by Keri Arthur
I half thought about dropping down in Aedh form, but that would probably be a move she’d expect. So I edged away from the hole, hunkered down to present less of a target to anything that might attack the minute we appeared, and called to the Aedh again.
The madmen in my head did their usual mad dance around my brain as I regained flesh form, but I had a feeling the lack of food was causing that rather than it being an aftereffect of the change.
I remained where I was, gaze roaming the building’s shadowed interior, body tense as we waited for something to happen. The concrete was cold against my knees and the air chill as it caressed my body through the newly created holes in my clothes.
But again, there was no response from the magic I could still feel. There wasn’t even any familiar scent in the air. Lauren and Azriel were certainly here, but they weren’t in the chamber immediately below the perfectly circular hole in the concrete.
My gaze returned to it. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind that there was a trap waiting in one of the rooms below, and that we would spring it, sooner rather than later. But if Amaya was right, and Lauren couldn’t spell us when we were combined, then maybe our best chance of beating the bitch was to make her think she had.
Amaya, I said, can your steel still merge with my flesh when you’re inside me rather than it?
Yes, she said. Steel still connected to us. Magic still within.
Excellent. And would it be possible for Valdis to take on a darker shade of steel?
Yes, she said again. Sneaky you are.
I half smiled. I think it’s the company I’ve been keeping. Can you ask Valdis to take on your coloring?
Am. She fell silent for a moment; then flames flickered down Valdis’s sides, blue at first, then gradually shifting to a darker violet. Her steel went from bright silver to a gray that was almost, but not quite, black.
Best can do, Amaya said. Shadowed steel hard to copy.
It’ll do. Neither Lauren nor Mike had actually seen Amaya, so they’d only be going on what Lucian might have told them. Okay, now we need to conceal your blade.
Hold flat, she said. Press.
I rose and pressed her blade against my chest and stomach. Energy stirred, prickling across my skin, its touch heated and clean compared to the foul feel of magic that filled this warehouse.
Harder, Amaya said. Hurt not.
I pressed harder. The hilt dug into my skin but, as she’d promised, didn’t actually hurt. The prickle of energy increased, and the sword began to disappear. It seeped into my flesh, the sharp tip of the blade the first to merge, but the rest of it soon followed, until my hands were pressing against my chest rather than the hilt of the blade. I could feel it within me—it was a weight that was oddly warm, an energy ready and waiting to be called and used—but it wasn’t restricting in any way. I twisted from side to side just to be sure, then smiled and hefted Valdis. Lilac fire rippled down her sides and my smile grew. Lauren would see precisely what she expected to see. Nothing more, nothing less.
Hopefully, it would be enough.
I jumped into the hole and dropped swiftly into the darkness, landing lightly and half-crouched. It was pitch-black and as still as death. There was no sense that anything or anyone was near; even the foul bite of magic seemed to have disappeared.
Anything? I asked Amaya.
Something, she said. Not here.
That wasn’t really surprising. This chamber had appeared to be little more than a storage area; the place where she’d had her pentagram and where she’d performed her magic had been in one of the chambers that ran off the two tunnels that were accessed from this one. I did destroy that particular pentagram, but I guess for a sorceress of her power, that wouldn’t have been much of an impediment.
Could you ask Valdis to provide a little light? The last thing I wanted was to be moving around in this utter ink and stumble into a more conventional trap.
Flames flared brighter down Valdis’s sides, half lifting the shadows and lending the rough-hewn walls a faint lilac glow. Nothing appeared to have changed since the last time we’d been here. The few small tables that had been hacked out of the soil and stone were still empty, but the clean spots in the thick grime that had items she’d moved before we’d raided the place were disappearing under yet more dust.
