Mortal Danger

TWENTY

THEY cascaded over the edges of the cul-de-sac so fast and in such numbers that Rule couldn’t sort out what an individual creature looked like. He had an impression of endless gray bodies with too many legs, and a pungent smell like mushrooms and grapefruit. They hurtled to the floor of the cul-de-sac in the hundreds and kept running, pouring up the other side in a steady stream.

It seemed to go on and on but probably lasted ten minutes or less. As suddenly as the flood had started it was over, leaving a couple dozen bodies behind. Many had been trampled into bloody pulp—red blood, so maybe their metabolism was oxygen-based. A few still twitched.

The demon didn’t move, so Rule didn’t, either. Seconds later two huge shadows glided across the rocky ground. Rule looked up.

Pterodactyls? Giant birds? They were too quickly gone for him to pick up much detail, and his distance vision wasn’t good in this form. They seemed to be trailing the stampeding creatures. Hunting them, maybe.

The demon heaved a great sigh and, after giving the sky a wary glance, wandered out into the open. Hoping that meant the coast was clear, Rule followed. He wanted to check out one of the creatures.

The body nearest him was almost intact. It looked rather like a roach without the carapace, only the size of a cat and with leathery gray skin. The six thin legs were hinged oddly, but were more animal than insect. He could see bone where the skin and sinew was missing. They ended in small, clawed feet. The head was pure bug, however—small, flattened, with faceted eyes and serrated mandibles.

Revolting to look at, he decided, but they didn’t smell half bad. In a pinch, they would do. For him, anyway. His body would throw off any toxins. He didn’t know if Lily could safely eat them—or if she’d be willing to try, short of starvation.

He hoped with everything in him they wouldn’t have to find out.

“Might as well get to it,” the demon said, resigned. It picked up one of the twitching creatures and bit its head off.

Lily made a choked sound. “You were saying something about how we kill too easily?”

It chewed and swallowed. “I didn’t kill it. I ate it.”

“Why am I not seeing the distinction?”

“It isn’t dead now. It would have been if I hadn’t eaten it, but now it’s part of me. You people eat dead things and keep the physical stuff. We eat live things and keep the life. Not that hirug would be my first choice.” It grimaced at the decapitated body it held and wrenched off one of the legs. “Stupid creatures. But they’re here, and I’m going to need extra ymu.”

When it opened that wide slit of a mouth completely, it looked like the whole lower half of its face was hinged. It crunched down on the leg. “You should have told me you were too weak to travel.”

Lily sighed and leaned back against the rock. It couldn’t have been comfortable, but the burn on her stomach probably made leaning forward worse. “Your little snack won’t help me travel. Unless you’re planning to carry me, and I’m not—”

“Carry you? That would be stupid. Better if I give you a little boost and make your wound go away.”

“You can’t do that. You said I’m a sensitive, and that— that feels right. I can touch magic…” Her hand went to the Lady’s talisman Rule had fastened around her throat when she became clan. “It can’t touch me, though. Can’t affect me.”

“How do you think you got here?” it snapped. “By train?”

Her head jerked as if she’d been slapped, her eyebrows flying up.

“We’re tied,” it told her, impatient. “So I can affect you. I can’t get inside you any more than I already am, but I’m partway there. I can give you… English doesn’t have the words.”

“Find some,” she said tersely.

Its brow wrinkled. “Well, when I eat, I take ymu and assig. Ymu is the energy. Assig is the pattern, the memories and thinking. Not that hirug actually think, but you get the idea.”

Rule did, and he didn’t like it. He moved between Lily and the demon.

“I’m not going to hurt her! I’m going to help her.”

Rule snarled.

“Wait.”

He looked at Lily, startled.

The small frown tucked between her eyebrows reminded him of her mother. “I don’t trust it, either, but he—it—she—” She stopped, frustrated. “What are you, anyway?”

“I’m called Gan. Your dumb language doesn’t have a word for he-and-she, so you can call me it. We don’t settle on a sex right away. Well, some demons never do, but most—”

“You’re… a demon.”

Gan rolled its eyes. “What did you think I was?”

“Then this place is…”

“Dis. Or hell, according to a lot of you people, but that’s a misunderstanding.”

Lily had already been pale. Now she looked shocky. When Gan started to speak Rule growled at it: Shut up.

She closed her eyes and then opened them as if she might be able to change what she saw that way. She looked at the stones, the bizarre sky, the dead and dying hirug, the demon. She drummed her fingers on her thigh. “Okay. You’re a demon and we’re in hell. How did we get here?”

