Blood Lines

EIGHT

LlLY felt short, tense, and awkward as she kept up with Cynna's longer legs. She needed to explain that she hadn't asked to be put in charge; that was Ruben's doing. But they couldn't discuss that or any of the morning's shocks in the corridor.

When they reached the elevator she thought of a way to break the silence. "Car trouble?"

Cynna grimaced. "Son of a bitch turned belly-up on I-235. I should've taken the Metro, like usual. Cars hate me."

The doors whooshed open and they joined three others. Lily didn't know any of them, but Cynna exchanged nods with an older man. After that, they followed the usual elevator protocol, pretending they didn't see the others trapped in the little box with them. "All cars?" she asked. "Or just that one?"

"Any of them I drive too often. Computers hate me, too. So do cell phones and remote controls, and I gave up wearing a watch years ago."

"Wait a minute. You use a cell phone."

"Sure. And most of the time it works. But if I leak, it doesn't."

"Leak?" Lily said. "Leak magic, you mean? I know some of the Blood don't deal well with technology, but I hadn't heard of any Gifted having problems."

"Most don't, but—"

The doors opened. Cynna finished explaining as they left the elevator for a long hallway. "I wear a lot of my magic on my skin. It's locked up in the kilingo and kielezo—the two kinds of what you'd call tattoos—but sometimes there's a discharge, like static electricity. Then things go wacko."

"Magic can interfere with technology?"

"Sure, but the little bit that floats around loose is weak, not enough to…" Cynna fell silent as the implications sank in. "Holy shit."

"Yeah." Loose magic hadn't been a problem before, but if last night's phenomenon hit again… Lily added that to her list of things to worry about when she had time. "What's 'full field authority'?"

"Scary." Cynna stopped in front of a door that looked exactly like the others spaced with metronomic precision along the hall.

"I was hoping for a more precise definition," Lily said dryly.

"Just a minute. Put your hand here, next to mine." Cynna flattened her palm on the door above the knob. "I want to key it to you."

Puzzled, Lily did.

"There," she said after a moment, and moved her hand to turn the knob. "You'll be able to open it if I'm not around."

"Most people use keys."

"So do I."

Not the usual sort, obviously. Lily followed her into a small office made smaller by a cacophony of objects: a desk bearing the expected computer and such, yes, but also a sitar, two dead plants, a human skeleton, a bookcase crammed with peculiar objects—the shrunken head was an eye-grabber—piles of baskets and files and papers, and a little fountain.

To her surprise, the fountain was burbling away. "Where do you pace?"

That brought a grin. "It's a challenge. Full field authority," Cynna said, grabbing a stack of files from the visitor's chair and dropping them on the floor, "means you can commandeer just about anything, no forms to fill out, no questions asked. Supplies, personnel, weapons, airplanes… technically you could call in the army, but I don't think anyone's ever done that."

Cynna was right. That was scary. "Ruben said something about a code."

She nodded and plunked herself down on the corner of her desk. "On the rare occasions when a Unit agent is granted full field authority, he or she gets a code number. That's the authorization, but it's only good for a short time. Ida will tell us how long our codes are good and what the procedure will be to invoke them."

There was plenty she needed to tell Cynna, plenty she needed to ask. But Lily wanted to clear the air first. "Cynna, I told Ruben you should be in charge, but—"

"Whoa!" Cynna held up both hands. "Is that what has you as stiff as if rigor had set in? I don't want to be in charge. Ruben knows that."

"I've only been an agent for two months. You've got the seniority, the knowledge—"

"Not to mention the rap sheet." She grinned. "Didn't know about that, did you? Penny-ante stuff from when I was young and stupid, but I did some time. It would disqualify me for any part of the Bureau except the Unit. As for my seniority, that's bullshit."

"Experience isn't bullshit."

"No, but your experience counts more than mine. I'm a Finder, not an investigator. The only cases I've handled on my own are missing persons. Kids," she added, her voice turning soft and sad. "A lot of the time, Ruben sends me to Find kids. Sometimes they're just lost. Sometimes… too often… they've been kidnapped, raped, hurt. Killed. But even then, someone else puts together the case. I'm not trained for that. You are."

Lily drew a breath, let it out. "So we're okay."

"We are. Sit, if your body will bend now."

