Blood Magic

by Eileen Wilks

  “Last name?”

  “Hemmings.”

  “Okay. I need you to come with me, Mike.” But she didn’t move right away, instead glancing behind her.

  Rule was coming. “You okay?” she whispered when he reached her.

  He made a single brushing-away gesture. “You’re doing your job. In this case it’s my job, too. I’ll need to Change. I can probably tell even in this form if anyone lies, but we need better than ‘probably.’ ” He glanced around. “The food tables. If you want to question people separately, we’ll need some distance so the others won’t overhear.”

  “Okay. Good idea. I need one of the guards to do the things I’d have a uniform do—fetch witnesses, mostly. Can you—”

  “Of course.” He gestured to the nearest guard, who happened to be Shannon, the youthful-looking redhead, and told him he was needed to help Lily with the witnesses.

  Then he pulled off his watch and tucked it in his jeans pocket. Then he Changed.

  Lily had watched the Change often enough. She still couldn’t say precisely what she saw. Every time, she thought maybe this time she’d be able to really see the process, but she never did. Not quite.

  It wasn’t like the way the movies depicted it, though—an arm sprouting fur and elongating into a leg, a face stretching into a muzzle. Nothing so clear and linear. Nor did she see the same thing a camera recorded. Rule had been caught on TV once when he Changed, and the space his body occupied had simply frizzed into visual static until he was wolf.

  It didn’t help that Rule was extremely fast about the business, but her eyes couldn’t track it when she watched other lupi Change, either.

  This time she tried watching out of the corner of her eye instead of head-on. Didn’t help. Reality folded itself up, space and flesh bending into places her brain couldn’t follow. Then it snapped back, and a wolf stood beside her. A really large wolf with black and silver fur.

  Lily glanced at Cullen—then forced herself to think, dammit, think about what she could do, not what lay outside her scope and skills. She bent to pick up the cutoffs that had fallen from Rule when he put reality on hold, then nodded at Mike and Shannon.

  “Let’s go over to the food tables. Shannon, I need my purse.” Her notebook was in it, for one thing. Also her weapon. “It’s in the kitchen at the Center, in the cupboard by the rear door. Can you get that pretty quick, then join us?”

  He nodded and took her at her word. He ran. Since he went at lupus speed while they simply walked, he was on his way back before they reached the tables.

  Potato salad. Coleslaw. An opened pack of buns. A spill of plastic forks. For some stupid reason the sight of all that made her eyes burn. She swallowed. Swallowed again. This shouldn’t have happened. Shouldn’t have happened at all, but especially not here, where Cullen was safe. Happy. He’d been so blasted happy, without his usual guards of cynicism and humor.

  He couldn’t die. She hadn’t given him his baby present yet.

  That thought nearly tipped her over, but Shannon arrived before she lost it. She got herself under control, took her bag, and dug out her notebook and a pen. She turned to face the gangly lupus.

  Jittery, she decided. She didn’t have to smell him to know he was strung tight. “Mike, you okay? You look pretty tense.”

  “Never mind making nice. Let’s get this over with.”

  His hostility puzzled her. Sure, sometimes wits took out their anger on the cop questioning them, but this felt personal. “All right. First, I’d like to shake your hand.” No point in hiding what she intended. Everyone here knew she was a touch sensitive.

  Mike’s palm was damp. No magic other than the familiar wash of lupus magic—cool, furry, with something that reminded her of the scent of pine needles, rendered tactilely.

  She dropped his hand. “Thanks. Did you see who stabbed Cullen?”

  His gaze darted to Rule, standing four-legged beside Lily. He nodded once.

  “Tell me what you saw.”

  He looked at the ground, his mouth tight. “I’ll tell my Rho.”

  Rule didn’t move. He didn’t growl or snarl, yet all at once he was more. Not more of any one thing—just twice as present as before. He stared at Mike out of yellow eyes, hackles raised.

  Mike’s head came up. He twitched as if fighting the need to abase himself, his gaze darting toward Rule, then dropping. “All right. All right, since you’ll have it this way, I’ll tell what I saw. I saw you, Rule. I saw you come up behind Cullen and slap him on the back. Then he fell, and I smelled his blood.”

