Blood Challenge

ELEVEN

BACK when she was a homicide cop, Lily had slept in her own bed every night—or as close to it as made no difference, given her stunted social life at the time. As a special agent in the Unit, she slept in lots of beds. The one at the Doubletree was better than most—plenty big, and the mattress didn’t resemble a rock. The room itself was pleasant enough, with honey beige walls and a comfy armchair. But there wasn’t much space for pacing.

Lily did her best. She reached the window, turned, and headed back along the aisle between the bed and the armoire that held the TV. The demon’s-eye-red numerals on the clock watched her from the bedside table.

Ten-oh-seven.

Rule had stalked out of the hospital around seven twenty. She hadn’t seen him since. Or heard from him. She knew roughly where he was—about ten miles southwest of the hotel. He was alive. That was all she knew. She’d tried calling. No answer.

She expected this sort of thing from Cullen. If he got too angry, he took off until he could cool down. That had been necessity for a lone wolf; it was habit now, she supposed. Rule was not a lone wolf. He’d never done this before, taking off without a word. Was he that angry at losing the chance to kill Cobb? Was something else going on?

Lily was pretty sure she could check the “something else” box. But what?

Eight steps to the door. Turn. Head back.

She’d eaten. She couldn’t remember what, but she’d eaten something, assuring herself that Rule wasn’t an idiot. No matter how upset he was, he’d have made sure his wolf was fed.

He was not himself, though, was he? He’d been cooped up too much today—first in an airplane, then in that tiny room at the hospital. That had to part of this. Whatever the hell “this” was. It involved him needing to run. She knew that much because he’d told his guards.

Not her. He hadn’t called her.

Lily stopped just short of the curtain, turned, and paced back toward the door.

When Sjorensen dropped her off at the hotel, Lily had thought Rule might already be in their room. Instead she’d opened the door on LeBron. Jeff had not been in the adjoining room, as she’d immediately assumed. LeBron explained that he’d gone running with Rule.

A quick flash of anger had stiffened her. It hadn’t lasted, but she was glad she’d been angry at first. Better for LeBron to see her angry than worried. There was a lot Lily didn’t understand about lupi dynamics, but she knew it was best if LeBron wasn’t frightened for his Rho.

She’d asked LeBron to guard her from the adjoining room and she’d ordered dinner and she’d Googled Warner Park, because that’s where Rule had gone to run, according to LeBron. It was in an area that ought to have cell service. She’d tried calling again.

Nothing. While waiting for room service, she’d very sensibly started writing her report. The Cobb case might not be hers anymore, but the paperwork was. Dinner arrived and she ate, then called Ida to check on Rubin. Ida said the secretive healer had arrived at the hospital. No word yet on whether he’d be able to help.

That’s when she made the mistake of turning on the news. First she watched a pasty-faced guy ranting about how America was being destroyed by nonhumans who wanted to eat people. His pale eyes brimmed with tears at the idea. That hadn’t done much for her digestion. She’d switched to a channel where another talking head was interviewing Friar.

That’s when she started pacing.

For the first time in nearly a year, Lily felt the loneliness of a hotel room. The emptiness. And if—

Her phone beeped, signaling a text message. She stopped, scowling at the phone sitting beside the demon-eyed clock, and hated the way hope made her heart lift. And hurried to check the message.

Gone running, the little bubble read. Wolf needs it. Back late. Eat without me. The last sentence pricked her into looking above it at the date/time stamp: SEP 23 7:44 P.M.

She sagged onto the bed. He’d sent the text hours ago, just after he left the hospital. For whatever reason, it had taken its sweet time arriving. Could be a problem with AT&T; could be the kind of glitch common to cell service in areas that lacked a resident dragon to soak up excess magic. Either way, it could explain why she hadn’t been able to reach him.

Lily looked at the phone in her hand. She knew what she needed to do. She didn’t want to. Some weird twist of pride and guilt made it hard to admit she had no idea what had really happened this afternoon. Just how big a deal was it for a Rho to refuse a “kill me” request from one of his clan?

When you don’t have enough information, you go looking for it. She knew who to ask.

“It’s about time you called,” Cullen Seabourne snapped.

Lily looked at her phone, bewildered. “What?”

“About Ruben. That is why you called, isn’t it?”

