“I understand that you wouldn’t. But yes, they do.”
Rule and Lily had been flying to North Carolina, where Leidolf Clanhome was located, about once a month. It was all he could do … and it wasn’t enough. “Alex has been keeping an eye on those within Leidolf who have trouble with control. Cobb wasn’t among them. He’s an angry man, but his control has been excellent.”
“Until now, and according to Alex.”
“Yes.” And Alex was shaken by what he considered his failure.
“Will you be able to tell if Cobb was in fury when he attacked? Will you smell it on him the way Benedict smelled it on you?”
“Not so many hours after the fact, no. But he’ll tell me what happened. If he fell into the fury, he’ll know, and he’ll tell me.”
Three people dead, ten injured … and it wouldn’t have happened if Cobb’s Rho had known him, understood him, and been watching for the signs of an unstable anger. The clan experienced the mantle whether Rule was among them or not, but some needed that experience reinforced in a way only frequent contact could provide.
If Raymond Cobb had indeed fallen into the fury, it was as much Rule’s fault as Cobb’s.
Restlessness poured through him like a tide of ants. His legs twitched with the need to move. But this time he recognized what he was trying to run from.
You have to turn and face it. You always have to turn and face it, no matter how keen the claws or how bloody the teeth. And sooner works better than later. He spoke very low. “Tell me about them. The victims. The ones he killed and the ones he hurt.”
“I don’t know much.” Lily studied him. She knew something was moving inside him, even if she couldn’t sense the shape of it. “The Nashville PD is playing coy, not cooperating worth a damn. But the two men killed were both white, one middle-aged, the other a lot younger. The woman—”
“Woman?” Rule’s head jerked. “He killed a woman?”
“Four of the victims were female. One was killed outright. The other three were among the injured. I don’t have details on them specifically, but three of the ten people injured are in critical condition.”
“He attacked three women?” Disbelief sharpened his voice. Carefully he brought it back down. The people around them didn’t need to hear this. “You didn’t tell me that. Alex didn’t, either. He didn’t say there were female victims.” Alex must not know. He wouldn’t have left that out.
The pleat was back in Lily’s brow. “I know that’s hard for you to accept. Your people are big on not harming women.”
“It’s deeper than that. Women are to be protected, just like—”
“If you say ‘children,’ I’ll have to hit you.”
His grin flickered. “I was going to say, like you automatically protect civilians.”
“Good save.”
“It’s not training and custom, Lily. Or not just that. In the fury, we lose track of who’s friend, who’s foe. Instinct itself goes awry, but it’s not revoked. For that rage to focus on women does not make sense.”
“Men turn their rage on women all too often.”
“Not lupi. And especially not in the fury. The fury is a battle state. I could see Cobb falling into it if he saw a woman being threatened or harmed. He shouldn’t, but it’s possible. But if he were so twisted he could see women as enemy, Alex would have noticed. He would have been watching the man and he would have warned me about him.”
“Alex is Leidolf. He might not see what you would.”
He shook his head. “I despise the way Leidolf tries to subjugate their women, but they don’t beat them. It’s … it’s like the difference between intentionally frightening a child to correct him and eating one. The first is misguided. The second is insane. A lupus who is so distorted he could see women—not just one particular woman, but women in general—as his enemy … Alex would have noticed. Everyone would have noticed.”
She didn’t respond.
He grimaced. “You don’t accept that.”
“People miss the craziness in their neighbors and coworkers all the time.”
Frustration balled up his gut. How could she have lived with him for so long and not understand? “We don’t hurt women.”
“What about clanless wolves? They, ah—they don’t have the same stability.”
This was hard to explain without referring to the mantle. “A clanless wolf can see humans of either sex as prey when he’s four-footed. On four feet or two, he’d probably see human males as rival predators to be chased off, killed, or avoided. Pack wolves are more likely to chase or kill; lone wolves prefer to avoid. But neither a pack wolf nor a lone wolf would see women as competing predators. And none of that applies to Cobb. He wasn’t beast-lost or clanless.”
“What if a woman was attacking him, trying to stop him? Wouldn’t that put her in the enemy category?”
“Even if that’s what happened, it wouldn’t generalize. He wouldn’t go on to attack other women.”
“You know what a fight is like. People get hurt even if they aren’t the target.”
“If Cobb accidentally hurt a woman because he didn’t see her, perhaps … but three women? No. That’s not accident. And it isn’t possible.”
“Yet he did it.”
“Not because of the fury.”
“What, then?” she demanded. “What else could it be?”
“I have no idea.”
SEVEN
NASHVILLE had a different take on September than San Diego: hotter and wetter. At six ten local time, their plane was bumping its way through heavy cloud cover as it approached the airport. The pilot informed them it was eighty-two degrees and raining in Nashville.
Lily put up her laptop. She’d spent the last hour scanning online news sources for information about the shooting without learning much, except that the talking heads were having a great time speculating in shocked tones. She still didn’t have an official report, but she’d sicced Ida, Ruben’s secretary, on the local cops, so she expected to get one soon.
Rule was pacing. He’d found an excellent excuse for it, one Lily estimated to be about five months old. And teething.
Rule loved babies. They usually loved him right back. This one, a little baldy with chocolate-kiss eyes and dusky skin, had been screaming his head off back in economy. Rule—who’d been getting seriously restless—had decided to ask his mother if he could try to settle the boy.
Lily had been sure the woman wouldn’t hand her baby over to some strange man. She’d been wrong. The baby was sound asleep now, crumpled into a terrycloth lump on Rule’s chest, drooling happily onto the fine Egyptian cotton of his shirt. Rule cradled him there in two spread hands, humming quietly as he headed back down the aisle.
It made Lily’s chest ache. Some of that ache was for Rule, who would love to have a baby of his own again. He’d missed out on so much with Toby. But some of the ache was about her.
She didn’t know what to think about that. She didn’t want a baby … did she? Not now, certainly. How could she do her job if she had a tiny little human depending on her? Besides, she’d never been one to dream over babies the way some women did. Although she’d always assumed that one day …
One day might never come. Lupi weren’t very fertile.
Cullen thought that might change now that the level of ambient magic was increasing, but even if he was right, the increase was gradual. Even if he was right, there was no guarantee things would change enough, soon enough.
One of the flight attendants stopped Rule. Lily didn’t hear what the woman said, but it was probably a request that he take his seat. The seat belt lights had flashed on.