Unbinding (18 page)

“Seventy-two minutes,” Arjenie put in helpfully.

“After seventy-two minutes,” Kai repeated faithfully, “and that was with humans. It’s been at least half an hour since the attacks.” It had taken them twenty minutes to get back to the house. It would have been longer—Nettie had been moving really slowly, making Kai worry that she’d been hurt worse than she claimed—but Isen had sent guards racing up the mountain to them. Nettie had made the last part of the descent piggyback. She’d still been so fatigued that Isen had taken one look at her and suggested that she put herself in sleep for a bit. She must have been feeling pretty bad, because she’d agreed. “If you did have a hook in your blood, your healing should have gotten rid of it by now.”

“You sound confident of that.”

“I think she’s right,” Cynna said. “Cullen thought his healing would get rid of the hook, only Dyffaya didn’t give him time. But his healing was slowed by blood loss. Yours isn’t.”

“Hmm.” Isen rubbed his chin. “Earlier, Kai, you indicated that you thought Nathan deliberately kept his healing from eradicating the hook in his blood. Even if you’re right about that—”

“I’m right.” She’d done more than “indicate,” as Isen delicately put it. She’d been fired up and furious then. She was still angry, but not enough. Behind the anger was a big, black mass of misery. Nathan meant to return. She believed that. He thought he had a chance to kill Dyffaya, to come back to her. But when? Even if he succeeded, how long might it take? Nathan didn’t think of time the way she did. To an adult, “next week” sounds like an easy wait, but to a toddler it’s an impossibly long time. To Nathan, a decade might seem like an easy wait, while to her . . .

“Even if you’re right,” Isen repeated, “it doesn’t necessarily follow that our healing can clear out these hooks. I don’t know that Nathan heals the same way we do. He can control his healing. We can’t. And what about Dell? Why didn’t her healing clear out the hook in her blood before Dyffaya snatched her? Do you believe she, too, slowed her healing so she would be snatched?”

“No, she wouldn’t risk the familiar bond that way.” Kai grimaced. “I suspect she wasn’t paying attention. Body magic takes conscious control. With everything that was going on she probably left things up to her healing, but it didn’t prioritize clearing out the hook. She doesn’t sense in the healing range,” she added. “Just the body magic part. If she didn’t stop and look for the hook using body magic, she wouldn’t know it was there.”

“I don’t follow you,” Isen said.

“Um. Okay, did you know that healing magic, body magic, and transformational magic are different aspects of the same kind of magic? The sidhe call it birith. It’s like with the electromagnetic spectrum—all the same kind of energy, only at different frequencies. If magical healing were the visual spectrum, body magic would be more like ultraviolet—higher energy, so it has different properties than healing magic. Transformational magic would be . . . I don’t know what’s that high energy on the electromagnetic spectrum. Something way above ultraviolet, though.”

“Gamma rays, maybe,” Arjenie offered. “What Dell and the lupi do—is that transformational magic?”

“Yes for lupi, no for Dell. Dell uses body magic, not true transformation, which is why it takes her so long to change her form compared to lupi. Lupi have healing and transformational magic, but not body magic—which is supposed to be impossible, and that’s one reason the sidhe are so fascinated by them. You aren’t supposed to be able to have the low end and the high end of the spectrum and skip the middle one. The body magic part. But never mind that. The point is, lupi have healing and transformational magic, but you don’t sense those energies, so they aren’t under your conscious control.”

Isen spoke patiently. “And yet the Change is under our conscious control. We spend a good deal of effort learning to make it so.”

“I meant that you can’t decide to Change into an eagle or a cat instead of a wolf. You can’t Change into a different style of wolf, either, by varying your coat or bone structure. You can choose when to transform, but not what you transform into. Although,” she added, “you’re right, in a way. Having any control at all means you do sense those energies, but in a very limited way.”

Arjenie nodded. “Like phytoplankton.”

