Darkness Splintered

Chapter 2

Oh fuck, no!

I spun and raced out of the kitchen. Ilianna’s screams stopped as abruptly as they’d started, and the only noise in the house now was the thunder of my footsteps as I raced up the stairs. If he’d hurt Ilianna in any way —

I swallowed heavily – as much against fear as fury – and followed the tendrils of power that was my father’s presence.

“Enter,” he said, as I approached a door near the end of the hall. “And witness what awaits should you fail.”

I flexed my fingers, my palm suddenly sweaty against Amaya’s hilt, then opened the door and stepped inside. The room was a mirror image of the one I’d woken in, although lilac rather than roses seemed to be the dominant theme here. Ilianna and Mirri stood in the middle of the room and, despite my fears, both were not only alive, but apparently unhurt.

But this was my father we were talking about. He was perfectly capable of tearing one or both of them apart in an instant.

I hoped to god that wasn’t what he was planning now.

My gaze met Ilianna’s, and in the green depths I saw fear and fury combined. She didn’t say anything – maybe she couldn’t – but her gaze flicked toward her mate. I stepped closer, and saw the luminous blue threads that had been wrapped around Mirri’s neck.

Only it wasn’t any type of thread found here on Earth. It was energy.

I stopped and stared. “What the hell have you done?”

“It is what you would call an insurance policy.” His voice was heavy with menace. “I have threatened the life of both the witch and the wolf, but it hasn’t appeared to make much difference to your actions —”

“My actions?” I all but exploded. “What about your fucking actions? If you’d been up front about what Lucian was and who he was working with, the damn sorcerer would not have grabbed the first key, nor would he have gained access to the second. That blame lays on your shoulders, not mine.”

“Indeed,” he continued darkly, as if I hadn’t spoken, “one could almost think you do not take my threat seriously.”

“That is not true —”

“And yet, you appear to fear the Raziq more than you do me. That cannot be allowed.”

I clenched my fingers against Amaya’s hilt, but resisted the urge to throw her into the haze of energy that was my father. I had no idea what that thread around Mirri’s neck was and, until I did, I had to practice restraint.

Thread bad, Amaya muttered.

I knew that without asking. Can you destroy it without hurting Mirri?

Know not, she replied. Taste first.

And if you taste it?

Kill might.

Mirri, or the thread?

Amaya hesitated. Both.

Then there’d be no tasting. “What the fuck have you done, Father?”

“If you wish this shifter to live, then you must not only retrieve the second key, but find the last one.”

“As I’ve repeatedly said, I can’t find the second key without your fucking help,” I spat back. “And I can hardly find the third key when you haven’t even told me where the fucking thing is.”

“I will send directions for the third key, and a means of getting into our temple rooms,” he said. “But the latter will require several hours to construct. You are not an initiate, so I will also have to create a means of circumventing that particular restriction. I suggest you use that time to search this plane for the sorcerer and the second key.”

“And if I don’t succeed in finding it, Mirri will die.” It was a statement, not a question. I don’t think I’ve hated anyone as much as I hated my father at that moment.

Except, perhaps, for Hunter.

“Yes. And there is one other restriction.”

My stomach was churning so badly it felt like I was going to throw up. It was enough that she could die – what the hell else could he do? But even as the thought crossed my mind, the answer came. He was Aedh, and Aedh, like reapers, could command souls. He could rip hers free and make her one of the lost ones – a ghost confined to the astral field, never to move on, never to be reborn. I licked dry lips and croaked, “Meaning?”

“The lariat will begin tightening at forty hours. At that time, she will have eight hours left.”

And with that, he was gone.

“Bastard!” Ilianna exploded, and swung around to face her mate. She touched a hand to Mirri’s cheek. “Are you okay?”

Mirri nodded, her face pale and fear in her eyes. “Yes. For now.”

I stopped beside Ilianna. “I’m sorry, Mirri, really sorry —” My voice faded. I seemed to be saying that an awful lot of late and, as ever, it was useless.

Mirri gave me a taut smile. “You can’t be held accountable for your father’s actions, Risa.”

No, but I could be held accountable for my own and if Mirri died… god, it would kill Ilianna. My gaze dropped to the thin cords of power around her neck and I raised a hand. Mirri hissed before I could actually touch it.

“Don’t,” she said quickly. “It tightens.”

