by Faith Hunter
Maria heard the clunk of plastic against plastic.
“And Sword Man chases them away before they can suck out his blood and eat his body.”
She was bothered by the violence of their play, but the world was a violent place—especially now. The noticias weren’t showing the video from Mineral City over and over again like they had been, but it still showed up at least once a day in some context.
Maria said a quick Hail Mary.
“And then a bunch of soldiers drive up and shoot Sword Man.”
“So the Dragon flies up and kills the soldiers,” José said, knocking over the soldiers before Enrique could even finish setting them up. “And then he kills the Spiders. And then he knocks over the house.”
There was a scrape as a chair was shoved across the floor.
“But more soldiers—”
“The Dragon breathes at them and they die. And then the Dragon breaks the store. And then he breaks another house. And then he stamps on a truck. And then—”
“That’s no fair. He can’t break everything.”
“Sure he can. He’s the Dragon. Nobody can stop the Dragon.”
The plastic-on-plastic noises continued, and Maria heard Riqi scramble around the room and then plop back down on the carpet.
“The Lady in Black steps out of the kirk and pulls out her sword and tells the Dragon to go away.”
“The Dragon flies over the Lady in Black and stomps on the kirk,” José replied.
“No he doesn’t! The Lady is too fast for the Dragon, and she stabs him, and the Dragon falls down.”
The Lady in Black? Maria didn’t remember José having any girl dolls. Maybe it was something new.
“Stop cheating, Riqi!”
“And then she stabs him again and the Dragon dies.”
“That’s not what Padre Pedro said in kirk. He said that nothing was strong enough to beat the Dragon except the Most High and the seraphs!”
“Uh-uh. The Lady in Black is stronger than dragons. I saw it on TV.”
“It’s still cheating!”
“No it isn’t!”
“Yes it is, Riqi. You cheated and you beat my best guy and I’m not playing with you anymore!”
“I didn’t cheat, José. I saw it! And I don’t want to play with you and your crummy toys!”
“They’re not crummy!”
Maria emerged from the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron, just as the boys started wrestling on the floor, scattering the assortment of Pre-Ap plastic acciones and a stuffed cloth dragon.
“Enrique Felipe López Rodriguez and José Antonio Gómez Gonzales, stop that this instant!”
The boys froze at the sound of her voice, then quickly separated. Good—she couldn’t see any bruises or scrapes.
“What is this all about? Why are you destroying my house?”
José stood silently and wiped his nose with his sleeve. Enrique wouldn’t raise his head to meet her glare.
“Riqi, what did you do?”
The boy slowly pointed at one of the figurines on the carpet, a black-clad woman with long, red hair and a silver sword.
Maria stepped over the mess to gently, reverently pick up the statuette she’d bought only a few days before.
“This is not a toy. Do you understand? It’s not for play. This is Mami’s imagen—serious business. It’s time for you to go home now, José. And I’ll deal with you later, Enrique.”
Maria put the estatua back in its proper place in the shrine on the other side of the room, next to Our Lady of Guadalupe and the Sagrado Corazon. She’d offer a full rosary to the new Lady later this evening, but for now she lit a votive candle to ask for forgiveness after Riqi’s rough handling.
Wings on Site
Summer 105 PA / 2117 AD
Faith Hunter
Vonn tossed the stub of his cigar into the creek, knowing that the kirk elder would smell the tobacco, and also knowing that the man could do nothing about his infringement. No one had seen him smoking. Scent and smoke weren’t proof of guilt, and unless Scoggins wanted to search him for contraband, the elder had no case. Most elders had loosened the chains on personal habits for smoking and drinking, but Elder Scoggins was old school—hardline and unyielding. A real pain in the ass until you needed him on the battlefield. You get a soldier wounded or in trouble, and Elder Scoggins would dash in where seraphs feared to fly, and lay down cover fire until the soldier was safe. The men might hate his Scripture-spouting guts, but they respected Scoggins in every way that counted.
“Evening, Master Sergeant,” Scoggins said.
Vonn grunted a hello and knelt to fill his canteen from the snowmelt stream. Icy water chilled his fingers, making them stiff when he tried to put the cap back on. Without asking, he lifted his hand and Scoggins placed his own canteen into Vonn’s outstretched hand. Vonn filled it too, capped it, and handed it back before standing.
With a smile in his voice, Scoggins said, “You’re a good man, Master Sergeant—despite your personal habits and lack of piety.”
