Blood Challenge

FORTY-FOUR

RULE came to with the same suddenness he’d passed out. He lay utterly still, allowing no muscle to tighten, using his other senses to gather information before opening his eyes.

Piss. That smell was so strong it took a second to sort out the rest, but Benedict was close. José, too, was near. And Sammy, Paul, Lucas … was that Brian? Yes, though his scent was so smeared with the stink of illness it was almost unrecognizable. He heard a heartbeat … no, two heartbeats, both of them unnaturally languid, but strong and steady.

He was lying on a hard, rough surface. The air was chilly and calm. His ribs ached, but nothing else hurt. Benedict was on his left, also lying down. José was on his right. Either they were still unconscious or they were faking it well. Better than he was, for he was sure his own heartbeat had speeded up.

“Rule? You awake?”

Brian’s voice. Rule opened his eyes. “So it seems.”

He was in a cage. No, only one wall was barred; the others were rock. Someone had made use of a handy cubbyhole in the rock to form a cell. The stone of the ceiling glowed—mage light, but fixed to a surface instead of floating free.

That ceiling was much too close. Only two feet from Rule’s head when he sat up. Too low to stand.

Panic twitched at him, a puppeteer demanding that he move, run. He breathed in slowly, deliberately, and looked around.

The stink of urine came from a bucket at the back of the cell, not far from where Brian sat, leaning against the stony wall The sanitary facilities, it seemed. Their cell was about twelve by eight, just enough room for their captors to lay everyone out neatly and naked … no, not everyone. Only the lupi. And not entirely naked. Rule touched his ribs. They’d left his elastic bandage on. How thoughtful.

On the other side of those bars … “Someone’s redecorated,” he murmured. He couldn’t see the whole place. His cell was at one end of the long, narrow cavern … a cavern he recognized, though the altar, the chanting Azá, and the electric lights strung on cables were missing.

In their place were mage lights and elves.

One, two, three, four of them … they had to be elves. One stood quite close, about fifteen feet from the bars, watching them with a drawn sword in one hand. His hair was blue. The others … Rule moved closer to the bars, crouched to avoid the low ceiling, to get a better look.

Their hair was long, too—white hair on one; the soft, taupey gray of a dove on another; yellow on the third. Not blond. Pale yellow, like freshly churned butter. They wore sleeveless tunics and trousers in bright colors. The tunics were belted at the waist; from this angle Rule could see that at least two of them had sheathed knives hanging from those belts. Thin and lovely, graceful and androgynous, those three were absorbed in what they were doing. Whatever that was.

One sat, eyes closed, lips moving. Another crouched ten feet from the first, patting the ground rhythmically, as if it were a drum. The third moved one step, stopped. Moved one step. Stopped. The three formed a rough triangle around … “Is that a gate?”

Rule had never actually seen one. He’d been zapped to the hell realm by other means, returned while unconscious, and hadn’t visited the one official gate on Earth in D.C. But he’d heard them described as a shimmer in the air, like heat waves. That’s what he saw over the spot that had once held the Azá’s altar.

“Yeah, afraid so.”

Brian’s voice was weak, strained. Rule turned.

Brian wasn’t a large man, no more than five-ten, and had always been slim, full of energy. Now he looked gaunt, his cheekbones jutting out sharply.

Rule crawled over the unconscious José to reach Brian. He gripped his friend’s hand. The stink of illness was so wrong, blended with a lupi’s scent. “You’re hurting.”

“Dya’s kept me going, but I think … not much longer. Oh. She’s Friar’s servant or slave or something. She doesn’t like being called a slave, but he for damn sure controls her. She’s, uh, she’s not from our realm.”

Rule nodded neutrally. Best, maybe, if he didn’t mention Arjenie. She wasn’t with them. He prayed that meant she’d somehow escaped whatever knocked them out, that she was okay. There were other possibilities, worse ones. For now, he wasn’t going to think about them. “Is she the one who called Isen?”

“I shouldn’t have asked her to. She got caught, and you …” His face spasmed. Sweat popped out on his upper lip and forehead.

“The pain’s bad.”

“Comes and goes.” His voice had sunk to a thread. “More coming than going lately. Rethna likes to experiment. Gado and … variations. He wants to control the Change. Not just shut it off, but call it up when he pleases.”

“Rethna?” Rule said sharply, glancing over his shoulder. The elves were still busy with their odd tasks. “What about Friar?”

“Friar’s around. Rethna’s bigger and badder, though. He’s an elf. Not one of those three—they’re flunkies. He’s some kind of big muckety-muck. Likes to be called ‘my lord.’ I told him he wasn’t my lord.”

