Darkness Hunts (DA 4) (29 page)

“I’m sorry—”

“There is no need for your sorrow. She died long ago, and was not my Caomh. While I regret her passing, it was not a life-altering event.”

Caomh was the reaper equivalent of a life mate if I’d understood the little Azriel had said about them. “So, is the fact that you can recharge through me a sign that the assimilation threat is greater than you were admitting?”

“No. I am, as I said, merely explaining why I react to Lucian’s presence in your affections.”

Because he wanted to protect something that was rare and precious in his world. And yet, at the same time, he was desperate to avoid it because he feared that it might cloud his judgment when it came to his task here. No wonder he seemed all over the place when it came to the two of us.

“What happens to reapers who do not find someone who is compatible energy wise?”

He shrugged. “Their life span is shortened. Even energy beings eventually need some means of sustaining themselves.”

“So recharging is as much about food as sex?”

“Yes.”

“Then how did you survive so long without your recharge partner?”

“I survive because recharging for a reaper is not the everyday necessity that it is for flesh-and-blood beings. We can go eons before the lack affects us.”

Thank god I wasn’t a reaper, then, because I actually enjoyed the daily necessity of food and sex.

“Look, I’m sorry you’ve been put in this position, Azriel, but I can’t stop living my life because you and I share what is rare in your world—especially when it’s something you fear will endanger us both.”

“I understand this now and, as I said, I will not mention it again.” He hesitated briefly, and again emotion flashed through his eyes. This time, though, I couldn’t really define what it was. “I just wanted to explain why I react as I do.”

“Thank you,” I said softly. “But you haven’t actually explained why you can recharge with me, when I’m not a full energy being.”

“No.”

I waited for him to continue, but when it became obvious he wouldn’t, I turned and walked out of the room.

It was the hardest thing I’d ever had to do, given that all I really wanted to do was to wrap myself in Azriel’s arms and let the rest of the world go to hell.

Which was
still
a very real possibility if we didn’t get to the remaining keys first.

*  *  *

I was half an hour late by the time I got to Lucian’s. Even though we’d been going against most of the traffic to get into the city, it was still peak hour, and that generally meant madness no matter which side of the road you were on.

I climbed out of the taxi and stared up at the old Victorian building. There were still workmen on-site, despite the fact it was nearing five thirty. Maybe they were making use of daylight savings and trying to get ahead of schedule. My gaze swept the top floor, but I wasn’t sure what I was searching for. The windows were covered by heavy plastic, so even if Lucian had been standing at one of them, I wouldn’t have been able to see him.

I took a deep breath, then released it slowly, but it didn’t do much to ease the tension slithering through me. And standing here wasn’t doing a whole lot for it, either. I waited for a tram to pass, then crossed the road and made my way through the scaffolding into his building.

The old lift rattled upward and came to a bouncing halt at the top floor. The doors groaned open, but it took me several seconds before I could force myself out.

And I wasn’t entirely sure whether the reluctance stemmed from not wanting to meet with the dark sorceress or not wanting to have my suspicions about Lucian confirmed.

Damn it, I
liked
sex. I especially liked having sex with Lucian. I
didn’t
want a return to the nun-like state I’d been in before this madness had all begun.

Of course, confirmation that he’d placed a compulsion spell on me wasn’t exactly a deal breaker, but it
would
worry me. If he was being dishonest about that, then what the hell else was he being dishonest about?

I walked through the clouds of dust that filled the room, my footsteps echoing softly in the vast emptiness. There were no workmen on this floor, just the sound of their jackhammers and whatnot echoing up from the floors below. Lucian’s lemongrass and suede scent filled the sub-layers within the dusty air, but it was entwined with an energy that was uneasy and shadowed. His dark sorceress was here.

I snuck under a dustcover and entered the kitchen. Except for the addition of four folding chairs, the room hadn’t changed since the last time I’d been here. Lucian and Lauren stood near the chairs, but there was nothing relaxed about either of them. In fact, the heat in Lauren’s cheeks and her sharp gestures very much suggested I’d walked in on the middle of an argument. Hell, Lucian was all but hissing in her face.

