Mortal Ties

by Eileen Wilks

  The gorgeous young behemoth looked at Rule gravely. “Laban would speak with Nokolai.”

  “V’eius ven,” Rule said. “Nokolai receives Laban.”

  Tony flushed. “V’eius ven,” he repeated, and reached for the hem of his polo shirt and pulled it off over his head, tossing it on the floor. When his hands went to the snap on his jeans, Lily’s eyebrows rose. Sure enough, he chucked them off, too.

  Turned out he’d come to the meeting commando-style. And he was proportional everywhere.

  He sank to his knees, then prostrated himself fully on the floor. His buttocks were a work of art. Michelangelo’s David would weep with envy. He spoke slowly and gravely, his voice slightly muffled by the carpet. “Laban subiciit Nokolai, plene et simpliciter.”

  Rule’s eyebrows flew up. “Tony—it is acceptable to Nokolai to renew our previous pledges—”

  The dark head moved once in a negative. “Plene et simpliciter.”

  “As you will, then. Nokolai accipit Laban subiiciuntur.”

  Tony sighed deeply as if relieved it was done and rose to his feet in one smooth motion. “Thank you. Fred?” He glanced to his right, and Lily finally noticed the other man new to her—a short, dark guy with a thick mustache. Both his hair and the mustache were grizzled more gray than black.

  Fred sighed. “I witnessed my Rho’s submission plene et simpliciter and will so state to any who ask.” He bent and retrieved the discarded jeans. “Here.”

  “Thank you,” Tony said again. He stood on one leg to begin pulling his jeans back on.

  “What just happened?” Lily asked. “I know he submitted, but something about it surprised you.”

  “Laban submitted plene et simplicite—that means fully and completely, nothing held back. Such language is unusual. It’s sometimes used when one clan defeats another in battle, but even then there are often terms applied to the submission.”

  “Like how long it will last?”

  “Among others, yes. Tony, this is my Chosen, Lily Yu. Lily, this is Tony Romano.”

  He was back on both feet now and zipping his jeans. “Miss Yu.” He gave her a nod, but his attention returned to Rule immediately. “I submitted fully. It was the right thing to do. Laban lost honor through my father’s actions. I needed to acknowledge that wrong. He meant well, but he was wrong.” His brows drew down. “I told him so, but he doesn’t listen to me.”

  “He’ll have to now, won’t he?” Rule said.

  “It will take time for him to learn how to do that. Isen didn’t let my father change his heir back to my brother before passing the mantle. He must have wanted me to be Rho. Why me instead of James?”

  “He didn’t tell me. It may be that he trusts you more than he does James.”

  The young man thought that over, then nodded. “James thought Father’s scheme to sell information was clever. I thought it was wrong. Maybe Isen guessed that. Or maybe Fred is right. Fred thinks that Isen preferred me because I would be easy to manipulate because I’m not very smart.”

  “Tony!” the short man exclaimed. “I didn’t say—”

  “No.” For the first time he smiled, a singularly sweet expression turned briefly on his counselor. “You didn’t call me stupid. You never do. But I am slow in my thinking. I’m an odd choice for Rho. My father never meant me to be Rho. I was his way of telling James to shape up. But now I am Rho, and so I submitted plene et simplicit. Now Isen won’t feel he has to manipulate me because he has all the control, and we can be comfortable together.”

  A single sharp crack of laughter burst from Rule. “And so you prove that thinking slowly is not the same as being stupid. You may have just gotten the best of my father, Tony, and there are very few who can say that.”

  Lily was confused. Her expression must have shown that, because Rule turned to her with a half smile. “This makes Isen more fully involved in Laban’s welfare, you see. Increasing his authority increases his responsibility to them.”

  “Isen is sneaky,” Tony said, “and very clever, so it would do me no good to try to outthink him. He is also very much a Rho. He will deal honorably with us.”

  Fred didn’t seem as sure of that as his new Rho. He sighed faintly. Lily thought Tony was right, though. Isen was both clever and sneaky, but he was also as dominant as they came…the lupi version of dominant, that is, which was as much about taking care of those in your charge as it was about taking charge.

