Blood Challenge

TWENTY-EIGHT

LILY’S eyelids lifted, and she was back. But in the wrong room.

No, that was stupid. Coming out of the light trance that was in sleep was as easy as opening your eyes—no sleepy brain-fuzz, no disorientation. She knew where she was—in Rule’s old room—and how and why she got there.

She knew Rule was with her. And Harry. She heard him purring, felt him curled alongside her.

Her head didn’t hurt.

Lily hadn’t been able to get the mindspeech to happen again. They’d tried. It seemed clear that whoever Dya was, she was connected to everything Arjenie couldn’t talk about, since she couldn’t speak the name aloud. But whatever Lily had done when she took Arjenie’s hand the first time, she couldn’t do it with a jackhammer smashing rhythmically into her skull. So she hadn’t argued when Nettie wanted to put her in sleep. There was no damn point. She hadn’t been able to think, much less figure out an off-again, on-again new skill.

Or maybe it was Arjenie’s skill, not hers. She hadn’t figured any of it out yet.

“Better?” Rule asked quietly.

“Yeah.” She moved her head tentatively on the pillow. “Lots better.”

A dun-colored ceiling hung above her. It and the walls brightened to a soft gold in the glow of the reading lamp in one corner, the room’s only illumination. That color was one of many things that had changed in this room since a much smaller Rule slept here every night. A few things remained from those years, though. Next to the window stood a mahogany bookcase. Benedict had built it before Rule was born, a baby gift for his youngest brother. The bookcase still held a few childhood trophies—a rock with a perfect trilobite fossil embedded on its surface; a mitt sized for a small hand; a ragged but complete set of E. E. “Doc” Smith’s Lensmen series.

The rest of the furniture was newer, sized and styled for adults. Like the comfy armchair over by the reading light. It was large and worn and leather—what was it with guys and leather?—and the same cocoa color as the comforter.

Rule wasn’t in the chair. He sat on the king size bed beside her, holding her hand. The chocolate comforter was folded back; only a sheet covered her. Dimly she heard voices coming from another part of the house. The loudest one sounded like Cullen.

She tried moving her head again, and smiled at the beautiful absence of pain. “I should send Nettie flowers or something. You haven’t been just sitting here, have you?”

“No.” He bent and kissed her forehead. “I’m devoted, but—”

“Not insane?”

“Carl makes excellent chicken and dumplings.”

And Rule was too sensible to allow himself to remain hungry. “How long was I out?”

“It’s after ten. Tuck-in with Toby took awhile.”

“He’s upset.”

“He had questions about her.”

“Jesus, Rule! You mean Isen told him—”

“Toby already knew about our enemy.”

“He’s only nine!”

“He knows our history. Not in detail, but he knows she is our Lady’s enemy, and therefore ours.”

“There’s a difference between hearing ancient history and being told that a super-powerful Old One wants to kill you and everyone you love right now.”

“Why would we not tell him the truth?”

“Maybe because it will scare the crap out of him?”

He paused for a handful of heartbeats. “Fear is part of living. I can’t spare him that. Toby is a child, yes, so many decisions are made for him, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t deserve honesty. If Isen is right—and Toby understands that we aren’t certain of her involvement—Toby’s life is in danger. That’s why he has to stay at here—for the physical security, and because her magic can’t penetrate Clanhome’s borders.”

Her magic can’t penetrate … something clicked into place in Lily’s mind. And oh, but she did not like how well it fit. “What about the other Nokolai children?” she said slowly. “If Toby’s in danger …”

“Toby’s danger is greatest because neither Nokolai nor Leidolf has another clear heir. He’s an obvious target.” Rule’s mouth tightened. “But Isen is considering having all Nokolai’s children brought to Clanhome and offering to take in the children of our subject clans. I’m not sure what I’ll do. Leidolf doesn’t have the funds or facilities Nokolai does.” He squeezed her hand, then let go and stood. “You need fuel. I’ll get you some chicken and dumplings.”

“No, I’ll get up.” She threw back the sheet and sat up, making Harry grumble in protest. Not that sitting up was a simple matter. She had to roll to one side, grip the edge of the mattress in her left hand, and use it to lever herself up.

The good news was her arm took the movement pretty well. The bad news was she was a wrinkled mess. Rule had taken off her shoes, but otherwise she’d lain down fully clothed. She wanted—needed—a shower, but that wasn’t allowed yet. Spit baths only. She grimaced.

