Darkness Devours (5 page)

“I did mind-read one of the Ania during the attack,” Azriel said. “The creature did not know who summoned it.”

“So how did those things find us? You said the Raziq probably wouldn’t be able to locate me once I was away from either my apartment or the café.”

“It may not be the Raziq.”

“Let’s just forget the
who
for the moment.” Annoyance edged my voice. “How did the Ania find me?”

“The Ania work along the lines of bloodhounds, only they are visual rather than scent hounds. Show them a picture and they will scour the earth until they find that person.”

“How could someone show them a picture of me without becoming visible themselves?”

“If it
is
the Raziq, then they have Razan. The only time the Raziq ever acquire flesh to do a task is when they cannot use the Razan to interact with this world—such as the time of conceiving. And even then, it is only the shortage of Aedh females that drives some of them into the arms of humanity.”

Well, that was one thing I wasn’t going to complain about, considering it had given me life. “And if it wasn’t the Raziq?”

He shrugged. “Whoever stole the key from us and opened the first portal would be clever enough to conceal their identity from any low-level demons they’d summoned.”

I pushed open the side door into the parking lot and walked down the stairs. My footsteps echoed in the concrete void, but Azriel was as silent as a ghost.

“So what do we do, given that they’ll probably hit us again?”

“We attempt subterfuge.” He paused, suddenly appearing just ahead of me to hold open the fourth-floor door. “How long can you hold a change?”

I frowned. While I was part werewolf, I couldn’t actually attain a wolf shape. In fact, the moon held no sway over me at all, and I was neither afflicted by the moon heat—although I did have a healthy sexual appetite—nor forced to change shape on the night of the full moon.

However, Mom hadn’t been just an ordinary werewolf. She’d been a helki werewolf, and one refined in the labs of a madman. Helkis were face-shifters. They could literally alter the shape of their face, hair, and eyes—although, oddly, the eyes were the most difficult to keep altered over long periods of time. I’d inherited that ability from her, but it wasn’t something I used very often, so it took a whole lot more out of me than it had Mom.

“That depends on just how much of a change we’re talking about.”

He stopped the door from slamming shut with his fingertips, then fell in step beside me. The heat of him washed over me, warm and comforting. “The Ania are somewhat rigid bloodhounds. Show them an image and that is precisely what they search for. I would think a simple change of hair color would suffice for now.”

I grimaced. I actually loved my coloring. Silvery hair and lilac eyes were a startling—and somewhat rare—combination, and I liked the attention they sometimes gave me.

“Black hair and lilac eyes would be no less startling,” he commented. “And as your skin is not pale, it would look very suitable on you.”

“Suitable?” I said, amused. “God, Azriel, surely even you can come up with a better compliment than that.”

He raised his eyebrows at me. “Why is ‘suitable’ not an adequate compliment?”

I studied him for a moment, not sure if he was teasing me or not. “Because I guess it sounds so… average.”

“Which you are obviously not.” His expression was still totally serious and yet, if he’d had an affair with a human woman, he surely couldn’t be as obtuse about human—or non-human—vanity as he was making out. “So, would the word ‘stunning’ be considered more appropriate?”

I rolled my eyes. Why was I even bothering to fish for compliments from him? “This conversation is insane. Let’s just forget about it.”

“As you wish. You have not, however, answered my original question.”

It took me a couple of seconds to actually
remember
his original question. “I’ve never actually held either a full or a partial change for any great length of time. I could probably hold a hair color change for three or four days if it’s continuous, but it’ll wear me out physically. If I simply revert back to my natural color once I’m home, it might be a little more sustainable.”

“Then do it.”

“What? Now?”

“There are no cameras in this immediate area, and no one nearby. And it is infinitely better to be safe than sorry.”

I nodded a little reluctantly. Face-shifting wasn’t as easy as shifting into an alternate form. From what I’d been told, donning your wolf form—or whatever other form of animal you might be—involved little more than reaching into that place inside where the beast roamed and releasing the shackles that bound her. Face-shifting was a little more complicated. Not only did you have to fully imagine all the minute details of the face you wanted to copy, but you had to hold it firm in your thoughts while the magic swirled around and through your body. Easier said than done when the magic was designed to sweep away sensation
and
thought.

