Rule’s enemy had acknowledged him, subordinating himself.
The immediacy of bloodlust faded. The man was his now, his to kill or to spare. Killing made sense. It would eliminate any future threats, and anything that stank of such perversion deserved death. Besides, what would he do with the man if he let him live? Rule couldn’t keep him. He was human, not clan.
And yet there was some reason, some important reason, for sparing him. Only he couldn’t quite . . .
I know him.
No, he didn’t. Beneath the reek of death magic, the man’s smell was unfamiliar. Confused, the wolf hesitated.
“Rule!” Dimly through the clamor he heard and felt her coming. His mate. Lily. “Don’t, Rule—I need him alive.”
He would wait. She knew . . . knew both of him, he remembered, and suddenly Rule-the-man was present again. Not in charge, but present, and echoing Lily’s command to spare the man.
Lily reached him, put a hand on his back, and her scent calmed him in spite of the traces of fear-stink that clung to her skin like a burr caught in fur. Her fear didn’t worry him. Lily was warrior. She could both fear and act.
“He’s down,” she told him, low-voiced. “I need you to keep him down while I—oh, shit.”
The enemy beneath him was convulsing.
Lily shoved at Rule, who stepped off. She touched the man’s throat, then ripped open his shirt and started CPR.
FIFTEEN
IT takes time to clear away the detritus of violent death. The patrol cars arrived first, then the ambulances, followed eventually by the same ERT Lily had summoned to another death scene early that morning.
An hour and twenty minutes after turning wolf, Rule was back in his human form, back in his clothes, and back in the house where his son had grown up.
Toby’s grandmother was upstairs, showering off other people’s blood. There had been two wounded—one with relatively minor injuries, one critical. Mrs. Asteglio might not have worked as a nurse in years, but she hadn’t forgotten much. As soon as the shooting stopped, she’d hugged Toby, then sent him to get a sheet for bandages.
Hodge hadn’t died, thanks to Lily’s quick action. Two others had. A boy, perhaps sixteen, with three silver rings in one ear, had taken a shotgun blast to the back of his head. He’d died instantly. Jimmy Bassinger, who’d asked about Rule’s “love child,” had been hit in the chest and throat. He’d bled out.
Lily was still outside, interviewing witnesses or directing her people or perhaps bossing around the city cops who’d shown up. Rule wanted to be with her. He also wanted to be exactly where he was—sitting on the couch in the den with Toby snuggled up against him, savoring the little-boy warmth against his side. The radio was on. The orderly beauty of a Mozart piano concerto soothed both wolf and man.
Classical music was one of the pleasures he’d shared with Alicia in their infrequent liaisons. He wondered if she still listened to Bach when she was on deadline. He wondered why she was in Halo, what she meant to do.
Mrs. Asteglio had called Alicia before heading upstairs to shower, letting her know Toby had survived the shooting. Rule had heard Alicia burst into tears on the other end of the phone. She’d sobbed out her relief.
He didn’t understand her. He supposed he never would. How could anyone give up this sweetness?
Rule inhaled deeply. Copper, earth, and mint, he thought. That’s what Toby’s scent reminded him of, or maybe those scents reminded him of Toby . . . who had been glued to him ever since he Changed back. The boy needed this closeness, the physical contact.
That was all right. So did Rule.
He could have lost them. Toby, Lily—one of them or both of them. He could have lost them.
Toby stirred. “Dad? How did you know? About—about Mr. Hodge. Was it just ’cause he had the shotgun?”
“Instinct,” Rule said, sifting his hand through Toby’s hair. “Though I suppose that’s not a very satisfactory answer, is it?” He felt Toby shake his head. “Let’s say, then, that my human part reacted to the sight of a gun, but the wolf had already recognized wrongness. I can piece that recognition together logically now, but I didn’t at the time.”
“Tell me about the logical part, ’cause I don’t get the instinct part.”
“Franklin Hodge was hiding behind a tree. A man who intends to bluster and threaten doesn’t hide himself. He’d brought his shotgun. A man in his right mind doesn’t bring a gun to his neighbor’s house to make a point.”
Toby picked at a loose thread in the seam of Rule’s slacks. His voice was small. “Mr. Hodge wasn’t in his right mind, was he?”
“No. We don’t know what happened to him, but he was certainly not in his right mind.”
“Dad, when you . . .” Toby’s voice trailed off. “You were going to kill him, weren’t you?”
Rule stilled. But there was only one answer possible. “Yes.”
“I’m glad Lily stopped you.”
“So am I.” Glad, very glad, that Toby hadn’t had to see his father kill an old man, however murderous. Yet on another level, it was as well the boy knew that Rule’s wolf was capable of such an act. Toby was tired of hearing warnings about First Change. He thought he understood what it would be like for the human to be swallowed by the wolf. He didn’t. Couldn’t. Yet. “Although I stopped needing his death before she arrived.”
“Yeah?” Toby turned his face up. “How come?”
Rule picked words as carefully as a rock climber chooses handholds. “I was wholly wolf for a brief time. Somewhere between leaping from the porch and spotting my enemy, I lost the man. It was a combination of factors, I believe, that tipped me over. The threat to you and Lily, of course. But there was also the stink of him . . . death magic reeks.”
Toby looked scared. “I don’t know what that is.”
“Cullen calls it power sourced by death.”
“Mr. Hodge wouldn’t do that. He wouldn’t.”
“I don’t know that he caused it. Just that he stank of it.”
The creak of the wooden floor turned Rule’s attention from his son to his son’s grandmother, entering from the foyer. She moved slowly. Her face was taut, the lines around her eyes and bracketing her mouth deeper than usual, but her makeup was freshly applied.
She smelled of soap. She sounded pissed. “I suppose they’re all still out there.”
“The police and FBI are, yes. Most of the reporters are probably gone.” One to the hospital, one to the morgue, the rest to file their stories—unless they hadn’t yet been interviewed by whichever officers were handling that.
“I am not going to feed them.”
Rule understood this for the radical statement it was. “You aren’t expected to,” he assured her.
“Well, it seems very strange to have people on my property and not . . .” She hesitated, shrugged, and continued into the kitchen. “I don’t suppose any of us are hungry, but we’d better eat something. I’ve got plenty of roast from last night. Toby, you can help me put together some sandwiches.”
He bounced up. “Okay. Dad needs extra meat on his, and prob’ly extra sandwiches, too. Right, Dad?” He gave Rule a look half searching, half stern. “After a Change you’re supposed to eat. Especially meat.”
Toby didn’t see the fear that flickered through his grandmother’s eyes, but Rule did. The woman had never seen him as wolf before. This had not been a good introduction to his other form. “That’s right.”
Mrs. Asteglio gave one short jerk of a nod and opened the refrigerator. Rule heard another door open, and stood. Toby heard it, too. “Is that Lily? Lily!” he called as he raced for the foyer. “Is Mr. Hodge going to be okay? Do they know what went wrong with him to make him go crazy?”