Blood Challenge wotl-7 Page 3

  Rule nodded thoughtfully. “I believe that would be called a tactic, not a strategy. A tactic is the immediate means used to achieve a goal. Strategy is the overarching vision of how to employ tactics and other assets to achieve a goal.”

  “Yeah?” Toby considered that. “So my strategy is keeping my clothes clean, and my tactic is not wearing them when I eat.”

  “Precisely. Unfortunately, that tactic only works at home.”

  “Well, yeah! The kids at school would think I was pretty weird if I stripped in the cafeteria at lunchtime.”

  “Which makes this tactic ineffective. The overall goal is for you to learn to keep food from decorating you.”

  Toby’s face fell. “You mean I gotta get dressed.”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “I don’t gotta get dressed before breakfast when I stay with Grandpa.”

  Grandpa was Rule’s father, Isen Turner—the Nokolai Rho. Toby had stayed with him at Clanhome until school started.

  “That was summer vacation,” Rule said firmly. “The rules are different once school starts.”

  That was a telling argument. The boy had been raised by his maternal grandmother, Louise Asteglio, until two months ago, when Rule was finally able to gain custody. Lily knew Louise had insisted on dressing before breakfast during the school year.

  Toby’s face fell. “But—”

  “Toby.”

  Toby heaved a sigh, then brightened. “Hamburgers?”

  Rule nodded.

  “Are you gonna make one for Lily, too?”

  She answered that one. “I ate before I went for my run. It’s not a good idea to exercise on empty.”

  “Yeah, but … hamburgers. For breakfast.”

  That hadn’t happened back in North Carolina at his grandmother’s house. It hadn’t happened at Lily’s home when she was growing up in San Diego, either. Rule was keeping some of Mrs. Asteglio’s rules, both because they worked and because he thought the continuity would help Toby adapt. But he saw no objection to burgers for breakfast. Even a fully human boy needs protein in the morning, he’d said.

  And Toby wasn’t fully human. He was lupus, though he wouldn’t turn wolf until he hit puberty. Lupi needed extra protein even before the Change.

  “I don’t think I have time,” Lily said. “I’ve got to take my shower and get dressed, or I won’t get you to school before the bell rings.” Dropping Toby off at school in the mornings was her idea. Rule could have done it. Any of the guards would have been happy to do it—and might need to sometimes, when her job got crazy. But Lily wanted those minutes with Toby in the car when it was just the two of them.

  Toby nodded. “Dad can make you one to take with you. Hey, Dad!” Excitement overtook him. “Did you tell her about—”

  “Not yet,” Rule said, “and it’s my surprise, so go get dressed before you ruin it.”

  Toby giggled, shot Lily a mischievous look, and raced off.

  Lily shook her head in wonder. “He’s sure riding a high of some sort this morning. Rule, about this surprise—”

  At the same time he said, “About those letters—”

  They looked at each other. Smiled. “Okay,” she said, “the letters came up first, so we’ll hit that, but fast. I do need to shower.”

  THREE

  “TALK while I cook,” Rule said, and headed for the kitchen.

  That was next to the entry. It was small compared to her parents’ kitchen, but huge compared to what she’d had in her old apartment. Of course, until recently the only use she had for a kitchen was as a place to park a coffeemaker and a refrigerator, but she was learning to cook. Slowly. “I’m not hungry. I ate before I ran.”

  “A yogurt smoothie is not a meal.”

  “Not for you, maybe. I had a banana, too.”

  He took out the hamburger meat. “I’ll cook it. You don’t have to eat it. How many threats have you received?”

  “None I consider serious.”

  “That’s not an answer.” He began shaping a patty.

  Lily bent to pull out the big grill pan and gave in. “Seven altogether. Six were addressed to the local FBI office. One was sent to Quantico. Two of those nuts signed their names,” she added dryly. “They’ve been checked out and given a stern warning. The rest contain either explicit or implicit threats.”

  “You’ll tell me exactly what it is they do threaten.”

