Eileen Wilks - Mortal Sins

Shit. Lily didn’t know what that meant, but it couldn’t be good. She glanced at Deacon. “Is he still absent?”

“He’s not what I’d call sane, but he’s present. You got some idea what could do that to a man? I mean, you’re sure there was magic involved, so, well. . . .” He hesitated, his voice dropping as if he were embarrassed. “Could Roy Don have been possessed? I know that’s supposed to be an old wives’ tale, but—”

“No, possession is real, and demons can cross if summoned, but it’s extremely rare. Almost all summoning spells were lost during the Purge.”

“Almost all?”

She waved that aside. “The point is, the magic I touched didn’t come from a demon.”

“You said it was faint.”

But not orange. For some reason, demons tripped a synesthetic switch in her Gift. They felt like a color, not a texture. “Demon magic is unique. Nothing else feels anything like it. And it’s been four days. If Meacham had been possessed and the demon left him for some reason, it would have found another host right away, or a series of hosts. And it would still be killing.”

“If it couldn’t find a new host—”

“It wouldn’t have left Meacham without having one to slip into. A raised demon needs a host to anchor it here.” It was more complicated than that, and Lily didn’t know all the complications. But she knew a demon. Well, a former demon. And Gan had told her that only a demon who’d come through a gate, or one like her, who could cross unsummoned, could stay in this world without a host.

And Gan was, as she liked to point out, very, very special because of that ability. Lily’s lips curved in the ghost of a smile. “I can’t say it’s impossible,” she added. “But it’s unlikely enough to not even make the list right now.”

“Guess you’ve had experience with that sort of thing,” Deacon said. “We nearly there?”

She nodded. Rule was close now.

“Who’d you leave on-scene? I don’t see anyone.”

“You won’t see him unless he wants you to.”

“Shit. You didn’t bring that weer here, did you? He’s here in my town?”

Just beyond the lance of her light, a shadow shifted. And growled.

Lily’s right hand slid beneath her jacket. Her left hand raised the flashlight higher, searching. “Hold it,” she snapped when Deacon didn’t stop.

“You have to draw on your lover to make him behave?” he drawled.

She had her weapon out and aimed. “That’s not—”

Two large dogs exploded from the underbrush—teeth bared, ears flat, moving fast. Lily didn’t think. She fired. Fired again.

The first dog fell. The second faltered, but kept coming on three legs—a Rottweiler with a foaming muzzle and mad eyes. She fired again just as two gunshots, packed together, smacked her eardrums.

The second dog fell, blood spraying from its head. So did one she hadn’t seen, a Doberman that had attacked from the right. Deacon’s bullets had caught it in midleap.

Lily was breathing hard, as if she’d been running. Her hands shook—aftermath of the adrenaline that had wanted her to run. She swallowed bile.

Dogs. She’d shot dogs. “Good shooting,” she managed.

“Shit.” Deacon’s voice shook slightly. “Did you see the way that one kept coming, even after you hit it? Sumbitches must’ve been rabid.”

Rabid. Yeah, that might explain why they’d ventured here, where they must have been able to smell Rule, but . . . Rule. Where was Rule?

Deacon was shining his flashlight all over the place, wary now. “You reckon there’s any more? Dogs don’t attack that way. Not like that. These were rabid. I’ll have to—hey!”

She’d taken off running.

Lily jumped a small log, skidded, then looped around a pair of scruffy pines. Rule was alive. She knew that as clearly as she knew the way the hot air felt as she sucked it in. If he’d been killed, the mate bond would have snapped.

But he hadn’t come. He should have heard the dogs, the gunshots, and he hadn’t come.

He wasn’t far. That was the main reason her pell-mell race through the woods didn’t put her on her butt, twist an ankle, or send her tumbling. She didn’t have far to run before jerking to a stop, her stomach roiling at the smell. She fell to her knees, her fingers clenched tight on the flashlight.

Rule lay in a leaf and loam bed, curled up like Hansel lost in the woods. Ten feet away, an open grave poisoned the air, but she saw no signs of a fight or trauma on Rule—no blood, ripped clothing, scuffed ground. His breathing was even; his face, peaceful. The dark hair falling back from his face wasn’t mussed.

She reached for his throat to reassure herself of a pulse. And jolted.

Magic. Thin and clammy, it coated his skin like pond scum . . . pond scum mixed with ground glass, for it held an abrasive wrongness she recognized. Even as her own heartbeat went crazy, her fingers found the steady beat in his carotid. And the ugly magic was fading. Evaporating like sweat on a hot, dry day.

His eyes opened slowly. He blinked. “Why am I lying on the ground?”

“I was hoping you could tell me. What’s the last thing you remember?” She stroked his skin everywhere it showed—his cheek, his throat, his hand—reassuring herself. The scum of magic was gone.

“Waiting. An owl hooting, the crickets . . .” He frowned. “There’s something else, but I can’t . . . It’s gone.”

He started to sit up. Lily tried to push him back down—which made him smile gently and move her hands. “I’m fine, nadia.”

“You were out cold a second ago.”

“Whatever caused it doesn’t seem to have left any aftereffects.”

“We don’t know that.”

“Lying on the ground won’t help us find out.” He stood, so Lily did, too. “Who’s thrashing through the underbrush?”

“Sheriff Deacon, I suspect.” Not that she could hear . . . No, wait, now that Rule had drawn her attention to it, she did hear movement, very faintly. “I think I lost him.”

“You should probably recover him, then.”

“I’ll call him in a minute.”

“I’m fine,” he repeated, annoyed.

“Maybe. Rule, there was magic coating you when I arrived. Death magic.”

He stilled. After a moment he said, “Whatever happened, I lived through it.”

“The magic’s gone now. Everywhere I’ve touched, it’s gone. Which is good, but I don’t understand it.” But she hadn’t touched everywhere, had she?

His shirt was loose. She ran both hands up under it, feeling his chest.

“Ah . . . Lily?”

“It could have localized, like the demon poison did.” Not on his chest, though. She moved closer so she could reach beneath his shirt to feel his back. The skin was warm, slightly moist . . . and just skin. No pond-scum grit.

“Death magic either kills you or it doesn’t. It didn’t. Lily—”

“We don’t know. We don’t know what it can or can’t do. You’re going to need to take off your shirt.”

“Christ.” Deacon’s voice came from behind her, thick with disgust. “You raced here to feel him up.”

HALOwas tiny compared to San Diego, but it was no fly-speck. As the county seat, it held a four-story district court building, where Rule would learn if his son was coming home with him. And the two-story sheriff’s department, where Rule was now. The Dawson County Sheriff’s Department smelled of dust, disinfectant, tobacco, printer’s ink, and mice. And people, of course. People who’d sweated and fretted, worked and eaten here for years

The most interesting thing about the smells, Rule thought, was the one that was absent: fear. That scent had been absent from the first, unfortunate moment he met Sheriff Deacon. The man didn’t like Rule, but he didn’t fear him. That was unusual enough to make Rule curious.