World of Lupi 10 - Ritual Magic (38 page)

Miriam liked talking about the god she called Dafydd. Lily listened with half an ear as she babbled on about how wonderful he was. Was it time?

Pete was close, which wasn’t good, but he was watching his men. A pair of them carried Rule into the circle while another man held the charm to Isen’s chest. The fourth man waited beside Isen; Carl still had charm duty there. They were the only ones other than Pete who were close enough to be a problem. Miriam stood right in front of the French doors, about ten feet away—farther than Lily liked, but this might be the only chance she got. If she didn’t try to jump Miriam, but instead—

Around the side of the house, a husky baritone voice started singing: “‘We shall overcome . . .’” A second later, his voice was joined by others—a child’s high voice, and Cynna’s? Could that be Cynna singing? And a voice Lily knew intimately. Her mother’s soprano came in strongly.

Miriam jolted as if someone had shot her. “What’s that?” she cried. “What’s that singing?”

“I’ll find out.” And Pete set off at a lope.

Pete was gone, Miriam distracted. This was her chance. She’d arranged two signals with Cory for when it was time for him to release her—one spoken, one nonverbal. But she didn’t just want him to release her. She wanted him to throw her at Miriam. “Cory—”

Drummond popped into sight in front of her, more see-through than usual. And frantic. He was waving his arms, shaking his head, saying with every motion
Stop! Danger! Don’t move!
His mouth moved, too, but Lily couldn’t hear a thing.

Why?
she wanted to scream. Every muscle was tight with the need to move, to act—but Drummond knew things she didn’t. He’d helped more than once, and he kept being right. She panted with conflicting needs and made herself stand there, just stand there, even as her mind screamed that this was nuts. She was losing her best chance.

Drummond faded out with his arms still waving
.

Lily tried to look behind her, but Cory was in the way. He shifted and she could see the steps up to the path. She heard Pete’s voice faintly, and someone responding to him, and the singers continued to come closer. She waited, her body taut, wanting to act, to do—and then it was too late. Pete leaped down the four steps to the deck and ran up to Miriam to report.

“It’s Cynna, Toby, Lily’s mother, Li Qin, and that homeless guy who was staying with Isen,” he said. “They approached the house. When Dave and Mitchell stopped them, they said they wanted to see you. Orders are to bring anyone suspicious to me, and they thought it was suspicious for them to ask to see you. How did they even know you were here? They’ve been searched. No weapons.”

“What homeless man? Who’s Li Qin?” Miriam was baffled, tense, distressed. “No, never mind. Why are they singing?”

“I don’t know.”

“They need to stop. I can’t hear him. I can’t hear my lord. They’re singing too loudly.”

They weren’t that loud. Not loud enough to drown out a voice you heard with your ears, but maybe . . . maybe the singing was happening someplace else, too. A place that Drummond was aware of and Lily wasn’t. A place that a saint might know about.

Without thinking, she started humming along. A moment later Cory started humming, too. And others. All around them, lupi joined in, humming the old civil rights anthem:
We shall overcome . . . we shall overcome someday . . .

And Miriam did nothing. Her face was as pale as the white powder she’d used to lay her circle and she swayed as if tranced or about to faint. But her lips were moving. She made no sound, but her lips moved:
Deep in my heart, I do believe . . .

The singers came down the steps to the deck as calmly as if they’d been in a processional at church. Hardy held Toby’s hand; behind them Cynna and Julia walked hand in hand, too. Li Qin brought up the rear—and behind her were two guards, their guns trained on their odd assortment of prisoners . . .

. . . who didn’t seem to notice the guards, the guns, or the peculiar tableau they approached. Toby looked like he was concentrating the way he did when he played soccer or computer games. Cynna wore a small smile, grim and defiant. Julia seemed caught up in the song, and Li Qin might have been pouring tea, she was so matter-of-fact. And Hardy . . . Hardy looked utterly at peace.

“Stop,” Miriam told them. Her voice shook. “Stop now, all of you.”

The guards stopped. The singers didn’t.