More guilt. Cullen had gotten to know Ruben fairly well when he, Cynna, and Ruben had been transported to Edge. “It probably should be, but it isn’t. I didn’t realize you’d heard.”

“It’s on the damn news. ‘Ruben Brooks, head of the secretive Unit Twelve of the FBI, was taken to Walter Reed today—’ and blah, blah, blah. Nothing about what happened or how he’s doing, and when I called, no one would talk to me.”

Briefly she told him about the heart attack and Nettie’s intervention. “This healer is at the hospital now,” she finished, “but I don’t have any word on whether he’s been able to help.”

“If Nettie says he’s good, he’s good.” The snap had left Cullen’s voice, replaced by curiosity. “Why did you call?”

“I need advice.”

“You know my rates.”

Cullen had recently increased his consultation fee. As a soon-to-be-dad, he’d decided he needed more income. As the only known sorcerer in the country, he could get away with charging sky-high fees. Fortunately, he was married to an FBI agent, who’d insisted he keep his fees reasonable when he worked for the Bureau.

“This is personal, not professional.”

Dead silence, followed by a wicked chuckle. “Well, my personal best is nine times, but that was a special situation, and I’d just as soon you didn’t mention it to Cynna. She wasn’t one of the participants, and I hate to set up expectations I might not be able to—”

“Okay, okay, you’ve made your obligatory sexual comment.” But Lily smiled as she said it. It was perverse, but the sheer predictability of Cullen’s response unwound some of the tightness. She rolled her shoulders, trying to dispel more of it. “I don’t know if it’s really advice I need, or just information. It has to do with clan expectations and a Rho’s obligations.”

“I’m not sure I’m the one to talk to.” Cullen was uncharacteristically cautious. “You might do better to ask Isen.”

“I think Rule wouldn’t be happy if I did that. It’s, ah, I guess it’s Leidolf business, so maybe I shouldn’t talk to the Nokolai Rho about it.”

“Maybe not.” Cullen paused. “I’m Nokolai.”

“So am I. This isn’t a deep, dark clan secret. I just think Rule would rather I asked you than pretty much anyone else, but I need your promise not to repeat what I tell you.”

“Too general. I can promise I won’t speak of it to anyone unless my Rho asks me directly, or I consider the need to reveal it both pressing and urgent. If it’s pressing but not urgent, I’ll let you know before I speak.”

Lily grimaced. She’d forgotten how meticulous lupi were with promises … which meant there was a difference between “I can promise” and “I do promise.” “That should work. So do you promise?”

He chuckled low in his throat. “You’ve a devious mind, don’t you?”

“I’ve been around Sam more lately.”

“That would do it. Yes. I promise, as stipulated. There’s a reason you can’t talk to Rule about this?”

“He isn’t here. That’s the problem, or maybe it’s a symptom of the problem, and I need your help to understand the real problem.”

“Since you aren’t making sense, I’d better hear the rest of it.”

She told him. Pretending she was making a report helped; she gave him the conversation with Cobb as close to verbatim as possible. She’d gotten to the part when Rule abruptly stood up when Cullen let out a low whistle. “Rule turned down Cobb’s request?”

Her heart sank. “Not exactly. He said he wasn’t refusing, but he had to delay granting the request. This is a big deal, then?”

“Lily.” Her name sounded heavy, weighted with frustration and something else. Worry, maybe. “Given any choice at all, we do not surrender clan to imprisonment.”

“No, mostly you just kill the perp yourselves, if you’re sure he’s guilty.” That bugged the hell out of her. “The last time a lupus was clearly guilty of killing a human—I’m not counting that self-defense case in Louisiana—his clan delivered his body to the courthouse.” Her voice soured. “He was in wolf form, so killing him was legal.”

“You don’t understand. If the human world requires that one of us be punished for a real or imagined crime, the Rho may choose to requite the offense with the death of the transgressor. But it’s more likely that the transgressor will ask that of his Rho—a quick death rather than the long insanity of living in a cage. The Rho always grants that request. Always.”

“It’s a big fucking deal, then.”

“Yeah. It is.”

“But Rule delayed granting Cobb’s request. He didn’t refuse outright.”

He was silent a moment. “I don’t know what that means. If he believed Cobb didn’t deserve an honorable death, he’d grant the request but have someone else handle the kill. He wouldn’t delay granting the request, though. That’s not what we do. The whole situation is peculiar, though. Rhos don’t visit a jailed clansman—mostly because until recently they haven’t been public about who they are. That’s changing, but …” His voice trailed off.

