Blood Challenge

THREE

“TALK while I cook,” Rule said, and headed for the kitchen.

That was next to the entry. It was small compared to her parents’ kitchen, but huge compared to what she’d had in her old apartment. Of course, until recently the only use she had for a kitchen was as a place to park a coffeemaker and a refrigerator, but she was learning to cook. Slowly. “I’m not hungry. I ate before I ran.”

“A yogurt smoothie is not a meal.”

“Not for you, maybe. I had a banana, too.”

He took out the hamburger meat. “I’ll cook it. You don’t have to eat it. How many threats have you received?”

“None I consider serious.”

“That’s not an answer.” He began shaping a patty.

Lily bent to pull out the big grill pan and gave in. “Seven altogether. Six were addressed to the local FBI office. One was sent to Quantico. Two of those nuts signed their names,” she added dryly. “They’ve been checked out and given a stern warning. The rest contain either explicit or implicit threats.”

“You’ll tell me exactly what it is they do threaten.”

She shrugged. “One was very traditional: ‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.’ They got a couple good partials and a full thumbprint from that one, but no match so far. The rest … Rule, they’re ugly, but there’s no reason to think the writers will go from words to actions. The vast majority of the time, the letter-writer is satisfied with venting and doesn’t escalate.”

“Someone did. He vandalized your car.”

“Which means we ought to have his picture, right?” She set the pan on the burner. “Medium heat?”

“A little higher. I want to see those letters.”

“There’s no point in it. You’d just—”

“Lily.” He slapped patties onto the griddle—one, two, three, four, five. At least two were for him, maybe three. She didn’t think Toby could eat two of the thick patties. “I am not going to panic. Do you really think I haven’t received my share of threatening letters?”

She felt foolish. Of course he had. “You think you have a handle on when it’s a real threat, when it’s a caution light, and when you can set it aside.”

“They’re all at least a caution light.”

“Okay. And how many letters have you received since Friar started appearing on all those talk shows?”

He stilled. Then his mouth twitched. “Ah … I’ll show you mine if you show me yours?”

She kept her mouth firm. “How many, Rule?”

“Four. But they’re—”

“Not anything I need to worry about? Nothing to be taken too seriously?”

He ran a hand through his hair. “Dammit, Lily, no matter how many people enjoy mouthing off, the number who will actually take on a big, bad werewolf is vanishingly small. You’re—”

“A big, bad federal agent,” she finished, before he could say “small” or “a woman” or anything else that would get him in trouble. “Believe it or not, very few people want to take us on, either. We’re not as scary as you, but we’ve got that whole power-of-the-law thing going.”

For a long moment he just looked at her. She could see thoughts moving behind his dark eyes, but had no sense of where he was headed with them. So it should have been no surprise that he surprised her. “Then it wasn’t the threats you’ve received that gave you nightmares last night?”

She considered several replies, but settled on “No.”

He crossed to her and brushed her hair back, his face softening. He settled his hands on her shoulders. “Did you think I wouldn’t notice that you woke smelling of fear?”

“Sometimes your ability to smell what’s going on with me is a comfort. Sometimes it’s a pain in the ass.”

That made him smile, but briefly. “You had a session with Sam yesterday.”

She didn’t say anything. They’d already talked about this. Okay, not much—she wasn’t a talk-it-out person—but they’d talked.

Last month, Lily had learned her Gift came with bonus abilities. The first one made her uneasy. It would be too easy to abuse, even with the best motives. No one should be able to suck out another person’s magic … except in extraordinarily rare situations. Like when the other person was a millennia-old out-realm being who was trying to kill you so she could drive millions of people into madness and feed on their fear.

Lily was okay with what she’d done then, but that situation wasn’t likely to arise a second time. She figured she could retire that particular trick. The other one was freaky in its own way, but nowhere near as disturbing.

Mindspeech was a dragon thing, but Sam said she had the potential to learn it. She’d actually done it once with Rule, but that had been an accident she hadn’t been able to repeat. But she’d been offered the chance to learn. After thinking it over, she’d accepted.

Her teacher was Sam, also known as Sun Mzao, the black dragon, who was sort of her grandfather-in-magic, if not DNA. A couple times a week she went to his lair and sat with him. It was hard to describe what happened. On a thinking level, not much did. She’d sit. After awhile he’d light the wick of a candle—easy for a dragon to do, no matches needed—and tell her, Watch. The first time he lit the candle, he had given her one additional instruction: Find me here.

So far, all she’d found were the nightmares.

Rule was every bit as good at saying nothing as she was. He waited, his thumbs making soothing circles along her collarbone.