“You look fine.”

“I don’t, but thanks for trying. Tell me Nettie doesn’t want me use that damned chair to go to the bathroom.”

“If you give me your word you’re entirely steady, I won’t mention it to her.”

“Let’s find out.” She stood up. “Hey, not bad.” She smiled. She was back. She wasn’t sure where she’d been, but she was back now.

Rule shook his head. “Does that mean you were dizzy when you fussed about us not letting you walk earlier?”

She patted his arm. “I’m not dizzy now.”

“You’re patronizing me.”

“Only a little bit.”

He smiled slowly. “You’re steady now, though.”

“I said I—”

He cut that off with his mouth.

This wasn’t a soft kiss. It was declarative and definite, a kiss that knew what it meant—and it didn’t mean “feel better” or “I care,” the way his recent kisses had. This kiss said, “I want you,” and said it loud and clear.

Lily’s body woke up. The hum of desire was sweet, and she reached with her left hand to stroke his jaw. He hadn’t shaved since this morning, and the hint of sandpaper on her fingertips aroused her. Oh, but her body felt good to be in, alive and zingy, like lemonade made with half the sugar—puckery and compelling. She hummed along with it, shifting, trying to get closer in spite of the sling caging her arm.

He took her bottom lip in his teeth and nipped. She shivered. Suddenly it wasn’t enough. She couldn’t get close enough, fast enough—the sling, his clothes, her clothes, everything was in her way. She slid her good hand up behind his head and pulled it down, needed the pressure. Harder. She needed this, needed both hands, dammit, needed to grab him and hold on, hold on, bring him into her and keep him, needed him—

Agony bloomed white-hot in her arm, an evil flower with quick-striking roots. She reeled back—less than a step, only a few inches, but enough to separate them.

“What did I do? Lily—”

“Not you,” she managed. “I did it. My arm. I—I wasn’t paying attention, and I moved it. Squeezed it.” She let her head fall, her forehead touching his chest. Her breath came fast and ragged.

He slid one arm loosely around her waist. With his other hand he toyed with the hair at her nape. For a long moment neither of them spoke. Gradually her breathing returned to normal.

His voice was quiet. “What was that about?”

“I don’t know.” It had felt so good at first, but she’d turned desperate or greedy or something. She’d lost it. “Maybe I don’t want to know. Maybe that’s the problem.”

He continued to sift her hair gently. “You’ll figure it out when it’s time. When you’re ready.”

Would she? For the first time since the shooting her head felt clear. No blurring from pain pills, none of the fog the body imposes when it’s insisting on rest, rest, and more rest. Her arm was throbbing like a bad tooth, but the exhaustion, the sheer drag of recovery, had lifted. And mostly, what she found in her newly clear head was confusion … that, and a sense of dreadful change. As if more than her arm had been damaged.

She didn’t understand. Was this guilt? Was she convinced on some deep but stupid level that she was wrong to have survived when LeBron didn’t? She didn’t think so. She’d gone over and over the shooting. Even with her brain fuzzed by drugs—maybe especially then—she hadn’t been able to stop going over it, looking for what she’d done wrong. And there wasn’t anything.

Oh, she could have skipped her run. She wished like hell that she had. But logically, reasonably, she’d had no way to know the danger was real and acute. Even Rule, protective as he was, had believed the only precaution she needed to take was a guard or two, and that was in San Diego, where the nutcases expected her to be.

No, once she and LeBron were out there on that sidewalk, there was nothing she could have done differently, no skill she’d failed to use, no trick of foreknowledge that would have protected them. They hadn’t been too slow to react. There’d been nothing to react to until the bastard fired.

Besides, this didn’t feel like guilt, the survivor’s version or any other. It felt like … like dread. Fear writ large.

But she didn’t see why, dammit. It wasn’t the slap of a renewed faith in her own mortality. Lily knew death, knew it would happen to her someday. She wanted to put that day off as long as possible, sure, and danger lit up her back-brain the same as it would anyone else’s. Getting shot was scary, but dying held no real terror for her.

Been there, done that, don’t want the damn shirt.

