by Eileen Wilks
She helped by turning the subject back to the job. “The killings happened quite recently, I understand.”
“Four days. Four days,” he repeated, his voice heavy with skepticism. “You can be sure after so long that there was magic involved?”
“I’m sure. The traces are faint, but unmistakable.” She didn’t blame him for asking. Suspicion was a natural attitude for a cop—doubt edged sword-sharp by the knowledge that people lied. For big reasons, for small ones, for convenience, for the hell of it—people lied to cops all the time.
But, dammit, she was a cop, too. He might try to remember that. “I heard Meacham turned himself in, then denied he’d done it.”
“Not exactly.” He was silent a moment. “It was noon on Monday. I was fixing to head out for a bite to eat when Roy Don pulled up in his truck. Parked in a handicapped spot, which folks around here don’t do, not right in front of my office, so I waited. Figured either he was drunk or somethin’ was bad wrong. He got out.” Another pause. “I never saw so much blood on a living person before.”
“Did he have the bat?”
“No. No, he climbed out and just stood there, not talking, not moving, not seeing anything at all, from the look in his eyes. His eyes . . . I asked him, was he hurt. Where was he hurt. That’s when he turned and got the bat from his front seat. He handed it to me. Didn’t say a word, just handed it to me. It was another two hours before he spoke. He seemed to wake up all of a sudden. He was in a hospital gown—that’s where we took him, to the hospital—but he still had blood on him. He saw that blood and thought he’d been in a wreck or somethin’. Didn’t remember anything since breakfast.”
“Did you go to the hospital with him?”
“No. No, I went out to his place to see if that’s where the blood had come from, and found poor Bill Watkins out cold. Bingham—that’s one of my deputies—took Roy Don to the hospital.”
She nodded. “So you didn’t actually see him when he, ah, came to.”
“No, but Bingham told me about it. He’s a good man. Pays attention.”
“He’s not an empath. Even with your Gift slicked over by that spell, you probably pick up more than an unGifted could. Your hunches about people would be good.” Which gave her an idea. “May not work with me, though. Maybe my Gift locks yours out.” Maybe that’s why he didn’t like or trust her.
“I’m not used to talking about this stuff.”
Tell me about it. Until her career change to the FBI, Lily never spoke of being a sensitive. Too often in the past, sensitives had been used to out the Gifted or those of the Blood, and she’d wanted no part of that. Being open about her ability had taken some getting used to. She figured she knew something of how a gay person felt, coming out of the closet. “Times are changing.”
“I guess. Are you askin’ me what I felt about Roy Don when he stepped out of the truck? When he handed me the bat?”
“What did you feel?”
“Nothin’. Like there was no one home.”
“You get that feeling with me?”
“No, you’re there. Like a closed door, but you’re there. I’ve never had that feelin’ with a person before. Not with a person. Bethany White’s girl, now, she’s mentally handicapped. Pretty severe—she wears diapers, can’t feed herself, but she’s there. Roy Don wasn’t. He drove his truck into town, came to me, handed me that bat. And he wasn’t there at all.”
Shit. Lily didn’t know what that meant, but it couldn’t be good. She glanced at Deacon. “Is he still absent?”
“He’s not what I’d call sane, but he’s present. You got some idea what could do that to a man? I mean, you’re sure there was magic involved, so, well. . . .” He hesitated, his voice dropping as if he were embarrassed. “Could Roy Don have been possessed? I know that’s supposed to be an old wives’ tale, but—”
“No, possession is real, and demons can cross if summoned, but it’s extremely rare. Almost all summoning spells were lost during the Purge.”
“Almost all?”
She waved that aside. “The point is, the magic I touched didn’t come from a demon.”
“You said it was faint.”
But not orange. For some reason, demons tripped a synesthetic switch in her Gift. They felt like a color, not a texture. “Demon magic is unique. Nothing else feels anything like it. And it’s been four days. If Meacham had been possessed and the demon left him for some reason, it would have found another host right away, or a series of hosts. And it would still be killing.”