“It was Helen again,” she admitted. “I don’t have to be a psych major to see why she stars in the nightmare. I’m trying to learn mindspeech, which Sam insists is not telepathy, but the two are next-door neighbors. I killed the only telepath I’ve ever met.”

“You killed a crazy woman who was trying to kill you and open a hellgate.”

“True, but somehow not pertinent.” She shook her head, disliking her own vagueness but unable to dispel it.

His thumbs circled back, pressing more firmly, finding the tension at her nape and easing it. “Are you committed to learning mindspeech? At first you weren’t sure it was worth it. If it opens you to such fears—”

She snorted. “This from the man who moved into a high-rise on purpose so he’d be forced to ride in the elevator every day.”

He smiled faintly. “Damn those torpedoes, hmm?”

“Pretty much. I get a week off, though. Sam will be gone for at least that long for one of their sing-alongs. Um … I’m not to speak of it, except to you, and you’re not to tell anyone.” Dragons were mostly solitary, but at unpredictable intervals they gathered to sing together—though Lily thought she and Rule were the only two in their realm who knew this. Except for Grandmother, of course. “That reminds me. While Sam’s gone, Grandmother and Li Qin are heading for Disneyland.”

He grinned. “That I’d like to see.”

“She loves Disneyland. She used to take me and my sisters every year. Are the burgers burning?”

“Shit.” He let her go and spun to the stove.

Feet thudded in the hall. “I’m ready!” Toby called. “Are the burgers done? It took me a little longer ’cause I had to pet Harry. He was lonely.”

Harry was Dirty Harry, Lily’s cat. Though he and Rule had achieved détente—based mainly on Rule’s willingness to give him ham at regular intervals—Harry had never gotten beyond a sort of disdainful tolerance.

He adored Toby.

That made no sense. According to Rule, Toby didn’t smell of wolf yet, but scent wasn’t the only reason Harry didn’t like Rule, probably not even the main reason. Harry was not a friendly beast. He had to be sedated to go to the vet. He attacked the bodyguards whenever he got a chance. He couldn’t stand Lily’s family—well, except for Li Qin, but no one could dislike Li Qin.

Lily had worried about how the cat and the boy would adapt to each other. Toby was a normal nine-year-old boy … which meant he did everything a suspicious and territorial cat hated. He ran. He jumped. He grabbed. He yelled. She’d been sure Toby would be scratched, clawed, disdained.

Yet from the moment Harry had sniffed Toby’s outstretched hand, he’d become a Toby acolyte. He purred when he saw Toby. He slept with Toby. He even condescended to play with the cat toys Toby insisted they buy.

And Toby had decided not to get a dog right now, though he’d talked of little else for ages. It wouldn’t be right, he said. It would make Harry awfully sad.

It would make Harry homicidal, Lily thought. Some puppy out there was going to live a long, unscarred life because Toby had abandoned his dog dreams for now.

Lily took down a couple of plates and put them on the counter next to Rule, then went to the refrigerator. Toby didn’t sully his hamburgers with vegetables, but he was big on condiments.

“The patties are done,” Rule said. “Would you get out the buns, please, Toby?”

“Sure!” Toby bounced over to the pantry—they had an actual pantry, a luxury new to Lily—and pulled out a package of buns. “Did you tell her?” he demanded, looking between Lily and Rule. “She doesn’t look excited.”

“I was waiting for you.” Rule accepted the buns. “It seems we’ll have to allow Toby to stay up late next Wednesday. Late enough to catch The Daily Show.”

She looked from Toby’s grin to Rule’s more restrained smugness. “You’re going to be on Jon Stewart?”

“Isn’t that cooler than catsup?” Toby burst out. “He’s gonna be talking to Jon Stewart!”

“Definitely cool,” she agreed. “But is it … I mean, Stewart’s not vicious the way some of them are, but he goes for the laughs. Is that going to …” Her voice trailed off. “Right. You’ll do fine.”

Rule smiled, amused, as he slid meat patties onto their buns. He didn’t say a word.

He didn’t have to. It would take more than Jon Stewart to make Rule put a foot wrong in front of cameras. It helped that he was so photogenic. Mostly, though, he was just good at it. He’d become the public face for his people almost the instant the Supreme Court made it safe for him to declare himself. His public persona was sort of a werewolf James Bond—mysterious and sophisticated with a whiff of danger. Only a whiff, though. Enough to intrigue, not frighten.

It helped that he really was mysterious and sophisticated. “Doesn’t he film in New York?” She ran through her current cases in her head, trying to figure a way to fly to New York City. The mate bond had its good points, and she was a lot more aware of them these days. But the downside was that it put geographical limits on how far apart they could be. If Rule flew across the country, she had to go, too.

