“We do not agree.”
I snorted. “Of course you wouldn’t. I mean, you’ve had such great success trying to track him down so far, haven’t you?”
“He is not so important. The keys are.”
If he wasn’t so important, they wouldn’t be doing their damnedest to find him. “You’ve got one key—why can’t you just make a couple more?”
He didn’t answer immediately, but his energy surged around me, singeing the hairs on the back of my neck and making my skin crawl.
Anger. No, not just anger. Fury.
Maybe they weren’t as unemotional as everyone believed—at least not when it came to people thwarting their desires.
“We do not have the key for the first portal. Your father has it.”
No, he bloody well hasn’t. I was pretty sure of that, if nothing else. Whoever had stolen the key was someone entrenched in magic—magic that was dark, ungodly, and bitter. And while the Raziq’s magic was dark, what I’d felt of my father’s wasn’t. Not to the same degree, anyway.
But if my father or the Raziq didn’t have the first key, that meant it had to have been a dark practitioner who’d stolen it from under our noses—and, more than likely, it was the same dark practitioner who’d been buying up the land around Stane’s—a dark practitioner who was also a face-shifter.
As a general rule, sorcerers weren’t able to walk the gray fields, but ley-line intersections were places of great power and could be used not only to manipulate time, reality, or fate, but to create rifts between this world and the next. A powerful enough sorcerer could enter the fields via the intersection and find the gates.
Which is precisely what our thief had done—walked the fields, and permanently opened the first portal to hell.
Still, it must have taken a whole lot of energy…
Shit—why hadn’t we thought of that before? That might well provide a way of tracking down this bastard…
I shoved the thought aside. That was an avenue I could explore later, when every little thought wasn’t being listened to by the Raziq.
I flicked a sideways glance at Amaya. Almost there. “So why not make more keys? I mean, you all had a finger in the pie of the first lot, didn’t you?”
“If by saying that you mean the Raziq as a whole were involved in their creation, then yes.”
“Then why bother with me or my father at all? Why not just make more keys?”
“Because each key was attuned to a specific portal. Unless they are unmade, more cannot be created.”
So my father hadn’t lied—the keys could be destroyed. If nothing else came out of this little session, at least we had that.
Although destroying them would just allow the Raziq to create more—which meant we were damned if we did and damned if we didn’t. Personally, I’d rather see the stupid things remain as they were, lost to everyone, but it seemed I was the only one who felt that way. Even Azriel thought it was far too dangerous to leave them undiscovered.
“Are you going to cooperate?” the Raziq added.
I took a deep, shuddering breath. Thought about consequences. Knew I had no choice.
“No.”
As I said it, I lunged for Amaya. I never got there.
The pain hit like a sledgehammer, knocking me sideways and damn near senseless in the process. I lay on the dirt in a quivering heap, battling to breathe as their dark energy tore through every part of me and my brain felt like it was on fire.
Because this wasn’t just a psychic attack. It went far deeper than that. It was an attack on my body and soul, and it felt like every fiber of my being screamed in agony. Only I made no noise because the sound seemed to be stuck somewhere inside my throat.
The torture continued, on and on, until I was raw and battered and bruised. My skin ran with rivers of blood that soaked into my clothes and deep into the earth, until the bitter smell of it stung the air and burned my throat. And still it went on, until it felt like they were pulling me apart atom by atom, until there was nothing left of me but a screaming, bloody mass of separated particles.
Eventually—mercifully—I blacked out.
But it was a state that lasted nowhere near long enough. As I climbed backed to consciousness, the dark energy of the Raziq still burned at me. It hurt—god, how it hurt—yet within that energy, something fierce and bright burned, calling to me.
Amaya.
She lay underneath my hand. All I had to do was grasp her… and do what?
I had no idea. I was working on pure instinct now, totally incapable of any actual thought processes.
My fingers twitched; felt metal. Somehow, I found the strength to grasp her.
I expected fury. Expected to be hit once again by the illusionary flames that had burned her from my grip the first time. But nothing happened. The dark energy continued to flow through me, this time rebuilding rather than tearing apart. My body continued to shudder, scream, but Amaya burned brighter in my mind, her energy flowing through me, giving me strength.
The dark energy began to ease, trickling away like water down a drain, leaving me a quivering, broken wreck.
