Mortal Danger

TWENTY-SEVEN

LILY needed clothes. Cynna’s belt had to be snug to keep the pants from falling off, and snug hurt. She also had to do something about Dirty Harry.

So after checking herself out, she sat in the back seat of Cullen’s old Bronco, fists clenched, trying not to think about what might be happening to Rule while she took care of her cat and her damned grooming. One of the officers had driven her car back to her place last night, and Rule’s car had been impounded.

For a few blocks she leaned her head back and shut out the sound of Cynna and Cullen arguing. She needed to see Beth, talk to her. She didn’t want to. Not when Beth was staying with their parents. But a phone call wasn’t enough, not for this. She needed to know how badly Beth had been scarred by last night.

God, she was tired. She closed her eyes, but there was no rest inside her. Not with everything humming like an overloaded power line.

She was scared. All the way down scared. Not so much of dying, though she wasn’t in denial about that.

Death was a strong possibility, but she knew how to keep going in the face of that sort of risk. As a cop, she’d usually had backup going into a dangerous situation. Barring that, she’d had training to fall back on. You identified your goal, made your plans, and did the best you could. Fear was normal, just one more factor to account for.

What was grinding at her wasn’t as clean as the fear of death. The shaky feeling came from the fear that she wasn’t enough. She didn’t know enough, couldn’t be enough or do enough to get Rule back. Her Gift was gone. She wasn’t sure there was enough of her left to do what had to be done.

Maybe, even with her Gift, there wouldn’t have been enough. What they were planning—or, so far, failing to plan—was nuts. One lupus sorcerer, one female Finder, and one damaged former homicide cop were going up against who knew how many demons on their home ground. How do you plan for that?

One step at a time, she told herself. If she couldn’t tell if she was going in the right direction, tough. She still had to take that next step.

Up front, Cynna snorted. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. There’s no technical difference between opening a big gate and opening a little one. It’s just a matter of power.”

They should have taken Cynna’s rental. The Bronco’s engine knocked so badly she wondered if Cullen kept it running with sorcery. But Cullen had insisted on driving, and Cynna wouldn’t let him behind the wheel of her vehicle. Even one only temporarily hers.

“I don’t imagine you’ve ever heard of McCallum’s Theorem.” Cullen sounded like an adult talking to a sweet but slow child.

“He’s got a theory about hellgates?”

“No, it concerns the difference between relevance and resonance, but it suggests that—”

“There’s only one kind of relevance that matters with gates. Now, if we were talking about voodoo—”

“Pretend you’re more interested in figuring this out than one-upping me,” Cullen said. “You won’t embarrass yourself so much.”

Lily wondered if she was going to have to kill them both, or if taping their mouths shut would be enough. “Bickering is one way of dealing with tension, but it isn’t doing much for mine. Since neither one of you knows how to open a gate, can we talk about something more to the point? Make some plans?”

“Believe it or not,” Cullen said, “our discussion is very much to the point. In a roundabout way.”

“Sure. Right. Now I understand.”

“We’re trying to settle what kind of gate to open,” Cynna said. “Single-relevance or multi-relevance. Only there isn’t such a thing as a multi-relevance gate, so you’re right. We’re wasting time.”

Cullen hissed. That’s what it sounded like—a cat’s hiss. “Lady save me from small-minded hedge witches. Just because you’ve never heard of something doesn’t mean it’s impossible.”

Lily tried once more to get them back on track. “Because you don’t know how to open a gate anyway, the discussion is moot.”

Cullen was impatient. “We know the general principles behind it.”

“Right,” Cynna said. “That’s like saying we don’t know how to build a television, but we know the general idea behind how one works. Cullen thinks that once we get our TV we should tinker with it. I think that would be too dangerous. We’ve got no reason to think his idea is even possible.”

“It’s possible,” Cullen insisted. “McCallum’s Theorem—”

“Hold off on the theorem talk a minute,” Lily said.

“What kind of risks are we talking about if you tinker with the spell? What advantages?”

“Ritual. Magic on this level requires a ritual, not just a spell.”

