Mortal Danger

by Eileen Wilks

  He hadn’t had eyes at the time, but Lily knew he’d still “seen” the sorcéri. Apparently the staff had shown up on his sorcerous radar screen, too. “I’ll bite. What did you see?”

  “A wound, a rent, a tear in the fabric of the world. The wooden staff you saw may be a new construct, but the underlying truth of the staff is a very, very old rip in reality. That’s why you need me—to close that hole. ‘Cauterize the wound,’ as the poem says.” He was quite cheerful about it. “I’m good with fire.”

  “You are,” Rule acknowledged. “But the Indomitus says to burn the staff with ‘black fire.’ I’ve never seen you use that. I’m not sure what it is.”

  “Mage fire. It’s a bit dangerous. I’d no call to mess with it before, but I’m learning.”

  Considering that Cullen found it amusing to play with stray sorcéri in her living room, she didn’t want to know what he considered “a bit dangerous.” “I hope you’re learning well away from populated areas.”

  He gave her a reproachful look. “But of course. It doesn’t pay to alarm the neighbors with the occasional fire.”

  She opened her mouth to mention a few other hazards associated with fire—and yawned instead. “Sorry. You’d think a threat to the fabric of reality would keep me awake.”

  “To put it another way,” Rule said, “good night, Cullen.”

  Cullen chuckled. “I can take a hint. I don’t always, but I can.” He came close enough to bend and drop a kiss on her cheek. “Get some sleep, luv. You can pester me with questions while I bedevil you with demands later.”

  “Leave your phone turned on for once, and I will.”

  “For you, I’ll keep it turned on.” He started for the door.

  “Cullen …”

  “Yes?” His eyebrows went up. “You’ve changed your mind? You’ll accede to my every wish?”

  “What do you know about possession?”

  “Not much. The religious honchos are bloody close-mouthed about it, always have been. Jealous of their turf, I imagine. Still, my knowledge, patchy though it may be, would be difficult to cover before Rule grabbed me by the scruff of my neck and tossed me out. Is there a more specific question you’d like to ask?”

  Lily squirmed mentally, but got it said. “Why would faith be a protection?”

  “Damned if I know.” He grinned. “Little joke there. I don’t know that faith is a protection.”

  “Nettie believes it is. So does the FBI.”

  His eyebrows shot up. “Is that so? Interesting … maybe The Exorcist got one thing right.” He turned his grin on Rule. “Remember when that came out? People thought it was for real. Bunch of idiots came crawling out of the woodwork, claiming to be experts. Lord, I remember this one ass on Phil Donahue—said he’d performed dozens of exorcisms. Dozens.” He chuckled.

  Lily snorted. “You’re undercutting your credibility, Cullen. The Exorcist came out before I was born. You and Rule might have been out of diapers, but not by much.”

  Cullen slid Rule an enigmatic glance. “Ah, you caught me. I do love to make myself sound important, but that was a bit obvious, wasn’t it?”

  But he hadn’t been trying to sound important. He’d been chatting easily, conversationally, about something he expected Rule to remember—but that was absurd. Lily told herself she was being ridiculous, but the question came out anyway. “Just how old are you?’

  “Persuaded you I’m a well-preserved centenarian, have I?” Cullen’s smile was teasing. “Or maybe just sixty or seventy. I ought to be in the record books. I doubt there’s another stripper my age still performing.”

  Rule’s flat voice cut him off. “Don’t.”

  Lily’s stomach did the elevator thing—as if she’d plunged down so suddenly that gravity hadn’t kept up.

  Cullen sighed. “Didn’t mean to put my foot in your mouth.”

  “I know. I’ve put off telling her, hoping for the right time … which this certainly isn’t, but I won’t lie to her about it. Or ask you to.”

  Lily found her voice. “Lie about what?”

  He touched her hair. “I’m sorry, nadia. I should have told you.”

  Told her what? Not what he seemed to be saying. That was preposterous. She shoved to her feet. “You are not a hundred years old.”

  A smile touched his lips—young, firm lips. “No. Nothing so extreme. But I am older than I look. Older than I’ve allowed you to believe.”