  She shrugged. “One was very traditional: ‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.’ They got a couple good partials and a full thumbprint from that one, but no match so far. The rest … Rule, they’re ugly, but there’s no reason to think the writers will go from words to actions. The vast majority of the time, the letter-writer is satisfied with venting and doesn’t escalate.”

  “Someone did. He vandalized your car.”

  “Which means we ought to have his picture, right?” She set the pan on the burner. “Medium heat?”

  “A little higher. I want to see those letters.”

  “There’s no point in it. You’d just—”

  “Lily.” He slapped patties onto the griddle—one, two, three, four, five. At least two were for him, maybe three. She didn’t think Toby could eat two of the thick patties. “I am not going to panic. Do you really think I haven’t received my share of threatening letters?”

  She felt foolish. Of course he had. “You think you have a handle on when it’s a real threat, when it’s a caution light, and when you can set it aside.”

  “They’re all at least a caution light.”

  “Okay. And how many letters have you received since Friar started appearing on all those talk shows?”

  He stilled. Then his mouth twitched. “Ah … I’ll show you mine if you show me yours?”

  She kept her mouth firm. “How many, Rule?”

  “Four. But they’re—”

  “Not anything I need to worry about? Nothing to be taken too seriously?”

  He ran a hand through his hair. “Dammit, Lily, no matter how many people enjoy mouthing off, the number who will actually take on a big, bad werewolf is vanishingly small. You’re—”

  “A big, bad federal agent,” she finished, before he could say “small” or “a woman” or anything else that would get him in trouble. “Believe it or not, very few people want to take us on, either. We’re not as scary as you, but we’ve got that whole power-of-the-law thing going.”

  For a long moment he just looked at her. She could see thoughts moving behind his dark eyes, but had no sense of where he was headed with them. So it should have been no surprise that he surprised her. “Then it wasn’t the threats you’ve received that gave you nightmares last night?”

  She considered several replies, but settled on “No.”

  He crossed to her and brushed her hair back, his face softening. He settled his hands on her shoulders. “Did you think I wouldn’t notice that you woke smelling of fear?”

  “Sometimes your ability to smell what’s going on with me is a comfort. Sometimes it’s a pain in the ass.”

  That made him smile, but briefly. “You had a session with Sam yesterday.”

  She didn’t say anything. They’d already talked about this. Okay, not much—she wasn’t a talk-it-out person—but they’d talked.

  Last month, Lily had learned her Gift came with bonus abilities. The first one made her uneasy. It would be too easy to abuse, even with the best motives. No one should be able to suck out another person’s magic … except in extraordinarily rare situations. Like when the other person was a millennia-old out-realm being who was trying to kill you so she could drive millions of people into madness and feed on their fear.

  Lily was okay with what she’d done then, but that situation wasn’t likely to arise a second time. She figured she could retire that particular trick. The other one was freaky in its own way, but nowhere near as disturbing.

  Mindspeech was a dragon thing, but Sam said she had the potential to learn it. She’d actually done it once with Rule
, but that had been an accident she hadn’t been able to repeat. But she’d been offered the chance to learn. After thinking it over, she’d accepted.

  Her teacher was Sam, also known as Sun Mzao, the black dragon, who was sort of her grandfather-in-magic, if not DNA. A couple times a week she went to his lair and sat with him. It was hard to describe what happened. On a thinking level, not much did. She’d sit. After awhile he’d light the wick of a candle—easy for a dragon to do, no matches needed—and tell her, Watch. The first time he lit the candle, he had given her one additional instruction: Find me here.

  So far, all she’d found were the nightmares.

  Rule was every bit as good at saying nothing as she was. He waited, his thumbs making soothing circles along her collarbone.

  “It was Helen again,” she admitted. “I don’t have to be a psych major to see why she stars in the nightmare. I’m trying to learn mindspeech, which Sam insists is not telepathy, but the two are next-door neighbors. I killed the only telepath I’ve ever met.”

  “You killed a crazy woman who was trying to kill you and open a hellgate.”

  “True, but somehow not pertinent.” She shook her head, disliking her own vagueness but unable to dispel it.

