“The fire is not mine, so no, I cannot.” His grip slipped down to my fingers, his palm warm against mine as he tugged me toward the rear exit. The smoke was so bad I could barely even see the emergency exit sign.
“Meaning I can?”
“Maybe.”
He pushed the doorway open. Beyond lay a small lane bathed in sunshine, but the sudden rush of fresh air seemed to send my lungs into a spasm and for the next few minutes I could do nothing but cough.
“Do you need a drink?” Azriel asked.
I shook my head and made a motion back toward the café. Smoke was funneling out of the open door and the purple flames were licking at the frame. It was almost as if they were following us.
“Amaya is their source,” Azriel said. “They follow where she leads.”
“Then how do I put it out? And why didn’t the café at Werribee mansion”—which was where we’d found, and lost, the first of the keys—“go up like this when Amaya set that alight last week?”
“Because her lust was fully sated and the flames could gain no hold. I suspect that’s not the case now.”
She was still hissing away merrily, so he was right in his presumption. “Then how do I calm her?”
He tugged me forward again, taking us farther down the lane, away from the front of the café and the approaching fire engines. “Every sword is different. What works for one will not work for the other.”
Which was a fat lot of help. I frowned, and tried sending calming thoughts her way. Her hissing only increased, and it felt oddly like she was telling me to get fucked. It would be just my luck to get a sword with attitude.
So I did the next best thing—I mentally promised her plenty of blood in the near future. She made several hissy, grumbling-type sounds, then quietened. A glance over my shoulder revealed that the flames were similarly calming.
Now all I had to do was hope I could keep the promise.
“Given that this attack was probably little more than a first foray,” Azriel said grimly, “I have no doubt that you will.”
We came out on Southbank Promenade and turned toward the underground parking at the arts center. He finally released his grip on my hand, but the warmth of his touch lingered.
“Who the hell would be sending Ania against us?” I glanced around to see if anyone was watching, then hitched up my dress and squeezed as much water from it as I could.
“They weren’t sent against us,” he said grimly. “They were sent to retrieve you.”
“That’s not what I asked.” I smoothed the dress back down, but it continued to drip.
Azriel acknowledged my point with a slight nod. He hadn’t put Valdis away yet, and the sword still glowed with angry-looking blue fire. I very much suspected it was a reaction to his emotions rather than any sense of lurking danger.
“It could be your father, it could be the Raziq, it could even be whoever stole the first key.” He shrugged and finally sheathed Valdis.
“My father has so far preferred to do his own dirty work, and the Raziq have always sent their Razan.” Razan were basically the long-lived human slaves of the Raziq, the secret group of Aedh priests who were apparently dedicated to finding a way to permanently close the portals between this world and the next. And, in the process, possibly destroy us all.
After all, if no souls could move on, then no souls could be reborn. And if there was no soul, then there could be no spark of life. The thought of babies being little more than lumps of meat, without inner life or any sort of hope, made me shudder.
It was the Raziq who had developed the keys, but my father had arranged for them to be stolen before the Raziq could put their plan into action—but whatever he’d intended had also gone awry, because the people who’d stolen the keys had died before they could tell anyone the exact location of them.
Why, exactly, my father had the keys stolen when he showed as little consideration for humanity as the Raziq did was something I’d yet to figure out. Especially when he kept saying he wanted me to find and destroy the keys, and yet had gotten dangerously annoyed when I’d suggested that leaving the damn things hidden was probably safer for everyone.
“I did mind-read one of the Ania during the attack,” Azriel said. “The creature did not know who summoned it.”
“So how did those things find us? You said the Raziq probably wouldn’t be able to locate me once I was away from either my apartment or the café.”
“It may not be the Raziq.”
“Let’s just forget the who for the moment.” Annoyance edged my voice. “How did the Ania find me?”
“The Ania work along the lines of bloodhounds, only they are visual rather than scent hounds. Show them a picture and they will scour the earth until they find that person.”
“How could someone show them a picture of me without becoming visible themselves?”
“If it is the Raziq, then they have Razan. The only time the Raziq ever acquire flesh to do a task is when they cannot use the Razan to interact with this world—such as the time of conceiving. And even then, it is only the shortage of Aedh females that drives some of them into the arms of humanity.”
