Mortal Ties

FORTY-THREE

LILY’S side hurt. Her cheek throbbed. Her hip burned from being dragged across concrete. But Friar had let go for the moment. Cautiously she sat up.

“We need to leave,” Friar said. “Now.”

“But my people—” Benessarai waved at the door. Someone screamed.

“Are you going out there to rescue them? No? Then we must depart.” When Benessarai stood staring at the closed door, Friar snapped, “It saw you. Saw all of us. It looks like a tiger, but I don’t know what it is. It wasn’t fooled by your illusions. How long will your wards keep it out?”

Benessarai drew himself up, offended. “The wards are strong.”

“Good. That means you have time to— No, you don’t.”

Lily had quietly scooted away and started to gather her feet under her. Friar grabbed her arm again and pulled her up. It hurt. He shook her. “What do you know about that tiger?”

“Do you think,” Benessarai said nervously, “that those lupi are behind this?”

There was another scream outside. It ended abruptly.

It was silent inside, too. Lily’s heart was hammering, but she took advantage of the quiet to look around.

From the outside, the warehouse hadn’t looked very large. Inside it seemed oddly bigger, maybe because of the way the lights were hung on the rafters, pointing down. That left the high ceiling in shadows, making it seem even more distant. Lily gave those shadowy heights one quick glance. A misty white cloud hung motionless up there.

She couldn’t see very far into the warehouse because of the way the shipping crates were stacked; the nearest row blocked her view. The immediate area was set up like an office, with short partitions on two sides. There was a counter flanking the door, an ancient vinyl sofa, some filing cabinets, a water cooler, and two desks.

There were also two bodies.

Alycithin and Dinalaran had been laid on the floor in the open space before the rows of crates started. A large, perfect circle glowed around them…glowed from the floor up, as if the cement had decided to luminesce. Their dead hands had been folded around the two knives that rested on their chests. Mage lights hovered at the head and foot of each corpse.

No sign of Adam King. If he was here, he wasn’t making any sound.

Friar broke the silence. “I believe,” he said, “you forgot this.” He held out the bowling-ball bag. Lily had forgotten all about it. Friar had remembered even while being charged by a Siberian tiger. The prototype must be in there.

Benessarai accepted it and replied with icy precision. “I appreciate your care for my property.”

Friar let his shoulders droop. “I”—he ran a hand over his hair—“I’m sorry for how I spoke to you. I was…the beast shook me badly. I admit it.”

Benessarai thawed, but only slightly. “Courtesy means little if you possess it only when all is well.”

“You are right,” Friar sighed, a man who saw his limitations all too clearly. He knew how to play the elf, even if he’d forgotten in the stress of the moment.

The thaw continued. “I suppose we must go. That beast shattered my concentration. Its presence will draw attention here.”

“Will you grant me a small boon? My man is either dead or otherwise unavailable. Would you ask one of yours to guard my prize while I retrieve my things?”

“Oh, very well.” The fabulous master of mind-magic sounded like a petulant child. “You can fetch my hostage while you’re back there. Use the charm so he doesn’t give you any trouble.”

“Of course.” Friar even gave him a little bow.

Benessarai spoke briefly to the two remaining elves—the ones who’d brought the bodies in. One of them—Lily thought this one was female, though it was hard to be sure with those long, loose shirts—headed their way. Her face was as impassive as ever, though she did dart one quick glance at the door when the tiger roared again.

Friar bent close and whispered in Lily’s ear, “You have a short reprieve. Behave, and perhaps I won’t make you pay too badly for the delay.” He shoved her to the floor.

She fell hard. Again. Her ribs ached where he’d kicked her. The side of her face throbbed. When had Friar gotten so bloody damn strong?

When she was busy remaking him, of course. When he hung suspended in what had been a gate until Rethna tampered with it. His goddess had given him his patterning Gift. She must have decided to make a few more alterations while she was at it.

While Friar vanished amid the packing crates, Benessarai had moved to the large circle that held the two people he’d killed. He began rolling up his sleeves, paused, frowned, and said something in his language.

Lily’s new guard repeated it, or something very like it, and seized Lily by her restraints the way Alycithin had. And pushed. Apparently she was supposed to move forward. She did, but as slowly as possible.

Hurry, she thought. It wasn’t mindspeech. She still couldn’t nudge that dial. But she thought it anyway.

She didn’t feel any tingle of magic when the elf steered her across the circle, which meant the circle wasn’t activated. “So how are we leaving?” she asked. “Not via a gate. There’s no node.”

