Darkness Falls (DA 7) (11 page)

“Tao might die if you don’t,” Stane replied, grim faced.

“Don’t you think I fucking
know
that?” I took a deep breath and tried to calm the anger and fear running through me. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have responded like that. But the thing is, Hunter’s given me a twenty-four-hour deadline, and if I don’t come through with the key, she’s going to start killing people. People like Ilianna and Tao and you.”

He blinked. “Why would the psycho want me dead?”

“For the same reason she wants the keys to hell—for
control. In your case, control of me. Or rather, my actions.” I took a sip of the coffee, noting somewhat absently that it was indeed the good stuff. “I have a choice, Stane. Save Tao and risk everyone else, or simply try to save everyone the best way I can.”

“Hell of a choice,” he muttered.

“Yeah, tell me about it.” I paused. “I don’t suppose you want to evacuate the immediate area and go hide somewhere, do you?”

“I’m thinking you can probably guess the answer to that.” He patted the desks holding his range of light screens and keyboards with affection. “I’m not leaving my baby, and I can’t exactly pack her up with me. Besides, someone has to be here in case Tao does turn up.”

“What, no mention of a particular upcoming sale of the generous-to-your-bank-account but definitely black market type?”

He grinned. “Well, there might be a couple of sales in the works over the next couple of days that I can’t afford to walk away from, now that you mention it.”

I snorted. Of course there were. “It could be dangerous. I’ve already lost Jak to the bitch. I don’t want to lose anyone else.”

“Then I’ll install a secondary energy shield around all internal walls. Trust me, no one—not even a vampire hell-bent on destruction—will get past it.”

I hoped he was right. I didn’t want to lose Stane any more than I wanted to lose anyone else.

“So,” he said, grabbing his coffee, then swinging around to face me. “Do you want to tell me why you’re here, or do you wish to see my results first?”

I blinked. “On what?” To be honest, we’d asked Stane to do so many searches over the last few weeks that I’d totally lost track of them all.

“You know those index cards you swiped from the dead jeweler’s place?”

I nodded. We’d gone to the jeweler’s after discovering his maker’s mark on the antique silver cuff link we’d found in Lauren Macintyre’s Gold Coast home, hoping he’d be able to tell us whom he’d made it for. As per usual when it came to our sorceress, we’d been a couple of steps too far behind. Not only had she fled her Gold Coast home before we’d arrived there, but she’d also made a visit to the jeweler and slashed his throat from ear to ear. Which meant the index cards, with their list of client names, had become our only chance of possibly tracking down another of Lauren’s alternate identities—an almost impossible task given that she could take on both male
and
female personas.

“Well,” Stane continued, a pleased grin stretching his lips, “I found a connection between the jeweler, the names on the cards, and your mad sorceress.”

I smiled at his enthusiasm. He really
was
going to be lost when all this crap was over with and life got back to normal. “The connection being?”

“Harry Bulter.”

I blinked. For some reason, that name rang a bell. Then the connection hit and I sat up a little straighter. “Harry Bulter—as in, one of the names mentioned in John Nadler’s will?”

John Nadler had been the man behind the consortium that had bought up most of the land all around Stane’s shop. Not that Nadler—or rather, Lauren, because the real Nadler had been long dead by the time the buyout had happened—had wanted the land per se; he’d 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, enabling those with enough power here on Earth to step onto the gray fields. And that’s exactly what Lauren had succeeded in doing, too,
but only with the help of Lucian, a rebel Raziq with destruction plans of his own.

And to think I’d not only bedded that bastard, but trusted him, too. My instincts had been way,
way
off as far as he was concerned.

At least he was dead. At least he couldn’t do any more harm to anyone I cared about. Couldn’t rape or impregnate anyone else, as he had Ilianna, and more than likely the sorceress.

