by Eileen Wilks
He nudged the door open wider and trotted onto the porch. Madame Yu flowed around the corner of the house, sleek and supple. She looked up at him and shook her head once.
Clear of intruders around back, then. He yipped and wagged his tail to tell her everything was fine inside, then went to look at the bodies. There were fewer than he’d thought. Oh, yes—the scent and blood trail told him the one he’d tried to ham-string had managed to stand and wobble away.
Still, five were dead, and one was badly injured. Of those five, four were Madame’s kills—not surprising, since Rule had avoided killing as much as possible. Not from any squeamishness, but practicality. Dead humans created complications. Rule didn’t object to taking responsibility for all the deaths, but tiger kills did not look like wolf kills.
Either he or Madame Yu should Change back and do something about the bodies, then. And about the injured man. Lily wouldn’t be happy with the body count, but . . .
Lily. His head jerked up and he looked toward the corner. Where was she? She was slower than he, but she’d been running. She should be here by now. So should Beck.
He took off running—knowing, even as he denied it, that he was too late. The mate sense told him that.
Rule found Cody Beck crumpled on the sidewalk just around the corner. He was unconscious, his head bloodied in back, but breathing normally.
Lily was gone.
THIRTY-FIVE
LILY woke slowly, with a twist of nausea and a pounding head. But she was not disoriented. She knew exactly what had happened to land her . . . wherever the hell she was.
Her thigh stung. That’s where the dart had gone in. She remembered what felt like a wasp sting, dizziness, the panicked certainty that she’d been drugged. She didn’t remember falling, but no doubt she had.
She lay on something softer than a floor, but not much. A cot, maybe. Above her was gray concrete. Same to her right side, a featureless cement block wall. Moving her gaze, she saw a single dangling light in the ceiling . . . a corner where wall met ceiling, the top of a door . . .
The door got her attention. She sat up slowly—and everything spun, then went dim. She damn near fell off whatever she was sitting on.
“Don’t worry. The worst of it will wear off soon.” The voice was male, cheerful, with an English accent.
The pounding in Lily’s head didn’t ease, but after a couple swallows she was fairly sure she wasn’t going to throw up, and her vision cleared.
She was in a room perhaps twelve feet by twenty. Concrete block walls, standard eight feet high. Light courtesy of two lightbulbs hanging from the ceiling, one at each end. No windows. A vent high in one wall—air-conditioning, she guessed, since the temperature was on the chilly side. Two doors. One was in the wall across from her. It was ajar, but not enough for her to see what lay beyond. The other was at the far end of the room, and closed. That door and a small, old-fashioned refrigerator flanked a short counter that held a hot plate. There was a cabinet above that. Three large packing boxes partly blocked her view of the refrigerator.
Clearly that was the kitchen end. A Formica-topped table and four chairs separated it from Lily’s end, which was the bed/living room. She sat on a thin bunk fastened to the wall. There was one just like hers on the opposite wall.
The man sitting on the bunk across from hers was him. The sorcerer.
He looked so happy and innocuous—a short, middle-aged man with thinning hair and a hint of a potbelly, wearing khaki shorts and a bright pink shirt. She didn’t see any weapons, but he wore a diamond ring on one finger and a small medallion hung from a chain around his neck. Magic shit, probably.
“Hello, Johnny.”
He beamed. “So you’ve learned one of my names? Good for you!”
She was fully dressed except for her shoes. They’d taken her shoulder harness and ankle holster, she discovered with a quick touch, as well as her weapons, her phone, and her watch. But she wasn’t tied up. Why wasn’t she tied up? “I thought you liked knives. What did you shoot me with?”
“Oh, a little cocktail of my own. A professional can’t always indulge his preferences, you know, and I’m not allowed to hurt you. Just as you can’t hurt me.”
“You might be wrong about that.” She was too wobbly still to jump him, but that would pass, and whatever spells he had handy wouldn’t work on her. “Johnny Deng, you are under arrest for the use of magic in commission of multiple felonies.”