“I forgot,” Miriam whispered. “Of course, I forgot to . . .” She fumbled at the scabbard and pulled out one wicked big knife—bigger than Benedict’s hunting knife, smaller than his machete. Maybe eighteen inches. And black. Whatever it was made of, it was all one piece from hilt to tip, and a dull, solid black. “Stop!”

They didn’t. And Lily knew why. As the singers had drawn closer she’d seen the silver charms they wore—charms the previous Rhej had created based on ancient spellwork from the Great War, workings no one alive today knew except those able to reach into clan memories. Charms that Nokolai clansmen had worn the previous year when they went to war against the Chimea.

Charms against the most potent of mind magic.

Her heart leaped in her chest. Of course! Why had none of them thought of that? Lily herself, Rule, Cullen—they all knew about the charms. It was blindingly obvious now, but she hadn’t once thought about them . . . Persuasion? Could that be used not just to plant ideas, but to keep you from thinking clearly, seeing the obvious? If so, nothing she’d done tonight was likely to work.

But it didn’t have to. The saint was winning this battle.

Lily and Cory stood near the house. There was plenty of room for the singers to pass them, and at first it seemed they would. But as Hardy and Toby drew even with her, Hardy stopped and made a patting gesture with one hand. Without a break in their song, the others moved to form a semicircle slightly behind Lily and Cory, facing Miriam. They kept singing . . . and Hardy kept walking.

Alone, he walked up to Miriam, who turned so she could keep her eyes fixed on him—eyes wide and wild, but now their brightness looked like tears, not mania. She shook as if she might fall over.

Hardy stopped in front of her. “What have I done?” she whispered. “What have I done?”

He held out his hand. He’d stopped singing. Lily wasn’t sure when, but it didn’t matter. His face was so full of compassion and love—it radiated from him like heat from a fire. He held out his hand and Miriam looked at the knife she held in hers. And shuddered.

A shredded and sorrowful calm descended on Miriam. Her face relaxed into it. She stopped shaking and stretched out the hand holding the knife, hilt first—then cried out in an anguished voice, “No!” Fast—too fast for Lily to react—she gripped that wicked big knife with both hands. And plunged it into her own chest.

Hardy cried out wordlessly. Miriam collapsed.

Lily gave the nonverbal signal. She stomped on Cory’s foot.

He let her go and she dashed forward, but Hardy—who’d fallen to his knees beside Miriam—held up a hand urgently, saying without words to stay back. Lily stopped. “I’m not going to touch it. The knife. I want to help her.”

Hardy shook his head sadly. He stroked Miriam’s face, crooning softly. Her eyes were open and staring. The knife must have gone straight to her heart. Lily wouldn’t have thought Miriam knew how to deliver such a tidy death stroke. But it hadn’t been her who did it, had it? That triple-damned god had directed her hands. She’d been about to get free of him, and it had pissed him off.

Hardy brushed her eyelids with his palm, closing her eyes, singing to her softly.

“Stop!” someone behind her called. One of the guards. “Cynna, don’t move, for God’s sake. I don’t want to shoot you. Pete, what do I do? She said to obey you, and you said—”

“Put your weapons up.” Pete’s voice was low and hoarse. “Lily, I can’t move. I still have to . . . she’s dead, but the last order she gave was for all of us to stop. Her other orders, too—they didn’t go away when she died.”

Shit. Miriam was dead, but the knife wasn’t. “Can you tell them to take the sleep charms off?”

“No.” He sounded agonized. “The others . . . she didn’t give them specific orders, except to obey me. She made her orders to me more explicit. I can’t give orders that counter hers.”

The knife was still enforcing Miriam’s orders, but was that all it would do? It was alive, in a sense. Able to act on its own. Any second now it might tell one of them to slit Rule’s throat.

Hardy had turned to listen to them. Now he cocked his head, then nodded. He turned back to the body that had been a woman moments before and gripped that black hilt. He grimaced as if in pain.

“Oh, shit. Are you sure you should . . .” But he was the saint. Lily had to hope he was getting instructions from someone who knew a lot more than she did. Maybe taking the knife out would cancel Miriam’s orders. Maybe if a holy person held it, it wouldn’t be able to compel people.

