“Which would be a whole lot easier if the fucking thing weren’t hidden by veils.” I paused, looking around the room, trying to find something—anything—that sparked a reaction in me. There was nothing.
I sighed in frustration, then put my shoes back on and limped out of the room. The tunnel curved on, and in the distance I could hear the footsteps of the other two men. They were heading back already. All hell would break lose once they’d found their companion. We were running out of time.
The tunnel split into three. I paused, peering into each branch intently, trying to figure out which way to go. The one to my immediate left echoed with the sound of footsteps, so there was no way I was heading down there if it could be avoided. The one straight ahead smelled stale and old, but the air in the one to the right stirred gently, and held the freshness of rain. There was an exit down there somewhere.
My gaze went back to the middle tunnel and, after a moment, I walked on. I don’t know why; it just felt right.
The tunnel’s old brick walls ran with slime, and the floor was slick with moisture. I couldn’t see it because the darkness had closed in once again, but I sure as hell could smell it—and it was nasty. Thankfully I wasn’t wearing my pretty new shoes, but even these older ones weren’t going to be wearable after this. If I’d had half a brain, I would have changed into boots when I’d gotten home.
Any further delay would not have been wise, Azriel commented.
“Stop reading my goddamn thoughts,” I muttered.
No.
I glared at him. “Why the hell not?”
Because you do not tell me everything you know or suspect.
Which seemed a bit hypocritical to me, given he was guilty of the same crime, but I knew it wasn’t about to change anytime soon. “Then will you at least do one thing for me?”
If it means you will stop risking exposure with all this talking, I will seriously consider it.
“All I’m asking is that you keep your distance whenever I’m with Lucian. That is my time, and it has absolutely nothing to do with your goddamn mission.”
He looked at me, his eyes glowing with an unearthly energy. “Trust me when I say that I have absolutely no desire to watch your liaison with the Aedh.”
The edge in his voice made my eyebrows rise. “You don’t like him, do you?”
“I do not trust him.” His gaze slid from mine. The edge in his voice had receded a little, but it still spoke of something more than distrust.
Which was curious. “Why?”
“Because he is Aedh.”
“A fallen Aedh.”
“Exactly. The Aedh do not tear wings off lightly.”
“He’s already explained that. He hunted down and killed the people responsible for his sister’s murder.”
His gaze flicked to mine once more. “And you believe him?”
“Why shouldn’t I?”
“Because full Aedh do not live in familial groups or feel love.”
“Which doesn’t mean it can’t be true.”
He studied me for a moment, then shrugged. Oddly enough, it seemed more an angry gesture than a casual one. “I shall bow to your judgment, as I have no knowledge of this Aedh.” And didn’t really want any, from the sound of it. “Now can we keep quiet and concentrate on finding this book before the priests return?”
I shut my mouth and walked on, my footsteps deadened by the slimy concrete. The air became fouler, clogging my lungs with its putrid stench. “God,” I murmured, raising a hand to my nose and pinching it shut. It didn’t help a whole lot—the smell still clawed at my throat and seared my lungs. “It smells like something massive has died down here.”
Azriel didn’t say anything. Maybe he was hoping I would follow suit. The tunnel widened slightly and my steps slowed as a sense of greater space hit me. But the darkness was still intense, and I couldn’t see any farther than my hand.
But I didn’t need to, because I could feel something. It was a presence—an energy—that tingled across my skin like fire and made the dragon on my arm stir and writhe within my flesh. It was a weird sensation.
“I think it’s here,” I said softly.
Azriel drew his sword and Valdis flared to life, blue flames caressing her razor-sharp sides before spreading out across the darkness.
Dark shapes scurried away from the light, and the source of the smell soon became obvious. A body lay in the center of what once must have been a wastewater junction. I couldn’t immediately tell if it was old or young, because most of its features had been eaten away by the rats. Its clothes were in tatters, but the remnants looked old and worn, and its hair—or what remained of it—was shot with gray.
A vagrant, I thought, continuing to hold my nose as I walked forward. The closer I got, the more the dragon writhed, and the more my stomach turned. The rats had been feasting on the vagrant’s body for a while, because intestines had spilled out over the old brickwork, gleaming like sausages in Valdis’s unearthly light.
“Do you still feel the presence of the book?” Azriel said softly.
I thrust up my arm so he could see the Dušan. She moved serpent-like around my arm, her eyes gleaming with an eerie lilac light.
“Interesting,” he said. “The Dušan do not usually react to stimuli outside the gray fields.”
I didn’t reply, concentrating on the Dušan as I held out my arm and swung around in a slow circle. Her twisting became more intense as I pointed to the right wall. I stepped over the vagrant’s legs and walked on. The Dušan’s reaction became stronger and stronger, until my flesh burned with her energy.
I stopped. The only thing in front of me was a wall … or was it? My father had said the book was veiled, but that didn’t necessarily mean it was cloaked in shadows. I ran my hand over the wet stained wall, searching for any unusual markings in the cold bricks. My fingers brushed against a perfectly round indentation and the Dušan’s head swung around, staring at it.
That had to be it.
