Blood Lines (16 page)

A beat of silence followed. Rule looked at Toby. “I understand you were disappointed that your mother won’t make it home for Christmas. But you
didn’t
call me. Why not?”

Toby studied his shoes. “I dunno.”

“You know I can smell it when you lie.”

When Toby looked up, his stubborn expression reminded Cullen of a mule—or Toby’s grandfather. “Grammy says Mom loves me, but she doesn’t. She doesn’t want to be around me ’cause I’m lupus. I want to live with you.”

“Toby.” Rule’s voice held a helpless ache. “Your mother has refused several times to share custody, much less cede it to me. Changing that would mean a court battle, and I’m not in a good position to win.”

“You think the judge won’t like you ’cause you’re lupus, but so am I.”

“Which would become public knowledge if I sued for custody.”

“I don’t care! You love me. She doesn’t. An’ we could prove that to the judge, ’cause you’re with me a lot more’n she is. And I know you have to go places sometimes, but during school I could stay at Clanhome with Granddad, so you could still do clan business.”

“What about your Grammy?” Lily said softly. “She loves you.”

Toby’s lip jutted stubbornly. “She could come to Clanhome, too.”

Oh, that was likely to happen. Cullen had only met the woman once, but once was enough to know she didn’t like lupi any better than her daughter did. She did seem to care about the boy, which must set up a colossal inner conflict or two . . . richly deserved inner conflicts, in his opinion.

Rule sighed and stood. “We aren’t going to settle this now, and, given recent events, it may be just as well for Toby to stay here for a while. We’ll have bodyguards soon.”

“Oh, God. I hadn’t—” Lily broke off abruptly, shutting her mouth on whatever she’d been about to say. She and Rule exchanged another glance.

“It’s possible,” he said, just as if she’d asked a question. “Lord knows
She
is capable of any abomination.”

Cullen’s eyebrows rose. “I’m feeling sadly uninformed.”

“Later.” Rule was curt. He looked down at his son. “We’ve a matter of clan discipline to deal with first.”

Lily shook her head. “This isn’t about the clan.”

Cullen had a feeling she was going to be difficult. He stood and headed for her.

Rule didn’t look away from his son. “It is, and Toby knows that. Toby.” His voice was hard now, as hard as his own father’s would have been. “You came here hoping to force my hand.”

He hung his head. “I—I guess so.”

“By using my credit card without permission, you stole. You disobeyed and deceived those who have charge of you. You understand that there are consequences for your actions.”

Toby gave a single, small nod.

“Kneel.”

“Wait one minute!” Lily burst out. “He’s—”

“Lily.” Cullen took her arm. “Shut up.”

She rounded on him. “He’s a little boy!”

“Yes,” Cullen said softly. “A little boy who, in another five years or so, will be capable of ripping out throats. Who will sometimes
want
to rip out throats, including, on occasion, his father’s. Adolescence is trying for anyone. For a lupus, it brings perils you do not understand.”

Lily opened her mouth. Shut it again. She aimed her frown at Rule, who hadn’t taken his gaze from his son.

Cullen grabbed his plate. “Come on,” he told her. “You and I need to talk about what brought me to your door.” And Toby didn’t need an audience.

In the parlor, Cullen plopped onto the couch—a fussy Victorian thing with a curvy back and too many pillows—and pointed at the painted armoire in the corner. “Is there a TV in that thing?”

Lily stared. “You want to watch television?”

“No, I want some sound. Toby’s hearing isn’t as good as it will be, but it’s not a large house. He can probably hear us from the kitchen.”

Lily stalked to the coffee table, picked up a remote, and pointed it. A rolling guitar arpeggio flowed from the armoire—Spanish flamenco, he thought, and took a bite of his sandwich. Either the channel was set to a radio station, or Rule had installed a CD player instead of a TV. Whichever, it ought to do the trick.

Lily paced the length of the room, turned. “That bitch.”

It wasn’t the subject he’d expected her to jump on first. “Which one?”

“Alicia. Toby’s mother.” She paced. “Two weeks ago, Rule asked Toby’s mother if he could spend Christmas with us. She wouldn’t even discuss it, but she doesn’t feel any obligation to spend it with him herself.”

