Dragon Spawn Read online

  Sam’s lair included several acres around the den he’d dug into the low mountain next to the Sweetwater Reservoir. It would take about forty-five minutes to get there. Lily didn’t know the straight-line distance, but she thought it was too far for her to mindspeak anyone but a dragon or another sensitive.

  Not for Sam. The black dragon could mindspeak across thirty miles as easily as thirty feet. Or thirty inches. He could mindspeak across the entire continent if he needed to, which ought to have been impossible. Earth and rock blocked mind magic, and the curvature of the planet put a great deal of earth and rock between San Diego and the East Coast. Plus the sheer amount of power it would take to reach that far boggled her brain.

  But Sam could do it. He hadn’t—not with her, that is, not while she was on the other side of the country. She hadn’t expected him to. When she and Rule first headed to D.C., she’d been on a precarious cusp in the development of her mindsense, and contact with Sam’s mind would have tipped her the wrong way. Once she’d passed through that cusp, he probably hadn’t seen the point in expending so much power.

  Now that she was back, though, she’d expected to hear from him. He’d spent a good deal of time training her. Surely he’d want to see what she could do. In the privacy of her own thoughts, she admitted that she’d been looking forward to showing him. That was probably dumb. The black dragon didn’t exactly subscribe to modern notions about the value of positive feedback. She hadn’t expected Rule to be summoned as well, or for Sam to confirm her suspicion about Tom Weng. That was not good news.

  Forty-five minutes. That was time enough to do some thinking . . . but not about Tom Weng and whatever Sam wanted to tell them. They’d learn that once they arrived. No, she had a more pressing concern. The Challenge, and the possibility—no, probability—that Rule would have to kill that intense young man with high ideals and screwed-up notions. Formal Challenges were fought to the death. Oh, the challenger could submit, which would stop the fight. But Mateo was incapable of submitting.

  There was always the chance that Mateo would kill Rule instead. She didn’t put that risk very high. Rule had experience and training that Mateo lacked. Rule had been trained by the best—his brother, Benedict. Benedict was considered the top fighter of his generation, maybe the best for several generations. Having seen Benedict in action, Lily leaned toward “several generations.”

  Rule wasn’t Benedict, but he was good. Very good. Most lupi fought primarily by instinct while in wolf form. That made sense; the wolf’s instincts were strong and allowed them to react instantly. The very best fighters learned how to use the man’s greater tactical knowledge without losing the wolf’s instinctive advantages. That blending took years to develop, however. Mateo simply wasn’t old enough to do it. Rule was.

  And that’s how they’d fight, of course. As wolves. Lowercase c challenges were sometimes fought on two feet, but not formal Challenges. The law didn’t take note of wolves fighting to the death, but it paid keen attention if men did.

  That was both good and bad. Good because Rule was probably better than Mateo in wolf form. Bad because it meant Lily couldn’t step in as an officer of the law and put a stop to this incredibly stupid, destructive—

  “You’re quiet,” Rule said.

  “Thinking.”

  “You can’t kidnap him.”

  Huh. Interesting idea. “That would be illegal.”

  “Lily . . .”

  “You don’t want to kill him. There has to be some way to keep that from happening.” Something other than kidnapping Mateo, which, in addition to being illegal, would be really hard to pull off. “Even if you delegated the Challenge to Alex, it would only change the casting for this event.” Someone would still end up dead. Someone would still be forced to kill.

  And Rule didn’t need that, dammit. He already had nightmares.

  “I can’t delegate to Alex,” Rule said patiently. “Either the Rho or his heir must fight when a formal Challenge is issued. There are a couple of exceptions, but they apply only in very unusual circumstances.”

  “I thought the Lu Nuncio could answer a Challenge.”

  “No, the heir can. Normally the heir is also Lu Nuncio, but as Mateo pointed out, I’ve no heir.”

  “For good reason.”

  “Good from my standpoint, yes. Good for Leidolf?” He shrugged. “The pup is right about my not putting the clan first when it comes to naming an heir.”

  “You can’t tell him why.”

