by Eileen Wilks
The staff might keep Beth hopelessly captivated, but it didn’t change her basic nature or intelligence. She wouldn’t understand what she was feeling… and had probably guessed by now that he’d used her to get to Lily.
Lily took a deep breath to steady her voice. “We’re turning onto Bandera. Where next?”
RULE crouched down on the cool concrete of the parking lot beside Club Hell, his phone held to his ear. Cullen squatted beside him. They watched a moving dot of light on the map Cullen had unfolded as it crept along the line that represented Bandera Street.
So did the twelve men standing still and silent around them.
“All right,” Rule told Benedict. “We’ve got your location. There are eight Lu Nuncios and seven nonheris here, plus myself and Cullen. I’m going to brief them now.” A pause. “Yes. Call me back after you’ve reached them.”
He disconnected and looked around at the silent men surrounding him. “Are you here from curiosity, or to help?”
“Is the staff involved?” Javiero asked.
“It is. Harlowe has taken my nadia’s sister and is using her to bring Lily to him. He has the staff.”
“Then I’m in,” Javiero said flatly, followed by a chorus of agreements, some vocalized, some simply nods.
“Understand this, then: We hunt, and I lead.”
The single word hunt set the terms: instant obedience. No discussion, no questions. Rule was incapable of operating any other way at this point, and they understood that. Even Randall nodded reluctantly.
“Very well. Lily and Benedict are in her car. Benedict’s driving. He’d assigned her guards, but he doesn’t think they’ve been able to follow. He’s calling them now.” The guards had one of Cullen’s charmed maps, but they didn’t have Cullen to make it work when the signal got scrambled. “You can see from the map that Lily and Benedict are heading generally toward us at the moment. We don’t have their destination yet—Harlowe’s feeding her directions, keeping her on the phone. He claims he’s getting real-time information from Her and will know if Lily contacts anyone.”
That brought a few murmurs. Rikard scowled. “Is that possible?”
Cullen answered. “Possible? Yes. Likely?” He shrugged. “The legends make it clear She’s able to observe our world, though She’s blind to us.”
“But no one can communicate between realms. Not even Her. Unless She has another pet telepath… ?”
“unlikely.” Instinct and need flowed hot inside Rule, a gathering force as compelling as blood or tides. For the moment, though, urgency was balanced by a mind washed cool and clear, as if by moonlight. Thank you, Lady. “Harlowe knew when she left the FBI building. He knew someone was driving her, but not who. Either he has someone physically following her and reporting her movements through conventional means, or She is somehow feeding him information.” He paused to make his point. “Benedict says no one is following them. He would be difficult to fool.”
Some nodded, some frowned. No one disagreed.
Stephen said thoughtfully, “Harlowe doesn’t know that Benedict has contacted you, I take it. That suggests that his source of information is indeed our enemy. A human follower might see Benedict using his phone, but She wouldn’t know, as long as he spoke to one of us.”
Rule nodded absently, his attention on the map. He could feel Lily now—faintly, faintly, but her direction rested on the edges of his heightened senses like a feather just touching his skin. He’d never sensed her from this far away before—a Gift from the Lady, perhaps. He considered logistics.
“Why,” one of the younger ones asked, “are we still standing here?”
Cullen nodded at the map. “We’ll lose time if we take off in the wrong direction. Once she passes Garner Street, here—” he pointed at a line just ahead of the dot of light—“we’ll know which direction we take.”
Rule spoke. “We’ll have to take multiple vehicles. Most of you don’t know the city, so—”
His phone rang. He had it at his ear before it finished. “Yes.” He heard his brother’s voice, speaking too quietly for human ears, and answered, “They’ll come. Hunt rules, my lead, Etorri as second.”
After a few moments of listening, he rose smoothly. “Lily’s guards were unable to follow, so it’s up to us. She’s heard from Harlowe. They’ll be turning south on Garner. Toward us.” He gathered the others with his gaze. “We go.”
The neighborhood sucked.