“It was an accident. The sorcerer burned up the staff while I was trying to get into you.”

Judging by the look on her face, the explanation didn’t tell her much. She shook her head. “Never mind. We’ll go into that later. You seem to be right about one thing—this area isn’t safe.”

And some other part of hell might be? Rule made a noise in his throat, frustrated by his inability to speak. And not at all sure they should budge from this spot.

He didn’t know how they’d gotten here, but the staff had disappeared before when She called it to her. That times, Harlowe had been dragged along willy-nilly because he’d been holding it. Maybe that’s what had happened this time. The burn on Lily’s stomach suggested the staff had been touching her when it was hit with mage fire, and Rule had been touching her. So they’d been pulled into hell with it.

But what about the demon? Why would it have been pulled here? And where was the staff? If She had summoned it, wouldn’t Rule and Lily have ended up wherever She was, too?

He glanced at the volcano. Not that he was complaining about Her absence. The farther away they were from

Her, the better. But if they’d been dragged here by the staff, they should have ended up with it.

The other possibility was that the destruction of the staff had somehow opened a gate. Cullen had called the thing a rent in reality, so that wasn’t too far-fetched. If so, that gate might be their only way home.

But if Lily remembered the existence of gates, they weren’t on her mind now. She had questions—that hadn’t changed—and only one place to aim them. At the demon. “How do you do this whatever-it-is? And what will it do to me other than make me stronger?”

“I sort of get control of your body.”

Rule growled.

Gan frowned at him. “If you want to say something, you have to think the words. Just making sounds doesn’t work.”

“I think I know what he meant,” Lily said. “You are not taking over any part of me.”

“I’m not talking about possession. If I could have done that, I would have. I was trying,” it added, aggrieved. “I mean that I have to take charge of your body temporarily. So I can make it take ymu.”

“This ymu is the energy you were talking about—that comes from living things?” She shook her head. “You’re not stuffing me with death magic, either.”

It rolled its eyes. “Ymu is not death magic! When you eat dead things, is that death magic? Ymu is just energy. You people have all kinds of energy in your world— bombs and electricity and gasoline—only you can’t eat those energies, right? Your body would have to change to take gasoline energy instead of dead animal energy.”

“Yes, but… I feel like you’re pointing in one direction so I won’t notice the card up your sleeve.”

Its forehead wrinkled. “Card?”

“Never mind. How would this ymu help me?”

Its forehead wrinkled even more. “You could say that ymu makes things want to be in their proper form.”

“Then a hirug’s ymu would make my body want to be like a hirug.”

“No, no, no! Ymu is the energy. The pattern is from the assig—which you can’t do anything with. I can.” It looked smug. “That’s why I’m a demon. But you won’t get any hirug assig and your body already knows its pattern, so I just have to get it to take the ymu and it will make itself strong and right again.”

She chewed on her lip a moment. “How would you do that?”

“You could suck me off—”

This time it was Lily who growled.

“Okay, okay, it doesn’t have to be sex. But you have to take something of my body into you. This is still eating. I can’t put ymu in air.”

“I have to eat part of you?”

“I’m not crazy about that, either, if you won’t do sex, but…” It scowled, its brow wrinkling as if it was thinking fiercely. “Spit. Spit should work. I can push lots of ymu into it, then push some in your mouth.”

Her face twisted in revulsion.

“What’s that thing you say? Get over it. Yeah. Get over it. If you’re picky about what you eat here, you starve. No McDonald’s on the corner. No corner. Get it? No corner.” It giggled, appreciating its own humor. “Before you can eat ymu, though, I have to tinker with your body. Make things more dense where they should be.”

“Dense?”

“You don’t have the words!” It rubbed its head with the hand not holding the dead hirug. Then it spat out a stream of what Lily called babble—and this time, Rule didn’t know what it meant, either.

Words mixed with images and sensory impressions. He heard “hydrocarbon.” Smelled blood. “Tender wheat” arrived with “liver” and the sound of water dripping. “Eggs” were part of an image of the glowing disc of the sun.

“See?” the demon finished in English. “He doesn’t understand, either. You have to already have the ideas, or you can’t get the meanings.”

She nodded slowly. “One more question. Can this be undone later?”

“Sure.” It looked at the hirug it still held and then tossed it to the ground. Apparently once something finished dying it became inedible. After another glance overhead, it began studying the remaining dead and dying hirug.

