Blood Challenge wotl-7

by Eileen Wilks

  “Interesting,” Isen murmured. “I suppose that’s why you consider yourself of the Blood? Your magic isn’t human, and I suppose your blood would interfere with lab tests. Yet, if I understand correctly, you aren’t sure if it’s sidhe magic or not.”

  “It’s more that I don’t know if the sidhe would consider me sidhe. That’s sort of important. My father is just under half sidhe by bloodlines—fifteen thirty-seconds, to be precise. His mother was a one-woman melting pot. If he were exactly half-sidhe, he’d automatically be considered low sidhe. Since he isn’t, he had to be tested. His magic tests as sidhe, so he’s sidhe.”

  Isen nodded thoughtfully. “You haven’t been tested?”

  “No.” She sighed. “Like I said, it’s complicated. My father did register my birth, which means I’m entitled to be tested, and he thinks I would test as sidhe. Not because I’m powerful, but my Gift is a sidhe ability. Kind of a rare one, too,” she added. “Or so he said the last time I saw him, but that was years and years ago. He isn’t exactly attentive. But I’d have to go to one of the sidhe realms to be tested, and that isn’t possible, which means I’m sort of at risk.”

  Benedict spoke for the first time in quite awhile. “What risk?”

  “There are, um, some people in some of the realms who might want to breed me or use my blood.”

  He growled.

  She blinked. “Wow. That sounds exactly like a wolf. I didn’t know you could do that when you were being a man.”

  He took a slow breath and looked at the lovely man sitting across from her. “Seabourne, do you know what she’s talking about?”

  Cullen Seabourne took his time answering, his expression abstracted, as if he were thinking hard. Or maybe seeing hard. He was watching Arjenie the way a mongoose watches a cobra. “Some blood is more magically potent than others. I assume that’s what she refers to.”

  Arjenie nodded. “Yes, and there are some spells you can only do with sidhe blood. I’ve made some guesses about what they might be, but Eledan wouldn’t tell me, and I suppose that isn’t important right now. I’m considered Sha’almuireli kin now, but if I tested as sidhe I’d be Sha’ almuireli—or possibly Divina’hueli, since my father does have some of that in his bloodline, but he’s Sha’almuireli, so I probably would be, too. If I turned out to be sidhe at all, that is. But being Sha’almuireli, however lowly a member, would probably keep me from being grabbed.”

  “I’m guessing that Sha’ almuireli is one of the Hundred?” Seabourne said. When she nodded he added to the others, “There are a fixed number of sidhe surnames, which designate kinship groups similar to clans—though it’s a great deal more complicated than the way we think of clans.”

  “It certainly is,” she said with feeling. “I don’t understand it all, but—” But she was trying to be brief. Not succeeding, but trying, so she wouldn’t go into that. “Unfortunately, there isn’t any way for me to be tested.”

  “You’ve never been to the sidhe realms, then?” Isen asked.

  “Oh, no. Eledan can cross realms whenever he wants—and that’s usually a middle sidhe ability, not low sidhe, but that’s the thing about mixed bloods. Sometimes we’re just a diluted version of a sidhe. Other times we don’t have any sidhe skills at all, but the other parent’s innate magic gets passed on, only stronger than usual. And sometimes we only get one or two of the sidhe abilities, but we get that full-strength. That’s how it worked with Eledan, and with me, too.”

  “But he can cross, and he wants you to be tested, yet he’s never taken you there for this testing.”

  “There’s a mass limit to what he can carry when he crosses. I’m too big now. When I was little enough for him to take me, my mother wouldn’t permit it. She thought he wouldn’t watch out for me properly, or maybe he’d forget to bring me back. He might have. He’s not very reliable.”

  Benedict spoke again. “I take it Eledan is your father’s name.”

  She flushed. “Yes. I don’t call him Father because, you know, he isn’t. He’s my genetic parent, and he’s got some sense of duty toward me, but it isn’t very highly developed.”

  Benedict’s eyes were flat. So was his voice. “What did you mean about them breeding you?”

  He looked scary again. He sounded scary, too. Why did all that grimness make her want to touch him? Right there, along that hard jaw … Behave, she told herself. “The sidhe realms are not uniform, no more than our realm is. Some governments in our world suck at civil rights. Some governments in the sidhe worlds do, too. There’s one place that’s rancid with slavery and other ugliness. According to Eledan, if I ended up there, I’d be used as breeding stock.”

  “And how would someone in this slavery realm know about you?”

  “Like I said, my father registered my birth, so it wouldn’t be all that hard to find out I exist and that this is my home realm. Especially because of Eledan’s profession.”

  This time it was Isen who spoke. “Which is?”

  “Um. We don’t have an analog for it. He’s unusually fertile for a sidhe, so basically he gets paid for impregnating women. Um—not my mother. She was a busman’s holiday. He was in our realm and she drew his attention, and he does have a touch of the sidhe glamour, though even without it he’s almost as beautiful as Mr. Seabourne.”

  “Cullen,” Seabourne murmured. “Lovely ladies should always call me Cullen, not mister.”

  She awarded him a quick grin before continuing. “What I’m getting at is that Mom wasn’t a paid job for Eledan, but he did come back to see if he’d impregnated her. That was partly duty, like I said, but also, the more offspring he registers, the better. Especially sidhe offspring, so we can’t assume he’s right about me testing as sidhe. I suspect he confuses what he wants with what is.”

  Benedict shoved back his chair and stood. “Excuse me.” He strode away.

  She started to rise, too. “What’s wrong?”

  Isen put a hand on her arm. “Give him a moment. “

  “But—”

  “He’s angry. He doesn’t like the way your father treated you.”

  She watched as, in three strides, Benedict reached the retaining wall and leaped almost straight up onto the upper deck. There he began pacing.

  Arjenie frowned. Benedict was truly upset. His father seemed to think he should be left alone, but… “Do you always interpret him for people?” she asked Isen, then patted the hand he’d used to stop her. “Never mind. I think I’ll go to the original text.” She stood.

  Seabourne spoke quickly. “That may not be a good idea.”

  “Resides,” Isen murmured, but to Seabourne, not her. In this context that meant calm down or subside. “Benedict is not you.”

  Arjenie limped over to the stairs. Benedict stopped pacing and looked down at her, his expression not at all welcoming, so she was surprised when he jumped down to land beside her. “You’re supposed to stay off your ankle.”

  “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.

  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 w
ere 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.