  SEVEN

  LILY looked at Rule. It was automatic, unthinking. He’d been accused of an impossible and horrific act, of trying to kill his best friend. Of course she looked at him.

  He dipped his head slowly in a nod.

  It took a second for her brain to work past the confusion. He meant Yes, Mike’s telling the truth—but the truth as Mike knew it. Not the actual, factual truth, but what Mike believed.

  Shit.

  In the silence, Lily realized she’d been hearing the approaching whomp-whomp of a helicopter without it registering. She looked up and saw the copter’s running lights moving against the inky sky. It was close.

  “Okay. Mike, you say you saw Rule. Did you smell him, too?”

  He shook his head. “I didn’t notice his scent, but I wasn’t standing all that close.”

  “Who was standing near you? Who did you see close to Cullen other than Rule?”

  He named seven people, including Cynna and the woman who’d spoken earlier—Sandra, last name Metlock. She jotted them down, then turned the page. “Give me a picture of where they were. Here’s Cullen.” She drew a small circle. “Where were you? Cynna?” She led him through the placement of seven circles, then wrote his name at the top of the page. “One more question. Have you seen an Asian man here tonight?”

  Mike blinked. “Sure. Your brother-in-law. Uh, sorry, but I don’t remember his name.”

  “You’re sure he’s the only Asian man you’ve seen?”

  “Pretty sure. He’s got a distinctive scent. No offense intended.”

  “None taken.” Though she’d love to know what Paul smelled like to a lupus. She closed her pad. “Okay. That’s it for now.”

  “Wait a minute. Aren’t you going to—”

  “I’m going to ask a lot of people questions. Shannon, escort Mike back. I want him to stay near Isen.” That should reinforce the order not to talk. “Bring back . . . No, wait. I’m heading back there, too. Rule, I need you two-footed.”

  His hackles lifted. He shook his head.

  “Don’t pull that mantle crap on me.” But dammit, he’d guessed what she meant. Or part of it. She went to one knee in front of him, putting them eye to eye, and gripped his ruff. “I know better,” she said fiercely. “You can’t think I suspect you, even for a second. But you can’t help me question witnesses, either. Not when you’re implicated. It would taint the investigation and I’d be pulled, and then I wouldn’t be any help.”

  He shook his head again.

  Damned stubborn wolf. “You need to go with Cullen, anyway.” The sound of the copter was loud now. “Or not with him—the copter won’t have room for you or Cynna. But you can drive her to whatever hospital they’re taking him. She’s going to need you, Rule.”

  He didn’t shake his head this time, but he didn’t Change, either.

  “I’ll get Isen to question wits with me. He’s got most of the mantle, right? If you can scent a lie, so can he.”

  Rule made a huffing noise. It might have been a lupine laugh, or sheer disbelief.

  “He’ll do it,” she told him. “I’ll see to it. Now, get yourself two-footed so I can ask you a couple questions, and so you can drive at your best bat-out-of-hell speed to the hospital.”

  “A Rho does not act as Lu Nuncio.” Isen’s face, usually so mobile, was stone. “I do not interrogate my people.”

  The whomp-whomp of helicopter blades was distant once mo
re. They’d loaded Cullen aboard—still breathing—and found room for Nettie. Cynna was heading with Rule to his car. Someone had loaned him a T-shirt to wear with his cutoffs.

  “A Rho does what his people need him to do,” Lily said, and bent to slip off her shoes. She’d check out the area where the perp must have stood to strike Cullen from behind.

  It was much darker now, with only a thin scattering of mage lights overhead. Most of the cheery little balls had come from Cynna and Cullen. Still, a few remained. Lupi, with the exception of Cullen, didn’t perform magic; they were magic. But their female children were sometimes Gifted, and a handful had learned the new spell that produced mage lights.

  At Lily’s request, most of those bobbing lights were concentrated where she stood now, facing Rule’s father. She straightened with her shoes in one hand. “You won’t question them. I will. You’ll tell me if they’re lying.”

