More or less a woman.
She breathed, Lily noted, fascinated. Her breasts rose and fell almost imperceptibly, but she was breathing. Her limbs were long and thin; her shoulders and chest disproportionately wide. Like a crane, Lily thought—long, thin limbs, broad through the chest and shoulders to support the wings she didn’t have.
She had the feathers, though, a fluffy cap of down on her head, but her features weren’t birdlike. Neither was her skin. It was white, and it gleamed. The shine was subtle, like the luminescence of a pearl.
She sure looked solid. Real. And physical. She sat there barely but perceptibly breathing and looked at Lily with eyes the color of storm clouds. And didn’t speak.
“I don’t have a name for you,” Lily said, “other than Chimei, and that’s a race. What do I call you?”
“Enemy, I think.” The voice was soft and high and lovely. The accent, like Johnny’s, was British.
“If you won’t give me a name to use, I’ll have to make up my own,” Lily said. “Kun Nu.” Kun meant a large, mythical bird, like a roc. Nu meant woman, wife, or daughter.
“S’n Mtzo has told you of me.”
She pronounced Sam’s Chinese name differently than Grandmother did, somehow removing vowels without losing the syllabic rhythm. “He told me your people and his fought each other in the Great War, and after it.”
“Did he speak of the treaty? There’s a silly word.” She gestured gracefully with one hand. The fingers were very long, very thin. “Your English word suggests so little of the reality. Did he tell you he wishes to save your world from me and my people?”
“Something like that.” The nausea was gone, and the dizziness. Her head still ached, but it no longer pounded.
“He lies. It is a habit with dragons, the lies designed to prod their little people this way or that. I have no people. He manipulates you, human. He uses you. His true wish is to kill me. This has always been his goal. It always will be.”
“And what is your goal?”
Her lips curved in a smile, a touch smug, that made Lily think of Dirty Harry after he’d stolen a bit of ham. “To live, of course. That is my purpose. That is the very soul of my creation. To live.”
“You’ve got a few other goals, though. You like fear.”
Her tongue touched her lips just once, delicately. “Living is primary, but to live well, that is important, too. Fear . . . Humans relate to fear so oddly. You crave it, creating stories and images—movies, television, books—which allow you to taste fear, yet leave your body undamaged. I understand the disinclination to sustain damage, but why then do you deny your love for and fascination with fear? You, too, enjoy it, if not as purely and keenly as I am able to. Yet you condemn me for my taste.” She shrugged. “Humans are mostly silly.”
“Not all of us, beloved.” Johnny smiled, stroking her thigh.
She in turn gave him a smile as tender as a mother with a new babe. “You are a precious exception, my love.”
Lily launched herself across the room. One step, two, pivot, body bending, foot angled to strike with the side, not the toes—
A wall slammed against the side of her head, knocking her to the floor in a sudden, awkward heap.
Now her head was really pounding. And her jaw. She moved it carefully, then felt it with her fingertips. Probably not broken.
“Did you forget? Or did S’n not tell you? We are allowed to protect ourselves, Johnny and I.” The voice was light, amused. “Just as you may try to protect yourself.”
Lily blinked swimming eyes. The Chimei stood over her, smiling. Johnny-boy still sat on the bunk, his hands on his knees, leaning forward as if watching the ninth-inning-with-two-men-out ball game.
He looked delighted. But then, his team was winning at the moment, wasn’t it? “She packs a punch, doesn’t she?” he asked cheerily.
“Yeah.” Lily had been aiming for the sorcerer, thinking he was the Chimei’s weakness. She’d caught a glimpse of white in the corner of her eye as she went into the kick, but she hadn’t really seen anything.
And that was a clue. She eased herself into sitting up, rubbing her jaw. “Good trick. You went fuzzy so you could move faster, didn’t you? Must be handy. But it cost you something, I’m guessing.”
The Chimei was amused. “There is a cost, but not so much of one as you are paying. You cannot sustain many of my blows, human, while I can offer them for hours and hours, if I wish. I . . . What is the phrase? I pulled my punch so as not to injure you permanently.” She gestured at the bunk. “Return to your place, unless you wish me to put you there. I assure you I am strong enough to do so easily, without allowing you to damage me.”
Lily did not like doing anything Kun Nu wanted, but she didn’t want to be handled, either. She rose to her feet slowly, trying not to jar her head—and had to stop and swallow back the bile. She managed not to stagger to get to the bunk. “You may not have achieved that aim. I’m pretty sure I’m injured.”
“Not seriously.” The Chimei returned to her place beside her lover. She tipped her head to one side. “You are afraid a little, but not as much as I expected. Why not?”
“You aren’t allowed to hurt me.”
“I’m not allowed to harm your body, save in self-defense. Do you believe the only harm is that which damages you physically?” She gave a little trill of a chuckle. “Oh, there. Now you fear. Do you enjoy it?”
“No.” Lily licked her lip and tasted blood. It was puffing up, too. “So your only goal is fear?”
“I have other goals. The happiness of my beloved . . .” She stroked Johnny’s arm fondly. “That is precious to me. And the suffering of your grandmother. That is necessary. I will eat her power, and you will help me.”
“I could have sworn that wasn’t allowed—you harming her, I mean, and eating her power would surely harm her. I notice you didn’t mention children. Offspring. Or becoming, uh, wholly physical.”
“Children.” The voice was still light and pure. But something vast and powerful moved behind those human-seeming eyes, darkening them. They changed even as Lily watched, turning alien and black. Wholly black, with no whites at all. “You touch on what you should not, human.”
Lily’s heartbeat kicked up. Saliva pooled in her mouth, forcing her to swallow. “I’m a pushy bitch. Sue me.”
Abruptly the black faded back to gray. She laughed. “I think not, but I will either eat you or make you wish you had died. Perhaps I can do both. As for becoming wholly physical . . . you choose one word correctly, no doubt by accident, for you grope after that which you cannot understand. I am, as you see, physical now, but this form is costly to maintain without my Becoming. I am very close now. Your grandmother will provide the last of my needs so I may Become.” She folded her long-fingered hands in her lap. “It is just that she do so.”
“You want revenge. She killed someone you cared about.”
“I lost him.” That was grief, surely, wild and unsated, in the stormy pools of her eyes. “She stole him from me, and caused me to unBecome. She must atone.”
“What about all the people who lose someone because of you? Do they get a shot at making you atone?”
Her eyes were clear gray now, and breathtakingly indifferent. “Humans die. It is your nature, as it is mine to live. Why fling your anger at me? I did not cause you to be as you are.”
Lily’s jaw clenched—which hurt like hell, so she made herself relax those muscles. “I saw bodies tonight. Bodies of people who didn’t have to die now—people who died in pain and terror because you wanted their fear. You stole their lives from them. You stole them from those who love them. Your grief isn’t pure and holy just because it’s yours. It’s all the same—the grief you cause, the grief you feel.”