by Eileen Wilks
Rule bent his head closer to hers to murmur, "It was good for me. Was it—" The quick pinch on his ass stopped him, as she'd meant it to. It also made him grin.
She pretended not to notice. "Static. As if music was playing, but I couldn't get the station tuned in."
"Ah! So my—but no. I'm so easily moved to digressions! Let us sit down, and perhaps you will tolerate a few questions."
There were more than a few questions, and they ranged all over the place. Had either of them experienced any unusual sensations or thoughts during the demon's attack? What did the demon's poison feel like now? How much holy water had Cynna used? How strong would Lily rate the power wind? Did she associate it with a color? A sound? Had Rule smelled anything when it hit? Why did the lupi not name this so-called goddess? What kind of powers were attributed to Her? How did they know Her avatar had been eaten by a demon prince?
Some answers were simple. They didn't name the goddess because names held power, and She might be drawn to the namer. Cynna had used about six ounces of holy water. The demon's poison felt, to Lily's touch, like a rotted orange.
Other answers took longer, and some they simply couldn't give.
When the others weren't asking questions, they were arguing about what the answers meant. At least, three out of four of them argued; Fagin looked on, a dreamy Buddha contemplating the is-ness of being, or maybe a nap.
Rule grew twitchy as the discussion dragged on. The wolf was bored, and his hip hurt. Not with the sharp pain of a fresh wound, but a tired sort of ache, as if the muscle were weary of the battle going on inside it. He was getting hungry, too; healing burned calories like crazy. The wolf didn't see the humans as food—only the feral or the very newly Changed lost their humanity to that extent—but he wanted to explore, even if he couldn't hunt.
Rule glanced at the door for the second or third time.
"Uh-uh," Lily whispered, leaning close. "If I can't escape, neither can you. Kind of like being around triplet Cullens, isn't it?"
"At least none of them are burning anything," he murmured.
The human in him recognized the method beneath the apparent disorder, however. Fagin might claim to be prone to digression, but he let the others have only enough time to see if a debate was going anywhere productive, then sighed and, professing regret at the necessity, pulled them back on topic.
Which apparently was the fate of the world.
When Lily asked, it turned out that all four of them did agree on one thing: the world teetered on the cusp of great change. Ito saw that change in terms of various prophecies; Sherry spoke of a trembling in her bones and a vision experienced by a member of her coven. The archbishop simply agreed that if the power winds continued, the level of magic in the world would rise.
And that could change everything.
Fagin grounded his explanation in his own specialty. "There are two schools of thought concerning pre-Purge history. The first school, accepted by the majority of the Western world, holds that early accounts of great magical events and abilities were the product of propaganda, exaggeration, hysteria, and superstition. Yet many of those accounts come from men who were hardly charlatans or credulous fools."
"It's the winners who write history," Sherry said.
He awarded her a delighted smile. "Precisely. Those who conducted the Purge were the winners, and their view is enshrined in our culture. We teach it to middle school students and expound upon it in countless doctoral theses."
Ito snorted. "It's not the first time a lot of crap has been taught at Harvard."
Sherry's eyes twinkled. "Hikaru, don't you teach at Harvard?"
"That's how I know."
Fagin nodded at Lily. "You've undoubtedly guessed that some of us do not share the accepted view. We believe there was once much more magic in the world, and that the failure of magic to deliver as it once had caused the Purge."
"You're right," Rule said quietly.
"Ah!" The bushy brows drew down in the first frown Rule had seen on the man's face. "I've heard that your people have a particularly vital oral history. One you don't share with outsiders."
"True on both counts."
Fagin regarded him a moment. "I may attempt to change your mind about that, but later. Interesting, isn't it, that your Mr. Brooks assembled his task force from academics and practitioners who don't subscribe to the conventional wisdom about the Purge?"
Lily leaned forward. "So what do you unconventional thinkers think?"
"Basically that during the sixteenth century the quantity of available magic began to decline. Perhaps people depleted it, just as any natural resource may be depleted. Perhaps the decline was part of a purely natural cycle, an ebb and flow of magic that produces occasional barren periods, just as the cyclical nature of global temperatures results in periodic ice ages. That is my own theory."
