Blood Challenge

FORTY-FIVE

“GIN,” Cynna said, spreading her cards.

“Again?” Lily tossed her cards down, disgusted. She didn’t mind losing. She hated being useless, especially when she thought something had gone wrong.

She couldn’t call Rule and he couldn’t call her, not when he was a few hundred feet below ground. But nothing blocked the mate bond. She knew roughly where he was right now … and that he hadn’t moved for the last hour. He could be hurt or trapped … or, she admitted, he could be simply waiting for the right moment to make his move.

They were in Friar’s kitchen, where oceans of granite and islands of stainless steel floated on solid oak flooring. Cynna and Lily sat at the table; Cullen was sitting tailor-style in front of the open broom closet, staring at the floor.

Cynna had Found the secret door pretty fast. The house was lousy with doors, of course, but she could eliminate those on the upper floor, and one by one she’d removed those on the lower floor from the pattern she used to search, leaving only the one they wanted.

The broom closet held a mop, broom, and carpet sweeper suspended off the floor by grippers fixed to the wall. The opposite wall had shelves for cleaning supplies. The floor held a trapdoor.

It was snugly fitted, almost invisible, but close examination revealed a hairline crack outlining a tidy square in the polished oak flooring. As for how to open it—there were two switches on the plate just outside the closet. One turned on the light. The other activated the trapdoor … or so they thought. They couldn’t check because the damn thing was warded to hell and gone. Open it and they notified Friar they were on their way.

Unless it fried them instead. Cullen said it was a nasty piece of work, not like any ward he’d ever seen. He could neutralize it, sure, but doing that without tipping off its caster was a slow, tedious business.

Funny how Cullen always claimed to be impatient. He’d been sitting there for an hour studying the damn thing. Now and then he muttered something or sketched in the air with his finger. Then he went back to staring.

Cynna collected the cards and began shuffling. “You want to switch to poker?”

“I want—” Lily’s phone rang. It wasn’t Rule’s ring tone, but she lunged for her purse anyway. It might be Nettie with word about the Challenge, or maybe Rule had sent someone aboveground for some …

The caller ID had her frowning, puzzled. “Lily Yu here.”

“As if I wouldn’t know your sweet voice,” Cody Beck said. “Hope you don’t mind me calling so late. It’s important, verging on oh-my-God.”

Lily’s focus tightened instantly. “What’s up?”

He told her. When she disconnected, Cynna was frowning at her. “I didn’t catch all of that, but I gather you want me to Find something.”

“Yeah. Cody discovered a very odd purchase made by Friar’s hazardous waste disposal company. Two days ago, they bought fifteen pounds of RN40.”

“I don’t speak acronym.”

“It’s a high-grade plastic explosive, new to the market. Fifteen pounds is a lot. A single pound of the stuff, applied right, can take down an office building.”

Cynna’s eyes widened. “Isn’t stuff like that regulated? How could they get hold of that much?”

“It sure as hell isn’t something a hazardous waste company ought to be able to buy. I don’t know how they got it or how Cody found out—he didn’t give me details. You said you can Find something if you have a piece of it, right? Well, they’ve got a piece from the same block of RN40 that Friar bought. Cody’s bringing it here.”

“I can use that, sure,”

Cullen’s head whipped around. He glared at Lily. “You want Cynna to play with high-grade explosives?”

She could have sworn he’d been too absorbed to hear a word. “It’s safe to handle unless you pop it in the oven or hold a match to it. And we might be in a hurry here.”

“Why?”

Because her gut said so. Not that she was a precog, but… “This buy of the explosive—it’s clumsy compared to his other tricks. Sure, he doesn’t know we know about his dummy company, but he’s left a trail this time. When something blows, that trail’s going to point to him.”

Cynna asked, “You think he’s getting hasty and stupid?”

“I don’t know. He wants to make something go boom, though. Maybe Rule’s apartment or the FBI building or some place I don’t have a clue about. But we know his usual target—lupi, specifically Nokolai lupi—and we know he got someone into Clanhome once to pour a potion in the wells. That attempt failed, and he’s a man who likes to win. Maybe he’s given up on subtlety.”

