45. DEVOURER #2
Ysira drew her last remaining weapon—an ashek.
It sprang to life at her touch, dark filaments coiling around her hands and wrist. A blade extended: a lightless void, edged in shimmering, undulating blood-red.
At the top of the shallow stairwell, she stabbed the blade into the floor, testing its strength.
The ashek cut stone as easily as flesh. She carved a long, straight gash in the obsidian and vowed, “No one will get past us.”
“It won’t be enough,” Turil sneered. “Your predecessors could not defeat us. Artek Var Naxal irradiated the Scar and broke apart before he could come close to finishing the job. You’ll fail, just as he did.”
If there was one thing all demons had in common, it was this stupid, reckless arrogance, this unrelenting belief in their own power. The gods of Zivora had suffered losses, but they had reigned supreme for so long, they had forgotten the true meaning of fear.
There were so many unforgivable sins on Jacen’s ledger. He had made so many mistakes, but he knew, with a certainty he’d craved for more than thirty years, that this was not one. This was what he had been born to do.
He had staked his soul on this, and he would not fail.
“Be silent.” His speech rang out between the spires. “I command you to depart this vessel.”
“You command me,” the demon goddess mocked. “In whose name?”
Jacen looked sideways to where Neri Semira faced the eclipse. Light coalesced around his clenched fists, coiling up his arms. His irises blazed red. Neri locked Jacen’s gaze, just for an instant, before his eyes no longer belonged to him. He set his jaw and nodded.
Then that searing glow drowned out his pupils and sclera, burning brighter than the heart of a star. If Jacen hadn’t turned away, he would have been blinded, but still he felt it—not only the heat on his skin but the triumph, as power incarnate shattered its chains.
“An older god than you,” Jacen said to Turil. “One you will regret having awoken.”
Jacen experienced most demons’ psyches as crude and unpolished, nebulous otherworlds projected by primitive alien consciousness. The archdemon’s mind was far more complex, and this time, Turil focused solely on Jacen. He had no fellow exorcists to guard his back.
Luckily, he had no intention of fighting her. As Turil opened her channel, Jacen followed that subtle tether from Seth’s mind, just as he had before, and plunged into what lay beyond.
He found himself in a vast circular chamber.
The ceiling loomed high above, and the massive, vaulted structure made his spine prickle.
The edges of the room were cloaked in darkness, and when he looked closer, he saw stars.
He was sinking, shrinking down to nothing.
He kept a tight rein on his focus. One misstep and he’d be annihilated.
Tharanoth, Lord of Hunger, sat in the center of the chamber. Again, his legs were crossed, his eyes closed.
Jacen’s image of Ileth was far less clear, but the Lady of Despair sat with her back to Tharanoth’s in a similar position. The two gods reached toward Turil.
“Oh, look.” Ileth sounded bored. “We have company.” Tharanoth seemed surprised, if only mildly.
“I thought you’d be running by now,” Ileth said.
“Not that it would help. In a few moments, we’re going to kill your friends.
Since you’ve so kindly offered yourself up to us, perhaps we’ll even make you do it.
” “Bold of you to try this,” Tharanoth agreed.
“However did you find us?” He probed past Jacen. “Turil. You’re getting sloppy.”
“A trifling detail. Everything is under control.” The Lady of Pain’s voice filled the psychic plane, soft and sinister, her presence curling around Jacen. “And he has just made a fatal error.”
Jacen remained calm, shuttering off his thoughts.
Whatever else these beings might be, they were still demons.
And he was an exorcist. He had passed assessment and manifestation.
Now he moved to the third and most difficult stage: interrogation.
This would be like no rite he’d ever attempted.
Brute force would not suffice; he would have to manipulate and obfuscate.
But he could be reckless, even audacious—whatever worked, anything at all—because his sole objective was to keep Tharanoth and Ileth oblivious to their physical surroundings long enough for Neri to unleash Naxal’s undiluted wrath.
Jacen was only a distraction.
“If you’d made it to our station, this might have at least been entertaining,” Turil hissed.
“But the child-god’s father was very stupid and ruined that for everyone.
” She did a horrifying impression of a chuckle, shivering through Jacen’s mind.
“How does it feel to have killed so many of your own? All those little brothers and sisters who will never see a new sun rise? All for nothing.”
Something jagged twisted inside Jacen’s chest, but he said, “Not for nothing.” His voice sounded odd, as though he’d heard it through someone else’s ears.
