by Faith Hunter
I followed him, feeling as if I was saying something with the action, but not knowing what and not knowing how to stop saying it.
“I intend to court you,” he said, his voice a low burr. He looked over his shoulder at me. “I intend to win you back. Marry you again.” His eyes were resolute, unwavering, fixed on me like blue lasers. My belly did a little somersault, thinking he might kiss me. Might. My heart thudded.
“You’re married,” I whispered, remembering the utterly beautiful face in the moment I discovered he had remarried. I hated him for that, for marrying a beautiful woman. “You married Jane Hilton. She said so on live television.”
“She lied. I never married Jane. And in my heart, I never left you. Never,” he said, one hand holding the door open. When I didn’t reply, he released the door, turned away, and walked down the steps. Cold air blew in from the stairway.
I wasn’t sure what he had thought I might say, and I had a feeling he was disappointed by my reaction, but I didn’t know what to do about it. I followed him down, shutting the loft door behind me, hearing our feet echo on the steps.
At the shop entrance, Lucas waited as I found the key and opened the door. Night had fallen while we talked. It was after six and the town was shut up, the citizens safely inside their homes. Only fools and evil walked alone in the dark. The sleet was long gone and the temperatures had dropped, the cold so intense it was blistering. Overhead, the clouds were breaking up. A black velvet sky peered down at the town, the moon bright, throwing shadows on white snow. Lucas stepped outside.
I lifted a hand to tell him to wait. I would get my sword. I would walk him safely home. Instead, he mistook the gesture for something else and pulled me to him, arm hard around my waist. His mouth came down on mine.
Warmth and need rose so fast they shocked me. His lips were demanding, beguiling, and punishing all at once. I heard a moan and knew it was me. One arm slid low on my hips to support me. The other hand slid around my neck to cradle my head. My mouth opened. His kiss deepened, hardened. Distantly, I heard the bag drop. My arms went around him.
He smelled of soap and beer and roast duck. He tasted of something else entirely. Something new and unpolluted, an unknown seasoning that flooded my mouth, faintly reminiscent of anise and nutmeg, sweet as honey. I knew it hadn’t been part of our meal. Want rose in me like a primeval spring, splashing joyously, to puddle low in my belly. My fingers slid through his dark hair, against his scalp.
His palm was hot against my face. His tongue touched mine. I reeled deeper into the kiss, nearer to the taste of him. That strange taste. I could hear myself moaning, knees weak, the world spinning around me. My head lolling back, I remembered to breathe, and he kissed my throat, his lips hot on my flesh. Where he touched, cold followed, the air chilling. Lucas pulled me tighter, backing me against the doorjamb to keep me from falling. I clung to him as his mouth sucked the soft skin above my collarbone.
I ran my tongue over my bruised lips, tasting him. It was like the otherness, some part of me noted. The sensation I wasn’t able to name when I blended two mage-senses into a single scan. An otherness I had been afraid to practice, afraid to use because it left me dizzy and befuddled. Now Lucas produced the same effect in me.
Lightheaded, faint, I pushed at his shoulders. Lucas pulled back, his blue eyes black in the dim light of the moon. “Whas at—” I stopped and licked my lips; they felt tender, swollen. “What’s that taste?” I managed, only a little slurred. “On your mouth? Like anise?”
Lucas stepped away fast, horror on his face. I caught myself on the doorjamb with both hands. “You can taste it?” he whispered. When I nodded, he said, “I think . . . it’s manna. I think it’s manna.” With that he turned and walked away, his boots crunching on the hard-frozen snow. He didn’t look back.
Searing-cold mind-clearing air brushed me. Feeling abandoned, I eased inside and closed the door. Manna? I touched my mouth, which tingled slightly. Lucas had kissed me. I’d wanted him to. And he’d eaten the food of angels.
When the sense of inebriation passed, I found myself sitting in the dark on the stairs to my loft, chilled to the bone, shivering, Lucas’ bag in my frozen fingers. I didn’t know what to think, not about Lucas, his declarations of love, or his intent to marry me. Marry me? Once bitten, twice shy. An old aphorism that didn’t take a kiss like Lucas’ into consideration. What was I going to do? I traced the contours of my mouth. It was sensitive from his lips.
