Mortal Danger

SIXTEEN

Rule felt the hair lifting all over his body, as if he were a conduit for lightning. The edges of everything turned sharp. So did his mind. He didn’t have to think about what to do—the necessary actions flowed, one from another, in crystal clarity.

‘The circle is ended,“ he said, flowing to his feet. ”Lily is in danger, perhaps under attack. I’m leaving. Cullen—“

He was on his feet, too. “The map’s in my dressing room. So’s your phone. Benedict may be trying to call.”

Rule was already moving when one of the nonheris sons grabbed his arm. “Wait a minute.” Rule backhanded him and kept moving.

There was a brief scuffle—the man he’d knocked down was angry, but Rikard and Con held him back. “Idiot,” Rikard growled. “The man’s mate is in danger. You’re lucky he didn’t break your neck.”

Rule headed for the railing—the stairs would take too long—but Stephen was there. His lip lifted in a snarl.

“I’m not trying to stop you,” Stephen said in that damned calm voice. “I’m coming with you.”

“Come, then.” Rule gripped the railing, flung himself over, and dropped.

The others followed.

The patrons of Club Hell were treated to an unexpected show that night. One, two, three, four at a time, men dropped out of the darkness overhead, landing on tables or the floor—and moving unbelievably fast. Like a river hitting the rapids, they flowed around or over any obstacles. Those who landed on tables simply leaped over anyone who’d been sitting there and hit the ground running.

The Mercedes’s tires squealed slightly as Benedict swung into the turn. Lily’s tongue felt thick and clumsy, as if it were taking up too much space in her mouth. “We’re on Fifty-ninth now,” she told the man holding her sister hostage.

“Proceed to Barbara… I think that’s what it says. Beth, dear, can you read those tiny letters? I don’t know why they make maps so… yes? Oh, Bandera, not Barbara. Turn right on Bandera. Do try to hurry. You’ve only fifteen minutes left.”

“Continue to Bandera and turn right,” Lily repeated, looking at Benedict.

Harlowe knew someone was driving Lily. He didn’t know who, or that Benedict could hear everything he said. Or that Benedict wore a headset attached to his own phone. Lily had dialed Rule’s number for him so he could focus on driving.

Calling Rule was a calculated risk. Harlowe insisted on keeping her on the line, giving her a deadline, handing out directions one street at a time. They wouldn’t know they’d arrived until they got there, so Benedict wouldn’t know when to remove the headset. If Harlowe spotted it…

But they needed backup. Harlowe had Beth, and he was calling the shots—the time and place of their meeting were in his control, and he might not be in this alone.

Lily didn’t dare call for official backup, but Rule would be able to hear Benedict speak subvocally. And Harlowe wouldn’t.

If Rule ever answered his damned phone.

As if he were a magnet and she had a sliver of iron in her gut, she felt Rule’s direction—and, roughly, his distance from her. He wasn’t at Clanhome. Much closer. Somewhere in the city. She could have pointed toward him, but she couldn’t reach across that distance and make him pick up his phone.

“This is a lousy neighborhood,” she said, doing the one thing she could do: keeping Harlowe talking. “Come down in the world a bit, haven’t you?”

“Temporary quarters, purely temporary. You should see the plans I’ve drawn up. Perhaps I’ll show you before… Beth, don’t bother me now. Where was I? Oh, yes, my plans. You come first, dear Lily. If it weren’t for you I wouldn’t be here, would I? I can’t say I’m happy with you, not at all, but you’ll get what’s coming to you. And you’ll… not now, Beth.”

“So what are you planning?” she asked quickly, able to hear Beth’s upset voice in the background. Beth, please, play it cool. Don’t make him angry. “King of the world, maybe?”

“No, no.” He was all good humor again. “They’ll elect me. They’ll all love me, you see.”

Benedict tapped her arm. When she looked at him he tapped his headset and nodded.

Thank God. He’d finally reached Rule. “Funny,” she said. “I’m not feeling much love for you right now.”

“Yes, you’re different, aren’t you? That’s your bad luck. But don’t worry, dear—it’s temporary. Or perhaps I should say you are.” He chuckled over his little joke.

“You hold on to that thought, if it makes you feel better.” Their biggest advantage was that Harlowe—or maybe his goddess—didn’t seem to want Lily dead. He wanted to feed her to the staff or the demon or something, which took a lot more arranging than just killing her. This gave her a little maneuvering room.

