Lupi 06 - Blood Magic

potbelly, wearing khaki shorts and a bright pink shirt. She didn't see any weapons, but he wore a diamond ring on one finger and a small medallion hung from a chain around his neck. Magic shit, probably.
    "Hello, Johnny."
    He beamed. "So you've learned one of my names? Good for you!"
    She was fully dressed except for her shoes. They'd taken her shoulder harness and ankle holster, she discovered with a quick touch, as well as her weapons, her phone, and her watch. But she wasn't tied up. Why wasn't she tied up? "I thought you liked knives. What did you shoot me with?"
    "Oh, a little cocktail of my own. A professional can't always indulge his preferences, you know, and I'm not allowed to hurt you. Just as you can't hurt me."
    "You might be wrong about that." She was too wobbly still to jump him, but that would pass, and whatever spells he had handy wouldn't work on her. "Johnny Deng, you are under arrest for the use of magic in commission of multiple felonies."
    That made him laugh out loud. He slapped his knee. "I am going to enjoy you, for however long you are with us. My beloved thinks that won't be long, however. She's usually right." He looked to the right, at the door that was ajar.
    Something pale poured through that door. It was translucent, almost transparent in spots, but it wasn't mist or fog. Its boundaries were too clearly defined for anything airborne, and it flowed like a thick liquid, flowed right up beside Johnny Deng sitting on the bunk. Gradually it coalesced into a shape. Between one blink and the next, that shape became a woman.
    More or less a woman.
    She breathed, Lily noted, fascinated. Her breasts rose and fell almost imperceptibly, but she was breathing. Her limbs were long and thin; her shoulders and chest disproportionately wide. Like a crane, Lily thought - long, thin limbs, broad through the chest and shoulders to support the wings she didn't have.
    She had the feathers, though, a fluffy cap of down on her head, but her features weren't birdlike. Neither was her skin. It was white, and it gleamed. The shine was subtle, like the luminescence of a pearl.
    She sure looked solid. Real. And physical. She sat there barely but perceptibly breathing and looked at Lily with eyes the color of storm clouds. And didn't speak.
    "I don't have a name for you," Lily said, "other than Chimei, and that's a race. What do I call you?"
    "Enemy, I think." The voice was soft and high and lovely. The accent, like Johnny's, was British.
    "If you won't give me a name to use, I'll have to make up my own," Lily said. "Kun Nu." Kun meant a large, mythical bird, like a roc. Nu meant woman, wife, or daughter.
    "S'n Mtzo has told you of me."
    She pronounced Sam's Chinese name differently than Grandmother did, somehow removing vowels without losing the syllabic rhythm. "He told me your people and his fought each other in the Great War, and after it."
    "Did he speak of the treaty? There's a silly word." She gestured gracefully with one hand. The fingers were very long, very thin. "Your English word suggests so little of the reality. Did he tell you he wishes to save your world from me and my people?"
    "Something like that." The nausea was gone, and the dizziness. Her head still ached, but it no longer pounded.
    "He lies. It is a habit with dragons, the lies designed to prod their little people this way or that. I have no people. He manipulates you, human. He uses you. His true wish is to kill me. This has always been his goal. It always will be."
    "And what is your goal?"
    Her lips curved in a smile, a touch smug, that made Lily think of Dirty Harry after he'd stolen a bit of ham. "To live, of course. That is my purpose. That is the very soul of my creation. To live."
    "You've got a few other goals, though. You like fear."
    Her tongue touched her lips just once, delicately. "Living is primary, but to live well, that is important, too. Fear... Humans relate to fear so oddly. You crave it, creating stories and images - movies, television, books - which allow you to taste fear, yet leave your body undamaged. I understand the disinclination to sustain damage, but why then do you deny your love for and fascination with fear? You, too, enjoy it, if not as purely and keenly as I am able to. Yet you condemn me for my taste." She shrugged. "Humans are mostly silly."
    "Not all of us, beloved." Johnny smiled, stroking her thigh.
    She in turn gave him a smile as tender as a mother with a new babe. "You are a precious exception, my