It was late enough that many of the houses were dark, and some of the streetlights had been shot out. But there was no full dark in a city this size. The dirty purple sky reflected the city’s lights, providing a murky sort of illumination.
Lily knew how the area looked by day, anyway—the huddle of small houses slumping into decay, some vacant. The peeling paint and yards mostly dirt, with the occasional rusty car as lawn ornament. All too often, walls had been sprayed with graffiti in gang colors.
Cripps territory, back when she’d patrolled here for five memorable months. But the current graffiti told another story: the Dozens had taken over this turf.
They were a relatively new gang—part import, part home-grown. Many of their leaders were casualties of the brutal Central American wars that had raged for so long, teens and young adults who, as children, had witnessed atrocities up close and personal. A brother hacked to death. A mother gang-raped. A baby sister casually spitted by a soldier with a machete.
Children who had found their way to America, escaping with whichever relatives survived. Children who had grown up to commit atrocities.
As soon as Benedict made that last turn, she’d known they were about to arrive at Harlowe’s hidey-hole. She’d motioned urgently for him to get rid of the headset. He had, thank God, ended the call and hidden the headset without argument or hesitation.
“I’m guessing our escort just pulled out in front of us,” she told Harlowe now. “An old Chevy Impala, bright purple with orange flames on the sides. Lowrider. The driver and one passenger are Hispanic. The other one’s African American.”
“My, aren’t you politically correct?” Harlowe was in high good humor now that she’d all but delivered herself into his hands. “You be sure to stay right behind Raul and his friends.”
“I take it we’re almost there.” The front-seat passenger was talking on a cell phone, no doubt reporting that they’d picked up Lily and Benedict.
“Perhaps.”
“I’m kicking myself for not thinking of the gangs earlier.” Let him revel in how he’d outwitted her. Let him preen and strut and think himself invincible. “Where better for you to hide out? They’d respond well to a charismatic leader.”
“The boys have been most helpful. They understand my message.”
Benedict touched her shoulder. She glanced at him. “Why don’t you tell me about that?”
“You want to hear my message?”
“Sure.” Benedict made a pulling motion with one hand. She subvocalized: “Drag it out? Stall?” He nodded, and she returned it. It was good to know they were on the same page.
Harlowe was making mistakes. He was relying too much on his not-quite-omniscient goddess. He wasn’t thinking straight, or he would have taken Her blind spot—the lupi—into account. Maybe he really did think he was invincible, as Rule had suggested earlier.
That didn’t make him less than deadly. But it gave them a chance. Rule was on his way—with others, she hoped. How far he had to travel, she couldn’t say, but she felt him more clearly all the time. “That is,” she went on out loud, “I’d like to know if there’s more to it than ‘stick with me and you’ll have all the money and women you want.’”
He chuckled. “Don’t underestimate the Dozens. They want guns and booze and drugs as well. What about you, Lily Yu? What do you want?”
“I want my sister turned loose, alive and unhurt.”
“So I assumed, or you wouldn’t be following Raul. But what about yourself? Aren’t you hoping to get out of this alive and unhurt, t
oo?”
“I’m planning on it.”
“My own plans fell through recently,” he said, dreamy now. “I’ve made more, of course. Can’t keep a good man down. But you might express some regret for having interfered in my plans. In fact, I feel sure you will. I’m predicting that you will soon be very, very sorry you presumed so much.”
The Chevy stopped abruptly. Lily jolted as Benedict hit the brakes to keep from climbing up the other car’s bumper. The passenger in the back seat of the purple car turned around, smiling at them. He rested the barrel of a sawed-off shotgun on the back of the seat, aimed straight at Lily.
“Predicting the future’s an iffy business.” Maybe she’d been wrong about Harlowe’s goal. Maybe he’d brought her here because he wanted her killed where he could see it happen. “Even good precogs don’t get it right all the time.”
“We’ll see. Pull over to the curb,” he told her, almost purring. “Pull over and get out of the car. The boys will take you where you need to go.”
