Authors: Eileen Wilks
Death Magic (9 page)
“The Shadow Unit,” she said wearily. “You’re going to tell me it’s needed to catch Friar.”
“No, I’m going to tell you that Ruben is needed to run that Unit. There are two Gifts that can confound a patterner. One is ours. Sensitives can’t be affected by the patterner’s manipulations, which makes us the large rock in their artificial stream.”
Rule spoke for the first time since admitting he’d deceived her. “As are lupi, at least as far as Friar is concerned.”
Fagin nodded agreeably. “So you stipulate. Your fiancé,” he added to Lily, “says that lupi are immune to
her
magic. Since we believe Friar’s Gift comes from her, they would likewise be barriers to his patterning. You and I and the lupi form, ah . . . call us dead spots in his manipulations. He can mobilize events that affect us, but it takes more power because his magic can’t touch us. But there’s only one Gift that can truly act
against
a strong patterner. Precognition.”
her
magic. Since we believe Friar’s Gift comes from her, they would likewise be barriers to his patterning. You and I and the lupi form, ah . . . call us dead spots in his manipulations. He can mobilize events that affect us, but it takes more power because his magic can’t touch us. But there’s only one Gift that can truly act
against
a strong patterner. Precognition.”
Lily frowned. “Because that’s like patterning? A precog is sensing patterns, I guess, when he gets a hunch.” Or sees visions of the Apocalypse.
Ruben shifted slightly in his chair. “I don’t think so.”
“No?”
“Fagin and I have discussed this.” A smile flickered over Ruben’s thin face. “At length. He would prefer to believe that my Gift picks up patterns from the future, much as a patterner senses patterns in the present. My input is subjective, of course, but it doesn’t feel that way to me. I’ve discussed this with that young woman you sent me for training.”
“Anna Sjorensen.” The other patterner Lily had met.
“Yes. Her Gift is quite weak, so she doesn’t sense patterns directly. This means her experience of her Gift should correspond to what I experience with my hunches if I’m also receiving patterns. Based on our conversation, this doesn’t seem to be the case.”
Fagin snorted. “Which could mean that the future’s patterns are experienced differently than those from the present. Or that you’re two different people and your minds interpret things differently.”
Ruben’s smile returned. “It could. But patterns are a space-time construct. I have a strong feeling that the information my Gift provides is not so bounded—that it comes from elsewhere and elsewhen, a state for which words are unsuited because it lies beyond space-time.”
Rule spoke very politely. “I imagine Sam would enjoy discussing your ideas about time and precognition.”
That widened Ruben’s smile. “I’ve strayed from the topic, haven’t I? Thank you for the reminder. Lily, the point is that I can act as a fulcrum, a way to leverage events away from the path Friar is establishing. To do so, I need the resources and cooperation of a great many people. Hence my leadership of the Shadow Unit.”
She sat with that in silence for a long moment. “Earlier, you said ‘the surviving lupi.’ When you talked about your vision, you said that in one scenario the surviving lupi retreat to their clanhomes. What did you mean?”
Ruben answered carefully, like a man picking his way through a minefield where he knew the location of some—and only some—of the explosives. “There are elements I can’t speak of at this time, but the greatest variation in the scenarios I saw involves the lupi. I believe that variation means that their very existence impedes her power.
She
has to destroy them to succeed.”
She
has to destroy them to succeed.”
No one moved. No one spoke. It was so quiet Lily could hear her own pulse in her ears, kind of like listening to the sea in a conch shell. Something chinked toward the back of the house. Maybe Deborah was washing dishes.
“All right,” she said at last. “I’m willing to promise my silence about all this. I understand why you’re doing it. I’m willing to offer some of that covert help you mentioned from time to time. But I’m not joining your ghosts.”