Well, that was one thing I wasn’t going to complain about, considering it had given me life. “And if it wasn’t the Raziq?”
He shrugged. “Whoever stole the key from us and opened the first portal would be clever enough to conceal their identity from any low-level demons they’d summoned.”
I pushed open the side door into the parking lot and walked down the stairs. My footsteps echoed in the concrete void, but Azriel was as silent as a ghost.
“So what do we do, given that they’ll probably hit us again?”
“We attempt subterfuge.” He paused, suddenly appearing just ahead of me to hold open the fourth-floor door. “How long can you hold a change?”
I frowned. While I was part werewolf, I couldn’t actually attain a wolf shape. In fact, the moon held no sway over me at all, and I was neither afflicted by the moon heat—although I did have a healthy sexual appetite—nor forced to change shape on the night of the full moon.
However, Mom hadn’t been just an ordinary werewolf. She’d been a helki werewolf, and one refined in the labs of a madman. Helkis were face-shifters. They could literally alter the shape of their face, hair, and eyes—although, oddly, the eyes were the most difficult to keep altered over long periods of time. I’d inherited that ability from her, but it wasn’t something I used very often, so it took a whole lot more out of me than it had Mom.
“That depends on just how much of a change we’re talking about.”
He stopped the door from slamming shut with his fingertips, then fell in step beside me. The heat of him washed over me, warm and comforting. “The Ania are somewhat rigid bloodhounds. Show them an image and that is precisely what they search for. I would think a simple change of hair color would suffice for now.”
I grimaced. I actually loved my coloring. Silvery hair and lilac eyes were a startling—and somewhat rare—combination, and I liked the attention they sometimes gave me.
“Black hair and lilac eyes would be no less startling,” he commented. “And as your skin is not pale, it would look very suitable on you.”
“Suitable?” I said, amused. “God, Azriel, surely even you can come up with a better compliment than that.”
He raised his eyebrows at me. “Why is ‘suitable’ not an adequate compliment?”
I studied him for a moment, not sure if he was teasing me or not. “Because I guess it sounds so… average.”
“Which you are obviously not.” His expression was still totally serious and yet, if he’d had an affair with a human woman, he surely couldn’t be as obtuse about human—or non-human—vanity as he was making out. “So, would the word ‘stunning’ be considered more appropriate?”
I rolled my eyes. Why was I even bothering to fish for compliments from him? “This conversation is insane. Let’s just forget about it.”
“As you wish. You have not, however, answered my original question.”
It took me a couple of seconds to actually remember his original question. “I’ve never actually held either a full or a partial change for any great length of time. I could probably hold a hair color change for three or four days if it’s continuous, but it’ll wear me out physically. If I simply revert back to my natural color once I’m home, it might be a little more sustainable.”
“Then do it.”
“What? Now?”
“There are no cameras in this immediate area, and no one nearby. And it is infinitely better to be safe than sorry.”
I nodded a little reluctantly. Face-shifting wasn’t as easy as shifting into an alternate form. From what I’d been told, donning your wolf form—or whatever other form of animal you might be—involved little more than reaching into that place inside where the beast roamed and releasing the shackles that bound her. Face-shifting was a little more complicated. Not only did you have to fully imagine all the minute details of the face you wanted to copy, but you had to hold it firm in your thoughts while the magic swirled around and through your body. Easier said than done when the magic was designed to sweep away sensation and thought.
Of course, I was only changing my hair color, but given how little I face-shifted, even that wasn’t a walk in the park.
I flexed my fingers, then closed my eyes and pictured my own face—from the lilac of my eyes, the slight up tilt of my nose, and my defined cheekbones, to the fullness of my lips. But instead of shoulder-length silver hair, I imagined it black and with a pixie cut. A black so rich that it shone dark purple in the sunlight.
Then, freezing that image in my mind, I reached for the magic. It exploded around me, thick and fierce, as if it had been contained for far too long. It swept through me like a gale, making my muscles tremble and the image waver. I frowned, holding it fiercely against the storm of power. The energy began to pulsate, burn, and change me. My skin rippled without altering, but my hair suddenly felt shorter and somehow finer. As the magic faded, I staggered a little, my knees suddenly weak.