Mortal Sins

THIRTY-SEVEN

THEY took Toby home late in the afternoon. He was still very sleepy and didn’t object to going up to bed—though he did get the ban on television in the bedroom lifted temporarily. Grammy brought in what she called the “sick set,” an old TV that she hooked up when Toby was ill.

Alicia had continued to improve, and her husband was with her. Louise planned to go back to the hospital tomorrow, but she, too, needed a rest. When Toby fell asleep watching cartoons, she decided to lie down and “rest my eyes a minute.”

She dozed off almost as fast as her grandson.

It was twilight when Rule, Lily, and Cullen went into the backyard with the jar of blood. Twilight, the between time, with dusky air flooding the senses with honeysuckle and fresh-cut grass, with hints and possibilities.

A good time to deal with the unnamed place that lies between life and death, Cullen said.

The first part was simple enough, no magic or ritual required. All Lily had to do was remember.

She settled cross-legged in the grass, closed her eyes, and thought about running. Running all-out for the edge of a cliff, the acrid air of Dis burning her lungs, everything she loved left behind.

No cold stole into her.

She tried other memories . . . bicycles. She remembered how delighted part of her, the hidden part, had been when she remembered riding a bike as a child, and the other-her shared that memory. The other-Lily had had no memories to sustain her in hell. Like the wraith, she thought. Like Charley.

But she’d had Rule. She hadn’t had her name, but she’d remembered grass and sunlight and stars. She hadn’t known if she’d ever ridden a bicycle, but she’d remembered bikes. She’d had her body, and she’d had Rule. He’d been wolf . . .

“That’s funny,” she said, sniffing. “Do you smell cigar smoke?” And just like that, she fell into ice.

Or was shoved.

It was, impossibly, even colder than the first time, or maybe it was impossible to recall such cold, a fierce cold that stole her breath, shutting down her muscles so that she swayed and would have toppled over. But Rule was there. His face was a mask of intensity as he steadied her and looked into her eyes.

“I know you,” he said, his voice seeming to resonate from deep within. “Leidolf’s mantle knows you.”

And the icy voice spoke, painful shards cutting and shifting in a way that was almost hope. Leidolf?

“Use . . . my mouth,” she told it, barely able to breathe the words. “I give . . . permission.”

It flooded into the warmth, almost all the way in this time! It didn’t have the use of the legs, but it didn’t need legs. It had words still. It had hung on to words, waiting and waiting, and that had been hard, but now it could ask the man . . . It couldn’t quite remember. “So hungry,” it whispered with those strange lips. “Feed me. Feed me so I can remember.” It felt its warmth’s face twisting, and didn’t know which of them did that. “Hurts. Hurts.”

But it was the other warmth who acted, not the man, unfastening something . . . a jar . . . and dipping his finger in. He held out a wet, glistening finger. It closed those borrowed lips around the finger . . .

Warmth? Yes. No. A different kind of not-cold than it felt from its warmth. Just a flicker of it, but sweet. So sweet. “More.”

“Listen,” the man said. “Listen to me, Charles.”

Charles . . . ?

Another glistening fingertip. It fastened on that finger eagerly, feeling its pieces shifting, scraping . . .

“Take your name, Charles Arthur Kessenblaum.”

The heat! It hurt, it hurt—its pieces were whirling too fast, too much! Panting, it tried to shove the man away, but these arms didn’t listen to it. “Hurts!” it screamed.

The man gripped the warmth’s face and stared into the eyes. “Charles Arthur Kessenblaum, you will heed me. Leidolf knows you.”

Leidolf, it panted. It almost remembered Leidolf, and the word was so dear it needed to say it over and over. Leidolf, Leidolf, Leidolf.

“You will kneel. Today is your gens compleo, Charles. You will kneel.”

It trembled with a feeling it had no word for—a terrible, wonderful feeling. But the legs, the legs didn’t listen . . . “Use the legs,” its warmth said. “Use my arms, and kneel. I give permission.”

And then it could move. Eagerly, clumsily, it knelt, staring at the man, the man it didn’t know, yet the man knew it. The man held everything it needed.

The man looked him in the eyes and said, “Charley.”

It screamed as the world broke. The world broke and broke, and with it all his pieces, but they broke perfectly—a sweet, perfect fracturing, as if they danced instead of clashing, a beautiful explosion that made the pieces . . . fall . . . back . . . together.

“I,” he whispered. “I. Am. Charley.”

The man agreed. He said it again. “Charley.”

