“But demons and things like this soul stealer we’re hunting do get out.”
“Because enough magic has been gathered—either on this plane or across the other side—to temporarily link the portals and cause a rift.”
“So what made the rift three weeks ago different?”
“The fact that it was no rift, and the portals sent out no warning.”
I rubbed my head. All this information was making the ache worse. “The gates send out warnings?”
“Once the warning of a rift would have been sent to the priests, but since they no longer exist, we have managed to subvert the magic enough so that we are warned instead. We may not be able to control the gates, but we can eliminate what comes through.”
Sometimes, I wanted to snap, but that would have been petty. He’d already explained that there were too few Mijai to stop whatever did come through. “None of this explains why my father would have sent me the Dušan.”
“It does if he expects you to be a part of his plans.”
“How?” I half yelled. “I can’t work magic and I’ve never even seen the portals! How the hell am I going to be any assistance in a plot to destroy them?”
“Hey,” Ilianna said from the other room. “Everything all right in there?”
I blew out a breath and tried to calm the anger boiling though me. It was due more to fear than frustration, but that didn’t make it any easier to deal with. Neither did Azriel’s impassive expression.
“Yes,” I replied, then walked across the room, stopping when only a few feet remained between me and the reaper. His heat surrounded me, a caress of warmth that did little to ease the chill deep within. “If there are keys to the gates, how did this person get hold of them? I would have thought they’d be well guarded.”
“They would be, had there been such things. But there are not.”
I frowned. “But you said—”
“What I said was true. Someone has created keys. We believe the brief openings we sensed—both the most recent and the one twenty-eight years ago—were merely a test.”
“If it was, and it worked, why aren’t the gates now permanently closed?”
“We do not know. Which is why we need to hunt down your father. He can help to further our knowledge of what is going on.”
I snorted. Help to further our knowledge was no doubt a polite way of saying he was going to give up the information or die. Possibly both.
“That suggests you’re not even entirely sure he’s involved in whatever nefarious plot is currently under way.”
His gaze dropped briefly to my arm. “The Dušan proves his involvement.”
“How?”
Again he hesitated. “The priests could traverse the gates and travel either path if required. The Dušan were their protection when the final portal was opened and the dark path revealed. We thought the knowledge of their creation had died with the priests, but we discovered the hard way that that’s not entirely true.”
“You’re big on explaining things without really explaining, aren’t you?” I said, exasperation in my voice.
A smile briefly tried to escape his solemn countenance. “We discovered the existence of the Dušan when I was sent one. It attached itself to my back rather than my arm.”
My eyes widened. “The tattoos on your back are a Dušan?”
“The tattoos, no. They’re my tribal signature. The winged dragon is.”
“I wouldn’t have thought a dragon with one and a bit wings would be of any use.” I crossed my arms and rubbed them lightly. The serpentine flesh felt cool under my fingertips, but I could feel the beat of life and power within it. It wasn’t a comforting sensation. Far from it.
This time, the smile escaped. And it was breathtaking. “The creature is fully winged when whole. It saved me recently on the gray fields.”
Surely if my father was behind the creature that had saved Azriel’s life, then that meant he had to be on the side of the angels? Or, in Azriel’s case, on the side of the dark angel? “Why would someone send you a Dušan? How would they even know where to send it? You’re a reaper, for fuck’s sake. You float around saving souls and whatnot.”
“That is not all I do. I have an existence outside my Mijai duties.”
And I was betting his definition of existence was far different from mine. “Which doesn’t answer the question.”
“No. And that is another reason we need to talk to your father.”
“What if you’re wrong? What if he’s not involved in this whole plot?”
“He was once Raziq. He will know of this plot, even if he is not involved.”
I frowned. “Mom mentioned that word. What is it?”
“The Raziq were a minority group of priests dedicated to preventing demons from being summoned, and they believed the only way to do this was to permanently close the portals between this world and the next. They also believed this world would be better for it.”
“Meaning they didn’t care about the whole human-race-becoming-vegetables scenario?”
“No.” He briefly looked surprised. “Why would they? The Aedh are not human—they aren’t even nonhuman as you define the word. Nor are they reborn. They welcome the eternity of their death when it finally comes.”
“But they interact with us. Hell, they beget children on us when they can’t find an Aedh female. Surely there’d be a little self-interest in preserving us?”
“There are enough new souls born in this world to satisfy their need. They would not care about everyone else.”
I stared at him for a moment, wishing I could read him, but in some ways glad I couldn’t. “Would you care?”
One eyebrow rose fractionally. “Of course. It is our duty to guide souls. Without humans—or nonhumans—we have no purpose.”
“And yet you said you have an existence outside of duty.”
“I do. But that doesn’t alter our purpose in life.”
I shook my head. I didn’t understand him at all, but I guess that wasn’t really surprising. He was a reaper. “You said your Dušan saved you—from what? I would have thought the gray fields would be safe for reapers.”
“For those of us who hunt, less so.”
“Meaning the attack happened during a hunt?”
“No. Afterward. Someone tried to destroy me.”
