Darkness Hunts

“Because it would explain my unrelenting need to be sexual with Lucian whenever I’m with him.”

The surprise gave way to amusement. “Why does a spell have to be involved? I mean, he’s a hot and sensual man and you’re a werewolf—unrelenting need comes with that sort of combination, doesn’t it?”

I was shaking my head before she’d finished. “This is something else. It’s almost a compulsion. It takes a huge amount of effort to say no to the man, and I’ve never been like that with anyone before now, werewolf heritage or not.”

She frowned and walked across to me. She raised her hands and skimmed either side of my body, not touching me but close enough that I could feel the sudden tingle of energy flowing from her fingertips. Reading my aura.

She stepped back. “I can’t sense any obvious spell, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t one on you. It could be a geas of some kind, which tends to be subtler and harder to trace.”

“Damn.” I thrust a hand through my hair. “Have you got anything that might be able to counter such magic?”

She hesitated, then went over to the huge, walk-in floor-to-ceiling cupboard that housed all her magical bits and pieces. She opened one side, revealing shelves stocked with all sorts of bottles, herbs, various tools, and other stuff I had no idea about, and fished around for several minutes. Eventually she returned with what looked like a thin rope bracelet entwined with dead leaves.

“This isn’t strong enough to totally counteract any spell or geas, but it will mute the force of it and allow clearheaded thinking.”

“Which is all I really need.” Sex with Lucian might be extraordinary, but I sure as hell still wanted the option of saying no occasionally.

She slipped the bracelet over my left hand, but as it settled on my wrist, the Dušan came to life, its head whipping around as if to study the intruder. Its tail lifted from my skin, curled around the bracelet, then returned to my flesh. And the bracelet went with it, prickling and itching as it leached into my skin. After a few seconds, it was little more than a leafed tattoo that encircled my wrist, one that was entwined by the Dušan’s serpent-like tail.

My gaze shot to Ilianna. “Was that supposed to happen?”

Ilianna’s eyes were wide. “Hell, no.”

“Azriel?”

He appeared and I shoved my hand at him. “Any ideas about this?”

He studied my newest tattoo with a frown. “Unfortunately, I do not know enough about the magic that created the Dušans, let alone understand what they are fully capable of. I had thought they were unable to be active on this plane, but that is patently untrue when it comes to the one that resides in your flesh.” His gaze met mine. His expression was flat, giving little away, and yet I felt the turmoil in him. He was fiercely glad that this had happened, and just as annoyed by the strength of that reaction. “This is not a bad thing, though.”

No, it wasn’t, though I suspected his reasons for thinking that stemmed more from a hope that I’d now stay totally away from Lucian rather than merely being less compelled in his presence.

Ilianna tentatively touched the tattoo. “The magic is still alive within it. Amazing.”

“Let’s just hope that if there is a compulsion, it works, because it looks like I’m stuck with it.”

But if there was a geas, and this bracelet did work, did that in any way imply that Lucian had meant me harm?

He’d made no secret of his desire for revenge, and definitely no secret of the fact that he would do anything—use anyone—to get it. Having a geas placed on me might be nothing more than his way of ensuring a continuing supply of the information he needed to hunt down the Raziq, especially since the only time he could fully read my mind was when we had sex.

Or was I simply trying to excuse the behavior of someone I liked, geas or not?

There was no easy answer to that one—or at least not one I wanted to confront right now—so I pulled the sleeve over the tattoo and said, “Holy water?”

“Ah, yes.”

Azriel stepped to one side as Ilianna returned to her cupboard. She came back a few minutes later carrying a purple satchel and a knife. “There’s six bottles in here. If you need any more than that, you get the hell out of there.”

“And the knife?”

“That,” she said grimly, “is for Jak. And no, I’m not going to stab him, as much as I might want to.”

I grinned, slung the satchel over my shoulder, and led the way back to the kitchen. Azriel made himself scarce again, although the heat that caressed my spine suggested he hadn’t gone far.

Ilianna handed Jak the sheathed knife and said, “This is for you, though you don’t deserve it.”

He took the knife tentatively. “I’m not much into weapons, you know—”

“If you’re tackling hellhounds, you’d better be,” she retorted. “And it’s not just a knife—it’s a blessed knife. It’ll work when other weapons don’t, so use it. I don’t want Risa hurt protecting your useless ass.”

