Unbinding (26 page)

Liu laid the towel down. He was still smiling as he reached for the snap on Nathan’s jeans.” No,” Nathan said, stopping his hand. “I don’t want that service from you. Dyffaya, we seem to be out of sync, time-wise, with Earth. That will make for a very slow game.”

“It’s a dramatic device, to build tension. Are you experiencing tension?”

“I can help with that,” Liu said softly. His tongue darted out, licking his upper lip. He reached out with his other hand. Nathan caught it, too. “Please. I want to. Please let me.”

“No,” Benedict said. Nathan looked at him. Penny had apparently forgotten about the hand-washing and gone straight for Benedict’s zipper. He pushed her hands away. “I don’t want that.”

“Don’t be shy,” Dyffaya said.

Benedict held both of Penny’s hands in one of his. She squirmed, trying to get free. He looked at Nathan. “Do elves not consider rape discourteous?”

“Raping a guest would be wrong. Raping your host would be, too.”

“Rape, rape, rape,” Dyffaya said testily. “Why do you talk about rape? Penny and Liu will enjoy it every bit as much as you. Possibly more.”

Benedict looked at the god. “They have no choice but to enjoy it. You’ve taken choice away from them. If I allow Penny to do what she wants, I’ll be raping her.”

“What if I said her life depended on sucking you off? Would you still refuse?”

“I notice,” Nathan said, “that you framed that as a question, not as a statement of fact.” He couldn’t figure out what Dyffaya was up to. Surely he wasn’t simply trying to force them to have sex with the poor people he’d beguiled. That would be cruel and demeaning, both of which Dyffaya might enjoy, but it was crude. Obvious. The former god of revenge—any god of the sidhe—should be planning something complex that would, in the end, lead them to destroy themselves.

So far, though, nothing he’d done was subtle, was it? He’d apologized for that when he tortured Nathan. He’d spoken of himself as easily amused.

Was he testing them? Dyffaya didn’t know much about lupi. Maybe he wanted to learn more about where their buttons were.

“Please,” Liu whispered, staring at Nathan’s crotch, his expression avid. Aroused. “I want to so much.”

“That’s José,” Benedict said abruptly. “Those shoes. They’re José’s.”

“Is José one of the men who’ve been, ah,
escorting
your lady and Nathan’s while you’re away?” Dyffaya’s delicate emphasis turned “escort” into a synonym for “fuck.” “If so, you may be right.”

The shoe was so blurry Nathan didn’t see how Benedict could have identified it, but if Benedict said it was José’s, it probably was.

“In a few moments,” Dyffaya said, “two of you will be able to see your ladies. I apologize, Cullen, that you won’t have that pleasure, but your lady didn’t accompany the other two. I thought you might enjoy looking at them while you climaxed, but if not . . .” He shrugged. Liu went still, then he and Penny both stood and headed back to Dyffaya. “No, my dears, sit at my feet now, both of you. That’s good. And now,” he said, his voice like the crack of a whip, “we will proceed to the next part of the game.”

Abruptly the display changed. No longer were they looking through a dog’s eyes. This view was sharp and clear, the colors normal . . . and the crosshairs were back.

This time, they were centered on Arjenie’s forehead.

They moved, trailing away from Arjenie—who was walking, Nathan realized. Walking at a normal speed. Time here must have popped back in sync with Earth.

The crosshairs settled on another forehead. Kai’s.

“Now,” Dyffaya said in a silky voice, “let’s talk about what I want from the two of you.”

K
AI
stopped suddenly. Dell was trying to reach her.

“What is it?” Arjenie asked.

She waved for silence and dropped into the lightest stage of trance, focusing on the tie to her familiar . . . “Down!” she shouted. And dropped.

*   *   *

N
ATHAN
watched Kai drop out of sight. By the time the shooter reacted, trying to follow her down, the lupi had closed in around her—five men and one wolf, blocking the line-of-fire.