“A gate?” He smiled at her pleasantly. She’d accidentally stroked his ego, though, hadn’t she? Implying he could actually open a gate all by himself. “Not that, but something quite clever. Robert taught it to me, but he can only execute it on himself. I, of course, am able to do much more. I shall send all of us out of phase, and then we may walk out unimpeded.”

Out of phase…invisible and untouchable, in other words. Like demons could do when they weren’t in their home realm. “Friar taught you a demon trick?”

“Don’t be absurd. Demons don’t exist.”

“Could have fooled me. The ones in Dis sure looked real. The dragons thought they were, and I tend to trust dragons on that sort of thing.”

He frowned. “You refer to the soulless.”

“You could call them that, I guess. We call them demons.”

“And you claim to have been to Dis and to converse with dragons.” He shook his head. “It is most annoying that I cannot simply cast a truth spell on you. Clearly you are not telling the truth, and yet—but this is not the time for discussion. Sit down out of my way. There,” he said, pointing next to Alycithin’s body.

The elf made sure Lily sat exactly where Benessarai wanted her and seated herself on the concrete floor, too. Lily found herself looking at the woman who’d captured her and brought her here and used the last split-second of her life saving Lily’s.

Exit wounds are always worse than entry wounds, and Dinalaran had shot her in the back. He must have been using hollow points. He’d fired twice, and it looked like they’d both hit her about heart high and blown out a good chunk of her chest on their way out. One breast was gone. The other was pretty torn up.

It made Lily sick and sad. Alycithin hadn’t been a good guy by human standards, but by those of her people she’d been deeply honorable. And so alive, so vital and curious. And now she was meat. Lily took a slow breath and turned herself enough that her back was to the corpse. Her elf guard didn’t object.

The other elf had knelt near but not at the edge of the circle. Eyes closed, he chanted softly. Rethna’s flunkies had done this, too—either adding their power to his or performing an active part of the spell, she wasn’t sure which. Benessarai was moving around the circle in a slow, deliberate way. He didn’t chant. The circle kept glowing faintly. No magic prickled over Lily’s skin. But the look of intense concentration on his face said he was doing something, even if she had no idea what.

He stopped. “Robert, what is keeping you? I cannot finish until you and the hostage are within the circle.”

“I’m coming.” A moment later he appeared. He carried a large duffel in one hand. With the other he guided Adam King.

Lily knew from the file that Adam King was Caucasian, forty-eight, five-ten, and one sixty. She knew his features were even, save for a crooked nose that had been broken twenty years ago. What the file hadn’t told her was how inviting his face was. King had one of those lived-in faces, the kind that says its owner has spent plenty of time laughing or crying, singing and shouting. The kind with friendly creases. His hair was dark and cropped very short. His eyes were brown and dazed. He looked around as the two of them moved into the broad aisle between the packing crates…and stopped.

“This is what kept me,” Friar said, exasperated. “The charm keeps him docile, but he loses track of what he’s doing. Come on, Adam.”

“You can’t be rough with him,” Benessarai warned. “It disrupts the charm.”

“Yes,” Friar said with heavy patience. “I know.”

A dead woman touched Lily’s hand.

Lily jerked. She couldn’t help it. The dead hand did something, and her restraints, the thrice-damned restraints, fell silently away. Lily’s arms trembled as her own muscles took over the job of holding her hands behind her back.

The dead woman placed a knife in Lily’s right hand.

Friar got Adam moving again.

“Well,” Lily said loudly, “it looks like it’s now or never.”

A burning man fell from the ceiling.

Flames covered him completely. He fell headfirst, like a diver, but flipped in midair as if determined that his corpse would land on its feet.

Lily thrust to her feet as her elf guard reached for her. She slashed with the dead woman’s knife—not trying for a specific target, just forcing the elf back, but she connected anyway. An arm, nothing fatal, but at least she hadn’t gotten her knife stuck, and the elf backed off. Lily spun toward Benessarai—who shouted something.

The lights went out.

Lily sprang at him.

Benessarai was many things, most of them repellent. He was heavier, taller, and stronger than her, but he was not a fighter, and his mind tricks did not work on her. Lily felt the knife connect, but in the darkness she didn’t know what she’d struck. Benessarai squealed in rage or fear and grabbed her, yanking her to him in a bear hug. “I’ve got her!” he shouted. “I’ve got Lily Yu! Stop or I’ll kill her!”

Lily’s arms were imprisoned. So she used her head.

The cranium near the hairline is one of the thickest regions of bone on the skull. Lily couldn’t reach some of the best targets for a headbutt—he was too tall—so she smashed the top of her forehead into his chin. As she connected, she hooked his ankle with her foot and pulled.