I swore vehemently and glanced at Ilianna. “I don’t suppose hoping for some sort of magical intervention is worthwhile?”

Her gaze came to mine, green eyes filled with fury. Though it wasn’t aimed at me, I felt the force of it nevertheless. It would be unleashed my way if anything happened to Mirri.

“No. It’s a type of energy I’ve never felt before.”

No surprise there given its source was one of the most powerful Aedhs around. “Would the Brindle be able to do anything?”

It was, after all, the home of all witch knowledge, so surely they had to have something, somewhere, about the Aedh and their abilities. And some way of counteracting something like this.

“I’ll take her there immediately.” The doubt in her expression suggested she held little hope of them being able to do anything. She gently squeezed my arm. “Find the keys, Risa. Fast.”

Easier said than done, and she knew it. But I pressed my hand over hers in reassurance, then spun and walked back into the room I’d woken in. I gathered my keys and wallet, shoving them into pockets as I looked around to see if there was anything else I’d left behind.

There wasn’t. I’d obviously travelled light when I’d gone on my drinking binge. I took a deep breath and released it slowly, vaguely hoping it might help calm the turmoil inside. I may as well have tried to stop the moon from rising.

I swore softly, wrapped my fingers around my keys, and called to the Aedh within. She came with a rush that literally blew me away. Energy tore through every muscle, every cell, numbing pain and dulling sensation as it broke them all down, until my flesh no longer existed and I became one with the air. Until I held no substance, no form, and could not be seen or heard or felt by anyone or anything who wasn’t reaper or Aedh.

In that form, I swept out of the house and into the sunshine, speeding away from peace and quiet of the rolling hills, heading toward Melbourne and the Collins Street building that housed Lucian’s apartment.

I didn’t re-form as I neared the building – there were too many people walking along this end of Collins Street to risk that. I didn’t immediately go into the building, either, but scanned it carefully, looking for anything that seemed odd or out of place.

It was one of those grand old Victorians the top end of Collins Street was famous for and, like many of them up here, only five stories high. Lucian’s apartment was on the top floor, at treetop level, and would have been beautiful once it had been finished. Not that being unfinished had ever stopped us from using the place – and we’d certainly shared many good times within the half-constructed interior walls. But it had all been a lie.

Well, not so much the joy he’d gotten out of sex – in that area, at least, he’d been real and honest. And yet the sex had been nothing more than a means to an end for Lucian. What he’d wanted – what he’d always wanted – was the keys.

The keys were everything. To Lucian, to my father, to the Raziq, and Hunter. Hell, even Azriel…

I cut the thought off abruptly. Don’t think about him, I reminded myself fiercely. Just don’t.

But it was hard not to when I was carrying his child.

I cursed and moved warily into the building. There didn’t seem to be any traps, but that didn’t mean they weren’t here. After all, Lucian’s other lover – and his partner in key-stealing crime – was a dark sorceress. And while we had no actual proof Lauren had been working with both Lucian and the key thief, my father certainly hadn’t denied the possibility, and that was good enough for me. And given that, she’d want to protect his identity just as much as Lucian had. After all, the game was far from over – for them, as much as for us.

I slipped under the locked gate and into the building’s foyer. New marble had replaced much of the old, but the floor was covered in dust and the breeze rustled the plastic sheeting still covering some of the walls. There were no workmen here, despite the fact it was only early afternoon. With Lucian dead, I guess they’d have no choice but to shut the site down – at least until his estate was sorted out, anyway.

That’s presuming he’d made a will. Lucian had never suffered from a lack of confidence, and he certainly wouldn’t have expected to die as he had – especially by my hand. But it might be worth doing a search through the probate office records. If he did have heirs, maybe he’d left information with them.

There would be something, somewhere, of that I was sure. Lucian had been betrayed once, and it had cost him his Aedh powers. He wasn’t likely to let anything like that happen again. He would have had some form of insurance.

I moved forward again, but tiredness washed through my particles and I stopped. I might shift to Aedh with far greater accuracy and power these days, but it still took a lot of energy to hold this form, and I wasn’t at my best. Not to mention the fact I was now pregnant. I had no idea how far along I was, but even if it was little more than a week or so, it would no doubt drain my strength faster. After all, there were now two beings for the energy to alter. I just had to hope that being in this form wouldn’t affect my child. But Azriel was energy rather than flesh, and I was half werewolf and half Aedh, so our child belonged to all three. Surely something that was part of my child’s heritage would not harm him or her.