Suddenly he knew. He knew everything he needed to know. This was it, his gens compleo, and he was staring at—good Lord, could he get it any more wrong? Quickly he ducked his head, baring his nape.

“Charley,” the man said one more time.

Eagerly he prostrated himself in the grass. It smelled wonderful. He hadn’t smelled anything so wonderful in . . . But there was something terrible at the end of that thought, so he shut it away.

A hand, warm and male, rested on his neck. He trembled with readiness.

But nothing pierced his skin. Puzzled, he waited . . . Then he felt wetness there, and he smelled blood, but it was as if someone had painted it on instead of finding it beneath his skin.

And then it didn’t matter. He felt the mantle race through him. Joy beyond words shook his body. I will never be alone again.

But that thought, too, made him tremble, as if it pulled on the other thought he didn’t dare finish. He was confused. The dizzy rush of the mantle retreated, a tide from an ocean that wasn’t his—but the ocean held him now. He both was and wasn’t with the mantle, and it was right.

“Charley,” the man’s voice said, and it was different this time. Sad. “You died seven months ago.”

Died? But no, that was foolish. He lay here in this wonderful grass, smelling it, feeling the soothing pleasure of the mantle connecting him.

“Sit up.”

All right. He sat, but he was oddly clumsy.

“Look at the body you’re in.”

No. No, he wouldn’t. Fear so vast it could swallow him whole froze him. He couldn’t look.

But that left him looking into the man’s eyes, and they were dark and almost as terrible as the fear. “Bad things happened to you after you died, very bad things. They weren’t your fault, Charley, but they caused you to take things that you should never have touched. Now you have to give everything back. Give back all that you’ve taken wrongly.”

He licked his lips. They felt . . . strange. Wrong. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Give me your hands.”

When he did, the man did a very odd thing. He rubbed something into them. Something gritty that smelled like . . . salt? It . . . it burned. Burned, and ripped at him—he was in pieces again. Pieces, shards, horrible memories slashing him everywhere—his car smashing into a tree, the pain! The steering wheel crushed him, crushed his chest, oh, God, Mommy . . . and his mother, weeping and weeping, doing something with his body—dear God, his wolf body, he’d Changed and he’d died, but his mother . . .

Cold. Vast, unstoppable, horrible cold.

Fast now the fragments flew through him. He was in a dog’s body, not a wolf’s. He caught and killed, but he didn’t eat the flesh of the raccoon. He ate . . .

Charley retched, but this body—whatever body he was in—didn’t bring anything up. The man held him, his hands gentle, while he tried to purge himself of things this body had never done.

“There was a gun,” Charley whispered. “I remember . . . an old man and a gun. He cried.”

“That wasn’t you,” the man said. “That was the wraith.”

“But I remember . . .” Then he understood. “The wraith didn’t have self.” It had never thought “I,” denied even that much of a center, its fragments held together by the darkest of magic. And by suffering. The wraith hadn’t known it was an “I,” but it had known it suffered.

“Now you know what you must give back. And you can, Charley. You attacked me once. When you realized I held part of a mantle—part of Leidolf—you pulled back every bit of the death magic you’d used. Even in your sundered state, you knew how to do that.”

Charley remembered that—and quickly shoved the memory away. “I won’t do those things anymore,” he said, pleading. What he’d taken—what he’d eaten—that was wrong, so horribly wrong. But if he gave it all back, he would be dead. He didn’t want to be dead. “I know better now. I remember. I won’t do those things.”

The man gripped Charley’s face in both hands. “Give it back.”

“I won’t!” he screamed.

The dark eyes closed. The man’s face—who was he?—went still, as if he were thinking hard, or praying. But his fingers tightened on Charley’s face. His breath started coming faster—fast like Charley’s now. And Charley’s heart was pounding hard, but oh, it was so good to have a heartbeat again! He wanted to keep it. He would keep it.

Suddenly the man gasped. He swayed, but his hands never left Charley’s face. His eyes opened, and it seemed they were even darker than before. He said Charley’s name once more, then spoke slowly, as one who must be obeyed. “You will give it all back. You will release everything you took.”

Oh, Charley thought, staring into those eyes. This wasn’t some man. This was his Rho. His Rho commanded him.

So Charley wept. Tears poured down, but he wasn’t ashamed. His Rho was asking him to give his life, and there was honor in that. “Yes,” he whispered. “I will do . . . as you say. But please . . . the fire? If this is my gens compleo . . . please may I have the joining fire first?”

