Each dropped to one knee in front of Rule.
Rule had never met either youth, but he’d been told their names and which was the elder by a few days, and so would go first. He looked the blond boy in the eye. The mantle knew him. “David.”
Immediately David ducked his head, baring his nape.
Rule looked at the other one. Again the sense of recognition from the mantle as their eyes met. “Jeffrey.”
Jeffrey dropped his head.
He said their names again, putting more power into his voice. This time they prostrated themselves, lying flat, face-down, in the dirt.
He knelt then at their heads, laying a hand on each young, strong neck, curving his fingers until he found the vein he needed.
He dug in his thumbnails, scraping across both veins.
This was the part he’d been unsure of. Nokolai used a blade fixed to a thumb brace to open the vein. Leidolf used the traditional method. Rule had filed his thumbnails to as sharp a point as he could.
It worked. Blood trickled down each neck.
The next words were not Latin. They came from an older language, one lost to all except the Rhejes, who must have such words in the oldest memories. He spoke them softly, making each sound distinct: “Nera ék amat.” He had no idea what the words meant.
It didn’t matter. The mantles knew. They leaped to his call, sliding down his arms like water, rushing along his hands, tasting the blood there. The two young men jolted as if he’d shocked them with an electric current, but he knew it was bliss, not pain, that shuddered through them.
The mantles, never quite separate from him, returned. The sense of them was subtly different, enlivened by the richness of youth. He straightened.
Only then did he realize what had happened. What he’d done. He’d successfully sent the mantles into both young men, and drawn part of them into the mantles.
Both mantles.
David and Jeffrey were now fully Leidolf . . . and fully Nokolai.
THIRTY-TWO
LILY watched as Rule stood. According to what he had told her earlier, the actual gens compleo was finished now. The rest of the ceremony was more symbolic, and mostly for the families.
He said something in that bastardized Latin they used. The two young men rose to face their families, neither of them bothered one whit by full-frontal, public nudity. Lily couldn’t say the same for herself, but she was adapting as best she could to lupus ways. And the view was . . . interesting.
Rule stepped back, exchanging one long glance with Cullen. Neither man’s expression changed. Then Rule gestured at the waiting logs.
This time, Cullen was supposed to show off.
Lily suspected he would have relished a robe with long sleeves that could sway dramatically, but he made do just fine in his ragged jeans. He stepped close to the fire pit, lifting both arms and chanting softly—and, she suspected, unnecessarily. Cullen could call fire with the flick of his hand.
He shook his hands over the logs as if dashing water from them, and fire fell as if it were, indeed, flung water drops. The logs burst into flame all at once, with an enthusiastic whoosh.
Normal flames at first. Gradually they changed, turning the bright green of a Granny Smith apple. The same green as the baby fire he’d played with in the conference room, she realized. He looked at Rule and nodded.
“Leidolf,” Rule said, “come share in the ardor iunctio.”
That meant “joining fire.” Lily had been learning a few bits of Latin, those that any clan member was expected to know.
Solemnly, in twos and threes, the clan members approached the fire. The woman next to Lily—an older woman, gray-haired, with glasses and a fair amount of pudge poured into her jeans—said, “Come on,” and took Lily’s hand.
“But I’m not—”
“You’re welcome to the ardor,” the woman said, and tugged again on Lily’s hand.
So Lily, too, moved up to the joining fire.
Rule went first. He plunged his hands into that spooky green fire, up to the elbows. And smiled. This, he’d told Lily earlier, was when he let a trickle of the mantle free, just a drop, joining it to the flames.
He stepped back, and those closest to the fire moved up, thrusting in their hands, some scooping up handfuls of flame—and it clung to them for several seconds, dancing merrily on flesh.
After a few moments, and with a few sighs of regret, the first group moved back and others moved forward eagerly, reaching for apple green fire. As they touched it, they grinned. Some of the women giggled. One man laughed out loud. His fire had scampered up his arm and kissed his cheek.
The others laughed, too. Lily looked at Cullen, who grinned. A curl of flame swam up a young woman’s arm to lick at her lips. She laughed, delighted.
Oh, yes, Cullen was showing off, and enjoying it immensely.
It was Lily’s turn. Green fire, she told herself firmly, was nothing like mage fire or regular fire. She’d seen how little hurt anyone took from it. So she held her breath and sank her hands into the blaze.
It tickled. It was warm and dry and merry in a way her skin understood, if her head didn’t. There was magic in it. And the magic tickled.
Everything tight and worried eased out of her as she watched the wonder of green flames dance cheerfully on her skin. Then a bright, mischievous thread darted up her arm—and jumped onto her breast. She yelped. “Cullen! Behave!”
He laughed. Everyone laughed. And then it was time for her to reluctantly step back, time to allow the rest their turn to safely play with fire.
When they had, and had stepped back, Rule spoke softly, in a rhythmic cadence that suggested the words were part of the ritual, though this time they were English words. “We are the fire.”
“We are the fire,” everyone repeated, not quite solemn anymore.
“Safe in joining, safe together. We are clan.”
“We are clan,” the others echoed.
Rule grinned. “Let’s eat. And then we play.”
Cullen snapped his fingers. Yellow and orange flames ate up the green, returning the bonfire to a normal sort of cheer—hot and happy and dangerous.
Lily made her way over to Rule. She leaned in to hug him—and whispered in his ear. “What’s wrong?”
Because something wasn’t as it should be. That glance he’d exchanged with Cullen . . . She knew both men too well. Their faces hadn’t revealed a damned thing, which was what had tipped her off.
He nuzzled her ear. “I’ll tell you later. It won’t matter right away.”
Well, that was interesting.
Interesting, too, was the next part, which was very much a party. The coolers held beer and soft drinks—the beer being for those women who wanted to indulge, since lupi didn’t bother with alcohol. Their bodies purged it too quickly. There were cupcakes, too, and brownies, and cookies, all homemade.
Rule stayed with her at first, introducing her and learning names. After the first few minutes, she relaxed and enjoyed herself. The only other time she’d hung out with Leidolf had involved guns and threats. This was much nicer.
Unlike Nokolai, Leidolf had a lamentable tendency to divide up into male and female clusters. She was chatting with one of the female clusters when one of them said to another in a low, gossipy voice, “Thank goodness Crystal didn’t come.”
“Now, Rachel, don’t you start.”
“No, really. You’ve got to admit it’s better this way. She kept insisting she would come. I really thought she would, too.”
“She and David are close, after all,” put in another woman.
“Well, fuck-friends aren’t normally asked to a gens compleo , are they?”