I remembered the name he’d spoken, the name of the Darkness trying to do an unspeakable evil. It wasn’t the beast’s true name, but it was a beginning, and research might provide me more. I pulled my fingers from my mouth and my mind from the kiss. What a kiss. I shivered in the cold. Forcas. Yeah. “I can’t do anything about you, Lucas Stanhope. But I can do something about that,” I said, my voice a whispered echo in the stairwell.
Well, maybe. Maybe not. But I stood and went to the computer to look up the evil called Forcas. For once, the computer in the little nook under the stairs worked at the same time as the Internet, though I had to leave my amulets hanging on the knob outside. Mage energies disagreed with sensitive electronics.
Online, I discovered that Forcas was not a nice little beastie. The occult lore didn’t indicate what rank Forcas once held in the angelic hierarchy, or to what order he belonged, but he was generally considered one of the minor seraphs before the fall. Since, however, he had become something far more powerful. When he lived on earth, he had been a teacher of rhetoric, logic, and mathematics. His gifts included being able to render people invisible and restoring lost property.
And according to Lucas, who had been a prisoner in the pit on the Trine, Forcas was the resident Darkness, a talented Fallen, and he had grown in power. He was practicing the Dark arts with Stanhope blood.
I closed down the computer. I was chilled through, and not just because it was cold outside. Because Stanhope blood wasn’t the only thing the master of the Trine was working with. If my guess was right, Forcas also had a few ounces of my blood, taken when I went underground to keep Ciana safe. I shuddered at the memory of the pit, the smell of sulfur and brimstone harsh in my mind. Never again, I promised myself. Never.
Before heading back upstairs, I walked into the stockroom and placed my palm on one of the metal boxes that contained the amethyst, the lavender stone I had thought was dead, yet which had generated the cobra. The first time I ever touched one of the metal boxes, I had been met with a frisson of heat, a whisper of power, and the touch of mage-perception. I had known that there was stone inside, stone imbued with power. That first time, sweat broke out on my arms and tingled down my spine. Not now. Straining, I lifted the metal box to the floor.
I touched the second box, which also contained stone. And behind it was another box, similar to the first two. I studied the boxes in the dim hallway light. They were an ugly green, painted with pale white pigments, words hidden under the crisscrossed security strips. A number six was clearly visible on one, the number two in a different place on another. They were Pre-Ap, US military ammunition boxes.
I sent a mind-skim into the box under my fingertips. The first time I had done this, the stone inside had swirled around me in an eddy, testing, toying. Something had touched my mind, recoiled a bare instant before it wrapped around me, seized me, and pulled me in. Something with unheard-of might. Such power. It beat into me, demanding.
Now there was nothing, not a whisper of power. I opened the box, its hinges twanging softly, and unexpected gloom settled across my shoulders at the sight of the once wondrous amethyst. Now it was pale, almost clear, like good-quality quartz, spotted with slightly darker inclusions in half curves and spots like eyelids and pupils. After the cobra, I had hoped it might be restored.
I lifted a fist-sized specimen and sent a tendril of thought into it. There was nothing there, no tremor of energy. I replaced the amethyst and closed the lid, feeling the chill of the unheated room through the soles of my feet. Fighting de
jection, I turned off the light, went back upstairs, and found my bed. I was asleep almost instantly.
The lynx sat on my back porch railing, purring, body erect, stubby tail curled around its back feet. I placed my hand on the ice-rimmed window and leaned closer to the huge black cat. It was between sixty and eighty pounds, its waterproof outer coat of hair harsh and glossy over an inner coat that fluffed for warmth. Moonlight brightened white facial hair and its pale-haired belly, and white tufts sprouted from erect ears. It was prim and proper, until it opened its mouth and growled at me. Two-inch fangs caught the moonlight. My breath fogged the glass—and I woke, the echo of the growl reverberating in the apartment around me.
I came awake fast. The loft was cold, silent, and very dark.
