by Eileen Wilks
“Your turn will be over fast if you play that way,” Lily said. “And you’re supposed to use colors, remember?”
Rule shook his head and finished eating to the sound of “I spy something gray” and Lily’s guesses. With the light nearly gone, almost everything in the cave was some shade of gray, so the game was likely to last a while.
How could she stand to be around the creature? She was playing kids games with it, for God’s sake. If he…
A low, mournful sound drew his gaze up.
There were seven dragons now. Seven dragons lined up along the top of the cliff, silhouetted against the darkening sky, their long necks stretched up.
Again the sound came… longer, deeper. Haunting. A little like a didjeridu, he thought. And the dragons were making it.
He’d thought them mute. Not dumb, no—they had mindspeech, possibly true telepathy. But not once had he heard any of them make a sound, not a grunt or a cough, until now. Now, when they sang to the gathering dusk.
Inside the cave, Lily looked up. “What’s that?”
Rule yipped: Come out. Come out and hear this. Another dragon had joined the first, and another.
“It’s just the dragons,” Gan said. “And it’s still my turn.”
“In a minute.” Lily stood.
“We aren’t finished!” Gan cried.
“Hush. I’ll finish later. I want to hear this.” She came out to stand beside Rule, looking up, as he was.
The dragons’ long necks were their instruments. Lungs accustomed to charging those big bodies with enough oxygen to sustain flight powered their song, and they wrapped their voices together in harmonies like nothing he’d ever imagined—eerie, wordless, haunting.
He glanced at Lily. Everything he felt was on her face—awe, grief, a poignancy as vast as the growing darkness. She met his gaze and then sat beside him, their bodies touching. And for a timeless period, Rule forgot everything he’d lost, everything he stood to lose, in the glory of dragonsong.
It was full dark when it ended. Not pitch black; more like new-moon dark, Rule thought, once he could think again. Lily was leaning against him.
He turned to look at her, aching to put his arms around her. But even if he’d had the right-shaped mouth to speak, he didn’t have words for what he’d just experienced.
Her face was damp. She met his eyes… and yawned. “Oh,” she said, startled, and did it again. “I thought… but I’m sleepy. Really sleepy.”
Everything inside Rule smiled. He’d worried about her sleeplessness. Her body might no longer want sleep, but the human mind needed to dream. He nudged her with his nose.
She gave a little laugh. “I guess I’d better get inside. I feel like I’ve been up for days… I have been, haven’t I? But this hit so suddenly…” This time she yawned like she was going to crack her jaw.
He nudged her again. She smiled, pushed his muzzle away, and stood, blinking. “Straight to bed, I think.” She looked a little unsteady as she headed for the cave.
Gan was inside, sulking, playing some game with a few small pieces of bones. “Are you finally going to finish our game?”
“Sorry, Gan. I’m not going to be able to stay awake long…” Another yawn. “Long enough. I’ll give you an extra round tomorrow to make up for waiting,” she promised, heading for the back of the cave, wobbling a little.
“Shit.” Gan stared after her. “It gets dark, and she conks out.”
Rule thought the darkness was coincidence, but maybe not. He followed her.
Moments after lying down on the mat where he’d slept, she was asleep. He sat beside her for a while, listening to Gan mutter. The demon seemed to be trying to levitate the bones. It wasn’t having much luck.
He was, he realized, extremely thirsty. But nature called. He went outside to take care of that and then returned to drink from the small basin filled by the spring. He was getting better at the three-legged bit, he thought. But bending to drink was a bitch.
He emptied the basin and was waiting for it to refill when he noticed an odd scent. Curious, he followed his nose to a boulder. Dragon-scent, he realized. Faint enough that he hadn’t picked up on it from a distance. And not just any dragon—this smelled of the one he thought of as Old Black. The one who’d told Lily to call him Sam.
He looked up at the ceiling, puzzled. That huge beast couldn’t have fit back here. His tail, maybe… Rule checked the ground around the spring and the boulder. Only the boulder held the scent.
