Blood Challenge

FIVE

AIRPLANE air stinks.

Even humans were aware of the problem, Rule thought, shifting to stretch his legs out better. They complained about staleness rather than stink, but they knew there was something wrong with the air. He’d read an article which identified one culprit: TCP, an organophosphate found in jet oil. When that oil leaked, TCP fumes entered the cabin because of the way cabin air was drawn off the engines. Airlines used top-notch filters, but air filters don’t stop fumes.

The overwhelmingly floral cologne of the woman two rows up was a worse irritant. Rule liked the scents of roses, gardenias, and lilies, but they did not play well together, especially when used at saturation level on a woman whose body chemistry turned them acrid. Rule wouldn’t mind the human fondness for perfumes so much if they’d been better at selecting fragrances that complemented their natural scent.

On the upside, the overwhelming fragrance did distract him somewhat from the fact that he was confined in a hollow metal cigar hurtling through the air under someone else’s control.

And that, Rule admitted as he resisted the urge to shift his legs again, was not the real problem. The real problem was that he could not get off.

His heartbeat picked up. He took a slow breath, focusing on the inhale for a count of five … hold briefly … and exhale for five. Two more rounds of controlled breathing and he was okay. Not great, but okay.

The important thing was to keep from giving off any silent cues that LeBron might pick up. It was easy not to look frightened. He was good at that. Keeping his emotions from telegraphing themselves in his scent and heartbeat was trickier, but possible. He didn’t want to contribute to his bodyguards’ unease on the four hour-plus flight.

LeBron, one row up and on the other side of the aisle, seemed to be coping well with their airborne imprisonment. Rule couldn’t tell about Jeff, who was back in economy. But Jeff claimed to be less affected than most by the claustrophobia common to lupi.

Rule wished he could say the same for himself. Jeff was in the economy section because there had only been four seats available in first class—one for LeBron, who was senior; one for Lily; and two for Rule. On long flights, he needed one of the seats next to him empty. It kept him from pacing the aisle. Much. Fortunately, they’d been able to get three of those seats together, so he had Lily on one side and an empty seat on the other.

Flying didn’t bother Lily. Not at all. She worked or she talked or she napped, entirely at ease. The last time they flew across the country—which was, unfortunately, quite recent—he’d asked why the loss of control didn’t trouble her.

“I don’t have control over all the drivers I encounter when I’m driving,” she’d said, “but that doesn’t keep me off the road. And statistics show I’m a lot safer on a plane than surrounded by the idiots on I-5.”

Wonderfully logical, and no help to him. It wasn’t the dangers of flying that got to him. It was being locked up.

He hadn’t asked how she dealt with that. Intellectually he accepted that humans didn’t respond to entrapment the way he did. Deep down, though, he worried that if he drew her attention to the fact that they could not leave, she’d start noticing it, too, and lose her easy acceptance. She was …

Studying him, he found when he glanced at her.

His eyebrows lifted. “Do I have mayonnaise on my chin?”

“I was just wondering what it would be like to miss you.”

He kept his face straight. “I didn’t realize you were angry with me.”

“That’s not what I mean. I’m pretty sure you know it isn’t what I mean. I’m not upset by the m—”

He cleared his throat before she could use the words, jerking his chin at the seats in front of them. Mate bonds were exceedingly rare. They were also a tightly kept secret, not to be spoken of where out-clan might hear.

“Right,” she said. “Anyway, I’m not upset about that anymore. Frustrated sometimes, but not upset. But most couples know what it feels like when the other one’s away on a trip or something.”

“Hmm.” Crossing the country hadn’t been on Lily’s to-do list today. She’d had to tie a few quick knots in some of the loose ends on her open cases, which was a frustration for her. “I don’t think I’d like missing you.”

“I don’t think I’d like it, either. It’s just weird to not know how it feels.” She slid her hand into his. Immediately some of his tension eased. The mate bond’s gifts, like its drawbacks, trended toward the sudden, the unstoppable, and the physical. “Of course, we were separated when you were in hell—at least part of my memories are about separation. But that wasn’t a normal absence.”

His lips twitched. “True. I suppose most couples experience absence because one of them is in Detroit or Dallas, not the demon realm.”

“You’re laughing at me.”

“Only a little.” The plane jittered as they hit a spot of turbulence. He didn’t flinch, and was proud of himself for it. “You’re getting good at that.”