  “Who did you name Lu Nuncio for Laban?” Rule asked.

  “My cousin Charlie.”

  Rule’s eyebrows rose. “I’d expected you to name your father.”

  Tony’s sigh was long and windy. “So did he. He’d be a safe choice, but he was Rho too long to make a good Lu Nuncio, and he doesn’t listen to me. Charlie is very dominant and thinks he’d make a better Rho than I will, but he listens. He’s not jumpy the way James is. He won’t try to kill me. Not right away, anyway. He’ll give me a chance.”

  “You have much to do within your clan,” Rule said. “I stand ready to help, if I can.”

  “Thank you. First, though, I must do as Isen said. He wants me to help you investigate the theft. How can I help?”

  “For now, by answering some questions,” Lily said.

  “Okay,” he said, but barely glanced at her before looking back at Rule with doubt writ large on his face.

  “Lily is in charge of the investigation,” Rule said. “She’s an FBI agent.”

  “I think I knew that, but I’d forgotten.” For the first time he really looked at her…and kept looking for a disconcertingly long time. Finally he nodded. “I’m not used to women being in charge. I know they are sometimes, but not in the clans, and I don’t see many women on my job.”

  “What do you do?”

  “Underwater and hyperbaric welding.”

  “Ah…that’s a very specialized skill.”

  “I like it. I’m good at it, too, and the pay’s good, but I won’t be able to do it anymore. There’s a lot of travel involved.”

  Rule spoke. “Tony works for an underwater fabrication and repair firm. They work on ships, drilling platforms, and underwater installations of all kinds. He’s been all over the world.”

  Lily exchanged a glance with Rule. There was more to this slow-speaking new Rho than met the eye. “I need to ask you some questions. Do you have a problem with a woman having authority?” she asked Tony.

  He thought that over a moment. “I don’t think so. I’ll need to study on it awhile, I expect, since I’m not used to it. If your questions are about who paid my father to betray Nokolai, I know some things that may help.”

  “Good. Have a seat,” she said, gesturing at the round table and chairs near the window. She glanced at Rule. “Maybe we could have a few less bodies in the room…and some coffee?”

  TWENTY-TWO

  LILY, Rule noted with amusement, was sublimely unaware that she’d shocked some of their company. Those who hadn’t been around her much weren’t used to seeing someone casually ask a Rho to get her some coffee, and these were Leidolf. Leidolf tended to cherish women in the abstract while devaluing them as individuals.

  It was good for them to see that Lily was his partner, not his subordinate, and that she possessed her own authority that didn’t devolve from his, even if they didn’t really understand. Yet. Rule emphasized the point by ordering the coffee himself, then asked her, “Do you need me?”

  “Always, but not immediately. Why?”

  He gave her a quick kiss to show how much her response pleased him and told her he needed to tend to a few security matters. While she questioned Tony, Rule conferred with Scott. They needed to rotate the guards, with some sleeping, some present but in the other suite, and some in the second-floor gym. Confining a number of lupi in a relatively small space for long periods of time created problems. Burning off some of their energy would help. He also wanted to change the guard rotation on Beth. They’d been handling it with three guards—Murray, who was in charge, plus two L
aban men—with each taking an eight-hour shift. Rule wanted two men on her at all times, starting immediately. For now they’d have to take twelve-hour shifts. After a brief discussion with Scott, he sent Patrick McCausey. Patrick was a steady sort with excellent control, unlikely to offend the notoriously prickly Laban.

  He was probably locking the barn door after the fact, but they didn’t have any idea why Sean Friar was missing. In the absence of data, Rule preferred to add a belt to the suspenders. If the belt proved unnecessary, good.

  After that he talked to Scott about a contingency he wanted covered—if they did end up faking a trade of Cullen for Adam, he didn’t want some sniper doing away with Cullen before they could act. Then he called Isen and brought him up-to-date, learning in turn that Lily’s crime-scene people had come and gone and that Benedict and Arjenie would be stuck in D.C. for a while. Some of the sidhe delegation were staying holed up in their suite due to an unspecified indisposition, and the administration wanted Arjenie around when they emerged.

