Mortal Danger

EIGHTEEN

Weariness. Pain. Sounds…

“… except Rikard. Damned staff severed his neck. He was gone before he had a chance to heal.”

“Hellfire. He went out in style, though. He’d be glad of that. He’s the only other one?”

She knew the second voice, but memory was a slippery fish, freeing itself before she could claim it. She almost drifted away again, but the body’s pain insisted on dragging her back from that beckoning dimness.

It felt as if a burning brand rested just below her belly button, throbbing along with her heartbeat. But there are worse pains than the physical. Floating between here and not-here, she was aware of loss so huge that her mind skittered away, refusing to close around the thought.

“… got all the wounded away now, so I’ll be going. The cops will be here any minute. You’d better clear out, too.”

“And let her wake up to this?” The familiar voice was bitter.

“Her sister should wake up soon. She can…”

Her sister. Beth. Yes. She’d come to… to… all at once memory plopped in her lap, writhing and ugly. And incomplete.

She had to know.

When she forced her eyes open it was still dark. Dark and fuzzy, as if she’d forgotten how to make her eyes focus. The air stank of gunpowder, blood, and charred meat. Her mind flashed back to fire—uncanny fire, black at the center, flickering into blue at the fringes. Black fire haloing Harlowe, speeding down his staff… which had rested on her belly.

She’d been burned, then. Burned by mage fire. Maybe she would have fried along with Harlowe if not for her Gift… which wasn’t quite the complete protection she’d always believed.

The dimly seen shapes resolved. Overhead, sky too smoggy for stars, glowing with the city’s reflected light. And kneeling next to her, though he was looking away… that was Cullen, she realized, naked from the waist up. He was listening to someone standing beside him.

“If you aren’t leaving, you might as well make yourself useful,” the other man said. She had a vague impression of even features, pale skin, and light-colored hair, but darkness hid the details. “Her burn needs tending.”

“I’m no healer.”

“You never did pay attention to anything that couldn’t be done sorcerously. Cold water will cool it so the flesh doesn’t continue to cook.”

“You have any?”

Enough of that. She didn’t need to hear about herself. Lily licked her lips and found her voice. “Rule?”

The other man slipped away into the darkness so quickly and silently she might have imagined him. Slowly Cullen looked down at her. His eyes were weary beyond words. “I’m sorry, Lily. He’s gone.”

WEARINESS. Pain. Sounds…

Sounds without meaning, a babble of words she didn’t know. Awareness flickered. Nothing in that babble drew her… yet something did.

Anger. Beneath the babble, powering it, lay anger. Someone was having a major hissy fit.

It might have been a sense of danger that kept her from slipping back into unknowing. It might have been curiosity. Once she’d lingered beyond that first heartbeat, though, she knew something was wrong. She hurt, and that was part of it… as if a fiery brand lay across her stomach, she hurt from some wounding. But there was more to the wrongness than that. Worse.

She had to know…

Confusion, vast and powerful as pain, startled her eyes open.

She saw sky—sky the color of tarnished brass, glowing like the embers of a dying fire. Glowing all over, with no sign of the sun. Beneath her the ground was stony. Pebbles dug into the skin of her back and butt… the bare skin of her back and butt.

She was naked. That bothered her. She tried to think of what she should do about it, but her mind felt heavy, as if thoughts had weight and she lacked the strength to push and lift and arrange them. But she was lying naked on the ground beneath a brassy sky. That wasn’t right, but… where was she supposed to be?

At least she wasn’t cold. Neither cold nor hot, actually, except for her legs. They were very warm. Something heavy lay across her legs, warming them.

Oh…

An impulse stronger than pain or weakness moved her to stretch out one hand. She touched fur… fur that lifted slowly with a breath.

That was all right, then.

Her breath sighed out, her eyes closing once more.

DIZZINESS seized Lily, as if the world had tipped into some new, impossible angle. She stared up at Cullen’s weary face, adrift.

No, she realized. The world wasn’t askew. It was the gap that made it seem so—the gap between reality and what she’d been told. “No. He isn’t.”

“Lily…” Cullen’s expression softened into something she’d never seen there before. Pity.

That irked her. “Not if you’re using ‘gone’ as a euphemism for ‘dead.’ He isn’t even that far away. Less than a mile.” She’d tested the mate bond enough to be confident about the distance. “I can find him easily enough, though you might have to help me move.”

