Blood Challenge

TWENTY-THREE

ON the other side of the continent, Lily sat up in her hospital bed scowling at the computer screen. Rule sat on the bed beside her, his laptop balanced on his thighs. He’d just ended the call to Isen.

“I can’t believe he told us that,” Lily said, frustrated, “then wouldn’t say why he thinks she’s involved.” She drummed the fingers of her good hand on her leg. “We’ll find out tomorrow, I guess.”

“We will not. You aren’t flying across the country so I can attend that damned meeting a few days earlier than otherwise. You’re barely out of surgery.”

His jaw was set stubbornly. His eyes were dark, shadowed by sleeplessness, and brimming with emotion … emotion that for once she had no trouble reading.

Rule had been on high alert for over twenty-four hours. He was worn-out and wired up and afraid that wouldn’t be enough. That he wouldn’t be enough. That he’d miss something or sleep at the wrong time or be less than omniscient, and whoever wanted her dead would succeed.

Isen was right. A hospital room was hard to defend. There were too blasted many people around, and the other side of her door was public territory. Rule knew this. He was determined to keep her here anyway. He had some control over their small territory—more than he would in an airport, at least. But more importantly, her wound scared him.

She held out her hand. He took it. She let the contact ease them both, wishing he could climb into bed so she could hold him and be held. “I do heal, you know,” she said gently. “I don’t heal the way you do, but I do heal.”

“You haven’t healed yet. It’s too soon.”

“Rule, this isn’t your decision.” She let that sink in, then added, “I’m not an idiot. If Nettie nixes the trip, I’ll stay here. My own opinion—which I confidently expect both you and Nettie to ignore—is that I can do it. I’ll hurt, sure, but I’ll hurt if I stay in this blasted bed, too. It won’t harm me to sit in an airplane.”

“We can’t go strictly by what Nettie says. If my father tells her he wants you to return home, she—”

“You know better.” She squeezed his hand. “Nettie won’t adjust her medical opinion to suit Isen or anyone else.”

He looked at their joined hands and sighed. “I don’t like it.”

“I know.” It was her left hand he held, her right arm that was damaged, and that was a bitch. She was right-handed. But for that one instant, she was glad he could hold the hand that wore his ring. “You’re going to wear one, too, you know.”

Puzzled, he looked up. “One what?”

“Ring.”

He smiled slightly. “I am, yes.”

She took a breath and jumped. “I’ll stay at Clanhome. Not the whole time I’m healing, because that’s going to take way too long, but while I’m officially on sick leave. You can guard the hell out of me there.”

His eyes searched hers. Some of the tension eased from his face. He lifted her hand and kissed it. “I love you at all times. Sometimes I like you tremendously, too. Thank you. I know you’d much rather be at our place. I also know you’re planning to investigate as much as possible while you’re there.”

She didn’t have a case. She’d been pulled from the Cobb case and she couldn’t just show up in D.C. to hunt for whoever had tried to kill Ruben and she was going to be on sick leave and … and did that matter?

Yes, she decided. But maybe not as much as it ought to. “Speaking of planning …” She glanced around, spotted her takeout cup, and disengaged her hand so she could pick it up. Then frowned at the few cold drops remaining in the bottom of the cup. “Maybe you could send the guard for more coffee.”

“Or maybe not. It’s nearly eleven, and you should sleep at some point tonight—especially if you’re going to persuade Nettie you’re well enough to fly home tomorrow.”

She was tired, and she was tired of being tired, and he was right, and the whole thing sucked. “Do you buy Isen’s idea? Do you think the Great Bitch is behind the attacks on me and Ruben?”

The twin slashes of Rule’s brows drew down. “I don’t know. Maybe more yes than no. Isen’s right an awful lot of the time, and you’ve been her target before. You don’t sound convinced.”

Lily wobbled her hand back and forth, miming uncertainty. “Sure, it could be her, but we’ve thought that before and it wasn’t. I don’t think the attack on me really suggests her. When she went after me before, she wanted me alive so she could eat me or my magic or something. Last night’s shooter wanted me dead.”

