Blood Magic

THIRTY-SIX

“BROOKS here.”

Rule held his phone with one hand and drove with the other. “This is Rule Turner. Lily has been taken.”

“Taken?” The jolt of surprise was clear in Brooks’s voice. “My Gift can be damnably capricious. It didn’t warn me. When I wasn’t able to reach her on her phone, I hoped the problem was technical. During the riots, much cell coverage was disrupted.”

Riots? Was that what they were calling it? “Much of everything was disrupted,” Rule said grimly. “They’ve also snatched Cynna. They’re using her to threaten Cullen, to keep him from looking for them. They say they’ll trade Lily for her grandmother—but not yet.”

“They’ve already sent their terms to you?”

“They made contact with Sam. They plan to hurt Lily.” Rule’s throat tightened too much for speech. He swallowed and forced himself to go on. “Madame Yu believes one of them will drain Lily of her Gift. It’s a slow process, and that’s why the delay in making an exchange. I intend to get Lily away from them. If you’re willing, you can help. I’ll tell you who has her, everything I’ve held back—but you have to come to me at Clanhome. I’m on my way there now.”

“Without Lily to affirm your words, I’m unsure if this is, indeed, Rule Turner I’m speaking with.”

“You’re allergic to iron and steel. You learned this in Edge.”

A moment’s silence, then Ruben said, “That is persuasive, if not . . . Yes? Just a moment,” he told Rule. And put him on hold.

The woman in the passenger seat spoke. “I am not persuaded this is wise,” Madame Yu said. “Bringing Brooks in changes the balance.”

“The Chimei already changed it. You said as much.”

She was silent a moment. Her hands gripped each other tightly in her lap. “I did not think she could do a new thing. I was wrong. This taking of hostages is new.”

Brooks came back on the line. “I just spoke with the officers I sent to look for Lily. They found the patrol car she borrowed. In the backseat was a young woman, a civilian, dazed and incoherent. In the front seat was a sheriff’s deputy, unconscious. There was a note saying he’d been enspelled, but paramedics suspect a concussion. He’s being taken to emergency now.”

“That won’t hurt him, but he’s unconscious due to a spell, not a head wound.” As Rule had said in the note he’d left with Beck.

Brooks absorbed that in a brief silence. “What did Lily send me from your computer this afternoon?”

Rule’s eyebrows shot up. “I don’t know. I haven’t been to the apartment since she was taken, and before that . . . First she was attacked by a gang. Then we raced into the madness, hoping to save her family.”

“Are they hurt?” His question came quick, urgent.

“They’re unhurt, but asleep. I’ve had them moved to Clanhome until they wake up.” Rule glanced at Lily’s grandmother. “Most of them are asleep, that is. Madame Yu is with me.”

“I will speak with her.”

Rule passed her the phone. He’d never been able to figure out how much of the tiger she retained when she was two-legged. Had she heard Ruben’s side of the conversation?

“Mr. Brooks,” she said, “what did my granddaughter send you?”

Apparently she had.

“A copy of a handwritten note, which includes a word or phrase in Chinese. I’m having it translated, but there is a problem. My translator doesn’t recognize one of the characters. Madame, are you confident that the person with you is, indeed, Rule Turner, and that he is not being coerced or affected in some way?”

“I am completely certain of it. Who was the note from?”

“A man believed to operate a criminal gang with ties to the Taiwanese underworld.”

“Zhou Xing?” It was as much demand as question. “His name is Zhou Xing?”

“It is.”

“Ahh.” That was almost a purr. For the first time since learning her granddaughter had been taken, some of the tension eased from those slender shoulders. “Excellent. Bring it with you when you come.”

“I haven’t said I will come.”

“Consult your Gift,” she snapped. “You are supposed to be able to follow a hunch. Attempt to do so.”

Another silence, longer this time. “I will come,” Brooks said simply.

“TOILET paper. Boxes of it,” Cynna muttered. “That’s not much help, but lightbulbs? Plastic knives? What were they thinking?”

