by Eileen Wilks
Either the woman was sincerely nuts, Lily decided, or she was sincerely… well, something completely outside Lily’s experience. This was no put-on. She found herself tugged toward belief, maybe because she needed to believe. To think she’d found someone who could help.
But Cullen was the opposite of gullible, and he’d brought them here, to this woman. “You’re saying that you experience what someone thousands of years dead lived through. You don’t remember it. You experience it.”
“That’s right. But once we’ve finished our apprenticeships, we don’t open our suitcases often. We remember what’s in them well enough for most things.”
The sort of memories that would be saved wouldn’t be pleasant, would they? They’d be from the big moments— the life-and-death struggles of the clan, not a baby’s first steps or the beauty of a sunrise on a particular morning. Lily could see why the Rhej didn’t open her “suitcases” often.
“I’d planned to tell you all of this anyway,” the old woman said. “Along with a great deal more, including some of those songs and stories. You’re Nokolai now. You need to know your clan. But you won’t have time for that now. So.” She slapped her palm on the table. “Time to spill your secrets. Tell me what you know or have guessed about Rule’s disappearance.”
It didn’t take long. Lily knew how to boil a report down and present it dispassionately. She left out what Karonski had told them, of course, simply saying they’d had a lead on a possible source for opening a hellgate, but it hadn’t panned out.
“So Rule’s in the demon realm.” The Rhej’s voice was heavy. She was silent a moment. “It was Cullen’s idea, I take it. To come to me.”
“Yes. We need to open a gate, and we don’t know how. Can you help us?”
She shook her head, but it looked more like “let me think” than a refusal, so Lily held her tongue. For several moments the old woman frowned at her thoughts.
“You’ve brought me a hard one,” she said at last. “Normally I’d refuse and then grieve. There are things we’re not allowed to reveal. That’s another reason Cullen isn’t fond of us,” she added. “We know things that we won’t tell him. Drives him crazy.”
Lily smiled faintly. “It would.”
“But now…” Her frown deepened. “I’ve been Rhej for forty-two years. I was apprenticed for twelve years before that. When I say I listen to the Lady, I’m not talking about hearing voices. If I get a feeling, a certain kind of feeling, I know it’s from her. Oh, when it’s clan business, I still use Tell-Me-Three-Times to confirm my feeling. That’s how we’re trained—check and double-check, using different rituals. But most of us only hear the Lady’s voice once in our lives. It’s enough.” She gave a short nod.
“Do you have one of those feelings now?”
She snorted. “Got better than that. There’s one time we don’t use Tell-Me-Three-Times. If the Lady ups and speaks, well, that’s it. Can’t mistake her voice for anyone or anything else, not if you’ve ever heard it. And we all have, that once. Well, she woke me up last night. Three o’clock in the damned morning, and for the second time in my life I heard her voice.”
Lily’s heart was pounding. “What did she say?”
“Bring him back.”
She closed her eyes, so dizzy with relief she swayed. “Then you’ll do it.”
“I’ll do what I can. It may not be enough. The sort of memories you need… they were split hundreds of years ago. Too dangerous to rest just with one person. None of us holds the entire spell to open a gate.”
“Then what?” she demanded. “What do we do? Will the other Rhejes help?”
“They should. When the Lady speaks… but you’d better hope the she’s been shaking some other shoulders. The ban’s been round for a long time, and we all remember why it was put in place. This is going to take time. Some of the others…” Her head turned toward the wall with the recliner. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Cullen. If you just have to hear what’s going on; come on in.”
A few seconds later a lean wolf trotted in the front door. He was smaller than Rule’s wolf-form—his shoulders would hit below her waist—and his coat was a pale silver, not the black-and-silver of Rule’s fur. And the sight of him hurt her heart.
Cynna made a small sound. Lily looked at her. “Knowing about it and seeing it are two different things, aren’t they?”