  “He’s undoubtedly guessed part of it,” Rule said dryly. “I’m averse to being assassinated.”

  When the previous Leidolf Rho died and Rule inherited the full mantle, he’d decided not to invest the heir’s portion of the mantle in any of the handful of clan who had enough founder’s blood to carry it. Leidolf and Nokolai had been enemies a long time. If Rule had an heir, he could count on receiving repeated Challenges from those who didn’t appreciate having their clan led by one brought up by the enemy. Outright assassination had been a strong possibility, too. But no Leidolf wanted Rule dead if that would mean losing the mantle.

  There had been another, even more vital reason not to name an heir. Toby.

  Last year Rule had seen signs that his son was at high risk for developing what lupi called the wild cancer—a deadly malignancy that could strike at only two times in a lupus’s life: old age or First Change. According to Cullen, there was one way to keep the wild cancer from occurring after a young lupus Changed for the first time. If Toby were invested with some portion of a mantle soon after First Change, the mantle would reinforce his pattern and keep the wild cancer from manifesting. But this was a deep, dark secret of Cullen’s former clan, Etorri. Rule had given Cullen his word he would not reveal Etorri’s secret.

  “I meant about Toby,” she said. “You can’t tell him about Toby because you gave your word to Cullen.”

  “No.” He was silent a moment. “I wonder if Mateo knows he could carry the mantle?”

  “What? You mean he could be Rho?”

  “Possibly. Probably. When the mantle recognized him, I felt . . . not a pull. Call it a sense of affinity. He has founder’s blood.”

  “Then this is more of a takeover attempt than some screwed-up idealism.”

  “Not necessarily. He smelled utterly honest when he spoke of his belief that the Lady could move the mantle where she wanted during a Challenge.”

  Lily snorted. “Move it to him, he means.”

  “Perhaps. But while Alex failed notably to tell me about Mateo, it’s hard to believe he would have withheld that information if he’d known that Mateo carried founder’s blood. If Alex doesn’t know, it’s possible Mateo doesn’t, either.”

  “How could they not know? Surely Leidolf keeps records like Nokolai does.”

  “Founder’s blood isn’t simply a matter of ancestry. That’s part of it, but not everyone who can trace his lineage back to the clan’s founder carries founder’s blood. Mateo’s father, Leo, doesn’t have it. Not enough for the mantle to notice, at least.”

  “That doesn’t make sense. If Mateo has founder’s blood, his father must.”

  “I don’t know why it’s true, but it is. I had enough of the Leidolf founder’s blood for Victor to force the heir’s portion of that mantle on me. But my brother, who is descended from the same runaway Leidolf daughter as I am, doesn’t seem to have any of that founder’s blood.”

  “None? But that . . . maybe the Leidolf mantle just couldn’t recognize it because Benedict’s Nokolai, so even though he’s got a bit of Leidolf blood, it didn’t . . .” She stopped. Frowned. “It’s hard to say what I mean when I don’t know what I’m talking about.”

  He didn’t laugh. Quite. But he snorted.

  “All right, all right. I accept that you can tell whether or not someone carries founder’s blood, and Mateo does, but he might not know it.”


  “Victor knew. That’s why he didn’t kill Mateo. Why the mantle was able to accept him, too, even without his submission. I don’t fully understand that, but I haven’t dealt with a high dominant since becoming Rho.”

  Lily drummed her fingers on her thigh. “Why didn’t anyone tell you about Mateo? At first, yeah, I can see them not saying anything. They didn’t trust you. But that’s changed.”

  “I suspect Mateo is well liked. They expected me to kill him once I learned of his existence. They may have been right.”

  She sighed. “I wish he’d just go away again. I can’t find a best-case scenario here. They’re all ugly.”

  “Best case would be for him to withdraw the Challenge.”

  “He can do that?”

  “Of course. That’s one reason I invited him to stay at the barracks. He’ll hear from other Leidolf with a different perspective. Unfortunately, he strikes me as the stubborn sort. I suspect it will take more than a day to wean him from his notions about the Lady and the Challenge.”

