“You do not have to be there in the flesh.”
I frowned. “But you warned me against taking Aedh form too much because it might attract the wrong sort of attention.”
“It might, but if you do not want to physically wait at Dark Earth, then we are left with Aedh form or watching from the gray fields.”
“In the gray fields we’d at least have the Dušan to guard us.”
He nodded. “But the Raziq prowl there. There is a greater chance of discovery if we step onto the fields for any great length of time.”
“We risk that no matter what we do,” I muttered. “Any idea how long it might be before the Rakshasa feeds again?”
“The five victims have all died within a week. From what I have been told, their feeding cycle lasts a month, and then they will go into hibernation again.”
“Spirits hibernate? That’s a new one.”
He ignored my comment. “After the initial frenzy, the hunter will space her kills more evenly. We may have a couple of days before the agony and fury of the lost ones call to her again.”
“I really don’t want to be hanging around that club night after night waiting for a spirit that may or may not appear.”
“No.” He hesitated. “I am attempting to get more information. It might also be helpful if we had greater details about the time and date of the deaths. There might be a pattern we could use.”
If there was a pattern, surely Hunter and the Directorate would have seen it. “I’ll ask Hunter to send the information to me.”
He nodded. “Once we get that, we can decide the best way to proceed.”
The best way to proceed—or rather, the sanest way to proceed—would be to run a mile in the other direction. I mean, a flesh-eating, shape-changing spirit with poisonous talons wasn’t exactly something anyone with an iota of sense would want to tangle with. But it wasn’t like I had any real choice, because right now I was stuck with two millstones hanging around my neck—the agreement to help Hunter and a vampire council still debating whether or not it would be better to kill me. A wrong step might be fatal in more ways than one.
“I’ll see you at the Brindle.” I didn’t bother waiting for an answer. I just shoved my helmet on, fired up the bike, and raced into the street.
Unfortunately, it was peak hour and all the main roads were playing parking lots again. Frustrated, I swung into a side street and took the more roundabout but better-flowing route to the Brindle.
Only trouble was, I didn’t get there.
Chapter 5
One moment I was cruising down the street behind a belching truck; the next I was hit side-on. The force of the impact ripped me from my bike and sent me flying toward a light pole. It happened so fast I didn’t even have time to try to protect myself—I just hit the pole and wrapped around it like an old bit of rubbish.
Then I slumped to the ground, battling to breathe and struggling to ignore the pain stabbing into my brain as well as the gathering tide of blackness that threatened to wash away consciousness.
I couldn’t let go. I just couldn’t.
It was a thought that made no sense, but one that had me struggling to rise nevertheless. I made it to my knees—the pain was too great to go any farther. Although getting even that far meant I hadn’t broken anything major. Yay for the strength of werewolf bones, I thought fuzzily.
Something warm and sticky gushed down the side of my cheek. I swiped at it and hit the visor instead. It was half hanging off, and swinging back and forth with my movements. I swore and wrenched it off completely. It clattered to the ground, though oddly made no sound. In fact, the whole world seemed to be silent. Or maybe I just couldn’t hear through the roar that seemed to be filling my head.
I blinked and looked around. Saw my bike lying on her side, hydrogen leaking from her tanks. It looked surreal, like blood, and I hoped like hell her wound wasn’t fatal.
That odd roaring got louder and I suddenly realized what it was. It was Amaya, screaming a warning, screaming for blood.
It was then that I saw them—Ania. And this time, there weren’t only six or so. This time, there were so many that it looked like an ethereal tower of white speeding toward me.
A hand wrapped around my arm and yanked me upright. My heart just about jumped out of my chest, even though instinct and something else—something that was infinitely deeper and decidedly scarier—told me it was Azriel.Power surged as he pulled me close and wrapped his other arm around my waist. Valdis blazed at his back, as eager as Amaya to fight, but neither sword was getting its wish today. Azriel’s power burned around me—through me—sweeping us both from flesh to energy. A second later we were on the gray fields, but they weren’t the fields that I knew. My gray fields were a place of shadows, a place where things not sighted in the real world suddenly gained substance. But in Azriel’s arms, the fields were vast and beautiful, filled with structures and life that were delicate and unworldly.
