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“I am not talking about the reapers.” His cultured tones had become soft, deadly. “I am talking about me.”
The words were barely out of his nonexistent mouth when he hit me. Though he didn’t have a flesh form, and though he’d told me he couldn’t interact with things of this world, his energy wrapped around my body, thrusting me upward, squeezing so tightly it felt like every bone in my body would break. Then he flung me back to the floor, all but smothering me with the fierce, blanketing heat of his presence.
“How the hell did you—”
“You are my blood,” he cut in, his voice a mere whisper that reverberated through my entire being. “It is the reason you can find the keys, and it is the reason I can do to you what I cannot to others.”
Meaning he couldn’t do this to Ilianna and Tao. But even as relief surged, he added, “But do not think your friends are any safer. I have Razan to do my bidding.”
“If you touch them, you’ll get nothing from me.”
Amusement seemed to touch the fierce energy surrounding me. “Do you really think you have the strength and will to resist me? You might hold out for a little while, but in the end you will do what I want.”
Not if I’m dead, I thought. And therein lay the crux of the matter. I didn’t want to die. Not until I’d at least found Mom’s killers.
“You will find those keys for me,” he added.
“Go fuck—”
But I didn’t get the rest of the sentence out, because he flung me violently across the room. I hit the shower doors sideways, tearing them off their hinges, and fell in a tangled heap of shattered glass, twisted metal, and bruised limbs.
“You will get those keys for me,” he said, “or what I do to you today I will have done to your friends tomorrow. Only my Razan will ensure they do not survive the experience.”
Bastard, I wanted to say, but the words stuck somewhere in my throat, caught up in the desperate struggle to breathe.
“The information you need to find the first key is in the Dušan’s book,” he continued as his essence continued to bear down on me. My lungs were beginning to burn and panic surged, making it even harder to breathe. “Only one of my blood can read it, and only from the gray fields while the book lies here. But it must be retrieved from the Raziq first. They have it concealed. And again, only one of my blood will be able to find or see it.”
“Why—” the words came out croaky, barely audible thanks to my lack of air. I licked my lips and tried again. “Why not simply tell me everything you know?”
“Because if I only feed you small pieces of the puzzle, you are still almost useless to the Raziq if they capture you.”
I guess that made sense, even if the rest of it didn’t.
“You still have the locker key,” he continued. “Go there today at one PM, and you will find further instructions.”
“Why not just give them to me now?”
“Because my Razan foolishly set the wards for a brief window, and I am out of time.” The smothering energy evaporated, and suddenly I could breathe again. “And the less I am close to you, the less likely the Raziq are to use you to come after me.”
Yeah, right. There was more to these fucking games of his than just a need to keep his distance.
“And what happens once I get the book?” I asked instead.
He didn’t answer immediately, and his retreating ene
rgy became more distant.
“I must go.”
“Wait!”
But he didn’t. I drew a shaky breath and slowly picked myself up from the shattered remains of the shower doors.
“Are you all right?”
The words emerged from the silence even as the heat of Azriel’s presence washed over me. Reapers, like the Aedh, were creatures of light and shadows, with an energy so fierce their mere presence burned the very air around them. And while they weren’t true flesh-and-blood beings, they could attain that form if they wished.
Which is how I’d come about. My father had spent one night in flesh form with my mother and, in the process, created me—a half-breed mix of werewolf and Aedh who was lucky enough to mostly get the best bits of both and few of the downsides.