Still, given the building site was closed, there was little reason to remain in Aedh form. I called to the transforming magic once again, and it stormed through me, rearranging cells until I was once again wearing flesh.

Dizziness immediately swept me, and I had to grab at the nearby wall to remain upright. But the pain that raced through my being was next to nothing when compared to my usual state after a shift.

My clothes, however, came through the change as disastrously as ever. They always disintegrated just fine, but re-forming them was trickier, as the magic didn’t always delineate bits of me from the other particles. Which meant I often ended up with a dustlike sheen covering my skin rather than fully formed pieces of clothing. My jeans generally came through relatively intact, although the breeze teasing my left butt cheek suggested a rather largish hole around that area. My underwear, as usual, hadn’t fared all that well, given both my knickers and bra were little more than fluff that clung to my skin and itched like hell. My sweater had also survived – a good thing, considering the state of my bra. Being nearly naked on a building site probably wasn’t a great idea, even if the building site was currently empty.

But I’d barely pushed away from the wall when a familiar scent teased my nostrils. I swore softly and turned around, my gaze scanning the plastic sheeting. As I did, Jak Talbott stepped out from behind it and said, “Well, that was certainly one hell of an entrance. Care to explain how you did that, exactly?”

“No,” I bit back. “Care to explain why the hell you’re here?”

Because he was certainly the last person I wanted – or had expected – to see here. Not only was he my first love – though one, thankfully, I’d finally gotten over – but also a reporter with a nose for a story. I did not want said nose sticking in this particular story, even if I’d been using him – and his resources – to help find the ley-line gate.

His answering smile was slow and sexy. At five ten, he was pretty much the average height for a male werewolf, and while he wasn’t what I’d term drop-dead gorgeous, his rough-hewn features could certainly be classified as handsome. His hair, like his skin, was black, but there was a whole lot of gray in it these days. More, perhaps, since he’d become part of my quest. As for the smile – well, it had certainly enabled him to slay more than his fair share of maidens. Me included.

“Where else was I supposed to be?” he said, his dark eyes showing little of the amusement evident in his expression and his voice. “You wouldn’t answer the phone, Tao threatened to cut my nuts off if I went near you, and Ilianna – well, heaven only knows what she would have threatened had I contacted her.”

Amusement bubbled briefly. Given Ilianna’s opinion of Jak’s reappearance in my life, her threat would probably have been a whole lot nastier than Tao’s. “None of which explains your presence here.”

“Where else might I be given the Directorate’s reticence about answering questions concerning Lucian?” He eyed me for a second, the amusement fading. “I figured that, given your involvement with the man, sooner or later you’d come here.”

A statement that made me wonder just how much he knew about Lucian’s death. “You could have been waiting a long time —”

“I doubt it. Now, it’s your turn.”

I grimaced. “Look, the way I reappeared… it’s not something —”

“Don’t try that,” he cut in. “We passed the whole ‘it’s not something I need to know’ thing around the time we were attacked by hellhounds. I deserve some honesty, Ris, if nothing else.”

I sighed. He was right. He did. After all, I could hardly bitch about people lying to me when I was doing the exact same thing to him.

“You know how Azriel comes and goes —”

“You’re not a reaper.” His gaze swept me, though I wasn’t entirely sure why. When Azriel wore flesh, it wasn’t obvious he was anything else.

“No, I’m not.” Not yet, anyway. “But I am partially an energy form. My father is an Aedh, just as Lucian was.”

Something sparked in his eyes. The reporter within had the scent of a story. “So you do know he died?”

I hesitated, though there was little point in denying it. “Yeah.”

“And do you happen to know how?”

“Why? What have you heard?”

“Interesting way of not answering the question, Ris.” He studied me for a moment, then added, “I talked to several people who were near the warehouse at the time of his murder. By their accounts, it appeared that Lucian had been blown up – something later refuted by the Directorate. They said the cause was accidental.”

If the Directorate were saying that, it could only mean Uncle Rhoan was cleaning up my mess and protecting my ass. They knew, as much as I did, that it had been no accident.