Of course, I was only changing my hair color, but given how little I face-shifted, even that wasn’t a walk in the park.

I flexed my fingers, then closed my eyes and pictured my own face—from the lilac of my eyes, the slight up tilt of my nose, and my defined cheekbones, to the fullness of my lips. But instead of shoulder-length
silver hair, I imagined it black and with a pixie cut. A black so rich that it shone dark purple in the sunlight.

Then, freezing that image in my mind, I reached for the magic. It exploded around me, thick and fierce, as if it had been contained for far too long. It swept through me like a gale, making my muscles tremble and the image waver. I frowned, holding it fiercely against the storm of power. The energy began to pulsate, burn, and change me. My skin rippled without altering, but my hair suddenly felt shorter and somehow finer. As the magic faded, I staggered a little, my knees suddenly weak.

Azriel caught my arm and steadied me. “Does it always affect you like that?”

“It’s usually worse.” I shrugged, locked my knees in place, then gently pulled away from the strength of his touch. “I’m told it gets easier with use, but I just don’t use it often enough.”

“So it will become easier as the weeks pass?”

“I don’t really know.” I eyed him for a moment. “Do you really think I’ll need to hold it that long?”

“Until we know who is behind the attack—and why—then, yes, I think it very likely.”

“Fabulous.”
Not
. I ran a hand through my hair—my now
short
hair. It was an almost surreal sensation, but one I’d have to get used to on a semipermanent basis, apparently. “Will changing my hair work if I’m still riding the same bike and working in the same place?”

“As I said, the Ania are precise hunters. A motorbike is not a unique object, and it could be anyone under the helmet. Sending them after a particular facial image is far safer.” He shrugged. “But we’ll know soon enough.”

I grimaced. “Hopefully, Jak will come up with something interesting tomorrow, because I really don’t want to be sitting around waiting for either my father to contact me or to be attacked.”

“We have little other choice.” Frustration briefly edged his voice. “Where do you go now? To the café?”

I shook my head. “I’m not scheduled until tonight. I thought I’d go see how Tao is faring.”

“He still lives.”

I grimaced. “Being in a semi-coma and living a fully functioning life are two very different things.”

And right now, Tao was still doing the former rather than the latter. He could swallow food and water, but there was little response to stimuli, and no sense that he was aware of our presence. No one knew when—or if—he was ever going to come out of it. Even the witches at the Brindle—the place that was now the home of all witch knowledge, ancient or new—could find no mention of anyone ever consuming a fire elemental before Tao had done precisely that—and there was no spell or potion to reverse what had been done. We were all playing the waiting game and hoping like hell that he’d come back to us.

“The witches do not appreciate my presence in their sacred place, so I shall meet you there but will wait outside.” He winked out of existence, but wasn’t entirely gone, because he added, “The black hair
is
truly stunning, but your natural color is more beautiful.”

Then the heat of his presence faded completely, leaving me grinning like an idiot. An obviously
insane
idiot, because Azriel and I were about as viable as Lucian and I when it came to anything resembling a relationship. But at least I could enjoy sex with Lucian.

Of course, Azriel
had
explored the intimate delights of flesh, but that didn’t mean he’d actually enjoyed it. The term “enlightening” could have meant
anything
.

And I really,
really
needed to steer well away from this line of thinking. Azriel’s presence might not burn the air, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t somewhere nearby and following every wayward thought.

I reached into my purse and retrieved the keys to my motorbike. She sat alone in the designated bike parking area, her sleek silver body gleaming brightly in the shadowy confines of the lot. The Ducati was one of the first things I’d bought when our café finally started making a profit, and even though her hydrogen engine was more than a little outdated these days, she was still a joy to ride.

