Lupi 08 - Death Magic

controlled circumstances until their first response to the smell of humanity was people , not meat .
    How long would it be before Ruben could live with his beautiful Deborah again?
    Rule shook that thought off. Worrying about things he couldn’t change was foolish.
    The other wolf had finished drinking. He stood still and taut, sniffing the air warily, glancing frequently at Rule. That wasn’t typical. With a full belly and no immediate danger, most new wolves would be looking for sleep or play or some interesting scent to track. Was the difference a matter of this one being older? Or was it the way he’d been brought into this form, unprepared and surrounded from the first with what he considered threats instead of clan?
    No way of knowing. Rule collected the new wolf with a glance, and the two of them trotted into the trees. They relieved themselves, then Rule had a good roll in the leaves. It felt good, it smelled good, and he wanted to take some of the scents of the forest with him into the metal cage-on-wheels Cullen would be driving.
    The plan was to get the other wolf to follow Rule into the back of the panel truck. The bratwurst should help. Rule didn’t know a wolf who wouldn’t salivate over that smell. Cullen would close the door quickly, then wait.
    Rule hoped the other wolf would not turn out to be as sensitive to small places as he was. Even so, there would be a period of panic and adjustment. Assuming Rule could get the new wolf to settle down, Cullen would drive them to Bald Eagle Park—Rule had let Walt pick the rendezvous point—where Walt and several Wythe wolves would meet them.
    Being surrounded by wolves who smelled right should help the new wolf adjust. It would be great if, at that point, Rule could turn his charge over to his clan. That wasn’t going to happen. The new wolf didn’t really know how to use the mantle he carried, but no Wythe wolf was going to be able to dominate his own Rho. On foot or in a mobile cage, Rule would be continuing with the others to Wythe Clanhome . . . nearly three hundred miles away from Washington.
    If the mate bond allowed it.
    Rule snarled silently at the empty air. The mate bond was the Lady’s gift.
    Hadn’t the Lady contrived to land him—and Ruben, and Lily, and the entire Wythe clan—in precisely this position? Rule didn’t understand it. How could Ruben have been turned into a lupus? One with founder’s blood, no less, able to carry the mantle. It made no sense. But somehow the Lady had done just that. She’d tinkered with the mantle while it resided within Lily.
    She could damn well tinker with the mate bond, too.
    She’d better. If Rule crossed that invisible boundary at highway speeds and passed out, it meant that here in D.C. Lily would probably pass out, too. Wherever she was. Whatever she was doing.
    Lily.
    Cullen hadn’t spoken of her. Rule hadn’t forced him to, though he could have, even in this wordless form. Silently, tacitly, they’d agreed to put off the moment of bad news . . . because it would be bad news.
    Enough of that. Rule shook himself and glanced to his left. The other wolf had relaxed once they were surrounded by trees again and was happily digging at an abandoned rabbit burrow. Rule left him to that and trotted up to Cullen. He sat and looked at his friend.
    For a long moment Cullen met his gaze without speaking. He sighed. “Lily. Yes. I haven’t talked to her myself, but . . . well, Drummond charged her with interfering with an investigation. She’s in jail.”

TWENTY-SIX
     

     
    THEY don’t turn the lights off in holding cells.
    The heavy woman with dreads and a blood-spattered orange shirt rocked and muttered to herself. She’d kept that up all night. A Hispanic woman argued with a brittle-looking blonde with a puffy lip and torn shirt. Up near the bars, a tall, skinny woman hooted with laughter at something one of her friends said. Prostitutes, those three, and Lily’s most relaxed roommates . . . unless you counted the ones who were passed out. Like the white-haired woman in a Dior suit who’d vomited all over herself and the floor about thirty minutes ago. Lily had had to get up and turn the woman’s head to make sure she didn’t aspirate the vomit and choke to death. At the rear of the cell a sad but sober-looking young black woman with some kind of stomach problem sat on the toilet, ignoring the rest of them.
    When Lily first arrived, a muscular fortyish woman with bad teeth and biker tats