by Eileen Wilks
Despite Rule’s current form, the man remained very present. And thinking hard.
Cody Beck had real courage. Rule hadn’t expected the man to be a coward—Lily wouldn’t have cared about him if he were craven or stupid—but he hadn’t expected that degree of bravery.
Cody Beck was also about half crazy. His courage was real, but foolhardy. Had the ghost-fire extended well beyond the car, Rule might not have been able to get him out of it in time. He could have died, the injuries so real to his brain and senses that his heart stopped. Or he could have been thrown into shock, forcing them to deal with him instead of the threat to Lily’s family.
Rule-wolf snorted at all the words the man dragged through his head. Cody Beck was strong and admirable, yes. And flawed, but who was not? And he was not right for Lily . . . which was clear to the wolf without all that thinking.
Lily’s parents lived in a lovely middle-class section of the La Jolla area. There were streetlights on every corner, porch lights, and landscape lighting in many cases. Yards were small, but beautifully tended. Some were xeriscaped or grav eled; some stubbornly retained their grass lawns. There was a lot of stucco, of course, in a mix of colors and styles. It was a pricey neighborhood, but Edward and Julia Yu had bought their home many years ago, when there were still a few bargains to be found.
Tonight smoke and ash from the fire drifted over the yuccas and the palms, the pale driveways, and the red-tile roofs. And the dogs howled.
In the yards, they howled. In the houses, they howled. Little dogs, big dogs—every dog for blocks around was howling. Whatever fell magic the Chimei used, it spoke to dogs, too.
Rule could almost feel that magic pressing on him, and understood the animals’ need to howl. As he ran—an easy pace, much slower than his top speed—he leaned heavily into listening. He listened as he would for the moon’s song, but it was those separate notes he leaned into, the notes the mantles had echoed when he Changed. The notes that named them, perhaps. Could a snatch of moonsong be a name?
Yes—clearly, yes. Sam possessed his name, and what else would a dragon be named by but dragonsong?
He didn’t see monsters looming in the darkness. He saw a woman sitting in her driveway, deep scratches on both bare arms, rocking herself and sobbing. He saw another auto accident—two cars, their front ends smashed and permanently mated. No drivers or passengers, though he smelled blood. He heard Cody Beck’s harsh breathing and smelled his fear, but the man ran steadily. Rule wondered what he saw.
Then he saw smoke billowing from a second fire, dark enough to show against the smear of stars. It was farther away, but perhaps larger than the first fire. He didn’t hear the bustle and shouts of firefighters. He did hear sirens, but they weren’t close.
Where were all the people? Aside from that lone woman, he saw no one, heard no one, smelled no one. It was night. They should be home from work, busy with dinner and family. Were they cowering in their houses, frozen by fear? Killing one another? Running in packs down other streets, maddened by visions too terrible to face?
Then, as they passed one house, he heard screams inside. Several voices, not just one. Lily stopped. He shoved at her. Keep going. Our enemies aren’t here. To stop this, we have to stop our enemies.
Beck pulled his weapon from its holster. “I’m going in.”
She slapped his arm—the one with the gun. “Put it up. Put it up, or you’re going to shoot what you think is a rapist and it turns out to be a ten-year-old. You go in, what will they see when you try to save them? A monster come to eat them? And you won’t know if what you see is real, or which parts are real. How can you help if you don’t know?”
“Then, dammit, if you can tell—”
Lily didn’t answer. She just started running again. Faster.
Rule ran beside her. So, too, did Beck—with his weapon back in its holster.
They were nearly to the Yus’ street. That was it, less than a block away now. The Yus’ house would be to the left, the third house on the left. And at last he heard people. Voices talking—one was Madame Yu. She told someone, “Leave or die. Your choice.” And laughter. Ugly laughter.
Then a shot. Two shots, close together.
He glanced up at Lily, torn. He doubted she could have heard her grandmother from this far away, but the shot—that, she’d heard. She waved him ahead. “Go. Go. I’ll be right behind you. Go.”
Rule kicked into his top speed. In seconds, the other two were well behind. He rounded the corner.
