Only . . . Sam should be here, dammit. The sense of betrayal was strong. Treaty or no treaty, he should have found a way to be here. If nothing else, he could soak up extra magic, leaving less for the Chimei and Johnny to grab and use.
Rule stumbled. She stopped. Alarm made it hard to keep her voice soft. “What is it? Are you okay?”
“I take it that means everything didn’t suddenly go dark for you.”
“No. Aren’t the mantles working?”
“Only one mantle, and I grew careless.” He shook his head as if to clear it. “I wasn’t relying on it as I should. I hadn’t needed to until now. The Chimei was focused on the others, I suppose.”
“What do you mean, only one mantle?”
“Later.”
Lily took the lead for the next part. Rule said his vision was clearing as he got used to leaning on the mantle, as he put it, but her sight was unaffected.
The woods ended abruptly—more so than they probably had an hour ago. Where there must have been brush and grass there was now burned stubble.
Lily stopped. Rule stopped beside her, one hand on her shoulder.
Perhaps twenty yards down the road, a white van lay tilted in the ditch. Lily didn’t see anyone there. Not Isen, not the other lupi.
Closer, three people stood where a dirt road dead-ended in a baked earth yard. Two were together—Grandmother, as erect as always. Cullen, not so erect. He was on his knees, and looked like he was fighting to keep from hitting the ground with his face.
Ten paces away from those two, the Chimei paced. Or one version of her did. Kun Nu, Lily had called her. Bird woman. Now she was all bird.
She wasn’t the size of a dragon. Not even close. But as birds went, she was huge—at least the height of an ostrich, but shaped something like a crane or stork, with a raptor’s strong beak and a long, forked tail. She was white still, pristine white and glistening in the moon-drenched darkness.
LI Lei stood with her hand on Cullen’s shoulder, turning to keep Kun Nu in view as the enormous bird circled them. He had fought hard, the lovely Cullen, fought well and valiantly. No blame to him that he was not as strong as a being who had been gathering power for three centuries. “You cannot break my circle,” she said in Chinese.
The great bird’s beak melted, along with the rest of the face, so that a woman’s face looked at Li Lei from atop that bird body. A familiar face, though Li Lei had not seen it outside her nightmares in so very long. “I can,” she said in her high, pure voice, using a dialect Li Lei also heard in her dreams at times. “I will, eventually. I have time.”
She spoke truly. Given enough time, she would undoubtedly figure out how to break the circle, though it was set specifically against her. That was a warding so old Li Lei should have forgotten it. Perhaps she would have, if she hadn’t practiced it faithfully every decade for all these years.
Or perhaps not. Some things one doesn’t forget. The past flowed around Li Lei now like thick cream. It was sweet, in its way, for all that the memories that swam in the air were of her own dying. Sweet because she’d succeeded—and terrible, for she also remembered the flames and the screams.
There had been no way to spare the others, those who worked for that first sorcerer. At the time she’d told herself it did not matter, that they deserved their fate for consorting with him. She’d been very young then.
There had been no way to spare herself, either. She, too, had burned and screamed.
Then Sam had come, a great black shadow plummeting out of the darkness and smoke to land beside her dying body. You are not dead yet, he had said, fierce and complete as only a dragon could be. I wish you to live. Be dragon with me.
She had chosen life, life and wings and Sam, and he had sung over her, sung one of the Great Songs, one which had gone unheard since the Great War.
Dragon bodies heal much, much better than human bodies.
“I think your little sorcerer is dying,” the Chimei said, smiling.
“You have thought that before and been wrong.” Though he was spent, badly spent. When the lupi opened up with their guns on the van driven by this new sorcerer lover, they’d immediately faded back into the bushes, as they’d been told to do.
It was wise. The sorcerer had lived, as she’d expected. He’d had to draw heavily on his lover for the power to heal those wounds, but she’d shared her power generously.
He’d lived, and sent fire after the two-legged wolves who’d tried to kill him. Cullen, in turn, had banished those blazes, one after another.
“Did he use himself up like you did when he attempted to throw mage fire?” She smiled sweetly. “He lacks your strength, my enemy. I was too high for him to reach with his little black flame. He missed.”
“I didn’t.”
“No.” She stopped her endless circling now. Her eyes glowed with hatred. “You did not miss. You stole him from me.”
Li Lei knew whom the pronoun referred to. “You swim in the past, too,” she observed. “But I think for you it is an ocean, and you never find shore.”
“If I found a shore, I would turn away. I am loyal to my loves. I do not leave them. I do not forget vengeance. Break your silly circle, my enemy. Break it and honor your word now, and I will allow the little sorcerer to live.”
“Ah, you refer to my agreement to exchange myself for Lily.” Li Lei smiled. “I lied.”
The shriek sounded like the bird, not the woman. “Filthy, treacherous, evil—you lied? You dare stand there and tell me so? I will drink your granddaughter’s blood along with her power!”
“I think not.” Li Lei slid her hand in her pocket. She didn’t let herself look away from the great bird, though blast her, the Chimei had stopped in the wrong place. She couldn’t see the van. She had to settle for listening.
“Are you going to throw a spell at me?” the Chimei asked. “Do you have some little charm in your pocket like those your wolf demons used?”
“Those little charms worked. You do not know what pot you’ve stirred.”
“By all means, try your spell or charm. It will break your circle and will not hurt me at all.”
Delay. She must delay, keep the enemy talking. Li Lei pulled her hand out of her pocket. She held a piece of paper. Ruben Brooks had not seen the point of her having a physical token, but he knew little of such things. “This grants me the authority of an agent of the United States government to place you and your lover under arrest.”
The Chimei erupted in peals of laughter. “Oh, your granddaughter did this same thing! She told my Johnny he was under arrest. She was helpless, our captive, yet she tells him this.”
Li Lei wished fiercely that Lily were here now to share the joke.
“But I regret that you are already insane,” the Chimei said, her laughter fading. “I had so looked forward to achieving that myself. Will it be as much fun to torment you when you are already insane, I wonder? Or is this mere senility?”
“The treaty recognizes the right of official agents to establish order in their realms. Order which you have disrupted.” The piece of paper Li Lei held made her an official agent of those responsible for Earth’s order. It made many things possible which had not been possible before . . . such as pronouncing certain syllables.
Or teaching someone else how to say them.
“Do you think that means it will allow you to harm me? To kill my lovely Johnny?” She was scornful. “You understand very little.”
“Perhaps,” Li Lei murmured—as at last, at last, her ears caught a sound from over by the van. Dirt scuffed by a foot, or—