I turned and headed for the first of the two tunnels that led from this room. I chose the one that had held her pentagram, as it was the most likely place for a trap to wait. The tunnel was small and narrow and cut so roughly into the earth that the sharp edges tore at my already shredded clothing and down into skin. Thankfully, it wasn’t all that long, and I soon found myself standing in another chamber. This also held empty shelves and tables hewn out of the earth, but there was one major difference here. A very elaborate protection circle had been etched into the stone floor, and the melted remains of black candles sat on each of the four cardinal points.
The twin scents of frankincense and cedar that had been so evident last time had faded greatly, however, as had the sharper, almost caustic aroma that Azriel had said was the scent of hell. My gaze went to the floor; the place where I’d scored the circle that had been etched into the stone—therefore breaking the circle and its ability to protect—had not been fixed. The magic within this room was no longer active.
They weren’t here.
I squeezed back through the rough-hewn tunnel, gaining yet more scratches—some of them deep enough to bleed. The sharp scent seemed to fill the air, and somewhere out there in the deeper darkness, evil stirred.
Find, Amaya muttered. Kill.
That’s the plan. I just hoped it was Lauren’s presence I was sensing, and not another of her traps.
The second tunnel was wide enough to walk down normally and led into a chamber as large as the main one. I scanned the floor, but once again there was little more than dirt here. The shelves and tables that had been hacked out of the earth held various dusty items, none of which appeared to have been touched or moved since we were here last.
I frowned and slowly turned around. There was nothing here—nothing that hadn’t been here previously. Yet the nip of magic was stronger, indicating we were at least closer to whatever it was Lauren had planned.
So where in hell was she?
There was nothing else in this underground system—no other rooms or tunnels. Or was there? It wasn’t like she hadn’t concealed entranceways before—she’d certainly done it in the underground system we’d discovered under that warehouse near Stane’s.
Amaya?
Something, she said. Trace not.
Which wasn’t a lot of help. I flexed the fingers on my free hand, though it didn’t do a lot to ease the tension that was growing stronger by the moment, then walked across to the wall and pressed my fingers against it. The magic that continued to nip at my skin had no pulse in the warm earth, so I moved on, keeping my fingers against the stone and earth as I slowly moved around the room.
As my touch ran across one of the half-filled shelf slots, energy stirred, the sensation cold and oddly flat. Amaya hissed, the sound filled with excitement as it echoed through me.
Evil, she said. Down.
Down?
She didn’t answer, instead briefly taking control and forcing me to squat. The cold bite of magic got stronger. I ran my fingers across the space between the shelf and the floor. If this was a doorway, then it was a damn small one. At barely two feet square, there certainly would be little enough room to maneuver, let alone fight.
And that was probably the whole point.
I pressed my hand hard against the cold, flat magic concealed within the wall of earth. It resisted briefly; then, with a slight sucking sound, my hand went through. Damp air briefly caressed my fingertips before I jerked my hand back. There was definitely a tunnel behind the magic, and one I very definitely had to explore, even if every instinct within me screamed to do the exact opposite.
With the butterflies going nutso in my stomach, I took a
deep breath, then pushed Valdis through. Her flames crawled away from the touch of the magic, dancing across her hilt, then my hand, before finally extinguishing as I went in after her. As had been the case the last time we’d gone through one of these concealed doorways, it felt like I was crawling through molasses. The magic creating the illusion was thick and syrupy, and its cold tendrils clung to my body, resisting my movements, then releasing me with an odd sucking sound. I shuddered, my skin crawling with horror as I continued to force my way through.
But unlike before, there was no wider tunnel to provide relief. The cold, foul magic played around me, resisting my movements, tearing at my strength and will as I moved deeper into the underground darkness.
Then, with a suddenness that forced a yelp from my throat, the ground gave way and I was falling.
Chapter 12
I landed on my back with a grunt of pain, the sound echoing as I scrambled to my feet. The room in which I’d landed smelled of wet earth and foul magic, and it was so filled with shadows that the light from the candles forming a large circle around me barely made an impact.
