Blood Challenge (21 page)

None of her uncles were related to her by blood. Most of her cousins weren’t, either.

Arjenie came from a large and loving family, but only her aunt Robin and her aunt’s children were family by blood. It didn’t seem to matter to her. She claimed them and they claimed her. It was like clan, Benedict thought. Blood mattered, but the claiming mattered more.

They visited the toddlers, then headed to the barracks for lunch. Benedict made sure his people ate well; lunch was chili and cornbread today. She ate a big bowl and two pieces of cornbread, and chatted easily with men who’d helped capture her two nights ago. Then they checked out the new nursery, where Samuel was growing native plants to sell to local garden centers. She asked Samuel a lot of questions, no doubt sorting the new information away tidily in the encyclopedia in her head.

As Benedict stored away the sight, sound, and scent of her in his head. Each moment was clear and precious. He’d told her he was taking time off. That was true, as far as his duties were concerned. His second was handling drill and routine security. That wasn’t unusual. Benedict left Pete in charge when he was up at his cabin or taking a new batch of youngsters into the wilderness for combat training.

But this wasn’t a normal time. His Rho believed their ancient enemy was active in their world once more and moving against them.

That was seriously bad news, yet on a personal level, it was a relief. A huge relief. The Lady hadn’t gifted Benedict with a second Chosen because of anything about him. It wasn’t personal at all. She’d done it because, for whatever reasons, the clans needed Arjenie. The Lady needed Arjenie. This meant that by protecting Arjenie, Benedict acted on the Lady’s side and for the good of his people.

He was free to protect her. Whatever it took.

Rule had called Benedict three times today. The first was to let him know that he and Lily would be returning today. They should arrive around supper, and would be staying at Clanhome for a while. The other two involved selecting the specific location for the heirs’ circle. With the venue changed so abruptly, that was a scramble. Rule had to present the other Lu Nuncios with a choice of sites, then all five had to agree on one.

Amazingly, they had. Now it fell to Benedict to assure the security, first, of his own Lu Nuncio—and second, of all the others. He should be at that site now, reacquainting himself with it.

He wasn’t. He was going to have to tell Arjenie about the mate bond, and soon. Everything would change then.

This wasn’t time off. It was time stolen.

“
You’re not supposed to just pick people up
,” she’d said when he first captured her. She’d offered several variations on that theme. He wasn’t to pick her up without her permission.

“
I have a strong sense of privacy
,” she’d told him when she learned he’d opened the bathroom door a bit
. “I don’t like having that intruded upon.”

She hadn’t liked it when he listened to her voice mail, either. And when Seabourne spotted the binding last night and held her still so he could study it, she’d told him, “
I don’t like being grabbed
.”

Arjenie did not tolerate being physically forced or intruded upon. Just this morning she’d said it again. “
Ask. You have to ask.”

Maybe that was a quality innate to the sidhe; he didn’t know enough about them to say. Maybe it had developed because of multiple operations and long hours in the hospital when she’d had so little control over who touched her, what was done to her. Maybe it was just her, like her prodigious memory. Whatever the reason, Arjenie could not stand to be physically constrained.

At first he’d thought her reaction no more than what anyone would feel. She wasn’t fiery, like Claire. She didn’t scream or lose control. But after enough repetition, even he could get the point, however politely it was made. Arjenie did not want to be touched, held, or helped without permission. You had to ask first.

The Lady hadn’t asked. Arjenie was bound to Benedict for the rest of her life—physically bound—and she’d been given no choice in the matter.

But “for the rest of her life” wasn’t entirely accurate, was it?

It had always been within Benedict’s power to release Claire from the mate bond. He’d hadn’t once seriously considered it. And in truth, Nettie had been only nine, so he couldn’t have offered that particular solution if he’d wanted to.