He shrugged. “Alicia never should have been a mother. She hadn’t planned on it, and I give her points for letting her mother raise him instead of botching the job herself.”

“She could have let his father have him.”

Lily’s intensity roused his curiosity. He hadn’t thought she was much more interested in motherhood than Alicia. “Is that what you want?”

She waved that away. “We’re talking about what Toby wants. What he needs. Alicia doesn’t seem to care about that.”

“To be fair, Alicia believes she’s doing what’s best for Toby by limiting his exposure to our perversions. If her mother hadn’t insisted that Toby be allowed to spend time with Rule, he wouldn’t get even the brief visits he does.”

“Alicia doesn’t approve of lupi, but she went to bed with one?”

“Amazing. After working homicide, you still think people are consistent.”

She lifted one hand, palm out. “All right, point taken.” She brooded over the situation a moment, then asked, “Tell me why discipline means that Toby has to kneel to his father.”

Still not the subject he’d expected. Maybe he didn’t know her as well as he’d thought. “Toby’s alpha. Rule has to remain his dominant, so when the boy hits his first Change and hormones collide with the moon’s song and his brain shuts down, he’ll still obey.”

“But to make him kneel—”

“Quit being so damned human. Submission isn’t humiliating. It’s instinctively right for us, but humans do it, too. Does a sergeant feel humiliated because he has to salute his colonel?”

Her voice was dry. “He might, if the colonel made him prostrate himself first. How would you feel about kneeling to Rule?”

“Wouldn’t do it,” he said promptly. “But I’d kneel to my Lu Nuncio.”

She looked at him a long moment, then shook her head. “Men don’t make sense. Men who are lupi really don’t make sense.” Her frown tightened down another notch. “Rule was uncomfortable after submitting to Paul, but I guess the act itself didn’t bother him.”

Cullen’s eyebrows climbed. “Who’s Paul?”

“It’s complicated, and I’m getting things out of order.” At last she sat, tucking one foot up on the chair with her. “It started with the power surge last night.”

“Are we talking electrical power?”

“Magic. A big, fat whirlwind of it, unleashed at the same time all over the world, from what we can tell. You didn’t feel it?”

He frowned. “The dragons were probably closer to the node than me when it hit. Greedy bastards must have soaked it all up.”

“They can do that?”

“Like sponges. Remember how hard it was to work magic in their territory in Dis? Tell me about this power surge,” he said, picking up his sandwich again. “I’ll eat.”

TWELVE

CULLEN
did eat, but he didn’t taste a bite. Demons, demonic poison, and the Great Bitch indulging in cross-realms assassination . . . the Lady speaking to an outclan know-it-all . . . a top secret task force investigating a mysterious power surge, and a top-notch precog who thought that was just the beginning. Even if he hadn’t interrupted with questions here and there, the tale would have taken awhile.

Cullen’s ears being better than a prepubescent boy’s, he’d heard Rule assign Toby his punishment and send him upstairs, where he was to play on the computer until further notice. That wasn’t the punishment, of course; Rule wanted to hear the game’s sound effects so he’d know Toby hadn’t snuck down to eavesdrop.

Harry joined them, staring at Cullen’s sandwich with a twitching tail. Rule followed, though he gravitated to Lily, not roast. He settled on the floor next to her chair, and she rested a hand on his shoulder without pausing in her tale.

Cullen doubted she even knew she’d done it. The mate-bound were touchy-feely that way. He passed Harry a bite of roast.

When Lily finished, the
boing-boing
of Toby’s game was still competing with Pepé Romero’s guitar. For the first time since joining them, Rule spoke. “You didn’t tell him everything.”

“All that concerns him.” Their eyes met. After a moment she said, “It’s your decision.”

He smiled, it evaporated when he looked at Cullen. “When Cynna dosed my wound with holy water, I hit her.”

“Shit.”

“Pretty much. My control has suffered ever since we returned from Dis. You need to be aware of that. You should also know that I submitted to the ritual of contrition.”

His eyebrows flew up. “With Cynna? Bet that confused her.”

“It did, but she handled it well. She’s Lady-touched, Cullen.”

