Darkness Rising: The Dark Angel Series: Book Two (21 page)

His gaze swept the immediate vicinity, then he looked up. “There are three people upstairs, five people on this level, and one downstairs, in the basement.”

“If he’s a rat shifter, he’s probably the one in the basement.”

He nodded and advanced. I followed, sorting through the scents that filled this place as I did. It smelled of age, refuse, and unwashed humanity. I couldn’t sense a shifter, but if he was down in the basement, then maybe the heavier aromas of oil and machinery were masking his scent.

No one came out to see who we were, although I did hear several movements. Maybe the homeless feared we were the police, sent to roust them out of their free lodging.

The stairs loomed out of the shadows. Valdis’s light died, although if the man we were hunting
was
a shifter, then he’d smell and hear us coming long before the sword’s brightness could announce us.

Azriel led the way down into the deeper darkness. I kept close to his back, the heat of him washing across my body and somehow making me feel more secure. When we hit the end of the stairs, the darkness became so complete I was virtually blind. I touched Azriel’s shoulder, not wanting to lose him as we continued on.

Gossamer brushed across my face and I bit back my squeak of fright. A web—sans spider, hopefully, I thought with a shudder. Critters that possessed eight legs were definitely
not
on my favorites list.

Our quarry is on the move
, Azriel said, his words warm as they whispered into my brain.

Stop laughing at my phobia
. I might not be telepathic, but that apparently didn’t stop him from hearing my thoughts loud and clear.

A point he’d proved time and again.

I wasn’t laughing. I am merely bemused that anyone could fear a creature so small
.

Australia has some of the deadliest creatures on the planet
, I retorted,
and most of them are tiny!

It was an empty web that touched your face, and you squeaked
, he said, mirth still very evident.
Our quarry is now running
.

Should we
?

He can’t escape. I have a sense of his soul now
.

And I had his scent. It was musty, sharp, and definitely rat-like.

We moved quickly through the blackness. Deeper shadows loomed, and the scent of oil and machinery sharpened. Azriel led me through the maze easily, obviously seeing a whole lot more clearly than I was.

There was a whisper of sound—dirt falling onto concrete—then the scent of the shifter faded sharply.

He’s gone through a hole in the wall
, Azriel commented.
I
smell sewers
.

For fuck’s sake, what was it with these people and sewers?

Rats do like them
. Amusement rolled through his thoughts again.
You may stay here, if you like, and I shall retrieve him
.

You promise not to question him before bringing him back
?

He studied me for a moment—something I felt rather than saw.
I
would not, but if you wish me to promise, then I shall do so
.

It was a rebuke, even if it was a gentle one. I didn’t answer and, a second later, the heat of him was gone. I crossed my arms, shifting from one foot to the other impatiently. But he was back quickly, the heat of his body announcing his presence long before the sharp scent of rat shifter hit the air and both men re-formed.

The shifter came into being screaming. “Fucking hell, what did you just do to me?”

Valdis’s flickering light lifted the darkness. The shifter was built like a string bean, but there was a strength to his movements that belied his gauntness. His face was angular—sharp—and his small eyes dark. Azriel held him securely by the scruff of the neck, but the shifter didn’t seem to notice, twisting from side to side as if to check that all the bits of himself had re-formed properly.

“You know what he did to you,” I said flatly. “You work for an Aedh. You must have more than a passing knowledge of their abilities.”

He jumped—a hard feat given how tightly Azriel was holding him—and his gaze settled on me. “Who the hell are you?”

“It doesn’t matter who I am. Just answer the question.”

“I would if I fucking knew what you were talking about!”

I studied him for a moment, sensing no evasion in his words and seeing no lie in his body language. Which was odd. “Several months ago, you were asked to deliver a package—and then a note—to a warehouse apartment in Richmond.”

“Yeah, so?”

“So you’re not a deliveryman, and the uniform you used was not yours. Who employed you to deliver those packages and how did they get in contact with you?”

He shrugged, his expression growing more uneasy. “The package was delivered here, with a page of instructions. I got paid once I did the job. I never saw the person and I never cared to, as long as I got my money.”

“And did you get your money?”

“Of course I did! I’m not a sucker, lady.”

I glanced over his shoulder and met Azriel’s gaze. He no more believed the shifter than I did.

“So you never saw who left the package here?”

“No. Like I said, the guy just left it sitting there with the instructions.”

“If you never saw him, how do you know it was a man?”

“Because girls don’t like the dark and all the spiders down here, do they?”

No, they didn’t, I thought with a shiver. Luckily, Valdis’s light wasn’t revealing any eight-legged critters in the immediate vicinity.

“Let me try,” Azriel said, then touched his free hand to the shifter’s forehead.

The shifter stilled instantly, and his face went slack. Azriel closed his eyes, and, for several minutes there was little noise other than the sound of both my breathing and the shifter’s.

Then Azriel opened his eyes again. “He does not lie. However, he does not tell the truth, either.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning, Hieu has tampered with this man’s memories.”

No surprise there, I guess. Not when he didn’t want to be found. “That still leaves the problem of how the book actually got here. I mean, my father no longer has a flesh form, and though this doesn’t stop him from manhandling me, the fact remains that you can’t carry anything in Aedh form unless it’s in contact with your skin before you change shape.”

Azriel nodded. His fingers were still resting against the rat shifter’s forehead, keeping him still, keeping him compliant.

“Hieu did not entirely erase the event from his mind. There are remnants.” He hesitated. “I can show them to you, if you like, but it will mean I need to go into your thoughts.”

