Mind Magic (41 page)

It was a good thing Rule didn’t need to rely on determination. He set Mike down carefully. “Your turn, Little John,” he told the man—for Little John was on two legs again, having Changed so he could keep hold of the prisoner.

Danny, Mike, and Bert were on the other side of the ward. Rule was glad to see that Bert was beginning to stir. He’d had to knock the man out to get him across. Danny, of course, hadn’t had any trouble. Sensitives couldn’t be turned away by wards. Nor could those with really strong shields—not this type of ward anyway. Keepaways used a type of mind magic.

Rule didn’t have shields, but he didn’t need them. The brownies had altered their ward to admit him when they became allies of the Shadow Unit, united against the Great Bitch. He had sworn not to use the privilege except in an emergency. No doubt the brownies had meant an emergency caused by
her—
but they hadn’t included that in the vow, and he wasn’t bound by their intentions. Only by his words, and this was certainly an emergency.

Rule had heard the helicopter twice on the way here. It hadn’t come dangerously close, but clearly the authorities had expanded their search. “Keep a tight grip on Harry,” Rule reminded Little John, and heaved the big man up in a modified fireman’s carry.

They’d used Bert’s belt to fasten Harry’s arms firmly to his sides, so Little John needed only one arm to keep the brownie pinned. The brownie and the oversize man made an untidy bundle, but Rule didn’t have to go far. He started forward. “Don’t struggle,” he ordered the moment he felt Little John twitch, reinforcing the order with a pull on the mantle. “Be still and keep hold of Harry.”

He’d learned, in carrying Mike across, just how strong this ward was. He took two steps, three—and the pull on the mantle rose as power was sucked out to enforce his order. Then he was across. He took another few steps and lowered Little John. “You all right?”

The big man was pale and clammy, but he had both arms around Harry, who was looking pretty woebegone. “Yeah, but I hope I never have to do that again. That felt like . . . I don’t know what. I couldn’t move, but I had to. I couldn’t stay still, but I had to.”

Mike came closer and poked his fellow clansman with his nose, then snorted—meaning something along the lines of, “You’re here, so get over it.” Mike wasn’t known for coddling those under him. He’d half kill himself rescuing any one of them, but once they were safe, he’d explain in clear terms just how stupid they’d been to get in that fix. He had a knack for finding nice, simple words for such explanations. Four-letter words mostly.

Bert sat up and scowled at Rule. “What the hell! You hit me!”

“I apologize for that,” Rule said. “You were struggling so much I was afraid of injuring you.”

“Getting belted on the jaw is a whole lot like being injured.”

“More seriously injured. I suppose I could have put you down and let you—” He broke off, his eyes widening. And turned toward the east.

Lily. Lily was
there.
Not splintered, fragmented, all-over-the-place in a hideous distortion. Right
there
.

“Rule?” Danny’s voice was high and worried. “What is it?”

His breath whooshed out as a burden he’d carried way too long evaporated, leaving him giddy. The mate sense was working. He could feel her. As surely as he felt the ground beneath his feet, he felt Lily. And she was close. He couldn’t tell precisely how close. She’d always been better at that, but within an easy run—no, not easy, not in these rocky hills. But she was
close.
“Lily.” His voice was hoarse. “She’s not far. I have to . . .” Go to her. But he also had to take care of his small company. Mike was injured, Danny didn’t know what to do, nor did Bert. Little John might be unhurt, but he was hungry and exhausted and not a leader. But—

Mike poked Rule with his nose this time. Hard. And snorted.

“Better go, then,” Little John said. “That’s what we’re here for, right? Rescuing Lily. Do I go with you?”

He had no idea if the mate sense would stay functional. It might fritz out again. “Yes. I mean no, you stay with the others, Little John. Mike’s in charge. Follow me, but with caution. I don’t expect any problems, but I don’t know what’s going on. I—”

Mike poked him again.

“Yes,” Rule agreed. And took off.

*   *   *

LILY
stepped out into open air. And night. And brownies.

