Mortal Sins

THREE

THE Turning. The first person to call it that had been Lily’s grandmother, and the name had somehow spread and stuck. It fit. The world had turned from one thing into another, leaving everyone scrambling to understand the new rules.

It happened just before Christmas last year. The realms had shifted and nodes all over the world had cracked open, spilling a tsunami of raw magic. Computers—and everything they controlled—had been scrambled for days. That initial, overwhelming surge hadn’t been repeated, thank God, but power continued to leak into the world. Ambient magic levels were up and expected to keep rising.

One expert expected them to rise to levels not seen in roughly three thousand years.

For the moment, computers and related tech worked fine in places that lacked a major node. Unfortunately, people seemed attracted to nodes. All the big population centers had multiple nodes, which meant multiple problems . . . except for the cities that had dragons.

People used to think dragons were myth, like Cyclops or Baba Yaga. That’s what Lily had believed until last November, when she ran into them in Dis . . . a realm better known as hell. The dragons had been ready to end their centuries-long exile; Lily had been more than ready to return to Earth. Together, they’d made that happen . . . for a price.

The price had been Lily. Part of her, anyway, a part that had been separately embodied at the time. But they’d brought Rule home; he’d had the surgery he needed, and he’d healed. And it turned out that the part of her that had been sacrificed wasn’t entirely gone. Just mute. Mostly.

As for the dragons, they’d gone into hiding at first. Two months later, the Turning hit—and the dragons reappeared.

The world learned that dragons act as oversize sponges, soaking up magic. After serious negotiation culminating in the Dragon Accords, the dragons had agreed that each would overfly a prescribed territory, keeping the ambient magic level low. Problem was, there weren’t enough dragons. Only the largest U.S. cities and a dozen overseas had a resident dragon. Rural areas like this had to make do with lesser protections—spelled collection crystals, silk coverings, and less proven barriers or receptors.

Then there were cell phones. Radios worked reliably everywhere, but cell phones were hit or miss—fine in some areas, chancy in others. This randomness offended scientists. Both radios and cell phones operated on broadcast radio waves, yet for some reason cell phones were more affected by magic. Worse, the interference seemed random.

So far, Lily’s cell had worked fine here in Halo, North Carolina.

Deacon was staring at her as if she’d sprouted a second head. She sighed. “I don’t know what you’ve heard. My involvement wasn’t in the news.”

“My cousin’s with the Washington PD. He said you summoned the dragons.”

Good grief. Lily wondered what other crazy stories were flying around, but for once left a question unasked. No point in it. As Grandmother said, rumors were like politics—inevitable whenever more than two people were around. “No one summons a dragon.”

“What did you do, then?”

“It’s complicated, large parts of the story are classified, and none of it relates to our problem tonight.” She turned and started walking again, skirting a large fallen branch.

They’d left the mob of teenage trees behind. Here the trunks were thick and widely spaced, with little underbrush. Nothing looked like a path.

She aimed her light up into the trees. There. A scrap of white. When Rule was taking her back to the highway, he’d shredded a tissue from her purse, fixing the bits on branches here and there to mark a detour she needed to take around some low, wet ground. Lily hitched her purse more securely on her shoulder and followed the tiny white flags.

Deacon moved up beside her. “Nothing you learned by touch is admissible in court.”

“Not as evidence, no. But it gives me reasonable grounds to believe magic was involved in the commission of a felony. According to the recent amendment to the Domestic Security and Magical Crimes Act—”

“Fuck that gobbledygook. Why are you here, huntin’ up crimes? Don’t you have anything better to do? Seems like I’m always hearing about how stretched you MCD folks are since the Turning, yet here you are, complicatin’ a simple case.”

MCD stood for Magical Crimes Division, the FBI division that, on paper, contained the unit Lily belonged to. And yes, they were stretched. Badly. “Sheer lust for power.”

He didn’t laugh.

