by Eileen Wilks
Then the other four wolves were amid the men.
A HUNDRED yards away, an erect old woman stepped out into the middle of the dirt road, just where it met the yard, and began drawing a circle in the dirt.
She wasn’t alone. On her left side stood a beautiful young man, a trifle pale, wearing a diamond in one ear and another around his neck. On her other side an older man planted his feet. He was grizzled and bearded and looked like some minor forest god.
A white panel van trundled down the road toward them. The driver must have seen them. He hit the gas.
“Chimei!” the older man boomed as the van raced toward them. “Sorcerer! You have offended my Lady, and we are at war!”
The niceties had been observed. From either side of the road, the six two-legged Nokolai warriors opened up—with machine guns.
The van was riddled. It veered hard right—a tire blew out, and it skidded into the ditch.
The shriek of some vast bird of prey split the air.
TWENTY feet belowground, rock groaned. Dust sifted from the cracked ceiling. Lily gripped her makeshift spear tightly and looked at Cynna.
Rule was here. Almost here, anyway—close, so close. He’d been close for hours. She’d woken up to feel him near and had let Cynna know—or hoped she had—by setting her makeshift spear close at hand and handing Cynna one of the magically enhanced knives.
Since then, she’d lost another five hundred thousand at gin. It would have been more, but Cynna was distracted, too.
Moments ago he’d rushed closer. She’d sprung to her feet, spear ready. For what, she didn’t know—but God, she was so ready for something.
The earth grumbled louder. And trembled.
Cynna bit her lip. “Maybe we should get under one of the b—yikes!”
A big chunk of the cement block wall closest to her had turned to dust. Peering out of that dusty hole was a small gray man.
No, a gnome. Three feet tall, weird little snoutlike nose, no chin. Baggy fuchsia shorts with yellow suspenders. A gnome.
“Bad thing is coming!” The gnome beckoned urgently. “Hurries you!”
The hole—the tunnel—was sized for a gnome, not for adult human women. “You heard the gnome,” Lily said. “Hurry.”
Cynna didn’t argue. They’d long since settled that protecting the baby came first—and the baby wouldn’t get out on his own. She got down on her hands and knees and started crawling.
Lily got down on her hands and knees, too, while the little gnome fairly hopped with fearful urgency. “Hurries, hurries!”
The lights winked out. The damned glowing bulbs they’d been unable to shut off went out on their own, leaving her in absolute darkness, blacker than any night.
The little gnome shrieked—and shoved Lily hard, toppling her on her side. He pounced on her, curving his little body over her as if those fragile bones could shield them both—as earth and rock shrieked along with him. And everything overhead collapsed.
THIRTY-EIGHT
THE agony and bliss of the Change whirled through Rule. When it ended he stood two-legged and naked in mud sticky with blood. He grabbed one of the weapons on the ground—an assault rifle, the reason he’d picked this spot for the Change. The model was unfamiliar, but it was similar enough to what he’d used. He fired a quick round.
The man at the window who’d been firing at them fell back. “Carl!” Rule snapped at a wolf streaking for the window, clearly intending to leap in. “Wrong way! Go get the damned package!”
Carl skidded, whirled, and raced the other direction.
Rule hit the dirt as someone else began firing from the house, rolling until he was behind the picnic table that still held playing cards and beer cans. It wasn’t much cover. “Remy, Jones—take cover and Change. We need weapons to keep them busy until Carl gets back.”
He didn’t call Mike. Mike lay still and unmoving in the bloody dirt. One of the gangbangers had gotten lucky—briefly. Very briefly.
Rule sprayed another round, providing cover for the others as they Changed. Remy was almost as fast he was, but Jones took a little longer.
Seconds later, a naked man with pale Irish skin stood in full view—for less than a second. Then he was rolling. He ended with a SIG Sauer much like Lily’s in one hand, and snapped off two shots quickly. Around the corner of the house, Jones finished his Change and dived for the nearest weapon—a sub-machine gun clutched in a dead man’s hand.
