Mortal Sins

THIRTY-THREE

COLD. Freezing cold, the most terrible cold Lily had ever known, swarmed into her like a living force. And with it, death magic—flooding her from the inside, unspeakably foul, choking her—breaking her, some part of her, something she grabbed after even as the cold swallowed it, leaving her alone. Unbearably alone.

You came to me, something crooned. You came.

What—?

All of you came to me. This is meant to be. The fire. Walk to the fire now.

The words were like ice chips cutting into her brain. It hurt. Her leg started to move. No! No, she wouldn’t; she . . . That voice in her mind. That was the wraith. Could it be anything else? She wouldn’t move, wouldn’t let it make her kill.

Walk to the fire, the voice repeated.

Ice, slicing into her brain—she tried to scream. And couldn’t. But . . . “No.” It was a whisper, a breath, all she could manage. Her lips barely moved—but her legs moved not at all.

You can talk to me!

She felt its astonishment, a blizzard of surprise, ice floes shifting in a glacial sea. “Get . . . out . . . of me.”

You don’t move when I say. How . . . oh, no! Its wail sliced at her. There are two of you! I got in through one door, but I can’t get all the way in. Only one of you died, and I can’t get all the way in!

Maybe she could shove it out, then. She tried, pushing at the smeared foulness inside her. But her head hurt bad, so bad . . .

Still, you can hear me, it said, apparently not even noticing her efforts. You can tell the man . . . ask the man. There is something I must ask him. I don’t remember. Help me. I must remember so I can ask him . . .

“Ask . . . who?”

He knows me. We will kill, it crooned. Together we will kill, then I will remember.

“No,” she whispered. “Together . . . we will . . . die. Look.” And she managed to pull her gaze to the left.

A red wolf with eyes a bright, unlikely blue crouched ten feet away, snarling. Cullen’s sorcerous vision worked in either form, and he did not like what he saw.

He leaped, crashing into her, knocking her to the ground—she glimpsed slashing teeth, his muzzle reaching for her throat—

She convulsed.

RULE ran faster than he ever had in his life—as if he could outrun death, race backward in time, find Lily safe and alive and laughing at him.

Three of the Leidolf lupi had Changed quickly enough to be on his trail. He barreled straight at them, the growl rising from his chest and breaking free in a maddened howl. They scattered.

He leaped over the next one. Then he’d reached the clearing and saw Lily’s body crumpled on the ground, and Cullen—Cullen!—crouched over her, teeth bared.

He slammed into his friend’s red-furred body, getting him off her, off Lily, twisting in midair to go for the throat, needing blood, blood, oceans of blood—

Cullen ducked his head and Rule got mostly fur in his mouth. The two of them landed hard and tangled, rolling, bones jarred by the force of Rule’s charge. Rule snapped at the paw nearest his teeth. Missed.

Around them, women’s screams. Other wolves gathering, growling. Other wolves . . . In the madness of grief, Rule hadn’t thought, wasn’t thinking much now, but—Cullen? No, Cullen wouldn’t kill Lily. Maybe he’d been standing guard over her body . . .

Her body. Rule raised his nose and howled.

Cullen Changed. Then stood there on two legs, hands on his thighs, head hanging, blood dripping from a slash on his shoulder near the neck. “Rule, she’s alive. Lily’s alive. The mate bond . . .” He gulped, as if he were holding back tears. “The mate bond is gone, but Lily’s alive.”

“I hate hospitals,” Lily muttered from her perch on the exam table.

“I know.” Rule leaned his forehead against hers.

She could feel his warmth, his skin. She couldn’t feel him. Not anymore. If she didn’t see him or touch him, she didn’t know where he was.

It was a small loss, she assured herself. The mate bond hadn’t given her access to his thoughts or feelings. Just a sense of where he was, physically. “I’m not hurt.” Except maybe in her brain, but that damage wouldn’t show up right away. And the wraith hadn’t been in her long—hadn’t been able to move her, control her. Maybe there wouldn’t be any damage.