If she
was
pregnant, I thought suddenly, how would that affect her ability to take other forms? While face shifting shouldn’t hurt any child she carried, I had no idea whether attempting a full-body transformation would. I imagined it would be rather hard to disguise a rounded belly, as she wouldn’t be able to manipulate the flesh of the child within her. Even if it was little more than a few weeks old, it would have a soul and a power all its own. She could change
her
flesh, but not her child’s. Nor, I imagined, could she change the physical space that child used.

Maybe we’d better start looking for men who looked pregnant—although given the number of middle-aged men who seemed to have beer bellies these days,
that
might not be such an easy task.

“So Harry Bulter was one of the names on the index cards?” Azriel asked.

“No, of course not. That would be too easy.”

“Yeah, I guess it would,” I agreed, amused. “So how did you find him?”

“By following the connections.” Stane shook his head, something close to admiration in his expression. “I can tell you one thing—the bitch may be as mad as a hatter, but she certainly knows how to cover her tracks.”

A skill no doubt garnered from her association with Lucian, who’d been banished to Earth’s plane for centuries, and who’d had the time to learn not only the art of deception, but also, we suspected, that of dark magic.

“So how did you find her in the end?”

“By tracing back not only every single name, but all the traceable connections each name had.”

He spun around and flicked a finger across one of the light screens. An image appeared on the next screen—a tall, gray-haired gentleman with stern features and a somewhat forbidding nose. “This is Harrison Jantz, a stockbroker who has purchased several items from our dead jeweler. His address on file was Elizabeth Street in Sydney, right opposite Hyde Park.”

“Expensive,” I murmured. “He’s obviously a very
good
stockbroker.”

“
Was
a very good stockbroker,” Stane commented. “He was reported missing yesterday, after not showing up for work several days in a row.”

“Coincidence, or the sorceress simply killing off another of her identities?” Of course, it hardly mattered, given that she sure as hell seemed to have enough of them—but it was damn frustrating to once again be a step behind her. Though
how
she managed to keep track of them, let alone keep them all alive as viable identities, I had no idea.

If she is responsible for this man’s disappearance,
Azriel commented,
then she is well and truly out of hell.

A point I hadn’t even
thought
about.
You’d think just once the fates would give us a break,
I all but grouched.
Just once. Is that too much to ask?

Apparently,
he said, with a mental shrug.
You’ll get used to it.

I bet I won’t.
And they had better get used to me complaining. Azriel might be all stoic and accepting, but I wasn’t about to be. Not if this was the pattern they’d set for the rest of our lives together.

If
they’d planned a “rest of our lives” for us, that was. I very much suspected that was still up in the air, especially given Azriel’s nonanswer earlier.

“I can’t tell you whether it was the real Jantz that was reported missing or the fake,” Stane said. “They did a search of his apartment, but there was no evidence of any sort of foul play. Nor has his body been found—and remember, Nadler’s corpse was found pretty quickly after our mad sorceress decided to shed the identity.”

“Is it common for Jantz to disappear like this?”

“No. According to the people who filed the missing persons report, it was extremely unprecedented for him to go away without at least informing one of them. I think we’d be wise to presume death.”

Totally wise. “So how did uncovering Jantz lead you to Bulter?”

“Ha. That’s where it gets interesting,” Stane said. “The apartment Jantz lived in is owned by a private consortium. As is usual with those sorts of companies, there are a couple executives who are responsible for securing targeted business, real estate, or whatever else the consortium might wish to purchase, and who play a central role in negotiations relating to all elements of the deal. It’s the consortium’s name on all legal documents rather than each investor.”

I nodded. “This is sounding very similar to the consortium Nadler set up.”

“That’s because it basically is. We couldn’t find anything about
that
consortium because the paper trail led to a company that was listed offshore, and it’s damn near impossible to trace the details of who might be involved with offshore businesses.”

“But you’ve had a breakthrough,” I said, smiling.

