“Li A’wan Ni Amo!” Isen thundered.
The Chimei froze. For one moment—that moment of hearing part of her true name, the name Lily had found, the name Li Lei had tried to make sure Lily would find—shouted by one who possessed a true name, she was helpless.
As was her lover.
Isen Turner—his skin blackened with burns in places, his beard singed half off, his clothes missing entirely—wrestled the sorcerer out from behind the van. He dragged him along quickly, out into the large, open space of the road.
The Chimei shrieked. And blurred.
And Sam was there. With a suddenness that made Li Lei’s heart skip in spite of everything, the black dragon popped into being overhead—so close! And plummeting toward Earth like a hawk, talons outstretched.
This was the plan. When Sam went unseen, he was out of phase with the world—a trick he had learned from demons while he sojourned in Dis, so not one the Chimei knew or understood. He had waited overhead, out of phase, invisible even to the Chimei’s nonphysical senses. Waited for the moment he could act.
It happened fast, almost too fast for her eyes to track. Sam seemed certain to crash into the ground—but those vast wings beat once, twice, slowing him just enough. Isen threw himself to one side and rolled. The sorcerer tried to scramble away also, but he was too slow. Much too slow.
The talons closed around him. With another buffeting of wind that sent dirt flying, the wings beat, and beat again—and Sam rose, the little sorcerer held tight in his grip.
“No!” the Chimei screamed, halfway between forms, between solid and otherness.
Kun Nu, my granddaughter-by-magic has named you, Sam said as he rose higher. Kun Nu I will call you now. I give you this chance, this last chance, to choose.
“You cannot harm him! You do not dare!”
I will not harm him. I will take him to a portal on the other coast, where agents of the human government wait, prepared to hand him over to the authorities in what they call Edge. You know that realm as Vei Mo Han . They know how to lock up a sorcerer there, Kun Nu.
“You break treaty!”
You took a hostage. I may take a hostage now, too. The treaty strives for balance. Had you forgotten? Sun’s form was so high now Li Lei couldn’t see him, save as darkness against the stars. She thought he circled, though. But I will not take him from you if you agree to go home to your realm, to your people. You will be allowed—
“Pah!” She drew herself up, becoming for the moment more physical than not, more human than bird. “I have no people.”
Thousands of Chimei still live.
“The Surrendered. I spit on them. They are not my people. My people are dead, all dead—and my children. Dead because of you and yours. I am the only one left. Do not think you fool me, S’n Mtzo. You hunger for my death so you will be free of the treaty.”
I hunger for your death, Sun agreed. My people died, too. Too many of them died. In spite of this, I will forgo your death and live with the binding if you return to your realm. Go there and take your lover with you. You do love him?
“I do. He is all that I have.” Tears—real, human tears—glistened in eyes gone pale with grief. “Johnny, my Johnny!” she cried. “I will come for you!”
Do you love him more than you love vengeance?
“I will have both!” Her eyes turned black as suddenly as a light can be switched on. Or off. “I will have both! You will not stop me!”
I already have. Swear on the treaty that you will return to your realm, and you may—
But she’d made her decision, it seemed. Quick as a wind springing up from nowhere, she faded to mist—and shot off toward Isen Turner, just now rising stiffly to his feet.
THIRTY-NINE
LILY stood planted to the earth, numbed by too many revelations, too many events, coming too fast. She didn’t recognize the threat to Isen until Rule took off running.
Then her feet got the message and she sprinted full-out.
What did the stupid man think he could do to the Chimei? He couldn’t hit her, stab her, bite her, bind her—actually, Lily couldn’t do those things, either. But at least she wasn’t subject to Bird Woman’s magic.
Though how she could use that immunity to help Isen, she didn’t know.
Rule got there first, of course. He skidded to a stop, dropping to his knees. It took Lily a few more moments to get close enough to see clearly what was happening.
Isen lay flat on the ground, his eyes open and staring. White mist, peculiarly defined at the edges, covered his face like a glistening, translucent shroud. His chest didn’t move. He wasn’t breathing.
Rule was shoving at that otherness, but his hands slid off every time, as if Kun Nu were ice, not mist. “I can’t move her. I can’t move her.”
Lily dropped to her knees and tried the same useless pushing. She felt the surface of the thing, utterly slick, slightly cooler than her own skin. Utterly immobile, as if it had the weight of a huge boulder, not a bird. “Shit, shit, shit. Get off of him. Get off.”
“He’s not breathing,” Rule said. “She’s gone down his throat. She’s in his lungs, goddamn her. Sam—do something. Stop her.”
There is only one way to stop her, Sam replied. And I cannot do it.
The Chimei couldn’t do this, couldn’t be allowed to do this. Rage rose, choking Lily as if she were the one with another being stuffed down her throat—and memory, dim and unclear, rose with it. Once before she’d tried to stop someone from using magic to destroy. But she couldn’t remember, dammit, couldn’t think of what she’d done.
“Hell,” she panted. “If I’m related to dragons . . .” Dragons soak up magic.
My granddaughter-in-magic, Sam had said.
There are two ways to take another’s power, the Chimei had said. One is voluntary. One is not.
Lily put her palms flat on the cool, white otherness. And pulled.
But this was no Earth-Gifted human witch willfully, insanely burning herself out in an effort to destroy.
This was Power.
Lily’s hands sank inside that whiteness. And power roared up her arms, a crawling horror of it, hot and icy and everything at once—every kind of sensation at once, every kind of magic, stretching into dimensions so alien Lily couldn’t grasp what she touched, what she held . . .
What held her. For the white mass came flowing up out of Isen, flowing up over Lily’s arms. It hung there in front of Lily, trapping her—and it formed a mouth.
That mouth, obscenely female, hissed, “Did you think you could absorb my power, little human? Oh, you surprised me with your trick, but you are no dragon, and the male human who betrayed my Johnny is dead. His heart stopped before you startled me with your trick. Now I will stop your heart, and your lover’s. I will kill you all slowly and eat your fear as you die.”
“You c-can’t. The treaty—”
“Poor, stupid little not-dragon. You broke the treaty. When you tried to take my power without my consent, you broke it.” And she swarmed up Lily’s arms, her shoulders—Lily dragged in a breath and held it as cool white otherness covered her face.
Overhead, Sam began to sing.
Dragonsong is not like any other sound. Rule once compared it to a didgeridoo, a hollow instrument played by Australian aborigines. Lily had listened to recordings of didgeridoos, and it did sound a little like dragonsong . . . and nothing at all like it.