Dyffaya clucked his tongue. “How annoying. I assure you, however, the safety of your ladies is entirely temporary. Benedict, I know your lady has sidhe blood, but I’m not sure what abilities that has given her. What, exactly, is her Gift?”

Benedict growled. It was a genuine growl, rumbling deep in the big man’s chest.

Nathan’s heart pounded. His mouth was dry. But fear could be managed. Harder to control was the rage building deep inside, the need for Dyffaya’s blood . . . especially since the god didn’t have blood. None of that showed in his voice. That much control he did have. “I don’t think Benedict is able to respond. He may be too much wolf at the moment for speech. Why do you ask?”

“I wondered if she might be a precog. It’s not an uncommon Gift for one with a bit of sidhe blood.”

“You may assume that to be true.”

“Or I may assume that she or someone else saw the weapon. Or that someone with them has a trace of precognition. I might assume any number of things, but for now, I won’t. Instead, let me show you why your ladies’ safety is so precarious.”

*   *   *

“W
HAT
is it?” José asked urgently. He and the other guards had not obeyed her order to get down. They were crouching in a circle around her and Arjenie, their weapons out. Ackleford had his gun out, too.

“Dell told me to get down.”

“Dell isn’t here.”

“I know that.”

*   *   *

D
YFFAYA
snapped his fingers. The display changed. Now they were looking at the sidewalk—then at a tree. A blurry view again, and bumpy. Lower to the ground than a man’s eyes . . . a dog again? Trotting along a sidewalk.

The dog stopped. Looked up and to his left at the man beside him—a middle-aged man in jogging shorts and gray T-shirt. He wore glasses. His hairline was receding.

He burst into flame.

*   *   *

J
OSÉ
spoke without turning around. “I don’t see a threat. Did Dell tell you why you needed to get down?”

“No.” The chameleon hadn’t sent words, just a strong burst of warning and the sensation of dropping to the ground.

Ackleford snorted. “How the hell could she know what’s going on here?” He slid his gun back in its holster beneath his jacket. “Whatever you picked up, either it wasn’t from her or it wasn’t about you.”

*   *   *

O
NCE
more Dyffaya snapped his fingers and the display changed. Back to the little dog’s eyes, judging by the blurriness and closeness to the ground. Back to Kai and Arjenie, who were still surrounded by the lupi guards.

“I could do the same here,” Dyffaya said. “Shall I?”

Nathan looked at him, scowling to hide his puzzlement. “Assassin’s fire,” he said to be sure.

“Give the doggie a cookie. He recognizes the obvious.” Another snap of the fingers.

Now the display had them looking down at an intersection. The colors were rich but weird, with a lot of purple mixed in where Nathan didn’t expect to see purple. Details were unnaturally crisp. They had a bird’s eye view, he realized. Literally. Birds saw into the ultraviolet, which his eyes didn’t have receptors for, so he saw those hues as shades of purple. It must be perched on a power line.

Below the bird, several cars were stopped on one street, while those on the other one hurried through the intersection. A blue pickup and a Volvo were passing each other, going opposite ways.

The Volvo’s driver burst into flames. A second later, a huge fireball exploded, engulfing the entire car.

*   *   *

“I
can tell the difference between something Dell sends and something she’s experiencing,” Kai said. “This was meant for me.”

“There’s that dog again,” José said.

“What dog?”

*   *   *

S
NAP.

Another dog, judging by the colors and blurriness of the display. This one was bigger than the one near Kai and Arjenie and the others. It was running down a sidewalk, the view bouncing with his motion. He ran up to—oh, God. A school bus, with children lined up, boarding it. Young children. Seven or eight years old.

“NO!” Benedict pushed to his feet.

“Fooled you!” Dyffaya laughed and laughed. He snapped his fingers. Another bird’s eye view, this one of an old woman digging in a flower bed. He was still laughing when the old woman burst into flame.

Snap.

Back to the little dog who was watching Kai and Arjenie.