She tried not to remember the sharp edges of the ice. She tried not to blink too much.

“I know.” Rule kissed her cheek and straightened. “But you’ll indulge me and allow the doctors to finish looking you over.”

“They’ve checked every inch of me, and their evil cohorts have drained me of blood.” Some of the results of the blood tests wouldn’t be back for a while, but that wasn’t what they were waiting on. Halo’s hospital didn’t usually run MRIs at night. They’d had to be persuaded to get their MRI tech out of bed.

Ruben had accomplished that with a phone call. Got to have a good look at her brain, after all. So they’d know if it started going wonky.

“Nettie will check you out tomorrow,” Rule said.

“Nettie? But she . . . Rule, you didn’t ask her to fly across the country.”

“Of course I did.” He was still speaking in that utterly calm voice, the one he’d used since she came to after her seizure. “I spoke to the Rhej, also.”

“Which one?”

His smile was as beautiful as ever, and as dear. It was the calm voice that made her want to hit him. “The Nokolai Rhej. What happened was impossible. I asked her how the impossible could occur.”

“And—?”

His smile died. “She said the mate bond is dissolved by death. Somehow the wraith pulled the bond inside it. And the wraith is dead.”

Lots of impossible happening lately. Like a wraith sliding in past her Gift as if it didn’t exist. It seemed she had a back door. “Now we know who is susceptible to the wraith,” she said wearily. “That’s something.”

“You said something about that earlier.” Rule slid up to sit on the exam table beside her. “Things were somewhat confused at the time, but you said you thought you knew how it . . .” His voice trailed off as if he found the reality too hard to speak.

“How it got in me,” she finished grimly for him. “Yes, I think so. Earlier today I learned that Meacham and Hodge had one thing in common. They both died for a few minutes. Cardiac arrest, no heartbeat. I need to talk to Brown about that, get him checking hospital records. We need to warn anyone who’s been clinically dead for a little while.”

He didn’t speak. She turned and saw that he was gripping the table so hard his knuckles were white. He stared straight ahead.

“Rule.” She put a hand on his shoulder. “Unpack it, whatever it is.”

“My fault,” he gritted. “I . . . What you did in Dis, that was because of me. You died. Part of you died. It’s my fault that abomination got in you.”

Aw, shit. She twisted so she could grip his shoulders, making him look at her. He allowed that. The bleakness in his eyes hurt her all the way down. “All of me would have died in Dis if part of me hadn’t.” That came out jumbled, but he knew what she meant. If war was hell, war in hell was a double-dip of deadly. If the other-Lily hadn’t made that sacrifice, they wouldn’t have lasted long.

“And since none of me died for good, it wasn’t a bad deal.”

A shudder traveled up him, and suddenly he grabbed her, holding on tight. He rubbed his cheek along hers, then buried his face in her hair and sucked in air, shuddering again. “This time, I thought you were all the way dead,” he whispered.

For long moments she said nothing, just held him. She needed this, too. Funny. Even without the mate bond, she needed this. Finally she pulled back enough to brush his hair back and look at him. His eyes were damp.

She tried a smile. “You thought Cullen did it. You ass!”

“He was standing over you.”

“You know why.”

“I do now.”

Cullen had seen the ugly smear of death magic covering Lily. He’d read the desperation in her eyes, and he’d guessed what had her. He’d done the only thing he could—scared the hell out of her in order to persuade the wraith it would die if it stayed inside her.

It had worked. When the wraith left, she’d convulsed. Just like Hodge. Unlike Hodge, though, it had left no smear of death magic on her. Once the wraith was gone, her Gift rid her of that.

She’d made Cullen check. Just to be sure. “Did you ask Nettie about my theory?” Cullen couldn’t see the wraith. Her own Gift couldn’t stop it. That told her the wraith might use death magic, might eat it the way the Etorri Rhej had said, but its basic self was something other than magic.

Spirit, in other words. Her Gift didn’t protect her from spiritual stuff.

“I did. She agrees with you.”