Hardy placed one hand on Miriam’s chest and pulled the knife out. It came free slowly, glistening with Miriam’s blood. He looked at it with the expression of someone holding a fistful of stinking, oozing shit.

A gun went off inside the house. Hardy’s eyes went wide in astonishment. His hand opened and the knife clattered onto the deck as a red stain spread across his chest. He toppled over.

FORTY-TWO

R
OBERT
Friar darted through the open French doors. Gauze still wrapped his chest and leg, but the son of a bitch wasn’t even limping.

Lily launched herself at him.

He got there first and scooped up the knife, but he didn’t have time to do more before she piled into him. He went over on his back. She gave him a quick, hard chop with the heel of her hand, delivered under his chin. It snapped his head back, but didn’t discourage him nearly enough. He struck at her with the knife and she had to roll off, but she grabbed his arm and tried to wrench it behind him. Any second now he’d go
dshatu
. He’d phase out, and she might still be able to see him—she’d seen Gan in that state, back when Gan was still a demon—but she wouldn’t be able to touch him. To get the knife away from him.

To
kill
the bloody bastard who’d shot a saint.

But he stayed solid. All too solid, as he used the arm she held to flip her up and over him with inhuman strength. He sent her sailing right off the edge of the deck to land in the dirt four feet below. She landed hard and badly. It knocked the breath out of her.

As she struggled to get her paralyzed diaphragm to work, Friar jumped down beside her, grinning nastily. He pulled a gun from the waist of his ruined slacks and took aim. And eighty pounds of determined nine-year-old boy hit him from behind.

The gun went flying. Lily’s diaphragm suddenly remembered what to do and she sucked in air as Friar flopped onto his knees, but he didn’t go all the way down. He twisted and knocked Toby away.

Someone was yelling. More than one someone. She didn’t have time to look. She got her feet under her and sent a kick at Friar’s head. He ducked and tried to grab her foot, but missed. It kept him busy for a second, though—giving her time to go after the gun he’d dropped. It was right beside Rule. She got her hand on it—and Friar landed on top of her, knocking her flat on her stomach.

He grabbed her hair and jerked her head back, exposing her throat. Toby screeched and must have done something—Lily couldn’t see what—because Friar let go. She bucked hard, trying to dislodge him, keep him from hurting Toby. He fell off and she turned over quickly.

A flash of searing pain sliced through her leg. And she was sucked away—away from her body, from the world, sucked off into . . . gray. Endless gray, where she floated for a time without time . . .

Slowly the gray resolved into trees. Black trees. They were tall, impossibly tall, and they were made from shades of darkness. They loomed over her where she lay in the dirt. Glowing dirt. All the light in this place came from the ground, not the sky.

Fear sank talons into her heart and ripped. She whimpered. Was she dead? She remembered fighting, but not . . . who had she fought? What had happened to her? What was this place?

“Welcome to my domain.”

The voice was rich and fluid, a mellow and very male voice, one that captivated. That made her want to hear more. She didn’t trust it, not at all. She managed to shove herself up, though her arms and legs shook. She felt weak and dizzy, but she got to her feet.

He was a god. She knew that the moment she saw him. He stood about twenty feet away in a small clearing, naked and perfectly shaped. And large, too large for a mortal man—he must have been twelve feet tall. His pale skin gleamed faintly. His ears were pointed, like an elf’s, and his face was elfin, too—narrow at the jaw, broad through the cheeks—and he had long, straight, silver hair. Literally silver. It gleamed, too. From the crown of his head to his bare feet, he was supernally beautiful.

She didn’t trust that, either. She couldn’t remember much—not how she got here, not what had happened to her. Not—oh, God. Not even her name. Fear spiked impossibly high until she panted with it. But however much she’d forgotten, she knew she did not trust this beautiful being.

“You’re silent. I don’t like silence. I get too much of that here.”

“You’re . . . the god who murdered Miriam.” She remembered that suddenly, the way Miriam’s hands had plunged a knife into her chest. The way she’d cried
no
even as she did it.

