by Eileen Wilks
Someone beat her to it, firing a steady burst. Bullets thunked into that rubbery flesh of Xitil’s head and neck—and vanished, leaving no visible wounds. Xitil tilted her head as if considering, then scuttled with shattering speed toward one of the black pillars.
Max raced out from behind it, an Uzi in one arm.
Lily sent a burst at the demon’s head, hoping to distract her. Smoke was beginning to build up. The fire Cullen had lit was growing, creating more fire, normal fire that licked its way along the nearest bodies in that morbid heap. Oh, shit, Cullen was there and unconscious. The ground still vibrated as if ready to explode, but it wasn’t rocking as badly. Lily pushed to her feet and limped quickly toward the mortuary pile, where Cynna was pulling on an arm. Cullen’s arm.
Jude got there first. He bent to get Cullen in a fireman’s carry—not easy when he had only one usable arm, but with Cynna’s help he managed it. They didn’t need Lily, so she paused, trying to think. How do you stop a demon prince? She had no bloody idea. Xitil was impervious to mage fire, for God’s sake. Cynna’s charm, designed to disrupt ordered magic, had only acted to free her from whatever that harness did to control her. Bullets sank into her flesh as if absorbed. She was, apparently, capable of shaking the very ground they stood on.
Never mind. They weren’t here to stop Xitil. They were here to get the children and get out. Weng had mentioned cells. He might have been lying, but—oh, there was Grandmother, sniffing along the wall where the now-empty cell was, the one that had held Xitil. She’d had the same idea, no doubt. Her nose might tell her where to look, and she could open all kinds of things, so—
A stifled cry made her spin. That had sounded like Cynna—but she didn’t see her. Jude, yes, with Cullen’s body draped across his shoulders, but no Cynna.
No Xitil, either, dammit, so where— The smoke was getting thick enough to make visibility poor, but not enough to hide anything that big. The fire was spreading faster now. They had to hurry, but—there was Xitil, and oh shit, there was Rule standing over his brother’s body—please God, his unconscious body, not dead!—preparing to defend both of them against a giggling demon prince.
He had a knife. A bloody damn knife against a mountain of demon.
Lily slapped her weapon back up to her shoulder and fired a burst. Xitil swatted the air as if annoyed by gnats. Lily squeezed the trigger again . . . empty. Shit. She released the old clip, reached for a new one—
“There you are.” Weng loomed up out of the gathering smoke a few feet away. He wasn’t smiling anymore. His beautiful shenyi was smutted with ashes on one long sleeve. And two enormous Claws accompanied him.
No time to load. Lily turned and ran.
“Get her!”
The fire was directly ahead. So was one of the black pillars. She slapped a hand on the pillar, meaning to use it to skid through a turn without slowing down—but the floor was slick with blood. Her skid turned into a slip, wrenching her bad ankle, making her lurch sideways. Her head struck the pillar in a white sizzle of pain, dizzying her. No time. No time. She fumbled the clip into her weapon as she turned—
“Lily Yu!” a squeaky voice called from very close by. “Hold still!”
The Claws loomed up out of the smoke. Her arms shook as she raised her weapon. One of them swatted it out of her hands with contemptuous ease. The other reached for her with both arms.
Two more arms—much smaller arms—circled her thigh and held on tightly. A lightning bolt shot down out of nowhere, splitting her sore skull in half, and shot her out into darkness.
* * *
SOMEWHERE, deep in the darkness, Lily knew she should wake. But she felt safe here, in this muffled place. Out there was . . . pain.
The thought dragged the reality in with it. A dull pounding . . . in her head. And with that, she had a head again. And a body. A body that ached. Groaning, she opened her eyes. And squeezed them closed again as brightness sent a fresh stab of pain.
After a moment she opened them again, squinting this time. The sky was a bright, cloudless blue. That didn’t seem right. Why . . .