He hadn’t wanted to. Back then, he’d never tasted real failure. Oh, he’d worked for success, not waited for it to fall in his lap. He might have been arrogant as hell, but he hadn’t been an idiot. That had only served to convince him he deserved success. By the time he met Clare at the age of twenty-seven, he’d been spoken of by some as the top warrior of his generation—and by a few as the greatest warrior of the century. He had a daughter, his smart and shining Nettie, whom he’d sired when he was only eighteen, and she spent the school year with him, the summers with her mother. That had been a rare arrangement back then.

Not that he’d known how to fully appreciate Nettie. He’d loved her, sure—she’d been the central joy of his life. But he’d also figured it was only a matter of time before he had a son or two as well.

Then the Lady had gifted him with a Chosen.

A man who’d never failed sure as hell wasn’t going to fail with such a precious gift. Sooner or later, he’d been sure, Claire would become reconciled to the bond. It wasn’t as if she didn’t care about him. She cared deeply, passionately. He just had to be patient, find ways to distract her, make the bond rest as lightly on her as possible. When that didn’t work, he’d focused on keeping her from doing anything irrevocable.

Like driving her car off a cliff.

Benedict had never believed Claire did it on purpose. There had been a cop at the hospital who’d said … but Isen had held Benedict down. The officer had probably never guessed how close he’d come to dying that night.

Claire had always loved to take risks, to push herself, but when he first met her, those risks had been leavened by practicality, practice, and planning. She threw knives for a living, but she’d tried other acts, too—high-wire, trapeze. He’d taught her to skydive. She’d loved it.

Claire had always been restless, too. She’d grown up in the circus and was used to constant travel, but the mate bond wouldn’t allow that. Not unless Benedict went with her. He’d gone with her as much as he could, but she’d hated knowing her freedom was forever limited by what he agreed to do.

The bond also meant that she couldn’t marry. Ever. Wildly unconventional in so many ways, his Claire had wanted marriage, wanted it badly.

The coastal road had been slick with rain that night. Claire had been furious, frantic. And pregnant.

They’d fought when she told him. At least, she had. He’d tried to calm her down, but as usual, that only infuriated her. There was no guarantee he’d be able to give her a baby himself, so in spite of his sorrow that this baby wasn’t his, he could rejoice that she would have a child of her own. He would gladly raise it with her.

That wasn’t what she wanted. He wasn’t sure she’d known herself what she wanted from him by then. Jealousy, maybe. She would have understood that. Or maybe she’d wanted exactly what she said she did. The demand she’d hurled at him had been simple enough:
Marry me or get out of my life.

He couldn’t do either one. And she couldn’t understand why. Why couldn’t he thumb his nose at the “lupi don’t marry” dictum? Hadn’t she thumbed her nose at everyone by taking up with him in the first place?

By then he’d been tired of explaining. Tired of her irrationality, her refusal to believe him or accept the reality of the bond. When she’d flung herself out the door and into the jazzy little convertible he’d bought her for her birthday, he hadn’t called her back.

She’d died on the operating table.

As they left the nursery, a big yellow Lab came romping up, trying to coax them to play. Arjenie laughed and rumpled his ears, which reduced him to bliss. Benedict introduced them.

“Mondo?” Upon hearing his name, the dog immediately plopped down and offered his belly for a rub. She grinned, bent down, and complied. “What a perfect name for this big guy. He’s huge, all right. Though I don’t think he fits the Spanish meaning of ‘clean.’ ”

“You know a lot about the meanings of names.”

“It’s sort of a hobby of mine. My name doesn’t have a meaning.”

Startled, he said, “None?”

“Not in our realm, anyway. It comes close to a lot of words or names in various languages, but I’ve never found an exact match.” She straightened, much to Mondo’s disappointment. “Just before he left, Eledan told my mother that if she did bear his child she was to name it Arjenie if it was a girl, Arjana if it was a boy. She always said it was a good thing I turned out to be female. Can you imagine naming some poor boy Arjana?”

“She named you to please your father?”

Arjenie looked wistful. “I don’t know. Eledan told her that names affect the sidhe in ways they don’t affect humans, and that seems to be true. Mom said she didn’t know enough to name me properly herself, while Eledan had had a great deal of practice naming his babies.”

