Darkness Unmasked (DA 5) (17 page)

“Well,” I said, once we were back out. “
That
was a waste of time.”

“At least there is one less option on the list.” He pressed warm fingers against my spine, gently guiding me away from the cultural center. “What do you wish to do now?”

I pulled out my phone and glanced at my list. “Let’s try the Aviation Museum. That’s probably the next least likely.”

“Done.” He wrapped his arms around my waist again and took us there. The museum, it turned out, was a big tin shed.

“It is also not open,” he commented

It certainly looked that way. The huge sliding doors that ran almost the entire length of the building were closed, and the tarmac forecourt was empty. I grabbed my phone, brought up the files I’d transferred, and checked the opening time. “What sort of museum is open only on weekends and public holidays?”

“This one, obviously.”

There was amusement in his voice. I smiled and lightly nudged him with my elbow. “That was a rhetorical question, not one that wanted an answer.”

I scanned the outside of the building. Though I couldn’t see any physical guards, there were plenty of cameras on the outside and no doubt plenty of security measures on the inside. “I might just take Aedh form and have a quick look around.”

“If the second key
is
in there, you will not sense it in Aedh form.”

“I know, but at least we’ll know if the place has any sort of military weapons on display.”

“Presuming it
is
a military dagger.”

“Yeah.” Given the cryptic nature of the clues, who actually knew?

I called to the Aedh, and she swept through me in an instant. In energy form, I made my way through the fence, across the tarmac, and through the small gap underneath the massive doors. The shed was huge and filled to the brim with all sorts of old-looking airplanes—some single wing, some double wing, some with propellers and others without. I didn’t know much about planes overall, but I had a feeling this collection was pretty impressive. There were also engines, various machine parts, and tools. But nothing that resembled an actual dagger. I turned around and headed out.

“Nothing?” Azriel said, as I became flesh again.

“Not as far as I can tell.” I rubbed my arms against the chill in the air. “I guess we should try the Eureka Centre next. If the dagger isn’t there, then we’re left with Sovereign Hill being the most likely location.”

“And yet you do not think it is there.”

“No, but I’ve been known to be wrong before.”

“I think it best I not say anything about
that
particular point.”

I grinned and wrapped my arms loosely around his neck. “Wise man.”

He smiled as his hand came around my waist again, but he didn’t say anything, just swept us across to the Eureka Centre. Which was also closed—for renovations, this time.

“Well, shit,” I said, staring at the sign on the door.

“Which leaves us with Sovereign Hill, I believe.”

“And that’s too big to check right now.” I briefly glanced at my watch. “We’ve got only an hour and a half before we have to be at Hallowed Ground.”

“Then what do you wish to do?”

I hesitated and stared up at the huge blue flag with its famous five eight-point stars that formed a cross in the middle of it. Though it was now a symbol of democracy and protest, it had originally been designed as a flag of war, and it was that symbol that spoke to me now. In very many ways I was in the middle of a war myself and, like the men who had fought under her on this very hill, my war was one I suspected could not be won. Not by me, anyway.

I pushed the rather gloomy thought away and swung around to look at Ballarat. “I don’t know. Maybe we should wander down to the Visitors Center, on the off chance there’s something the search missed.”

“You wish to walk?”

I hesitated, then nodded and headed down the hill. He fell in step beside me, his arm brushing against mine and sending little slithers of desire skittering through me. It was, I thought with amusement, an almost normal moment in a life that had become insane.

With a little help from Google Maps, we found the Visitors Center and headed inside. It was, as was usual with these sorts of places, filled to the brim with information and souvenirs as well as local food and clothing. The thick jackets, I noted with amusement, seemed to be particularly popular today.

I walked across to the wall of information about local events, and almost immediately a brochure caught my eye. I picked it up and showed Azriel. “Well, looky here—an Arms and Militaria Exhibition.”

“That is the one place we are certain to find military daggers. Whether it is the
right
place is another question.”

“And one we won’t answer until we go see it.” I flicked the brochure around. “It doesn’t open until tomorrow and runs until Sunday. At least that gives us plenty of time to check it out.”