Memory tumbled in, all in pieces. The rocky bleakness of Dis. Red-eyes. Fire. Rule facing off against some monster with only a knife. Dirt bikes. Tom Weng in a red shenyi. Spider demons charging in a black mass. A sharp crack on her skull. Cullen throwing black fire. Screams. Grandmother’s fur covered in blood. Rule calling her name. An enormous pink monstrosity . . .
Xitil. She felt a burst of satisfaction at identifying that memory shard. She’d been in Dis and she’d seen the demon prince. But surely Xitil was dead? No . . . they’d been wrong about that. She remembered the wall vanishing and what it revealed. Xitil had been in a cell next to the palace’s small audience hall . . . the cells. Toby. Ryder. The children.
All this worked through her brain with the slow drip of molasses until she jarred up against the last thought. The children! Where were they? Where was Rule? Automatically she reached out with the mate sense, but the answer it returned was so fuzzy . . . could he be that far away? The mate bond had never let them be separated by that much distance before.
He wasn’t close, though. That much was certain. He wasn’t with her.
Where was she?
Her head was not working right, but her arms did as they were told, shifting to push her up. The movement hurt her head. The light did, too, but she made herself look around.
Green. That’s the first thing that struck her. She was surrounded by green . . . a bank of trees fronted by all sorts of greenery. The giant frilled leaves of a gunnera caught her eye, and the ferns growing under it, and shy lavender flowers she thought might be some kind of anemone. And those were hostas. No gardener could fail to recognize hostas. Lily hadn’t had good luck with them in San Diego’s climate, but she hadn’t given up.
If only her head worked better . . . she’d hit it, hadn’t she? Knocked it against that black pillar because her foot slipped when those Claws were chasing her. Must have hit it harder than she’d realized to leave her this muzzy.
She turned her thick, heavy head. The bank of trees went all the way around, interrupted by a couple of paths. Somewhere nearby, water gurgled. She didn’t see it, but she heard it. She was sitting in an open area, surrounded by trees and plants. Sitting on grass. Soft, mowed grass.
She was in someone’s garden? Or a park? How had she gotten here, for God’s sake?
The Claws had caught up with her. Two of them. A bolt of remembered terror shot through her. One had knocked her weapon out of her hands, and . . . and someone else had grabbed her thigh. Someone small who called her Lily Yu.
After that, pain and blackness.
Gan. Gan had brought her here. She wasn’t in Dis anymore because Gan had crossed to this place and brought Lily along. Oh, God, she’d done this before, hadn’t she? Been yanked into another realm by Gan, who could bring someone else with her when she crossed if she had enough power. She’d said several times that she had lots of power now. From the medallion, no doubt.
Last time this happened, Rule had been with her—with one of her anyway. This time he wasn’t anywhere close. He’d been facing off with Xitil with a goddamned knife the last she saw him, and the damnably blurry mate bond made her think he was still there, still in Dis fighting for his life against—
Shut up, she told herself. Rule was alive. The bond might be fuzzy, but she knew that much. He was alive and so was she. Start from there and build on it.
A deep, shaky breath. Think, dammit. The other time she’d crossed with Gan she’d blacked out and woken up hurting. She was pretty sure her headache was worse this time, but she’d hit her head, after all. She’d been confused that other time, too, even worse than now because she’d had her memories stripped. She’d been split in fucking two.
That hadn’t happened this time, she told her suddenly frantic heartbeat. This time she knew who she was.
She remembered everything. At least she thought she did. Gan had risked the roomful of demons and Xitil herself to save Lily from the Claws, who would have turned her over to Weng. Whose “colleague” wanted Lily alive.
Two years ago, the Great Bitch had wanted to capture Lily alive so she could use Lily’s clean-wiped brain to store a copy of the Codex Arcana, the legendary Book of All Magic. God. Lily scrubbed her face with both hands. Was that what she wanted Lily for now? But she’d tried to kill Lily several times in the intervening two years. What had changed to make her revert to capturing Lily?
Never mind that for now. Gan had brought her here . . . but where was here, dammit? And where was Gan?