"I've been sitting all morning." Besides, if she sat in that chair, she'd get a crick in her neck looking up at Cynna. "We're working the case we started last night. The demon summoner."

Cynna nodded, obviously expecting that. "You should know that I tried to Find Jiri before I left the scene. Bombed."

"You told me your Gift can only reach a certain distance."

"About a hundred miles, given a tight, fresh pattern. Which I don't have for Jiri," Cynna admitted. "I haven't seen her in years, so my pattern for her is old. But I still should have been able to Find her if she'd been close enough to control that demon."

"Did she have to be close? You said summoning and binding were two different things."

"They are, but you still have to bring the demon here, to our realm, which means bringing it into a summoning circle. There's no way to do that from a distance."

That's what Lily had thought. It wasn't what she'd wanted to hear. "There were five demons last night, not one. Five demons who attacked the lupi heirs to their clans—three here in the United States and two in Canada. Three of the heirs were killed. So were at least two of the demons, counting the one we killed."

Cynna stared. "Holy Mother Mary. Five summoners?"

"And maybe three demons still around." Lily gave her a moment to absorb that. "From what I was told, one of the demons vanished after killing its target. But that doesn't mean it's really gone, does it? The one last night mostly vanished, too. It turned shimmery. I almost couldn't see it."

"Almost?" Cynna was surprised. "You shouldn't have been able to see it at all when it was dashtu. I wonder if that means dashtu is part illusion?"

"I'm not following you."

"A dashtu demon is out of phase with our realm—not quite here, not quite gone. They can't go dashtu in hell," she added. "That's one reason they like to come here. I thought dashtu made them completely invisible, but if you saw something, there must be a degree of illusion involved. Illusion wouldn't work on you."

"I saw Gan when she was invisible to others. No shimmer."

"Huh." Cynna considered that a moment. "There's a lot I don't know, but Gan's a really young demon. Maybe she can't phase out as completely as the older ones, so she relies more on illusion. What kind of demons attacked the others? Did you get a description?"

"Only of two of them. They match the one we killed last night: big, built like a hyena with a broad chest and short rear legs, red eyes. A third pair of limbs attached at the chest that end in claws."

Cynna nodded. "Like the ones we fought in Dis, then."

"Except for the claws on the forelimbs." Which made a difference. Lily took a slow breath to steady herself. "Five demons means we're looking for five people who can summon and bind demons. That suggests a strong, organized conspiracy."

Cynna frowned. "Maybe not. Give me a minute." She stared at the fountain, jiggling first one foot, then the other, as if trying to pace sitting down. "Five summoners were needed," she said slowly. "We can't get around that. But maybe only one did the binding."

"How?"

"Theoretically, at the master level—and with binding, that's what we're talking about, a demon master—at that level you start getting into demon politics. Politics in hell," she added, "make the UN look good."

"I can believe that, but I don't see where you're going."

"It's because of the way demons are bound to their higher-ups, see? You bind enough low-level demons, or reach for one of the more powerful ones, and you're treading on some powerful toes. See, the one you're hooked into is hooked into a more powerful demon, and so on, right up the feeding chain. So your deal can end up involving some of hell's big muckety-mucks." She took a deep breath, let it out. "The short version is that our perp could've cut a deal with a demon lord, who can bind multiple demons, no problem. Though distance still could be a problem… but if the deal involved a demon prince, it wouldn't be."

Sickness settled in the pit of Lily's stomach. "Xitil."

Cynna nodded.

Xitil was the demon prince who'd made an ally of Her avatar, then fought her, then eaten her—and promptly gone insane. Demons didn't just eat the flesh of those they consumed. They absorbed something of the essence.

How much of the lupi's ancient enemy now lived inside a demon prince? Had someone here allied with that prince?

Lily pressed her fingers into the hollow where neck met skull, trying to dig out an incipient headache. "It makes too damned much sense. Xitil is controlled or strongly influenced by Her. Killing lupus heirs would suit Her. The one thing I can't figure is how She was able to track her targets. She's not supposed to be able to see lupi with her X-ray vision—or whatever it is She uses to see into our realm."

"Maybe the human perp has a strong farseeing Gift."

Lily frowned, mentally running through what little was in the dossier on Jiri. "What's Jiri's Gift?"

"I don't know. No one did, though we all tried to guess. I can say for certain it's a strong Gift, and it isn't Finding. I always thought she might be a precog—it was uncanny the way she could make things work out the way she wanted. But her Gift could be farseeing."