“Whatever. Risks and advantages, Cullen.”

“The major risk is that the ritual won’t work. We don’t get a gate. In which case we can back up and try again with the unaltered ritual.”

“Maybe,” Cynna said dryly. “If we all survive. We’re talking about a major ritual here, involving forces we don’t understand. There’s no sure way to predict the outcome.”

Lily frowned. “That’s a big risk.”

“And the advantage,” Cullen said, “is that if it works we’d have full control of the gate and who and what passes through it.”

She was silent a moment. Cynna and Cullen had needled each other about all the demons who weren’t ravaging the countryside, but if they opened a gate they couldn’t control… “That’s a big advantage. Big enough to outweigh the risks—if this multi-relevance thing is possible.”

He switched lanes with typical split-second timing. “Let’s go back to the basics. You know gates are magical constructs, right? Located on or very near a node.”

“Got that. The Azá were trying to open theirs right on top of a node. They needed the power from it.”

“In part, yes. But nodes are also the places of greatest congruence. Think of them as spots where the realms almost touch. Now, magically speaking, congruence is one of the five fields of relevance. It’s spatial. There’s also physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual.”

Lily shook her head. “I’m getting dizzy already. I thought spiritual stuff and magic were different. That’s how Nettie was able to do some healing on me—because she wasn’t using straight magic.”

“Depends on who you talk to. Theories abound.”

“Such as?”

“My early training was Wiccan. They consider spirit one of the five types of power—earth, air. fire, water, spirit. Chinese practitioners work with five energies, too, though they substitute metal for spirit and see the spiritual as entirely separate. So do many Protestant faiths. Catholicism is hopelessly muddled on the subject. Most shamans say there is a difference between spirit and magic but just smile mysteriously if you ask what it is.”

“Like Nettie.”

“Exactly. Houngans and mambos—‘”

“Who?”

“Male and female voodoo priests. Their magic is spirit-based, so naturally they don’t distinguish between magic and spirit. And Buddhists…” He shrugged and added in a singsong, “Spiritual, nonspiritual—no difference. Duality is illusion.”

Cynna chuckled. “I used to know someone who would have said just that.”

Lily drummed her fingers on her thigh. “They can’t all be right. What do sorcerers say?”

“Mostly we ignore the question. Spiritualism has that good and evil thing going on. Confuses things.”

“And sorcerers hate to be confused,” Cynna said. “They can’t see spiritual stuff, so they treat it the way ungifted humans treat magic—as if it isn’t real. And if it is, it shouldn’t be.”

Cullen gave a quick laugh. “Biased, but not completely inaccurate. Of course, the Msaidizi were faith based.”

“The what?” Lily asked.

“Dizzies.”

Oh. “What does this have to do with a hellgate?”

“The gates are magical constructs, like I said, but they were closed using a combination of spiritual and magical energies. To reopen a gate, we’d need spiritual energy as well as magic.”

“That’s what the Azá were doing, wasn’t it? They believed in their goddess, and that belief was part of what

She needed to get that gate open.“ That plus a little bonus from death magic.

“Exactly. We can’t supply a large faith-based community, so even if we knew how, we couldn’t reopen a gate.”

“But you’re planning to open one.”

“Open, not reopen. We’ll have to build a new gate. Cynna and I have been arguing about how to, ah, tether it. She thinks congruence is the only criteria. I agree it’s essential—we don’t want to step out into thin air or the middle of a mountain, so the two spaces have to be congruent. But I think that with a small gate, other relevancies can be used, too.”

Cynna spoke. “He means you.”

“What?” She shook her head. “That’s a joke, right?”

“Nope.” Cullen slowed. They’d reached her apartment complex. “Five fields of relevance, remember? Spatial, physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. The more fields we use, the more stable the gate and the greater our control.”

“Theoretically,” Cynna added darkly.

Cullen ignored that. “The mate bond gives us two more fields to use—physical and emotional.”

“I… see. Sort of. Because Rule’s there and I’m here, the mate bond is already sort of a gate. But once I’m there, too, that won’t be true.”

