Lupi 06 - Blood Magic

abundant.
    The Chimei had killed her entire family, using one of her loved one's hands to deal the deaths. The demon could not herself be killed, much as Li Lei longed to send her across that dark curtain... but she could be hurt, diminished, stopped.
    And the sorcerer could be killed.
    He would be. Li Lei had vowed that on her true name - just before she'd cut off her tongue.

 
    TWENTY

    Rule sat quietly through a second making and pouring of tea. Alarm still pinged through his system, scattered after-quakes set off by Sam's revelations. His thoughts were jumbled; he made no attempt to gather them. Not yet. There was a time to bear down and think through a problem, and a time when thinking was mere froth on the surface of deeper processes moving forward, unseen, in their own way.
    Mostly he watched Lily.
    She was upset, and not just by the threat posed by the Chimei. Topsy-turvy, she'd said. He didn't understand. He tried not to feel affronted. He knew she'd always understood herself to be fully human, and it was rough to be forced to change one's view of self. But was her notion of humanity so rigid it couldn't flex to include a whiff or two of dragon?
    Once the tea was poured, he inhaled deeply, allowing the scent to fill him. A question floated up into the froth of his thoughts. How would he react if he were told he wasn't purely lupus?
    Badly, he decided, and sipped.
    More questions, more insistent: What would they do about this Chimei? How would they stop her?
    A year ago he would have pounced on those questions, wrestled with them, stuck doggedly to their trail. The balance between wolf and man had shifted since then... a forced shift, perhaps, and acceptance had not come easily. But the new balance worked. His wolf was more present these days. If that made some situations - like hospitals - harder to navigate, it steadied him in others.
    Like now. His wolf understood waiting. They didn't know enough. Some shapes were emerging, but the murk was too thick to guess what those shapes portended. It wasn't yet time to act, or even to choose an action.
    He glanced at Lily. There was a small crease between her brows, and though she seemed to look at the cup she held, he doubted she noticed it at all. He would leave the first action to her, he decided. Soon she would begin to ask questions. The shapes would grow clearer.
    For now, Rule relaxed into the moment. The air was almost painfully dry, which muted the scents it carried, but those scents were delightful - creosote, cypress and sumac, wild mustard and cholla, all overlaid with the lush moistness of the reservoir. San Miguel Mountain smelled like home to him, only without much wolf-scent. And with a good deal of dragon.
    Most wolves wouldn't care for that, and not because the smell was unpleasant. Sam's scent was as compelling as his sinewy form, but it bore the meaty whiff of predator among its notes of metal and spice and mystery. The smell awoke the crouched beast in the back-brain, stirring the hackles, making feet twitch with the need to escape something much larger and more dangerous than any wolf could be.
    Rule's beast was calm. He knew this scent, this dragon.
    The air was growing warm, perhaps unpleasantly so for humans. Rule asked Li Qin if she were comfortable here, if she required anything. She assured him it was much cooler inside Sam's lair. He'd dug her a small "room" inside and enchanted it to remain cool. Something to do with moving the heat elsewhere, she said, through the rocks.
    Rule smiled. Even the black dragon was not immune to Li Qin.
    Lily asked what she could bring Li Qin. Food? An air mattress? Books? Rule's thoughts drifted back to wolves and dragons.
    Wolves prefer to run away if faced with an impossible battle - a more helpful attitude than human machismo, in his view. But Rule's wolf knew this particular dragon. Knowledge did not make him unwary, but it settled his hackles. They weren't friends, he and Sam, but there was respect and honor between them. Sam was deeply honorable, by his lights.
    Deeply tricky, too. Rule contemplated that as he sipped.
    This time, the consumption of tea seemed to settle Lily, though she hadn't quite emptied her cup when the first question emerged, shaped as a statement. "I wish I knew where Sam went. What he's up to."
    Li Qin spread one hand gracefully. "Perhaps he is up to something, as you say, at this moment. Perhaps he left simply so he would not be tempted to steer our conversation."
    "He did