Blood Challenge

by Eileen Wilks

  “He’s not coming. He’s sending the others up.” She could feel Rule, motionless, at the bottom of the ladder.

  The floor shuddered beneath her.

  “Give him this one goddamn thing and get out of here!” Cullen snarled.

  He was right. She forced herself to move. Pushed it into a run and pelted out of Friar’s beautiful, empty house, stopping when she reached the car. No keys. She wanted to laugh. No goddamn keys, because they were in her purse, which was back in the house.

  Lucas came running out carrying Brian. “How far,” he gasped, “are we supposed to go?”

  “I don’t know.” She wasn’t going one step more without Rule.

  Then José emerged with Arjenie. And Sammy and Cullen—and hard on his heels, Rule.

  The earth groaned almost silently. Behind Friar’s house, the mountain began to move—earth and rock shearing off, beginning to slide down.

  “He’s coming,” Arjenie said frantically. “He’s coming. I feel him.”

  Where were the militia guys? Calvin Brewster and his sergeant? Lily didn’t see anyone.

  The earth growled. And shook, and kept shaking. Lily fell. Lucas went to his knees, hastily setting Brian down. Cullen stumbled. José fell, Arjenie pitching out of his arms. Rule broadened his stance and stood, staring at the house . . .

  Which twisted, groaning like a huge beast in pain. The lights winked out. Part of the second story collapsed. The earth rolled beneath Lily like it was liquid.

  Benedict ran out the front door, weaving on the unsteady stone of the veranda like a surfer riding a wave. He leaped—and landed on grassy lawn just as the house shrieked and groaned hugely. The rest of the second story and most of the first collapsed in a horrendous crash. Dust billowed in the moonlit night.

  A few feet from the disaster, Benedict sank to his knees, spent. Only then did Lily see Dya. She’d ridden his back like a child, clinging to his neck with one arm. Her other arm clutched a small satchel tightly.

  Arjenie burst into tears and limped toward them.

  The earth grew quiet.

  Dya climbed off Benedict’s back. “This is a brave man,” she said solemnly to her sister as Arjenie reached them. “He says he is yours.”

  “Yes,” Arjenie said, sinking to the ground and holding out one hand to Dya—her other arm still hung limp—and leaning in to kiss Benedict lightly. “Yes, he is.”

  He gathered her close.

  For a moment there was only the groan and crash as the debris that had been a house settled. Lily pushed to her feet, needing Rule.

  “Rule,” Lucas said quietly. “We’re losing him.”

  Lily moved the few steps to where Brian lay on the ground. Rule got there first. As Lily sank down beside him he was trying to take Bryan’s pulse at the wrist. He abandoned that to lay his ear directly on Brian’s chest . . . which was rising and falling in quick jerks. Distressed breathing. Not a good sign.

  “He’s bad,” Rule said, straightening, “but he’s not gone yet.”

  “Dya,” Arjenie said, “Dya, can you help him?”

  The little woman shook her head sadly. “I changed back to true venom to kill my lord. After you gave me the tears, I hurried to change it. I knew his death was mine. It is not easy to kill a lord of the sidhe, but the venom of a dereet of the Binai will do so quickly.” She sounded proud. “But now . . . true venom is very different from what I use to make potions. Especially potions of healing. I can’t change back so quickly.”

  Lily unclipped her phone and turned it on. She’d had it off for the op. “I can call Nettie. Maybe she could get here in . . .” Her breath sucked in. She’d forgotten. For a moment she’d forgotten where Nettie was, and who she was with.

  “Isen’s okay,” Rule said, adding mind reading to his other abilities. “Or at least alive. What time is it?”

  She glanced at the phone in her hand. “Twelve twenty.”

  “The Challenge must be over by now. He survived it.”

  Tears stung her eyes, making her feel foolish. Crying over good news? But Isen had made it. Most of them had made it. Most, but not all. “I’ll call,” she said. She touched Nettie’s name in her contacts list.

  Rule gripped Brian’s hand. “He didn’t want to die alone. I wonder if he knows . . .”

  “Hearing’s the last to go,” Cullen said quietly as he joined them. “There’s a good chance he knows we’re here.” He sat and reached for Brian’s ankle, shook his head, then took his other hand and tried to find a pulse at the wrist.