“That’s why you need me,” Cullen said cheerfully, pulling into the space next to Lily’s car. “To figure out the hard parts. If I get it right, the gate will close behind us as soon as we cross. It will open again when you want it to, and nothing will be able to pass through it without your permission.”

Whew. Lily ran a hand through her hair. “What happens if I’m killed?”

‘Try to avoid that.“ He shut off the engine and opened his door. ”It’s a damned good way of keeping the other side from making use of our gate, though, isn’t it?“

“Theoretically.” She pushed her door open, too, and got out. The burn throbbed, protesting the pressure from the belt. She eyed the stairs to her apartment grimly and started forward. “You’ve convinced me it’s worth a try, though.”

‘i knew you’d see sense.“ She heard the click-click from the car’s lock behind her. ”If it’s any consolation, I couldn’t do it if you still had your Gift.“

She acknowledged that with a nod. She wasn’t ready to look on the bright side.

“If you were still Gifted, it might not have been a good idea for you to cross,” Cynna added, coming around the car. “Considering what they say about sensitives in hell.”

“What do they—hey!”

Cullen had swung her up into his arms. “Who says I’m not a thoughtful and considerate guy? You don’t need to climb those stairs. All right,” he added to Cynna as he headed for the stairs. “I’ll bite. What do they say about sensitives in hell?”

“ ‘Feendly armies in foul affray dide fighte,’” she recited, “‘ ’for who wolde holde the sixewitte hral. Bihood thes brutall beistis, who wolde their yvel powers incresen—and drinken of hir precious herte blood!‘ Here, give me your keys. I’ll go ahead and open the door.”

Lily dug them out of the side pocket of her purse. “I don’t know what you said, but I didn’t hear anything about sensitives.”

“Sixewitte was the medieval term.” Cullen started up the stairs behind Cynna. “The five senses were the five wittes. The way they saw it, sensitives had a sixth sense. Sixewitte.”

“Ah… if I caught the gist, that’s whose ‘precious herte blood’ the feendly hordes planned to drink.”

“You got it,” Cynna said, sticking Lily’s key in the lock. “Feendly hordes being demons. Supposedly they get some special power from the blood of a sensitive.”

Cullen reached the landing. He wasn’t even breathing hard. Pretty good for someone pushing sixty. “I’ve never heard that verse. What’s it from?”

“ ‘The Furiel Pyne of Helle.’ It’s pretty obscure. Fourteenth century, and it might be pure fiction, but the monk who—oh. Good grief. What are you doing here?”

FIVE minutes later, Lily sat in her one and only chair petting Dirty Harry, who had his motor going full-blast. The cat had claimed her lap when the man who’d been keeping him company stood up.

“I’d offer you a sandwich, but Harry and I ate the last of your ham,” Abel Karonski said from her kitchen, where he was refilling his coffee cup. “Anyone want some coffee?”

“Why does everyone feel entitled to break into my place?” Lily asked the ceiling. “Sure, I’ll take a cup, since it’s my coffee and all.”

Karonski rejoined them, carrying two steaming mugs and looking around vaguely as if her place might have sprouted another chair in his absence. His gaze paused on Cullen. “Seaborne,” he said with a nod. “We met at your, ah, adoption ceremony. When you joined Nokolai, I mean.”

Cullen was wearing his inscrutable face. “I remember.”

“At the risk of repeating myself,” Cynna said, “what are you doing here?” She was silting on one of the floor cushions by Lily’s big, square coffee table, the only other seating in the pocket-size living room. Cullen occupied the other cushion.

“I’m not really here. Think of me as a figment of your overheated imaginations.”

“Nothing personal, Abel, but you’ve never figured high in my overheated imagination. Here.” Cynna scooted off her cushion onto the floor. “Sit down and give those old bones a rest.”

“Mouthy. Always mouthy. I’m only ten years older than you.” He handed Lily a mug that read, Don’t Make Me Release the Flying Monkeys! “You’re not looking so great.”

“Neither are you.” The pouches under his eyes were looking more like duffel bags.