I couldn’t see but I didn’t care. Azriel was here. The connection we shared flared to life, bright and fierce, even if somewhat constrained. I couldn’t hear him—whatever magic caged him obviously restricted our ability to communicate—but given the circumstances, that was probably a good thing. He’d no doubt be furious about me walking—or, more accurately, falling—into Lauren’s trap.
Fire rippled down Valdis’s sides, lilac flames that briefly glowed a fierce and bloody red. Her steel quivered in my grip and tugged lightly to the left, as if eager to be free and moving. But until I knew for certain where both Azriel and Lauren were, I couldn’t release her. Our demon swords might be able to move of their own will, but I didn’t need Lauren realizing that.
“Well, well, well,” an all-too-familiar voice said. “Look what the trap just dropped into our laps.”
I swung around, Valdis raised high. Her lilac flames burned through the shadows and revealed the evil that hid beneath them.
Lauren stood twenty feet away. She was a tall, full-bodied—almost matronly—woman, with angular features and dark hair cut close to her head. Her nose was large and Roman, and it gave her an arrogant air. But it was her eyes that sent shivers skating across my skin. It wasn’t so much that they were a blue so pale it was almost impossible to separate the iris from the white, but that, in this place, they glowed with a fire that was cold, cruel, and very definitely otherworldly.
But then, this was a woman who had willingly handed herself into the hands of hell—and then walked free.
“I have to say,” she drawled, voice coolly amused, “while I did not really expect you to be so foolish as to step into the transport stones, I certainly wasn’t expecting your capture to be this easy or this fast.”
“It was only easy because I wished it to be,” I said. “Where’s Azriel?”
She raised an eyebrow and made a slight motion with her hand. In the shadows that lingered to the left of where I stood, torches appeared, their flames a bright and unnatural blue.
Azriel was caged. Literally.
It was a metal structure that resembled a fancy birdcage, but the steel was silver and glowed with an unhealthy green-yellow light. At the top of the cage there was an odd sort of haze that swirled in a lazy circle and, every now and again, sent a pulse of brown down the metal. Even from where I stood, the foulness of those pulses was evident.
Azriel sat crossed-legged in the middle of the cage’s base. He looked very relaxed, almost serene. But then, he was a master of concealing his thoughts and emotions, and I knew him well enough now to understand that the blanker his expression, the more he was trying to conceal.
In this case, he was furious. Murderously so.
At me, as much as at Lauren.
I switched Valdis from my right hand to my left and saw his gaze narrow slightly. Tension, anger, and perhaps a glimmer of understanding briefly rolled through the connection between us, but the brown haze pulsed and the connection was shut down again.
I frowned and returned my gaze to our sorceress. “What do you want, Lauren?” I hesitated, then added, “Or should that be Mike? Or even Harriet? What name do you actually prefer?”
She raised an eyebrow. “You can call me whatever you wish. I don’t care, because none of those names are mine.”
“So what is your name? And do you actually own a face of your own? Or has it been so long since you’ve worn it that you’ve forgotten?”
“I forget nothing.”
As she spoke, her skin began to ripple and move, rather resembling putty that was being pushed and prodded and remolded by invisible hands. Even though I was a face shifter myself, even though I’d seen Mom transform more than once, there was something quite revolting about the way Lauren shifted. When she’d finished, the woman who stood in front of me had thickset, almost manly shoulders, a thin face still dominated by a large, almost regal-looking nose, and short, colorless hair. It wasn’t white, wasn’t gray, wasn’t anything, really. Much the same could be said of her skin. It was almost as if she were an unwashed canvas, waiting for the arrival of paint. Even her eyes held so little in the way of color that her pupils seemed to be drowning in a sea of white.
I couldn’t help the shudder that ran through me, and a thin, humorless smile touched her lips. The shift magic crawled across her body again and, after a few moments, it was Mike who stood in front of me.