He’d touched her cheek before he had time to remember that touching her was a bad idea. Her skin was so soft. He stroked his thumb across that warm, smooth skin. “That makes you sad.”

“It made her sad. Not all the time, but sometimes. Sometimes I’d see her sitting quietly, looking out the window, and I knew she was thinking of him. Remembering. Wanting him to come back, even though she knew he wouldn’t stay. But he—he’d told her he’d come back one day. Not right away, because he was a foolish and distractible fellow. Those were his words, and when he said it he laughed in this way that always made her smile when she told the story. She wasn’t to expect him on any particular day, for he was blasted if he could see how anyone knew what they’d do tomorrow, much less a year or ten from now. But one day he’d come back to check on her.” She swallowed. “He did, too. He came to check on her … two years after she died.”

He kissed her.

There was no thought to it, no plan, no reason. And every reason. She jolted when his lips touched hers, then went still. He kissed her softly, learning the taste and feel of her mouth, and then he made another mistake. With his lips touching hers, he breathed deeply of her scent.

Fire leaped in him, and need—need so strong it made his breath jerk in his throat and almost, almost, made him reach for her with his hands as well. But some dim remnant of reason told him that if he did that, he wouldn’t stop.

And he had to stop. His head was light and empty, dizzy with hunger, when he lifted it, breaking the kiss. Her hands clutched his arms. She looked as undone as he felt.

“What …” She stopped. Swallowed. “What was that? I mean, I know it was a kiss, but it was—I never—”

“A summary,” he told her, his voice hoarse. “You’ll get the full report soon, but right now we both have to settle for a summary.”

She shook her head. “You’re not making sense. You aren’t … you can’t do a glamour, can you? Like the sidhe?”

Like her father had done to her mother, she meant. He looked at her wide, wary eyes, and sorrow took him by the throat and shook him like a terrier shakes a rat. “No.” He forced that word out, then found a few more. “We’d better get back. Sun’s on its way down. Rule and Lily will be here soon.”

“Okay.” But her brows remained pleated in a small, worried frown. “Are they going to answer some of my questions?”

He managed a wry smile. “I don’t know. Can you wait until tomorrow to have them answered?”

Her chin tilted up. “I can. I don’t want to.”

When he held out his hand she looked more worried than shy. She hesitated for several long heartbeats. But she did take it.

His stolen time was ending. He’d known that it would. The sweetness of their afternoon together was marred now by all he wasn’t telling her. And she sensed that.

Tonight, then. He would tell her tonight. But he would make it clear that if she couldn’t tolerate the bond, there was an alternative. Not a good one, but sometimes all the choices were ill.

If everything went to hell, Benedict would release Arjenie in the only way he could. It was not a solution he liked, nor was it without risk for her. But if she grew frantic and miserable and dangerous to herself … well, Nettie was an adult now. He didn’t fool himself that she’d understand. She wouldn’t. She’d hurt, and so would his father and brother. But it was his decision to make, not theirs.

There was only one way to dissolve the mate bond, but it was one that lay within Benedict’s power to grant. Death did the trick neatly. Only this time, he wouldn’t be the one death left behind.

TWENTY-SIX

RULE
rented a limousine to take them from the airport to Clanhome.

The flight itself wasn’t as bad as Lily expected, probably because she didn’t remember much of it. Nettie loaded her up on painkillers. Getting dressed for it had been a bitch, though. Most of Lily’s tops were tanks and tees meant to be pulled on over her head. That didn’t work now. Rule had bought her some button-down tanks that were much easier to get into, though she still needed help, dammit.

Much to Lily’s surprise, Nettie hadn’t argued when Lily told her she wanted to fly home. Oh, Nettie got her pound of flesh in the form of a promise—Lily was to stay off her feet on the day they traveled, and
we’ll see
after that—but she didn’t have a problem with the flight itself.