Rule’s face closed down, which meant he was upset. “You thwarted her earlier plans, not once but twice. She holds a grudge.”

“Maybe, but surely she’s imaginative enough to know that there are lots worse things she could do than kill me. If I was more useful to her alive a few months ago, why would killing me be a good idea all of a sudden?”

“Because her plans have changed. Not her goal. I doubt that has changed since she was defeated in the Great War. Three thousand some-odd years isn’t a long time to an Old One.”

“And that goal is—?”

“To possess the Earth. To remake it to suit her values, her notions of what is good and proper.”

Lily drummed her fingers. “Having her avatar eaten by a hell lord may have set back her world conquest schedule.”

“Unless that’s what she intended. A year’s delay in nothing . She may have needed that time to subjugate the demon lord who ingested whatever portion of her was held by her avatar. A demon lord would make a much more powerful avatar than one born human.”

That was the problem with dealing with a perp who had, supposedly, been around since the universe kicked off—or maybe before that. The Great Bitch wasn’t omnipotent or omniscient, but her knowledge, experience, and abilities were so far beyond the human it was impossible to guess her plans. “If the Old Ones fought a war to stop her once, wouldn’t they step in now if she were trying to take over Earth?”

“Not directly. Neither they nor she can enter any realms where humans live. The Great War was fought, in part, so that those on my Lady’s side could impose just that restriction.”

“The good-guy Old Ones restricted themselves? Permanently?”

He spread his hands. “We are taught that they amended their reality in order to allow the younger races a chance to create their own.”

That was too mystical entirely for Lily. She drummed her fingers again. “Why Ruben? Why would she want him taken out?”

“I don’t know. I can speculate. His precognitive ability combined with his position may be a threat to her plans. But I don’t know.”

It was all too mushy. They had no real reason to suspect the Great Bitch’s involvement, but almost anything could be made to fit that scenario when they knew so little about her plans, methods, and capabilities. It reminded Lily of the way people in medieval times thought the devil was behind every illness and misfortune. “If your milk cow dries up, blame it on her,” she muttered.

“What?”

“Never mind.” Maybe it was her brain that was mushy. Hot licks of pain kept grabbing her attention, disrupting her train of thought. Damned pain. Couldn’t God or evolution or whatever have arranged things so pain didn’t have to hurt quite this much?

Rule was frowning, more in thought than temper. “It’s possible the attack on Ruben was her agent’s idea and promotes his plans, not hers.”

“What do you mean?”

“If Robert Friar is her agent—”

“Whoa. That’s a giant step.”

“She has to act through agents, just as my Lady does, since she’s prohibited from acting directly. Why not Friar? He’s cunning and wary and wealthy. He already has followers, an organization of sorts, and he hates us.”

She looked at him, ruffled and irritated and not sure why. “You realize you’ve stepped off into pure speculation? There’s a suggestion that Friar could be involved, but it’s wispy. Enough to justify looking into the possibility, no more. We don’t have even a wisp to say that she’s involved, much less anything linking her to Friar.”

“I’m entitled to a hunch,” he said mildly, “even if I lack Ruben’s accuracy.”

She frowned at her hand. Her only useable hand. “I’m going to be a real bitch for a while, I think.”

He touched her cheek lightly. “I’m tough. I can handle it.”

She looked up. “You think she’s involved, don’t you?”

“Isen does. I won’t adopt his conclusion without hearing his reasoning, but I respect his judgment. Also …” He got that far, then drifted into silence, frowning at his thoughts.

“Keep going.”

“If she is moving, preparing an assault on us and our world,” he said slowly, “our Lady would know this. She’d be working through her agents to stop her enemy.” He paused, meeting Lily’s eyes. “ We are the Lady’s agents. Lupi. It is very rare that she speaks to us directly through a Rhej, and she has not done that. But she has done something she hasn’t done since she created us. She has gifted one of us with a second Chosen.”