Eileen Wilks: Blood Challenge

It vanished.

Lily’s heart pounded so hard she felt sick. She started toward Rethna.

His eyebrows rose. “You must be the mate. A sensitive, I’m told.” One of the wolves he’d sent tumbling stirred. Flick. The wolf froze. That left one wolf unfrozen, still lying motionless where he’d fallen. Just to be sure, Rethna aimed a flick at him, too. “Friar wants you. I’ve forgotten your name. What is it?”

“Call me Dirty Harry’s best friend.” Her SIG lay behind her on the ground. Her clutch piece, though, was in her sling—the snub nose Isen had loaned her. It wasn’t accurate at a distance. She wasn’t accurate at a distance, and the frozen Rule-wolf statue was too close to Rethna for her to take any chance of missing. So she’d get nice and close. She rubbed her right arm as if it hurt—it did—and slid her hand just inside the sling, still rubbing. Now if someone—anyone—was still able to move and distract him—

A reddish wolf raced out from the tumble of rocks, moving so fast the eye could scarcely track him.

Rethna glanced that way. Flick. Cullen froze.

Lily shot the elf lord.

The black stone on his chest glowed. He kept walking. “You’ve cost me quite a bit. Fortunately, you’re worth quite a bit. Sensitives are—”

She squeezed the trigger again. Again. The black stone flashed with each shot, and Rethna kept coming. Then her gun flashed hot, crazy hot, and she had to drop it and he was only five feet away now, smiling faintly as if it amused him to be shot at.

“—extremely rare,” he said, stopping. “Or I may keep you and sell your blood and breed you. Unless she requires you, in which case you will be very unhappy for a long time.”

Lily glimpsed movement out of the corner of her eye. She kept looking straight ahead. “Do you know where sensitives come from?”

“No.” His eyebrows lifted slightly. “Are you going to tell me?”

“Dragons.” It was Arjenie she’d glimpsed—a grim and battered Arjenie who limped heavily, had one arm hanging down as if disabled, and held a nice, big rock in her other hand. “My grandfather won’t like it if you take me away. I’m studying with him.”

“You bluff poorly. There’s no dragon who—”

Arjenie smashed that rock on his head.

He swayed. Staggered. Saw Arjenie—his eyes widened—and backhanded her. She fell next to a rock the size of a hassock, nearly hitting her head on the stone. And as he struck and Arjenie fell, a tiny woman with purple black skin sprang out from behind that rock and latched onto his leg. And bit him.

His eyes went big with fear or astonishment. “Dya,” he said. Oh, yes, that was fear in his voice. He said a couple more words in that liquid tongue before his eyes rolled back in his head. His knees buckled. As he sank to the ground the tiny woman—no more than four feet high—clung tightly to his leg with her arms and mouth.

The last elf still standing shrieked and shrieked again. He started in with the gestures. As he did, reality split sharply into other behind him. Where a wolf had stood frozen, a man—naked and snarling as if he were still wolf—stood.

But only for a split second. Then Rule leaped at the lone elf and seized his head in a two-handed grip and snapped his neck.

Lily breathed. Just breathed for a moment, her heartbeat still hasty. A little tremor of nerves ran through her. She looked around and saw wolves starting to stir. With Rethna dead, the freeze thing was … no, that was an assumption. Better make sure.

She knelt beside him. The staring eyes and vacant face said dead, but she laid her fingers on his throat to be sure. No pulse. The little dark-skinned woman—she was naked—finally released his leg. She looked up and smiled at Lily … not a human smile, not in that face. Her eyes were huge and lovely, a soft violet, too widely spaced for human. But it was her short muzzle that really tipped her into otherness. And the fangs protruding from it. “You’re Dya,” Lily said.

Dya nodded—a very human gesture. “Now the Queens will not have to send the hellhounds of the Hunt to kill him. You will be glad of that,” she informed Lily, and turned to check on her sister.

Hellhounds? Lily shook off that question and looked at Rule. “Who was it he killed?”

“Paul.” Rule’s voice was harsh, his eyes still way too black, as if he needed to snap more than one neck. He raised his voice. “Change.”

Here, here, and there, wolves slid into the Mobius-strip spin of Change. Suddenly Lily realized someone was missing. She shoved to her feet and looked at the gate. No white-robed man lay sprawled in front of it now. “Friar,” she said urgently. “We’ve got to catch him.”

“Shit,” Rule said. “He’s got a radio transmitter that will set off explosives at Clanhome. Benedict—”

“S’okay,” Arjenie said fuzzily. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a small metal box. “I picked his pocket. After he told you that, I followed him and picked his pocket. Took out the batteries, too, to be safe.”

Relief swamped Lily. She felt dizzy, giddy, exhausted. “Okay. Okay, that’s good. Cynna was going to Find the explosives, but best if they don’t get triggered. No telling how long it might be taking her and Cody to get them removed.”

“Rule.” That was Cullen’s voice, strained. “We’ve got a problem.”

“What?”

Cullen was crouched, magnificently naked, where he’d fallen as wolf, staring at the vague distortion that marked the gate. “The gate. Rethna tampered with it for his ritual. He didn’t get it put back right. Almost, but not quite. It’s … ah, shit.” He sprang to his feet. “We’ve got to get out. We’ve got to get out now .”

“LUCAS,”Rule snapped, “get Brian.” He came for Lily.

Benedict ran to Arjenie. Dya ran away—to the other end of the cavern. Lucas raced back into the cell. Rule scooped up Lily. “Shut up,” he said before she could protest. “I’m faster.”

“Dya!” Arjenie called as Benedict lifted her into his arms. “Dya, we have to get out!”

“The tears!” The little woman’s voice was high, childlike. “They’re here, they’re here!” She skidded to a halt by one of the chests and began trying frantically to open it. The lid didn’t budge.

Benedict handed Arjenie to José and ran to the other end of the room. Cullen dashed up to Rethna’s body, bent, and seized the black stone that had flashed every time Lily shot Rethna. He jerked it free, snapping the chain. Lucas emerged from the cell carrying a brown-haired man who seemed to be unconscious.

“Go!” Benedict shouted as he reached the frantic Dya. He pushed her small hands away. “Go, dammit!”

That’s all Lily saw. Rule took off. Behind him streamed the rest—José carrying Arjenie, Lucas carrying Brian, Cullen and Sammy on their own.

“Light!” Rule snapped as they entered the dark maw of the tunnel, and Cullen obliged with a mage light, far brighter than he’d used on their way in. They ran.

The slope was steep. Even Rule must have felt the strain of racing up it carrying Lily. For her part, she held on with one arm and grimly ignored the jolts of pain in her bad arm and listened desperately for footsteps coming up from behind.

She could hear nothing but their own party. She couldn’t force herself to ask if Rule heard him. But unless Benedict was much closer than she thought, he’d be coming up in the dark. “Cullen—can you set a mage light back there for—”

“I’ll try. They follow the caster,” Cullen said. “But I’ve set one behind me a couple hundred yards. He’ll see it. He can’t be too far behind.”