Rule smiled. It hurt, but he did it. “Bet he didn’t like that.”

“Not much.” The ghost of Brian’s usual cocky smile crossed his face.

“How long have you been here?”

“I think … ten days? Hard to tell, underground.” He squeezed Rule’s hand. “There’s things I need to tell you. Rethna and Friar aren’t exactly partners, but they’re working together. They’ve both made deals with her. The Lady’s enemy. ”

“I knew about Friar and her. I’ve been trying to convince the others …” He thought of his most recent attempt. Of his father, who must be fighting for his life by now. Of Brian’s older brother, who’d fallen to a complicated madness. “I’m so sorry about your brother, Brian.”

Brian closed his eyes. “Felt it, of course. When what Edgar carried came to me, I knew he was gone. I haven’t told them about that.” He opened his eyes. They glowed with sudden intensity. “About the Lady’s secret. They’ve done things to me, but I haven’t told them the Lady’s secret.”

The mantles, he meant. “Good. You’ve done well.”

Brain snorted, sounding so much like he always had that it pinched Rule’s heart. “No, I haven’t. I told them too much, but he—the elf—Rethna can do things you wouldn’t believe. He calls it body magic. Mostly it’s pain. Good thing he doesn’t have much mind-magic, or …” He shook his head. “Never mind. I need to tell you before they come. The deal Friar made—he gets paid tonight. They’re setting up this big ritual to give him some kind of major Gift. I don’t know what. Once that’s done, Rethna will clear out. Now that he’s got you, he’ll go home. He means to take you—all of you he caught—with him. To sell.”

Nastiness twisted in Rule’s gut. “It was a trap, then. Dya’s phone call. They were ready for us.”

“No! Dya didn’t … she’s a friend. She didn’t trick you. But Friar knew about the call somehow … maybe one of Soshi’s pets. Soshi’s one of Rethna’s flunkies. They’d planned to lure some of you down here soon. Dya didn’t know how, but she thought if you got here quickly they wouldn’t be ready yet.” He grimaced. “They were.”

“Soshi’s pets?”

“Spiders. They’re big, the size of a tarantula, but they aren’t from our realm. Soshi links with them, sees from their eyes.”

The spider that had run across Arjenie’s foot—had it been watching them? “You’re sure this Rethna plans to sell us? We, ah—we had reason to think Friar and a sidhe allied with him were breaking something called Queens’ Law. The one about genocide.”

Brian’s eyebrows lifted. “You know about Queens’ Law?”

“Cullen knows a little about all sorts of things he shouldn’t.” True enough, but a lie in the way he meant it to be taken.

“Oh, Seabourne. Sure. No, genocide’s the one they don’t want to break. Don’t want to attract the Queens’ attention. Keep a few of us alive and it isn’t genocide when they kill the rest.” He licked his lips. “The law Rethna’s breaking involves a name. Call on that name and the Queens get totally pissed. It’s a name we don’t use, either.”

Rule’s eyebrows lifted. “Our ancient enemy is anathema to the two Queens?”

Brian nodded weakly. “It’s all about power. Rethna wants more. He thinks he can get it from her, but he has to cut his realm off from the Queens. I don’t really know what that means, but it takes time and planning and if the Queens find out, he’s toast. That’s why they won’t kill all of us. Someone might notice.” He licked his lips again. “Sorry. I need …” He fumbled for something at his side—a hide sack with a metal nozzle.

“You’re thirsty.” Rule picked up the primitive canteen and held the nozzle to Brian’s lips. Brian drank greedily.

“Thanks,” he said when Rule lowered it. “Hate that you’re here, but it’s been hard, thinking I’d die alone. Only now, Wythe …” His face twisted with worry or grief. He spoke subvocally. “When I die, the mantle’s lost. There’s no one else, only my son, and he’s too young. Much too young.”

Losing both Rho and heir almost always meant losing the mantle. Clan history said that twice a Rho had died without an heir and the mantle had passed to someone from the founder’s bloodline anyway, but the Spanish massacre in the seventeenth century proved how rare that was. And a mantle couldn’t pass to one who hadn’t yet Changed. Rule squeezed Brian’s shoulder gently. “You’re not dead yet. With what you received from your brother, you may postpone that moment quite awhile.”

“Rethna won’t take me with him. I’m too damaged to sell. When he leaves, Friar cuts my throat. I’m no use to him.” He swallowed. “We have to try.”

“Try … ?”

Lucas’s voice was drowsy. “Knocked out twice in one day. No offense, Rule, but I have to stop hanging out with you. What happened?”

“Sleep spell,” Brian said. “Rethna set them himself along the routes to this place. They’re targeted to us—to lupi—and to humans, so his people don’t trigger them accidentally.”

