Darkness Unmasked (DA 5) (13 page)

I glanced at him sharply. “So this
isn’t
his house?”

“It’s not even his
suit
.” Amusement briefly touched the corners of his eyes. “The actual owner is one Shamus O’Callagan, and he’s overseas on business. Apparently, old Sam here has been putting his psychic talents to good use and keeping himself off the street by not only sourcing out temporary high-end accommodations, but taking over the owner’s identity.”

“He might still be alive if he’d been on the streets.”

Rhoan raised his eyebrows. “Meaning you think our killer has a taste for the high life?”

Maybe not so much the high life, but possibly a taste for those who are psychically endowed. It couldn’t be a coincidence that the first two victims were both gifted in that area. “How strong a psychic was he?”

“Strong enough to easily convince doubters he really
was
O’Callagan.”

“From what I’ve been told, the first victim was a strong telepath.”

“Given he was an old vampire, that goes without saying.”

Not all vamps were strong telepaths. There were a few—
a very rare few
—who missed out on that particular gift. “Then being a strong psychic of some kind
could
be the link.” I half shrugged. “Of course, he was also rich. Maybe our killer is going after the wealthy. Maybe their innards taste better than us more ordinary folk.”

He snorted softly. “You’re about as ordinary as a blue diamond.”

I grinned. “I think that’s the nicest thing you’ve said to me for ages.”

“That’s because you keep doing dumb things.” He nodded toward the body. “Is there anything else you can tell us?”

I sighed. “No. Bit of a waste of time, wasn’t it?”

“Maybe, but at least we now know we could be looking for a spirit; it’ll give the witches in the Directorate’s employ something to do on this one.” He gave me a stern look. “You’re not going to attempt to track this thing down, are you?”

“Not unless I’m forced to.” I gave him a lopsided smile, then rose on my tiptoes and kissed his cheek. “Tell Riley I’ll see her on Thursday for lunch.”

“I’d advise not missing this one, or she’ll be royally pissed.”

“And that’s never very pleasant for anyone,” I said. “Tell Jack I’m sorry I couldn’t be of more use.”

He nodded. I turned and headed out. At the front door, I stripped off the protective booties and gloves, dumping them in the hazmat bin before walking down the front steps.

“Now what do you wish to do?” Azriel said, as I stopped near the front gate.

“Run away to a desert island somewhere with a mountain of chocolate and a refrigerator full of Coke.” But running away wasn’t going to solve anything. Not when I had a world to save, keys to find, and beings willing to kill those I loved if I didn’t get my ass into gear sooner rather than later. I sighed. “But I guess we’d better go home and see if we can do anything to pinpoint the location of the next key.”

“Home it is,” he said, and had us there in a heartbeat.

I rang Hunter, but this time, she didn’t answer. I left a message that our killer appeared to be going after men who were psychically strong and asked if I could grab a copy of the crime-scene report when it came through.

My phone rang the minute I hung up. “Ilianna,” I said. “Please tell me you’ve found him.”

“Unfortunately, no.” Frustration and concern filled her voice and expression. “If he’s out there, then I can’t see him. God, I hope he’s okay.”

So did I. “Would it be worth trying location spells every hour or so?”

“If he’s in a state of flux, yes. If the elemental has full control, then no. But I’ll keep trying.”

“Just don’t tire yourself out too much. That’s not going to help anyone.”

“I won’t. Let me know the minute you hear anything, won’t you?”

“Absolutely.”

I hung up, then stripped off my jacket and said, “Com-screen on,” as I headed into the kitchen. A light screen flared above the small, dome-shaped computer unit I’d left sitting in the middle of the dining table a few days ago. Several seconds later, a laser-light keyboard appeared on the table surface near the unit. I grabbed another Coke from the fridge, as well as a wedge of the cake I’d resisted earlier, then sat down and said, “Show last search result.”

