Darkness Unmasked

Page 5

His voice was dry, and I chuckled softly. “Oh come on, she might actually be nice.”
“She’s taking her mother on a date. What does that say about her?”
“Hey, your mother will be there, too, remember.”
“Yeah, but my mother has become a conniving witch who plots incessantly to get me married.”
“What makes you think her mother isn’t?”
“Because,” he grumbled, “it was apparently her idea, not her mother’s. Besides, the word from the pack is that she doesn’t approve of wolf clubs. Hates what they represent.”
“She’s a werewolf, isn’t she? How the hell can she disapprove of the clubs?”
“Who the fuck knows? Maybe she’s a prude.”
Was it even possible to be a werewolf and a prude? It certainly wasn’t a likely combination. “If you think it’s going to be that bad, don’t go.”
He snorted. “My mother will make my life hell if I don’t go. Trust me.”
I grinned. Stane was afraid of his mother. Imagine that. “And the storage container?”
“Oh. Yeah.” There was a brief whoosh of sound, and I had the mental image of him scooting from one screen of his massive computer “bridge” to the other. “I couldn’t find anything listed under John Nadler’s name, but I did find one under Genevieve Sands.”
Who was one of Nadler’s heirs, according to the information I’d gotten from a ghost. Nadler was the man behind the consortium that had been buying up the land all around Stane’s shop. Not that he wanted the land, per se; he just wanted to control what lay underneath it—a major ley-line intersection. Such intersections were places of great power and could be used to manipulate time, reality, or fate. But they could also be used to create a rift between this world and the next, and we very much suspected that whoever had stolen the first key had used the power of the intersection to access the gray fields and find the gates.
Which, in turn, meant that John Nadler was either involved with the sorcerer, or was the sorcerer himself. Unfortunately, he was also a face-shifter, and it was damnably hard to track someone who could alter their facial features at will. Of course, I was also a face-shifter, but that didn’t make it any easier for me to spot others of my kind.
This particular face-shifter had assumed the identity of the real John Nadler after he’d killed him—a fact we were sure of only because the body of the real Nadler had turned up just as we were getting closer to pinning down the fake. We suspected that at least one of the three people named in Nadler’s will was in fact the face-shifter, but so far we’d yet to track any of them down.
“You want to send me the address?” I said. “I might go check it out.”
“Just sent you that. I’ve also hacked into their security cams so we can screen who might be coming and going. But is there anything else you need done?”
I couldn’t help smiling at the hint of desperation in his voice. “Haven’t we already given you enough?”
“No. I mean, I have a double date I need to get out of, remember.”
I chuckled softly. “Think of your mother’s wrath, and—as they say in the classics—suck it up, princess.”
“Some help you are,” he muttered. “The rates are going up next time you want me to do something.”
“You’d be bored to death inside a week if we weren’t bugging you.”
“That,” he said grimly, “is undoubtedly true. Think of me suffering while you’re off enjoying yourself somewhere tonight.”
“Tell you what—I’ll send a bottle of Bollinger for you to drown your after-date sorrows in.”
“At least that would give me something to look forward to.” His sigh was overly dramatic. “Chat to you later.”
He hung up. Two seconds later, my phone beeped, an indication that Stane’s information had arrived. The storage locker was located in Clifton Hill and wasn’t all that far away from Stane’s shop. I shoved the phone back into my pocket, then locked the front door of Wolfgang’s house and met Azriel’s gaze. “Can you take us there now?”
He stepped close again and wrapped his arms around my waist. I resisted the temptation to snuggle deeper into his arms, and a heartbeat later we were zipping back through the gray fields.
We reappeared near the intersection of Hoddle Street and the Eastern Freeway exit. The self-storage premises couldn’t be missed—it was a three-story brick building that had been painted in orange and blue stripes, with a huge white lock on the front of it.
“How do you plan to access this locker?” Azriel said.