Lily could almost hear Cullen scowling in the silence that followed. She remembered how grateful, how glad, Cobb had been to see Rule. He hadn’t expected his Rho to come to him. He hadn’t thought he’d have the chance to ask for the one mercy his Rho was obligated to grant. “Does the clansman have to make his request in person? He can’t pass it along through someone else?”

“Normally he does, but the granting of the request … this gets complicated. Like I said, the request is always granted, but the Rho may not carry it out himself. If he does, it’s an honorable death. If he has someone else handle the kill, it’s a dishonorable death. Sometimes, though, a Rho can’t grant final mercy personally. Maybe he’d have to travel to do so, and that isn’t safe. Or maybe he’s wounded, or the clansman is already in jail. There are plenty of reasons he might have to delegate the act. There’s a ritual, a way he can pass that duty to another of the clan, so that the death remains honorable even though the Rho didn’t grant it personally.”

An honorable death. Lily knew that was important to lupi, even if she couldn’t see the honor in having your leader kill you. “So even if Rule intended to have someone else kill Cobb, he wouldn’t have delayed granting the request.”

“I don’t understand what he did, but I know why. You do, too, don’t you?”

And here came the guilt. “Because of me.” She’d just been pulled from the case. Had he acted, the repercussions to her could have been huge. She sighed.

“You understand enough now?”

“No, but that’s probably all you can help me with. Rule had the right idea. I’m going for a run.”

LILY left Rule a text plus a written note on the pillow in case the text didn’t reach him. Then she told LeBron she’d be downstairs in the hotel gym. Much as she preferred to run outside, it was after ten and she could be sensible when she had to. Muggers were so damned distracting.

Telling LeBron didn’t work out like she’d intended. He went with her. He apologized, but Rule had told him to guard her, not their room, so that’s what he had to do. The hotel gym didn’t work out, either. There was only one treadmill, and it had an OUT OF ORDER sign.

She looked at LeBron when she saw that. “I tried. You’re witness to that. I tried to do this the cautious way.”

LeBron grinned. “We’re still going to run, then.” Clearly he liked the idea.

She grimaced at the “we,” but didn’t argue. He’d go with her whether she agreed to it or not. On the upside—she could be a glass-half-full person if she tried, dammit—LeBron was six-five and bodybuilder buff. Having him along ought to cut down on the risk of an unpleasant interruption. “I’ll check with the concierge to map out a route, but yeah, I still need a run. You could probably use one, too, after being cooped up so much.” She considered a moment. “I’m going to head back upstairs first and get my weapon. I’ve got a tidy little pancake holster that lets my clutch piece ride at the small of my back. You aren’t carrying, are you?” He was wearing cutoffs with a tank. Not many options for concealed carry.

He looked sheepish. “I didn’t think of it.”

LeBron shared the usual lupi distaste for guns. He was receiving weapons training, but she suspected guns still seemed foreign to him. “You probably don’t have a permit for it here, anyway. You can follow a little behind me, okay? I need to think about some stuff.”

“I hate to argue, but a black man running after a woman? In the South?” He shook his head. “I’d just as soon not get the local boys in blue all excited.”

She should have thought of that. “I’m not used to this.”

“After a while, you’ll forget I’m there,” he assured her.

DOWNTOWN Nashville was downright pretty. Streets and sidewalks gleamed wetly in the glow of streetlights, tail-lights, and headlights. It was almost too clean for an urban center and far from deserted, with enough nightlife to bring people downtown even on weeknights.

The air was muggy with the brassy taste of pollution. By the time she and LeBron reached a spot called Victory Park, Lily’s skin was already filmed with a light sweat.

Lily did not forget that a ridiculously tall hunk was running beside her. At first she made conversation—they weren’t running fast, so she had enough breath, and naturally LeBron wasn’t winded. That was the downside of running with a lupus. You couldn’t measure yourself against them at all. He had pointed out it would be harder to forget his presence if he was talking to her.

True. But now that she had what she wanted, she didn’t want it anymore. Her thoughts made for uncomfortable company.