He toppled. She came down on top of him, cracking her left elbow on the floor but keeping a tight grip on the knife in her right hand. Mage lights popped up all over the place, and she saw Benessarai’s slack face—stunned, she thought, not out, so she pressed the tip of her borrowed knife to the spot right under his chin where a hard thrust would take it up to his brain. Then took the chance of glancing behind her for the guard elf.

Who was several feet away, fighting a wolf.

People were falling from the roof. Leaping down and falling.

One of them was Rule. Her heart exulted even as she turned back to her prisoner.

It would be easy, so easy, to end him here and now. More fitting to do it through the eye the way he’d made Dinalaran kill himself, but she wasn’t going to pass up easy to go for poetic.

“Don’t! Lily, don’t do it!”

It was Drummond. And he was a mess.

He crouched in front of her. One arm hung down. It probably didn’t work right because a big chunk of his bicep was missing. Just gone. He crouched on both knees, but she only saw one foot. The other leg ended cleanly about midcalf. His shirt hung open. Skin and muscle were missing from his middle. She could see one of his ribs, the pale curve of it, and the round pillow of his stomach, and the segmented worms of his intestines. Which were also a mess, ripped and ragged.

No blood. Somehow that made it worse. He’d been ripped apart, but he couldn’t bleed.

“You’ve got a choice,” Drummond said urgently. “You don’t have to do it.”

“What happened to you?” she whispered.

He glanced down at his ravaged middle. His mouth crooked up. “I got there, got to Turner, but it was not a smooth trip. I guess I’m finally dying. So listen up. That scumbag deserves to die, but you don’t deserve to live with what that will do to you. You don’t deserve to end up like me.”

His arm was fading. The one hanging down, the one with a chunk missing—it was dimming, going away. She swallowed. “I—”

He leaned closer, scowling. “Promise me. Promise me you won’t kill him. Not like this.”

She looked him in the eye and nodded slightly. “Okay. I promise.”

He exhaled in relief. “Good choice. You’re a good cop, and we don’t have enough—” Suddenly his head tilted. He looked up and to his right. His mouth fell open. She could swear tears filled his eyes—and joy. He reached up, his face lit with happiness as real as anything she’d ever seen. He reached up with his remaining hand, the wedding band on the third finger glowing softly.

“Sarah,” he said. And the rest of him faded away.

Lily felt shaky and weird inside. Kind of hollowed out. Then the body beneath her tensed, and she was called back to reality. This reality. Benessarai was looking up at her. She sighed and pressed the knife into his skin slightly to make him pay attention. “So what the hell do I do with you?”

“I can help with that,” Cullen said. He limped over, wincing with every step. He was missing half his hair, and he looked like he had a bad sunburn.

“Cullen! That was you falling? You didn’t—”

“Didn’t burn. Much. I couldn’t get the last damn ward down, but it was a fire ward, and I’m good with fire, so I took it down by leaping through it. Landed badly, though—my ankle’s got a hairline fracture, I think. It took a lot of concentration to keep the flames from burning me until I could snuff them.” He sank down carefully to sit by Benessarai’s head. “Good thing this asshole doesn’t know about mage fire, or I’d be really crispy. Nighty-night,” he said, and slapped his palm onto the elf’s forehead.

Benessarai went limp, his eyes closing.

“Sleep charm,” Cullen added. “Don’t know how long it will work on his sort. You okay?”

“Not…long,” a breathy voice said on Lily’s right.

Lily turned to see the not-so-dead Alycithin smiling faintly at her. She scooted close. “What can we do? How do we help you?”

“Aroglian…will help. Give him…ring and word. Thelaisat.” She closed her eyes as if gathering herself. “I bequeath to you, Lily Yu, my…rights and responsibilities for…Sean Friar, hostage. You…accept?”

“I do.”

“Say…the word.”

“Thelaisat,” Lily repeated. Alycithin’s wince might have been at Lily’s mangling of her language, or simple pain. “That one…” The halfling’s gaze shifted to indicate Benessarai. “Best if…you kill.”

“I can’t. I gave my word.”

The slightly lifted brows expressed incredulity. Alycithin didn’t ask who Lily had promised, though. Instead she said, “Duct tape.”

“Duct tape.”

“On…mouth, hands, feet. Strong. Magically…inert.”

“Cullen, did you hear that?”

“Mike!” Cullen called. “We need duct tape, pronto. I’ve got a couple more sleep charms,” he added, “which is good, because he’s almost burned this one up.”

“You shocked the hell out of me when you touched me,” Lily said. “And undid the restraints, for which I thank you with my whole heart.”

The eyebrows lifted again. “You…did not know? Said…now or never.”