I pulled out my helmet, leather jacket and pants, and Kevlar boots from the seat storage, then deposited my purse. Once I’d donned my bike gear, I climbed onto the Ducati and started her up. Unlike regular motorbikes, hydrogen bikes run relatively silent, with only the lit-up light-screen dashboard and the slight vibration running through the frame to tell you they’ve started. In fact, when they were first developed, our nanny-inclined government had forced manufacturers to add a fake engine noise so that pedestrians could hear them coming. These days, that rule was pretty much defunct, as pedestrians had far greater worries—namely the air blades, which were basically jet-powered skateboards. Those things really
were
dangerous—a fact I knew because I’d tried them recently. Not only had I almost decapitated Lucian, but I’d spent more time on the ground than I had on the damn blade.

I drove out of the parking lot and headed back into the city. The traffic was light, so it didn’t take me too long to get there. I swung onto Lansdowne Street, then into Treasury Place. The Brindle was a white, four-story building that had once been a part of the Old Treasury complex. It looked innocuous until you neared it—that was when the tingling caress of energy burned across your skin. This place was protected by a veil of power, and it didn’t suffer fools—or evil—gladly.

I stopped in the parking bays along the edge of a park that had once held the premier’s office. After I’d stripped off the leathers and retrieved my purse, I locked the bike and helmet in place and headed into the Brindle. I climbed the steps and walked through the huge wood and wrought-iron doors into the shadowy interior. Even though I came here at least a couple of times a week, a sense of awe still struck me. This place—these halls—was almost as old as Melbourne itself, but it was so immersed in power that mini comets of energy shot through the air at any sort of movement.

The foyer wasn’t exactly inviting, but the rich gold of the painted brickwork added a warmth that the somewhat austere entrance lacked. I walked on, my footsteps echoing in the stillness and little explosions of fire following in my wake. A woman appeared out of one of the rooms farther down the hall, then stopped, her hands clasped together in front of her tunic-clad body.

Her gaze rose to my hair, but all she said was, “It is good to see you again, Risa.”

“And you, Margo.” I stopped and made the expected tithe at the discreetly placed urn near the reception room’s entrance. For normal dealings with the
witches of the Brindle, it wasn’t required, but Tao’s situation was far from normal, and they’d been throwing a whole lot of resources behind the effort to make him whole again.

I hated to think just what it was going to end up costing Ilianna. Tithes or not, it was only thanks to her—and the promises she’d made to the Brindle that she wouldn’t tell me about—that the witches had agreed to take him in.

The only thing she
had
said about the promises she’d made to get him treated scared the hell out of me.
He saved my life at the cost of changing his very being. I can do no less for him.

This whole key mess was changing the very fabric of our lives, and there was virtually nothing any of us could do to stop it. I’d asked them both many a time to walk away, but they wouldn’t. And while part of me was relieved, mostly I was just scared. For Ilianna and Tao, for what the ultimate cost to them might be.

They were my childhood friends, my best friends, and we not only shared a home, but owned and ran a café together. I didn’t want to lose either of them.

I followed Margo down to the far end of the hall and through a small, ornately carved door. The hall beyond was smaller, its walls a soothing green. The air was a riot of indefinable scents that had my nose twitching even though it wasn’t exactly unpleasant. We passed several rooms, including the one Tao had been in a few days ago.

“He’s been moved?” I asked, as we continued on. “Why?”

“Elementals need a heat source to survive. We suspect
the shadowed room could have been the reason for his failure to improve.”

Tao was a werewolf rather than an elemental, but it was possible that consuming the elemental had changed his physiology enough that the lack of sunlight would affect him. “So the new room is sunnier?”

“Yes.” She stopped at a doorway near the far end of the hall and motioned me to enter.

I took a deep breath, fearing what I might find, then stepped inside the small, sunlit room. Tao lay on a bed in the middle of the room, his lower body covered by a sheet—more for modesty, I suspected, than any real need for a cover. Even from here I could feel the heat radiating off him.

Ilianna sat in a chair beside the bed and did something of a double take as I entered. Dark smudges dulled her green eyes and her normally lustrous blond mane hung limp and lifeless.