Blood Magic

THIRTY-THREE

“WHY do snitches never want to meet someplace comfortable?” Lily complained as she got out of her car.

Cody grinned. “I think someone didn’t get any supper.”

“I had supper.” She’d eaten the sandwich in the car and downed half the soda. “What I didn’t get was a shower.”

They were in the parking lot of the Oceanview Mall—which completely lacked a view of the ocean, offering instead acres of concrete that had been soaking up heat all day. Having received in abundance, it was now giving back. A bit of a breeze was kicking up, though, carrying a teasing whisper of coolness. Lily glanced off to the west, where the stalled cloud-bank looked like a massively bad bruise, all black and purple. Maybe the storm would move in, after all. “What now?”

“Having parked in the boonies, we now walk to section A12, where we look for a 2007 red Ford pickup, California license 3NQS750. Lowrider, orange flame on the sides.” Cody glanced at her. “For some reason Javier thinks my ride’s too distinctive. He didn’t want me parking anywhere near him.”

They started for the congested section he’d indicated. Privately, Lily admitted that, from a snitch’s point of view, the setup made sense in a paranoid sort of way. Public spots were better than dark alleys or bars, and what could be more public yet anonymous than a mall parking lot? The light was fading, but not yet gone. If he was a smart snitch, he’d shown up early and would be watching to make sure they followed instructions—and that no one had followed either him or them.

“Your man always this careful?” The breeze was growing stronger, blowing her hair in her face. She shoved it back.

“Pretty much. He likes the cloak and dagger aspect of informing as much as he likes getting a little cash now and . . . Shit.”

“What?” Lily stopped, her heartbeat revving. Then she realized what he was looking at. Her hand. Specifically, the ring she wore. “Oh. You mean you were, ah . . .”

“I had it in mind, yeah. I mean, a lupus—that’s temporary.”

Lily eyed Cody warily. “This ring says it isn’t. You aren’t going to do something stupid, are you?”

“Like grab you and plant one on?” Cody’s teeth flashed white in a grin. “Maybe I thought about it, but, hey, I’m a cop. I can read body language, and yours is saying ‘whoa, black belt here.’ ”

“Oh.” She felt foolish. “How’d you guess? I wasn’t a black belt yet when you knew me.”

“You mean you are now? Shit, it’s a good thing I finally did develop some sense.” He wiped his forearm across his forehead, rearranging the sweat. “Guess I could take it as a compliment that your man was in a hurry to put up that big, shiny KEEP OUT sign.”

A KEEP OUT sign? Like she was property? Lily opened her mouth to tell him what she thought about that attitude . . . then realized it didn’t matter. It really didn’t. Maybe Cody would feel better if he thought Rule had considered him a threat. “I guess you could.”

He looked at her for a long moment. “He didn’t, though, did he? You may not have been wearing that sparkler earlier, but you had it.”

She smiled. She couldn’t help it. Cody had always been at his most appealing when his good sense got the drop on his ego. “I did. We were waiting for the right moment for the big announcement, but I decided right moments can be hard to spot, so why not wear it?”

His mouth twisted in a wry smile. “Maybe you wanted to put up your own KEEP OUT sign, having just run into me again and all. You’d know that a ring was a good defense against my legendary appeal. Ah—you don’t have to actually respond to that. Think I’d like it better if you didn’t.”

Lily grinned and started walking toward A12 again. In truth, she’d been thinking of Rule when she put on his ring, and only Rule. Well, him and giving Dreyer a black eye, if she could. “I’m not going to tell you what to think.”

“There’s a switch.”

“I did not tell you . . . okay,” she admitted. “Sometimes I did. But I was young.”

“Young, but smart enough to know when to bail. Don’t puff up. I mean that. You were right to hand me my walking papers. I’ve got a lot of regrets from my drinking years, Lily. My stupid years, I call them. I want you to know that you’re the biggest one. I shouldn’t have let you go.”

Her eyebrows arched. “Shouldn’t have let me?”