Lily didn’t roll her eyes. But she wanted to. “Joke, Sheriff. That was a joke. I’m not eager to complicate your life or mine. I’m supposed to be on vacation.”

“Yeah? I don’t see Disneyworld nearby.”

“Personal leave, actually. Family stuff.” And that’s all she planned to say about it. Rule had given up a lot to protect his son from his own notoriety, and though the secret couldn’t be kept much longer—not with Toby moving to San Diego to live with them—Lily wouldn’t be the one to reveal it.

And she could not, of course, refer to the other reason they were in North Carolina. Rule’s new tie to Leidolf was secret. “I understand the perp you’ve locked up—Meacham, right?—hasn’t admitted anything.”

“Claims he doesn’t remember. Shit, half the time he refuses to believe his family’s dead, says we’re lying’ to him. The DA thinks Roy Don’s hopin’ to cop an insanity plea.”

“What do you think?”

“Oh, Roy Don’s nuts, all right. I don’t know if he matches up with the legal definition, but he’s crazy as hell.”

He sounded deeply sad, as if Meacham’s insanity robbed him of something important. “Did you know him? Or the victims?”

“I met Roy Don a few times. Went to high school with his wife, Becky. Rebecca Nordstrom, back then. Didn’t know her well—around here, kids mostly hang with their own in high school. Some of it’s prejudice, but a lot is just social hang-ups. You know how, at a middle school dance, the boys bunch up together along one wall, the girls across from them? No one’s sure what to say to the folks on the other side. That’s how it is. Loosens up some if you go on to college, but Becky didn’t—married Roy Don right out of high school.” He was silent a moment. “Their youngest daughter was friends with my little girl. Pretty thing. Real sweet.”

And now decaying under a tree. Lily thought she understood why he’d been such an ass about holding on to his case. “I used to work Homicide. It’s hard when the victims are kids. And it’s hell if you knew them.”

“I don’t let it interfere.”

“I’m sure you don’t.” Lily didn’t believe that, but he needed to. She knew how it was when the professional and the personal trampled all over each other. Most of the time, you could hold professionalism up like a shield to keep the horror at bay. Not entirely, maybe, but enough to do the job. When an investigation turned personal, you worked harder than ever at the shield. Knowing it wasn’t enough.

She helped by turning the subject back to the job. “The killings happened quite recently, I understand.”

“Four days. Four days,” he repeated, his voice heavy with skepticism. “You can be sure after so long that there was magic involved?”

“I’m sure. The traces are faint, but unmistakable.” She didn’t blame him for asking. Suspicion was a natural attitude for a cop—doubt edged sword-sharp by the knowledge that people lied. For big reasons, for small ones, for convenience, for the hell of it—people lied to cops all the time.

But, dammit, she was a cop, too. He might try to remember that. “I heard Meacham turned himself in, then denied he’d done it.”

“Not exactly.” He was silent a moment. “It was noon on Monday. I was fixing to head out for a bite to eat when Roy Don pulled up in his truck. Parked in a handicapped spot, which folks around here don’t do, not right in front of my office, so I waited. Figured either he was drunk or somethin’ was bad wrong. He got out.” Another pause. “I never saw so much blood on a living person before.”

“Did he have the bat?”

“No. No, he climbed out and just stood there, not talking, not moving, not seeing anything at all, from the look in his eyes. His eyes . . . I asked him, was he hurt. Where was he hurt. That’s when he turned and got the bat from his front seat. He handed it to me. Didn’t say a word, just handed it to me. It was another two hours before he spoke. He seemed to wake up all of a sudden. He was in a hospital gown—that’s where we took him, to the hospital—but he still had blood on him. He saw that blood and thought he’d been in a wreck or somethin’. Didn’t remember anything since breakfast.”

“Did you go to the hospital with him?”

“No. No, I went out to his place to see if that’s where the blood had come from, and found poor Bill Watkins out cold. Bingham—that’s one of my deputies—took Roy Don to the hospital.”

