Unbinding (12 page)

“In the sense that destroying it may be possible without connecting with it, which would let Dyffaya take me over? Nope, not the same. In the sense that destroying it will release a catastrophic amount of power? That part’s pretty much the same.”

“That’s how it looks to me, too. Which is one reason I told you what I have. Cullen, when I told you about the source of magic, ideas began fizzing and popping around in your head. You saw what it meant in all sorts of ways that had to be explained to me. You’ve got a chance of figuring out how to destroy the chaos energy released by Nam Anthessa’s death. I don’t. And we need to destroy it. We can’t get to Dyffaya, so we have to make it impossible for him to get to us.”

Cullen’s eyes went unfocused. He shook his head, muttered something Kai didn’t catch, then suddenly paced right up to the edge of the circle, stopped, and glared at it. “I can’t even figure out how you did this.” He waved at the invisible ward. “And you want me to come up with a way to safely dispose of chaos energy?”

“Well, hell,” Kai said. “You’re doing it, too. Even you.”

He turned the glare on her. “What the hell does that mean?”

“It’s what I saw in almost all the humans in the Queens’ realms—this damnable assumption that elves know more, can do more, than anyone else, so the only way to get ahead is to get hold of
their
knowledge.” She shook her head. “Elves do not like change. Their whole system works against it. What they know now is pretty much what they’ve known for centuries
.
When you offered to trade Nathan a spell or two in exchange for learning how to set a silence ward, you said they were spells you’d come up with yourself. You do that a lot? Come up with new spells?”

“Sometimes, sure, but there’s a wee bit of difference between coming up with a magnification spell and safely disposing of the most volatile energy in existence.”

“The point is that we don’t need someone who already thinks they know everything worth knowing. We need someone who’s used to banging his head up against all that he doesn’t know in order to come up with something
new
.”

Cullen was silent for a long moment. When he spoke again, his voice was mild. “Nathan is not an elf.”

“What?”

“You thought I was coming over all insecure because of exposure to Nathan, but your argument was about elves. Nathan isn’t an elf.”

“You pick every nit you find, do you?”

“Damn straight. All right.” He faced Nathan again. “I’ll do what I can, but like I said, I need to see chaos energy. We’ll have to figure out a way for me to do that. Also, you’re going to have to ante up information when I ask for it.”

“Blank check?” Nathan said dryly.

“You have my word that I won’t ask unless I believe the information is relevant to my finding a way to destroy chaos energy.”

“Very well. If it’s something I know and am not honor-bound to withhold, I will answer you.”

“Good. We can—no.” He shook his head, then stood frowning off into space. “I need to think. I need time to think. Is there more you need to tell me under my vow of secrecy?”

“Not unless you’ve a question whose answer might need to be included in that vow.”

“I need to digest awhile before I know what to ask.”

“We may as well rejoin the others, then.” Nathan stepped up to the circle Kai couldn’t see and broke it with the side of his hand.

Cullen watched intently, but shook his head as if unable to figure out what, exactly, Nathan had done. “About how you set that ward—”

“Not now.”

Unexpectedly, Cullen grinned. “I’m going to ask again, you know.”

Nathan’s voice was very dry. “I had guessed you might.”

Cullen turned away. Paused. “Oh. You need to ask Lily about the godhead. She was there, after all. Not physically, but her experience might offer some information.” He gave Nathan a nod and headed for the house.

Kai started to follow, then stopped when she realized Nathan hadn’t moved. He was watching Cullen, his expression bemused. “What?” she asked.

“Just wondering what I’ve turned loose on this world. I’m thinking he’s going to be the first full mage your realm has seen since the Purge. Maybe even the first full adept.”

A mage wielded a lot of power. An adept, though . . . “You really think he could go that far?”

Nathan shrugged. “He hasn’t found his true name, but if he does, then yes. He’s brilliant, fascinated by magic, and obsessed with learning more and more—the three qualities all human adepts require.”

“Only the human adepts?”

“Well, all adepts are all fascinated by magic, but elves have longer to spend on the learning. Humans need to get there in a hurry if they’re to arrive at all, so there’s more need for obsession.”

And elves, for all their faults, had evolved a system of checks on the power of their adepts—one largely composed of other adepts and backed up, in the end, by the two Queens. Kai thought of some of the stories about adepts that she’d heard. “It’s not like I think Cullen’s going to go over to the dark side, but if he did, no one here could stop him. Even if he just got careless . . .” She shivered, thinking of one story in particular, about an adept who’d made a small mistake once when opening a gate.

“You’re forgetting the Eldest.”

True, and that did make her feel some better. Still, dragons did not have the same priorities as humans. The black dragon might do nothing as long as Cullen didn’t interfere with his own plans, regardless of what Cullen did in the human world. He might decide to kill Cullen tomorrow, just in case.