  Her heart was pounding. “How old?”

  “Fifty-four. Cullen is a bit older.”

  “Fifty-nine next June.” Cullen’s grimace was frankly apologetic. “I hope you noticed that I didn’t lie to you. Quite.”

  She looked at the tall, beautiful young man claiming to be older than her mother and shook her head. “No, that isn’t possible.”

  Neither of them answered. Cullen looked apologetic. Rule was wearing his inscrutable face, the one she couldn’t read worth shit.

  They meant it. She began to pace. “How could I never have heard about this? How could you have fooled everyone all this time?” How could he have fooled her?

  Rule rose. He moved so smoothly. He couldn’t be fifty-four. “We’ve gone to some extremes to keep it secret. Until three years ago, it was still legal to shoot us on sight in five states. How much worse would it have been if humans knew we live twice as long as they do?”

  Twice as long?

  Lily’s heart was pounding too hard, too fast. Her head felt stuffed with cotton. She’d known Rule was older than he looked—which was about her age. Twenty-eight. His assurance suggested a man beyond the mixed insecurity and infallibility of youth. Mid-thirties, she thought. That’s what she’d guessed him to be the first time she saw him. “Your driver’s license says you’re thirty-five.”

  “Well.” Cullen stood and headed for the door. “Never let it be said I’m not a sensitive guy, and I’m sensing that I’m not wanted right now.” He reached for the knob.

  “Wait,” Rule said. “Can you set some kind of wards here? Otherwise we’ll have to crate up Harry and head to my apartment.”

  “Sure, I could do something. Not true wards—they’d take too long—but a bit of ‘don’t see me’ might do the trick. Tidy little spell. Doesn’t use much power. Fuzzes the mind so people can’t quite locate the spot I tie it to. I don’t know if it works on demons, though.”

  “I’d prefer to keep demons out.”

  “I don’t know of anything that will do that,” Cullen said frankly. “Some believe holy symbols work, but I’m skeptical. In the old days … but we can’t work with what was, can we? In any event, you’ve got an alarm system in place. Cats hate demons. Harry’ll set up a howl if one comes near.”

  Lily looked for her cat, but Harry had apparently tired of watching the corner. He was nowhere in sight.

  “Your call,” Rule said quietly to her.

  Her hands had made fists. She didn’t notice until the stinging in her palms grew too sharp. She forced herself to open them. “Here. They found me at my sister’s wedding. They must know where your apartment is.”

  “Cullen?” Rule said.

  “Will do. Do you have rosemary?”

  “Will the dried stuff work?”

  They didn’t need her. Lily picked up her weapon. “I’m going to take a shower.”

  Cullen’s eyebrows went up. “Armed?”

  “Your spells may not work on demons, but I’m betting my bullets will.”

  EIGHT

  IN the bathroom Lily turned on the tap, stripped off her bridesmaid’s dress, wadded it up, and stuffed it in the trash. In spite of what she’d said to Cullen, her gun was on the bedside table, not in here with her. Her bathroom was too tiny for armed combat.

  Panties and bra went on the floor as the tiny room filled with steam. She peeled off the gauze pad covering her wound.

  Most of the damage didn’t show. The doctors thought she’d been hit by a ricochet—there’d been no scorching around the entry, and the bullet had lodged
instead of ripping a second hole in her back on its way out. But it had tumbled inside her flesh, tearing up muscle and chipping bone.

  All she saw was a depressed, puckered circle, still an angry red. A crescent-shaped scab at one edge marked where it had torn open when she fell. They told her the scar would fade in time. She hoped so. She’d known since she was ten that she could be damaged, permanently and irreversibly—and that scars didn’t have to stop her. But she was vain enough to dislike the way this one looked.

  Rule thought the in-sleep thing might have speeded up healing on her shoulder as well as her head. Gingerly, Lily touched the small, puckered circle.

  Orange.