The other man—the one Charley had thought of as a warmth, something to be used or killed—made a fire. Right in the middle of the green grass that smelled so sweet, he tossed a fire down as easily as someone else might sprinkle fertilizer. It was small, but that was all right. It was also green, a lighter, brighter green than the grass. And when Charley put his hand into it, it scampered up his arm. It rolled all over him, tickling.

It was while the fire played with him that he began to let go. It was easy, really. Just as the wraith had instinctively known how to eat, Charley knew how to let go of what he’d taken. It was only energy now.

When he was finished, though, there was still something left. Something very powerful, and . . . shaped. Not just energy. Something incredibly lovely.

“Ready to go?” someone asked.

He looked up as the last of the green fire flickered on his hands and died. A black dude with a paper white face and a top hat stood a few feet away, grinning. He looked odd, but right. Somehow he looked right.

“Who are you?”

The black dude doffed his hat with a little bow. “Think of me as the taxi driver. I’m here to pick you up.”

“But what do I do with this?” He indicated in a way he couldn’t describe the shaped power that still rested inside him. “Everything else is gone, but this didn’t leave.”

“It’s not going anywhere. You are. Just leave it where you found it.” The man held out his hand.

Charley took it.

Lily felt him leave. And she felt what he’d left behind—right where he found it. “Rule,” she said, flooded with wonder. “Rule, the mate bond is—”

But she couldn’t say anything more, because her lover, her mate, her Rule was holding her too tightly for words, and laughing. Laughing as he covered her mouth with his.

THE day after Charley died for the second and final time, Rule sat in the porch swing with his son. No reporters today, thank God. The grass was wet from a shower last night and the sky was a solid sheet of gray, promising more rain to come. This time, the rain had managed to dial down the thermometer; it was twenty degrees cooler than it had been this time yesterday.

Nettie and Cynna had arrived at Charlotte’s airport late last night. Cullen had picked them up and brought them to Halo, going straight to the hospital, where a grouchy Lily was being kept while experts argued about whether she should be released. Her MRI scan didn’t show any problems—but everyone who’d been possessed by the wraith had ended up suffering brain damage.

Ruben had given Nettie a security clearance that allowed her full access to all test results from both Meacham and Hodge. She’d studied those as well as Lily’s test results. She’d also examined Lily directly, using whatever means healers used to sense the body. In the end, she’d arrived at a theory that the other experts agreed with: possession triggered changes in the brain’s chemistry—changes that initially were minor, but which caused a cascade effect if left unchecked, resulting in irreversible damage.

But Lily hadn’t reached that point. There were signs of what Nettie called instabilities, but the mate bond seemed to have put a stop to the chemical cascade. Nettie had still ordered Lily to bed—an edict Lily tried to appeal, but no one, not even Rule’s father, won that sort of argument with Nettie. Lily was upstairs in bed now, probably asleep.

Nettie’s healing Gift couldn’t work on Lily directly. A sensitive could not be affected by magic, even if she wanted to be. Yet Nettie could put Lily in sleep, a trancelike state that heightened her body’s innate healing. Nettie said this was because, as a shaman, she could call on spiritual aid, and Lily’s Gift wasn’t proof against the spiritual.

The wraith had certainly proven that.

The whole business annoyed Lily no end—for the same reason, Rule suspected, that she was unsettled by the mate bond, the same reason she was baffled by religion. None of them were quantifiable. None offered clear, consistent answers to her questions.

A pale green sedan cruised past. On the sidewalk, a middle-aged woman and her large, happy Labrador retriever trotted past, ignoring the imminent rain. The woman smiled and nodded. The Lab looked astonished.

Caught a whiff of Rule’s scent, probably. “What about a Lab?” he said. “They’re athletic dogs and are happy with low status as long as they’re fed and loved.” Since every lupus the dog met would outrank him or her, this was a factor. A few breeds were too innately dominant to thrive at Clanhome.

“Maybe.” Toby watched the dog, which stopped twice to look over his shoulder at them. He giggled. “Can’t believe his nose, can he?”

Alicia was still hospitalized. She’d done something to her shoulder—Rule was unclear on the specifics—that made her doctor decide to keep her an extra day. Tomorrow she and James would drive up to D.C. Rule had offered to move to a hotel with Lily so Alicia could recuperate at her mother’s home, but Alicia hadn’t wanted to.

Perhaps that was for the best. Toby had become upset at the idea of his father staying elsewhere. Rule should stay here, “to protect Grammy.”

Clearly Grammy wasn’t the only one Toby felt needed protection. He didn’t feel safe anymore in the house where he’d grown up, not unless his father was present. It ached Rule’s heart.

