Blood Lines (11 page)

An odd, unpleasant scent made him turn his head.

To his regular senses, it was the barest shimmer in the air fifty feet away, a whiff of a carrion stench. To his other vision, it was a nightmare striding down the street.

It walked upright on two great, clawed feet. The haunches were huge, making the lumpy body look too small. There were no upper limbs. The head—shaped like a cross between a crocodile and a rhinoceros, with the teeth of the former and the horn of the latter—quested forward on about five feet of thick neck and still topped the tin roofs on either side of the road. A naked woman rode on its back, her skin the black-brown of the mask on a Siamese cat.

No, he realized a split second later. The astral form of a woman. The demon was dashtu—physically present but slightly out of phase with this realm. The woman wasn’t really here at all.

“Shit. Double shit. I don’t guess any of you see that?”

“¿Señor? ¿Qué dijo usted?”
The café’s owner tapped his arm, jabbering at him. The boy talked right over his elder, glaring at Cullen and gesturing. Three of the kids were sitting in the middle of the road, playing some stupid game with a bit of string. The others shoved each other, chattered, or watched Cullen and the boy.

And the demon was coming, one slow stride at a time. Its head swung from side to side—and zeroed in on Cullen. The eyes glowed red.

So did the woman’s eyes. She smiled at him and raised one lazy hand.

Instinctively he reached for the diamond hanging on a chain around his neck. That single, flawless carat, lab-certified, was the reason he was on a cash-only basis these days. Visa still didn’t understand why its computers had allowed him to go so far over his limit, and they weren’t happy about it.

The stone was only about half-f, since he’d used some of the stored magic in his search. Didn’t matter, though, did it? No arcane duels with all those kids in the line of fire. “Shit!” he said again, with feeling. And moved.

Cullen wasn’t as strong as some of his kind. He could fight, of course, but he wasn’t trained. But he was fast—faster than anyone he knew, except Rule’s supernally skilled brother, Benedict. Fast enough that the humans around him would later deny what they’d seen.

So he ran . . . toward the demon, not away. Running away would draw it after him, right over the underage mob. He didn’t know what would happen if a dashtu demon stepped on a kid, but he wasn’t minded to experiment.

He’d surprised the demon’s rider. The glimpse he caught of her expression as he barreled straight at her and her nightmare pet told him that. Not enough for her to lose focus, though. Her raised hand still directed the magic she’d gathered, an energy loop spinning over her head in slow circles, like a lasso.

Fortunately, her mount had less control. It stopped, jerking its head back, and hesitated briefly before thrusting those toothy jaws at the idiot charging it.

Cullen dodged.

One huge foot lifted as the demon tried stomping on him. He threw himself aside, rolling as he hit the ground, and came up running. No point in hanging around to fight, not when there was a good chance he’d lose.

He made for the church. It was tiny and crumbling, but those consecrated walls should repel the demon. He felt rather than heard the thing’s feet thud against the ground behind him. So why he could feel that, when the thing wasn’t present enough to be seen or heard? He knew damn little about the dashtu state, but—

Damn! That thing could
jump
!

Cullen skidded to a halt. The demon had leaped over him, landing less than ten feet away. Its snout darted toward him even as the rider sent the glowing loop she controlled his way.

No time for a spell or to draw down from his diamond. Cullen did the one thing he could without weapons or spells. He flung fire at it.

The creature bellowed as flames crawled up its belly and chest. It tossed its head, staggering back so fast its rider lost control of her lasso. The glowing loop snaked wildly through the air.

Cullen was already running the other way when the loop whizzed over his head. The demon was annoyed, not stopped. Not enough of it was physically present for normal fire to do real damage, and Cullen needed a boost from the diamond to call mage fire.

Probably just as well. Mage fire was the devil to control.

He ducked between two houses, where the demon’s bulk wouldn’t fit. Unless, that is, it could slip deeper into dashtu so its mass could overlap with—

A glance over his shoulder told him it could.

