Blood Challenge

by Eileen Wilks

  “It’s much better than it was.” She tipped her head up, studying him. “What’s wrong?”

  “My father’s interpretation is accurate.”

  “Oh. Well, Eledan may a bit of a prick by our standards—”

  The muffled snort came from Seabourne back at the table. “—and even for a sidhe I think he’s careless. Of course, that’s based on a sample of one and a half, so I could be wrong.”

  “Half? You sampled half a sidhe?”

  She waved that aside. “I don’t understand why you’re so upset.”

  “Your father put you in danger of being enslaved and bled or bred in order to further his career as a professional stud.”

  “I like that.” She smiled, pleased. “A professional stud. That’s a good way to put it. But I may have made things sound too black-and-white. Registering my birth was partly self-interest, but not entirely. To Eledan, being sidhe is terribly important. In his eyes, he would have failed me in a fundamental way if he hadn’t registered my birth. It wouldn’t occur to him I might not want to be registered.”

  “Maybe because the danger isn’t to him.”

  “Nooo . . . at least, I don’t think so. I don’t think he’s cowardly. Self-interested and a bit lazy, but not cowardly. Anyway, I doubt the danger is very great. This is a big world. Someone who wanted to grab me would have to find me first, so I don’t draw attention to myself.” She shrugged. “Maybe no one’s even looking. I’m just careful, that’s all.”

  “No Facebook page, or Myspace, or Twitter. No Internet presence at all.”

  “You checked?”

  “I can Google. I wonder if an out-realm kidnapper could.”

  “Who knows? My feeling is that if someone took the trouble to come here at all—and that’s a big if—they wouldn’t mind staying long enough to learn stuff like that. They couldn’t just use a Find spell. My Gift protects me from that.”

  He looked so tight. Unhappy. Maybe that’s why she did something unwise. She touched his cheek.

  He went still. She skimmed the line of his jaw with her fingertips before reluctantly dropping her hand. “I get the feeling . . . are you a father?”

  He nodded slowly, his eyes as wary as if he were the wolf instead of the man, uncertain about this human who’d dared touch him.

  “So’s my uncle Clay. He’s a father to the children he had with Aunt Robin, and to me, too. I didn’t grow up fatherless. I’m not hurting because my genetic parent isn’t my dad.”

  His face softened. It wasn’t quite a smile, but it came close. “I’m not to feel sorry for you.”

  “Absolutely not. And anger—well, I won’t say that it’s never useful, but in this case it’s pointless. It won’t change anything.”

  He didn’t speak. His eyes were so intent, so focused on her . . . He’s going to kiss me.

  Arjenie’s heartbeat picked up. Longing rose in her, sweet and warm as summer rain. She forgot about the people sitting at the table a few feet away. Her lips parted.

  He put one hand on her shoulder . . . and slowly drew that hand down her arm to reach her hand, which he clasped.

  “Do you keep up with the news?” he asked.

  “Oh. Um. Well.” Was her radar that badly off, or had he changed his mind? She pulled her thoughts together. “I’m a bit of a news junkie, but real news, not the TV pundits who just talk and talk. Though I’m out of touch right now, what with traveling and, um, stuff. I haven’t even checked the Times online lately.”

  He nodded. “Then maybe you haven’t heard about Ruben Brooks or Lily.”

  “What?” Alarm pinged through her. “Ruben? Lily? What haven’t I heard?”

  “Yesterday Brooks had a heart attack. Last night Lily was shot.”

  “Shot!” She grabbed his arm. “Is she—no, you wouldn’t be sitting around holding dinner parties if she . . . but she’s all right? And Ruben? What about Ruben?”

  “Lily’s arm was damaged. We don’t know yet how fully it will heal. Brooks lived through the heart attack and is considered stable. There is some question about whether it occurred naturally or was magically induced.”

  “Induced,” she whispered. “Oh, no.”

  “You know something about this.”

