Lupi 08 - Death Magic

heir’s portion of their mantle was shared among all Etorri lupi, not just the one their Rho named heir. Which was—natch—a secret, and meant that Cullen had been a mantle-holder once. Only a small bit of a mantle, but he’d been there, done that, and had apparently been given both the T-shirt and the secret handshake. “You’re breaking the rules by telling me this.”
    “Technically, you’re carrying a mantle now yourself. And you need to understand why Rule’s control is splintering.”
    She glanced at the hole in the wall. “That’s not hard to understand.”
    “If all he does is put his fist through a wall now and then, we’ll be lucky. Rule believes the Lady has betrayed him.”
    “Because she shoved this thing into me without clueing us in about the consequences? That pisses me off, too.” Lily had had to give permission, but apparently Old Ones didn’t worry about informed consent.
    “Lily.” He sighed. “The Wythe mantle is doing something it should not be able to do. Mantles don’t send out little roots. They are controlled by their holders—within limits for the heirs, and entirely by the Rhos. There’s only one exception, one way the mantles can act without direction by a Rho. They are of the Lady. If a mantle starts doing something wholly new, we have to think that she’s directing it.”
    “ She’s making it try to kill me?”
    “That’s unlikely,” the Leidolf Rhej said.
    Lily damn near dropped the coffeepot. “Dammit, how did you do that? You’re not lupus. You shouldn’t be able to come down those stairs that quietly.”
    The woman smiled wearily. “Maybe you’re a little preoccupied.”
    Maybe so. “Why do you think the Lady isn’t trying to kill me?”
    “If you die, the Wythe mantle is lost.”
    Oh. That was a lot better answer than the sort of “have faith” argument Lily had been expecting. “Then maybe she’s just not very good at whatever she’s doing.”
    “Could be. We don’t have any idea what she is doin.’ As far as we know, she hasn’t fiddled with a mantle since she changed Etorri’s, but Cullen says she’s doin’ something to this one. Whatever she has in mind, though, I’m sure she doesn’t want you to die, which is why I agreed with Mr. Gorgeous here about what we might do to help a bit.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “I hadn’t told her that part,” Cullen said.
    “Good. You makin’ coffee, honey? I could sure use some.” She headed for the table, moving as if her body was twice as heavy as it had been earlier.
    Lily suppressed her impatience and grabbed the kettle. “Coffee’s coming. What did you do that left you so tired?”
    “Made some phone calls, then spent some time in the memories.” She sat at the big, round table with a sigh.
    When the Rhej said she’d spent time “in the memories,” she meant she’d essentially relived certain events. The memories were just that—actual memories magically preserved and passed from Rhej to Rhej. A lot of them were from the Great War. All of them involved key events, which meant heaping doses of disaster, death, betrayal, battle, pain, tragedy . . . and, now and then, triumph.
    Also—now and then—spells. Spells such as hadn’t been cast since the Purge. Spells that had been lost centuries before the Purge. Adept-level spells, some of them. Which was one reason Cullen was so damn twitchy about Rhejes. They knew things he desperately wanted to learn, and they weren’t talking.
    Maybe there was a spell that would help Lily now. She put the kettle on the stove, glanced toward the front of the house, then at the Rhej. “I hope it was worth it. You learned something?”
    “A technique that hasn’t been used for a very long time. The Wythe Rhej—she was one of those phone calls—agreed to try it. The idea is to pull enough power out of the mantle that it has to slow down on healin’ you. Slower healin’ should mean less damage. In addition to that, I want you to stay close to Rule. Physically close. The mate bond may be able to help.”
    Lily’s eyebrows shot up. “She can pull power from the mantle? I knew she could pull power from the clan as a whole, but to take it directly from the mantle . . . that seems like a different deal.”
    “It is,” the Rhej said grimly. “And it is not recommended. It makes the mantle vulnerable. Lily, you’re Lady-touched, so it’s okay for you to know about this, but you can’t speak of it to anyone. Neither of you can.” She