Darkness Devours (37 page)

I double-checked the bathroom and bedroom just to ensure that no one was here, then moved back to the kitchenette and propped myself against the small table. Despite the fact that the worst of my wounds had been sealed by the antiseptic spray, blood still trickled down my back. I wondered briefly if Jerry would smell it and decide to investigate. It would mess things up if he did.

After what seemed an eternity, the creak of floorboards and heavy—almost drunken—steps eventually began to invade the silence. They drew closer and closer, then paused just outside the doorway. Tension crawled through me. I held my breath, waiting for the moment when our plan went to hell and Jerry either ran or came at me.

For several seconds, nothing happened. I had the image of him standing there, nostrils flaring as he drew in the scent of blood and listened to the rapid beating of a heart. Mine, to be exact.

Whether he was actually doing that I couldn’t say, and after several minutes of inaction, his door creaked and he stepped inside.

I reached for Amaya, then stopped. Would the Rakshasa be able to sense her energy? I had no idea, so I left her sheathed. In this sort of situation, it was better to be safe than sorry. The decision, however, did not please my sword, and she hissed and grumbled in the back of my mind.

I padded across to the door and opened it slightly. There wasn’t anything to see in the hall or anything to
hear in the room opposite. But as I stood there, an ill wind began to gather. It stirred the hairs on the back of my neck, making them stand on end. I shivered, my fists clenched so tightly against the need to draw my sword that my fingernails were digging into my palms. I might have felt stronger—safer—when she was in my hand, but the energy that dripped off her surely wouldn’t go unnoticed by a creature born to the world of spirits rather than flesh.

The wind gathered strength, filling the air with such darkness that it became harder and harder to breathe. And the desire to rush into the room opposite to see what was happening warred with the need to remain safe, but I knew I would only hinder rather than help. I had to let Azriel do what he’d been trained to do.

I opened the door a little farther. No sound came from the room opposite. Jerry might have entered, but he was no longer moving around. Maybe the poison the Rakshasa had administered when she’d slashed his back had taken full effect, and he simply lay there, waiting for the approach of his doom.

And it was certainly coming.

The sense of menace in the air was so sharp it felt like a knife cutting through my soul.

Then, down at the far end of the hall, something moved.

I froze, breathing labored and Amaya screaming furiously in my head. The movement wasn’t repeated. My gaze darted through the shadows, but I couldn’t see the threat that every sense—and my sword—said was there.

And then I realized why.

The threat
wasn’t
in the hall.

It was behind me.

I swung, but it was already far too late.

A smothering blanket of darkness fell around me, and pain exploded. Then there was nothing, simply nothing.

Waking was an exercise in agony. Every muscle, bone, and fiber ached with a fierceness that had my head spinning and my heart racing. Even my hair felt like it was on fire.

For a minute I wondered if I’d somehow ended up in the hands of the Aedh again, but this pain was different from the torture they’d put me through. This wasn’t the pain that came from a spirit being pulled apart. Rather, it was from something more mundane—like a body that had been beaten and abused to the nth degree.

But the blood that rode the air suggested I wasn’t any more hurt now than when the Rakshasa had captured me. She obviously hadn’t had me for dinner, and while I was naturally grateful for that, it was a fact that only ratcheted up the levels of fear. She was saving me for something, and I had a bad, bad feeling I really
didn’t
want to know what.

As my mind crawled toward greater awareness, I realized I was lying on something cold and uneven. Stone rather than concrete. My breathing was labored,
suggesting there wasn’t quite enough oxygen, and the air itself tasted bitter and decayed.

There was also a strange buzzing in my head, and it seemed oddly—darkly—blanketing.

Frowning, I reached down inside and called to the Aedh. Power surged, but so did pain, a warning that I was still too close to my limits. I ignored it, and called to the change regardless. It surged through me, breaking down skin and muscle as it began the shift from human to Aedh. Then that strange buzzing sharpened, becoming so fierce it felt like nails were being slammed into my head, and the energy stumbled, then receded, leaving me bound by flesh rather than a being of energy.