There was one empty spot at the curb directly in front of a rundown stucco house, pale and colorless in the dark. The windows were boarded up, but light snaked out through cracks. A late model pickup, modified beyond recognition, occupied most of the front yard.
She glanced at Benedict. He looked bored. They might have been paying a visit to some tedious relatives.
But he would know just how scared she was. He’d smell it on her. Dammit, dammit… Lily took a breath and rolled the dice, staking her life, Bern’s, and his on her best guess. “No.”
“What? What did you say?”
“Once I put myself in your hands, I’ve lost all bargaining power. Send my sister out. Then we’ll talk.”
Benedict gave her a small nod.
Harlowe’s laugh was less convincing than it had been. “You must be joking. Do as you’re told, or Beth will regret it, even if you don’t.”
“My walking into that house won’t make her safe. If you’ve got both of us, I’ve nothing left to bargain with.”
“What about your safety?” Harlowe’s voice lost its music as it rose. “Do you see the shotgun pointed at you? The others have guns, too. What makes you think you have a choice?”
“Shoot us, then.” Her heart beat so hard and fast she thought she’d be sick. “Tell them to blast away. Unless, of course, you think that might piss off your goddess.”
“She doesn’t control me. I’m in charge, you understand?”
“Yeah? So how come you keep killing the same woman over and over, Patrick? Do those brown-haired girls remind you of anyone?”
That tipped him over some edge. He cursed her—and Her. All women. While he ranted, Lily stole a glance at Benedict. “How long?” she whispered, meaning, How long before we have backup?
Looking sleepy, he spread both hands, closed them, and then spread the fingers of one hand again.
Fifteen minutes. Surely she could keep Harlowe from acting for fifteen minutes—though he was getting so wound up, she was afraid he’d have them shot to prove a point. She broke into his tirade. “Okay, okay, you’re in charge. The big kahoona. I got that. But you still need to deal. You want me, you’re going to have to deal.”
Silence, except for his breath hitting the mouthpiece in windy bursts. He was panting as if he’d been running. “I’m not sending your sister out,” he said at last. “That would be giving up my bargaining power, wouldn’t it? Perhaps you need to be convinced. Felix,” he said to someone else, “would you like to rape her for me? You can listen,” he told Lily. “You can hear her beg.”
Her hands went cold and numb. She flexed her hands, swallowed bile, and said, “We’ll pull up to the curb, but I’m not getting out until I see Beth.”
He giggled. “Tell you what—we’ll take off her clothes while you’re thinking things over.”
Fourteen more minutes. She had to keep him talking for fourteen more minutes. “Don’t know much about this hostage business, do you? You’re not giving up enough to make me think I’ve got a chance. If I decide it’s hopeless, I’m going to call in forty or fifty federal agents just to be sure you pay.”
“And what do you think will happen to your sister if you do that?”
“I don’t know. Will it be as bad as what happens to you if you don’t deliver me to your goddess?”
Another long moment of silence. “Perhaps we can deal.”
SEVENTEEN
BENEDICT ended the call with a single growled word: Hurry.
Force rose in Rule like an imminent explosion, hollowing him until all that remained was purpose, tipping him away from the rationality of the human toward the power of the beast. He found a new balance. Thought remained, but altered; words no longer led, but existed as small chips of focus for the gathering storm.
Cullen was in the Mercedes’s back seat with his map spread out. Con was driving; Rule hadn’t wanted to split his attention. They’d made good time while they had four lanes, but construction had sent them on a two-lane detour. They were practically crawling now due to some fender bender up ahead.
They were close, though. Rule felt Lily clearly now, like a separate pulse. He felt the moon, too, with her different call. But that call now fed rather than cooled the tide surging within him.
Soon, he told the rage in his blood. Very soon. “Stop the car,” he told Con.
Con stopped the car. Rule hadn’t said to pull over first, so he didn’t. Three vehicles followed his, each riding the other’s tail much too close for safety, had the drivers been human. Because they weren’t, all three stopped immediately, as if they’d choreographed it.