“The wraith wanted to talk to someone there at the gens compleo. Ask him something. I think it wanted you.”

Rule stared. “You heard it?”

“Yes.” The others hadn’t, but it never got all the way inside Lily. Maybe that’s why she’d been able to hear it, because they’d shared her body rather than her being shoved completely into the backseat.

There’s two of you . . .

She shivered at the memory. “It wanted me to go to the fire. I could understand why. Ice . . . doesn’t begin to describe that kind of cold.”

This time when he put his arms around her, it was to comfort her, not himself. “Warm now?”

Lily nodded, but it was a lie. She was physically warm again, but inside she was still shaking, still cold. Afraid.

And alone. Rule held her. She felt his breath on her hair, the heat from his body, yet she felt alone in her body in a way she hadn’t for nine months.

Damned mate bond, she thought. And wept.

“OUT. Out. Get out.”

“Shh, baby, it’s okay. You’re okay. It’s gone.”

Yes, the wraith was gone. A dream. That’s all it had been, just a dream. Lily blinked her eyes open, aware of Rule’s body curved around hers, his hand stroking her hair. The smutty air of predawn told her it was early, but no longer night.

She’d dreamed the wraith was still in her, that it had hidden so well it had fooled everyone. And Rule . . . Rule had left her. The mate bond was gone, so he’d left her.

Her damned subconscious didn’t bother with subtlety, did it? Hit her over the head with her worst fear when she was already hurting. Stupid subconscious. She sat up, shoving back her hair. “I need to get to work.”

“It’s early yet. You don’t have to—”

“No. No, listen. In the dream, it kept telling me how glad it was I’d come to see it. But that happened for real, too. It did say something like that. It said that I—that we—came to it.”

He said nothing for a moment, then spoke slowly. “It was already there, in the forest.”

She nodded. “I need to look at the map.”

RULE went with her. She could have stopped him, probably—if she’d had every available deputy at the sheriff’s office man the doors, ready to shoot. He’d know if the wraith got into her again, he said. He’d smell it. When it was in a body, he could smell the death magic.

“Then what?” she asked sourly. “You going to make scary faces at me until it leaves?”

His smile had been faint. Distant.

But he was right, and though she tried not to notice too much, it comforted her to have him with her. Maybe he wouldn’t be with her that much longer.

Shut up, she told herself. Rule hadn’t stopped loving her when the mate bond snapped. They’d adjust. They’d be okay.

Assuming her brain didn’t fry. Was she blinking more than usual, or just noticing it more?

“Here’s the spot where you found the bodies.” Lily pointed at three red pins. “Here’s where Deacon and I shot the dogs.” Those pins were blue, and almost on top of the first three. “Last night we were . . .”

“Here.” Rule tapped a spot a few inches away. “The blue pins are animal deaths?”

She nodded and stuck in a white pin, then used her finger to estimate the distance. “That’s only about five miles between the bodies and the picnic site. The way the roads curve around, it seemed farther.”

“What’s this?” Rule tapped another white pin.

“Meacham’s house. It’s not far from the woods. Well, we knew that, but we were thinking in terms of how easy it was for him to take the bodies there, not—”

The door opened. “How come I always have to get my own donuts?”

It was Brown, disgruntled as ever. And holding a white box with the Dunkin’ Donuts logo. “Here,” he said, thrusting the box at her. “You might as well eat some, since I damned near had to draw on that deputy to get past without him mooching. And don’t give me any crap about your diet.” He glared. “Someone who’s been in the ER needs sugar.”

It was a get-well gift, Brown-style. “Thank you.” And bless him, there was a chocolate cake donut with chocolate icing. She snagged it.

“What are you doing here?” Brown asked Rule with no more belligerence than usual as he helped himself to one of the donuts. “And where’s the other one, the pretty guy?”

Lily had to smile at that description, but with her mouth full of donut, she let Rule answer.

“Cullen’s holed up at his hotel. His wife couriered him some of his materials. He hopes to find out more about wraiths. And I’m watching out for Lily,” Rule finished levelly. “I can smell death magic.”