“If it couldn’t find a new host—”
“It wouldn’t have left Meacham without having one to slip into. A raised demon needs a host to anchor it here.” It was more complicated than that, and Lily didn’t know all the complications. But she knew a demon. Well, a former demon. And Gan had told her that only a demon who’d come through a gate, or one like her, who could cross unsummoned, could stay in this world without a host.
And Gan was, as she liked to point out, very, very special because of that ability. Lily’s lips curved in the ghost of a smile. “I can’t say it’s impossible,” she added. “But it’s unlikely enough to not even make the list right now.”
“Guess you’ve had experience with that sort of thing,” Deacon said. “We nearly there?”
She nodded. Rule was close now.
“Who’d you leave on-scene? I don’t see anyone.”
“You won’t see him unless he wants you to.”
“Shit. You didn’t bring that weer here, did you? He’s here in my town?”
Just beyond the lance of her light, a shadow shifted. And growled.
Lily’s right hand slid beneath her jacket. Her left hand raised the flashlight higher, searching. “Hold it,” she snapped when Deacon didn’t stop.
“You have to draw on your lover to make him behave?” he drawled.
She had her weapon out and aimed. “That’s not—”
Two large dogs exploded from the underbrush—teeth bared, ears flat, moving fast. Lily didn’t think. She fired. Fired again.
The first dog fell. The second faltered, but kept coming on three legs—a Rottweiler with a foaming muzzle and mad eyes. She fired again just as two gunshots, packed together, smacked her eardrums.
The second dog fell, blood spraying from its head. So did one she hadn’t seen, a Doberman that had attacked from the right. Deacon’s bullets had caught it in midleap.
Lily was breathing hard, as if she’d been running. Her hands shook—aftermath of the adrenaline that had wanted her to run. She swallowed bile.
Dogs. She’d shot dogs. “Good shooting,” she managed.
“Shit.” Deacon’s voice shook slightly. “Did you see the way that one kept coming, even after you hit it? Sumbitches must’ve been rabid.”
Rabid. Yeah, that might explain why they’d ventured here, where they must have been able to smell Rule, but . . . Rule. Where was Rule?
Deacon was shining his flashlight all over the place, wary now. “You reckon there’s any more? Dogs don’t attack that way. Not like that. These were rabid. I’ll have to—hey!”
She’d taken off running.
Lily jumped a small log, skidded, then looped around a pair of scruffy pines. Rule was alive. She knew that as clearly as she knew the way the hot air felt as she sucked it in. If he’d been killed, the mate bond would have snapped.
But he hadn’t come. He should have heard the dogs, the gunshots, and he hadn’t come.
He wasn’t far. That was the main reason her pell-mell race through the woods didn’t put her on her butt, twist an ankle, or send her tumbling. She didn’t have far to run before jerking to a stop, her stomach roiling at the smell. She fell to her knees, her fingers clenched tight on the flashlight.
Rule lay in a leaf and loam bed, curled up like Hansel lost in the woods. Ten feet away, an open grave poisoned the air, but she saw no signs of a fight or trauma on Rule—no blood, ripped clothing, scuffed ground. His breathing was even; his face, peace
ful. The dark hair falling back from his face wasn’t mussed.
She reached for his throat to reassure herself of a pulse. And jolted.
Magic. Thin and clammy, it coated his skin like pond scum . . . pond scum mixed with ground glass, for it held an abrasive wrongness she recognized. Even as her own heartbeat went crazy, her fingers found the steady beat in his carotid. And the ugly magic was fading. Evaporating like sweat on a hot, dry day.
His eyes opened slowly. He blinked. “Why am I lying on the ground?”
“I was hoping you could tell me. What’s the last thing you remember?” She stroked his skin everywhere it showed—his cheek, his throat, his hand—reassuring herself. The scum of magic was gone.
“Waiting. An owl hooting, the crickets . . .” He frowned. “There’s something else, but I can’t . . . It’s gone.”
He started to sit up. Lily tried to push him back down—which made him smile gently and move her hands. “I’m fine, nadia.”
“You were out cold a second ago.”
“Whatever caused it doesn’t seem to have left any aftereffects.”
