Darkness Hunts (DA 4) (4 page)

Hey, you
. I projected my mind voice so hard it shook the very foundations of the buildings around us.
Leave that woman alone.

He didn’t unhand her. Didn’t react in any way that I could immediately see. Then, slowly, he turned his head in my direction.

He had no
face
.

Where there should have been eyes, a nose, and a mouth, there was nothing. It was as if his features had been wiped clean. It was totally and utterly blank.

Impossible,
I thought in disbelief. It had to be a trick of some kind.
Had
to be.

Go away
. His voice was little more than a whisper, crawling around me like a dead thing.

I shivered and gripped Amaya harder.
Maybe you didn’t hear me the first time. I said, leave that woman alone.

I heard.

Then do as I say or the sword I bear will sever your ethereal head from its body
.

I didn’t know if that was possible, especially after Adeline saying you couldn’t actually die on the plane. But my sword was from neither the real world nor the astral one. She was born of a demon’s death, and was far more than mere steel. She had a life of her own, a serious hunger for blood, and she could destroy demons and spirits as easily as she did flesh. Surely it wasn’t such a stretch to think she could also kill someone on the astral plane?

The stranger raised his featureless face, oddly looking like he was sniffing the air even though he had no nose. After a moment, he said,
As you wish
.

He released the woman and stepped back. She collapsed in a heap at his feet and remained there. Which was odd—why hadn’t she zapped back to her body? In fact, why hadn’t she done that when she was first attacked?

Now leave,
I said.
Get off the fields
.

He didn’t react, didn’t reply. He just stood there, his unseeing face pointed in my direction, as if he were studying me. The unease crawling through me grew stronger, but I ignored it and imagined myself closer to the woman. The charm at my neck burned to life, its white light slashing through the shadows. Whoever—whatever—this man was, Ilianna’s magic didn’t like it.

Did you hear me?
I swung Amaya in warning. She reacted fiercely to the vibration pouring away from the stranger, spitting and hissing purple fire that danced across the shadowed buildings around us.

I heard
. His voice remained soft and oddly free of emotion.
But you should know that what I claim, I keep. You have saved no one here, huntress.

I wouldn’t be so sure of that, stranger
.

He cocked his head sideways. If he’d had features, I think they would have appeared . . . amused.
If you are so confident that you can save her, why don’t we play a little game?

There wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of me playing
any
sort of game with a featureless freak on the astral plane. I swung Amaya again, her
kill, kill, kill
chant crystal clear in the back of my thoughts. For the moment, my desire for control was stronger than her need to attack, but I had to wonder if that would always be the case, given she’d already tried to take me over once before.

I’m not interested in playing games. I just want you gone.

Ah, but this game involves saving the woman’s life. We both know you are interested in doing that, huntress, or you would not be here
.

He was right, of course, but I saw no point in admitting the obvious.

He nodded in the woman’s direction and continued.
She has twenty minutes of life left on earth. If you can find her in that time, I will let her live.

Twenty minutes? That’s hardly fair.

Life is never fair
. He shrugged.
That is the offer. Take it or leave it.

And if I don’t take it?

Then she dies as I have planned, and you will be left to wonder if you could have done the impossible
.

And with that, he was gone, taking with him the uneasy sense of trouble. As the charm’s fierceness died to a more muted glow, I imagined Amaya sheathed, then knelt beside the woman.

Miss? Are you all right?

She didn’t respond to the soft question, so I lightly touched her shoulder. She jumped, then shimmied away from me, her brown eyes wide and staring.

It wasn’t so much the fear in her expression that surprised me, but rather the mark burned into her forehead. It was raw and weeping, as if it had only just been done. It was also K-shaped, with a tail that looped, reminding me oddly of a serpent. Two wounds marred her wrists, slicing up the center of her arms. While these were neither raw nor weeping, they’d split the skin open and looked painful. Two red marks also appeared to ring her calves, but from where I stood I couldn’t really see if they were open wounds or not.

