Mortal Ties

THIRTY-TWO

THEY came through the double doors in twos—four men in dark jeans and dark shirts with expressions to match. They were fit and dangerous and beautiful.

“Stop,” Friar said, and they did.

Jasper’s not-quite-human brother wasn’t the tallest or the most beautiful. The dark-skinned man on his left was six-five, and Cullen Seabourne had probably been the most beautiful person in the room all his life. But Rule was the center. He held the others in place with one quick gesture while his eyes swept the room—pausing on Friar, then on Jasper, lingering briefly on each of the girls.

Jasper saw his throat move. Maybe he was swallowing the same terrible frustration and horror Jasper felt.

Too far. He was too far away.

The girl nearest the lupi—nearest, yet yards and yards too distant—whimpered. One of the thugs had her by her hair, holding her head up to expose her throat. He held a knife to it.

“I’m disappointed,” Friar said in his silkiest voice. “Where’s the lovely Lily?”

“She couldn’t make it.” Rule looked at the man on his left, then the two on his right. He didn’t speak or signal with his hands, but the glance must have meant something. The tallest one’s eyes widened. He returned his gaze to Friar, his expression giving away nothing. “What did you have in mind, Robert?”

“Why, an exchange, just as I said.”

“Adam King isn’t here.”

“No, he’ll remain my guest awhile longer. Jasper will join him. They’ve been pining for each other—I’m quite looking forward to reuniting them. But you’ll still make the exchange, I’m sure, given the terms. You’ll give me Cullen Seabourne. In return, I won’t kill any of the pretty girls here.”

Rule was silent for several heartbeats. Then he smiled slowly, a smile as hard and pure and cold as Arctic ice. “What pretty girls?” he said. And shouted, “Go!”

A great many things happened in the first two seconds.

The lupi charged, flowing forward across that shiny floor absurdly fast. Glass shattered up high. The thug with the knife dropped it and reached for his gun. The one with the gun swung it toward the racing lupi and deafening sound crashed and ricocheted through the gymnasium. Four enormous wolves leaped off the bleachers—the windows, they must have come through the windows!—and if Jasper had thought the men were fast, the wolves were unbelievable. In the next second they would—

Beside him, Friar shouted something over the bestial roar of the guns.

All six girls sprang to their feet brandishing wicked-long knives—and flung their free arms over their eyes.

The sun exploded right there in Hammond Middle School’s gymnasium.

Jasper’s eyes squeezed closed, but he still saw light—searing, intolerable brightness. His eyes streamed. He gulped and gasped and realized there was no heat. No heat, only that terrible brightness.

He heard screams. Screams, not gunfire, and the meaty thud of fighting. He forced his eyelids to lift, but he couldn’t see anything. Blind. He’d been blinded, and oh God—

“Hold still,” Rule’s voice said right next to his ear. He felt Rule’s hand on his, still bound behind his back. A second later his hands parted. They tingled and stung and he brought them to his face with the duct tape still tight on his wrists, but severed. “I can’t see.”

“Nor can I,” his brother said, and shoved him out of the chair.

He landed heavily on his side, and now there was heat—the fiery breath of a furnace.

“Goddamn elves!” someone shouted.

“Cullen!” Rule roared. “Your fire’s too damn close!”

“That wasn’t mine!”

“Shit,” Rule said, and rolled on top of Jasper, covering him with his body.

“They’re getting away,” Seabourne cried. “Out the window, I think—take that, you slimy, pointy-eared bastards!”

Then it was silent. Almost silent. Jasper heard breathing—his, Rule’s, and was that the panting of a wolf nearby? He felt Rule shift. “My vision’s coming back,” Rule said.

“Mine’s not,” Cullen said sourly.

“What were you throwing fire at if you couldn’t see?”

“Elves. Goddamn elves glow plenty bright to my other sight. They’re gone,” he added.

