Blood Challenge

by Eileen Wilks

  “We’ll need to talk about that, but maybe not on Lily’s dime.” A thread of humor lightened Isen’s voice. “She’s glaring at you right now, isn’t she?”

  Rule looked at her. And smiled in spite of her narrowed eyes. “Not glaring, no. Vexed, though, and wishing for my ears.”

  “If you’re going to talk about me on my phone,” Lily said, “put it on speaker.”

  “I’d better go,” Rule said.

  “I expect you had. T’eius ven.”

  “T’eius ven.” Rule repeated the blessing automatically, bemused. Go in her grace, it meant—the Lady’s grace—or travel in her hunt. It was a common enough phrase, but Isen seldom closed a conversation with it. Perhaps this second Choosing had him thinking of the Lady. She was certainly one of many thoughts coursing through Rule’s mind.

  He handed the phone to Lily. “Well?” she said.

  “I’m asked—not ordered, but asked—not to speak to you about this matter yet. I agreed to wait a day or two.”

  Her eyebrows drew down. “Was it urgent?”

  “Perhaps not urgent, but important.”

  “And I’m not allowed to know. Do I get to ask questions?”

  “Only if you want to make me extremely uncomfortable.”

  She considered in silence for a moment, then said, “Okay, back to Cobb. Tell me what else Alex said about him.”

  “Hmm. Well, he never attended college. Leidolf lacks a fund for higher education—”

  “Something you plan to change.”

  He gave her a quick smile. “I do. Even had such a fund been available, though, Cobb might not have taken advantage of it. He seems to be a highly physical man. He competed in the last three All-Clans, and he tends to choose physical work. Carpentry and logging, in the past. Currently he’s a certified personal trainer and owns a small gym in Nashville.”

  “That’s unusual, isn’t it? Mostly you guys stay away from human athletics. You’re too good, and it’s hard to rein yourselves in enough to pass. Unless his customers are all lupi?”

  Rule thought of a certain Olympic swimmer and smiled, but said, “Generally that’s true, yes. I gather Cobb’s clientele is mostly human, but two nights a week he closes the gym to the public. Those are clan-only nights. There are a fair number of Leidolf in Nashville,” he added, “who need a physical outlet. He offers that at no charge, and in return the clan exempts him from the drei.” Rule hadn’t known of that arrangement until this morning, but that wasn’t Alex’s fault. Alex had never been privy to Leidolf’s financial matters—which were an unholy mess—and hadn’t known about the waived drei until he began asking about Cobb. “Also, Cobb had a child, a daughter, but she died about ten years ago. No sons, but he has a pernato grandson—”

  “Hold on. Drei is your head tax. I know that one. But what’s pernato?”

  “One without a lupus father.”

  “Without . . . oh, you mean like the ones you call throw-backs or lost ones? Only these pernato are known to the clan.”

  “Exactly. A pernato is lupus because of recessives in both parents’ genes. In this case, Cobb’s daughter proved fertile with a young man who is essentially human, but whose maternal grandfather was lupus.”

  “A pernato grandson wouldn’t be considered full-blood.”

  “It’s a distinction without a difference. Pernato are lupi. Sometimes they’re below average in one of our abilities, but there’s variance among the full-blood, too.”

  “Why haven’t I heard about pernato?”

  “Pernato clan are rare in Nokolai. Leidolf is known for throwing them more often than most. It’s one reason they’re the largest clan.”

  “Plus they have a habit of absorbing smaller clans, though I don’t see how the—no, I’ll ask that later. This gym Cobb owns. Do you know its name and address?”

  “I don’t have the address. It’s called Cobb’s Gym.”

  “Not an imaginative guy,” she said, making another note. “You say his clientele is human except for those two nights a week. That suggests he’s comfortable being around a lot of humans a lot of the time, even training them.”

  “It does.”

  “It doesn’t suggest someone balanced on an unholy edge, teetering toward multiple homicide.”

  Rule considered what to say. How much to say. He snuggled her close so he could speak very softly. “You read about the fury in that history of the clans the Rhej gave you. You asked me about it.”

