Darkness Devours (16 page)

I gave him a deadpan look. “I
will
resort to greater violence if you don’t get on with it.”

He laughed again, and the sound ran across my senses like a summer rain, warm and inviting. “I think what we’re looking for is not just a man but rather something a whole lot more. John Nadler, I suspect, is a face-shifter.”

I blinked in surprise. “But they test DNA at birth. If he wasn’t human, then it would have been discovered. Mistakes like that just aren’t made.”

“Helki werewolves are not the only ones capable of face-shifting,” he said. “I know for a fact the military has human face-shifters. Did a story on it quite a few years ago.”

“But from what I’ve heard, they’re rare.”

“Rare doesn’t mean impossible. But I rather suspect that the Nadler who was born fifty-six years ago is dead, and that a face-shifter has taken over his face and his life, and
that’s
who is now running the consortium.”

I frowned. I certainly knew how easy it would be to assume someone else’s appearance, having done it myself. But stepping fully into their life was a whole different matter. “What makes you suspicious? The lack-of-relatives factor?”

“In a way, yes. Nadler was an only child, as was his mother. But his father had two brothers and one sister, and they provided Nadler with a total of five cousins.”

“And they’re all dead?” That
did
raise my eyebrows. You’d think at least a couple of the cousins would still
be alive, considering that some of them had to be younger.

“All dead, and all within a three-year time span.”

My frown deepened. “Something like that would have raised suspicions with the police or at the coroner’s office.”

“Not if each and every one was classified as either an accident or natural causes.”

“And were they?”

“Yep.”

At least that explained why Stane hadn’t picked up on this. He didn’t have Jak’s naturally suspicious nature. “So if your suspicions are right, and a face-shifter
was
cleaning Nadler’s house in preparation for a takeover, what about business partners and the like? They’re often more familiar with someone than relatives are, simply because they spend more time with them.”

He grinned and raised a hand, signaling to the waiter for two more beers. I finished the remnants of my first and slid the glass toward the waiter as he appeared with the second one.

“Ah, now this is where it gets
really
interesting.” Jak’s excitement ramped up another notch. I took several gulps of beer, but it didn’t do a whole lot to quench the rising flame of desire. Damn it, I would
not
go there. He continued. “Nadler supposedly had a partial breakdown when his parents died in a car accident. He took six months off work, and when he came back, his colleagues noticed a change in him, but put it down to the recent trauma. Interestingly, he left that business two weeks later to run the newly formed consortium.”

“A consortium with a paper trail so convoluted it’s almost impossible to track down its true beginnings.”

“Exactly.” He raised his glass and clicked it lightly against mine. “All roads point to the man we know as Nadler being a face-shifter.”

“You’ve made a case for it,” I agreed. “But it’s no certainty, and it’s not something his lawyer can tell us. Hell, if a face-shifter
has
taken over Nadler’s life, then there’s no saying that the Nadler the lawyer sees is the one everyone else involved in his day-to-day life does. He’s a face-shifter, remember.”

He frowned slightly. “Hadn’t actually thought of that.”

I grinned. “Sorry to burst your excited little bubble.”

“Oh, you haven’t.” His expression held altogether too much warmth and a whole lot of sexual hunger. And that, I suspected, wasn’t so much about the desire that raged between us as it was about the thrill of a case that had him intrigued. Which wasn’t saying he didn’t want me; it was just that I wasn’t the prime motivator of said hunger.

Which didn’t make the desire surging through
me
any easier to ignore. I dropped my gaze back to my beer and took several slow, deep breaths. They helped about as much as the cold beer.

“Thing is,” he continued, “the lawyer will at least be able to describe the Nadler
he
knows well enough for me to work up a sketch, and we can go from there.”

“That’s a good idea.”

“Oh, I’m full of them.”

“There’s no denying you’re full of something,” I said dryly. “But I’m not sure I’d call it ideas.”

His soft laugh shivered across my senses enticingly. Damn, damn,
damn
.

“Well, I’d offer to show you exactly what is filling me at the moment, but I rather suspect you’ll refuse.”

