by Eileen Wilks
“Really most completely dead,” Friar murmured.
Lily hadn’t needed the confirmation. The mate bond was working freely again. She knew where Rule was—and he was close. Very close, but not yet here. They needed to stay out in the open a little longer. “Where’s Adam King?”
“Inside.” Friar smiled. “I’ll introduce you.” He raised his voice slightly. “If you’re quite satisfied, I suggest we move inside. I’m not happy being so exposed.”
Benessarai spoke without looking at Friar. “Patience. Who will attack when none can see us? We will have the remains in stasis quickly, but then the blood must be collected.” He waved at his people, who moved close to the bodies once more.
“I am unable to help with that,” Friar said, “so I will await you inside where there is more tidying up to do.”
“Oh, as you will, then.”
“Hugo, bring her along.”
The mass of fat and muscle gripping her arms shoved her—and she let the momentum take her to her knees.
“Really, Lily, you can do better. If you don’t, Hugo will carry you.”
The elves had stopped waving their arms. Two of them bent and tenderly picked up the bodies and started this way. Benessarai spoke to the other two. Lily raised her voice. “Benessarai, he intends to kill your hostage!”
The elf glanced her way. “Hostages are not killed.” He waved at the two remaining elves as the two carrying the bodies passed Lily.
She tried again. “He’s going to kill me, too, and feed me to his goddess.”
“That is true.” Benessarai cocked his head, curiosity brightening his eyes. “It is rather a waste. I have never encountered a sensitive. Bring her to me.”
Friar spoke softly. “She is my prize, not yours.”
“Of course. My apologies, Robert. That was thoughtless of me.” He began to saunter toward them.
Out of the corner of her eye, Lily glimpsed movement. A flash of orange. She ducked her head and shook it as if confused…which let her look that way without Friar noticing.
A tiger peered around the far corner of the warehouse. Just the head showed—that enormous, orange and black head with green eyes slitted against the sunshine. The tiger nodded at her once and pulled back out of sight.
Grandmother? Grandmother was here?
Thank God she’d ducked her head and her hair was hanging down, hiding her face. She had a moment to get her expression smoothed out, a moment to try to figure out what that nod meant. Distract them? Be patient? The latter, maybe, she decided. No one was rushing to the rescue right away, so maybe they had more preparations to finish.
Benessarai stopped in front of her. “With your permission, Robert, I would like to try something before you make your offering. It would be too late afterward.” He chuckled at his own wit. “Your man will need to let go of her and step back, or he will be affected. He wouldn’t like that.”
“Of course not.” Friar didn’t put much effort into the lie. He sounded downright brusque. “If it won’t take long.”
“Not long at all.”
“Hugo, release her but keep her covered.”
The big man grunted and dropped his hold on Lily. The smell of pizza retreated with him. Her shoulders ached.
“Hugo won’t shoot to kill if you try to escape,” Friar told her. “He’ll aim for your stomach. A gut full of buckshot would kill you eventually, but not so quickly I would fail in my duty to the Great One.”
“Do step away just a bit, Robert. There, yes.” Benessarai wiggled the fingers of one hand at Lily.
Magic prickled over her face. It felt like a breeze with feathers in it. “Air magic, only slightly shaped. Mind-magic is connected to Air, isn’t it?”
He frowned slightly and wiggled his fingers again.
The gust of magic was stronger this time, more prickly. “Why is it okay for Friar to kill me? I’m a hostage.”
“No, you aren’t.” Benessarai studied her the way a scientist might study a lab rat that was not reacting in the expected way to a stimulus. He started in with more hand waving, this time accompanied by a short chant.
Friar smiled slowly. “Allow me to explain. An abomination can’t make a true covenant. If Alycithin was unable to make a true covenant, she has no family. If she has no family, she is not party to the code. If she is not party to the code, then alas, you are no hostage. Only a prize.”
“I see. Yet I’m a valuable prize, aren’t I? I’m surprised Benessarai is willing to let you kill me without learning where sensitives come from.”
This time the elf answered. “I am curious. Do you claim to know?”
“Oh, yes, I know. You have humans in your realm, right?”
“Your kind are everywhere.” He said that the way a New York apartment dweller might speak of roaches: try as you may, you can’t get rid of them. “Tell me,” he said.
“Make me your hostage so I don’t get fed to Her Evil Nastiness and—”
Friar slapped her. Hard. Way harder than he should have been able to. She fell to the ground, dazed, with black fluttering at the edges of her vision.
“You do not—”
He kicked her in the ribs. She gasped and curled around the sudden pain.
“Speak of—” His leg drew back for another kick.
A tiger roared.
Hugo screamed.
Five hundred pounds of Siberian tiger raced straight at them.
Friar’s eyes widened. He reached for her. Lily tried to scramble out of the way, but she was dizzy, slowed by the blows. He got hold of her arm and started dragging her, and he should not have been able to do that. Not as fast as he was moving. She caught a glimpse of Benessarai fleeing through the open door of the warehouse, heard the two elves call out something, but she was fighting, kicking, squirming, trying her damnedest to stay out of the warehouse.
She failed.
Friar dragged her across the threshold. Just as her skin tingled from the magic of the wards she heard the raucous boom of a shotgun.
Friar slammed the door shut.
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 sp
ace 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 c
onnect, 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.”