That made him laugh out loud. He slapped his knee. “I am going to enjoy you, for however long you are with us. My beloved thinks that won’t be long, however. She’s usually right.” He looked to the right, at the door that was ajar.
Something pale poured through that door. It was translucent, almost transparent in spots, but it wasn’t mist or fog. Its boundaries were too clearly defined for anything airborne, and it flowed like a thick liquid, flowed right up beside Johnny Deng sitting on the bunk. Gradually it coalesced into a shape. Between one blink and the next, that shape became a woman.
More or less a woman.
She breathed, Lily noted, fascinated. Her breasts rose and fell almost imperceptibly, but she was breathing. Her limbs were long and thin; her shoulders and chest disproportionately wide. Like a crane, Lily thought—long, thin limbs, broad through the chest and shoulders to support the wings she didn’t have.
She had the feathers, though, a fluffy cap of down on her head, but her features weren’t birdlike. Neither was her skin. It was white, and it gleamed. The shine was subtle, like the luminescence of a pearl.
She sure looked solid. Real. And physical. She sat there barely but perceptibly breathing and looked at Lily with eyes the color of storm clouds. And didn’t speak.
“I don’t have a name for you,” Lily said, “other than Chimei, and that’s a race. What do I call you?”
“Enemy, I think.” The voice was soft and high and lovely. The accent, like Johnny’s, was British.
“If you won’t give me a name to use, I’ll have to make up my own,” Lily said. “Kun Nu.” Kun meant a large, mythical bird, like a roc. Nu meant woman, wife, or daughter.
“S’n Mtzo has told you of me.”
She pronounced Sam’s Chinese name differently than Grandmother did, somehow removing vowels without losing the syllabic rhythm. “He told me your people and his fought each other in the Great War, and after it.”
“Did he speak of the treaty? There’s a silly word.” She gestured gracefully with one hand. The fingers were very long, very thin. “Your English word suggests so little of the reality. Did he tell you he wishes to save your world from me and my people?”
“Something like that.” The nausea was gone, and the dizziness. Her head still ached, but it no longer pounded.
“He lies. It is a habit with dragons, the lies designed to prod their little people this way or that. I have no people. He manipulates you, human. He uses you. His true wish is to kill me. This has always been his goal. It always will be.”
“And what is your goal?”
Her lips curved in a smile, a touch smug, that made Lily think of Dirty Harry after he’d stolen a bit of ham. “To live, of course. That is my purpose. That is the very soul of my creation. To live.”
“You’ve got a few other goals, though. You like fear.”
Her tongue touched her lips just once, delicately. “Living is primary, but to live well, that is important, too. Fear . . . Humans relate to fear so oddly. You crave it, creating stories and images—movies, television, books—which allow you to taste fear, yet leave your body undamaged. I understand the disinclination to sustain damage, but why then do you deny your love for and fascination with fear? You, too, enjoy it, if not as purely and keenly as I am able to. Yet you condemn me for my taste.” She shrugged. “Humans are mostly silly.”
“Not all of us, beloved.” Johnny smiled, stroking her thigh.
She in turn gave him a smile as tender as a mother with a new babe. “You are a precious exception, my love.
”
Lily launched herself across the room. One step, two, pivot, body bending, foot angled to strike with the side, not the toes—
A wall slammed against the side of her head, knocking her to the floor in a sudden, awkward heap.
Now her head was really pounding. And her jaw. She moved it carefully, then felt it with her fingertips. Probably not broken.
“Did you forget? Or did S’n not tell you? We are allowed to protect ourselves, Johnny and I.” The voice was light, amused. “Just as you may try to protect yourself.”
Lily blinked swimming eyes. The Chimei stood over her, smiling. Johnny-boy still sat on the bunk, his hands on his knees, leaning forward as if watching the ninth-inning-with-two-men-out ball game.
He looked delighted. But then, his team was winning at the moment, wasn’t it? “She packs a punch, doesn’t she?” he asked cheerily.
