Blood Lines

ELEVEN

"THEY can wait. I need to tell you about the meeting." Lily's chest felt full, as if inside the cage of ribs a storm was brewing, a cloudburst of words that might break any second. Yet she didn't know what she needed to say. To ask.

Something about the wolf…

Rule's eyes were dark and grave. And though he remained human, though his face and form and voice were calm, wildness seemed to shimmer inside him. She could almost glimpse the wolf hiding behind bone and sinew the way a wolf in the wild might peer out from the trees.

Was she seeing him differently because he'd admitted his wolf was close? Or had something changed inside her?

His words were prosaic enough. "Cynna is taking your car?"

"Hers broke down, and she needs to get to Nutley as quickly as possible." Though right this moment that seemed less urgent than the imminence in her chest, she didn't know what else to say. Help me? I've swallowed my words and they're swelling up inside me.

"Tell me." He was unaccountably gentle, as if he knew about the cloudburst and was asking for it rather than facts.

But facts were all she had. "Last night's power surge wasn't a local phenomenon. It happened all over the world, causing all sorts of problems and oddities. As I said earlier, the Unit's stretched to capacity and beyond. Goblins showed up in Missouri, brownies in Tennessee, and there may be a golem in Vermont. A school bus is missing in Texas. And, of course, we have demons to chase."

"That's why Cynna's going to Nutley with someone she doesn't know. There's no one from the Unit to send with her."

"Yes. Ruben has put together a task force to come up with an explanation and make guesses about the implications. He believes last night's power wind will happen again. That something fundamental has changed."

For a long moment he looked at her, the dark slashes of his brows drawn down in thought. Finally he spoke. "Have you eaten?"

She was telling him about the disasters stalking their world, and he wanted to know if she'd had lunch? "I'm not hungry."

"Healing burns a lot of calories. I need to eat whether you do or not. You talk. I'll put together sandwiches." He moved to the refrigerator and began pulling out the fixings. "Extra, extra, extra pickles, right?"

"You're going to make me a sandwich whether I want one or not, aren't you?"

He smiled at her over his shoulder. "Of course."

For no reason at all, that smile popped a bubble in her throat and words spilled out. "I missed pickles."

Rule, of course, looked puzzled.

"Not… me. The other me, the one who was with you while you were a wolf. I—I think she's trying to tell me something. Or maybe…" Something about the wolf. "She needs to tell you something."

Rule crossed to her, put his hands on her shoulders. "She is you."

"Sort of." Same soul, different memories. "I can't get it to come up to the top, but it feels important. If—"

The doorbell rang.

"I'll get it."

"Lily—"

"I'll get it," she repeated. And fled for the front door.

The house was familiar to her now. She knew where things were, could navigate the furniture in the dark. Most of the time she was glad to be here instead of in some bland and crowded hotel. And sometimes she felt as if the place were choking her.

These rooms held too much stuff. Beautiful stuff, of course: a Jacobean chest in the entry, a dining table whose dark wood gleamed beneath a crystal chandelier, a pair of Queen Anne chairs facing a plush sofa in the parlor. Excellent prints hung on the walls. Elegant arrangements occupied all the various surfaces— silk flowers, leather-bound books, candlesticks, brass or crystal whatnots.

Her mother would love it.

As Lily passed through the dining room she resisted the urge to sweep her arm along the sideboard and knock the cut-glass decanter, the shiny glasses on their silver tray, onto the floor.

Less stuff, she thought. More plants. She longed for at least one blank wall and air that smelled of the ocean.

She was homesick?

Maybe she wanted to be home so she could pull the covers over her head and hide from monsters, responsibilities, and change. Life was very simple with a blanket over your head.

She had to go up on tiptoe to see through the peephole in the front door. Whoever had installed it thought the whole world was at least five foot six.

What she saw had her rearing back in surprise.

The alarm was still disengaged. She unlocked the door, swung it open, and was hit with a second surprise.

The two people at her door must be planning to stay awhile. Each had a large duffel bag. The one she'd seen through the peephole was a man of average height with light brown hair. Those were the bits that looked normal. He was completely abnormal otherwise—head-turning, heart-stopping gorgeous, the most physically beautiful man she'd ever known.