  “Not about Lily getting shot.” But about Ruben’s heart attack . . . maybe she was wrong. Maybe there were other ways to magically induce a coronary infarction. Vodun? It could be a vodun spell. Maybe. “I need my laptop. And my phone. I’ve got to check in.” And log in, do some research, and talk to someone, find out just how closely Ruben’s symptoms mimicked those of a heart attack.

  If it wasn’t mimicry—if he’d actually had a heart attack—it wasn’t vodun.

  Isen came up behind his son. “Not just yet. You need to tell us what you know or suspect.”

  “I can’t.”

  He shook his head. “I know we agreed you could withhold information on one subject, but there are lives at risk.”

  “No,” Cullen said abruptly. “I think she’s right.” He shoved back from the table, strode up to her, and gripped her chin in one hand.

  She tried to jerk away. Couldn’t. “I don’t like being grabbed.”

  “Hush.” His fingers dug in enough to hold her head still.

  “I don’t like being told to hush, either.”

  “I’ll remember that.” But he didn’t let go as he murmured something, his other hand shifting rapidly through the air. The first symbol he sketched was the Raetic ka, which was common to lots of spells, being a rune of seeking. The rest . . . his hand moved too fast. She couldn’t see what they were.

  And then she stopped breathing. Entirely.

  It was only for a moment, but the terror was huge. She dragged in a deep breath as soon as her body would let her. “You—you—”

  “I’m sorry. It was necessary.” He looked at Isen, then Benedict. “When she says she can’t talk about some things, she means it literally. There’s a binding on her.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  THE current crop of experts claimed that baby girls stare at faces while baby boys watch the mobile over their cribs. They extrapolated from this to conclude that women are inherently interested in people and men are inherently interested in objects.

  Isen Turner supposed they might be right in a statistical sense, but numbers don’t tell the whole story. If you have one foot in boiling water and one in a tub of dry ice, on the average you’re comfortable. And maybe those experts hadn’t included any lupi in their sampling. His mother used to say he’d begun studying people the moment he figured out how to focus his eyes.

  He’d kept that up for the ninety-one years since. People fascinated him. Male people, female people . . . lupi, human, gnome, whatever. He never tired of studying them, figuring out what they were thinking and feeling, what they wanted, what they feared, how they had changed or were changing. That fascination worked out well. There was no more important subject for a Rho to devote himself to.

  That’s why it was his youngest son, not his eldest, who would become Rho one day. Benedict saw clearly when he looked, but it was a learned behavior, not innate. It was also why Isen’s middle son hadn’t been in the running. Mick had never learned to clear his eyes where others were concerned, his vision of them forever warped by his own wants and needs and obsessions. Eventually, this had killed him.

  That was a grief Isen lived with daily, one that woke him some nights with his face wet. But Isen was well-acquainted with grief. It was the one opponent to whom even a Rho must submit.

  Benedict understood and accepted why Isen had chosen Rule as heir. This was one of Benedict’s most remarkable gifts—a deep and fluid acceptance of both his limits and his talents. Rule didn’t understand, an odd blind spot in one who otherwise made good progress in his own study of self and others. But Isen knew his sons. Rule’s blind spot would not hamper him as Rho, for Benedict would never take advantage of Rule’s love and admiration for his big brother. He would, quite literally, die first.
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  On this sweet-smelling night in September, Isen didn’t need his ninety-plus years of expertise. Arjenie Fox presented no challenge. A scent-blind ten-year-old boy could have read her face. She might be able to keep a factual secret, but emotionally she was transparent.

  True, she wasn’t purely human, and Isen had no real experience with the sidhe. That might be throwing him off. He didn’t think so. When Seabourne had revealed her binding, Isen was convinced she felt a single, simple emotion.

  Relief.

  That certainly wasn’t the emotion the others felt. Seabourne was suspicious and fascinated. Benedict remained fascinated, too, though in quite a different way, but he’d gone still, ready to counter if she suddenly attacked. As for their invisible company, why, Rule was silent at the moment. Probably typing out on his laptop what Seabourne had just said so Lily would know.

  Technology was a marvel sometimes.