Maybe not tomorrow. He’d left, hadn’t he? Taken off on some mysterious business of his own.

“It isn’t Cullen we need to worry about, though, is it?”

She shook her head as if to dislodge her previous thoughts. “What?”

“Cullen will never violate his oath to Isen. Whatever power he acquires will belong to his Rho, so it looks like he will be Isen’s problem. Did you know Lily Yu had been inside the godhead?”

“He yanked her there mentally when she was injured and tried to persuade her she was dead. Apparently he could have trapped her there if she’d been convinced she didn’t have a body to return to. She talked about it once, but I guess you weren’t there. You didn’t know?”

“It seems I’ve been insufficiently curious.” He held out his hand. “Let’s get back inside.”

Surprised, Kai took his hand. Nathan wasn’t much for holding hands in public. He loved to touch, but when out in the big, dangerous world he preferred to keep his hands free in case an assailant dropped out of the sky or burrowed up from the ground or whatever.

She tossed a mage light into being with her other hand, being unable to see in the dark the way he did, and they headed for the lower deck. It felt good to hold hands as they ambled back to the house on this cool April night, but Kai couldn’t help wondering. Nathan kept doing things she didn’t expect . . . like holding hands. And arming Isen Turner with a soon-to-be mage who might even become an adept. Isen was an honorable man, but he was at war. War could bring even honorable men to make choices they’d never otherwise consider.

They started down the steps to the lower deck. “How angry will your Queen be that you shared that information with Cullen? And with me, for that matter.”

“Eh!” His mouth turned up, but this wasn’t one of his freshly-minted smiles, for his eyes stayed dark with trouble. “As you pointed out, we’re going up against a god. I’m betting she’ll understand.”

S
OMEONE
new sat at the big table, talking to Cullen, when Kai went back inside—a tall woman with short blond hair and beautifully intricate tattoos. Cynna Weaver was Cullen’s wife, a former Dizzy, former FBI agent, new mother, and a very strong Finder. She was also the Rhej of Nokolai Clan, with Rhej being a term no one could define very well for Kai, save to say that it did not mean priestess.

Kai sat down across from her. “Hi, Cynna. No Ryder?” Kai loved babies, and Cynna and Cullen’s little Ryder was beyond adorable.

“She’s full, happy, and fast asleep under Marianne’s watchful eye. Isen called me to see if I wanted to join your task force. I do.”

Nathan spoke gravely, but humor lurked at the back of his eyes. “You’re welcome to join us, but I understood you were likely to be asleep by now yourself, worn out by the rigors of parenthood.”

Cynna rolled her eyes. “Oh, please. I fall asleep on the couch once, and this never-needs-sleep wolf I’m married to—”

“Once?” Cullen said, his eyebrows lifting. “Once? I know math isn’t your thing, but I’m pretty sure you can count above ‘one.’”

“Speaking of sleeping on the couch . . .” Cynna gave Cullen one of those couples’ looks, the kind that outsiders can’t decipher but know carries meaning. He grinned and leaned close to whisper something that made her grin right back.

Isen spoke dryly. “Now that we have, once again, covered the topic of Cullen’s sex life, perhaps we could talk about the god who’s sending chaos into our world. Cullen? Was the explanation you received worth the vow?”

“Yes and hell yes. Two hundred percent worth it. A thousand percent. The ramifications . . . but I won’t go there right now. Like Nathan said, Dyffaya has a helluva lot of magical power to toss around because chaos energy generates it in crazy-big lots. He probably can’t use much
arguai
against us, though, for complicated reasons, so spiritual attacks are less likely than they were when Nam Anthessa was intact. The only way he can act in our realm is through the chaos energy created by the knife’s destruction. That will be used up eventually, but we’ve no way of knowing how long that might take, so Nathan would like me to speed things up. He wants me to devise a way to safely destroy chaos energy.”

Cynna frowned. “Is that even possible?”

“Not very, but what he told me makes it slightly less impossible.”

She didn’t look reassured. “We don’t even know what this chaos energy is, so—”

“You may not, but I do.”

Her frown tightened another notch. “Is that what you can’t tell us?”

“In part,” Nathan said, “but part of it you can know. We discussed that before you arrived. Chaos energy is a tangle of magic and
arguai
—what you call spiritual energy—with a kernel of chaos at its center.”

Arjenie frowned. “I keep wondering why it stayed here after the knife was destroyed. I got the impression your Queen didn’t expect it to.”

“No,” Kai said. “And that bothers me. She tends to be right about that sort of thing.”

“It seems pretty obvious to me,” Nettie Two Horses said.

Kai turned to her, surprised. “What do you mean?”

