Blood Lines

THIRTY-TWO

NOT a wind, Lily thought in the first split second as magic gusted across her face, prickled up her nose, and burned her hands.

A gale. Stronger than the first one, horribly strong.

Reality splintered. Here—here—here—everywhere the vortex of the Change seized men and spun them into other shapes. Screams sounded. One of Lily's guards dropped his hands or lost them to the Change.

It was all she needed. Her elbow rocked into the other guard's ribs, distracting him from his battle with the Change. He howled and bent, and reality splintered even as she spun away, diving for a rifle dropped by one of Benedict's guards.

She got her hands on the rifle, rolled, and flowed to her feet.

Wolves. Wolves everywhere, with a scattering of women uncertainly upright in the sea of fur. None near her were two-legged except the Rhej, who stood motionless, her eyes closed and her lips moving; the Rho, equally unmoving where he lay on the ground, unconscious or dead, his skin blooming with dark lesions… and Rule.

Rule was on his knees as Victor had wanted, his head thrown back, his face contorted. Screaming. And bleeding. Even as she stared, more blood sprang out in drops on his skin like sweat.

She threw herself into motion only to jerk to a halt, nearly falling. Benedict's hand had closed over her arm and stopped her. She rounded on him and would have hit him—or tried to—if that hand had been free instead of full of rifle.

That flashback to sanity brought with it a full-fledged thought: his hand had stopped her. Benedict wasn't wolf anymore, but he had been. His clothes were gone. How could he have Changed back so quickly?

"No!" he shouted over the howling. "You can't touch him now. The mantle has him."

The power wind still rushed over her skin, but silently. The howling came from lupus throats—a dozen, two dozen, more. As Rule fought some terrible internal battle, Leidolf howled.

"Why doesn't he Change?" she cried.

Benedict's voice was hoarse. "He can't."

The Rhej moved. Only four steps, but each taken with such ponderous care she might have been treading quicksand or crossing a minefield. She knelt between Rule and the prostrate Rho, stretched out her arm, and seized Victor's hand. With her other hand she gripped Rule's shoulder.

Lily jolted, instinctively wanting no one to touch Rule if she couldn't, but Benedict's grip held her fast. The Rhej's eyes rolled back. She held there, motionless in the dead grass, a white-robed bridge between the two men—one unconscious at best, the other…

Rule stopped screaming. Slowly he straightened, swaying, though he remained on his knees. The blood drops began to dry on his skin. His eyes were open but it was obvious he saw nothing as tremors snaked up his spine in quick succession. The Rhej released him.

Growls rumbled up from a throat far too close. Her head swung. Most of the wolves howled or watched the tableau of Rule, the Rhej, and their Rho, but two didn't. Two gray-black wolves the size of small ponies watched them, ears flat, heads lowered, hackles raised. Then another one moved, this one with reddish fur, and smaller—Great Dane instead of Shetland. She shouldered the rifle.

"Don't shoot the little one," Benedict said, his own rifle ready. "It's Cullen."

Suddenly the air lost its rush of power and was just air, cold and still. Then the magic returned, but quieter now, brushing her skin in an ebbing rhythm until it tickled her face like dandelion fluff.

The howling died, but the growling increased as more wolves focused on her and Benedict and the red wolf standing between them and the rest. The ground was littered with clothing. Shoes, jeans, slacks, belts, shirts—all had fallen to the ground when the form they belonged to whistled into elsewhere and came back reshaped.

Rule slumped forward suddenly, catching himself with one hand so that he didn't quite land on his face in the dirt. But that arm trembled, and his chest heaved as if he'd run for miles and miles.

"Goddamn it." She couldn't go to him, not with wolves surrounding them, wolves with little that was human shining in their dark eyes. Dozens now watched her and Benedict with hackles raised, their growls a rumbling chorus.

"Leidolf!Heliedtoyou!"

A woman's voice, rich and loud: the Rhej. Lily spared her the barest flick of a glance. The woman had moved closer to Victor, rolling him onto his back. She held his hand in both of hers as she spoke. "Your Rho lied. He didn't let the mantle choose. He tried to force it on Rule Turner, and it cost him. Look at Victor. Smell him. Your Rho has the cancer, and he damn near killed himself tryin' to find a legal way to kill someone he'd granted guest rights. He'd die now, be dead in seconds, if I let go of him. And I will let go if you attack our guests. I will let go, and the Rho will die."

Some of the growling faded. Not all.

"Women," the Rhej called, "your brothers know you. Pet them, touch them, help them remember who they are." She looked at Lily, and her voice dropped. "Go to your man. Move slow, but go to him. Get him on his feet. He's got the heir's portion now. He was winnin' the fight till the node burst open and damn near the whole mantle was just sucked right up into him. I forced most of it back, but he's heir. Leidolf won't like that, but they have to feel it, smell it on him."