“Yes,” Rule said, and rolled off Jasper. “They left their two gunmen behind, however. Or their bodies. Can anyone else see yet?”

“I can, a little,” someone said.

“Good. See if the gunmen are dead. Jasper, I have to check on Ian. He’s down.”

Jasper blinked his streaming eyes, still seeing only the afterimage of that intolerable brightness, and sat up. He heard movement from several directions. “This one’s dead,” a voice said. Then there was the low whine of an animal in pain.

A moment later Rule spoke. “Ian’s alive, but they took his front left leg off. I’ve tied it off. Cullen, I need you.”

A voice announced that the “other one” was still alive, and did Rule want him to stay that way? Rule told him yes. More sounds of movement. Cullen said, “Damn elves. No, I can see well enough now. I’m going to cauterize the stump. I’ll put the no-pain spell on first, but I can’t leave it on, Ian. You know that. It’s going to hurt like a mother in a minute.”

Someone came over to Jasper. “Is that your blood or Rule’s?”

“I…” Jasper touched the front of his shirt, just now realizing it was damp. “It’s not mine. Is Rule hurt?”

“Took a bullet in the shoulder, looks like,” the voice said cheerfully. “That’s not too bad,” he added a moment later, maybe in reaction to Jasper’s expression. “If the bullet didn’t go through he’ll have to have it dug out, but there’re a lot worse places to get shot.”

“I guess so.” Rule had been wounded when he covered Jasper with his body, shielding him. Jasper passed a shaky hand over his face.

“You still can’t see?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know who I’m talking to. Maybe I should know your voice, but I don’t.”

“Oh, sure. You only heard me that once in the stairwell, and you can’t identify us by smell. I’m Barnaby.”

“Barnaby, what in the hell just happened? Those girls—”

“They weren’t girls. At least not human ones. Some of them might have been female—I mostly saw what you did, so I can’t say for sure. But they were elves. So was Friar. The one who looked like him, I mean.”

“Elves.”

“Yeah. Rule had an idea we might run into one elf. He wasn’t expecting a whole fistful, but he had us wear these charms, just in case. They’re Nokolai work, though, so they didn’t work great for us. They did help some. The elves looked like girls to me, but in a wavery way, like they weren’t quite in focus. It’s hard to attack someone who looks like a young girl,” he added, “even if you know she isn’t. Even if the image is kind of wavery, it’s hard.”

“I guess it would be.”

“They didn’t smell quite right, though. They smelled human, but like they were all the same human, so that helped. Plus the charms worked like they should for Rule and Cullen, so they told us we were looking at elves, not kids.”

Jasper frowned, puzzled. “When did they tell you?”

“Oh, before we came in. Scott got here ahead of time and he reported to Rule, who wanted to see for himself. Scott and Joe were on the roof, see, with a rope to let them look in the window. Rule saw elves, not girls, so he had Chris and Ian stay with Scott. He wanted wolves coming at them through the windows, see, and Chris and Ian can Change really fast, almost as quick as Rule.” Regret entered his voice. “We were maybe a little slow on the attack because of how they looked to us, but we’d have had them. If they hadn’t had that big flash-bang, we’d have had them.”

Jasper digested that. Friar hadn’t been here at all. Some unknown elf had been talking to him, wanting him to choose which girl got hurt. Only they weren’t girls. The glow he’d seen hadn’t been a spell. They’d glowed because they were elves, and the not-Friar elf hadn’t intended to harm them. He’d manipulated Jasper into offering to be hurt.

After a moment he said, “You call that a little slow?”

“Any hesitation in a fight can be deadly.” That was Rule. “Barnaby, can you walk on that leg?”

“Not really,” Barnaby said apologetically. “I can hop on my other one, though.”

“Go see Cullen.”

Barnaby sighed and, from the sound of it, got up. Jasper realized the whiteout of his vision wasn’t quite complete. At the edges it was turning gray and fuzzy. His heart jumped. Maybe he wasn’t permanently blind. “Barnaby said the girls weren’t girls. They were elves, but they all smelled the same.”