Dr. Skinny had. At first it had looked like he wouldn’t release Lily, but Nettie had handled him. Most patients didn’t have a personal physician in attendance for such a flight, after all. Lily might have felt pretty damn pampered if she’d been able to stay awake long enough.

A personal physician who was also a shaman and could put Lily
in
sleep whenever she woke up for two seconds. Which she did, because of her bladder. Lily had been jumped in the ladies’ room once and didn’t want to repeat the experience, so she had Rule wake her up a couple times so she could use the facilities on the plane rather than at the airport after they landed.

Jeff flew back with them. The other Leidolf guards stayed behind … as did LeBron, in a very different way. Or maybe he didn’t. Lily knew that something lasted beyond the body. Might as well call it a soul. She also knew that ghosts were real. A medium had told her once that a ghost was more like a side effect of dying—the shadow cast by a soul, not the soul itself, no more than a physical body was a soul. Ghosts winked out when the soul completed its transition, and most souls moved on pretty quickly.

Most, not all. Some ghosts lasted for days, weeks, even years.

Could LeBron’s ghost have tagged along at thirty thousand feet?

Who knew?

The painkillers started wearing off shortly before they landed. Lily’s arm throbbed as she was wheeled off the plane, then deposited in one of those motorized carts the airports use. But at least she was awake.

No one attacked them. They were met on the other side of security by five Nokolai guards with another wheelchair. Rule had taken her at her word when she said he could guard the hell out of her—and Nettie had meant it when she said Lily was to stay off her feet.

Lily gritted her teeth and put up with it. She hated being treated as incapable of taking care of herself, even if it was true right now. She hated the spectacle of being wheeled through the airport surrounded by bodyguards. Most of all, she hated the idea of anyone else dying because of her. For her.

It was a stretch limo.

That surprised a laugh out of her. It made her think of Grandmother, and that helped her put up with all the assistance Rule was determined to give her. She was capable of walking a few feet, dammit. Admittedly, she was annoyingly weak, but she could walk if anyone would let her do it.

She might have mentioned that a little too vehemently.

“Don’t worry,” Nettie said as she slid into the ridiculously long vehicle. “I’ll have you up and walking. Just not today.”

One of the bodyguards got up front with the driver. The others went with José, who would follow them in his car. Rule managed to climb into the limo while carrying Lily without banging her head or feet on anything, which probably ought to qualify him for an Olympic something-or-other.

He deposited her on the rear seat, then sat beside Nettie on the facing seat. There were pillows she could prop herself up with so she could stretch out without lying down. There was a cat carrier, too, on the floor. Inside, a thoroughly sedated Dirty Harry snoozed away.

“You’re being perfect again,” she told Rule as they pulled away. She gestured at the cat carrier. “Did anyone get hurt?”

“José is sure he can get the blood out of the carpet.”

He wasn’t kidding. She sighed. “I don’t know how Harry will take to Clanhome. It must smell like wolf everywhere.”

“Harry’s tough. He’ll adjust. Besides, Toby will be there.”

She frowned. “Did you tell me that already and I was too doped up to notice?”

“Briefly. You asked if school was out already, but fell asleep again before I could answer.”

“School isn’t out.”

“He’ll be homeschooled for now. At least until we know for sure if
she
was behind the attack on you.”

Toby wouldn’t like that. Sure, he loved Clanhome. But he also loved school, little though he might admit it. He was a thoroughly social little being, thriving on having lots of kids around, and he was already finding ways to fit in at his new school in spite of the notoriety of being Rule’s son. He’d tried out for soccer and been accepted. He was excited about that, and about the music program at the school. They’d bought him an oboe.

Public school had seemed safe enough. It didn’t matter what enemies Rule might have himself. No lupus would harm a child. But
she
didn’t play by the same rules. “Toby’s at Clanhome already, then.”

“He isn’t happy about it, but he’s there. If it’s any consolation, he was mollified when he learned you’d be at Clanhome for a time, too. That helped him accept that the threat was serious.”