And yet, something in the way they stood—in their very closeness—was oddly intimate.

Unfortunately, thanks to all the noise the builders were making, I caught only a couple of chopped-up sentences of his conversation with the sorceress—
it means nothing, I will have my revenge regardless
.

And while Lucian had made no secret of either aim, I had to wonder why he was now saying those words to a sorceress he claimed to barely know.

Because he is a liar. And have no doubt that he will not only lie, but cheat, steal, and kill to gain what he wants.
Azriel could have been talking about the weather, for all the emotion he showed, yet we both knew that was as far from the truth as you could get.
What we cannot be truly sure of yet is what, exactly, he wants.

He says revenge, and that’s the one thing I truly do believe he’s being honest about.

Perhaps.

And perhaps he was just incapable of seeing the forest for the trees where Lucian was concerned.

That is an incongruous statement.

But true.

Possibly.

As I drew closer, Lucian swung around and gave me a wide grin of greeting. Any sign of anger had completely disappeared. My gaze flicked briefly from his face to Lauren’s. She looked regal and composed—a woman certain of her place and power rather than one who’d seemed ready to tear eyeballs out just moments ago.

“You’re late,” Lucian said, the amusement in his eyes at odds with the rebuke in his words. “I was beginning to think you’d had second thoughts.”

“Just because I’m here doesn’t mean I don’t.”

“Of course.”

He dropped an overly polite kiss on my cheek, and again I had to wonder if the argument I’d witnessed
had
been about sex. The only time he’d ever been so frugal with his kisses was when she’d been witness to them.

And while I was aware that he had a stable of bed partners, I certainly hadn’t expected one of them to be a dark practitioner. Nor was I entirely sure how I felt about it.

But at least it
did
explain the heady scent of sex and blood I’d smelled when I’d entered the room at Maxwell’s—it had come from
their
activities rather than from those on the main dance floor.

“Would you like something to drink?” he asked.

“A Coke would be good.”

He tsked. “And I had my best champagne on ice, too.”

“Save it for when we’ve got something to celebrate.”

“Later, then.”

“Perhaps.”

My reply was somewhat absent as movement caught my gaze. Lauren folded gracefully onto a chair and crossed her legs. The bright lights gave her dark hair a purple sheen but shadowed her face, softening her stern, somewhat matronly features. Once again I had that odd sense of familiarity, but I still couldn’t place who she reminded me of. Although she
did
remind me somewhat of a spider. A big black one, sitting in the middle of her nest and contemplating the world around her as she waited for her prey to fall into her web.

“Take a seat,” Lucian directed. “I’ll grab your drink.”

I claimed the chair nearest to Lucian’s, and Lauren gave me a thin smile. “And still you distrust me.”

“It’s not so much you as your profession.”

She raised one thin eyebrow. “Which is not saying much given my profession is who and what I am.”

I wasn’t quite sure how to take that statement, so I didn’t say anything. Lucian returned and handed me a can of Coke, then sat down between us.

“So,” he said, picking up his glass of wine from the floor. “As I said on the phone, Lauren believes she has come up with a possible answer.”

My gaze flicked to hers. Those icy depths watched me closely, and the hairs on the back of my neck rose. Not because of the intensity of her gaze, but rather the hatred so very evident in it.

Why the hell would someone I’d barely even met hate me so much? Or was it not so much me, but the fact that she considered me a sexual rival?

If she thought
that
, then she didn’t understand Lucian. But maybe she hadn’t even known he was Aedh until he’d told her about the device in my heart. She might be knowledgeable about the dark arts and the denizens of hell, but that didn’t mean she had any expertise when it came to the beings who inhabited the gray fields.

“I’m not committing to anything until I know exactly what we’re talking about.”

“Of course.”

He said it soothingly, like a parent talking to a spooked child. Irritation swirled, but I forced myself to ignore it and kept my gaze on Lauren.