“Thanks for the concern,” he muttered.

I restrained my smile and glanced at Ilianna. “Are you and Mirri still having dinner with your parents tonight?”

Mirri was Ilianna’s girlfriend, though like many mares she was bisexual rather than just a lesbian like Ilianna. She was also very open about her sexuality, whereas Ilianna kept hers a closely guarded secret—at least where her parents were concerned. She and Mirri had been in a steady relationship for a while now, but it was only very recently that Ilianna had acceded to Mirri’s requests to meet her parents—as friends, nothing more.

She grimaced. “Yes. And Carwyn will be there.”

Carwyn was the stallion her parents were trying to set her up with. According to Mirri, he was rather hot—in bed and out—but given Ilianna’s preferences, she was either going to have to be honest with her parents or get stuck in a situation that could only end badly.

“Oh,” I said, well aware that Jak was rather avidly listening in. Once a newshound, always a newshound. “Good luck.”

“Yeah, I’m going to need it.” She grimaced. “Just make sure you ring me if you find magic.”

I nodded, then picked up my sandwiches and headed out. Jak followed so close on my heels that his breath washed the back of my neck. Unfortunately, it wasn’t an unpleasant sensation.

“You can drive,” I said, as the front door slammed behind us.

“Color me shocked,” he said. “Here I was thinking you didn’t trust me to keep my hands to myself when you were in the same vehicle as me.”

“I don’t. Which is why you’re driving.”

He snorted softly, but opened the passenger door of his red Honda Accord, ushering me in before running around to the driver’s side.

It didn’t take us long to get to West Street. We cruised slowly past the warehouse, then turned into Reeves Street. Halfway down the block, we stopped and I climbed out of the car, then leaned against it, my gaze sweeping the building. It was one of those old two-story, redbrick places that had become so popular with inner-city renovators. The iron roof was rusted and covered in bird shit, and the regularly spaced windows were small and protected by bars as rusted as the roof. But considering its age, it still seemed surprisingly solid. Like many of the other buildings in the area, it had walls littered with graffiti and tags, and rubbish lay in drifting piles along its length. It looked and felt abandoned.

Only it wasn’t.

Though there was no sign of guards or movement, there was an odd, almost watchful stillness about the place. In fact, the whole area was unnervingly quiet. Even the sound of traffic traveling along nearby Smith Street seemed muted.

Azriel reappeared, but the heat of his presence did little to chase the growing chill from my body. “I can sense no human life inside.”

My gaze swept the building again. It was waiting. Ready. Trepidation shivered through me, and I rubbed my arms. “What about unlife? Or hellhound-type life?”

“There is nothing in there other than vermin.”

“So why does it feel like a predator is about to pounce?”

“I do not know.”

“Well,” Jak said, from the other side of the car, “we’re not going to find out what’s going on by standing here.”

“No.” I hesitated and glanced at Azriel. “You really can’t get in there?”

“The wards are set just within the building walls. Destroy them, and I can enter.”

“If I do that, whoever set them will likely feel it.”

“Yes.” He half raised a hand and, just for a moment, he leaned closer, as if to kiss me. Then he stepped back. “Be careful.”

“Coward,” I muttered, then spun and walked away.

“So.” Jak’s voice was conversational as he fell in step beside me. “There’s absolutely nothing going on with that reaper and you, is there?”

“Just drop it, Jak.”

“Thought so.”

“Then you thought wrong.”

He chuckled softly. I ignored him and kept walking. There were no doors on this side of the building, and all the bars—despite their rusted appearance—were solid. But there were two entrances on West Street—one of them heavily padlocked and apparently leading into an old office area, and the other a roller door over what once must have been a loading bay. The door itself was battered and coated with grime, and the bottom edge had been torn away from the guides. Obviously, this was where the homeless had been getting in.

I took a long, slow breath that didn’t ease the tension knotting my stomach, then squatted and squeezed through the gap.

The room beyond the roller door was still and quiet. I shifted to one side so Jak could enter, and studied the immediate area. A platform ran around three sides of the dock, and there were stairs down at the far end that led up to it. I could neither see nor smell anything or anyone out of the ordinary, and yet there was something here. Something that crawled along the edges of that other part of me—the bit that saw the reapers and was sensitive to the feel of magic.