Lily rubbed her forehead. “I need to think about this.”

In the distance, the mountain rumbled, though there was no accompanying trembling in the ground this time.

“Think fast,” Gan said, bending to pick up another hirug.

Rule rubbed his head along Lily’s arm, making a low, grumbling sound. This is a bad idea. Don ‘l do it.

She ran a hand along his back. “You don’t like it, do you? I don’t, either. But what are my choices? I was barely able to make it out of the open before the hirug got here. I hurt. And I can’t travel like this.”

He poked her with his nose and pointedly sat down.

“You think we should stay put?”

For now, anyway. He nodded.

She shook her head. “I think we have to accept that the creature—the demon—that Gan knows how to survive here. And we don’t. If it’s giving it to me straight about needing to keep me alive, or it dies, too… what do you think?”

That he couldn’t answer with a simple yes or no. He couldn’t even write in the dirt. There wasn’t enough of it. Rule made a frustrated sound.

“Never mind.” She sank her fingers into his fur and scratched. “I don’t know why I keep feeling like you ought to be able to answer… anyway, I think Gan’s telling the truth about that part.” She looked at the sky, where the fiery glow near the volcano was fading. “I wonder if you know anything about that goddess Gan says is duking it out with its prince.”

Rule nodded again.

“You do, huh? I wish you could talk. She must be pretty tough if she can hold her own with a demon prince. You think she might help us?”

He shook his head vigorously.

“She’s one of the bad guys?”

He nodded.

“Then it doesn’t matter who wins the fight. Either one will be bad news for us.”

Dammit, she was right—more right than she knew. And he wasn’t thinking straight. If Her avatar survived the battle with the demon prince, She might come looking for Lily.

So yes, they might have to leave this spot, but not right this minute. Lily was letting the demon’s urgency rush her to a decision. Slowly Rule shook his head. Slow down. Give me time to look for any remnants of the staff, or some trace of a hellgate. To look for food and water, find out if it’s possible for us to survive here.

She titled her head to one side. “I can’t tell if that means ‘no, we can’t stay,” or ’no, 1 don’t agree.‘ I guess it doesn’t matter. It’s my decision.“

He shook his head sharply. She didn’t have enough information. She couldn’t even consult her own memories, or she’d realize that he’d be bound by what she chose. If she stayed or if she moved on, that’s what he would have to do, too.

But she wasn’t paying attention. She’d raised one hand and leaned her head into it, looking strained and weary. And uncomfortable.

He could help a little there, at least. He moved up beside her so she could lean on him. She gave him a small smile and did just that, laying an aim over his back and resting against him. For several moments neither of them moved.

What would he do if she decided to take the demon up on its offer?

There wasn’t much he could do, he realized. He might like the idea of attacking the demon, but it was their only guide in this world, however little he trusted it. And it claimed to be tied to Lily. He could try to interfere, not letting the demon approach, but that would do little other than make her angry. It wouldn’t persuade her to rethink her decision, and he couldn’t plant himself between them indefinitely.

“Damn,” she said at last, straightening. “I wish I had clothes.” She shook her head. “That’s stupid. It’s just stupid to be worrying about clothes right now, but I don’t like this. I don’t like being naked.”

It wasn’t stupid at all. He was, for having paid no attention to her nudity. Just because he didn’t react to her body in this form the way he did as a man… but why hadn’t her clothes come with her? The Lady’s token had. So had he.

Later. He’d worry about that later. Right now he had to get her some protection. She was all-over skin, and her skin damaged easily. At the very least she needed shoes. He turned his head and yipped at the demon.

It snorted. “You see a Wal-Mart nearby? Here, clothes are for decorating high-status types. You can’t just run out and buy them.”

Rule yipped again.

“Feet that can be hurt by walking on them!” Gan snorted. “Humans are weird. If walking hurts her feet, she’ll heal them. Once I give her some ymu, that is.” It smiled slyly. “I bet I could get her some clothes in Akhanetton.”

“All right,” Lily said.

Rule’s head swung back toward her.

“My body,” she told him. “My choice. And I think I have to try Gan’s way. This isn’t a good place to be weak.”

Gan hummed approvingly. “That’s good thinking. Your brain’s working better than I thought.” It had found another twitching hirug. This one was more lively—three of the legs still functioned well enough that it tried to get away, which seemed to cheer up Gan. It smiled before it bit the thing’s head off, chewed, and swallowed.

