Mortal Ties (9 page)

The second fire was started with plain old lighter fuel, not explosives, and laid
smack-dab on the trail the thief had taken. Laid with the wind in mind, that helpful
wind that had carried his scent to them. The wolfbane-contaminated smoke took out
five of the twelve-man squad immediately. Five of the others were affected to a lesser
degree, leaving only two at full strength. Still, one of them managed to pick up a
scent trail on the other side of the fire.

That’s when the klaxon went off.

Lupi do not all react the same way to the same dose of wolfbane. The nausea is universal,
but the degree varies, the duration varies, and some lupi have other symptoms. José
was one of those who lost their sense of smell. He hadn’t inhaled much smoke, so he
was queasy rather than incapacitated, but his nose was horribly and infuriatingly
dead.

There is little that makes a lupus crazier than losing his sense of smell. Maybe that
had led José into error, or maybe he’d have done the same thing had his sniffer been
at full strength. He ignored the klaxon as an obvious attempt to lead them away from
the real trail—the scent trail he could no longer detect, but two of his wolves had
it. He and the remaining squad members took off down that trail, crossing onto state
land.

Then they heard the dirt bike…half a mile of very rough country away. Right about
where the klaxon had gone off.

When they got there, both motorcycle and thief were gone.

Smart thief, Lily thought as she crested a rise, breathing hard. The klaxon had been
a double-dip of deceit. What kind of fool would set off a klaxon to announce his location
while pursued by wolves? One who knew something about
lupi, who knew they’d trust their noses over their other senses. Rule was investigating
that deceptive scent trail now.

A man stepped out of the darkness in front of her. “Lily.”

She couldn’t see his face well without shining her flashlight in it, and that would
be rude. But she did lift the light slightly. “Ah—David, right?” She’d met the leader
of this squad at some point—tall, with a blocky build and reddish brown hair, but
mostly what she remembered was the mustache. Very few lupi kept any facial hair.

“Yes. This is the perimeter Merowitch suggested should be safe.”

Merowitch was the explosives guy. “He’s in the workshop still?” When David nodded,
she said, “I need to talk to Cullen.”

“He’s at the workshop.”

“Dammit, he was told—”

“Not inside,” David said quickly. “But Isen didn’t tell him to stay away from the
workshop—just not to go inside. He, ah, takes orders very literally. And only,” he
added with justified exasperation, “from his Rho or Lu Nuncio. Or so he informed me.”

That sounded like Cullen. “Does he have some reason to think that’s safe, or is he
just being an asshole?”

“He did some kind of spell and said he didn’t find any explosives—but he thought we
should all wait on Mero witch’s okay, just to be sure. But if he isn’t sure, he shouldn’t
be there.”

“I’ll take care of it,” she assured him, and raised her voice. “Cullen? I’m heading
down there to talk to you.”

A voice floated up from the darkness. “Like hell you are!”

“Lily?” David said, worried. “You can’t—”

She patted him on his arm as she passed him and kept her voice raised. “If it’s safe
enough for you, it’s safe enough for me.”

“Dammit, David, can’t you stop one little bitty human female?”

Either David had caught on or he was truly appalled. “You want me to physically restrain
a Chosen? Rule’s Chosen?”

“She’s not going to shoot you,” Cullen called back. “I don’t care what she says, she
won’t shoot.”

That made Lily grin as she picked her way down the path. “I don’t threaten what I
won’t do.” There were trees on this side of the ridge—pine and scrub oak, mostly—and
the trail down was steep and skid-inducing, with scree and pine needles. She kept
her flashlight on the ground right in front of her, but farther down she could see
light through the branches. It wasn’t very bright, but it gave her a target. She could
hear something, too—Cullen cursing as he hurried up the trail toward her. The light
brightened as he got close, resolving into a small ball of pure light floating just
ahead of a half-naked man who could have given nine out of ten Hollywood stars a run
for their money.

Ten out of ten, if he hadn’t been scowling so hard. “Did it even occur to you that
I wouldn’t be down there if it wasn’t important?” Cullen demanded as he came to a
stop in front of her.

“Important and urgent aren’t the same thing. Are you going to behave, or should I
tell Cynna?”

“Cynna would understand. If there was a firebomb, I could put it out, couldn’t I?
But there isn’t. I did a quick Find spell.”

She didn’t say a word.

“I may not be a Finder, but my spell’s pretty good.”

She kept looking at him.

“And don’t tell me I proved anything by coming up here to stop you. If something did
blow, I’d heal. You wouldn’t.”

She glanced back over her shoulder, where David and the rest of the squad waited—all
of whom were every bit as good at healing as Cullen—then looked back at him, eyebrows
raised.

“All right, all right. But it was important enough to take a small risk.” Cullen ran
a hand through his hair—something
he’d been doing a lot of, judging by the way it was spiked up all over. “You don’t
have to mention this to Cynna.”

“I need to know about the prototype that’s missing.”

“Yeah, well, I need to know how the rat bastard got through my second ward, which
I can’t figure out from up here.”

“We can start there. What does your second ward do?”

“Stops kids.”

“I’m pretty sure the perp isn’t a kid.”

Cullen waved one hand impatiently. “It takes too much power to outright block people
with a ward. If I could figure out how they used to do it, using ley lines to—never
mind. The point is, I can keep out fleas and scorpions. Flies are harder. So are kids.
You tell kids they can’t go somewhere, they’re immediately going to want to check
it out. Can’t have that. Aside from the sheer nuisance of having them sneak into the
workshop, it isn’t safe. So I added a second ward. If someone crosses it, a wall of
flames springs up around the building.”

Lily’s eyes widened. “You’d risk burning nosy kids?”

“It won’t burn anything.”

“I thought you couldn’t do illusions.”

