Mortal Ties (50 page)

“Inside.” Friar smiled. “I’ll introduce you.” He raised his voice slightly. “If you’re
quite satisfied, I suggest we move inside. I’m not happy being so exposed.”

Benessarai spoke without looking at Friar. “Patience. Who will attack when none can
see us? We will have the remains in stasis quickly, but then the blood must be collected.”
He waved at his people, who moved close to the bodies once more.

“I am unable to help with that,” Friar said, “so I will await you inside where there
is more tidying up to do.”

“Oh, as you will, then.”

“Hugo, bring her along.”

The mass of fat and muscle gripping her arms shoved her—and she let the momentum take
her to her knees.

“Really, Lily, you can do better. If you don’t, Hugo will carry you.”

The elves had stopped waving their arms. Two of them bent and tenderly picked up the
bodies and started this way. Benessarai spoke to the other two. Lily raised her voice.
“Benessarai, he intends to kill your hostage!”

The elf glanced her way. “Hostages are not killed.” He waved at the two remaining
elves as the two carrying the bodies passed Lily.

She tried again. “He’s going to kill me, too, and feed me to his goddess.”

“That is true.” Benessarai cocked his head, curiosity brightening his eyes. “It is
rather a waste. I have never encountered a sensitive. Bring her to me.”

Friar spoke softly. “She is my prize, not yours.”

“Of course. My apologies, Robert. That was thoughtless of me.” He began to saunter
toward them.

Out of the corner of her eye, Lily glimpsed movement. A flash of orange. She ducked
her head and shook it as if confused…which let her look that way without Friar noticing.

A tiger peered around the far corner of the warehouse. Just the head showed—that enormous,
orange and black head with green eyes slitted against the sunshine. The tiger nodded
at her once and pulled back out of sight.

Grandmother? Grandmother was here?

Thank God she’d ducked her head and her hair was
hanging down, hiding her face. She had a moment to get her expression smoothed out,
a moment to try to figure out what that nod meant. Distract them? Be patient? The
latter, maybe, she decided. No one was rushing to the rescue right away, so maybe
they had more preparations to finish.

Benessarai stopped in front of her. “With your permission, Robert, I would like to
try something before you make your offering. It would be too late afterward.” He chuckled
at his own wit. “Your man will need to let go of her and step back, or he will be
affected. He wouldn’t like that.”

“Of course not.” Friar didn’t put much effort into the lie. He sounded downright brusque.
“If it won’t take long.”

“Not long at all.”

“Hugo, release her but keep her covered.”

The big man grunted and dropped his hold on Lily. The smell of pizza retreated with
him. Her shoulders ached.

“Hugo won’t shoot to kill if you try to escape,” Friar told her. “He’ll aim for your
stomach. A gut full of buckshot would kill you eventually, but not so quickly I would
fail in my duty to the Great One.”

“Do step away just a bit, Robert. There, yes.” Benessarai wiggled the fingers of one
hand at Lily.

Magic prickled over her face. It felt like a breeze with feathers in it. “Air magic,
only slightly shaped. Mind-magic is connected to Air, isn’t it?”

He frowned slightly and wiggled his fingers again.

The gust of magic was stronger this time, more prickly. “Why is it okay for Friar
to kill me? I’m a hostage.”

“No, you aren’t.” Benessarai studied her the way a scientist might study a lab rat
that was not reacting in the expected way to a stimulus. He started in with more hand
waving, this time accompanied by a short chant.

Friar smiled slowly. “Allow me to explain. An abomination can’t make a true covenant.
If Alycithin was unable to make a true covenant, she has no family. If she has no
family, she is not party to the code. If she is not party to the code, then alas,
you are no hostage. Only a prize.”

“I see. Yet I’m a valuable prize, aren’t I? I’m surprised
Benessarai is willing to let you kill me without learning where sensitives come from.”

This time the elf answered. “I am curious. Do you claim to know?”

“Oh, yes, I know. You have humans in your realm, right?”