  Rule had been listening in on their dinner table conversation via Isen’s phone, typing a rough transcript of it for Lily, whose human ears would miss most of it. Benedict and Seabourne were undoubtedly aware of this. They would have heard Rule’s occasional comments from Isen’s earbud. Benedict had probably known from the moment Isen returned to the table with an open phone line. Even for a lupus, his hearing was unusually acute.

  Isen’s hearing wasn’t exceptional, but it was easy for him to hear Lily’s reaction. She wanted Isen to get away from Arjenie right now. Isen smiled. His youngest son’s Chosen was wise and wary. Good traits. He had no intention of following her directions, but he approved of her caution. She was very like Benedict in some ways. “You can see this binding?” he asked Seabourne.

  “I do now. It’s a subtle thing, almost invisible unless it’s active. I thought it a natural part of her aura at first.”

  Arjenie Fox looked from Benedict to Isen to Seabourne. No doubt it was clear from their faces they weren’t experiencing the relief she felt. She spoke quickly. “Did you know that one kind of binding spell doesn’t compel a person to do anything? It wouldn’t even make them lie. It would just keep them from revealing something.”

  “Who did this to you?” Benedict demanded. “Friar?”

  That deepened her anxiety, but she didn’t speak. Probably couldn’t.

  Seabourne could and did. “Extremely unlikely. The spell is beyond anything I could do, and I refuse to believe he has that kind of skill and training. Plus it’s hard as hell to use mind-magic on sidhe. Even someone only a quarter-sidhe would be resistant.”

  Isen spoke. “Could another sidhe do it?”

  “It takes a sidhe to bind a sidhe?” Cullen shrugged. “Maybe.”

  Arjenie smiled brightly. “I don’t think I told you that I was five when Eledan came to see me the first time. He was worried about me chattering the way kids do, so he put a spell on me so I couldn’t speak about him or my heritage. I couldn’t tell anyone about the spell, but fortunately my mother figured out what he’d done and made him remove it. Otherwise I couldn’t tell you about it. Or him.”

  “Your father did this to you,” Benedict said flatly.

  Her smile stayed stuck tight to her face.

  “You can’t confirm or deny this binding,” Isen said gently. “You can’t speak of it at all, so you can’t let us know if we guess right. But it doesn’t make you lie, so you aren’t forced to deny it. That’s helpful.”

  She looked at him gratefully. “You remind me of my uncle Clay. I wish you could meet him. I wonder how you would feel if there was something you really wanted to let people know, but you couldn’t speak of it.”

  Isen nodded, understanding. “You want to get rid of the binding.”

  She smiled like crazy.

  Isen looked at Seabourne. “Can you do that?”

  “Maybe, given time. The question is whether I can do it safely.”

  Rule spoke softly in Isen’s ear. “Lily says Sam could.”

  Isen nodded thoughtfully. “I wonder if Sam would be willing to take a look at this binding.”

  Seabourne’s expression sharpened. “Good idea. The binding is tied to her blood, so it’s similar to what was done to me. Sam unsang that.”

  Arjenie looked from one of them to the other. “Who’s Sam?”

  “Sun Mzao. The black dragon.”

  Her eyes widened. Her mouth shaped a silent “oh.”

  Rule spoke so quietly Isen didn’t know if even Benedict could hear him. “Sam is, ah, out of pocket at the moment. He won’t be back for several days, and when he returns, he’ll probably consider this a favor. Nokolai hasn’t accumulated a favor from him yet. We’d have to bargain for this separately, and dragons tend to price their favors high.”

  Isen answered him while appearing to respond to Cullen. “It’s worth finding out.”

  “Conversational breadcrumbs,” Benedict said abruptly. His attention had never wavered from his Chosen. “You’ve been dropping some, haven’t you? The potions are connected to whatever you can’t reveal. Your father put this binding on you. Is your father connected to the potions?”

  She started to say something, stopped, and began again. “When I was young I saw things much more in black-and-white than I do now.”

  “The connection is indirect.”

  She beamed at him.

  “You said the potions wouldn’t harm us.”

  “One of them was to mask my scent, like I said. The other one was intended to help, not harm.”

  “Did you make the potions?”

