Darkness Unmasked (DA 5) (39 page)

I still wasn’t sure that he hadn’t succeeded, despite Azriel’s statement that the child I apparently carried was his.

Ilianna grimaced. “Yeah. Tao’s fobbed her off a couple of times now, but she’s getting pretty scary.”

Scary was a normal state for Hunter, but I certainly didn’t want to piss her off any more than necessary. Not after what I’d seen her do to the dark spirit who’d murdered her lover.

Still, it was decidedly odd that she didn’t know where I was. “Why would she be hassling Tao, or anyone else for that matter? She knows
exactly
what I’m doing every single minute of the day, thanks to the fucking Cazadors.”

Cazadors were the high vampire council’s kill squad, and they’d been following me about astrally for weeks, reporting my every move back to Hunter.

“In this case, she doesn’t, because they
can’t
follow you here.” Ilianna tucked her arm through mine and escorted me down the hall.

I raised an eyebrow. “You’ve
spelled
the place?”

She nodded. “Mom found a spell that automatically redirects astral travelers every time they approach the spell’s defined area.”

Just
astral travelers, not Aedh, I guessed. Which was logical given that the only spell we had to keep the Aedh out was the one we were using around our home, and that had originated from my father. Which meant my father and the Raziq could get to me here. I shivered and tried to ignore the premonition that I’d be confronting both far sooner than I wanted.

Still, some protection was better than nothing, and at least we could plan our next move without the Cazadors passing every little detail onto Hunter. “There wouldn’t happen to be a mobile version of that spell, would there?”

“Unfortunately, no.”

Of course not. Why on earth would fate throw me a lifeline like that? “Then I guess I’d better give the bitch a call ASAP.”

And pray like hell she didn’t have another job for me. I really didn’t need to be chasing after escapees from hell right now—especially, I thought bleakly, when chasing hell-kind was all I had to look forward to in the long centuries after my death.

Besides, I needed to find the sorcerer and snatch the second key back. While he might not know which one of the items he’d stolen it was, there was nothing stopping him from taking them all to hell’s gate and testing them out one by one.

And while my father and the Raziq had been relatively patient so far when it came to my lack of progress on the key front, I doubted that would last. They’d already threatened to destroy those I loved if I didn’t find the keys. I wouldn’t put it past any of them to actually kill someone close to me just to prove how serious they were.

As if tearing
me
apart to place the tracker in my heart hadn’t already proved that.

“Calling her should definitely be a high priority,” Ilianna agreed. “But come and eat first. You look like death warmed up.”

No surprise there, given I nearly had been. “So what’s stopping Hunter or the Cazadors from
physically
finding us?”

“She probably could, given enough time. While the spell is designed to confuse astral senses, they’d still have a general idea of location.”

“But all she has to do is hack into my phone—”

“Which was left at home,” Ilianna interrupted. “Along with anything else that could be used to track you. We’re not that dumb.”

No, they weren’t. And Hunter was undoubtedly hassling Tao simply because she couldn’t get to anyone else. Even
she
had more sense than to contact Aunt Riley. I might not be related to Riley by blood, but she and her pack were the only family I had left. They would not have reacted nicely to the news that Hunter was after me.

“Knowing Hunter as well as I now do, I’m surprised she hasn’t done more than merely threaten him.”

Hell, she probably considered a spot of bloody torture a good way to start the day. Although, given that Tao was rapidly losing the battle with the fire elemental he’d consumed, maybe I should’ve been hoping the bitch
did
attempt to torture him. Crispy-fried Hunter was a sight I wouldn’t have minded seeing.

“She’s given him until tonight to find you, so there’s time. You need to regain some strength before you run off to confront that psycho bitch.”

“Ain’t that the truth,” I muttered. “Especially now that I have to do it alone.”

Ilianna hesitated, then said quietly, “Look, I don’t know what actually went on between you and Azriel, but—”

Something twisted deep inside me. Pain rose, a knife-sharp wave that threatened to engulf me.
No,
I reminded myself fiercely,
you can’t go there.
Not just yet. Not so soon after waking. I needed at least
some
time by myself to mull over the implications of my actions.