More than twenty-five names immediately scrolled onto the screen. All were museums located within the golden triangle, with the biggest of them being Sovereign Hill, the open-air museum that re-created life of the goldfields during the mid-1800s. It was probably the most logical place to hide a dagger—which was what the second key had apparently been disguised as—and yet, for some reason, I had a nagging suspicion it wouldn’t be there. But maybe that was due to little more than the fact that nothing else had been easy of late, so why the hell would the search for the second key be so straightforward and logical?

Besides, the clue my father gave mentioned “soil being stained by rebellion,” and that
had
to refer to the Eureka Stockade—one of the biggest and bloodiest rebellions in Australian goldfields history. Given the stockade had happened on Bakery Hill in Ballarat, that removed more than half of the search results. I ran an eye down the list, then grimaced and sat back in the chair. “This is going to take forever.”

“Though your father has been surprisingly patient thus far, I cannot see him waiting out eternity for the keys,” Azriel said.

“Especially since I’m not immortal and haven’t got an eternity to search for them.” I ate some cake, then added, “Hell, for all we know, the bloody dagger isn’t even
in
a museum, but rather some private weapons collection.”

“Possibly.” Azriel studied the screen for a moment, then said, “Logically, a dagger would not likely be found in either a pottery museum or a fine arts gallery, so that would erase at least half of those names from the list.”

“True.” I leaned forward and looked at the list again. “If logic
did
play any part in the placement of this thing, then it’s more likely to be at either Sovereign Hill, the Eureka Centre, or the Aviation Museum. And maybe—if it was disguised as some sort of artifact—maybe the Aboriginal Culture Centre.”

“Four locations is not an overly large search area.”

“No, but it would be better to visit them when they’re open.” If only because I needed to be in flesh form to feel the presence of the key, and I could hardly just pop in at this hour of night and start wandering around. Security would be on me before I got three steps. And while Stane could hack into their systems, he needed more than a few minutes’ notice. I munched on the remainder of the cake, then said, “The real problem is not going to be finding the key. It’ll be keeping the damn thing long enough to figure out what we’re going to do with it.”

“With the Aedh out of the equation—”

“It wasn’t Lucian who stole the first key,” I cut in, more than a little annoyed at his continuing insistence on blaming all of our bad luck on Lucian. He was undoubtedly responsible for
some
of it, granted, but definitely not all of it. “It was a dark sorcerer. A
male
dark sorcerer.”

“Who might well be connected to both Lucian and his dark sorceress lover.”

“He also might not. The point, however, is not who is involved with whom, but how do we stop them from grabbing the second key.”

“Simple. We tell no one—”

I snorted softly. “Yeah. Except that my father, the Raziq, and probably Lucian all have varying degrees of access to my thoughts. Hard to keep a secret when your mind leaks like a sieve.”

“And there is nothing we can do about
that
. However, your father is more than capable of creating wards powerful enough to keep the Raziq and possibly the dark sorcerer at bay. Perhaps the time has come to lean on his capabilities a little more.”

I frowned. “Do you really think he’s going to agree to make wards strong enough to keep the Raziq out when it will also keep him out?”

“He can easily add a back door for himself in any magic he creates.”

Given my father was responsible for the wards that currently protected this building, as well as creating the Dušans, that was undoubtedly true. And yet something within me didn’t want to depend on him for
anything
. I didn’t trust him.

“You don’t have to trust him,” Azriel commented. “You just have to exploit his abilities. Besides, if you wish to keep both the Raziq and the sorcerer from the key, then there isn’t anyone else who has the power required to create such magic.”

I took a deep breath and released it slowly. “Then let’s go talk to the bastard.”

I pushed away from the table and walked back into my bedroom. I’d stashed the communication cube my father had given me in a shoe box at the back of my wardrobe, hoping against hope that I wouldn’t have to use the thing again. I should have known better.

I dug it out, then walked across to the bed and opened the box up. The cube sat within. It was little more than a white stone roughly the size of a tennis ball. Its surface was slick—almost oily—looking, and ran with all the colors of the rainbow.

I picked it up somewhat gingerly. It was warm against my fingertips, the energy within it muted and unthreatening. Yet it had been created using Aedh magic, and it was activated by blood—my blood—and that gave it a certain edge of darkness that made me wary.