  There were drugs that crosswired the brain so you tasted a color or smelled a sound. Synesthesia, that’s what it was called. LSD, peyote, mescaline … even marijuana had been known to blur the lines between the senses. But she wasn’t on drugs, and her regular senses weren’t crossing things up. Just the extra sense that let her touch magic.

  Maybe this was normal. Her Gift was rare. She’d never met another touch sensitive, and there was precious little about them in folklore. She didn’t have much to go on except her own experience, and she’d never run across a demon before. Maybe she experienced the magic from other realms differently.

  But why had it stuck to her?

  Frowning, she adjusted the water temperature, stepped into the tub, and pulled the shower curtain closed.

  God, but that felt good. For a moment the sheer animal pleasure of hot water blanked her mind. She wanted to sleep right here, standing up, with hot water pouring over her … and not have to face Rule.

  That was just lame. Disgusted with herself, Lily squirted shampoo into her hand. She could use her left hand enough to do that, but she couldn’t raise that arm over her head. Washing her hair one-handed was awkward, but she’d be damned if she’d go to bed with dried blood sticking the strands together.

  Rule had been washing her hair for her since she got hurt.

  Guilt twinged. So he was older than she’d thought. Lots of women dated older men. What was the big deal?

  She closed her eyes and let the water stream over her. He was fifty-four, she was twenty-eight, so he was twenty-six years older than her. Twenty-six years was pretty much a lifetime to her. Not to him. That was the problem.

  She got out of the shower, dried off, and told the mother-voice in her head nattering on about taking care of her skin to shut up. Then reached for the lotion anyway.

  Did he still argue with the mother-voice in his head? Or maybe it was a father-voice, because he was a guy … but surely at fifty-four he’d have found his own voice to listen to.

  Lily pulled on a T-shirt and panties, tugged a wide-toothed comb through her hair, and gave serious thought to going to bed without drying it. The prospect of a wet pillow dissuaded her, though. She got out the blow drier and plugged it in.

  Had they had blow driers when he was growing up? He would have been born about 1950. Blow driers came along a lot later than that, didn’t they?

  He looked maybe thirty. It hurt to find out he wasn’t. That he had let her believe an untruth. She’d thought they stood on roughly the same cultural ground, and they didn’t. When she was a kid, she’d listened to disco. He’d listened to … what? The Beatles? Elvis? She’d grown up watching Cagney and Lacey, Cheers, Happy Days. Rule had grown up in Happy Days.

  She clicked off the blow drier, wound the cord around it, and shoved it in a drawer. She started to get out a fresh gauze pad and the tape, frowned, and decided she didn’t need a bandage. Nettie’s religious version of magic seemed to have worked on her—which was disconcerting, but she’d work out the ramifications of that later.

  Then she took a deep breath and opened the door.

  Rule was in bed, propped up against a couple pillows on the right side—she always slept on the left—with the sheet pulled up over his legs and hips. Beneath the sheet he was naked. He thought pajamas were one of the silliest things ever invented.

  He was watching her closely. His eyes made her think of water at night—full of mysteries and hints, revealing little.

  She’d had it with mystery. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Before you became clan, I couldn’t. After that … fear, I suppose. Ignoble, but accurate.”

  “You were afraid I’d be upset?”

  “Aren’t you?”

  Upset wasn’t the right word. Confused, disoriented, achingly aware of all the differences between them …

  “It isn’t as if you haven’t kept secrets, too. I’ve respected that.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Grandmother.”

  She blinked. “But you know about her. I didn’t tell you, but you saw her in action. Benedict even saw her Change.”

  His mouth turned down at one corner, a crooked not-smile. “I also know there aren’t any, ah, were-beasts. Yet that’s what she is. I haven’t pressed you for an explanation.”

  “Bully for you. I don’t have one.”

  “I wasn’t asking you to explain.”

  She gritted her teeth. “You aren’t listening. I didn’t say I wouldn’t explain. I can’t, because I don’t know. If there’s anyone more secretive than your father, it’s my grandmother.”

  He didn’t say anything for a moment and then grimaced and rubbed his chest. “That does make my silence harder to explain.”