Now, an alien voice whispered through my brain.
I didn’t think. I just obeyed.
I forced my eyes open. Amaya was dark and ghostly, giving no hint of the fierceness that burned within her—and within me. Beyond her, I saw the shimmer that was the energy of the Raziq who’d attacked me.
I drew Amaya back and threw her. It wasn’t a strong throw—it couldn’t be, not after everything I’d just been through.
It didn’t matter. Amaya flew straight and true, flaring to glorious life just as her black blade buried itself in the heart of that dark shimmer. Purple fire exploded as Amaya’s flames wrapped around the Raziq’s energy, capturing it, drawing it back into herself. Feeding on him.
He screamed. Screamed. As I’d screamed—long and hard—until his voice was raw and he could scream no more. If I’d had the energy I would have danced with joy.
There was another explosion, and the force of it shifted me sideways several inches. The flames and the Raziq were gone, leaving only blessed silence.
Amaya slid across the floor toward me, and almost of their own accord, my fingers wrapped around her again. She felt heavy in my hand. Sated.
Somehow I managed to sheathe her. We might have killed one Raziq, but there were plenty more where he’d come from. I didn’t want them forcing me to drop her again, and the fact that they hadn’t seen her either in my hand or in flight made me suspect that if she was sheathed or cloaked, they couldn’t.
I lay there waiting for the hammer to fall, my body on fire, every part of me aching and my clothes wet with blood and god knows what else. I stank of fear and sweat and blood and urine, and I knew it wasn’t over yet. Not by a long shot.
That oily, rainbow shimmer still crawled across the roof of my tomb, so the Raziq were still here even if I was no longer capable of sensing them. Not that I would have been able to call to the Aedh even if they hadn’t been present—I just didn’t have the strength or will.
“That,” a new voice said, “was unexpected.”
Which had to be the understatement of the century.
“But at least,” he continued, “the transfer was completed.”
“What—” I licked dry lips. It didn’t help much, because I had little in the way of saliva. “Transfer?”
“As you would not agree to use the device, we placed it within you.”
Well, it won’t be there for fucking long, I thought resolutely. I didn’t say anything, but then, I didn’t need to.
“If you remove it,” the Raziq said, voice still amazingly calm considering I’d just killed one of them. But he was Aedh—practical, unemotional, cold. As long as their objective had been achieved, I doubted they’d care how many of their number I killed. “You will die.”
Fear crawled inside me. “Why?”
“Because it cannot be removed. It will cease functioning if you die, but I suspect you would not wish that.”
He suspected right. But that didn’t actually mean I had to believe him. Aedh might be cold and unemotional, but I had no doubt they weren’t above lying if it suited their needs.
“Indeed,” the voice agreed. “But in this case, there is no need. The device was interwoven into the fabric of your heart when we re-formed you. To take it out, you must take out your heart.”
Oh, fuck. Two words that really didn’t seem adequate enough for the shit I was now in.
“Why would you do something like that?”
“You would not aid us. This way, we know your location at any moment, and we will know when your father nears you.”
Meaning they’d have me and my father. Fuck, fuck, fuck!
Then his words hit me. I might have fallen deeper into the shithole, but it might just have one silver lining…
“Does this mean you won’t be sending Ania and other assorted demons against me and my friends?”
“We will know where you are at any given moment. There is no need for us to do anything else.”
Which at least meant I could sleep in my own bed again. The relief that surged at that thought said a lot about the sorry state of my life at the moment.
The dark energy rose again and I cringed, hating the cowardice even as I did it. But it wasn’t his energy—it was Ania. They spun around me, blanketing me with their ethereal forms, whisking me into that place of black nothingness and uneasy movement.
Then, suddenly, I was back in the car.
But not for long. Arms gathered me and held me close, and the sensation of movement hit again. This time, instead of darkness there were silver buildings and insubstantial beings. Then they were gone and I was back in the hotel room, cradled against a body that was warm and strong.
I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t say anything. I just wrapped my arms around Azriel’s neck and held on tight. Not that he appeared to be in a hurry to release me.
His warm energy spread through me in gentle waves, chasing away the chills, healing the hurt, soothing the aches. After what felt like ages, I took a deep, shuddering breath, and said, “You have no idea how glad I am to see you.”
