Dragon Spawn

by Eileen Wilks

  Rule’s eyebrows shot up. “He’s not completely incompetent, then.”

  She stared at him, incredulous. “Have we met?”

  “You like being in charge and you’re good at it. You usually take charge whether or not anyone makes it official.”

  “Of an investigation, yes! That’s a whole different skill set from running the whole damn Unit—which I would hate doing, in addition to being bad at it. Parks has Ruben right there. He could do a whole helluva lot better than me, or anyone else.”

  “Did you tell him that?”

  “Sure. I was polite,” she insisted. “I know how to do that. I was raised on polite.”

  “True. So who’s running the Unit?”

  “No one,” she said bitterly. “We’re way down on Parks’s list of priorities, I guess. And I know things are a shambles right now, but Parks seems to be trying to run this investigation himself. That doesn’t leave him time to do the things he’s supposed to do, like make sure someone’s running the Unit. Speaking of units, have you talked to Ruben about the other one?”

  “Yes—on the phone, and Sam passed on a message later. The Shadow Unit is on high alert. Come on.” Using the arm around her waist, he urged her toward their bedroom at the back of the house. “I may not need much sleep, but I need some. You do, too.” She was still too wired for it, but he could help with that. “Will you shower tonight or in the morning?”

  “Tonight. I need to wind down.”

  “Good. I’ll join you.”

  “I’m planning on a quick shower.”

  “I can be quick.”

  She gave him a suspicious look that had nothing to do with his ability to shower quickly. His nadia thought he had something other than cleanliness in mind.

  She was right.

  So was he. By the time they crawled between the sheets, clean and exhausted, neither of them had trouble falling asleep.

  A banshee howl woke him. With it, an electric wrongness. Violation.

  Rule was on his feet and racing for the stairs before his head finished processing what the noise was. Harry. That was Dirty Harry’s war cry.

  Harry’s yowling cut off. A thud, followed by another cry. Toby.

  Rule flew up the stairs at top speed. He hit the door to Toby’s room without taking time to open it—a spinning kick did that—and skidded to a stop.

  Moonlight painted the room in silver and shadow, a room filled with the clutter of a boy’s life. There were no clothes on the floor; the grandmother who’d raised Toby until last year could not abide that form of untidiness, and Lily had continued her training. But neither was the floor clear. A toppled pile of books here, a soccer ball there, three shoes, a board game, the skateboard that was supposed to be in the garage . . . a puddle of orange fur, limp and motionless. A length of white sheet, bright against the dark wood floor. It had been dragged halfway off the bed.

  The empty bed.

  ELEVEN

  “I SWEAR, Rule—I didn’t see, hear, or smell a thing. I don’t know how anyone got in. I—”

  Rule chopped a hand down, cutting Manny off. “Crane.”

  The tall man was naked, having been four-footed a moment ago. He reported crisply, his gaze lowered. “No scents near the house that don’t belong.”

  “Check the roof.”

  Crane took off. Rule stayed where he was, on the front porch, utterly still. Fighting a battle none could see, though his men sensed it. Smelled it. He held a volcano inside, tamped down by nothing but will.

  “Ricky. Precisely where were you when—” He broke off. Over a dozen men and two wolves were streaming toward them through the darkness. The rest of the guards. Good.

  “Toby’s been taken. Form up in squads,” he ordered, his gaze snapping to his acting second, who kept his eyes carefully averted. “Mike. Two squads are to make an immediate search of the grounds, half of each squad in wolf form. A third squad, to include Barnaby”—who had the best nose—“will Change and go to Toby’s room. I smelled two intruders there. They’re to locate and memorize those scents, then report to me.”

  “Rule.” Lily came out of the house while Mike gave quick instructions. She wore one of his T-shirts and carried a cabinet door that someone had ripped off its hinges. On that flat surface lay Dirty Harry’s motionless body. “Harry’s still alive. Send someone to Nettie with him, stat.”

  Anger threatened to spew out, lava-hot. Toby was gone. Taken, he had no doubt about that. And she was worried about the cat?

