Mortal Sins (4 page)

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.”

FOUR

HALO
was 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.

They were more or less alone. The sheriff’s office was on the second floor of the cement block building, separated by a glass panel from a large, communal space crammed with desks. Most of those desks were empty at this hour, though a square-set woman in civilian clothes had grim possession of the desk in front of the door to Deacon’s office.

It was 6:42 a.m. Rule sat on a hard wooden chair and longed for coffee. Lily might classify the liquid in his foam cup as that beverage, but Lily had drunk the sludge perpetrated by cop-house coffeepots too long. Her senses were permanently skewed by the experience.

“Okay.” Deacon hit a button on his computer and the printer jumped into action. “I’ll need you to sign your statement, then you’re free to go. Don’t leave town.”

Rule considered pointing out that he’d been free to go all along—he was here voluntarily. Lily had wanted him to wait to give Deacon his statement until she was finished at the scene and could come with him. Rule had understood. He, too, knew the need to protect, though he still found it odd, even unsettling, to have that instinct trained on him.

Protection was unnecessary in this instance. He’d dealt with any number of suspicious or prejudiced police in his time. He’d chosen to cooperate with this one. So far, cooperation had earned him no points at all. “I’ll wait here for Lily, if you’ve no objection.”

Deacon shot him a hard glance. “Your lover may be a while, you know.”

“Lover” was a fine word, yet in this man’s mouth it sounded like “slut.” Rule told himself he would not allow anger to make his choices for him, but it was just as well he didn’t have Cullen’s knack with fire. “It would be more respectful to refer to her as Agent Yu.”

Deacon snorted. “Pull the other one. I know how your kind treats women, and respectful isn’t the word for it.” The printer spat out a sheet of paper and he leaned sideways to pluck it. “Here. Read and sign.”

Rule accepted the page without looking at it. He couldn’t tell Deacon he would be faithful to Lily unto death. She was his
nadia
, his Chosen. But while that was understood among his people, none outside the clans knew of the existence of the mate bond—which was the only form of fidelity that was acceptable for a lupus. But that was none of the human’s business.

Yet the sheriff’s attitude rankled. He didn’t understand why. When had lupi cared what the out-clan thought? “It occurs to me you live in Leidolf’s territory.”

“In what?” Deacon shook his head. “You’re from California, right? Maybe California schools don’t teach kids about states and counties and such. Sheriffs are elected by the county, not some blamed territory.”

“I’m aware of counties,” Rule said dryly. “Leidolf is a lupus clan whose territory—which does not appear in your children’s schoolbooks—includes much of North Carolina.” In fact, the Leidolf clanhome was seventy miles south of Halo, but that was none of this man’s business. “I’m wondering if your attitude comes from having known Leidolf lupi. Their treatment of women is not typical of my people.”

“You gonna tell me you believe in marriage?”

“Is marriage the only way to demonstrate respect for a woman?”

“The only way that means anything.”

“So you wouldn’t object if your daughter grew up to marry one of us.”

Rule thought the man would hit him. Deacon did, too, for a moment—which told Rule that Deacon’s prejudice didn’t involve any real knowledge of lupi. A man who knew much about Rule’s people might, in a fit of temper, consider shooting. He didn’t think of punching.

Deacon mastered the impulse. “Read and sign the statement.”

This, of course, was the other reason, aside from cheap land, that Nokolai had settled in California so many years ago. The woods here were magnificent. The attitudes were not.

Rule read quickly. Barring a couple of typos, the statement was accurate enough. He smiled when he reached the last part . . . which described him disrobing so Lily could make sure no death magic clung to him. Anywhere.

Deacon’s arrival hadn’t fazed her. “Get your mind out of the sewer,” she’d snapped, then gone on doing what she considered necessary. As she always did. Lily had offered Deacon a terse explanation once she finished, but it had been Rule who’d pointed out that it seemed wise to make sure he wasn’t enspelled. It would be unfortunate if he went mad on them, wouldn’t it?

Rule’s smile faded. He hadn’t known about the dogs when he said that. He looked up. “You have a pen?”

Deacon dug through the debris on his desk until he’d unearthed one. “You said you arrived in town yesterday. I need to know where you’re staying.”

“I have a room at the Comfort Inn.” He wasn’t staying in it, but he did have the room.

