Blood Challenge

by Eileen Wilks

  “Cullen knows a little about all sorts of things he shouldn’t.” True enough, but a lie in the way he meant it to be taken.

  “Oh, Seabourne. Sure. No, genocide’s the one they don’t want to break. Don’t want to attract the Queens’ attention. Keep a few of us alive and it isn’t genocide when they kill the rest.” He licked his lips. “The law Rethna’s breaking involves a name. Call on that name and the Queens get totally pissed. It’s a name we don’t use, either.”

  Rule’s eyebrows lifted. “Our ancient enemy is anathema to the two Queens?”

  Brian nodded weakly. “It’s all about power. Rethna wants more. He thinks he can get it from her, but he has to cut his realm off from the Queens. I don’t really know what that means, but it takes time and planning and if the Queens find out, he’s toast. That’s why they won’t kill all of us. Someone might notice.” He licked his lips again. “Sorry. I need . . .” He fumbled for something at his side—a hide sack with a metal nozzle.

  “You’re thirsty.” Rule picked up the primitive canteen and held the nozzle to Brian’s lips. Brian drank greedily.

  “Thanks,” he said when Rule lowered it. “Hate that you’re here, but it’s been hard, thinking I’d die alone. Only now, Wythe . . .” His face twisted with worry or grief. He spoke subvocally. “When I die, the mantle’s lost. There’s no one else, only my son, and he’s too young. Much too young.”

  Losing both Rho and heir almost always meant losing the mantle. Clan history said that twice a Rho had died without an heir and the mantle had passed to someone from the founder’s bloodline anyway, but the Spanish massacre in the seventeenth century proved how rare that was. And a mantle couldn’t pass to one who hadn’t yet Changed. Rule squeezed Brian’s shoulder gently. “You’re not dead yet. With what you received from your brother, you may postpone that moment quite awhile.”

  “Rethna won’t take me with him. I’m too damaged to sell. When he leaves, Friar cuts my throat. I’m no use to him.” He swallowed. “We have to try.”

  “Try . . . ?”

  Lucas’s voice was drowsy. “Knocked out twice in one day. No offense, Rule, but I have to stop hanging out with you. What happened?”

  “Sleep spell,” Brian said. “Rethna set them himself along the routes to this place. They’re targeted to us—to lupi—and to humans, so his people don’t trigger them accidentally.”

  Would a sleep spell intended for humans and lupi leave a part-sidhe woman unaffected? Had Arjenie managed to escape?

  “Rethna?” Lucas sat up. “Who the hell is . . .” His gaze locked on Brian. “Brian. Shit, man.”

  Brian tried to grin. “Look that bad, do I?”

  “You’ve looked better.” He switched his gaze to Rule. “I guess we got where we meant to go.”

  “If not quite the way we meant to arrive. We’re near the node. Our hosts have added a new touch to it—a gate. I’m guessing it goes to the home realm of the elves you see out there.”

  “Elves.” Lucas said flatly as if forcing himself not to sound incredulous. Then he looked out through the bars. “Elves. Son of a bitch.”

  “The chief son of a bitch seems to be a fellow named Rethna, a sidhe lord who’s fallen in with bad company. So bad we don’t name her. He wants to take us home with him . . . as merchandise.”

  Benedict growled, “I don’t much care for travel.”

  Rule’s breath sucked in. Benedict was awake—and not screaming or howling at the severance of his mate bond. No, he was looking out through the bars. Rule spoke carefully. “I imagine your sweetheart would miss you.”

  “Yeah.” Benedict sat up and smiled faintly at Rule. “We’re very close.”

  Arjenie was alive—and close? Rule couldn’t see her, couldn’t see anything that suggested she was there. His view of the cavern wasn’t impeded. He didn’t have any sense he was being urged to look away from some spot. “You met Benedict’s sweetheart earlier today,” he told Lucas, who looked puzzled. “She’s shy.”

  “A real wallflower around strangers,” Benedict said. “Hates drawing attention to herself.”

  She was near the wall, Rule concluded.

  “Of course,” Lucas murmured. “I remember her.”

  “Brian,” Rule said, “do you have an idea of how long we were out?”

  “Not so good at guessing time lately. Maybe an hour?”