“Don’t pick at my words, woman. If I’d gone in rehab as soon as . . . Well, once I knew you meant it, you’d have come back, and you’d have stuck by me. I knew it then, I know it now. You’re the kind who sticks.”

She would have. She’d hoped hard that he’d do just that—go into rehab for her sake. For both their sakes. It had been painful, giving up that hope.

They walked on in silence for a bit. They were in a busier, more crowded section now, which Lily preferred. She’d felt exposed out in the boonies.

“He’s really it for you, this Turner dude?” Cody asked abruptly. “No regrets, no doubts?”

Lily had always spoken the truth to Cody. She gave him truth now. “No regrets. No doubts.”

His mouth flattened into a straight line, but only for a moment. Then he slipped back into the cocky grin he wore so well. “Guess you finally found someone who worries your mother even more than I did.”

“I did not get involved with you to annoy my mother.” When they first started dating, he’d thought her real goal was to shock her mother. That had been the topic of their first fight, but it grew into a shared joke eventually. “That was a side benefit.”

He chuckled. “She give you grief over your fiancé?”

“He’s not Chinese,” she said dryly. “What do you think?” In truth, Julia Yu wasn’t prejudiced in the ordinary sense. She had a keen sense of justice, donated to civil rights organizations, and voted a straight Democratic ticket. And saw no contradiction between that and her insistence that her daughters marry good Chinese boys.

They were in A12 now, passing the rear end of a dark blue panel van. A trio of teenage girls chattered their way along the center of the traffic lane, much to the frustration of a white Mustang forced to proceed at a walking pace behind them. And the Buick behind it. And the VW behind the Buick.

Four or five slots ahead was a red pickup; she couldn’t see the tags from this angle. “That your man’s truck?” she asked.

“Think so.”

A flicker of motion in the corner of her eye was all the warning she had. In that split second—before she even knew what she’d seen—she cried out, “Duck!” and stepped to the left, pivoting.

The heavy steel chain whipped through the space where Cody’s head had been. He’d dropped—and was rolling into the legs of the Hispanic tough who’d sent the chain whirling at him.

That one fell. The two behind him didn’t. One had a knife, the other a baseball bat. They charged Cody, who was scuffling with the one he’d knocked down. “Police!” Lily snapped, drawing her gun. “Drop your weapons!”

The boom- crack of a shotgun answered her—from behind. Glass shattered as Lily dropped to a crouch, looking around frantically.

“You drop yours, bitch!” a male voice called from inside the Buick. No doubt it belonged to whoever was poking the shotgun barrel out the tinted rear window. Lily sighted quickly. She could barely make out a form behind the shotgun.

The girls screamed and scattered—one of them running right between Lily and her shot, dammit. The Mustang, no longer blocked, floored it, and the VW rocked into reverse.

“Drop it!” the one in the car yelled. “You are so dead, bitch, if you don’t put that gun down!”

Lily felt pretty attached to her weapon just then, so she replied by squeezing off a quick shot. It missed, but gave her a second’s cover to turn and—oh, shit.

She’d been about to dive between the van and the Honda on the other side of it, but the space was occupied—by three more gangbangers, advancing on her single file. And grinning. One had a gun—a Glock, maybe. She couldn’t see about the other two.

The black wolf seemed to come from nowhere, moving at top speed. She dropped. He leaped over her, right at the gangbangers. Two shots rang out—one from the shotgun, one from the other side of the van, and she hoped like hell that meant Cody had been able to get his weapon out.

Screaming—from the other side of the van, from behind her. She let the wolf take her back, rising to one knee to sight again on the shadowy form in the Buick. She squeezed the trigger.

Glass shattered. A choked noise, not hearty enough to call a scream. She kept her weapon steady, swinging it slightly to sight on the driver. “Don’t do it. Don’t think you can get away. Open the door and get out real slow.”

“Get him off,” someone was screaming. “Get him off, get him off!” Someone else was cursing and sobbing. And someone was growling, deep in his chest.

No, two someones. One on each side of the van.