“Ilianna,” I said, when I could, “leave it alone.”

“But he wouldn’t have left you—”

“He did, because he had no choice. I banished him.”
How
I’d actually managed that, I had no idea. I mean, he was a reaper, a Mijai, and my telling him to leave me alone had never worked before. So why the change?

“Why the hell would you do that? Damn it, Ris, you need—”

“Ilianna,” I warned, the edge deeper in my voice this time.

She drew in a breath, then released it slowly. “When you want to talk about it, I’ll be here. But just remember one thing—he’s not human. He’s energy, not flesh, and he doesn’t operate on the same emotional or intellectual levels as we do. But whatever he did, he did for a reason. A
good
reason. And no matter how absolute or final his actions may seem to you, it may not be a truth in his world.”

“The truth,” I replied, bitterness in my voice, “is that the keys were always first and foremost to him.”

And I wanted more than that. Wanted him to feel about me the way I felt about him. But was love an emotion reapers were even capable of?

I blinked at the thought. I
loved
him. Not just cared for him, but
loved
him. How or when it had happened, I had no idea. It wasn’t like love and I were on familiar terms. Quite the opposite really, given the only other man I’d loved had been Jak—the werewolf reporter who was one of the people we’d pulled in to help with our key search—and that had turned out to be a complete and utter disaster.

Maybe love and I just weren’t meant to be.

Ilianna said, “I would not be so—”

“Ilianna,” I warned yet again.

She sighed, then pushed open the door and ushered me through. The twin scents of curry and baking bread hit, making my mouth water and my stomach rumble even louder than before.

The room itself was a kitchen bigger than our entire apartment. The country-style cabinets wrapped around three of the four walls, providing massive amounts of storage and preparation space, and there were six ovens and four stovetops. A huge wooden table that could seat at least thirty people dominated the middle of the room, and it was at this that Sable, Mirri, and two other women sat.

They glanced around as we entered. Sable smiled and rose. In both human and horse form she was a stunningly beautiful woman, with black skin and brown eyes that missed very little. Mirri, a mahogany bay when in horse form, had taken after her dad.

“Risa, I’m so glad you’ve recovered.” Sable kissed both my cheeks, then stood back and examined me somewhat critically. “Although you do need some condition on you. You, my girl, are entirely too thin.”

I smiled. “Werewolves tend to be on the lean side.”

“Not this lean, I’ll wager. The ladies and I are just about to go out, but there’s a curry in the oven and the bread should be done in about five minutes.”

“Thank you—”

She cut me off with a wave of her hand. “Ilianna is family, and her family is my family. So please, don’t be thanking me for something we’d do for anyone in the herd.”

I smiled. At least Mirri’s mom had accepted her relationship with Ilianna. The same couldn’t be said of Ilianna’s parents—although I personally thought they
would
come round if they actually knew about it. But Ilianna refused to even tell them she was gay.

Sable collected her coat and bag from the back of one of the chairs, and then she and the two women retreated out the sliding glass door.

I raised an eyebrow and glanced at Mirri. “That felt like a deliberate retreat.”

Mirri grabbed a couple of tea towels and rose. “I told them you and Ilianna needed some alone time for a war council when you woke up.”

“War council? Sorry, but whatever I do next—”

“You’re
not
doing alone.” Ilianna grabbed some plates from a nearby cupboard and began setting the table for the three of us. “Azriel may be gone, but Tao and I are still here. And we’re a part of this now, Risa, whether you like it or not.”

I didn’t like it. Not at all. She and Tao had been through enough because of me and this damn quest. I wasn’t about to put them through anything else. But I also knew that tone of voice. It was no use arguing—not that that ever stopped me from trying.

“The first thing I have to do is find the damn sorcerer who stole the key, and that’s not something I want you involved with. It’s too dangerous, Ilianna.”

“Maybe,” Ilianna said, giving me a somewhat severe look. “But the Brindle is more than capable of taking care of a dark sorcerer. There aren’t that many in Melbourne, you know, and they’d be aware of all of them.”