  “You’re talking about the berserker thing. One of the clans—I don’t remember the name—had a bad rep with the others because its members fell ‘into the fury’ too often. This was a long time ago, well before the Purge, and there wasn’t a lot of communication between the clans, so the Nokolai guy who wrote the history didn’t know the details, but—wait, stop, I’m sidetracking. Basically, you said, the fury is when a lupus goes berserker in battle.”

  “That’s the short version. You need a longer one to understand what may have happened.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Pack wolves and lone wolves fall into the fury easily—that’s one reason they’re so dangerous.” Pack wolves were clanless wolves who’d gathered in a small pack—something almost unheard of these days, since the clans allowed very few lone wolves. Lacking a mantle, they were susceptible to the fury. “Clan wolves are more protected, but in battle we can succumb, too, if we’re fighting two-footed and aren’t trained to avoid it.”

  Her eyebrows lifted. “Not when you’re wolf?”

  “No. The fury is . . .” He spread his hands. “The fury is of the wolf, but the wolf doesn’t experience the fury. You might call it an unhappy blending of the two states arising from the way the man experiences the wolf during battle. It’s born of rage, but it isn’t rage. Just as anger may be born of fear, but isn’t fear.”

  Her brow pleated in concentration. “You think it’s a truly separate experience. Not some composite of other emotions, but an emotional state humans don’t have.”

  He shrugged. “The closest analogue in humans seems to be the berserker state, which is why I explained it that way before. The fury is raw and red and dangerous. In its grip, pain has no meaning. We lose all intentions but one: to kill our enemies. And everyone within sight or scent of us is the enemy.”

  She tipped her head. “You’ve experienced it.”

  “As part of my training, yes. I was fourteen.” He smiled ruefully. “The fury is uncommon in adults, but not in adolescents—who are, as the saying goes, all balls and no brain. We have to experience it to learn how to avoid it, so it’s triggered in us intentionally, in a controlled situation.”

  “What happened?”

  “I thought I was in a normal practice bout, but Benedict had arranged for two opponents to attack me from behind quite . . . unexpectedly.” At fourteen, he hadn’t yet attained certa, the optimal battle state, which rendered the fury impossible. Back then, no one knew if he would. Many lupi didn’t, so they had to learn other ways to avoid the fury. By Changing, for example. You couldn’t fall into fury if you were wolf.

  “Is an unexpected attack a trigger?”

  “Triggers vary, but Benedict knew me well enough to have a good idea of what would work with me. Ah . . . let’s just say he was right. My opponents were well-trained adults, of course,” he added. “Not other youngsters. They knew what to expect, so the moment they smelled it on me, they got out of the way and Benedict pinned me until it passed. Then he, ah, spoke firmly to me.”

  “Firmly. I’ll bet. Does it pass quickly, then?”

  “It depends on the situation. Benedict pinned me so I couldn’t fight. Fighting feeds it.”

  “You think that’s what happened to Cobb. He fell into the fury.”

  “If the information we have about what happened is correct, I have no other explanation. He didn’t Change, so he wasn’t beast-lost. He seems to have had no reason to kill, much less to do it so publicly.”

  “Lupi don’t just go nuts sometim
es?”

  “Define ‘go nuts.’ We aren’t subject to psychoses, hallucinations, or other physically based forms of insanity.”

  “But you are—sometimes, in some situations, for some individuals—subject to the fury. Something triggered it in Cobb. A threat?”

  “I don’t know. Adults don’t react like adolescents, except . . .” He shifted his legs restlessly. “Some lupi, like some humans, have what you might call anger issues. Those who carry habitual anger, if they also have trouble with control, might slip into furo without being engaged in actual battle. Such clan are usually brought to live at or near Clanhome.”

  “Nokolai does this, too? They bring the angry ones to Clanhome?”

  He smiled. “If you’re worrying that the lupi you meet at Clanhome are dangerous, don’t. When such clan have more contact with—I will say with their Rho”—because he couldn’t mention the mantle—“they’re calmer, more able to control themselves.”

