Blood Magic

by Eileen Wilks

  When Benedict moved, people got out of his way. Fast. She couldn’t come close to keeping up, but by putting everything she had into her sprint she managed to catch the openings in the crowd he created.

  People called out. The music died. She lost the Benedict-driven opening and was faced with a wall of bare backs. She resorted to shoving. This crowd wouldn’t care about her badge, and she had to get through.

  Rule was ahead. She felt him. Something had happened, something had gone wrong—

  “Nokolai!” Isen’s deep voice bellowed. “If you are not a guard, sit down! Now!”

  All over the field, they dropped. Men and women alike—even children—they all sat on the grass as their Rho had commanded. No questions, no hesitation.

  Except Lily. She was Nokolai and technically not a guard, but it didn’t occur to her to sit. Not when the way was suddenly clear. Not when she could see over the heads of those in front of her.

  Several hadn’t dropped to the ground. Guards. Benedict, of course, wasn’t sitting. He stood beside Isen, his eyes busy and his Glock in his hand. But he had nothing to shoot.

  And Rule. He wasn’t standing, but kneeling, kneeling next to a man stretched out in the grass. At first all she saw of that man were the legs, bare like most legs tonight. The rest of him was hidden by Cynna’s crimson-clad back, bent over him, and by the woman kneeling beside her, whom Lily recognized by the hair—long, dusty gray mixed with brown, a frizzy, flya way mane trailing to her waist.

  Nettie, the clan’s healer.

  Lily’s feet carried her two more steps at an angle, and she saw the rest. Saw Cullen Seabourne’s body lying peacefully in the grass, his still, empty face staring up at the starry sky.

  SIX

  “YOU are not dead,” Cynna was saying fiercely, her hands digging into Cullen’s shoulders. “You are not. You are not dead. Dammit, Cullen, you—”

  “I’ve got him,” Nettie said crisply. She’d flattened her hands on Cullen’s chest. “Cynna, get back. You’re leaking. It interferes.”

  Lily couldn’t feel her feet. She was standing, so they must still be there at the end of her legs, but she couldn’t feel them. Her last breath had pulled something bad inside her, unreality spreading like poison through her body, paralyzing her. No, she wanted to say along with Cynna. No, he can’t be dead. Cullen can’t be—

  Cullen’s chest quivered. It lifted, ever so slightly, then fell. His eyelids drifted closed.

  Lily sucked in a breath, too. This one dispelled the poison and she hurried to Cynna. “Come on, Cynna. Move back. Let Nettie work. You’re right. You’re right, he isn’t dead, but you have to move back.”

  He wasn’t dead now. Seconds ago, he had been. Or at least he hadn’t been breathing. An atavistic shiver threw goose bumps along Lily’s arms. She pulled on Cynna, who allowed it, lurching to her feet with Lily’s arm around her waist.

  “He’s not dead.” Cynna’s face was dry but oddly slack, as if shock had cut the muscles.

  “No, he isn’t. Look at his chest. Look at his eyes, Cynna. He closed them. Nettie did her thing and Cullen’s breathing.”

  A shudder traveled through Cynna like a minor earthquake. Lily tightened her arm as the woman’s knees went soft, bracing her legs so they didn’t both tumble to the ground.

  A second later Cynna stiffened, taking most of her weight again. “I’m fine,” she said. “I’m good. Cullen—”

  “Nettie’s got him. She isn’t letting him go.”

  As if agreeing, Nettie spoke. “Helicopter.” Her head was upright, her eyes closed, the frizzy waves of her hair hanging down on either side of her face like half-drawn drapes. “Medevac.”

  “Nettie—” Isen began.

  “Now.” There was no give in her voice. Iron couldn’t be harder or more certain. “Stabbed in the heart. There’s poison. It’s interfering.”

  “I sent for the Rhej,” Benedict said.

  “Good.” With that, Nettie shut the rest of them out, beginning a low chant.

  Poison? Lily twitched, wanting to check for herself. To see if the poison had a magical component, because there were precious damned few things that poisoned a lupus.

  But Cynna was leaning on her, and she didn’t want to interfere with Nettie. Who was keeping Cullen alive.