*   *   *

“. . . B
ACK
about fifteen feet. He’s been following us. Doesn’t get too close, but it’s unusual.”

Yes, it was. Dogs didn’t tag along after wolves. Kai sat up. “Move aside. I need to see him.”

José hesitated, but stepped aside just enough for her to see the little dog he was talking about. Cute little thing. Mixed breed, she thought. His thoughts were as simple as most animals’, with very little patterning compared to human thoughts. Except for that little bubble at the base of—

“Shit!”

*   *   *

S
NAP
.

A man’s-eye-view this time. Or a woman’s. Impossible to say in the few seconds it took him or her to turn and look out a window—an office window. He or she was in an office. Nathan had glimpsed a desk and computer before the view shifted to the window. He or she walked up to the glass and looked out and down, three stories down, at people walking purposefully this way and that across a concrete expanse punctuated by a raised bed that held a couple small trees and—

One of the people down there burst into flame.

*   *   *

“G
RAB
him!” Kai cried. “He’s got a compulsion—if I can study it—”

José made a gesture. One of the men—Nick, that was his name—took off running. “We’re getting inside,” José said. “Now.”

*   *   *

S
NAP
.

The display returned to the crosshairs, not the dog. They tracked various parts of Kai, whatever showed, as she and the lupi bunched up around her and Arjenie hurried into a stucco building.

Then the display vanished.

Dyffaya lounged in his recliner. He was smiling. The two young people at his feet were smiling, too. Nathan thought he could grow to hate smiles. “You see how easily I could kill your ladies. One or both of them.”

Nathan held himself still. The god was half right. That gun could kill Kai. Assassin’s fire could not . . . and Dyffaya seemed not to realize that. He seemed not to recognize the amulet for what it was, and he should have. Dyffaya should have been able to See the spell on the amulet and figure out what it did. Either he hadn’t tried . . . or he couldn’t.

If it was the first, Dyffaya was incredibly careless. Nathan was betting on the latter. The god’s display didn’t allow him to use the Sight on what he watched.

It was a small chink in his armor, but it was the only one Nathan had found so far. He held himself very still and didn’t look at Cullen, though he wanted badly to know if Cullen had noticed the lapse. If Cullen, too, was unable to use his Sight on the images in the display.

He didn’t look at Benedict, either, but for a different reason. Arjenie didn’t have such an amulet.

Dyffaya let the silence go on for several moments before continuing. “No doubt you’re wondering what I want. I think you won’t have any trouble agreeing, given the stakes. I want to watch a more personal game, one between you . . .” He trailed his gaze from Benedict to Nathan. “And you.”

Dyffaya changed. Not his body, which remained the mixed-race form he’d chosen this time around. His presence. The air—so nearly dead, devoid as it was of scent—suddenly filled with the god’s power, so that Nathan breathed him in. The recliner under his butt was Dyffaya.
Everything
was Dyffaya. Nathan had known that, but for the first time, he felt it. For the first time, he felt himself in the presence of a god.

It wasn’t beguilement. It was sheer power.

Dell must have felt something, too. Her skin twitched. She sat up and stared at the god beside her.

When Dyffaya spoke this time, his voice reverberated like a deep bell. “The wolf and the Queen’s Hound will fight. You may have up to five matches to kill your opponent, and you will both try very hard to win—because the loser’s lady will die with him.”

As suddenly as it had appeared, the power was withdrawn. Dyffaya giggled like a schoolgirl. “No cheating, now. That means you, Nathan, can’t use that fancy blade of yours, and the sorcerer isn’t allowed to help Benedict. Also, no holding back. If you’re both still alive at the end of the fifth bout, both of your ladies will die.”

T
HERE
were four of them. Four healthy, pretty young people, two men and two women, none of them over the age of twenty-five, Kai thought. They sat on the floor on the second story of the lifeguard tower with their hands cuffed behind them. The two women were of European heritage; one of the men had African ancestors; another was Hispanic. All four wore jeans, running shoes, and white T-shirts printed with hanji or kanji in broad brush strokes. Under the Asian script were English words: “Before the beginning of great brilliance, there must be chaos.”