“This god must have worshipers—or people who serve him—here.”

“I don’t see how,” Cullen said. “Or why that’s so obvious, for that matter, but I’ll defer to your expertise on spiritual matters. If you say having worshipers here would keep the chaos energy in our realm, fine. But how did he have time to acquire any? The only worshiper he had when Miriam and Nam Anthessa nearly yanked him into our realm was Miriam.”

Nettie gave him the kind of look teachers have been giving students for generations. “The only one we know about.”

“And yet,” Isen said, “I think I see what Cullen means. Manifesting in our realm was hugely important to Dyffaya, yet the only worshiper he used in his attempt was poor Miriam. If he had others, why weren’t they present at the rite?”

Nettie shrugged. “Maybe he doesn’t have the kind of hold over them he did over her, so he couldn’t count on them to be okay with all the throat slitting. That’s particularly true if they serve rather than worship.” She looked around the table. “You lupi should understand the distinction between service and worship.”

“Service would be a bit tepid for Dyffaya,” Nathan said. “He’ll want to be worshiped.”

Nettie nodded slowly. “If so . . . worship has to be genuine to be useful to a deity. Miriam may have started out as a true believer, but in the end she was under compulsion. That wouldn’t feed or anchor him. He may have been picking up followers all along because Miriam’s compelled service didn’t feed him.”

“Eh.” Nathan drummed his fingers on the table thoughtfully. “I can’t say I understand how deity functions, but worship is surely the most recognized way to link a godhead to a realm. Occupied godheads are different from the unoccupied ones, of course, but—”

“Wait a minute. Occupied and unoccupied?”

“That’s a sidhe concept,” Kai explained. “They believe that godheads exist whether or not there’s a being connected to the quality or qualities being worshiped, and they have a cultural preference for godheads that aren’t personified. Most of them worship beauty, for example, but it’s considered rather déclassé to worship one of the gods or goddesses of beauty. Although some do, especially among the lower sidhe.”

Nettie’s snort made her opinion of that clear. “I’d like to turn Coyote loose on them. He’s personified as hell.”

“Actually,” Cynna said, “Godheads are also a lupi concept. I can’t say much—it’s secret lupi stuff—but the Lady speaks of occupied godheads. She makes a distinction between those occupied by former mortals and those occupied by Old Ones. This Dyffaya isn’t an Old One, so—”

Ackleford broke in impatiently, “Look, maybe all this godhead shit matters in some way I don’t see right this fucking minute, but what do we do with it? What’s the plan? How do we keep this Dyffaya from grabbing more people?”

“Does he need more people?” Cynna asked.

“We’d best assume so,” Nathan said. “He grabbed the toddler and sent her back. He grabbed Britta and kept her. He tried to grab Kai. That failed because—”

“That’s unproven,” Ackleford said. “It’s a strong possibility, not established fact.”

Nathan looked at the special agent. “It’s what happened. I
know
he tried for Kai.”

Ackleford met his look with his trademark scowl. “You can be as sure as you like. Doesn’t mean I am. I repeat—do we have a plan?”

“Basically, I want to cut Dyffaya off, make it so he can’t act in our realm. If he has worshipers here, he’s got more of an anchor than I realized—and we need to find them. Special Agent, I’d like you you to find out everything you can about the people who were present at Fagioli today. It would make sense for the god to have one or more of his worshipers present when he acted. Meanwhile, Cullen will try to come up with a way to get rid of the scattered chaos energy. Cullen says he needs to see it. I’m hoping a Finder might be able to help with that.” He raised his eyebrows at Cynna.

“Yeah, well . . .” She grimaced. “The problem is getting a pattern I can use for a Find, when chaos is the opposite of pattern.”

That started a discussion about patterns and Finding that quickly got too technical for Kai. She knew the basics, but what in the world did “null-sequenced pulses” mean? Nathan seemed to get it, or at least he was able to follow well enough to ask the right questions. The upshot seemed to be that Cynna needed a pattern for the particular flavor of magic chaos energy generated—which meant she needed to be present at a chaos incident or very soon after one occurred.

After that, Nathan explained why he thought Dyffaya had less spiritual power to use against them than he had before. “But,” he added, “we can’t assume he won’t mount any spiritual attacks. Corruption’s the easiest for him, but it’s also the easiest to spot. It’s essentially selfish—that little voice that says it’s okay to have what you want, no matter what. Watch for those kind of thoughts in yourself and others. Persuasion—that’s more subtle, a way of tilting your thoughts in a certain direction. It can fly under the radar, but will be harder for him to use without the knife to direct it. Still possible, though. Of course, if you actually touched chaos energy, Dyffaya could persuade you of pretty much anything. Put you under compulsion, too, though that’s a magical trick, not spiritual.”