Victory Park wasn’t what Lily would call a real park. It was more like an oversized, paved veranda for some sort of public building to the north. Trees sprouted from their designated strips of dirt, and a large water feature sprouted a tall spray. She and LeBron ran up some steps—good for the quads—and veered right, their feet slapping wet pavers as they headed toward the Tennessee Capitol Building on the other side of Charlotte Avenue.

That was a thoroughly Greek structure with a plethora of columns and a single round tower giving the sky the finger. Lights trained on the building burnished the stone to soft gold. The grounds surrounding it were broad and dark and higher than street level, so it seemed to loom over them as they ran alongside it on Charlotte. No foot traffic here, except for them. Not many cars.

Rule must have known Cobb might ask for final mercy. All this time, he must have known it could happen. And he hadn’t told her.

Lily’s muscles had warmed up by now. She ran easily, her body loose. She tried to focus on that, on the sensations in her calves and thighs, on keeping her elbows in and her shoulders back. For a little while, she didn’t think.

The route the concierge had suggested took them past the Capitol building, past the state library, then turned onto James Robertson Parkway, which curved in a large half circle around the buildings. They’d follow it to Fifth Avenue, take a right, and run along past the Nashville Auditorium and on back to Deadrick, which would return them to the hotel.

They swung onto the sidewalk flanking the Parkway, and LeBron dropped back a couple of paces. He didn’t need to—the sidewalk broadened here. Maybe there were lots of pedestrians in the day, when the government offices were open. Not now. They had it to themselves. On the left, headlights flashed and passed, flashed and passed. On the right was a grassy embankment studded by trees that ended in a parking lot. A sparse sprinkling of cars suggested that a few government employees were working really late.

LeBron stayed behind her, but on her left, closer to the highway. If she’d thought there was a real threat, she’d have placed him on her right. With his night vision, he could pick out any lurkers in the deep shadows beneath the trees a lot better than she could.

Was his choice of highway-side instinct? Did cars and the people in them seem more of a danger to a part-time wolf than the darker, unpopulated stretch of grass and trees?

Lupi were human-like or human-plus, but they were not plain old human. Their default settings were different. They doted on babies. They never let themselves get too hungry. They were subject to the Change, the fury, and a nasty form of late-life cancer. They were promiscuous and beautiful and deeply, irrationally protective of women.

They kept secrets.

Rule’s tendency to keep things to himself had tripped them up more than once. He tried, but sometimes he simply didn’t notice he was keeping things from her, no more than she’d notice she hadn’t commented on her menses lately. Was his silence this time merely habit? Had it just not occurred to him to tell her he might be asked to kill his clansman?

How could it not? When you got down to it, Rule had used her to gain access to Cobb, knowing what Cobb was likely to ask of his Rho. Knowing—he had to know!—she could not allow him to kill the man. Maybe she’d used him, too, but he could have said, No, I’m not going to use my position as Rho to get my clansman to confess. She might not have liked it, but she would have understood. He had the right to refuse to help in that way.

He hadn’t given her a chance to refuse. And that was not like him.

Rule insisted the Leidolf mantle didn’t affect him. Lily was growing more and more sure that it did … because if she was wrong, he’d knowingly withheld information so he could use her.

Somewhere to the north and east he was running, too, seeking the surcease of the physical. She knew he’d been pulled by opposing needs—his duty and hers. In the end, he’d backed away from his duty for her sake, and maybe that should make everything okay.

It didn’t. It mattered. It meant a lot, but it wasn’t enough. Not when she felt separated from him by more than eight or nine miles of city.

He needed to see that the mantle was affecting him. She didn’t know how to make that happen, but somehow she had to.

Lily picked up the pace. LeBron kept up easily. She pushed herself, craving the burn, knowing he’d have no trouble with any pace she could set. A less confident person could get a complex, going running with—

With the first sharp crack! something tugged hard at her arm. She didn’t have time to drop. Two hundred and forty pounds of LeBron hit her from behind even as a second and third shot split the air—and he wrapped himself around her, so that she hit the ground helpless but cushioned.

They rolled—another shot, another—and she ended up on top, her arms free, but when she reached for her weapon her right arm barely twitched. Pain rocketed straight to her brain in a hot blur.

Tires screeching, a horn blaring—

She started to roll off LeBron, flatten herself better. And saw his face.

One eye open and staring. The other gone, just gone, vanished in the bloody, jellied wreck the bullet had made on its way out of his skull.