Darkness Hunts

Chapter 10

For a minute, I felt nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Then fear set in and I began to shake so badly that my legs wouldn’t support me and I dropped onto the bed.

He knew where I lived!

Fuck, oh fuck.

I stared at the letter for several more minutes, then, without warning, started to cry.

Fiercely.

Uncontrollably.

The sobs were so bad my whole body shook with them and though I was gulping down air like a fish, it caught in my throat and made it even harder to breathe.

Tao was suddenly on his knees in front of me. He wrapped his arms around my body, making soothing noises low in his throat as he pulled me onto his lap and rocked me as gently as a father would a terrified child. It felt like a furnace had wrapped itself around me, and it went a long way toward chasing away the chill that had enveloped my body.

But the tears continued to fall. In anger, in fear, and in frustration. For everything that had happened, for everything I’d los ndayin Stt, for all those who had died because of me, and for all those who might yet die because of me.

Because I was sick of monsters chasing me and sick of people using me.

And because I knew, no matter what, there was no going back. This path, this journey, was leading me inexorably into darkness, and I knew with every fiber of my being it was a darkness from which I would not escape.

My mother had sensed this destiny long, long ago. Had, in fact, told Aunt Riley when I was still a child that I would be involved with angels and demons and god knows what else, and she hadn’t been sure if that involvement would be for the side of good, or for evil. She’d never actually said anything to me, of course, but I’d known. She’d had her secrets, but this was one I’d uncovered fairly young—too young to understand the true depth and cost of such darkness.

I understood it now.

Understood, and feared it.

I’m not sure how long we stayed like that, but it was certainly long enough that Tao’s legs had to be cramping. He never said anything, just continued to hold me long after the tears had stopped falling. Eventually, I lifted my head from his shoulder and said, “You wouldn’t have a tissue on you, would you?”

“No, but I can produce a handy sleeve.”

He offered me his left arm. I made an odd sound that was caught between a laugh and a sob. “Thanks, but it’s too nice a sweater to ruin with snot.”

“Snot can be washed off.” He gently thumbed away a remaining tear, then placed his hands on my hips and lifted me onto the bed. “Now, do you want to tell me what that was all about?”

“It was this.”

I handed him the letter. He read it quickly, then met my gaze again, his expression curious. “Who is it from? It doesn’t seem the sort of thing the Raziq or your father would send, and they’re the only crazy people currently in your life, aren’t they?”

“Well, there’s Hunter and the vampire council, but this isn’t from them. It’s from someone who brings a very fresh approach to the business of being insane.”

“Well, you do seem to attract them.” Amusement ran through his voice, but there was concern in his eyes.

“Yeah, I do.” I rose, stepped past his legs, and walked around the bed to grab a tissue, blowing my nose before adding, “I met this one on the astral plane. Apparently he’s been killing people and taunting the Directorate for a week, but now he’s decided to turn his attention to me. Why, I have no idea.”

“The insane rarely need a good reason to do anything.” He studied the note for a moment, then threw it on the bed and rose. “Have your shower and then pack. We’re getting out of here.”

“Why? I mean, this place is more secure than just about anywhere.”

But even as I said that, I remembered that this foe could astral-travel and was apparently able to interact with people on both the plane and the real world while in that astral state.

And though we had the latest in security gadgets in our apartment as well as wards designed specifically to keep Aedh out, it wouldn’t keep out a human in astral form.

He knew where I lived.

All he had to do was wait until I was asleep and vulnerable. And because Azriel couldn’t interact with the astral plane, he wouldn’t be able to stop him.

Azriel.

I wanted the comfort of his presence so badly it hurt, and it was rather surprising that he hadn’t appeared, given the stress I’d been under. But then, he was a man fighting for control and warring against need while trying to do the job he’d been sent here to do. And as our all-too-brief kiss had proved, it was a war he was losing.

And while part of me did want him to lose that particular battle, I knew in the long run it wasn’t for the best. Whatever my fate might be, whatever my future might entail, it wouldn’t involve Azriel. It couldn’t. He was reaper, I was a half-breed werewolf-Aedh. We were two very different species physiologically, if not emotionally.

Even if, right at this point in time, what we both secretly hungered for was exactly the same thing.