“That was for Rule. I knew he was on the roof. I thought you were dead. You fooled Benessarai, too, when he did that spell.”

Alycithin’s eyes closed, but her lips turned up. “The fool…right about one thing. Rekklat…hard to kill. My Gift…he didn’t notice.…I was alive.”

“Your Gift doesn’t work on me, and I’ve never seen anyone look as dead as you did who wasn’t.” She hadn’t been breathing. Lily was sure of that.

“Not…very alive. More now, but…” Very faintly she sighed. “I will sleep.”

Outside, a tiger roared. Lily looked up. “Grandmother—”

Rule stepped into view at the end of an aisle between shipping crates. “Let Madame Yu in,” he snapped at someone.

“Friar?” she asked, pushing herself to her feet.

“No sign of him. His scent trail ends at the back of the warehouse.”

“He knows a spell to go out of phase like—” Rule had reached her and his arms closed around her. Tight. “Ow. My rib.” But she held on, too.

He loosened his grip immediately and straightened to inspect her worriedly. “Are you all right? Your face.” He touched her cheek gently. “Someone hit you.”

“Friar. He’s gotten a lot stronger than he used to be. I don’t think he broke any ribs, but they’re tender.”

Rule’s mouth tightened. “That would be why Madame rushed things, I imagine. She was to wait for our signal. Cullen took down the first ward—there were only two—but the second was harder.”

“Not on Rethna’s level, thank all the gods,” Cullen said, “but a good, workmanlike job. I couldn’t untangle it in the time I had.”

“Which is why,” Rule said dryly, “he knocked me aside—damn near knocked me off the bloody roof—so he could make his heroic dive.”

“Because you were about to do it,” Cullen said promptly, “and you are not good with fire.”

Lily shivered at how close it had been.

“You’re all right?” Rule asked again.

“I’m good. Sore here and there, but good. What about…do we have any casualties? From last night or now?”

“Minor wounds, nothing serious. I think we managed to keep one of the other two elves in here alive.” He turned his head. “Scott? Is your captive going to make it?”

“I think so. He’s still out.”

“Duct tape,” Lily said. “We’ll need it for him, too. And we have to send someone to the apartment with Alycithin’s ring so Argolian will release Sean Friar and come here to help Alycithin, and—” She broke off to smile. “Grandmother.”

Todd had opened the door. The tiger who slinked in was as huge as Grandmother was small in her usual shape. Her head reached Todd’s chest. Her tail lashed as she stalked forward. Flecks of blood, drying now, marred her beautiful coat.

Lily didn’t ask if any of those outside had survived. Tigers, Grandmother had said once, see no point in disabling an enemy.

The tiger came straight to Lily and rubbed up against her. Firmly. Lily would have fallen if Rule hadn’t caught her. “Hey.” She grinned and knelt on one knee and ran her hands through the great cat’s ruff, scratching where she knew it felt good. Grandmother purred. She was a lot more demonstrative as a tiger. “Thank you,” Lily told her.

She got a tiger tongue in her face in return. Tiger tongues are about 120 grit. She laughed and gave Grandmother a last rub along her cheekbone, and the tiger turned and lay down next to Benessarai. She laid one huge paw on his chest—pinning her prey, maybe, but she was still purring, so Lily was pretty sure she wasn’t going to rip out his throat.

Lily stood. Rule immediately slid his arm around her waist. He needed the contact, she thought. She did, too, so she leaned into him.

“I have never even imagined seeing anything like that.” Jasper had come in behind Grandmother. He watched her now with wide, wondering eyes. “A were-tiger.”

“Not exactly,” Lily said. “You’ve been told that you aren’t to speak of this? Ever?”

He nodded and tore his attention from the great cat. “Have you seen—”

“Jasper.”

Adam King looked a bit wobbly from the aftereffects of the charm, but his eyes were clear. Alan was steadying him with one hand, but he pulled free. “Jasper!”

Lily got to see joy all over again, on two faces this time. The two men were struck motionless by it for a second, then Jasper ran and Adam wobbled forward and they hung on to each other, talking and crying…about like she was doing with Rule, except for the crying. Though maybe her eyes were a bit damp. She leaned back to look at Rule’s face. “We’ve got a lot to do. Alycithin needs care we can’t give her. We need to free Sean Friar, too.”

“I know.” But he didn’t let go. “Tell me something.”

“What?”

“When I…when you seemed to want to go to find Hugo, and I…did you know what I was doing? Trying to trick you to keep you safe?”

She snorted. “You are not that sneaky, Rule.”

Behind her a tiger huffed in what might have been amusement.