But if Jak had been talking to people who’d been near the warehouse at the time of Lucian’s death, it was more than possible he knew my part in it. Still, I returned his gaze steadily. “And you don’t believe the Directorate’s statement?”

He snorted. “I saw the photographer, remember? From what the witnesses said, the manner in which Lucian died was almost identical.”

The photographer had been one of the many leads Lucian had erased before we’d had the chance to talk to him. I’d forgotten Jak had been there when I’d discovered the body. “Whoever killed Lucian didn’t kill the photographer.”

“Never suggested they did.” He quirked an eyebrow. “And that wasn’t actually a question I asked.”

Perhaps not out loud, but it was nevertheless implied. And I didn’t have to be psychic – although, technically, given my somewhat unreliable clairvoyant abilities, I was – to predict his next question.

“It does, however, force me to ask – did you kill him?”

I didn’t pull my gaze away, didn’t react, even if my insides were churning so badly it felt like I was about to throw up. “What do you think?”

“I think it’s possible, and I’d like to know why.”

I considered my options, weighing honesty – and what that might mean – against the knowledge that I still needed his help. Probably more so now than ever before thanks to the fact that I’d pushed Azriel away.

And yet, it was no more right to draw Jak deeper into this whole mess than it was to involve Ilianna or Tao.

“It’s possible,” I said eventually, “that Lucian died the way he did simply because that’s the exact same way he killed my mother.”

Jak blinked. “Lucian killed your mother? Why the hell were you fucking him, then?”

“Why do you think, asshole?” I spun around and stalked toward the elevator.

He took several quick steps and grabbed my arm, stopping me. “Look, I’m sorry, but you’ve got to admit, it’s an obvious question.”

I drew in a deep breath, though it did little to calm the rush of anger – anger that was aimed just as much at myself as at him.

“Do you think I haven’t agonized over the fact I was having sex with my mom’s murderer? It makes me want to puke every time I think about it.” I pulled my arm from his and continued on to the elevator. “And the worst of it is, that wasn’t the end of his crimes. It was just the beginning.”

Jak fell in step beside me. “What else did he do?”

“Just about everything.” I punched the Call button. “He was working with the sorcerer who stole the keys, and he was reading my thoughts during sex to keep up-to-date with everything we were doing to find them.”

“Wow,” Jak murmured. “Even I wasn’t that much of a prick. At least when we were making love, I concentrated on the business at hand.”

A reluctant smile touched my lips. “Oh, I don’t know about that. There were definitely occasions when it seemed your thoughts were elsewhere.”

“If my thoughts were elsewhere, you can bet it was because I was trying not to come. You, my dear, can sometimes make a man a little too quick on the trigger.”

My smile grew. “I did notice you had a tendency to fire off a little too soon —”

“It didn’t happen that often,” he said, nudging me with his shoulder.

“If you say so,” I murmured, amused. The elevator door opened and I stepped inside.

He followed close behind. “What floor are we heading to, and why?”

“Top floor, to what would have been Lucian’s apartment. I’m looking for clues.”

He punched the appropriate button. “Clues for what?”

I grimaced. “I wasn’t Lucian’s sole bed partner. Not only was he bedding a dark sorceress, but we’re pretty sure the two of them were partners in crime with the sorcerer who stole the keys.”

“Well, speaking from experience, the man had to have superman’s stamina if he could cope with more than you in his bed.”

I raised an eyebrow. “You and I are over, so you really can stop with all the compliments.”

“Hey, throwing a compliment doesn’t mean I want back in your bed. I mean, yeah, I’d love it, but I’ve come to accept it’s not going to happen.” He paused, then added more seriously, “So we’re looking for something to pin down the sorceress?”

“No, because we know who she is. However, we’re not looking for anything. I’m looking. I don’t believe you were invited to this particular party.”

“Unfortunately, you’re stuck with me. I mean, considering the options and all, what choice do you have?”

“That sounded like a threat, and really? That’s not a place you want to go.”

“It wasn’t so much a threat,” he murmured. “Not considering you could probably get your uncle to throw my ass into jail or erase my memory.”

“Then what the hell was it?”

“More a… reminder. I know what I know, simply because I have the contacts. Contacts you still need.”

I should have been annoyed, but the reality was, he was right. I’d gone to Jak in the first place because of those contacts, and I still very much needed them.