  Arjenie was here now. In about an hour, Lily would be coming . . . and wasn’t that a fine bit of irony? He’d wanted to spare her the worst of the danger, but she would walk right into the trap just as he had. If any of them were to get out of this, she had to be warned about Rethna—and those damned spiders. “Perhaps,” he said softly to Benedict, “your sweetheart and my nadia will console each other.”

  Benedict nodded. “The sooner the better, I think.”

  The rest were waking—stirring, looking around. José rolled up on one arm and looked at Rule. “Not what we had in mind.”

  “No. Explanations—”

  “Shh,” Brian said urgently. “He’s coming.”

  Yes, Rule had noticed a new scent. He looked at Brian. “That smell—a bit like human, but not as meaty, a hint of cardamom. That’s how elves smell?”

  “Shh.” Brian’s eyes were wide.

  A tall elf sauntered into view a few feet back from the bars. His hair was the blue black of a raven’s wing, so shiny it was almost iridescent. It hung to his waist in back, but was arranged in elaborate braids on the sides. He wore a similar outfit to the others—red tunic, black trousers. He’d added a knee-length vest in gauzy black silk. His belt was black, too, as was the hilt of the knife protruding from the sheath on that belt. His boots were dark red. He liked jewelry. Rule saw two rubies in one ear, a diamond in the other, plus armbands and two pendants: a short one with a silver disc and a longer one with a large black stone.

  He stood there with his head tipped to one side, studying them. “Which of you is the leader?” He spoke news-anchor English.

  “I am,” Rule said.

  “Has Brian told you who I am?”

  “If you are Rethna, a lord of the sidhe, he has.”

  The elf nodded. “I will speak only with you. The others are to remain silent at all times in my presence. If they do not, I will hurt you. You will speak only when I ask you a question. You will answer fully and truthfully. If you do not, I will hurt one of yours. Like this.” He pointed at Rule and clicked his tongue.

  Every nerve in Rule’s body fired with agony. He convulsed, mouth agape, too stunned by pain even to scream. Pain ate his skin, his eyeballs, his genitals, and burned from inside as if he’d breathed it in.

  It passed. Between one moment and the next, it passed. His chest shuddered in relief.

  “Rule.” Benedict’s voice. Benedict’s hand on his shoulder. “Rule, can you talk?”

  It wasn’t until he opened his eyes that he realized he’d closed them. He was shaky, weak, flat on the ground again . . . and unharmed, aside from his ribs. They disapproved of convulsions. Benedict hovered over him, worried. He managed to nod—then realized that Benedict had spoken, which that bastard had threatened to punish them for.

  Rule pushed himself up on one elbow. The bastard was gone. He’d introduced himself, told them his damned rules, given Rule more pain than he’d ever felt outside of the Change . . . and left. “I’m okay. But something tells me Rethna and I are not going to get along.”

  FORTY-FIVE

  “GIN,” Cynna said, spreading her cards.

  “Again?” Lily tossed her cards down, disgusted. She didn’t mind losing. She hated being useless, especially when she thought something had gone wrong.

  She couldn’t call Rule and he couldn’t call her, not when he was a few hundred feet below ground. But nothing blocked the mate bond. She knew roughly where he was right now . . . and that he hadn’t moved for the last hour. He could be hurt or trapped . . . or, she admitted, he could be simply waiting for the right moment to make his move.

&nbs
p; They were in Friar’s kitchen, where oceans of granite and islands of stainless steel floated on solid oak flooring. Cynna and Lily sat at the table; Cullen was sitting tailor-style in front of the open broom closet, staring at the floor.

  Cynna had Found the secret door pretty fast. The house was lousy with doors, of course, but she could eliminate those on the upper floor, and one by one she’d removed those on the lower floor from the pattern she used to search, leaving only the one they wanted.

  The broom closet held a mop, broom, and carpet sweeper suspended off the floor by grippers fixed to the wall. The opposite wall had shelves for cleaning supplies. The floor held a trapdoor.

  It was snugly fitted, almost invisible, but close examination revealed a hairline crack outlining a tidy square in the polished oak flooring. As for how to open it—there were two switches on the plate just outside the closet. One turned on the light. The other activated the trapdoor . . . or so they thought. They couldn’t check because the damn thing was warded to hell and gone. Open it and they notified Friar they were on their way.