Adeline had said you couldn’t be harmed on the astral plane, and yet this woman
had
been injured, and one of those wounds lay right where the stranger had been touching her. I doubted it was a coincidence.

Who are you?
Her mind voice trembled with the fear so obvious in her pale features.

I’m a friend,
I thought softly.
There was a man attacking you—

Attacking?
She frowned.
What do you mean, “attacking”? We were having sex, for fuck’s sake!

Sex? On the astral field? How the hell was that even possible?
That’s not what it looked like. Besides, you were screaming in fear.

She gathered the remnants of her clothing.
Just because I don’t like it vanilla doesn’t mean it wasn’t sex.

I frowned. She was making all the right sounds, but there was something not quite right about her eyes—something beyond the fear. It was almost as if someone else was staring out of them.

I shivered.
I need to know where you live, Miss—

Like I’m about to tell you that!
And with that, she disappeared.

I swore softly, then closed my eyes and imagined myself back in my body. I whooshed back with surprising speed, my eyes springing open as I gasped in shock.

“Returning swiftly can be quite painful when one isn’t used to traveling on the astral plane,” Adeline commented. “Lie there and rest. I’ll bring you your tea.”

“No!” I jerked upright, and immediately regretted it as my stomach jumped into my throat. I swallowed bile, then added, “We don’t have time.”

Adeline stopped and frowned down at me. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, I came across a woman being attacked by a man with no features.” I pushed to my knees, but the room spun around me, and it was all I could do not to fall back down. “He gave me twenty minutes to try to save her on
this
plane.”

“Meaning she
wasn’t
actually being attacked on the astral plane. What you saw was merely a reflection of what is happening here.”

“If that’s the case, he’s branding her with a hot iron and pulling her brains out.”

Adeline went pale. “Then you’re definitely dealing with a dark traveler.”

“Yes.” I pushed to my feet, then flung out an arm to steady myself, only to catch Azriel rather than the wall. The fingers that wrapped around mine were gentle steel, and heat leapt from his flesh, warming the chill from my body and lending me some much-needed strength.

“How are you going to find him if he has no features?” Adeline asked. “Did he give you any clue as to his identity? Did the woman?”

“No, so we’re going to have to do this the hard way.” I glanced at Azriel. “You need to take me to Stane’s.
Now
. Adeline, I’ll be back.”

Azriel stepped close and wrapped his arms around my waist. His scent—a scent that was both masculine and sharply electric—filled every breath as his power burned through me, sweeping us from flesh to energy in an instant. A second later we were on the gray fields, but these were very different from the ones I traveled. The fields I knew were little more than shadowed echoes of the real world, a place where things not sighted suddenly gained substance. But in Azriel’s arms, I saw the fields as a vast and beautiful place, filled with structures and life that were delicate and unworldly.

We re-formed outside of Stane’s electronics shop in Clifton Hill, which happened to be on the very same street that Nadler’s consortium had been attempting to purchase. In fact, only Stane’s building and one other—a bar—remained in private hands.

I’d known Stane a good part of my life, simply because he was Tao’s cousin. Tao, like Ilianna, was a childhood friend and current housemate, and he and Stane had come from the same brown werewolf pack. Their fathers were brothers—although Tao’s had died when he was young, and Tao himself hadn’t actually lived with the pack; he’d lived with his mother, who was human. Stane was a whiz at all things computer related, and he’d become a rather invaluable source of information and black market technology. If he couldn’t get me the information I needed in record time, no one could.

“You should have just zapped us inside.” I glanced at Azriel as I pushed open the somewhat ratty-looking door. A tiny bell rang cheerily above our heads. “It would have saved us a few seconds.”

“Stane does not react well to sudden appearances.” He shrugged.

I guess that was true—and certainly the last thing we needed right now was Stane passing out in shock. Once we were inside, the camera above us buzzed into action and began tracking our movements. Not that we could go far—the shimmer of light surrounding the small entrance was warning enough that a containment shield was in action.