A couple dozen of them, at a guess. All female. And all talking in their high, piping voices. “My head hurts. Shut up.”

They didn’t. They desperately wanted her to go back, and they all told her so, and told her, and told her. “Charles. Cut me a path through them.”

The wolf moved in front, and that helped, but it didn’t get rid of them. Charles didn’t want to hurt the brownies. Lily didn’t, either—not really, though her temper was peaking along with her headache. That
word
Mika had sent had made her mindsense recoil. It lay curled up inside her now. She wasn’t tempted to nudge it. Not until her headache died down.

It had seemed to take forever to reach the outside. That twisty wormhole of a tunnel had devolved into a long stretch she’d had to travel on hands and knees, with Charles following in a crouch. But the fire curtain hadn’t come back. She’d made it, and the air smelled sweet and the stars were putting on a dazzling show overhead and Rule was
so close!
But all those desperate, damnably cute little brownies would not get out of her way.

She gave up and stopped. Waiting.

He came racing over the crest of the hill in front of her, leaping from rock to rock to land on a twisty path. Which he ignored, bounding down like a two-legged mountain goat. The fire of his nearness burned through everything else as he landed on the relatively level ground at the base of the hill a dozen yards away.

He’d been going fast. Now he speeded up. Brownies scattered.

And at last, at last, they came together—his arms around her, her arms around him. No words, no caresses, nothing but the sweet ease of his breath stirring her hair, his heart beating so close she could feel it, his arms whole and strong, her arms tight, tight around him . . . for a long moment they stood motionless beneath the night sky and held each other. Just that. And everything that had been wrong in the world gradually righted itself.

Without her thinking about it, something uncoiled inside her. And spread out a bit . . . oh! Oh, of course his mind felt like that, so dear and familiar even though she’d never sensed it like this before . . .

Guess what I can do?
she said—then, out loud: “Ow.”

“What the—that was—are you okay?”

“My head hurts, that’s all, and I gave myself an owie just now—but I can do it! I can mindspeak. That’s why the—ah, that’s why you could find me.” Couldn’t speak of the mate bond in front of all those pint-size witnesses. “I’m not good at it, not yet, but I know the basic trick. But mindspeaking Mika left me with such a headache . . . shit.” She shouldn’t have mentioned the dragon. But surely they—the dragons—didn’t expect Mika’s changed condition to be a secret forever?

“Mika?” He straightened enough to frown down into her face. “What do you mean?”

“Long story, and I can’t . . . but you’re okay? You got out on bail?”

“Not exactly. That also is a long story. Come on. We need to get out of here. Whoever snatched you—”

“Isn’t really an enemy.”

“You must define enemy differently than I do.”

“It’s complicated.” The scattered brownies had begun to clump up again a few feet away—all of them chattering madly, of course. She raised her voice to be heard over them. “The brownies aren’t enemies, either, though I’m not too happy with them. They did aid and abet the one who snatched me.”

His eyebrows drew down. “And held you prisoner.”

“And held me prisoner, at first by keeping me asleep all the time.”

“You were drugged?”

“No drugs. After a while it wasn’t possible to keep putting me to sleep and I figured out that the fire was a bluff, so Charles led me out and we escaped. We just walked out, really, though I did have to crawl part of the way.”

For once, Rule was flunking poker face. Confusion flickered in his eyes. Urgency or anger tightened his mouth. When a couple of the brownies darted forward and tugged on Lily, he bared his teeth at them.

They squeaked and jumped back. Another brownie stepped forward.

“Rule Turner,” Gandalf said sternly, frowning with all the severity her round, wrinkled face could muster. “Behave yourself.”

“Address your corrections to your own people,
t’laptha
.”

“But you are here with my people, on our land.” Gandalf shook her head. “This was a bad idea, wolf. A very bad idea.”

For some reason that made Rule burst out laughing.