That was something, she supposed. Another point in favor of Clanhome: her mother wouldn’t be dropping by constantly. It was unfair, but Lily liked knowing her mother wanted to come fuss over her. She just didn’t want her to actually do it.

“Has anyone talked to—” She cut herself off, frowning. If Friar could eavesdrop, she didn’t want to mention Sam and the possibility of having a binding removed. Or did she? Would it matter?

Dammit, her head was still fuzzy from the drugs. And her back ached. Lily used her good arm to prop herself up better—and her other arm yelled at her to be still. She told it to shut up.

“You can have more pain medication,” Nettie said.

“I don’t want it,” she snapped and shifted again, but slowly. This time the pain was more of an annoyed mutter than a shriek, and the new position did support her back better. “Um … was I rude just now?”

“Yes. You aren’t the worst patient I’ve ever had, though.”

Nettie’s voice was dry, but her expression was abstracted, almost uncertain. That was unusual enough to get Lily’s attention. “What is it?”

“You know Arjenie Fox?”

Oh. Lily glanced at Rule. Did Nettie know that Arjenie was Benedict’s Chosen? Or that the woman had sidhe blood? “I’ve never met her in person. I’ve worked with her, but it’s all been by phone or e-mail. I guess I’ll be meeting her soon. She’s staying with Isen, isn’t she?”

Nettie nodded, her lips tight with worry or temper or both. “There’s something Benedict hasn’t told me about her. Something important. I’m not reading between the lines,” she added dryly. “He told me there was, and that he would explain when I was at Clanhome, not over the phone. Security reasons, he said.”

Lily was careful in her response. If Friar’s clairaudience Gift was connected to
her
, the mantles Rule carried should create a sort of cone of silence. Even
she
couldn’t spy on someone who carried a mantle. But they didn’t know enough. They couldn’t be sure, so they were being careful. “He talked to you about her?”

“If you mean do I know she’s his new Chosen, the answer is yes.” She glanced at Rule. “You told Lily.”

“I did, yes. Benedict spoke accurately. I’m aware of the information he hasn’t given you, but we’re being careful what we say because there’s reason to suspect Robert Friar is a Listener who is unable to eavesdrop at Clanhome.”

“Friar?” Nettie said, startled.

“You know where and how Benedict first encountered Ms. Fox.”

Nettie nodded, her face tight. “I’m worried. I’m worried about him.”

Sometimes Lily almost forgot that Nettie was Benedict’s daughter—probably because she looked five or ten years older than her father. “I can’t tell you much about Arjenie. She asks good questions. She’s quick but thorough, and probably brilliant in her way. And that isn’t what you want to know, is it?”

“It all helps. All I know about her is what she looks like when she’s unconscious.”

Lily thought for a moment. “I’ve never heard her be bitchy, gossipy, or play the poor-me card. I guess I’d say she’d level. Not unemotional or stoic—just the opposite, really. More as if she got her balance years ago and held on to it.”

Nettie’s mouth curved up, but her eyes were bitter. “That would be a major improvement over Claire.”

“I don’t know much about Claire.”

Nettie shrugged. “I don’t suppose I really do, either. I was just a kid. I liked her when I first met her. She was one of those people who seem twice as alive as everyone else, who make you feel extra alive when you’re around them. She was also a faithless bitch.”

That startled Lily enough that she jolted physically. Her arm flashed a protest from fingers to collarbone.

“Benedict never held that against her,” Rule said quietly.

“I did.” Nettie’s face and voice were stone.

Rule spread his hands. “I was a child at the time, too, so mostly I can only repeat what I’ve been told, not what I’ve put together for myself. But I believe it to be true. Claire couldn’t accept the mate bond,” he said to Lily. “At one point she tried to break it by sleeping with other men. She told Benedict what she was doing, and why. She didn’t do it to hurt him, but to—as she saw it—save herself.”

“That’s what he believes,” Nettie said. “That doesn’t mean he didn’t hurt.”

