Secrets of the Demon

the art of summoning.

It wasn’t the only change in her that left me somewhat unnerved. Somehow she’d known of my agreement to become Rhyzkahl’s summoner, and in the weeks after she’d woken from the coma I kept expecting her to lay into me about it—to give me a full verbal flaying. Or to at least want to know more about the circumstances that had led to the agreement, or the terms of my oath. But neither argument nor conversation had ever materialized, and the couple of times that I’d tried to speak about it, she’d hurriedly changed the subject, as if the thought of even mentioning a demonic lord was anathema.

I shifted uncomfortably on the stool, suddenly insanely glad that Carl had left before he’d been forced to witness this. Or had he somehow known this was coming, and excused himself accordingly? Anything was possible. Especially with him. “Look, if you don’t want me to use the library, I’ll understand.”

Tessa sighed and rubbed at her eyes. “No, go ahead and use it. I’m sorry I said that. Besides, you need it more than I do right now.”

Something about her tone made me frown. “Aunt Tessa, have you summoned since . . . you came back?”

She gave a soft snort. “There’ve only been two full moons since I was released from the hospital. Give me a little time to adjust, all right?”

I schooled my expression into an understanding smile. I had yet to tell her about my discovery that potency could be stored—and without resorting to the kind of torture and murder that the Symbol Man had used. Summoners utilized the natural potency that flowed in the world to create the portal between the spheres through which the demons were summoned from their world to ours. Potency was also required to power the wards and bindings that protected the summoner from being torn to pieces—either by the forces of the portal, or by the summoned demon. Power was easiest to draw and control during the full moon, which was why summonings were almost always performed on—or very close to—the full moon. On rare occasions a summoner could perform a ritual when there was no moon, but only when calling a very low-level demon, for whom very little power would be required for the bindings and protections. During the waxing and the waning of the moon, the danger lay in the erratic inconsistency of available potency. A hiccup in the flow of power during the forming of a portal could mean an ugly and bloody death.

However, in an effort to “woo” me to become his summoner, Rhyzkahl had provided me with instructions for a ritual to help draw my aunt’s essence back to her body. And I’d discovered that a portion of the diagram used in the process could be used as a means to store small quantities of power, and—more important— release it in a smooth and steady flow. I still wasn’t sure if Rhyzkahl had intended for me to discover this means of storing potency, but he certainly had yet to voice any objections to my use of it.

But I had absolutely no idea why I was holding back from telling my aunt about this. Maybe it’s because she doesn’t seem like herself. Was that it? The storage diagram was a huge discovery, and the more I learned about it, the more I realized that it had the potential to be dangerous as well. What could be done with a massive supply of stored potency?

I could summon other demonic lords. And bind them, with enough preparation. Not that I ever would. One demonic lord was enough for me, and such summonings were insanely dangerous. But what if another summoner—one with scruples similar to the Symbol Man—had this knowledge? What could someone like that do with a demonic lord at his command? I’d faced that possibility once already—even chosen to die rather than let it happen.

A chill swept through me. What if that’s why I might be in danger? Not only did Rhyzkahl have the advantage of having a summoner bound to him, but he had one who wasn’t limited to summoning during the full moon. There might be some who would seek to remove his advantage, or worse, there might be some who would seek to protect themselves by removing one who had knowledge that could make it easier to enslave them. All the more reason for me to keep it to myself. The last thing I wanted to do was put Tessa in any sort of danger again.

I jerked as Tessa put a hand on mine. “You look ill, sweets. What is it?”

I forced a smile. “Sorry. Lost in thought for a second. I think I’m still tired from last night.”

She gave my hand a pat. “I’ll make you some of that boring oversweetened tea that you tolerate, okay?”

I laughed. “That would be slightly delightful.”

I expected her to turn and go to the sink, but her hand stayed on mine. Her gaze had gone distant, and I even glanced behind me to see if she was looking at something out the window.

“Aunt Tessa? Is something wrong?”

The barest hint of a frown furrowed her brow. “Do you ever wonder why Szerain was willing?”

I blinked. “Huh?”

She dropped her eyes to mine. “Szerain. The lord that my mother and Peter Cerise and the others were trying to summon . . .”

Even with her clarification it still took me a few seconds to figure out what she was referring to. “Right. When Rhyzkahl came through instead,” I said, keeping my face immobile. Nearly thirty years ago Peter Cerise had gathered five other summoners together in a bold, ambitious, and shockingly dangerous attempt to summon the demonic lord Szerain. Cerise’s wife was dying of breast cancer, and Szerain was—supposedly—amenable to being summoned for such a need. This was most assuredly not the case for any other demonic lord.

Perhaps the summoning would have proceeded without incident if Szerain had actually been the one to come through the portal, but Peter Cerise and the other summoners were unaware that the then-teenage Tessa was hiding in that basement that night. And though she’d yet to realize her potential as a summoner, her presence altered the forming of the portal. A different—and unwilling—demonic lord was pulled through instead: Rhyzkahl, one of the most powerful of the demonic lords.

The result was a slaughter. Rhyzkahl killed all the summoners except for one who later went on to plan another summoning of Rhyzkahl out of vengeance—becoming the serial killer known as the Symbol Man— and who had tortured and murdered his victims in order to gather the power needed to make such a powerful summoning successful.

“Yes,” Tessa said, expression strangely calm. “That’s the one. Do you ever wonder why Szerain was willing to be summoned?”

The serene look on her face was beginning to seriously unnerve me, especially considering the topic of our conversation. Her mother—my grandmother—had been one of the summoners Rhyzkahl had slain. “I, uh, hadn’t really thought about it.”

“You should,” she said, voice soft. “The demonic lords never do anything without motive.” Then she patted my hand and looked back at me with a perfectly normal Tessa-smile. “Let me get that tea for you now.”

I fled to the library after taking a few token sips of tea, but my mind was on Tessa’s strange words—and her stranger mood shift.

Why would a demonic lord be willing to be summoned? I could think of an answer right off the top of my head: the demonic lord in question had an arrangement with a human summoner, much like the arrangement I had with Rhyzkahl. So perhaps Szerain had a summoner of his own at one time as well. Perhaps he still did. I knew next to nothing about the demonic lords except for Rhyzkahl, and I didn’t exactly know a whole lot about him either—even if we did have crazy hot sex every time I summoned him.

But if some other summoner were to think that Rhyzkahl might be willing to be summoned simply because I was able to do so . . . well, that would most assuredly be a fatal mistake on their part. That, I was certain of. A summoning was considered a deep and terrible insult to a lord, a slight to their honor that could not go unanswered, else they risked losing yet more honor. It would be like yanking the pope out of his chair and setting him to clean your bathroom. But a thousand times worse, and with far more devastating repercussions. Honor was the bedrock of the demons’ society.

There were twelve levels of demons: from the first-level zrila to the twelfth-level reyza. The higher level demons had more arcane skill and strength than the lower, but the demonic lords were above all of those. They were denizens of an alternate plane of existence, and I had the ability to open a portal between this world and theirs and summon them forth to serve me in exchange for a suitable offering. While it was an affront for any demon to be summoned, the demons gained status among their kind through knowledge gained in this sphere or the artifacts and offerings the summoner might exchange for the