Whatever that strange buzzing was, I couldn’t change while it was near.

Fuck, fuck,
fuck
!

I cracked open an eye. Darkness met my gaze, and it held an odd sense of heaviness, as if the weight of the world pressed down upon this place. And if that were true—if we were deep underground somewhere—then yet again Azriel wouldn’t find me.

Which meant I was alone.

Fear swarmed, so thick that for several minutes it threatened to choke me. I might have been trained to fight by the best of them, but I’d never been prepared for a situation like this.

Alone not,
came the alien voice that was my sword.
Am here
.

The relief that hit was so strong it left me shaking. Though there was no guarantee Amaya could protect me
from whatever it was that waited in this darkness, with her in my hand I at least had a chance. And no matter how small that chance might be, it was better than nothing.

I opened both eyes and looked around. Or tried to, because my head wouldn’t move. In fact,
nothing
would move. I was all but frozen, able to breathe but little else.

Panic swelled again, but I tried to ignore it, tried to think. There
had
to be a way out of this—had to be! I wasn’t going to just lie here and allow the Rakshasa to tear me apart at her leisure. I might be frozen, but the mere fact that I was breathing suggested that either the poison in the Rakshasa’s claws hadn’t affected me as completely as it had her vampire victims or it was wearing off quickly.

I prayed it was the latter rather than the former. It would give me more of a chance—as long as the Rakshasa didn’t decide to eat me immediately now that I was awake. After all, she did seem to prefer to consume her victims when they were aware.

As my eyes began to adjust, I realized the darkness wasn’t as complete as I’d thought, thanks in part to the huge weights of stone that hung high above me. The stalactites gleamed with an odd, ghostly glow, and their light filtered through the surrounding ink, alluding to other outcroppings and hinting at fissures in the rock walls. Moisture gleamed and dripped, splashing onto the stony floor close to where I lay. It ran along the cracks and underneath my body, the chill of it contrasting sharply with the warmer moisture saturating my back. One of my wounds had obviously opened, even if the scent of it didn’t sting the air.

But there was more than just stone and fissures here. There were shadows—shadows that were as still as the stone and humanoid in shape.

My heart began to beat a whole lot faster.

If those shapes were any indication, there wasn’t just one Rakshasa here, but at least another five.

Panic surged anew, but I shoved it back down brutally. Panicking wouldn’t achieve anything, and it certainly wouldn’t get me out of here.

Something stirred to my left, and my gaze darted that way. One of the shadows peeled away from the wall and came toward me, the movement languid and oddly sensual. Which was fitting, because the woman who approached was one of the most exotic women I’d ever seen. She had the stature of an Amazon, with skin like warm honey and eyes the color of a newly unfurled leaf. Her hair was a fierce red and glowed like fire. But despite her beauty, there was little in the way of humanity in her expression, and her striking eyes were as cold as any monster’s.

She stopped several feet away and gazed down at me. My heart beat so fast I could have sworn it was going to burst out of my chest, and sweat trickled down the side of my face.

“So,” she said, her voice holding the edge of an accent that was both foreign and somewhat grating. “You are the one who almost caught me. The one who works with the reaper.”

I tried to answer, but no sound came out. My vocal cords were as frozen as the rest of me.

“Why does a human work with a soul guide? I wonder. What makes you so special?”

She continued to study me, but the shadows behind her stirred, and harsh whispers rose, then fell away. I couldn’t understand what was said, simply because it wasn’t any language I’d heard before, but the Rakshasa raised a pale eyebrow and said, “Perhaps. Perhaps not.”

She knelt and ran a finger across my chin. It came away bloody, and she raised it to her mouth and licked it clean.

“Your taste is sweet, but it is no different from that of any human,” she mused softly. “Why, then, do the reapers run with you?”

She studied me as if she expected an answer, but even if I had been able to speak, I wouldn’t have. I wanted her dead, not informed.

She smiled coldly, and it made me wonder if she was following my thoughts. I had the microcell implants, but had no idea whether they’d work against beings that were essentially spirit rather than flesh. They certainly didn’t appear to work against either Azriel or Lucian.