“It is not a spell, so you have nothing to fear along those lines,” she said easily. A little too easily for my liking. It sounded like a well-rehearsed line more than anything approaching sincerity.

I took a sip of Coke, but it failed to help the sudden dryness in my throat. Despite what I’d said to Azriel earlier, I really
didn’t
want to be here discussing magic with a dark practitioner. And yet, it was an avenue that had to be explored.
We do what we have to do,
Azriel had once told me. It was that statement that had driven me to enlist Jak’s help, and if it also meant enlisting the help of a sorceress, then so be it.

“Then what is it if not a spell?”

She glanced at Lucian. And
that
had all sorts of alarm bells ringing, if only because it suggested they’d discussed just what she should and shouldn’t say before I’d gotten here.

Had that been another part of what they’d been arguing about? I knew Lucian was desperate to gain revenge on the Raziq, who’d stolen not only his wings but also his ability to shift into Aedh form, but was he so desperate that he would advise a dark sorceress what to say—and not say—to convince me to use her magic?

I briefly studied his angelic face and saw a determination that bordered on ruthlessness. Yes, I thought, he was.

Lauren took a sip of her wine, then casually said, “It’s a ward.”

I waved the statement away. “You and I both know there’s a million different kinds of wards.”

She smiled. It didn’t do a whole lot to ease the tension. Quite the opposite, in fact. “This one is designed to prevent magic escaping its boundaries once it has been activated.”

So, similar to the wards Ilianna had used when we’d attempted to read the clues in the book my father had sent me—a book that had been subsequently destroyed when the elementals had attacked. “How is it powered?”

“Not by blood magic, if that is what you fear.”

“Then how does it get its power? You felt the energy of the thing in my heart. You know it’s not a creation of this world.”

“Which is why I do not use the magic of this world.”

I stared at her, my stomach twisting into knots. “You exploit the power of
hell
to create your spells? That is a very dangerous practice—”

She snorted, the sound unladylike and at odds with the image she was projecting. “I think I understand better than you just what it is I’m dealing with.”

Somehow I doubted that. I might not have had much experience with hell and its denizens, but I did have a healthy respect for just how dangerous they could be—something Lauren appeared to have lost.

“Look, I really don’t think a ward powered by the energy of hell is something I should be handling.” Especially not when I had a sword at my back eager to kill all things related to hell.

“You cannot make that judgment without at least looking at it,” Lucian commented. “I have handled it without harm, and its magic seems no better or worse than what the Raziq use.”

I cast him a somewhat wry look. “You
would
say that, given how desperate you are for revenge.”

“I cannot deny I have a stake in this device working. If we get the remaining keys, we can force a confrontation with the Raziq.” He hesitated, and something flickered briefly in his eyes. Something that was altogether too dark for my liking. “That is something I have long desired.”

“If you confront the Raziq, you’ll be dead. There’s too many of them.”

“I am not suicidal, dear Risa.” He slid his hand under my skirt and gently squeezed my thigh. His fingers were warm and familiar, but there was no must-have-you-now-or-I’m-going-to-melt hormonal attack. Which didn’t mean it had
no
effect, just that my response was basically normal when being intimately touched by someone who was as sexy as all get-out. The charm, it seemed, was working. He added, “I plan to be around to devastate your bed long after the keys are history and the Raziq are little more than a bad memory.”

Anger stirred the air, a sharp burst that was quickly contained. I glanced at Lauren. Her expression was as calm and as regal as ever. The only sign that the flash had come from her was the whiteness of her knuckles as she gripped her wineglass. But the moment she caught the direction of my glance, her grip eased. I resisted the temptation to smile. Lauren was in for one hell of a shock if she thought Lucian would ever stay with just her.

Although it had to be said, if they
were
lovers, then Lucian was playing with fire. A sorceress wouldn’t be someone you’d want to make an enemy of.

“Which is presuming I’d actually
want
you in my bed by then.”