  Lily stopped in front of him, her eyes dark and steady on his. She could do that, could look right at him, without inflaming him. He didn’t understand that. He was glad it was so, but he didn’t understand it. “Harry’s mine. He’s just a cat, but he’s mine. And whoever did this, however they did it—Dirty Harry saw them.”

  “Harry’s communication skills are limited, and since neither of us can lift that knowledge out of his—”

  “Sam can.”

  Hell. She was right, and he hadn’t thought of it. Besides, Harry had been injured trying to protect Toby. Rule owed him care.

  He wasn’t thinking straight. “Mason—” He stopped. Another wolf had just arrived, this one with half a leg missing. José. He must have Changed to that form so he could move better, but he’d still been slowed by the infirmity. José was Nokolai. He’d get into Nokolai Clanhome faster than the others. “Mason, José—take Harry to Nettie at Nokolai Clanhome. Hurry. Toby’s life may depend on keeping Harry alive.”

  Within seconds, José and Mason were racing for the Toyota that Rule kept for the guards’ use, with Mason carrying Harry on his makeshift stretcher. “Lily.” Rule turned to her, about to tell her to look for Toby with her mindsense. And stopped. She’d anticipated him. Her face wore the distant look he’d grown to recognize.

  A few seconds later, her gaze snapped back into focus. “Sam is coming.”

  “Dammit, you aren’t supposed to mindspeak Sam! You didn’t fall over this time, but—”

  “I didn’t mindspeak him. I sort of tapped him on the shoulder. He established the connection.”

  “Fine,” he snapped. “Now use your mindsense to look for Toby and his abductors instead of—”

  “I already did. That’s why I stayed upstairs longer than you. Toby isn’t anywhere in my range, and the only minds I found nearby are lupi. Whoever grabbed him left as instantly as they arrived.”

  “It wasn’t a gate. Gates don’t work that way.” But something had . . . and none of this was Lily’s fault. She didn’t deserve to catch the spillover from his rage. He looked away. “I’m not—I didn’t mean . . .”

  “I know.” She reached for his hand and squeezed.

  The volcano didn’t go away. It still seethed inside him, still threatened his control. Yet he felt steadier, better able to fight it back. “It’s her,” he told Lily. “She’s got Toby.”

  “That seems possible.”

  “More than possible. I know. The mantles recognized the taint of her magic. And I . . .” He paused, scowling. “One of the intruders was someone I know or have met. The scent was familiar. I can’t place it, dammit, but it’s a scent I’ve encountered before.”

  “Maybe you should Change so you can get a better read on—”

  “Rule Turner.” That voice was newly familiar.

  Rule spun, his lip lifting in a silent snarl at the interruption. Mateo stood in front of the other men, his eyes raised to meet Rule’s. Staring at him. “I am sorry about your boy. I will help if I can. But I need to know if the Challenge will be—”

  Rule leaped.

  Mateo’s surprise lasted only the blink of an eye, but it was enough. Rule twisted as he jumped so that his kick landed squarely in the man’s chest, knocking him back several feet. Mateo turned his stagger into a roll, but he didn’t stay down, rising to his feet—

 
“Grab him! Stop him!” Lily cried.

  Two of the men latched on to Mateo. Mateo landed a solid blow on Robin’s jaw, but the other man was Mike, and Mateo’s punch had left him open. Mike didn’t waste the opportunity. Four seconds later, Mateo lay facedown on the ground, one arm lifted at a painful angle, with Mike atop him.

  Rule watched, fists clenched, every muscle tight, as his body fought to be freed from the damnable restraint of his mind. He wasn’t supposed to Change. He remembered that, but not why. Not supposed to Change and leap onto that upstart who kept staring at him, not supposed to rip out his throat—

  “What do I do with him?” Mike asked.

  Lily answered before Rule could get his mind to supply words. “Knock him out, tie him up—I don’t care. Just keep him away from Rule.” Then she came to Rule and put a hand on his shoulder. “That wasn’t a Challenge, Rule. Stupid, yes, it was deeply stupid, staring at you that way. But Mateo wasn’t challenging you. He’s already done that.”

  With a shuddering breath, reason returned. Mostly. Enough that he remembered why he shouldn’t Change. He didn’t dare. His wolf was not interested in control. In that form he’d be all rage, and he had to be able to think. Rage wouldn’t find Toby . . .