I scanned the building and noted the cameras placed strategically around the perimeter. Undoubtedly, it would be a similar story inside, and that meant it might be wise to indulge in a little face-shifting. If Genevieve Sands was connected to Nadler, then they might be keeping an eye on who went near their storage locker. It wouldn’t be hard to do—anyone with the right sort of knowledge would be able to hack into the security system. The last thing I wanted was for them to see how close we were. We didn’t need another possible lead closing down before it led to anything—or anyone.
“I guess how we approach it depends on who is at the desk,” I said eventually. “If it’s male, I’ll flirt. If it’s female, you flirt.”
He raised his eyebrows. “The last time we did something like that, you stomped out in what I believe you would call a snit.”
“It wasn’t a snit,” I replied, amused. “It was mere annoyance. You were flirting with a stranger at a time you were refusing to do anything with me.”
“I am still not doing anything with you.”
“That’s true.” I gave a mock sigh. “God, it’s been so long, I can hardly even remember what a kiss is, let alone sex.”
“Then perhaps,” he said, and stepped closer, “I should remind you.”
His lips met mine, and though the kiss was little more than a tease, it was also the sweetest damn thing I’d ever experienced. It made me feel higher than a kite and warmer than the sun, cherished and oddly alive all in one quicksilver moment. And I sighed in frustration when he pulled back.
“Damn it, Azriel—”
He pressed a finger against my lips, silencing my protest. “What you desire and what your body is capable of are two very different things right now.” He gave me a lopsided smile that was oddly endearing. “I want what you want, believe me, but I am not willing to tax your strength any more than necessary. And, right now, that’s what we would be doing.”
“The whole point of sex is to be taxed,” I replied, exasperated. “If you’re not boneless and replete afterward, then you haven’t put enough effort into it.”
“What effort can you put into it when you are all but exhausted?” He raised an eyebrow, expression amused. “Trust me, given the risks involved, I want nothing more than your maximum.”
I laughed softly, then rose on tiptoes and dropped another quick kiss on his lips. “Believe me, when you give in—and you will give in, reaper—I’ll give you one hundred percent, exhausted or not.”
“A promise I will hold you to.”
“As long as you do hold me, I don’t care.” I reluctantly returned my attention to the building in front of us. “Can’t you just pull the information about the storage locker from the mind of whoever is manning the reception desk?”
“I could, but our sorcerer appears to have telepathic abilities, remember, and while it is unlikely he would sense any psychic intrusion on my part, it is a risk we should not take, given he is most certainly aware of my presence on this quest.”
I frowned. “Does that mean clouding her perception is out?”
“No. Clouding is more a sensory intrusion than a mental one, and therefore it is safer.”
“Then I guess you’d better make whoever is inside think we’re cops.”
“That I can do.” He placed his fingers under my elbow and lightly guided me across to the thick shrubs that lined one side of the nearby parking lot. “If you wish to alter your facial shape, you will not be seen here by either the cameras or those driving by.”
“Good idea.” While Azriel might be able to stop people from noticing his comings and goings, the last thing we needed was some poor driver spotting what I was doing and having a freak-out. While humanity was as aware of shape-shifters as they were vamps and werewolves, very few knew of the existence of us face-shifters.
I flexed my fingers, then closed my eyes and pictured my own face—from the silver of my hair, the lilac of my eyes, the slight uptilt of my nose and defined cheekbones, to the fullness of my lips. Then I replaced it with more rounded features, thinner lips, and very short black hair. A black so rich it shone blue in the sunlight.
Once that image was frozen 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 the image fiercely against the storm. Power began to pulsate, burn, and change me. My skin rippled as my features altered, and my hair suddenly felt shorter and somehow finer. As the magic faded, my knees buckled, my legs suddenly weak.
Azriel gripped my arm and saved me from falling.
“Damn,” I muttered, leaning against him briefly. “That never seems to get any easier.”
“Given you continue to function barely above exhaustion, it is unlikely to.”
“It’s not like I can do a whole lot about that,” I muttered, and forced my knees to lock. “What I need is for the bad guys to stop creating havoc for a month or so.”
“A situation that is unlikely. I am actually amazed that your father has let the lack of progress on finding the second key slide for as long as he has.”
“He could hardly force me to look when I was all but dead in the hospital. Even he isn’t that callous.”