Darkness Splintered (DA 6) (6 page)

But given the fact that everything that could go wrong
had
gone wrong, I at least owed him the chance to back away. Not that I thought he would – not when the scent of a story was in his nostrils.

“Jak, the people who want the keys are threatening the life of everyone I care about.” I met his gaze again, hoping he’d see that I was totally serious. “The more you attach yourself to this quest, the more likely the chance of you becoming one of its victims.”

“And tomorrow I could die crossing the road,” he said, with a shrug.

“Jak, I’m not kidding —”

“I know.” He squeezed my arm lightly, his fingers warm against my skin. “I don’t mean to downplay the danger, but it’s a danger I’ve faced before. I’m a paranormal and occult news investigator, remember?”

“You’ve never faced this sort of danger before,” I muttered, glancing up at the floor indicator as the elevator came to a bouncing halt.

The doors swished open. “Perhaps not,” he agreed. “But it doesn’t alter the fact that I always do whatever is necessary to get my story.”

And one of those necessary things was hooking up with me to get a story on my mother. While I knew not everything about our relationship had been faked, it had certainly been more real to me than it ever had been to him.

The elevator opened directly into what Lucian had planned to be the living room of his penthouse apartment. It was still filled with building debris, although many of the plastic sheets that had defined the different areas the last time I was there were gone. But the new walls hadn’t yet received a coat of paint and cables hung everywhere, looking like a network of intertwined snakes.

Snakes were better than spiders, I thought with a shiver. And then wondered whether that was clairvoyance or merely paranoia speaking.

“Wow,” Jak said, looking around. “This place is huge.”

“And this is just the living area.”

“Obviously, Lucian wasn’t lacking in cash.”

“No.” I picked my way through the building rubbish, heading for the newly constructed doorway into the kitchen area. “But considering he’d had centuries to accumulate it, that’s no real surprise.”

“Centuries?” Jak said, surprise in his voice.

“At least.”

I paused just inside the doorway, quickly scanning the vast kitchen-dining area. It still held the remnants of the old kitchen – an oven, a fridge, and the bare bones of two small counters – but the framework for the new kitchen was in place.

The folding chairs we’d briefly used the time I’d met Lauren here were propped up against an outer wall. I’d asked her – against Azriel’s warnings and my own misgivings – to create a spell that would nullify the device the Raziq had placed in my heart. She’d subsequently presented me with a cube designed to prevent magic escaping its boundaries. The idea, supposedly, was that once the cube had been “tuned” to my aura, it would prevent the device in my heart activating. But the cube hadn’t been created from the magic of this world. It hadn’t even been created from blood magic. That, perhaps, I might have risked, even if only as a last resort.

The source of the cube’s power had come from hell itself. While I might have made some very stupid mistakes lately, and had often placed too much trust in entirely the
wrong
people, even
I
knew better than to use a device created by a woman who not only considered it natural to play in hell’s fields, but perfectly normal to draw on its energy to create her magic.

It was certainly one of the few decisions I didn’t regret. Unlike all the time I’d wasted with Lucian…

I shoved the thought aside and continued looking around the room. But aside from the fact there were now doors dividing this room from the bedroom area, little else had changed.

And yet, something
felt
different.

An odd sense of wrongness crawled across my skin, and that was usually a precursor to me walking into a shitload of trouble.

“I don’t suppose you have any weapons, do you?” I studied the doorway leading into the bedroom. If any clues were going to be here, they would be found in the place where he’d made so many conquests. Like most Aedh, he’d been able to charm the pants off any woman he desired with just a kiss, simply because an Aedh’s kiss was designed to sweep aside objections and fuel lust.

And Lucian had certainly been more than willing to employ the power of it. Maybe it had been his way of passing time – when he
wasn’t
plotting his revenge, that was.

Jak glanced at me, expression sharp with concern. “Why would I? And why would you be asking something like that?”

“Because I have a very bad feeling we could be walking into trouble.”