He’d moved it, Rule realize. The dragon had moved the boulder. To hide something? Something like—a way out? Excited, Rule yipped.
“Go chase your tail,” Gan said, staring at its bone fragments. “I’m busy.” One of the pieces lifted about an inch at one end but then fell. “Stupid fucker!” Gan cried. “Those dragons have eaten all the stupid magic here!”
Rule studied the boulder. He could have moved it himself, if he had hands. As it was… he sighed and hobbled to the front of the cave. He growled softly.
“Go away,” Gan muttered, resting its chin in its hands “I’m not moving any stupid rocks for you.”
Rule drew in the dirt with his paw—two horizontal lines crossed by two vertical lines. He put an X in one square and growled again.
Gan sat up straighten Its expression was funny, as if it was trying not to look happy. “Tic-tac-toe? Well… it’s not as good as I Spy, but you can’t talk, can you? Okay, I guess I could do it. For twenty games, and you let me win every one.”
Rule stared. The demon thought that would be fun? Knowing Rule was letting it win, it would still enjoy playing? He growled.
“Okay, okay. Ten games, but I win them all.”
Why not? Rule nodded and then added a growl that meant: If you can do it. You don’t get anything for failing.
“Ha. Of course I can do it.” The little demon waddled to the back of the cave, and Rule showed it what he wanted moved. Gan and the boulder were the same height. It studied the rock for a moment—then, as Rule watched in amazement, it grew smaller.
After a second he caught on. The demon had redistributed its mass to make itself almost as inert as the boulder. It spread its newly shortened legs, pressed its tail into the ground, and began pushing.
The boulder rolled. And behind it… darkness. Stale air.
A tunnel.
Dread rose in Rule. He had a horror of small, closed spaces. If he went in there and Gan pushed the boulder back…
“I get to go first,” Gan said, expanding back to its normal size. “I’m exes, you’re boos.”
As promised, Rule let Gan win the first two games, making it so easy he didn’t see how the demon could get any pleasure from it. But Gan crowed over both staged victories as if it had won the sweepstakes.
Rule sighed and put a pawprint in one of the squares.
Gan studied the nine squares as intently as if there was some chance it could lose. And yawned. Its eyes widened. “Shit! Was that a yawn?”
Rule nodded.
“Demons don’t sleep.” Gan scowled. “I am not sleepy. I’m not going to start falling unconscious every so often like some stupid…” It yawned again. “Shit, shit, shit! She’s making me sleepy! I’ve never felt this before. I don’t like it.” It looked like a sulky—and very ugly— child defying bedtime as it glared at Lily’s sleeping figure. “This is all her fault.”
Rule stood, growling.
“I’m not going to hurt her, stupid. Sit down. You still owe me eight games.”
The demon was asleep before they finished the fourth game. Once Rule was sure it was sleeping soundly, he hobbled to the back of the cave. He stared into the tunnel for a long moment. It might be a dead end. But Rule didn’t think dragons rolled boulders around for fun. The tunnel had been blocked for a reason.
Even if Gan pushed the boulder back, he told himself, he’d just have to bark. Lily would hear him and make the demon let him out. He could mark his route by scent. He wouldn’t get lost. The lack of light wouldn�
�t be a problem.
The tightness of the space would. And these rocks were mostly limestone. Good for forming caves, but also prone to shifting. To collapse.
He did not want to go in there.
He looked over his shoulder at Lily, sleeping for the first time in God knew how long. Gan thought the dragons meant to trade Lily to a demon lord. The big dragon hadn’t denied it. If they had a chance of escape… he had no choice, really.
But he was shaking as he eased himself down onto his belly, his bad leg pushed in front of him, and inched under a mountain of stone.
THIRTY
ONE week later, Lily was at the airport, waiting for Cullen. Originally, Cynna had been supposed to pick him up, but she was upstate, looking for a missing child in one of the state parks. Lily could hardly argue for Cynna to ignore the needs of a lost child, but the other woman’s absence made Lily feel as if her plan was unraveling.
Or maybe it was just her that was unraveling.