She walked around to my other side, a slight frown marring her face. “There is something about you, however. Something not of this world, and powerful.”

God, she was sensing Amaya.

No see,
came her response, and with it a heat so fierce it burned into my spine. She was readying herself for battle, but it wouldn’t do me a whole lot of good if I couldn’t actually grip her.

I frowned, and forced every ounce of energy into trying to move something—anything. After a moment, my right hand twitched. Exhilaration surged. A twitch
might not save me, but it was a definite sign that whatever it was that had frozen me was wearing off.

And maybe, just maybe, Amaya was helping. Until her heat had surged, my muscles had been totally unresponsive. As the thought crossed my mind, Amaya’s heat increased, storming through my body like wildfire. Sweat began to drip from every pore. It smelled like fear and poison.

“I do not like this,” the Rakshasa said, and raised her gaze to the shadows.

Again that murmur rose, the sound uneasy but vehement. The other Rakshasa wanted a kill, needed to taste flesh.

Fear threatened to choke me again. I took several deep breaths in an effort to remain calm, and kept my gaze on the Rakshasa. She was the immediate danger, not the ones who whispered from the shadows.

Her gaze came to mine again. She smiled, and in that instant I saw death.

My death.

Amaya’s heat became even fiercer, soaking through every pore and muscle, until it seemed that she was becoming a part of me.

And I suddenly realized that was
exactly
what she was doing. Her energy wasn’t just consuming me, it was shifting
through
me. She was moving through my flesh from her position at my back and, in the process, freeing me from the poison that held me immobile.

I twitched my fingers, my toes. Felt elation curl through me, and swiped down on it.
Hard
. Moving a few digits didn’t mean I was out of the woods. I needed
full movement to have any hope—and even then, the odds were still stacked against survival.

The Rakshasa knelt beside me again. She gripped my face, her sharp nails digging into my skin but not actually cutting. “Your reaper cannot find you here,” she said softly. “You are ours to enjoy.”

I swallowed heavily. Urged Amaya to hurry the hell up.

“Our dark god demands a sacrifice during the feeding phase,” she continued, “and while the vampire would have sufficed, I believe you will bring us far greater favor.”

Meaning they weren’t going to eat me? I couldn’t exactly be unhappy about that, even though I wasn’t terribly keen on being sacrificed to their god instead.

She released me and rose. “Prepare her.”

The other Rakshasa peeled away from the shadows. I’d been expecting them to be as beautiful as the first one, but that wasn’t the case. Several verged on hideous, with yellowed skin, protruding teeth, long breasts and big bellies, while another had an odd number of limbs and the head of a horse. There was a dwarf with a bald head and a bulbous nose, while the last of them was tall and thin, and had the look of an elf. Except her skin was the color of moss and her hair a tangle of hissing serpents.

According to Azriel, the Rakshasa were shape-shifters, so I had to wonder why they’d chosen these forms over something more pleasant. But then, I guess beauty was in the eye of the beholder, and the Rakshasa were spirit rather than flesh. They weren’t likely to be governed by the same ideals of beauty as I was.

They shuffled toward me, eyes alight with an odd sense of expectation. I clenched my fists but could do little else except watch them. Amaya still burned through my body, her energy sitting somewhere in my middle, making my innards quiver and twitch—more from the thought of it than any actual discomfort. The ceremony that had made her a part of me had also ensured that she could never harm me physically. I wasn’t so sure about the whole mentally bit—at the very least, her constant hissing could possibly drive me around the bend.

Four Rakshasa moved to compass points around my body and began to chant. The sound resonated across the heavy atmosphere, dark and oddly powerful. From deep within the stones came a response—a heartbeat, slow and ponderous. It was as if the stones around me were coming to life.

The serpent-haired Rakshasa appeared, her chant joining the chorus of her kin as she swooped and tore my clothes from my body. I shivered as the cold, dense air hit my skin, and Amaya surged. She was so close to breaking through that I was surprised that the glow of her wasn’t making my skin translucent.