Isen looked as puzzled as Kai felt.

“Oh. Sorry. I meant that phytoplankton are sensitive to light, but they can’t actually see. Lupi may be like that with transformational magic. They’re sensitive to it, but they don’t see with it.”

“Good analogy,” Kai said. “Nathan only has the healing portion of
birith
, but he does sense it, so he has some control over it. Only for himself, though. He’s not a healer, so he can’t extend that sense to others, so . . . oh.” She shook her head. Stupid. Why hadn’t she thought of that before? “I just realized that Nettie ought to be able to sense those hooks if they’re present in anyone’s blood. Anything Nathan can spot and heal in himself, she should be able to spot in others.”

“We’ll find out after she’s recovered,” Isen said. “For now, I’ll accept your optimistic prognosis about whether Josh, Ridley, and I are likely to be snatched. Arjenie, you look like you want to say something.”

Kai realized that she felt better. Not good, but not like she was going to fall apart any minute, either. Forcing herself to think clearly enough to explain had steadied her.

“There is something I noticed,” Arjenie said.

Could Isen have done that on purpose? Asked her questions that forced her to think instead of feeling? It was the sort of thing she might do to help someone get a grip, but he didn’t have her Gift. How could he have known what she needed? Probably it was a happy coincidence. Still, she was curious enough to check out Isen’s colors.

“Go ahead,” Isen said.

His colors were darker than usual. More of that midnight blue and no happy yellow, and there was red anger smoldering away at the base of his thoughts. But no churning. Isen’s colors were calm, amazingly so, not roiling the way . . . the way everyone else’s colors had been, she saw as she looked around the table. Not anymore. Like her, they’d steadied.

Maybe it hadn’t been coincidence.

Arjenie was saying that so far, everyone had been snatched in pairs. “. . . two people at Fagioli, two here at the house, and two on Little Sister. I realize we’re talking about a pretty small sample, so while this is suggestive, it doesn’t prove anything. But maybe he has to grab people in pairs.”

“Interesting,” Isen said. “And reassuring in its possibilities. I don’t—ah, thank you, Carl.”

The houseman had apparently decided it was lunchtime, though it was still short of eleven o’clock. He’d appeared with a tray of sandwiches. Lots of sandwiches. They were passed around, with each of the lupi taking three or four. Kai ended up with one, though she wasn’t sure who put it in front of her. She certainly hadn’t; the thought of eating made her queasy. Carl vanished and reappeared with another tray, this one carrying lemonade and glasses. “Coffee’s coming up,” he said tersely.

“The ward,” Cynna said, pushing back her chair.

“Ah, yes. Carl, we’ll wait on the coffee so Cynna doesn’t have to keep resetting the ward.” As Cynna stood to take care of the ward Carl’s entrance had broken, Isen went on, “I don’t want to interrupt your meal, Kai—ah, I see you got one of the roast beef sandwiches. You’ll have to let me know what you think of the horseradish spread. I think it needs a bit more kick, but Carl disagrees. While you’re eating—”

“Give me a minute,” Cynna said. She was crouched on the other side of the table, so Kai couldn’t see what she was doing. She felt it when the ward sprang back into place, though.

“I need to call Ackleford,” Kai said.

“You will. From what I’ve put together, the attack on Little Sister may have taken place a trifle ahead of the one here, but they might have been simultaneous. In both, Dyffaya appears to have used a node to bring in the attacker, which is troubling given that—”

Kai broke in. “Not exactly.”

Isen tilted his head. “No?”

“He used the node on Little Sister to bring in the chameleons. Here, I think he used chaos energy to transform an existing plant.”

“Hmm. I would prefer to think that he can’t access this node, which ought to be closed to him. But why do you believe this?”

“Two reasons. First, from what Carl told me, Nathan didn’t react until the guard out back shouted.”

“That was me,” Josh put in.

“Where were you?”

