Mortal Danger (23 page)

“Uh…”

“The way everyone sees it, either I really did lose my Gift and it sent me round the bend, or I’m blocking it as part of my denial.” She glanced at Cullen. “That’s what you think, isn’t it?”

“I’m keeping an open mind,” he said lightly.

Lily shook her head. “If you really thought there was a chance Rule was alive, you’d be looking for him.”

His expression flattened. “Where? Your former compatriots searched the area, didn’t they?”

“You’ve got ways of looking they lack.”

“I’m no Finder.”

“No,” she said. And looked at Cynna.

“I wondered when you’d think of that. Rule…” Saying his name made her throat unhappy. She swallowed. “Ruben told me you’re insisting that he’s alive. I want to know why.”

“If I tell you—”

“Lily,” Cullen’s voice was sharp. She ignored him. “If I tell you what you want to know, will you try to Find him?”

“I already have.”

TWENTY-FOUR

LILY’S head went light and dizzy. Big Dick’s planned press conference hadn’t come as a shock, but the whiff of hope hit her system like a double scotch on an empty stomach.

“Hey.” That was Cullen, standing by her bed with a hand on her shoulder. “It helps if you keep breathing.”

“Okay. I’m okay.” She waved him away and got herself back under control. “Where? Where is he?”

Cynna held up both hands. “I did that wrong. Sorry. What I mean is that I
tried
, not that I Found him. What I did Find doesn’t make sense. That’s why I need to know why you’re so sure he’s alive.”

Lily realized her nails were about to draw blood. She unclenched her fists. “All right. Then you’ll tell me what you Found.”

Cullen sighed. “As a clan member in good standing, this is where I’m supposed to threaten you with all manner of dire consequences.”

“What can they do—kick me out?” She shook her head. “Sorry. I know that’s a big deal for you, but it doesn’t mean as much to me.”

“Let me help.” As if she’d been still as long as she could, Cynna popped to her feet and began to pace. “I’ve got some of it figured out. I came up with three possible reasons for you to hold out on me. One, there’s some kind of national security deal involved that I’m not cleared for. Except you’d tell me if that were the case, right? Or Ruben would have told me before I got here.”

“That’s not it.”

“I didn’t think so. Reason two. The stuff you’ve kept to yourself is personally embarrassing. People do that all the time, and cops aren’t immune to the cover-up urge. But a good cop wouldn’t do it, and Ruben has pretty high standards for the Unit. Rule’s standards weren’t so shabby, either. So that leaves me with reason number three.” She glanced at Cullen. “Which you pretty much confirmed just now with that ‘clan member in good standing’ bit.”

He raised his eyebrows politely. “Did I?”

“I’m wondering if that was on purpose.”

Lily didn’t wonder. She wasn’t sure of his motives, but Cullen gave away very little by accident. “Go on.”

“It’s lupus secrets you’re keeping, isn’t it? And it has something to do with your relationship with Rule. Something that makes you think you’ve got the inside track on whether he’s dead or alive. Something that makes him, well,
yours
.”

Lily nodded slowly. She’d underestimated Cynna Weaver. “You’ve got most of it. Rule and I are mate bound.”

Cullen sighed and plopped down in one of the chairs, stretching out his legs and tilting his head back. “I wonder,” he asked the ceiling, “if I’ll be considered an accomplice for not stopping you?”

“You couldn’t have.”

“So what does mate bound mean, exactly?” Cynna asked.

“It’s rare, I understand.” And harder than she’d expected to put into words, especially with this woman she didn’t know well… whom Rule had once known very well. “Lupi see the bond in religious terms. They say their goddess—they call her the Lady—occasionally chooses a life mate for one of them. And, uh, it’s very physical. Sexual, but more than that. When it first hit, Rule and I couldn’t be separated by more than a couple hundred yards. It’s more relaxed now, thank God.”

“What do you mean, you couldn’t be separated?”

“If we put too much distance between us, we get dizzy. I’m told that if we get too far away we’d pass out, but we’ve never gone past the dizzy stage.”

Cynna’s lips pursed. She glanced at Cullen.

“Don’t look at me,” he said to the ceiling. “I’m an innocent bystander.”

Lily continued doggedly. “Rule says the separation thing never goes away completely, but I don’t know what our limit is now. I haven’t tested it lately, but…” She paused, tensing.

The mate bond was like background music, she thought. If the radio was always playing, she didn’t notice unless she stopped and paid attention. But let someone change the station or the volume…

“What is it?” Cynna asked.

“He’s moving again. Moving fast.”

“What do you mean, again?” Cullen asked sharply.