Cullen Seabourne smiled at her. "Hello, luv. Look what I found."

The other person on her doorstep was much shorter than Cullen, too short to be seen through the peephole. He was cute, not sexy, and his smile lacked the cocky confidence of Cullen's.

He was eight years old.

"Hi, Lily," Toby said, his voice as wobbly as his smile. "Is my dad home?"

So far, Toby's interrogators hadn't gotten any more from him than Cullen had.

Rule and Lily sat at the kitchen table with Rule's surprising son. Dirty Harry had plunked his fat ass next to Cullen, who'd taken over slicing roast for sandwiches.

"It wasn't hard." Toby's set jaw made him, for a second, a miniature of his grandfather. "I went on the Internet an' booked the flight. There's a box to check if you're a minor, so I checked it."

"How alarming," Cullen murmured. Toby looked so much like Rule, and Rule so little like his own father, that he'd never noticed the resemblance before. It was a matter of expression rather than bone structure, he supposed. And scent. No question about it—Toby was a dominant.

"What?" Rule snapped.

Cullen appeased the beast at his feet with another scrap of roast, then used his knife to point. "Look at him. Can't you see Isen's ghostly image floating over that cherubic young face?"

Toby joined the adults in frowning at Cullen. "My granddad isn't a ghost."

"It's a metaphor." Cullen turned back to the cutting board to send the knife whizzing through a tomato, leaving a tidy pile of slices. "That's when you say a thing is something else to make a point. Like saying it's raining cats and dogs when, in fact, nothing more amazing than water is falling."

"But why's it alarming if I look like Granddad?"

"Isen kept going back for seconds when they handed out stubborn. Got way more than his share." Cullen dealt tomato slices over the meat heaped up on the sub rolls. "I'm thinking you did, too."

"We've wandered off the subject," Rule said. "How did you book the flight, Toby? I'm unaware of any companies that issue credit cards to children."

Toby looked down. "I used yours," he admitted. "The numbers of it. I had them 'cause… 'member when you let me order that music?"

"I see." Rule's voice was utterly level. "Two months ago, you memorized my credit card number so you could use it again without permission."

"No!" Toby sat up straight. "I didn't… I mean, the computer 'membered the number, not me. I didn't know I'd need it. I mean," he said again, correcting himself meticulously, "I didn't plan on being bad. Only then I had to."

"Which brings us back to the original question," Lily said gently. "Why?"

Toby shrugged, kicked the table leg, and wouldn't look at any of them.

Poor kid. Wasn't it obvious? Cullen grabbed two plates and crossed to the table. "Me and my mum got along fine," he said. "It was my dad who couldn't deal with what I was."

Toby's serious face swung up toward him. "But your dad was a lupus! He knew what you were."

"He wasn't a sorcerer. Or even a witch, like my mother. Mum wasn't thrilled when I accidentally burned something— my Gift was greater than my control when I was young—but she didn't think I was too weird for words because I could see magic." He set a plate in front of Toby. "My father couldn't handle it."

Toby's eyes, dark and intent, fixed on Cullen's face. "Your dad didn't like you?"

"He didn't trust me." He said that as if it didn't matter, though after all these years that simple truth still stuck in his throat. "I possessed a power he didn't understand. He thought I ought to be able to give that up to fit into his world. And I couldn't."

Lily and Rule exchanged glances.

The house phone rang. "That's probably your grandmother," Rule said, standing.

Mrs. Asteglio hadn't been home when Rule called, but that wasn't surprising. She didn't think her grandson was missing; she thought he'd flown to D.C. to spend Christmas with his father. Exactly true, of course. She just didn't know it had been all Toby's doing, not Rule's.

Quite an achievement, really, Cullen reflected as he delivered two more plates to people with no interest in food. The boy possessed unsuspected talents.

Toby's lower lip jutted out. He opened the sub roll and gave full attention to removing the tomato Cullen had just placed there. "She's gonna be mad. I don't see why we can't just tell her you want me here."

Rule stopped in midstep, swung around, and knelt on one knee in front of his son, putting their faces on a level. He gripped Toby's shoulders. "I want you here." His voice was low and fierce. "I have always wanted you with me. You know that."