But given the fact that everything that could go wrong had gone wrong, I at least owed him the chance to back away. Not that I thought he would – not when the scent of a story was in his nostrils.

“Jak, the people who want the keys are threatening the life of everyone I care about.” I met his gaze again, hoping he’d see that I was totally serious. “The more you attach yourself to this quest, the more likely the chance of you becoming one of its victims.”

“And tomorrow I could die crossing the road,” he said, with a shrug.

“Jak, I’m not kidding —”

“I know.” He squeezed my arm lightly, his fingers warm against my skin. “I don’t mean to downplay the danger, but it’s a danger I’ve faced before. I’m a paranormal and occult news investigator, remember?”

“You’ve never faced this sort of danger before,” I muttered, glancing up at the floor indicator as the elevator came to a bouncing halt.

The doors swished open. “Perhaps not,” he agreed. “But it doesn’t alter the fact that I always do whatever is necessary to get my story.”

And one of those necessary things was hooking up with me to get a story on my mother. While I knew not everything about our relationship had been faked, it had certainly been more real to me than it ever had been to him.

The elevator opened directly into what Lucian had planned to be the living room of his penthouse apartment. It was still filled with building debris, although many of the plastic sheets that had defined the different areas the last time I was there were gone. But the new walls hadn’t yet received a coat of paint and cables hung everywhere, looking like a network of intertwined snakes.

Snakes were better than spiders, I thought with a shiver. And then wondered whether that was clairvoyance or merely paranoia speaking.

“Wow,” Jak said, looking around. “This place is huge.”

“And this is just the living area.”

“Obviously, Lucian wasn’t lacking in cash.”

“No.” I picked my way through the building rubbish, heading for the newly constructed doorway into the kitchen area. “But considering he’d had centuries to accumulate it, that’s no real surprise.”

“Centuries?” Jak said, surprise in his voice.

“At least.”

I paused just inside the doorway, quickly scanning the vast kitchen-dining area. It still held the remnants of the old kitchen – an oven, a fridge, and the bare bones of two small counters – but the framework for the new kitchen was in place.

The folding chairs we’d briefly used the time I’d met Lauren here were propped up against an outer wall. I’d asked her – against Azriel’s warnings and my own misgivings – to create a spell that would nullify the device the Raziq had placed in my heart. She’d subsequently presented me with a cube designed to prevent magic escaping its boundaries. The idea, supposedly, was that once the cube had been “tuned” to my aura, it would prevent the device in my heart activating. But the cube hadn’t been created from the magic of this world. It hadn’t even been created from blood magic. That, perhaps, I might have risked, even if only as a last resort.

The source of the cube’s power had come from hell itself. While I might have made some very stupid mistakes lately, and had often placed too much trust in entirely the wrong people, even I knew better than to use a device created by a woman who not only considered it natural to play in hell’s fields, but perfectly normal to draw on its energy to create her magic.

It was certainly one of the few decisions I didn’t regret. Unlike all the time I’d wasted with Lucian…

I shoved the thought aside and continued looking around the room. But aside from the fact there were now doors dividing this room from the bedroom area, little else had changed.

And yet, something felt different.

An odd sense of wrongness crawled across my skin, and that was usually a precursor to me walking into a shitload of trouble.

“I don’t suppose you have any weapons, do you?” I studied the doorway leading into the bedroom. If any clues were going to be here, they would be found in the place where he’d made so many conquests. Like most Aedh, he’d been able to charm the pants off any woman he desired with just a kiss, simply because an Aedh’s kiss was designed to sweep aside objections and fuel lust.

And Lucian had certainly been more than willing to employ the power of it. Maybe it had been his way of passing time – when he wasn’t plotting his revenge, that was.

Jak glanced at me, expression sharp with concern. “Why would I? And why would you be asking something like that?”

“Because I have a very bad feeling we could be walking into trouble.”

And along with it came a very bad desire to reach for Azriel. Not so much for his protection, but simply because I felt stronger – more capable of coping with the weird shit that kept getting thrown at me – with him by my side.

I don’t want to do this alone. And that, right there, was a truth I might not have any wish to face, but one I inevitably would. Because no matter how angry I was, no matter how determined to prove that I could do this alone, the truth of the matter was, I really didn’t want to.