“Your kind are everywhere.” He said that the way a New York apartment dweller might
speak of roaches: try as you may, you can’t get rid of them. “Tell me,” he said.

“Make me your hostage so I don’t get fed to Her Evil Nastiness and—”

Friar slapped her. Hard. Way harder than he should have been able to. She fell to
the ground, dazed, with black fluttering at the edges of her vision.

“You do not—”

He kicked her in the ribs. She gasped and curled around the sudden pain.

“Speak of—” His leg drew back for another kick.

A tiger roared.

Hugo screamed.

Five hundred pounds of Siberian tiger raced straight at them.

Friar’s eyes widened. He reached for her. Lily tried to scramble out of the way, but
she was dizzy, slowed by the blows. He got hold of her arm and started dragging her,
and he should not have been able to do that. Not as fast as he was moving. She caught
a glimpse of Benessarai fleeing through the open door of the warehouse, heard the
two elves call out something, but she was fighting, kicking, squirming, trying her
damnedest to stay out of the warehouse.

She failed.

Friar dragged her across the threshold. Just as her skin tingled from the magic of
the wards she heard the raucous
boom
of a shotgun.

Friar slammed the door shut.

L
ILY’S
side hurt. Her cheek throbbed. Her hip burned from being dragged across concrete.
But Friar had let go for the moment. Cautiously she sat up.

“We need to leave,” Friar said. “Now.”

“But my people—” Benessarai waved at the door. Someone screamed.

“Are you going out there to rescue them? No? Then we must depart.” When Benessarai
stood staring at the closed door, Friar snapped, “It saw you. Saw all of us. It looks
like a tiger, but I don’t know what it is. It wasn’t fooled by your illusions. How
long will your wards keep it out?”

Benessarai drew himself up, offended. “The wards are strong.”

“Good. That means you have time to— No, you don’t.”

Lily had quietly scooted away and started to gather her feet under her. Friar grabbed
her arm again and pulled her up. It hurt. He shook her. “What do you know about that
tiger?”

“Do you think,” Benessarai said nervously, “that those lupi are behind this?”

There was another scream outside. It ended abruptly.

It was silent inside, too. Lily’s heart was hammering, but she took advantage of the
quiet to look around.

From the outside, the warehouse hadn’t looked very large. Inside it seemed oddly bigger,
maybe because of the way the lights were hung on the rafters, pointing down. That
left the high ceiling in shadows, making it seem even more distant. Lily gave those
shadowy heights one quick glance. A misty white cloud hung motionless up there.

She couldn’t see very far into the warehouse because of the way the shipping crates
were stacked; the nearest row blocked her view. The immediate area was set up like
an office, with short partitions on two sides. There was a counter flanking the door,
an ancient vinyl sofa, some filing cabinets, a water cooler, and two desks.

There were also two bodies.

Alycithin and Dinalaran had been laid on the floor in the open space before the rows
of crates started. A large, perfect circle glowed around them…glowed from the floor
up, as if the cement had decided to luminesce. Their dead hands had been folded around
the two knives that rested on their chests. Mage lights hovered at the head and foot
of each corpse.

No sign of Adam King. If he was here, he wasn’t making any sound.

Friar broke the silence. “I believe,” he said, “you forgot this.” He held out the
bowling-ball bag. Lily had forgotten all about it. Friar had remembered even while
being charged by a Siberian tiger. The prototype must be in there.

Benessarai accepted it and replied with icy precision. “I appreciate your care for
my property.”

Friar let his shoulders droop. “I”—he ran a hand over his hair—“I’m sorry for how
I spoke to you. I was…the beast shook me badly. I admit it.”

Benessarai thawed, but only slightly. “Courtesy means little if you possess it only
when all is well.”

“You are right,” Friar sighed, a man who saw his limitations all too clearly. He knew
how to play the elf, even if he’d forgotten in the stress of the moment.

The thaw continued. “I suppose we must go. That beast shattered my concentration.
Its presence will draw attention here.”