“Yeah.” Lily had been aiming for the sorcerer, thinking he was the Chimei’s weakness. She’d caught a glimpse of white in the corner of her eye as she went into the kick, but she hadn’t really seen anything.
And that was a clue. She eased herself into sitting up, rubbing her jaw. “Good trick. You went fuzzy so you could move faster, didn’t you? Must be handy. But it cost you something, I’m guessing.”
The Chimei was amused. “There is a cost, but not so much of one as you are paying. You cannot sustain many of my blows, human, while I can offer them for hours and hours, if I wish. I . . . What is the phrase? I pulled my punch so as not to injure you permanently.” She gestured at the bunk. “Return to your place, unless you wish me to put you there. I assure you I am strong enough to do so easily, without allowing you to damage me.”
Lily did not like doing anything Kun Nu wanted, but she didn’t want to be handled, either. She rose to her feet slowly, trying not to jar her head—and had to stop and swallow back the bile. She managed not to stagger to get to the bunk. “You may not have achieved that aim. I’m pretty sure I’m injured.”
“Not seriously.” The Chimei returned to her place beside her lover. She tipped her head to one side. “You are afraid a little, but not as much as I expected. Why not?”
“You aren’t allowed to hurt me.”
“I’m not allowed to harm your body, save in self-defense. Do you believe the only harm is that which damages you physically?” She gave a little trill of a chuckle. “Oh, there. Now you fear. Do you enjoy it?”
“No.” Lily licked her lip and tasted blood. It was puffing up, too. “So your only goal is fear?”
“I have other goals. The happiness of my beloved . . .” She stroked Johnny’s arm fondly. “That is precious to me. And the suffering of your grandmother. That is necessary. I will eat her power, and you will help me.”
“I could have sworn that wasn’t allowed—you harming her, I mean, and eating her power would surely harm her. I notice you didn’t mention children. Offspring. Or becoming, uh, wholly physical.”
“Children.” The voice was still light and pure. But something vast and powerful moved behind those human-seeming eyes, darkening them. They changed even as Lily watched, turning alien and black. Wholly black, with no whites at all. “You touch on what you should not, human.”
Lily’s heartbeat kicked up. Saliva pooled in her mouth, forcing her to swallow. “I’m a pushy bitch. Sue me.”
Abruptly the black faded back to gray. She laughed. “I think not, but I will either eat you or make you wish you had died. Perhaps I can do both. As for becoming wholly physical . . . you choose one word correctly, no doubt by accident, for you grope after that which you cannot understand. I am, as you see, physical now, but this form is costly to maintain without my Becoming. I am very close now. Your grandmother will provide the last of my needs so I may Become.” She folded her long-fingered hands in her lap. “It is just that she do so.”
“You want revenge. She killed someone you cared about.”
“I lost him.” That was grief, surely, wild and unsated, in the stormy pools of her eyes. “She stole him from me, and caused me to unBecome. She must atone.”
“What about all the people who lose someone because of you? Do they get a shot at making you atone?”
Her eyes were clear gray now, and breathtakingly indifferent. “Humans die. It is your nature, as it is mine to live. Why fling your anger at me? I did not cause you to be as you are.”
Lily’s jaw clenched—which hurt like hell, so she made herself relax those muscles. “I saw bodies tonight. Bodies of people who didn’t have to die now—people who died in pain and terror because you wanted their fear. You stole their lives from them. You stole them from those who love them. Your grief isn’t pure and holy just because it’s yours. It’s all the same—the grief you cause, the grief you feel.”
“You are wrong, but you lack the scope to know this.” She rose to her feet. “I speak to you of these things both to poke at you and because you may have a choice to make. Did you know there is a technique to drain the magic from another?”
“You alluded to that.”
“There are two ways to do this. One requires the permission of the person being drained. One does not. Both are painful. I cannot force your power from you, for that would be against the treaty. I can, however, take what is offered.” She smiled. “By you or your grandmother. I believe you will offer to allow me to sip at your power.”
“You have some strange beliefs.”
