Behind him in the cage, Benedict crouched in a miserably bent-over way to avoid the low, low roof—and landed a perfect side-kick where the gate was joined to the bars. Thud-rattle. She realized she’d been hearing that sound repeatedly as she ducked a sword stroke, danced back, and watched Benedict do it again.
Something snapped. Rule and Paul and Lucas seized the door then, grabbing it and twisting, and the metal shrieked—
“Lily!” Arjenie screamed.
She glanced quickly to her right. A yellow-haired elf ran at her with a big knife. She snapped off a quick shot—missed, dammit, but he’d swerved—swung her gun back around to the sword-wielding elf—
Who collapsed beneath two hundred pounds of snarling wolf, who seized his neck between his jaws and twisted. Blood flew.
The cage’s gate lay on the ground. Wolves poured out. One—Rule!—it was Rule—launched himself at the yellow-haired elf. The other three raced for the front of the room.
Cullen’s voice came from behind a tumble of rock. “If they point, get the hell out of the way!”
Lily stood there and panted, suddenly aware of how winded she was, how much her arm hurt, and how shaky and tired her left arm had grown. She let it fall to her side. Couldn’t shoot now … and wouldn’t have to. There was only one elf left, chanting silently in support of Rethna, who still stood with his back to the room. To the wolves racing for him.
Friar collapsed to the ground and lay motionless.
The chanting elf’s eyes opened.
Rethna turned.
Two wolves leaped for him. He held out both hands as if his palms could halt them.
They did. The wolves halted in midair—hung there for a split second—then sailed backward several feet to land hard. He waved at the third wolf, a casual flick of his hand. That wolf—she thought it was Benedict—froze as if he’d been turned to a statue.
Rethna started toward her. He should have been swaying, exhausted from such major magical work. He looked dewy fresh.
Good news. Now she could shoot the bastard. Lily lifted her weapon.
Rethna smiled and twiddled his fingers. The metal turned instantly red-hot. Lily cursed and dropped the gun.
A ball of fire zipped out of a tumbled piled of rocks. Dammit, Cullen, we agreed—but before Lily could finish the thought, Rethna’s upheld palm stopped the fireball in midair. Rethna kept walking. The fireball quivered—then started inching toward him again.
Rule and the wolf who’d killed Sword-guy streaked toward Rethna, zigzagging unpredictably.
Rethna continued to hold one palm up to the fireball. His other hand flicked the air in the general direction of Rule-wolf. He froze in midstride. The other wolf leaped.
Rethna’s one remaining attendant shouted something, his hands flying through some spell. The wolf burst as if he’s swallowed a grenade, blood and gobbets of flesh flying everywhere.
Rethna looked back at the other elf, frowning. The elf fell to his knees, babbling what had to be an apology. Blood and nasty bits stuck to Rethna’s pretty clothes. Maybe he didn’t like getting dirty. He spoke in that musical language, then glanced at the fireball still creeping closer. He snapped his fingers.
It vanished.
Lily’s heart pounded so hard she felt sick. She started toward Rethna.
His eyebrows rose. “You must be the mate. A sensitive, I’m told.” One of the wolves he’d sent tumbling stirred. Flick. The wolf froze. That left one wolf unfrozen, still lying motionless where he’d fallen. Just to be sure, Rethna aimed a flick at him, too. “Friar wants you. I’ve forgotten your name. What is it?”
“Call me Dirty Harry’s best friend.” Her SIG lay behind her on the ground. Her clutch piece, though, was in her sling—the snub nose Isen had loaned her. It wasn’t accurate at a distance. She wasn’t accurate at a distance, and the frozen Rule-wolf statue was too close to Rethna for her to take any chance of missing. So she’d get nice and close. She rubbed her right arm as if it hurt—it did—and slid her hand just inside the sling, still rubbing. Now if someone—anyone—was still able to move and distract him—
A reddish wolf raced out from the tumble of rocks, moving so fast the eye could scarcely track him.
Rethna glanced that way. Flick. Cullen froze.
Lily shot the elf lord.
The black stone on his chest glowed. He kept walking. “You’ve cost me quite a bit. Fortunately, you’re worth quite a bit. Sensitives are—”
She squeezed the trigger again. Again. The black stone flashed with each shot, and Rethna kept coming. Then her gun flashed hot, crazy hot, and she had to drop it and he was only five feet away now, smiling faintly as if it amused him to be shot at.
“—extremely rare,” he said, stopping. “Or I may keep you and sell your blood and breed you. Unless she requires you, in which case you will be very unhappy for a long time.”
Lily glimpsed movement out of the corner of her eye. She kept looking straight ahead. “Do you know where sensitives come from?”
“No.” His eyebrows lifted slightly. “Are you going to tell me?”
“Dragons.” It was Arjenie she’d glimpsed—a grim and battered Arjenie who limped heavily, had one arm hanging down as if disabled, and held a nice, big rock in her other hand. “My grandfather won’t like it if you take me away. I’m studying with him.”
“You bluff poorly. There’s no dragon who—”
Arjenie smashed that rock on his head.
He swayed. Staggered. Saw Arjenie—his eyes widened—and backhanded her. She fell next to a rock the size of a hassock, nearly hitting her head on the stone. And as he struck and Arjenie fell, a tiny woman with purple black skin sprang out from behind that rock and latched onto his leg. And bit him.
His eyes went big with fear or astonishment. “Dya,” he said. Oh, yes, that was fear in his voice. He said a couple more words in that liquid tongue before his eyes rolled back in his head. His knees buckled. As he sank to the ground the tiny woman—no more than four feet high—clung tightly to his leg with her arms and mouth.
The last elf still standing shrieked and shrieked again. He started in with the gestures. As he did, reality split sharply into other behind him. Where a wolf had stood frozen, a man—naked and snarling as if he were still wolf—stood.
But only for a split second. Then Rule leaped at the lone elf and seized his head in a two-handed grip and snapped his neck.
Lily breathed. Just breathed for a moment, her heartbeat still hasty. A little tremor of nerves ran through her. She looked around and saw wolves starting to stir. With Rethna dead, the freeze thing was … no, that was an assumption. Better make sure.
She knelt beside him. The staring eyes and vacant face said dead, but she laid her fingers on his throat to be sure. No pulse. The little dark-skinned woman—she was naked—finally released his leg. She looked up and smiled at Lily … not a human smile, not in that face. Her eyes were huge and lovely, a soft violet, too widely spaced for human. But it was her short muzzle that really tipped her into otherness. And the fangs protruding from it. “You’re Dya,” Lily said.
Dya nodded—a very human gesture. “Now the Queens will not have to send the hellhounds of the Hunt to kill him. You will be glad of that,” she informed Lily, and turned to check on her sister.
Hellhounds? Lily shook off that question and looked at Rule. “Who was it he killed?”
“Paul.” Rule’s voice was harsh, his eyes still way too black, as if he needed to snap more than one neck. He raised his voice. “Change.”