I stuck a finger into the hole. Something sharp pricked my finger and I instinctively jerked back. A droplet of blood beaded the tip, but it didn’t actually look as if anything had bitten me. I frowned, remembering my father’s words. Only one of the blood will be able to find or see it. I shoved the finger back into the hole. After a heartbeat, there was a soft clicking noise and a small rectangular section of the wall receded, revealing a small chamber. In it sat the book.
I reached inside and picked it up, but the minute I did, there was a huge whooshing sound and three metal gates dropped down from the ceiling, forming a very solid cage.
The bastards had set a trap, and I’d just sprung it.
Chapter Six
AS SOON AS THE THICK METAL BARS HAD clanged home, a rainbow shimmer flared up around them, quickly encasing us on all four sides as well as above. I knew that shimmer—it had been present in the cell, too. It was a veil of magic that prevented me from reaching for the Aedh. To do so would only send me crashing to the floor in writhing agony—or so I’d discovered the last time they had me trapped.
“You have to get us out of here,” I said, turning quickly to Azriel. “I can’t shift shape when that veil is in place.”
“And I can’t transport you out of here when it is present,” he said, his expression grim. “So let’s hope this works.”
He raised Valdis and swept her across the nearest barrier. The sword screamed as she bit through the air, the blue flames incandescent by the time metal hit metal. Sparks flew and Azriel’s arms jerked as the sword’s speed slowed abruptly. Still, bit by bit, Valdis was cutting through the bars, hissing and screaming every inch of the way. Metal melted, running like water down the bars to pool at their base.
The sound of running steps began to echo from the tunnel we’d just left. The Razan were coming. The Raziq were probably on their way, too. I licked my lips, my heart racing as Azriel withdrew the sword and started cutting again lower.
Valdis’s screaming continued to fill the
air, her fire flicking across the darkness, sending blue shadows dancing up the slick brick walls. When the second cut was as long as the first, Azriel withdrew the sword, raised a foot, and kicked at the metal. The bars went flying, clattering noisily against the opposite wall. A shout came from one of the men in the tunnel and the sound of their steps grew faster.
“Go,” Azriel said, turning to face me. Sweat beaded on his forehead and ran down the edge of his face.
I shoved the book down the front of my top, then grabbed the bars above the cut and swung through feetfirst. My wounded leg brushed one edge and pain rolled through me. Gasping, I stumbled forward, going down on one knee, my hands disappearing into the thick slime lining the floor as I tried to stop my fall.
“Don’t move!” a voice said from the tunnel doorway.
I looked up and saw a blond Razan burst into the main tunnel. I saw the gun in his hands, already raised. I saw him pull the trigger.
I threw myself sideways, but it was too late. Far too late … only suddenly I was jerked roughly to the right and there was a body standing between me and that bullet.
As Azriel’s arms wrapped around me, I felt him jerk. Then energy surged and we were on the gray fields. This time the trip was short and sharp, and darkness still encased us when we reappeared.
We hit the ground together and sprawled forward, landing with some force against a surface that was hard and cold. For several seconds neither of us moved. Azriel’s weight pressed me against the cold concrete, making it difficult to breathe. Not that I really cared; I was too busy listening to the silence, smelling the damp and the cold, and wondering where the hell we were.
“Not clear yet,” Azriel stated as his weight lifted off me.
There was an edge in his voice that made me frown. “Meaning we’re still in the tunnels?”
“Yes.” He pushed upright. “Are you all right?”
“I’ll survive.” I rolled onto my back and accepted his offered hand. His warm flesh was slick—not with moisture or slime, but with blood.
“You’ve been shot?” I said, watching the blood pour from his wounded shoulder as he hauled me up. “How the hell can a reaper get shot?”
“When I’m in flesh form, I can be damaged.” He shrugged.
“Meaning you can also be killed?”
“We are not immortal, Risa. If death is our fate, it will find us—whatever the form.”
“But you’re more vulnerable in flesh form?” The blood pouring down his arm dripped from our twined fingers—an indication of just how serious the wound was even if he didn’t appear to be worrying. Hell, did reapers even feel pain?
“Yes,” he said softly. “We are not Aedh. We live and love and hurt.”
“So why the hell are we just standing here? Let’s zap ourselves away.”
“The bullet is silver. With it still in my flesh, I am prevented from doing anything more than short jumps into the gray fields.”
“Then let’s get the fucking thing out.” I hesitated, and frowned. “Wait—they used silver?”
That didn’t make sense. The Razan had aimed for my head, but the Raziq needed me alive. But it also meant that Azriel had saved my life by stepping in front of me and taking the bullet.
“I suspect the bullet was meant for me all along,” he said. “The Raziq would have felt my presence the first time I rescued you. They’d know I’d do so again should you be captured a second time. By shooting me with silver, they are giving themselves extra time to find us.”
“Then let me shift the two of us so we can get the hell out of here.” The only problem was, I’d only ever shifted to Aedh form with another person in my arms once, and only then because we’d had no other option. But I knew Tao almost as well as I knew myself, and I’d been lucky. I suspected that would not be the case with Azriel. Hell, I didn’t even know if I could reassemble the damn book after a shift.
