Lupi 06 - Blood Magic

overhead, out of phase, invisible even to the Chimei's nonphysical senses. Waited for the moment he could act.
    It happened fast, almost too fast for her eyes to track. Sam seemed certain to crash into the ground - but those vast wings beat once, twice, slowing him just enough. Isen threw himself to one side and rolled. The sorcerer tried to scramble away also, but he was too slow. Much too slow.
    The talons closed around him. With another buffeting of wind that sent dirt flying, the wings beat, and beat again - and Sam rose, the little sorcerer held tight in his grip.
    "No!" the Chimei screamed, halfway between forms, between solid and otherness.
    Kun Nu, my granddaughter-by-magic has named you, Sam said as he rose higher. Kun Nu I will call you now. I give you this chance, this last chance, to choose.
    "You cannot harm him! You do not dare!"
    I will not harm him. I will take him to a portal on the other coast, where agents of the human government wait, prepared to hand him over to the authorities in what they call Edge. You know that realm as Vei Mo Han. They know how to lock up a sorcerer there, Kun Nu.
    "You break treaty!"
    You took a hostage. I may take a hostage now, too. The treaty strives for balance. Had you forgotten? Sun's form was so high now Li Lei couldn't see him, save as darkness against the stars. She thought he circled, though. But I will not take him from you if you agree to go home to your realm, to your people. You will be allowed -
    "Pah!" She drew herself up, becoming for the moment more physical than not, more human than bird. "I have no people."
    Thousands of Chimei still live.
    "The Surrendered. I spit on them. They are not my people. My people are dead, all dead - and my children. Dead because of you and yours. I am the only one left. Do not think you fool me, S'n Mtzo. You hunger for my death so you will be free of the treaty."
    I hunger for your death, Sun agreed. My people died, too. Too many of them died. In spite of this, I will forgo your death and live with the binding if you return to your realm. Go there and take your lover with you. You do love him?
    "I do. He is all that I have." Tears - real, human tears - glistened in eyes gone pale with grief. "Johnny, my Johnny!" she cried. "I will come for you!"
    Do you love him more than you love vengeance?
    "I will have both!" Her eyes turned black as suddenly as a light can be switched on. Or off. "I will have both! You will not stop me!"
    I already have. Swear on the treaty that you will return to your realm, and you may -
    But she'd made her decision, it seemed. Quick as a wind springing up from nowhere, she faded to mist - and shot off toward Isen Turner, just now rising stiffly to his feet.

 
    THIRTY-NINE

    Lily stood planted to the earth, numbed by too many revelations, too many events, coming too fast. She didn't recognize the threat to Isen until Rule took off running.
    Then her feet got the message and she sprinted full-out.
    What did the stupid man think he could do to the Chimei? He couldn't hit her, stab her, bite her, bind her - actually, Lily couldn't do those things, either. But at least she wasn't subject to Bird Woman's magic.
    Though how she could use that immunity to help Isen, she didn't know.
    Rule got there first, of course. He skidded to a stop, dropping to his knees. It took Lily a few more moments to get close enough to see clearly what was happening.
    Isen lay flat on the ground, his eyes open and staring. White mist, peculiarly defined at the edges, covered his face like a glistening, translucent shroud. His chest didn't move. He wasn't breathing.
    Rule was shoving at that otherness, but his hands slid off every time, as if Kun Nu were ice, not mist. "I can't move her. I can't move her."
    Lily dropped to her knees and tried the same useless pushing. She felt the surface of the thing, utterly slick, slightly cooler than her own skin. Utterly immobile, as if it had the weight of a huge boulder, not a bird. "Shit, shit, shit. Get off of him. Get off."
    "He's not breathing," Rule said. "She's gone down his throat. She's in his lungs, goddamn her. Sam - do something. Stop her."
    There is only one way to stop her, Sam replied. And I cannot do it.
    The Chimei couldn't do this, couldn't be allowed to do this. Rage rose, choking Lily as if she were the one with another being stuffed down her throat - and memory, dim and unclear, rose with it. Once before she'd tried to stop someone from using magic to destroy. But she