Darkness Unbound
Page 24

He moved his sword lightly. Fire shimmered up its side and the blade hummed. “That is her name.”
His sword was a she? Weird. I released my knees and pushed up into a sitting position. But the movement was too sharp and my stomach rebelled. I managed to scramble to a nearby trash can before whatever was left in my stomach rose yet again.
Azriel didn’t say anything, simply stood and watched.
“What was that thing?” I said, when I could.
“An oni.”
I blinked. “A what?”
“Oni. They are not usually soul stealers. Flesh is more to their liking.”
Well, at least it hadn’t tried that. Stuck as I had been on the gray fields, I couldn’t have done much to stop it.
“Why wasn’t the Dušan able to attack it?” I’d already guessed the answer, but I knew so little about the creature who now shared my flesh that I wanted it confirmed.
“Because they can only protect on the gray fields. The oni remained on this plane, so the Dušan could do nothing.”
“Fuck, Risa, are you all right?”
Stane came down the stairs two at a time. From behind me came a fierce half cry—Azriel moving his sword into attack position.
“Whoa!” Stane said, skidding to a halt at the base of the stairs and throwing up his hands. “Ris, tell the man-mountain I mean you no harm.”
Man-mountain? Azriel wasn’t small, but it was obvious Stane was seeing something far different from what both Ilianna and I did.
“Azriel, he’s the one we came here to rescue.” I sat back on my heels and wiped a hand across my mouth. What I really needed was a drink to wash the sour taste away. “Stane, why the hell would a soul stealer be attacking you?”
“Was that what that thing was?”
“Yeah. It killed a little girl two days ago, and Handberry last night. Now it’s come after you. There’s obviously a link we’re not seeing.”
“Well, I can’t think of a goddamn thing Handberry and I have in common.” He knelt down beside me and touched my arm lightly. “Are you all right? Do you need to come upstairs and freshen up?”
“That would be wonderful.” I glanced back at Azriel. “You’d better come, too.”
He nodded, his gaze on Stane, his expression intent. Assessing. I briefly wished I was telepathic. Right then, I really would have loved to know just what was going on behind those bright eyes of his.
Stane’s grip slipped underneath my elbow; then he all but lifted me to my feet. The room did several giddy turns before settling down, as did my stomach. I swallowed heavily, then said, “Okay, ready to move.”
It was slow progress, but by the time we reached the top of the stairs, I was actually feeling a little better.
“The bathroom is the second door on your left,” Stane said, releasing my arm but keeping rather close—no doubt ready to catch me should I suddenly drop.
“Thanks.” I took a tentative step forward. A slight tremor ran in my limbs and my head was aching even fiercer than before, but it didn’t immediately seem like I was going to collapse again. I gave him a reassuring smile and added, “You’d better call Tao and give him the all-clear.”
He nodded. I walked across to the bathroom. Azriel followed me in and closed the door behind him.
“You know,” I said, exasperated, “it is polite to let a lady go to the bathroom in peace.”
“There is nothing you can do in here that I haven’t seen before.”
“Maybe,” I said, “but that doesn’t mean there aren’t certain things that a girl desires privacy for.”
“But you wish to speak to me privately, do you not?”
“I do.” But how the hell did he know that? Did the fact that he was connected to my Chi give him a far deeper connection than I’d figured?
“Then talk.” He crossed his arms and leaned a shoulder against the wall, his expression once again dispassionate.
Annoyance flickered through me, but I thrust it down and turned on the tap, wetting my face and rinsing out my mouth before asking, “What took you so long to get here?”
“The fact that I cannot follow you in Aedh form. I tried to tell you, but you’d already left.”
I frowned. “Why wouldn’t you be able to follow me when you’re supposedly connected to my Chi?”
“The Chi is a complex form of energy that manifests itself in the form of your human vitality, spirit, and flesh. But when you become Aedh, you become an entirely different form of life—one that I am not attuned to.”
“But I’m still me. No matter which form I take, it’s my spirit, my soul, inhabiting that form. So I can’t see why that would make any difference.”
“The soul may be the same, but the energy force changes greatly. I cannot track that force, nor can I attune myself to it.”
“Why not?”
He shrugged. “I do not know the whys, I only know the fact.”
Huh. Helpful—not. “And yet you heard me when I was on the gray fields.”
“Because I am a reaper, and the gray fields are our domain.”
I frowned, splashed some more water over my face and neck, then turned off the tap and sat down on the edge of the bath. “Were you able to get a sense of the soul stealer’s creator before you destroyed it?”
“Unfortunately, no. I thought it more important this time to rescue you. As I have said, your death would be inconvenient right now.”
Meaning that in the future, my death might not be so inconvenient? Irritation flared brighter, but I wasn’t entirely sure why. I really didn’t expect anything else from a reaper.
“Well, I sensed her—she’s evil, through and through. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get much more than that.”
Or had I?
I frowned, thinking back over the impressions that had swamped me a heartbeat before I’d fled my flesh. The soul stealer had been at the base of the stairs when I arrived, looking up but not moving …
“But you would know her if you saw her?”
I jumped at Azriel’s question, then nodded and rubbed my arms. The stain of her still lingered in the dark recesses of my mind.
“Good,” he said. “That is at least a starting point.”
“We may have more than that.” I pulled out my phone and said, “Ilianna.” When her somewhat exasperated-looking features appeared on-screen, I added quickly, “I know, I know, we’ll hurry. I just need to ask a question.”
“Ask. Then you and Tao better get your asses into gear and get over here. The roast is spoiling.”
And given she was a vegetarian and only cooking the roast for Tao, she’d be totally pissed off for the next several days if that actually happened. “We’ll be there in twenty-five minutes. Tell me, those wards you set up—just how strong were they?”