He popped into a yard overrun with chickens, which squawked and fluttered and generally got in his way. And kept running—into the trees and up a winding mountain path.

An hour later he perched in a gnarly oak tree surrounded by thousands of others. His chest heaved. The muscles in his thighs jumped and twitched, and his shirt was soaked with sweat. The legs of his jeans were wet to the knees.

A butterfly with wings the color of sunrise drifted past like a scrap of tissue paper. Monkeys screeched nearby. He was maybe eight or nine miles from the village and at least a thousand feet higher.

Time was on his side, he told himself. Eventually the woman would have to give up. Legend said that some adepts had been able to sustain an astral body for nearly a full day, but he was damned if he’d credit that bitch with an adept’s abilities. Another hour or three, and she’d have to return to her physical body.

He just hoped she took her demon with her when she left.

As the sweat cooled on his body, he shivered, but not really from the chill. Twice he’d thought he’d gotten away; twice the demon and its rider had found him.

How? That was the twenty-thousand-dollar question.

Not psychically. He was sure of that; his shields were locked down tight, and they’d kept out a crazy telepath assisted by an ancient staff. Nor did he think the demon was using scent, not after he’d splashed along that damned creek. Hearing was theoretically possible, he supposed. In his wolf form, he could distinguish between one beating heart and another, but he had to be pretty damned close. He didn’t think his heartbeat was giving him away.

That left vision or magic. Maybe the demon was Davy Crockett on steroids and could spot Cullen’s traces whether he went down a creek, over boulders, or made like Tarzan through the trees.

Or maybe the demon’s rider had some kind of magical fix on him.

Last night something had brushed against his shields. He’d assumed it was Sam. Too bloody sure of himself, he thought now, bitter at finding himself a fool. He should have been warned. Instead he’d been smug, knowing nothing could get through. He . . .

Cullen blinked. How did he know nothing could get through?

Dumb question. He tested everything. When he’d devised his shields . . .

The flush of vertigo hit so suddenly he nearly swayed right off his perch. He grabbed the trunk, sweat popping out on his forehead.

When he’d devised his shields
. That’s what he’d thought just before falling off into . . . nothing. Because he couldn’t remember testing the shields. He couldn’t remember coming up with them in the first place.

Them?

Cullen’s fingers dug into the bark. He stared out at the jungle, seeing nothing. A beetle as big as his thumb investigated his hand. He ignored it.

He had a shield. One shield, singular, that protected him from any sort of mental attack. And he had no idea where it had come from, or why he kept thinking of
shields
, plural.

Someone or something had messed with his mind, swallowed part of his memory.

He began tracking his memories, plucking at one, then another, trying to figure out when he’d acquired his shields. When had he first begun relying on them?

It didn’t take him long to turn up an answer. That day wasn’t one he was likely to forget. He could make a good guess about the culprit, too, though not the motive nor the man’s current location. Lucky him, though—he knew someone who could help. Someone with access to all sorts of information.

Gradually, the silence penetrated his concentration. No birds called, no monkeys fussed and chattered. The forest was quiet . . . and drifting faintly in the air was the stink of rotting flesh.

Son of a bitch! He didn’t have
time
to play hide-and-seek. He needed to be out of this damned jungle and onto a plane.

When the demon’s questing snout preceded its ungainly body up the path twenty feet from Cullen’s tree, he was standing on the ground at its base. He waited with one hand closed around the little diamond at his throat, the other outstretched.

“All right, sugar,” he murmured. “Have it your way. You want to play? I’m ready.”

SEVEN

CYNNA
skidded into Headquarters at two minutes after ten o’clock. Elevators never come when you’re late, so it was 10:07 when she arrived, only slightly breathless, at his secretary’s desk. “He’s expecting me.”

