Darkness Devours

I grabbed one of the spare chairs near the computer and plunked down rather inelegantly. Stane came out of the kitchen area in the living room and handed me some painkillers and an open can of Coke.



“Thanks.” I quickly downed both the pills and several large mouthfuls of fizzy soda, then swallowed a burp and added, “How long will the transfer take?”



He shrugged. “A couple of minutes. What are we looking for?”



“These disks came from the man who photographed Nadler’s wedding. We’re hoping that if we have a youngish picture of Mr. Elusive, we might be able to figure out what he should look like these days.”



“Clever thinking.” Stane pressed several buttons on the left console screen. On the right, thumbnail images flashed up. “And there’s no maybe about it. I have a program that can age any facial image fed into it.”



“Excellent.” I wheeled the chair closer and indicated the thumbnails on the screen. “They from the first disk?”



“First and second,” Stane confirmed. “How are we going to know which one is Nadler?”



“I was talking to his wife yesterday. It should be easy enough to pick her out.” I leaned forward a little, scanning the images that were loaded onto the screen. “None of these is her.”



He grunted and scrolled the screen over to the next page. “These are the third and fourth disks.”



The first lot of images was a continuation of the previous ones, but a buxom blonde began appearing in the latter half. “That’s Jacinta Nadler,” I said, pointing.



“And a rather well-endowed lass she is,” Stane said as he enlarged one of the pics. “Let me guess—she’s a stripper or works as a topless waitress in a strip club.”



“Not every woman who has large tits works in a strip club,” I said dryly.



“Oh, I know, but she has the look.”



“There’s a look?”



He nodded. “It’s mainly reserved for those who have been in the business for a while—there’s a world-weariness evident in their eyes.” He indicated her picture. “She’s young here, but she’s got it, which suggests she’d been working at the game for quite a few years before she married Nadler.”



I remembered the impression I’d had that Jacinta Nadler had never been the innocent she made out to be—even at eighteen. “So how do you know so much about strippers and their game?”



He grinned. “Hacking into strip club security cams is an entertaining way to keep the skills up, not to mention have a bit of fun.”



I snorted softly. “Why would a well-to-do businessman risk his reputation by marrying a stripper?”



Stane laughed. “Are you kidding? Look at her. I’m betting Nadler was in his forties when the two of them were hitched. She’s blond and big-breasted—the classic type of woman men like him seem to go for when their midlife crisis happens.”



“Yeah, but they don’t often marry them.” And I’d never thought to ask her how she’d met Nadler, which was stupid because it might have given us another means to find him. I frowned. “Don’t suppose you could do a search on her, and see if you can pull up a bit of history?”



“Tax file records are probably our best bet if we want to know where she worked.”



That had me raising my eyebrows. “You can get into the tax office records?”



He gave me the sort of look a teacher might bestow on a bright but inattentive student. “If I can get into the Directorate records, why would you think I couldn’t get anywhere else? Trust me, the Directorate has the latest and greatest anti-hacking features.”



“But it hasn’t stopped you from accessing their system.”



“Well, no. But it does take me longer these days.” He wheeled across to the other screen and typed for several minutes.



I leaned forward and hit another of the images loading onto the screen. And there, standing beside a glowing Jacinta, was the man who had to be John Nadler.



He wasn’t what I’d expected. He was tall, with thick black hair, an arrogant sort of nose, and lips that were little more than pale slashes in his thin face. His eyes were a cold, hard gray, and his body slender but wiry. He looked mean, I thought, and I wondered what the hell Jacinta had seen in him. Or was he merely a way out of a life she’d hated—a life she’d been forced to return to after he’d all but destroyed her?



“Okay,” Stane said, wheeling back to my side of his bridge. “Search under way. It shouldn’t take that long.”



I indicated the picture on the screen. “Meet Mr. Elusive himself.”



“If his eyes are any indication, he’s not the sort of man you’d want to run into on a dark night.”



“You don’t need to see his eyes to guess that,” I murmured. “Anyone who’d set a soul stealer onto a little girl is someone with very little in the way of compassion or humanity.”