“What are you doing in Halo, anyway?”

“Personal business.” Rule scrawled his signature and put the statement on Deacon’s desk.

“What kind of personal? If there’s another weer living in my town, I want to know about it.”

“I realize you would consider that your business. I don’t. As it happens, the law agrees with me.” Not that he could hope to keep Toby a secret much longer, but damned if he’d turn belly-up to this man.

“Yu said she was here on family business.”

“Yes.”

“Would that be your family or hers?”

“That would be personal. As I’ve said. Do you have family, Sheriff?”

“We aren’t talking about me.”

“Perhaps we should. If you . . . Ah, here she is.” Rule turned to look through the glass partition at a metal door on the far side of the large room. A moment later, it swung open, revealing a staircase and a slim, pissed-off woman.

The bulky woman seated at the desk directly in front of Deacon’s office expressed a need to know what Lily wanted. Lily flashed her badge and spoke Deacon’s name without breaking stride. The woman considered stopping her, shrugged, and went back to tapping at her keyboard.

Wise of her. Lily was not in a good mood.

She swung open the door to Deacon’s office. “Deacon, you sent the damned vet to pick up those dogs.”

“They’ve got to be checked for rabies.”

“Believe it or not, the FBI lab is fully able to make that determination. The veterinarian wasn’t happy about our presence or our refusal to allow him on the scene. He called the press. Not just your local rag—Durham and Raleigh.”

Deacon shrugged. “I told Stan to wait a bit before he went out there. Sorry he didn’t, but you should’ve told me your people were handling the dogs’ bodies. Besides, what makes you think it was him tipped the press?”

“Dr. Stanfield informed me personally of his action and motives. He hoped to keep us from covering everything up—though he declined to say what, exactly, he thought might merit a cover-up. Possibly aliens. Or maybe he believes cover-up is the FBI’s SOP in any investigation. As a result, we’ve got two television crews and a swarm of print reporters at the scene. Several of them followed me into town. They’re downstairs now.”

“They’ll keep a bit.”

Her lips stretched in a smile that should have made Deacon nervous. “You’ll want to speak to them soon, Sheriff. I gave a brief statement at the scene. They know that the FBI received a tip about the location of three bodies, which have been tentatively identified by the sheriff of this county as those of your three vics. They are also aware we have reason to believe magic was involved in the deaths.”

“You told ’em that? Shit! I’m going to have forty thousand scared people in this town! Why the hell did you—”

“Because I had to. Because my hand had been forced.” She stepped up to his desk, set her palms on it, and leaned forward. “Because you were either too stupid to guess that Dr. Stanfield would freak at the presence of the FBI, or you called him,
knowing
good old Stan is a conspiracy nut and likely to call in the press. Knowing that and wanting it, because you’re pissed. I would very much like to know which one it was.”

Deacon scowled—but Rule caught the whiff of guilt-scent on him. “Why the hell would I want the press around?”

“You don’t like bossy women. You don’t like feds. And you really don’t like bossy female feds who have a personal connection to a lupus, because you’re a narrow-minded, self-righteous bigot.” Lily straightened, glanced at Rule. “We’d better go before the vultures realize you’re here.”

“Bigot!” Deacon shot to his feet. “You’re nuts, you know that? You notice that I’m black? Don’t tell me about bigotry, you sorry little—”

“Sheriff.” Rule stood. Anger slid into ice, setting its cold claws at his throat so that his voice dropped to what, in his other form, would have been a growl. “You don’t want to finish that sentence.”

Deacon stared at him, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed. And didn’t say a word.

Rule turned to Lily. “I’d rather not be on television this morning.”

“My car’s out front. Yours isn’t. Back door?”

He nodded. The press would find him. He knew that. Halo was too small, and he was too well-known for his presence to remain secret. But he wanted a chance to talk to Toby first.

Lily opened the door, then paused to look over her shoulder. “By the way—the dogs weren’t rabid. That will be confirmed by the appropriate tests, but I already know what the problem was.”

“What?”

“Something they ate disagreed with them.”

FIVE

RULE
slid behind the wheel of his Mercedes. Lily shut the door on the passenger side with what, in a less perfectly engineered piece of equipment, would have been a slam. “Stupidity I can live with. God knows I have to, at times. But that sort of mean-spirited behavior . . . He did it on purpose, didn’t he?”