Vonn grunted again and shifted his rucksack to his other shoulder. “It’ll be night soon. The kylen will be back with intel. Let’s get the men into a circle and a fire started.”
“Of course,” Scoggins murmured. Vonn really hated that smug amusement.
Scoggins followed him up the steep hill to the clearing his patrol had staked out. Claire was talking to a group of men, standing on a fallen tree to bring her face nearly level with theirs. The tiny priestess had a beauty that was so perfect it was nearly unearthly, and—according to Scoggins—evil in its sensuality and seductive charms. If he went only by his men’s reactions, Vonn might agree. The soldiers were focused on her like flies on honey. But Vonn didn’t think the priestess was evil; he didn’t think any neomage was inherently evil. In the Last War, they fought on the side of Light until the remnants of the Army tried to blow them up. He’d never been completely clear on who’d been on the side of evil in that little skirmish.
Claire looked over her shoulder at him and smiled, her cupid mouth curling up like a bow. Vonn lifted a finger in acknowledgment and fought down his own smile. At his side, Scoggins murmured something about not suffering a witch to live, and if they hadn’t needed Claire’s magics so much right now, Vonn might have worried about Scoggins murdering her in her sleep. But they did need her to find an entire platoon, and Scoggins would never kill anything or anyone who might save a soldier in danger.
The forty men they were hunting had been on routine patrol when they’d just up and vanished. Their commanding officer radioed in at dusk, seventy-two hours ago, and then . . . nothing. Nada. They’d had an assey with them, Sam Wong, and even he hadn’t called in. All assey’s carried satellite phones, so there was no way the men were out of range. If Investigator Wong wasn’t checking in, then something bad had happened.
Vonn’s men were standing on the last known coordinates of the missing platoon, and if Claire had her way, they’d camp tonight right here. Claire had taken a reading—whatever the saints that was—and said the lost men had slept comfortably here before moving on in the morning. She insisted that the platoon had decamped at dawn and headed east. The tracks suggested that she was right, and that his men would be safe here tonight.
Vonn knew that the priestess had layered reasons—political and personal—for agreeing to join them on this hunt, but he was pretty sure the biggest reason of them all was the presence of the kylen, though Eldratos never so much as looked at her. Claire touched her seraph stone and looked to the sky, waiting on the arrival of the kylen like a drunk waited on his next bottle. She was seraph-struck, for sure. But a lusting mage wasn’t his problem. His men were.
“MacEachern,” he said, “take two and gather deadfall wood. Myers, get a fire started. What the saints is wrong with you people? A pretty face turn your mind from duty? Who’s got KP tonight? Simko killed a warren of rabbits with her sharpshooting, and I expect rabbit stew tonight, even if it is flavored with dehydrate
d-not-much-a-nothin’. Sundown’s comin’. Get your as—backsides in gear.”
The soldiers dispersed and Vonn was pleased to see that they didn’t dawdle. He continued to cajole his platoon. “We got ten bunnies for the stewpot and I’m not of a mind to bite down on a bone. We got dehydrated carrots and dehydrated peas and dehydrated onions and let’s hear it for the maker of the dinner!”
“Hail to the dehydrator!” his unit answered, laughing.
Scoggins had pursed his prissy lips the first time he heard the joke, but this time he just smiled. Maybe the elder was coming along after all. Claire’s tinkling laugh joined the troops’ and more than one man turned her way. Not good. No one, not a kirk elder, not an assey, not even an Enclave witchy woman, should be able to distract his patrol. But before he could come up with a response to the dangerous reaction, he heard the sound of air whistling through feathers overhead.
“Atten-hut! Wings on site!”
The kylen guiding Vonn’s patrol landed with a sweep of flight feathers and folded his wings. Funny thing that. Somehow none of the troops had ever seen the kylen fly. They’d seen him land plenty of times, but never take off. There was a rumor of a video showing kylen soaring alongside seraphs in a mopping-up operation years after the Last War, but Vonn had never seen it or met anyone who had. He almost doubted that they could fly; the kylen’s eighteen-foot wingspan was impressive, but a lot smaller than a seraph’s. Still, he had to be coming down from somewhere. And the intel he’d gathered from above had been spot on so far.
This was the first time a first-gen kylen had been seen outside of a Realm of Light for generations. And Eldratos had military training, even boasting the rank of lieutenant, bestowed on him by some grateful, but now long-dead, general. Vonn wasn’t sure why the High Host was interested in this one missing platoon, but whatever the reason was, he welcomed it. He had friends among the missing men. They all did.