  She looked down at her notebook, but obviously was consulting her thoughts, not the few things she’d written there. When she looked up at him again, her expression was carefully neutral. “You aren’t living at Leidolf Clanhome.”

  “No.” And it gnawed at him. That he was doing the best he could didn’t mean it was enough. A Rho should live among his clan. They needed the sight and smell of him. They didn’t have to like him—which was just as well, because many Leidolf couldn’t stand him. They still needed him.

  “But what you carry doesn’t depend on proximity. The clan still feels it, even when you’re on the other side of the country.”

  “In the most important sense, yes. But I can’t use it directly from a distance, plus there’s a psychological need, especially for those whose control isn’t great. They need to know someone can control them, if necessary.”

  Her eyebrows lifted. “They find that calming?”

  “I understand that you wouldn’t. But yes, they do.”

  Rule and Lily had been flying to North Carolina, where Leidolf Clanhome was located, about once a month. It was all he could do . . . and it wasn’t enough. “Alex has been keeping an eye on those within Leidolf who have trouble with control. Cobb wasn’t among them. He’s an angry man, but his control has been excellent.”

  “Until now, and according to Alex.”

  “Yes.” And Alex was shaken by what he considered his failure.

  “Will you be able to tell if Cobb was in fury when he attacked? Will you smell it on him the way Benedict smelled it on you?”

  “Not so many hours after the fact, no. But he’ll tell me what happened. If he fell into the fury, he’ll know, and he’ll tell me.”

  Three people dead, ten injured . . . and it wouldn’t have happened if Cobb’s Rho had known him, understood him, and been watching for the signs of an unstable anger. The clan experienced the mantle whether Rule was among them or not, but some needed that experience reinforced in a way only frequent contact could provide.

  If Raymond Cobb had indeed fallen into the fury, it was as much Rule’s fault as Cobb’s.

  Restlessness poured through him like a tide of ants. His legs twitched with the need to move. But this time he recognized what he was trying to run from.

  You have to turn and face it. You always have to turn and face it, no matter how keen the claws or how bloody the teeth. And sooner works better than later. He spoke very low. “Tell me about them. The victims. The ones he killed and the ones he hurt.”

  “I don’t know much.” Lily studied him. She knew something was moving inside him, even if she couldn’t sense the shape of it. “The Nashville PD is playing coy, not cooperating worth a damn. But the two men killed were both white, one middle-aged, the other a lot younger. The woman—”

  “Woman?” Rule’s head jerked. “He killed a woman?”

  “Four of the victims were female. One was killed outright. The other three were among the injured. I don’t have details on them specifically, but three of the ten people injured are in critical condition.”

  “He attacked three women?” Disbelief sharpened his voice. Carefully he brought it back down. The people around them didn’t need to hear this. “You didn’t tell me that. Alex didn’t, either. He didn’t say there were female victims.” Alex must not know. He wouldn’t have left that out.

  The pleat was back in Lily’s brow. “I know that’s hard for you to accept. Your people are big on not harming women.”

  “It’s deeper than that. Women are to be protected, just like—”

  “If you say ‘children,’ I’ll have to hit you.”

  His grin flickered. “I was going to say, like you automatically protect civilians.”

  “Good save.”

  “It’s not training and custom, Lily. Or not just that. In the fury, we lose track of who’s friend, who’s foe. Instinct itself goes awry, but it’s not revoked. For that rage to focus on women does not make sense.”

  “Men turn their rage on women all too often.”

  “Not lupi. And especially not in the fury. The fury is a battle state. I could see Cobb falling into it if he saw a woman being threatened or harmed. He shouldn’t, but it’s possible. But if he were so twisted he could see women as enemy, Alex would have noticed. He would have been watching the man and he would have warned me about him.”

  “Alex is Leidolf. He might not see what you would.”