“Does this form make you feel more at ease?” he said, his voice almost mocking. “It is certainly the one with which I am most familiar these days, given the length of time I have held it.”
Amaya began to hiss, the sound fierce and angry as it echoed from my lips. I clenched my fingers against Valdis’s hilt and resisted the urge to throw her at the mocking figure in front of me.
Kill must, Amaya muttered. Taste her we will.
Yeah, but first we have to find out what sort of circle surrounds us, I snapped back. So behave yourself until we actually can attack her. We don’t need to tip her off that all is not as it seems.
Her muttering continued, the sound echoing through my mind. But she didn’t attempt to wrest control from me and, for the moment, seemed content to do as I asked.
“Actually,” I said. “Your current form does nothing more than increase my rage. I will kill you for all your years of deceit, you know. Mom deserved better than that.”
He laughed. The familiar sound itched at my skin and only made the determination to kill him stronger. “Your mother was a means to an end. And, may I point out, a jolly good fuck.”
My grip on Valdis became so tight my knuckles practically glowed. He laughed again. “Go on, throw it. You know you want to.”
“Actually,” I somehow managed to reply, “what I want is to thrust my hand into your chest, to watch the fear grow on your face as my fingers wrap around your heart, and then squeeze tight. I want to watch the pain grow, I want to taste your fear, and I want to watch the life bleed from your body. And then I want to rest content in the knowledge that you will never move on and never be reborn.”
He raised an eyebrow, expression still mocking. “It is always good to have ambitions, even if you will never see them come to fruition.”
He made a flicking motion with his hand, and the candles surrounding me shivered and danced. Magic settled around me, thick and cloak heavy. My knees buckled briefly under its weight, but I locked them tight and remained upright.
His gaze narrowed slightly. “Release the sword, Risa.”
My grip on Valdis tightened. I actually did want to release her, because until I did, she couldn’t make her way toward Azriel. But I also couldn’t seem too eager.
“Go fuck yourself, Mike.”
He made another motion with his hand. “Release the sword. Now.”
The weight of the magic increased. This time, I allowed my knees to buckle. They hit the cavern’s stone floor hard, and pain
slithered through me—something I was more aware of than truly felt.
“Sorry, but my previous response still applies,” I said through gritted teeth.
“This stubbornness obviously comes from your father. Your mother was certainly far more pliable.”
My mother had trusted him—and for that alone I would kill him. But I held the words back and kept my spine straight against the continuing force of magic.
He made another motion with his hand. “Release it.”
I made a show of fighting the order—although it wasn’t all show. The magic was so damn heavy it felt like a ton of bricks was settling around my shoulders. My muscles were screaming and sweat poured down my face and bowing spine.
Enough was enough.
I flung Valdis toward Azriel as hard as I could. She landed on the stone halfway between me and him and slid several feet closer.
“Well done,” Mike said, his voice losing its edge of command. “Although if you have any hopes of the reaper being able to reach your weapon, I can assure you that will not be the case. His cage is, I’m afraid, rather more than it seems.”
I licked my lips, my body still quivering under the weight of the magic. “Meaning what?”
“Meaning, it has been specifically designed with dark angels in mind. The steel contains him, and the mist drains him.” His smile was edged with satisfaction. “He will die, slowly but surely, unless you do precisely what I ask.”
Which explained the bouts of dizziness I’d been getting. It wasn’t the lack of food; it was Azriel drawing on my strength. I glanced at him, suddenly worried. We might not be able to communicate, but he obviously sensed my concern and minutely shook his head. He was okay for the moment. Relief flooded me.
I took a deep, quivery breath and returned my attention to our sorceress. “Trouble is, he’s going to die even if I do what you want. Or do you honestly expect me to believe you’re going to leave either of us alive once you have the final key?”
“Oh, I have no intention of killing you, my dear. I did, after all, promise your mother to look after you, and I do actually prefer to keep my promises if it’s at all possible. It’s bad karma to do otherwise.”