Lily sipped at the coffee and started organizing her thoughts on paper.
Sequence, she wrote. Under that she began listing last night’s events. She put asterisks next to the parts she’d heard secondhand.
According to Cullen, Benedict had scented the other lupi. Knowing help was almost there, he’d timed his play to have the gang in a state of maximum confusion when the wolves showed up, howling. He’d gotten Lily out of the line of fire even as he’d taken care of the one holding Beth.
His knife had flown true. The gangbanger had died fast with several inches of steel in his throat—too fast to harm Beth. Then Benedict had opened fire on the rest of the gang.
There’d been twenty of them, it turned out. Twenty young men with weapons trained on him, ready to shoot. He’d killed seven and wounded five before their return fire took him down just as the pack arrived.
That had sent most of the remaining gang members running. Most of those who hadn’t run were dead—but only one of them had been killed by the wolves. Harlowe had been foaming-at-the-mouth crazy by then, fixated on reaching Lily. He’d used the staff so erratically that he’d done as much damage to his own people as to the lupi.
The staff, Lily wrote.
One. Harlowe had been holding it when Cullen hit him with mage fire. He’d been toasted… but his body hadn’t gone missing.
Two. It had been touching Lily. She’d been burned, but she hadn’t vanished.
Three. It hadn’t even been touching Rule, yet he was gone.
Why? And why was she the only one who saw that his death didn’t explain anything?
‘She frowned at her list of events. Make it complete, she told herself, and added: Took patrol cop to Rule’s location. He wasn’t there.
Lily couldn’t blame the local cops for thinking she was nuts. She’d known where Rule was, been able to feel his location precisely—on the west side of the dilapidated house that had been the gang’s headquarters. She’d talked one of them into helping her get there… and found nothing, no one, no sign of Rule.
Alternatives, she wrote. Under that went: (I) The mate bond isn’t working right and (2) The mate bond’s working, but reality is screwed up. She grimaced. Hard to see how she could prove or disprove either of those. Then she made herself write the last alternative: (3) Rule’s dead, and I’m delusional.
But dammit, she felt him. Not nearby, no. He was at least ten miles away now, maybe more. But the sense of direction was as clear as it had ever been. If she was imagining this, then the mate bond had been a delusion all along.
She crossed out the last alternative.
Where did that leave her?
No one had seen him die. No one had seen his body carried away. Yet two groups, the lupi and the FBI, insisted that he was dead, not missing. One or both groups must have some compelling reason to want Rule declared dead, even if they suspected he was still alive.
That was where she hit a stumbling block. She couldn’t come up with any scenario that would put Cullen in cahoots with the FBI… which left her either with two groups with different motives, or back at the delusional alternative. In which case she couldn’t trust her perceptions or her logic and should meekly agree when they offered to tuck her away in a nice, safe place.
Fuck that.
Rule was alive. She was the only one who could find him, because no one else wanted to look.
How did she start looking?
With what she knew, of course. And she knew where he was—the direction, at least. She shoved back the table, bent and grabbed her purse from the floor, and pulled her city map out of the side pocket. She’d track him her way.
He’d moved, she realized, surprised. He was still moving… slowly, maybe at a walk. She made her best guess about the distance and noted her estimate of his location on the map. Every thirty minutes she’d check, she decided. And she wouldn’t let herself wonder how she could find him, then bring him back, on her own.
Because it looked impossible, and if she let herself get bogged down in what was or wasn’t possible, she’d never take the next step.
Whatever the hell that was.
THE sky in this place didn’t change. That was hard to get used to. She had no idea how long she’d been walking, but it felt like a long time. Her feet hurt.
Otherwise, though, she was in good shape physically. That ymu was strong stuff. She felt as if she could keep walking for days if she had to… whatever “days” might mean in a place with no sun.
They’d left the barren heights behind and were walking along a narrow valley. Oddly, it had grown cooler as they descended, cool enough that she was beginning to envy the wolf his fur. So far, though, walking kept her reasonably warm.
Things grew here.
Nothing green. No sun meant no chlorophyll, she supposed. The most common plant looked like a succulent grass—thick, fleshy stuff the color of lemons that grew in patches that didn’t reach the top of her foot. The other plants were mostly stem or stalk and didn’t grow much higher than the “grass.”
There was one exception—a rusty red vine that grew in great, looping piles to form thickets that dotted the valley like nests of enormous, vegetative snakes. She hadn’t seen the vine up close. Gan wouldn’t go anywhere near those thickets.
Occasionally the sky flared behind the mountains on her left. The volcano was out of sight, but signs of the battle continued.
Ahead was the Zone. Not far now—maybe thirty minutes, and they’d be there.
From a distance it had looked like a huge gray wall stretched from one side of the valley’s mouth to the other, blocking the narrow egress. As they drew closer, it had lost definition rather than gaining it, growing almost misty and somehow hard to see. Unless she forced herself to stare at it her gaze would slide away.
That wasn’t a spell, she knew. She didn’t react to spells. Something about the nature of the barrier was simply hard to focus on. Whatever it was made of, though, it wasn’t solid. At the top it faded into the sky like a shadow cast upward.
On the other side was their goaclass="underline" Akhanetton. There they’d be out of reach of Gan’s prince and the goddess Gan wouldn’t name.
The Rules behaved oddly in a zone, according to Gan. And that was about all the demon had told her about zones. All she knew about Akhanetton was that it was another region. When she asked questions, Gan hushed her and looked scared.
She was pretty sure the demon was faking some of its fear to avoid answering questions.
Gan was especially jumpy now that they were in the open, but she hadn’t seen any threats. Mostly bugs. Hell was big on bugs. Most of them were small and acted like regular insects, flying or scurrying about on their buggy business with the fearlessness only the lack of a brain could impart. The few larger ones had run away when the three of them came near.
More than bugs, though, more than plants, the valley had dust. Very fine dust in a funny color, sort of a dusky purple. Like desiccated twilight.
She remembered twilight. Also sunrise, the scent of the ocean, and the sound of a cat’s purr. She had no idea how any of those sights and sounds related to her, but she remembered them now.
At first she hadn’t had anything, not a single memory. But as she walked, from time to time a word would float in and make itself at home. Like when the whir of an insect’s wings had made her think of a cat purring, and all of a sudden she had “cat” back—the size and shape of cats, their soft fur, and sharp claws. The way they moved, as if they owned whatever space they occupied.