The two of them sat on the floor of their temporary prison, surrounded by what they’d plundered that might prove useful. The door their captors had left through—the one leading to the stairs—was locked by both magic and a dead bolt. The other door led to a tiny bathroom with a chemical toilet, a tiny sink, and five five-gallon bottles of water.

“This is probably where they’ve been holed up themselves. They didn’t expect to use it as a jail.” The lightbulbs were an especially odd find because there wasn’t actually any electricity in their little cell, as a bit of investigation had shown. The bulbs plugged into the ceiling glowed anyway.

“I bet some of this stuff was already here when they made this their hideout. Most of the stuff here is pretty old, like someone stockpiled it years ago.”

“Could be.” Among their finds were five extra lightbulbs. Unlike those in the ceiling, they didn’t glow. Lily had broken one and was wiggling the longest shard of glass loose from the socket. “Their schedule got pushed up when Johnny went after Cullen on his own, putting him in danger. I’m betting they’ve got something else in mind for us, long-term. It isn’t ready yet.”

“Makes sense. That ready?” She held out her hand.

“As ready as I can make it.” Lily gave her the long glass sliver.

Cynna took it and closed her eyes. She sat cross-legged, her lips moving, though Lily didn’t hear anything.

The sorcerer had taken Cynna before he and the Chimei rained madness on a square mile of the city. She’d been stopped at a traffic light, on her way back to Sam’s lair after dropping Nettie off at Clanhome; he’d hit her with a sleep spell. That was all she knew until she woke up, hands cuffed behind her, in the back of an old panel van.

There’d been two young toughs watching her. Members of the Padres, Lily thought, judging by what Cynna reported about their clothing and tattoos.

Abruptly Cynna stopped her silent chant and slashed her arm with the glass. Blood welled up in the shallow cut. Quickly she dragged a small plastic knife through it.

“It looks the same,” Lily said dubiously. Except that the plastic was still white and pristine, without a drop of blood on it. Weird.

“Let’s see what it does.” Cynna ripped a page out of a magazine and drew the knife down the paper—which split as if the serrated plastic were a razor blade. She grinned. “Damn, I’m good.”

“You are, but did I mention that you’re sounding more like Cullen all the time?”

“I think you did. Got another one for me?”

They had three plastic knives. Now that they knew Cynna’s spell worked, they needed two more glass shards, but they had to be at least two inches long. “The rest of the pieces aren’t long enough. I’ll break another lightbulb.”

The next bulb shattered into way too many tiny pieces. Lily’s lips thinned. Her hand felt shaky as she reached for another one. Easy does it, she told herself. She hadn’t wrecked their chances by wrecking one lightbulb.

The next lightbulb broke perfectly, leaving three long, lovely pieces. Lily handed her one. “I should sweep up the broken glass first.” They had a broom, an actual broom. They planned to make it nice and pointy at one end, using the newly sharp plastic knives.

“Wait till I’m finished. This takes a whopping lot of concentration.” Cynna closed her eyes again.

They were being careful about what they said out loud. Lily hadn’t found a camera or a bug, but there might be something she’d missed. And Cynna thought their captors might be able to eavesdrop magically. “They couldn’t listen every minute,” she’d said, “because they have other things to do, and they’d have to concentrate to listen in that way. But we’d better assume they can hear us.”

Lily had asked if that kind of listening was mind-magic, or another kind. Mind-magic wouldn’t work on her, but a spell that picked up sounds would pick up her voice as well as anyone else’s.

“It’s not mind-magic,” Cynna had said, “but I don’t have a clue how it’s done. We know it’s possible, but I don’t think anyone in this realm knows how.”

“Anyone but Johnny, you mean?”

“It seems possible. He knew a lot about Cullen, didn’t he? I’ve been thinking about that. If this Chimei’s been around a few centuries, she could know a lot of spells that are lost to the rest of us. That’s probably why her pet sorcerer could do that sleep-spell bomb. It’s something she taught him.”

