Darkness Unmasked

“Hard choice,” I murmured, pressing myself against the warm, hard planes of his body. “But I’ve never really had the chance to test that expression out.”



“Then perhaps we should.”



“What, here?” I raised an eyebrow and glanced around the Visitors Center. “I might have werewolf blood in me, but I’m not that much of an exhibitionist.”



He smiled and touched my cheek gently. “I meant in your bed.”



“Perfect—”



His energy swept around me even before I could finish my sentence.



And I have to say, that old saying was right. Makeup sex was the best kind.



Needless to say, we did not arrive at Hallowed Ground on time. In fact, we were a good twenty minutes late. The club was situated on the corner of Wellington Parade and Simpson Street, not far away from what most Melbournians considered hallowed ground—the Melbourne Cricket Ground. The club was situated in a rather unusual two-story, redbrick building that had an old-fashioned concrete turret on one corner and small sash windows at regularly spaced intervals. The entrance was nondescript, and it would have been easy to pass by and think it was nothing more than an apartment entrance. Certainly, the small, discreet sign above the door did little to give it away.



Azriel opened the white-painted wood and glass door and ushered me inside. Darkness greeted me, and it took a moment for my eyes to adjust. The room was midsized, with a bar to the right and a stage at the back of the room. A thin woman with an oddly ragged red streak running through the middle of her dark hair was spotlighted on the stage. She was playing some sort of lute, and the music was strange and yet somehow evocative. There were more than a dozen people sitting at the various tables scattered throughout the room, and most of them had their eyes closed, listening with something close to rapture in their expressions.



I walked across to one of the tables sitting in the deeper shadows of the room and pulled out the chair. “Is she a dark spirit?”



Azriel hesitated, studying her as he sat down next to me. “It is difficult to tell. She has some sort of shield around her.”



I frowned. “Meaning you can’t break past it?”



“I could, but then she would sense that I am here. Spirits may not be the normal prey of dark angels, but they generally will not take a chance and remain in our presence if they sense us.”



I studied her for a moment, noting her long, thin fingers and sharply pointed fingernails. Handy for plucking lute strings . . . or slicing stomach flesh, I thought, and shivered.



“Why would she have a shield up if she wasn’t up to no good?”



“She is sitting in a room filled with vampires, many of whom are not above using their telepathic powers to seduce or influence the thoughts of others. It is natural she would have some means to protect herself from such events.”



That did make sense. I continued to frown at the woman on the stage. There was something about her that made my nerves crawl, but maybe that was nothing more than my desire for this hunt to be easy.



“She’ll have to take a break soon. We can interview her when she does.” I leaned back in my chair and glanced at Azriel. He was little more than shadow in this darkness, but his eyes shone brightly—almost as brightly as his sword. “Why is Valdis reacting? Amaya’s not.”



Can, she said.



No. The last thing I wanted was her hissing like a banshee in my brain.



Banshee not. Her tone was a trifle huffy. Maybe she’d been taking lessons from Azriel.



“I had good reason for the huffiness,” he replied evenly. “And I thought we’d moved past that.”



My eyebrows rose. “You heard her?”



He nodded. “Through you. And a banshee is a spirit; she’s a demon.”



Better, Amaya grouched.



I snorted. “Tell me, do all demon swords have such attitude?”



He smiled. “The attitude of the sword very much depends on the attitude of the owner.”



“So you’re saying I’m a sweet-tempered, silver-tongued woman?”



He caught my hand in his, drew it to his lips, and kissed it. “Would I dare say anything else?”



“Usually, yes.”



“Then maybe I am merely in an exceptionally good mood.”



“Good sweaty sex will do that to you every time,” I replied, voice wry.



His smile grew, touching the corners of his eyes and making my heart do several little happy skips. “Then perhaps I should get in a snit more often.”



I laughed. The sound seemed to echo softly through the darkness, and the woman on the stage turned to look at us. Though she didn’t move, there was an almost imperceptible tightening in her shoulder and arm muscles.



“She knows what I am.” Azriel squeezed my hand, then released me. “Get ready to move. I believe she’s about to finish her set.”