Rule started the car. “Perhaps not consciously, but he knew the veterinarian would cause trouble for you.” Not that Lily had taken that parting shot because of the trouble Deacon had caused her. To her way of thinking, she’d already dealt with that. She’d done it for Rule.

That protective instinct again. His lips curved up. Lily might never run four-footed in the moonlight with him, but in other ways she made a fine wolf.

“A couple of the reporters recognized me,” she said. “They asked about you, of course. They’ll find you pretty quickly here.”

“I know. You’ve given me time to warn Toby and Mrs. Asteglio, at least. You touched the dogs’ bodies?”

She nodded. “The magic felt different, I guess because of the way they, uh, encountered it—through ingestion. Slimy as hell. But it was there. I’ve warned the ERT to treat all the bodies as biohazards. Rule, Ruben wants me to work the case.”

Ruben Brooks was the head of Unit 12, a formerly obscure section of the FBI’s Magical Crimes Division that had risen to importance with the Turning because most of its agents were Gifted.

Rule was silent as he pulled out of the small parking lot onto an empty street. Dawn had cracked the horizon and light was bleeding back into the world, but no one seemed to be up yet, save themselves. “I suspect he didn’t phrase it as a request.”

“No. Not really.”

“Good.”

“What?” Her head swung toward him fast enough to send her hair flying. “I know you don’t want me to work this case, not with the hearing so close. Then there’s Leidolf and what you have to do there.”

“I don’t want it, no, which is why it’s just as well Brooks didn’t leave it up to you. You would have been torn by opposing obligations. I understand why Brooks wants you on it. No one else has your protection against death magic, for one thing.” Lily’s Gift gave her that. She could touch magic; she couldn’t be touched by it. “For another, you want this one. It’s already yours.”

She reached for his right hand, curling hers around it. “Think you know me pretty well, don’t you?”

“I wouldn’t say that. You’re like Russia.”

“What?” This time he’d surprised a smile from her. “I’m guessing you don’t mean I’m cold—too much evidence to the contrary. And as for any communist tendencies you think I’m harboring—”

“No, I was borrowing from Churchill. Like Russia, you’re a ‘riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.’ But I’ve been studying the riddle, the mystery, and the enigma awhile. I know the obvious things. You’ll let go of an investigation about as easily as a bulldog unclamps its jaws.”

“So I’m an enigmatic bulldog.”

“Of course.”

“I don’t know about the enigmatic part.” Her smile faded. “Speaking of dogs . . . it’s stupid, but that got to me. Having to shoot those dogs got to me.”

Rule didn’t doubt that, though he suspected she was focusing on that horror because the other—the children—was too large to come at directly. He squeezed her hand. “I won’t tell you it wasn’t your fault, because you already know that. But maybe it hasn’t occurred to you that death by bullet was cleaner than what they’d have endured otherwise.”

“They’d been pets, you know? At least two of them had. They had collars. No tags, but collars. If you could have seen their ribs . . . They were starving to death. That’s why they dug up the grave. They were starving.”

“They were sinned against twice—by those who abandoned them, and by whoever left the tainted bodies for them to find. But not by you, Lily.”

“I guess.” Her eyebrows knitted. “I don’t see why the magic transferred that way. Why they went mad. I wouldn’t have thought that was possible.”

“I don’t know much about death magic.”

“Well, neither do I, but I thought it took a big-deal ritual to work it. I’ll ask Karonski about that.”

“Ah. Will he be joining you? Or is Brooks sending you some other minions?”

“Minions. I like that.” She smiled, but in the pale light of early morning, she looked tired. “For now, just the ERT. Karonski will be calling soon, though. Ruben’s going to brief him. He’s on a case in Wisconsin he can’t leave—one involving a coven gone over to the dark side.”

Surprised, he looked at her. “A Wiccan coven?”

“I’m afraid so. Magical theft. They found a way to persuade the Bank of America’s computers they were millionaires. That’s been done before, of course, but not effectively. Their spell was a lot more sophisticated than the typical lone practitioner’s—it took months for the bank to become suspicious. The story’s going to hit the media in a big way in another day or two, when Karonski makes the arrests. Ruben says Karonski plans to come out of the closet at the press conference.”