“Tired, that’s all. We found the leak, and it’s big. The biggest I’ve seen. I’ve called a Gathering to close it.”

“A Gathering?”

“Multiple covens,” Cullen said. “Anywhere from three to a dozen. That’s a major working you’re talking about.”

“It’s a major leak.” He lowered himself awkwardly onto the cushion and then scowled at Lily. “I don’t know why you don’t own chairs. Everyone owns chairs.”

“My figments have never complained about the seating before,” she commented. “Or helped themselves to my ham. Maybe you’ll explain why I’m imagining you’re here.”

“Officially I’m still in North Carolina. I’ll be flying back as soon as we’ve talked.” He sipped. “Good coffee.”

“Rule’s picky about coffee. He buys some fancy blend and grinds it fresh.”

The silence that followed reeked of everything he didn’t say. At last he sighed. “I’m sorry about Rule, Lily. Damned sorry.”

She didn’t respond. Just waited.

His eyebrows lifted, “You aren’t going to insist that he isn’t dead?”

“I’m pretty sure you know that. Just like I know you didn’t fly twenty-five hundred miles to offer me your sympathy.”

“No.” He took another sip, heaved another sigh, and put the mug on the coffee table. “I’m here to tell you some things Ruben didn’t want to go into over the phone. Also to be sure you aren’t planning to do something stupid.”

Lily kept her face stony. “Ruben’s private line is as secure as any in the nation.”

“So it is. I’m going to give you some background you aren’t cleared for. Heavy duty stuff with lots of tops stamped in front of secret.” He looked at Cullen. “I figure you see the advantage in continuing to fly under the official radar.”

Cullen smiled pleasantly. “Just as you see the advantage in letting me hover there. Don’t worry. I’m not going to run to the tabloids with the story.”

“You won’t tell anyone, or discuss it with anyone except those in this room. And you’ll all be damned careful how you discuss it at all. You’ll see why.” He paused. “In the past year, two U.S. Congressmen and the under secretary of a major department have reported being contacted by a demon.”

“What?” Lily’s coffee jiggled, spilling a couple of drops on Harry. He gave her an indignant look and jumped down. “That… is certainly not what I was expecting.” Demons didn’t just dial up Congressmen and offer them deals. For one thing, they couldn’t… or so everyone thought. “There hasn’t been a confirmed case of demonic tampering with government in… well, not since Hitler.”

Karonski nodded. “And that was a freak occurrence, the result of conditions unlikely to be duplicated in a thousand years. You can see why they’re keeping the investigation quiet.”

“They, not we?” Her eyebrows rose. “Who’s investigating?”

“The Secret Service. They’ve needed some expert help, so Ruben’s made a few of us in the Unit available to them on an informal basis. But it’s their investigation, not ours.”

“Are we talking about one demon?” Cynna asked. “Or more?”

He gave her a nod. “Good question. We’d like to know if we’re looking at a widespread change in the relationship between the realms, which is what contact by multiple demons would suggest. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you. The descriptions we’ve got don’t match, but demons have a nasty habit of changing their body size and shape, so that isn’t conclusive.”

Cullen slid him an unreadable look. “And what does this have to do with Lily?”

“Think about it. If one appointee and three elected officials report unsolicited demonic contact, there’s a damned good chance that others were contacted, too. And haven’t reported it.”

“Shit.”

“The ones who reported it were taking a risk,” Lily said slowly. “Supposedly demons can’t initiate contact themselves, right? They have to be summoned. The Congressmen must have wondered if anyone would believe that it wasn’t any of their doing.”

Karonski gave her a nod. “They showed courage, all right. We’re betting that others were contacted who didn’t take the deal but didn’t report it, either. Some would be afraid. Some probably persuaded themselves it never happened. Denial is a powerful force. But human nature being what it is, we have to assume there are people in powerful positions in the government who took the demon up on its offer.”

“What kind of offer?” she asked.

“The usual. Fame, wealth, power. The power to do good can be a strong temptation for even the best of us.”

Cynna shook her head. “Those pacts leave traces. It’s not that hard to find out if someone has been sipping demon blood.”

