Karonski was as rumpled and fashion-challenged as ever, but for once he wasn’t scowling. “Got any coffee?”
She shook her head, smiling. “There’s probably some left in the pot. Come in. You’ll have to get it yourself, though,” she said, heading for the bathroom. “And talk while I finish getting ready. I’m, ah, due somewhere at noon.”
“I know.”
She glanced over her shoulder at him, surprised.
He smiled crookedly. “I’m your ride. Rule asked me.”
“Oh. Well, that’s great. How are you feeling?” she asked, picking up her brush and frowning at her reflection. There was no way she could braid her hair. It would have to be left loose.
“Good. I’m good. I was one of the lucky ones.”
“Yes.” She dragged the brush through her hair.
When Helen died, there’d been a sort of rebound effect on her victims. Most of them had gone crazy, though in different ways. The ones who’d been under her control the longest and the deepest—many of them in the cavern—had exploded in homicidal fury. But two of them had suicided.
So had Mech.
Lily’s eyes filled. “Dammit.” She flung the brush down. If she hadn’t killed Helen, Mech would still be alive.
“It’s okay,” Karonski said quietly. “I’ve been there. You do fine when it’s all going down, but afterward . . .” He shrugged awkwardly. “You get weepy all of a sudden.”
She tried for a smile. “You, weepy?”
“Hey, us Poles are manly men. A few tears doesn’t change that.”
She nodded, took a deep breath, and picked up her mascara. Good. Her hand wasn’t shaking. It was hard to apply mascara when you had the shakes. “So how’s Croft?”
“Busy. He’s the smart half of the team, you know, so I let him handle the paperwork.” Karonski chuckled and went on to talk about his partner, idle talk that filled the moment, giving her time to get herself back together.
Lily did her best to take advantage of that. But her attention wasn’t with him or the familiar task of applying makeup.
Karonski had been one of the lucky ones, all right. Still sedated when Lily killed Helen, his mind had been shielded from the worst of the rebound. And he’d had a trained shaman standing by. None of the others had been as fortunate.
There was a city councilman in a quiet, private room at a sanitarium. The wealthy widow of a congressman was catatonic. The doctors were optimistic about a few of them, though. The Air Force colonel who’d turned himself in, for example, once his mind cleared. He hadn’t been under Helen’s control long.
Captain Randall had been unaffected. He’d been clean all along. And he hadn’t forgiven Lily for doubting him, though he had paid her a stiff courtesy visit before they discharged her from the hospital.
She’d apologized. And then she’d quietly resigned from the department.
As for Harlowe . . . Lily was trying not to worry about him. Not today, at least. They didn’t know what the rebound had done to him because somehow, in all the confusion, he’d gotten away . . . apparently with the staff. They’d never found it, either. Or Ginger.
Then there was Mick.
Lily swallowed past the ache in her throat and dropped her lipstick in her purse. Rule had been down, bleeding. One of the Azà had been about to put a bullet in his head—a silver bullet.
Mick had leaped between them. The bullet had smashed his heart beyond the power of even a lupus to heal. Some might call what he’d done suicide. But since he’d died saving his brother’s life, she prefered to think he’d gotten a sudden, overwhelming dose of sanity.
“I’m ready,” she said. “Let’s go.”
“SO,”
Karonski said, sliding behind the wheel of his car, “you want to explain to me how you can be here when Rule is at Clanhome?”
“I would if I understood it. For some reason the mate bond suddenly loosened after the big fight. Rule said that happens sometimes.” It was still very much present, though. She needed him, physically and every other way, and didn’t want to be away too far or too long.
But she
could
be away now, for awhile. And she’d needed that, needed a bit of privacy. Time to herself. She had a lot to work through.
“Another thing I don’t understand. How did the others manage to arrive in the proverbial nick of time?”
She glanced at him, amused. “I don’t know about nick of time. A few minutes earlier would have been nice.”
He sighed. “You aren’t going to tell me, are you?”
“Nope. Need-to-know only, Karonski. And you don’t.”
The answer she wouldn’t give him was Max. When the spell failed, the others had been halfway to the spot marked on Cullen’s map. They’d continued, of course. Walker knew where one cave was, though they had no idea if it connected to the place where she and Rule had been taken.
