Fury of the Demon (Kara Gillian) by Diana Rowland Page A

or so names filled the margin next to a halfway decent sketch of a zrila. I read through them one by one, murmuring each name to myself.
Sara Fillmore. Bryce Thatcher. Robert Finch. Henrietta Sloan. Jose Luis Hernandez. Carla Billings.
There were more, but none sparked even a sliver of familiarity. Eilahn denied knowledge of them as well, so I marked the page for future investigation and moved on. One folder, with a picture of a kitten on the cover, held several pages from a sketch book—all with odd drawings of leaf-less trees. Or at least I thought they were trees. In all of the drawings the tree-thing had a weirdly short central trunk with branches above that divided and spread and divided some more. Yet it also reminded me of pictures I’d seen of arteries and veins and capillaries, the way they all divided into smaller and smaller vessels.
    A few of the sketches had snatches of alliterative phrases penciled along the outer edges of the pages, but with no meaning or central theme that I could grasp.
Boss-boy begets better brains. Masters make misery manually. Cancer clutched Claire’s comfort. Good games give great gifts.
And many others just as bizarre.
    I read through the odd phrases several times, turning the papers around as I did so to see if anything clicked from different angles, but finally admitted defeat, replaced all of the sketches in the folder, and moved on to the next item.
    We pored through for another hour or so and found lots of interesting factoids and tidbits, such as how to determine the gender of a
savik
, and that a mature faas has seventy-two teeth, but nothing directly relevant. At around eight thirty a.m. we took a break, Eilahn to the roof for some morning sun, and me to scrounge breakfast and make another pot of coffee. I had a feeling it wouldn’t be the last one I made this morning.
    My phone buzzed with Zack’s number as the pot began its gurgling. “Hey, Zack, what’s up?”
    “Beaulac PD just called Ryan and me out to a scene,” he said. “Since you’re a special consultant, it would be righteous if you could make it.”
    Special consultant. That still cracked me up. “I can do that,” I said. “Text me the address. What kind of scene?”
    His voice turned grim. “Murder.”
    “A murder that your team gets called out on,” I said. Shit.
    “We haven’t seen pics yet, but they’re saying Symbol Man.”
    My eyes narrowed even as a chill crept through me. “The real Symbol Man is long dead. Let’s hope this is just a mundane copycat.”
    “I don’t know. I’m not holding my breath on that one.”
    “I’m leaving in two minutes.” Shit. The Symbol Man was a serial killer who’d terrorized the Beaulac area for four years around the time I became a cop. He was dubbed thus for the convoluted mark he’d carved into each tortured and murdered victim. After thirteen victims he stopped, and when three years went by with no sign of more victims, most people concluded he’d either died or left the area.
    And then a little over a year ago, the marked and mutilated bodies started showing up again.
    The Symbol Man case was the first one I worked with Ryan and Zack as part of a serial killer task force. It was also how I first encountered Rhyzkahl. The Symbol Man turned out to be a summoner who sought to call and bind the demonic lord to his will, and during the first attempt Rhyzkahl managed to escape by hijacking a completely unrelated summoning I was performing at the same time. Instead of a fourth-level
luhrek
, the beautiful and powerful lord appeared instead. And, well, from there
events
progressed that I still kicked myself over.
    I slipped on a dress shirt and khaki trousers, pulled on a shoulder holster and tugged a jacket over it. I exited the front door, then looked up at the roof. “Eilahn,” I called up. “The task force has been called to a murder. Supposedly looks like a Symbol Man victim.”
    She dropped to the ground with a leap graceful enough to make an