Lily looked around as if she might have overlooked three feet of khaki-clad orange topped by bright blue hair. She even looked up.
High in the blue sky, a shape soared. The color was indistinguishable against that brightness, but the shape was unmistakable. A dragon.
Reno! Could Gan have brought Lily to the same realm Reno had flown off into through the construct? Gan hadn’t said she could tell where the dragon went, but maybe it hadn’t occurred to her. Sometimes Gan had a poor grasp on what facts were important. Quickly Lily unfurled her mindsense and sent it out and up and up . . . but she had to push to reach that soaring figure. There was no sudden eagerness to connect with the dragon’s mind, no easy draw.
There was no dragon mind there to contact.
“There you are,” said a female voice.
Startled, Lily swiveled on her butt. And saw a dead woman.
She was tiny, no more than five feet tall, with the twiggy bones of a bird. Her forehead was high and round; her chin was small and round; her skin was very pale and bore a delicate tracery of wrinkles around the eyes. She wore loose black trousers and a pale blue top with a mandarin collar. Her neatly pinned-up hair was the pale uncolor of a blond who’s gone mostly silver.
The last time Lily had seen that hair, it had been wet with blood. The hood to the woman’s robe had slipped off her head while Lily was slamming her head against the rough stone floor. “Helen?” she whispered.
TWENTY-EIGHT
ON a stretch of sandy beach lay a man’s body. He was sprawled on his stomach, one arm out-flung, the other by his side. His jeans were ripped and bloody. The sand beneath his body was pink with watery blood.
A wave washed in, tickling the fingers of the out-flung hand. He didn’t react.
The beach was deserted save for the gulls. Most of them soared overhead, calling out suggestions or complaints to each other—eee-yi-yi-yi-yi. A couple of them hopped along the sand, turning over bits of seaweed or shells washed up by the waves.
One gull landed near the man. It cocked its head, studying him with a bright, black eye. After a moment it hopped closer and tugged at his hair with its beak.
He didn’t react. The gull, however, did, launching itself skyward in a flurry of hasty wings. So did its two compatriots on the beach. The reason for their departure slunk closer, ten feet of orange and black lethality. A seagull would have barely made a bite for such a beast, but why take chances?
A smaller being trotted alongside the beast, her skin almost the same shade of orange as parts of the tiger’s fur. She stopped a few paces back, frowning fiercely. The tiger continued until it could sniff the man from head to toe, then snorted softly. The big head gently nudged the man’s side.
Rule groaned.
Keep reading for a sneak peek of the next Lupi novel by Eileen Wilks
DRAGON BLOOD
Coming soon from Berkley Sensation!
PAIN comes in many varieties. There’s the crushed outrage of a smashed thumb and the oh shit rip of a twisted ankle. A bad tooth throbs, a headache pounds, and when a bone breaks the bright shock of it shorts out the whole system, as intense as a climax.
There is also pain that swallows the entire world, admitting no presence beyond itself. Pain that goes on and on.
Rule woke to pain.
In the first few seconds or eons there was no place to put the pain, nothing to assign it to, no sense it was lodged in this or that part of his body. Pain was entire, complete . . . until it wasn’t. He grew aware of a voice. Not words, for the pain-universe allowed him no space to sort sound into words, but he knew this particular sound was a voice.
He was not alone.
Some instinct rose from a place so deep inside the pain could not shut it out. An instinct that said quiet. That said listen. He was hurt, badly hurt, and he was not alone. Not-alone was dangerous. His nostrils flared. He did not smell clan or Lily. He smelled . . .
“. . . did you stop?” the voice was saying. It sounded scared. “It’s not enough to get him out of the water. We’ve got to get to cover. One of them could swoop down at any moment and . . .”
The word for what he smelled eluded Rule, but he knew the scent. No, two scents. The one that went with the voice was not-trusted. The other . . .
“Hey, why did you—what are you—eeep!”
The other was very dangerous.
“Oh, right. The sleep charm. I forgot about that. I can put him in sleep and then he won’t scream anymore. Okay. You can back off now. Please back off.”