Cullen had flown to New Orleans yesterday. He called the trip research, though he’d refused to tell her what he hoped to accomplish—“you being an officer of the law and all, luv,” he’d said with an irritating grin.
An officer of the law who was conspiring to open a portal to hell. She hitched her purse higher on her shoulder, scanning the faces of the disembarking passengers. She didn’t have much room to criticize his methods.
It had been a long week.
Before Cynna left, she’d located three small nodes within a few miles of the spot both she and Lily felt Rule to be. He’d stopped moving around so much, which helped.
His current location corresponded to a point about two miles out to sea. Not so cool. That spot might be high and dry in Dis. She hoped so. But she was taking an inflatable raft, just in case.
Assuming they were able to cross, that is. There was a whole lot of nothing going on with the Rhejes. Hannah kept saying it took time to be sure of the Lady’s will, but Rule might not have time. They didn’t know… oh, there was Cullen. At last.
He had a carryon slung over one shoulder and his other arm slung over the shoulders of a dark-haired woman—fortyish, Caucasian, shapely, wearing a business suit that had probably started out crisp. Lily’s lips tightened.
He saw Lily, turned to give the woman a murmured word and a kiss, and left her sighing.
“What kind of research were you doing in New Orleans, anyway?” she asked as soon as he reached her.
“Chill,” he said. “Lorene and I were seatmates on the flight. I got what I went after.” He patted his bag, looking smug.
“And what was that, exactly?” She started down the concourse.
He ignored her question and asked his own. “Where’s Cynna?”
She told him, watching his face for signs of disappointment or relief. Despite all the sparks, he and Cynna hadn’t fallen into bed together at the first opportunity. They probably couldn’t stop arguing long enough, Lily thought.
“Anything else happen while I was gone? The scary old bats still conferring?”
“Hannah says they’re doing the Tell-Me-Three-Times, checking out the Lady’s will through rituals. But how long can that take? It’s been seven days.” The days weren’t the worst, of course. It was the nights that made her crazy. She wasn’t sleeping well. “They’re trying to convince themselves the Lady doesn’t want what she said she wanted. ‘Bring him back.’ That’s what she told Hannah. How much clearer could she be?”
He gave a hard-to-read glance. “You beginning to accept that the Lady is real, are you?”
She shrugged impatiently. “Maybe. They think she is, so why won’t they listen to Hannah?”
“Sweetheart, those women make the pope look like a screaming revolutionary. They aren’t going to like any decision that wanders a hair outside tradition.” He shrugged. “I guess when you carry that much of the past around inside you, you can’t help getting hung up on the status quo.”
“Yeah, well, if the status gets any more quo, we’ll be moving backward.”
“Is Hannah still convinced that Cynna’s her replacement?” he asked as he got on the escalator.
“Yeah.” She followed him. “And Cynna’s getting annoyed. I don’t blame her. Hannah keeps instructing her.”
Cullen let out a laugh. Two women riding the up escalator stared at him, practically drooling. “I’d like to see that.”
“You probably will. When Cynna objects, Hannah just smiles and says Cynna is Lady-touched, and she’ll come around when it’s time. As if Cynna could change religions just like that.”
“It isn’t a religion.”
“What?” She stepped off the escalator after him.
“Serving the Lady. There’s a spiritual aspect, or can be, but it isn’t a religion. Cynna could go right on being a Catholic if she wants.”
“You might not see a conflict, but I suspect the Church would.” She frowned at him. “You sound like you want her to do it. To apprentice herself to Hannah.”
He hesitated and then said slowly, “Hannah’s eighty. That’s old for a human, even one clan-born. There’s been a buzz for years about her lack of an apprentice. She had one once. She was lulled in the accident that blinded Hannah. That was more than thirty years ago.” He looked at Lily. “Nokolai has to have a Rhej.”
She was absurdly disappointed. She’d wanted him to share her anger, dammit. “That’s not Cynna’s problem. Anyway, I thought you didn’t like the Rhejes.”
Cullen stopped. He let his bag slip to the floor.
“What?” She looked around, barely resisting the urge to reach for her weapon. “What is it?”