  Unless it fried them instead. Cullen said it was a nasty piece of work, not like any ward he’d ever seen. He could neutralize it, sure, but doing that without tipping off its caster was a slow, tedious business.

  Funny how Cullen always claimed to be impatient. He’d been sitting there for an hour studying the damn thing. Now and then he muttered something or sketched in the air with his finger. Then he went back to staring.

  Cynna collected the cards and began shuffling. “You want to switch to poker?”

  “I want—” Lily’s phone rang. It wasn’t Rule’s ring tone, but she lunged for her purse anyway. It might be Nettie with word about the Challenge, or maybe Rule had sent someone aboveground for some . . .

  The caller ID had her frowning, puzzled. “Lily Yu here.”

  “As if I wouldn’t know your sweet voice,” Cody Beck said. “Hope you don’t mind me calling so late. It’s important, verging on oh-my-God.”

  Lily’s focus tightened instantly. “What’s up?”

  He told her. When she disconnected, Cynna was frowning at her. “I didn’t catch all of that, but I gather you want me to Find something.”

  “Yeah. Cody discovered a very odd purchase made by Friar’s hazardous waste disposal company. Two days ago, they bought fifteen pounds of RN40.”

  “I don’t speak acronym.”

  “It’s a high-grade plastic explosive, new to the market. Fifteen pounds is a lot. A single pound of the stuff, applied right, can take down an office building.”

  Cynna’s eyes widened. “Isn’t stuff like that regulated? How could they get hold of that much?”

  “It sure as hell isn’t something a hazardous waste company ought to be able to buy. I don’t know how they got it or how Cody found out—he didn’t give me details. You said you can Find something if you have a piece of it, right? Well, they’ve got a piece from the same block of RN40 that Friar bought. Cody’s bringing it here.”

  “I can use that, sure,”

  Cullen’s head whipped around. He glared at Lily. “You want Cynna to play with high-grade explosives?”

  She could have sworn he’d been too absorbed to hear a word. “It’s safe to handle unless you pop it in the oven or hold a match to it. And we might be in a hurry here.”

  “Why?”

  Because her gut said so. Not that she was a precog, but... “This buy of the explosive—it’s clumsy compared to his other tricks. Sure, he doesn’t know we know about his dummy company, but he’s left a trail this time. When something blows, that trail’s going to point to him.”

  Cynna asked, “You think he’s getting hasty and stupid?”

  “I don’t know. He wants to make something go boom, though. Maybe Rule’s apartment or the FBI building or some place I don’t have a clue about. But we know his usual target—lupi, specifically Nokolai lupi—and we know he got someone into Clanhome once to pour a potion in the wells. That attempt failed, and he’s a man who likes to win. Maybe he’s given up on subtlety.”

  AT a deserted mining camp, two wolves circled in the moon-cast shadow of a wooden gantry. The gray wolf was the taller, the reddish one had a more powerful build. A low growl rumbled continuously from the gray wolf’s chest. His ears were flat to his skull, his lips peeled back in a snarl.

  The red wolf’s ears were flat, too, yet somehow the gaze he pinned on his opponent seemed more jaundiced than enraged.

  A scattering of silent men formed a circle around them. The dirt in that circle was trampled, gouged in places from claws scrabbling for purchase, muddy in places where blood hadn’t fully soaked into the parched ground. Wind whipped at their fur, tails, and ears . . . three ears between the two wolves. The fur of the gray wolf was black with dried blood where one ear had been ripped off. The fur was dark on one haunch, too, and around his muzzle.

  The reddish wolf moved as smoothly as the gray one, though he used only three feet, holding one foreleg off the ground for obvious reasons. Blood dripped sluggishly from the mangled leg.

  The gray wolf charged. His opponent dropped and turned belly up—and thrust with his hind legs, flipping the other wolf, who thudded to the ground and rolled, nearly colliding with one of the watching men.

  It would end soon.

  Isen knew this. He’d trained three-legged, which might keep him alive a bit longer. But he hadn’t trained while pain radiated in huge waves from the broken limb.