But they’d had Max. Gnomes know rocks and earth the way birds know air and wind. With his usual combination of insult and braggadocio, Max had assured them that he could find his way to any spot in any cave system blindfolded.
It hadn’t been that easy, of course. They’d made a few wrong turns, and some of the passages had been hair-raisingly tight. But once they got close enough for the lupi’s ears to pick up the chanting, they’d had a directional fix. Max had been able to lead them straight to the cavern.
Lily just wished she could have seen the confrontation between Benedict and Grandmother before they entered the caves. Lily had put Benedict in charge of the field team, and he had flatly refused to take an old woman into battle. He’d been ready to tie her up to make sure she didn’t “tag along,” as he’d put it.
But no one was in charge of Grandmother. She’d resolved the argument by Changing.
Lily shook her head, smiling. Trust Grandmother to pick the moment with the ripest drama to let the others know that lupi weren’t the only ones with a second form.
“What’s the joke?” Karonski said.
“Families. They can drive you crazy, but where would we be without them?”
“True enough. You’re sort of picking up a lot more family today, aren’t you?”
“I guess I am.”
SOMEONE
else was at the gate this time. Sammy, the redhead, was mending from the bullet he’d taken, but he wasn’t fit for duty yet. They parked a little ways from the open field in the center of the village. It was filled with people.
Rule was waiting. He limped toward the car, smiling. Rule had taken four bullets to her one. The guards had hesitated to shoot at her, since she was so close to Helen. One of the bullets had collapsed his lung, which hadn’t slowed him much at the time but had made for some scary moments after it was over. But his wounds were nearly healed now, while her shoulder still hurt like blazes and kept her from using that arm.
The mate bond hadn’t given her his ability to heal. They were still trying to figure out what, exactly, had changed in each of them.
In more ways than one. “Hi, there,” she said, moving easily into his arms.
He hugged her, careful of her shoulder. “Ready?”
She nodded.
Lupus ceremonies were more casual affairs than most human rituals. People called greetings to Rule—and some to her—as they walked, hand in hand, to the center of the field, where the Rho sat on a large, flat stone.
Normally he would have stood for the ceremony, she’d been told. He wasn’t well enough for that yet, but he had insisted on holding the ceremony today anyway. Lily didn’t understand why, but for the lupi, the discovery of a Chosen—any Chosen—was cause for great celebration. It seemed to be tied to their religious beliefs.
Whatever the reason for their feeling about Chosen, it went deep. Deep enough to have jolted Mick out of Helen’s control for a moment, giving them the chance they’d needed.
Someone else waited in the center of the field. A lean man with hair the color of cinnamon and the most stunningly perfect face she’d ever seen—though part of it was hidden by dark glasses. Cullen’s eyes hadn’t finished regrowing yet. He was nude.
Lily wasn’t the only one joining Nokolai today.
While Lily was still in the hospital, the Rho had summoned Cullen. No one knew exactly what passed between the two of them, though Cullen had shared one part of it with Lily; even Benedict hadn’t been present for that meeting. But Cullen had emerged dazed—and having accepted the Rho’s offer. The clanless one would be outcast no more.
Rule and Lily stopped a few feet back, leaving Cullen alone before the Rho. “Cullen Seabourne,” Isen said in a deep, carrying voice. “You are called to Nokolai by blood, by earth, and by fire. How do you answer?”
Cullen dipped gracefully to his knees and bowed his head. “I submit, and answer with blood, to the earth, and through fire.”
“Raise your head and your arm.”
Cullen did, extending his right arm straight out.
The Rho lifted his own arm. He bought up a knife in his other hand—and slashed Cullen’s arm. Blood welled and dripped.
Then he slashed his own arm. He turned it so the wound was facing the earth where Cullen’s blood had spilled, and let his own blood drip into the same spot. “Our blood is joined,” he announced. “We seal the union with fire.”
A woman Lily hadn’t seen before stepped forward. She had gold-rimmed glasses and short white hair. She wore a loose green dress and carried a wand.
She stopped three feet away from the two men, pointed her wand, and fire leaped from its tip to touch Cullen’s wound, then the Rho’s. Neither man’s expression changed.
Lily winced. That had to hurt.
“Rule . . .”