Sorrow flooded his perfect face. “My lovely Miriam. She wanted so much to be with me, and now . . .” Rage washed away sorrow. “Now she never will, and it’s your fault.” He took a single step toward her. “You will have a long time, a very long time, to apologize. To try to make it up to me for losing my lovely Miriam. And everything else.”

A ghost stepped out from behind one of the too-tall black trees. He was dark haired with a receding hairline. He wore dark slacks and a white button-down shirt and he was familiar . . . but he looked solid, she thought, bewildered. Why did she think he was a ghost?

“Lily,” he said, “that bastard is lying to you.”

She knew his voice, she knew she did. “My name is Lily?”

“Son of a
bitch
.” That came out with such vehemence she took a step back. “No, don’t move. It’s really important you stay where you are. You can get lost in this place way too easy.”

“Lily,” that other one said. The god. He was off to her right now, only ten feet away. She hadn’t seen him move. “Why are you listening to him? He tried to kill you once. You don’t remember? You listen to bad counsel all too often, don’t you?” He smiled and whispered, “It’s all right to kill Santos. He deserves it.”

A flash of memory shivered through her. A face, a man’s face. Her hand holding a gun to him, the barrel jammed in his throat. Had she shot him? What had she done?

“You killed him at my suggestion,” the god said in his wonderful voice. “You’re mine, Lily. You made yourself mine the first time you listened to me. You’ve been mine all along.”

“He’s lying to you,” the ghost said again, moving so he was in front of her. “He’s trying to persuade you, but all he’s got is lies.” He stretched out a hand beseechingly. “You have to listen to me.”

A gold ring glowed on that hand. On the third finger, the one connected to the heart, according to the old tales. A glowing gold ring . . . memory cascaded in on her, so swiftly she gasped. Rule
.
Isen, her mother, Toby, Cullen, Cynna, her father and her sisters . . . and Rule. Oh, God. “Drummond. You’re Drummond.”

“Part of him, anyway.” His grin was quick and feral. “That shiny bastard behind me sliced a bit of me away from the rest. Thought he was being clever, but we tricked him. The bit he cut out is the part you need. I’ve been waiting here for you.”

“Do you remember him now, Lily?” The god was on her left now. He spoke mockingly. “He tried to kill you. You and so many others. And you trust him?”

“I . . .” But she did remember. Drummond had done terrible things, but he’d redeemed himself. He
was
on her side—and the beautiful god most definitely wasn’t. She remembered the fight now. She remembered Friar and Toby and a hot, terrible pain and being sucked out, away . . . “He got me with the knife. Friar did. I’ve . . . been cut out of time.”

The god chuckled. “That’s where we are. Out of time. You’ve worried about running out of time for so long, and now you’ll stay out of time. With me.”

“No.” Drummond came closer. “He cheated. He’s sidhe. What do sidhe do best?”

Her eyes widened. “Illusion.”

“This”—he gestured widely—“this is real to him and me, because we died. But
you didn’t
.”

That terrible, slicing pain—it had been in her thigh. Not her chest, not her head—

“He had enough power to suck you here, but he can’t keep you. See how he pops here and there, but never gets close? He can’t touch you because you’re still alive and he isn’t, and as long as you don’t believe in him—”

“Believe in the god of chaos?” She snorted. She’d spent her life fighting against chaos. “Not happening. But I—can I get back? How do I get back?”

Drummond grinned again. “You’ve got a heavy hitter of your own. One who operates on your side of things, so she can’t come here, but she can help. She’s waiting to help. Just focus on that bond of yours.”

Lily felt a sudden warmth on her hands and lifted them . . . both rings were glowing, just like Drummond’s did. The engagement ring Rule had given her glowed a soft sunshine yellow, and the
toltoi
charm on her other hand shone with the moon’s pale white light. She reached out with her mate-sense—and found Rule. He was right beside her. Never mind what her eyes said. She
felt
him.

She knew what to do. She held out her hand. “Come with me!”

Drummond hesitated. “It won’t work. You can’t—”

“Hurry!” The gray land was starting to fade.

Drummond put his hand in hers. It felt solid and real and warm, and the shock of that rippled through her. She closed her fingers tightly around his and closed her eyes and focused on what the mate bond was telling her . . .