“Oh, yech,” Lily said. “Is that how the pacts are sealed?”

“Blood is both the seal and the way power is transferred,” Karonski said. “And yes, we can detect it. But it’s not feasible to run blood tests on every member of Congress, their staffs and families, all the Secretaries and Under Secretaries, maybe a few dozen judges and—”

“Okay, okay,” Cynna said. “But what is the Secret Service doing then? How do they investigate if they can’t run tests?”

For a long moment Karonski didn’t say anything.

“We’d hoped to bring in a sensitive,” he said at last. “Someone who could tell who was clean with a single handshake.”

Lily closed her eyes. Shit, shit, shit…

Cullen’s voice was hard. “You also didn’t fly twenty-five hundred miles to make Lily feel even worse about the loss of her Gift, I’m assuming.”

Lily spoke without opening her eyes. “He’s warning us. He thinks the acting director of the FBI may have been corrupted. That’s why Ruben didn’t say anything over the phone. Why Karonski is officially still in Virginia… and probably why the Secret Service is investigating, not us.”

Karonski spread his hands. “We’ve got no evidence. None. No reason to think Hayes was contacted, except…”

“One of Ruben’s feelings,” she finished for him.

“Yeah.” He picked up his coffee and took a drink. “Which was strengthened when Hayes put pressure on Ruben to close the investigation and declare Rule dead.”

“I’m not getting the connection,” Cynna said.

“You should. If Hayes is corrupted—” Karonksi interrupted himself. “That’s a big if, of course. He might have done one of his damned cost-benefit analyses and decided it was cheaper to write off Rule. He could be clean himself but getting pressure from others who aren’t. But if he is corrupted, he didn’t make the decision. The demon did.”

Lily’s head hurt. She rubbed her temples. “And this hypothetical demon doesn’t want anyone looking for Rule?”

“Either the demon… or the demon’s master.”

Cynna made a small sound.

Karonski looked at her, sympathy softening his eyes. “That makes the most sense, doesn’t it? More than assuming the rules have changed. A true master could put a demon in contact with ordinary humans.”

“You haven’t brought me in on it.” Her voice was tight, her eyes turbulent. “I’m the one person who could Find her, and you haven’t brought me in.”

“Ruben wanted to. The Secret Service refused.”

She looked away and then nodded.

“Which brings me to the other reason I’m here.” He drained the last of his coffee and put the empty mug on the table. “Just in case any of you are thinking of doing something colossally dumb, like crossing into hell without official sanction, you should know that the Secret Service’s chief suspect is Jiri Asmahani… Cynna’s old teacher. This isn’t a good time to renew that acquaintance.”

There wasn’t much to say after that. Karonski stood, told them all he’d see them later, and then paused in front of Lily. She didn’t get up. Or speak. He stood in front of her for a long moment, looking tired and sad and like he wanted to say something. But in the end he shook his head, bent and patted her shoulder, and left.

He took about every last drop of hope with him.

Take the next step, she’d been telling herself. What did you do when you ran out of steps?

Even if she’d been willing to endanger an investigation into the demonic control of highly placed national officials, there was a chance Cynna’s old teacher was behind the official ban on looking for Rule. She wasn’t likely to change her mind just because Cynna said pretty please.

Karonski wasn’t going to help them open a hellgate. Cullen didn’t know how.

God, she was tired. She closed her eyes and thought about keeping them closed. Just not opening them ever again. She heard Cullen push to his feet and start pacing, muttering to himself. It sounded like Latin.

“Cynna,” she asked without opening her eyes. “Is there any chance you could summon the demon who took Rule? Force it to take us to him, or bring him back?”

“No.” She sounded miserable. “I don’t have enough of its names.”

“Okay.” Cullen took a deep breath, let it out. “We’ve run out of other options.”

That startled her eyes open. “Other options? As in, you have one I don’t know about?”

“You know about it. Sort of.” He stopped in front of her. “It’s a long shot, but the only shot we’ve got left. You said the Rhej wanted to talk to you.”

Baffled, she nodded.

“That’s what you should do, then. Go talk to the Rhej.”