  His thumbs circled back, pressing more firmly, finding the tension at her nape and easing it. “Are you committed to learning mindspeech? At first you weren’t sure it was worth it. If it opens you to such fears—”

  She snorted. “This from the man who moved into a high-rise on purpose so he’d be forced to ride in the elevator every day.”

  He smiled faintly. “Damn those torpedoes, hmm?”

  “Pretty much. I get a week off, though. Sam will be gone for at least that long for one of their sing-alongs. Um … I’m not to speak of it, except to you, and you’re not to tell anyone.” Dragons were mostly solitary, but at unpredictable intervals they gathered to sing together—though Lily thought she and Rule were the only two in their realm who knew this. Except for Grandmother, of course. “That reminds me. While Sam’s gone, Grandmother and Li Qin are heading for Disneyland.”

  He grinned. “That I’d like to see.”

  “She loves Disneyland. She used to take me and my sisters every year. Are the burgers burning?”

  “Shit.” He let her go and spun to the stove.

  Feet thudded in the hall. “I’m ready!” Toby called. “Are the burgers done? It took me a little longer ’cause I had to pet Harry. He was lonely.”

  Harry was Dirty Harry, Lily’s cat. Though he and Rule had achieved détente—based mainly on Rule’s willingness to give him ham at regular intervals—Harry had never gotten beyond a sort of disdainful tolerance.

  He adored Toby.

  That made no sense. According to Rule, Toby didn’t smell of wolf yet, but scent wasn’t the only reason Harry didn’t like Rule, probably not even the main reason. Harry was not a friendly beast. He had to be sedated to go to the vet. He attacked the bodyguards whenever he got a chance. He couldn’t stand Lily’s family—well, except for Li Qin, but no one could dislike Li Qin.

  Lily had worried about how the cat and the boy would adapt to each other. Toby was a normal nine-year-old boy … which meant he did everything a suspicious and territorial cat hated. He ran. He jumped. He grabbed. He yelled. She’d been sure Toby would be scratched, clawed, disdained.

  Yet from the moment Harry had sniffed Toby’s outstretched hand, he’d become a Toby acolyte. He purred when he saw Toby. He slept with Toby. He even condescended to play with the cat toys Toby insisted they buy.

  And Toby had decided not to get a dog right now, though he’d talked of little else for ages. It wouldn’t be right, he said. It would make Harry awfully sad.

  It would make Harry homicidal, Lily thought. Some puppy out there was going to live a long, unscarred life because Toby had abandoned his dog dreams for now.

  Lily took down a couple of plates and put them on the counter next to Rule, then went to the refrigerator. Toby didn’t sully his hamburgers with vegetables, but he was big on condiments.

  “The patties are done,” Rule said. “Would you get out the buns, please, Toby?”

  “Sure!” Toby bounced over to the pantry—they had an actual pantry, a luxury new to Lily—and pulled out a package of buns. “Did you tell her?” he demanded, looking between Lily and Rule. “She doesn’t look excited.”

  “I was waiting for you.” Rule accepted the buns. “It seems we’ll have to allow Toby to stay up late next Wednesday. Late enough to catch The Daily Show.”

  She looked from Toby’s grin to Rule’s more restrained smugness. “You’re going to be on Jon Stewart?”

  “Isn’t that cooler than catsup?” Toby burst out. “He’s gonna be talking to Jon Stewart!”

  “Definitely cool,” she agreed. “But is it … I mean, Stewart’s not vicious the way some of them are, but he goes for the laughs. Is that going to …” Her voice trailed off. “Right. You’ll do fine.”

  Rule smiled, amused, as he slid meat patties onto their buns. He didn’t say a word.

  He didn’t have to. It would take more than Jon Stewart to make Rule put a foot wrong in front of cameras. It helped that he was so photogenic. Mostly, though, he was just good at it. He’d become the public face for his people almost the instant the Supreme Court made it safe for him to declare himself. His public persona was sort of a werewolf James Bond—mysterious and sophisticated with a whiff of danger. Only a whiff, though. Enough to intrigue, not frighten.