They were on the second floor of the lifeguard tower. It was a bit crowded. In addition to the persons of interest, it held three police officers, Ackleford, Kai, Arjenie, and two lupi—José and Casey. The other three guards had stayed on the first floor. Nick hadn’t returned yet.

Two of the police officers kept their weapons trained on the pretty young people who’d asked for Kai by name. The third one handed Ackleford back his ID after scrutinizing it carefully. “What happened out there?” he asked. “I was told not to leave these people for an instant, no matter what. I didn’t, but I covered you from the window. Only I didn’t see anything.”

“May have been a false alarm,” Ackleford said, slipping his ID back inside his jacket. “Or not. Someone else should be along shortly. Tall guy, African American, red shirt. Name’s . . .” He glanced at José.

“Nick. Nick Mathews.”

“He might be carrying a small brown dog. Let him in.”

The officer told him “yessir” without a second’s hesitation. No doubt he’d seen a lot weirder things than a man with a dog today. Kai turned to study the persons of interest sitting in a row on the floor. It took only a moment to confirm her initial impression. “They’re asleep. Their minds are, anyway. There’s a heavy overlay, very intricate, a combination of beguilement and compulsion, that’s suppressing their thoughts.”

“What the hell’s beguilement?” Ackleford demanded.

“Infatuation on steroids,” Arjenie said. “It’s an elf trick.”

None of the four reacted in any way. “It’s possible Dyffaya can hear us,” Kai warned the others. “They aren’t aware of their surroundings, but he might be. I don’t know how that kind of mind tap works, so we have to act as if he’s able to overhear us.”

“Got it,” Ackleford said. José just nodded. Arjenie frowned. The police officers didn’t react outwardly, but the acrid yellow of fear swirled through their thoughts.

A sensible reaction under the circumstances, but she’d best keep an eye on them. If the guys with guns went from fear to panic, bad things could happen. Kai moved closer to the beguiled young people, stopping just out of reach. “I’m Kai. You said you wanted to talk to me.”

The thoughts of the young man nearest Kai stirred sluggishly. A thought bubble arose, heavily laced with lavender. He blinked and looked up at her. His hair was buzzed very short; his skin was unusually dark. “May I see some ID?” He spoke politely in what sounded like a New York accent.

Kai reached into her pocket for her wallet. When she started to step forward to hand it to him, José stopped her. He took her wallet and crouched, holding it out so the handcuffed young man could see it.

“What’s your name?” Kai asked.

No response. Not in his face, voice, or his thoughts.

“Is she Kai Tallman Michalski?” asked the pretty blonde next to him. She wore blue-framed glasses and pink lipstick.

“Yes.”

The young woman on the other end of the row of beguiled people—short brown hair, a scattering of freckles on an up-tipped nose—spoke suddenly. “The convenience store at the corner of Browning and Moran.”

The young man next to her said, “The Fowler Building.”

“Tuttle Park in El Cahon,” said the blonde.

“The airport.” That was the first young man.

“What about those places?” Kai asked. All of them were generating thoughts now, but sluggishly, as if each thought had to push its way through the lavender smothering them.

The New Yorker spoke first this time. “Our lord gives warning. These places will be his.”

“Chaos gives birth to great beauty,” the blonde said.

“And great terror,” added the young Hispanic man.

“Blood,” whispered the girl at the end, the one with freckles. “So much blood.” Her thoughts were more active than the others, as if they were struggling against the overlay—but it didn’t last. Her thoughts quieted, and she spoke. “He is the bringer of dreams—”

“Of fire and change—”

“Of the known made new—”

“And lovely and strange.” The four-part recitation ended with the New Yorker, who smiled beatifically.

So did the other three, all at the exact same instant. It was creepy as hell.