Would a sleep spell intended for humans and lupi leave a part-sidhe woman unaffected? Had Arjenie managed to escape?

“Rethna?” Lucas sat up. “Who the hell is …” His gaze locked on Brian. “Brian. Shit, man.”

Brian tried to grin. “Look that bad, do I?”

“You’ve looked better.” He switched his gaze to Rule. “I guess we got where we meant to go.”

“If not quite the way we meant to arrive. We’re near the node. Our hosts have added a new touch to it—a gate. I’m guessing it goes to the home realm of the elves you see out there.”

“Elves.” Lucas said flatly as if forcing himself not to sound incredulous. Then he looked out through the bars. “Elves. Son of a bitch.”

“The chief son of a bitch seems to be a fellow named Rethna, a sidhe lord who’s fallen in with bad company. So bad we don’t name her. He wants to take us home with him … as merchandise.”

Benedict growled, “I don’t much care for travel.”

Rule’s breath sucked in. Benedict was awake—and not screaming or howling at the severance of his mate bond. No, he was looking out through the bars. Rule spoke carefully. “I imagine your sweetheart would miss you.”

“Yeah.” Benedict sat up and smiled faintly at Rule. “We’re very close.”

Arjenie was alive—and close? Rule couldn’t see her, couldn’t see anything that suggested she was there. His view of the cavern wasn’t impeded. He didn’t have any sense he was being urged to look away from some spot. “You met Benedict’s sweetheart earlier today,” he told Lucas, who looked puzzled. “She’s shy.”

“A real wallflower around strangers,” Benedict said. “Hates drawing attention to herself.”

She was near the wall, Rule concluded.

“Of course,” Lucas murmured. “I remember her.”

“Brian,” Rule said, “do you have an idea of how long we were out?”

“Not so good at guessing time lately. Maybe an hour?”

Arjenie was here now. In about an hour, Lily would be coming … and wasn’t that a fine bit of irony? He’d wanted to spare her the worst of the danger, but she would walk right into the trap just as he had. If any of them were to get out of this, she had to be warned about Rethna—and those damned spiders. “Perhaps,” he said softly to Benedict, “your sweetheart and my nadia will console each other.”

Benedict nodded. “The sooner the better, I think.”

The rest were waking—stirring, looking around. José rolled up on one arm and looked at Rule. “Not what we had in mind.”

“No. Explanations—”

“Shh,” Brian said urgently. “He’s coming.”

Yes, Rule had noticed a new scent. He looked at Brian. “That smell—a bit like human, but not as meaty, a hint of cardamom. That’s how elves smell?”

“Shh.” Brian’s eyes were wide.

A tall elf sauntered into view a few feet back from the bars. His hair was the blue black of a raven’s wing, so shiny it was almost iridescent. It hung to his waist in back, but was arranged in elaborate braids on the sides. He wore a similar outfit to the others—red tunic, black trousers. He’d added a knee-length vest in gauzy black silk. His belt was black, too, as was the hilt of the knife protruding from the sheath on that belt. His boots were dark red. He liked jewelry. Rule saw two rubies in one ear, a diamond in the other, plus armbands and two pendants: a short one with a silver disc and a longer one with a large black stone.

He stood there with his head tipped to one side, studying them. “Which of you is the leader?” He spoke news-anchor English.

“I am,” Rule said.

“Has Brian told you who I am?”

“If you are Rethna, a lord of the sidhe, he has.”

The elf nodded. “I will speak only with you. The others are to remain silent at all times in my presence. If they do not, I will hurt you. You will speak only when I ask you a question. You will answer fully and truthfully. If you do not, I will hurt one of yours. Like this.” He pointed at Rule and clicked his tongue.

Every nerve in Rule’s body fired with agony. He convulsed, mouth agape, too stunned by pain even to scream. Pain ate his skin, his eyeballs, his genitals, and burned from inside as if he’d breathed it in.

It passed. Between one moment and the next, it passed. His chest shuddered in relief.

“Rule.” Benedict’s voice. Benedict’s hand on his shoulder. “Rule, can you talk?”

It wasn’t until he opened his eyes that he realized he’d closed them. He was shaky, weak, flat on the ground again … and unharmed, aside from his ribs. They disapproved of convulsions. Benedict hovered over him, worried. He managed to nod—then realized that Benedict had spoken, which that bastard had threatened to punish them for.

Rule pushed himself up on one elbow. The bastard was gone. He’d introduced himself, told them his damned rules, given Rule more pain than he’d ever felt outside of the Change … and left. “I’m okay. But something tells me Rethna and I are not going to get along.”