“I moved the heat around. Instant chill on your tummy. Better?”
“Yes. Thanks. Now help me up.” She held out her hand.
Instead of taking it, he bent, slid an arm beneath her shoulders, and then lifted. It hurt, but the world didn’t wink out. Once she caught her breath she did a quick scan of the area.
They were alone except for the dead.
There were a lot of them, dimly seen heaps crumpled here and there all over the small yard. And one mound near her feet—that would be Harlowe, or what was left of him. She wasn’t eager for the police spots to reveal the details.
They’d be here soon. Sirens warbled their alarm from only blocks away. “Benedict?”
“Damned hero.” He shook his head. “Timed things a little too close.”
Something lurched in her chest. “He’s dead, then.”
“Hell, no. Full of holes, but he didn’t even have the decency to pass out. Made us go get his knife back before he’d let himself be taken away. If he makes it through the night he’ll be fine—though even he will take a while to heal.”
“The others…” Whoever they were, and she had plenty of questions about that. “They took him away in spite of his injuries?”
“Can’t leave anyone behind. Your compatriots would arrest them. The dead, though…” He hesitated. “Traditionally, they serve a final time by taking the blame for any dead humans. There are a number of them tonight.”
“Not Rule,” she said firmly. “You won’t be pinning anything on him. He’s not dead, and I can swear that he didn’t kill anyone. He was with me.”
“Lily.” He looked haggard. “The staff exploded, then vanished. Rule went with it.”
Two cop cars screeched around a corner, lights flashing, sirens howling.
“Argue with me later,” she said quickly. “Here’s the deal. Don’t answer questions from anyone but me. Lawyer up if you have to. I’ll say I think Harlowe burned himself up trying to kill me. I didn’t see you, after all, so I can’t testify about what you did or didn’t do. And magic’s dangerous stuff, right? Using the staff on a sensitive could have made it backfire on him.”
“It’s as good a story as any.” He sounded indifferent.
He’s grieving, she realized. He doesn’t believe me about Rule, and grief is making him numb to his own fate. “Cullen,” she said, and reached out to rest her hand on his bare arm… and froze.
Because it wasn’t there. The buzz, the hum, the indefinable texture of magic she should have felt the second she touched his skin… it was gone.
SHE came awake all at once, jolted by fear. In her mind there lingered the echo of an eerie howl. Something about that sound…
She didn’t hear it now, though—just the same angry, high-pitched babble as before. The same brassy sky glared down. No clouds, no sun. The same terrible pain throbbed on her stomach.
The weight on her legs was gone.
Her breath sucked in. Need gave her the strength to raise up on one elbow.
A huge wolf stood at her feet. He was beautiful—his coat black and silver, his proportions elegant. He was also angry, his lip lifted in a snarl that advertised the long, wicked teeth.
He was growling at the source of the babbling—a creature like nothing she could have imagined. It was a bright, greasy orange. And naked. And at least halfway male.
Aside from the small, soft genitals, the creature’s lower half resembled a kangaroo or a child’s toy dinosaur with its oversize haunches and spiked tail. Big feet. No belly button. The chest was muscular but decorated by a pair of very female breasts tipped by olive green nipples the size of half dollars. In contrast, the arms and shoulders looked almost human.
No hair. Neither around the genitals nor on the round head. A wide slit of a mouth crowded with teeth every bit as pointy as the wolf’s, but not as long. The eyes were large and heavily lashed, absurdly pretty in that face. They were set too far apart above a pair of sphincters that she supposed were nostrils.
It stood about three feet tall. The size of a child.
“What are you?” she asked.
It jumped, its eyes widening. Then it rolled those eyes in a disconcertingly human way. “Great. That’s just great. You didn’t understand a word I’ve said, did you?”
“Were those words?”
“You’re just lucky I know English,” it grumbled.
The wolf glanced at her and stopped growling. He backed up, careful to keep the creature in sight, until he stood beside her.
She didn’t like lying flat. She didn’t like being naked, either, but there didn’t seem to be an alternative at the moment.
Sitting up hurt,“ but she managed it. She pushed her hair out of her face and her fingers brushed something at her neck… a chain with a pendent. The feel of the pendent comforted her, both the shape and the faint buzz of magic from it. She clasped it in one hand and leaned against the wolf.
His fur wasn’t as soft as it looked, but it felt good against her skin. He seemed content to serve as her support, so she laid an arm on his back and rested more of her weight against him. The contact felt good. Right.
He made a whining sound, almost like a question.
The creature spoke. “I suppose you didn’t understand him, either.”
“I suppose you did?”
It raised both hands to its head as if it wanted to rip out the hair it didn’t have. “Could things be worse? Could it get any worse? I’m supposed to be in you, on Earth, but here I am, back in Dis—”
The ground rumbled. And moved.
Her fingers clenched in the wolf’s fur. Earthquake? Her heart pounded. For the first time she looked around.
Rock. That’s all she saw—big rocks, little rocks, pebbles. Orange, rust, gray, and yellow rocks. No trees, no grass, no weeds or water. Off in the distance she saw a single mountain, dull black and topped by what looked like a caldera. A dead volcano?
She hoped it was dead.
But she couldn’t see far. They were in a small cul-de-sac, a low point bounded by the rock humped up around them. Rock that might be dislodged if the earth twitched again.
She didn’t want to be here. She wasn’t sure where she needed to go, but this was the wrong place for her, wrong in every way. She needed to move, to get out of here… but just sitting up drained her.
How could she travel? Where could she go?
The creature groaned. “She is so pissed. We’ve got to get out of here. There’s a Zone real close. A Zone,” it repeated impatiently when she looked blank. “You know. Where the regions overlap.”
The wolf curled his lip in what looked more like scorn than temper.
“I know, I know. You don’t trust me, but you should. As far as Lily’s concerned, anyway—”
Lily?
“—because I can’t let anything happen to her. I’m tied to her, by Xitil’s great, glowing nipples! If she dies, I die! That stupid man was supposed to help me get into her, but I didn’t get all the way in because your stupid sorcerer messed up the staff and now I’m tied to a stupid sensitive who shouldn’t be here and Xitil is fighting it out with Her and—” its voice rose to a squeaky crescendo—“we’ve got to get out of here!”
The wolf turned his head to look directly at her with what she was sure was a question in his dark eyes.
“Don’t ask me,” she said in a voice dry as dust—dry as all the aching, empty places inside her. “I don’t know what to believe, what to do. I don’t know who you are, why we’re here, where ‘here’ is, or…” She tried to swallow past the dryness, but her words came out raspy. “Or who I am.”