I’d banished him in anger and confusion and grief, and it wasn’t just that he’d made me Mijai and ended any possibility of me being reborn and seeing my mother again. It was that he’d destroyed our one sure way to end this key madness and keep everyone I cared about safe.

The simple fact was, no one but me could find the keys. No me, no key, no threat.

I had every right to be angry. And I was. Very much so. But Ilianna was right. I owed him the chance to explain his reasons. He had tried – in his own stoic, say-as-little-as-possible way – but I’d been too locked in misery to listen. I’d wallowed in that particular pool long enough, though, and I was ready to listen now. Besides, I’d faced up to Jak’s betrayal, and had given him a second chance, even if it extended only as far as friendship. Did Azriel deserve anything less?

“What sort of trouble?” Jak asked.

“The kind that comes from a seriously annoyed dark sorceress.”

“Oh, delightful.”

He gave the bedroom doors a somewhat dubious look. He wouldn’t have seen anything more than I did – an innocuous, unpainted double entrance into another room. But the more I looked at those doors, the more the sensation of danger crawled through me.

“You know,” he added, “common wisdom would suggest walking away from trouble rather than into it.”

I half snorted and glanced up at him. “Seriously? You’re actually suggesting we turn around and walk away?”

“You know me better than that.” His grin flashed. “I was merely pointing out what the wise would do.”

“I don’t suppose suggesting you at least wait here would do any good?”

“No. Besides, you’re armed and I daresay your reaper is near.”

“I daresay a reaper is near,” I commented, voice a little harsher than necessary. “Whether they’ll come to our assistance should we land in trouble is anyone’s guess.”

I forced my feet forward. Jak fell in step beside me. “I take it from that there’s been a lover’s quarrel?”

“It means exactly what it says. A reaper is near, just not Azriel. More than that you need not know.”

“Which, of course, just fuels the fire,” he murmured. “This case gets more interesting by the day.”

“And more dangerous.” I slowed as I neared the double doors, scanning them quickly and still seeing nothing. Yet that niggling sense of wrongness was growing.

Amaya? Can you feel anything? I twitched my fingers but resisted the urge to reach for her. Not every problem could be solved by her presence, however much she might believe otherwise.

Not, she replied, and sounded a little miffed. I wasn’t entirely sure whether it was over my thought that she couldn’t solve every problem, or the fact that there didn’t seem to be a problem.

“So what lies beyond the doors you’re giving the evil eye to?” Jak asked.

“A bedroom.”

He frowned – something I sensed rather than saw. “I thought you were looking for clues?”

“I am, but I’m not likely to find them where the builders could inadvertently stumble upon them.”

“And the builders couldn’t stumble into the bedroom?” Jak asked, a slight edge in his voice. Whether it was sarcasm or concern, I wasn’t really sure.

“Well, yes. But it would suit Lucian’s twisted sense of humor to hide stuff in a half-finished bedroom.”

“So are we going to enter, or are we just going to stand here and stare at the door?”

“I prefer the latter option myself,” I muttered. “But I guess we should do the first.”

I gripped the handles and slid the doors back into their respective recesses. The large room beyond was more finished than it had been the last time I’d been here. The king-sized bed still dominated the middle of the room, but the three bathroom walls had been plastered and the fourth side was now a half-height glass-and-brick wall that would have provided some modesty to those sitting on the toilet but little else.

My gaze swept the rest of the room, but I couldn’t see anything out of place. Couldn’t see anything that suggested there was, in any way, something dangerous lurking in wait for us.

And yet that’s exactly what I sensed.

It would be sensible to retreat. Totally. But retreating wouldn’t get the damn keys found. Wouldn’t save Mirri’s life.

I swallowed heavily and forced myself forward. Felt a featherlight press against one shin, then a snap. Quickly looked down and saw the glimmer of pale thread.

I froze, waiting for the hammer to fall.

“What?” Jak’s voice was little more than a whisper.

“Someone placed a cotton line across the door. I just broke it.” I scanned the room again. Still nothing, and yet the sense of danger was growing.

Energy whisked across my skin. It was the barest caress, little more than a hint of darkness, but it nevertheless made my skin crawl. Amaya’s hiss began to flow through the back of my thoughts.

“Why would someone do that?” Jak asked. “I mean, anyone could spring it.”

I didn’t get the chance to reply, because at that precise moment all hell broke loose.