Tempting Danger (5 page)

“Hmph. I can get you witnesses for that period easily enough, but they’ll be lupi. Cops and juries don’t trust a lupus’s testimony.”

Rule’s lips twitched. “Maybe they have reason.”

Isen chuckled. “Maybe they do. Okay, here’s what you do. First, find out if it really was a lupus who killed the man. Wouldn’t be the first time someone tried to pin his sins on one of us.”

“That had occurred to me. I’ve spoken to a reporter who’s willing to exchange information, but he doesn’t have anything yet. Given what Cullen told us, though—”

“Which may or may not be true.”

“He was right about the attack on you.”

“But his warning came too late, didn’t it? If he was trying to convince me of his bona fides—calm down, boy. I can practically smell you bristling over the phone. I know he’s your friend, and I’m not discounting what he said. But I’m not swallowing it whole, either. He’s clanless.”

“But not outlaw.”

“A rogue is, by definition, insane.”

There was nothing Rule could say to that. “We know something is cooking.”

“But not what, or who the cooks are.” Isen sounded weary. “Guesses, that’s all we have. I need facts. The cops may stumble across some. I need to know what they find out, and you need to stay out of jail. The obvious solution is for you to seduce that pretty detective.”

Rule felt sucker-punched. It took him a second to get his breath back, and all he could think of to say was, “What makes you think she’s pretty?”

Another deep, rumbling chuckle. “You can hide a lot of things from a lot of people, but I’m not just your Rho, I’m your father. Think I can’t tell when you’re attracted to a woman?”

Isen had more questions and instructions. Rule answered with half his mind. The other half was screaming at him to tell his father he couldn’t seduce Lily Yu for such a reason, that she was . . . she might be . . .
might be,
he reminded himself. He didn’t know. One whiff wasn’t proof.

“Attraction aside,” he said, “it would help if I could tell her some of our suspicions.”

“Don’t tell her anything,” Isen snapped. “She won’t believe you. It would interfere with gaining her trust.”

“You sound as if Nettie let you out of Sleep too soon.”

“You all think you know more about my body than I do . . . yes, dammit,” he said to Nettie, whose voice Rule could hear in the background. “I know you’ve got a piece of paper saying you do. Think I’m impressed?”

Rule could picture Nettie standing near her patient’s bed, arms crossed. He heard her saying that she did know a lot more about Isen’s body than he did, and he ought to be glad of that, since he was an idiot.

“We think you have no idea of your limits,” Rule told him soothingly, worried by the querulous note in Isen’s voice. His father was not a querulous man. “Besides, I’m scared of Nettie. She’s already threatened me.”

That brought a chuckle, but it lacked strength. “You should be. Damned tyrant . . . no, you will not,” he said, but the last was addressed to Nettie, not his son.

Rule heard both sides of the argument that followed. Nettie won. A few minutes later, she came on the line. “I’ve put him back into Sleep. This time he’s staying under for twenty-four hours.”

He ran a hand over his head. “He’ll be fuzzy after so long in Sleep. Of course, if he needs it—”

“Rule, you saw his wounds. There’s nothing he can’t heal, but until he grows some of those bits back, his condition is
not
going to be stable. Unless you covet your father’s job—”

He growled.

“Don’t be so touchy. The plain fact is that you’re heir. If the Rho dies, you take over. And some will wonder if you wanted it that way.”

“You’re giving me gristle—lots of chew, not much meat. How is he, really?”

“Hardheaded. Worried. And older than he wants to accept. The pain’s too much for him, and he doesn’t heal as fast as he once did. He won’t go to a hospital—no, don’t bother to explain. I understand his reasons. But if he can’t use technology to keep him going while he heals, he’ll have to spend a lot of time in Sleep.”

Rule swallowed his fear. He couldn’t be a child now. There was bloody little room to be a son. “If he must, he must.”

“I shouldn’t have let him out of Sleep as soon as I did,” she admitted. “He faked me out. Got his vitals under control long enough to . . . well, never mind. Don’t worry about things here. Your father will heal, and the Council can handle things while he does.”