  He shook his head. “I despise the way Leidolf tries to subjugate their women, but they don’t beat them. It’s . . . it’s like the difference between intentionally frightening a child to correct him and eating one. The first is misguided. The second is insane. A lupus who is so distorted he could see women—not just one particular woman, but women in general—as his enemy . . . Alex would have noticed. Everyone would have noticed.”

  She didn’t respond.

  He grimaced. “You don’t accept that.”

  “People miss the craziness in their neighbors and coworkers all the time.”

  Frustration balled up his gut. How could she have lived with him for so long and not understand? “We don’t hurt women.”

  “What about clanless wolves? They, ah—they don’t have the same stability.”

  This was hard to explain without referring to the mantle. “A clanless wolf can see humans of either sex as prey when he’s four-footed. On four feet or two, he’d probably see human males as rival predators to be chased off, killed, or avoided. Pack wolves are more likely to chase or kill; lone wolves prefer to avoid. But neither a pack wolf nor a lone wolf would see women as competing predators. And none of that applies to Cobb. He wasn’t beast-lost or clanless.”

  “What if a woman was attacking him, trying to stop him? Wouldn’t that put her in the enemy category?”

  “Even if that’s what happened, it wouldn’t generalize. He wouldn’t go on to attack other women.”

  “You know what a fight is like. People get hurt even if they aren’t the target.”

  “If Cobb accidentally hurt a woman because he didn’t see her, perhaps . . . but three women? No. That’s not accident. And it isn’t possible.”

  “Yet he did it.”

  “Not because of the fury.”

  “What, then?” she demanded. “What else could it be?”

  “I have no idea.”

  SEVEN

  NASHVILLE had a different take on September than San Diego: hotter and wetter. At six ten local time, their plane was bumping its way through heavy cloud cover as it approached the airport. The pilot informed them it was eighty-two degrees and raining in Nashville.

  Lily put up her laptop. She’d spent the last hour scanning online news sources for information about the shooting without learning much, except that the talking heads were having a great time speculating in shocked tones. She still didn’t have an official report, but she’d sicced Ida, Ruben’s secretary, on the local cops, so she expected to get one soon.

  Rule was pacing. He’d found an excellent excuse for it, one Lily estimated to be about
five months old. And teething.

  Rule loved babies. They usually loved him right back. This one, a little baldy with chocolate-kiss eyes and dusky skin, had been screaming his head off back in economy. Rule—who’d been getting seriously restless—had decided to ask his mother if he could try to settle the boy.

  Lily had been sure the woman wouldn’t hand her baby over to some strange man. She’d been wrong. The baby was sound asleep now, crumpled into a terrycloth lump on Rule’s chest, drooling happily onto the fine Egyptian cotton of his shirt. Rule cradled him there in two spread hands, humming quietly as he headed back down the aisle.

  It made Lily’s chest ache. Some of that ache was for Rule, who would love to have a baby of his own again. He’d missed out on so much with Toby. But some of the ache was about her.

  She didn’t know what to think about that. She didn’t want a baby . . . did she? Not now, certainly. How could she do her job if she had a tiny little human depending on her? Besides, she’d never been one to dream over babies the way some women did. Although she’d always assumed that one day . . .

  One day might never come. Lupi weren’t very fertile.

  Cullen thought that might change now that the level of ambient magic was increasing, but even if he was right, the increase was gradual. Even if he was right, there was no guarantee things would change enough, soon enough.

  One of the flight attendants stopped Rule. Lily didn’t hear what the woman said, but it was probably a request that he take his seat. The seat belt lights had flashed on.

  Rule answered with a smile. The woman—who was in her late forties, at a guess—smiled back shyly. That was better than slipping him her phone number, Lily supposed. Babies weren’t the only ones who adored Rule.

  Her phone chimed the opening bars to “The Star Spangled Banner” as Rule passed their seats, no doubt returning the sleeping charmer to his mom. Lily answered. It turned out to be Ida, rather than Ruben himself, letting her know that a preliminary police report was in her e-mail in-box; they were booked into the Doubletree Hotel downtown; and they’d be met at the airport by an Agent Sjorensen from the local office.