And a large tawny wolf raced up beside Rule and dropped a small, Bubble-Wrapped bundle from his jaws.
“Good.” Rule ripped at the Bubble Wrap to reveal a pair of grenades. They’d been stashed just the other side of the first ward, ready to be retrieved. He raised his voice. “You in the house! You have ten seconds to surrender! Throw your weapons out!”
On the other side of the house, fire bloomed. And vanished. Something white and almost transparent flowed overhead.
The earth shook and screamed. It shimmied against Rule’s belly where he lay prone. He raised his head to look over his shoulder—and a rectangular section of ground twenty feet away gave way, collapsing into itself like a sinkhole.
“Remy! Take over!” And he was on his feet, running bent low. That was training, not conscious thought. So was the zigzag he used. He barely noticed the bullets kicking up dirt around him.
At the edge of the cavity he once again hit the ground. She’s alive, she’s alive. I can feel her . . . but so fragile, so human, beneath that load of earth and crumbled masonry.
He climbed down carefully—not thinking of his own safety, but desperate not to send anything shifting. He knew where she was, exactly where she was. Should he Change again? A wolf digs well through dirt but lacks hands to move any large stones.
Hands first, and quickly. He went to hands and knees—would have gone flat so as to spread his weight out better, but the spot over her was too uneven. He began digging, scooping dirt and small rocks away with his hands.
When the ground beneath him shifted he cried out in rage.
A hole appeared right where he’d been digging. A small gray head poked out, looked around—blinked when he saw Rule—then popped back down.
“Wait!” Rule cried. “Wait! Is Lily—”
Then a very human hand gripped the edge of the neat, circular hole. Another hand. Rule leaned forward, grasped those hands—and stood, lifting.
“Ow! Shit! Pull!” Lily exclaimed as he pulled. Her head appeared, dusty and brown, her eyes blinking. He let go of one hand to quickly slide an arm around her shoulders as they emerged. She wriggled—and came out of the ground.
The two of them ended up lying in a tangle on the crumbled earth. “That was tight,” Lily said. “That was way too tight. He only knows one size for tunnels, and that’s his size. He saved my life.”
“You’re all right.” Rule ran his hands over her frantically. “You’re not hurt.”
“Scraped and bruised, that’s all.” She stopped to cough.
Sudden dread made him freeze. “Cynna?”
“In the tunnel. She was in the tunnel when the ward pulled everything down. Mel says she’s fine. He says gnome tunnels do not collapse. No,” she corrected herself with a faint grin, “he sniffed, very superior, and said, ‘Our tunnels is never collapsing. Real earthquakes is not collapsing. This bitty shake is not collapsing.’ ”
Now Rule was the one blinking. “Mel?”
She grimaced. “I can’t say his whole name. The little elder who saved me.”
“I thought he was . . . Never mind.” Rule heaved to his feet, but stayed bent over so he wouldn’t provide a target. He gave Lily a tug to get her on her feet. The cavity was deep enough that she could stand straight.
Carl poked his nose over the edge. He yipped happily when he saw Lily.
Behind him, an explosion made the ground shake again, followed quickly by a second blast.
Rule looked at his friend. “The ones in the house didn’t surrender.”
Carl shook his he
ad.
Rule had a quick flash of the kind of devastation the grenades must have wreaked. He shut it away. No time for that now. “Okay. Go back to Remy. He’s in charge of your group. I’m heading around front.”
“What’s happening?” Lily asked.
“My father, your grandmother, Cullen, and six clan are fighting the sorcerer and the Chimei.” He gave the steep side of the cavity an appraising look, found a likely handhold, and started up. Dirt crumbled and he shifted, got close enough to get an arm over the edge, and heaved. “Five of us tackled the gang members in and near the house,” he continued, reaching down to pull Lily up. “They’re either dead now or very close to it.”
She helped as much as she could, scrambling with her feet. Once again they ended up tangled together in the dirt. “All of them?” She was slightly winded. “How many is all of them?”
“Thirty-six.”
She looked at him for a moment, then gave a quick shake of her head. Like him, she’d deal with that later. “What’s the plan?”