  Rule already had his phone out and was speaking into it. “. . . need a medevac helicopter at Nokolai Clanhome. Stabbing victim, a heart wound, and there’s some sort of poison involved.” A pause. “That’s not acceptable. We have a doctor on scene, and she says she needs a helicopter.”

  Lily glanced around. “Here,” she said to one of the men still on his feet. Shannon was a freckled, redheaded guard who looked about twenty. He was probably twice that. “Keep her on her feet.”

  Cynna scowled. “I don’t need to be passed around like—”

  “Yes, you do.” Lily waited until Shannon slid an arm around Cynna, then hurried to Rule, who was speaking with controlled fury to the person at the other end. She held out her hand. “Let me.”

  He broke off in midsentence and put his phone in her hand. His pupils had swollen, black overtaking color in his eyes but not swallowing the whites. Yet. The edges of that black quivered as he fought back the need to Change.

  He wanted to hunt and catch and kill. She understood.

  Lily took his hand so the mate bond could help him hold on to his control and spoke into the phone. “This is FBI Special Unit Agent Lily Yu. I need a medevac helicopter at this location. Immediately.”

  The 911 operator told her all the copters were out on other calls, but she’d send an ambulance. Lily had to let go of Rule’s hand to retrieve her own phone from her pocket . . . not the pocket that held Cullen’s present.

  And she was not going to think about that. “I need a copter. You can divert one of yours, or you can call the Navy.” Naval Base San Diego was the largest in the country. They kept fully equipped medevac copters standing by. “Priority authorization for that—be quiet. This is an order, not a request. Call this number”—she read it off her own phone’s directory—“with authorization code Elder, Elder, M as in Mary, S as in Susan, six-one-one-five. Got that?” She listened. “Right. I’ll stand by while you confirm.”

  While the operator made the call, Lily took in the scene.

  Nettie chanted. Her expression was serene, but beneath the natural coppery pigment of her skin she looked strained. How long could she keep pouring energy into Cullen? He was pale. Shock? Could a lupus go into shock? She didn’t see any blood, not a mark on him anywhere.

  Stabbed from behind, then. No sign of the weapon. Did the perp still have it, whoever he was?

  An assumption there, but the odds favored a male assailant. It took strength and a great deal of skill to hit the heart with a single strike.

  Was Cullen still breathing? He must be. Nettie hadn’t given up. Lily took a breath herself, as if that would help. Her palms were damp. She wiped one absently on her dress, switching hands with the phone so she could wipe the other one, too.

  One of the faces in the seated crowd snagged her attention. Her sister sat beside Jason, holding his hand, about twenty feet away. Beth looked shocky, her gaze jumping all over as if she expected the next knife to come straight at her.

  Lily took a single step, then stopped. Beth would have to wait.

  Benedict was speaking urgently to Isen. Rule had moved away when she released his hand, and now he replaced Shannon, folding Cynna up in his arms. Several men had formed a perimeter around them, facing out—the guards, watching for another attack.

  What the hell had happened?

  Finally the operator came back on the line. “A naval medevac copter is taking off now. ETA ten minutes. Please stay on the line while I—”

  “No,” Lily said. She disconnected and went to Rule.

  “You’ve called out the Navy,” he said, raised eyebrows making a question of it.

  “A naval helicopter.” For the first time, she’d used the code U
nit agents were allowed to use in an emergency, one that let them call on federal forces, including the military. There might be trouble over that later. “They’ll be here in about ten minutes. We need to clear the field, make a place for them to land. When we do, I want to separate my witnesses.”

  “Your witnesses?”

  “For now.” She had no reason to think she had jurisdiction, but . . . but dammit to hell, that was Cullen lying on the ground. Someone had nearly killed him. “The nine-one-one operator will have notified the sheriff’s department, of course, but I can get things started.” Movement at the end of the field snagged her attention.

  A burly man with brown hair was running flat-out toward them carrying roughly two hundred pounds of little old lady. She wore an unfitted cotton dress with an embroidered yoke and yards and yards of crinkly apple green that would have reached her ankles if she’d been standing. Lily knew how long the dress was because she’d seen the woman standing earlier. Her hair was short and white as milk. Her eyes were milky, too.