He nodded. “And plenty of time for your father to come up with a way of keeping the sorcerer and the Raziq out.”

“Yeah.” I tucked the brochure into my pocket and glanced at the time. “I guess we can head to Hallowed Ground. Maybe we’ll get lucky and she’ll start her set early.”

“Luck has not been particularly favorable to us as yet,” Azriel commented, as he caught my hand and drew me closer. There was something in the way he looked at me that had my pulse racing. “And I can think of other, more pleasurable ways to fill in our time.”

A smile teased my lips. “Can you, now? And what about the snit you were in not so long ago?”

“Would you rather talk yet again about the reasons for the snit?” he said, voice soft as he slid an arm around my waist. “Or perhaps explore the possibilities of a rather quaint human expression that goes something along the lines of makeup sex being the best kind?”

“Hard choice,” I murmured, pressing myself against the warm, hard planes of his body. “But I’ve never really had the chance to test that expression out.”

“Then perhaps we should.”

“What, here?” I raised an eyebrow and glanced around the Visitors Center. “I might have werewolf blood in me, but I’m not that much of an exhibitionist.”

He smiled and touched my cheek gently. “I meant in your bed.”

“Perfect—”

His energy swept around me even before I could finish my sentence.

And I have to say, that old saying was right. Makeup sex
was
the best kind.

•   •   •

Needless to say, we did not arrive at Hallowed Ground on time. In fact, we were a good twenty minutes late. The club was situated on the corner of Wellington Parade and Simpson Street, not far away from what most Melbournians considered hallowed ground—the Melbourne Cricket Ground. The club was situated in a rather unusual two-story, redbrick building that had an old-fashioned concrete turret on one corner and small sash windows at regularly spaced intervals. The entrance was nondescript, and it would have been easy to pass by and think it was nothing more than an apartment entrance. Certainly, the small, discreet sign above the door did little to give it away.

Azriel opened the white-painted wood and glass door and ushered me inside. Darkness greeted me, and it took a moment for my eyes to adjust. The room was midsized, with a bar to the right and a stage at the back of the room. A thin woman with an oddly ragged red streak running through the middle of her dark hair was spotlighted on the stage. She was playing some sort of lute, and the music was strange and yet somehow evocative. There were more than a dozen people sitting at the various tables scattered throughout the room, and most of them had their eyes closed, listening with something close to rapture in their expressions.

I walked across to one of the tables sitting in the deeper shadows of the room and pulled out the chair. “Is she a dark spirit?”

Azriel hesitated, studying her as he sat down next to me. “It is difficult to tell. She has some sort of shield around her.”

I frowned. “Meaning you can’t break past it?”

“I could, but then she would sense that I am here. Spirits may not be the normal prey of dark angels, but they generally will not take a chance and remain in our presence if they sense us.”

I studied her for a moment, noting her long, thin fingers and sharply pointed fingernails. Handy for plucking lute strings . . . or slicing stomach flesh, I thought, and shivered.

“Why would she have a shield up if she wasn’t up to no good?”

“She is sitting in a room filled with vampires, many of whom are not above using their telepathic powers to seduce or influence the thoughts of others. It is natural she would have some means to protect herself from such events.”

That
did
make sense. I continued to frown at the woman on the stage. There was something about her that made my nerves crawl, but maybe that was nothing more than my desire for this hunt to be easy.

“She’ll have to take a break soon. We can interview her when she does.” I leaned back in my chair and glanced at Azriel. He was little more than shadow in this darkness, but his eyes shone brightly—almost as brightly as his sword. “Why is Valdis reacting? Amaya’s not.”

Can,
she said.

No
. The last thing I wanted was her hissing like a banshee in my brain.

Banshee not.
Her tone was a trifle huffy. Maybe she’d been taking lessons from Azriel.

“I had good reason for the huffiness,” he replied evenly. “And I thought we’d moved past that.”

My eyebrows rose. “You
heard
her?”