“Don’t you know it.” Thankfully, my phone chose that moment to ring, cutting off any other comments he might make along those lines. It was Mike. “I’m guessing it’s bad news, seeing not much time has passed.”

“On the contrary,” he said. “The tickets will be dropped off at the office tomorrow at nine, and you can pick them up anytime after that.”

“Excellent.” I gave Jak the thumbs-up. “Thanks heaps, Mike.”

“Glad to help,” he said, and hung up again.

“Fantastic,” Jak said as I put the phone away. “What time do you want me to pick you up?”

“It’s supposed to be a chance meeting, remember? I’ll meet you there.” Besides, he and I confined in a car was not a good idea if he was going to continue radiating desire so strongly. My brain and emotions might want to keep their distance, but my hormones remembered the good times, and they were more than willing to take the chance and dance with him again.

“Not because of any ruse, but because you don’t trust me,” he commented, amusement crinkling the corners of his dark eyes.

“Not one iota. You, my friend, have seduction on your mind.” I finished my drink and stood. “I’ll see you tomorrow night.”

“Bring your dancing shoes,” he said.

I snorted in disgust, and his laughter followed me out the door.
Damn him to hell,
I thought, and fleetingly
wished I hadn’t argued with Lucian. It would have been nice to ease the ache of desire in his arms. I could always go to Franklin’s, a discreet up-market wolf club I often used at times like this, but even as that thought crossed my mind, my nose was wrinkling. The club had lost some of its appeal lately—mainly because Lucian had a sexual repertoire my usual partner at Franklin’s had no hope of competing with.

Azriel appeared beside me as I walked up the road to the taxi stand. “The face-shifter theory is an interesting one.”

His voice was still very formal, and irritation swirled. But did I really want the easygoing, warm version when desire raged so badly inside me?
Yes
, that insane part of me whispered.
Most definitely
. I ignored it and said, “It would certainly explain why no one can find Nadler.”

“If he is being so cautious with who sees him, it is also probable that he is not only keeping an eye on his lawyer’s movements, but he would have ensured that the lawyer could not actually describe him.”

I stopped and looked at him. “Mind tampering?”

He nodded. “It’s possible.”

“But that implies our fake Nadler is more powerful than we’d thought.” And probably more dangerous, although his actions with the soul stealer gave more than enough warning about the lengths to which he was willing to go.

“Exactly,” Azriel said. “I do not think it wise for Jak to accompany you to this ball.”

“There’s no way in hell he’s going to remain behind. He wants this story, Azriel.”

“Maybe so, but that is neither here nor there. Do you agree that it would be better for him not to appear?”

I frowned. “Yes, but if we stop him, he’ll be furious.” And knowing Jak as well as I did, I had no doubt he’d pursue the story without us, and that, ultimately, could be even more dangerous. At least this way we had some control over his actions.

“He can be stopped and yet still think he was there,” Azriel commented.

My gaze searched his for a moment—although why, I have no idea, given that he was still in retreat mode. “So you’ll keep him at home somehow, but feed him false memories afterward?”

“Yes.”

“Won’t work. He’s a reporter, and reporters talk. He’ll discover soon enough that no one can remember seeing him there and he’ll suspect I’ve done something.”

Azriel raised his eyebrows. “But what if—as far as everyone was concerned—he did appear?”

Meaning
he’d
become Jak? “How is that going to keep him safe? I mean, for all intents and purposes, everyone will think he was there.”

“True. But remember, Ilianna warned you that more trouble could be headed your way tomorrow night, and the timing coincides with this gala. It’s possible the face-shifter we know as Nadler is ready to react at the slightest hint of a problem.”

A taxi pulled into the rank up ahead, and I started walking again. “I’m not sure you could pull something like that off convincingly.”

He fell in step beside me again, his hands clasped
lightly behind his back and the warmth of his presence doing more damage to my breathing than Jak’s excitement had. “Why not?”

“Because—”
Because he’s warm and real, and you’re not
. Not in a flesh-and-blood sense, anyway—even if he felt altogether
too
real right now. “You can’t inhabit the personality of a person you hardly know.”