  “You’re my mother’s age. My father is only two years older than you are.” A thought struck her. “You do age, don’t you?”

  His eyebrows lifted. “You’ve met my father, among others. Yes, we age. Just more slowly. Perhaps we heal the free radical damage scientists have begun touting as one cause of aging.”

  Lupi healed everything from colds to STDs to bullets. Why wouldn’t they be able to heal most of the damage that caused aging? “Copies,” she muttered.

  “What?”

  “I’ve read about it. By the time we’re seven or so, every cell in our bodies is a copy. By the time we’re seventy, our DNA is running copies of copies of copies, and things start to wear out. Maybe the same thing about you that messes up lab tests keeps your copies clearer than mine.”

  “You do like things logical.”

  “Why not? Magic is a system, right? Figure out the rules and you know where you stand.”

  “You have more in common with Cullen than you’d like to think.”

  No, she didn’t. “Is there anything else you haven’t gotten around to telling me? Anything important?”

  Two slow beats of silence were enough of an answer. Her stomach hurt. “We haven’t been together long. I know that, but—”

  “That isn’t it. I … hell.” He ran a hand over his hair. “I’m not supposed to tell you. It’s … it falls within the Rhej’s province.”

  The priestess or historian she was supposed to talk to in a couple days. “So this a clan secret. A lupus secret. It isn’t just about you.”

  He didn’t say anything. She turned away, padding over to her side of the bed. She could understand. She would probably have to keep secrets from him, too, sometimes. FBI secrets.

  But they wouldn’t be about her. Dammit. Maybe it was childish, but she wanted Rule to tell her, not this woman she’d never met. She yanked back the covers.

  “Lily.”

  She scowled at him.

  “I’m probably sterile.”

  Her mouth opened. Closed. She swallowed. “You have a son.”

  “A blessing. A miracle, perhaps. But I’m fifty-four years old, and Toby is my only child. Perhaps ‘all but sterile’ is more accurate.”

  His face was closed up, not letting her see what it had cost him to tell her. “But … you can’t be sure. Unless you’ve been tested—”

  “You aren’t thinking. Laboratory tests don’t yield useful results for one of the Blood.”

  Of course. Of course she knew that. “Still, you’ve been with a lot of women, and not always hung around long enough to
know if … you can’t be sure.”

  “It’s given to us to know the moment our seed quickens.”

  They knew? Lupi always knew if a woman got pregnant? Rule would know if she … Lily rubbed her chest. There didn’t seem to be enough air in her lungs.

  She used birth control, of course. She’d started taking the pill as soon as she got her period, years before her first lover. Her mother had understood. Without, for once, the need for explanations or long discussion, her mother had known why Lily needed that protection.

  She’d been eight when it happened, not yet fertile. She’d been abducted. Stuffed in a trunk and stolen … she and her best friend, Sarah. They’d played hookie and gone to the beach, where a nice, grandfatherly man grabbed them. Lily hadn’t been raped because the police found her in time.

  In time for her. Not for Sarah. So Lily knew in her blood, bones, and sinew that a woman’s choices could be stolen, and she’d always made sure that choice—the decision to bear a child—rested with her.

  Only now it didn’t.

  “I’m sorry,” he said quietly.

  “No.” She took a deep breath, shoving confusion aside for now. “Don’t apologize for what you can’t help. I can see …” She could see him again with his son, swinging Toby in the air, filled with a clear, unfettered joy. Little though she would have believed it a month ago, Rule was a man made for fatherhood. “I’m sorry for your loss.” The words she’d spoken to the families of victims seemed to fit.

  “I’ve had time to grow accustomed. This is a blow for you. I don’t know how you feel about having children.”

  She didn’t, either. “There wasn’t anyone on the horizon, so …” She gave a one-shoulder shrug. “I’ve put off thinking about it.” Now she didn’t know what to feel.

  “You can still have children, if you choose.”

  Her mouth tightened. “By someone else, you mean.”

  “I understand that your upbringing tells you that would be wrong. My upbringing tells me it would be wrong to deprive you of such a fundamental joy as children out of a disinclination to share.”