I frowned. “Why would someone want to do that?” How would someone do that?
“I can no more answer that than I can the question of why either of us was sent a Dušan. Now, if that is all—”
He hesitated as my phone rang, a brief expression of displeasure crossing his features.
Though I wondered why, I didn’t bother asking. He wasn’t likely to answer given he wasn’t telling me all he knew about this whole situation.
An intuition as odd as the man himself.
I drew my phone out of my pocket, saw it was Tao, and walked across to the window to answer it. “What’s up?”
“You need to get over to Stane’s right away.”
I frowned at the edge in his voice. “Why? What’s wrong?”
“Ilianna set up the wards this afternoon. I just got a call from him. Something’s trying to get past them. Something that resembles a gray shroud.”
MY STOMACH CLENCHED.
God, it was the soul stealer. It had to be.
But why in hell would it be attacking Stane?
“Risa?” Tao said. “You need to get over there. Now. Both you and that reaper of yours. You need to stop this thing before it gets Stane.”
“We’ll try. You stay away—”
“Ris, he’s my cousin—”
“And that fucking soul stealer can take you just as easily as him. Fire won’t stop it, Tao. Just wait for my call. Please.”
He didn’t look happy, but his grunt told me he’d do as I asked. I hung up and swung around. Azriel had drawn his sword. The blade was ethereal, alive with flickers of blue fire. It was the same sort of blue fire that now burned in his mismatch
ed eyes.
“Where do we go?”
“Follow me,” I said, and called to the Aedh.
“No, wait—” he said, but it was already too late. I was out of that room and speeding toward Stane’s.
Outside, darkness was already falling, and the city’s blanket of lights was beginning to twinkle into the shadows. The wind was sharp, buffeting my fleshless body, freezing even though there was nothing real and whole to freeze. I arrowed on, reaching for as much speed as I could, trying to ignore the wind and the cold and the fear that burned deep in the pit of my stomach.
I recognized Stane’s street and flew down it. Music began to ride the air, loud and heavy. The outside of the Phoenix was lit up like a Christmas tree, but it didn’t make the façade or the club any more inviting. Not that it seemed to stop anyone, because from the look of it, the place was packed. Maybe they were there mourning Handberry’s loss. Or maybe they were celebrating it. He certainly hadn’t appeared the most popular of bosses in the brief time we’d seen him last night.
I swept on. Stane’s grubby, steel-barred building came into sight. I swept around it, seeing little out of place, then realized I probably wouldn’t. Ilianna would have set her wards inside, not outside, where there was a greater chance of them being disturbed.
I slipped under the gap between the front door and the floor, then swirled to a stop as the containment field shimmered its warning. I reached for the Aedh again, re-forming and rebuilding my body particle by particle, until I was once more flesh and blood.
As I dropped to the concrete on my hands and knees, my body shaking and my breath wheezing past my throat, I felt it.
Evil.
An evil so thick and ripe bile rose up my throat and my soul shivered away from the awareness of it. The charm at my neck burned to life, its light ablaze with a fierceness I’d never felt before, smoldering against my skin and warming the air.
“Stane,” I said, my throat tightening against the urge to be sick and the words coming out little more than a harsh whisper, “lower the containment shield. I need to get in.”
The slight buzz of electricity died, and all that filled the silence was the rapid beating of my heart. Then I saw it—a shadow, a wisp, a trick of the light—hovering near the steps that led up to Stane’s command center.
But as I saw it, it saw me.
And suddenly it was right in front of me, its evil filling every breath, every fiber, until I couldn’t think, I couldn’t breathe, and all I wanted to do was run.
But I couldn’t.
My limbs were shaking, my muscles weak with exhaustion, and they just wouldn’t do what I wanted.
And that thing was reaching for me, its ghostly shroud forming hands that pierced my flesh and reached inside me. For the briefest of moments, I felt the power of the woman who had summoned and now drove it. I felt the depth of evil in her soul—a darkness that stained the very heart of me.
She was going to kill me—just as she’d killed little Hanna and Marcus Handberry. Not because she hated me, but because that was her task—to kill all those who stood in the way. Right now, the one standing in the way was me. And her creature was going to rip my soul from my flesh and consume it.
I screamed then. Screamed and ran.
Not physically, but psychically.
I ran into the gray fields, where the tenuous link between this evil and that woman would fade, as all things that stepped into the gray realm faded unless they had the skill and the power to traverse them.
I did.
This creature—no matter how powerful—didn’t.
But on the gray fields, the invisible became visible. The real world might fade to little more than shadows, but those things not sighted on the living plane gained substance when viewed from here. The soul stealer was a dark and twisted thing, its body mutilated and limbs malformed. Its skin was black and leathery, its face all teeth and snout, and two long horns extended from the top of its head. The claws reaching into my flesh were viciously curved. It was like nothing I’d ever seen before, and it wasn’t something I wanted to see again.