And along with it came a very bad desire to reach for Azriel. Not so much for his protection, but simply because I felt stronger – more capable of coping with the weird shit that kept getting thrown at me – with him by my side.

I don’t want to do this alone.
And that, right there, was a truth I might not have any wish to face, but one I inevitably would. Because no matter how angry I was, no matter how determined to prove that I could do this alone, the truth of the matter was, I really didn’t
want
to.

I’d banished him in anger and confusion and grief, and it wasn’t
just
that he’d made me Mijai and ended any possibility of me being reborn and seeing my mother again. It was that he’d destroyed our one sure way to end this key madness and keep everyone I cared about safe.

The simple fact was, no one but me could find the keys. No me, no key, no threat.

I had every right to be angry. And I was. Very much so. But Ilianna was right. I owed him the chance to explain his reasons. He had tried – in his own stoic, say-as-little-as-possible way – but I’d been too locked in misery to listen. I’d wallowed in that particular pool long enough, though, and I was ready to listen now. Besides, I’d faced up to Jak’s betrayal, and had given him a second chance, even if it extended only as far as friendship. Did Azriel deserve anything less?

“What sort of trouble?” Jak asked.

“The kind that comes from a seriously annoyed dark sorceress.”

“Oh, delightful.”

He gave the bedroom doors a somewhat dubious look. He wouldn’t have seen anything more than I did – an innocuous, unpainted double entrance into another room. But the more I looked at those doors, the more the sensation of danger crawled through me.

“You know,” he added, “common wisdom would suggest walking away from trouble rather than into it.”

I half snorted and glanced up at him. “Seriously? You’re actually suggesting we turn around and walk away?”

“You know me better than that.” His grin flashed. “I was merely pointing out what the wise would do.”

“I don’t suppose suggesting you at least wait here would do any good?”

“No. Besides, you’re armed and I daresay your reaper is near.”

“I daresay
a
reaper is near,” I commented, voice a little harsher than necessary. “Whether they’ll come to our assistance should we land in trouble is anyone’s guess.”

I forced my feet forward. Jak fell in step beside me. “I take it from
that
there’s been a lover’s quarrel?”

“It means exactly what it says. A reaper is near, just not Azriel. More than that you need not know.”

“Which, of course, just fuels the fire,” he murmured. “This case gets more interesting by the day.”

“And more dangerous.” I slowed as I neared the double doors, scanning them quickly and still seeing nothing. Yet that niggling sense of wrongness was growing.

Amaya? Can you feel anything?
I twitched my fingers but resisted the urge to reach for her. Not every problem could be solved by her presence, however much
she
might believe otherwise.

Not,
she replied, and sounded a little miffed. I wasn’t entirely sure whether it was over my thought that she couldn’t solve every problem, or the fact that there didn’t seem to be a problem.

“So what lies beyond the doors you’re giving the evil eye to?” Jak asked.

“A bedroom.”

He frowned – something I sensed rather than saw. “I thought you were looking for clues?”

“I am, but I’m not likely to find them where the builders could inadvertently stumble upon them.”

“And the builders couldn’t stumble into the bedroom?” Jak asked, a slight edge in his voice. Whether it was sarcasm or concern, I wasn’t really sure.

“Well, yes. But it would suit Lucian’s twisted sense of humor to hide stuff in a half-finished bedroom.”

“So are we going to enter, or are we just going to stand here and stare at the door?”

“I prefer the latter option myself,” I muttered. “But I guess we should do the first.”

I gripped the handles and slid the doors back into their respective recesses. The large room beyond was more finished than it had been the last time I’d been here. The king-sized bed still dominated the middle of the room, but the three bathroom walls had been plastered and the fourth side was now a half-height glass-and-brick wall that would have provided some modesty to those sitting on the toilet but little else.

My gaze swept the rest of the room, but I couldn’t see anything out of place. Couldn’t see anything that suggested there was, in any way, something dangerous lurking in wait for us.

