Unbinding

by Eileen Wilks

  “Now, don’t freak out. I’m fine. Arjenie’s fine, too—she’s busy telling Benedict that right now. She wasn’t even bitten.”

  Nathan’s heartbeat didn’t pick up. It settled as his senses sharpened. He spoke very evenly. “But you were.”

  “I’ve got a lot of little bitty owies, that’s all. There’s no real damage, but I did bleed, and you know how Dell is about my blood being anywhere but inside my body. She’s determined to come to me, no matter how much reassurance I send. I think I managed to persuade her to wait for you by the gate, so could you pick her up on your way?”

  “What bit you?”

  Kai sighed. “Carnivorous butterflies.”

  THREE

  “DOESN’T bloody make sense,” the man in the passenger seat muttered . . . not for the first time.

  “Not yet,” Nathan said, slowing as he approached the gate. Lupi lived in clans; each clan claimed some amount of land which they called a clanhome. Nokolai Clanhome, where he and Kai were guests, lay forty minutes from San Diego. Its boundaries were marked by both a fence and an immaterial claiming bearing some resemblance to a sidhe lord’s land-tie. Guards patrolled the fence, with one pair always near the gate. “It will.”

  Several of those playing basketball had been guards, so Benedict hadn’t had to wait to collect a squad to take with him. He would have had to wait for the clan’s sorcerer, however, if Nathan hadn’t offered to. Nathan had several reasons to make that offer.

  First, time wasn’t a major factor. Kai wasn’t really damaged, and the guards who’d been with Arjenie had killed all of the butterflies. At least they thought they had. It wouldn’t have been easy. Small prey like that could be hard to catch, but apparently the butterflies had been so intent on biting people that they hadn’t tried to get away.

  Second, a sorcerer was apt to be useful. Nathan might know more than most in this realm about magic, but he lacked the Sight. That was an uncommon Gift among his people, and even more rare in humans.

  Not that Cullen Seabourne was human. He went beyond rare to unique, being the only Gifted lupus on Earth, and therefore the only one in existence. Cullen was also a consultant for the FBI, though the Unit agent he usually worked with was currently on her honeymoon. Still, Cullen had worked with the local office several times, and that should help them gain access to the scene.

  Third, and most important, Nathan had offered to wait for Cullen because of Dell. He needed to pick her up, which meant he needed to take his own vehicle. While the chameleon had excellent control for a relatively new sentient, it was best not to trap her in a small space with half a dozen lupi. She didn’t like the way they smelled.

  Yet she did like Cullen Seabourne.

  It had taken Nathan months to work his way from toleration to real trust with Kai’s familiar. Within thirty minutes of meeting Cullen, Dell had allowed the sorcerer to pet her. When Nathan asked Kai about it, she’d shrugged. “She thinks he’s funny.”

  Nathan stopped a few yards short of the gate. The two guards wore matching stony expressions. They were clearly very conscious of the smoke-colored feline stretched out on the sandy ground twenty feet away, her tail twitching. In this, her true form, Dell was over eight feet long, nose to tail-tip. Her oversize pads hid claws that would do a grizzly proud. She needed those claws; the teeth in her oddly shaped muzzle weren’t made for biting. Chameleons consumed blood and magic, not flesh.

  The blood part of her diet had been provided for by a small herd of sheep. The magic part was augmented now by the Winter Queen’s gift: a dusky purple gem set into a band around one ankle, a gem capable of storing a vast amount of magic and disgorging it at whatever rate Dell required. Such a talisman, made by Winter herself, was literally priceless in Faerie. Here on Earth, no one had any idea what it was, although Cullen Seabourne had asked. Three times.

  Nathan put the vehicle in park and got out. Dell flowed to her feet and started for him. He shook his head at her. “Kai is in the city.”

  Dell stopped. Her ears flattened. Her lips lifted in a snarl.

  Nathan waited. Dell knew very well she couldn’t go into a crowded human city looking like that.

  “She understands you?” one of the guards asked.

  “Dell understands a fair amount of English, but language doesn’t come easily for her. She’s a gestalt thinker.”

  “Gestalt?”