There it was, the Yus’ home—a pale, pretty stucco split-level with a double-wide driveway that swallowed most of the front yard. In a flash, with the air streaming past, he took in the scene. Lights were on—inside and on the porch, plus muted solar lights lining the drive.
And in that driveway, a crowd of young men, maybe a dozen of them. Another gang? The wind brought him their scents—sweat and cigarettes, beer, weed. And gunpowder. He couldn’t see from this distance and in the dark how many had guns, but he smelled the gunpowder.
They weren’t firing, though. They were staring at the porch—where a vortex of shadow and color swirled.
Madame Yu didn’t Change the way he did. It took her a bit longer.
Rule barreled into the nearest one from behind before the rest even saw him. He simply knocked that one flat and sprang onto the next, slashing an upraised arm with his teeth. He spun, ducking and going low, aiming for the hamstrings of one swinging a baseball bat at the spot where he’d been one or two slow seconds ago.
A shattering roar rent the air. A streak of orange, black, and white launched into the midst of the gang members. A Siberian tiger—about ten feet, nose to tip of tail, of snarling fury—was among them.
Now they screamed.
Madame Yu was not a dainty fighter. She slapped out with claws that could take down a black bear. Blood flew. Within seconds, the fight was over. Rule trembled with the need to pursue as those still able to move ran off, but the man restrained the wolf.
Madame Yu may have felt a similar frustration. She roared again.
A wolf knows better than to approach an angry tiger, however friendly and respectful they might be toward each other in their other forms. Rule yipped to get her attention, then pointed with his nose at the house, ears pricked. Her tail lashed. She nodded, going so far as to wave one huge paw, as if urging him to go in.
She’d left the front door ajar. He ran toward it. She didn’t, heading instead around toward the back of the house.
Good. Those in front could have been a diversion for others coming in the back way.
Inside, he followed his nose—and found an amazing sight. In the dining room—a small room, with only one window—the dining table was gone. Instead the floor held a pair of mattresses. On them lay Madame Yu’s family—son, daughter-in-law, two granddaughters, and grandson-in-law. Peacefully, deeply asleep, all of them. Susan was snoring slightly.
He stopped, staring. Then shook his head and wished this form could laugh. She’d drugged them, one and all. How she’d persuaded or tricked them into it he couldn’t guess, but she’d made sure the madness wouldn’t reach them.
After a second’s grinning appreciation, he went back into the tidy living room. Not so tidy now, with shards of glass littering the floor. At least one of the shots he’d heard had shattered the large picture window.
He nudged the door open wider and trotted onto the porch. Madame Yu flowed around the corner of the house, sleek and supple. She looked up at him and shook her head once.
Clear of intruders around back, then. He yipped and wagged his tail to tell her everything was fine inside, then went to look at the bodies. There were fewer than he’d thought. Oh, yes—the scent and blood trail told him the one he’d tried to ham-string had managed to stand and wobble away.
Still, five were dead, and one was badly injured. Of those five, four were Madame’s kills—not surprising, since Rule had avoided killing as much as possible. Not from any squeamishness, but practic
ality. Dead humans created complications. Rule didn’t object to taking responsibility for all the deaths, but tiger kills did not look like wolf kills.
Either he or Madame Yu should Change back and do something about the bodies, then. And about the injured man. Lily wouldn’t be happy with the body count, but . . .
Lily. His head jerked up and he looked toward the corner. Where was she? She was slower than he, but she’d been running. She should be here by now. So should Beck.
He took off running—knowing, even as he denied it, that he was too late. The mate sense told him that.
Rule found Cody Beck crumpled on the sidewalk just around the corner. He was unconscious, his head bloodied in back, but breathing normally.
Lily was gone.
THIRTY-FIVE
LILY woke slowly, with a twist of nausea and a pounding head. But she was not disoriented. She knew exactly what had happened to land her . . . wherever the hell she was.
Her thigh stung. That’s where the dart had gone in. She remembered what felt like a wasp sting, dizziness, the panicked certainty that she’d been drugged. She didn’t remember falling, but no doubt she had.