“Strong enough to hold up for several minutes against a concerted attack. Why?”
“So enough time for Stane to escape, but not enough to completely stop a major magical attack?”
“Yes.” She frowned. “I didn’t have enough time to create those sorts of wards. You know that.”
I knew, but I needed to check. “Thanks. I’ll see you soon.”
“But why—”
I cut the connection and looked at Azriel. “The stealer wasn’t actually trying to kill Stane.”
“This is the name of one you came here to rescue?”
“Yeah.” I carefully stood up. My stomach behaved itself, but it felt like there were a hundred tiny drummers going mad inside my head.
“Why would you believe the oni wasn’t sent here to kill?” He turned around and opened the door, stepping back so I could precede him.
“Because Ilianna’s wards weren’t strong enough to physically stop it, yet when I arrived, it was simply hovering at the bottom of the stairs.” I hesitated, glancing at Azriel as I walked past. “Why does Stane see you as a man-mountain?”
“I merely present a form he feels inclined to trust.”
“Most male wolves would feel threatened by someone fairly sizable.”
“But your friend was once rescued by a man similar to the form he sees.”
I paused. “And how would you know that?”
“Because I may be a Mijai, but I am still a reaper. We can reach into the minds of humanity and see their desires and fears.”
Fuck, I hoped he wasn’t seeing my desires and fears. That might get a tad embarrassing! “Then why do both Ilianna and I see your true form?”
“Because there are a rare few in this world who can see past the glamour.”
“Feeling better?” Stane swung around in his chair and gave me the once-over. He frowned slightly. “You still look a little peaked. Maybe a coffee would pick you up—”
“Not coffee,” Tao said, as he galloped up the last couple of steps. “In times like this, only a Coke will do.”
He handed me several cans, then his gaze fell on the dragon glittering fiercely on my arm. “What the f**k is that?”
“Long story. I’ll explain on the way home.”
He grunted, and his gaze slid past me. “Then who’s that?”
“Azriel.” I popped a can open and gulped down some fizzy brown life-giver. I immediately felt better—although by rights, given I’d only just finished chucking my heart out, it should have had the opposite effect.
“The reaper?” Tao said, surprise in his voice. “Why the hell does he look like Marat Neale, then?”
Marat Neale was the youngest of the brothers who co-ran the Neale wolf pack. Kellen—who’d once been one of Aunt Riley’s lovers—was Stane’s father and the oldest. Sian—the middle brother—had been Tao’s. I looked over my shoulder. Azriel’s gaze met mine, a small smile touching his lips and briefly warming his eyes. “The man-mountain previously mentioned.”
“Ah,” I said, then reached out and squeezed Tao’s shoulder. “Long story. Right now, we need to concentrate on finding the people behind the attack on Stane.”
“And we need to do it quickly,” he said. “Ilianna’s stuck at home with Mom, and she’s not happy.”
“Yeah, already spoke to her.” I glanced at my watch. “We’ve got fifteen minutes. I told her we’d be back in twenty-five.”
“Ris, this is far more urgent than a goddamn birth—”
I pressed a fingernail against his chest and tapped lightly to emphasize my point. “You tell that to Ilianna after she’s spent weeks organizing it, because I have no intention of having a clumsiness spell—or something far worse—flung my way.”
Which she probably wouldn’t actually do given the threefold rule, but when Ilianna was pissed off enough, you never knew.
He obviously saw my point, because he said, “Okay, what did we learn?”
“We learned that the people behind this didn’t want Stane dead. They were merely trying to scare the shit out of him.”
“Well, they succeeded.” Stane leaned forward, caught a nearby chair with his fingertips, then rolled it in my direction. “But why would they spare me and not the others?”
I gratefully spun the chair around and collapsed more than sat down. The day had been a long one, and it was starting to tell. I felt like something the cat had regurgitated. Worse still, I thought with a sliver of amusement, I probably looked like it.
I met Stane’s gaze. “Maybe the other attacks were either a final warning or a last resort. Maybe there had been previous warnings that had been ignored. Or maybe they simply need you alive for the moment.”
“There are simpler ways to send a warning,” Tao commented. “Why in hell would anyone want to wreck a person’s very existence? Especially when it’s a little girl?”
“Humanity is often more monstrous than the monsters they endeavor to emulate or control,” Azriel said softly. “And many times the cause is nothing more than money.”
I spun the chair to look at him. His mismatched eyes were as unreadable as his expression, but the wash of his contempt ran across my senses, stinging like flame. He might be a reaper, he might be a warrior who protected us from the things that came through the portals, but that obviously didn’t translate to any respect for those of us who populated the real world.
“Not all of us are like that, Azriel.”
One dark eyebrow rose slightly. “Did I say they were?”
“No. But you implied it.” I spun around again. “When the soul stealer attacked me, I got an impression of the witch behind it. She’s powerful, she’s mean, and she’s borderline insane. But while she might be part of whatever is going on, in the end, this is just a job for her.”
“Could the link between me and Handberry,” Stane said slowly, “be something as simple as the fact that we both work on this street?”
“A street someone is trying to buy up,” Tao said, catching on. “Although I still can’t see why they’d go to this extreme for a housing development.”
“Interestingly enough,” Stane commented, “this area is classified as commercial, but no approaches have been made to the council about rezoning the land.”
I frowned. “Why would they make an approach if they don’t own the land?”
Stane snorted. “Why would they waste millions without at least investigating whether a rezoning application would go through?”
Unless they were idiots, they wouldn’t. “So I guess that begs the question: What else is here that they’re willing to go to such extremes for?”