Then the brightness and warmth of his world was gone, replaced by a darkness that felt damp and smelled faintly of rot and excrement. The sewers, I thought dazedly. Why the hell were we in the sewers?
“Because this is the last place the Ania or the Raziq will think to look for us,” Azriel said.
He shifted his grip and guided me down onto a chair. Which was a smart move, because if he’d simply let go I think I would have fallen. My legs were like jelly and my whole body was shaking.
I looked around. Wherever we were, it didn’t actually look like a sewer. It actually resembled a small control room of some sort, filled with computers and what looked to be some kind of projector…
Memory stirred, and I suddenly realized that this was the control room where Ike Foreman had held me and questioned me about the keys for the portals of hell—although we still had no clear idea for whom he’d been working. He’d died in the sewer just beyond the main doorway, shot by Lucian. The image of Foreman’s face—and the surprise that had flitted across it a second before he died—rose, and I suddenly found myself wondering why he’d been so shocked. It wasn’t the fact that death had found him; of that I was sure.
“We’ll just be here long enough to stop this bleeding,” Azriel continued, drawing me out of my thoughts. But his attention was focused on the helmet that had saved me, and after a moment he unsheathed Valdis. “Stay still.”
I tightened my fingers around the arms of the chair, suddenly fighting the urge to flee. “What the hell are you intending to do?”
“Your helmet shattered when you hit the pole, and there are several pieces embedded in your head.”
Well, that would certainly explain the pain in my head and the blood on my cheek. “So just take them out and then remove the helmet. There’s no need to try to cut it off—”
“I suspect moving the shards will cause greater bleeding. Valdis will obliterate the shards and heal the wound at the same time.” He paused, and his gaze met mine. There was something unyielding in his eyes, almost as if he were drawing a line in the sand. “You said you trusted me.”
I licked my lips. “I do, but using Valdis to dig them out seems a little like using a jackhammer to hit home a nail.”
“Valdis would never harm you. She can’t.”
I raised my eyebrows at that. “Why not?”
His expression became closed again. “Do you trust me?”
That was a question I’d answered more than once. He was connected to me on a chi level—and far more strongly than he was admitting—and he knew just how much I did trust him, even if the occasional doubt raised its ugly head. I motioned for him to proceed.
Valdis’s fire was a strange green-gold as he brought her close. Droplets of fire splattered across my skin, hissing as they touched, yet not hurting. Warmth flushed upward from my neck and face, until even the ends of my hair felt like they were on fire. There was a brief retort, and a bitter smell—which was a mix of melting fiberglass and burning carbon fiber—filled the air.
Then it was gone, and with it the stabbing pain in the side of my head.
Azriel sheathed Valdis, then slowly—carefully—removed the helmet. The shards digging into my skull might have been eliminated, but it still hurt like shit. I blinked back tears, and gripped the chair arms so damn tightly that my fingernails tore into the leather.
“You were extremely lucky,” Azriel said, and held the helmet so I could see it.
The whole left side was broken, much of it dented inward toward what was now a jagged and somewhat melted hole in the center. It was destroyed—but it had undoubtedly saved my life.
My gaze rose and met Azriel’s. The anger that burned in the mismatched blue depths just about snatched my breath away. “The Ania could have killed me.”
“By mistake, yes, but if they’d actually wanted to kill you, they could have easily done so by now. And remember, it wasn’t so much an attack in the café as an attempt to capture you.” He tossed the helmet aside. It clattered against the old stones and rolled limply into the shadows. “It would also appear that changing your hair made little difference. They obviously know more about your habits than I presumed.”
I didn’t have the energy to say “I told you so,” and simply leaned back in the chair and closed my eyes. While the pain in my head had all but gone, the rest of me felt more than a little pulverized. But I guess feeling that way was better than actually being so, and that had very nearly been the reality.
“I can’t step away from everything and go into hiding, Azriel,” I said, after a moment. “That won’t find the Rakshasa and it certainly won’t find us the keys.”
“No, but staying away from the things they are aware of—like your bike, the café, and your apartment—would be a good start until we figure out a way to stop these attacks.”
I opened my eyes again. “Do you really think we can stop them? I don’t.”
“We can stop them.” He said it firmly, like he was trying to convince himself as much as me. Which was an odd thought, since he generally saw these things in black-and-white—will or won’t. “But until we do, we should do all that we can to avoid them.”