by Faith Hunter
Thadd shot again, his beast still moving. “These things don’t kill easy.”
I spun a throwing knife at him. It landed beside his foot, sliding along his boot sole, and Thadd’s eyes went large. “Use that,” I said. “Mine’s dead. Cut them enough and they bleed out.”
From 2 Samuel, I quoted a stone mage’s battle mantra as I picked another dragonet and cut into its tail, my arm moving with the tempo of my voice, “God, my rock”—cut and cut—“in Him will I take refuge.” Cut and cut and cut. The beast was a scaled, catlike thing with four-inch fangs. It whirled, its back feet and most of the tissue from one hip gone in a bloody heap. It snarled, spitting venom, and sprang at me, raking the air with razor claws. “My shield, and the horn of my salvation.” Three cuts.
Choosing a move based on its form, I ducked beneath its lunge and stabbed up in the sleeping cat move, into its tender underbelly. Its momentum carried the killing stroke deeper, eviscerating it. The jar of its landing traveled up my shoulder into my spine. Its entrails splatted on the ground and uncoiled in a messy heap. I beheaded the beast with a single strike. Settling into the rhythm of fighting, I hacked it into pieces. “My high tower, and my refuge; My savior, thou savest me from violence.” At my feet a second dragonet bled out, mewling like a kitten as it died. It was in dozens of pieces. “Four down, five more to go.” The assault of Darkness was in a group of nine. Most of them were concentrating on the seraph overhead. Easy pickings for us.
From across the street, Eli and a ragtag cluster of humans raced from a pile of dead spawn and daywalkers toward the seraph. I picked out another dragonet. Thadd shouted advice to the approaching humans on how to kill the beasts. The group spread out and circled an eight-foot-long wasplike thing with demi-wings and knifelike claws. I shouted scripture and attacked another beast. A trio of Flames darted in and pierced its flesh to either side of my sword. They disappeared inside. The beast howled with pain.
Above me, Cheriour tilted his body at an impossible angle, his feet to the sky, head toward the earth, arms reaching down. Like me, he was chanting scripture, a single line over and over. “And behold, a pale horse.” It was a quote from Revelation, and as war cries went, it seemed pretty pallid, but I wasn’t complaining. His sword no longer simply cut the dragonets in two. Now he was slicing and dicing, leaving them in numerous pieces, none large enough to regenerate. And then I remembered the full scriptural quote. “And behold, a pale horse, and he that sat upon him, his name was Death.” Cheriour was calling upon one of the four horses of the apocalypse. I shivered. It was warfare most extreme.
I dispatched my target and whirled, seeking another, searching up and down the street. Groups of humans were killing succubi, stabbing the woman shapes while they screamed, entreating mercy, or bared their breasts, offering sex. Beside me, humans finished off their dragonet prey. Thadd, reeking of ginger, stood over the unmoving bodies of two others.
I sucked in a breath that sounded like a bellows and lowered my blades. The muscles in my arms were stiff, my fingers frozen in place on the hilts. I hurt in a dozen new places. I was burned, bitten, and had sustained a glancing blow from a fast-moving stinger. But I was alive. Euphoria shot through me and I raised my head, howling in exultation. All the Darkness were dead. The town was saved.
Cheriour landed beside me in the street, his primary flight feathers brushing the snow as he closed them with a whoosh like storm wind. I turned to him, grinning with victory. And saw his sword. It was still drawn, raised over his head. Beside me, a man fell to his knees, then face-first onto the frozen, crusted snow.
Chapter 18
Down the street, a fighter fell. In the shadows, the man who had been consorting with a succubus lay still, blood flowing from his mouth and nose.
“Stop,” I said, horrified. “Stop.” I stepped to the seraph, instinctively raising my sword.
I heard a woman scream from an open doorway, a wail of grief. A child called for its father. They were dying. The Sword of Punishment had been raised against the town.
Cheriour looked down at me, and at my raised sword. His victorious face transformed, the light of battle in his eyes dying. When he spoke, his voice was touched with sorrow. “You would wage war against the High Host, little mage?”