SIX
I T
must have rained while they were inside. The air was crisp with ozone, rich with the smell of damp earth. Wet grass glistened. But the sky was clear again and making a spectacle of itself, drifts of stars like spangled gauze swathing the darkness. As they walked to Rule’s car along a path bordered by roses and baby’s breath, Lily’s stomach jittered while her mind jumped around like a hyperactive two-year-old.
must have rained while they were inside. The air was crisp with ozone, rich with the smell of damp earth. Wet grass glistened. But the sky was clear again and making a spectacle of itself, drifts of stars like spangled gauze swathing the darkness. As they walked to Rule’s car along a path bordered by roses and baby’s breath, Lily’s stomach jittered while her mind jumped around like a hyperactive two-year-old.
She’d asked more questions before they left. Ruben had answered some of them. Not all.
“You turned him down,” Rule said.
“This may be the right thing for him to do. That doesn’t make it right for me.”
“He didn’t stop you from refusing. You aren’t at risk because you know too much. Doesn’t that prove that your fears about the Shadow Unit are misplaced?”
“I’ve got way too many fears at the moment for you to be sweeping them into a single pile and labeling them false. At least I’m restraining my burning urge to arrest people.”
“For now,” he said dryly.
“Look, let’s stipulate Ruben’s right and you’re right and so is whoever else is part of this. I don’t know. I haven’t . . . it’s going to take time for me to get my mind around everything, and we can’t even talk about it! How am I supposed to think it through if I can’t talk about it, or make notes, or . . . but even if you’re all right, that doesn’t mean I have to be part of it.”
He was silent for several paces, then stopped just short of the car. “I hurt you with my silence. I’m sorry for that.”
She stopped. Faced him. “It’s not what you didn’t say, it’s how you pretended. For weeks—”
“Three weeks. Slightly less, to be specific.”
She flung up a hand. “Okay. Fine. Be specific by all damn means. For three weeks you’ve acted like things are okay, but if you believe everything Ruben said, everything’s going to hell—or could, pretty damn fast. How could you
pretend
with me?”
pretend
with me?”
He looked baffled. “I haven’t.”
“When you first learned all that stuff I can’t say out loud, it didn’t just about blow off the top of your head? And you hid that from me!”
He answered slowly. “The timing came as a shock.
She
is moving much faster than I’d expected. The rest of it . . . no. We’ve known for nearly a year that
she
is active in our realm once more. Now we know some specifics about her plans. That’s tremendously valuable, and learning that we—the clans—have strong allies against her is a great relief.”
She
is moving much faster than I’d expected. The rest of it . . . no. We’ve known for nearly a year that
she
is active in our realm once more. Now we know some specifics about her plans. That’s tremendously valuable, and learning that we—the clans—have strong allies against her is a great relief.”
She stared at him. All this time, he’d been expecting something like this. When he proposed to her, he’d known they’d face some kind of Armageddon shit. When they planned their wedding, he’d known. He hadn’t just thought there would be danger—he’d known it would be vast and powerful. World-toppling. All along, he’d known. “You’re really okay with . . . with all this. You expected it. You’re not freaked and hiding it. You’re . . . okay.”
A small frown tugged at his eyebrows. “My wolf helps. That I live more closely with him than I used to helps a lot. Fear is . . . an immediate thing for a wolf. What hasn’t yet happened isn’t real enough to trouble him.”
“What about the man? How does that part of you stay so damn calm, and plan a wedding, and spend time picking out a necklace for me, and set up Toby’s college fund, and—and look to the future as though things were going to be okay?”
“Lily.” He took her arms gently. “How else could I live? It’s helpful to know what our enemy intends, and while I take Ruben’s visions very seriously, none of it is fated.” He cocked his head as if listening to something she couldn’t hear, then leaned in so close his lips brushed her ear as he whispered, “My Lady is also a patterner, and vastly more experienced than Friar.”
“But . . .” She switched to a whisper so soft only he could hear. “But your Lady isn’t able to act in our realm.”
She felt his lips move in a smile and the breath of his next words. “Except through her agents,
nadia
. She acts through us.”
nadia
. She acts through us.”
Through lupi. Who she’d created, and who served her still, wholly and freely. She could act through them, and that was why the Great Bitch had to remove them. And instead of finding this terrifying, Rule took comfort in it.
Lily didn’t answer with words. She took his hand. She was frowning as she did it, but knew he’d understand both the frown and the touch. “We should go home.”