“Oh. Good idea.” Brown chewed as he talked. “If that wraith gets in her again, you’ll know, huh? Not sure what you can do about it, but at least you can warn the rest of us. What?” he said when Rule narrowed his eyes. “It’s not a great idea to have the lead on an investigation under the control of a crazy spook. She’s armed, for Christ’s sake. I’d appreciate a little warning.”

“I’ll do my best,” Rule said dryly.

“I’ll be having frequent MRIs,” Lily told Brown. “To make sure my brain’s functioning normally. For now, I’m clear of crazy spooks and my brain’s working as well as it ever does. Which isn’t all that great, but I finally noticed something.”

She pointed at the map. “Here’s Meacham’s place, where the wraith entered a human for the first time. Here’s where the dogs were, the ones it had been riding. We think the wraith was in one of those dogs when it attacked Rule near the grave site, right here. And here”—she tapped the map—“is where it was last night. It told me . . . It said we had come to it. It was there already.”

“You think that’s where it’s hanging out? In the woods?” Brown came closer. “Reasonable, but over here’s Hodge’s place, nowhere near the other spots.”

Lily exchanged a glance with Rule. “It may have followed me or Rule into town when we discovered the bodies. It . . . wants to talk to someone, possibly Rule.”

“The crazy killer spook wants a conversation?” Brown shook his head and grabbed another donut. “So you figure its grave is out in those woods?” When they stared, he waved the donut in his hand, looking almost embarrassed. “I just thought—you know. Graves. Spooks. Seem to go together.”

“Maybe the death wasn’t reported,” Lily said slowly. “If it wasn’t, the woman, the practitioner who created it, had a body to dispose of. And maybe”—she looked at Rule—“Meacham didn’t bury those bodies. The wraith did, while still in Meacham’s body. It had some sense that bodies should be buried, and it took them to the place it knew.”

“Not quite the same place,” Rule said. “I would have smelled another body if it were close.”

“A seven-month-old body?”

He considered that a moment, then nodded. “I think so, yes. I’d have to be close, but the soil smells different when there’s a body beneath it.”

“So you could do it now. You could find it.” A body would mean an ID. A name.

“I can try.”

“Let’s go.”

“Lily.” Rule gripped her arm, stopping her. “You’re the last person who needs to go looking for the wraith’s grave. You’re too vulnerable.”

She kept herself steady. Inside she wasn’t, but she kept her outside steady, and she was proud of that. “You’re going to go sniffing without me?” She shook her head. “It may not be there. It could be right in this room now. We don’t know—”

“It’s more likely to be there than anywhere else.”

“I think I know how to keep it out.”

“That’s not good enough.”

She lowered her voice, hoping to keep Brown from hearing. “It came in through . . . the other-Lily. You know what I mean. It came in when I’d just felt her memories brush against me. If I close her out, it can’t get in.” Maybe. She swallowed. “I need to know, Rule. I need to know I can keep it out.”

When he let go of her arm, it wasn’t really acceptance. His eyes were too flat and closed to call it that. But at least he wasn’t fighting her.

Okay. Get moving. Lily grabbed the other chocolate donut and shoved the box at Brown. “You’re going to need these. You’ve got that list from the hospital?” The list of those who had, temporarily, died.

“Yeah.”

“Bribe some cops. You’ll want help finding and notifying the people on that list that they’re in danger.” She looked at Rule. “Let’s move.”

They did.

Lily had a hunch. The wraith was cold, unbearably so. That’s almost all she’d noticed at the time because it hurt her with its iciness.

But she’d also felt alone, horribly alone. And in her dream . . . in her dream, she hadn’t been the only one who’d lost someone, who was left alone.

Maybe she was projecting her own fears onto her memory of the wraith, but she didn’t think so. Beneath the wraith’s freezing cold—in addition to it, or maybe causing it—was a vast and terrible loneliness.

Had it brought the bodies of those it killed near its own, trying to find some company in death?