He just shook his head, looking so wretched she didn’t know if she should shake him or pat his hand. Her lips thinned, but she went on to her next question. “My sister. Harlowe knocked her down. Is she—”

“She’s okay,” he said quickly. “Knocked out, but Stephen said her breathing and heartbeat are fine, so she should come around soon. He moved her to the porch so she doesn’t wake up next to what’s left of Harlowe.”

“Okay, that’s good. Was Stephen the one you were… never mind.” That could wait. They didn’t have much time. “We need to find Rule.”

He winced. “Lily—”

“Look, I don’t know where he is, but he was hurt, not killed. Give me a hand. I need to sit up.”

Cullen shook his head, bafflement mixing with his weariness. “No, you don’t. You’ve been hurt.”

“No kidding. But I lack authority when I’m flat on my back, and those sirens are getting close. You’re going to need all the official weight I can muster to keep from being arrested and executed for using sorcery to fry Harlowe.” And she had to find Rule.

He sighed. “Wait a minute. Let me try something. I don’t have much juice left, but…” He pulled out the little diamond he’d taken to wearing around his neck.

“What’s that for?”

“Think of it as a storage battery. Mage fire takes a lot of power, so I’ve been gathering it for a while.”

At her apartment… when he’d been playing with the sorcéri, had he really been tucking them away for later? “I thought the how-to for that sort of thing was lost during the Purge.”

“I’m fucking brilliant, aren’t I?” His voice was as light as his face was bleak. He held the little diamond in one hand, held the other over her stomach, muttered something, and then pointed away.

A small flame burst where he’d pointed and then died. And a wave of wonderful cold sucked much of the heat from her stomach.

“I moved the heat around. Instant chill on your tummy. Better?”

“Yes. Thanks. Now help me up.” She held out her hand.

Instead of taking it, he bent, slid an arm beneath her shoulders, and then lifted. It hurt, but the world didn’t wink out. Once she caught her breath she did a quick scan of the area.

They were alone except for the dead.

There were a lot of them, dimly seen heaps crumpled here and there all over the small yard. And one mound near her feet—that would be Harlowe, or what was left of him. She wasn’t eager for the police spots to reveal the details.

They’d be here soon. Sirens warbled their alarm from only blocks away. “Benedict?”

“Damned hero.” He shook his head. “Timed things a little too close.”

Something lurched in her chest. “He’s dead, then.”

“Hell, no. Full of holes, but he didn’t even have the decency to pass out. Made us go get his knife back before he’d let himself be taken away. If he makes it through the night he’ll be fine—though even he will take a while to heal.”

“The others…” Whoever they were, and she had plenty of questions about that. “They took him away in spite of his injuries?”

“Can’t leave anyone behind. Your compatriots would arrest them. The dead, though…” He hesitated. “Traditionally, they serve a final time by taking the blame for any dead humans. There are a number of them tonight.”

“Not Rule,” she said firmly. “You won’t be pinning anything on him. He’s not dead, and I can swear that he didn’t kill anyone. He was with me.”

“Lily.” He looked haggard. “The staff exploded, then vanished. Rule went with it.”

Two cop cars screeched around a corner, lights flashing, sirens howling.

“Argue with me later,” she said quickly. “Here’s the deal. Don’t answer questions from anyone but me. Lawyer up if you have to. I’ll say I think Harlowe burned himself up trying to kill me. I didn’t see you, after all, so I can’t testify about what you did or didn’t do. And magic’s dangerous stuff, right? Using the staff on a sensitive could have made it backfire on him.”

“It’s as good a story as any.” He sounded indifferent.

He’s grieving, she realized. He doesn’t believe me about Rule, and grief is making him numb to his own fate. “Cullen,” she said, and reached out to rest her hand on his bare arm… and froze.

Because it wasn’t there. The buzz, the hum, the indefinable texture of magic she should have felt the second she touched his skin… it was gone.

SHE came awake all at once, jolted by fear. In her mind there lingered the echo of an eerie howl. Something about that sound…

She didn’t hear it now, though—just the same angry, high-pitched babble as before. The same brassy sky glared down. No clouds, no sun. The same terrible pain throbbed on her stomach.

The weight on her legs was gone.

Her breath sucked in. Need gave her the strength to raise up on one elbow.