AT a deserted mining camp, two wolves circled in the moon-cast shadow of a wooden gantry. The gray wolf was the taller, the reddish one had a more powerful build. A low growl rumbled continuously from the gray wolf’s chest. His ears were flat to his skull, his lips peeled back in a snarl.

The red wolf’s ears were flat, too, yet somehow the gaze he pinned on his opponent seemed more jaundiced than enraged.

A scattering of silent men formed a circle around them. The dirt in that circle was trampled, gouged in places from claws scrabbling for purchase, muddy in places where blood hadn’t fully soaked into the parched ground. Wind whipped at their fur, tails, and ears … three ears between the two wolves. The fur of the gray wolf was black with dried blood where one ear had been ripped off. The fur was dark on one haunch, too, and around his muzzle.

The reddish wolf moved as smoothly as the gray one, though he used only three feet, holding one foreleg off the ground for obvious reasons. Blood dripped sluggishly from the mangled leg.

The gray wolf charged. His opponent dropped and turned belly up—and thrust with his hind legs, flipping the other wolf, who thudded to the ground and rolled, nearly colliding with one of the watching men.

It would end soon.

Isen knew this. He’d trained three-legged, which might keep him alive a bit longer. But he hadn’t trained while pain radiated in huge waves from the broken limb.

Twice he’d held back from the kill. Once when he removed Javier’s ear instead of crushing his skull. Once when he had Javier pinned and stepped back, refusing the kill. Oh, but that had infuriated the young wolf—being made a gift of his life by his enemy.

Anger was Javier’s weakness. Isen had taken advantage of that, using body language to taunt the youngster into rashness. It had paid off, helping Isen drag things out, hoping that Rule would manage to rescue Brian quickly and a call—a single phone call—would allow them to stop spilling each other’s blood.

That hadn’t happened, and the pup was fast, damn him. The moment Isen had felt his leg bone snap beneath his enemy’s teeth, he’d known he could delay no longer. Either he finished things, or Javier would.

Javier righted himself quickly. Isen hadn’t tried to take advantage of his brief disarray. He couldn’t move fast enough, and he knew it. He would have to draw the other wolf in close, perhaps by feigning …

Fifty feet away, a wolf yipped three times.

Son of a bitch. The enemy had taken the bait after all. Isen lifted his nose, but the sentry’s call had come from downwind, so scent told him nothing. He looked that way.

Javier’s hard, heavy body slammed into him, jaws gaping. Flip him and go for the belly, that was the idea. Isen twisted frantically, avoiding disembowelment but rolling onto his shattered leg. Pain paralyzed him for a second—a second too long as Javier lunged again.

And was knocked away by another wolf. Stephen. Who crouched between Isen and Javier, growling a warning at the younger wolf.

Stephen might be overly tied to tradition, but he could be counted on for fairness and good sense. The Challenge had ended the moment the sentry sounded the alert. Panting with pain, Isen struggled to his feet and took in the situation quickly. He’d warned Stephen they might be attacked, so Stephen had posted all four of his guards as four-footed sentries. They yipped at each other now in a code Isen didn’t know. His own people had followed orders and were racing for …

Isen heard the rifle. He never felt the bullet.

LILY called Pete, Benedict’s second. Clanhome was already on alert, but she wanted him to know about the RN40—which she’d been told had a distinctive smell. A bit like almonds, at least to a human nose. She also wanted to find out if there’d been any word about the Challenge. None, he said.

Cynna was pacing, waiting for Cody to get there with the sample of explosive.

Cullen still sat on the floor by the broom closet. “Lily. I need you here.”

“Got to go,” she told Pete, and put her phone up. “What?” she asked as she went to him.

He didn’t look up. “I’m not going to unravel this thing tonight. It’s beyond anything I’ve ever seen. But I’ve isolated the thread that powers it.”