“On the roof. A big stalk from that vine shot out over the deck. I’d never seen anything like it. It was so fast—and it grabbed Benedict’s leg.”

“But the vine was rooted already when that stalk shot out.”

“Yeah, I guess so. Over by the west end of the deck.”

“And the node is underneath the deck right outside the French doors. That’s twenty feet from where the vine rooted.”

Isen spoke. “You don’t think the plant could have moved away from the node after being gated in?”

“It’s theoretically possible. Mobile plants are rare even in high-magic places, but this was not a normal plant. But why would it move? Why not put down roots where it came in?”

“It needed sunlight?” Arjenie suggested.

“Maybe, though mobile plants tend to depend on magic and meat for energy more than sunlight. It’s the timing that wrecks that scenario, though. If the plant had been gated in and scuttled down to the end of the deck, then set roots—all that took time. Maybe only a few seconds, given how fast it grew, but those seconds mean it didn’t happen that way. Um . . . you know that Nathan doesn’t use gates to cross between realms, right? Well, people with that ability are sensitive to gates.” They made Nathan’s gut tickle. That’s what he’d told her. “But he didn’t react until Josh shouted, which means he didn’t notice anything. There’s no way Nathan would miss something like that. Therefore, no gate was used.”

Isen nodded slowly. “I can accept that. And your second reason?”

“The vine looks like a giant, mutated version of one I’ve seen growing here. It doesn’t have the purple flowers, but the leaves look the same. I don’t know the name of the native vine—”

“Morning glory,” Isen said dryly, “of some kind. Lily would know the exact name. They spring up on that side of the house every year. I didn’t note the resemblance at the time, but I believe you’re right.”

“Morning glories don’t have thorns,” Josh said.

“This one only grew thorns where it needed them,” Kai said. “Where it was attacking people.”

Isen nodded. “That I did notice. All of which means that the node here is still closed to Dyffaya. This is good news. But the timing of the attacks suggests that he wants to keep us from closing the other node to him, which in turn means we need to do just that. Cynna? Nettie? How quickly can you finish what you started?”

Cynna grimaced. “Um . . . it
is
closed to him.”

Both of Isen’s eyebrows shot up. “Explain.”

“When the chameleons attacked, the node was primed and ready for the next step. I didn’t have time to undo everything, not with the chameleon draining Cullen’s blood, so I finished the rite . . . only Nettie wasn’t there to involve the mountain’s guardian, so I couldn’t do it the way we’d planned. So I, uh, tied the node to me.”

“That’s not possible,” Kai said without thinking.

Cynna looked at her. “Actually, it is.”

“But . . .” She shook her head. “I can see that you believe what you say.” Cynna’s colors were clear, without the snot-green of a deliberate lie. “But you may be mistaken. It’s hard to believe that you did something that only an adept or sidhe lord with the land-tie is supposed to be able to do. And if you did, you wouldn’t be sitting here talking to me. You’d be screaming in pain. If you were still alive, that is. Node energies are
strong.
”

Cynna and Isen exchanged one of those looks—the kind that had bugged her so much when she first sat down. She resisted the urge to snap this time, but it reminded her that she still didn’t know what Arjenie had wanted to tell her.

“I can’t tell you how I know what I do,” Cynna said finally, “or how I’m able to handle the tie, but you’re right about one thing. Unlinking myself from the node will take time and a lot of prep, especially without Cullen to help, but it has to be done as soon as possible. The energies involved aren’t compatible with mine.”

“S
O
that’s what they did!” Dyffaya exclaimed. He slapped Nathan on the shoulder, friendly-like. “Clever bunch your lover’s mixed up with.”

Nathan didn’t scream. Screaming took too much energy.

He hung upside down from one of the trees. Twin branches impaled his feet. His arms were bound tightly to his sides by a vine. A black vine, just like the trees.