“Yeah.” Cynna’s eyes never left the wolf, who came up to the table and fixed the Rhej with a pair of disconcertingly bright blue eyes.
“I guess you heard the most of it,” the old woman said.
Cullen-wolf nodded.
“This is not going to be easy.” She contemplated things for a moment and then pushed her chair back. “Or quick, so I’d best get started. You can take me to Isen’s house. I’ll use his phone. Someone bring the cookies. Isen’s fond of chocolate chip.” She stood. “I’m Hannah, by the way.”
Cullen yipped and then pointed with his nose at Cynna.
“Wondering about that, are you? Why I let her learn so much?” Suddenly the old woman grinned and her face lit up, bright as a mischievous child. “I did say I’d explain. After all, she’s not clan yet.”
“Ah…” Cynna looked taken aback. “What do you mean, yet?”
Hannah’s grin widened. “Just what it sounds like. You’ll have to become Nokolai sooner or later. You’re the next Rhej.”
TWENTY-NINE
RULE woke from his first true, deep sleep in hell with a hard ache in his leg; the scents of earth, water, and smoke in his nostrils; and a clear head. He lay quietly, eyes closed, savoring the relief.
Most of his memories of the period immediately following the demon’s bone-setting were a blur of pain punctuated by fitful sleep. Lily had woken him periodically, coaxing him to drink from her cupped hands. Sometimes he’d woken on his own. She’d always been near.
He did recall how he’d gotten to the cave. Lily had called down a dragon.
The agony of having his bone set had left him too weak and dizzy to stand. She’d been determined to get him in the cave, where there was water, since they lacked any kind of bowl or pot. The demon was strong enough to handle Rule’s weight, but too small to manage his bulk. Lily had gotten one of the “coverings” the dragon had mentioned, a thick braided mat she could use as a stretcher. But there had been no way to lower him from the sandbox to the beach.
He’d tried to tell her to wait until he’d healed enough to do it on his own. Maybe his meaning lost something in the translation, or maybe she was just stubborn. She’d called for help.
One of the coppery-brown dragons had descended. Rule remembered the way Lily had ordered it to be careful of his ribs and gentle when it set him down. He remembered the miserable jerk of the takeoff, too, with the talons wrapped around his middle, but the flight had been brief. And the dragon had sent him down gently as ordered, right on the mat Lily had waiting outside the cave. Gan had dragged him in.
He’d been glad of the water, he admitted now. But his bladder was about to burst.
How long had he been sleeping?
Rule was familiar with injury and its aftermath. Lupi played hard, trained hard, and often fought hard, and their bodies cleansed themselves of pain killers and as efficiently as they disposed of alcohol and other toxins. So pain was no stranger. He knew to ride it, not fight it. But he’d never been cut off from the sweet song of the moon or away from Earth’s rhythms.
He hadn’t been sure he would heal.
Lupi drew from both earth and moon magic. The Change was wrought by their interplay, when the moon’s call set the earth dancing in his blood and bones. Here there was no moon, and this earth wasn’t Earth. Yet it was enough like his earth, it seemed. His sense of time was distorted, but he thought no more than a day or two had passed—a little slow, but close enough to his normal rate of healing.
His hunger fit that estimate. It had been much too long since he’d eaten.
He took a moment more to assess his situation
. His head didn’t hurt at all, so the concussion was healed. His ribs… well, he’d find out in a moment. Scents told him that Lily was near but not right beside him. He smelled demon and dragon, too, but more faintly—neither were present now. Good. But the smoke… what was that from?
He opened his eyes.
The cave was a single chamber about twenty feet deep, fairly regular, with a sandy floor. It was dim where he lay near the rear, but he saw well enough. The rough ceiling was less than five feet overhead—enough head room for him in this form, but Lily must have had to stoop to tend him.
The fire was near the cave’s mouth. So was Lily. She was feeding it sticks. She was clothed, he noted with surprise. She’d wrapped a length of red fabric around her torso like a sarong. More of the dragon’s coverings, he supposed. Like the one beneath him, the braided mat Gan had dragged him in here on.
