"I'm not sure why she'd bother. I mean, they only led to her place on the Gold Coast, and it wasn't like anyone other than an Aedh could use them."
"The Razan could use them – the one who set the hellhounds on you in that tunnel wore a device on his wrist, remember. And Lauren would not have wasted energy on such devices without being able to use them herself." He pressed a hand against my spine and ushered me forward. "The bodies lie in the bedrooms."
Fabulous not, as my sword would say. I blew out a breath and hoped like hell my stomach would behave itself if their deaths were mucky. As it turned out, they weren't.
We found one body in the first of three bedrooms off the hall. Just as he had been the last time I'd come here, the Razan was sprawled stomach down on the bed. The blankets were twisted around his legs, leaving part of his butt and his back uncovered. He was muscular and thickset – the body of a wrestler rather than a sprinter – and his skin lightly tanned. He had two tattoos on the upper part of his shoulders – one of a dragon with two swords crossed above it and the other a ring of barbed wire. Lucian's mark, and probably my father's.
He looked for all the world like he was asleep, but he wasn't. He wasn't moving, he wasn't breathing. And he was beginning to smell.
My stomach stirred and I stopped. Azriel walked over to the Razan and lightly pressed his fingertips to either side of the man's temples. Energy whisked around me, fierce and bright, but no images rose from the Razan's mind.
"He died when Lucian died," Azriel said grimly. "There is nothing left in his mind to help. The resonance of his memories has faded."
"He probably wouldn't have been able to help us much anyway. Lucian would have ensured his Razan would never betray him."
"Him, yes, but it is questionable whether he would have offered the same sort of protection to Lauren. Or anyone else who might have used the cuneiform stones."
"True." I turned and headed down the hall to check the other bedrooms. One contained the second body and the other was empty. The cuneiform stones that had stood in the third bedroom had disappeared as completely as their kin in the courtyard. "I wonder where the other Razan are?"
"Undoubtedly lying dead somewhere," Azriel said. "And if we're very lucky, perhaps those misbegotten shifters that have attacked us both times we attempted to get the keys have suffered the same fate."
I shot him a glance. "Why would they? It was dark magic that created them, not Aedh."
Amusement briefly touched his lips. "I did say if we were lucky." He held out a hand. "There is nothing more we can do here. Shall we move on to Stane's?"
"I think we should search the place first. Maybe we'll find something helpful."
"I very much doubt it."