My joy and battle-lust leached away, leaving horror in their place, knowing it was hopeless. Even if I attacked him, he would win. And even more would die for my insolence. Slowly, my sword arm fell. “No.” Fighting was worthless now. No one, no mage working alone, could defeat a seraph. Perhaps with an army . . . but I didn’t have an army. Rebellion and fear warred inside me, my fists gripping so hard on my weapons that they ached.
I didn’t want to do this. I didn’t want to beg.
Forcing my hands to unclench, I dropped the sword and knife to the snow at my feet. Hearing the cries of the dying, feeling the weight of them in my deepest heart, I crumpled to my knees. From the Psalms, the book humans and mages called upon during war, plague, and punishment, I pleaded, “O Jehovah, have mercy upon me. Heal my soul; For I have sinned against thee.”
Cheriour answered, voice like a gong, and I recognized Deuteronomy. “When the LORD thy God shall deliver them up before thee, and thou shalt smite them; then thou shalt utterly destroy them,” he belled. “Thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor show mercy unto them.”
Thadd knelt beside me and quoted, the lines also from Psalms, “Have mercy upon me, O Jehovah, for I am in distress. Have mercy upon me; For I am desolate and afflicted.”
Cheriour looked at him as if seeing the cop for the first time. His teal eyes widened, and his nostrils flared. After a moment, he said, “I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy.”
More scripture. Was that a good thing? I bowed my head.
A kirk elder, the hem of his brown robes splashed with gore, stepped close. Others clad in black moved and fell to their knees near him. When he spoke, I recognized Culpepper’s voice, quoting, bouncing around in Psalms, “Hear, O Jehovah, and have mercy upon me. Mercy and truth are met together.”
The others near him began to pray. I heard the words in an overlay of litany. “O turn unto me, and have mercy upon me.” “Give thy strength unto thy servant.” “Save the son of thy handmaid.” Culpepper knelt in the snow beside me, unexpectedly close. In my peripheral vision, I saw more townspeople falling to their knees. Beyond them, bodies dropped in the street, lifeless.
“Please. You can’t kill them.” Ciana’s voice jolted through me. I raised my head. Cheriour whipped his sword down. It sought her chin, the point touching the tender flesh of her throat. I froze, one hand lifted.
“You reek of Mole Man’s blood,” Cheriour murmured, his tone a minor chord of uncertainty. “As did the beasts.”
“They stole the blood of Mole Man’s progeny,” Lucas’ voice called from the shadows, growing clearer as he neared. “They held me prisoner. Raziel, second to Michael the Archangel, the revealer of the rock, he rescued me. But not before they took my blood. Not before they used it to make new dragonets that smell like Mole Man’s blood, and that heal from mortal wounds.”
“Is this possible? That the Darkness has made a new thing?” Cheriour whispered, his words the rustling of hollow reeds in a summer wind. “Darkness has made no new thing since it created sin.”
“The evil smells like both Mole Man’s blood and Darkness. The creatures you fought in the sky are old things conjured with my blood and with the blood of Darkness and with the blood of seraphs. Ciana, come here.”
Ciana stepped back from the seraph’s sword, blue eyes staring in her pale face. Raziel’s pin blazed like a torch on her chest, casting light to the snow.
“The human speaks truth,” Audric said. “I am bound to Raziel—”
“Audric, don’t!” Rupert shouted from the darkness.
“I have to. For the town. I am his for beck and call,” Audric said, voice so low it scarcely breathed into the air, “my blood
and bone and sinew.” The ancient words of binding a half-breed to a seraph. Cheriour hesitated, the point of his sword arcing down to point at the ground.
Culpepper stared at Audric, his eyes cunning. My heart clenched tightly. Audric had given himself away.
“For Mole Man,” Ciana said, staring up into the seraph’s face.
Lucas said, “Show mercy to the town he died for.”
The seraph looked out over the growing crowd, their shuffling feet and labored breath loud in the night. “You wish this, little human child, progeny of Mole Man?”
“Yes. Please.” She folded her hands together, her dark hair loose and curling around her waist. If her dress hadn’t been saturated with Zeddy’s blood, and if blood hadn’t dried in the ridges of her hands, the pose would have made a lovely picture. But her eyes and face no longer held the innocence of a child. They carried the weight and knowledge of war and death in them. She had seen too much in the past hour.