"Or perhaps," Ito said, "when the Codex Arcanum was lost or destroyed, it took much of the world's magic with it."
Fagin smiled. "And that is Ito's theory, based on his interpretation of Nostradamus. In any case, what we are seeing now suggests that our magical ice age is drawing to an end."
For a moment no one spoke. Rule thought about the power grid, the stock market, the banking system… air traffic control. The Internet. Cars. Buses. Medical technology. Laboratories. All of them vulnerable to sudden surges of magic. "How well does silk insulate against magic?"
It was Sherry who answered, her voice soft. "Not well enough."
No one spoke for a moment. Then Ito scraped his chair back. "I'm sorry to leave, but my wife is flying here to join me, and I need to pick her up."
Lily checked her watch. "It's later than I thought. If you're through with me for now, I'd like to see if Ruben's still here. I need some help prying information out of the Secret Service."
"I don't think he goes home much." Fagin pushed his chair out. "I'd like a word with him myself. Shall we hunt him up? We can compare notes on our mutual Gift on the way."
She looked at Rule. She didn't say a word. He knew what she wanted.
He sighed. "About the poison…"
"Yes." Sherry's frown was sharp. "We need to talk about that. Patrick?"
Lily touched Rule's shoulder lightly, then rose. "Have you ever touched a magic that seemed—well, evil?" she was asking Fagin as the door closed behind them.
Rule soon decided he might as well have left with Lily. Sherry and the archbishop didn't seem to require his presence. Patrick Brown paced, paused, threw up his hands. He spoke of souls, demonic intrusion, and quasi-magical energies, while Sherry just kept talking, wearing away at the man's arguments the way water wears away stone.
After five or ten minutes of that, Rule agreed with his wolf. He'd sat here long enough. Abruptly he stood. "I'm going in search of vending machine calories and some of the sludge they call coffee here. Would either of you care to risk your stomach lining on a cup?"
Sherry chuckled. "I don't heal as well as you do. No, thanks."
The churchman stopped moving and grimaced. "We've ignored you. Sorry. I get caught up… but I have a question for you. You said the holy water caused pain. How much?"
"Like cauterizing a wound."
His eyebrows shot up. "Have you experienced that? Never mind—none of my business. A high level of pain, then." He didn't look happy about that. His eyes flicked to Sherry. "How quickly can you call a coven?"
"Maybe by tonight. Tomorrow night at the latest. We won't need to work full-coven, and my healer is a local."
He nodded reluctantly. "Then I'll defer to your technique. We'll try my method if yours doesn't work as well as you expect."
"That's what I've been saying." She was brisk as she reached into the large purse by her chair and pulled out her phone. "I'll start calling."
"Wait a minute," Rule said. "You're calling a coven? Isn't that overkill?"
Her gaze lifted to him. "It may have sounded like Patrick and I can't agree on the color of the sky, but we do agree about
one thing. It is vitally important to get that poison out of you as soon as possible."
"Most of it's already gone, and more holy water—"
"Is unlikely to work on its own," the archbishop said. "I'm surprised it worked at all, frankly. You must have a great deal of trust in the woman who used it, and she must possess a great deal of faith."
"Cynna?" Rule hoped he didn't sound as incredulous as he felt.
"Holy water does have some intrinsic power, but it's slight. Mostly it acts as a conduit for faith. Since you aren't Catholic, her faith would have to be unusually strong for the holy water to affect the poison."
Rule hadn't really adjusted to the idea of Cynna being Catholic. That she might be truly fervent unsettled him. "Why wouldn't more holy water eliminate the poison entirely?" Not that he was crazy about the technique. He'd probably have to be held down—a humiliating prospect—and that required lupus strength, which meant a delay until his bodyguards arrived. But at least it would be quick.
"It's complicated." The man frowned, tapping his fingers against his thigh. "We've been calling the substance in your wound poison, but that's misleading. It's actually a bit of the demon itself—a demonic artifact, or intrusion."
