Darkness Splintered

“Risa,” he said, cutting me off with a fierceness that surprised me. “There is no need for you to place yourself in danger. Not in this case. For once let me do what I was sent here to do without argument.”

Let me take care of you. Please. He didn’t say the words out loud, but they echoed through me nonetheless. I met his gaze, saw the annoyance and the caring there, and reached out, cupping his cheek lightly as I leaned forward and kissed him. “Just this once,” I murmured.

“Thank you.” His voice was dry but amusement tugged at his warm lips. “So generous of you.”

And with that, he jumped into the hole, Valdis aflame and spitting in fury. I watched, heart in my mouth, as the hellhounds attacked and he briefly disappeared under the force of their onslaught. He emerged seconds later, Valdis a blur as he hacked right and left, dispatching the hounds with quick efficiency. When the last of them was dead, he looked up, his blue eyes glowing as fiercely as the sword in his hand.

“Now you may come down.”

I sheathed Amaya, then gripped the edges of the hole and carefully lowered myself into the darkness. It seemed an awful long way down to the bottom, even at full arm’s length.

“I’ll catch you.” He sheathed his sword, though her brightness still provided enough light to see by.

“You’d better, or I’ll be pissed.”

“Which scares me not. It’s not like I haven’t been subjected to your ire before.”

I snorted softly, then released my grip on the edge and plummeted down. Two heartbeats later Azriel caught me, as promised.

“You,” he said, voice severe as he stood me upright, “have lost far too much weight since this quest began.”

And the opposite should be happening given I was now pregnant. “Yeah, well, tell that to the bad guys who are either interrupting my meals or making me lose my lunch.” I swung around. “Is there anything here besides a black hole and hellhound bits?”

“There are no cuneiform stones, if that is what you are looking for.”

Meaning our sorcerer and sorceress weren’t using it as a jumping off point to get to their ley-line intersection chamber. I swore softly. “Is there anything else here?”

“Nothing living.”

Flames flared down Valdis’s sides again, lifting the shadows and lending the rough-hewn walls a blue glow. The cavern was on the small side, though there were two tunnels leading off it. A few small tables had been hacked out of the soil and stone, but there was little on them other than clean spots in the grime – indications that things had sat there not so long ago.

I drew Amaya and marched toward the first of the two tunnels. It was small and narrow, and cut so roughly that the sharp edges tore at my dress and skin. Thankfully, it wasn’t all that long, and I soon found myself standing in another chamber. This also held empty shelves and tables hewn out of the earth, but there was one major difference here. A very elaborate protection circle had been etched into the stone floor, and the melted remains of black candles sat on each of the four cardinal points.

The twin scents of frankincense and cedar still lingered in the air, which was odd. I knew from Ilianna that frankincense was used as protection against evil, and I had no doubt that Lauren used this circle to summon evil. But maybe she used it for personal protection – it wouldn’t be surprising given what she was summoning. It was what ran under those scents, however – a sharper, almost caustic aroma – that made my skin crawl.

“That is the scent of hell,” Azriel said grimly. “This is certainly where she summoned her demons.”

“Then we’d better destroy it.”

“It will not be the only place from which she could summon.”

“No, but one less place has got to be a good thing for us, right?”

Not waiting for his answer, I stepped forward, swung Amaya, and slashed her across the nearest part of the circle. The sharp point of her steel scored the stone, cutting the etched lines in two, thereby destroying whatever magic lingered within the circle. To use it again she’d have to redo the entire thing, and that would take time in stone this hard. I smiled grimly. It wasn’t much but, if nothing else, it would annoy the bitch.

“Now all we have to do is find whatever other circles she is using.” Azriel touched my back, his fingers warm against my spine. “Shall we inspect the other tunnel?”

“Might as well since we’re here.”

I squeezed back through the rough-hewn tunnel, gaining yet more scratches – though, thankfully, none were deep enough to bleed. The second tunnel was wide enough to walk normally down, and led into a chamber as large as the main one. I scanned the floor, but there was little more than dirt here. But there were more tables and shelves hacked out of the stone and earth, and this time, not all of them were empty. I walked across to a row of six shelves, inspecting the items stacked neatly along them, but not touching. I didn’t know enough about the accoutrements of a witch to do so; what I did know was the fact they could be damn dangerous if you didn’t know what you were doing.

There were old jars of varying sizes, and they seemed to hold little more than herbs, though there were a few that had dried up bits of animals and one that held what looked suspiciously like strands of hair. Hair that was the color of silver.

My hair, I very much suspected.

Maybe this is where Lucian had brewed the geas he’d placed on me that had made me unable to resist him sexually. Meaning, this place might not be Lauren’s bolt-hole, but rather Lucian’s.

“It’s possible they both use it,” Azriel commented. He stood on the opposite side of the cavern, inspecting several bags. “Lucian was certainly on Earth long enough to have become proficient in magic.”

“Why would he need the help of dark sorcerers, if that is the case?” I peered closer at the jar containing the hair to see if there was any sort of visible trap or alarm, then cautiously lifted it. There was no way in hell I was leaving this stuff here for the sorceress to use and abuse. The last thing I needed was another spell or geas placed on me.

I unscrewed the lid, inserted Amaya’s tip, and watched as she crisped the silken strands until nothing – not even ash – remained. That done, I placed the jar back on the shelf and walked across to a table that held a mix of candles, bells, a chalice, and several incense sticks. There was absolutely nothing that even remotely resembled any of the weapons that had been stolen from the Military Fair.

Frustrated, I walked over to Azriel, my shoulder brushing his as I stopped beside him. “Anything interesting?”

“In the first one, no. This one, however —” He upended the sack, and half a dozen old weapons tumbled out. There were daggers, short swords, several old-fashioned guns, and even a polished silver bayonet. I had no doubt they were part of the haul the dark sorcerer had taken from the Military Fair, because there was little other reason for these types of weapons to be here.

I raised a hand and skimmed it across them. There was no response from the Dusan on my arm, and I couldn’t feel any sort of pull toward them.

“You know,” I muttered, thrusting my hands on my hips as I glared at the weapons, “I’m getting pissed not only about having hell’s minions constantly thrown at us, but also continually being runner-up when it comes to these damn keys.”

Azriel tossed the sack back onto the table and swung around, his gaze searching the rest of the cavern. “We might not have found the key, but finding some of the stolen items in this cavern confirms that the dark sorcerer – if indeed there are two sorcerers involved, and not just a hermaphrodite shifter – is in fact working with Lauren. Up until this point, it was little more than conjecture.”

“Forgive me if I don’t get overly joyous about that bit of news.” I turned and leaned my butt against the stone table. “With the sort of luck we’ve been having, I fully expect the Raziq to make an encore appearance sometime in the near future.”

“It would not matter if they did.”

I blinked and stared at him for several heartbeats, wondering if I’d heard him right. “What?”

He glanced at me, eyes once again gleaming brighter than his sword. But this time its source was not the