The first impalement, the one through his gut, had hurt worse initially, a shock of pain so intense he hadn’t been able to breathe. Benedict, Dell, and Cullen had all sprung forward to help, but that wasn’t part of the god’s plans. He’d opened another pit to drop them into—this one, he’d chattily explained to Nathan, with a tunnel to take them to the place where he’d left “pretty little Britta.” He’d then closed off their access to the clearing.

Nathan had walked off that branch one agonizing step at a time. When he came free, Dyffaya had applauded—and immediately wrapped him up in the vine, pierced his feet, and set him to dangling. Giving him no chance to draw Claw, much less use it.

That pain kept getting worse. It was interfering with his concentration, and he needed to be able to concentrate. If he could slow his healing enough, eventually his weight would finish ripping his feet apart and he’d fall to the ground. Of course, Dyffaya likely had something else in mind to do if that happened, but at the moment Nathan didn’t care.

“No comment?” Dyffaya inquired. “I thought you’d be cheered by your friends’ cleverness. They’ve got me quite blocked from that node. Of course, the woman will probably incinerate in a day or two, so this is only a temporary setback.”

Nathan’s voice was breathy. “I can’t . . . understand the display, I’m afraid.”

A visual display of some sort hovered in the air between Dyffaya and Nathan. It consisted of swirling colors that Nathan couldn’t resolve into any kinds of shapes. There was no sound, just the colors.

“You can’t?” Dyffaya glanced at the display. “Silly me. I’m using the wrong setting. You’re really quite human in some ways, Nathan.”

The swirls suddenly resolved and Nathan was looking at a small, three-dimensional representation of Isen Turner’s face. Isen was speaking, but Nathan only caught a few words; the man’s beard made lip-reading difficult. Something about a sandwich, though. Then Nathan saw a plate holding a sandwich and a hand reaching for it.

Kai’s hand.

He was seeing the world through Kai’s eyes.

*   *   *

K
AI
found herself taking a bite of the sandwich she didn’t want without knowing why she’d given in to Isen’s suggestion that she finish eating. The man was uncanny.

Her stomach didn’t approve. She set the sandwich down.

“Too much kick in the sauce?” Isen asked. “Not enough?”

“No. No, it’s good.” She laid a hand over her unhappy stomach.

“All right. We’ve settled that we aren’t under immediate threat, either of attack via the nodes or of having more of our number snatched. Our next priority is those who’ve been taken.”

“Nope,” Nettie said, startling Kai. She twisted in her chair. Nettie was crossing the room from the wing that held most of the bedrooms. She looked rested; her color was back to normal, and the faint pain lines bracketing her mouth were gone. “Sorry to disagree, but our next priority is a cleansing. At least that’s mine and Kai’s priority.”

Kai’s stomach clenched.

Isen frowned. “I don’t understand.”

“I can’t believe I forgot.” Nettie shook her head. “I must have been more wiped out than I realized. When Kai went into that trance—”

“It wasn’t a trance,” Kai said, then turned to the others to explain. “Dell had just killed the chameleon who nearly killed Nettie. Dell was wounded already, and the other two attacked her. They were under Dyffaya’s control, so I had to cut that, and fast. But . . .” She swallowed, remembering that terrible stretching. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that a god is really, really powerful. I did manage to break his control, but the recoil slammed me out of my body. While I was out there”—wherever
there
was—“he grabbed me.”

Isen’s eyebrows lifted. “You broke a god’s control?”

Put that way, it did sound kind of impressive. Or unlikely. The look on Isen’s face suggested he was leaning toward the latter.

Nettie frowned. “You didn’t tell me that you weren’t in your body when Dyffaya grabbed you.”

“I didn’t?” Kai searched her memory and found she didn’t have much idea what she’d said right after returning to her body.

“You mentioned being gone. I thought you meant . . . never mind what I thought. I didn’t follow through. We’ll do the cleansing now.”

Kai shook her head. “Getting Cynna clear of her tie to the node is more important.”