“As soon as Remy makes sure there aren’t any left to pursue, he and Carl will take you to the cars. They’re a couple miles away—we couldn’t risk being spotted. The gnomes know the spot. They’ll take Cynna there.”
“Did you take a blow to the head? I’m not going to the damned cars.”
“You’re unarmed. You’re a potential hostage. The Chimei—”
“You’re not just unarmed, you’re unclothed. And the Chimei is a lot more likely to kill you than me.”
“Lily, the whole point of tonight’s mission is to get you and Cynna safely away. No one can leave until you do.”
“And you think Johnny—”
“Johnny?”
“The sorcerer. He goes by Johnny Deng. You think he and the Chimei are going to say, ‘Okay, you can all go home now,’ once I’m not around?”
He scowled, furious. And unsurprised. “Come on,” he said roughly.
* * *
BUT Rule didn’t lead her to the front of the ramshackle house. He took her first to the place he’d left his weapons. As they ran, he briefed her in a low voice about who was here and why.
Charms made by the Rhej using an ancient spell. The Lady speaking. Nokolai at war. “How can you win such a war?” she asked, her voice quiet.
“We’ve made plans,” he said vaguely as he handed her a nice little semiautomatic Glock. It wasn’t her SIG, but it would do. “There’s a chance the Chimei can hear us, if she tries, so I won’t go into detail now.”
She stuck the plastic knife she’d held on to all this time in her pocket. “Sam somehow lured the bad guys away, you said. How?”
Rule stepped into his jeans. “He made it seem his lair was unguarded. He thought the Chimei wouldn’t be able to resist trying to get at Li Qin. Apparently he was right.”
Lily shivered. If the Chimei hadn’t been so eager to collect another hostage with which to torment Grandmother, she might have tried to force Lily’s “freely made offer” already. “But Li Qin—is she all right?”
“Madame Yu assured me Li Qin would be safe. If she believes it, I’m inclined to.” He shouldered an assault rifle.
“Where is Sam?”
“He RSVP’d his regrets.”
“What?”
He grabbed her hand. “Come on. We’ll come at them through the woods.”
The ground was rough and it was dark among the trees. Lily couldn’t go fast without tripping over something. She was making noise and slowing him down. “You could go ahead.”
“No.”
“Did Sam say the treaty wouldn’t let him help?”
“Something like that. Shh.”
The Chimei had claimed Sam was lying to her, using her. Lily figured that was partly true—the black dragon was manipulating all of them. But the Chimei had even less reason than Sam to speak truth to Lily. She had wanted Lily cowed and fearful, and persuading her she couldn’t trust the dragon would help that along.
Only . . . Sam should be here, dammit. The sense of betrayal was strong. Treaty or no treaty, he should have found a way to be here. If nothing else, he could soak up extra magic, leaving less for the Chimei and Johnny to grab and use.
Rule stumbled. She stopped. Alarm made it hard to keep her voice soft. “What is it? Are you okay?”
“I take it that means everything didn’t suddenly go dark for you.”
“No. Aren’t the mantles working?”
“Only one mantle, and I grew careless.” He shook his head as if to clear it. “I wasn’t relying on it as I should. I hadn’t needed to until now. The Chimei was focused on the others, I suppose.”
“What do you mean, only one mantle?”
“Later.”
Lily took the lead for the next part. Rule said his vision was clearing as he got used to leaning on the mantle, as he put it, but her sight was unaffected.
The woods ended abruptly—more so than they probably had an hour ago. Where there must have been brush and grass there was now burned stubble.
Lily stopped. Rule stopped beside her, one hand on her shoulder.
Perhaps twenty yards down the road, a white van lay tilted in the ditch. Lily didn’t see anyone there. Not Isen, not the other lupi.
Closer, three people stood where a dirt road dead-ended in a baked earth yard. Two were together—Grandmother, as erect as always. Cullen, not so erect. He was on his knees, and looked like he was fighting to keep from hitting the ground with his face.