“We don’t know that.”
“Lying on the ground won’t help us find out.” He stood, so Lily did, too. “Who’s thrashing through the underbrush?”
“Sheriff Deacon, I suspect.” Not that she could hear . . . No, wait, now that Rule had drawn her attention to it, she did hear movement, very faintly. “I think I lost him.”
“You should probably recover him, then.”
“I’ll call him in a minute.”
“I’m fine,” he repeated, annoyed.
“Maybe. Rule, there was magic coating you when I arrived. Death magic.”
He stilled. After a moment he said, “Whatever happened, I lived through it.”
“The magic’s gone now. Everywhere I’ve touched, it’s gone. Which is good, but I don’t understand it.” But she hadn’t touched everywhere, had she?
His shirt was loose. She ran both hands up under it, feeling his chest.
“Ah . . . Lily?”
“It could have localized, like the demon poison did.” Not on his chest, though. She moved closer so she could reach beneath his shirt to feel his back. The skin was warm, slightly moist . . . and just skin. No pond-scum grit.
“Death magic either kills you or it doesn’t. It didn’t. Lily—”
“We don’t know. We don’t know what it can or can’t do. You’re going to need to take off your shirt.”
“Christ.” Deacon’s voice came from behind her, thick with disgust. “You raced here to feel him up.”
FOUR
HALO was tiny compared to San Diego, but it was no fly-speck. As the county seat, it held a four-story district court building, where Rule would learn if his son was coming home with him. And the two-story sheriff’s department, where Rule was now. The Dawson County Sheriff’s Department smelled of dust, disinfectant, tobacco, printer’s ink, and mice. And people, of course. People who’d sweated and fretted, worked and eaten here for years
The most interesting thing about the smells, Rule thought, was the one that was absent: fear. That scent had been absent from the first, unfortunate moment he met Sheriff Deacon. The man didn’t like Rule, but he didn’t fear him. That was unusual enough to make Rule curious.
They were more or less alone. The sheriff’s office was on the second floor of the cement block building, separated by a glass panel from a large, communal space crammed with desks. Most of those desks were empty at this hour, though a square-set woman in civilian clothes had grim possession of the desk in front of the door to Deacon’s office.
It was 6:42 a.m. Rule sat on a hard wooden chair and longed for coffee. Lily might classify the liquid in his foam cup as that beverage, but Lily had drunk the sludge perpetrated by cop-house coffeepots too long. Her senses were permanently skewed by the experience.
“Okay.” Deacon hit a button on his computer and the printer jumped into action. “I’ll need you to sign your statement, then you’re free to go. Don’t leave town.”
Rule considered pointing out that he’d been free to go all along—he was here voluntarily. Lily had wanted him to wait to give Deacon his statement until she was finished at the scene and could come with him. Rule had understood. He, too, knew the need to protect, though he still found it odd, even unsettling, to have that instinct trained on him.
Protection was unnecessary in this instance. He’d dealt with any number of suspicious or prejudiced police in his time. He’d chosen to cooperate with this one. So far, cooperation had earned him no points at all. “I’ll wait here for Lily, if you’ve no objection.”
Deacon shot him a hard glance. “Your lover may be a while, you know.”
“Lover” was a fine word, yet in this man’s mouth it sounded like “slut.” Rule told himself he would not allow anger to make his choices for him, but it was just as well he didn’t have Cullen’s knack with fire. “It would be more respectful to refer to her as Agent Yu.”
Deacon snorted. “Pull the other one. I know how your kind treats women, and respectful isn’t the word for it.” The printer spat out a sheet of paper and he leaned sideways to pluck it. “Here. Read and sign.”
Rule accepted the page without looking at it. He couldn’t tell Deacon he would be faithful to Lily unto death. She was his nadia, his Chosen. But while that was understood among his people, none outside the clans knew of the existence of the mate bond—which was the only form of fidelity that was acceptable for a lupus. But that was none of the human’s business.
Yet the sheriff’s attitude rankled. He didn’t understand why. When had lupi cared what the out-clan thought? “It occurs to me you live in Leidolf’s territory.”