"That's why it's important to remove it as soon as possible," Sherry said, holding her phone to her ear. Rule could hear it ringing on the other end. "You may not be losing much blood now, but… Oh, Linda, hi. This is Sherry."
Patrick Brown took it from there as Sherry spoke to one of her coven members. "But there are potentially other problems. As I understand it, magic permeates your physical being. Yes?"
"Basically."
"You have demon magic lodged in your body, interfering with your innate magic to prevent your healing. That much we know. It's also quite possible that it's interfering in other ways we're unable to detect. Any such other effects could be negligible or serious. You might grow horns or tentacles, begin to crave blood, or fall down dead. We simply don't know. But the longer the demon stuff stays in your body, the greater the chance of additional adverse effects."
Rule was glad Lily had left the room. She was already worried about him. "All right, I'm picking up on the urgency. I still don't see why you won't try holy water again."
Brown sighed. "It seems you're strongly attached to your guilt."
"What?" His scalp twitched, trying to flatten ears that didn't lay down in this form.
"That wasn't an accusation. Being human means being subject to the ills of guilt and temptation. I assume that is true for a lupus, also."
Rule gave a tense nod.
"Demons lack souls, yet they can have a terrible effect on ours. Demonic intrusions act on us through magic but bind to us through spirit. The binding agents are temptation, guilt, or both."
"You're saying that I'm holding on to the poison myself."
"More that guilt creates a sticky place for it to adhere. If you were of my faith, I'd advise you to attend confession. Since you aren't, I suggest you search your conscience. If you can make peace with yourself and the Creator, however you think of Him—"
"Her." The wolf wanted to bare its teeth. He had no great sins on his conscience. "We worship the female aspect of the One."
"So do we," Sherry said, punching in more numbers on her phone. "Male and female both, actually. Our healer wants to check you out first, but if she gives the go-ahead we'll hold the ritual at midnight."
"Midnight."
"Tradition has its… hello, Stephen. I need to know if…"
Patrick Brown was looking at Rule with a damnable degree of sympathy. "Guilt doesn't always exist for rational reasons, you know. We may feel terrible guilt for events beyond our control. Survivor's guilt, for example."
"This all has something to do with holy water, I presume."
"Through a mechanism involving guilt, your body has been fooled into accepting the demon's substance as part of it, rather the way a human body is fooled into feeding cancer cells. Holy water affects the demonic, but it would affect your body, too, because of this misidentification. If it worked at all, it could cause lasting damage. I'm surprised it didn't the first time."
Rule's hip throbbed quietly. After a moment he said, "There's a scar." A scar was nothing in itself, but was there other, less visible damage?
Sherry thanked someone, disconnected, and immediately punched in another number. Rule felt Lily drawing nearer. A moment later, he heard her and Fagin talking on the other side of the wall. At first their words were indistinct; then Lily's voice rose, incredulous. "You've got to be kidding."
Fagin's low rumble was soothing. "… just a theory… my family… old stories and folklore."
"But that's not—it isn't—it can't be physically possible. A dragon?" She was at the door. The knob turned.
Rule's left foot landed on gray carpet.
Vertigo struck. He staggered, righted himself, and looked around wildly. He—he was in a hall, one of the many hallways of the FBI building. He heard a copy machine humming, voices behind him and in the office to his left, the chime of the elevator up ahead as it stopped on this floor.
This floor? Which one? Where was he?
Lily grabbed his arm. "Rule? What is it? What's wrong?"
"We…" He turned carefully, looking back down the hall. Back the way he must have come. It was the same floor, he realized. The conference room was just around that bend.
Lily didn't seem to notice anything wrong, other than the way he was acting. Whatever had happened, it happened to him, not both of them. "I was in the conference room with Sherry and the archbishop. You and Fagin were about to enter. You'd just turned the doorknob. Then… then I was here."
Her eyes were wide with distress, her voice level. "You've been with me since I walked back into the conference room."
"What happened?" What could possibly have happened to rob him of himself for… how long? How much time had he lost?
