Blood Magic

THIRTY-NINE

LILY stood planted to the earth, numbed by too many revelations, too many events, coming too fast. She didn’t recognize the threat to Isen until Rule took off running.

Then her feet got the message and she sprinted full-out.

What did the stupid man think he could do to the Chimei? He couldn’t hit her, stab her, bite her, bind her—actually, Lily couldn’t do those things, either. But at least she wasn’t subject to Bird Woman’s magic.

Though how she could use that immunity to help Isen, she didn’t know.

Rule got there first, of course. He skidded to a stop, dropping to his knees. It took Lily a few more moments to get close enough to see clearly what was happening.

Isen lay flat on the ground, his eyes open and staring. White mist, peculiarly defined at the edges, covered his face like a glistening, translucent shroud. His chest didn’t move. He wasn’t breathing.

Rule was shoving at that otherness, but his hands slid off every time, as if Kun Nu were ice, not mist. “I can’t move her. I can’t move her.”

Lily dropped to her knees and tried the same useless pushing. She felt the surface of the thing, utterly slick, slightly cooler than her own skin. Utterly immobile, as if it had the weight of a huge boulder, not a bird. “Shit, shit, shit. Get off of him. Get off.”

“He’s not breathing,” Rule said. “She’s gone down his throat. She’s in his lungs, goddamn her. Sam—do something. Stop her.”

There is only one way to stop her, Sam replied. And I cannot do it.

The Chimei couldn’t do this, couldn’t be allowed to do this. Rage rose, choking Lily as if she were the one with another being stuffed down her throat—and memory, dim and unclear, rose with it. Once before she’d tried to stop someone from using magic to destroy. But she couldn’t remember, dammit, couldn’t think of what she’d done.

“Hell,” she panted. “If I’m related to dragons . . .” Dragons soak up magic.

My granddaughter-in-magic, Sam had said.

There are two ways to take another’s power, the Chimei had said. One is voluntary. One is not.

Lily put her palms flat on the cool, white otherness. And pulled.

But this was no Earth-Gifted human witch willfully, insanely burning herself out in an effort to destroy.

This was Power.

Lily’s hands sank inside that whiteness. And power roared up her arms, a crawling horror of it, hot and icy and everything at once—every kind of sensation at once, every kind of magic, stretching into dimensions so alien Lily couldn’t grasp what she touched, what she held . . .

What held her. For the white mass came flowing up out of Isen, flowing up over Lily’s arms. It hung there in front of Lily, trapping her—and it formed a mouth.

That mouth, obscenely female, hissed, “Did you think you could absorb my power, little human? Oh, you surprised me with your trick, but you are no dragon, and the male human who betrayed my Johnny is dead. His heart stopped before you startled me with your trick. Now I will stop your heart, and your lover’s. I will kill you all slowly and eat your fear as you die.”

“You c-can’t. The treaty—”

“Poor, stupid little not-dragon. You broke the treaty. When you tried to take my power without my consent, you broke it.” And she swarmed up Lily’s arms, her shoulders—Lily dragged in a breath and held it as cool white otherness covered her face.

Overhead, Sam began to sing.

Dragonsong is not like any other sound. Rule once compared it to a didgeridoo, a hollow instrument played by Australian aborigines. Lily had listened to recordings of didgeridoos, and it did sound a little like dragonsong . . . and nothing at all like it.

At the same time that something cool and repellently solid flowed into Lily’s nose, flowed down inside her, dragonsong flowed into her, too. In through her ears, and in through some channel that had nothing to do with her ears.

In that song, she heard what she knew. What she was.

How did you know? she asked, even as the world grew gray and hazy to her vision and her lungs filled with unbreathable otherness. How did you know?

Child, he said, and his voice was tender as she had never heard it, gentle and large and intimate, I held you as you died. How could I not know your Name?

And then he gave her another word. This one was cold, colder than any word could be, and it cut into her, cut all the way to the core of her.

Remember.

SHE leaped from the cliff—leaped willingly, but not peacefully, her heart in a riot of love and grief for all she surrendered, her mind blanked by terror of what she did.