  “You misunderstand. The clan is accustomed to their Rho acting as judge, not as a policeman. You might be asking the questions, but if I’m present, they’ll believe they are being judged.”

  “I’d say that it’s up to you to handle that.”

  “I am. I’ll send Shannon to retrieve my Lu Nuncio—who knows better than to leave at this time.”

  “Fine. I won’t be needing Rule, however, nor will he be allowed to question anyone on his own, since I’m being forced to hand this case over to the local cops.”

  “Almost,” he said thoughtfully, “I could believe you are threatening me.”

  “I’m giving you facts. You want me to conduct the investigation. Rule can’t participate in questioning witnesses when he’s been implicated by one of the witnesses. If I let him do that, any information I get will be tainted, and I’ll be pulled off the investigation.”

  “Your superior is Ruben Brooks. He has confidence in you, and he’s shorthanded. Very few could take over the investigation.”

  “Which is why the case will land with the locals if I don’t claim it. At this point, there’s a vague suggestion that magic could be involved. There’s no compelling evidence of it.”

  “Compelling.” Isen repeated that one word, then said nothing more, his expression revealing little more than a certain intensity of interest.

  Lily recognized the tactic, having used it often enough herself. If you leave a large, blank space in an interview or a negotiation, most people will rush to fill it. Especially if you watch them while you wait.

  Lily watched him back.

  Finally Isen’s mouth crooked up. “Tried that on you once before and it didn’t work. All right.” He raised his voice slightly. “Benedict.” He continued in his normal voice. “I’ll sniff for you, but not in this form, so I won’t be able to speak. I need to give Benedict some instructions first.”

  Benedict was at the other end of the field. Could he really pick out Isen’s voice from so far away?

  Apparently so. He started toward them at a trot. “When I look at you,” Lily said, “one nod means the witness is telling the truth. Shake your head if they lie.”

  “They won’t. Did you know those are the signals a Lu Nuncio gives?”

  She hadn’t, but it made sense. They were what Rule had suggested. “Do you act as judge when you’re in wolf form?”

  “Ah. Now you ask a better question. No, I do not.”

  In other words, his people weren’t going to react as if he were judging them because he’d be in wolf form, so what he’d said earlier was misdirection. “Then what’s your real objection?”

  He sighed, a teacher unimpressed by his student’s progress. “You should be able to figure that out by now.”

  She huffed out an impatient breath. “You’re going to make me guess, aren’t you? Fine. My first guess is that it’s a status thing. You don’t think a Rho should do the work of a Lu Nuncio.”

  “Not status.”

  “Authority, then. But you have the mantle. Nokolai lupi know you for their Rho in a way I can barely imagine.”

  “Ah, but Rule now has a Rho’s mantle, too.”

  “Not the Nokolai mantle, and Rule would not dispute your authority over Nokolai. Not for a second.”

  He nodded. “True. But he and I do not convince Nokolai of that by announcing it. Our actions must make it clear to them. My assuming his responsibility will not reassure them.”

  “Why didn’t you just say that?”

  He smiled and patted her on the cheek. “Ask your grandmother.”

  THE mountains cradling Nokolai Clanhome were scarcely mountains at all compared to their larger brethren to the north or south, but they were every bit as rugged as those higher ranges. Dirt and rock crumpled by some giant’s petulant fist was mounded in ridges, hills, crags, and gullies—a rough, broken land, hardened by heat and drought.

  In spite of the dryness, there were trees—oak and sycamore, manzanita, juniper and pine. The ridge where a single man paced, however, was bare. Perhaps the top of this ridge was too often scoured by wind for seeds to linger and root. This, too, was Clanhome land, but another ridge lay between him and the lights of the interrupted party. That ridge was lost to sight now, invisible in the night.

  It was quiet, but not silent; wind fingered the branches of trees and tickled weeds, raising vegetative whispers all up and down the slope. The man’s athletic shoes kicked up little scuffs of dust.