Lily heard the reluctance in Cynna's voice. "You don't want our perp to be Jiri."

"She wasn't… when I knew her; she wasn't a person who could do something like this."

"But you left."

"Yeah." After a moment Cynna shrugged. "I left, and I don't know what she's like now. If half the street talk about her is true, she's turned into a major badass."

Lily's brain felt sluggish, unable to keep up with the thoughts skittering around in it. She'd only gotten about three hours of sleep. But she could see Cynna was hurting.

New subject. "You don't have a coffeepot in here."

"Never touch the stuff, but there's a pot down the hall. You need a cup?"

Yes. "It can wait. Ruben is proceeding on the assumption the demons who weren't killed are still around. He's informed the authorities in Canada."

"What about the U.S. attacks? Where were they?"

"Montana and Virginia. The one in Montana occurred on federal land, so the Billings FBI office will handle it with some help from MCD. At least, Ruben hopes they can handle it." Lily was glad that call wasn't hers to make.

"And in the one in Virginia?"

"Near a little town called Nutley, on land owned by the Lei-dolf clan. That one's ours. Actually, it's yours for now, but I'll be joining you there as soon as possible."

Lily told Cynna about Leidolf and Nokolai and Rule's duty to escort Paul's body home. There was plenty for her to do while she waited for the body to be released—Dr. Fagin wanted to ask her some questions, and she had some for him and the other task force members. And she needed to pry some information out of the Secret Service. They'd traced some of Jiri's former associates in the course of their investigation—people who'd been students, hangers-on, or lovers, according to Cynna. Not apprentices. As far as Cynna knew, she'd been Jiri's only true apprentice.

Cynna seemed to think Lily's delay was reasonable, even necessary. And it was, dammit. But reason didn't ease her guilt. All those good, solid reasons weren't the only thing holding her in D.C.

There were details to settle: the need for a warrant if the Leidolf Rho didn't cooperate; the type of weapons to take; the type of backup. Cynna tried to argue about that. She didn't have a high opinion of MCD agents, and no one from the Unit could be spared.

Lily wasn't having it. "You're not going without backup. You need someone who can shoot an M-16. If they can use a rocket launcher, even better."

"They won't be much help if they get themselves possessed."

"You can't be the only Catholic with the Bureau. Or the only person of faith. That's what counts, right? Anyone with a strong, personal faith is protected."

"Yeah, yeah, but—"

"You mentioned coffee down the hall."

"And you'd like me to shut up and quit arguing." Instead of being offended, Cynna grinned. "See? This is why you're in charge, not me. Who'd I argue with if I was heading up the case? Come on. Let's get you some caffeine."

The break room smelled of old, burned-to-bitter coffee. Lily felt right at home. The cops she used to work with never made fresh, either. "In Virginia, I've notified the local police chief and the state cops, as required. But I told the state troopers not to go in yet."

"Good." Cynna nodded emphatically. "The last thing we need is a possessed state trooper."

"Which could happen if the demon's still there. Also, Rule says Leidolf is pretty territorial. If a dozen gun-toting heroes charge into their clanhome—"

"Could be a bloodbath."

"That was my thinking." She blew on her coffee, then took a sip. Tasted as bad as it smelled. "You'll need to check in with Chief Mann in Nutley when you get there. When I told him of a possible demon outbreak in his jurisdiction, he was inclined to doubt my sanity, but he did agree to speak to the Leidolf Rho."

"I guess the lupi didn't report the attacks."

"Good guess," she said dryly. Lupi weren't exactly known for cooperating with the authorities. "If the Virginia demon is still there, how hard will it be for you to Find it?"

"My range will be limited—probably closer to ten miles than a hundred. The pattern I got last night will let me Find other demons of the same type, but it won't be an exact match."

"Because they're different individuals?"

"Mostly because I took it from a corpse. Death doesn't resonate strongly with life, even when the patterns match otherwise."

That made a grisly sort of sense. "There's one more thing you should know before you leave."

"What's that?"

"These demons are different from the red-eyes we tangled with in hell."

"Yeah, we covered that. They've got claws on those stubby little arms."

"That's right. They may…" Lily had to stop, take a breath. "Those claws seem to carry some kind of poison. Rule's wound… it isn't healing."