Cheriour looked from Ciana to me to Audric. Lastly, his gaze fell on Elder Culpepper. The older man raised his hands and clasped them together in a sign of piety and entreaty. A cold wind blew along the street, whistling through the buildings, a high-pitched paean over the whispered scripture. I shivered hard, clamping my teeth together to stop their chattering. Cheriour breathed the wind deeply into his lungs. The snow beneath his feet melted in a sudden rush, leaving him standing on ancient, cracked asphalt in a shin-deep puddle. A teal-colored mist seeped from the surface of his skin, glowing with a faint light. He inhaled again. The water at his feet steamed.
As if he had forgotten us, the seraph stepped up onto the snow and walked down the street, snow melting with each footfall. His sword dropped, as if forgotten. Thadd looked at me, a question in his eyes. “I don’t know,” I said.
Cheriour stopped at the body of a man and a succubus, their blood mingled in a frozen crimson pool. With the point of his sword, he nudged the Darkness. Her full breasts were bared, and moved with languid enticement. Standing alone, he bent over them, breathing deeply. He was sniffing the succubus. Snow melted beneath him.
His wings shifted, the feathers rustling. Slowly, they rose, long flight feathers brushing the street. The pale down beneath was caught in the glow of an amulet, one of the ones I had thrown early in the battle. The nevus, the major vessels feeding the wing structure, were glowing. As I watched, they brightened, the blood superheated as if for flight, his pulse rapid and uneven.
At his groin, the flesh brightened between the seams of his battle armor, pulsing in time with his heart. His scent filled the street, carried on the cold air. The first time we met, when he judged me. Battle-lust and his sigil had protected us from mage-heat. Even now, he hadn’t gone into heat at the presence of a mage, the golden disc of his sigil protecting him from me.
But he was going into heat at the presence of a succubus.
The light on his face, his neck, beneath his wings, glowing from the joints in his armor, blasted out. I turned away. But not before I saw the expression on his face. Lust. Hot and demanding. Cruel.
At the sight, my own lust rose, a throb of need low in my belly and high in my breasts. I covered my face, hunger beating in time with my blood. Cheriour turned to me.
“The next great war begins. A mage is in place,” he said, his voice like low brass bells and wind instruments, again playing in minor chords, mournful and stricken. “A harbinger she is, and a guardian.” He strode to me, the packed ice melting in his path and running across the snow, water mixed with blood. His wings closed and opened, his scent caught in the wind they made—the smell of sex. My knees went weak.
“The beast came for Thorn,” Lucas said from beside me, his voice rigid with anger and fear. “It said, ‘I have you again, body, blood, and spirit.’ Did Forcas have her once?”
I took Lucas’ arm to keep me upright, desire purling through me. His question rode above the need, and I said, “I was taken by a Darkness when I was a child—”
The seraph raised his sword, point down, and slid it into the sheath. Seraph-steel rasped like the dying breath of an army as it slid home, echoing up and down the street, cutting off my words.
His wings lifted and swept down, and he leaped, his body shooting for the sky. The downdraft threw me to the ground, wrenching my grip from Lucas. And he was gone, questions unanswered. The mage-heat that had been building fell away like a wave splashing on the beach, sliding back out to sea, leaving only a trace of want in its wake.
Snowflakes drifted down, a silent dance of lacy ice. They settled on my exposed skin and melted, pinpricks of pain. A hush settled on the town. No one moved for a long moment, every face turned to the clouds. Ciana slipped her small hand into mine and I gripped it hard, feeling awe and wonder at the presence of a seraph.
“That’s really cool,” Ciana said, and I agreed.
“Take her,” Culpepper said, his tone commanding.
Before I could react, a crowd of men surged in. With a soft click, a shield opened over us, Ciana and me in the center. I hadn’t opened it. I hadn’t even reacted. I looked down at my stepdaughter. “How—?” Her hand was on the seraph pin gifted to her by Raziel. Obviously, a seraphic shield of protection was contained in the pin. Somehow, Ciana knew how to open the conjure, when even mages couldn’t use seraph energies.