  That struck Rule as suspicious. Elves’ ability to heal varied, but it seemed unlikely they’d caught a bug. Perhaps “indisposition” was diplomatic code for “we’re sick of talking to you.” Still, he called Benedict and, after some discussion, they agreed on a plan.

  Then he called an old acquaintance who had lived in San Francisco a long time and had contacts in some less-than-legal venues. He might know about this Hugo they wanted to find.

  He didn’t, but he promised to ask around. Just as Rule disconnected, Cullen arrived with Marcus and Steve. They hadn’t found a body or signs of a fight, so Rule called Beth to let her know, then directed Cullen to the small conference room he’d booked on the second floor, where he could work on his Find spell. Marcus and Steve would remain Cullen’s personal guards, so they went with him.

  At last Rule was able to pour himself a cup of coffee from one of the insulated carafes room service had delivered and sit beside Lily, who was just getting off the phone. Good coffee, he noted, savoring the aroma. “What do I need to know?”

  She glanced at her notebook. “This part is secondhand. An individual calling himself Ahab contacted Leo Romano on December second.”

  “Just after the demo Cullen gave for the T-Corp people.”

  She nodded. “Ahab is a male with a voice described as a ‘resonant tenor.’ Accent and diction suggest a native Californian, educated, no perceptible ethnicity. Contact was by phone only, with Ahab calling Leo from a series of numbers—probably throwaways, but we’ll check. Ahab claimed to work for a large multinational corporation, though he refused to say which one.”

  Ahab certainly could be Friar. Rule looked at Tony. “You know quite a lot, considering you never spoke to this Ahab.”

  “I thought you’d want to know things like that, so I asked my father once I was Rho.”

  “Good thinking.”

  “I don’t think fast,” Tony said with a hint of humor, “but I do think.”

  “I’ll speak with Leo to confirm, of course,” Lily said. “Ah…I’ll skip some of the details to get to the interesting part. Payment was in cash, with the first installment left at the Golden Gate Park on December twenty-first. Tony persuaded his father that it would be good to know more about their mysterious Ahab, so they’d staked out the drop hours before it occurred. Successfully.” She flashed him a grin. “A Laban guard saw the drop made and followed the woman who did it to her car—an older model Toyota, license number 2LBZ112. Which is registered,” she finished smugly, “to a Ms. Carrie Ann Rucker. Special Agent Bergman is sending someone out now to pick her up for questioning.”

  BETH hit send and leaned back with a sigh of relief. It was not her best work, but it was what the client wanted, and it was finished. Which was something of a miracle considering she didn’t really give a damn, not with Sean missing, but working was better than pacing. So she’d worked.

  When she wasn’t Googling Humans First, that is. And the October massacres and Robert Friar and sociopaths. She hadn’t expected to find anything about this war the lupi thought they were fighting, and she’d been right about that. She’d turned up plenty about the Azá and their attempt to open a hellgate a year ago last November, but very little about the goddess they were said to worship. The one Lily called the Great Bitch. Who they didn’t name because she was attracted to her name. Who was apparently behind everything—Harlowe and the staff he’d used on Beth. The demons who’d killed so many at the Humans First rallies. The sniper who’d shot Lily last September and the plastic explosives planted at Nokolai Clanhome that they’d found barely in time.

  There was a good chance she was behind Sean’s disappearance, too. Lily said Robert Friar was her agent and acolyte. Beth didn’t know why Robert would kidnap his own brother, but she didn’t have to understand to think he was involved.

  Kidnap, Beth repeated silently, giving the word a mental underline. Sean had been kidnapped, not killed. He was alive. She believed that fiercely, knowing she was being irrational and not caring. He was alive, and they’d find him.

  On the rational side, they did know now that he wasn’t lying dead or dying in his house. That was something, she told herself as she powered down her laptop.

  Not enough, shouted the anger simmering inside her. Not nearly enough, and if Lily had only told her more about what was going on—at least that Sean’s brother was still alive! If Lily had told her that, she would have warned Sean, and he’d have been on his guard, and maybe he wouldn’t be missing now.