“Her what?” Nettie gave Cynna a look, then waved her hand. “Explain later. Come on, Kai.”

The phone in Kai’s rear pocket buzzed. Not her phone. Nathan’s. She’d gotten it from Carl when she questioned him. She took it out. “This is Kai.”

“I need to talk to Hunter.”

“Is this Special Agent Ackleford?”

“Yeah.”

“I was going to call you. Nathan’s been taken by the god.”

The curses that followed were brief but heartfelt. “Then I need the other guy. Seabourne.”

“He was taken, too.” Be crisp, Isen had said. Kai did her best to be crisp as she gave Ackleford a brief account of the two attacks.

“Shit.” A moment’s silence. “I’ll let Brooks know, but he’ll want to hear from you, too. You got his number?”

“I can get it.”

“Good. Call him on the way. Looks like we’ve got another chaos event. I need someone who can help with the woo-woo end of things.”

“I guess that’s me.” The coven that used to help the Bureau had pretty much dissolved after their high priestess’s death while under the control of Nam Anthessa. Kai borrowed Isen’s notebook so she could jot down the address he gave her, along with a few details. When Ackleford finished, she looked around at the others. “A historic building in Old San Diego just sprouted flowers or turned into a plant or something. Reports are garbled. I’m headed there now.”

“I’ll go with you,” Arjenie said.

Cynna stood, too—then sat again abruptly. “Shit. I can’t go. Not while I’m tied to the node.”

“How’s your stomach, Kai?” Nettie asked suddenly.

Kai blinked. “What?”

“You keep rubbing your stomach.”

“I’m fine,” she said impatiently, and when Nettie just kept looking at her, snapped, “A little queasy, okay? Nothing major. Stress. Arjenie—”

“You’ll come outside for the cleansing before you leave.”

Kai shook her head. “Ackleford needs someone who has some understanding of magic. I’m not Nathan or Cullen, but I’m what he’s got.”

“After you’ve been cleansed.”

Anger flared. She pushed to her feet and turned her back on Nettie. “Come on, Arjenie.”

“Isen,” Nettie said. “I need you to stop her.”

*   *   *

H
EALING
took energy. Slowing his healing did, too. Most of that energy was magical, but some was physical. Hanging upside down didn’t help. The pooling of blood in his head called for continual, low-level healing, which was draining. All in all, Nathan was getting very hungry—enough that he noticed it in spite of the agony radiating from his feet. It was hard to focus on the images hovering near his head.

But he saw two of the lupi lay hands on Kai, stopping her. Why did they do that? He’d missed something. If Kai wasn’t looking right at someone he couldn’t read their lips. Even when she did look at them when they spoke, he was bleary with pain. Hard to concentrate . . .

“I knew that shaman was going to be a problem. Oh, well. Change of plans.” Dyffaya had hunkered down in the easy squat he’d used before so he could watch along with Nathan. “Look at her fight! A little panic is a wonderful thing. Pity she didn’t have time to draw the knife. A nice blade, that. Custom work?”

Nathan licked dry lips. Thirst was beginning to compete with hunger and pain for his attention. The images showed Kai being held by two lupi while Nettie walked up to her. “Yes.”

“Very nice,” Dyffaya repeated. “Not as fine as your blade, of course—we really must chat about that—but very nice. I’d enjoy seeing her use it some time, but that won’t happen today.” He snapped his fingers—and the images vanished.

“Tired of . . . watching?”

“I could have made the shaman do it, but this is more fun. If I retrieve my power myself, when they go through their little cleansing ritual they won’t find a thing. They’ll wonder if anything was there in the first place—or if it’s still there and they simply can’t find it. They won’t quite trust the only one who can see my handiwork, and she will begin to doubt herself even as she resents their distrust.”

Kai was free of Dyffaya’s influence. As of right now. Relief made Nathan dizzy. It would be nice if he could pass out. “Didn’t have . . . much of your power in her, did she?”