“You do that anyway.”

“That is surface sifting. This would be deeper.”

I studied him for a moment, wondering at the wariness I saw in him. “Is it dangerous?”

“For you? No. But you are not happy with my frequent incursions as it is, and this might just strengthen the link that already exists.”

Well, wasn’t
that
just great! But it wasn’t like I had another choice, not if I wanted answers.

“You always have another choice,” he said softly.

I snorted. “You’re in my head one way or another, so let’s just get on with it.”

His gaze lingered on mine for a moment, then he nodded and tapped the rat shifter’s head twice. The rat shifter dropped to the ground and didn’t move. But he was breathing, so he wasn’t dead.

“Handy trick,” I muttered, crossing my arms in an effort to chase away the chill beginning to invade my bones. “Why didn’t you do that with the half-shifter in the locker room? Why use the ropes?”

“Because Razan are harder to render unconscious by this means. The rope achieved the same result, but with less effort.”

Azriel stepped over the shifter and stopped in front of me. The heat of him washed over my skin, filled with the vague scents of musk and man. When he’d first appeared in my life, he’d smelled of nothing. Holding flesh was obviously changing him in more ways than what he was saying.

“Are you ready?” he asked, his gaze steady on mine.

I licked suddenly dry lips, and yet I didn’t know what it was I feared. I knew he wouldn’t hurt me because he still needed me to complete his mission.

“I would never hurt you, mission or not.” He raised his hands, lightly cupping my cheeks. Electricity
flared instantly, burning past my skin into my body, right down to my soul—until it felt like there were thousands of fireflies buzzing around inside me.

Then they exploded and, in the midst of the energy surge, the two separate entities that were our minds became one. In that state, what remained of the shifter’s memories and experiences were laid out before me like a picture book. The man who’d delivered the parcel was tall and powerfully built, but his face was blurry and he’d talked to the air. My father, undoubtedly, though the rat shifter had no sense of him. Then I felt the energy—an Aedh’s energy, the same sort of energy that had attacked me when the Raziq had held me captive—flowing through the shifter’s limbs, snatching away his memories, leaving huge swaths of nothingness rather than whatever conversation had followed the tall man’s arrival. I saw the tattoo on the stranger’s left shoulder as he departed—a dragon with two swords crossed across it. I saw a second tattoo—a ring of barbed wire—on his right shoulder.

Then, without warning, the contact deepened, flowing from an exchange of images to something both tempestuous and sensual—becoming a connection that went beyond mind, beyond body. It went beyond anything I’d ever felt before.

And it was a connection that was severed so abruptly I staggered backward, and would have fallen had not Azriel grabbed my arm.

I stared at him for several seconds, my breathing rapid and my heart feeling like it was about to explode out of my chest. His expression gave little away, but Valdis burned with orange fire, and it seemed to echo deep in the heart of his mismatched blue eyes.

“What the hell just happened?” I said, pulling away from his grip and taking a step back.

“Nothing,” he said, voice clipped. “The connection simply became stronger than I’d intended.”

“So you didn’t cause—” I paused. “—whatever the hell that was?”

“No.”

“Then how did it happen? And what
did
happen?”

He shrugged and glanced down at the rat shifter—not letting me see his eyes, I thought. Then, as Valdis’s fire faded to blue, I realized he was simply getting himself under control. Which meant that whatever had happened had shaken him as badly as it had shaken me.

“We are Chi-linked. I did not expect it to affect the simple act of mind sharing, but it appears I was wrong.”

“But that sensation was—”
Erotic
. A blush crept across my cheeks. Damn, I couldn’t admit
that
out loud. Not to a reaper. Not to
him
. So I simply added, “Unusual.”

“Yes. As I said, somehow the fact we are connected on a Chi level enabled the connection to deepen. What you felt—” He paused and rose, finally meeting my gaze. His expression was carefully neutral, and the fire in his eyes had disappeared. “What you felt was the energy of my true self.”

It was more than that. He knew it, and I knew it. But he obviously wasn’t going to admit it or explain it any more than he had.

I flexed my fingers, still feeling the energy of his touch on my arm—just as I could still feel the remnants of that connection burning deep inside. I suspected it wouldn’t be something I’d easily forget.

Yet I had to. No good would ever come of it. Both instinct and head were suggesting that, and I believed them both.

“What do you wish done with the shifter?” he said calmly, as if he weren’t aware of my thoughts or the tumult that still burned within me.

I took a deep breath that did little to calm anything, and said, “Can you get a name out of him?”

He nodded, then bent down and touched the shifter’s forehead again. “James Larson. He’s a small-time thief who generally survives by picking pockets at the St. Kilda market.”

“I wonder why my father chose him to deliver the book.”

Azriel shrugged as he rose. “That is something you will have to ask your father.”

And my father was about as easy to get a straight answer from as Azriel.
And
he was a whole lot more difficult to find. “Can you erase any memory of us questioning him from Larson’s mind? You never know; my father might decide to use him again.”

“He will not remember us. I have already ensured that.”

“Good.” I glanced at my watch. I really needed to get going if I was going to meet Mike in time. Then I had to get over to the Brindle. And if I didn’t start doing some work on Hunter’s case, the shit was going to hit the fan—although Hunter herself had yet to come through with her list. Nor had Catherine Alston. It was rather hard to follow up on things when I wasn’t getting full cooperation. But maybe that was the whole point. Maybe Madeline—or rather, the council—just wanted to see how I coped on my own.

“If these lists are important to solving this case, why not simply call her and ask for them?”