Lily did fine on the "go to him" part, not so well on moving slowly. But she made it without inciting a lupus riot, knelt, and got her free arm around Rule.

He raised his head to look at her, his eyes bleary with pain. Barely aware.

Benedict moved to Rule's other side, and the red wolf posted himself in. Lily shifted, getting Rule's arm over her shoulder as Benedict did the same. They got him to his feet.

He swayed, shook his head. "Lily."

"Here. I'm right here."

"You got to get out of here," the Rhej told them, her voice hoarse. "All of you. The ones that ain't back yet—you don't smell right to them. The ones that're coming back, they'll be thinking Challenge soon, as much as they think at all."

One of the biggest wolves tipped his muzzle toward her, ears forward. His coloring reminded Lily of Rule's wolf form—black, barely tipped with silver.

"That's right." The Rhej addressed the wolf as if it had spoken. "If they start in on the Challenges, he's dead." A jerk of her head indicated Rule. "And so is Leidolf, 'cause if they kill the heir the mantle will snap back into Victor. I'm barely holding life in him now—that mantle rebounds on him, he's dead. I need you two-footed, Alex. I need your voice with mine, and so do they. Try. You're Lu Nuncio now. For the Lady's sake and Leidolf's, try."

The wolf whined unhappily and closed his eyes. Reality pleated itself, but slowly. For the first time Lily could almost follow the Change as it happened… almost, for some of it was simply other, too far outside what the senses could report or her mind absorb.

Fur folded into skin, legs kinked, lengthened; there blinked into not-there, into somewhere, into… a man, a big man, almost Benedict's size, naked, his dark skin gleaming with sweat in the cold air, his face tight with pain. "Shit," he said. "Shit."

"Buck up." That was his sister, unsympathetic. "Talk to them."

He straightened. After a moment he spoke, projecting his voice strongly. "Listen. I am Lu Nuncio, and you will listen. Does Leidolf kill those with guest rights? Do we remember the price of dishonor? Listen. Listen, and remember. In the days when Eiriu fought with Trath, when gnomes dwelled beneath the Earth and elves still walked its forests…"

A story. He was telling them a story, one from their oral history, one of the legends they'd been raised on. And it seemed to work. He had their attention.

"Girl," the Rhej said quietly, "bring your man here. Ah can't let go of Victor, but Rule Turner's bad muddled. No one's built to hold two mantles, an' he had damned near all of Leidolf's shoved in on top of the Nokolai heir's portion."

Lily exchanged glances with Benedict, and they did as she asked.

Rule had forgotten how to walk. He tilted to one side, then the other. He thrust one leg forward twice instead of alternating, realized that was wrong and stopped, rearing back so fast he nearly dragged Lily down. Benedict righted him.

The Rhej lowered herself to sit cross-legged on the cold ground, keeping her grip on Victor's hand. The Rho was a sight to frighten small children… hell, big, tough federal agents, too. Mottled skin sagged off his bones like congealed wax, skin mottled like a toad's by the cancers that had sprung up like mushrooms after a rain.

So fast. How could the tumors have grown so fast? "Can you help Rule?" she asked the Rhej, fear roughening her voice. "If you're keeping Victor alive, how much can you spare for Rule?"

A grin, unexpected and fierce, flashed across the dark face tilted up to them. "Damn near anything, right now. Ah've got more power to draw on than any Rhej since the dawn times." She looked at Rule. "Two-mantled," she said softly, making the term sound like a title. "Will you let me help you?"

Rule stirred as if trying to take more of his own weight, but sagged again. "Could use… help, serra."

"Ah need his hand." She reached up with hers.

Carefully Lily unwound Rule's arm from her shoulder, trusting Benedict to keep him upright. Rule managed to stretch out his hand himself. The woman took it in hers, frowned. "You've got some funny stuff in you."

Rule didn't seem able to answer, so Lily did. "Demon poison. He was wounded by one, and it got into him." Her voice wasn't steady. With all that had happened, she'd actually forgotten the demon poison.

"Don't think Ah can help with that. But with the other…" She closed her eyes, and began to hum… "Rock of Ages," Lily realized, the incongruity of hearing the old gospel hymn in this setting almost shocking her into a giggle.

Or maybe that was hysteria trying to blossom. She squelched it.

Alex was still speaking, telling a tale of some ancient Rho and his enemy… and a few feet away, reality did its splinter dance once more. Where there had been a red wolf, a naked Cullen stood bent over, hands on his knees, gasping.

