There is little that makes a lupus crazier than losing his sense of smell. Maybe that had led José into error, or maybe he’d have done the same thing had his sniffer been at full strength. He ignored the klaxon as an obvious attempt to lead them away from the real trail—the scent trail he could no longer detect, but two of his wolves had it. He and the remaining squad members took off down that trail, crossing onto state land.
Then they heard the dirt bike…half a mile of very rough country away. Right about where the klaxon had gone off.
When they got there, both motorcycle and thief were gone.
Smart thief, Lily thought as she crested a rise, breathing hard. The klaxon had been a double-dip of deceit. What kind of fool would set off a klaxon to announce his location while pursued by wolves? One who knew something about lupi, who knew they’d trust their noses over their other senses. Rule was investigating that deceptive scent trail now.
A man stepped out of the darkness in front of her. “Lily.”
She couldn’t see his face well without shining her flashlight in it, and that would be rude. But she did lift the light slightly. “Ah—David, right?” She’d met the leader of this squad at some point—tall, with a blocky build and reddish brown hair, but mostly what she remembered was the mustache. Very few lupi kept any facial hair.
“Yes. This is the perimeter Merowitch suggested should be safe.”
Merowitch was the explosives guy. “He’s in the workshop still?” When David nodded, she said, “I need to talk to Cullen.”
“He’s at the workshop.”
“Dammit, he was told—”
“Not inside,” David said quickly. “But Isen didn’t tell him to stay away from the workshop—just not to go inside. He, ah, takes orders very literally. And only,” he added with justified exasperation, “from his Rho or Lu Nuncio. Or so he informed me.”
That sounded like Cullen. “Does he have some reason to think that’s safe, or is he just being an asshole?”
“He did some kind of spell and said he didn’t find any explosives—but he thought we should all wait on Mero witch’s okay, just to be sure. But if he isn’t sure, he shouldn’t be there.”
“I’ll take care of it,” she assured him, and raised her voice. “Cullen? I’m heading down there to talk to you.”
A voice floated up from the darkness. “Like hell you are!”
“Lily?” David said, worried. “You can’t—”
She patted him on his arm as she passed him and kept her voice raised. “If it’s safe enough for you, it’s safe enough for me.”
“Dammit, David, can’t you stop one little bitty human female?”
Either David had caught on or he was truly appalled. “You want me to physically restrain a Chosen? Rule’s Chosen?”
“She’s not going to shoot you,” Cullen called back. “I don’t care what she says, she won’t shoot.”
That made Lily grin as she picked her way down the path. “I don’t threaten what I won’t do.” There were trees on this side of the ridge—pine and scrub oak, mostly—and the trail down was steep and skid-inducing, with scree and pine needles. She kept her flashlight on the ground right in front of her, but farther down she could see light through the branches. It wasn’t very bright, but it gave her a target. She could hear something, too—Cullen cursing as he hurried up the trail toward her. The light brightened as he got close, resolving into a small ball of pure light floating just ahead of a half-naked man who could have given nine out of ten Hollywood stars a run for their money.
Ten out of ten, if he hadn’t been scowling so hard. “Did it even occur to you that I wouldn’t be down there if it wasn’t important?” Cullen demanded as he came to a stop in front of her.
“Important and urgent aren’t the same thing. Are you going to behave, or should I tell Cynna?”
“Cynna would understand. If there was a firebomb, I could put it out, couldn’t I? But there isn’t. I did a quick Find spell.”
She didn’t say a word.
“I may not be a Finder, but my spell’s pretty good.”
She kept looking at him.
“And don’t tell me I proved anything by coming up here to stop you. If something did blow, I’d heal. You wouldn’t.”
She glanced back over her shoulder, where David and the rest of the squad waited—all of whom were every bit as good at healing as Cullen—then looked back at him, eyebrows raised.
“All right, all right. But it was important enough to take a small risk.” Cullen ran a hand through his hair—something he’d been doing a lot of, judging by the way it was spiked up all over. “You don’t have to mention this to Cynna.”
“I need to know about the prototype that’s missing.”
“Yeah, well, I need to know how the rat bastard got through my second ward, which I can’t figure out from up here.”
“We can start there. What does your second ward do?”
“Stops kids.”
“I’m pretty sure the perp isn’t a kid.”
Cullen waved one hand impatiently. “It takes too much power to outright block people with a ward. If I could figure out how they used to do it, using ley lines to—never mind. The point is, I can keep out fleas and scorpions. Flies are harder. So are kids. You tell kids they can’t go somewhere, they’re immediately going to want to check it out. Can’t have that. Aside from the sheer nuisance of having them sneak into the workshop, it isn’t safe. So I added a second ward. If someone crosses it, a wall of flames springs up around the building.”
Lily’s eyes widened. “You’d risk burning nosy kids?”
“It won’t burn anything.”
“I thought you couldn’t do illusions.”
“It’s real fire. It just doesn’t burn anything.”
“But—”
Cullen rolled his eyes. “Look, let’s skip the explanations. You wouldn’t understand ’em anyway. I’ve got three wards on the workshop. The first one’s the keep-away. There’s layers to that one, but it’s basically a single ward. It makes anything with a nervous system deeply reluctant to go farther. A motivated adult—or a kid being egged on by his buddies—can summon the determination to keep going. Or you can hit it at a run and be through before you have time to stop.” He stopped, his scowl returning. “The rat bastard wasn’t running, so he—”
“You know that how?”
“Tracks. He left some clear prints, so I know he walked through the first ward. But like I said, if someone’s determined enough, he can do that. But then he should have set off my second and third wards. The third ward worked. That’s strictly a warning to me that there’s an intruder. But the second one didn’t. No pretty flames.”
“Pretty flames that don’t burn,” Lily said. “Maybe he knew that and kept going.”
“It’s real fire,” Cullen said again. “Even if he somehow knew it wouldn’t burn him, he’d have a hard time talking himself into walking into it. He wouldn’t just see it and hear it—he’d feel the heat. It should have at least slowed him down. But that doesn’t matter, because the ward wasn’t triggered.”
“You’re sure? With the way your workshop’s tucked away in this cleft, you wouldn’t have seen the flames from Big Sister, and since they don’t burn anything there would be—”
He snorted in disgust. “What do you think I was doing just now? I can see the power loss if one of my wards gets triggered. That one wasn’t, so I was looking for signs of tampering.”
“Did you find anything?”
“No, but someone dragged me away before I could finish.”
“Okay. We’ll come back to that. Tell me about this prototype the rat bastard stole.”
“Have you listened to me at any point in the last month?”