So Cynna chanted silently as she turned a plastic knife into a potentially deadly weapon. And Lily didn’t refer to their plans for the broom, once she’d swept up the broken glass they didn’t use.

Their weapons might be taken from them. The Chimei was powerful. So was the sorcerer. But Lily had realized something, and managed to convey it to Cynna by speaking elliptically.

When Rule had said the Rhej had no knowledge of the Chimei in the clan’s memories, Lily had been disappointed. But there was an upside, a very large upside. It meant that the Chimei knew little about lupi.

The Chimei didn’t know how deeply lupi treasured their babies. She’d made a bad mistake when she kidnapped and threatened a woman who carried a lupus babe.

More important, the Chimei clearly didn’t know who Cynna was. They knew she was Lily’s friend and Cullen’s wife, so thought they had a hostage with double value.

They did. But Cynna was also the Rhej’s apprentice. And Lily was pretty sure the Chimei didn’t even know the Rhejes existed, much less what they meant to their clans. She certainly didn’t know about the memories they carried . . . memories Cynna had so recently begun acquiring.

The spell Cynna used now was from one of the earliest memories, from the time of the Great War. That’s why she had to chant it rather than use what was inscribed on her skin.

One other thing the Chimei didn’t know about: the mate bond.

Bird Woman and Johnny had gone to a great deal of trouble to hide Lily and Cynna where neither dragon senses nor human Gifts could find them. They’d done a good job of it, according to Cynna. Cynna’s Finding sense was so muffled by the wards she claimed she couldn’t Find the sky from their prison.

But the earth and wards had no effect on the mate bond. They had no effect on the mate sense, which told Lily as clearly as ever in what direction Rule was, and how far away.

He’d be coming for her, and for Cynna. He wouldn’t be alone. They’d do their best to be ready.

THE sky was dark, overcast, the moon and stars hidden behind clouds that refused to drop their burden of water. Beneath that heavy sky, Clanhome’s meeting field was as full as it had been two nights ago. But this time, there were no children running madly around the field. No women laughed and danced. Only lupi were on the field tonight.

Nokolai was going to war.

At one end of the field, Rule hugged his son. “I’ll see you again soon.”

Toby squirmed away. “Maybe you will. You can’t promise, or Grandpa wouldn’t have shifted the heir’s portion.”

“The Rho did that,” Rule corrected firmly. It had been necessary, the removal of his heir’s portion. But the ache of loss was keen.

Toby repeated Rule’s correction, but his face was pure stubbornness. “The Rho did it because you could both get killed.”

Rule nodded. “You’re right. We can’t know what will happen in battle, and we can’t risk losing the mantle entirely. But I am a very good fighter—and your grandfather is undefeated.”

Toby frowned hard. “That’s ’cause he doesn’t fight Uncle Benedict.”

“True.” Rule’s throat closed.

Toby looked at Benedict, standing tall and grim on Rule’s left. “It’s temporary, though. Giving Uncle Benedict the heir’s portion of the mantle is temporary.”

Benedict spoke gravely. “That, as always, is the Rho’s decision. But I do not want it. And the mantle does not want me. It wants my brother.”

That startled Rule. “You can tell—”

“Hush,” Isen said. “Toby, you must go to the Center with the other children now.”

Toby nodded, but spoke, low and fierce, to his father. “I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be safe when everybody else isn’t!”

“No more than I would want to be safe if you weren’t. But it eases me to know you’re safe, and it’s for me to go and you to stay. You’ve the harder duty tonight. As does Benedict, and the others who don’t go to battle with us. It is very hard to wait.”

“I—I want you to go. I want you to get Lily back, and Cynna. You have to.” Toby’s voice didn’t quiver, but it was a near thing. “But I don’t see why you and Grandpa both have to go.”

Rule glanced at his father, standing to his right. Isen spoke. “You understand what happens tonight? You understand why this is not just a rescue of two clan members?”

Toby nodded. “It’s not just about them. It’s about the clan, too, because of the memories, and the Lady.”

