Fire. Maybe that was the key point. Maybe the intruder was counting on the fire to get big enough to require most or all of Nokolai’s fighters, leaving the village relatively undefended. If whoever it was didn’t know about Cullen’s knack with fire, that would make sense.…except that this was winter. An unusually wet winter. There was more to burn on the east face of Big Sister than the west—more trees, brush, and general growth—but none of it was dry enough to catch readily.
Maybe Big Sister hadn’t been the first choice. What was it Rule had said? Isen might have “precipitated an incident.” Or someone else could have, like the missing patrol. Someone who spotted the intruders or was spotted, which somehow resulted in setting off the bomb in a less than ideal spot.
And she was diving off into pure speculation now, when what she needed was facts.
Faint but not distant, she heard yipping. That meant someone had approached the house who was supposed to be here.
“Cynna’s here,” Rule said abruptly—and in his normal voice, which meant he was talking to her, not Pete. “With Ryder. Toby’s team reports all quiet there. Still no word from the missing patrol, but the others should reach the area any minute now. If…yes?”
Lily heard the front door open and a woman’s voice murmuring softly: “Shh, now, we’re going to see Uncle Rule and Aunt Lily, and yes, I know you want to finish eating and you will in just a minute, promise…”
“Hell,” Rule said. “Warn Cullen. Cynna’s here, so I’m switching to the landline now.”
Lily shoved to her feet. “What?”
“Rick,” Rule said—apparently to the dark shape that suddenly bulked in the doorway, blocking what bit of light there was. “Any problems on the way here?”
“Nothing,” said a young lupi Lily knew slightly.
“Good. Take your post. Cynna, once you’re in here, we’ll turn on a light.”
“Good, because while Ryder doesn’t mind the dark, I bump into things. Lily?”
“Back here,” she answered as dim forms moved against the paler shape of the doorway. Cynna was a good friend and fellow FBI agent, currently on extended maternity leave. She was also the new Nokolai Rhej, as vital to the clan in her way as its Rho. “You’ve been told what happened?”
“An explosion and a fire up on Big Sister.” Her voice moved as she came into the room. “Cullen’s off to—” She stopped, blinking as the overhead light came on. “Wow, that’s bright. Cullen’s going to go put the fire out.”
Cynna looked a bit like a blond Xena who’d gotten carried away with body art. Lacy patterns decorated pretty much every exposed inch of her skin, and most of the unexposed regions, too. Anyone who knew much about tattooing would realize the designs hadn’t been applied with a needle, however. It took magic to imprint lines that spiderweb-fine.
At the moment she wore jeans and a button-down shirt and carried a blanket-wrapped bundle that was beginning to bleat like a distressed sheep. “Firebug Asshole interrupted Ryder’s dinner,” she added, plopping down in one of the chairs and unbuttoning her blouse with one hand. “That’s about all I know.”
“We don’t know much more,” Lily told her. “Isen’s off on a run. He went alone, which is why Rule’s in charge. Rule, you learned something just as Cynna got here.”
His face was about as closed as the door he’d just shut. “One of the nearest patrols got close to the fire, but had to retreat. Our intruder has burned some grass, a couple of trees, and one hellishly large amount of wolfbane.”
SEVEN
WOLFBANE, aka monkshood, blue rocket, devil’s helmet, aconite. There were over two hundred species in the genus, many of which had been used medicinally for hundreds of years. Landscapers still planted it ornamentally. It was a deadly poison.
The roots of several species contained a highly toxic alkaloid that the Japanese once used for hunting bears and the Chinese in war. In Ayurvedic medicine, aconite was said to increase the fire dosha, and traditional Chinese medicine considered it a remedy for “coldness” or lassitude. In Western medicine, it had been used for everything from a local anesthetic—contact with the sap caused first tingling, then numbness—to a treatment for various heart problems. Certainly it acted on the heart. It stimulated the cardio-inhibitory nerve in the medulla oblongata, reducing both heart rate and blood pressure, but there was a wee tendency for the heart to slow too much. In most mammals, though, respiration stopped before the heart did.
Werewolves were not most mammals, but wolfbane affected them, too. It made them sick. Deeply, miserably sick. Hence the name.
“What symptoms?” Lily asked urgently.
“Aaron is still puking his guts out,” Rule said. “Will wasn’t as badly affected and was able to drag Aaron away from the smoke and call Pete. No paralysis.”
That was a relief. There was a woman—currently in prison and stripped of her Gift—who’d devised a way to combine wolfbane with other ingredients to create a smoke that paralyzed lupi. Best if that innovation did not spread.
Lily looked at Cynna. “How close does Cullen have to be to tell the fire to quit burning?”
“It depends on how big the fire is, but the closer the better. He won’t be able to get very close, will he? Unless…how steady is the wind?”
Rule answered that one. “Too fitful up on the slope to predict. Unless it steadies so that Cullen and the others can approach from upwind, we’ll have to wait for the wolfbane to be consumed before we can deal with the fire.”
Lily gave him a look. “You’ve got plenty of clan who aren’t lupi.” Clan who were female, in other words. The daughters of lupi were human but were considered clan, and there were more than the usual number of adult females at Clanhome now.
Rule got a funny expression on his face, as if he’d taken a swig of what he thought was water and found out was vodka. “You’re right. I didn’t think of it, but…still, it would take them awhile to get up there, and the wolfbane should have burned up by then.”
“Unless Firebug Asshole scattered wolfbane all over the place, so that wherever the fire spreads, there’s wolfbane around to burn.”
It took Rule five seconds to nod. Every instinct was arguing against it, she knew. Lupi didn’t precisely coddle their women. At least Nokolai didn’t. Southern California sprouted wildfires in the summer the way Iowa grew corn, and Lily knew that some of the female clan had been on fire lines before. But the instinct to protect went deep. Sending women out now, exposing them to possible attack from whoever had invaded Clanhome…no, that hadn’t occurred to Rule, and it took him a moment to accept the necessity.
Still, he called Pete and told him that Mellie would be in touch shortly about an escort for the female firefighting crew she would put together. Then he called Mellie. Mellie Blackstone was fifty-something, tough as nails, and owned a small construction company. She was also on Nokolai’s council of elders.
All of the lupi clans had councils except Etorri, which was too small to need one. Lily hadn’t understood the function of these councils at first, save for the obvious: they advised the Rho. In a few clans they also managed the clan’s financial affairs; in others they had ceremonial duties; in a couple they were responsible for overseeing the clan’s youth. They also took on the day-to-day duties of the Rho if he were incapacitated or unavailable. Wythe’s elders had kept the clan going until their mantle found its new holder in Ruben; Leidolf’s elders were responsible for a great deal now that Rule held that clan’s mantle, given how little time he was able to spend there.