Lily took the question literally. "Fagin and I came in. Archbishop Brown explained about the problem with holy water. He said Sherry's healer will have a look at you, then her coven will perform some sort of ritual. You didn't say much, but you were there. Present. Ifelt you as clearly as I feel you now. Then Cullen called, and—"
"Cullen called?"
"You spoke to him." The distress leaked into her voice. "He called on my phone to let me know what happened with the demon. It had possessed someone. They dispatched it, but Cynna was hurt. Then he talked to you—something about, uh, heres va-lus. Clan stuff. You—you were going to explain that, but wanted to wait until we were private."
"Cynna—"
"She'll be okay."
Would he? Rule knew he couldn't be possessed, and yet… "Are you sure it was me?"
"You sounded like yourself. I felt you there, beside me. You…" She stopped, swallowed. "I touched you. I didn't feel anything, no spell, no…"
"Demon." He searched for a scrap, a hint, any shred of memory that something had occurred between the moment he'd watched the doorknob turn and the one when he found himself in midstride on this hall.
Nothing. "I don't remember. I don't remember any of it."
Instinctively she reached for his arm. Her eyes widened—then narrowed. She stared at her hand, then deliberately reached up and touched the bare skin of his face.
"Well, shit," she said.
NINETEEN
SOMEONE was messing with her foot. It hurt. She jerked it away.
"Hold still."
That was Cullen's voice. He sounded peevish. Someone— Cullen?—yanked her foot back onto the warm place it had been resting and wiped it with the stinging stuff again.
"Ow!" Cynna's eyes popped open.
"Don't be a sissy. It's not much of a cut."
She blinked as memory seeped back in. She was lying on her back in a bed—pretty decent bed, too. Soft. The ceiling was white, and somewhere that longhair music was still playing. So she was still in Victor Frey's house, and not too much time had passed.
What had happened after things went black? Was the demon… Check, fool.
She did a quick cast. Okay, good. She was badly drained, but she was sure the demon wasn't nearby. And Cullen was all right. What about Merilee and Frey and Timms and the lupus guards? Had they come through okay? She propped herself up on one elbow.
Hey. Her head didn't hurt.
She was in a small bedroom with faded wallpaper and maple furniture. Very tidy, like the rest of the house. Cullen sat on the bed with her right foot in his lap. His hair was mussed, and his shirt was ripped and bloody. "You're hurt."
"No, dummy, you are." He finished what he'd been doing with the washrag and picked up a tube of antibiotic ointment.
"I guess I stepped on something." She didn't remember cutting her foot, but in all the excitement she might not have noticed. A dozen questions jockeyed for position. She plucked the simplest and asked it. "What happened?"
"You pissed off a demon." His voice was funny. He squirted ointment on her foot and smeared it around. "Remember that part?"
"Yeah. She clobbered me."
"She cracked your skull." Now he looked up, and she knew why he'd sounded odd. She'd never heard him flat-out furious before. "Of all the lamebrained, stupid-ass stunts—"
"Did it work?"
He shoved her foot off his lap and sprang to his feet. "I'm not believing this. Two humans and three lupi go after a demon. Do the humans let the lupi deal with the hand-to-hand? No, since you lack the common sense of a dung beetle, you—"
"Two humans? Is Timms okay?"
The door opened. A handsome woman with broad hips and shoulders and hot-cocoa skin came in. "Banged up some, but he'll mend. They're loading him into the ambulance now. He wouldn't let me set his arm—said he wanted a real doctor." She looked at Cullen. "Quit yelling at my patient."
She was a patient? Cynna gave her head a shake. Nothing rattled. "I'm fine. What happened with Frey and Merilee and the demon? Anyone else hurt?"
The woman turned a solemn face on her. She looked somewhere over forty but still downwind of old age; beyond that, it was hard to guess. "The Rho's well enough to heal on his own, thanks to you. Merilee…" She sighed. "Ah don't know about her. Her body's not hurt aside from a couple bruises, and the baby's fine, praise the Lord. But the poor child's mind is a mess."