Maybe it was the inadequate light or the uneven surface, or maybe it was the way tears suddenly blurred her vision. Whatever the cause, she tripped and fell, dropping her phone and landing on her sprained wrist.
The sharp pain startled a cry out of her. She choked it off, but too late, too late . . . had someone heard? There was a lot of dirt between her and the rest of the world, but lupi ears were keen. If one of them was nearby . . .
What would happen if a Nokolai lupus heard her in the tunnel?
She sat in the dirt cradling her throbbing wrist and at last her mind began working. Furiously.
Assumptions, she thought a moment later. Everyone makes them. Miriam did. She kept assuming that because people had to do what she said, they’d do what she wanted. The two weren’t the same, were they? Lily grabbed her phone off the dirt floor. Miriam didn’t always get her orders right. She’d told one person simply that he wanted to do everything he could to help her. And it worked; he still wanted to help her.
“Help” was such a fluid word.
Lily touched the screen of her phone. She and Rule kept their phones synced, so if he had Cory’s number, she should have it, too . . . not that she knew Cory’s last name, but she could do a search on the first name and . . . nothing with that spelling. She tried again, this time looking for Gene’s number. Bingo.
“Gene. It’s Lily. I need to talk to Cory.”
FORTY-ONE
THERE was no sound of fighting at Isen’s house anymore.
It had taken too long to put her plan into action. Lily was horribly aware that it had all taken way too long, and besides, this was insane. What had made her think this would work? No doubt she stank of fear to the lupi around her.
The guard who’d stopped them was named Rick. Rick was over sixty and had one grown son, two lupus grandsons, and a young daughter. A rich man, as lupi counted wealth. “He just came marching up with her, sir,” Rick said to Pete. “Says he wanted to help Miriam.”
Surely this hadn’t been her idea. That damn half-dead god must’ve put it into her head. He must be laughing his head off right now. But she’d follow through anyway. She’d stand here stinking of fear with her arms pinned behind her back and follow through. Cory wasn’t holding her arms tightly enough to hurt, but she had no chance of getting free.
Pete had come from the back of the house when Rick called. The floodlights were on, so she had no trouble seeing him. He was cradling his right arm with his left and his face lacked all expression. Normally Pete had one of those mobile faces that shows everything, but tonight he was as stone-faced as Benedict. “Cory. Why aren’t you at the gate? What the hell are you up to?”
“Someone called and when we were chatting she said Lily had gone to the store,” Cory said earnestly. “I knew Miriam wanted to see her, and I wanted to help Miriam, so I checked and sure enough, Lily was there.”
“You and Gene were told to call me if Lily showed up.”
“Yes, sir, if she came to the gate, but she didn’t. She was at the store.”
Pete’s gaze flicked to Lily without meeting her eyes. “And she just came along with you?”
“Well . . . not exactly.” Cory did a good job of sounding abashed. “And I had to take her gun. I didn’t hurt her, though. I was careful. I mean, it’s Lily.”
Pete sighed. “Better give me her weapon.”
Cory shifted his grip on her arms so he could free one hand. He gave Pete her Glock. “I hope I did the right thing.”
A longish pause. “I expect you did what you were told to do.”
“Yes, sir.”
And that was true, as was everything else Cory had said. When Lily coached him, she’d emphasized that he had to tell the truth. If Miriam were to ask him about his story directly, he’d have no choice but to answer, so they’d come up with a story that was, word by word, true . . . just not all of the truth.
Someone had called him to say Lily was at the general store. She had, when she arranged to meet him there. Cory had taken Lily’s weapon without hurting her—easy enough to do, since she’d given it to him. He did know that Miriam wanted Lily. And he wanted to—had to—help Miriam.
But what would really help a woman who’d been taken over by a god willing to destroy an entire realm in order to be fully alive again? That was what she’d asked Cory to think about. She’d let him work through it himself, come up with his own answer. He had to believe it or this wouldn’t work. He couldn’t not help Miriam, Lily had said to him, but, she added, “That dead god has taken away her free will, so she wants what her god wants. Should you help her get what she wants? Or would something else help her more?”
Cory had thought it over for a painfully long time, but once he decided, he’d spoken with real certainty: “She needs to be free of him. That may not be what she wants, but it’s what she needs. I want to help her get free.”
Now Cory held Lily firmly. Everyone had to see that she was restrained, not a danger. But when the time came . . .
“Lily.” For the first time, Pete looked directly at her. His face was stony. His eyes were anguished. “We’re all doing what we’re told.”
“I know.” She nodded, trying to tell him it was all right. This was all part of her plan—her insane plan that couldn’t possibly work, but somehow it hadn’t blown up in her face yet. “What happened to your arm?”
“Rule broke it. It would have been better if he’d—” Pete stopped and stood rigidly still, frozen by whatever internal cataclysm he wasn’t allowing—or couldn’t allow—to erupt in words. Abruptly he turned away. “Better bring her around back. I have to see what Miriam wants me to do with her.”
Cory marched Lily behind Pete, who led the way to the side of the house. They passed three more guards on the way. Two of them had been injured . . . or maybe the blood on that second man’s arm wasn’t his. But whoever had bled tonight—whoever had died—they were hers. Leidolf or Nokolai, compelled or free, they were hers to protect if she could, and to grieve if she couldn’t. But not now. She refused to count her dead until this was over, one way or another.
One she knew for certain had survived the fight. She knew where he was, too, as clearly as she knew her right hand from her left. Pete was taking her to him now, taking her behind the house . . . where Rule was, according to the mate-sense. Right by the node.
They rounded the corner of the house. The path they were on was higher than the lower deck; four stone steps led down to it. She could only see this end of the deck; the roof blocked her view of the rest. The upper deck was roughly level with her waist, supported along its length by a stone retaining wall. Floodlights lit it.
Lily glanced quickly at the upper deck, so brilliantly lit—and horror iced the blood in her veins, freezing her in place. It held bodies. Rows of bodies. Maybe twenty. Maybe more. A second later relief punched through the ice, leaving her dizzy. Some of them, at least, were alive. She saw makeshift bandages wrapped around chests, arms, legs. Four lupi moved among the injured—one with water, one with food, and a pair who seemed to be performing some kind of crude surgery on one motionless body.
She knew two of the men tending the wounded fairly well. One was Sean, a cheerful redheaded Nokolai who actually was as young as he looked. One was Mike. One of Rule’s Leidolf guards. Mike, who’d remembered a lot about crazy gods when she asked . . . a blood-soaked cloth was tied around his thigh. His head was bare. The garish green-and-orange knitted cap from Walmart was gone.