Beyond the shield, a group of elders stood. Ringing them were blood-soaked townspeople, all dressed in black; the orthodox, watching us. My shields were created to hide me from sight. Not so with this one. The dense crowd surged together, several deep, only yards away. Weapons that had recently been buried in the dying bodies of spawn were lifted in tight fists. The power of the shield burned into the snow, showing a clear line where its protection began. The throng circled around us.
“You cannot hide, mage,” Culpepper called. “You brought the Darkness here.” The crowd murmured agreement, faces hostile and bitter, fists clenched. “You called the Darkness to you with your wanton ways,” Culpepper said. “The evil of sexual sin came at your behest and now good men are dead because of your siren’s call.”
Between the shield wall and the black-clad townspeople, raced a narrow ring of my supporters, weapons drawn. Thadd, Lucas, Eli, and Audric. Rupert and Jacey, her young daughter Cissy, three of her sons, and Big Zed, Jacey’s husband. Sliding around the shield wall from behind came old Miz Essie, Sennabel, and Polly. The elder’s wife walked with a limp, her dress stained with blood. Her face was flushed and sweaty from the spawn poison coursing through her body. I gripped Ciana’s hand and blinked back tears at the unanticipated presence of friends.
“Get away,” Culpepper demanded, his fists clenched. “You cannot defend a whore.”
“The seraph didn’t call her a whore. He called her a harbinger and a guardian. A guardian of this town,” Miz Essie said, her old voice crackling.
“I reckon that’s so. Heard it with my own ears,” Shamus Waldroup said, edging along the front of the shield, followed by his wife Do’rise. Polly’s husband, Elder Jasper, stepped through the crowd, pushing aside the orthodox, and took his wife’s hand, feet planted in a runnel of bloody water.
“Look at her, stealing a child away from its mother, kidnapping her beneath the vile shelter of mage-power,” a woman shouted.
I didn’t answer. Marla didn’t come forward to add her complaints to the elder’s. I had no idea where Ciana’s mother was, but it was likely under the sheets with her latest fancy. And the fact that the town thought the shield was one I had made was protection Ciana might need. So far, no one had ever noticed the pin Raziel had given her, and that was a very good thing.
“Whore,” another woman shouted from the edge of the mob. She lobbed a stone; it hit the shield and bounced away with a spark of light the humans could see.
“Why do you defend a mage-slut? Would you fools die for the likes of her?” a man near the front called out.
“Would you murder your friends to get her?” Elder Jasper asked. The man he rebuked frowned a
nd looked at the bloody weapon in his hand. He hefted it and dropped it into his palm as if considering his answer.
Three men in rags, their feet swaddled in strips of leather and old tires, brands on their cheeks, moved next to the elder. Members of the EIH. They carried bloody weapons, clearly part of the town’s defense. Tears of the seraph, what were they doing? Another elder, his face set in hard lines, slid in, trailed by two black-clad women, Mrs. Abernathy and Florence Watkins. They had been among those who judged me before my trial and found me wanting. They stood with me now, facing their neighbors, the other orthodox. My tears fell in earnest, trickling slowly through the dried blood and gore on my cheeks, burning the injured skin.
A phalanx of miners carrying bloodied picks and shovels, guns at their waists a clear threat, entered from the west. I recognized several of them as men we had bought from over the years. Another group of miners looped around from the east. All were dressed in jeans, plaid shirts, jackets in browns and yellows, colors often worn by members of the reformed movement. At their head was Ken Schmidt, the miner who had a crush on me.
A Jewish family joined my supporters, grown sons carrying bulky automatic weapons in both hands, heads topped by black yarmulkes. The women wore olive green, and handled similar weapons with a surprising confidence. Pushing their way through the crowd, ten men in braids and jeans, carrying both traditional stone axes and hunting rifles, joined the supporters. They moved close to the shield wall, standing equidistant from one another, facing out. Cherokee.
The numbers standing for me were growing, but so was the opposition. Rumbling and name-calling began, calls of slut-lover and mage-lover used interchangeably. Someone in the back cried out that I should be burned at the stake. Some of my supporters racked their weapons at that one. Another quoted scripture, calling for my death.