He wanted to be at Clanhome, too, dammit. Tradition banned him from his father’s presence while he healed, but not from Clanhome itself. That was his big brother’s doing. Benedict’s authority to bar the Lu Nuncio from Clanhome was shaky in theory, firm enough in practice. No one argued with Benedict about security. Most people didn’t argue with Benedict, period.

At least he knew the Rho was safe. Barring a strike by the U.S. Air Force, nothing and no one was getting to their father when Benedict was there. “Give Toby a hug for me,” he said. “I’ll be in touch.” He disconnected and tucked his phone in his jacket pocket.

Then he just sat for a moment. He was scared. For his father, his people, and himself. This was a hell of a time for the Nokolai leader to be incapacitated.

Which, of course, was exactly what Isen’s attackers had wanted. Rule stood and headed for the bar and the one scent that drew him right now. “Ah. My coffee’s ready.”

“Don’t see how you can drink that crap,” Max said.

Cullen grinned and slid a mug across the bar. It held coffee made from Rule’s private stock of beans.

“It requires a palate.” He could keep his shoulders loose. He could control his expression, his voice, and to some extent his smell. But he couldn’t keep the nerves from crawling across his belly, making it as jumpy as a Chihuahua on caffeine. “This place looks like hell with the lights up,” he observed, sliding onto a stool.

Max set his own mug—which would hold Irish whiskey, not coffee—on the bar and hopped up on the stool next to Rule’s. “That’s the point.”

“But this is the morning-after kind of hell. Like a carnival before night falls and the lights and music turn tacky into mystery.”

“It’s five o’clock in the goddamned morning, what do you expect? Anyway, I don’t want to hear about carnivals. Makes me think of the years I spent in the sideshow.”

“You were in a sideshow?” That was Cullen, who’d stayed on the other side of the bar. He was in one of his restless moods, fiddling with first one thing then another. “Was this before the war, or after?”

“Which war? Humans are assholes.” He tilted his mug, downed half of the contents, and belched contentedly. “Leave the damned glasses alone.”

Cullen continued polishing the glass he’d picked up. “World War Two. That’s the one you always lie about.”

“Jealousy.” Max shook his head sadly. “This younger generation is sick with it. Lacks respect, too.”

Cullen paused. “You calling me a member of the younger generation?”

“You’re all younger. Children, every one of you, running around like crazy so you won’t notice how soon you’re gonna die.” Max took a silver case out of his jacket, opened it, and selected one of the cheap cigars he liked to poison the air with. “Take the way you idealize truth—telling it, finding it.” He snorted. “Finding it! As if it were lying around somewhere, waiting for you to pick up. Childish. People live by stories, not truth. What you really want are answers so you won’t have to figure things out for yourselves.” He pulled out his lighter. “I admit, thinking takes time.”

“Don’t,” Rule said wearily.

Max paused, squinting at Rule for a moment. He put the lighter down. “Your father?”

“The Rho is healing. Sorry. Didn’t mean to make you think something was wrong.” Rule grimaced. “That something
more
was wrong, anyway.”

“You’re shook,” Cullen said, surprised.

Rule took a moment to sort out what to say. Max and Cullen were his friends. At the moment they were colleagues, too, of sorts. But they weren’t Nokolai. “None of us expected them to act this soon. And I didn’t expect it to be this personal.” He thought of Rachel, her eyes red and swollen, empty of everything but grief. “Perhaps I should have.”

“Regrets are the most useless form of guilt,” Cullen said. “They always arrive too late to do any good.”

“That’s their nature, isn’t it?” He pushed that aside and spoke formally. “The Rho extends Nokolai’s gratitude, and offers you the aid and comfort of the clan for a moon cycle.”

“I thank the Rho,” Cullen said, his voice light, his fingers tight on the glass he’d been polishing. “Canny old bastard that he is. I’m surprised he didn’t offer me money.”