She crouched beside him, but the sling made that awkward, so she went to one knee. “Okay. Does that mean you can cut the thread and it won’t have any juice?”

“That’s what I want you for.”

“Me?” She couldn’t have been more surprised if he’d told her he needed her to dance naked. Actually, the dance naked bit sounded like something Cullen might suggest.

“I called it a thread deliberately. Thread’s twisted to strengthen it. This has a twist to it … I’ve never seen that before, but I’m pretty sure it means that if the thread’s cut, it comes uncoiled. That releases the inherent energy from the twisting. I can’t cut it right next to the ward—don’t ask why, I don’t have time to explain—so the remnant of thread nearest the ward would release a bit of power into the ward, triggering it.”

“Okay,” she said dubiously. “But what do you want me for?”

“To soak up that bit of power.”

She opened her mouth … and closed it without saying anything.

Twice she’d actively absorbed magic from a person. Apparently she did the same thing passively all the time, only in very tiny amounts. That was the essence of her Gift—the ability to soak up tiny amounts of magic, which her brain then interpreted as a texture. “Am I supposed to try to soak it up?”

“Yes, but don’t pull hard. The thread’s tied to the node—that much I’m sure of. Nothing else is that clear and pure. If you pull too hard, you’ll draw too much energy up through the thread and it will break.”

“How do I know how hard is too hard? I’m not even sure I can do this!”

“I’ll monitor you. Here’s what we’ll do. I’ll put your finger where I want you to pull. You do your thing. I should see the bit of thread between your finger and the ward go dim. When it does, I’ll cut it. If I’ve figured it right, the ward will evaporate.”

“And if you’re wrong?”

“We’ll find out exactly what this ward’s supposed to do. Which reminds me.” He raised his voice slightly without looking away from that fascinating floor. “Cynna, go pace in the living room.”

“If it’s too dangerous for me to stay here,” she began.

“I don’t think it’s dangerous or I wouldn’t do it. I intend for our child to have a father. Even if the ward does trigger, I doubt it will do more than knock us out. Friar wouldn’t want a fireball going off in his kitchen. That’s why you need to be in the other room. Worst comes to worst, you can drag Lily and me away from the trapdoor before Friar comes to see who tampered with his ward.”

Cynna bit her lip, frowning.

Lily looked at her watch, considered her options, and nodded. “Okay. Cynna, having you in the other room makes sense.”

“You’re going to do it, then?”

She’d try. Whether she could do it or not remained to be seen. “It’s nearly eleven.”

“Which means you’ll still have another hour to wait once you get that thing open.”

“I’m not sure waiting is a good idea.”

Cullen chuckled. “What will it be? You had your fingers crossed when you agreed to wait for midnight?”

“That would be childish.” She paused. “We didn’t say midnight in this time zone, though, did we?”

ARJENIE’S heart pounded. Her mouth was dry. She leaned against the rough stone beside the cell and thought about fear.

Terror was the top of the fear scale. That’s what she’d felt when she saw everyone dropping around her even as a wave of vertigo swamped her, sending her to her knees. She’d fought off the dizziness by the time she heard people coming. The terror had taken longer to go away. It was probably the sheer passage of time—or exhaustion of her adrenal glands—that muted it to simple fear.

She’d followed the elves here and watched as one of them opened the barred gate to the cell by pressing his palm to a silver plate where you’d expect to see a knob or handle. She’d watched as they laid her friends and her lover in the cell. Then she’d gone exploring, creeping around the walls of the cavern like a frightened mouse.

Arjenie looked at the blue-haired elf standing guard fifteen feet away. He never moved, just stood there watching the cell, his thin, lovely face as still as a statue’s. She looked past him and to the right, at the dark mouths of the tunnels separated by about twenty feet of tumbled stone. Then she looked at the far end of the cavern. That’s where Dya was, curled up in a nest of exotic bedding. They’d put a collar on her with a long leather lead clipped to a ring in the wall. Tethered her there, like an animal.