“You.” He moved behind her and put his hands on her shoulders.
She jolted and turned to face him. “Are you crazy? What are you doing?”
“I’m going to give you a massage.” He moved behind her again. “You’re wound so tight you’re likely to plug someone for bumping into you. If you won’t accept sex,” he said, putting his hands on her shoulders again and kneading, “you’ll have to make do with a back rub.”
“Here?” But she didn’t move. His fingers dug in just right, relaxing muscles she hadn’t realized were so tight.
“Here. Where there are lots and lots of people around, and you won’t worry about where I’m going to put my hands next. This is a strictly asexual massage.”
She didn’t think Cullen could do asexual if his life depended on it. But he wasn’t trying to seduce her, she admitted. And… it felt good. His thumbs made circles on her neck, and it was like he’d poured warm oil along her muscles. Everything loosened.
“Damn, you’re tight. I mean that in a strictly asexual way,” he added. “Because I have no way of knowing—”
“Shut up, Cullen.” But she smiled in spite of herself.
“Have you been working out? That’s not as much fun as sex, but it can dissipate the tension.”
“Sure. With an Ml6.”
“Ah, I sense Benedict’s strong hand. He’s too banged up to train you himself, though.”
“Jeff’s put me and Cynna through our paces.”
She’d gone to Benedict for tactical advice and firepower. Nokolai possessed a weapons cache that horrified the law enforcement officer in her, but was coming in damned handy now. She and Cynna would carry Ml6s; Cullen got Benedict’s machine gun. He’d also carry the rocket launcher, and they’d each have grenades.
Benedict had helped with her lists, too.
They couldn’t know how big their gate would be until Cullen had a chance to evaluate the ritual, maybe not until he worked it. Mass wasn’t an issue, he’d told her, but size mattered. She didn’t pretend to understand that, but she and Benedict had worked up lists of supplies and weapons based on various possibilities.
What should they take if it was just her, Cullen, and Cynna? If they could take either two extra people or one person and the rocket launcher, which should they leave out? Or if—oh, that’s right. She hadn’t told Cullen about that possibi
lity. “He wanted me to ask Max to join us.”
“Max?” His fingers paused. He chuckled. “I’d like to have seen his face when you invited him to go to hell.”
“I didn’t get to see it yet myself. He wasn’t at the club.”
Max was the owner of Club Hell, where Cullen danced. He was small, bad-tempered, foul-mouthed, and a gnome. Though no one was supposed to know the last bit.
“Why Max, anyway?” He began knuckling her spine. “He’s no good with weapons.”
“He can fight, though, and he’s smaller than any of the lupi. Plus Benedict says gnomes are immune to demon magic. The compulsion type, at least.”
Cullen made a scoffing noise. “Rumor. Tall tales.”
“I don’t think Benedict makes tactical judgments based on rumor. Will you ask him?”
“Sure. He’ll turn me down, but I’ll ask.” He gave her shoulders a last squeeze. “Better?”
It was. She rolled her shoulders and nodded. “Thanks.”
“I’m just looking after myself, you know.” He picked up his bag.
“How’s that?” she fell back into step beside him.
“You stay stretched this tight and you’re going to screw up and get us all killed. Can’t run things by committee once we cross, you know. You’ll be in charge.”
Uneasy and unsure why, she shook her head. “I’m the least knowledgeable of us. You or Cynna should be captain, or head wolf, or whatever you want to call it.”
“Boss bitch?” He grinned at her scowl. “No, it needs to be you. Cynna’s not used to running the show, and I’m not alpha enough.”
She snorted. “Oh, yeah, I’ve noticed how submissive you are.”
“I do like to be on top, but I try to be flexible. There are all sorts of other lovely positions. For example—”
“Cullen.”
He flashed her a grin. “Right. Alpha isn’t really a synonym for bossy, you know. I could handle that just fine. A true alpha… funny. I never tried to put it into words before, but I know I’m not one.”
They’d reached the automatic doors leading outside. She went through first. “So is a true alpha different from a plain old alpha?”