“The Rho has a great respect for money—and an understanding of what it can and can’t buy. The offer wasn’t meant as an insult, Cullen.”

The other man shrugged and slid the glass back in its overhead rack. “Perhaps not. I’m tempted to show up at Clanhome for a month just to make his hackles rise.”

“You need a bodyguard,” Max said suddenly. “We knew they’d targeted Isen. Why wouldn’t they try to get rid of you, too?”

“Killing Carlos is an uncertain means to that end. Besides . . .” Rule paused, frowning. “It doesn’t fit. Why risk an investigation?”

Max shrugged. “Might be cocksure.”

“Might have reason.” Cullen was messing with the wine bottles now, rearranging them to suit some arcane sense of composition. “So far they’re batting a thousand.”

“Not even five hundred. They tried to kill Isen and failed. Now they’ve tried to get Rule put away, but the frame’s sloppy. Quit that,” Max snapped when Cullen moved another bottle. “My bartender won’t be able to find anything.”

“You’re assuming we know their goals,” Rule said slowly. “Isen isn’t dead, but he’s out of the picture for awhile. That may serve their purpose just as well. And we don’t know why Fuentes was killed—or that I’ll manage to stay out of jail.”

“You’re not going to jail,” Max insisted.

Cullen turned. “Stop playing Pollyanna. The role doesn’t suit you. Rule is right. Our opponents are subtle, and we can’t afford to underestimate them.”

Max snorted. “You been tuning in
Mission Impossible
on your crystal ball? Subtle’s another way of saying convoluted. In real life, the fancier the scheme, the more likely it is to fall apart.”

“Some do.” Cullen picked up Max’s lighter, flicked it, and studied the flame. “There’s a rumor of a banshee sighting in Texas.”

“Is that what this is about? Signs and portents?” Max cackled. “The big, bad werewolf has his panties in a twist because some idiot can’t tell marsh gas from a banshee. And in
Texas!
” That, apparently, was the best part of the joke, for Max slapped his knee and nearly fell off his stool laughing.

Cullen didn’t say a word, but his face tightened, his pupils contracted—and the lighter’s flame suddenly shot up a foot and darted toward Max.

“Hey!” Max did fall off the stool this time, landing on his butt. “Are you crazy? You want to set off the smoke alarms? Burn the place down? Like I really need to explain to the fire department and the insurance company about my crazy were friend who has this little problem with anger management.” He stood up, muttering and rubbing one hip.

“Cullen,” Rule said.

The other man looked at him. After a moment his eyes went back to normal, and the fire died.

“I’m not laughing,” Rule said. “What are you suggesting?”

“I tossed the bones after the cops left.”

Max rolled his eyes. “Teenage tricks.”

Rule knew little about divination, but everyone tried tossing the bones at some point—usually, as Max had said, as a teenager, when the lure of the forbidden was strong and common sense was short. The results were unreliable, at best. Or so he’d always thought.

But done by a sorcerer of the Blood? His eyebrows went up. “And . . . ?”

“I asked for information about your enemy. And got . . . this.” He pulled a handful of dice out of his pocket and tumbled them onto the bar.

Snake eyes. All of them. All six dice had a single dot on every side.

There was silence for a moment, then Max breathed, “Jesus.”

Rule’s mouth was dry. “I don’t suppose there’s a chance you did that yourself? Accidentally?”

“About the same chance you have of turning into a kitty cat at the next full moon.”

“Another sorcerer?”

Cullen’s lip curled. “I don’t think so.”

“There’s some of the Fae could do it,” Max said. “Don’t know why they would, but who knows why a Fae does anything?”

“Or we can consider the obvious.” Cullen looked at Rule.

“Yes.” Rule drew a deep breath. “Maybe one of the Old Ones has woken, and is stirring this pot.”

THE
low ceilings and twisty ramps of the subbasement parking at headquarters always made Lily feel as if she were traveling through the guts of a concrete behemoth. Her cell phone rang as she pointed her old Toyota down yet another rigid intestine.