THE Chimei shuddered inside Lily. And began to withdraw. Slowly, then more quickly.

LILY fell and fell—as she had in dreams, but this was no dream; this was what had happened, was happening, the air whistling past so fast, burning her eyes. Her body tumbled helplessly.

THE whiteness left her lungs, her throat. Her nose. She dragged in a breath, her chest heaving. No, she said to the Chimei without using any of the precious air—but she said it gently, for she knew. She knew what to do.

Lily—all of Lily, for her soul was no longer sundered, nor any of her memories hidden—wrapped her arms around the whiteness, not letting it escape as she fell to the rocky beach below. Held her, held on to her with the Gift that was hers, the dragon’s gift. She held the Chimei as she died.

“LILY? God, Lily, I can feel you, but if you don’t wake up and answer me, I’ll—I’ll—”

Lily opened her eyes on Rule’s frantic face. “I’m here,” she whispered. She was lying on her back, she noted dimly. On the ground.

Rule’s eyes closed. He shuddered. “Thank God. Oh, God, I thought I’d lost you. Are you hurt?”

“Dizzy,” she murmured. “Help me sit up, okay? Oh, shit—your father—”

“CPR works on lupi as well as humans,” Isen said gruffly. “Once you pulled that creature out of me, Remy got my heart started up.”

Lily turned her head and saw Isen sitting nearby. A tall young man she vaguely recognized kneeled beside him. Remy, she assumed.

“I want to sit up,” she repeated. Rule helped, moving so that his body braced her. That was good. Wonderful. “Was I out long?”

“No, it just seemed like forever. Are you sure you’re all right?” he asked. “The Chimei’s gone,” he added hastily, as if she might not know this. “All at once, she vanished.”

Not vanished, Sam said. She is dead.

“What?” Rule looked up.

Sam was coming in for a landing again—this one much slower than the last. He still held Johnny, but the sorcerer was limp—unconscious, maybe? Or had losing his lover killed him? It is the only way to kill a Chimei. Created to not-know death, they cannot die until someone shares a death with them.

“Shares a death?” Rule repeated blankly.

Dragons are the only ones who can do this—or we were, until tonight. In Dis, Lily died. That she also lived does not make her death less real. She shared that death with the Chimei.

“I broke the treaty,” Lily said dully.

No. Small actions accumulate. As an agent of order, you tried to stop the Chimei without killing her. She thought your attempt to drain her power broke the treaty, but her thinking was badly warped, or she would have sensed it still in place—strained, stretched, yet still intact. When she tried to kill you— that broke the treaty.

Rule looked at her, questions in his eyes.

“If you’re trying to ask how I did all that, well . . . I lack words.” That’s what he’d said to her often enough. “Rule, I remembered. Because of Sam, I remembered everything. The part of me that was with you in Dis—she’s here now, all the way here. I mean I’m here now. I’m not . . . I’m all of me.”

He wrapped his arms around her and held her gently, pressing a kiss to her hair. She smiled and let her eyes close again. I love you.

He jolted. “Lily?”

“What?”

“You didn’t say that out loud.”

That startled her eyes open. “Shit.”

Grandmother arrived at the same time as half a dozen lupi—some clothed and two-legged, some naked and two-legged, a couple still on four feet. She was propping up a wobbly Cullen. Cullen’s face was strained, his eyes frantic. “Cynna?” he said hoarsely.

“She’s all right,” Lily said quickly. “She’s fine, and so is the baby. The gnomes got her out.”

His eyes closed. “Okay,” he said simply—and slid to the ground.

After a few frantic seconds, they confirmed that he’d passed out, not died. His heart still beat.

He is well enough, Sam said, sending dust flying as he settled to the ground several dozen feet away. He set the sorcerer’s body aside. This one is not.

Lily looked at Grandmother, standing unnaturally quiet in the midst of the lupi, her face tender and sad and happy all at once. “You arrested her. The Chimei.”

“You heard.” Delight rang through Grandmother’s voice. “I did. It is important to follow the forms of such things.”

“I have a few questions,” Lily began—and broke off, frowning.

For some reason everyone—well, everyone but Cullen, who was unconscious—seemed to find that terribly funny.