Unless, of course, they were wrong about Harlowe’s intentions.

“But you won’t be a problem much longer. I’ll take care of—now, now, didn’t I tell you to leave her alone?”

The last was spoken to someone else. Lily heard a male voice, then Beth’s, high-pitched and frightened.

“What’s going on?” Lily demanded. “If you hurt her—”

“I do as I please. As long as I have her—”

“Alive and unharmed, or you’ll make my job simple. I’ll just kill you.”

“Oh, but you can’t. And even if you could, you wouldn’t. You have to arrest me.” He made it sound like the most amusing of impossibilities.

“I didn’t arrest Helen.”

That checked him briefly. “Well, well, you won’t have the opportunity to kill me. But let’s not be so grim. After all, your sister is alive and well. Not too happy at the moment, but that’s her fault. She takes offense so easily.”

Male laughter in the background. Lily’s empty hand fisted, her nails digging in hard. “Maybe she finds you offensive.”

“No, she’s terribly in love with me. Although I—Beth, haven’t I told you to be quiet?” Harlowe snapped.

Lily had to distract him. “Is this about vengeance, Harlowe? Is that why you want me—because I screwed up all your big plans?”

“I told Helen,” he muttered. “I told her she was moving too quickly, but would she listen? And you… you think you’re so clever, but it wasn’t really your doing. It was Helen’s stupidity that made things fall apart. Not that you’re off the hook, oh, no, I’ll—what?”

The voice she heard in the background this time was squeaky, high-pitched. “Oh, all right.” Harlowe must have turned his head away. His voice was faint, the tone petulant. “Go ahead and tie her up, since she can’t behave.”

Lily heard her sister say his name—Patrick—clear and disbelieving. And the sound of a slap.

Then he was back, quite cheerful once more. “She’ll learn. Perhaps I’ll keep her. She is a pretty little thing, though not as loyal as she might be. She seems to think your safety is worth incurring my anger.”

The staff might keep Beth hopelessly captivated, but it didn’t change her basic nature or intelligence. She wouldn’t understand what she was feeling… and had probably guessed by now that he’d used her to get to Lily.

Lily took a deep breath to steady her voice. “We’re turning onto Bandera. Where next?”

RULE crouched down on the cool concrete of the parking lot beside Club Hell, his phone held to his ear. Cullen squatted beside him. They watched a moving dot of light on the map Cullen had unfolded as it crept along the line that represented Bandera Street.

So did the twelve men standing still and silent around them.

“All right,” Rule told Benedict. “We’ve got your location. There are eight Lu Nuncios and seven nonheris here, plus myself and Cullen. I’m going to brief them now.” A pause. “Yes. Call me back after you’ve reached them.”

He disconnected and looked around at the silent men surrounding him. “Are you here from curiosity, or to help?”

“Is the staff involved?” Javiero asked.

“It is. Harlowe has taken my nadia’s sister and is using her to bring Lily to him. He has the staff.”

“Then I’m in,” Javiero said flatly, followed by a chorus of agreements, some vocalized, some simply nods.

“Understand this, then: We hunt, and I lead.”

The single word hunt set the terms: instant obedience. No discussion, no questions. Rule was incapable of operating any other way at this point, and they understood that. Even Randall nodded reluctantly.

“Very well. Lily and Benedict are in her car. Benedict’s driving. He’d assigned her guards, but he doesn’t think they’ve been able to follow. He’s calling them now.” The guards had one of Cullen’s charmed maps, but they didn’t have Cullen to make it work when the signal got scrambled. “You can see from the map that Lily and Benedict are heading generally toward us at the moment. We don’t have their destination yet—Harlowe’s feeding her directions, keeping her on the phone. He claims he’s getting real-time information from Her and will know if Lily contacts anyone.”

That brought a few murmurs. Rikard scowled. “Is that possible?”

Cullen answered. “Possible? Yes. Likely?” He shrugged. “The legends make it clear She’s able to observe our world, though She’s blind to us.”

“But no one can communicate between realms. Not even Her. Unless She has another pet telepath… ?”