  Lily got Nettie’s voice mail. She left a brief message. “An ambulance,” she said. I’ll call 9-1-1.”

  Rule looked at Cullen, who shrugged. “It can’t hurt,” Rule said.

  Lily knew what they meant. They didn’t think he’d last that long. Even if he did, EMTs, paramedics, doctors—none of them would have a clue what to do for a lupus whose magic wasn’t able to fix whatever Rethna had done to him.

  But they didn’t know. They had to try. She punched in the numbers and gave the 9-1-1 operator their location and what little information she had about Brian’s condition.

  When she ended that call, Brian’s breathing seemed worse. There was a rattling sound in his throat. Cullen was talking to him quietly, recounting aloud some escapade. Lily bit her lip and checked for messages. There was one from Jason, who’d accompanied Isen. That one came in thirty minutes ago. Another from Pete, Benedict’s second, that was only fifteen minutes old. She touched the one for Jason first.

  “Isen’s okay,” she said after listening. Rule and Cullen would have heard the message, but Benedict was probably too far away. “He took some damage, including a bullet that creased his skull. Nettie’s keeping Isen in sleep. They’re headed back to Clanhome. Ah . . . Javier’s alive, too. Jason called the Challenge inconclusive.”

  “I’ll talk to Javier,” Lucas said, “when you’re able to lend me your phone. He’ll withdraw it when he knows the truth.”

  She nodded, then listened to the message from Pete. “Pete wants to talk to Benedict. The bomb squad’s at Clanhome now.” She looked at Arjenie, huddled against Benedict. “There’s a good chance you saved a few hundred people when you picked Friar’s pocket.”

  Arjenie’s smile trembled at the edges. “Do you think he got out? Friar, I mean.”

  Lily looked at the dark, looming shape of the mountain behind the house. It hadn’t collapsed entirely, but anyone underground when it rearranged itself . . . “I don’t know. He didn’t use the same tunnel we did, but there could have been a way up to the surface we don’t know about. There were at least two militia guys here earlier. They seem to have vanished.”

  “José,” Rule said, “the garage is around back. Friar has three vehicles—a red Ford Ranger, a black Porsche, and a ’64 T-bird convertible. See if they’re there. Sammy, patrol. Find out if we’re really alone.”

  The two men rose and left.

  Lily needed to call Croft. She needed to mobilize a man-hunt for Friar, to find out the extent of the damage when the gate imploded and the earth shook. But at this moment none of that seemed important. She looked at the young man who lay dying in front of them. Rule held one of his hands. Lucas clasped the other.

  Brian’s eyes opened, but stared out blindly. “Rule.”

  “I’m here.”

  “Have to try.” His voice was faint and hoarse. “You took . . . Leidolf. Take Wythe, too.”

  “I had a Leidolf great-grandmother. I don’t have a blood tie to Wythe.”

  “But . . .” His eyes seemed to focus—but not on Rule or any of them. He looked . . . surprised. Then peaceful and happy. His lips moved, but Lily didn’t hear anything except that rattle in his throat.

  Lucas, though, stiffened and bent close. Rule leaned in, too.

  A few seconds passed. Lucas straightened and looked at her. “Take his hand.” He thrust that lax hand out to her.

  “What?” Automatically she clasped it in hers. And jumped a little in surprise. Th
e skin was cold, as if he were already dead—but his magic was so present. So strong and alive. Pine and fur seemed almost to press up into her own skin.

  “The Lady wants you to take it,” Lucas said urgently. “He sees her. Hears her. You’re to take the mantle from him and hold it intact until it can be passed on.”

  She looked at him. “That’s nuts.”

  “It’s the Lady’s mantle.” He closed both of his hands over hers and the cold one she held and pressed firmly, as if he could squeeze the mantle out of Brian and into her. “You’re the Lady’s Chosen.”

  “I’m not—” But it was pushing at her. Magic didn’t do that, but this was. “I can’t do that. I’m not lupus.”

  “Consent is necessary,” Rule said calmly. “If you could do it, would you?”

  Would she?

  It was a stupid question, like asking what she’d do if she won the lottery when she never even bought a ticket. She didn’t know why she stopped to think about it, but she did. Would she allow a clan to die?