  She hadn’t wanted to know.

  Grimly Beth acknowledged that truth. She’d avoided learning more about all the bad things that had happened in the past year. She hadn’t wanted to know how scary things really were for her sister and for anyone connected to her. How dangerous it had become to be lupi or Gifted, and how many people purely hated them. How much crap was out there masquerading as fact, and how many people believed it. She really hadn’t wanted to know there was an Old One auditioning for the role of Baddest Megalomaniac I-Will-Take-Over-The-World Villain Ever. She hadn’t wanted to know, so she hadn’t asked Lily the questions that were now burning up her brain. After she’d been enspelled by Harlowe, held prisoner by a gang, and nearly killed, she’d just wanted her life back, wanted to choose her own course, not get sent careening off on some crazy trajectory like a badly struck cue ball.

  No. Lily was the cue ball. Beth was just one of the random balls sent crashing around the pool table, hoping to find a safe pocket to hide in. That’s what San Francisco was supposed to be—her safe pocket.

  Beth snorted in disgust. She’d played ostrich, and that was on her. Lily still should have told her way more than she had. Now Beth was pissed. And scared. Scared for Sean and scared for herself, and there didn’t seem to be anything she could do. Beth shoved away from her desk and grabbed her sneakers. “Murray!”

  He appeared in her doorway. “Yo.”

  She glanced up at him, annoyed. That probably had more to do with his presence than his word choice, but still, he was here and she didn’t like it. “No one actually says ‘yo.’ ”

  “I do.”

  Murray had such pretty eyes. They reminded her of the half-starved puppy she’d snuck into her room when she was eight. She’d named him Samson. Lily hadn’t told on her. Even Susan had kept mum, but there was no way to keep a puppy a secret, and their mother thought dogs were dirty and full of germs. Beth had cried and cried when Samson’s new owners came to take him away. “Are you an army wannabe or something?”

  “I was with the Rangers for six years. Are we going somewhere? It’s not time for your Bojuka class.”

  Which he would know because he’d been following her to the damn class all along. “I’m not going to Bojuka.” Not with Sean missing. It would hurt too much. She tugged on one shoe. “I didn’t think lupi could be in the military.”

  His mouth crooked up. “Legally, you mean? The jury’s still out on that. But there’s always been some of us who joined anyway
, especially during World War II. Not so many these days, but a few.”

  “How did you pull it off? I mean, I know you don’t absolutely have to Change at full moon, but still. That had to be hard.”

  “It can be. You have to be okay living away from clan, and you have to have really good control. It’s not just keeping your wolf from showing up at a bad time. You have to be able to fake human-level responses and strength pretty much all the time, and not everyone can do that.”

  “This was back before it was okay to go public about being lupi?”

  “Some would say it isn’t okay now,” he said dryly. “I ask again. Are we going somewhere?”

  “Out.” She tied the second shoe and stood. “Maybe we’ll pick up something for supper. You like pad Thai? There’s a place six blocks over that makes incredible pad Thai.”

  “We could order in.”

  “You can do what you like. I need to get out. I need to move.” And she needed to figure some things out before her roommates showed up. Susan wouldn’t be home for at least an hour, but Deirdre might turn up any minute. Deirdre knew that Sean was missing—Beth had called her about that this morning—but not about any of the rest of it…such as the homely man with the gorgeous build watching her warily now with those pretty brown eyes.

  What was Beth supposed to tell her roommates?

  The truth, she supposed glumly. She couldn’t yell at Lily for hiding stuff then hide stuff herself. Beth pulled her favorite hoodie, the one with the fake fur trim, from her overstuffed closet. “Come on, if you’re coming.”

  He was, of course. Not only that, but he insisted on going first when they reached the stairs. She frowned at the top of his shoulders as they started down. Great shoulders. “Haven’t you ever heard of ladies first?”

  “Ladies first is for idiots. Or for people who don’t care if the lady takes a bullet.”

  “Don’t talk about bullets.”

  “Okay.”

  “It’s not like I can’t take care of myself, you know.”