“He was upset, yes. That much I did see for myself. But mostly because he feared she would damage herself emotionally, and for no reason, since her attempt would fail. He tried to get her to choose lupus partners because human men wouldn’t treat her well if they saw her as easy. She refused.” Rule looked at Lily. “This was over forty years ago, remember, in the 1960s. Attitudes toward women’s sexuality were changing, but they had a long way to go.”

Lily’s brain was well and truly boggled. “That’s … they discussed it? And his response was to advise her to only sleep with lupi?”

Rule’s mouth quirked up, though his eyes remained troubled. “I’ve recently discovered that I am capable of jealousy. It’s not knowledge I like, but it’s true … of me. I don’t think Benedict is. He’s capable of possessiveness, certainly, but not in a sexual sense.”

“He’s capable of being hurt,” Nettie said gruffly. “She hurt him plenty, long before she nearly destroyed him by killing herself.”

Rule gave his niece a sharp look. “She didn’t kill herself.”

Nettie waved that away. “Maybe, maybe not. I don’t know what was in her head that night, and you don’t, either. Don’t worry. I won’t say that to Benedict. I wouldn’t do that to him.” She broke off, her eyes dark with emotion. “I wasn’t there when she died. You were. I’d gone back to the reservation to stay with my mom. It was the usual time for me to go to her, so I wasn’t there.” She sighed, long and shaky. “You were. I resented that, you know, for a long time. That you were here when it happened, and I wasn’t.”

“I know,” he said quietly, and reached for Nettie’s hand.

She closed her fingers around his. “My mother wouldn’t let me go to him. He was in bad shape, and she wouldn’t let me go to Clanhome and be with him. She thought it would be too hard on me, seeing him like that. She didn’t understand that it was worse, not being there.”

“I know,” Rule said again, this time with a small smile. “You got around that, eventually.”

Nettie snorted. “It was a stupid thing to do. I was luckier than I deserved to be.”

Rule turned that smile on Lily. “Nettie had just turned ten. Three months after Claire’s death, she took matters into her own hands. She hitchhiked from New Mexico to California. Made it to Palo Verde unharmed, though she picked up a couple of scary memories before Benedict found her.”

“He did? He knew she was coming?”

Rule shook his head. “Not ahead of time. Nettie left her mother a note. Her mother called Isen. She was pretty frantic, I gather. The authorities in her part of the state weren’t exactly sympathetic to the Navajo population, and though she notified them, she wasn’t sure they would look very hard. Isen … well, Benedict was in bad shape, and he wasn’t getting better. Isen told him to either kill himself and get it over with, or go rescue his daughter.”

“He did need me,” Nettie said quietly. “Oh, not for what I thought. I was a kid. I thought he needed me to do things for him—sweep his floor, make sure he ate, whatever, so he’d remember he was loved. I was wrong about that, but I was right that he needed me. He needed to do things for me.”

Kind of like Rule had needed to get Lily a limo … among other things. Guilt made her feel small. She hadn’t had much energy to spare, it was true, but she could have made more of an effort to understand. The attack hadn’t happened only to her. In a very real sense, it had happened to Rule, too.

Violence was like that. There was never just one victim.

He and Nettie were uncle and niece, but they were also close age-mates. Nettie had been ten when her father’s Chosen died. That meant Rule had been eleven or twelve when he saw the big brother he idolized almost destroyed by the breaking of a mate bond. “I’m getting a better picture of how you felt when the mate bond hit,” she said quietly.

He tipped her a wry smile, but his phone sounded before he could reply. She recognized the ring tone.

Rule’s system for assigning musical ring tones baffled Lily, but she knew most of them. His father got “Dueling Banjos.” Benedict was “Eroica” by Ars Arcana. Those two sort of fit, but for Lily’s ring tone he used piercingly sweet violin music, part of an old gypsy song. It was lovely, but it didn’t sound like her. She’d asked him about it. He’d smiled and touched her cheek. “The music doesn’t represent you,
nadia
, but how I feel about you.”

He melted her sometimes.