“This place might be secure,” Tao said, dragging me out of my thoughts, “but if this guy is as bad as you say, then we must go somewhere he doesn’t know about. Stane’s.”

I frowned. “But I don’t want to drag Stane into danger—”

Tao cut me off with a snort. “Oh, trust me, Stane is more than able to take care of himself. Besides, his place is almost as well protected as this apartment, especially with the wards Ilianna gave him still online.”

I had forgotten about those, though I doubted that even wards designed to keep demons out would deter astral travelers. “But that doesn’t mean we should risk—”

Tao touched a finger to my lips. “No arguments. I was going to Stane’s for the night, anyway, as it’s game night and we’ve planned to shoot the shit out of people online. So, get ready while I go ring Ilianna.”

He walked out. I gave in to the inevitable and went to have my shower, lingering long enough to get prune skin. Once dressed, I packed several days’ worth of clothing and other necessities, then slung the bag over my shoulder and headed out.

“Ilianna’s going to stay at Mirri’s. She’s not happy about it, though.”

Mirri lived in an apartment building in Carlton, and while it was well enough protected magically, there were apartments both above and below Mirri’s and they weren’t well soundproofed. Ilianna hated the sensation of so many people surrounding her, as well as the fact that you could hear every little movement in the other apartments.

“I’ll ply her with her favorite ice cream when we all return home,” I said. “That’ll ease the grumpiness.”

“You’d better make it a couple of tubs, then.” He ushered me out, then set all the various locks and alarms. “Oh, and she said to tell you that the Brindle witches haven’t noticed any unu stichan able sual activity along the ley lines, which means the magic is being contained.”

“Did she say if they were going to follow up the possibility of containment?”

“No.” He opened the car door and ushered me in. “But you’d think they would. I mean, they wouldn’t want anyone controlling that sort of magic, would they?”

“I wouldn’t think so.” But then, when it came to the Brindle witches, who really knew what they would or wouldn’t want? Certainly some of their actions so far had surprised the hell out of me.

Stane greeted us with a cheerful hello and several boxes of pizza. He kissed my cheeks, then waved his free hand toward his bedroom. “It’s all yours. I’ve even changed the sheets.”

“You didn’t have to do that. I mean, you don’t use the thing, do you?”

He grinned. “I do tend to sleep on one of the couches, granted, but that doesn’t mean the sheets were clean. I don’t dust and it was thick on the bed.”

I laughed, then rose on my toes and kissed his cheeks. “Thank you. And enjoy your pizza and online destruction.”

“What, you’re not going to join us?”

I shook my head. “Right now, all I really want is to sleep.”

“We’ll try to keep the noise down.” Tao squeezed my arm gently, his touch light but comforting. “Yell if you need anything.”

“I will. And thanks.”

I turned and walked into Stane’s bedroom. It was very much like the rest of his apartment—filled with all the latest gadgets, and there was little in the way of dust, despite his claim to the contrary. Which wasn’t really surprising—dust could ruin the innards of expensive gadgets, after all, and there were lots of them up here.

I closed the door, shed my clothes, then tucked Amaya under the pillow and climbed into bed. It was big and warm and comfortable, and I was asleep in no time.

The sensation of movement woke me. For a couple of minutes I did nothing more than lie there, dizzy, confused, and feeling oddly transparent. Like my body had somehow disappeared and I was nothing more than particles drifting in the air. When I tried to wake, tried to move, I couldn’t do either. But as panic surged, the movement stopped, and suddenly I was full-bodied and fully aware.

I wasn’t in Stane’s bed.

Not unless it had suddenly turned to cold stone.

No, no, no! It can’t be happening again. They can’t have taken me again.

I opened my eyes. Realized my fears were all too real.

They had taken me.

The last time I’d been in this place the heavy blanket of darkness had been lifted only by Amaya’s lilac flames. This time there were torches on the wall. Why they were there I had no idea, but they sputtered and spat and threw an angry light, as if they had no desire to be in this place.

It was a desire I fully understood.

Because this was the place where the Raziq had torn my molecules apart to place the tracker in my heart.

My heart began to race so fast I could have sworn it was trying to tear out of my chest. But fear wouldn’t help me get through this. Truthfully, nothing would. They’d do what they wanted to regardless of what I said or did.