“unlikely.” Instinct and need flowed hot inside Rule, a gathering force as compelling as blood or tides. For the moment, though, urgency was balanced by a mind washed cool and clear, as if by moonlight. Thank you, Lady. “Harlowe knew when she left the FBI building. He knew someone was driving her, but not who. Either he has someone physically following her and reporting her movements through conventional means, or She is somehow feeding him information.” He paused to make his point. “Benedict says no one is following them. He would be difficult to fool.”

Some nodded, some frowned. No one disagreed.

Stephen said thoughtfully, “Harlowe doesn’t know that Benedict has contacted you, I take it. That suggests that his source of information is indeed our enemy. A human follower might see Benedict using his phone, but She wouldn’t know, as long as he spoke to one of us.”

Rule nodded absently, his attention on the map. He could feel Lily now—faintly, faintly, but her direction rested on the edges of his heightened senses like a feather just touching his skin. He’d never sensed her from this far away before—a Gift from the Lady, perhaps. He considered logistics.

“Why,” one of the younger ones asked, “are we still standing here?”

Cullen nodded at the map. “We’ll lose time if we take off in the wrong direction. Once she passes Garner Street, here—” he pointed at a line just ahead of the dot of light—“we’ll know which direction we take.”

Rule spoke. “We’ll have to take multiple vehicles. Most of you don’t know the city, so—”

His phone rang. He had it at his ear before it finished. “Yes.” He heard his brother’s voice, speaking too quietly for human ears, and answered, “They’ll come. Hunt rules, my lead, Etorri as second.”

After a few moments of listening, he rose smoothly. “Lily’s guards were unable to follow, so it’s up to us. She’s heard from Harlowe. They’ll be turning south on Garner. Toward us.” He gathered the others with his gaze. “We go.”

The neighborhood sucked.

It was late enough that many of the houses were dark, and some of the streetlights had been shot out. But there was no full dark in a city this size. The dirty purple sky reflected the city’s lights, providing a murky sort of illumination.

Lily knew how the area looked by day, anyway—the huddle of small houses slumping into decay, some vacant. The peeling paint and yards mostly dirt, with the occasional rusty car as lawn ornament. All too often, walls had been sprayed with graffiti in gang colors.

Cripps territory, back when she’d patrolled here for five memorable months. But the current graffiti told another story: the Dozens had taken over this turf.

They were a relatively new gang—part import, part home-grown. Many of their leaders were casualties of the brutal Central American wars that had raged for so long, teens and young adults who, as children, had witnessed atrocities up close and personal. A brother hacked to death. A mother gang-raped. A baby sister casually spitted by a soldier with a machete.

Children who had found their way to America, escaping with whichever relatives survived. Children who had grown up to commit atrocities.

As soon as Benedict made that last turn, she’d known they were about to arrive at Harlowe’s hidey-hole. She’d motioned urgently for him to get rid of the headset. He had, thank God, ended the call and hidden the headset without argument or hesitation.

“I’m guessing our escort just pulled out in front of us,” she told Harlowe now. “An old Chevy Impala, bright purple with orange flames on the sides. Lowrider. The driver and one passenger are Hispanic. The other one’s African American.”

“My, aren’t you politically correct?” Harlowe was in high good humor now that she’d all but delivered herself into his hands. “You be sure to stay right behind Raul and his friends.”

“I take it we’re almost there.” The front-seat passenger was talking on a cell phone, no doubt reporting that they’d picked up Lily and Benedict.

“Perhaps.”

“I’m kicking myself for not thinking of the gangs earlier.” Let him revel in how he’d outwitted her. Let him preen and strut and think himself invincible. “Where better for you to hide out? They’d respond well to a charismatic leader.”

“The boys have been most helpful. They understand my message.”

Benedict touched her shoulder. She glanced at him. “Why don’t you tell me about that?”

“You want to hear my message?”

“Sure.” Benedict made a pulling motion with one hand. She subvocalized: “Drag it out? Stall?” He nodded, and she returned it. It was good to know they were on the same page.

Harlowe was making mistakes. He was relying too much on his not-quite-omniscient goddess. He wasn’t thinking straight, or he would have taken Her blind spot—the lupi—into account. Maybe he really did think he was invincible, as Rule had suggested earlier.

That didn’t make him less than deadly. But it gave them a chance. Rule was on his way—with others, she hoped. How far he had to travel, she couldn’t say, but she felt him more clearly all the time. “That is,” she went on out loud, “I’d like to know if there’s more to it than ‘stick with me and you’ll have all the money and women you want.’”

