Death Magic (14 page)

Read Death Magic Online

Authors: Eileen Wilks

The trip down was scary and uncomfortable—his talons were rough and gripped too tightly—but blessedly brief. They hit with a small jolt and a flurry of dust from his wings. He set her down and folded those wings back in place.
Lily’s legs tried to buckle. She stiffened them.
I did not scream.
You think loudly. Or you were. Your mindspeech isn’t that bad. It’s bad, just not as bad as I thought it would be.
Oh. She’d done it again—used mindspeech without meaning to. That had happened three times in the past month. Well, four now. The other three had all been with Rule, which was just as well. Some people would get upset if they found her thoughts in their heads all of a sudden.
You didn’t intend to?
Headshaking was not a dragon gesture, but Mika flavored his reply with something very like a disgusted headshake.
“Sam doesn’t want me to practice on my own.”
Of course not. At this stage, you would only acquire bad habits. Sit down and we will start.
She obeyed. “I know why Sam is teaching me. Why did you agree to do it, too?”
You know very little. It is not surprising you ask a great many questions.
Mika’s head darted to the right and swung back with a small branch in his mouth. He dropped it in front of her. It burst into flame.
Find me there.
Great. She’d hoped a different teacher meant different methods. With a sigh, Lily looked at the small fire.
Her left ankle itched. The flames were too bright, making her squint. Why had she been determined to do this? Because Rule didn’t want her to? Surely she had a better reason.
Oh, yeah. Because Sam told her to. But that reminded her . . .
I promised Rule I’d tell you about my headache.
That was pathetic. You sent perhaps one word in three. If I weren’t able to read your mind anyway, I’d have no idea what you said. What headache?
“Have you ever taught anyone?”
No. I thought it might be interesting. So far it isn’t.
“You aren’t supposed to tell your students they’re pathetic.” She went on to describe her brief pain-in-the-skull, ending with, “. . . since kinspeech hurt me in sort of the same way, Rule wants to be assured the headache has nothing to do with my mindspeech lessons.”
Kinspeech is not mindspeech.
“Sam says they’re related.”
You’re related to Beelzebub, since you are both mammals, but you are not Beelzebub. If mindspeech could damage you, Sam would have warned me. Find me in the flame.
When Mika called an end to the session, Lily had found him three times. She lost him again each time, but she was encouraged. She hadn’t been sure how well her practice at finding Sam would translate to finding Mika. Turned out it was pretty much the same . . . a lot like groping in the dark with her hands tied behind her, trying to pick up a feather with her toes. Mostly she failed, but at least now she could tell what the feather felt like if she did come across it.
And her head didn’t hurt. In spite of her insistence to Rule that her mindspeech lessons weren’t the cause of that brief headache, she was relieved.
That was more interesting than I’d hoped.
“Oh?” Lily felt as wrung out as if she’d spent the past hour running.
Not your mindspeech. That remains pathetic. But human brains are interesting—much more elastic than human minds, fortunately, which I suppose is necessary, given your brief allotment of time. You wouldn’t otherwise have a chance to learn much of anything. Yours is forming new synaptic connections quite rapidly.
“You’ve been watching my brain?”
Perceiving is a better descriptive. I am uncommonly good at this.
“Is this perception like what a physical empath does?”
Closer to what one of your healers does. I need to observe that. I am not perfectly clear on the time frame, but since it will fall to me to—oh. You don’t know about that yet.
“About what?”
If you don’t know, I can’t tell you.
There was a broody feel to his thoughts.
This splintering of time can be disruptive. I am not accustomed to it.
Alarmed, she sat up straighter. “What splintering? What are you—does this have anything to do with—”
The troubles foreseen by your Ruben Brooks? Of course. Oh. You are thinking I meant that time itself splinters.
His breath huffed out, hot and smelling of metal and spice, in what might have been amusement.
No. I am newly arrived at . . . you lack a referent. It is the time when a dragon begins to grasp threads from not-now. It is a confusing period. Such threads are experienced much like memories, but they arrive tangled and before the events occur. Of course, “before” and “after” are poor constructs for out-time perception, but as usual, your language lacks more precise terms.
Lily blinked. “Are you talking about precognition?”
No, I do not manifest those threads the same way Ruben Brooks does. Not that you have the slightest understanding what he does, either, so there is little point in discussing it. You need to bring me your healer. Oh, and someone who is injured, also, so I can observe the process.
“I don’t happen to have a healer,” Lily said dryly. “You know about Ruben’s—”
I see. She is Rule Turner’s healer. I will tell him I require her.
Rule didn’t “have” a healer, either, but he had access to two. Nettie Two Horses was Rule’s niece, Nokolai’s healer, and on the other coast. The Leidolf Rhej was also a healer and was much closer. Leidolf’s Clanhome was in Virginia.
That one will do. I believe my observation of your brain is helping me untangle your muddy thinking.
A definite tinge of satisfaction coated that thought.
Why do humans all believe they are their thoughts?
“I don’t know. You know about Ruben’s visions.”