Reality popped like a soap bubble.

She was lying on her back in the dirt—dirt that did not glow—with her leg hurting like fire and Rule beside her and people shouting somewhere, and she knew that here, no time had passed. Because where she’d been there was no time, so she hadn’t really been gone at all. Two Drummonds, both misty white and grinning widely, hovered above her . . . and drifted together, until there was just one. Just one, with a glowing gold band on his left hand.

He gave her a quick salute and faded out.

Lily’s gaze cut to the sleeping man beside her, and beyond him, the lupus who held that damn sleep charm to his chest. She sat up and knocked the man’s hand away. The charm fell off and Rule’s eyes flew open.

Toby screamed.

By the time Lily saw that Friar had Toby around the neck, Rule was on his feet and diving for the enemy who threatened his son.

Friar went ever so slightly fuzzy. Rule’s hands passed right through him. And the knife, that terrible black knife, fell to the ground. Rule scooped Toby up in his arms, patting him frantically. “You’re all right? Are you all right?”

“I’m okay.” Toby’s voice wobbled. “He scared me more than he hurt me. I thought—he cut Lily and I thought—” He clung to his father.

“Lily?” Rule’s head swung toward her.

“I’m okay enough,” she said. “Toby saved my life.”

Friar tipped back his head and howled in frustration. Lily couldn’t hear him, but there was no doubt that was what he did.

Triumph brought a tight grin to Lily’s face. Friar couldn’t hold on to the knife when he was
dshatu.
That was why he’d stayed solid when they fought. He didn’t dare stay material to fight Rule, though, and he couldn’t take the knife with him when he wasn’t. His clothes, shoes, that gun—all those went out-of-phase with him, but the knife did not. Maybe because it was a named artifact. Maybe it didn’t want to go with him.

Lily clambered to her feet. Her leg was bleeding freely and hurt like blazes, but it held her. “Friar’s still here.” She pointed at him. “He’s gone
dshatu
, but I see him.”

Cynna yelled, “He’s
dshatu
?”

“Yes!” Lily’s head swung that way. The guards had put up their weapons, as Pete had told them to—but other orders remained operative. One guard gripped Cynna’s arms. Another held Julia and Li Qin. And that, she realized, was what some of the shouting had been about. Cynna did not like being restrained.

“Then I’ll exorcise the hell out of him.
Om redne ish n’vatta—tol harvatay nil ombrum. Ils sevre—
”

Friar’s eyes widened in sudden fear. He climbed back up on the deck and took off, jumping onto the upper level.

“He’s getting away!” Lily wobbled forward a step.

Cynna chanted faster and louder. It wasn’t Latin. It wasn’t any language Lily knew.

Rule was scowling at her. “Your leg.”

“Hurts, but I don’t think it’s serious.” She peered down at it. The slash was long but shallow, for all that it had nearly persuaded her she was dead.

Rule held Toby in one arm with the boy’s arms wrapped around his neck, but he had another arm. He wrapped it around her and put his face in her hair and breathed in deeply. “I don’t know what the hell has been happening. My father—”

“Is okay. Carl’s holding a sleep charm on him because Pete told him to, or maybe Miriam did, so he can’t not do that. Uh—most everyone can’t move because Miriam told them to stop. Plus, they’re all compelled to obey Pete, and he’s compelled to follow the orders Miriam gave him before she died. And Friar—” She couldn’t see the man anymore. “He seems to be gone.” He’d been heading for the slope, but she’d looked away for a moment. Probably he’d vanished into the darkness . . . unless Cynna really had exorcised him. Would that send him to hell? To the realm where demons lived, anyway. Could Cynna do that to someone who wasn’t a demon? God, she wanted to think so.

Friar had seemed to think it was possible. He’d run like a rabbit. She snorted at the memory, but sobered quickly. Six feet away, a long black knife lay on ground marked by black runes. All around her were lupi frozen in place because they’d been ordered to stop. And Hardy . . . she’d forgotten to check, and no one else was able to move. Maybe he was still alive. “I need to see about Hardy,” she said, pulling free from Rule.