The woman on the stage finished the song she was playing, then rose and bowed to the audience. They didn’t immediately respond, but as the spotlight died and she walked from the stage, it was as if a spell had been released and they all began to clap—some conservatively, some not.



I rose and wove my way through the tables, planning to cut the woman off before she could slip backstage. She was moving deceptively fast, however, and slipped through the curtains and disappeared from sight. I swore softly and ran forward, flipping the curtains aside and following the sound of her retreating steps down a dark corridor. Somewhere up ahead, a door opened and closed. I slowed.



Valdis’s blue fire flickered across the walls, highlighting the peeling paint and dusty cobwebs. I shivered, not wanting to think about webs when I was chasing a woman whose alternate form could well be the world’s biggest spider.



“I cannot sense her presence in the room ahead,” Azriel said.



“Does that mean she’s escaped us? Or is it simply a matter of the shield continuing to block you?”



“It could be either.”



Meaning the only way we were going to find out was to enter that damn room. I flexed my fingers and opened the door. Nothing immediately jumped out at me, but the room was pitch-black and my reluctance to enter grew.



I reached to the left and brushed my hand down the wall, looking for the light switch. Something skittered across my fingertips, and I yelped and jumped backward—straight into Azriel. He grabbed my arms and steadied me.



“It was only a small spider,” he said.



I snorted. “I don’t care if it’s big or small; they’re all spiders and they all deserve to die.”



“Spiders are generally harmless creatures.”



He reached past me. A second later, I heard the light switch being flicked up and down. No light came on, so the bulb was obviously blown.



“Can I remind you that this is Australia? We have some of the deadliest spiders known to man.”



“That does not alter the fact that the one that touched you didn’t actually harm you.”



“That isn’t the point.” I stared at the darkness a moment longer, then drew Amaya and took a wary step. Lilac flame flared down her sides, providing enough light to view the immediate area. The room was small and furnished sparsely. There was a dressing table with an office chair in front of it, as well as a small sofa and a minibar fridge. I stepped farther inside and swung Amaya around. There was nothing and no one else in the room. Our musician had fled.



“Well, I guess that points to her—” Something dropped onto the back of my neck, and I swiped at it irritably. “What the hell?”



Something else dropped, but this time it raced under the collar of my shirt and down my spine. I yelped and flung myself backward at the wall, hoping to squash the hell out of whatever it was.



“Risa, I think we’d better get you out of here.”



I gulped, my heart in my mouth and fear twisting my stomach. “Why?”



But I knew why even as I asked the question. There were more than just a couple of spiders in this room. I raised Amaya and looked up.



The entire ceiling was alive and moving.



Chapter 7



I opened my mouth to scream, but before I could, the whole damn lot dropped down, covering both the floor and me in a mass of tiny black bodies.



Horror filled me, and for a moment I couldn’t move, frozen to the spot and praying like hell that this was nothing more than a nightmare. Then thousands of tiny fangs began to dig into my flesh, and I screamed and jumped and swung Amaya around wildly, swatting at the creatures I could barely even see.



Azriel pulled me into his arms, then swept us away. We reappeared in my bathroom, but it wasn’t enough. I could still feel the fangs. I raced under the shower, throwing off my clothes and stomping on the black bodies that fell like rain around me. Despite the heat of the water, I was shivering like crazy, and my skin crawled with the sensation of movement.



“Are there any left?” I asked, spinning around almost wildly, trying to spot the creepy little bastards.



“No.” Azriel caught my arm and made me stop. “They’re gone. It’s okay.”



I shuddered. “It still feels like they’re on me.”



“No.” He hesitated. “But we should go back—”



“There is no way in hell I’m going back into that room.”



“If you’d let me finish a sentence occasionally,” he said, voice a mix of amusement and annoyance, “I was going to suggest you talk to the manager while I investigate the room to see if the woman left anything behind in her haste to escape.”



“Oh.” I gulped down some air in an attempt to calm my still-racing pulse. “That I can do. Just wait until I get dressed.”



He handed me a towel. “I was not intending otherwise.”



I raised my eyebrows. “If I didn’t know you better, reaper, I’d suggest there was an almost propitiatory note in your voice when you said that.”



“Then you would be wrong.”



“Really?”



“Yes.”



“So if I started shagging Lucian again, you wouldn’t care?”