  The Nokolai Rhej was entirely blind. It didn’t slow her down much, but her age did. Enough, at least, that she put up with what had to be a bumpy ride.

  “Damn, boy,” the Rhej said when he stopped, his chest heaving, his body shiny with sweat. Even a lupus could tire after a three-mile run while carrying so many lumpy extra pounds. “One of us is out of shape, huh?” She chuckled as he put her down. Her face turned toward Cynna, those blind eyes seeming to pick her out easily. “You’re not crying. Good. Don’t, not yet.”

  She waddled forward. The Rhej couldn’t see, no—but she didn’t have to. She was the strongest physical empath Lily had ever met. She knew her surroundings in a way most people couldn’t.

  Cynna met her and put a hand on her shoulder, bending to say something Lily couldn’t catch. The Rhej shook her head, spoke quietly, then patted Cynna and moved up to stand behind Nettie. Cynna circled Cullen. As she started to lower herself to the ground, Benedict moved quickly to help her.

  “Hannah,” Isen said.

  That was the Rhej’s name, but normally no one used it. Even if you’d been given permission, you didn’t use a Rhej’s name in public. Apparently the Rho could, though. Lily felt a familiar frustration. No matter how much she learned about Rule’s people, there always seemed to be more she didn’t know.

  “Isen.” The Rhej gave him a nod. “How much?”

  “I want him alive, and we’re not in combat.”

  “Good. Nettie’s going to need it.” With that the old woman put her hands on Nettie’s shoulders and closed her eyes.

  Lily moved closer to Rule to ask quietly, “What’s she doing?”

  “Feeding Nettie power. From the clan. She . . .” He stopped. Swallowed. “They’ve done this before. The Rhej can’t heal—it isn’t her Gift—but she can shape the power so Nettie can use it.”

  Lily dragged in another breath, let it out slowly. “What the hell happened?”

  “I wasn’t close enough to see. I heard Cynna cry out, so I came running. Cullen was down. I smelled blood. I didn’t see any, but I knew he’d been injured. I gave the alert for an attack.”

  A middle-aged woman seated on the ground nearby spoke, her face incredulous. “But you were there, Rule. I saw you. You were standing right behind Cullen.”

  “No, he wasn’t,” the man on her right said. “I was beside you, Sandra, and I didn’t see Rule until he came running up.”

  “He was there,” she insisted.

  Sandra was not going to make a good witness, but maybe someone with Rule’s height and coloring . . . ? Lily glanced at her watch. “We have to get the field cleared.”

  “I’ll do that,” Isen said from behind her.

  She turned and met his eyes.

  Isen Turner wasn’t a short man, but neither was he as annoyingly tall as his sons. His eyes were the color of wet bark, topped by bushy brows that lacked the elegance of Rule’s. Those eyes blazed now in a face gone still.

  He was furious. In complete control, but beneath that, the beast raged. Startled, she spoke formally. “Thank you. I need possible witnesses separated from the rest. Also from each other, as much as possible. I don’t want them discussing what they saw or thought they saw. I need to be sure no one leaves, too.”

  “They won’t leave. They won’t discuss it if I tell them not to.”

  She wondered at his cooperation. Lupi were not known for welcoming the authorities into their affairs, and Isen would see this as a Nokolai matter. “You’re accepting my authority in this?”

  “I accept necessity. You’re Nokolai. You will handle this.”

  “Uh . . . for now. The dispatcher will have notified the sheriff’s department.”

  “So Benedict told me. He’s notified the guards at the gate to admit whoever they send, but you’ll be in charge.”

  “I don’t know if this falls within my jurisdiction. By law, magical crimes are those—”

  He made a chopping motion with one hand. “You’ll find a way to work it. I don’t care how. I haven’t asked for obedience from you because you weren’t raised to understand the need, but you are Nokolai. You’ll find a way.”

  Prickles traveled up her arms. She wanted to agree. She was immune to whatever pull his mantle gave him, yet she wanted to agree. “And if I don’t?”

  A glint of humor passed through his eyes. “Oh, I’m not fool enough to threaten you. No, you’ll find a way to make this your case because that’s best for Nokolai—as you’ll understand when you’ve thought on it. And you are Nokolai.”