Not that Toby clung in an obvious way. Once he’d thrown off the effects of the drug last night, he’d asked a lot of questions. Was his mother okay? Why had that woman stolen him? What happened to her? What happened to the wraith she made? Was it okay to kill a woman if she wanted to kill you?

That last question had stalled Rule out. He could discuss killing with his son, but killing a woman . . . Lily had been there, though, and she hadn’t hesitated. “Killing someone is never a good choice,” she’d said. “But sometimes we don’t have any good choices. Is it okay to kill a dog?”

“No!” Toby had exclaimed, frowning in disbelief at the question.

“I had to shoot two dogs that attacked me. They were sick and possessed by the wraith, but even though that wasn’t their fault, I had to kill them so they wouldn’t kill me. I didn’t have time to find another choice. They attacked too fast. Was that okay?”

Toby had thought that over. “Maybe it’s a little okay, but mostly it’s sad.” He thought some more, then asked, “Was the woman who stole me sick like the dogs?”

“Not the same sickness, but yes, she was ill. She’d made some bad choices, and by the time she took you, she didn’t know what she was doing anymore.”

“Then I guess that’s mostly just sad, too.”

There on the porch swing, Rule smiled. His nadia was wise. His son was, too. They both asked good questions.

The green sedan went by a second time.

“Dad?”

“Yes?”

“Did you know that someone stole Lily, too, when she was about my age?”

Rule looked at Toby, startled. “Yes, I did. She told you about it?”

“Uh-huh. She said a man stole her an’ her friend, and the police came and saved her, but they were too late to save her friend. She said sometimes bad stuff happens that isn’t our fault, but we can’t help thinking about how maybe we could have made it not happen, and I should talk to you when I get to thinking like that.”

“Are you thinking like that now?”

“Sorta.” Toby fidgeted, then said, “I keep thinking that if I hadn’t wanted to play miniature golf, Mom wouldn’t have been at that gas station and then she wouldn’t have been hurt and I wouldn’t have gotten stolen and Lily wouldn’t have had to kill the sick woman.”

“Maybe. Or maybe the sick woman would have tried to steal you somewhere else, and even more people would have been hurt.” Rule squeezed Toby’s shoulder. “There’s a difference between learning from our mistakes and thinking that everything depends on our choices, as if other people’s choices don’t count, too. You aren’t responsible for what other people did.”

“Yes, but . . . but then it seems like we can’t ever be sure. We can’t know how to act or what to do so we’re safe.”

“Life isn’t safe.” It was a hard lesson, but one that lupi believed children must learn. “The best we can get is ‘safe enough for now.’”

“I know, but . . .” Toby’s voice trailed off unhappily.

“But knowing that in your head is different from knowing it in your gut.”

“Yeah.”

“Hmm.” It wasn’t quite raining. It wasn’t not raining, either. The air was filling with a fine mizzle that turned it as gray as the sky.

Children weren’t good with shades of gray. Rule hunted for a way to make Toby understand “safe enough.” “Your wolf is probably too deeply asleep to counsel you, but perhaps you could imagine what he would say about fear and safety.”

“If I could Change,” Toby began, then stopped, scowling. “I was gonna say that my wolf wouldn’t be afraid, but wolves can get hurt, too, so that doesn’t make sense. Does your wolf know he can be hurt?”

“Oh, yes.”

“But he isn’t afraid about it?”

Rule bit back the need to tell Toby the answer he wanted the boy to find. Some answers had to come from inside. “Wolves feel fear. What do you imagine your wolf would be afraid of?”

“Guns, maybe. Bigger wolves, especially if they’re mad at him. Things that could blow him up.” Toby thought a moment, his eyes unfocused, as if he might be consulting the sleeping wolf. “Oh. That’s all now stuff, isn’t it? Not maybe stuff.”

Rule smiled. “That’s right. Wolves fear immediate threats, not the possible threats the mind conjures.”

“So is the wolf right? We shouldn’t be afraid of stuff that isn’t happening now?”

“Mostly right. The world is complex, and wolves aren’t good at abstract risks or multiple contingencies, so the wolf may counsel the man on the present, but the man must counsel the wolf on the future. The wolf needs the man just as the man needs the wolf.”

Toby said glumly, “I’m not a man yet, and my wolf is asleep. I don’t know what’s a real threat and what isn’t.”

“Your job is to learn. My job is to protect you . . .” Rule’s voice drifted off as the green sedan approached again. “To protect you while you learn.”