Very dangerous, but also . . . his. His, and trusted. Rule made a huge effort and opened his eyes.
The glare made his eyes blur, or maybe they’d already been wet. He panted, open-mouthed, as pain threatened to white-out his other senses. He blinked to clear his vision. All he saw was blue. After a moment he caught the word for all that blue: sky. Then a large head loomed over him, furred in orange and black with white above the eyes and on the ruff.
Tiger. That was the word for the one with the dangerous-but-mine scent.
The tiger licked the side of his head with a huge, rough tongue. And purred.
The tiger had a name. Madame Yu. Yes. He was safe. He did not need to defend himself with Madame Yu here. His eyes closed in exhausted relief.
“How did Cynna say it worked?” the voice asked. “I hold it on him, but there was something else.”
Memories flickered through Rule and landed on a name. Gan. The voice belonged to Gan, who used to be a demon and an enemy but was now a friend. She was not-trusted because her judgement was unreliable, not because she wished him ill.
“No, don’t lick me! Lick him if you want, but I don’t—oh, I get what you mean. I’m supposed to lick the charm to activate it.”
Madame Yu was here. Gan was here. Where was his mate? Automatically Rule reached for Lily through the bond. Panic flickered, a hot little flame amid the larger pain. So far. She was so far away—
Something damp and metallic pressed against his cheek. Sleep swept in, soft and comforting as a blanket, and separated him from both thought and pain.
* * *
WHEN Rule woke again, pain was not the entire universe—more like a tidal sea that waned and waxed with each breath. He floated on that terrible sea and reached again for Lily through the mate bond.
Alive. She was alive, but how could she be so far away?
Madame Yu was nearby. She wasn’t a tiger now, according to his nose. She must not be expecting immediate attack, or she wouldn’t have returned to her weaker form. He smelled smoke and cooking meat . . . a campfire? Yes. He did not smell Gan except for a faint, lingering scent that seemed to come from his own body, as if the former demon had handled him while he was unconscious. But Gan was not close now.
The ocean was. That mélange of scents soothed him with its familiarity and timeless indifference. He hadn’t noticed it the first time he woke, but only the wolf had roused then. Good thing Madame Yu had been with him. He might have killed himself trying to kill Gan or to escape. Lupi had been known to wake in the operating room . . . at least, their wolves had woken up, often with unfortunate results for the surgeon. To an injured wolf, almost everyone was an enemy.
The pain in his head didn’t worry him. Neither did that in his leg—a deep wound, but he hadn’t bled out, so it would heal if he lived to heal it. He might not. The worst pain came from his gut.
Even lupi had trouble healing gut wounds without medical care. Surgery was usually required, assuming there was someone to hold the patient in sleep. Units of blood helped. An IV to replace fluids. Nettie, he remembered, had given his father antibiotics when Isen had lost part of his duodenum to a Leidolf attacker a couple years ago. Normally lupi shrugged off unfriendly microbes, but gut wounds were particularly nasty. And why, Nettie had asked, should Isen spend resources healing an infection if he didn’t have to?
None of that seemed to be available here . . . wherever “here” was.
Not Dis. Not with the blue sky he remembered seeing. Earth? Had he somehow been returned to Earth? What had happened to him?
With the question, a jumble of memory poured in. Fire. His brother’s body, bloody and motionless. Lily on the other side of the cavern, nearly hidden in the smoke. No sign of Toby or the other children, and Cullen either unconscious or dead. Cynna trying to rescue Cullen. A mountain of pink flesh looming over Rule, giggling. Rule gripping his knife firmly as he faced Xitil, the mad demon prince, who had turned out to be insufficiently dead. She’d been about to kill him when . . . what? He couldn’t think, couldn’t remember—but he remembered enough to know that the only medical supplies he’d had were a roll of gauze and a tube of superglue.
No, he’d used the gauze on Daniel—who was still in Dis, he supposed, if he was still alive. But the others—what had happened to them?