“The show is filming in L.A. next week. Stewart is emceeing the Emmys again, so they decided to move the show there for the week preceding the awards.”

“What about St. Paul? The circle?” Rule was meeting with the Lu Nuncios of the other North American clans. It was a big deal. She was supposed to be there to prove to the others that Nokolai intended no violence. To the clans, a Chosen was sacrosanct. Not the most paranoid among them would suspect Nokolai of putting its Chosen at risk. Plus Lily’s officialness was a deterrent to naughty behavior, period. She was known to take the law seriously.

“That’s Monday.”

“I know.” She’d had to clear her schedule to go with him. The others wanted it held in neutral territory, which had turned out to be St. Paul. “But if it doesn’t go well—if you bleed or something—”

“We’re going to talk, not cry Challenge at each other. Even if it goes badly, I’ll be able to fly to L.A. by Wednesday. The question is, will you? We can fly up and back the same night, if necessary.”

He could probably go to L.A. on his own. The mate bond had been giving them plenty of slack lately, but they couldn’t take the chance because the physical limit it imposed changed. Without warning. Without reason, from what Lily could see. That bugged her a lot more than it did Rule.

At least it had never contracted as much as it had right after it hit and they made love the first time. They’d been all but glued to each others’ sides then. “Okay,” she said at last. “I can make it work. None of my cases are hot and all the task force does is talk, so a couple hours on a plane shouldn’t be a problem. This is about Friar, isn’t it? Him and Humans First.”

Toby made a face. “He’s a turd.”

“Are you allowed to say that?’ Lily asked, then glanced at her watch. “Damn. I’ve got to go shower.”

“Tell her the rest, Dad,” Toby said. “Quick, so we aren’t late.”

The rest? Lily looked at Rule, eyebrows raised. “Letterman?”

“He does film in New York, so I had to turn him down.”

He’d been asked, though. Sometimes it was deeply weird, living with someone who got asked onto Letterman. It wouldn’t have been his first time, either. “Who, then?”

His bland smile made her instantly suspicious. “You’ll have to agree to this one, since the invitation includes you. It’s for two weeks from today, and we’d have to go to Chicago.”

Toby couldn’t stand it anymore. “Oprah! You get to be on Oprah with Dad! She particularly asked for you.”

She stared at Rule in horror. “You haven’t accepted yet, though. You can turn them down.”

“Lily!” Toby was shocked.

“I don’t want to be on Oprah. She makes people say stuff. Personal stuff that no one … I don’t want to say stuff.”

“And you don’t have to,” Rule said soothingly. “Not much, anyway. You can talk mostly to me and to Oprah’s other guest.”

She could feel that other shoe about to hit the floor. “Who will be—?”

“Robert Friar.”

Oh, shit. “You’ve trapped me. If he’s going to be there, I can’t … You made it so I can’t say no.”

“Actually, I believe the credit for that goes to Oprah herself, or to those who handle bookings for her show. I had nothing to do with it.”

“I can’t guarantee anything. If something big comes up, or if the task force stops talking and actually does something—”

“Oprah will understand, I’m sure, if you have an urgent investigation and can’t travel. But it does have to be urgent.”

Oh, yeah. She was trapped.

ROBERT Friar, founder of Humans First, was going to be on Oprah.

Lily adjusted the shower temperature to cool and stepped in, brooding on that. It wasn’t as if Rule needed her to pin Friar’s ears back. He could do that just fine. He knew how to handle himself on TV. She … well, she could handle a press conference, but Oprah was a whole ’nother kettle of fish. You were supposed to confide in Oprah. Get intimate. Reveal stuff.

Lily so did not want to reveal stuff. But Friar would be there, so she had to go.

Robert Friar had started the rounds of the talk shows the day after she and Rule announced their upcoming marriage at a press conference. At first he’d hit the hard-right radio shows, then FOX, and now a couple mainstream news pundits had had him on. Any controversy was good controversy when you had twenty-four hours to fill with something vaguely news-related.

Friar called Lily’s relationship with Rule bestiality. He wanted the California government to rule that a lupus couldn’t marry a human. On his last appearance, he’d gone even further. He wanted to make it a crime for a human woman to conjoin with a lupus. That was his word—conjoin, as in “this unnatural conjoining of the races.”

Lily ground her teeth as she scrubbed her scalp.

Friar knew—everyone knew—that lupi were always male. If he could eliminate all that conjoining, after awhile there wouldn’t be any more lupi. That would suit him. Oh, he didn’t come out and say he wanted an end to lupi and brownies and witches, to anyone of the Blood, anyone with a Gift, anyone who carried the taint of magic. He was too slick to say that outright, talking instead about legal remedies.