Her eyebrows lifted.

“Distracting me.” He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it. “Thank you. Although there’s one means of distraction you haven’t tried.” He tickled her palm with his tongue and her fingers curled in, cupping her scent there. His nadia didn’t wear perfume. Nor did she object to his selecting lotions and shampoo for her, so the subtle blend of almond from her skin and apple from her hair pleased him almost as much as the underlying scent that was Lily. He inhaled deeply, dreaming on that scent, his eyelids drifting down.

She cleared her throat. “It’s kind of crowded here for that sort of thing.”

He smiled agreeably. “It takes ingenuity, but I could ask for one of those skimpy blankets they have. If you put it in your lap—”

“Now who’s being distracting?”

“It’s working, then?”

She smiled and pulled her hand away, bending to take out the small spiral notebook that went everywhere with her. “I have some questions.”

“Naturally.” So far, they’d spoken very little of the killings. There had been a great deal to do, and do quickly, so they could leave. Rule had spoken with his father and his guards, and he’d a second, brief conversation with Alex. He’d also had to call the Lu Nuncios of the five other clans involved to assure them he still planned to hold the circle he’d called. Meanwhile, Lily had been busy with calls to the local FBI office, someone in the coven she’d been working with, her Grandmother, her mother, and her boss, Ruben Brooks.

Brooks was one of very few humans who knew about the mate bond. When he recruited Lily for the Unit ten months ago, he’d understood and accepted the limitations the bond imposed on her. So far, he hadn’t complained about the way it sometimes affected her job.

Once they boarded the plane, they’d quietly discussed how Rule planned to handle the press. Then they’d worked on their laptops. Rule was playing some risky financial games, trying to get Leidolf on a sounder footing, and had to stay on top of currency fluctuations. Lily had worked on a report—one of those loose ends.

“The killer has been ID’ed as Raymond Cobb,” she said. “I have precious damn little on him. You’ve met him, right?”

“When he came for the gens subicio, yes.” Every Leidolf lupus had attended that. Exceptions were made only for the dying. Each clan member presented himself to his new Rho and ritually submitted, allowing the mantle to recognize him.

Normally, the submission was the important part; the Rho would have grown up knowing every clan member. Rule had grown up knowing Leidolf as his enemy. He’d needed both the submission and the mantle’s recognition.

“Do you remember anything about him?”

“A tall man, grizzled, looks about fifty. Angry, but it seemed an old anger, not directed at me. A bitter man, perhaps.”

Her eyebrows shot up. “There were over six hundred lupi at the ceremony. He must have made an impression for you to recall that much about him.”

Rule shrugged. “Not really. Ah …” Lupi kept many secrets, but only one was the Lady’s secret. The mantles. They were not named where out-clan might hear. “You might say that my gut recognized him and helped me remember all those I met that day. I could name each Leidolf clan member now.”

“You didn’t mention that before.”

She was right. He hadn’t noticed the omission, but now that she mentioned it … “What I carry encourages silence about it. Them. They don’t enforce or even suggest secrecy, but they …” He fell into vagueness, as he so often did when trying to describe the mantles. “It’s more as if silence is the default setting, easily overridden, but I have to notice to override it.”

“Hmm.”

Two-mantled, some were calling him now. Rule wasn’t comfortable with the phrase, which struck him as both pretentious and portentous. Portentous because of a prophecy Etorri spoke of about a two-mantled leader—a prophecy they hadn’t shared with the other clans, but that was Etorri for you. Their vague mutterings lent “two-mantled” its portentous aura.

It was also pretentious. Rule didn’t carry two full mantles. He held all of Leidolf’s mantle, yes, now that the old Rho was dead, but only the heir’s portion of Nokolai’s. But “one-and-a-portion-mantled” didn’t have the same ring, did it?

“You know anything else about Cobb?” Lily asked, tapping her pen on her pad. “Gossip, hearsay, whatever. Anything that might give a clue why he went homicidal at three A.M. this morning.”

“I asked Alex about him, of course.” Alex Thibideux was Rule’s Lu Nuncio in Leidolf, just as he was his father’s Lu Nuncio. Their positions weren’t identical, however. Normally a Lu Nuncio was both heir and deputy to his Rho, but Alex was not heir. There was no Leidolf heir now, and wouldn’t be until Rule’s son was old enough to invest with the heir’s portion of the mantle.