Time to find out what shape he was in. Awkwardly he clambered to his feet, holding the splinted leg carefully.
Shit. That hurt. Just his leg, though. The ribs were tender, but not painful. Good. They’d be fully healed in another day or so. His leg would take longer. That had been a bad break. A week? Maybe a little more…
“What do you think you’re doing?” Lily made a bee-line for him. “You don’t need to be standing, for God’s sake. Lie down. Whatever you need, I’ll get it.”
He looked at her wryly and started for the mouth of the cave, clumsy but determined. Some things she couldn’t do for him.
“Rule. You’re not listening.” She kept pace beside him, looking worried. “You do understand me, don’t you?”
He nodded.
“Well, then, why… oh.” She nodded. “Right. Uh, I’ve been using the grassy area for a privy, but that’s too far for you. I guess… what’s wrong?”
He’d paused in the mouth of the cave. Surely it had been lighter before. He looked up at the sky, where two dragons soared, high above. It was definitely darker than it had been. He looked at her.
“The light’s fading,” she agreed. “Looks like night does fall in hell, after all. Or in parts of it. Gan says there’s no natural night and day here, but light and darkness get tugged around by the different demon lords. Xitil keeps her realm light most of the time, but the lord of the realm over there”—she waved out at the ocean— “goes for a more regular light-dark cycle. The dragons can’t regulate their territory the way the demon lords do, so it trends along with its neighbors. This close to the ocean, we’re in for bouts of darkness. That’s one reason I wanted the fire.”
He glanced over at it, nodded, and resumed his slow progress.
She kept pace beside him. “I sent Gan for some firewood. There wasn’t much on the beach to burn. I hope it gets back soon—I’m almost out of sticks.” She grinned. “At first Gan said starting a fire was easy, that demons can all do small magics like that. But he—it—took forever to get this one going. It blames the dragons, of course.”
He glanced at her.
“Apparently they have sort of a dampening effect on magic. Gan says they soak it up.”
The demon had said earlier that dragons were immune to magic. Apparently they weren’t immune in the way Lily was, though, with it bouncing off them. They simply absorbed it.
That is, if the stupid little shit was telling the truth, or even knew what was true. Where was the demon, anyway? Rule looked up and down the beach. No sign of it—and that bright orange skin did stand out.
Well, he was far enough from the cave now. He’d have to squat and pee like a girl, though. He didn’t think he could balance on two legs.
As soon as he started, his attentive nurse discovered a sudden need to attend to something in the cave.
He hobbled back. It was awkward as hell. He promised himself that the next time he saw a three-legged dog hopping around he’d have a better appreciation for the skill involved.
If he ever saw a dog again. Or anything else of Earth.
Lily was messing with the fire. She looked up, her expression almost shy. “Are you hungry? There’s some fruit. A little meat, too… well, dead animals, really. There’s two of them. There were three, but I tried to skin one and made a mess of it. I’ve been sharpening one of the bones the dragons brought when we splinted your leg,” she added, “but it’s not much of a knife.”
He could smell the game—at least a day dead, but not spoiled. It would do. He gave her a nod and started for the back of the cave.
“No, I’ll get it.” She stood. “You’ve been rambling around enough.”
He decided not to object, partly because that short walk had left him stupidly winded, partly because of the look on her face.
Happiness. He hadn’t seen that in her eyes since her sister’s wedding.
He lay down near the fire. The flames were small and gave off little heat, but a welter of emotions. Fire was a comfort for humans, bane to most beasts. He was uneasily aware of how little he enjoyed the flames. Surely the man hadn’t slipped so far away in such a short time?
And yet he’d attacked without thought. When he learned what the demon had done, that his mate was dying because of it, there had been only the killing rage, the need to feel the demon’s life bleed away beneath his teeth.