She nodded. “So you didn’t actually see him when he, ah, came to.”

“No, but Bingham told me about it. He’s a good man. Pays attention.”

“He’s not an empath. Even with your Gift slicked over by that spell, you probably pick up more than an unGifted could. Your hunches about people would be good.” Which gave her an idea. “May not work with me, though. Maybe my Gift locks yours out.” Maybe that’s why he didn’t like or trust her.

“I’m not used to talking about this stuff.”

Tell me about it. Until her career change to the FBI, Lily never spoke of being a sensitive. Too often in the past, sensitives had been used to out the Gifted or those of the Blood, and she’d wanted no part of that. Being open about her ability had taken some getting used to. She figured she knew something of how a gay person felt, coming out of the closet. “Times are changing.”

“I guess. Are you askin’ me what I felt about Roy Don when he stepped out of the truck? When he handed me the bat?”

“What did you feel?”

“Nothin’. Like there was no one home.”

“You get that feeling with me?”

“No, you’re there. Like a closed door, but you’re there. I’ve never had that feelin’ with a person before. Not with a person. Bethany White’s girl, now, she’s mentally handicapped. Pretty severe—she wears diapers, can’t feed herself, but she’s there. Roy Don wasn’t. He drove his truck into town, came to me, handed me that bat. And he wasn’t there at all.”

Shit. Lily didn’t know what that meant, but it couldn’t be good. She glanced at Deacon. “Is he still absent?”

“He’s not what I’d call sane, but he’s present. You got some idea what could do that to a man? I mean, you’re sure there was magic involved, so, well. . . .” He hesitated, his voice dropping as if he were embarrassed. “Could Roy Don have been possessed? I know that’s supposed to be an old wives’ tale, but—”

“No, possession is real, and demons can cross if summoned, but it’s extremely rare. Almost all summoning spells were lost during the Purge.”

“Almost all?”

She waved that aside. “The point is, the magic I touched didn’t come from a demon.”

“You said it was faint.”

But not orange. For some reason, demons tripped a synesthetic switch in her Gift. They felt like a color, not a texture. “Demon magic is unique. Nothing else feels anything like it. And it’s been four days. If Meacham had been possessed and the demon left him for some reason, it would have found another host right away, or a series of hosts. And it would still be killing.”

“If it couldn’t find a new host—”

“It wouldn’t have left Meacham without having one to slip into. A raised demon needs a host to anchor it here.” It was more complicated than that, and Lily didn’t know all the complications. But she knew a demon. Well, a former demon. And Gan had told her that only a demon who’d come through a gate, or one like her, who could cross unsummoned, could stay in this world without a host.

And Gan was, as she liked to point out, very, very special because of that ability. Lily’s lips curved in the ghost of a smile. “I can’t say it’s impossible,” she added. “But it’s unlikely enough to not even make the list right now.”

“Guess you’ve had experience with that sort of thing,” Deacon said. “We nearly there?”

She nodded. Rule was close now.

“Who’d you leave on-scene? I don’t see anyone.”

“You won’t see him unless he wants you to.”

“Shit. You didn’t bring that weer here, did you? He’s here in my town?”

Just beyond the lance of her light, a shadow shifted. And growled.

Lily’s right hand slid beneath her jacket. Her left hand raised the flashlight higher, searching. “Hold it,” she snapped when Deacon didn’t stop.

“You have to draw on your lover to make him behave?” he drawled.

She had her weapon out and aimed. “That’s not—”

Two large dogs exploded from the underbrush—teeth bared, ears flat, moving fast. Lily didn’t think. She fired. Fired again.

The first dog fell. The second faltered, but kept coming on three legs—a Rottweiler with a foaming muzzle and mad eyes. She fired again just as two gunshots, packed together, smacked her eardrums.