  He turned abruptly and raised his voice to that full-throated bellow. “Nokolai! This is an offense against the clan.” He paused, letting them absorb that. Calling a clan-offense was serious. “Our Chosen will act for me in this, along with my Lu Nuncio. Anyone with information that might help, come forward. Anyone who was close to Seabourne just before the attack—even if you don’t think you can help—come forward. You will not speak of it to each other. Come forward and wait. Children and tenders, go to the Center. Everyone else, go to the south end of the field. Quickly. We need room for the helicopter.”

  He turned to Benedict, who’d come up as he was speaking. “Make sure our elders are comfortable.”

  Benedict gave a single nod and moved away.

  “Does he magically know when you need him?” Lily shook her head. “Never mind. Did you see what happened?”

  “No. I was at least twenty yards away, talking with Sybil and Toby.”

  Toby. God, she hadn’t thought—“Where is he?”

  “With Sybil, of course. She was a tender for thirty years. She’ll take him to the Center with the other kids.”

  Guilt washed through her. She shoved it back. No time for that now—but it was just as well she had plenty of help with this parenting business. She wasn’t very good at it yet.

  The crowd was moving, most heading for the south end of the field, as instructed, while a few swam against the current to come forward, also as instructed. Isen directed them to wait about twenty feet away.

  They were all so orderly—no panic, no one complaining or assuming that Isen couldn’t possibly have meant him. Or her. They scarcely spoke. She felt Rule move up beside her. “It’s kind of eerie.”

  “What?”

  “Them.” She gestured. “Everyone’s just . . . They’re so calm. Earlier one of them got so excited from watching a dance that he Changed. No one’s Changing now.”

  “Isen is drawing heavily on the mantle.” He paused, then added, “They don’t smell calm. They trust him to deal with the situation, but they aren’t calm.”

  “Hmm.” Scent-blind, lupi called humans. They had a point. She turned to Rule. “I need to talk to the wits. You can help with that.”

  As Lu Nuncio, he’d smell it if they lied—the lupus ones, anyway. According to Rule, lupi couldn’t lie to someone carrying a portion of their clan’s mantle without reeking of guilt.

  Rule didn’t respond. He was looking at Cul
len, his face blank. Shut down.

  Lily realized she was staring, too, watching Cullen’s chest as if her eyes could keep it lifting, ever so slightly, with his breath. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and touched Rule’s arm once. Then moved away.

  Keeping Cullen alive wasn’t her job. Nettie and the Rhej were in charge there, and thank God for that. She’d do what she knew. She moved closer and crouched down beside Cynna. “Can you answer a couple questions?”

  Cynna nodded without taking her eyes off Cullen.

  “You were with Cullen when it happened.”

  “Yeah, I—I was standing beside him. Someone came up to congratulate us. I didn’t know him, but Cullen called him Mike. They were talking when he . . . Cullen jerked, then he fell. He just collapsed. I don’t know who was behind us. It was crowded. I didn’t notice.”

  Suddenly Cynna gripped Lily’s arm, her fingers digging in. The bones of her face stood out starkly. “You’ll find him. Or her. Whoever did this, you’ll find them.”

  In the face of that need, Lily didn’t speak of jurisdictions. “I will. Cullen’s going to make it, Cynna. He’s got too much holding him here. The Rhej and Nettie will hold on to him in their way, but you and the baby—you’ll keep him here, too.”

  Cynna jerked out a single nod and looked at Cullen again. One hand went to her belly, rubbing gently. Her lips moved. Lily caught the words, just barely . . . “Hail Mary, full of grace . . .”

  Among her other improbabilities, Cynna was Catholic. Maybe that helped right now. Lily hoped so. She stood.

  Twenty or thirty people had collected where Isen told them to. They didn’t talk to one another. They were waiting, as they’d been told.

  Lily shook her head, more aware than usual that lupi might look human—but they weren’t. She headed for her witnesses, and had a small shock. One of those waiting so quietly was her sister Beth. Jason the hunk had his arm around her. Lily paused, absorbed that surprise, and asked, “Who’s Mike?”

  “Me.” The man who spoke was the skinniest lupus she’d ever seen. Not emaciated, but stringy, and well over six feet tall. His hair was a dusty black, straight and shaggy, his skin a pale caramel. He looked sick.