  Wythe would be no more, but not all the clan members would die. Some—many? A handful? She didn’t know—would eventually be adopted into other clans. Those who survived. Those who weren’t sent wholly mad by the death shock. “Yes,” she said slowly, “but it’s a crazy question.”

  Put your hand on his chest.

  She tugged her hand free from Brian’s grip and put it on the chest of the dying man. She could feel the magic moving up him. How strange. It seemed to be moving up from his gut to his chest, heading for his throat . . . “Brian had a hallucination. If it gave him peace, that’s good. But I don’t know what your excuse is,” she told Rule.

  Bend close to him.

  “Even if I could suck up his magic,” she went on, bending low, “it wouldn’t help. Once I absorbed it, it would turn into my magic.”

  Breathe his breath.

  “It wouldn’t be a mantle anymore.” Lily finished with her face hovering over Brian’s, his breath faint but perceptible, her own breath falling into his open mouth . . .

  What the hell? What was she doing?

  . . . as living magic poured out of the dying man with his last breath. And into her mouth.

  Lily jerked upright. Her hands went numb. Tingles raced over her skin from the inside. She couldn’t breathe. It was choking her, this huge ball of magic——fur and pine and moonlight—lodged in her throat, in her lungs—blood and strength and moonlight—no, it was settling in her belly. Large and living and not her. Not part of her, not any part of her.

  “He’s gone,” Lucas said calmly.

  “Son of a bitch,” said Cullen. “Son of a bitch. She did it.”

  “Lily?” Rule took her hand, searching her face. “Are you all right?”

  She looked down at her belly. “I feel like I need to burp.”

  FORTY-EIGHT

  Two weeks later, in North Carolina

  THE first time Lily had seen Leidolf Clanhome, it had been for a funeral. A young Leidolf clansman had died fighting a demon with her and Rule. That occasion had turned into an effort by the clan’s crazy-mean Rho to kill Rule by forcing the heirs’ portion of Leidolf’s mantle into him. That hadn’t worked out the way Victor wanted.

  She was here for a funeral again. She and Rule were even in the same bedroom they’d been given that time. He refused to sleep in the former Rho’s room.

  “I can’t believe she went into labor today,” Lily said, sliding her arms into the sleeves of the silk tee she’d settled on for the ceremony, then lifting them carefully so it slid over her head.

  She could do that now. Get dressed, wash her hair, even wear her shoulder holster. She still had to be careful, but she could do all the normal stuff again.

  “I don’t think she planned to,” Rule said. He’d just finished brushing his teeth and was stepping into his jeans. Lupi dressed very casually for this sort of thing. “But I wish we were there.”

  “Not that she needs us.” Lily slid her feet into her flats. Lupi might be informal, but she couldn’t bring herself to wear athletic shoes to the firnam. “She’s got Nettie and Cullen.”

  The full moon had come and gone without Lily feeling an urge to howl, much less discovering a knack for turning furry. First Cullen, then the Nokolai Rhej, had assured her she wouldn’t. She hadn’t told anyone how she felt about that, not even Rule. She barely admitted it to herself. Babysitting a mantle did not turn her into a lupus.

  Turned out there was a precedent for what she’d done, though no one outside of Etorri and the Rhejes had known about it. Three thousand years ago it had been a Rhej, not a Chosen, who’d held the Etorri mantle within her for seventeen days before she found an Etorri lupus to carry it.

  Lily might have to wait a lot longer than seventeen days. The only one who definitely carried enough of the Wythe founder’s bloodline was too young to Change, much less assume the mantle and leadership of his clan. Soon, though, Lily would go to Wythe Clanhome and meet the entire clan and give the mantle a chance to go where it was supposed to be.

  She rubbed her belly, frowning at the ball of otherness lodged there.

  Rule slipped an arm around her. “Still bothering you?”

  “It’s like having a piece of spinach stuck between your teeth. Something’s stuck inside me that doesn’t belong.” She had a strong feeling she wasn’t supposed to poke at it the way she would a piece of spinach, however. She shrugged. “It doesn’t hurt, and the bennies are good.”

