Eileen Wilks: Blood Lines

He waited.

She took a deep breath and got it said. "I've killed."

Silence.

"Not humans. Shit. Sorry, Father. I'm saying this all wrong. What I mean is, I killed demons."

The silence was longer this time. Finally he said, "You are quite sure these were demons you killed?"

At least he hadn't told her she was nuts. She didn't blame him for asking, though. Everyone knew demons couldn't cross un-summoned, and accurate summoning spells were as rare as hens' teeth these days. Had been since the Purge. Like a lot of things "everyone knew," that was wrong, but this priest wouldn't have any way of knowing that.

Of course, demons were common as hell in hell. "Um… I'm with MCD. You know, in the FBI? And… look, I'm sorry, but I can't talk about the details, not even with a priest. But it involved killing demons."

"There is no sin in that, if the act was without malice," he said kindly. "Since Vatican II, destroying them hasn't been considered an act of grace in and of itself, but they are soulless creatures."

She sighed. That's pretty much the reaction she'd expected. 'Thanks, Father."

He talked with her a little more and assigned her penance. He added that he'd be in his office a while, so the sanctuary would be available.

Cynna could take a hint. She sat in one of the pews to get started on her Our Fathers, but her attention kept drifting.

The thing about killing demons was that they stayed dead. The ones she'd shot had been planning things even nastier for her and the others, so she didn't regret killing them. Not exactly. But the whole thing didn't seem right to her. No souls meant they were morally blind. They didn't know they were being evil, so they couldn't choose good. No souls also meant no shot at an afterlife.

Didn't that make it worse to kill them?

And why had God set things up that way?

She shifted. Questioning the Almighty probably wasn't something good Catholics did, but she'd come late to the Church, and partly for selfish reasons. Believers were protected against possession.

Of course, possession was another thing everybody knew didn't happen anymore.

Damn. Still chasing her thoughts instead of paying attention to her act of contrition. Maybe she'd do better with her Hail Marys. She felt more comfortable with Mary than with the omnipotent Father.

"Hail Mary, full of grace…"

"Child."

The voice was church bells and wind, the lap of waves at night and the hunting hoot of an owl. And yet it was utterly human. Female. It was an actual voice, too, air vibrating to produce sound, not mindtalk… yet it seemed to happen inside her as well.

Awe. For the first time Cynna-fully understood the meaning of that word. For a long moment she neither moved nor breathed, hoping the voice would speak again. Finally she said, "M-Mary?"

"No." The presence was amused, but so gently. "I have been many, but not that one. I am yours already, Cynna. Are you mine?"

There was no thought to her answer, but neither was there fear. "I don't know. Who are you?"

"When you know, you will choose. For now, Find your friends. Go quickly. You are needed."

WASHINGTON wasn't round-the-clock busy like New York or L.A. Even on the main arteries, traffic thinned out by midnight. But it didn't evaporate entirely. Lily watched the scattering of headlights on the other side of the median, the way they seemed to merge in the curve of the windshield with the reflections of taillights and neon. Her fingers tapped impatiently on her thigh.

They were in the Mercedes Rule had rented, not her government-issue Ford. It wasn't a convertible like his own car, but it had the same bells and whistles.

Lily still didn't get why Rule hadn't wanted to bring his car to D.C. Sure, it would have taken longer, but he hated flying. A touch of claustrophobia he liked to pretend didn't exist made anything but first class impossible for him. Maybe that was why he'd insisted on flying. He'd prefer fighting a weakness to working around it.

That, she understood.

There'd been no question that he would come with her to Washington. Even if they'd been okay with a long separation, the mate bond wouldn't have let them stay on opposite coasts.

The mate bond. That's what she'd referred to earlier when she'd said she was Rule's Chosen—not that he'd chosen her, or vice versa. According to Rule's people, their Lady had tied the knot for them—a till-death-do-us-part bond she'd fought like crazy at first. But then, at first she'd thought of it as entirely physical. Sexual.

But mind-blowing sex was only part of it. There was a limit to how much physical distance they could tolerate; put too much space between them and they'd pass out. If that limit varied maddeningly according to no rules she could fathom, she was learning to live with it. Plus she always knew where Rule was—his direction and roughly how far away he was.

There might be a spiritual aspect to the bond, too, but Lily preferred not to think about that. Religion made her uneasy, and dying hadn't provided as many answers as you might think.

She glanced at the man behind the wheel and smiled, thinking of the way he'd woken her that morning. Whatever the mate bond had brought to their relationship, she'd fallen in love with him on her own.

She loved him. He loved her. It was that simple, and sometimes that scary.

Rule had so many nooks and crannies, so much that remained a mystery… but she knew the important things, didn't she? He was smart and often kind. He could laugh, and he could listen. Mostly he was reasonable, though there was an autocratic streak in him.

No surprise there. Rule was the heir, the Lu Nuncio, of his clan. When his father died, he'd be the big cheese, the Nokolai Rho. Lily hoped Isen Turner lived a long, long time.

Which he might. One of the more unsettling things she'd learned recently was that lupi aged roughly half as fast as humans.

Another thing she knew about Rule: at the moment, he was in a major snit. "All right," she said. "Let's talk. All that silent, simmering anger is interfering with my thinking."

"Should I be flattered?"

"What's got your tail in a twist?"

"If that's your colorful way of asking why I'm angry—"

"That's me. Colorful."

"You stepped between a shooter and his target." Rule didn't get loud when he was angry. He turned quiet. His voice lowered now until it thrummed like an overloaded power line. "That cop was ready to pull the trigger, and you put yourself in his line of fire."

"It worked, didn't it?"

Rule growled. It was an honest-to-God growl, not a sound human throats accommodate well.

"Look, the cop pulled an idiot act. Paul wasn't a threat until someone tried to shoot him, and firing a normal load at a lupus is more likely to annoy him than stop him. Not a good way to live to collect your pension. But most cops don't know enough about lupi to handle them right, and he'd had good training otherwise. It showed in his stance, the way he handled his weapon. I figured he wouldn't shoot with someone in his line of fire. I was right."

"If you expect me to applaud your decision to risk your life because you won your gamble—"

"I expect you to trust my judgment! What about you? You jumped an angry wolf, for God's sake, and invited him to rip out your throat!"

"It was a brave act, and an honorable one," the man in the backseat said. "Especially under the circumstances. You want the next exit, sir."

Lily didn't quite jump, but she came close. Their passenger hadn't spoken since telling Rule how to get to his apartment. She'd nearly forgotten him.

It wasn't easy for a lupus to Change back to human quickly after going wolf. Paul Chernowich had managed it an hour after turning down his chance to kill Rule. By then the place had emptied of audience and most of the performers, and refilled with cops.