A huge wolf stood at her feet. He was beautiful—his coat black and silver, his proportions elegant. He was also angry, his lip lifted in a snarl that advertised the long, wicked teeth.

He was growling at the source of the babbling—a creature like nothing she could have imagined. It was a bright, greasy orange. And naked. And at least halfway male.

Aside from the small, soft genitals, the creature’s lower half resembled a kangaroo or a child’s toy dinosaur with its oversize haunches and spiked tail. Big feet. No belly button. The chest was muscular but decorated by a pair of very female breasts tipped by olive green nipples the size of half dollars. In contrast, the arms and shoulders looked almost human.

No hair. Neither around the genitals nor on the round head. A wide slit of a mouth crowded with teeth every bit as pointy as the wolf’s, but not as long. The eyes were large and heavily lashed, absurdly pretty in that face. They were set too far apart above a pair of sphincters that she supposed were nostrils.

It stood about three feet tall. The size of a child.

“What are you?” she asked.

It jumped, its eyes widening. Then it rolled those eyes in a disconcertingly human way. “Great. That’s just great. You didn’t understand a word I’ve said, did you?”

“Were those words?”

“You’re just lucky I know English,” it grumbled.

The wolf glanced at her and stopped growling. He backed up, careful to keep the creature in sight, until he stood beside her.

She didn’t like lying flat. She didn’t like being naked, either, but there didn’t seem to be an alternative at the moment.

Sitting up hurt,“ but she managed it. She pushed her hair out of her face and her fingers brushed something at her neck… a chain with a pendent. The feel of the pendent comforted her, both the shape and the faint buzz of magic from it. She clasped it in one hand and leaned against the wolf.

His fur wasn’t as soft as it looked, but it felt good against her skin. He seemed content to serve as her support, so she laid an arm on his back and rested more of her weight against him. The contact felt good. Right.

He made a whining sound, almost like a question.

The creature spoke. “I suppose you didn’t understand him, either.”

“I suppose you did?”

It raised both hands to its head as if it wanted to rip out the hair it didn’t have. “Could things be worse? Could it get any worse? I’m supposed to be in you, on Earth, but here I am, back in Dis—”

The ground rumbled. And moved.

Her fingers clenched in the wolf’s fur. Earthquake? Her heart pounded. For the first time she looked around.

Rock. That’s all she saw—big rocks, little rocks, pebbles. Orange, rust, gray, and yellow rocks. No trees, no grass, no weeds or water. Off in the distance she saw a single mountain, dull black and topped by what looked like a caldera. A dead volcano?

She hoped it was dead.

But she couldn’t see far. They were in a small cul-de-sac, a low point bounded by the rock humped up around them. Rock that might be dislodged if the earth twitched again.

She didn’t want to be here. She wasn’t sure where she needed to go, but this was the wrong place for her, wrong in every way. She needed to move, to get out of here… but just sitting up drained her.

How could she travel? Where could she go?

The creature groaned. “She is so pissed. We’ve got to get out of here. There’s a Zone real close. A Zone,” it repeated impatiently when she looked blank. “You know. Where the regions overlap.”

The wolf curled his lip in what looked more like scorn than temper.

“I know, I know. You don’t trust me, but you should. As far as Lily’s concerned, anyway—”

Lily?

“—because I can’t let anything happen to her. I’m tied to her, by Xitil’s great, glowing nipples! If she dies, I die! That stupid man was supposed to help me get into her, but I didn’t get all the way in because your stupid sorcerer messed up the staff and now I’m tied to a stupid sensitive who shouldn’t be here and Xitil is fighting it out with Her and—” its voice rose to a squeaky crescendo—“we’ve got to get out of here!”

The wolf turned his head to look directly at her with what she was sure was a question in his dark eyes.

“Don’t ask me,” she said in a voice dry as dust—dry as all the aching, empty places inside her. “I don’t know what to believe, what to do. I don’t know who you are, why we’re here, where ‘here’ is, or…” She tried to swallow past the dryness, but her words came out raspy. “Or who I am.”

The sky around the dull black cone of the volcano suddenly flared, shooting from dark brass to incandescent orange and gold—sunrise arriving with a bang. A second later, the ground shimmied beneath them, accompanied by a dull, distant rumble, like thunder below the ground.

“Remind me,” the creature whispered, “not to ever, ever ask if things could get worse.”