She just stood there, smiling. Johnny stood up. “Don’t like that idea, do you? Can’t say I blame you, but you’ll do it.” He nodded in a friendly way, turned, and opened the door that had been ajar, revealing stairs. He jogged up with little taps of his feet.
Were they in a basement? No windows, cement block walls, stairs going up. What the hell—why not ask? “Is this a basement?”
“We are belowground. It is called a bomb shelter. I believe humans in this country expected to all die in nuclear war some years back, so some built these shelters.”
“Cozy.”
“S’n Mtzo will not be able to sense you here—earth blocks him. Did you know that? In addition, my love and I have crafted other layers of protection. This will prevent any humans from finding you. Oh, and I should warn you.” Clearly she was enjoying doing so. “One of the wards will be triggered if you try to escape. This will cause this shelter to collapse, burying you.”
“Isn’t that a lot like killing me?”
“I have warned you, so you are able to avoid dying.”
“Stretching the treaty pretty far, though, aren’t you?”
The Chimei tipped her head. “Has S’n Mtzo deceived you about the treaty? It is quite literal in its binding. I cannot kill you, but I can keep you as long as it pleases me to do so. You will have food and water and air, and your wastes will be disposed of. You won’t be harmed, save for what you offer willingly, so I abide by the treaty. But you will not leave this room until I am ready for you to do so.”
Breathe, Lily told herself. Nice and slow. Fear was a largely physical reaction. She’d do what she could to keep from giving Bird Woman any little tastes. “Us puny little humans have a saying. It goes something like this: fuck you.”
“You try to control your fear. That increases its savor.” She smiled, hands clasped in front of her, almost as if she were praying.
On the stairs, two sets of feet sounded. One was Johnny—tap-tap-tap. The other sounded less certain. “And here comes the reason you will allow me to sip at your power. The same reason, as you will see, that the other sorcerer will not trouble us.”
Lily didn’t recognize the feet that she saw first, but she knew the ankles. The calves. Surely no other ankles and calves were decorated with those particular arabesques.
Cynna’s belly moved into view, her blue T-shirt straining against the mound of baby beneath. She moved awkwardly. The stairs were steep, and her hands were fastened behind her back. Johnny was right behind her, and he wasn’t fooling with a no-weapons look now. He pressed the barrel
of a subma chine gun to Cynna’s back. “Here she is, Beloved,” he said. “Unhappy, but undamaged.”
Cynna met Lily’s eyes, and sighed. “Hey, there.”
“This one is not covered by the treaty,” said the Chimei. “I can do anything at all to her. I can give her pain or fear, abort her offspring, kill her outright. Whatever I wish. But I give you the power to stop me. Only offer a sip of your magic, and I will leave her alone. For a time.”
Fury turned Lily’s vision red. Her hands clenched at her sides.
“More anger than fear? Your friend is afraid.” The Chimei smiled and smiled. “Consider your power, little human. Your decision. I will return when it suits me and you will tell me what, if anything, you offer. Whatever your decision then, you will remain here as long as I wish. Will that be a week or a year? Five years, or a decade? I have not decided, but at some point I will allow your grandmother to trade herself for you. You will be free then, and she will be fed and tended, and have nothing taken from her that she does not willingly offer.”
“You’re backing the wrong horse, Kun Nu. Grandmother won’t agree.”
“She already has.” Her smile grew radiant. “I will keep her for a long, long time. And while she suffers, so, too, will S’n Mtzo.”
THIRTY-SIX
“BROOKS here.”
Rule held his phone with one hand and drove with the other. “This is Rule Turner. Lily has been taken.”
“Taken?” The jolt of surprise was clear in Brooks’s voice. “My Gift can be damnably capricious. It didn’t warn me. When I wasn’t able to reach her on her phone, I hoped the problem was technical. During the riots, much cell coverage was disrupted.”
Riots? Was that what they were calling it? “Much of everything was disrupted,” Rule said grimly. “They’ve also snatched Cynna. They’re using her to threaten Cullen, to keep him from looking for them. They say they’ll trade Lily for her grandmother—but not yet.”