I sighed. I had a horrible premonition that I’d never get the hang of this whole-new-world business. “And a bane is…?”

“The opposite of a ward. Rather than protect, its intent is to do harm.”

“Well, he can just stop that,” I said loudly, walking toward him.

I intended on merely standing a few feet away and trying to stop him by means of the ring, but as I got close, Aisling, who had been arguing with Drake about his romantic liaisons in the past, suddenly stopped and yelled, “Aoife, don’t get close—”

“Look,” I said at the same time, about to unload a can of magic ring whoop-ass on Bael, “this isn’t going to fly—”

Just as the words left my mouth, Bael’s arm shot out, and he grabbed me, yanking me into the circle with him. I backpedaled wildly as Kostya yelled and lunged forward, Aisling calling out a warning for him to stay out of the circle, but it didn’t matter.

The ring grew tight on my finger as instinctively I pulled heavily on both it and Kostya’s fire to protect myself. There was a moment of utter silence during which all life seemed to hold its breath; then a massive percussive blast sent me flying backward. I hit something hard and saw stars for a few minutes, my body not hurting, but my lungs scorched and my brain oddly numb and unable to function.

Dimly, from a great distance away, a voice said, “Peracta vis est omnis!”

“What’s that mean?” I heard myself ask, even though I was blind and bemused.

The hard thing I hit shifted beneath me and groaned. “You don’t speak Latin?”

I waited a minute until the wavy blackness that seemed to swim around me faded, and I could see. I rolled off Kostya and glared at him as best I could. “I’m a half-Senegalese, half-Irish woman who was born in America and raised in Sweden. Do you think I speak Latin?”

“I see no obstacle to you knowing it.” Kostya groaned again as I got to my knees and started patting down his torso, putting out the fire that danced merrily on him. “The phrase translates to ‘all power is marshaled,’ and I believe it means Bael has just summoned whatever demons are in his control.”

“Oh no. That was something I did, wasn’t it? Hell.” I waited for a moment, but there was no following “Abaddon” from Jim. Blinking, I realized that what I had taken for temporary blindness was mostly due to the air being full of dust and smoke. Around us, through the eddies of smoke, flames were visible, climbing the walls, moving across the floor, and consuming furniture that blocked its path. “Your dragon fire is everywhere. Does anything on you hurt like a broken bone or internal injuries?”

“That is not dragon fire, and no, I have no injuries. Do you?”

“None at all, thanks to you catching me.” As he got to his feet, I winced at the Kostya-shaped dent in the plaster wall. The poor guy had cushioned me from the blast and taken the worst of it. I took the hand he offered and got to my own feet, mentally swearing at my stupidity, coughing and wheezing a little when he lifted me over a partially burned table.

“Kostya!” Drake’s voice called out through the smoke and dust.

“We are here.”

A large black shape moved in the smoke, resolving itself into Drake carrying Aisling, who he set down beside me. “You are both unharmed?”

“Yes. And you?”

“We’re fine, although Jim’s coat got a bit scorched,” Aisling answered for Drake, slapping his hands when he started patting her down, obviously checking her for injuries. “Stop it, Drake! I’ve already told you that you shielded me from the worst of it.”

“I wish I could say the same,” Jim said, padding over to us. One side of his head was singed, but it was nothing to the look he turned on me. “Man, Eefies! If you were jealous of me being Aisling’s demon, you could have warned me. You didn’t have to release Bael. My coat is never going to be the same!”

“Hush, Jim,” Aisling said, brushing herself off. Her face was tight with worry, which just made me feel a hundred times worse.

“I’m so sorry. I had no idea that Bael would grab me and pull me into the circle. I didn’t know he could do such a thing. What was that explosion?”

“My circle breaking.” Aisling looked at Drake, who shook his head and consulted quietly with Kostya. “Which is a big surprise to me, since I hadn’t the slightest idea that they could break. Not to brag, but normally, when I make a circle, they stay made until I undo them.”

“Woot! Got me a badass Guardian as a demon lord. That’s a lot better than a clueless wyvern’s mate any way you slice it,” Jim chimed in.

“You are beyond obnoxious,” Aisling told him. “Apologize to Aoife right now. She took excellent care of you, and God only knows what she had to put up with from you.”

Jim looked contrite. “Sorry, Eefies. Still wuv me?”

“Yes, not that you deserve it after kicking me when I’m down. Was it me going into your circle that made it break, Aisling?”

“No.” Her nose scrunched up for a few seconds; then she shook her head. “No, there’s no way having an addition to the circle would cause it to break. There was some other factor involved that caused the circle to explode.”

“It was the ring,” I said miserably, yanking a chair that wasn’t yet on fire out of the path of the nearest blaze and setting it behind Aisling so she could sit. “I had no idea it would do that. It just happened of its own accord. But what it can do, it can undo. I’ll just go find Bael and get the ring to zap him back to wherever he came from.”

“I’m afraid it’s not going to be that easy,” Aisling said, waving a hand in front of her face. “The smoke is getting worse, which means the non-dragon fire is taking hold. Drake, we should probably get out of the building; I imagine the mortal fire department will be here soon.”

“We can’t leave, but you certainly will,” Drake said, moving over to help Aisling. “Aoife will take you home.”

“Why can’t you come as well?” I asked Kostya, who was looking toward the back room. “Not that I approve of running away from a building I just blew up, because my parents always taught me to take responsibility for my actions, even if it’s caused by a magic ring that I didn’t tell to blow up a mystical circle, but still. The smoke is getting worse.”