But I could at least face it with dignity and strength. If nothing else, it would make me feel better afterward.

I forced myself upright. I couldn’t stand—the ceiling in the cavern was far too low to allow that. The air was as stale as ever, and the torches only made it harder to breathe.

The Raziq were little more than a faint shimmer in the shadows, but the electricity of them crawled across my skin. This time, it was different, though—stronger. There was someone else here, someone I hadn’t met before. Someone more powerful than the other five combined.

And I was without Amaya.

Fuck, fuck, fuck!

Once again I shoved aside the panic that threatened to overwhelm me and hugged my knees close to my chest.

“So,” I said, somehow managing to keep my voice conversational, although it wouldn’t have mattered if it wasn’t. These Aedh had about as much understanding of human emotion as a brick wall. “My posse has gained a new member—how lovely.”

“I am not new.” Though I’d been expecting a male, this voice was not only decidedly feminine, but surprisingly pleasant. “But I am here due to past actions, both yours and ours.”

“And do you have a name?”

She didn’t answer immediately. I had the odd impression she was considering the wisdom of doing so, as she no doubt knew I’d ask my father about her. But then, they wanted me in my father’s presence so they could capture him, so there was little harm in telling me.

It was a conclusion she must have agreed with. “I am called Malin.”

“And what do you want from me this time, Malin?”

“We want what we have always wanted—your cooperation.”

“And as I seem to be saying a lot lately, it isn’t like I have much of a choice to do anything else.” I considered the shimmer that was her presence. “How did you get past Azriel?”

“The distance the reaper kept between you was foolish.” There was a hint of smugness in her voice. The Aedh might be unfeeling creatures, but they were not above feeling superior. “He did not realize the danger he had placed you in until you were in our grasp.”

And he couldn’t rescue me, either. For some reason, earth inhibited a reaper’s ability to track souls, so being this deep underground meant that not only would Azriel be unable to find me, but our chi connection wouldn’t work.

If he’d been frantic when I’d been confronted by the hellh s by’ounds, I could well imagine his state right now. And he’d no doubt blame himself for my capture. But even if he had been close, he wouldn’t have been able to stop this kidnapping. They’d wanted me, and one solitary reaper could not have stood up to the number of Raziq currently in this place. No matter how fierce a fighter Azriel was, it would have been six against one, and the death I’d feared at the train station would have been real and devastating.

“Look, my father sensing your damn device was not my fault. I didn’t warn him. I did what you asked.”

“We realize this. The device placed within you was somewhat hurried in its creation. I plan to rectify this now.”

Horror crawled through me. “Rectifying” was surely just another word for pulling me apart to adjust the thing in my heart. I’d lived through that once. I wasn’t entirely sure I could do so a second time.

“My father is no fool, and he’s managed to remain one step ahead of you lot all along. He’ll expect changes to be made to the device.”

“Undoubtedly.”

“Then what is the point of making the adjustment?”

“It will provide a nice piece of subterfuge. He’ll see what he expects to see, and will not go looking for any other changes.”

Any other changes? I was not liking the sound of that at all. My voice shook slightly as I said, “Meaning what?”

“Meaning I plan to interweave the strands of our beings.”

I could only stare at the flame-lit shadows in horror. Weave her being through mine? What the hell did that mean? How the hell was something like that even possible?

“When you can pull apart the atoms of a being as easily as a human might a tapestry, such a task is relatively simple.”

“But—” The rest of the sentence got stuck somewhere in the thickness of my throat. I swallowed heavily and tried again. “But what does it actually mean?”

“It means that not only will you carry the threads of your father’s heritage, you will also carry mine.”

Was “thread” the Aedh word for DNA? Is that what she was going to do—insert her DNA into mine? What the hell would that do to me? Make me more Aedh? Make me more like them?

“Yes,” she said. “And no.”

“Well, that fucking answers the question, doesn’t it?”

She didn’t react to the anger in the statement. No surprise there, I guess. “You will become more fully Aedh than you currently are, and your skills will therefore be stronger, but it will not affect your overall humanity.”