“He’s been moving for some time, but slowly. Now…” She tried to estimate. “He might be in a car or something, because he’s going a lot faster.”

Cynna frowned. “Can you guess at the distance? Are you likely to pass out or something?”

“I don’t know. He’s farther away now than he has been since the bond happened, and the farther away he is, the fuzzier my estimate of distance. Direction, though—I get that right every time.”

Cynna nodded. “It sounds a lot like Finding.”

“What do you mean?”

“The farther away my target is, the less I can say about the distance. There’s a limit, too. For me it’s between a hundred and a hundred fifty miles. Within that limit I get direction. Beyond it…” She shrugged.

“You don’t just Find physical objects, though. You said you turned up ghosts sometimes.”

“Yeah.” Her eyebrows twitched together. “That’s sort of what it was like when I tried Finding Rule.”

“He is not a ghost. The mate bond ties me to his body, which is very much alive.” Somewhere. “What, exactly, did you Find?”

“I went to the scene this morning after I talked to Ruben, and I did a Find. I, uh, already had Rule’s pattern, from when I used to know him. It’s better to have the current pattern, but I thought I had enough that I’d be able to tell if he was still around.”

“And?” Lily thought she might jump up and shake the woman.

“What I got was fuzzy. Real fuzzy. I didn’t think it was a ghost, but it’s hard to be sure when I had such a poor fix. But there was a direction, so I followed it. Right where my Gift told me he was, though…” She spread both hands. “A gas station. Lots of cars. No sign of Rule.”

Her heart was pounding. Cynna had gotten the same results she had—a clear fix on a specific spot, yet no sign of Rule. That proved she wasn’t crazy and that the mate bond was working right, didn’t it? “Has that ever happened before?”

Cynna shook her head but then added, “Except with ghosts.”

“Ghosts don’t move around. Where was this gas station, and what time did you do the Find?”

“The corner of Middlebrook and Hessing. I got there about nine-thirty.”

Lily leaned over and pulled her table closer, took the city map off it, and passed it to Cullen.

He raised his eyebrows as he took it.

“Check my notes,” she said tersely. “I’ve been trying to track Rule. I had to guess at the distance, but the direction is right.”

He unfolded it, studied it a moment, and then passed it to Cynna without a word.

“Where… oh, yeah, I see it.” She looked at Lily. “Maybe you’re better at guessing distance than you thought. The line connecting your estimates runs pretty close to my gas station. The times fit, too.”

“Yes.” She looked at Cullen—who was back to studying the ceiling. “Rule’s people might expect me to be weird right now. I gather that the sudden breaking of the mate bond can have repercussions. But only if you start with the assumption that he’s dead. And I can’t see why you’ve done that.”

That was one hell of a fascinating ceiling.

She kept going. “There’s no body. The staff wasn’t even touching Rule when you crisped Harlowe, so why assume he’s dead? And now Cynna has confirmed that the mate bond is working. She and I both know where he is— only he isn’t there. I only see one possibility. He’s someplace that’s tied to Earth geographically, but isn’t Earth.”

“I’ve tried,” Cullen told the ceiling. “Haven’t I tried? But she’s determined, and maybe Isen is wrong. No, strike that—Isen is definitely wrong.” Abruptly he pushed to his feet. “Being Rho isn’t like being the pope, is it? No one granted him infallibility.”

“What are you talking about?”

He began pacing. There wasn’t much room for it. “Cast your mind back. I didn’t say Rule was dead. At the time you weren’t in any shape to consider nuances of speech, but what I said was that he was gone.”

“So you
don’t
think he’s dead.”

“He might be.” Cullen shook his head. “I don’t know. Isen wants me to lie to you about that, and I could. I’m an excellent liar, but my heart isn’t in it. And I’m not good at blind obedience. Lost the knack, I suppose, in all those years I was clanless…” Cullen stopped, tilting his head back and closing his eyes. “God, I’m tired.”

“Tough. Keep talking.”

He sighed. “You’re right. Right about all of it, I’m afraid.”

She closed her eyes.
Breathe
, she reminded herself. She did, and her muscles turned slippery, loosening up so suddenly it was a good thing she was propped up.

“So why would this Isen dude want you to lie about it?” Cynna demanded.

Cullen glanced at her. “Isen Turner. He’s Rule’s father and the Rho, the head of Nokolai… my clan. He wants to protect Lily.”

“To
protect
me?” That sent a charge through her that brought her upright again, all but vibrating with anger. “By trying to convince me Rule’s dead?”

“Think about it.” Cullen’s face could never be other than beautiful. Even when it had been butchered, the eyes gauged out, it had possessed a certain ravaged glory. But she’d never seen it look so naked—naked like an old, twisty tree. All bones, no softness.

