Darkness Hunts(7)

He made the right motions, and a somewhat fuzzy white limousine popped into existence. As Logan happily climbed in, I turned away. Time to return—

The thought was cut short by a scream.

A scream that suggested there was a woman on the astral plane in very big trouble.

I froze, not sure I could—or should—do anything. Then the scream echoed again, and it was so filled with fear and pain that goose bumps crawled across my imaginary skin. I glanced around for my watcher. He was standing about six feet away, his expression unconcerned as he looked in the direction from which the scream had come.

Are you going to do anything about that?

He turned to me, obviously surprised. Why would I? I am here to report your actions—nothing more, nothing less. But there is nothing to stop you from stepping in.

I guess not, I muttered, then closed my eyes and imagined myself standing near the screamer.

There was no obvious sense of movement, but I was suddenly somewhere I didn’t know. The building outlines, though still shadowed, were sharper here, but rubbish lay everywhere, rats ran in full view, and there were vast puddles of putrid-looking water.

Not the sort of place I’d ever want to be—on this plane, or in life.

A woman stood ten feet away. She was reed thin, with limp blond hair and an almost gaunt face. Her clothes were little more than gray rags and seemed to be unraveling of their own accord, exposing jigsaw sections of her torso and legs. She wasn’t trying to pull the threads back together, wasn’t trying to do much of anything other than scream.

But maybe she couldn’t do anything else. The man who stood in front of her had his palm pressed against her forehead and was burrowing ethereal fingers into her skull.

He was also the source of that uneasy sense of trouble I’d felt earlier—only it wasn’t coming from the stranger himself, but rather from the area immediately around him. It was as if the air were so repelled by his presence that it violently recoiled.

And the air wasn’t the only thing repelled. The Dušan crawled around my left arm, its dark eyes spitting fire, as if it wanted nothing more than to be free from the flesh that bound it to attack the man who stood before us.

A man I wasn’t about to face unarmed.

I imagined Amaya in my hands, and she appeared in a blaze of purple fire, her normally shadowed blade so bright on the astral field it was almost impossible to look at her.

Hey, you. I projected my mind voice so hard it shook the very foundations of the buildings around us. Leave that woman alone.

He didn’t unhand her. Didn’t react in any way that I could immediately see. Then, slowly, he turned his head in my direction.

He had no face.

Where there should have been eyes, a nose, and a mouth, there was nothing. It was as if his features had been wiped clean. It was totally and utterly blank.

Impossible, I thought in disbelief. It had to be a trick of some kind. Had to be.

Go away. His voice was little more than a whisper, crawling around me like a dead thing.

I shivered and gripped Amaya harder. Maybe you didn’t hear me the first time. I said, leave that woman alone.

I heard.

Then do as I say or the sword I bear will sever your ethereal head from its body.

I didn’t know if that was possible, especially after Adeline saying you couldn’t actually die on the plane. But my sword was from neither the real world nor the astral one. She was born of a demon’s death, and was far more than mere steel. She had a life of her own, a serious hunger for blood, and she could destroy demons and spirits as easily as she did flesh. Surely it wasn’t such a stretch to think she could also kill someone on the astral plane?

The stranger raised his featureless face, oddly looking like he was sniffing the air even though he had no nose. After a moment, he said, As you wish.

He released the woman and stepped back. She collapsed in a heap at his feet and remained there. Which was odd—why hadn’t she zapped back to her body? In fact, why hadn’t she done that when she was first attacked?

Now leave, I said. Get off the fields.

He didn’t react, didn’t reply. He just stood there, his unseeing face pointed in my direction, as if he were studying me. The unease crawling through me grew stronger, but I ignored it and imagined myself closer to the woman. The charm at my neck burned to life, its white light slashing through the shadows. Whoever—whatever—this man was, Ilianna’s magic didn’t like it.

Did you hear me? I swung Amaya in warning. She reacted fiercely to the vibration pouring away from the stranger, spitting and hissing purple fire that danced across the shadowed buildings around us.

I heard. His voice remained soft and oddly free of emotion. But you should know that what I claim, I keep. You have saved no one here, huntress.