“Stane, it’s Risa.” Impatience edged my voice as I stared up at the camera. “I need some help rather urgently.”

“Well, it’s about fucking time.” His voice sounded tinny as it echoed from the small speaker near the camera. The shimmer flared briefly, then died. “I’ve been bored as hell lately.”

“What?” I said, as I ran for the rear stairs. “The black market business isn’t going so well at the moment?”

He appeared at the landing and gave me a wide smile. “It’s going very well. But I’ve grown addicted to the challenges you give me. A little subversive hacking into government databases is good for the soul.”

Despite the urgency of the situation, I laughed and kissed his cheek. Stane rather looked like his building—a slender, unholy mess. With his somewhat long and scruffy brown hair, his wrinkled blue shirt, and loose, ill-fitting shorts, he certainly didn’t look like someone who was in any way dangerous—until you actually gazed into his honey-colored eyes. Stane was smarter and harder than he looked.

“So what is it this time?” he said, stepping to one side and waving us through.

“We have a life to save, and precisely eighteen minutes to do it in.”

“Fuck!” He scraped a hand across his bristly chin, then reclaimed his seat at the computer system that dominated his living area. He shoved a second chair in my direction. “You really
are
pushing it this time. How can I help?”

“I need you to work up an image of the woman I have to find, and then I need you to find her address.”

He swore again, then stretched out his fingers and cracked his knuckles. “Okay, hit me with the details.”

I gave him everything I could remember, and within a couple of minutes we had an image of the woman I’d seen on the planes. He flicked it across to another screen, and the search began.

And all I could do was wait.

I pushed to my feet and began pacing. Stane watched me for a moment, then said, “Anything else?”

I inhaled deeply, then slowly released it. It didn’t do much to ease the tension growing inside me. “Well, I also have the names of Nadler’s heirs.”

“How the hell did you manage that?”

I grimaced. “I had a conversation with a ghost.”

He eyed me for a moment, then said, “I won’t even ask. What are their names?”

“Harry Bulter, Jim O’Reilly, and Genevieve Sands.”

“A woman?” Stane frowned. “I can understand naming a number of men, because as a face-shifter, he could step into their lives anytime he wished. But a male face-shifter cannot take the form of a female, and vice versa.”

A fact that I knew, since I was a face-shifter myself. “He obviously has a reason for doing it, but it’s not like the man we’ve been calling Nadler is working on any logical playing field, anyway.”

“True.” Stane typed the names into his system, then swished them across to a separate light screen. “You want a coffee or Coke while we wait?”

“Coke, thanks.”

Stane glanced at Azriel, eyebrow raised in question. Azriel shook his head and I continued pacing, pausing only long enough to accept a can of Coke with a grunt of thanks. The time continued to tick away and it seemed to be taking forever to get our answer.

Stane reclaimed his seat and watched the screens, his expression intent, as if willing a prompt response. But another five minutes passed before the screen closest to him beeped. He put his coffee down and scooted forward.

“About time,” I grumbled, stopping to peer over his shoulder.

“Believe it or not, that
was
actually fast.” He ran a finger across the screen to highlight some lines, then enlarged them. “The woman you’re looking for is Dorothy Hendricks, from Craigieburn.”

I frowned. Craigieburn was a suburb on the northern edges of Melbourne, developed before the no-larger-than-a-postage-stamp housing plots of today, and popular with families thanks to its decent enough schools and leafy environs. It wasn’t the sort of place I’d expected last night’s woman to live. Given where I’d found her on the astral plane, I’d been expecting a suburb far grimmer. Grimier.

“What address? And what other information have you got on her?”

“Seventeen Crockett Avenue.” He paused, and quickly scanned the screen. “There doesn’t appear to be anything remarkable about her. Her parents are dead, and she has no siblings. According to her tax records, she works the night shift at the Nestlé factory in Campbellfield.”