The way she said “humanity” made it all too clear that she meant “emotion,” and that was a huge relief. As much as I’d enjoyed being with Lucian, I didn’t want to be like him emotionally. Hell, the only thing he seemed passionate about—aside from sex—was revenge.

“But won’t my father st ionate absense such an insertion?” I was his daughter, after all, and he could trace my whereabouts thanks to that fact. Surely that same connection would inform him that something had been altered within me.

“Your father cares as much for the human part of your nature as any Aedh ever does. As long as that is retained—however minor it might be—he will not notice the change.” The tone was still smug, and yet oddly kind. Like a parent talking to an obtuse child.

I guess if she intended to weave her DNA through mine she technically could be considered a parent.

“But he can read my thoughts as easily as you lot. It’s illogical to think he won’t know.”

“Which is why you will not remember exactly what we have done,” she replied. “In fact, we bet your life on this.”

Fuck, they were going to alter my memories. Then the rest of her words sank in and my gut began to churn even harder. “What do you mean, you’re betting my life on it?”

“Hieu will not risk our regaining control of the keys, so if he does notice the insertion, he will kill you.”

Maybe. Maybe not. After all, my father seemed overly determined to get the keys for his own nefarious reasons, and I was his only way of doing that when he had no physical form here on earth.

But then, what did I really know about the man who was my parent? He’d been one of the Raziq, had worked with them to create the keys. They surely had more of an insight to his character than I did.

“How will this insertion help you capture my father?”

“As you have noted, your father has always been one step ahead of us. Now that he knows of the device, he will work on a way to mute it.”

“Yes. And?”

“By threading my DNA through your lesser being, I will be aware of your movements, no matter where you are. If the device within your heart becomes subdued, I will still be able to find you.”

I stared at the energy of the Raziq, and felt ice crawl through me. There was more to this than that. It would do more than that.

“If the keys were so damn important, how the hell did you lose them in the first place?”

“We did not expect treachery.”

I snorted. “More the fool you, then. Treachery comes with any attempt at power.”

“The keys were meant to end our servitude to the portals by closing them permanently. They were not a means of power.”

The person who had control of the keys had control over the gates to heaven and hell—how could that not be considered a means of power? Hell, maybe that was the real reason Hunter wanted the keys. It wasn’t about the high council using hell as their own private prison—a stupid idea if ever I’d heard one—but rather yet another means of Hunter solidifying her power base.

“Can I remind you that it’s the reapers who have been guarding the gates? The pries ses? as tts who were actually supposed to guard them died out long ago.” Or rather, had died out or become Raziq.

“Just because we no longer serve or guard the portals does not mean we are free from them.”

Another statement that didn’t make a whole lot of sense.

God, I thought, dropping my head onto my hands. Why in hell didn’t someone wake me? Surely this couldn’t be happening. Surely it couldn’t be real.

But it was. And it was a nightmare from which there was no escape. I very much suspected that not even death would help me. After all, beings who could unravel the threads of humanity could command a being to life as easily as they could kill.

“What about the device in my heart? What are you going to do to that?”

“Little more than mute its power and make it a less tangible presence. Hieu will still sense it, but only because he already knows it exists within you.”

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. “Do what you have to.” My voice was flat but not truly steady. It couldn’t be when I was all too aware of what was about to happen. “It’s not like I can do much to stop you anyway.”

“That is refreshingly compliant of you.”

I snorted. “Fighting you bastards didn’t achieve a whole lot the last couple of times, did it?”

“No, but it is in your nature to fight regardless of the wisdom of such an action. We were expecting nothing less.”

“Which just goes to prove that even those of us with thick heads get sick of constantly knocking ourselves out against brick walls.” I rubbed my arms, and felt a flicker of warmth run through my fingers. I glanced down. The Dušan’s eyes glowed with deep, angry fire. She might not be able to react against whatever the Raziq were about to do, but she was here, with me, and they could neither remove nor alter her. And suddenly I didn’t feel so alone.

“Then let us proceed.”

