Cullen’s head whipped around. He glared at Lily. “You want Cynna to play with high-grade explosives?”
She could have sworn he’d been too absorbed to hear a word. “It’s safe to handle unless you pop it in the oven or hold a match to it. And we might be in a hurry here.”
“Why?”
Because her gut said so. Not that she was a precog, but… “This buy of the explosive—it’s clumsy compared to his other tricks. Sure, he doesn’t know we know about his dummy company, but he’s left a trail this time. When something blows, that trail’s going to point to him.”
Cynna asked, “You think he’s getting hasty and stupid?”
“I don’t know. He wants to make something go boom, though. Maybe Rule’s apartment or the FBI building or some place I don’t have a clue about. But we know his usual target—lupi, specifically Nokolai lupi—and we know he got someone into Clanhome once to pour a potion in the wells. That attempt failed, and he’s a man who likes to win. Maybe he’s given up on subtlety.”
AT a deserted mining camp, two wolves circled in the moon-cast shadow of a wooden gantry. The gray wolf was the taller, the reddish one had a more powerful build. A low growl rumbled continuously from the gray wolf’s chest. His ears were flat to his skull, his lips peeled back in a snarl.
The red wolf’s ears were flat, too, yet somehow the gaze he pinned on his opponent seemed more jaundiced than enraged.
A scattering of silent men formed a circle around them. The dirt in that circle was trampled, gouged in places from claws scrabbling for purchase, muddy in places where blood hadn’t fully soaked into the parched ground. Wind whipped at their fur, tails, and ears … three ears between the two wolves. The fur of the gray wolf was black with dried blood where one ear had been ripped off. The fur was dark on one haunch, too, and around his muzzle.
The reddish wolf moved as smoothly as the gray one, though he used only three feet, holding one foreleg off the ground for obvious reasons. Blood dripped sluggishly from the mangled leg.
The gray wolf charged. His opponent dropped and turned belly up—and thrust with his hind legs, flipping the other wolf, who thudded to the ground and rolled, nearly colliding with one of the watching men.
It would end soon.
Isen knew this. He’d trained three-legged, which might keep him alive a bit longer. But he hadn’t trained while pain radiated in huge waves from the broken limb.
Twice he’d held back from the kill. Once when he removed Javier’s ear instead of crushing his skull. Once when he had Javier pinned and stepped back, refusing the kill. Oh, but that had infuriated the young wolf—being made a gift of his life by his enemy.
Anger was Javier’s weakness. Isen had taken advantage of that, using body language to taunt the youngster into rashness. It had paid off, helping Isen drag things out, hoping that Rule would manage to rescue Brian quickly and a call—a single phone call—would allow them to stop spilling each other’s blood.
That hadn’t happened, and the pup was fast, damn him. The moment Isen had felt his leg bone snap beneath his enemy’s teeth, he’d known he could delay no longer. Either he finished things, or Javier would.
Javier righted himself quickly. Isen hadn’t tried to take advantage of his brief disarray. He couldn’t move fast enough, and he knew it. He would have to draw the other wolf in close, perhaps by feigning …
Fifty feet away, a wolf yipped three times.
Son of a bitch. The enemy had taken the bait after all. Isen lifted his nose, but the sentry’s call had come from downwind, so scent told him nothing. He looked that way.
Javier’s hard, heavy body slammed into him, jaws gaping. Flip him and go for the belly, that was the idea. Isen twisted frantically, avoiding disembowelment but rolling onto his shattered leg. Pain paralyzed him for a second—a second too long as Javier lunged again.
And was knocked away by another wolf. Stephen. Who crouched between Isen and Javier, growling a warning at the younger wolf.
Stephen might be overly tied to tradition, but he could be counted on for fairness and good sense. The Challenge had ended the moment the sentry sounded the alert. Panting with pain, Isen struggled to his feet and took in the situation quickly. He’d warned Stephen they might be attacked, so Stephen had posted all four of his guards as four-footed sentries. They yipped at each other now in a code Isen didn’t know. His own people had followed orders and were racing for …
Isen heard the rifle. He never felt the bullet.
LILY called Pete, Benedict’s second. Clanhome was already on alert, but she wanted him to know about the RN40—which she’d been told had a distinctive smell. A bit like almonds, at least to a human nose. She also wanted to find out if there’d been any word about the Challenge. None, he said.
Cynna was pacing, waiting for Cody to get there with the sample of explosive.
Cullen still sat on the floor by the broom closet. “Lily. I need you here.”
“Got to go,” she told Pete, and put her phone up. “What?” she asked as she went to him.
He didn’t look up. “I’m not going to unravel this thing tonight. It’s beyond anything I’ve ever seen. But I’ve isolated the thread that powers it.”
She crouched beside him, but the sling made that awkward, so she went to one knee. “Okay. Does that mean you can cut the thread and it won’t have any juice?”
“That’s what I want you for.”
“Me?” She couldn’t have been more surprised if he’d told her he needed her to dance naked. Actually, the dance naked bit sounded like something Cullen might suggest.
“I called it a thread deliberately. Thread’s twisted to strengthen it. This has a twist to it … I’ve never seen that before, but I’m pretty sure it means that if the thread’s cut, it comes uncoiled. That releases the inherent energy from the twisting. I can’t cut it right next to the ward—don’t ask why, I don’t have time to explain—so the remnant of thread nearest the ward would release a bit of power into the ward, triggering it.”
“Okay,” she said dubiously. “But what do you want me for?”
“To soak up that bit of power.”
She opened her mouth … and closed it without saying anything.
Twice she’d actively absorbed magic from a person. Apparently she did the same thing passively all the time, only in very tiny amounts. That was the essence of her Gift—the ability to soak up tiny amounts of magic, which her brain then interpreted as a texture. “Am I supposed to try to soak it up?”
“Yes, but don’t pull hard. The thread’s tied to the node—that much I’m sure of. Nothing else is that clear and pure. If you pull too hard, you’ll draw too much energy up through the thread and it will break.”
“How do I know how hard is too hard? I’m not even sure I can do this!”
“I’ll monitor you. Here’s what we’ll do. I’ll put your finger where I want you to pull. You do your thing. I should see the bit of thread between your finger and the ward go dim. When it does, I’ll cut it. If I’ve figured it right, the ward will evaporate.”
“And if you’re wrong?”
“We’ll find out exactly what this ward’s supposed to do. Which reminds me.” He raised his voice slightly without looking away from that fascinating floor. “Cynna, go pace in the living room.”
“If it’s too dangerous for me to stay here,” she began.
“I don’t think it’s dangerous or I wouldn’t do it. I intend for our child to have a father. Even if the ward does trigger, I doubt it will do more than knock us out. Friar wouldn’t want a fireball going off in his kitchen. That’s why you need to be in the other room. Worst comes to worst, you can drag Lily and me away from the trapdoor before Friar comes to see who tampered with his ward.”