Lupi 06 - Blood Magic

calm, and able to focus. Do you have such a practice, also?"
    "I am aided in this by my wolf." His gaze slid to Lily, amusement crinkling the corners of his eyes. "Lily lacks such an aid."
    "Lily is very like her grandmother." Li Qin took a sip of tea.
    That was obviously false. Oh, she had some things in common with Grandmother, but in this they were totally different. Lily had never found sniffing and sipping tea interesting or transformative, but Grandmother clearly did. She immersed herself in the experience. She practically rolled around in all that calm, awake focus.
    Obedient to the situation, though, Lily didn't argue. She sipped tea.
    Rule seemed to be enjoying his. "I have wondered sometimes if Madame Yu was even more like Lily when she was younger."
    Li Qin nodded. "I think she must have been, though I did not know Li Lei when she was Lily's age, of course. She is more mellow now."
    Lily did not - quite - choke.
    Rule quirked a brow. "Is she?"
    "Oh, yes. She was very intense as a young woman. Much like Lily." She gave Lily a gentle smile. "More autocratic, I believe, but this is because she was born into a society that did not value females. She could not attach that lack of value to herself, and so concluded that she was exceptional. Circumstances have never detached her from this belief."
    "Understandable," Rule said, while Lily sat dumbstruck at having Grandmother summed up with such tidy accuracy. "Since she is, in fact, exceptional." He smiled at Lily. "Much like her granddaughter."
    Lily found herself smiling at him, because he meant it. Grandmother truly was exceptional. She wasn't, but Rule saw her that way.
    "Li Qin," Rule said, gently setting down his empty cup, "I regret my need to bring up another subject, but we aren't here only in search of Lily's grandmother. We also need a safe haven for - "
    Granted.
    Memory shivered through Lily like sleet, tiny, stinging bits that melted when she tried to catch them. The voice that had spoken that single word was as cold and clear as the space between stars. And it was all in Lily's head. Literally.
    Sam's voice.

 
    EIGHTEEN

    Ten feet up and fifty feet away horizontally, a wedge-shaped head the size of a small car emerged from the shadows of the arched entrance. The base of that huge skull was decorated with a lacy frill the color of fresh blood that dwindled into a thin streak of color along the neck.
    It was a very long neck.
    Bring Cullen Seabourne here, Sam told them. He will be safe nowhere else, and we may need him. Think about his wound for a moment so I may see... Think clearly, if you are at all able. No mistaking the acerbity in that command. Ah. Blood magic, and it is sustained by his own blood. That may be tricky to unknot. I will assist. I expect I will dislike having him underfoot, but I concede the necessity.
    "Mr. Seabourne is injured?" Li Qin said, distressed.
    Rule spoke to her softly. Lily couldn't pay attention to his explanation, caught as she was by the sight of the black dragon leaving his lair.
    Sam was a very large dragon, sleek as a serpent if wider in girth, his length upheld by four short, powerful legs ending in talons. The cop in Lily tried to guess his weight. Three elephants' worth? Four? How much did an elephant weigh, anyway? Were Sam's bones heavy like an elephant's, or light like a bird's?
    She had no idea.
    Black and steel, sleek and huge, with the origami folds of the great wings riding along his back, Sam flowed down that ten-foot "step" onto his landing pad like molten midnight.
    This midnight, however, was the black composed of all colors, not their absence. He sparkled. In the morning sunlight his scales cast a rainbow iridescence - fugitive gleams of blue, purple, red, gold, and green.
    Lily found herself on her feet. Impossible to meet such huge and deadly beauty while sitting on the ground. Rule, too, had stood. He took her hand. Even Li Qin rose, though somehow with her it seemed more a courtesy than an instinctive response.
    Sam's landing pad was as wide as a football field and about twice as long. He settled himself into a comfortable coil that occupied some thirty feet of it. His head remained raised about twenty feet in the air as he looked at the two of them.
    I greet you, Rule Turner. I greet you, Lily Yu.
    For a second, Lily forgot to breathe. For a second she forgot all the safeguards and looked directly into eyes that were all black and silver, with no white at all...
    Falling. She was falling and