Or maybe that wariness simply stemmed from the fact that I didn’t trust the man who’d made it.

And yet he’d also made the Dušan on my arm, and she’d saved my life twice now.

I contemplated the cube for several more seconds, then tossed it on the bed and sat cross-legged in front of it. I glanced up as Azriel appeared. “I don’t suppose you could get me—”

“Done.” He offered me the knife hilt first, then sat opposite me and drew Valdis, placing her across his knees. Blue fire ran the length of her bright blade, a sure sign she was ready for action.

Hopefully, she wouldn’t be needed.

I drew a deep breath, then released it slowly. It didn’t do a lot to calm the nerves. I pressed the point of the knife against a fingertip until a drop of blood appeared, then turned my finger upside down and let the blood drip onto the cube. As it hit, the rainbow swirl of colors stopped, and everything went still.

Then light burst from the stone and quickly encased me in a cylinder of glaring white. Azriel disappeared from sight, and Valdis’s fierce blue flames were little more than a shadowed flicker.

“Father, are you out there?” My voice echoed slightly in the odd silence of the white void.

For several seconds, there was no reply; then his voice—a harsher, more masculine version of mine—said, “I’m here. Why are you using this cube?”

“You gave it to me to communicate. I’m communicating.”

“So you have found the next key?”

“Not yet.”

“Then why are you using this cube?”

Impatience—and perhaps a touch of anger—swirled through the whiteness around me. My stomach tightened. I’d felt my father’s anger once before. I did
not
want a repeat of the bruises that had ensued.

And yet I couldn’t quite help snapping, “Because if you want the damn keys, then you’re going to have to do a bit more than provide indecipherable clues.”

“I cannot give you what I do not have. The Raziq who hid the keys are dead. I cannot call them back from whatever hell they may have gone to, so I am at a loss as to the point of this request.”

“The request isn’t more information.” Which he’d know if he was reading my mind. The fact that he obviously wasn’t meant either he was some distance away or something else was going on. Aedh could usually read the minds of anyone nearby, and my father had implied he could read mine anytime he desired. “I want to know if you can create a ward or something like that to keep both the Raziq and the black sorcerer who stole the first key out of whatever building I happen to be searching. It would need to be reusable.”

He was silent for a moment, then said, voice cool, “When would you need such an item?”

“As soon as possible. I don’t want to start looking for the key before we have some means of protecting ourselves from outside forces.”

And that outside force included him.

If he heard that particular thought, he thankfully didn’t react to it. “It could be done. It would not, however, keep anything flesh based out.”

“Meaning it won’t keep the sorcerer out?” If that was the case, then it was pointless.

“It will keep the sorcerer out if he uses magic to transport in. I doubt I can make something quickly enough that would also stop him from using magic to transport out if he happened to arrive in flesh form.”

I frowned. “Aren’t they the same thing?”

“No, they are not. It is easy enough to bounce magic to prevent entry. It is harder to contain once in.”

Ah. You learned something every day. “What about the Raziq?”

“The wards will be designed to react to the energy of their beings, so will restrict entry regardless of the form they take.”

“Does that mean they will also restrict Lucian?”

“My
chrání
has basically been reduced to flesh form, so no. But the restrictions that apply to the sorcerer would also apply to him.”

Meaning he could not use any of his lover’s magic to transport in and snatch the keys from under our noses, but he could certainly walk right in. If he managed to get past Azriel, that was.

“So how long would it take for you to get something like that to me?”

He paused. “Perhaps a day. I will have a Razan deliver it to you.”

“Thanks.” It stuck in my craw to actually say that, but being polite didn’t cost me anything, and it was certainly a better option than pissing him off in some way.

“Just ensure no one else gets this key, or I will
not
be pleased.”

“I’ll do my best.”

The energy in the cylinder became so electric, the hairs on my arms stood on end. “I am
not
interested in your best. I just want that key.”

You and everyone else
. I rubbed my arms and didn’t say anything. A heartbeat later, the white light died and I found myself blinking at the abrupt darkness.