She lay on something softer than a floor, but not much. A cot, maybe. Above her was gray concrete. Same to her right side, a featureless cement block wall. Moving her gaze, she saw a single dangling light in the ceiling . . . a corner where wall met ceiling, the top of a door . . .
The door got her attention. She sat up slowly—and everything spun, then went dim. She damn near fell off whatever she was sitting on.
“Don’t worry. The worst of it will wear off soon.” The voice was male, cheerful, with an English accent.
The pounding in Lily’s head didn’t ease, but after a couple swallows she was fairly sure she wasn’t going to throw up, and her vision cleared.
She was in a room perhaps twelve feet by twenty. Concrete block walls, standard eight feet high. Light courtesy of two lightbulbs hanging from the ceiling, one at each end. No windows. A vent high in one wall—air-conditioning, she guessed, since the temperature was on the chilly side. Two doors. One was in the wall across from her. It was ajar, but not enough for her to see what lay beyond. The other was at the far end of the room, and closed. That door and a small, old-fashioned refrigerator flanked a short counter that held a hot plate. There was a cabinet above that. Three large packing boxes partly blocked her view of the refrigerator.
Clearly that was the kitchen end. A Formica-topped table and four chairs separated it from Lily’s end, which was the bed/living room. She sat on a thin bunk fastened to the wall. There was one just like hers on the opposite wall.
The man sitting on the bunk across from hers was him. The sorcerer.
He looked so happy and innocuous—a short, middle-aged man with thinning hair and a hint of a potbelly, wearing khaki shorts and a bright pink shirt. She didn’t see any weapons, but he wore a diamond ring on one finger and a small medallion hung from a chain around his neck. Magic shit, probably.
“Hello, Johnny.”
He beamed. “So you’ve learned one of my names? Good for you!”
She was fully dressed except for her shoes. They’d taken her shoulder harness and ankle holster, she discovered with a quick touch, as well as her weapons, her phone, and her watch. But she wasn’t tied up. Why wasn’t she tied up? “I thought you liked knives. What did you shoot me with?”
“Oh, a little cocktail of my own. A professional can’t always indulge his preferences, you know, and I’m not allowed to hurt you. Just as you can’t hurt me.”
“You might be wrong about that.” She was too wobbly still to jump him, but that would pass, and whatever spells he had handy wouldn’t work on her. “Johnny Deng, you are under arrest for the use of magic in commission of multiple felonies.”
That made him laugh out loud. He slapped his knee. “I am going to enjoy you, for however long you are with us. My beloved thinks that won’t be long, however. She’s usually right.” He looked to the right, at the door that was ajar.
Something pale poured through that door. It was translucent, almost transparent in spots, but it wasn’t mist or fog. Its boundaries were too clearly defined for anything airborne, and it flowed like a thick liquid, flowed right up beside Johnny Deng sitting on the bunk. Gradually it coalesced into a shape. Between one blink and the next, that shape became a woman.
More or less a woman.
She breathed, Lily noted, fascinated. Her breasts rose and fell almost imperceptibly, but she was breathing. Her limbs were long and thin; her shoulders and chest disproportionately wide. Like a crane, Lily thought—long, thin limbs, broad through the chest and shoulders to support the wings she didn’t have.
She had the feathers, though, a fluffy cap of down on her head, but her features weren’t birdlike. Neither was her skin. It was white, and it gleamed. The shine was subtle, like the luminescence of a pearl.
She sure looked solid. Real. And physical. She sat there barely but perceptibly breathing and looked at Lily with eyes the color of storm clouds. And didn’t speak.
“I don’t have a name for you,” Lily said, “other than Chimei, and that’s a race. What do I call you?”
“Enemy, I think.” The voice was soft and high and lovely. The accent, like Johnny’s, was British.
“If you won’t give me a name to use, I’ll have to make up my own,” Lily said. “Kun Nu.” Kun meant a large, mythical bird, like a roc. Nu meant woman, wife, or daughter.
“S’n Mtzo has told you of me.”