It shoved its claws deeper into my flesh, still seeking that energy, that spark, that gave me life and made me me. I was safe as long as it didn’t find the delicate thread that connected my soul to my flesh. If it did …
As I battled to breathe, battled against the rising tide of panic, power surged from my flesh. The Dušan came to life, her lilac body exploding from my arm. Her energy flowed through me, around me, as her body grew and became so solid and real that I wanted to reach out and touch her warmth. She screamed as she whipped around me—a sound filled with fury and frustration.
Because the thing that was attacking me wasn’t on the fields and the Dušan couldn’t get at it. I needed help. We needed help.
Azriel!
The scream was silent, but it echoed across the fields like a call to war.
I saw him before I felt him—he was a blaze of sunlight in this ghostly otherworld, and the sword clenched in his right hand was pure blue and wraithlike, throbbing with a life of its own.
He was half on the gray fields and half in the real world—a ghostly fierceness that was suddenly standing between my body and my soul.
He swung the sword. A scream rent the air—a scream that was pure energy and coming from the sword itself—and the blade cut through the creature and then me, severing the shroud-like contact between me and the soul stealer. The sword swung again, straight down this time, rending the creature in two. It fragmented, its ethereal remains becoming just another ghostly remnant of the gray fields.
I closed my eyes and willed myself back to my flesh, careening into my body with enough force to knock me sideways. My head hit something hard, but I barely even felt it. As the Dušan crawled back onto my arm, I hugged my knees close to my chest. For several seconds I did nothing more than simply lie there, shaking and crying at the horror of the evil that had so briefly stained my soul.
Heat warmed the air. But I kept my eyes closed and didn’t acknowledge him.
“Risa,” he said softly. “You are all right.”
It was a statement, not a question. I curled up into a tighter ball and wished he’d go away. Wished they’d all go away and leave us all in peace.
But that train had long since left the station, and there was no catching it now.
“Risa,” he said, his voice still soft and even. And God, that irritated me. Right now, I wanted emotion. Wanted to be held and hugged and told that he understood, not just that it was all right. I knew he was a reaper, I knew he confronted this sort of evil on a regular basis, but I didn’t. “There is no remnant of evil left inside of you. Valdis severed the connection and ensured that no scraps remain.”
Despite myself, I looked up. “Valdis?”
He moved his sword lightly. Fire shimmered up its side and the blade hummed. “That is her name.”
His sword was a she? Weird. I released my knees and pushed up into a sitting position. But the movement was too sharp and my stomach rebelled. I managed to scramble to a nearby trash can before whatever was left in my stomach rose yet again.
Azriel didn’t say anything, simply stood and watched.
“What was that thing?” I said, when I could.
“An oni.”
I blinked. “A what?”
“Oni. They are not usually soul stealers. Flesh is more to their liking.”
Well, at least it hadn’t tried that. Stuck as I had been on the gray fields, I couldn’t have done much to stop it.
“Why wasn’t the Dušan able to attack it?” I’d already guessed the answer, but I knew so little about the creature who now shared my flesh that I wanted it confirmed.
“Because they can only protect on the gray fields. The oni remained on this plane, so the Dušan could do nothing.”
“Fuck, Risa, are you all right?”
Stane came down the stairs two at a time. From behind me came a fierce half cry—Azriel moving his sword i
nto attack position.
“Whoa!” Stane said, skidding to a halt at the base of the stairs and throwing up his hands. “Ris, tell the man-mountain I mean you no harm.”
Man-mountain? Azriel wasn’t small, but it was obvious Stane was seeing something far different from what both Ilianna and I did.
“Azriel, he’s the one we came here to rescue.” I sat back on my heels and wiped a hand across my mouth. What I really needed was a drink to wash the sour taste away. “Stane, why the hell would a soul stealer be attacking you?”
“Was that what that thing was?”
“Yeah. It killed a little girl two days ago, and Handberry last night. Now it’s come after you. There’s obviously a link we’re not seeing.”
“Well, I can’t think of a goddamn thing Handberry and I have in common.” He knelt down beside me and touched my arm lightly. “Are you all right? Do you need to come upstairs and freshen up?”
“That would be wonderful.” I glanced back at Azriel. “You’d better come, too.”
He nodded, his gaze on Stane, his expression intent. Assessing. I briefly wished I was telepathic. Right then, I really would have loved to know just what was going on behind those bright eyes of his.
Stane’s grip slipped underneath my elbow; then he all but lifted me to my feet. The room did several giddy turns before settling down, as did my stomach. I swallowed heavily, then said, “Okay, ready to move.”
It was slow progress, but by the time we reached the top of the stairs, I was actually feeling a little better.
“The bathroom is the second door on your left,” Stane said, releasing my arm but keeping rather close—no doubt ready to catch me should I suddenly drop.
“Thanks.” I took a tentative step forward. A slight tremor ran in my limbs and my head was aching even fiercer than before, but it didn’t immediately seem like I was going to collapse again. I gave him a reassuring smile and added, “You’d better call Tao and give him the all-clear.”
He nodded. I walked across to the bathroom. Azriel followed me in and closed the door behind him.
“You know,” I said, exasperated, “it is polite to let a lady go to the bathroom in peace.”