“Cody!” she called, not taking her attention off the Buick, where the driver’s door was opening slowly. “You okay?”

“Battered and bloody, but operational. Your boyfriend’s got one of them pinned and I’ve got the others covered. One’s shot, but not bad.”

“On the ground. Now, dammit!” she snarled at the driver—a lanky youth, maybe nineteen, maybe less, with dirty black hair and whites showing all around his pupils. He dropped to the concrete.

“That’s it,” she said, standing slowly. “Arms out. Hold real still now. I’m feeling nervous. You don’t want to get me excited.” She advanced on the car cautiously. The driver had left the door open, and the dome light glowed brightly. The car looked empty. Was the one she’d shot dead, unconscious, or hunkered down and waiting for her to get close?

The driver was holding still like a good boy. She eased close enough to peer in the shattered window.

No, he wasn’t hunkered down waiting. He was either passed out or dead—out of play for now. She took a chance by glancing over her shoulder quickly.

The black wolf was faced off against two gangbangers, snarling. They stood frozen, not even twitching. The third lay on his stomach, unmoving. In the failing light she couldn’t see if he lived, but there was a lot of shiny liquid puddling around him.

A siren sounded suddenly, and fairly close. Wouldn’t be long.

“Cody, can you get your perps to join us out here? And, uh, Jacob—I think that’s you, right? Let your prey up now.”

“All right, you heard her. Move slow and easy. Oh, look, the poor boy peed himself.” Cody had an evil chuckle. “Didn’t like it when the big bad wolf knocked you down, huh? Come on, you, don’t whine. You’re not hurt much. I used my clutch piece, and it’s just a little .22.”

At some point during the fight the switch had flipped from dusk to night, but the parking lot lights glowed brightly. She had no trouble seeing the three gangbangers who emerged from the far side of the van. One was limping—and yes, there was a dark spot on the front of his jeans. One held his arm, where blood was oozing from the biceps. The third looked undamaged.

Lily’s heart was tripping along fast. Later, she knew, she’d get the shakes from unused adrenaline. Later she’d feel something other than relief that the one with the shotgun wasn’t shooting at her or Cody or anyone else. Later she’d feel all sorts of things.

Right now she felt fine. The breeze was stronger now, definitely cool. It felt good. It felt damn good. She was alive and she felt really good about that.

Cody followed his perps with his weapon trained on them. The wolf—a gray and tan beast—brought up the rear. Cody directed his prisoners to lie down next to the driver, a suggestion the wolf reinforced with a growl.

They didn’t argue. Cody spoke to Lily without looking away from the three gangbangers on the pavement. “I thought your boyfriend’s name was Rule.”

“It is.” A pair of headlights raced toward them down the lane, coming much too fast. “That’s not my boyfriend. Neither of them are.”

Cody’s eyes widened. “Neither of . . .”

Lily’s lips twitched as she realized that Cody hadn’t known there were two wolves. “Nope.”

The driver behind those bright headlights braked at last, tires screeching as the Mercedes shuddered to a stop ten feet away. She nodded at the car as the door was flung open. “That is.”

WITHIN fifteen minutes, an ungodly number of cops had arrived. There were a pair of rent-a-cops from the mall itself—a phrase Rule was careful not to use out loud. Lily took offense, since retired and off-duty police sometimes worked those jobs. Three patrol units and one sheriff’s deputy had responded. The flashing lights from their cars added a rosy glow to the surroundings, a counterpoint to the headlights from the two ambulances. A detective, he’d been told, was on the way, as was the ME.

The man Lily had shot still lived. He was being loaded in the first ambulance now. The one José had jumped did not. José had ripped out his throat.

Rule had heard the basic outline of events when Lily reported crisply to the first officers on scene. He’d watched as she handed over her weapon—which had angered him, but she took it in stride. It was procedure, she’d said, when shots had been fired. Besides, she’d added with a sly grin, she still had her clutch piece. Cody Beck had handed over the weapon he’d fired, too, but he still had his police-issue gun.

Jacob had already Changed back and was being questioned by one of the officers. José was still wolf. He needed more time to rest between Changes.