Not that either Nokolai or Leidolf—or Toby, for that matter—were aware that would happen. “Cobb wasn’t his original surname. He changed his name and place of residence about thirty years ago. Ah—he’s close to eighty, Alex thinks.”

“He’s got a sheet under the other name?”

“Not unless you consider being registered by the government and given gado a criminal record.”

“Thirty years ago … he must have been among the early catches. Was he kept under gado for long?”

“A handful of months. The gado affected him. It may be why he struck me as angry. It didn’t drive him insane thirty years later.”

“Hmm.” Tap, tap, tap. “So what was his original name?”

His legs wanted to move. He didn’t let them. He didn’t answer, either.

“Rule, I need the name. I need everything about him, including what he did, who he was, before he became Raymond Cobb.”

“I don’t know it. I didn’t ask.”

She frowned. “You knew I would.”

Yes, he had. That’s why he didn’t get the name from Alex. “I’m …” He spread his hands. “This is difficult. I’m his Rho, but I don’t know him. I hold his life, but I don’t know him, not the way I know every member of Nokolai. Within the constraints of what is best for the clan, I owe him support—but it’s a different clan. It’s not Nokolai. I don’t have a feeling for Leidolf,” he said, his voice tightening. “I’m doing my duty, but it’s all being worked out in my head. I have no feeling for the clan.”

Rule’s restlessness mounted. He wanted to move, to pace, to … I’ll check on Jeff back in economy in a moment, he promised himself. Not right away, but soon.

Lily tilted her head, considering. “Not having a feeling for Leidolf is several steps up from hating their guts. That’s progress.”

His breath gusted out in something less than a laugh. “I suppose it is. It’s not enough, but it’s progress.”

“The, uh … what you carry doesn’t help with the way you feel about Leidolf?”

“It creates a tie, but … this is almost impossible to discuss here.”

She unfastened her seat belt, pushed up the armrest, and snuggled up against him.

Automatically he put an arm around her, but he frowned. Lily was seldom willing to cuddle in public. “If you’re trying to relax me—”

“I’m trying to get you to talk. Whisper in my ear.”

“Hmm.” He nuzzled her hair, breathing in the apple scent of her shampoo … and beneath that, Lily. Just Lily. The lingering sense of being trapped eased. “You’re a smart woman,” he murmured.

“True.” Her voice was barely above a breath—easy for him to hear when she was this close, impossible for anyone else. “Also a curious one. Tell me why the mantle doesn’t help you feel loyal to Leidolf.”

“It’s not a matter of loyalty, but of a bond, one based on experience. I lack that experience.” He knew she worried about the effect the Leidolf mantle had on him. He tried again to reassure her. “My thoughts and feelings are my own. My decisions are my own.”

“So you’ve told me. I guess your Lady wouldn’t have infected you with—”

“Infected?” Rule’s eyebrows rose.

“Maybe injected is a better word. She wouldn’t inject her Rhos with something that wanted to take over. That could make more problems than it solved. But it does affect you, even if not in a takeover way.”

“Affect isn’t the word I’d choose.” He lowered his voice even more, to a whisper no human other than Lily could hear. “You know that each clan’s mantle is different from the others.”

She nodded, her head moving against his shoulder in a pleasant way. “Because they’ve been carried by different people, right? The mantles are affected by the Rhos who carry them. You said that, though you couldn’t tell me how, exactly.”

“You might think of it as an imprint. The mantle doesn’t change its essence, but it accepts the imprints of all adult clan.”

“Is that what happens at the gens compleo? The mantle accepts the imprint of the newly adult clan member?”

“More or less. But the imprints of most clan are, ah … important, yet insubstantial. The Rho’s imprint is more significant.” He frowned, hunting words. “In the months since Frey died, there’s been a change in some elements of—no, that’s the wrong word. Scent comes closer. It suggests a subtle and complex mix that may vary with the situation, yet has an underlying integrity.”

“That’s not clearing things up for me.”

He smiled. “You always smell like Lily, even when you change shampoos. Leidolf still smells like Leidolf, regardless of who’s Rho.”

“But you’re the new shampoo.”

