Darkness Unmasked (Dark Angels 5)

I snorted softly. “Yeah. Except that my father, the Raziq, and probably Lucian all have varying degrees of access to my thoughts. Hard to keep a secret when your mind leaks like a sieve.”

“And there is nothing we can do about that. However, your father is more than capable of creating wards powerful enough to keep the Raziq and possibly the dark sorcerer at bay. Perhaps the time has come to lean on his capabilities a little more.”

I frowned. “Do you really think he’s going to agree to make wards strong enough to keep the Raziq out when it will also keep him out?”

“He can easily add a back door for himself in any magic he creates.”

Given my father was responsible for the wards that currently protected this building, as well as creating the Dušans, that was undoubtedly true. And yet something within me didn’t want to depend on him for anything. I didn’t trust him.

“You don’t have to trust him,” Azriel commented. “You just have to exploit his abilities. Besides, if you wish to keep both the Raziq and the sorcerer from the key, then there isn’t anyone else who has the power required to create such magic.”

I took a deep breath and released it slowly. “Then let’s go talk to the bastard.”

I pushed away from the table and walked back into my bedroom. I’d stashed the communication cube my father had given me in a shoe box at the back of my wardrobe, hoping against hope that I wouldn’t have to use the thing again. I should have known better.

I dug it out, then walked across to the bed and opened the box up. The cube sat within. It was little more than a white stone roughly the size of a tennis ball. Its surface was slick—almost oily—looking, and ran with all the colors of the rainbow.

I picked it up somewhat gingerly. It was warm against my fingertips, the energy within it muted and unthreatening. Yet it had been created using Aedh magic, and it was activated by blood—my blood—and that gave it a certain edge of darkness that made me wary.

Or maybe that wariness simply stemmed from the fact that I didn’t trust the man who’d made it.

And yet he’d also made the Dušan on my arm, and she’d saved my life twice now.

I contemplated the cube for several more seconds, then tossed it on the bed and sat cross-legged in front of it. I glanced up as Azriel appeared. “I don’t suppose you could get me—”

“Done.” He offered me the knife hilt first, then sat opposite me and drew Valdis, placing her across his knees. Blue fire ran the length of her bright blade, a sure sign she was ready for action.

Hopefully, she wouldn’t be needed.

I drew a deep breath, then released it slowly. It didn’t do a lot to calm the nerves. I pressed the point of the knife against a fingertip until a drop of blood appeared, then turned my finger upside down and let the blood drip onto the cube. As it hit, the rainbow swirl of colors stopped, and everything went still.

Then light burst from the stone and quickly encased me in a cylinder of glaring white. Azriel disappeared from sight, and Valdis’s fierce blue flames were little more than a shadowed flicker.

“Father, are you out there?” My voice echoed slightly in the odd silence of the white void.

For several seconds, there was no reply; then his voice—a harsher, more masculine version of mine—said, “I’m here. Why are you using this cube?”

“You gave it to me to communicate. I’m communicating.”

“So you have found the next key?”

“Not yet.”

“Then why are you using this cube?”

Impatience—and perhaps a touch of anger—swirled through the whiteness around me. My stomach tightened. I’d felt my father’s anger once before. I did not want a repeat of the bruises that had ensued.

And yet I couldn’t quite help snapping, “Because if you want the damn keys, then you’re going to have to do a bit more than provide indecipherable clues.”

“I cannot give you what I do not have. The Raziq who hid the keys are dead. I cannot call them back from whatever hell they may have gone to, so I am at a loss as to the point of this request.”

“The request isn’t more information.” Which he’d know if he was reading my mind. The fact that he obviously wasn’t meant either he was some distance away or something else was going on. Aedh could usually read the minds of anyone nearby, and my father had implied he could read mine anytime he desired. “I want to know if you can create a ward or something like that to keep both the Raziq and the black sorcerer who stole the first key out of whatever building I happen to be searching. It would need to be reusable.”

He was silent for a moment, then said, voice cool, “When would you need such an item?”

“As soon as possible. I don’t want to start looking for the key before we have some means of protecting ourselves from outside forces.”

And that outside force included him.