  She all but sang her answer. “No!”

  “Can you tell me who did?”

  “I need to change the subject.”

  Benedict continued to circle around the forbidden topic with questions, trying to define its parameters. Arjenie looked harried and tense and tired. Seabourne had tuned the rest of them out and was frowning off into space. Rule was arguing with Lily. She wanted to check out of the hospital tomorrow and fly back here. Rule considered that incredibly foolish, though he didn’t put it in quite those words.

  It was nice to know his son had some sense. Isen sighed. Rule was not going to be happy with him. He agreed with Lily. “Arjenie, you’re looking worn-out. Let’s sit down again. Perhaps some more coffee?” He offered her his arm rather than taking hers. He’d noticed that she disliked being handled. Was that a sidhe characteristic? He’d have to ask Seabourne.

  Benedict gave him a quick glance—wondering why he’d interrupted, probably. Arjenie took his arm, smiling at him in a much more natural way than her too-bright smiles earlier. “I’d love some coffee. You’d think I wouldn’t be sleepy for hours after being unconscious for so long, but passing out doesn’t seem to affect my sleep cycle at all, and back home it’s midnight. Besides, I love coffee.”

  “Then we’ll get you some.” He patted her hand, then pulled his phone out of his shirt pocket. As they started for the table he added casually, “I believe it’s time we all participated openly in this discussion. Rule, I’m putting you on speakerphone.”

  Arjenie stopped dead. “What? You don’t mean—tell me you haven’t—has Rule Turner been listening?”

  “I’m afraid so. So has Lily, indirectly.”

  She blanched. “Oh, no. Oh, no. We agreed—”

  “I agreed not to speak of your secret away from Clanhome,” Isen said. “I haven’t. Nor have those under my authority.”

  “But Friar can hear! If he’s trying, he could have heard everything! Lily’s Gift might block him from hearing her—I’m not sure about that, but it might. But it wouldn’t keep him from hearing a phone near her! Someone . . . someone could be in terrible trouble.”

  Lily’s voice came through clearly on the phone’s speaker. “It shouldn’t be a problem. I confirmed that he’s in California now. I also checked with Cullen. No Listener can eavesdrop across that many miles.”

  Arjenie was anguished. “He can.”

  “You’re claiming that Friar is the strongest clairaudient on record?”

  “I know h
e can hear things in D.C. when he’s in California, so he could Listen to you in Tennessee, too!”

  “Well, even if you’re right, he can’t do it constantly, so the odds are good. And even if he beat those odds and was Listening to my hospital room, he didn’t hear much. I know that because I didn’t. Rule had his phone on speaker, so I heard Isen, but the rest of you weren’t close enough to Isen’s phone for it to pick up your voices much. Rule’s been typing a rough transcript for me. If I hadn’t had that, I wouldn’t have been able to follow things at all, so I doubt Friar could have, either.”

  Arjenie was not placated. “You don’t know what he could hear magically, not for sure. You don’t have the right to risk someone else when there’s so much you don’t know.”

  “Arjenie, that’s my job,” Lily said, her voice weary. “That’s what I do every day. I make decisions that either help or hurt people, and I almost always have way too little information.”

  Ah, poor Lily. Isen knew it wasn’t really her injury dragging at her. That would frustrate and infuriate and worry her in the days and weeks to come—humans healed so slowly!—but it wouldn’t flavor her voice with defeat. In her head she knew LeBron had not been under her authority, but in her heart he had been, and had therefore been hers to protect.

  Isen understood her new burden all too well, but this wasn’t the time for him to speak of it. It was time for clarity on another subject. He looked at Arjenie. “Lily believes there is an organized effort against the Unit. Ruben Brooks was nearly killed. He will be unable to resume his duties for some time, and may be unable to resume them at all, depending on the results of the healing performed on him. Then Lily was herself nearly killed. She has a responsibility to determine whether you were involved in the attack on Ruben Brooks or on her.”

  “Me?” Arjenie was dumbfounded. “But I’ve been here! Here in California, I mean.”

  “Isen,” Lily said, warning clear in her voice, “don’t—”