“Will you grant me a small boon? My man is either dead or otherwise unavailable. Would
you ask one of yours to guard my prize while I retrieve my things?”

“Oh, very well.” The fabulous master of mind-magic sounded like a petulant child.
“You can fetch my hostage while you’re back there. Use the charm so he doesn’t give
you any trouble.”

“Of course.” Friar even gave him a little bow.

Benessarai spoke briefly to the two remaining elves—the ones who’d brought the bodies
in. One of them—Lily thought this one was female, though it was hard to be sure with
those long, loose shirts—headed their way. Her face was as impassive as ever, though
she did dart one quick glance at the door when the tiger roared again.

Friar bent close and whispered in Lily’s ear, “You have a short reprieve. Behave,
and perhaps I won’t make you pay too badly for the delay.” He shoved her to the floor.

She fell hard. Again. Her ribs ached where he’d kicked her. The side of her face throbbed.
When had Friar gotten so bloody damn strong?

When
she
was busy remaking him, of course. When he hung suspended in what had been a gate
until Rethna tampered with it. His goddess had given him his patterning Gift. She
must have decided to make a few more alterations while she was at it.

While Friar vanished amid the packing crates, Benessarai had moved to the large circle
that held the two people he’d killed. He began rolling up his sleeves, paused, frowned,
and said something in his language.

Lily’s new guard repeated it, or something very like it, and seized Lily by her restraints
the way Alycithin had. And pushed. Apparently she was supposed to move forward. She
did, but as slowly as possible.

Hurry,
she thought. It wasn’t mindspeech. She still couldn’t nudge that dial. But she thought
it anyway.

She didn’t feel any tingle of magic when the elf steered her across the circle, which
meant the circle wasn’t activated. “So how are we leaving?” she asked. “Not via a
gate. There’s no node.”

“A gate?” He smiled at her pleasantly. She’d accidentally stroked his ego, though,
hadn’t she? Implying he could actually open a gate all by himself. “Not that, but
something quite clever. Robert taught it to me, but he can only execute it on himself.
I, of course, am able to do much more. I shall send all of us out of phase, and then
we may walk out unimpeded.”

Out of phase…invisible and untouchable, in other words. Like demons could do when
they weren’t in their home realm. “Friar taught you a demon trick?”

“Don’t be absurd. Demons don’t exist.”

“Could have fooled me. The ones in Dis sure looked real. The dragons thought they
were, and I tend to trust dragons on that sort of thing.”

He frowned. “You refer to the soulless.”

“You could call them that, I guess. We call them demons.”

“And you claim to have been to Dis and to converse with dragons.” He shook his head.
“It is most annoying that I cannot simply cast a truth spell on you. Clearly you are
not telling the truth, and yet—but this is not the time for discussion. Sit down out
of my way. There,” he said, pointing next to Alycithin’s body.

The elf made sure Lily sat exactly where Benessarai wanted her and seated herself
on the concrete floor, too. Lily found herself looking at the woman who’d captured
her and brought her here and used the last split-second of her life saving Lily’s.

Exit wounds are always worse than entry wounds, and Dinalaran had shot her in the
back. He must have been using hollow points. He’d fired twice, and it looked like
they’d both hit her about heart high and blown out a good chunk of her chest on their
way out. One breast was gone. The other was pretty torn up.

It made Lily sick and sad. Alycithin hadn’t been a good guy by human standards, but
by those of her people she’d been deeply honorable. And so alive, so vital and curious.
And now she was meat. Lily took a slow breath and turned herself enough that her back
was to the corpse. Her elf guard didn’t object.

The other elf had knelt near but not at the edge of the circle. Eyes closed, he chanted
softly. Rethna’s flunkies had done this, too—either adding their power to his or performing
an active part of the spell, she wasn’t sure which. Benessarai was moving around the
circle in a slow, deliberate way. He didn’t chant. The circle kept glowing faintly.
No magic prickled over Lily’s skin. But the look of intense concentration on his face
said he was doing something, even if she had no idea what.