Toby looked at the car, too, this time. “That’s Alex. How come he isn’t stopping? Is he a threat now, because of you taking the whole Leidolf mantle and all?”

Rule knew his body had announced his alertness, and Toby had noticed. “He may be angry, but he won’t hurt me or attempt to. I’m his Rho. However, he could be a future threat to me or mine or to plans I’ve made.” He stood, glancing at his son. “I need you to go inside now. Not because there’s danger, but because Alex is waiting for that. It’s a matter of respect.” He paused and smiled in spite of himself. “And tell Lily she may as well come out. As a Chosen, her presence won’t signal disrespect.”

“Okay, but Nettie’s not gonna like it if Lily gets out of bed.”

“She’s already up, I’m afraid.”

The front door opened. “I may not have your hearing, but I’m not deaf,” Lily said.

“Also, you opened the window earlier.”

“Well, yes. I saw Alex circling the block.” She came out on the porch—barefoot, wearing an old T-shirt and jeans . . . with nothing beneath the shirt. She hadn’t taken time for a bra. His body signaled strong approval for her haste.

She looked good. She looked wonderful, but then she always did. More important, she smelled healthy. But she wasn’t supposed to be up.

“So how come she doesn’t show disrespect and I do?” Toby asked as he moved reluctantly toward the door.

“Later.” Alex had pulled up to the curb. Rule heard the silence when the engine shut off. “I’ll explain later, but basically it’s because she’s a Chosen. Lily, you should sit down.”

Toby sighed and closed the door behind him. Lily moved up beside Rule. “I’m so rested I could scream,” she said. “That won’t keep Nettie from putting me back in sleep once she finishes yelling at me for getting up, but I’m okay. You can prop me up if you want to,” she added in the way of one making a concession.

A wave of feeling rose up, cresting tsunami-high and breaking over him in a wash of love. It had never and would never occur to her to obey him. She did what she did out of choice, and his Chosen chose him over and over.

He accepted her suggestion, sliding an arm around her waist to support her as much as she’d allow . . . while she supported him.

Equals. It wasn’t a concept that came readily to a lupus, but with her, he dealt always with a sovereign power, one that would neither bow to him nor insist on his submission. She was a gift freely given.

A thought floated in as he watched Alex start across the lawn. It wasn’t the first time this thought had come to him, though originally it had been so alien he’d given it little heed. But more and more the idea compelled him, drawing him with its rightness. So strange, yet so right.

So difficult, too, he acknowledged wryly, brushing lips across Lily’s hair. He strongly suspected his nadia would be among the difficulties. But what was life without difficulties?

He turned his full attention to the one who approached.

In the gray drizzle, Alex’s damp skin gleamed like melted chocolate. He wasn’t a tall man—Rule had three inches on him—but he was broad, and every bit of that breadth was muscle.

Rule had seen Alex fight. He was trained, strong, and quick, a formidable opponent in either form. Rule had spoken truly when he told Toby that Benedict thought highly of Alex’s skill.

Rule was trained, strong, and quick too, however. And he had one advantage Alex lacked: he’d been trained by Benedict.

“What are we expecting?” Lily murmured very low.

“To learn in what manner he acknowledges his Rho.” A Challenge, most likely. There were other ways to formally recognize a new Rho, but Rule accepted that he’d forfeited the more peaceable options when he killed Victor Frey.

From this man, at least. Rule wouldn’t tolerate Challenges from other Leidolf. But Alex had been Frey’s Lu Nuncio, and was entitled to express his outrage, so Rule would accept without using the mantle. Better to allow the man to express his anger honorably . . . though Rule had best win the Challenge.

Alex stopped at the foot of the porch steps. He tilted his head the exact fraction necessary to meet Rule’s eyes. Leidolf’s mantle stirred in Rule’s gut, edgy, wanting to answer the implicit challenge in that steady gaze.

Rule restrained it. Neither man spoke.

Alex broke the silence with four terse words. “I greet my Rho.” Abruptly he dropped to his knees—then lowered himself awkwardly to his stomach. He lay flat, fully prostrated, on the damp grass.

Astonishment gripped Rule so hard it took him a moment to respond. He stepped off the porch, bent, and touched Alex’s nape. “Rise,” he said softly.

Alex rose to his feet more gracefully than he’d lowered himself. His mouth moved the fraction that stood for a smile with this deeply taciturn man. “Your face looks funny.”

“I am . . .” Flabbergasted. “Seldom as wrong as I was about this. You don’t object to my being Rho? Or to the way I assumed the mantle?”

Alex snorted. “Took you long enough.”