Ten paces away from those two, the Chimei paced. Or one version of her did. Kun Nu, Lily had called her. Bird woman. Now she was all bird.
She wasn’t the size of a dragon. Not even close. But as birds went, she was huge—at least the height of an ostrich, but shaped something like a crane or stork, with a raptor’s strong beak and a long, forked tail. She was white still, pristine white and glistening in the moon-drenched darkness.
LI Lei stood with her hand on Cullen’s shoulder, turning to keep Kun Nu in view as the enormous bird circled them. He had fought hard, the lovely Cullen, fought well and valiantly. No blame to him that he was not as strong as a being who had been gathering power for three centuries. “You cannot break my circle,” she said in Chinese.
The great bird’s beak melted, along with the rest of the face, so that a woman’s face looked at Li Lei from atop that bird body. A familiar face, though Li Lei had not seen it outside her nightmares in so very long. “I can,” she said in her high, pure voice, using a dialect Li Lei also heard in her dreams at times. “I will, eventually. I have time.”
She spoke truly. Given enough time, she would undoubtedly figure out how to break the circle, though it was set specifically against her. That was a warding so old Li Lei should have forgotten it. Perhaps she would have, if she hadn’t practiced it faithfully every decade for all these years.
Or perhaps not. Some things one doesn’t forget. The past flowed around Li Lei now like thick cream. It was sweet, in its way, for all that the memories that swam in the air were of her own dying. Sweet because she’d succeeded—and terrible, for she also remembered the flames and the screams.
There had been no way to spare the others, those who worked for that first sorcerer. At the time she’d told herself it did not matter, that they deserved their fate for consorting with him. She’d been very young then.
There had been no way to spare herself, either. She, too, had burned and screamed.
Then Sam had come, a great black shadow plummeting out of the darkness and smoke to land beside her dying body. You are not dead yet, he had said, fierce and complete as only a dragon could be. I wish you to live. Be dragon with me.
She had chosen life, life and wings and Sam, and he had sung over her, sung one of the Great Songs, one which had gone unheard since the Great War.
Dragon bodies heal much, much better than human bodies.
“I think your little sorcerer is dying,” the Chimei said, smiling.
“You have thought that before and
been wrong.” Though he was spent, badly spent. When the lupi opened up with their guns on the van driven by this new sorcerer lover, they’d immediately faded back into the bushes, as they’d been told to do.
It was wise. The sorcerer had lived, as she’d expected. He’d had to draw heavily on his lover for the power to heal those wounds, but she’d shared her power generously.
He’d lived, and sent fire after the two-legged wolves who’d tried to kill him. Cullen, in turn, had banished those blazes, one after another.
“Did he use himself up like you did when he attempted to throw mage fire?” She smiled sweetly. “He lacks your strength, my enemy. I was too high for him to reach with his little black flame. He missed.”
“I didn’t.”
“No.” She stopped her endless circling now. Her eyes glowed with hatred. “You did not miss. You stole him from me.”
Li Lei knew whom the pronoun referred to. “You swim in the past, too,” she observed. “But I think for you it is an ocean, and you never find shore.”
“If I found a shore, I would turn away. I am loyal to my loves. I do not leave them. I do not forget vengeance. Break your silly circle, my enemy. Break it and honor your word now, and I will allow the little sorcerer to live.”
“Ah, you refer to my agreement to exchange myself for Lily.” Li Lei smiled. “I lied.”
The shriek sounded like the bird, not the woman. “Filthy, treacherous, evil—you lied? You dare stand there and tell me so? I will drink your granddaughter’s blood along with her power!”
“I think not.” Li Lei slid her hand in her pocket. She didn’t let herself look away from the great bird, though blast her, the Chimei had stopped in the wrong place. She couldn’t see the van. She had to settle for listening.
“Are you going to throw a spell at me?” the Chimei asked. “Do you have some little charm in your pocket like those your wolf demons used?”
“Those little charms worked. You do not know what pot you’ve stirred.”
“By all means, try your spell or charm. It will break your circle and will not hurt me at all.”