“Out of the—oh. You mean he’ll make his own Wiccan status public.” Abel had avoided that in the past. “Damage control?”

“Yeah. If nothing else, people will see that they need the good witches to protect them from the bad ones.” She shook her head. “There’s always been some distrust of Wiccans, especially in rural areas, but it’s worse since the Turning.”

Rural areas, yes, and small towns like Halo.

“You didn’t mention the AP earlier, or CNN. Are they here?”

“They will be.”

Oh, yes. The prospect of a magical component to the murder of children would draw reporters in droves—reporters who would demand to know why Rule was in Halo. Reporters who would gleefully switch to report on a custody hearing involving the son of the Nokolai “prince,” shoving their microphones at Toby, fighting for a chance to put the boy’s face on the six o’clock news.

Rule wasn’t too happy with the sheriff himself.

The sifted light of dawn had already strengthened as summer blew on the coals of yesterday’s heat, ready to throw a new day onto the forge. Halo’s streets remained quiet, but were no longer empty. Rule passed a shiny Ford pickup headed the other way, its driver sipping Coke from a cup the size of a bucket of popcorn. A gray Suburban was backing out of the cracked driveway leading to a small frame house surrounded by mounds of hydrangeas, their bright blue blooms floating in clouds of green like flakes from a dandruff sky.

The Suburban’s movement startled an orange tabby, who streaked in front of Rule’s car. He braked gently. “Looks like Harry.”

“Hmm?” Lily had obviously been a thousand miles away, but she returned in time to see the cat attain the safety of the shrubbery on the other side of the street. “In coloring, maybe, but Harry wouldn’t panic and run in front of a car that way.”

“No, he’d park his ass in the street and dare me to keep coming.” Dirty Harry was Lily’s cat—or she was Harry’s person, to phrase things from Harry’s perspective. He was staying with Lily’s grandmother while they were away. Not that Harry and Grandmother got along, but Grandmother’s companion had a way with cats.

All sorts of cats. Rule smiled as he turned onto Sherwood Lane.

“I guess you were right about renting two cars,” Lily said, “though at the moment mine’s in front of the sheriff’s office. Are you going to need this one?”

“I suppose you need it.”

“Yes.” She ran a hand through her hair, looked down at herself, and frowned. “How do I look?”

“Lickable.”

Her eyes flicked to his, amusement swimming in their depths. No heat, but he heard the way her heartbeat kicked up. Her voice was dry. “Not the look I’m going for. I’ve got a meet with the DA—the one who’s been planning to make a name with this case.”

Rule understood the value of controlling the surface, creating a certain effect, so he gave her another once-over with that in mind. She was less correctly dressed than she liked, he supposed, having thrown on clothes for hiking through the woods: jeans, white T-shirt, black linen jacket, athletic shoes. No makeup.

Honey-and-cream skin. Black hair, shiny and smooth as if she’d just brushed it. Firm lips, unsmiling. Dark eyes that had pinned the sheriff in his chair when she stormed into his office.

What did she need with makeup? “Tidy,” he said. “Casual, but professional. And gorgeous. Is this district attorney male?”

She snorted. “No. Not that it matters, since I’m not vamping my way into anyone’s good graces. Even if I could, I wouldn’t.”

“Oh, you could. Why the DA first?”

“The arraignment’s today. I need to see her before that. Plus she’s arranging for me to see—uh, the suspect. The one they’ve locked up. I need an interview room, one where we aren’t separated by glass.”

“So you can touch him and tell if he’s tainted by death magic.”

“Yeah. Since it clung to the bodies this long, there must still be traces of it on him, too, but I have to check. Also . . .” She grimaced. “I’m going to have to talk to the veterinarian. The one who thinks I’m hiding an alien spaceship in the woods.”

“Why?”

“People don’t start working death magic out of the blue on humans. They practice on animals first, work their way up. I’ve got the office checking for reports of animal killings, but I’m not expecting much to come of it. Our practitioner would have to have been pretty obvious to tip his hand that way. But the vet’s the head of the local SPCA. He might have heard about pets going missing, that sort of thing.”

When Lily spoke of “the office,” she meant FBI Headquarters. “You’ll be busy, then,” Rule said, slowing. “Take this car and leave me your keys. If I need a vehicle before you get back, I’ll pick up yours.”

