“Vegard, cover me!” I yelled.

I didn’t wait for a response. Rage fed the fireballs in my hands until I could feel the heat. I ran toward the mage, hurling the fireballs at the demon as one clawed hand locked around the mage’s throat, claws piercing his flesh, pulling him to his feet and tearing his throat out doing it. The demon simply raised his free hand, and one of my fireballs ricocheted off of it and came right back at me.

I swore and ducked. The fireball hit the wall behind me and burned straight through the brick. Seconds later, I heard flames crackling from inside. Crap.

The demon was staring at me, his eyes yellow with a vertical slit for a pupil, like a goat. But unlike any goat I’d ever seen, the demon’s pupils glowed red.

A familiar fire bloomed in the center of my chest. The Saghred. I silently went through a litany of curses. I did not need this now. I braced myself for the surge of Saghred-spawned power that was coming. Power that would consume me, force me to fight it rather than the demon. Power that was going to get me killed just like that mage.

Nothing. No surge, no force, nothing. What the hell?

The demon smiled slowly, the tips of his needle teeth visible. I desperately called my magic for another fireball. Not a spark. All the fire I had seethed in my chest. It wasn’t white-hot and raging; the stone’s power wasn’t fighting to get free. It burned bright, warm, welcoming.

For the demon.

The demon looked at me, unclenched his hand, and negligently tossed the dead mage aside. Then he stepped back and bowed deeply and respectfully.

“We are honored by your presence,” he told me.

Then he cloaked, invisible to all but me, and with one leap was on the wall like a big purple spider, the talons of his claws and feet clicking and gouging chunks out of the bricks as he scuttled around the corner, right over the clueless heads of a crowd that was forming at the end of the street.