The second dog fell, blood spraying from its head. So did one she hadn’t seen, a Doberman that had attacked from the right. Deacon’s bullets had caught it in midleap.

Lily was breathing hard, as if she’d been running. Her hands shook—aftermath of the adrenaline that had wanted her to run. She swallowed bile.

Dogs. She’d shot dogs. “Good shooting,” she managed.

“Shit.” Deacon’s voice shook slightly. “Did you see the way that one kept coming, even after you hit it? Sumbitches must’ve been rabid.”

Rabid. Yeah, that might explain why they’d ventured here, where they must have been able to smell Rule, but . . . Rule. Where was Rule?

Deacon was shining his flashlight all over the place, wary now. “You reckon there’s any more? Dogs don’t attack that way. Not like that. These were rabid. I’ll have to—hey!”

She’d taken off running.

Lily jumped a small log, skidded, then looped around a pair of scruffy pines. Rule was alive. She knew that as clearly as she knew the way the hot air felt as she sucked it in. If he’d been killed, the mate bond would have snapped.

But he hadn’t come. He should have heard the dogs, the gunshots, and he hadn’t come.

He wasn’t far. That was the main reason her pell-mell race through the woods didn’t put her on her butt, twist an ankle, or send her tumbling. She didn’t have far to run before jerking to a stop, her stomach roiling at the smell. She fell to her knees, her fingers clenched tight on the flashlight.

Rule lay in a leaf and loam bed, curled up like Hansel lost in the woods. Ten feet away, an open grave poisoned the air, but she saw no signs of a fight or trauma on Rule—no blood, ripped clothing, scuffed ground. His breathing was even; his face, peaceful. The dark hair falling back from his face wasn’t mussed.

She reached for his throat to reassure herself of a pulse. And jolted.

Magic. Thin and clammy, it coated his skin like pond scum . . . pond scum mixed with ground glass, for it held an abrasive wrongness she recognized. Even as her own heartbeat went crazy, her fingers found the steady beat in his carotid. And the ugly magic was fading. Evaporating like sweat on a hot, dry day.

His eyes opened slowly. He blinked. “Why am I lying on the ground?”

“I was hoping you could tell me. What’s the last thing you remember?” She stroked his skin everywhere it showed—his cheek, his throat, his hand—reassuring herself. The scum of magic was gone.

“Waiting. An owl hooting, the crickets . . .” He frowned. “There’s something else, but I can’t . . . It’s gone.”

He started to sit up. Lily tried to push him back down—which made him smile gently and move her hands. “I’m fine, nadia.”

“You were out cold a second ago.”

“Whatever caused it doesn’t seem to have left any aftereffects.”

“We don’t know that.”

“Lying on the ground won’t help us find out.” He stood, so Lily did, too. “Who’s thrashing through the underbrush?”

“Sheriff Deacon, I suspect.” Not that she could hear . . . No, wait, now that Rule had drawn her attention to it, she did hear movement, very faintly. “I think I lost him.”

“You should probably recover him, then.”

“I’ll call him in a minute.”

“I’m fine,” he repeated, annoyed.

“Maybe. Rule, there was magic coating you when I arrived. Death magic.”

He stilled. After a moment he said, “Whatever happened, I lived through it.”

“The magic’s gone now. Everywhere I’ve touched, it’s gone. Which is good, but I don’t understand it.” But she hadn’t touched everywhere, had she?

His shirt was loose. She ran both hands up under it, feeling his chest.

“Ah . . . Lily?”

“It could have localized, like the demon poison did.” Not on his chest, though. She moved closer so she could reach beneath his shirt to feel his back. The skin was warm, slightly moist . . . and just skin. No pond-scum grit.

“Death magic either kills you or it doesn’t. It didn’t. Lily—”

“We don’t know. We don’t know what it can or can’t do. You’re going to need to take off your shirt.”

“Christ.” Deacon’s voice came from behind her, thick with disgust. “You raced here to feel him up.”