  It helped that he really was mysterious and sophisticated. “Doesn’t he film in New York?” She ran through her current cases in her head, trying to figure a way to fly to New York City. The mate bond had its good points, and she was a lot more aware of them these days. But the downside was that it put geographical limits on how far apart they could be. If Rule flew across the country, she had to go, too.

  “The show is filming in L.A. next week. Stewart is emceeing the Emmys again, so they decided to move the show there for the week preceding the awards.”

  “What about St. Paul? The circle?” Rule was meeting with the Lu Nuncios of the other North American clans. It was a big deal. She was supposed to be there to prove to the others that Nokolai intended no violence. To the clans, a Chosen was sacrosanct. Not the most paranoid among them would suspect Nokolai of putting its Chosen at risk. Plus Lily’s officialness was a deterrent to naughty behavior, period. She was known to take the law seriously.

  “That’s Monday.”

  “I know.” She’d had to clear her schedule to go with him. The others wanted it held in neutral territory, which had turned out to be St. Paul. “But if it doesn’t go well—if you bleed or something—”

  “We’re going to talk, not cry Challenge at each other. Even if it goes badly, I’ll be able to fly to L.A. by Wednesday. The question is, will you? We can fly up and back the same night, if necessary.”

  He could probably go to L.A. on his own. The mate bond had been giving them plenty of slack lately, but they couldn’t take the chance because the physical limit it imposed changed. Without warning. Without reason, from what Lily could see. That bugged her a lot more than it did Rule.

  At least it had never contracted as much as it had right after it hit and they made love the first time. They’d been all but glued to each others’ sides then. “Okay,” she said at last. “I can make it work. None of my cases are hot and all the task force does is talk, so a couple hours on a plane shouldn’t be a problem. This is about Friar, isn’t it? Him and Humans First.”

  Toby made a face. “He’s a turd.”

  “Are you allowed to say that?’ Lily asked, then glanced at her watch. “Damn. I’ve got to go shower.”

  “Tell her the rest, Dad,” Toby said. “Quick, so we aren’t late.”

  The rest? Lily looked at Rule, eyebrows raised. “Letterman?”

  “He does film in New York, so I had to turn him down.”

  He’d been asked, though. Sometimes it was deeply wei
rd, living with someone who got asked onto Letterman. It wouldn’t have been his first time, either. “Who, then?”

  His bland smile made her instantly suspicious. “You’ll have to agree to this one, since the invitation includes you. It’s for two weeks from today, and we’d have to go to Chicago.”

  Toby couldn’t stand it anymore. “Oprah! You get to be on Oprah with Dad! She particularly asked for you.”

  She stared at Rule in horror. “You haven’t accepted yet, though. You can turn them down.”

  “Lily!” Toby was shocked.

  “I don’t want to be on Oprah. She makes people say stuff. Personal stuff that no one … I don’t want to say stuff.”

  “And you don’t have to,” Rule said soothingly. “Not much, anyway. You can talk mostly to me and to Oprah’s other guest.”

  She could feel that other shoe about to hit the floor. “Who will be—?”

  “Robert Friar.”

  Oh, shit. “You’ve trapped me. If he’s going to be there, I can’t … You made it so I can’t say no.”

  “Actually, I believe the credit for that goes to Oprah herself, or to those who handle bookings for her show. I had nothing to do with it.”

  “I can’t guarantee anything. If something big comes up, or if the task force stops talking and actually does something—”

  “Oprah will understand, I’m sure, if you have an urgent investigation and can’t travel. But it does have to be urgent.”

  Oh, yeah. She was trapped.

  ROBERT Friar, founder of Humans First, was going to be on Oprah.

  Lily adjusted the shower temperature to cool and stepped in, brooding on that. It wasn’t as if Rule needed her to pin Friar’s ears back. He could do that just fine. He knew how to handle himself on TV. She … well, she could handle a press conference, but Oprah was a whole ’nother kettle of fish. You were supposed to confide in Oprah. Get intimate. Reveal stuff.

  Lily so did not want to reveal stuff. But Friar would be there, so she had to go.