“Which is why we cannot take that option,” he said softly. “We cannot risk the book, and you cannot disassemble or reassemble me as you did Tao. I am an energy being, and my makeup is unlike anything you could ever imagine.”
And yet, here he was, bleeding like a regular person. “Then let’s damn well run! Anything is better than standing here.”
He ignored my outburst, his expression as calm as ever. “You cannot go home. That is the first place they will look.”
“Then where will we go?”
“Not we. You.”
I frowned at him. “I’m not leaving without you—”
“You must,” he said. “The Raziq have arrived back in the tunnels. They will be here soon. Go, before they find us.”
“But they can track me, can’t they?”
“If you remain here, yes they can. If you flee, if you get as far away from this tunnel as you can and don’t go back to your apartment, you will be safe.”
I eyed him doubtfully, torn between not wanting to get caught by the Aedh again and not wanting to leave the man who’d just saved my life. “But if I remove the bullet—”
“We do not have the time. There is a small manhole above us. Use that to escape.”
“Fuck it, I can’t—”
Anger surged—a brief flare of energy that stung my skin and rushed through my mind. Then it was gone, and he released my hand, pushing me back from him. “Go. I will be fine.”
I swore again, then shoved the book at him and said, “You’d better be, reaper.”
I slid a hand into my pocket and wrapped my fingers around my keys and wallet, then reached into that place inside that wasn’t wolf, that was something far more powerful and dangerous. My Aedh half surged to life and flared through my body—a blaze of heat and energy that numbed pain and dulled 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 shadows, one with the air. Until I held no substance, no form, and could not be seen or heard or felt by anyone or anything.
Except reapers and undoubtedly the Aedh, if they were close enough.
I glanced at Azriel, but he’d already gone, zapped away to God knew where. I swirled upward, found the manhole, and slipped through the small opening in the center of the cover.
And found myself in the middle of Swanston Street. A tram rattled by inches from my smoky form, stirring rubbish and sending a breeze through my particles.
Don’t go home, Azriel had said. So where the hell should I go? I couldn’t go to Stane’s, simply because I didn’t want to place him in danger. Azriel might suspect that the Raziq couldn’t find me unless I was close, but until we knew that for certain, I was better off keeping well away from those I cared about.
It also meant I’d better get the hell away from this manhole. I fled, swirling randomly through the city streets, the chill night air seeming to seep into my particles, making them feel heavy, as if ice had settled somewhere deep inside. I flowed out of the city and followed the Tullamarine Freeway into the suburbs—more out of habit than necessity, because in Aedh form I wasn’t restricted to using regular roads and pathways.
I ended up at the airport. I had to meet Lucian here later, anyway, and it was certainly the last place anyone would think to look for me.
I re-formed in a dark corner within the parking lot, releasing my grip on my phone and wallet as I dropped inelegantly to the concrete floor. My body shook and my head spun, and for several minutes I could do nothing more than simply lie there, my lungs burning as I dragged in thick, ragged breaths.
Becoming Aedh had its price for those of us who weren’t full-blooded—and for me it meant a complete inability to do anything other than battle for breath for several minutes after re-formation.
When the debilitation finally started to ease, I pushed upright and cautiously rocked back on my heels. Several more minutes passed, and the stabbing pain in my head settled to a more durable ache behind my left eye. An ache that matched the one in my leg.
The other bad thing about becoming A
edh was its effect on my clothes. They 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 dust-like sheen covering my skin rather than fully formed pieces of clothing. Thankfully, my jeans had come out of the change almost intact, showing only a small patch just under my right knee. My underwear and bra hadn’t fared as well, hanging on in barely there strips that tickled my skin. My leather jacket, like my jeans, had a patch missing from the right elbow and was a little tatty around the bottom hem, but otherwise had come through in one piece for a change.
It was probably just as well that I’d left Azriel with the book. And that I hadn’t attempted to shift shape with him in tow.
I climbed carefully to my feet. The pain remained, constant yet bearable. The bullet wound had finally stopped bleeding, so I unwound the bloodstained bandage and tossed the scraps into the corner. Thankfully, my jeans were dark, so the blood wasn’t really noticeable.
I reached into my pocket and pulled out my phone. Metal and plastic weren’t affected by the shift into—or back out of—particle form, but unless they were touching skin, they wouldn’t actually change. Which is why I’d wrapped my hand around my phone and keys before I’d shifted. I knew from experience that there was nothing worse than metal and plastic stuck in the middle of your particle form.
“Hunter,” I said into the phone. The voice recognition swirled into action, its screen flaring with a vivid mosaic of color as I limped toward the elevators.
Her face appeared on the screen and she did not look happy. “This is not what I call immediately.”
Well, suck it up princess, I wanted to snap, because it’s the best I could do. I wisely didn’t say it, though, and was grateful she wasn’t here in person. Pissing her off wouldn’t be the wisest move right now, given she was all that stood between me and an extermination order.
I simply said, “Sorry, but something important came up,” then updated her on what had happened at Alston’s house, as well as what Azriel had said about both the creature and Alston.