Demon’s Quest (High Demon #4)(64)
Author: Connie Suttle

"My love?" He was there in an instant.

"You picked up a piece of that Ra’Ak, didn’t you—the one I killed on Tulgalan?"

"This piece?" He held the chunk out to me. It was bigger than my fist.

"May I borrow this?" I asked.

"You may have it, I have three more." He was smiling widely at me.

"Lendill, can your dad zone in on this sort of abnormality?" I handed the chunk over. "There’s only four more now with this sort of illness, and they should all be together."

"Might be possible—would you like to see where my father lives?" Lendill was smiling too. That’s how Lendill, Nefrigar and I all ended up in the Elven Kingdom, somewhere a High Demon had never been before.

"This is fascinating," Kaldill Schaff took the chunk of Ra’Ak dust from Lendill. "I’m not sure I’ve ever held such as this." We’d been transported to the hidden Elven lands on Wyyld, and stood inside Kaldill’s beautiful, private study.

"You may keep it, Elf King," Nefrigar smiled as Kaldill handled the chunk of Ra’Ak dust. "Reah may have one of the other pieces if she wants."

"I don’t need it, Honey Blue," I smiled up at him.

"You know, I think I can place a tracer on this," Kaldill grinned. "It was difficult with the other, since he changes bodies so often. I had to rework the spell every three days, using the essence signature. I won’t have to do that with this malady, it will give off a vibration peculiar to the sufferers."

"How long?" Lendill was almost breathless in anticipation.

"Two—three days. After that, I can track them even if they’re folding from one spot to another."

"I know where Zellar will strike next." Willem had come to Lissa. "The Ra’Ak don’t go with him when he gathers his victims, but he knows they’ll track him if he doesn’t return quickly. Lendill is correct in that he’s trying to gather several and then use what power he has left to scatter them, after placing something of himself with each one. What we have to do is give him a surprise when he lands in the next spot, so he’ll run back to the Ra’Ak for protection. Then, Reah and the others can be waiting."

"But I thought you weren’t allowed to say things like that." Lissa blinked at Willem in surprise.

"Kaldill knows my talents. He gave permission." Willem was smiling. "Be ready tomorrow afternoon, around second bell. I will take you where you need to be."

"You got it," Lissa nodded.

"Is everybody ready?" I looked up at Norian—he was running the command center himself while the rest of us geared up for battle. Drake, Drew and Dragon were coming with us and Teeg stood at my side, a Ranos rifle slung over his shoulder as if he were used to it. My rifle was in my hand and I was checking the charge.

Gardevik had come, with Em-pah Denevik and two other High Demon males. Rylend was also there, and he gave me a heart-stopping smile from across the room. Farzi and Nenzi hadn’t been willing to stay behind—they were coming as lion snakes. Lendill had asked them to bite anything that still appeared human and they’d readily agreed. Astralan and his brothers had offered to come, but Teeg asked them to stay behind with Dee, in case something happened. Dee would carry on with the newly-formed Alliance if anything happened to Teeg. I was determined that nothing would happen.

We were waiting for mindspeech from Lissa—she and Willem had some errand of their own. They’d been secretive about it; we only knew that when the signal came, we would know the right time to go. Kaldill Schaff was better than any bloodhound, I learned. He’d gotten the information for us, just as promised. Our quarry had folded to Lidrith, barely a click before Lendill had gathered all of us together. I figured that Lissa and Willem meant to interrupt Zellar in his kidnapping efforts, chasing him back to the Ra’Ak for protection. That would put them all together in a knot. Now, all we had to do was catch them in those bare blinks before they folded to another location. No problem.

Zellar, in a twenty-year-old body, stood beneath the awning at the train station on Lidrith. Since the pirates had taken over, Lidrithi went to work as before, for little or no pay. They were rationed food and utilities. Zellar saw them as rats, continuously searching through a maze for small rewards in the form of food and housing. Zellar had long ago lost anything closely resembling a conscience, not even blinking when he saw children waiting to take the train to work alongside their parents. The ones he took might even think it a blessing when their sorry lives ended abruptly.

"Zellar?" A woman stood beside him, smiling. And were those? Zellar stared at the Queen of Le-Ath Veronis, her lengthy claws extended, one lethal nail sliding beneath his chin. Zellar gulped in fear and screamed as he folded away.

Now! Lissa shouted in mindspeech.

Pandemonium. Perhaps there’s a better word to describe what happened when we hit the ground inside a cavernous grotto hidden inside a mountain on Lidrith’s northernmost continent, but I couldn’t dredge it up in my mind, I was too focused on what we had to do. Dragon, Drake and Drew became dragons immediately, doing battle with three of the four Ra’Ak. Garde, Denevik and the other High Demons had turned and were chasing the fourth.

I wasn’t sure what was keeping any of them from folding away, until I saw Lissa and Ry. Somehow, between the two of them, they’d shielded the entire cave. The enemy couldn’t escape. That made me smile.

It was easy enough to see that Zellar had done a soul-shift with all the humanoids inside the cave, and Farzi and Nenzi were whipping about, biting as many of those thirty humans as they could. Lendill and Teeg were shooting with deadly aim, killing what got away from the reptanoids. But Zellar? He was wrapped inside a spell that he thought to stay safely hidden inside. He’d tapped Lidrith’s core shortly before he’d gone hunting more victims, and employed that vast power to hide himself while his Ra’Ak captors died. Did he think his spell would keep him from my sight? I pulled the knife from the sheath clipped in my waistband and made my way carefully toward the other side of the cave.

Three Ra’Ak dusted while I edged around the others, avoiding Ranos shots and humanoids dying of lion snake poison. One man dropped at my feet and stared helplessly up at me as he quivered and died on the dusty cave floor. I felt a brief moment of pity for him, but he was dead anyway—Zellar’s soul-shifting had seen to that. This was a quicker and more merciful death—lion snake poison paralyzes everything. You feel no pain at the last.

I stopped not far from Zellar, who was invisible to all except perhaps Lissa and me—the other High Demons were attempting to help three dragons wrestle the last Ra’Ak. Zellar had been hiding for a very long time, and now that I’d stopped moving, seemingly embroiled in watching the last Ra’Ak fight off the others, he turned his attention to that as well.