Ida Rheinhart was older than God and a lot meaner. She looked at Cynna over the top of bright red reading glasses and handed her a folder. “He was expecting you at ten. Everyone else is here already. Conference room B-12.”

She started to explain—Ida had that effect on her—but closed her mouth. What was the point? Ida had never been late in her life. But that was easy for her, because she never left her desk. Cynna was pretty sure she curled up beneath it at night, waiting to snatch unwary agents or cleaning people who trod too close to her lair.

Cynna tucked the folder under her arm and hurried down the hall. She hadn’t expected they’d use a conference room. Apparently this was a bigger meeting than she’d thought.

That worried her. The news this morning had been decidedly odd.

The demon she’d killed had been given a big play, of course, but that was only one of last night’s oddities. The
New York Times
online edition reported all sorts of sightings—of lupi, yeti, banshees, even fairies. Of course, people claimed to see things they hadn’t really seen all the time, but what about that brownie reservation in Tennessee? Supposedly it had doubled its population overnight.

A school bus in Texas had disappeared on the way back from a football game; drivers around it claimed they’d seen it vanish. A well-known medium had announced the end of the world. So had an infamous terrorist organization. Not that Cynna put any stock in end-of-world bullshit, but something was up.

She shoved open the conference room door and stopped dead. Two dozen people sat around the dark wood table. Every one of them turned to look at her.

“Sorry. Car died.” Jesus. She’d never seen this many of the Unit’s agents in one meeting before. And it wasn’t just Unit agents at the table. Not even just FBI.

Sherry O’Shaunessy, the high priestess for the oldest and largest Wiccan coven in the country, sat beside a short, dark-haired man in a clerical collar. Cynna was pretty sure he was Archbishop Brown, a fiery Catholic with reformist leanings. She didn’t know the old guy with Einstein hair or the bald man built like a pro wrestler, but she recognized the woman sitting on Ruben’s right.

Cynna swallowed and hurried to sit down. She’d never met the president’s senior adviser, but she’d sure seen pictures.

Ruben sat at the head of the table. Nothing about his appearance explained the respect he commanded. He was painfully thin, making the custom-tailored suit a necessity. His nose was large, and Cynna knew for a fact that his wife cut his hair. He’d mended his glasses with duct tape again. On his good days, when he could walk with a cane, he was slightly above average height.

Cynna hadn’t seen him on a good day for over a year. Today, as usual, he sat in his motorized wheelchair.

Ruben gave her a nod. “Gentlemen and ladies, this is Cynna Weaver, one of my best agents. Her particular Gift is Finding, but she’s trained in spellcraft and demonology as well. Cynna, Agent Yu just finished summarizing two of last night’s ASEs—ah, excuse me. Some of you aren’t familiar with our jargon. ASE stands for
apparent supernatural event
, which is the designation given to events that meet our criteria for investigation.”

“Two?” Cynna repeated, zeroing in on the important part. “How many ASEs were there?”

“Since ten o’clock last night, we’ve received fifty-seven reports of ASEs from official sources and two hundred forty-two reports from unofficial sources.”

Cynna’s jaw dropped. That was beyond unprecedented. It was . . . scary as hell, she decided.

She wasn’t the only one shocked. Ruben had to quiet the questions and exclamations with a raised hand before continuing. “This is more than ten times our usual load. Since we can’t suddenly acquire ten times our usual personnel, we’re forced to apply triage. Only the most critical incidents will be handled by Unit agents. For the rest, some investigations will be delayed, some will be left to local authorities, and some will be turned over to our non-Unit colleagues in MCD. I realize,” he added with a brief smile, “that will displease some of you.”

No duh. In Cynna’s opinion, most of MCD—the FBI’s Magical Crimes Division—was staffed by pencil pushers and exterminators. The pencil pushers were useless. They wouldn’t know a spell after it turned them small, furry, and fond of carrots. But the others were worse—MCD agents who’d tracked down lupi and others in the bad old days, before the Supreme Court changed the rules.