The Brindle was the home of all witch knowledge, both ancient and new. Ilianna’s mom was one of the custodians there, and Ilianna was powerful enough to have become one—and in fact had started the training when she was younger. She’d walked away for reasons she refused to discuss, but if the predictions of the head witch, Kiandra, were to be believed, not only would Ilianna one day finish that training, but her daughter would save the Brindle.

“Yeah,” I said, “but given Lucian was probably working with him, he’ll know about my connection to both you and the Brindle.” I grimaced, then added, “I’d bet my ass he’s taken steps to ensure you—and they—can’t find him.”

“But it would take
major
magic to achieve something like that, and that in itself can also be traced.”

Undoubtedly. But it still meant dragging more people into the search, and I really didn’t want to do that unless absolutely necessary. It was just too damn dangerous.

“It’s an option.” I sat down. “But it wouldn’t be my first.”

Ilianna placed the hot bread on the table. “Why not? There’s no easier way to find a sorcerer than to trace his magic.”

“A normal sorcerer, perhaps. But this one has been working with an Aedh, and has probably acquired much of his knowledge.” Which was another reason to be glad Lucian was dead. At least the bastard couldn’t pass anything else on to our ever-elusive sorcerer. “Besides, our best option right now is to go through Lucian’s things and see if he left any clues behind.”

Mirri snorted as she began dishing out the huge chunks of curried vegetables—which wasn’t normally a favorite of mine, but it smelled incredible. “Forgive me for stating the obvious, but you’ve been on a bender for three days. That would have given our sorcerer plenty of time to go through Lucian’s things and ditch whatever evidence there might have been.”

“Lucian was clever enough
not
to leave such information in easy reach. If there
is
incriminating evidence to be found, then it would be somewhere ultimately safe from everyone but him.”

And that, I realized suddenly, could mean the gray fields. They might be the unseen division between worlds, but they were as filled with life as anyplace in
this
world. And given Lucian had once been an Aedh priest under my father’s tutelage, then maybe the first place I should look was in temples near the gates of heaven and hell. I had no idea whether the temples still stood now that the priests had all but disappeared—or if someone like me would even be able to see them—but what better place would there be to secure information? It was doubtful whether the reapers or the Raziq would bother to look through ruins in an effort to find information on a dark sorcerer.

Of course, that was presuming Lucian had been able to get onto the fields. The ability to attain full Aedh form had apparently been ripped from him by the Raziq, but that hadn’t stopped him from shoving his fist into my mother’s chest and blowing her apart.

Which was exactly how I’d killed him.

I’d had my revenge, but its taste wasn’t as sweet as I’d expected.

I swallowed heavily and added, “The bastard was more cunning that a basketful of foxes.”

Ilianna’s smile was grim. “But not cunning enough in the end.”

“No.” I tore off a chunk of bread as Mirri slid a plate of curry my way. “I’ll search his place first; then I’ll do the same to his lover’s place.”

“And if you find nothing either there or on the fields?”

If I found nothing, we were up shit creek without a paddle, because I honestly didn’t think the Brindle would be able to help us. Not in this. Not when Aedh magic was involved. And there had to be; the ancient cuneiform that gave the magic to the transport pillars we’d found—pillars both the dark sorcerers and Lucian had been using to move around undetected—could have come only from Lucian.

“If I find nothing,” I replied as I dipped a chunk of bread into the curry, “then I guess I have no choice but to involve the Brindle.”

“Good,” she muttered. “Because I was going to involve them if you didn’t. You can’t do this on your own anymore, Ris.”

I snorted softly. “I was never doing it on my own, and look where it’s gotten—”

I cut the words off as awareness ran through me. Something approached the house.

Something that wasn’t human, or in human form. An invader that was as silent as a ghost, and yet accompanied by such a wash of heat and power that the hairs on my arms stood on end.

It was a sensation with which I was more than a little familiar.

An Aedh approached the house, and he was in energy form rather than physical.