  Find. Oh, yes. “Cynna,” he said. “She can Find Toby.” He reached for his phone—which chimed as he pulled it from his pocket. He stared at the screen, blank and baffled. How had his father known to call? At this hour, it couldn’t be coincidence.

  It didn’t matter. Whatever Isen was calling about couldn’t matter as much as what Rule had to tell him. “Father,” he said. “Two of her people came here somehow. They took Toby. They’ve got him.”

  A long, long silence. Then Isen’s voice, pitched so low it sounded as much as a growl as words. “They’ve got Ryder, too.”

  * * *

  “SCARED” was too small a word. Toby huddled up against the boulder where he’d been dumped and told to stay put and did not cry.

  Almost everything here was rocks—big rocks, little rocks, gray rocks, reddish rocks. Black rock in that hill on his left. Speckled rock in a band cutting through the black. Pretty rocks like the one by his foot that was an unlikely shade of yellow. Chalk-colored rock jutting up on his left like someone giving the finger to the sky. Pink rock in the boulder he leaned against.

  Rocks and dead stuff. Mostly dead vegetation—bare twigs, withered or rotting plants. But there were bones, too, here and there. Bones that hadn’t come from any kind of animal he had ever heard of. And he might not know much about geology, but he was pretty sure all those different kinds of rocks weren’t supposed to be all mixed up together. Not on Earth anyway.

  This wasn’t Earth.

  The sky glowering down on them wasn’t blue with day or black with night. It looked like metal, like those old brass candlesticks in Grandpa’s bedroom, the ones he said had come down to him from a Nokolai Rho who lived hundreds of years ago. It glowed, that sky, though it held no sun.

  He knew where he was. He knew, because his dad had been here. So had Lily, but she wouldn’t talk about it. Bad things had happened here and it hurt her to talk about it. Dad had told him some stuff, though. Enough for Toby to understand where he’d been taken.

  He was in hell, and hell was full of monsters.

  They came in all sizes and colors, like the rocks. The second-biggest one, the frog-demon whose warty skin reminded him of camo, must be about eight feet tall. She—he knew the monster was female because none of them wore clothes—had more muscles than Benedict. Her arms looked human, but her legs were more like a kangaroo’s, with meaty haunches and big feet—built for hopping, not walking. She had a thick tail like a kangaroo, too. But she came closer to human than most of the others.

  The warty monster was in charge now that his human kidnappers were gone.

  He thought they were humans anyway. They’d looked human and spoken English, and they didn’t smell like the monsters—a smell that somehow made him think of pumpkin pie, like someone had sprinkled them with spices. But his sense of smell was no better than a human’s. He couldn’t be sure.

  Toby had never wished so badly to be on the other side of First Change. If he could turn wolf, he’d have Changed and ripped out the man’s throat when he hurt Dirty Harry. Maybe the woman’s, too, but he wasn’t sure about that. It made his insides hurt to think of hurting a woman, even if she was evil. But he was sure he could kill the man.

  At least, he could have if he’d been able to Change. The desire to do that burned inside him, a red-hot creature pacing and pacing inside the cage of his flesh. It wanted out. He’d never felt his wolf like this before. If his dad were here, he could ask what it meant. If his dad were here . . .

  Tears burned his eyes. He blinked fast.

  The bundle in his lap stirred and whimpered. “Shh,” he said, stroking the baby’s back. “Go back to sleep, sweetheart.”

  She didn’t. She added fist-gnawing to whimpers. He held her up to his shoulder and patted and murmured at her, but Ryder wasn’t having any of it. Part of that was explained by the pungent aroma she gave off. She let go with a good, loud wail of distress.

  Warty glared at him. “You keep her quiet.”

  She didn’t really say that. She used some grunting kind of language, but Toby knew what she meant. Dad had said that in Dis—which was the other name for hell—the world followed The Rules instead of natural laws. The Rules were whatever the prince in charge of the region said they were, but one Rule they all used was that meanings were clear even if the words weren’t.