“Ah. Now that is interesting.”

“He also said you were shot.”

“So was he. Very few people can hit a rapidly moving target, but with automatic weapons little aiming is required.”

“Especially if you run straight at them.”

“Which is why I had some of my men Change and come through the window. Wolves have a way of commanding the attention of most people. Jasper, I’m trying to decide if I should call this in.”

“Call it in?” Jasper blinked rapidly. The fuzziness at the edge of his vision was spreading. Everything in the middle was blank, but he could see dim shapes at the edges.

Amusement warmed Rule’s voice. “Lily’s jargon is contagious. Call the cops, I mean. Probably her people, though it might be better to call Ruben and…” His voice trailed off.

Funny how Jasper could feel the sudden tension in Rule even though he still couldn’t see him. “What is it?”

“I can’t find her.” Rule’s voice was utterly flat. “I can feel Lily, but I don’t know where she is.”

Cautiously Jasper asked, “Should you?”

Rule didn’t answer.

Jasper turned his head slightly so he wasn’t looking straight at Rule. It worked. He saw Rule take out his phone. Dimly, fuzzily, but he could see his brother. Relief swamped him so hugely that for a second he was afraid he’d cry.

Rule held his phone to his ear. Waited. Waited some more. Then snarled, clutching the phone as if he wanted to throw it. “Scott!” His voice cracked out like a whip. “Take those who aren’t mobile to the hotel. The rest of you, with me. Now.”

“Your shoulder—”

Rule growled. It was not a human sound. He turned and started for the door. “Now.”

“IT’S like with my Find spell, then,” Cullen said. “You know she’s somewhere. You just can’t tell where.”

“So I assumed.” The mate bond hadn’t broken. Rule kept repeating that mantra. The bond hadn’t broken, so Lily was still alive. Still alive somewhere…but he had no sense at all of where. The directional sense he’d grown so used to was completely screwy.

He reached for his phone.

“No, dammit, hold still. Unless you think bleeding out will improve matters?”

Rule forced stillness on himself. It was not easy. His friend was driving a hot poker into his shoulder.

And Lily was missing. And it was his fault.

They were in the backseat of the rented BMW. Joe was driving. Jasper sat beside him. He’d insisted he was mobile, his vision was returning, and he would damn well go with them. If nothing else, he could give directions. He knew the city, knew where Dingos was. Chris and Alan followed in another car.

Cullen jabbed. Pain shot off the scale, a white-hot burst so acute it had to mean he’d finally found the bullet. Rule hissed through his teeth. Sweat sprang up on his face, his chest…and finally, finally, Cullen stopped.

“Got it.”

Rule took a moment to regain his breath. He’d told Cullen to skip the pain-blocking spell, which drained both the caster and the recipient. Rule wanted nothing to slow his healing, and he wanted Cullen to hang on to as much juice as possible. He might need it. “Good. I need to call Ruben.” Rule used his left hand to reach for his phone. His right would be useless for a while yet. His shoulder throbbed in blazing pulses.

“You need a sling.”

“Got one?” First Rule checked for calls or texts. He knew Lily hadn’t called him back. He knew that, but he checked anyway. He’d called her twice. He’d also called Tony and Todd and Mike. None of them had answered.

Cullen pulled his T-shirt off over his head. “I’ll improvise.”

“If—” The phone in Rule’s hand vibrated. He answered quickly. “Cynna—”

“I can’t do it.” She sounded weary and frustrated. “I’m sorry, Rule. I can’t come there.”

If anyone could find Lily, it was Cynna. He needed her to come. Needed her to at least try. She didn’t know Lily was missing. If he told her—

If he told her, she might well come anyway. Rule squeezed his eyes closed. He gave up guarding his expression, his body, so he could make sure he had his voice under control. “I see. I was wondering.…is it possible that your decision is based on information I don’t have? Information, perhaps, you aren’t able to share with me?”