He grinned. “Yes. Herbal scented, perhaps. The thing is, there remains that which is Leidolf, unaffected by me or any other Rho. My own suspicion—this isn’t in the stories, so it’s just a guess—is that the differences exist because each mantle was ineradicably stamped by its first holder.”

“The first Rho of each clan.”

“Yes. And according to the stories, the first Leidolf Rho was high dominant.”

She heaved a frustrated sigh. “How come there’s still so much stuff I don’t know? Okay, I’ll bite. What’s a high dominant?”

“All Rhos are dominants, of course, but high dominants are different—and rare, fortunately. In my lifetime, I’ve only known two. A high dominant is incapable of submitting. Circumstances don’t matter. He will die rather than submit to another’s authority.” Even with a mantle enforcing that authority.

“Victor Frey,” Lily said flatly.

His eyebrows lifted. “Good guess. Yes, he was a high dominant, but he’s an extreme example of an extreme condition. The other one I knew—Finnen Ap Corwyn—was a friend. Not close, because he was Cynyr and lived in Ireland, but I liked and respected him.”

“Past tense?”

As usual, she’d plucked the significant detail from the pile. “Yes. He was killed in Challenge several years ago. I don’t know the circumstances; it was a Cynyr matter. But I assume he challenged because he could not submit. His death grieved me, but it didn’t surprise me. Or him, I suspect.”

“So high dominants aren’t always evil bastards, but they are über dominant, right? And that tendency is part of Leidolf’s mantle.”

“Über dominant sounds like über bully. The inability to submit to others is not the same as requiring everyone to submit to you. But yes, there is a certain approval of dominance built in.” In fact, Leidolf had a rep for throwing high dominants more often than other clans. It had been a Leidolf high dominant who founded the youngest clan—Ybirra—back in the 1800s, after leaving his birth clan. Tomás Ybirra had gathered enough strays to begin his own clan, though no one outside Ybirra knew how he’d acquired a mantle to unite them.

“So what you carry inclines you toward dominance, not conciliation.”

“Those who become Rho are not by nature conciliatory,” he said dryly. “What is it you’re trying to ask?”

She waved one hand vaguely. “It’s more trying to grasp than ask. I get the feeling dominance means something different to you than it does to me. Never mind. We started this discussion with me asking if what you carry helps you want what’s best for Leidolf. If you answered that, I missed it.”

“I’m trying to answer. It … the more clearly I feel a decision aligns with Leidolf’s best interests, the more what I carry aligns with that decision. If I’m unsure, or if I reach a decision more through my head than my heart, then it … withholds itself. My decisions for Leidolf are all coming from my head,” he said, his throat tight with frustration. “I want to do the right thing more than I want what’s best for Leidolf.”

“Wanting to do the right thing doesn’t count?”

“Not exactly.” He shook his head again, unable to put into words what he knew.

“I guess that explains how a scum like Victor Frey was able to use his power as Rho to do commit such major assholery. He didn’t give a shit about doing the right thing, and he was sure that whatever worked for him had to be best for everyone.”

That made his lip twitch. “I suppose it does, yes.”

“If the—” Her phone chimed softly from her purse. She straightened. “I’d better get that.”

Rule’s hearing made it easy to eavesdrop. The caller spoke in a deep bass—and deeply familiar—voice. “Lily, I apologize for disturbing you, but I need to speak with my Lu Nuncio.”

She frowned. “Isen, I don’t use my in-flight phone privilege for family conversation.”

“It’s a clan matter.”

“Unless it’s urgent—”

“I have spoken as your Rho only once before, Lily. I am speaking as your Rho now.”

Her frown lingered. Rule didn’t literally hold his breath, but it took an effort. Lily had been formally adopted into Nokolai soon after they were joined by the mate bond. Female clan had different rights and responsibilities than male clan, of course; they couldn’t Change and couldn’t be included in the mantle. But male and female alike had to obey their Rho.

Lily was not good at obeying. “All right,” she said at last. “But first, tell me what you know about Raymond Cobb.”

“Nothing personally. Benedict says he’s strong, but not fast. Competitive. He took second in pole vaulting and placed in shot-put at the last All-Clan.”

“Did Benedict say anything about Cobb’s control?”

“He considered it good. Please pass the phone to Rule, Lily.”

She grimaced, but did so.

Rule took it. “Yes?”

“The Lady has Chosen for your brother a second time.”