As she spoke, dark energy began to swirl around me. I braced myself, expecting the worst, but this time was very different from the last. Maybe it was simply a matter of accepting rather than fighting, but it didn’t rip through my body, tearing me apart cell by cell, until every atom felt like it was on fire and screaming in agony. This was more like a slip into Aedh form. The energy wove through me like a summer storm, powerful and yet oddly warm, numbing pain and dulling sensation as it invaded every muscle, every cell, breaking them down and tearing them apart, until my flesh no longer existed and I became one with the air. Until I held no substance, no form, and was little more than thousands of tiny particles floating aimlessly in the air.

Then I felt it.

A sharpness, like a knife being inserted into flesh. Pain rippled through my being, a burn that got fiercer, brighter, sharper. Silver flickered across the edges of awareness. The foreign line of particles was finer than a hair, but bright, shining, and cold. They wove through the tapestry of my being, stitching themselves to me and forever altering what I was.

Then the d sd">my being, ark energy began putting me back together, piece by piece, until I was again on the stone, quivering and shaking and gasping for air.

For several minutes I didn’t say anything. Couldn’t say anything. The change into Aedh might not have been of my choosing, but it still affected me exactly the same.

In some way, that was a comfort. They may have altered strands of my DNA, but I was still reacting as I always had. At least for the moment.

My skin rippled as the Dušan crawled around my forearm, her claws creating tiny pinholes into my skin with each movement. I glanced down at her, and her head whipped around, her gaze meeting mine. There was displeasure and anger rather than concern in those dark violet depths.

I rested my fingertips against her gleaming body, gaining some measure of calm from her warm presence in my skin, then glanced up to the shimmer that was Malin and the other Raziq.

“Now what?”

“Now we return you and wait for your father to contact you.”

“And if he doesn’t?”

“Have no doubt that he will. Hieu wants those keys as much as we do.”

“Only he doesn’t want to basically destroy humanity by permanently shutting the gates.”

“No,” she agreed. “What Hieu wants would be far worse.”

Trepidation crawled through me. Her words all but echoed my earlier fears. “And what are his motives?”

“Dictatorship over all realms.”

“As in heaven, hell, and earth?”

“Yes.”

Fuck. Which didn’t really seem an adequate response to that bit of news.

Of course, given who was relating it, maybe I should be taking it with a grain of salt. They wanted my help to capture him, after all, and maybe imparting this bit of mind-blowing news was little more than an extension of their revised plans.

“Believe what you want,” Malin said. “It is not important to us.”

And with that, the dark energy swept around me again, shifting me from flesh to Aedh in the blink of an eye. It didn’t re-form me in Stane’s bed, but somewhere dark, cold, and wet.

It was rain, I realized, after staring at it running down my arms. I was kneeling in the rain. Why the hell did they dump me in the middle of a storm? Because they didn’t want to risk a clash with Azriel, even with greater numbers on their side.

I sat back on my heels. The madman in my head was reacting less severely than usual, enabling me to at least look around without feeling like I was about to pass out.

Not only was I in the middle of a storm, but if the height of the moon was anything to go by, it was also the middle of the night. Obviously, I’d been in the hands of the Raziq for longer than I’d thought.

A heartbeat later, a hurricane hit, blasting my skin with heat. Azriel dropped onto his knees in front of me, his fingers cupping my cheek as his gaze met mine.

There was a whole lot of anger in those blue depths. A whole lot of guilt.

“I’m okay,” I whispered, wishing he’d just wrap his arms around me and hold me like he never intended to let go. It might be a lie, but it was one I suddenly needed, if only for a few minutes.

“You are changed.” The words came out tight.

“It didn’t hurt. Not this time.”

“That is not the point.”

No, I guess it wasn’t. And like the last time, it couldn’t be undone. Not by him, and certainly not by me.

“Just take me home, Azriel. Please.”

He swept us across the fields even before I’d finished speaking, but when we reappeared, it was in Stane’s room, not mine.

“But—”

“No,” he said, his voice sharp, almost vicious. “I allowed you to be taken once. I will not risk it a second time.”

And I, for one, wasn’t about to complain about that, even if I’d rather be home. I stepped back and rubbed my forehead wearily. “The Raziq won’t snatch me again.”

“I didn’t mean the Raziq.”

I stared at him blankly for several heartbeats, then fear struck anew and I began to shake again. God help me, with everything else that had happened, I’d forgotten about our faceless madman.

But he was still out there, still after me.