Kai crouched to get at their level and spoke in her best healer-to-patient voice. “When is your lord going to act?” They sat there, not moving, and smiled. Their thoughts were smoothing out, receding, as they fell back into the weird waking-sleep they’d been in before. No, wait—the girl on the end. Her thoughts had stirred slightly. Not much, and they were quiet again, but on some level she’d heard Kai.

Behind her, Ackleford was on the phone, telling someone they had to evacuate the four places mentioned. Kai stood. “This is going to take time. The combination of beguilement and compulsion isn’t like anything I’ve seen before, and it’s really complex. I can’t just yank out the part that keeps their minds asleep. It’s woven into everything else.”

“And you’re already depleted.”

Kai grimaced and nodded. She recharged fast, but not this fast.

“They wouldn’t talk before, either,” said the cop who’d checked Ackleford’s ID.

She looked at him. “They can’t. It might help if I had their names.” People responded to their names on a deep level.

“None of them have given their names, and they don’t have any ID. We’ve taken prints, but who knows if any of ’em are in the database?”

“Facebook,” Arjenie said. “They’re probably on it.”

“Good point. I’ll tell the lieutenant, make sure he has someone check that.”

“No need. I can do that.” Arjenie took out her phone and started taking pictures.

Kai spoke to the helpful officer. “They were here when it happened, right? Here at the beach, I mean, not here at the lifeguard tower.”

“Yeah. The first patrol unit to arrive found them standing together near that damn glass sea serpent, holding hands. Not a scratch on them. They were just standing there, calm as could be, and—well, like they are now. The guy on the end, he told the patrol officers their lord had made the glass bloom. He said that they had a message, but they would only give it to Kai Tallman Michalski. Then he shut up. None of the others spoke until just now.”

Ackleford cursed and disconnected, immediately punching in another number. After a brief wait he said, “I need the airport evacuated.”

Kai turned her attention back to the four young people, absently rubbing her aching head. They’d learned so little, and that little wasn’t adding up. Four people, presumably Dyffaya’s followers, wanted them to know where the god would strike next. Why? And why ask for Kai? And who had shot at her back at the hobbit house? Someone female who was not human. In the realms that would leave it pretty wide open. Not so much here. She turned to José. “Can Doug Change yet?”

“We’d better give him another ten, fifteen minutes.”

“I’ve got three out of four,” Arjenie announced. “The guy on the end doesn’t seem to be on Facebook.”

“That was quick. The Bureau must have excellent facial recognition software.”

“No, but Facebook does. It’s their new DeepFace system.”

“That,” Kai observed, “sounds creepy as hell. DeepFace?”

“Hell you say!” Ackleford exclaimed. “Where?”

“What is it?” Arjenie asked.

He waved at her to be quiet, listened intently, then told whoever it was to “send it so I can have my experts take a look.” He disconnected and turned his scowl on her and Arjenie. “Either of you ever deal with spontaneous human combustion?”

“No,” Arjenie said.

“Yes,” Kai said.

“Good, ’cause I sure as hell haven’t. This guy was walking his dog. The dog’s special—a rare breed or something—so this woman who was walking her dog decided to take a picture. That’s why we’ve got a shot of the man bursting into flames.” He held out his phone.

Kai took it reluctantly.

The image was every bit as horrible as she’d feared. She made herself study it anyway, using the phone’s features to zoom in on key spots. “The fire started in his gut. There’s not much of him left there—it’s all flames.” Bright red flames, too. She handed the phone back.

Ackleford studied the grisly close-up. “Yeah, his stomach seems to be gone. Does that mean he swallowed some of that chaos stuff and it exploded inside him?”

“If a chaos mote discharged on its own, the resulting explosion would take out several blocks at least. Probably a lot more. No, this was done on purpose, by someone with a lot of power who’s good with fire and with body magic. That sure fits Dyffaya.”

“Why good with body magic?” Arjenie asked.