“It’s real fire. It just doesn’t burn anything.”

“But—”

Cullen rolled his eyes. “Look, let’s skip the explanations. You wouldn’t understand
’em anyway. I’ve got three wards on the workshop. The first one’s the keep-away. There’s
layers to that one, but it’s basically a single ward. It makes anything with a nervous
system deeply reluctant to go farther. A motivated adult—or a kid being egged on by
his buddies—can summon the determination to keep going. Or you can hit it at a run
and be through before you have time to stop.” He stopped, his scowl returning. “The
rat bastard wasn’t running, so he—”

“You know that how?”

“Tracks. He left some clear prints, so I know he walked through the first ward. But
like I said, if someone’s
determined enough, he can do that. But then he should have set off my second and third
wards. The third ward worked. That’s strictly a warning to me that there’s an intruder.
But the second one didn’t. No pretty flames.”

“Pretty flames that don’t burn,” Lily said. “Maybe he knew that and kept going.”

“It’s real fire,” Cullen said again. “Even if he somehow knew it wouldn’t burn him,
he’d have a hard time talking himself into walking into it. He wouldn’t just see it
and hear it—he’d feel the heat. It should have at least slowed him down. But that
doesn’t matter, because the ward wasn’t triggered.”

“You’re sure? With the way your workshop’s tucked away in this cleft, you wouldn’t
have seen the flames from Big Sister, and since they don’t burn anything there would
be—”

He snorted in disgust. “What do you think I was doing just now? I can see the power
loss if one of my wards gets triggered. That one wasn’t, so I was looking for signs
of tampering.”

“Did you find anything?”

“No, but someone dragged me away before I could finish.”

“Okay. We’ll come back to that. Tell me about this prototype the rat bastard stole.”

“Have you listened to me at any point in the last month?”

“You’ve been working on a thingee that shields tech from ambient magic. You thought
you had it figured out, but the device didn’t work.”

“Oh, it works, aside from a little problem with sporadic discharge. Unfortunately,
the side effects preclude using it.”

“Did you tell me about side effects? Because I don’t remember that. I remember you
found out it had a problem when you did a demo for some bigwigs from a tech company.”

“The demo didn’t go well.” He brooded on that a moment. “T-Corp knew it wasn’t ready
for production—I told them about the unpredictable discharge—but they wanted a demo
anyway. I agreed. We’d tested it plenty here at Clanhome. How was I to know it would
affect nulls that way?’

He definitely hadn’t told her this part. She’d have remembered. “What does it do to
nulls?”

But she’d lost him. His head came up, alert and listening. Without a word, he spun
and sprinted back down the slope, nimble as a deer or a cat—more like the cat, she
thought sourly, since he could see in the dark. “Am I about to be blown up?” she asked
the empty air.

“Merowitch gave the all clear,” David said from behind her—right behind her, though
she hadn’t heard him approach. “I imagine that’s why Seabourne took off.”

Cullen might have taken two seconds to mention that. “I need to get down there before
he tramples over any evidence the thief left.”

L
ILY
had never been to Cullen’s workshop. He discouraged visitors of any sort, but especially
her. That wasn’t personal. The minute trace of magic her touch siphoned off made no
difference normally, but there were some spells and charms that were fragile enough
during some stages that even the slightest alteration might affect the outcome.

On the outside, it wasn’t much to look at—a plain cinderblock rectangle with a shingled
roof. There was no electricity, and water was supplied by a cistern that had been
filled through a combination of magic and muscle. Eventually the building would be
connected to Nokolai’s water supply, but that was delayed for now. Too much other
construction going on.

On the inside, it was a cluttered visual cacophony. Aside from the intricate circle
inscribed in the center of the cement floor, it looked like a junk room with a few
odd outbreaks of order. And it smelled like…everything. The scents were too many and
jumbled for her to sort—herbs, ashes, leather, ozone, coffee, all mixed in with stinks
both organic and chemical.

No wonder it had taken Merowitch awhile to check the place.

Lily had wrested an agreement from Cullen: she’d stay in the doorway if he would refrain
from touching things. The door where she stood was set precisely in the center of
the north wall. She could see well enough; a pair of mage lights bobbed around on
the ceiling. There were three windows placed with equal precision in the middle of
each of the other walls. Two of the windows held window boxes where a few brave herbs
struggled for survival. In addition to being a sorcerer—which meant he could see magic—Cullen
was Fire Gifted. Not a good match for growing anything but flames. Cluttered shelves
sprouted along the two longest walls, almost as miscellaneous as their contents—three
of them wood, two metal, one plastic, and one an incongruously elegant glass étagère.

The corners of the room held a ratty old recliner, a woodstove, a sink, and a cage.
On one side of the circle laid into the floor was a long table—counter height, not
dining. On the side nearest Lily was a perfectly ordinary looking pair of filing cabinets
and a desk. The top of the desk held a lizard—alive—three Nerf balls, an ornate spoon,
a surprisingly healthy aloe plant, a litter of papers, two pencils, a paperback book
by Douglas Adams, a broken clock, a bottle of ink, and a small cauldron. And Cullen’s
grimoire.

It was large, covered in black leather, with a runic symbol of some kind on the front.
Anyone looking at that would guess what it was. “Why didn’t he take your grimoire?”
she asked.

Cullen was squatting in front of one set of shelves, frowning at its contents. Apparently
that wasn’t enough. He leaned forward to sniff them, too. “He didn’t see it.”

“A lookaway spell?”

“Yeah. Though the one you’re looking at is a fake.” He rose to stand with his hands
on his hips, scowling around at his invaded domain.

“I take it he didn’t find the real one, either.”

“I don’t keep it here.” He dropped to his haunches
suddenly. “If that dung-begotten abortion of a thief got hold of my—” He started to
reach under the table.