He almost looked his age. “I spent a long time working out the possibilities last night. I’ll give them to you the way I gave them to the Rho. One, Rule is dead. Wait.” He held up his hand. “Hear me out.”

He resumed his pacing, a two-legged panther caged in a modern hospital room. “Mage fire burns in places—call them dimensions—you can’t see, and it burns very, very hot there. When my mage fire hit the staff, the hole in space that was its underlying reality imploded. It could have sucked Rule along somehow.”

“Sucked him… where?”

“That’s the question, isn’t it?” He reached the wall and turned. “Two. The staff was Hers. If She called it to Her the second the mage fire hit, she might have been able to recover part of it. I don’t know why Rule would have been dragged with the staff. As you said, it was touching you, not him, so I didn’t give this a very high probability. But it was just possible that the effect traveled along you without, ah, grabbing hold, because of your Gift. And Rule got taken instead.”

To
Her
. The Old One or goddess or whatever. Lily’s mouth was dry. “One problem with that. My Gift is gone.”

He nodded without pausing in his restless motion. “Exactly. So I thought Rule probably was dead, only you were so damned sure he wasn’t. I couldn’t overlook the chance that you were right. I tried scrying for him.”

“You didn’t tell me.” Anger burned still, but lower, retreating to a tight, sullen heat in her belly. “I take it you didn’t find anything.”

He grimaced. “I had to light the candle with a match. Didn’t have enough juice left to raise a fever, much less start a fire. It’s hard to get a salamander to notice a non-magical fire. I struck out.”

“I didn’t,” Cynna said.

He gave her an unfriendly look. “No. So I’ve had to rethink some of my assumptions.”

Lily‘ drummed her fingers. “I don’t see what any of this has to do with lying to me to
protect
me.”

Cullen held out both hands, turning them palms up. “The way Isen saw it, either Rule was dead and you were delusional, and feeding that delusion wouldn’t be healthy. Or else he was alive and we’d have to find a way of going after him. Of course, I don’t know how to do that, but assuming we made it past that little road block, it was apt to be a suicide mission, so—”

“Wait a minute. You sound as if you know where he is.”

His eyebrows lifted. “I thought you’d figured that out.

You said you knew he was in the realm most analogous to ours, physically.“

She wanted smack him. “I don’t know what that means!”

His mouth flattened. “Hell, luv. He’s in hell.”

A thousand feet up Lily discovered that ymu might keep her from sleeping, but she still needed oxygen. Or maybe it was fear, pure and simple, that made her pass out.

She came to as they descended. This would have struck her as lousy timing if she hadn’t been so surprised to still be alive—and so busy trying not to throw up. From the ground, the dragons’ flight had been grace itself. Experienced up close and personal, the ride was jerky as the great wings sculled through the air, tilting first one way, then the other.

Mountains again. These were green and gold, dust and rock—and hurtling toward her with stomach-wrenching speed. It was hard to breathe. The dragon’s talons felt like hot steel bands clamped around her middle, leaving her head, arms, and legs dangling. Her hands and feet were numb. Cold air rushed passed, filling her ears with its ocean noise, making her eyes water and her nose run.

Rule was close.

The heart-song of his nearness hummed inside her as they spiraled down and down, giving her one clear note to hold onto amid the cacophony of fear and pain. He hadn’t died. The dragon hadn’t eaten him.

It looked like they’d die together in about thirty seconds though, when they smashed into the side of the mountain. No, wait, there was a crevice—it looked too narrow for the dragons’ wings, but they tilted madly and sailed through, leveling off over the ocean.

Oh, God, the ocean. It was the first familiar thing she’d seen, though the colors weren’t right. Blue. She remembered blue, a shifting symphony of blues. This ocean shimmered through lichen colors—yellow ochre with bands of rust and dusty olive, reflecting the odd sky.

No beach. The water rolled right up to the rocky cliff face they flew along. Then the cliff fell back. They tilted, turning into a wide inlet.

More cliffs—rocks meeting ocean, then a thin strip of beach that widened—

They dove at it. As if the dragon had suddenly discovered gravity, they fell faster and faster. Her eyes watered madly from the rush of air. She couldn’t see.

She wanted to touch Rule, just to touch him once more—

The dragon put on the brakes. Those huge wings pulled sharply forward, cupping the air.

Her body tried to keep going. The talons didn’t let it. Too airless to scream, she blacked out again. Only for a moment, though, this time. She was dizzily conscious when, with the beach two stories beneath her, the bands around her middle opened and she fell—