Alex glanced that way. Without losing his storyteller's cadence, he said, "Eric. Reese. Can Nokolai do what Leidolf cannot? Change now. I need you two-legged. Now, Trath agreed to speak of truce with Eiriu," he went on, "and both would guest with Leidolf. But Trath had taken…"

Cullen moved more slowly than usual, bending to retrieve something from one of the piles of clothing. Not his slacks, however. A necklace. Sunlight glittered on the diamond he rehung around his neck.

Off to her left, two wolves fractured into pieces of otherness and began re-forming.

Rule straightened. His breathing evened, slowed. He turned his head, met her eyes… and he was back. Exhausted, his hair sweat-soaked, but back. He smiled at her, then at the Rhej. "Serra," he said, and did a very Rule thing. He raised the Rhej's hand and bent to place a kiss on it. "I thank you."

"Thank me later," she said tartly. "Get moving now."

"… agreed that Eiriu's power must be broken," Alex said, "for it had turned rancid with bloodlust. Reese, Eric, go with them. Get my keys from my pants. They'll take my Suburban; their own car is too far away. Now, Leidolf didn't want to break the bonds of…"

And so Lily was escorted through a field of wolves by five men, every one of them except her lover as bare as the day he was born. She now knew exactly what Rule's brother looked like naked. Clothes didn't do Benedict justice.

A few wolves growled as they passed, but none opposed them. She kept the rifle ready. Rule walked on his own, but his exhaustion was obvious—not that any of Leidolf were going to notice, because they wouldn't look at him. Their escorts kept track of her and Benedict and Cullen without once glancing at Rule. The wolves they passed through scented them—noses lifted, nostrils twitching—but none looked directly at Rule.

They could deal with the purely Nokolai Benedict, she supposed, or her own female self, but the one who was both Nokolai and their heir must have made them uneasy. Though maybe uneasy wasn't the right word.

Still, they made it to the road and across it, to a green Suburban parked in front of Victor's house. One of their escorts— Reese or Eric, she had no idea which was which—held out a set of keys. She reached for them, but Benedict was faster.

"Don't you think the one who hasn't Changed twice should drive?"

"No."

If he was still fast enough to beat her to the keys, he was probably up to driving. He was also still naked. "Maybe…" She glanced at the house, thinking of the AK-47 upstairs, but also about pants.

"No," Benedict said again. "We don't retrieve our things. We leave now."

She didn't argue.

Lily climbed in back with Rule. He held her hand and leaned his head back as they took off, the tires spitting dirt. "You're okay," she told him softly, but it was also a question.

He got that, turning his head to smile at her wearily. "Mostly. Things are still… a bit jumbled inside. What the Rhej did got the circuits uncrossed, so the new mantle's settling in, but it… makes words difficult right now."

She squeezed his hand, telling him words weren't needed.

Benedict was driving too fast for anyone but a lupus over the rough road. She approved, lowering the window so she could fire out if necessary. Lord knew there was plenty of cover if someone wanted to stage a last-minute ambush, and the way the road wound around, a party of wolves cutting straight through might be able to cut them off. She rested the rifle's barrel on the open window. "I'm going to come back and arrest Brady once he and the others are two-legged again."

"No need," Cullen said. "He's a dead man." He gave his head a shake. "I think I'm power drunk. If that's what the magic wind was like before—"

"This was worse. A lot worse. If it was this bad everywhere…" Reminded of the outside world, Lily released Rule's hand just as they took the turn up onto pavement, tires squealing.

It was probably safe to put the rifle down. She did, then got her phone from her pocket to call Ruben. She'd had three missed calls: her parents, the ever-popular Unknown, and Cynna. "Brady isn't dead," she pointed out. "In spite of everything, no one died."

"He meant that Rule will kill him," Benedict said.

"Urn… no." Cynna first, she decided and punched the call button. It rang and rang, though, without Cynna or her voice mail picking up. She frowned, checked that she had a connection, then called her own voice mail. "You're integrating more with the human world, remember? Killing people who piss you off is not the way to do that." She fast-forwarded past the first two messages.

"Lily." Rule squeezed her shoulder. "I am sorry, but they are right. Brady must die."

She turned startled eyes on him, but Cynna's message started, and her voice was one breath short of panic. Lily listened to the disjointed words with horror pooling in her gut. "Benedict," she said, and could not understand why her voice was so steady. "Have you got plenty of gas?"

"Yes."

"Hit it, then. Open it up. We need to get to D.C. We need to hurry. I… I'll get us an escort." Yes, an escort, a cop car with its cherry light clearing the way—they needed that. She turned to Rule and gripped his hand. "Jiri attacked the house. She got to Toby."