“But I’ve had a breakthrough,” he echoed. “A mob called the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists has spent years sifting through millions of leaked documents and recently released an updated report on those involved with offshore accounts, trusts, etcetera. And one of the names in that report just happened
to be Harry Bulter. And this,” he added, swinging around to grab a piece of paper from his desk, “is his address in Sydney.”

I glanced at the address and frowned. “He lives in the same building as Jantz?”

“No only the same building, but the same
apartment
. But, according to those who filed the missing persons report, Jantz lived alone and rarely had visitors.”

“Meaning Jantz was either in cahoots with Lauren, or she was simply using his name and face when it suited her.” I hesitated, my frown deepening. “Did Jantz have any special delivery instructions on his index card?”

“None—though some of the others have ‘pickup only’ noted on them, so that would suggest Jantz’s items were posted.”

“Then we definitely had better go investigate the apartment.” Jantz might be missing and presumed dead, but there could be a faint hope that he—or even Lauren, if he was involved with her in some way—had left something behind that would clue us in as to where Lauren might be.

It is a very faint hope,
Azriel commented.
Our sorceress has shown no inclination so far to leave things to chance.

Granted, but it’s not like we’ve got many other choices right now.
And until we’d cut down the huge number of possibilities when it came to the placement of the final key, there wasn’t much we could do there, either. No matter how much Hunter might threaten or wish otherwise.

“So,” Stane said, “my news has been dealt with. What’s the next delicious puzzle you want me to solve?”

“I’m afraid it’s a rather tedious one.”

“Which is precisely what computers are designed for. Give.”

I hesitated, my gaze sweeping the room. “You
have
checked for bugs recently, haven’t you?”

He snorted. “Daily, my dear. And I have several of the latest noise screens up and running, just in case the Directorate or some other government department decides to get long-distance nosy about my activities.”

“Good.” Because I wouldn’t put it past Hunter to have this place wired for sound. Of course, I guess she really didn’t
need
to, given that she still had at least two Cazadors following me about astrally, and at least one of those was still reporting back truthfully. I supposed I just had to hope it was Markel on duty right now, not the other one. I took a deep breath in an effort to calm the tension running through me, then added, “According to the bastard who was my father, the third key lies in the southeast, on a palace whose coat of arms lies the wrong way around.”

Stane blinked. “Well, that’s not exactly an expansive clue, is it?”

“No. I’ve done a search and come up with thousands of possibilities. I need you to pin it down—and, if possible, within the next six hours.”

He clasped his hands, then stretched them out in front of his body, cracked his knuckles. “Well, we’d better get down to it, then, hadn’t we? You waiting around, or checking out Jantz’s address?”

“The latter.”

“Then come back in six hours if I haven’t contacted you sooner.”

“Will do.” I gulped down the remainder of my coffee, put the cup in the sink—which was already half-filled with unwashed dishes—then walked back over and dropped a kiss on Stane’s cheek. “Thank you.”

His grin was decidedly impudent. “You
do
know that another crate of bubbles would be far more appreciated than a kiss—as lovely as a kiss is, obviously.”

“Consider it done.” I got out my phone and ordered him two. Who knew when I’d get the chance otherwise.

“Thank you, my dear. My liver appreciates it.”

“So does your wallet, no doubt,” I said, voice dry, “especially considering you’re undoubtedly making a nice profit on them.”

“On some of them, definitely. But me and the liver have acquired quite a taste for bubbles.”

I stepped toward Azriel, then hesitated and glanced back at Stane. “Get the rest of those screens up. Now.”

His smile faded. “On it, boss. You take care yourself.”

“We will.”

With that, Azriel wrapped his arms around my waist, tugged me closer, then whisked us out of there. We reappeared in the middle of a park. A pretty park, but still a park rather than the expected apartment. I blinked and looked around, then caught sight of the golden turret atop the Sydney Tower and realized what had happened. Azriel couldn’t actually take us to anyplace neither of us had been. We were here rather than Jantz’s apartment simply because I’d been through Hyde Park, and this was the closest we could get to the Elizabeth Street building.