  “Can’t you put off fighting the Challenge? Give him time to figure out that he’s wrong?”

  “I’m afraid not. Except in exceptional circumstances, a Rho must answer a formal Challenge within twenty-four hours.”

  “You already answered.”

  “Not that kind of answer.” He glanced at his watch. “Dammit, Alex still hasn’t returned my call. I need to know who put Mateo up to this.”

  “You’re sure someone did.”

  “I asked. He was careful not to answer.”

  “I noticed.” Lupi mostly didn’t lie to their Rho. There wasn’t much point when he could smell the lie. “His father is the obvious suspect.”

  “Leo is probably the one who filled his head with this holy Challenge nonsense. That doesn’t mean he’s the one who manipulated Mateo into making this Challenge. I wish Cynna—” He cut himself off, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel.

  “She’ll let us know what she learns.”

  “Probably. Her focus will be different from mine, however. As it should be,” he admitted. “Any hint of Lady worship has to be stopped right away.”

  To Lily’s mind, there was often a hint of worship—or more—in the way lupi regarded the one who’d made them, but Rule wouldn’t agree. Maybe the line between reverent service and worship was clear to him. It was damn near invisible to her, but she knew it was vital that they not worship their Lady. The long explanation involved ideas she couldn’t wrap her mind around. Beings who’d existed since before the Big Bang? Who’d hung around from the previous cycle to help out, only to find that the rules were different this time around? Surely that was more myth than reality.

  But the short version seemed to be true: worship could wrap a godhead around its object, and Old Ones who assumed a godhead tended to go insane. The last part was confirmed by experience. The Lady refused to be worshipped and she was sane. The lupi’s Great Enemy liked worship just fine and she was one crazy bitch. So yes, it was important not to worship the Lady. “Can’t the Leidolf Rhej just tell Mateo not to Challenge because he’s wrong about this Santo Desafío deal?”

  “No. Not unless the Lady speaks to her about it, which is highly unlikely. A Rhej’s authority—ah.” He took out his phone, which she hadn’t heard. He probably had it on vibrate. “Alex at last.”

  Lily didn’t listen. There had to be some way to stop this Challenge from proceeding, but she couldn’t come up with one. She understood why Rule had accepted Mateo’s Challenge—at least, she understood as well as a human could. The Challenge wasn’t simply tradition. It was both sacrosanct and necessary, given the top-down, autocratic nature of lupi governance . . . which was also necessary, much as that bugged Lily. Lupi needed the mantles and a clear hierarchy, with someone at the top. They also needed a way to remove the top person if he kept making bad decisions.

  So the Challenge was necessary, but it was also really stupid. Victor had been a terrible Rho, but although he’d been Challenged multiple times, he’d remained in charge of Leidolf until the wild cancer took him out. Rule was a damn good Rho, and now here was this young man with a head full of mystical nonsense who might legally kill him.

  Though it was more likely he’d just force Rule to do the killing.

  “. . . all right. Let me know what you find out,” Rule said. A pause. “No, but it will be sometime tomorrow. Yes. I’ll let you know what I decide about your status after the Challenge.” He disconnected.

  “Is Alex in trouble?”

  “He withheld information from me about the very existence of a clan member.”

  “When you said you’d decide about his status later . . . are you thinking of removing him as Lu Nuncio?”

  “A Lu Nuncio’s primary duty to his Rho is honesty. None of his other duties can be discharged honorably without that.”

  Okay, that sounded bad for Alex. “But who else could you—”

  “I haven’t decided, Lily. Leave it for now, please. I’m wondering why Sam summoned us instead of simply mindspeaking us.”

  She let him change the subject. It was his decision, after all. “Privacy, I guess. Whatever he has to say, it goes beyond just telling us that Weng’s alive. He already did that. And he likes for us to speak out loud when we respond to him. At home, people could overhear us.”

  “They might overhear me, but you don’t have to vocalize now when you mindspeak.”

  “Responding to Sam’s mindspeech is a totally different experience from mindspeaking someone myself. I’m riding on his wave, you might say, which . . . but I’ll skip the description. I still have to move my lips.”