  From the car came Cullen’s voice. “Like a new wolf. She doesn’t think in words.”

  The chameleon cast a snarling glance at the guards.

  “I’m here,” Nathan told her. Meaning that he would guard her during her transformation, when she was vulnerable. He thought a moment and added, “Not Cynna. She would stand out too much.”

  Dell gave him a haughty look meant to say that of course she wouldn’t choose such a distinctive form, but Nathan suspected she might have. Dell loved what she thought of as Cynna’s markings—the tattoos that covered most of her skin. A couple times now she’d disconcerted people at Clanhome by wearing Cynna’s form when she came down from the node to see Kai.

  Dell huffed out a breath and began her change.

  The chameleon’s transformation looked nothing like those of the lupi. Took longer, too. Her fur went first, soaked up into skin the same shade of gray. Then muscle, flesh, bone, and sinew melted into a thick gray ooze that briefly held Dell’s original shape before flowing into a new one.

  One of those stoic lupi guards made an “ewww” sound.

  It was probably the eyeballs, Nathan thought. They’d disconcerted him at first, too. Dell always left them for last, so they bobbed around on the viscous gray surface of her transforming body until she had the shape she wanted. Then they wandered to the front of the reshaped head.

  That head was rapidly sprouting hair now. The rest of the details shaped themselves, and a few moments later an apparently human woman stood there, holding out one hand imperatively. She wore the Queen’s gift around her right wrist and nothing else.

  Dell had chosen one of her favorite “hiding” forms, a blended-race woman with features that managed to be unremarkable rather than exotic. Here she’d probably be taken for Mexican with a trace of Asian ancestry. “Pass me the dress, will you?” Nathan said to Cullen.

  A cotton dress came sailing out the window. Nathan caught it and tossed it to Dell. Dell preferred dresses or robes to pants and refused to wear underwear. After they arrived, Kai had bought her a few loose dresses so the omission wouldn’t be too noticeable.

  A moment later, the chameleon slid into the backseat wearing a demure brown dress with tiny blue flowers. Nathan closed the door and got back behind the wheel.

  Dell looked at Cullen. Her nostrils flared. “Smell Cynna.”

  Cullen heaved a sigh. “Ryder’s napping. Cynna and I were taking advantage of that, but we hadn’t gotten very far. You look nice, Dell, but I like your other form better.”

  “So does she,” Nathan said, putting the SUV in gear and accelerating through the open gate. “Human forms feel weak to her.”

  “She loses strength when she changes?”

  That would seem odd to a lupus. “It’s a matter of innate abilities versus learned skills. Shifting her coloring, now, that’s innate, like those colorful lizards you have here. The ability to change her entire form is innate, too, but she has to have a pattern to copy, and she can’t edit those patterns. She has to use all or nothing.”

  “So if the person she copies has a mole, she will, too?”

  Nathan nodded. “This form isn’t as fully human as it looks, which is why her sense of smell remains good. That’s one reason she likes this form even if it does feel weak to her. She retains a few things regardless of her form. Her blood stays the same, as does her cells’ ability to hold magic. Kai thinks she must retain her brain structure, too. She thinks the same way no matter how she’s shaped.”

&n
bsp; “Huh.” Cullen thought that over briefly, then shook his head. “Her brain must transform to some degree. The skull’s a different shape.”

  Nathan shrugged. Cullen wanted details he didn’t have.

  “Go fast,” Dell said suddenly. “Heal Kai.”

  “Wait a minute,” Cullen said, looking at Nathan. “You can heal? Someone other than yourself, I mean.”

  “Not me,” Nathan explained. “Dell. She can do it with Kai because of their bond, and it’s really body magic, not healing. The result is the same, but it takes a lot more power.” Which Dell had now, thanks to the Queen’s gift, though she still stayed near the node much of the time, saving the gem’s power for an emergency.

  Nathan used to think that the mage who’d originally created the familiar bond in Dell had been a touch crazy. A chameleon seemed a peculiar choice. But the obvious drawback—Dell’s need for magic—turned out to also be a plus. That need had caused her species to develop the ability to store an enormous amount of power, which could be drawn upon through the familiar bond.