Then it started toward them. “Okay, all you have to do is hold still.”

Lily put up a hand, palm out. “Hold it. You’re not touching me with that in your hands.”

“What?” Gan glanced at the remains of the hirug. “‘Oh. You don’t like blood and stuff? A lot of humans do. And weren’t you some kind of cop?”

“I don’t know. Was I?”

It slapped its forehead. “Right. Missing marbles. I forgot.” It gave its attention to polishing off the hirug, tossed aside a few bits that weren’t sufficiently lively, and then lumbered toward Lily.

Rule’s hackles lifted. This was wrong. It had to be wrong, but he didn’t know how to stop her.

Gan stopped a couple of feet away, eyeing him warily. “I don’t trust you. Go somewhere else.”

The demon didn’t trust him? Rule’s mouth wasn’t shaped right for laughter, ironic or otherwise.

Lily shoved at him. “Move. The sooner we get this over with, the better.”

Apparently Lily didn’t need her memory to be cussedly determined on independence. Grudgingly, he moved away a few feet—close enough to be on top of the demon in one leap, if necessary. It might be stronger than he was, but it was smaller and slower. If it hurt her…

Gan edged closer, staying as far away from Rule as it could. With Lily sitting, its head was roughly level with hers. It held out its hands. Its feet were large and flat, rather like a kangaroo’s, but its hands were small. Child-size. Aside from the color, they looked quite human.

Lily stared at those small, orange hands, her face blank. Then she clasped them.

For several minutes nothing happened. Nothing he could see, anyway.

“You have to be still!” Gan said, frowning with that very wide mouth.

“I haven’t moved.”

“You’re moving inside. Pushing back at me.” It frowned harder. “Think about still things. Things that don’t move at all. Think about them real hard.”

She scowled and closed her eyes.

A few moments later, Gan leaned in close and opened its mouth over hers. She started to pull away, but it gripped her head and held her still. Rule stiffened, growling, but the kiss was over before he could be sure he should attack.

Gan stepped back, smiling.

Lily wasn’t smiling. She swallowed. Swallowed again, as if she was having trouble keeping the demon spit down. Gradually her expression changed to puzzlement.

The redness around her burn was fading.

It went quickly then, faster by far than he could have healed that degree of damage. First the red, weepy skin turned creamy, then the blister-bubble began to shrink. Within five minutes, there was no sign she’d been burned. The wound on her shoulder was gone, too.

Was this, Rule wondered, how humans felt about his own ability to heal? Uneasy, unsettled, convinced that it wasn’t supposed to be so easy? That such ease would have to be paid for at some point.

Lily touched her stomach and then rolled her shoulders as if testing the internal workings. Her eyebrows went up. “It worked. I feel…” She stretched out both arms. “I feel good.”

“You ought to,” Gan grumbled. “You’ve got enough ymu in you for a Claw. Let’s go.” It started toward the other side of their cul-de-sac.

Lily stood easily, with no wincing, no need to balance herself on his back. She looked at him, and there was nothing in her face for him to latch onto—no softness, no apology, no doubt. Maybe an acknowledgment: he hadn’t wanted this, and she’d done it anyway.

He was, he realized, thoroughly pissed. He looked away.

Gan was already scrambling up a ravine. Lily followed, so Rule did, too.

He took the rear. The cul-de-sac wasn’t deep, and the ravine the demon had chosen for an exit made for an easy climb. He followed her as she followed the demon, and his anger didn’t dissipate.

That was unfair. He knew it, though the knowledge didn’t release him from the anger. Lily was sundered from her self in a way he could scarcely imagine, lost in hell with a wolf and a demon, unable to recall her own name. In pain, afraid, and lacking memory, why should she take his wordless counsel?

But anger isn’t always logical, and his welled up from the deep places inside. For he was sundered, too, from a large part of himself—from his clan, his family, his world, and his other form, And he might never get any of that back. He might never speak in words again, or see his father or brother, or be there to help his son through his first Change. He might never pick something up with a hand instead of a mouth.

And if he stayed in this form too long, he would forget what it was to use his hands. He would cease thinking in words. The man would fade, and there would be only the wolf.

The part of him that was wolf didn’t fear as the man did. He missed his clan, but he enjoyed his four feet, and his mate was near. And when was the future ever more than a mist? Yet the wolf’s pain went deep, too.

Where there should have been the long, slow song, the pull and call that shaped his soul, there was silence. And for that there was no comfort.

There is no moon in hell.