  “Which may not be sufficiently private for whatever Sam intends to tell us. Speaking of Weng’s survival . . .” He quirked an eyebrow at her. “You haven’t said, ‘I told you so.’”

  “Well, that spoils things. It’s no fun to say it once you point that out. And anyway . . .” She grimaced. “I’d rather not be right this time.”

  “Weng is probably going to cause trouble at some point,” he agreed, slowing for the turnoff onto a gravel road marked by a sign warning that the area was restricted. “Did you tell the men to stay on this side of the inner fence?”

  “And to stay in their car.” This was not exactly the first time Lily had made this trip. She’d been coming every week for months, and both she and the guards knew the rules. The area between the first fence and the inner fence wasn’t truly part of Sam’s lair, being where pigs and cattle were released periodically—part of his payment for soaking up magic, per the Accords. He did not like people wandering around in his larder. Trespassers might not be eaten, but they were strongly discouraged.

  They proceeded down the bumpy gravel road about fifty yards, stopping at a simple gate. Lily got out. The sign on the gate was large, its message delivered in all caps: DRAGON LAIR. DO NOT ENTER. U.S. AND STATE LAW SUSPENDED BEYOND BARRIER.

  FIVE

  THE trickiest part of the negotiations that ended in the Dragon Accords had been the dragons’ refusal to submit to human law, which they considered capricious, absurd, and quite inapplicable to themselves. They had agreed to follow certain basic rules—no eating people, pets, or livestock, for example. But in a dragon’s lair, all bets were off. A dragon cannot conceive of his lair being subject to any authority except his own.

  Or her own. That’s what Lily was thinking about as she dragged the gate open so Rule could drive through. There was exactly one female dragon . . . and until last year, she’d been a he, just like the rest.

  As far as Lily knew, she and Rule were the only two people who were aware of Mika’s sex change. Well, and Grandmother, but Grandmother was outside all the rules. The rest of the world knew that Mika was female and a new mother—and had forgotten that they used to refer to the red dragon as “he.”

  And that was one half of the dragons’ big secret. They wer
e all male until they decided to become female.

  It was a crazy, convoluted system of reproduction, complicated by instinct and hormones. A mother dragon would not tolerate having a male dragon anywhere near her clutch, plus she reverted to a more primitive state after laying their eggs. She was still capable of logic, but not much interested in it, and she lost the ability to use mind magic.

  That was a major problem. Baby dragons had to be named when they first hatched. Not named the way human babies were, but given the first syllable of what would be their true names through mind magic. This naming kept their minds from closing up forever.

  And that was the other half of the dragons’ big secret. It was why Mika had kidnapped Lily: to mindspeak and name her babies as they were born. An efondi, the brownies called her. Normally that role was filled by another female dragon, but at the moment there weren’t any female dragons except Mika.

  Sam had conspired with Mika and the brownies to kidnap Lily. She’d forgiven him for that; the need had been great. She slid back in the car and closed the door. “Have you gotten over being mad at Sam?”

  “His secrecy and manipulation nearly cost your life. I understand why he did it. I respect his reasons. I will probably still be angry a decade from now.”

  A breeze blew across her mindsense. That’s what it felt like, anyway, a touch so light it was no more than a hint of movement. So she was expecting it when an icy mental voice spoke.

  Your anger is justified, but as you have concluded, it is largely irrelevant to today’s conversation. Lily Yu, you have not reached for my mind. Do so now.

  “Okay,” Lily said. Now was her chance to show off for the teacher, however little praise she was apt to receive. She gave the glowy stuff curled up in her middle a nudge. Slowly it uncoiled . . . then shot out like a metal filing pulled to a strong magnet.

  Mika’s mind had been compelling to Lily’s new sense. Fascinating. Lava-mind, she’d called it, for what she sensed had reminded her of magma, dark-crusted on top and seething with heat below. Of course, Mika had been in a primitive mind at the time. She expected Sam’s mind to be different, but still compelling.