“He’s bad,” Rule said, straightening, “but he’s not gone yet.”
“Dya,” Arjenie said, “Dya, can you help him?”
The little woman shook her head sadly. “I changed back to true venom to kill my lord. After you gave me the tears, I hurried to change it. I knew his death was mine. It is not easy to kill a lord of the sidhe, but the venom of a dereet of the Binai will do so quickly.” She sounded proud. “But now … true venom is very different from what I use to make potions. Especially potions of healing. I can’t change back so quickly.”
Lily unclipped her phone and turned it on. She’d had it off for the op. “I can call Nettie. Maybe she could get here in …” Her breath sucked in. She’d forgotten. For a moment she’d forgotten where Nettie was, and who she was with.
“Isen’s okay,” Rule said, adding mind reading to his other abilities. “Or at least alive. What time is it?”
She glanced at the phone in her hand. “Twelve twenty.”
“The Challenge must be over by now. He survived it.”
Tears stung her eyes, making her feel foolish. Crying over good news? But Isen had made it. Most of them had made it. Most, but not all. “I’ll call,” she said. She touched Nettie’s name in her contacts list.
Rule gripped Brian’s hand. “He didn’t want to die alone. I wonder if he knows …”
“Hearing’s the last to go,” Cullen said quietly as he joined them. “There’s a good chance he knows we’re here.” He sat and reached for Brian’s ankle, shook his head, then took his other hand and tried to find a pulse at the wrist.
Lily got Nettie’s voice mail. She left a brief message. “An ambulance,” she said. I’ll call 9-1-1.”
Rule looked at Cullen, who shrugged. “It can’t hurt,” Rule said.
Lily knew what they meant. They didn’t think he’d last that long. Even if he did, EMTs, paramedics, doctors—none of them would have a clue what to do for a lupus whose magic wasn’t able to fix whatever Rethna had done to him.
But they didn’t know. They had to try. She punched in the numbers and gave the 9-1-1 operator their location and what little information she had about Brian’s condition.
When she ended that call, Brian’s breathing seemed worse. There was a rattling sound in his throat. Cullen was talking to him quietly, recounting aloud some escapade. Lily bit her lip and checked for messages. There was one from Jason, who’d accompanied Isen. That one came in thirty minutes ago. Another from Pete, Benedict’s second, that was only fifteen minutes old. She touched the one for Jason first.
“Isen’s okay,” she said after listening. Rule and Cullen would have heard the message, but Benedict was probably too far away. “He took some damage, including a bullet that creased his skull. Nettie’s keeping Isen in sleep. They’re headed back to Clanhome. Ah … Javier’s alive, too. Jason called the Challenge inconclusive.”
“I’ll talk to Javier,” Lucas said, “when you’re able to lend me your phone. He’ll withdraw it when he knows the truth.”
She nodded, then listened to the message from Pete. “Pete wants to talk to Benedict. The bomb squad’s at Clanhome now.” She looked at Arjenie, huddled against Benedict. “There’s a good chance you saved a few hundred people when you picked Friar’s pocket.”
Arjenie’s smile trembled at the edges. “Do you think he got out? Friar, I mean.”
Lily looked at the dark, looming shape of the mountain behind the house. It hadn’t collapsed entirely, but anyone underground when it rearranged itself … “I don’t know. He didn’t use the same tunnel we did, but there could have been a way up to the surface we don’t know about. There were at least two militia guys here earlier. They seem to have vanished.”
“José,” Rule said, “the garage is around back. Friar has three vehicles—a red Ford Ranger, a black Porsche, and a ’64 T-bird convertible. See if they’re there. Sammy, patrol. Find out if we’re really alone.”
The two men rose and left.
Lily needed to call Croft. She needed to mobilize a man-hunt for Friar, to find out the extent of the damage when the gate imploded and the earth shook. But at this moment none of that seemed important. She looked at the young man who lay dying in front of them. Rule held one of his hands. Lucas clasped the other.
Brian’s eyes opened, but stared out blindly. “Rule.”
“I’m here.”
“Have to try.” His voice was faint and hoarse. “You took … Leidolf. Take Wythe, too.”
“I had a Leidolf great-grandmother. I don’t have a blood tie to Wythe.”
“But …” His eyes seemed to focus—but not on Rule or any of them. He looked … surprised. Then peaceful and happy. His lips moved, but Lily didn’t hear anything except that rattle in his throat.
Lucas, though, stiffened and bent close. Rule leaned in, too.
A few seconds passed. Lucas straightened and looked at her. “Take his hand.” He thrust that lax hand out to her.
“What?” Automatically she clasped it in hers. And jumped a little in surprise. The skin was cold, as if he were already dead—but his magic was so present. So strong and alive. Pine and fur seemed almost to press up into her own skin.
“The Lady wants you to take it,” Lucas said urgently. “He sees her. Hears her. You’re to take the mantle from him and hold it intact until it can be passed on.”
She looked at him. “That’s nuts.”
“It’s the Lady’s mantle.” He closed both of his hands over hers and the cold one she held and pressed firmly, as if he could squeeze the mantle out of Brian and into her. “You’re the Lady’s Chosen.”
“I’m not—” But it was pushing at her. Magic didn’t do that, but this was. “I can’t do that. I’m not lupus.”
“Consent is necessary,” Rule said calmly. “If you could do it, would you?”
Would she?
It was a stupid question, like asking what she’d do if she won the lottery when she never even bought a ticket. She didn’t know why she stopped to think about it, but she did. Would she allow a clan to die?
Wythe would be no more, but not all the clan members would die. Some—many? A handful? She didn’t know—would eventually be adopted into other clans. Those who survived. Those who weren’t sent wholly mad by the death shock. “Yes,” she said slowly, “but it’s a crazy question.”
Put your hand on his chest.
She tugged her hand free from Brian’s grip and put it on the chest of the dying man. She could feel the magic moving up him. How strange. It seemed to be moving up from his gut to his chest, heading for his throat … “Brian had a hallucination. If it gave him peace, that’s good. But I don’t know what your excuse is,” she told Rule.
Bend close to him.
“Even if I could suck up his magic,” she went on, bending low, “it wouldn’t help. Once I absorbed it, it would turn into my magic.”
Breathe his breath.
“It wouldn’t be a mantle anymore.” Lily finished with her face hovering over Brian’s, his breath faint but perceptible, her own breath falling into his open mouth …
What the hell? What was she doing?
… as living magic poured out of the dying man with his last breath. And into her mouth.
Lily jerked upright. Her hands went numb. Tingles raced over her skin from the inside. She couldn’t breathe. It was choking her, this huge ball of magic——fur and pine and moonlight—lodged in her throat, in her lungs— blood and strength and moonlight—no, it was settling in her belly. Large and living and not her. Not part of her, not any part of her.