“Because someone turned that man’s guts into flames.”

“Oh, eck.”

Ackleford was unconvinced. “Maybe it’s that damn chaos god, maybe not. Must be other ways for magic to burn someone.”

“Lots of them, but this was assassin’s fire. That deep red at the base of the flames—that’s the tip-off. You have to have line-of-sight to use assassin’s fire, and, like I said, you need lots of power and top-rate skills with body magic.”

“Is that what your cuff is for?” Arjenie asked.

“Among other things.” She’d told Arjenie the story that went with that gift. Part of it, anyway. “It repels all kinds of magical fire. Turns it back on whoever is trying to use it on me. Special Agent, you said—José? What is it?”

José had answered his phone while she was talking. His expression said he hadn’t gotten good news. He put the phone up as he answered. “That was Nick. The little dog is dead. He ran right under the wheels of a car.”

“Shit,” she said, feeling sick. And turned to look at the four pretty, healthy young people as a terrible thought bloomed. “Put away your guns,” she said urgently. “If Dyffaya decides he doesn’t need those people anymore, or that they’re a liability—”

“Suicide by cop,” Ackleford said. “Got it. Sergeant, tell your men to holster ’em.”

“I was ordered—”

“And I’m changing that order.”

*   *   *

D
YFFAYA
left again. As gone as he ever was, that is. He said he was off to, “get the rest of the audience.”

Nathan felt cold. He didn’t see a way out of this. That tiny chink he’d spotted—thought he’d spotted—in Dyffaya’s armor gave him nothing that helped with this. He had Claw. He could stab the ground with it. The ground was godhead, like everything else here. But all Dyffaya had to do was pull his consciousness away from the area Nathan stabbed and the death Claw sowed wouldn’t touch him. Nathan still needed that third element. He needed a chance at one of those bodies Dyffaya wore, which concentrated more of the god in one spot.

Dyffaya, damn him, knew that. Nathan rubbed his face with both hands as if he could scrub a solution into his head.

“I could’ve sworn he meant to keep you, Nathan,” Cullen said. “He wants company, even if you are an enemy. Long-lived company.”

Nathan dropped his hands and grimaced. “I’m the stakes, I think. The risk of losing me will make the game interesting to him.” Dyffaya would consider it a small risk. That was, in part, the usual elfin arrogance that aggravated Kai so much. Nathan was no elf, but he was sidhe. Dyffaya wouldn’t believe a lupus could kill him.

Arrogant or not, Dyffaya was right . . . if Nathan fought to kill. Benedict was the best fighter he’d ever sparred with, save for that old elf. But if Nathan fought to kill, he would. His Gift was the same now as it had been when he was four-footed, the same Gift every hellhound possessed. And it was a singular Gift, in spite of what Cullen’s Sight suggested, though it encompassed a range of skills.

The Gift of killing.

“Do it now,” Benedict said.

“What?” Nathan looked up, startled.

Benedict’s face was stony. “Do it now, not as part of his damn game. If he doesn’t get his game, there’s no loser. No one dies but me.”

He meant it. “No.”

Benedict’s lip lifted in a snarl. “You’re the one with a chance of stopping him, not me. If I win—and I’ll fight to win if it comes down to that—it won’t be the end. He can just keep using Arjenie to make me do what he wants. There’s no end to her risk that way. If I’m dead before the game starts, Arjenie’s out of danger.”

Benedict’s conclusion was logical. Beautifully brave. And wrong. “Benedict, you just saw him kill four people to make a point. What makes you think he won’t kill Arjenie out of spite if you deprive him of his game?”

Benedict’s expression didn’t change—but he spun and slammed his fist into the back of the recliner. It toppled over. “I need to kill that bastard.” His voice was tight, throbbing with fury. “I need to Change. And
I can’t do either one.”

Benedict was right. If Nathan won and Kai was allowed to live, it would be the most temporary of reprieves. Dyffaya had every intention of using her against Nathan. Unless . . .