He tucked her hair behind her ear and smiled. “Yes. I love you.”
Emotion burst out in a shaky laugh. “Don’t I get to brood at all?”
“Later, perhaps.”
LATER
started as soon as they got in the car.
started as soon as they got in the car.
Ruben’s street was quiet, but once they turned onto Bethesda Avenue the traffic picked up. Wet streets bounced light back from taillights, headlights, streetlights, bistros, clubs, and storefronts. If the brief rain had washed people inside for a time, they were back out now, wandering the pretty downtown area and sitting at tiny outdoor tables with frothy drinks or beer and nachos. It was only a little after eleven, and on a Saturday night.
All these people busy having lives . . . people mad at the boss, celebrating a raise, hunting for a hookup, getting busted, falling in love. People praying, partying, laughing, yelling, making up, breaking up . . . people helping a stranger or robbing one. People who expected tomorrow to arrive in about the same shape as today.
And maybe it would for most of them. And the day after, and the one after that. But next month was looking pretty damn iffy.
An Old One wanted to amputate the future all these people were building with whatever mix of altruism and cruelty, determination and thoughtlessness. The Great Bitch wanted to graft her version of the future onto the world. According to the lupi,
she
saw herself as humanity’s benefactor. Sure, people would die on the way to her shiny utopia, but death was what mortals did, right? No real problem. She’d make it up to the survivors by making sure they didn’t get to make bad choices anymore.
she
saw herself as humanity’s benefactor. Sure, people would die on the way to her shiny utopia, but death was what mortals did, right? No real problem. She’d make it up to the survivors by making sure they didn’t get to make bad choices anymore.
If the strongest precog on the planet—who also happened to be a good man, good all the way down—was convinced the only way to stop
her
lay in a shadowy, extralegal organization, Lily could accept the necessity. It didn’t go down easily, but wasn’t bullshit often easier to swallow than truth? She wouldn’t be reporting Ruben to the federal attorney. She’d keep his secret, but she wouldn’t be part of it.
her
lay in a shadowy, extralegal organization, Lily could accept the necessity. It didn’t go down easily, but wasn’t bullshit often easier to swallow than truth? She wouldn’t be reporting Ruben to the federal attorney. She’d keep his secret, but she wouldn’t be part of it.
She was a cop. She didn’t know how to be anything else.
They left the downtown behind. Rule hadn’t said a word since they got in the car, but he was holding her hand. He did that a lot. She looked at him. Light and shadow slid over his face, shifting as they passed this streetlight, that bar, a pocket of darker land anchored by oaks. “Did you know what Ruben had in mind for tonight?”
“I did.”
She wanted to ask how he’d known. How did Ruben’s Shadow agents communicate? Phones weren’t safe. Neither was e-mail. Not if they wanted to be sure neither Friar nor the non-ghostly FBI caught them at it, but what other options were there? But if she wasn’t going to be part of them, she couldn’t ask. She couldn’t ask who else was in the Shadow Unit, either, or who knew about it, or how it was organized, or what Rule’s place was in it . . . other than as a coconspirator, that is.
This was deeply annoying.
As for the rest of it . . . the collapse of the nation, a military coup, “the surviving lupi” . . . her stomach churned. Contemplating Ruben’s visions didn’t help. Her mind kept trying to go there, but it didn’t help. So what would? She drummed her fingers on her thigh and stared at the back of Scott’s head.
Scott drew driving duty whenever Rule went out at night, partly because he looked so harmless. He was short and wore baggy clothes that turned his wiry frame skinny. His face was round and boyish with guileless blue eyes he framed in geek glasses—clear lenses, of course, since no lupus needed vision correction. He was adept in three martial arts, deadly with a blade, good with a gun and getting better.
From the back, she could see Scott’s short, badly cut brown hair and the way his small ears hugged his head like they’d been superglued down. A small Bluetooth headset curled around his right ear like a question mark.
Questions. Lining up her questions always helped. Her fingers twitched with the need to jot them down, but she restrained herself. None of this could go on paper.
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