If the dragon hadn’t stopped him, he would have been responsible for Lily’s death.
He held no anger for the dragon over his injury. He’d earned his broken leg. It scraped against his raw places now for Lily to look so happy at the chance to do him a service, when he deserved it so little.
She needed the demon now. Needed it far more than she did him. And however ugly that thought was, he’d better get used to it. He had to get along with Gan somehow, or he’d make things harder for her.
But what, he wondered with a blind sort of agony, had happened to the part of her left behind? What became of such a strange remnant? Lady, he thought, and stopped, unsure what to ask. Lady, she is yours. Care for her. All of her.
Lilly brought back two creatures that looked like a cross between a rat and a naked jackrabbit. Nothing he’d seen here had fur. She glanced from the limp bodies to the fire. “I could cook them. Or try to.”
He shook his head. Even in this form he enjoyed his meat cooked when it wasn’t a fresh kill, but he was too hungry to wait.
Before he could take the game from her hand, though, he heard something approaching. He bristled to warn Lily. A few seconds later, he heard Gan muttering under its breath. A surge of loathing flattened his ears.
“Rule? What is it?”
The demon came into view. “This better be enough wood,” it grumbled. It was carrying several branches under one arm. “I had to climb to the top to get it.”
Lily frowned at Rule. “It’s just Gan. You aren’t going to attack it again, are you?”
It was harder than it should have been to remember the reasons he couldn’t. The wolf wanted to, badly. And the man didn’t disagree, but knew better.
His tail twitched in disgust, partly at himself. He took the two rat-rabbits from Lily’s hand. He’d eat them outside. Less of a mess—and he wouldn’t have to smell the demon while he ate.
He passed Gan on the threshold.
“Hey, look who’s awake,” it said. “It’s old dark, mute, and crippled. Going to have a picnic, fur-face?”
Rule ignored it, carrying his meal several paces away and lying down. He glanced up. The sky was much darker now, more gray than copper, and the air had that near-shimmer of approaching twilight. And there were more dragons overhead than before—three, five… six now, and wasn’t that another one headed this way?
Either they wanted extra guards at night, or the dragons were protection as well as jailers. Night often brought new dangers, and they didn’t want Lily killed.
On that one point, he and the dragons agreed. He bit into a rat-rabbit and grimaced. Good thing he wasn’t a picky eater.
“How far away do you think you were?” Lily asked the demon.
“How do I know?”
That jolted Rule. It echoed so precisely the way she’d reacted to the mate bond—test it, learn the parameters.
“Maybe three kilometers.” There was a clatter as Gan dropped its load.
“Did you go to the limit of the bond?”
“I said I would, didn’t I? It was like walking into a Zone that doesn’t want you there. Everything turned thick and I couldn’t breathe, so I backed up.”
“I didn’t feel anything.” Lily crouched to feed one of the smaller branches into the fire. “Break a couple more in half, would you? They’re too big.”
“Of course you didn’t feel anything.” Gan cracked a three-inch thick branch over its knee. “I’m the one partly inside you, not the other way around.”
The bond between Lily and the demon wasn’t exactly like the mate bond, then. That didn’t make Rule feel any better.
Rule finished off the first rat-rabbit methodically, glancing overhead every so often. The dragons were gathering along the top of the cliff. Odd. He’d stay out here a while, he decided. Keep watch.
“How did the dragons react to you climbing the cliff?” she asked.
“One of them kept track of me, but from a distance. They know I can’t go far. You’ll keep your end of our deal now, right?”
Rule stiffened, looking back at the cave. Lily had made a deal with the demon?
Lily had her fire going nicely now. She sat beside it. “Of course. One load of firewood equals five rounds of I Spy”
Gan grinned, showing its pointy teeth. “I get to go first.” It plopped down on the dirt floor, stubby legs extended, and leaned back on its tail as it looked around, its gaze landing on Rule outside. “I spy something furry and stupid.”
