Mortal Sins

FOURTEEN

RULE went out on the porch with his body loose and his face relaxed, ready to smile as if he were greeting old friends who’d dropped in at an inopportune time yet were always welcome.

Flashes went off. Lupus eyes react to light like human eyes, but recover faster. He was blinded for a second but ignored it, walking to the edge of the porch as if he could see perfectly. By the time he reached it, he could.

Quite a crowd. He didn’t know any of the television people, but three faces from the print press were familiar—Ed Eames from the AP, a woman named Miriam from the Washington Post, and a sad-faced fellow who worked for one of the scandal rags. Rule couldn’t summon the man’s name, but he knew the face.

Rule kept his smile easy as the shouted questions flowed over him. He raised his voice slightly. “Ed, Miriam, good to see you again. This isn’t your usual beat, is it? And, ah . . .” He aimed his smile at the man from the scandal rag, who stood near the rear of the crowd. “I should know your name, shouldn’t I?”

“Jimmy Bassinger with Global. Is it true you—”

“Jimmy. Of course. But—no, no. Wait.” Rule held up a hand, speaking over the pushy tabloid reporter. “No questions yet. Was it Dan Rather who said that a good interview is ninety percent listening? Please listen a moment.” He swept his gaze over the lot of them, cocking an eyebrow quizzically. “I understand you—all of you—would like a few moments of my time.”

A couple of them laughed. Another flash went off. Good. Rule spoke simply. “You are here because of my son. So am I.” And that quickly, the damned lump was back in his throat. He swallowed. Should he have known how strongly it would affect him to declare Toby’s existence to the world?

Naturally, his statement set off another round of questions. He didn’t allow himself to feel the insult implicit in some of them, but held up his hand again. “I’ll give you a statement, answer some questions, but I thought you might like to speak with Toby, too. And with his grandmother, Mrs. Louise Asteglio, who has loved and cared for him since birth. And, of course, with my beloved, whom you already know—you’ve been besieging her regarding quite a different story.”

With that enticement, it was easy to arrange a few ground rules. He expected those rules to be bent or broken by some, but the agreement gave him some leverage.

He opened the front door and gestured for the others to come out. “They aren’t supposed to ask questions until I give the go-ahead, but one or two probably will, as soon as you appear,” he said. “Ignore them.”

“Oh, I can do that.” Lily gave him a small smile and brushed his hand with hers as she passed.

Mrs. Asteglio touched her hair, took a deep breath, and followed.

Toby hung back.

“If you’ve changed your mind,” Rule began gently.

“No, but it went all empty! My mind did, I mean. All of a sudden there’s nothing there, and I don’t know what to say!”

“Ah. Tell the truth. Keep your answers short. You don’t have to answer questions you don’t like. If you don’t want to answer, squeeze my hand and I’ll deal with it.” He held out his hand.

Toby bit his lip. “Mostly boys my age don’t hold their dad’s hand.”

“Mostly boys your age aren’t lupus. We require more touch than humans seem to. And you’re presenting yourself as lupus today.”

Toby slipped his hand into Rule’s and nodded once. “Okay. I’m ready.”

RULE arranged them on the porch swing—Toby on his right side, Lily on his left, and Mrs. Asteglio on Toby’s far side. One of the television vans had brought portable spots; the tech was setting them up on either side of the swing, which faced the yard. The porch’s elevation would put them approximately on a level with their interrogators, even while seated.

“Good grief,” Mrs. Asteglio muttered, smoothing her shirt. “I don’t even know half those people.”

He assumed she meant the crowd gathered to watch the press uphold their right to be informed. “The bystanders will leave when the TV vans do,” he told her quietly, then raised his voice. “If you’re ready, I’ll give a brief statement first, then we will accept questions.”

“Give us another sec, here,” the brunette anchor from one of the TV stations said. “Let them get the lights fixed. Joe,” she said, turning to her cameraman, “you still getting that shadow?”

“Mrs. Asteglio,” the scandal-rag reporter called from the rear of the crowd, “is it true that Turner seduced and abandoned your daughter? And that you’ve been raising her love child?”

Rule just smiled and waited.

“Love child,” Mrs. Asteglio sputtered. “Love child? Why, I—”

“Shh,” Lily said. “He wants a reaction. Don’t give him one.”