Rule crouched in front of José now.

The black wolf sat stiffly, not looking directly at his Lu Nuncio. The smell of blood clung to him. José was a strong and skilled fighter with excellent control as well as the three kinds of sense a warrior needs—tactical sense, common sense, and people sense. That’s why Benedict had put him in charge of the bodyguards.

But this was his first human kill.

“You did right,” Rule said, his voice pitched low enough that none of the humans around them would hear. “You assessed the situation and did as you’d been taught. Three attackers, all armed—you had to stop them quickly or risk my nadia’s life. Taking out the one with the gun frightened the others into surrendering. Lily trusted you to guard her back. You didn’t fail her.”

The black wolf’s head lifted slightly. He looked Rule in the eye for one second, then away, his head dipping in a small nod.

Rule shifted to subvocalizing—speaking softly deep in his throat without moving his lips. “You are to say that Lily signaled you to attack. She realized you were following her, and when trouble erupted, she signaled you in the same way I would have, had I been here.”

José’s ears pricked up. Another nod.

Rule raised his voice to a normal level. “You’re ready to Change, then? The officers would like to take your statement.” He stepped back.

Rule knew Lily couldn’t see what happened during the Change. He wondered if that was because she hadn’t grown up seeing it, as he had. He’d read that the visual cortex of a person who’d been blind from birth was used to process the other senses, and so was not available for vision. Perhaps Lily’s brain would eventually learn how to process this kind of seeing.

Or perhaps not. Rule watched as José opened the door to another reality, one where moon and earth were one, just as man and wolf were one. For those few seconds he saw both José’s forms existing in the same space at the same time. For those few seconds, what he saw made perfect sense.

Then José was a man only, the wolf gone. Rule handed him the cutoffs he’d taken from his trunk. They’d do well enough for now.

Lily had been talking to one of the patrol officers. The two of them moved closer now. Lily looked at José—at his face, that is. Lily wasn’t entirely comfortable with nudity, and José was just then stepping into the cut-offs. “José, this is Officer Munoz. He needs to ask you some questions.”

José looked at the young patrolman, whose face was frozen in his best Jack Webb impression: just the facts, ma’am or sir. José’s nod looked much the same in this form as in his other one. “Let’s get to it, then.”

Lily gave a little jerk of her head, telling Rule to come with her. He did.

She stopped several feet away from the nearest officer. “You told him to say I signaled him?”

“I did. Ah—should it come up, you used the one I taught you.” He made a surreptitious movement with one hand—palm held vertically, perpendicular to his body, with the fingers tight and straight. Two quick slashes. It was the standard Nokolai hand signal for attack. He’d already told Jacob to make the same claim.

Lily was relieved. “Good. It’s not that deceitful. If I’d known they were there, I sure as hell would have signaled them.”

Rule had been halfway to the city when he realized he wasn’t going to make it to the apartment before Lily left for her meeting. He’d decided to follow his father’s suggestion after all, and called José, telling him he didn’t want Lily to know she was being guarded.

The mate sense had told Rule where to go, and the Oceanview Mall was closer to the city’s edge than the apartment, so he’d managed to arrive in time to hear shots fired. By the time he leaped from his car, he’d been ready for battle—but the battle was over.

He’d raced to Lily and run his hands over her, demanding to know that she was all right. She’d allowed that. She’d even clung to him for a moment—and whispered in his ear that he needed to tell his people they’d acted on her signal.

“Will your deputy confirm this?” he asked.

“He wasn’t in a position to see, so it doesn’t matter.”

“You think this is necessary, then? My people acted with no more force than necessary. They saved your life and probably the deputy’s as well.”

“I like to think I would have come up with something if they hadn’t been here. There were a lot of attackers, but they were sloppy. Didn’t make me for a serious threat, probably, or they’d have just shot me instead of waving their guns around and yelling. But yeah, José and Jacob saved lives today. Either mine or some of the gangbangers, because I was going to have to shoot them to stop them.”