Lily looked at the two of them and went to get the phone.

"Hello? Yes, Mrs. Asteglio, he arrived just fine. The problem is that we didn't know he was coming."

Cullen took his own plate to the table and listened to both conversations—Lily explaining to the grandmother that they hadn't sent for Toby, and Rule explaining to his son the difference between wanting him here and allowing him to show up on his own initiative.

The boy certainly had shown initiative. Cullen took a bite of his sandwich. Toby had planned his adventure well, right up to the moment the stewardess expected to hand him off to a waiting parent. The jig would have been up then if Cullen's plane hadn't landed when it did—just enough ahead of Toby's for Cullen to be making his way down the concourse and hear a familiar voice.

What are the odds? he thought, taking another bite. Then he put his sandwich down, his eyes narrowing in thought.

Coincidences happen all the time. People run into someone from their hometown while thousands of miles away, or stand in line behind a stranger with the same last name. Statisticians worked their own sort of magic to show that these events were less - remarkable than they seemed. In a country of 280 million people, you could expect a one-in-a-million event 280 times a day.

But the odds of encountering one specific person at an airport far from home at one specific moment…

Cullen looked at Toby.

No, that wasn't it. The boy's aura looked much as it always had—the magic a little stronger, maybe, but that was to be expected as he grew older.

It had been a wild notion, anyway. Patterning was a damned rare Gift, and as far as Cullen knew, he was the only Gifted lupus on the planet.

Lily promised to call Mrs. Asteglio back and hung up. Rule asked with a lift of his brows what she'd learned.

"She's upset, of course." Lily wore her just-the-facts-ma'am face, void of opinion. "We need to call her back when we've decided what to do so she can adjust her plans, if necessary."

Rule's eyebrows crunched down. "What plans?"

"Toby's mother was transferred to her wire service's office in Beirut. She flew there yesterday, so she won't be able to make it home for Christmas. Mrs. Asteglio decided to spend the holiday with her son and his family in Memphis. Toby…" She cast him a glance. "… objected. She thought he'd contacted you, and that you'd booked the flight for him."

A beat of silence followed. Rule looked at Toby. "I understand you were disappointed that your mother won't make it home for Christmas. But you didn't call me. Why not?"

Toby studied his shoes. "I dunno."

"You know I can smell it when you lie."

When Toby looked up, his stubborn expression reminded Cullen of a mule—or Toby's grandfather. "Grammy says Mom loves me, but she doesn't. She doesn't want to be around me 'cause I'm lupus. I want to live with you."

"Toby." Rule's voice held a helpless ache. "Your mother has refused several times to share custody, much less cede it to me. Changing that would mean a court battle, and I'm not in a good position to win."

"You think the judge won't like you 'cause you're lupus, but so am I."

"Which would become public knowledge if I sued for custody."

"I don't care! You love me. She doesn't. An' we could prove that to the judge, 'cause you're with me a lot more'n she is. And I know you have to go places sometimes, but during school I could stay at Clanhome with Granddad, so you could still do clan business."

"What about your Grammy?" Lily said softly. "She loves you."

Toby's lip jutted stubbornly. "She could come to Clanhome, too."

Oh, that was likely to happen. Cullen had only met the woman once, but once was enough to know she didn't like lupi any better than her daughter did. She did seem to care about the boy, which must set up a colossal inner conflict or two… richly deserved inner conflicts, in his opinion.

Rule sighed and stood. "We aren't going to settle this now, and, given recent events, it may be just as well for Toby to stay here for a while. We'll have bodyguards soon."

"Oh, God. I hadn't—" Lily broke off abruptly, shutting her mouth on whatever she'd been about to say. She and Rule exchanged another glance.

"It's possible," he said, just as if she'd asked a question. "Lord knows She is capable of any abomination."

Cullen's eyebrows rose. "I'm feeling sadly uninformed."

"Later." Rule was curt. He looked down at his son. "We've a matter of clan discipline to deal with first."

Lily shook her head. "This isn't about the clan."

Cullen had a feeling she was going to be difficult. He stood and headed for her.

Rule didn't look away from his son. "It is, and Toby knows that. Toby." His voice was hard now, as hard as his own father's would have been. "You came here hoping to force my hand."