I had left the fireplaces on medium to combat the winter chill, and their flames should have cast wavering light on the walls. They didn’t. The fans should have stirred the air with warming currents. They didn’t. The air should have smelled of fish and potatoes and beer and candles. It didn’t. I caught a whiff of fresh roses and moldering leaves. Beneath it was the dank stench of standing water, mold, and mildew.
I opened my mage-sight and scanned the room; the furnishings, walls, ceiling and floor were lit with soft blue, green, and pinkish tints. There was no hint of Darkness, but the scent continued to grow, as if it—they—sat on the foot of my bed. There were two of them.
I slid my hand across the sheets to my amulets but encountered only cotton. They weren’t there. I remembered taking them off at the computer nook. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Head full of kisses and beer, I hadn’t put them under the pillow before sleep. I didn’t remember where they were, and broke into a sweat of fear. My hand met a solid object. The kris—no, not the kris, I remembered as I forced myself more fully awake. It was gone, broken off in the belly of a Minor Darkness. What I touched was the hilt of a throwing blade.
I slid my hand around it. The knife was beautifully balanced, but wasn’t shaped right for close fighting. It needed a longer blade with a honed edge, not just a sharp point. The hilt was bone, tapered and smooth, to slide from a hand without a hitch, which was great for a throw; not great for cutting. No help against a being of spirit. But it was what I had.
I slid from the sheets, a soundless action, and placed my feet on the icy floor. As I stood, the flames came on with a quick puff of natural gas. A click and hum overhead indicated the fans were back on. The other scents faded as if they had never been. I looked around, the blade catching the light.
Had the smells been real or a dream? Had the heat gone off? Had there been an interruption in both electricity and the supply of gas, leaving only enough to keep the pilot lights lit? Then when power and gas were restored they both came on at once? Was such a thing possible? Were the two forms of power linked somehow? Or was I going nuts? I looked at the black-pig clock in the kitchen. It was three a.m. I was wide-awake.
Unsettled, I crawled back into the warm bed. Unable to sleep, I stared at the ceiling, waiting on something. Anything. Time passed. The loft warmed. What seemed like hours later, I heard an almost silent click, a distant sound, muffled and muted. A quick glance told me it was now four, and I slid from the bed again. I gathered the practice swords Audric had given me, thin and pliable bamboo staves. Careful to keep from stirring the air currents, I crept to the door and crouched beneath the bar that separated the kitchen from the entry.
Stealthy as the lynx that invaded my dreams, Audric opened my door and entered my apartment. Until now, I hadn’t figured out how he got in, but my eyes were adapted to the dark and my position was perfect. I saw him pocket a key as he stepped over the threshold.
Without warning, I attacked. I got in three deadly strikes, stabs in each kidney and one cut across his spine at shoulder level before the half-breed managed to master his surprise, turn, and raise his weapons. “Dead,” I said softly, feeling triumphant. I should have known better than to gloat.
Audric countered and slapped me four times with his staves, any one of which would have killed me. Even prepared, I didn’t get a single block in. After that it was downhill all the way. I lost count of the ways I died. Audric killed me with the walking horse, the dolphin, and three versions of the crab, an ugly move that I should have been able to block with my eyes closed, half asleep. He killed me with the scissors, the lion rampant, the lion sitting, and the lion resting. He killed me with a half-dozen moves whose formal names I didn’t know and had never seen. I had bruises on top of bruises.
When my Thursday-morning lesson in humility was over and Audric let me rest, I fell across the couch, gasping and groaning. My teacher turned on a lamp and studied me. He wasn’t even breathing hard, standing over me in his white dobok, arms crossed, staves beneath one arm. The light gleamed across his freshly shaven skull. “I smelled the evil when I entered,” he said. “But not as strong as before.”
“Let me guess,” I gasped. “It distracted you and that was why I killed you three times before you responded.” When he inclined his head, I whispered, “Bloody seraphs.” And then, boneless across the couch, desperately needing to rest, I told him about the lynx whose cry waked me some mornings, the dreams of Raziel, and the incubus who had tried, but been unable to gain a foothold this morning. Audric listened as if he had been solely my champard, and not the bound servant of the seraph, the winged-warrior Raziel himself.