Rule got out. So did those in the other cars—no questions, no debate.
Hunt rules.
“We’re out of time,” he told them, pitching his voice to be heard over the blaring horns of drivers behind them, speaking quickly because he couldn’t hold off the Change much longer. “Lily has reached or is about to reach Harlowe. He’s recruited a gang, a vicious bunch. I don’t know how many are involved. They’ll have guns.” Rule stopped, his breathing ragged.
Just a few more minutes. “Cullen,” he snapped, “stand back.”
Map in hand, Cullen retreated several feet.
“We’re very close,” Rule continued. “Cars will only slow us now, so half of us go ahead, four-footed, at full speed. We’ll approach from upwind—the humans won’t scent us, but Benedict will. The sight of us will surprise them.”
That brought a few grins. Very few humans had ever seen a lupus pack in full hunt. Those who had generally hadn’t live to speak of it. “The other half stay with Cullen, led by Etorri. Stephen.” He faced the other man. “Stay two-footed so you can give orders. Your job is to get Cullen close enough to destroy the staff. He can’t Change or fight—he must retain all his power for the staff. Get him there quickly.”
“Who goes with you?” Stephen asked quickly.
“Those nearest me, I ima—” But words shut off as the Change seized Rule. Earth stretched itself up inside him as if it would claw its way to the moon that called and called, using him as ladder.
As with birth or death, pain was part of the Change.
Sometimes it was a minor note in the song, like the ache of lungs and body during a race. Sometimes—when the Change had been held off too long, or took place away from Earth or at the dark of the moon—pain was a huge gong, belling its brassy note through every cell.
This time, the Change ripped him from human to wolf in a single, deafening blast.
One after another, those nearest him Changed, just as he’d expected. The sudden Change of an alpha leader sends a blast rippling out through the pack, dragging others along. As if reality were no more than a bubble waiting to be popped by some giant, mischievous finger, in eight places that bubble burst.
Clothing ripped. Horns ceased blaring as drivers stared, stunned. Somewhere a dog began to howl.
Seconds later, eight pairs of empty shoes stood where men had been. And eight huge wolve
s raced off into the night.
LILY’S breath felt harsh in her chest as she opened the car door. Her mind was a tight ball of focus.
Fourteen or fifteen young men—some in their teens, some in their early twenties—fanned out in a semi-circle in front of the concrete slab that served as a front porch. All were armed. She counted six rifles, two shotguns, and a wide array of handguns.
Barely visible behind them stood three people: Harlowe, Beth, and the gang member holding her motionless with one thick arm.
The darkness didn’t hide everything. Harlowe’s staff, for example. A dull black, it shouldn’t have been visible, yet her eyes found it as easily as they picked out the man who gripped it. The gang member holding Beth was easy to spot, being more than a head taller than everyone else and built like a bull. Other than his size, only the pale do-rag and white T-shirt stood out clearly, but a fugitive glint of light caught the barrel of the gun he rested against Beth’s head.
And Beth… Beth was fully dressed. Lily swallowed. Her sister hadn’t been raped, and Harlowe had agreed to let her go.
At least Lily could put down the damned phone now. With her door cracked but not fully open, she turned to Benedict. “Stay here. Harlowe wants me alive. He has no reason to spare you.”
“Can’t do much from in here.”
“Can’t do much out there, either. Not with twenty or thirty bullets in you.”
He just smiled that barely there smile of his and reached for the handle of his door.
She grabbed his arm. “I can’t stop you. You’re too damned big. But don’t make yourself into a liability. With that staff, Harlowe can make you like him, believe him, want to follow him. Don’t trust your reactions. Leave him to me.”
He gave her a level look and a slow nod. “Understood. But his charisma won’t matter much if he doesn’t smell right.”
“What does that mean?”
“Are you coming?” Harlowe called. “Beth, maybe you’d better ask your sister to hurry.”