“I am as real as you, Risa,” he said softly. “And you’d be surprised at just what I can do.”

No doubt.
I took a deep breath and blew it out slowly. “If you think you can be convincing, then it’s worth the chance. As much as I hate what Jak did to me and my mom, I don’t want to see him hurt.”

“This will at least keep him safe from whatever trouble Ilianna has seen coming tomorrow night.” He hesitated, then added, “But it has a second benefit.”

I glanced at him. “That being?”

“He doesn’t get to dance with you.” And with that he winked out of existence again.

Goddamn you, Azriel. You can’t keep running like that.

Why not
? his thought came back.
You do
.

Which was not something I could argue with. I grabbed the cab, gave the cabbie the hotel’s address, then dragged out my phone again and called Hunter.

“This is not what I would term a timely phone call,” she commented, and though her voice was mild, I was suddenly glad the vid-screen was broken. “Yeah, sorry, but I had an accident and fell off my bike.”

“I am aware of that fact,” she said crisply. “Just as I am aware that you’re planning to be at the FMFFC ball tomorrow night. I do hope you were intending to include that in your report.”

I closed my eyes and swore internally. I’d forgotten all about our damn watcher. “If I’d gotten the chance to make a report, I would have.”

“And I, of course, believe that implicitly.” Her voice was dry. “I have the information you requested, but with the privacy requirements of this investigation, I will not be sending it to you, electronically or otherwise.”

Meaning I’d have to meet the bitch. Great. I rubbed my aching head wearily. “Where and when?”

“Dark Earth. Half an hour.”

She hung up before I could answer. I swore again, this time out loud, then leaned forward and gave the driver the new address.

Unfortunately, it didn’t take long to get there. Azriel appeared the minute the cab stopped, catching my hand and holding me steady as I climbed out, then just as quickly releasing me. Even so, the memory of his fingers against my skin seemed to linger, teasing imagination and desire.

Damn it, this avoidance—on
both
our parts—just couldn’t go on. I might not want to confront whatever it was that was actually happening between us, but it was getting clearer and clearer that I would
have
to. For the sake of my sanity, if nothing else.

But not yet,
that voice inside whispered.
Not yet
.

It seemed my inner voice was very much a coward.

Barkley Street was a hive of activity. Half of Brunswick had apparently decided to shop here tonight, which surely meant that getting into the club via its secret entrance without anyone seeing us would be that much harder. I couldn’t wrap the shadows around me
like a vampire, after all, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to take Aedh form. Not when the Raziq were actively hunting me.

But as we neared the nook, the buzz of magic began to crawl across my skin and the shadows within seemed dense and forbidding. It was a place that repelled inspection rather than inviting it. I couldn’t even see the door, although it was little more than an arm’s length away.

Hunter suddenly appeared out the darkness. She looked me up and down, then said, “Nice to see you’re prompt about some things.”

Her voice gave as little away as her expression, but that still didn’t stop the tremor that ran down my spine. I was entering a club that catered to vampires with a blood whore addiction, and I was doing so with one of the most powerful vampires in Australia. I was insane.

Thank god I wasn’t alone.

Her gaze went to Azriel. “You’re allowing me to see your true form. Why?”

“Those I hunt always see my true form,” he replied evenly.

A comment that briefly made me wonder if he was, in some way, hunting me, despite his assurances to the contrary. It would certainly explain why I saw his real form when generally I only saw whatever form the reapers took on.

Hunter raised dark eyebrows, amusement glowing in her green eyes but not actually altering her otherwise remote expression. “Are you suggesting my mortal soul is in danger?”

“What you do not possess cannot be in danger.”

She laughed. It was a rich, warm sound that nevertheless sent another round of chills down my spine. “I like you, reaper. Very much.”

With that, she turned and walked back into the nook, becoming one with the shadows. I hesitated, glancing up and down the street to see if anyone was paying any attention. No one was—unfortunately. As Azriel’s fingers touched my spine and urged me forward, I took a deep breath and followed the bitch inside.