I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t cope. Damn it, why wouldn’t everyone just leave me the hell alone? Was that too much to goddamn ask?

Azriel caught my hands and tugged me into his embrace. I closed my eyes and leaned my cheek against his chest, listening to the rapid pounding of his heart. It felt like heaven. Like I was home.

“Leaving you alone was what caused you to fall into Raziq hands.” His breath tickled the back of my neck, ragged and warm. “That should not have happened, and I apologize.”

“It wasn’t your fault.” I lifted my face and met his gaze. And while I ached to brush my lips against his, any move in that direction had to come from him. He knew what I wanted. He’d always known.

“If I had been here—”

“You would have been dead.” Even saying the words had my stomach tightening. “I know you believe otherwise, but there were six of them, Azriel, and one of them was immensely powerful. She said her name was Malin.”

He closed his eyes for a moment and said something in his own language. And though I didn’t understand one word, I didn’t really need to, given the anger in his voice.

“Malin is the leader,” he said eventually. “ senter in hShe is the one your father betrayed when he stole the keys.”

“Then what she did to me was as much about revenge as the keys.” I hesitated, and suddenly realized I couldn’t actually remember what they’d done. “Damn it, are you able to un-erase my memory?”

“No. And it is better that you do not know.”

Which suggested he did. Frustration ran through me, but it was quickly forgotten when he brushed a fingertip down my cheek and rested it all too briefly on my lips. “But you are right about the revenge factor. Your father and Malin were lovers. Malin has commanded the Raziq for a very long time, and she is nearing the end of her life. She wanted to reproduce. Your father refused.”

“But I thought that when the Aedh were at the end of their life cycles, breeding wasn’t a matter of choice, but rather an imperative they couldn’t ignore.”

“That is true.”

“Then why did my father turn to my mother when he had the option of a full-blood Aedh to breed with?”

He shrugged. “Your father is an uncommonly powerful Aedh, and one who has long planned domination. It would not surprise me if he foresaw the current problems and created you as a means of working around the Raziq and finding the keys.”

“But if he’d known the keys would be lost, why the hell wouldn’t he just ensure that they weren’t?”

“Because there were other players involved, and Hieu could not control them all. And perhaps you were nothing more than just a backup plan.”

Well, that’s something every child wanted to hear—although when it came to my father, nothing should really surprise me. “How come you know so much about Hieu and Malin?”

“When one is a hunter, it helps to understand the prey.”

“But I can’t see either of them giving those sorts of details to their own kind, let alone a reaper.”

“They didn’t. But the Raziq are nearly a hundred strong. It was simply a matter of capturing one of the unwary, lesser beings, and questioning him.”

Whatever it takes. Whatever needs to be done. The words rolled around the outer reaches of my mind, and though I didn’t know if they were mine or his, I shivered. Because those words were like a death knell ringing in my future.

“Why would the lower-ranked Raziq be privy to information like that, though?”

“Aedh can read the minds of any who are in close proximity, and though Malin and Hieu are powerful enough to conceal information, they would have considered their relationship neither valuable nor important.”

Because they didn’t do emotions—although they did seem to have the whole revenge thing down pat.

I sighed wearily. “This is all becoming a nightmare.”

Azriel raised an eyebrow, amusement briefly teasing his lips. “Becoming?”

AT Std">I smiled. “Yeah, I guess that train left the station long ago.”

“Definitely.” He hesitated, his gaze sweeping my body before coming to rest briefly on my lips. Desire spun around me, but its sweet heat disappeared as quickly as it had appeared. “You need to rest.”

I couldn’t disagree with that. But I also didn’t want to get into that bed alone.

“Azriel—”

“No,” he said softly. “I want what you want, Risa, but it is better that we fight this. Assimilation is a very real threat.”

“But it’s not assimilation you truly fear, is it?” I said it softly, my gaze searching his. Looking for the emotions he was never going to reveal, but that I nevertheless knew were there. The hum of them echoed through the deeper parts of my being, warm and precious.

For a moment I thought he wasn’t going to answer, but then he said softly, “No.”

“Then for once tell me the truth, Azriel. What is it you truly fear?”

His hesitation was longer this time.

“What I fear,” he said eventually, “is us.”