Kari looked past her friend and met Grakin’s eyes. “It’s the Fuzzy Man,” she said. Eli and Danilynn had no idea what she meant, but Grakin excused his way past them and into the room. The elestram made no move to impede Grakin, and once he slipped past the jackal demon, the priest stood beside his mate. If Kari was surprised, Grakin was petrified, and Kari could see the anger boiling up in him.
“Who are you? How did you get into my mother’s home?” Grakin demanded with force uncharacteristic for him. It surprised Kari only slightly that her gentle mate’s protective nature surfaced so quickly when it appeared his son was in danger from a demon. Grakin saw the dead syrinthian woman after a minute, and he looked to Kari for explanation.
She laid a calming hand on his shoulder. “Whoever he is, he just saved my life,” Kari said, and all eyes turned back on the seated elestram. “What is your name, elestram? Do you understand me?”
“I understand you,” he replied. He crossed one leg over the other and continued rocking back and forth in the chair. His accent was strange like Emma’s, but a little different than hers. Kari was thankful he spoke the Citarian common tongue since she didn’t speak or understand infernal, and she didn’t want Grakin to have to speak with the elestram without Kari being able to help. The jackal demon continued, “I have no name. Among my people I am called The Wraith.”
“Why are you here? And how did you get into my mother’s home?” Grakin demanded.
The elestram turned its eyes to fix Grakin squarely in that intense orange gaze. “Your mother invited me in,” he responded. If he was at all offended by Grakin’s tone, it didn’t show. He had that same impassive expression and speech pattern that Emma had possessed. “She did so at your child’s insistence. As to why I am here, that is the reason there.”
He gestured toward the dead syrinthian, and Grakin, Eli, and Danilynn looked to Kari for an explanation. “Irressa was really a syrinthian,” Kari told Grakin. “And we invited her into our house. She was about to kill me, but this elestram struck first.”
“Why? What are you about?” Eli asked the demon.
“I am about my master’s business,” he replied.
“He saved you?” Grakin asked Kari, confused.
“Who do you serve?” Danilynn asked from the hallway, and one of the elestram’s ears swiveled in her direction, though he didn’t turn to look at her.
“That, I am not at liberty to say,” the elestram answered. “My master appoints me to a task, and I see to its execution. I do not question his orders or his motivations. It should be sufficient for you that I was assigned to come here and protect you from these syrinthian infiltrators. You should be thankful you are alive and leave well enough alone.”
Grakin had heard enough. He scooped Little Gray out of bed and edged past the elestram and out of the room. The elestram made no attempt to stop him and didn’t move a muscle even when Eli and Danilynn entered the room. Kari picked up her scimitars but put them back in their sheaths. She knelt beside the syrinthian corpse and checked to make sure Irressa was truly dead. There was little doubt; the elestram’s shadowed blade had gone right through her heart. In death, the syrinthian had reverted back to her normal form, and Kari stared at the body.
“Do you know Emma?” Eli asked.
Kari rose to see if the question garnered any reaction from the demon.
“I am not here to answer questions,” the elestram said, standing up. “My orders were to safeguard this demonhunter from the assassins. I have been patiently waiting for her to ask the obvious, but it seems to have eluded her.” He turned toward Kari. “There is more than one syrinthian among your Order. You will want to see to that. My time here is at an end.”
Eli moved to block the doorway, but Kari gestured for him to stand aside. There was little point to trying to stop the elestram; he had saved Kari’s life, and she wasn’t sure it was a worthwhile risk either way. If the Wraith, as he called himself, was an assassin in the underworld, Kari had little doubt he was at least as dangerous as Turillia, if not more so. For now, he wasn’t a threat, and Kari didn’t want Eli or Danilynn to risk injury or death to fight something that wasn’t a threat. Kari decided to leave well enough alone. Someone in the underworld had ordered this elestram to protect her, and he had done that.
The elestram started to leave but stopped in the doorway and turned back to Kari. “I envy you,” he said before he pulled the goggles back down over his eyes. Kari wasn’t sure what he meant, but then he added, “You have a beautiful child.”
He disappeared from sight then and made not a sound as he left the room. Kari never heard the front door open, and she wondered if he had truly left the house. She glanced at Danilynn, and the priestess whispered an incantation before she began to check the house room by room.
Grakin was downstairs in the dining room with Little Gray, and Kari and Eli joined him there while the priestess searched the house. Kari held tight to her son, and she could see that Grakin was quite alarmed by what had just happened.
Danilynn found no trace of the elestram and was at a loss as to how he had left the house without opening a door or window. Kari shivered involuntarily; his nickname was the Wraith, and he moved liked one. She gave thanks that he had come to protect her, for whatever reason. Had he, too, been sent to kill her, she would’ve ended up dead at the hands of Irressa and the elestram together. What proved even stranger was that he played with and watched over Little Gray. Kari looked at her son, and the elestram’s words echoed in her mind.
Kari’s thoughts circled back to Emma. “I have to go report this to the Order. I’ll be back as soon as I can, but if there are more of them among our cadets, we need to weed them out and kill them before they do any damage. Killing me is probably the least of their orders.”
“Yes, of course. Do as you must,” Grakin said. “I will take Little Gray to the temple and tell my mother what happened. She will need to replace the wards about the home to revoke the invitations we unwittingly gave to our enemies.”
“Good. You two want to come with me?” Kari asked Eli and Danilynn, and both agreed to accompany her. Kari kissed Grakin and their son and gave them both tight hugs.
It’s amazing how many people look out for me, she thought. Friends, deities, even a demon king or two, it would seem. Does this mean they know I’m Salvation’s Dawn?
As she thought about it, Kari realized Little Gray had been talking about the Fuzzy Man for months. If the demons knew Kari was Salvation’s Dawn, why hadn’t they moved against her in Barcon? And if she went into the underworld, would they try to capture her, or would she start a massive war as some kings fought to capture her and others fought to keep her safe?
Kari kept her thoughts to herself. She led Eli and Danilynn to the campus of the Order. She marched them past the gate guards and to the main offices. She passed through to the rear, where her own office sat across from Lord Allerius’.
Albrecht Allerius was in his office, and he regarded Kari and her two friends with no small amount of surprise. “Lady Vanador, it’s good to see you home safely. And, my word! Mistress Danilynn and Elias, it’s been a long time,” he greeted them.