A long pulse of silence, then she said, “That’s an interesting idea.”

If the answer had been no, she would have said so.

He could change her mind. He was sure of it. He could tell her about Lily, and loyalty and friendship would bring her here. Cynna would tell herself that whatever omen or communication the Lady had given her wasn’t 100 percent. She’d come, determined to Find Lily.

Rule would have rather had Cullen digging in his shoulder again than say what he said next. “I see. Well, there’s an excellent chance you wouldn’t be able to find anything, anyway. Cullen’s prototype is doing an excellent job of blocking that sort of thing. We’re having a rather busy night, so I’m going to go now, but give Ryder a kiss for me.”

“Will do. Rule, you know I’d have come if I could.”

“I know.” He disconnected before he could change his mind and beg her to come.

Cullen was watching him. “Thank you,” he said softly, so softly Jasper probably didn’t hear. Then, more briskly, “What you told her might well be true. If the prototype can screw up the, uh, thing that lets you know where Lily is, Cynna’s Gift might be just as screwed. Here. Let’s get this on you.” He’d twisted his T-shirt into a sort of rope that he tied behind Rule’s head. “I’m thinking it was too easy.”

“I haven’t noticed anything easy about tonight.” Rule used his left hand to ease his right arm through the loop.

“How’s the length?” Cullen said.

“Forget the damn sling and explain what you mean.”

“After that damn elf tossed the magical flash-bang—”

“That was magic?” Jasper said.

Cullen nodded. “A-grade magic. Not that the bastard is on Rethna’s level, for which I thank every god present and past, but he’s pretty damn good. What, did you think they used a regular flash-bang?”

“I stopped thinking about the time the lot of you raced into that hail of bullets. I thought everyone was dead—you, the girls, everyone.”

Rule had set his phone down to get the makeshift sling on. He picked it up again. “You think the elves should have hung around to try to finish us off while we were blinded?”

“Wouldn’t you?’ Cullen said. “But it seemed they only wanted to confuse us long enough for them to get away. Which they did, dammit. Though I may have singed two or three of them on their way out the window.”

“That’s the way a good thief reacts,” Jasper said. “If a job goes south, you don’t hang around and duke it out.”

Rule selected Ruben’s number. “But Friar doesn’t think like a thief, does he? If that had been Friar instead of an elf wearing his seeming, I suspect some of us would be dead. So would several of them, but Friar has no objection to using up his people to kill some of us.”

Cullen nodded. “So maybe the elf and Friar don’t have the same goal.”

“Or else the elf isn’t as cavalier as Friar about getting his people killed.”

“Or Friar isn’t part of this at all,” Cullen said slowly. “The elf could have been using his seeming, his voice, all along.”

“No,” Jasper said. “That much I’m sure of. The person I met here tonight may not have been Friar, but the guy who’s been calling me is.”

“How can you be sure?’ Cullen asked.

“Because I know Robert Friar. Or knew him—it’s been awhile. But the man who called me when Adam first went missing knew things only Friar would have known.”

Ruben wasn’t answering. The call went to voice mail. Rule scowled. It was the wee hours of the night in D.C., but Ruben always answered this line. Always. Except tonight he wasn’t…just like everyone else Rule called. He texted a terse message: Lily is missing, probably taken. Magic involved. Call me. And forced his attention back to what Jasper had said. “You already knew Friar? When was this?”

“About three years ago,” Jasper said. “He and I met at a party given by a mutual friend, and…this was before I met Adam, understand.”

Rule stared. “Are you saying that you and Robert Friar were lovers?”

“That’s not the best word for it. Affair doesn’t fit, either, because that implies a real connection.”

Cullen looked as dumfounded as Rule felt. “You hooked up with Robert Friar at a party.”