He grunted, flashed the photo onto another screen, then opened it in an app and began to work on it. Within a couple of minutes, we had several different photos of just what Nadler might look like now.



“That one,” Azriel said, pointing at the third image on the screen, “is the Nadler Logan saw. Only he had a small scar near his left temple.”



The image he pointed to was basically a more lined, silver-haired version of the younger Nadler. “Jacinta didn’t mention a temple scar, so Nadler must have acquired that after he’d divorced her.”



Stane glanced at us. “I gather the Logan you’re talking about is Nadler’s lawyer?”



I nodded. “He was murdered last night.”



“Shit.” Stane scraped a hand across his jaw. “This fucker means business.”



“We already knew that.”



“Yeah, but to kill off someone so closely involved in his current business dealings could make a bit of a mess of said dealings.”



“Not necessarily. Logan’s practice wasn’t a solo one, was it?”



“Well, no—”



“So I’m betting one of the other partners knows enough to take over the reins. Our fake Nadler wouldn’t risk jeopardizing his plans by having no one else up-to-date on the lay of the land, so to speak.”



“I guess.” He studied the image for a moment, then pointed to the scar on Nadler’s forehead. “That looks fairly serious. Might be worth checking to see how it was acquired.”



I frowned. “If he is a face-shifter, it wouldn’t matter. He can simply make it disappear when he reverts to his regular self.”



“Yeah, but there’re certain wounds that are impossible for any shifter to heal. Those made with silver, for instance, will always leave a scar, and sometimes the wound can be so deep that scarring is inevitable.” He looked at me. “You should know that, given how many scars your Aunt Riley has.”



Good point. “Can you do a disk print of those for me? And send a copy of the younger and older Nadler to my phone? I’ll need to give the disks to Uncle Rhoan, but I want some images to work with myself.” And at least if I gave him the disk, he wouldn’t be as shitty with me when he realized I’d already copied them. And he would—the tattered state of my clothes would be enough of a giveaway to someone who knew what I was.



Stane nodded, clicked a button, then flicked the pictures into another program on the other side of the desk. “I’ll run a search on all the photos and see if I can find a match on any system.”



“He has to exist somewhere.” He couldn’t disappear off everyone’s radar once he’d left the office—not if he wanted to maintain credibility as Nadler. And he could hardly kill off every single person who currently knew him. That would only make it easier for the Directorate to connect the dots.



Stane rose and walked across to the printer sitting on the coffee table—although just why it was there rather than closer to his bridge was anyone’s guess. He came back with a disk. “All possibilities are recorded on this.”



“Thanks.” I shoved the minute disk into my jeans pocket—there was just enough fabric left to hold it in place. I finished my drink, then pushed to my feet. “We’d better get back.”



He gathered Blake’s disks and handed them to me. “I’ll let you know if we get any hits.”



I leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek. “Thanks, Stane.”



He grinned. “My pleasure. As I keep saying, the black market is positively boring after you lot.”



“Well, I’d rather have your boring life than my exciting one at the moment.”



“Everyone always thinks the other person has it better,” was his somewhat philosophical comment. “It’s the way of humanity.”



It might be the way of humanity, but in this case, he was very wrong. I glanced at Azriel. “I’m ready to go.”



He wrapped his arms around me, nodded a good-bye to Stane, and then his energy surged, flooding through me, sweeter and sharper than before. As were the gray fields in the few brief moments between leaving Stane’s and reappearing in Blake’s shed.



“Whoa.” I grabbed Azriel’s arm tightly as the shed reeled around me. I waited until everything settled, then added, “Why did the fields appear so much clearer this time?”



He half shrugged. “Perhaps you’re merely getting used to traveling with me, and therefore are more able to understand what you see.”



Which was totally logical, yet not the real answer—but why I was so certain about this I couldn’t say.



“I usually see delicate-looking structures, but this time they just seemed more solid.” I hesitated. “And there were beings—or at least, wisps of them. Sort of like souls.”



“They could have been souls under escort.” He shrugged again and walked over to Jak. “We’ve lost our watcher, by the way.”



I glanced around—a pointless action when I’d never been able to see our Cazador follower in astral form. “Really?”