  Twice he’d held back from the kill. Once when he removed Javier’s ear instead of crushing his skull. Once when he had Javier pinned and stepped back, refusing the kill. Oh, but that had infuriated the young wolf—being made a gift of his life by his enemy.

  Anger was Javier’s weakness. Isen had taken advantage of that, using body language to taunt the youngster into rashness. It had paid off, helping Isen drag things out, hoping that Rule would manage to rescue Brian quickly and a call—a single phone call—would allow them to stop spilling each other’s blood.

  That hadn’t happened, and the pup was fast, damn him. The moment Isen had felt his leg bone snap beneath his enemy’s teeth, he’d known he could delay no longer. Either he finished things, or Javier would.

  Javier righted himself quickly. Isen hadn’t tried to take advantage of his brief disarray. He couldn’t move fast enough, and he knew it. He would have to draw the other wolf in close, perhaps by feigning . . .

  Fifty feet away, a wolf yipped three times.

  Son of a bitch. The enemy had taken the bait after all. Isen lifted his nose, but the sentry’s call had come from downwind, so scent told him nothing. He looked that way.

  Javier’s hard, heavy body slammed into him, jaws gaping. Flip him and go for the belly, that was the idea. Isen twisted frantically, avoiding disembowelment but rolling onto his shattered leg. Pain paralyzed him for a second—a second too long as Javier lunged again.

  And was knocked away by another wolf. Stephen. Who crouched between Isen and Javier, growling a warning at the younger wolf.

  Stephen might be overly tied to tradition, but he could be counted on for fairness and good sense. The Challenge had ended the moment the sentry sounded the alert. Panting with pain, Isen struggled to his feet and took in the situation quickly. He’d warned Stephen they might be attacked, so Stephen had posted all four of his guards as four-footed sentries. They yipped at each other now in a code Isen didn’t know. His own people had followed orders and were racing for . . .

  Isen heard the rifle. He never felt the bullet.

  LILY called Pete, Benedict’s second. Clanhome was already on alert, but she wanted him to know about the RN40—which she’d been told had a distinctive smell. A bit like almonds, at least to a human nose. She also wanted to find out if there’d been any word about the Challenge. None, he said.

  Cynna was pacing, waiting for Cody to get there with the sample of explosive.

  Cullen still sat on the floor by the broom closet. “Lily. I need you here.” />
  “Got to go,” she told Pete, and put her phone up. “What?” she asked as she went to him.

  He didn’t look up. “I’m not going to unravel this thing tonight. It’s beyond anything I’ve ever seen. But I’ve isolated the thread that powers it.”

  She crouched beside him, but the sling made that awkward, so she went to one knee. “Okay. Does that mean you can cut the thread and it won’t have any juice?”

  “That’s what I want you for.”

  “Me?” She couldn’t have been more surprised if he’d told her he needed her to dance naked. Actually, the dance naked bit sounded like something Cullen might suggest.

  “I called it a thread deliberately. Thread’s twisted to strengthen it. This has a twist to it . . . I’ve never seen that before, but I’m pretty sure it means that if the thread’s cut, it comes uncoiled. That releases the inherent energy from the twisting. I can’t cut it right next to the ward—don’t ask why, I don’t have time to explain—so the remnant of thread nearest the ward would release a bit of power into the ward, triggering it.”

  “Okay,” she said dubiously. “But what do you want me for?”

  “To soak up that bit of power.”

  She opened her mouth . . . and closed it without saying anything.

  Twice she’d actively absorbed magic from a person. Apparently she did the same thing passively all the time, only in very tiny amounts. That was the essence of her Gift—the ability to soak up tiny amounts of magic, which her brain then interpreted as a texture. “Am I supposed to try to soak it up?”

  “Yes, but don’t pull hard. The thread’s tied to the node—that much I’m sure of. Nothing else is that clear and pure. If you pull too hard, you’ll draw too much energy up through the thread and it will break.”

  “How do I know how hard is too hard? I’m not even sure I can do this!”

  “I’ll monitor you. Here’s what we’ll do. I’ll put your finger where I want you to pull. You do your thing. I should see the bit of thread between your finger and the ward go dim. When it does, I’ll cut it. If I’ve figured it right, the ward will evaporate.”