“It lasted about three weeks. I was coming off a difficult breakup and ripe for a fling, but I sure as hell chose badly. I’m afraid,” Jasper added apologetically, “that’s when he learned that you were my brother, Rule. I don’t remember how the subject came up, but it did.”

Rule was turning this new puzzle piece over and over in his mind, trying to make it fit. He’d done a great deal of research on Robert Friar. Nothing he’d learned suggested this. Friar seemed to have a contempt for women, but he’d been enthusiastically hetero all his life. And yet…“You’re saying that Friar is gay.”

“Bi, I think. There used to be a bit of controversy in the gay community about that, and a few still don’t consider bisexuality authentic. They believe you’re either gay or straight, and those who call themselves bisexual are fooling themselves. To me that sounds too much like what the right-wingers think about homosexuality—that we’re all fooling ourselves about being born this way, and they know better. If someone identifies himself or herself as bi, that’s good enough for me.”

“Did Friar tell you that?’ Cullen demanded. “He said he was bisexual?”

“I don’t think he used the word. Does it matter?’

“It might.” Rule was getting a glimmering of an idea. “This was three years ago, you said.”

“Roughly. Um…let’s see. He said he’d always preferred women, but had recently decided—or maybe he said he’d been persuaded—to explore things ‘on the other side of the fence.’ I’m pretty sure that was the phrase he used. Now, I know what you’re thinking. Friar is a liar from the soles of his feet to the tips of his hair, but that much may have been true. There’s a certain…call it a beginner’s enthusiasm, only it has less to do with experience than acceptance. When you first truly believe it’s okay to want who you want, you get giddy, extravagant, excessive. It’s like falling in love, only you’re in love with an entire sex. That’s hard to fake.”

“Rethna,” Cullen said.

Rule nodded slowly. Friar had been recruited by her just over three years ago. As part of his recruitment, he’d spent time in Rethna’s realm. “Elves are often bisexual, you told me.”

“They’re bisexual, period. Whether that’s innate or a cultural norm to which they all give lip service—pun intended—I can’t say, but they consider monosexuality downright deviant.”

Rule felt a tingle of excitement, as if he’d found tracks left by his prey. Old tracks, but they led somewhere. A bisexual Robert Friar was no more evil than the heterosexual version, but Rule’s understanding of his enemy had shifted. “I told Lily once,” he began. And stopped. Saying her name opened up the terror and rage, the primal need that was ready to explode inside him.

His wolf wanted out. He wanted out now.

For the space of three slow, careful breaths Rule rode the razor’s edge of Change. Cullen—who would know, who would smell it on him—didn’t speak. Out of lucky instinct or preoccupation, Jasper didn’t, either.

That was just as well, for where he was in that moment, words couldn’t reach.

Eventually the wolf subsided enough for him to find words useful again. He picked up where he’d left off. “I told Lily once that I think sex is Friar’s weak point. It is, of course, an avid interest for many and a twisted interest for some. With Friar, I think sex is both of those, and more. I think sex defines and controls him. Knowing that he’s bisexual matters. I don’t yet know how, but it matters.”

“If I helped, then good.” Jasper’s face was shadowed, lights from outside the car playing across it. “Your eyes turned black a minute ago.”

“I was resisting the urge to Change.”

“Not your clothes.”

“No.”

Another car’s headlights played over Jasper’s face, which for once wasn’t giving anything away. But he smelled ever so faintly of fear. “Does Friar know you intend to rip his throat out?”

“Oh, yes,” Rule breathed. “Yes, he knows.”

In the brief silence that fell, the buzz of Rule’s phone seemed very loud. He grabbed it. That wasn’t Lily’s ringtone, and he didn’t recognize the number, but maybe she’d gotten hold of someone else’s phone. Maybe— “Yes.”

“Rule, it’s Tony. I have failed you. I failed Lily. She’s gone, and there is one fucking big mess here.”