Lupi 09 - Mortal Ties

Behave,
     and perhaps I won’t make you pay too badly for the delay.” He shoved her to the floor.
    She fell hard. Again. Her ribs ached where he’d kicked her. The side of her face throbbed.
     When had Friar gotten so bloody damn strong?
    When
she
was busy remaking him, of course. When he hung suspended in what had been a gate
     until Rethna tampered with it. His goddess had given him his patterning Gift. She
     must have decided to make a few more alterations while she was at it.
    While Friar vanished amid the packing crates, Benessarai had moved to the large circle
     that held the two people he’d killed. He began rolling up his sleeves, paused, frowned,
     and said something in his language.
    Lily’s new guard repeated it, or something very like it, and seized Lily by her restraints
     the way Alycithin had. And pushed. Apparently she was supposed to move forward. She
     did, but as slowly as possible.
    Hurry,
she thought. It wasn’t mindspeech. She still couldn’t nudge that dial. But she thought
     it anyway.
    She didn’t feel any tingle of magic when the elf steered her across the circle, which
     meant the circle wasn’t activated. “So how are we leaving?” she asked. “Not via a
     gate. There’s no node.”
    “A gate?” He smiled at her pleasantly. She’d accidentally stroked his ego, though,
     hadn’t she? Implying he could actually open a gate all by himself. “Not that, but
     something quite clever. Robert taught it to me, but he can only execute it on himself.
     I, of course, am able to do much more. I shall send all of us out of phase, and then
     we may walk out unimpeded.”
    Out of phase…invisible and untouchable, in other words. Like demons could do when
     they weren’t in their home realm. “Friar taught you a demon trick?”
    “Don’t be absurd. Demons don’t exist.”
    “Could have fooled me. The ones in Dis sure looked real. The dragons thought they
     were, and I tend to trust dragons on that sort of thing.”
    He frowned. “You refer to the soulless.”
    “You could call them that, I guess. We call them demons.”
    “And you claim to have been to Dis and to converse with dragons.” He shook his head.
     “It is most annoying that I cannot simply cast a truth spell on you. Clearly you are
     not telling the truth, and yet—but this is not the time for discussion. Sit down out
     of my way. There,” he said, pointing next to Alycithin’s body.
    The elf made sure Lily sat exactly where Benessarai wanted her and seated herself
     on the concrete floor, too. Lily found herself looking at the woman who’d captured
     her and brought her here and used the last split-second of her life saving Lily’s.
    Exit wounds are always worse than entry wounds, and Dinalaran had shot her in the
     back. He must have been using hollow points. He’d fired twice, and it looked like
     they’d both hit her about heart high and blown out a good chunk of her chest on their
     way out. One breast was gone. The other was pretty torn up.
    It made Lily sick and sad. Alycithin hadn’t been a good guy by human standards, but
     by those of her people she’d been deeply honorable. And so alive, so vital and curious.
     And now she was meat. Lily took a slow breath and turned herself enough that her back
     was to the corpse. Her elf guard didn’t object.
    The other elf had knelt near but not at the edge of the circle. Eyes closed, he chanted
     softly. Rethna’s flunkies had done this, too—either adding their power to his or performing
     an active part of the spell, she wasn’t sure which. Benessarai was moving around the
     circle in a slow, deliberate way. He didn’t chant. The circle kept glowing faintly.
     No magic prickled over Lily’s skin. But the look of intense concentration on his face
     said he was doing something, even if she had no idea what.
    He stopped. “Robert, what is keeping you? I cannot finish until you and the hostage
     are within the circle.”
    “I’m coming.” A moment later he appeared. He carried a large duffel in one hand. With
     the other he guided Adam King.
    Lily knew from the file that Adam King was Caucasian, forty-eight, five-ten, and one
     sixty. She knew his features were even, save for a crooked nose that had been broken
     twenty years ago. What the file hadn’t told her was how inviting his face was. King
     had one of those lived-in faces, the kind that says its owner has spent plenty of
     time laughing or crying, singing and shouting. The kind with