  The other plus was her body magic . . . and what that meant.

  Most mages didn’t take familiars because the risk outweighed the benefits. The death of a familiar would, at best, magically cripple the mage for days or weeks. At worst, it killed. The reverse was true, too. Dell had survived the breaking of the familiar bond with her mage when she was hurled to Earth when the realms collided at the Turning, but she’d been in bad shape by the time Kai found her. She’d used up her vast reserves of magic, and her hunger had been deep and terrible—and not just for magic. She’d been so alone. So very alone.

  Until Kai. When the familiar bond broke, it didn’t go away. Some combination of Dell’s knowledge, Kai’s Gift, and the mystery of affinity had made it possible for Kai and Dell to anchor the raw, bleeding end of that bond in Kai. Later, that bond and Dell’s frantic need to keep Kai alive had made it possible for the chameleon to use her body magic to save Kai’s life . . . body magic that operated instinctively, rebuilding according to whatever pattern Dell had. The pattern she had for Kai was of a thirty-year-old human woman in excellent health.

  No one knew exactly how long chameleons lived, but Dell’s lifespan would likely be counted in centuries, not decades. Which meant, Nathan thought smugly, that Kai’s likely would be, too. If she didn’t get herself killed in some mundane or uncanny fashion that Dell couldn’t fix in time. “Dell, has something else happened to Kai?”

  “Bug bites. Blood. Go fast.”

  “Can’t go very fast on this road. I’ll speed up when we hit the highway.” Dell hated it when Kai bled. Blood was food and life to the chameleon. Still, her level of anxiety bothered Nathan. Kai might downplay an injury to keep him from worrying, but she wouldn’t outright lie about it. Could she be hurt worse than she realized?

  “Bug bites,” Cullen muttered. “How does that make sense? The Great Bitch has tried assassination, hellgates, demon-possessed doppelgangers, explosives, dworg, destroying the U.S. through mob rule, and destabilizing the entire realm. Those didn’t work, so now she’s using butterflies? I don’t get it. Unless they’re infected in some way—”

  Nathan broke in as a thought occurred to him. “Dell, do the bug bites have poison? Eriahu,” he added, using the most general term for poison in the elfin tongue. Dell had known elfin longer than she had English, but her connection with Kai usually made English easier for her.

  Dell growled.

  “What does that mean?” Cullen said. “No, yes, maybe, shut up?”

  “That’s frustration. Either she doesn’t know or she isn’t sure what I mean.” Gestalt thinkers sometimes showed amazing insight, but they processed information so differently that communication was difficult.

  Nathan thought about the context of the last time he and Kai had discussed poison around Dell. Dell would understand that when he said “poison” just now, he hadn’t meant “colorless, odorless liquid added to the Devrai ambassador’s wine at an equinox celebration by an agent of the Osiga which killed him in thirty seconds,” but she’d be puzzled by which attributes of that event he wanted her to apply to the current situation. Was he talking about a substance consumed at a particular time? One administered at a celebration, or one used by Osiga agents? Something that killed, something that lacked odor, something added to wine, or something frequently given to Devrai ambassadors?

  Or maybe she was trying to sort through elements of that event he’d never noticed. Dell’s process was different. “Eh. Yes, I’ve confused her. I phrased my question badly. Dell, will the bug bites make Kai sick?”

  A growl. Then, “Not now sick.”

  “Later sick?”

  Silence.

  “Dei’re het ahm Kai insit?”

  More silence. Then: “Dots, dots, dots!” She hissed, sounding very much as she did in her other form. “Jisen dá, oran-ahmni! Go fast.”

  “Dots?” Cullen repeated.

  “Dots are what she calls words,” Nathan explained.

  “And the rest of it?”

  “Roughly translated, ‘shut up, dot-eater.’ I think I’ve exhausted her patience with language.”

  None of them spoke again until they left the gravel road for the highway, where Nathan could, as promised, speed up. Eighty wouldn’t be conspicuous along this stretch, he decided. “Arjenie has some skill with magic.”

  Cullen shook his head. “If you’re wondering if she could check out Kai, the answer is no. She and I have talked spellcraft enough for me to be sure she doesn’t have anything that would help.”