Rule seemed certain. Cullen wasn’t, but if the Lady had spoken to her . . . He frowned. He didn’t like that, but for the life of him, couldn’t see why it would matter to him.

Lily spoke. “Pretty much everything I’ve told you is highly secret. Repeat any of it and I’ll have to pull out your tongue.”

“I adore secrets. I’m fond of my tongue, too, as you would be if you’d let me—”

“I may pull it out anyway.”

He grinned. It was fun to flirt with Lily. She disliked it so much. “Will you be in trouble if they find out you’ve told me all this?”

“Not unless you abuse the confidence.” Her fingers drummed once on her thigh. “You said the dragons must have been closer to the node than you were. You’re assuming this magic wind came from nodes?”

“That’s where all magic comes from. Not that your friend Sherry will agree,” he said, bending to put his plate on the floor so Harry could nose out any scraps of roast. “Wiccans believe the Earth inherently possesses magic, but they’re wrong.”

“Explain.”

“I can’t. The realms connect at the nodes, but I don’t know enough about the way they connect to devise a coherent theory. But I’ve watched magic. They haven’t. It comes from nodes, then dissipates in air and is absorbed by earth or water.”

“If you didn’t come here because you felt the magic wind, what made you abandon your dragon hunt?”

“Postpone, not abandon. I had a spot of demon trouble myself. Different model—”

“You were attacked?”

“Chased. I don’t know what she had in mind if she caught me, though I’d wager I wouldn’t have liked it.
She
meaning, in this instance, the demon’s rider. No doubt, left to its own devices, the demon would have just killed me.”

Lily’s eyes widened. “Someone was riding it?”

“Not physically. What I saw was her astral form. That’s drawn from the physical state, but it’s not an exact mirror of the body. For example, amputations and most scars aren’t reflected in one’s astral form, and age is fluid. You won’t project an astral body that’s older than you are, but your projection might look a lot younger. Within those parameters, I can give you a description, if you like.”

She did.

“Tall, very dark skin, thin but with wide shoulders and a prominent rib cage. No boobs to speak of.”

“You’re sure it was a woman, though?”

“There’s another thing about the astral state—no clothes. I’m sure. Her hair was buzzed off close to the skull, and she looked about thirty, so she’s at least that old. Tattoos everywhere.”

“Then . . . but I thought scars didn’t show up.”

“These weren’t regular tattoos. I’m thinking our Cynna knows her.”

Lily didn’t look happy. “It sounds like her old teacher, Jiri Asmahani. Which is
not
her real surname, just something she made up—and that’s about all we know. We don’t have a social security number, place of birth, parents. We don’t know what her Gift is. Cynna’s sure it isn’t Finding, but other than that . . . it might be one of the elemental Gifts.” Earth, air, fire, water. “Those are less formed, so they work best for spells, and Jiri is apparently hell on wheels with spells. But we don’t know.”

“A dark Athena, sprung whole from Zeus’s brow,” he murmured.

“What?”

“Never mind. I think I singed her, by the way.”

“But she wasn’t really there. She was, ah . . . what would you call it? Astrally present?”

“Mage fire reaches farther than ordinary fire.”

“Cullen,” Rule said.

That was all he said, but Cullen knew a rebuke when he heard one. He flung a frown at Rule. “I was being chased by a damned demon! What was I supposed to do—call my lawyer?”

“I thought you weren’t going to use mage fire anymore.”

“I agreed not to experiment with it. This wasn’t an experiment.”

Lily rolled her eyes. “We’ll examine your verbal contract later. I need to know the rest of the story. Where were you? And when did this happen?”

“This morning, at a little village called Los Lobos in Michoacán, Mexico.”

Her eyebrows lifted. “The other attacks all occurred about the same time, shortly after the power surge.”

“I’m special.” When she rolled her eyes, he grinned. “Actually, I did experience something last night that might be connected to your magic wind—a tickling at my shields. I assumed it was one of the dragons, probably the one who calls himself Sam.” He was still annoyed about it, too. “That would be when Cynna’s Jiri got a fix on me. I’m betting she used the power surge to give her search a boost.”