“Yes. You must also know that a Rho doesn’t call war and sit back from battle. In this battle I must be close, for without the mantle, the charms the Rhej made won’t work. And without your father, of course, we could not find Lily and Cynna.” He clapped Rule on the back. “Not that I’d be able to hold him back, anyway, with Lily in danger. But we need him.”

Toby sniffed, nodded, and stood as straight as a nine-year-old body could. “Okay. I’ll see you later, too, Grandpa.” That was said defiantly.

Isen laid his hand on Toby’s head. “You will. And whether you believe such promises or not, I promise it. Go with Sybil now.”

The child tender led Toby away. He would wait with her at the Center, with other children whose fathers went to battle tonight.

That was a small number. Only those with charms to guard them from mind-magic would fight, and even going without sleep, the Rhej had been able to make only ten of those in the twenty-six hours since Lily and Cynna were taken. She’d used a spell from the memories to make those charms . . . a spell lost to the rest of the world since before the founding of Rome. A spell that been used in the Great War, and not since.

Those charms should protect against the Chimei—but they didn’t know how much. Lupi had never fought against Chimei. They wouldn’t know how well the charms worked against this particular enemy until they faced her.

But though only a dozen would fight tonight, in a few moments, all of Nokolai would be at war. If neither Rule nor his father came back from tonight’s battle, Benedict would be Nokolai’s Rho—and he would continue the war.

This, for lupi, was the meaning of war: it didn’t end until the enemy was defeated. There might be lulls, but there were no truces.

All lupi had been at war with one enemy—their Lady’s enemy—for more than three thousand years. That she had been far from their realm and untouchable for most of that time changed nothing. They remained at war with the Great Bitch, and would until she was dead or forever defeated.

Isen gathered his two living sons with a glance. The three of them strode into the waiting throng.

The crowd of lupi fell silent. Waiting.

When the three men reached the center of the field, they halted. Rule and Benedict stationed themselves to either side of their Rho and a couple paces back.

Isen raised his arms and his voice. “Nokolai! You have heard of our enemies. You know what they have done. Twice they attacked one of ours—at a baby party, and at the hospital. Twice they failed. And now they have stolen our Chosen, touched by the Lady—”

Growls erupted from more than three hundred throats not designed for growling.

“They have stolen her, and our Rhej’s apprentice. You know Cynna. You know she is with child, carrying a clan babe, a lupus babe. They threaten her. They threaten the baby.”

The growls were louder this time. A few of the younger men lost control and Changed.

“But Cynna is more than a mother, precious as that is. They have stolen she who will carry the clan’s memories! She who will bring the Lady among us! Lady-touched, both of them—Chosen and Rhej-to-be, both taken!”

Now they howled—human and lupine throats alike.

“Our enemies are powerful. Make no doubt of that. One—the Chimei—is ancient and canny, and cannot be killed. She can control the perceptions of hundreds at a time. She feeds on fear. I am told that if she is allowed to fully manifest herself, she will be more powerful than any who have walked this earth since the Great War. Her sorcerer has power, too, and spells we can’t guess at, and he shares some of her immunity to damage, so he will be hard to kill. And together they have allies, human gangs. This is no small thing we do, going against such foes.”

The answering growls were low, and to Rule’s ears said clearly, “Who cares?”

“But we have a sorcerer, too. And allies of our own—some here, some elsewhere.” Isen waved—and a huge black shape descended from the sky to land at the far end of the field. He had riders, two human shapes who bestrode his shoulders near the base of the neck. One was female, and old. One was male and recovering from a heart wound—and very good with fire.

“Nokolai.” Now Isen’s voice dropped to a normal level. Every man and wolf on the field fell silent, straining to hear. “Our Rhej has spoken to me—because the Lady has spoken to her.”

Utter silence. There was no shifted foot, no slightest rustle of clothing, no quickly indrawn breath.

“The Lady gave our Rhej one word.” His voice was quiet now, conversational. Only lupus hearing enabled those at the edges of the crowd to hear. “One word.” He waited, then boomed, “Nokolai—I cry war!”