“Hold on,” Ackleford said. “Wasn’t everyone who was bitten today touched by this chaos energy?”

Cullen answered that one. “Nope. The butterflies were created using chaos energy, but what they transmitted was a magical hook, not a spiritual one.”

“You’re sure about that?”

Cullen shot him an irritated look. “I can’t be a hundred percent sure because I don’t see spirit. I see magic. But spiritual energy causes a perturbation in magic that I can see, and I didn’t see it in the hook I was able to study.” He tipped his head, looking at Nathan. “Sam told us you were immune to persuasion.”

Nathan rubbed his nose thoughtfully. “I can be fooled, but not that way. Persuasion is all about fooling you into accepting thoughts that aren’t really your ideas at all. Dyffaya could maybe put a thought in my head. He couldn’t make me think it was mine, which makes it easier to push it right back out again. But . . .” He looked vaguely embarrassed. “It’s just a knowing, not something I learned, so I can’t tell you how to do it. I can say that knowing your true name helps, but that’s no help for most of you, is it? Having a strong faith helps, too. I’m hoping Nettie has some ideas about protection.”

Nettie advised them to pray frequently, if that was part of their faith tradition. Meditation was good, too. Even if they weren’t especially religious, a religious object might offer some protection if they had a strong emotional tie to it—“like your grandmother’s cross or Bible,” she said, “if your grandmother was a believer.” The older the object, the better. She also said that Cynna was probably protected by the Lady, and Isen might be as well. The lupi all nodded. No one explained.

Kai didn’t ask. Lupi weren’t quite as big on secrets as elves, but they came close sometimes.

After that Cynna wanted to talk with Isen privately, Nathan wanted to talk to Nettie, Cullen wanted to argue with Benedict, Benedict wanted to go home, Arjenie wanted Cullen to stop arguing, and Ackleford wanted to talk to Kai. He asked her to walk out to his car with him because he had “a couple questions.”

She could only think of one subject he was likely to ask her about. She was right.

“I need to know more about Hunter,” he said as they walked out into the cool night air.

“And yet you’re talking to me, not him.”

“Some of my questions might piss him off. I don’t mind pissing people off. Sometimes you get better answers that way. But Seabourne tells me the sidhe are touchy and hold a grudge, so I wanted to know what I shouldn’t ask him about.”

He was not, she noted, worried about pissing her off. People mostly didn’t. Somehow she never struck anyone as scary. “I wouldn’t worry about it too much. Elves are touchy, but Nathan’s not an elf.”

“So what the hell is he? I mean . . . he used to be some kind of dog, right? A hellhound. But his Queen did a big spell on him a long time ago, and poof.” He made a circling gesture, as if stirring a cauldron. “Now he’s . . . what?”

Kai’s lips quirked. Calling a hellhound “some kind of dog” was accurate—in the same way that calling a dragon “some kind of lizard” would be. “He’s Wild Sidhe and he’s a man. He lived as a human for a long time, Special Agent. That doesn’t make him one, but he’s not that different from us, either. Just think of him as a man with an unusual skill set.”

He snorted. “Unusual skill set. Sure. What exactly are Wild Sidhe?”

“That’s a pretty large question. The short answer . . .” She thought for a moment. “They vary a lot, and some are one-offs—an individual rather than a species—but they’re all nature-beings, mostly animal, though some look human or elfish, and a few resemble some kind of plant. Ents, for example.”

“Ents? Like in
The
Lord of the Rings?
You mean they’re real?”

She grinned. “I’d never have taken you for a Tolkien fan. You have unexpected depths, Special Agent. Yes, ents are real, rare, and powerful, but you won’t find any here.”

“I’ve got a son. Two sons, but it’s Brian that’s the Tolkien fan. He had to see all the movies.”

Two sons, yet here he was at nearly midnight . . . “It must be hard, being away from them so much.”

“Divorced,” he said glumly. “Their mom moved to Albuquerque and . . . shit. How did you do that? That’s not what I want to talk about.” They’d reached his car. He turned and leaned against it, crossing his arms. “I’m trying to get a handle on how Hunter thinks.”

“I don’t know how to answer that. If you want to know what I see in his thoughts, that’s confidential.”

“No, I’m not talking about that shit. More like . . . he talks about knowing stuff as if the knowledge arrives from outside him. Like he doesn’t need any logic to reach a conclusion. Is that for real? Is he, like, a precog or something?”

“Oh, I see what you mean. No, it isn’t any kind of precognition. More like instinct on steroids. Magic gives his instincts a boost, but the process isn’t that different from you’ve experienced, I bet. You’ve been an agent a long time. You probably have an instinct for when something’s off—when a witness is lying, or when the obvious answer doesn’t quite fit.”