  He stopped, peering out at empty air. Riding the darkness was a new sound, the measured beat of wings shushing the wind. His eyes tracked that beat, but there was nothing to see—no blurring of the darkness, no occlusion of stars. Still he watched, his feet shifting restlessly. Eagerly.

  Nothing landed on the ridge’s crest—yet dust swirled as if thrown up by unseen wings. He rushed forward, exclaiming in Chinese, “Well? He’s dead, yes? He must be!”

  The air shivered. Where there had been nothing, there now stood a woman.

  She was tall and thin and nude. Her skin was white—truly white, not some version of beige, however pale. White like the white of an eye. Even the fluffy cap on her head was white, but it was a cap of down, not hair. There was no matching fluff on her pubis, which was as bare as a child’s.

  She was no child, though. Her breasts were high and full, set on a prominent rib cage and tipped by nipples that looked pink only because they were set against such a purity of white. Her arms and legs were thin and oddly elongated, her torso brief in comparison.

  Her face was beautiful. Asian in cast, perfectly symmetrical, vaguely childlike with the features set low beneath a high, curving forehead. Her eyes startled. They were black, as truly black as her skin was white.

  “He lives.”

  Her voice was barely above a whisper, yet so clear and lovely the words seemed more a stroking of the air than sound shaped for speech. Those words had a profound effect on the man, who cried out. He threw himself in the dirt, prostrating himself at her feet. “I have failed you! Oh, my beauty, my love, punish me. Hurt me. He is a danger to you, and I failed.”

  She bent and stroked his back. “Ah, my little man, do not fret yourself. You did not fail. Your knife was true, and he may yet die. Yet these wolf demons have more magic than we knew.”

  Slowly the man rolled over and sat, then stood. He clutched her hand. “You are gracious to forgive, but I do not forgive myself. I will not fail again. The sorcerer will die, but I know what pain it is for you to delay your revenge when—”

  She struck out casually. One hand smacked his cheek, sending him tumbling. Her voice was calm, her expression soft and fond. “You do not know. In another hundred years or two you may begin to understand, but not now. Such a thin word, revenge. A human word, as weak as human bodies. You do not know what I mean by revenge, no more than I understand your laughter when things break.”

  At that he giggled. “No, you do not understand humor. So wise in so much, but laughter wasn’t given you, was it?” He stood again, brushing at his clothes. “Even if I do not understand fully, I know revenge is like blood f
or you. Necessary. The delay—”

  “I do not delay.”

  “But the sorcerer—”

  “May die, and if not . . .” She shrugged. “He will be occupied with his healing for some time. You will try again to kill him, but only when it is safe. You will not endanger yourself with haste.”

  “Ah, but thanks to you, I am very hard to kill or even to injure.”

  “It is not a chance I am willing to take. You say you worry for me. I think you do not like the competition.”

  He smiled, placating. “If I worry for myself, well, I am human. But that worry is a dash, a tiny pinch, compared to my feelings for you. If you will not countenance an immediate attack on the sorcerer, what of the sensitive? She is a lesser threat, but still—”

  “You know my plans.”

  “But if you could alter some small part of them . . .” He came to her then and clasped one of her hands in both of his. “My beauty, my beloved, you will do as you must, but if you could hasten that one aspect of your revenge . . . ?”

  She gave a little sigh, a very human-sounding sigh, and wrapped her long, thin arms around him. She was taller by several inches, so she rested her cheek on top of his head. He began stroking her back, and her eyes slitted, almost closing, like a cat’s when it purrs.

  “I worry,” he murmured, his voice soft. “I worry for you.”

  “How can they harm me? You will kill the sorcerer when it is safe to do so, and I will consider some slight alteration in my plans, to please you. But nothing major, not unless you can give me some reason other than these vague fears. This is a rich place, so much to feed on, and the kine so unwary. I will eat my enemy’s fear, and not rush my meal. And you, beloved . . .” She smiled down at him, both hands moving to cup his face. “You will have your city. Just as I promised.”

  EIGHT

  BY the time the deputies arrived, Lily had checked out the trampled grass near the spot where Cullen had fallen. She’d also done preliminary interviews with seven witnesses and was about to start on number eight.