Lupi 06 - Blood Magic

the trees. Lily couldn't go fast without tripping over something. She was making noise and slowing him down. "You could go ahead."
    "No."
    "Did Sam say the treaty wouldn't let him help?"
    "Something like that. Shh."
    The Chimei had claimed Sam was lying to her, using her. Lily figured that was partly true - the black dragon was manipulating all of them. But the Chimei had even less reason than Sam to speak truth to Lily. She had wanted Lily cowed and fearful, and persuading her she couldn't trust the dragon would help that along.
    Only... Sam should be here, dammit. The sense of betrayal was strong. Treaty or no treaty, he should have found a way to be here. If nothing else, he could soak up extra magic, leaving less for the Chimei and Johnny to grab and use.
    Rule stumbled. She stopped. Alarm made it hard to keep her voice soft. "What is it? Are you okay?"
    "I take it that means everything didn't suddenly go dark for you."
    "No. Aren't the mantles working?"
    "Only one mantle, and I grew careless." He shook his head as if to clear it. "I wasn't relying on it as I should. I hadn't needed to until now. The Chimei was focused on the others, I suppose."
    "What do you mean, only one mantle?"
    "Later."
    Lily took the lead for the next part. Rule said his vision was clearing as he got used to leaning on the mantle, as he put it, but her sight was unaffected.
    The woods ended abruptly - more so than they probably had an hour ago. Where there must have been brush and grass there was now burned stubble.
    Lily stopped. Rule stopped beside her, one hand on her shoulder.
    Perhaps twenty yards down the road, a white van lay tilted in the ditch. Lily didn't see anyone there. Not Isen, not the other lupi.
    Closer, three people stood where a dirt road dead-ended in a baked earth yard. Two were together - Grandmother, as erect as always. Cullen, not so erect. He was on his knees, and looked like he was fighting to keep from hitting the ground with his face.
    Ten paces away from those two, the Chimei paced. Or one version of her did. Kun Nu, Lily had called her. Bird woman. Now she was all bird.
    She wasn't the size of a dragon. Not even close. But as birds went, she was huge - at least the height of an ostrich, but shaped something like a crane or stork, with a raptor's strong beak and a long, forked tail. She was white still, pristine white and glistening in the moon-drenched darkness.
     
    Li Lei stood with her hand on Cullen's shoulder, turning to keep Kun Nu in view as the enormous bird circled them. He had fought hard, the lovely Cullen, fought well and valiantly. No blame to him that he was not as strong as a being who had been gathering power for three centuries. "You cannot break my circle," she said in Chinese.
    The great bird's beak melted, along with the rest of the face, so that a woman's face looked at Li Lei from atop that bird body. A familiar face, though Li Lei had not seen it outside her nightmares in so very long. "I can," she said in her high, pure voice, using a dialect Li Lei also heard in her dreams at times. "I will, eventually. I have time."
    She spoke truly. Given enough time, she would undoubtedly figure out how to break the circle, though it was set specifically against her. That was a warding so old Li Lei should have forgotten it. Perhaps she would have, if she hadn't practiced it faithfully every decade for all these years.
    Or perhaps not. Some things one doesn't forget. The past flowed around Li Lei now like thick cream. It was sweet, in its way, for all that the memories that swam in the air were of her own dying. Sweet because she'd succeeded - and terrible, for she also remembered the flames and the screams.
    There had been no way to spare the others, those who worked for that first sorcerer. At the time she'd told herself it did not matter, that they deserved their fate for consorting with him. She'd been very young then.
    There had been no way to spare herself, either. She, too, had burned and screamed.
    Then Sam had come, a great black shadow plummeting out of the darkness and smoke to land beside her dying body. You are not dead yet, he had said, fierce and complete as only a dragon could be. I wish you to live. Be dragon with me.
    She had chosen life, life and wings and Sam, and he had sung over her, sung one of the Great Songs, one which had gone unheard since the Great War.
    Dragon bodies heal much, much better than human bodies.
    "I think your little sorcerer is dying," the Chimei said,