So she had to go to Chicago. She had to try to get him to show his true colors.

And it was sick to be wishing for a triple murder by some whacked-out witch to keep her here. She shut off the water and grabbed a towel.

Lily worked for the FBI’s Unit Twelve, which on paper looked like part of its Magical Crimes Division. MCD usually handled the more routine cases, while the Unit got the weird ones. And Lily, because of her background as a homicide cop, often got the ones involving dead bodies.

Not always, though. At the moment she had four open cases and nary a murder in sight. One case was all but closed. A pissed-off girlfriend had cursed her cheating partner—who, as it happened, was also female—and had left plenty of non-magical tracks for Lily to follow, which was fortunate. A good curse was hard to track magically.

Not that Lily could do that, anyway. She was a touch sensitive, able to experience magic tactilely, but she could neither work magic nor be affected by it. Mostly she liked it that way.

The curse Sheila Bickner had plucked from the Internet wasn’t all that good. It had made the victim seriously ill, but that was more a matter of the practitioner’s power than the curse’s efficacy. At least that’s what Lily had been told by the experts—the Wiccan coven who would be doing their thing today, tracing the curse to its caster to tie up the last bit of evidence.

The courts accepted very little magically produced evidence, and then only from Wiccan practitioners. That was being challenged in court as a religiously biased criteria—which, of course, it was. Lily expected the criteria would change. She just hoped the congressional committee working on a new bill came up with something reasonable before the courts struck down the old law.

Two of the other cases were both felony theft involving magic. So far, she was ringing up a big zero on both of them. The warehouse theft shouldn’t even be hers, she thought as she slathered on lotion with sunscreen. Magic had been used to gain access, sure, but otherwise it was a straightforward burglary. It would be solved by regular police work, which was best carried out by regular cops.

She’d talk to Ruben about handing that one back to the locals, she decided as she gave her hair a quick blast with the blow-dryer. No time to dry it completely, but she could keep it from dripping.

The other case was relatively minor, but she wasn’t letting it go. It involved theft by magical means of a controlled substance—gadolinium.

Gadolinium was a rare earth metal with a handful of legitimate applications, but it was best known as the key ingredient in gado. Gado was the drug the government had used to control lupi—any they could identify, that is, and register—until the Supreme Court put a stop to it.

Gado stopped the Change. It also tended to drive lupi insane.

The amount of gadolinium that had been stolen from a medical lab was quite small, but Lily meant to find out who had it before he or she used it to make some lupus miserable. Or dead.

Then there was the task force. Lily shook her head and pulled on underwear, bra, black slacks, and a black tank. She wore a lot of black, too, she admitted. But only because it was easy, not because she was working on a certain look. Black slacks, black tee—add a colorful jacket to hide her weapon, and she was good to go.

It wasn’t that the task force wasn’t important. It was. There was a new drug on the streets in California, one with a magical component, and several agencies—federal, state, and local—were working together to stop its spread. Lily had personally confirmed that magic was involved by touching one of the very few samples the DEA had. The street name for the drug was Do Me, which pretty much said it all. Best date rape drug ever, from all accounts. It only affected women; it was impossible to detect within a couple hours of ingestion; and there were no known side effects. Just lust, and lots of it. The only upside was that there didn’t seem to be a plentiful supply.

So it wasn’t the task force itself that bugged her. It was her role on that task force. She was liaison for MCD. Being liaison meant she went to meetings, reported to Ruben on those meetings, and now and then passed on a request from some other agency for information.

It did not mean investigating.

Lily stepped into her flats, slipped on her watch, then her shoulder holster, and grabbed a jacket at random. It turned out to be one of her favorites, a pale turquoise with oversize buttons. She glanced at the time. Looked like she’d go makeup-free today. She took one more second to grab a scrunchy and stick it in her pocket. It had been way too long since she had her hair cut, and it was long enough now to get in the way if she didn’t do something with it.

She called out as she slipped on the jacket, “Toby, we should be able to make it. Got your books?”

No answer. Frowning, she hurried to the living area.

Rule stood near the dining table, his expression wiped clean. “Toby’s gone. I asked Jeff to take him this morning.”

Lily stopped. “Something’s wrong. Something’s happened.”

“While you were in the shower, I heard from Alex about a Leidolf clan member, Raymond Cobb. At one thirty this morning East Coast time, Cobb was at some sort of party. A human party, not clan. He killed three people and injured ten others before the party’s host retrieved his rifle and shot him.”