Chapter 10
I laid my amulets aside, wearing only a healing conjure to lessen my practice session aches, and ate breakfast—oatmeal, because two teeth were loose from the fighting. A knock sounded on my door and, distracted by the sting of yogurt on a busted lip, I answered it in my bathrobe, the ruby velvet soft against the abrasions on my shoulders. Any knock while the shop was closed had to mean Rupert or Audric. Both had seen me in much less.
As I unlatched the door, the smell hit me and my entire body clenched. Kylen.
Caramel, brown sugar, and vanilla with a gingerlike hint of heat. My body reacted instantly. I threw the door wide, mage-sight flashing on before it banged open. Thaddeus Bartholomew was a huge form composed of reddish-gold with hints of green light. I reached for him, heat rising in me like lava from the earth’s crust, like a megatsunami. My lips found his mouth. He tasted like a bakery. He smelled wonderful.
Distantly, I heard a voice say, “Get her amulets. Quick.”
I could hear panting. Need thrummed through me. His hands pushed aside my robe. I tore at his clothes, found his throat with my teeth, and bit down. Hard. His arms came around me, lifting my bare bottom with heated palms. His seraph ring flared, scorching my buttock. My legs wrapped around him, pulling him closer.
Something slipped over my head. The world tilted. Agony and blistering cold twisted through me. I gasped and drew back, hissing with pain. My spine arched back and wrenched forward in an electric spasm. Mage-sight snapped off, leaving a whiteout of frozen emptiness. Heat paled and cooled so fast it crackled through me like breaking ice. Like a glacier calving and falling. I dropped to the hallway floor, fingernails carving into the old wood.
“Blood of Michael, what was that?” someone asked.
I threw back my head, tossing my hair, which had come undone. I smelled kylen. I wanted. But some minute, newly rational part of my brain catalogued the symptoms and knew what had happened. I pulled that stable fragment of myself around me even as I tugged the torn lapels of my robe over my naked flesh. I was panting, and I could smell my heat, a raw, wild smell of roses and almonds and a hint of blood. From my place on the floor, I looked up.
Rupert and Audric were restraining Thadd, who was growling like an untamed animal, his face twisted in need and fury. He battled the two big men as Rupert found Thadd’s police sigil with one hand and opened it. The sigils carried by the state police had built-in conjures, including an antimage conjure. Rupert pressed it against the cop’s bare chest. Thadd screamed.
That cool, composed part of me registered that he was emitting kylen pheromones at an unprecedent
ed rate. His genetic makeup had been hidden from him his whole life, arrested at conception by a powerful seraph conjure held in a turquoise ring, its band shaped like angel wings. My buttock stung where the ring had been pressed against my bare skin as it battled against mage-heat. The ring and his heritage had been a forbidden secret kept by his mother.
Until I made him take off the ring. The transformation that should have taken place in the womb had been held at bay by unknown incantations and unimaginable power. When the ring came off, it had begun in the body of an adult. His bones, organs, and cells had begun trying to transform him into a kylen from the genes up, in a single instant. With the ring back in place, the process was interrupted, but he was still kylen, still part seraph. Still smelled of caramel and ginger and hot, fierce, furious sex. I wanted him.
As the police sigil pressed into his bare chest, his scent faded. Intelligence returned to his eyes and they met mine. In their depths, I saw his anguish. The transformation and the constant low-level mage-heat were making him crazy. Only the partial protection of the ring and the sigil were keeping him sane. That and the fact that I wore my amulets almost constantly, which gave us both protection from my effect on him.
I gathered my robe closer. One-handed, I levered myself up from the floor. Reaching my feet, I caught the wall unsteadily and looked at our rescuers. Rupert and Audric were flushed and sweating. Blood streaked their faces and hands. I smelled it: human, half-breed, mage, and kylen. I’d torn at Thadd’s throat with my teeth, wanting the taste of his blood, and reopened the tear in my lip. I’d ripped at Rupert and Audric as they tried to separate us. The image of two rutting wolves hit me and I laughed. A shaky sound, but lucid. My friends were staring at me, guarded and cautious.
“I’m okay,” I said, almost like myself.