“In what?” Deacon shook his head. “You’re from California, right? Maybe California schools don’t teach kids about states and counties and such. Sheriffs are elected by the county, not some blamed territory.”
“I’m aware of counties,” Rule said dryly. “Leidolf is a lupus clan whose territory—which does not appear in your children’s schoolbooks—includes much of North Carolina.” In fact, the Leidolf clanhome was seventy miles south of Halo, but that was none of this man’s business. “I’m wondering if your attitude comes from having known Leidolf lupi. Their treatment of women is not typical of my people.”
“You gonna tell me you believe in marriage?”
“Is marriage the only way to demonstrate respect for a woman?”
“The only way that means anything.”
“So you wouldn’t object if your daughter grew up to marry one of us.”
Rule thought the man would hit him. Deacon did, too, for a moment—which told Rule that Deacon’s prejudice didn’t involve any real knowledge of lupi. A man who knew much about Rule’s people might, in a fit of temper, consider shooting. He didn’t think of punching.
Deacon mastered the impulse. “Read and sign the statement.”
This, of course, was the other reason, aside from cheap land, that Nokolai had settled in California so many years ago. The woods here were magnificent. The attitudes were not.
Rule read quickly. Barring a couple of typos, the statement was accurate enough. He smiled when he reached the last part . . . which described him disrobing so Lily could make sure no death magic clung to him. Anywhere.
Deacon’s arrival hadn’t fazed her. “Get your mind out of the sewer,” she’d snapped, then gone on doing what she considered necessary. As she always did. Lily had offered Deacon a terse explanation once she finished, but it had been Rule who’d pointed out that it seemed wise to make sure he wasn’t enspelled. It would be unfortunate if he went mad on them, wouldn’t it?
Rule’s smile faded. He hadn’t known about the dogs when he said that. He looked up. “You have a pen?”
Deacon dug through the debris on his desk until he’d unearthed one. “You said you arrived in town yesterday. I need to know where you’re staying.”
“I have a room at the Comfort Inn.�
� He wasn’t staying in it, but he did have the room.
“What are you doing in Halo, anyway?”
“Personal business.” Rule scrawled his signature and put the statement on Deacon’s desk.
“What kind of personal? If there’s another weer living in my town, I want to know about it.”
“I realize you would consider that your business. I don’t. As it happens, the law agrees with me.” Not that he could hope to keep Toby a secret much longer, but damned if he’d turn belly-up to this man.
“Yu said she was here on family business.”
“Yes.”
“Would that be your family or hers?”
“That would be personal. As I’ve said. Do you have family, Sheriff?”
“We aren’t talking about me.”
“Perhaps we should. If you . . . Ah, here she is.” Rule turned to look through the glass partition at a metal door on the far side of the large room. A moment later, it swung open, revealing a staircase and a slim, pissed-off woman.
The bulky woman seated at the desk directly in front of Deacon’s office expressed a need to know what Lily wanted. Lily flashed her badge and spoke Deacon’s name without breaking stride. The woman considered stopping her, shrugged, and went back to tapping at her keyboard.
Wise of her. Lily was not in a good mood.
She swung open the door to Deacon’s office. “Deacon, you sent the damned vet to pick up those dogs.”
“They’ve got to be checked for rabies.”
“Believe it or not, the FBI lab is fully able to make that determination. The veterinarian wasn’t happy about our presence or our refusal to allow him on the scene. He called the press. Not just your local rag—Durham and Raleigh.”
Deacon shrugged. “I told Stan to wait a bit before he went out there. Sorry he didn’t, but you should’ve told me your people were handling the dogs’ bodies. Besides, what makes you think it was him tipped the press?”
“Dr. Stanfield informed me personally of his action and motives. He hoped to keep us from covering everything up—though he declined to say what, exactly, he thought might merit a cover-up. Possibly aliens. Or maybe he believes cover-up is the FBI’s SOP in any investigation. As a result, we’ve got two television crews and a swarm of print reporters at the scene. Several of them followed me into town. They’re downstairs now.”