Dyffaya shrugged pettishly. “She’s more resistant than I’d expected, but it’s challenges that make life interesting, don’t they? You don’t answer. No doubt you’re feeling slighted. I can’t blame you. This”—he waved a hand, indicating the way Nathan hung—“is hardly worthy of either of us. So simplistic it scarcely counts as revenge. Don’t worry. I’ll do better.”

“I’m . . . not entirely . . . happy to hear that.”

Dyffaya gave a boyish peal of laughter. “In which case, do worry. But not right now. I’ve been indulging myself, playing with you while others attempted the less interesting chores, but that hasn’t worked out. I’m sorry to have to abandon you, but I really must take a more direct hand.” With that, he vanished.

And popped up again some fifteen feet away—in front of a table complete with white tablecloth and silver covers over dishes Nathan could smell vividly. And water. There was water in the crystal carafe. “I’ve been forgetting my duties as host! I’m sure you’re getting hungry by now. Please help yourself. Everything will stay warm, however long it takes you to get here. Some of it is even safe to eat.” He winked and vanished once more.

Nathan’s thoughts were sluggish. He might not be able to pass out or go into shock, but this amount of pain made it hard to think. He worked his way through events slowly to be sure he understood.

First Kai’s situation. Clearly the god had managed to sink a mote of power into her. He could see through her eyes, probably influence her, but he wasn’t in full control or he would have gotten all her senses, not just vision. Now he’d retrieved that mote of power, releasing Kai . . . or had he? Had he said that outright or only implied it?

Dyffaya might be wearing a human form just now, but he was sidhe, and sidhe do not lie. They enjoy deception, they hoard truth, but they don’t lie outright because it puts a crimp in their power. The more powerful they are, the worse they’re affected by false speech. There were a few rare exceptions. Nathan was one himself. But Dyffaya wasn’t. At least he hadn’t been before his death, which admittedly was a very long time ago, but the dead don’t change much. Nathan thought he could count on Dyffaya speaking some version of truth.

The god had implied that he’d released Kai by making the images go away. He’d stated what he believed the results would be . . . if he retrieved that mote before the cleansing.

If. Powerful little word, that.
If
meant Dyffaya might still have a mote of power in Kai that he believed he could hide from the Powers that Nettie would call on. Or it might mean he’d done exactly what he implied, but put that maddening
if
in place so Nathan couldn’t be sure. Or it could mean he wanted Nathan to spot the deceptive phrasing and conclude that he’d removed the mote, but the deception itself was the lie and he’d really left the mote in place.

It was typical elfin circumlocution: tell the truth in a way that looks deceitful to keep your opponent off balance. Nathan’s brain obviously wasn’t operating at full power—he should have noticed the phrasing right off. Unfortunately, noticing it didn’t keep it from working. Just as Dyffaya wanted, he couldn’t be sure. He set the question aside for now.

Which meant it was time to address his own situation. Which he’d been putting off, hadn’t he?

The solution was obvious.

Oh, but he did not want to do this.

Nathan squeezed his eyes closed and counted to five in his head. Then he used all his considerable strength to rip one foot free.

This time he went ahead and screamed. Then he panted and whimpered for a time. Eventually he yanked again—and screamed a second time as his other foot, left to support his entire weight, ripped open. And he fell.

*   *   *

T
HE
clean, astringent scent of sage hung heavy in the air. Kai’s left foot had fallen asleep, which made no sense because she was lying on her back. She felt stiff, as if she’d been lying there for hours, though she didn’t see how the cleansing could’ve taken that long.

Not that she knew. When the lupi grabbed her, she’d fought—briefly and ineffectually, but she’d tried to get loose. So Nettie had put her in sleep. She still felt dopey, reluctant to open her eyes . . . though the latter was more because she didn’t want to look at anyone. She wiggled her foot.