The house ahead on the right was a two-story frame structure, the siding freshly painted white, the trim dark green to match the shingles on the roof. An enormous oak in the front yard discouraged grass, but made a nice home for an old-fashioned tire swing. The long, shaded front porch held a pair of wicker chairs, a porch swing, and a red bicycle.

The look of the place had often been a comfort to him. Halo might not have been Rule’s choice for his son, but Toby’s grandmother had done her best to make a home for him. Rule pulled into the drive.

“What’s the plan?” Lily asked. “Are we going to stay here?”

“I don’t know.” Rule yanked the key out of the ignition, frustrated. He wasn’t accustomed to indecision. “I don’t know if it will do any good to move to the hotel. I need to talk to Toby and Mrs. Asteglio.”

“Hmm. Well, you’ve been playing footsie with the media a long time now. You’ll know how to handle them. Just let me know once you make a decision. Rule, when you nearly lost it with the sheriff back there—”

“I did not nearly lose it.”

“All right, when you persuaded Deacon you
might
lose it. Was the new mantle . . . ah, active?”

He looked at her, startled. “I don’t think so. I didn’t notice it, at least. Why?”

“You were different.”

“Different how?”

“If you’d told Deacon to go sit in the corner, he would have. He might not have stayed long, but he’d have gone.”

He didn’t enjoy having his mistakes pointed out. “I scared him, you mean. Until then he didn’t fear me.”

Lily huffed out a breath, impatient, as if he were being deliberately obtuse. “Rule, he’s an empath. His Gift’s blocked by a spell, but I suspect some stuff still leaks through. He didn’t fear you at first because you weren’t a danger. And I’m not sure it was fear that had him buckling under.”

Dryly he said, “It was fear I had in mind when I suggested he be quiet.”

“He’s former military, you know. Military police.”

“He told you that?”

“No, one of the pictures on his wall shows him in an MP uniform. Marine. What I’m saying is that I doubt he’d let fear freeze him that way.”

Rule had been in that office much longer than she had, and he hadn’t noticed the photo. But he was less visual than she was, and Lily had a cop’s habits. She noticed everything. “I worried you.”

“More like you turned me on, actually. But if the—”

Whatever else she’d meant to say was lost in his mouth. She tasted warm and welcoming, with hints of bad coffee and minty toothpaste. And what stirred in his belly and below had nothing to do with the mantles.

All too soon, she pulled away. Her well-kissed mouth curved in a smile. “Men are so opportunistic about sex.”

He sighed. “Not in Mrs. Asteglio’s driveway, I’m not.”

“Good point. About the mantle—”

“I know better than to call up the new one, Lily.”

“Okay. I have to go.”

“Yes. I love you.”

“Oh.” Her eyes softened. She touched his lips with her fingertips. “Love you. Now I’ve got to go.”

Moments later, Rule let himself into the silent house. Neither Toby nor his grandmother was awake yet, which wasn’t surprising on a summer morning just brushing up on seven a.m. Rule had an urge to go upstairs where he could hear his son breathing, watch him sleep in the twin-size bed that had held Toby’s dreaming self since he left his crib.

Watch him and worry,
his wolf pointed out, about all manner of things he had no control over.

Well, wasn’t worry a parent’s prerogative? Still, he heeded the wolf this time, heading for the kitchen instead of the stairs. He’d brought some of his own coffee with him—already ground, which wasn’t as savory, but Mrs. Asteglio didn’t own a grinder, and Lily had rolled her eyes when he proposed bringing his.

The kitchen was a large, comfortable room at the back of the house, flanked by a den on one side and a formal dining room, seldom used, on the other. It was immaculate; Mrs. Asteglio was as uneasy with disorder as Lily, and more militant about it. Rule spotted the piece of paper on the counter right away.

A glance told him Lily had written it. She’d made sure that if she and Rule were delayed, Toby and his grandmother would know where they were and not worry. She thought of things like that.

He didn’t, not always. He’d lived alone too long, grown accustomed to the autonomy of distance. Too, secrecy was a habit for most lupi, especially one in his position. He was learning new habits with Lily, but he had a ways to go. Lily would help, though—by pointing out when he screwed up, for one thing.