And yet that’s exactly what I sensed.

It would be sensible to retreat. Totally. But retreating wouldn’t get the damn keys found. Wouldn’t save Mirri’s life.

I swallowed heavily and forced myself forward. Felt a featherlight press against one shin, then a snap. Quickly looked down and saw the glimmer of pale thread.

I froze, waiting for the hammer to fall.

“What?” Jak’s voice was little more than a whisper.

“Someone placed a cotton line across the door. I just broke it.” I scanned the room again. Still nothing, and yet the sense of danger was growing.

Energy whisked across my skin. It was the barest caress, little more than a hint of darkness, but it nevertheless made my skin crawl. Amaya’s hiss began to flow through the back of my thoughts.

“Why would someone do that?” Jak asked. “I mean, anyone could spring it.”

I didn’t get the chance to reply, because at that precise moment all hell broke loose.

Chapter 3

The air exploded, filling the room with a tidal wave that was both heat
and
magic. As it stormed toward us, I swore and spun, wrapping my arms around Jak and calling to the Aedh.

“What the
fuck
—”

The rest of his words were abruptly cut off as my magic ripped through us both, shredding skin and blood and bone with quick efficiency, until there was nothing left but two streams of tremulous smoke, separate but entwined.

Then the wave of energy and magic hit, and the doors, walls, and ceiling all around us disintegrated. I very much suspected the wave would have done the same to us had we been in flesh form.

The wave rolled into the kitchen–dining area, its progress trackable through the pulverization of everything it touched. Not just walls and ceilings, but the half-built kitchen as well as the old remnant. But the force behind the wave obviously began to fade as it neared the far wall, because while some of the plaster fell, most remained intact.

I turned, peering through the dusty gloom, wondering if that explosion was all there was to the trap. Wondering if it had been aimed at me, specifically, or just anyone who entered this room. That brief caress of darkness before the explosion certainly seemed to suggest the former rather than the latter, but if that was the case, why not create an explosion that would do damage to an Aedh? Whoever had set this trap – be it the dark sorcerer or Lauren – had to know what I was.

But then, why would they want me dead? The final key still had to be found, and I was the only one who could do that.

Maybe this trap had been set more out of spite and emotion than levelheaded thinking, and
that
suggested Lauren more than the dark sorcerer. If the argument I’d interrupted between Lucian and her had been any indication, Lauren hadn’t been happy about my presence in his life. And she certainly
had
to suspect my part in his death.

Maybe destroying any possible evidence had been the main intent of the blast. Damage to
me
, if I hadn’t been quick enough, might have just been a bonus.

Which made me wonder if the reaper who’d replaced Azriel would have stepped in to save me had my life truly been in danger.

Or wouldn’t it have mattered to him? Or to any of them?

I mean, I was now destined to become Mijai the next time I died, and Mijai could become flesh. Maybe it would be better for them if I
did
die.

But with Azriel gone, there was no way to get any answers to questions like that…

Except, he doesn’t have to remain gone…

The thought rose like a ghost, seductive and enticing. I pushed it away. If I was going to invite him back into my life, then I’d do it the fair way – when I was safe rather than in trouble.

I studied the mess now that the white dust had started to settle. What it revealed was the broken remnants of the bed and bathroom. Wiring hung like limp snakes from the remains of the ceiling, and the lines of silver ducts that crossed the room had been torn open in several places.

I couldn’t see anything that suggested there was another trap waiting, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t. There was only one way I could ever be sure, however.

I carefully imagined Jak and me as two separate beings, and reached for the Aedh. The magic stitched us back together, until flesh was fully formed and we became ourselves once again.

There was nothing at all elegant about my reappearance this time. I landed with a splat on the dust-covered concrete, shivering and coughing and generally feeling like shit. Back to the old days, I thought bleakly. But I twisted around, ignoring the red-hot pokers that jabbed into my brain as I looked for Jak.