“That’s reason enough for force, according to the law.”

“This way, though, people will read about two lupi attacking on the signal of an FBI agent. A human FBI agent. They won’t focus on how big and scary you lupi are because these wolves were under the control of a human who’s allowed to use deadly force. It’s like with guns. When people read about a nutcase going postal and shooting up a crowd, guns are scary. When people read about a police sniper using a rifle to take out a killer who’s got hostages, they don’t think, ‘Wow, rifles are scary.’”

Rule smiled slowly. “That’s spin. PR.”

“Don’t talk ugly to me.”

“I’ve been waiting for you to ask what the hell I thought I was doing, sending the guards trailing you without letting you know.”

She snorted. “It’s obvious what you were doing. Why, though—that’s a good question. If you’d had anything solid to worry you, you’d have called me. So was it just a hunch? Or was it because the meet was with Cody, and you weren’t a hundred percent sure of me?”

“Don’t talk ugly to me.”

She smiled and brushed his hand quickly. “Yeah, but when I said that, there was a grain of truth in what you’d said. So . . . ?”

“Do you seriously think that if I suspected you of, ah, sneaking around, I’d send two of my people to catch you at it?”

“Put that way—no.”

“Good.” Yet Rule felt uncomfortable. He hadn’t lied. He did trust Lily . . . but he suspected that the fact that it was Beck she was going to meet had kept his attention on that meeting. Maybe it had fed his uneasiness. How could he tell?

It didn’t matter, he decided. If his feelings were murky, his actions were right. He wasn’t acting like a jealous man, so—

“I guess it doesn’t matter, then, that Cody said my ring was a big KEEP OFF sign.”

“Good.”

Lily tipped her head to one side. “Oh?”

“You’re thinking I’m jealous.”

One corner of her mouth tipped up. “Yeah, I am.”

“I’m not—at least, it’s similar to jealousy, I suppose, but I know you wouldn’t act on whatever feelings you have, but—” He stopped. Ran a hand over his hair. “Dammit, Lily. He matters to you. I can hear it in your voice.”

Deliberately she took his hand, her eyes steady on his. “Lots of people matter to me. I’m not in love with them. I am in love with you. Cody . . . I guess what you were hearing was unfinished business. He and I ended things badly, and that left all these messy regrets hanging around. Regrets about the way I handled things, not about us breaking up. How could I regret that? I’ve got you now.”

A small, dark place inside Rule opened up, releasing a heaviness he didn’t name. That lump of darkness met air, turned to mist, and evaporated. A smile spread over his face. The hand he held wore his ring. He ran his thumb over it. “And I have you.”

“You’re sounding pretty possessive there.”

And she sounded pretty amused. He didn’t care.

Beck chose that interesting moment to join them. He glanced at their joined hands, then spoke to Lily as if Rule wasn’t there. “I’ve got an APB out for Javier. I can’t figure this out. It isn’t his style, setting us up that way.”

“I imagine he got one of those ‘can’t refuse’ type of offers.” She glanced at Rule, including him. “Just before I came here I got a tip from someone who knows what he’s talking about. Our perp’s taken over two small gangs and wants more. According to my source, he wants to run all criminal operations in San Diego. I’m betting these clowns are from one of the gangs he’s already co-opted.”

“I don’t know, Lily,” Beck said. “These particular scum are Soldados. They’re a small gang, yeah, but they’re vicious, ambitious, and territorial, and their leader is Cruz Montoya. He wouldn’t hand control over to some newcomer.”

“If he refused, he’s probably dead. We’re not dealing with the usual sort of perps, Cody. If . . . Looks like the detective’s here. I need to talk to—no, hell, I’d better get that.” She dug out her phone.

Rule recognized the ringtone. “Wouldn’t Ruben still be in the air?” He seemed to remember that Brooks’s flight was to land around ten.

She nodded, touching the answer link. “Lily Yu here.”

Rule heard Brooks’s voice clearly. “Lily, your family is in grave and immediate danger. That’s all I know, but I am completely sure of it.”