  Like the healing. She didn’t heal as fast as lupi—Isen’s arm was fine now, as was his hard head—and they didn’t know if she’d heal completely. There was a big dent in her biceps where muscle was just gone, and no one knew if her silent passenger would make it grow back. But the wound had closed up really fast, no skin graft needed, and the bone was well on its way to being healed. She hadn’t even needed a cast—partly because of how fast it was healing, but also because of the way the surgeon had nailed things together.

  Just the damn sling. Which she still used, at Nettie’s very firm instructions, every time she left the bedroom. Well, almost every time. Any time it started hurting, certainly, and whenever Rule saw her. Or really, since they’d been staying at Clanhome, every time anyone saw her. Nearly healed did not mean healed.

  Lily put that arm—her right arm—around Rule and snuggled close. Her body hummed in approval. It was so good to want him again. For a while after the shooting, touch had brought comfort . . . but nothing more.

  Plenty more now. Rule stroked her hair. She closed her eyes and savored the feel of him, and the way her body responded. She stretched up, cupped his head, and pulled it down to sample his toothpaste secondhand.

  She kissed him slowly but thoroughly, pressed close enough to feel it when his heartbeat picked up. And pulled away. “I hear the drums.”

  For a moment she thought he was going to tell her—as he had last night when they were supposed to go down to dinner with his Lu Nuncio—that he was Rho and could be late if he wanted. But this was nothing as trivial as a meal. He nodded and reached for her sling.

  She let him help her into it. She gave her phone a regretful glance as they left. Cynna had called five hours ago, completely jazzed because she was having contractions. Rule had talked to Cullen about an hour ago. Nothing since.

  Couldn’t take a phone to the firnam, though. They headed down the stairs, and together they walked outside into dusk.

  The air was warm silk. A few trees had begun turning color. A breeze whispered through boughs and leaves, the wind singing softly to accompany the drums.

  The drummers, like the rest of those attending the firnam, were in a grassy field a short walk from the house. There were four of them. Like all the lupi, they were shirtless. Lily had seen their drums earlier. All were old, handmade, with hide drumheads. One had been made in Austria over two hundred years ago, though the drumhead had been replaced a couple of times.

  LeBron’s second son was one of the drummers. He took his father’s pl
ace. In Leidolf, this was a hereditary position. Lily walked slowly beside Rule and thought about a bright smile, a shaved head, and a man who wasn’t with them anymore.

  They’d caught the bastard who shot him, though. Lily let that satisfaction ease the sting in her eyes. Sjorensen had kept the local homicide detective filled in on whatever the FBI had because the asshole in charge wouldn’t. Between them, that detective and Sjorensen had tracked him down the old-fashioned way: lots of knocking on doors, lots of interviewing, and finally a break. Adrian Huffstead had lawyered up and wasn’t talking. It wouldn’t help. The friend who’d driven the truck—a truck with vanity plates, for God’s sake—had flipped so fast, Sjorensen said, she never got to practice being the mean cop.

  They had not caught the traitor who’d tried to kill Ruben. If Karonski even had a lead, she hadn’t heard about it.

  Ruben was doing okay. Not back at work, but okay.

  They hadn’t found Friar’s body. Calvin Brewster and a couple of the militia guys were still missing, too.

  Lily wanted to believe Friar was dead. There didn’t seem to be any way he could have escaped the destruction of the cave system. But Cynna had tried to Find him—or his body—using hairs from his hairbrush. Her Gift was good up to about a hundred miles, but she got nothing.

  Maybe his body was crushed beneath rock with a lot of quartz veining that blocked Cynna’s Gift. Maybe.

  Arjenie had put in for a transfer to San Diego. Some of the files she used were not accessible outside the FBI building, but much of her work could be done long-distance. She and Benedict had just finished a visit with her family in Virginia, and she was now able to speak her sister’s name. Sam had removed the binding.

  But her sister was gone. Dya had used Earth’s only gate, the one in D.C. It opened in Edge, where she could take another gate to reach her home. The news she had to bring her people couldn’t wait. Their lord was dead. He’d broken Queens’ Law. The repercussions for the Binai could be huge.

  The firnam was held in a field much like Nokolai’s meeting field. Many people stood or sat in the grass—observers, not participants. Three dozen men formed a large circle around a generous pile of wood set on bare earth blackened by past fires. Lily and Rule moved to join them.