If Toby objected to being called a love child, it didn’t show. “Look,” he piped up, “here comes Mr. Hodge. Bet he’s going to make them all go away. You think they will? Maybe he brought his shotgun to scare them.”

“His shotgun?” Lily exclaimed. “Where? Where is he?” Rule was on his feet. Without intention, without knowing he would do it, he’d stood, his nape cold and bristling. There. There, at the back of the crowd, stood an older man, dark-skinned, nearly hidden by people and by the large oak tree—stepping forward now, holding something, bringing it up—

“It’s okay,” Toby said, reassuring. “He never loads it, right, Grammy? He just likes to—”

Time slowed as Earth magic surged up through Rule to join, with a sudden snap, with the moonsong always present—join and pull. Between one second and the next he fell into certa, a place of ice and clarity, where sensation is sharp enough to cut and action flows too swiftly for thought.

And held himself back, by sheer will, from the rest of the fall.

“—make out like he’s all mean, but he really—”

Rule used one arm to sweep Toby and his grandmother off the swing, onto the porch floor. He was aware of everything—the reporters just starting to react, not to the threat behind them, but to Rule. Toby squawking. Lily on her feet, reaching under her jacket, shouting, “Down!” at the crowd.

But he was already in the air, sailing in one leap over the head of the brunette reporter, letting the vicious pull have him as Earth and moon finished their dance and dragged him through the twist they’d made in reality. The blast from the shotgun smacked his human ears—

—and echoed in the much better ears he landed with, the incandescent pain of the Change already gone. Landed amid screams and blood-scent, steady on all four feet, ready to launch himself forward—but people were in the way. People scrambling, falling, yelling, standing frozen. Too bloody many people between him and the threat to his mate and son.

Another concussion of sound—the shotgun’s second barrel. It tipped him out of certa and close to frenzy, but he held on, held back, gathering himself on his haunches—and leaped again.

Over the people.

He lacked the elevation of the porch this time, but he was a very large wolf. He couldn’t high-jump the whole crowd, but he leaped over the two people immediately impeding him and darted through the rest—who would doubtless have given way for him if they’d had time, but he moved too fast for their human reactions.

There. The enemy. Senses merged into a single data flow as Rule saw/scented the man, the gun, and something else. Something unutterably foul.

The man saw him, too—the gun’s barrel swung toward Rule as the man’s eyes widened, his face contorting. “I didn’t know!” he cried, dropping the gun, stumbling back. “I didn’t know!”

In his backward retreat, he tripped. Fell.

The enemy was down. Rule leaped on him, snarling, teeth reaching—

The man tipped his head back, sobbing as he bared his throat.

Rule froze. Need strove with need, clashing instincts mounting an explosion barely capped by will. Blood! screamed the loudest part of him—he needed blood, needed to finish the enemy.

An enemy who reeked of perversion. Of death magic. Dimly, Rule recalled the name for the stink coating his nostrils, but the wolf was more interested in destroying such foulness than naming it. But the man’s action had tripped another switch.

Rule’s enemy had acknowledged him, subordinating himself.

The immediacy of bloodlust faded. The man was his now, his to kill or to spare. Killing made sense. It would eliminate any future threats, and anything that stank of such perversion deserved death. Besides, what would he do with the man if he let him live? Rule couldn’t keep him. He was human, not clan.

And yet there was some reason, some important reason, for sparing him. Only he couldn’t quite . . .

I know him.

No, he didn’t. Beneath the reek of death magic, the man’s smell was unfamiliar. Confused, the wolf hesitated.

“Rule!” Dimly through the clamor he heard and felt her coming. His mate. Lily. “Don’t, Rule—I need him alive.”

He would wait. She knew . . . knew both of him, he remembered, and suddenly Rule-the-man was present again. Not in charge, but present, and echoing Lily’s command to spare the man.

Lily reached him, put a hand on his back, and her scent calmed him in spite of the traces of fear-stink that clung to her skin like a burr caught in fur. Her fear didn’t worry him. Lily was warrior. She could both fear and act.

“He’s down,” she told him, low-voiced. “I need you to keep him down while I—oh, shit.”

The enemy beneath him was convulsing.

Lily shoved at Rule, who stepped off. She touched the man’s throat, then ripped open his shirt and started CPR.