He nodded. “Through you. And a banshee is a spirit; she’s a demon.”

Better,
Amaya grouched.

I snorted. “Tell me, do all demon swords have such attitude?”

He smiled. “The attitude of the sword very much depends on the attitude of the owner.”

“So you’re saying I’m a sweet-tempered, silver-tongued woman?”

He caught my hand in his, drew it to his lips, and kissed it. “Would I dare say anything else?”

“Usually, yes.”

“Then maybe I am merely in an exceptionally good mood.”

“Good sweaty sex will do that to you every time,” I replied, voice wry.

His smile grew, touching the corners of his eyes and making my heart do several little happy skips. “Then perhaps I should get in a snit more often.”

I laughed. The sound seemed to echo softly through the darkness, and the woman on the stage turned to look at us. Though she didn’t move, there was an almost imperceptible tightening in her shoulder and arm muscles.

“She knows what I am.” Azriel squeezed my hand, then released me. “Get ready to move. I believe she’s about to finish her set.”

The woman on the stage finished the song she was playing, then rose and bowed to the audience. They didn’t immediately respond, but as the spotlight died and she walked from the stage, it was as if a spell had been released and they all began to clap—some conservatively, some not.

I rose and wove my way through the tables, planning to cut the woman off before she could slip backstage. She was moving deceptively fast, however, and slipped through the curtains and disappeared from sight. I swore softly and ran forward, flipping the curtains aside and following the sound of her retreating steps down a dark corridor. Somewhere up ahead, a door opened and closed. I slowed.

Valdis’s blue fire flickered across the walls, highlighting the peeling paint and dusty cobwebs. I shivered, not wanting to think about webs when I was chasing a woman whose alternate form could well be the world’s biggest spider.

“I cannot sense her presence in the room ahead,” Azriel said.

“Does that mean she’s escaped us? Or is it simply a matter of the shield continuing to block you?”

“It could be either.”

Meaning the only way we were going to find out was to enter that damn room. I flexed my fingers and opened the door. Nothing immediately jumped out at me, but the room was pitch-black and my reluctance to enter grew.

I reached to the left and brushed my hand down the wall, looking for the light switch. Something skittered across my fingertips, and I yelped and jumped backward—straight into Azriel. He grabbed my arms and steadied me.

“It was only a small spider,” he said.

I snorted. “I don’t care if it’s big or small; they’re all spiders and they all deserve to die.”

“Spiders are generally harmless creatures.”

He reached past me. A second later, I heard the light switch being flicked up and down. No light came on, so the bulb was obviously blown.

“Can I remind you that this is Australia? We have some of the deadliest spiders known to man.”

“That does not alter the fact that the one that touched you didn’t actually harm you.”

“That
isn’t
the point.” I stared at the darkness a moment longer, then drew Amaya and took a wary step. Lilac flame flared down her sides, providing enough light to view the immediate area. The room was small and furnished sparsely. There was a dressing table with an office chair in front of it, as well as a small sofa and a minibar fridge. I stepped farther inside and swung Amaya around. There was nothing and no one else in the room. Our musician
had
fled.

“Well, I guess that points to her—” Something dropped onto the back of my neck, and I swiped at it irritably. “What the hell?”

Something else dropped, but this time it raced under the collar of my shirt and down my spine. I yelped and flung myself backward at the wall, hoping to squash the hell out of whatever it was.

“Risa, I think we’d better get you out of here.”

I gulped, my heart in my mouth and fear twisting my stomach. “Why?”

But I knew why even as I asked the question. There were more than just a couple of spiders in this room. I raised Amaya and looked up.

The entire ceiling was alive and moving.

Chapter 7

I opened my mouth to scream, but before I could, the whole damn lot dropped down, covering both the floor
and
me in a mass of tiny black bodies.

Horror filled me, and for a moment I couldn’t move, frozen to the spot and praying like hell that this was nothing more than a nightmare. Then thousands of tiny fangs began to dig into my flesh, and I screamed and jumped and swung Amaya around wildly, swatting at the creatures I could barely even see.