THIRTY-FOUR

“A
terrible idea. I told him!” Dirty Harry told the other brownies. “But how do you make a stupid, stubborn werewolf listen? I sure couldn’t!”

There were a lot of others for him to address. Everyone had gathered in the village green—that’s what they called it, though it was mossy and tree-shaded rather than open and grassy. A vast mob of brownies nodded, exclaimed, and called out questions or suggestions on how to get a werewolf’s attention.

Lily paid little attention to them. She had a hamburger. A big, juicy hamburger with lots of pickles.

At Gandalf’s strenuous urging (“We have to get that stubborn wolf away from you-know-who!
He’s
not dying! You know he can’t be here, Lilyu!”), they’d walked to the brownie village. One of the villages anyway. There were at least two—one in the tourist section, where Big People could snap pictures of the adorable little people churning butter or whatever. And one where the brownies actually lived.

Most of the brownie great-mothers had stayed at the tunnels, but Gandalf, Shisti, and three other brownies had accompanied them. Lily had agreed to go on one condition: they had to bring her things to her. Purse, weapon, everything. They agreed, but at first Rule didn’t. He wanted to wait for the rest of his party, which consisted of a wolf, a teenage girl, and two men, one of them human, the other one lupus and carrying Dirty Harry. The wolf was wounded. They would all be tired and hungry, Rule had added. Especially the wolf.

That had elicited worried glances and Gandalf’s quick assurance that the men, the wolf, and the girl would be brought to the village, too. They’d call the horses and everyone who wanted to could ride, though someone might have to help the injured wolf—no, no, don’t worry, Happy Feet would carry a wolf if they asked him to, he was not at all excitable, and of course there would be food, but brownies didn’t eat animals so they couldn’t offer—

“My people do eat animals,” Rule had said, “and it’s easier for us to be calm and rational when we eat meat instead of thinking about how much we want to eat meat.”

More worried glances.

“You have meat. You sell hamburgers and hot dogs to tourists in the public area. Four or five hamburgers apiece would be about right. My people are very hungry right now.”

“You mean I could have had a hamburger?” Lily had said indignantly. “All this time I’ve been eating trail mix, and Charles has had to get by on jerky—”

That had brought on a burst of brownie chatter, the gist of which was that brownie mothers could not touch meat, that was in the
ithnali
, not for the whole time they were serving. But the males could—it wasn’t forbidden in the
ithnali
—so maybe it would be all right for male brownies to bring hamburgers to the village. “But not
here
,” Gandalf said urgently. “We need to go to the village. We need to go now.”

“They’re right about that,” Lily told Rule. “At least I think they are. Explanations later, okay?”

So they had walked to the village, talking on the way. Mostly it had been Rule who talked, at Lily’s request. She couldn’t tell him who had kidnapped her—not without thinking it through, at least, and maybe not at all. He didn’t like that, but he seemed to accept her assurance that they weren’t in danger.

He’d been right. His story was long. Also complicated, scary, and in spots it hit pretty high on the shocked disbelief scale. She tried not to interrupt, but he kept tripping her “Oh, shit!” switch. Especially when he told her about breaking his house arrest.

She’d stopped and stared, stricken. “That’s not going to go away. Even if—when—we prove you were framed—”

“Later,” he told her. “That isn’t our priority. We’ll deal with it later.”

Twice as they walked, she felt something brush against her mind. Felt it with her new sense, and knew who and what it was. Mika was keeping track of her. By the time they reached the village, Rule had finished briefing her. He’d done a good job of summarizing, but it was still a summary, and she had a gazillion questions. She didn’t get to ask them. That’s when the others in his party joined them—riding enormous horses. She hadn’t known horses came that big.

The village was—surprise!—adorable. Rather than using a clearing, the brownies had built their little houses in and around tall pines, oaks, and cedar—with “around” meaning that some of them were literally built around the trunks of trees. Mage lights glimmered and danced among the trees. No electric lights; brownies were selective about where they used electricity. Mostly they didn’t. Aside from the tourist area, only a few public buildings were wired.