She pronounced Sam’s Chinese name differently than Grandmother did, somehow removing vowels without losing the syllabic rhythm. “He told me your people and his fought each other in the Great War, and after it.”
“Did he speak of the treaty? There’s a silly word.” She gestured gracefully with one hand. The fingers were very long, very thin. “Your English word suggests so little of the reality. Did he tell you he wishes to save your world from me and my people?”
“Something like that.” The nausea was gone, and the dizziness. Her head still ached, but it no longer pounded.
“He lies. It is a habit with dragons, the lies designed to prod their little people this way or that. I have no people. He manipulates you, human. He uses you. His true wish is to kill me. This has always been his goal. It always will be.”
“And what is your goal?”
Her lips curved in a smile, a touch smug, that made Lily think of Dirty Harry after he’d stolen a bit of ham. “To live, of course. That is my purpose. That is the very soul of my creation. To live.”
“You’ve got a few other goals, though. You like fear.”
Her tongue touched her lips just once, delicately. “Living is primary, but to live well, that is important, too. Fear . . . Humans relate to fear so oddly. You crave it, creating stories and images—movies, television, books—which allow you to taste fear, yet leave your body undamaged. I understand the disinclination to sustain damage, but why then do you deny your love for and fascination with fear? You, too, enjoy it, if not as purely and keenly as I am able to. Yet you condemn me for my taste.” She shrugged. “Humans are mostly silly.”
“Not all of us, beloved.” Johnny smiled, stroking her thigh.
She in turn gave him a smile as tender as a mother with a new babe. “You are a precious exception, my love.”
Lily launched herself across the room. One step, two, pivot, body bending, foot angled to strike with the side, not the toes—
A wall slammed against the side of her head, knocking her to the floor in a sudden, awkward heap.
Now her head was really pounding. And her jaw. She moved it carefully, then felt it with her fingertips. Probably not broken.
“Did you forget? Or did S’n not tell you? We are allowed to protect ourselves, Johnny and I.” The voice was light, amused. “Just as you may try to protect yourself.”
Lily blinked swimming eyes. The Chimei stood over her, smiling. Johnny-boy still sat on the bunk, hi
s hands on his knees, leaning forward as if watching the ninth-inning-with-two-men-out ball game.
He looked delighted. But then, his team was winning at the moment, wasn’t it? “She packs a punch, doesn’t she?” he asked cheerily.
“Yeah.” Lily had been aiming for the sorcerer, thinking he was the Chimei’s weakness. She’d caught a glimpse of white in the corner of her eye as she went into the kick, but she hadn’t really seen anything.
And that was a clue. She eased herself into sitting up, rubbing her jaw. “Good trick. You went fuzzy so you could move faster, didn’t you? Must be handy. But it cost you something, I’m guessing.”
The Chimei was amused. “There is a cost, but not so much of one as you are paying. You cannot sustain many of my blows, human, while I can offer them for hours and hours, if I wish. I . . . What is the phrase? I pulled my punch so as not to injure you permanently.” She gestured at the bunk. “Return to your place, unless you wish me to put you there. I assure you I am strong enough to do so easily, without allowing you to damage me.”
Lily did not like doing anything Kun Nu wanted, but she didn’t want to be handled, either. She rose to her feet slowly, trying not to jar her head—and had to stop and swallow back the bile. She managed not to stagger to get to the bunk. “You may not have achieved that aim. I’m pretty sure I’m injured.”
“Not seriously.” The Chimei returned to her place beside her lover. She tipped her head to one side. “You are afraid a little, but not as much as I expected. Why not?”
“You aren’t allowed to hurt me.”
“I’m not allowed to harm your body, save in self-defense. Do you believe the only harm is that which damages you physically?” She gave a little trill of a chuckle. “Oh, there. Now you fear. Do you enjoy it?”
“No.” Lily licked her lip and tasted blood. It was puffing up, too. “So your only goal is fear?”
“I have other goals. The happiness of my beloved . . .” She stroked Johnny’s arm fondly. “That is precious to me. And the suffering of your grandmother. That is necessary. I will eat her power, and you will help me.”