She sighed and straightened and saw how worried Rule was, and how hard he was trying to hide it. So she smiled, and she made it a good one. “I need to do something with my hair and I need to pee.” Gently she disengaged from his arms and started for the door. “Was that Cullen’s voice I—damn, he got out.”

Rule had opened the door for her—he was sneaky that way—and Harry had done his fast-cat bit, shooting through before even Rule could stop him.

“He’s headed straight for Toby’s room. No doubt he feels he’d done his duty by you and is needed to guard Toby now.” Rule often spoke of Harry that way, as if the cat had plans and goals like a person. “And yes, Cullen’s here. Cynna, too. They’ve been discussing matters with Arjenie, hoping to figure out the mindspeech you experienced with her.”

She grinned. “Discussing” was Rule-speak for arguing, at least where those two were concerned. “I can tell you one thing about it. I have a new understanding of what Sam means when he complains about our muddy thinking.”

“I take it Arjenie’s ‘speech’ wasn’t like Sam’s.”

“Only in the sense that a two-year-old’s babble is like Hamlet’s soliloquy.” Priorities, she told herself. If she couldn’t figure out what was wrong with her now, she’d have to figure it out later. Right now her first priority involved a bathroom. After that… “I hope they figured out enough that I can turn back on whatever I did when I touched her the first time.”

“Do you?” he said calmly, reaching around her so he could open the bathroom door, too. “I don’t.”

Her eyes flashed to his. “It was a headache, Rule. A bad one, but it’s gone, I’m fine, and there’s no danger to me in trying to get the mindspeech working.”

“No? And yet that’s one of the things Cullen and Cynna have been arguing about.”

He was going to hover, Lily told herself after she took care of her first priority. She looked in the large mirror over the bathroom sink and grimaced. She could at least wash her face. She turned on the tap.

Rule was going to hover, but she could live with it. She wet a washcloth and dragged it over her face and throat. She’d frightened him, frightened him badly, and …

Her heart gave a single, hard thump in her chest, a meaty gong sounding the alarm. Her mouth went dry. She started into her own wide eyes in the mirror. The washcloth, rung out imperfectly with her single hand, released a slow, cold runnel that ran down beneath her shirt, wending its chilly way between her breasts.

It could have been Rule running beside her instead of LeBron.

She saw it again—the bloody wreck where LeBron’s eye had been, flesh and bone and brains blenderized by gunpowder and velocity, his other eye smeared with the placid scum of death.

Fear twisted sickly, a whole-body knife dragging disgust and weakness in its wake. Lily leaned against the vanity, closing her eyes as she swung between shame and terror and faced the thing she hadn’t wanted to know: that she was glad. Glad it had been LeBron with her on the sidewalk. Glad it was him who’d died, and not Rule.

It could so easily have been Rule. Might be him tomorrow or the next day. Or Cullen or Cynna, her sisters, Toby, her parents, Isen, Nettie … she shuddered.

Funny. She’d thought death held no terror for her. But that was terror twisting her up right now, and it was all about death … from the other side. The side of the one left behind, the one who couldn’t keep death from taking those she loved.

There’d been nothing she could have done to save LeBron. Nothing short of omniscience, and God knew she was short on that. And the wrongness in her, the weakness in her gut, blood, and bones, came from the certain knowledge that it could happen again. If not through a bullet, then through lightning, car crash, cancer, any of the freakish fits of fate and mortality.

She couldn’t protect them all. She wasn’t in charge of who lived and who died. She didn’t think anyone was. And it didn’t help, it didn’t help at all, that she’d figured out why Isen believed she was actively moving against the lupi once more. Lily thought he might be right. Probably was right, if what Arjenie said about Friar being unable to Listen in at Clanhome was true.

How did she set that aside and go on as if she could count on having those she loved and needed with her tomorrow and tomorrow?

She used to know. Only three days ago, she’d known how to move through the day without gasping like a landed trout, terrified for those she loved. She couldn’t remember how to do that.

Lily took a slow breath. All she could do was act, then. Act as if she could protect them, or they could protect themselves, or somehow fate would be kind. Act as if her heart wasn’t pounding and pounding right now. As if she had the courage to risk them, because what choice did she have?

To risk Rule.

It could have been him.

Her head clear, her hands icy, Lily left the bathroom. She got in the wheelchair Rule had waiting for her and let him push her forward, since everyone was convinced she couldn’t walk on her own.

They were right, weren’t they?