He chuckled. “Don’t underestimate the Dozens. They want guns and booze and drugs as well. What about you, Lily Yu? What do you want?”

“I want my sister turned loose, alive and unhurt.”

“So I assumed, or you wouldn’t be following Raul. But what about yourself? Aren’t you hoping to get out of this alive and unhurt, too?”

“I’m planning on it.”

“My own plans fell through recently,” he said, dreamy now. “I’ve made more, of course. Can’t keep a good man down. But you might express some regret for having interfered in my plans. In fact, I feel sure you will. I’m predicting that you will soon be very, very sorry you presumed so much.”

The Chevy stopped abruptly. Lily jolted as Benedict hit the brakes to keep from climbing up the other car’s bumper. The passenger in the back seat of the purple car turned around, smiling at them. He rested the barrel of a sawed-off shotgun on the back of the seat, aimed straight at Lily.

“Predicting the future’s an iffy business.” Maybe she’d been wrong about Harlowe’s goal. Maybe he’d brought her here because he wanted her killed where he could see it happen. “Even good precogs don’t get it right all the time.”

“We’ll see. Pull over to the curb,” he told her, almost purring. “Pull over and get out of the car. The boys will take you where you need to go.”

There was one empty spot at the curb directly in front of a rundown stucco house, pale and colorless in the dark. The windows were boarded up, but light snaked out through cracks. A late model pickup, modified beyond recognition, occupied most of the front yard.

She glanced at Benedict. He looked bored. They might have been paying a visit to some tedious relatives.

But he would know just how scared she was. He’d smell it on her. Dammit, dammit… Lily took a breath and rolled the dice, staking her life, Bern’s, and his on her best guess. “No.”

“What? What did you say?”

“Once I put myself in your hands, I’ve lost all bargaining power. Send my sister out. Then we’ll talk.”

Benedict gave her a small nod.

Harlowe’s laugh was less convincing than it had been. “You must be joking. Do as you’re told, or Beth will regret it, even if you don’t.”

“My walking into that house won’t make her safe. If you’ve got both of us, I’ve nothing left to bargain with.”

“What about your safety?” Harlowe’s voice lost its music as it rose. “Do you see the shotgun pointed at you? The others have guns, too. What makes you think you have a choice?”

“Shoot us, then.” Her heart beat so hard and fast she thought she’d be sick. “Tell them to blast away. Unless, of course, you think that might piss off your goddess.”

“She doesn’t control me. I’m in charge, you understand?”

“Yeah? So how come you keep killing the same woman over and over, Patrick? Do those brown-haired girls remind you of anyone?”

That tipped him over some edge. He cursed her—and Her. All women. While he ranted, Lily stole a glance at Benedict. “How long?” she whispered, meaning, How long before we have backup?

Looking sleepy, he spread both hands, closed them, and then spread the fingers of one hand again.

Fifteen minutes. Surely she could keep Harlowe from acting for fifteen minutes—though he was getting so wound up, she was afraid he’d have them shot to prove a point. She broke into his tirade. “Okay, okay, you’re in charge. The big kahoona. I got that. But you still need to deal. You want me, you’re going to have to deal.”

Silence, except for his breath hitting the mouthpiece in windy bursts. He was panting as if he’d been running. “I’m not sending your sister out,” he said at last. “That would be giving up my bargaining power, wouldn’t it? Perhaps you need to be convinced. Felix,” he said to someone else, “would you like to rape her for me? You can listen,” he told Lily. “You can hear her beg.”

Her hands went cold and numb. She flexed her hands, swallowed bile, and said, “We’ll pull up to the curb, but I’m not getting out until I see Beth.”

He giggled. “Tell you what—we’ll take off her clothes while you’re thinking things over.”

Fourteen more minutes. She had to keep him talking for fourteen more minutes. “Don’t know much about this hostage business, do you? You’re not giving up enough to make me think I’ve got a chance. If I decide it’s hopeless, I’m going to call in forty or fifty federal agents just to be sure you pay.”

“And what do you think will happen to your sister if you do that?”

“I don’t know. Will it be as bad as what happens to you if you don’t deliver me to your goddess?”

Another long moment of silence. “Perhaps we can deal.”