Turil chuckled again. “Oh. Yes. The child-god is attempting to integrate. Do you really think he can harm us? He has hate in his heart, but it’s buried deep. He’s afraid of his own shadow. Naxal will devour him before he touches this station, just like Artek before him.”
“We’re priming the cannons now,” said Ileth. “Your city will be gone in a heartbeat.”
“What about the Harvest?” Jacen demanded. “You need us.”
“We have others,” said Tharanoth. “Zivora is an unfortunate loss, but defiance such as yours cannot be tolerated.”
Jacen did not disguise his fear, nor the grief and horror within his mind. He did not have to pretend so long as he concealed his ultimate intent—the way he dug in to Tharanoth’s subconscious with meticulous subtlety.
He’d gotten the idea from Seth. Even when Turil was in control, even buried, Seth’s mind persisted.
Turil needed him alive to use his eyes and ears, and so the same must be true of Tharanoth’s host. Jacen didn’t have to target the Lord of Hunger himself.
He slipped beneath that alien mind, fine tendrils of extradimensional awareness probing deeper.
It was like weaving blind on an underwater loom—yet far easier than it should have been.
This mind was a terribly familiar place, cut from the same cloth as Jacen’s.
As deeply as he wanted to have been wrong, it was just as he’d suspected. This monster was his own flesh and blood.
Jacen could not stop his heart from sinking, nor Tharanoth from sensing it.
“Ah.” This time, the god’s surprise was more than mild.
Behind him, Ileth stirred. Turil’s presence turned colder, withdrawing from the periphery of Jacen’s awareness. He exploited their lapse in concentration to dig deeper still.
Tharanoth collected himself enough to rearrange his features into an approximation of pity. “Please understand that you are still nothing to us, no matter what blood runs through your veins.”
“Even yours?” Jacen said. “Oh?” Ileth’s tone was cutting.
“Probably one of Zephon’s.” Tharanoth snorted. “I always said he spent too much time among the livestock. His little planetside excursions did get him destroyed.”
“No,” said Jacen, with a futile attempt to stop his voice from trembling. “It was you. You wanted to know how I found you hiding behind Turil, and this is how. You’re my father.”
“You hypocrite,” Turil spat. “You held my spare bodies hostage for a decade when you found out about my Dalish pet.”
“Do you consider a bead of your sweat, or your piss, or even your seed to be your offspring?” Tharanoth scoffed.
“That is all you are to me. I have had eighty-six hosts. I was older than any living creature on your primitive planet when your ancestors first crawled out of the mud.” “Did the Church know?” To ask elicited agony, but Jacen made himself do it anyway.
He let that pain surge over his mind, let it be all Tharanoth saw. “Who was my mother?”
“Why would I know that?” Genuine confusion emanated from the god—from his father. And if Tharanoth did not know, Jacen never would.
He could only ask, “Why?”
Tharanoth tilted his head and sighed. “Curiosity.” The word chilled Jacen to the marrow. Tharanoth spoke as one might about a peculiar insect he’d found under a rock. “A brief embarrassment, best forgotten.”
“You may not think much of us,” Jacen said, “but I could still be useful to you.”
Tharanoth laughed. “Telepathic gifts aside, you’ve made a mess of your body. I have no shortage of better options.”
Jacen fought back his revulsion. “Not my body. My mind. I could quell the revolution in your streets, restore order to Zivora. I could give you back your prized experiment. It’s not too late. I know how to control these people, because I learned from your Church.”
He spoke the truth—careful not to present it as hypothetical. Tharanoth would sense no deception from Jacen, because he did know how to control Zivora’s faithful. He had been trained from childhood for that very purpose.
The Lord of Hunger’s lips twitched. “And why would you do that? Filial devotion? Whatever you feel toward me, I assure you, I do not share it.”
“Logic,” said Jacen. “And fear. That’s why Mother Akkani served you, isn’t it?
” He addressed Turil. “I have one other condition. Leave Seth Semira’s body, for good, and I’ll give you whatever you want.
” He let down the barriers of his mind, only a little, as though his very real emotions had made him slip.
He let them catch a glimpse of what he felt for Seth.
Tharanoth’s ridged brows lifted. He seemed, at the very least, amused enough to listen. But Ileth said, “The Emperor would never approve. Not in the wake of this mess.”