Working out how to talk to Dya without being noticed had taken longer than it should have. Fear might be great for helping someone run faster, but it sure fogged the brain. Fogged her brain, anyway. Finally she’d realized she could hunker down behind one of the trunks—the elves were messy, leaving their stuff all in a jumble—and let go of the pull on her Gift.

Dya had not been glad to see her.

Her lord—the black-haired Rethna—was punishing her. He knew about the call she’d made to Isen—Arjenie had guessed that much—and when it was time for Dya to take the tears, they’d given her only half what she needed. Enough to keep her from permanent damage. Too little to keep her from going into withdrawal.

It had taken several minutes for Dya to calm down enough to tell Arjenie this. Then she wasted several more minutes trying to persuade Arjenie to leave, get out. When Arjenie finally persuaded her she wouldn’t, Dya had wept and asked Arjenie to get the tears for her. She knew where the rest of her dose was—in the blue vial sitting on another trunk. It was two feet beyond Dya’s reach with her tether stretched as far as it could go.

That, too, was part of the punishment.

Arjenie had given Dya the vial. She’d left her sister passed out in a pile of fur and silk and crept carefully back to the cell. An endless time later, Rule had woken. Then Lucas. Then Benedict. When Benedict opened his eyes and looked right at her, for a moment she’d known they would be okay. She’d been able to touch him, to reach through the bars and touch his fingers with hers.

A few minutes ago, that black-haired elf had come up. Rethna, who’d tied her sister up like an animal and left her to suffer. Arjenie had discovered her adrenals had managed to restock all those shriek-and-flee hormones. Elves were more resistant to magic than humans, and he was an elf lord. She’d been sure he’d notice her sitting only a few feet away.

He hadn’t. He’d spoken only to Rule. And then he’d hurt him.

She’d thought about creeping up behind Rethna and hitting him over the head, but what if she didn’t knock him out? She’d never hit anyone over the head. She didn’t know how hard you had to hit. Besides, that wouldn’t get Benedict and the rest out of their cell, so she’d eased back in front of the bars so she could see if Rule was okay.

He said he was. He was sitting up, talking about the bars with Benedict. Her heart hadn’t gotten back to normal yet. She watched as Benedict, Rule, and the one named Paul crowded up together. What were they—oh, they were testing the bars. After a minute Rule said, “We’ll break our hands before we bend these. You were right, Brian.” Then he did something with his fingers down low. Sign language. Why hadn’t she ever learned to sign?

Benedict scooted over to where he’d sat before and put his hand where she could touch it, so she did. “If only I knew where my sweetheart was,” he said, looking right at her. “It would help to know she was safe.”

What did he … oh. She pulled hard on her Gift and whispered, “You want me to go to Lily, tell her about Rethna.”

He hummed a soft, approving sound.

“There are too many tunnels.”

He lifted both brows questioningly.

“While you were unconscious, I snuck around and—and looked. There are three tunnels leading out of here. I know which one we came in from, but there are two more, and they’re close together. You can see one of them from in there, I think. The other’s about twenty feet away. One must go to Friar’s house. The other must be the one on the USGS map. But they’re too close to each other. I don’t know which is which. And they’re both warded.” She paused. “Really strong wards.”

His fingers stroked hers, then he turned away and signed something to Rule. She couldn’t see it, but she supposed Rule signed back, because a moment later he looked at her and mouthed one word: wait.

Wait? That was it? She had to bite her lip to keep from giggling hysterically. She was good at waiting, but this was not the time for that. Surely there was something she could do.

He mouthed two more words. She couldn’t quite tell …

“The bond,” he whispered very softly, hardly moving his lips at all. “Rule will know.”

Oh. He meant that Rule would know which tunnel Lily was in, because of their mate bond. She nodded and … uh-oh. “Someone’s coming,” she whispered, and eased away from the comfort of Benedict’s touch so the dark-haired man in the long white dress—it was sort of like an Arab thobe only more loose and flowing—wouldn’t stumble over her.