  “Arjenie wasn’t bitten.” Arjenie’s Gift was far more useful than invisibility, as it extended to all the senses except touch and made her impossible to notice, but . . . “Normally, mind magic doesn’t work on insects.”

  Cullen snorted. “And you think there’s something normal about carnivorous butterflies?”

  “Not,” Dell said.

  Cullen twisted to look at her. “They’re not normal? Or they’re not carnivorous?”

  “Like Dell.”

  “Blood drinkers,” Nathan said. “They drank Kai’s blood?”

  “Go fast,” she said.

  Maybe a hundred would be better.

  * * *

  “NO one is being admitted to the scene. Move away now to keep our access clear.”

  Nathan had nothing against cops. He’d been one himself for a time. But the officer stationed at the police cordon near the coffee shop was beginning to annoy him. “If you lack the authority to admit us, you need to contact your superior.”

  “No, sir, I do not. Orders are clear. The three of you need to move away.”

  “Look,” Cullen said, “you’ve seen my ID. If the FBI is here—”

  “I can’t give you that information, but if they were here and if they wanted you to join them, they’d have let me know, wouldn’t they?” There was a definite touch of smirk to his mouth.

  Cullen’s scowl should have melted the officious young officer into a puddle of cooperation. Instead the man stood even stiffer. “I’ve told you twice now to move on.”

  “It’s a public goddamn sidewalk, asshole.”

  A sidewalk currently crowded with curiosity seekers and a couple reporters, one of whom was eyeing Cullen. He was certainly photogenic, but it was also possible the woman recognized him. Nathan touched Cullen’s arm to get his attention and jerked his head to the left, where Benedict waited. For a moment he thought Cullen was going to stay and argue himself into getting arrested, but Benedict said his name. Cullen huffed out an impatient breath and obeyed.

  Benedict and his men had arrived a bare five minutes ahead of Nathan. They’d been told to move along, too, and Benedict had chosen to seem to obey. Though he’d deployed his squad, only two of them were visible, and Benedict himself was waiting about twenty feet away. It was a good decision. This y
oung cop was the type to react to intimidation by doubling down, and all Benedict had to do to look intimidating was breathe.

  “I’m going to call Kai,” Nathan said as they headed for Benedict. “Cullen, maybe you should call Ruben.”

  “Damn straight I will. I’m betting the FBI hasn’t been called in at all. Whatever idiot is in charge decided to shut them out for some stupid reason, though this is clearly a Unit 12 matter. If—”

  Dell spoke suddenly. “Kai pissed. Wants us come in.”

  Nathan glanced at her. “I imagine so. But she doesn’t want you to do anything, does she?” Such as break the young officer’s neck so she could get inside.

  Dell growled softly. Nathan took that for an affirmative.

  They’d reached Benedict. Cullen pulled his phone out. “Dell, you going to be okay waiting a little longer? Ruben can get us in, but it may take—”

  “No need,” Benedict said. “Arjenie already called him.” He nodded at the barricade, where a dirty white Ford was pulling up. “Guess he sent us this guy, since Lily’s in France.”

  Cullen stopped and shook his head. “Huh. Who’d have thought I’d ever be glad to see the Big A?”

  “He’ll admit us?” Nathan asked.

  “Yeah. He’s an asshole, but he’s not stupid.”

  The four of them headed back toward the barricade, where three people were getting out of the car—two men and a woman. It was obvious which one was in charge, but not because he looked the part. Derwin Ackleford, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s local office, was a middle-aged Anglo, neither short nor tall, fat nor thin. He wore a suit the color of bland and a grade-A scowl.

  Nathan had met Ackleford during the legal sort-out of the events that brought him and Kai back to Earth. The man was regular FBI, not part of their Magical Crimes Division, much less the special unit that investigated the most serious magical problems. While he had a smidgeon of a Gift, he preferred to think of himself as a null. He didn’t like magic, didn’t trust it, and knew damn little about it. Still, if he was reasonable about using the resources at hand—i.e., Nathan and Cullen—his ignorance didn’t have to be a major problem.