  Toby looked the monster right in the eye and said, “She’s hungry, she needs her diaper changed, and she wants her mama. She won’t be quiet.”

  Warty scowled. She seemed to be thinking, because she just kept scowling and didn’t say anything for a long moment. Maybe thinking hurt. Finally she spoke again. Her voice sounded the way a giant bullfrog might. “You need food, too?”

  “Yes.” He wasn’t hungry, but it was a good idea to eat if food was offered because he might not get a chance later. Besides, he wanted to see what they would do. Just before the man and woman left, the man had told Warty to take good care of “our prizes”—meaning him and Ryder. Taking care ought to mean feeding them. “I don’t eat bugs,” Toby added quickly, because they did. A bunch of the monsters had gone chasing after some flying bugs—the first life Toby had seen here, other than their captors—until Warty yelled and made them come back.

  Warty grimaced. “You eat dead food.”

  “I need water, too.”

  Warty turned to another monster, one of the little ones. It was about three feet long, green, and looked like someone had smashed together a beetle and a slug, only the slug had tentacles and teeth. Warty grunted and the beetle-slug chittered, but though they weren’t speaking the same language, they understood each other. That was The Rule about meanings again.

  Toby understood them, too. Warty wanted the beetle-slug and its (companions? siblings?) to go get the baby-thing, a container of water, and one of the dead-food-things. Beetle-slug wanted to know which dead-food-thing. Not the lords’ food, stupid, said Warty. The other stuff. The beetle-slug and three of its companions or siblings—they looked alike anyway—scampered off, heading for the only creature there that was bigger than Warty.

  A lot bigger. It was undoubtedly a demon, too. Everything that lived here was some kind of demon, but this one was beautiful. Weird, but beautiful. It looked like an enormous, shaggy caterpillar with a whole rainbow’s worth of silky fur striping it from one end to the other. It had a zillion legs, no head that he could tell, and was as tall as a grown man and longer than two cars, end-to-end. The others used it to carry stuff. They’d strapped all sorts of things on its long back.

  They’d strapped Toby there, too, until he persuaded the woman to let him take care of Ryder. She hadn’t been hard to persuade. She hadn’t wan
ted to “mess with the squirmy little thing.”

  The beetle-slugs swarmed up the giant caterpillar’s body, veering around a pile of mysterious parcels to detach something Toby couldn’t see. A moment later, an object sailed around the parcels and fell to the ground. A diaper bag. Ryder’s diaper bag.

  “Hey!” Toby cried. “Be careful. You might break stuff inside it, and where will you get more?”

  Warty glanced at him. “Shut up.” Casually she twitched her tail—then slapped him with it.

  It was like getting clubbed with a meaty baseball bat. He toppled over. He managed not to drop Ryder or land on top of her, but she let out a frightened wail. “It’s okay, sweetheart,” he told her, cuddling her close . . . unable to see her clearly because his stupid eyes were blurred by tears. That hurt. “You’re okay, aren’t you?”

  Gradually Ryder quieted, her wails fading into heartbreaking little sobs as he sat up again—winced, and kept murmuring to her. The whole side of his face throbbed. He blinked away the wetness and saw that the diaper bag had been left in front of him. So had a bottle of water and a sandwich wrapped in cellophane with a bar code on its label.

  He scooted closer to the diaper bag so he could dig inside it with one hand, keeping Ryder propped up with the other. The bag was pretty full—a change of clothes, a thin blanket, a little bitty stuffed dog, diapers, a two-handled cup . . . good, she’d need that. And there was what he was looking for: her pacifier.

  Ryder latched on to the pacifier with desperate eagerness. Maybe it would soothe her long enough for him to get her diaper changed. But what to feed her?

  Ah. One pocket held her little spoon in its case and two jars of that special baby food Cynna bought. Organic stuff. He took out a jar of apricot-oatmeal, a diaper, and the baby wipes. Then he set about removing the full diaper and cleaning up her little bottom.

  There were six diapers in the bag. Lots of baby wipes, but only six diapers. And only two jars of food. He fastened one of the diapers on Ryder and looked up at Warty. His heart pounded. Maybe the monster would hit him again for talking, but he needed to know. “How long does this stuff need to last?”