He hung his head. "I—I guess so."

"By using my credit card without permission, you stole. You disobeyed and deceived those who have charge of you. You understand that there are consequences for your actions."

Toby gave a single, small nod.

"Kneel."

"Wait one minute!" Lily burst out. "He's—"

"Lily." Cullen took her arm. "Shut up."

She rounded on him. "He's a little boy!"

"Yes," Cullen said softly. "A little boy who, in another five years or so, will be capable of ripping out throats. Who will sometimes want to rip out throats, including, on occasion, his father's. Adolescence is trying for anyone. For a lupus, it brings perils you do not understand."

Lily opened her mouth. Shut it again. She aimed her frown at Rule, who hadn't taken his gaze from his son.

Cullen grabbed his plate. "Come on," he told her. "You and I need to talk about what brought me to your door." And Toby didn't need an audience.

In the parlor, Cullen plopped onto the couch—a fussy Victorian thing with a curvy back and too many pillows—and pointed at the painted armoire in the corner. "Is there a TV in that thing?"

Lily stared. "You want to watch television?"

"No, I want some sound. Toby's hearing isn't as good as it will be, but it's not a large house. He can probably hear us from the kitchen."

Lily stalked to the coffee table, picked up a remote, and pointed it. A rolling guitar arpeggio flowed from the armoire— Spanish flamenco, he thought, and took a bite of his sandwich. Either the channel was set to a radio station, or Rule had installed a CD player instead of a TV. Whichever, it ought to do the trick.

Lily paced the length of the room, turned. "That bitch."

It wasn't the subject he'd expected her to jump on first. "Which one?"

"Alicia. Toby's mother." She paced. "Two weeks ago, Rule asked Toby's mother if he could spend Christmas with us. She wouldn't even discuss it, but she doesn't feel any obligation to spend it with him herself."

He shrugged. "Alicia never should have been a mother. She hadn't planned on it, and I give her points for letting her mother raise him instead of botching the job herself."

"She could have let his father have him."

Lily's intensity roused his curiosity. He hadn't thought she was much more interested in motherhood than Alicia. "Is that what you want?"

She waved that away. "We're talking about what Toby wants. What he needs. Alicia doesn't seem to care about that."

"To be fair, Alicia believes she's doing what's best for Toby by limiting his exposure to our perversions. If her mother hadn't insisted that Toby be allowed to spend time with Rule, he wouldn't get even the brief visits he does."

"Alicia doesn't approve of lupi, but she went to bed with one?"

"Amazing. After working homicide, you still think people are consistent."

She lifted one hand, palm out. "All right, point taken." She brooded over the situation a moment, then asked, "Tell me why discipline means that Toby has to kneel to his father."

Still not the subject he'd expected. Maybe he didn't know her as well as he'd thought. "Toby's alpha. Rule has to remain his dominant, so when the boy hits his first Change and hormones collide with the moon's song and his brain shuts down, he'll still obey."

"But to make him kneel—"

"Quit being so damned human. Submission isn't humiliating. It's instinctively right for us, but humans do it, too. Does a sergeant feel humiliated because he has to salute his colonel?"

Her voice was dry. "He might, if the colonel made him prostrate himself first. How would you feel about kneeling to Rule?"

"Wouldn't do it," he said promptly. "But I'd kneel to my Lu Nuncio."

She looked at him a long moment, then shook her head. "Men don't make sense. Men who are lupi really don't make sense."

Her frown tightened down another notch. "Rule was uncomfortable after submitting to Paul, but I guess the act itself didn't bother him."

Cullen's eyebrows climbed. "Who's Paul?"

"It's complicated, and I'm getting things out of order." At last she sat, tucking one foot up on the chair with her. "It started with the power surge last night."

"Are we talking electrical power?"

"Magic. A big, fat whirlwind of it, unleashed at the same time all over the world, from what we can tell. You didn't feel it?"

He frowned. "The dragons were probably closer to the node than me when it hit. Greedy bastards must have soaked it all up."

"They can do that?"

"Like sponges. Remember how hard it was to work magic in their territory in Dis? Tell me about this power surge," he said, picking up his sandwich again. "I'll eat."