“Shh. Don’t worry. You aren’t called by blood, earth, and fire.”
Okay. Good.
“By blood, to the earth, and through fire,” the Rho boomed, “you are Nokolai.”
There were a few cheers and a few who shouted “Welcome!” to the new clan member. Cullen rose gracefully to his feet and backed away. Someone tossed him a pair of cutoffs, and his grin flashed. He looked over at Rule.
Rule gave him a grin and a thumbs-up.
Then it was their turn. She walked with Rule to the stone where his father sat, and she knelt—less gracefully than Cullen, she feared. Rule knelt beside her.
“We have been given a Chosen,” the Rho said, his voice even lower, a rumble like distant thunder. “The Lady has blessed Nokolai. When she calls on us, do we answer?”
A hundred voices shouted, “Yes!”
“But the Chosen also chooses. How do you choose, Lily Yu?”
Lily had been told what the traditional reply was. She gave it—with an addition of her own. “I choose to honor the mate bond. I choose Nokolai. And . . . I choose Rule.”
Rule’s hand tightened convulsively on hers.
Isen blinked, startled, but he recovered quickly. “Then, in token of the Lady’s choice and yours, accept this token from the hand of your Chosen.” He held out something that glittered, golden, in the sunlight.
Rule took it. Lily bent her head, his hands at her nape as he brushed her hair aside, and he settled the necklace in place.
She felt something else, too. Her hand went to the small gold shape suspended on the chain—a fluid shape, abstract, representing nothing that she recognized.
But it felt familiar. It felt like magic, just a tiny breath of it. Magic . . . and moonlight.
“Be welcome to Nokolai,” the Rho said in a voice rough with emotion. He leaned forward, took Lily’s face in his two hands, and kissed her on the mouth. Then he sat back, grinning broadly. “And now,” he roared, “we party!”
IT
was hours before Rule had a moment with Lily alone. Finally, sensing that she was overwhelmed by all the attention—and frankly wanting to have her to himself—he’d pled his wounds and hers, and escaped to the Rho’s house.
“Thank God,” Lily said, dropping onto the couch in the small parlor. “Everyone’s been great, but it gets a little . . .”
“Overwhelming?” Rule sat beside her. Now that he had her alone, he didn’t know how to lead up to the question that had been burning in him all afternoon.
She nodded. “I feel a little like a token myself.” Her fingers brushed the little golden symbol that hung around her neck. “Everyone wanted to touch me.”
“We’re a touchy-feely bunch.”
“But there’s more to it than that. There’s all this religious stuff attached to being a Chosen. It’s hard to take.”
“What you see as religion, we see as fact. Not undistorted,” he admitted. “We’ve a long oral history, but the stories have undoubtedly lost pieces and gained others over the centuries.” He took her hand. “Lily . . .”
She leaned back, resting her head on the soft back of the couch and smiling at him. “Yes?”
“You added something to the ritual. Words of your own. About me.”
“It seemed right.”
He swallowed. “Not long ago, you hated the bond, and you weren’t too sure about me. What changed?”
“As Cullen says your father told him, I may be stubborn. I may be slow sometimes. But I’m not stupid.” She leaned close and kissed him, gently but thoroughly, on the lips. “It took me awhile, but it finally dawned on me that the mate bond hadn’t been done
to
me. How could it? I’m immune to magic. It had to come from inside me. I couldn’t repudiate it without rejecting part of myself.”
The slow seep of relief, deep and profound, loosened his muscles. He sank back like her, resting his head on the back of the couch. And smiling.
“Just think,” she said dryly. “In a few days we get to go through another ceremony of sorts.”
“Hmm?”
“The rehearsal dinner, remember? You’ll meet the rest of my family. They may not be as welcoming as yours has been.”
He’d deal with that when the time come. Right now it was enough—more than enough—to be here with her. Accepted. Chosen . . . by the Lady
and
by Lily.
After a moment she put her hand on his thigh. “Tired?”
“Exhausted,” he admitted. And aching in a few places that hadn’t finished healing . . . and beginning to ache somewhere that hadn’t been damaged, as her hand eased farther up his thigh. He turned his head.
“Not
too
tired,” he told her. And, a second later, he caught her laughter with his mouth.