Why else would we ally with him? The wolves do not mistake their thinking for their selves, although they err this way when they are men. Li Lei, of course, has the advantage of having been dragon for a time, but I had thought that a human with a true name would know the difference. Yet you do not.
“Wait. Wait. You’re allied with Ruben?”
A contemptuous snort.
We do not pass on his communications for the pleasure of reading your murky minds. If you could be a bit quicker to learn mindspeech . . . oh.
A whiff of chagrin.
You did not yet know that part. Not-now is very confusing.
“You—you’re how Ruben and his Shadow Unit communicate? You and the other dragons?” Of course. Dragons were the most undetectable communication device possible.
It is time for you to go.
“Mika—”
When a dragon says it’s time to go, he can make it so whether you agree or not. Mika scooped Lily up in his front talons and hurled himself skyward. His wings snapped up and out. The jolt from their first massive buffeting of the air was huge. So was the second. And the third.
The jolt of terror and memory was pretty huge, too. Lily had been carried this way across the plains of hell, sundered from everything, even her name, hurt and lost and terrified, unable to do anything but endure . . .
You are loud!
“Put me down!” she screamed with mind and voice together.
He did. He landed about twenty yards from a teeming horde of fourth- or fifth-graders and the outnumbered adults trying desperately to corral them, set her on her feet, and leaped skyward again.
The shriek level was ear-numbing. She could not let her wobbly legs give out on her. She had to go calm down the miniature civilians and . . . oh, shit. Not all of the screaming was from fear, and here came . . .
“Tawny!” screamed one of the adults. “You come back here right now!”
The pigtailed sprinter had long legs for her age and a head start on the heavyset woman in pursuit. Lily could see how that was going to work out and started toward the girl, calling out, “It’s okay. I’m, ah, a friend of Mika’s. He didn’t hurt me. It’s okay, everyone.”
The kid jolted to a halt in front of Lily. Her skin was dark. Her eyes were lit with urgent joy. “I want to meet him! Tell him to come back. I want to talk to him, to—to—he’s your friend? You could introduce me. My name’s Tawny. I
need
to meet the dragon!”
“Um, well, I don’t think I can arrange that, but you got to see him from pretty close up. That’s something, isn’t it? I . . . uh-oh.” Tawny’s escape or her teacher’s pursuit had stampeded the herd. Fifty or so kids were racing straight for her.
The teacher got there first. She was a tall woman, gray-haired and out of breath. “Tawny, you will go back to the class right now, you hear me?”
“The class is here, Miss Pearson.” Tawny’s eyes were limpid with innocence. “Mostly here, anyways.”
Miss Pearson’s skin flushed to a really deep chocolate. She glared at Lily. “I have no idea what you thought you were doing, flying that dragon so close to these children—”
“I didn’t fly him. He flew me.”
“But for every one like Tawny here who is overly fascinated by dragons, there’s another child who was scared to death when it flew over us like that! It was shockingly irresponsible for you to—”
“Ma’am, a dragon is not a horse. I was not steering Mika.”
The herd arrived. Everyone was shouting, wanting to know how to get a ride and if it had hurt and what if the dragon had dropped her and what did dragons eat and did his claws hurt and I don’t see any blood and where did he go . . . although one voice, belonging to a young blond woman, did ask Lily if she was all right.
“I’m fine,” she assured her sole well-wisher. “I’m sorry Mika scared some of you. He’s not always very considerate. Oh. Sorry. I have to get that.”
Lily had seldom been so glad to hear her phone buzz. She pulled it from her inside pocket. “Excuse me, I have to answer this, and I need to step away . . . no, ma’ am, I realize that. Yes—” One of the teachers or aides had recognized her. “I’m Special Agent Yu. Move, please. Excuse me.” She finally broke free of the horde and thumbed her phone on. “Lily Yu here.”
It was Martin Croft, his smooth tenor voice utterly uninflected. “I need to know where you were from 8:30 until 12:30 today.”
Her brain went blank. This was one hundred percent not what she’d expected. “Well. Okay. I arrived at headquarters at 8:00 and remained there until 11:05, when I left for Rock Creek Park to see Mika. I reached the park at approximately 11:15—the guard at the gate should be able to confirm—and was with Mika until”—she glanced at her watch; it was 1:00—“12:45 or 12:50.”
“Mika.” There was an odd note in Croft’s voice. “I suppose that works, though I’d prefer not to be the one to depose him, should it be necessary.”
“What’s going on?”
“I’m taking you off limited duty, effective immediately. Report to Special Agent Drummond at 14321 Camber Lane in Georgetown. He’s lead.”
“Yes, sir. Lead on what?”
“Senator Robert Bixton has been murdered.”
TEN
 
 
LILY
parked three blocks from 14321 Camber Lane. One block away and she started shoving. As she got closer, the elbow duel got vicious. The press was in feeding frenzy.
They didn’t seem to know much yet, judging by the questions hurled at her. Well, neither did she. Croft hadn’t told her much. He wanted Drummond to brief her.
Bixton’s body had been found in his living room by the only person in the house at the time—the maid. His wife was visiting family in North Carolina. The maid’s 9-1-1 call was logged at 12:01. Time of death not established, though Lily assumed they had reason to think it was between 8:30 and 12:30. The probable murder weapon was known. The killer had thoughtfully left the dagger in Bixton’s body. No other visible wounds or trauma.
Left in his shoulder, that is. Not his chest, not near any vital organs. That’s why Lily was here.

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