And whatever minor discipline problems she might cause, Vonn was just glad to have the priestess along, too. She and Eldratos had magic, and that might be the only thing that allowed them to rescue the missing patrol. Well, that and the brand-spanking-new RPGs they carried. These models launched grenades packed with some newfangled explosives—something holy, built to destroy Darkness in any of its forms.
“As you were, men,” Eldratos said, his voice so musical it was like bells ringing.
The men weren’t what Vonn was worried about. The master sergeant saw the neomage raise a hand and grip her seraph stone so hard that her knuckles blanched white. Even with the stone to damp her mage heat, it was hard for the priestess to be in the presence of the kylen. Eldratos was beautiful in ways that made even the gorgeous Claire pale by comparison. He was nearly seven feet tall, with ebony skin, tightly curled black hair, and vivid blue eyes. His wings were the pure white of a swan. Vonn was totally straight, but he could see how the kylen’s face and form would tempt any other-than-straight man. The thought made him uncomfortable, and Vonn turned so the kylen was to his side.
“Did you find the trail?”
“I did. But I also found the train.” At Vonn’s blank look, Eldratos touched his own seraph stone for a moment before dropping his hand. There was something almost tentative about the gesture. “A passenger and freight train is over the mountain, the tracks in front of it buried beneath tons of ice and rock. The Omega is with it; Darkness created the avalanche to stop her.”
“Omega?”
“She who you call the consul-general. The battle mage.”
“Holy sh—” Vonn cut short the expletive. “You mean Thorn St. Croix?” Eldratos nodded once. Vonn had heard of her. Every military man in the nation had heard of her, and had seen her fight Darkness on SNN. She was an amazing warrior.
Things fell into place in Vonn’s mind. If Thorn St. Croix was here, and the Darkness was trying to stop her From getting somewhere, then maybe that Darkness had something to do with his missing platoon. Vonn pulled out a much-folded paper map. He knelt and spread it open on his knee. “We’re here,” he pointed,” as near as I can say. We got railroad tracks here and here. Which one is St. Croix on?”
Eldratos pointed at a section of track that wound in a gorge between two nearly vertical mountain cliffs. He slid his finger over to the other side of one of the mountains. “And here are the tracks of your missing men, moving in this direction. The Omega prepares for battle. She does not know it, but she moves to fight the Darkness.”
“Darkness?”
Eldratos nodded slowly. “I believe the Darkness took your soldiers.”
“That’s what I was afraid you’d say.”
As shadows lengthened, Vonn marked the reference points and tried to figure out where the missing platoon had been going. As he worked, his troops secured the perimeter, set up camp, and fixed a meal. Securing the perimeter had meant putting out sensors that would alert them of anything that moved in the shadows beyond the fire. There would be no patrols tonight, as they’d all be inside a Charmed Circle provided by the priestess. It felt strange to depend on magic walls he couldn’t see or smell, but mage-bought security was better than anything his men could provide with human senses. Instead, they’d pull shifts inside, keeping watch on the forest and monitoring the sensors from the safety of the mage circle.
Patrols with mages and the occasional kylen had their advantages, but some things just felt gut-wrong, like huddling inside instead of being out there on watch.
Vonn watched as Claire took a stick and started walking a circle, scratching it into the dirt around the clearing. Behind her walked a sharpshooter, Corporal Susan Simko, carrying a fifty-pound bag of salt, letting it dribble out of the bag at a slow, steady rate, into the small trench Claire left behind her. Vonn felt more comfortable assigning a female soldier to close duty with the priestess. The Charmed Circle would be huge to allow for so many people inside, but Claire was stronger than most mages, maybe stronger than St. Croix, and he trusted her to maintain a Circle big enough for them all.
And that reminded him. He tapped his com unit and said into the mic, “Mac.”
“Here, sergeant,” Specialist Michaela MacEachern answered.
“You should have enough deadwood to burn down Atlanta. Get your men back here. The mage is ready to close the Circle.”
“Sarge, Malc found something. Maybe you better see this.” MacEachern gave her coordinates and signed off. She sounded spooked, and Mac wasn’t someone to get spooked easily.
Vonn thought about going alone, but he had the kylen, and so he walked to the winged warrior and stood at attention, waiting to be recognized. Eldratos was standing, his wings half-furled, his face and hands lifted to the sky, still as a statue, staring at the sunset. It was nearly the time for Jubilee and while most soldiers participated in the worship of the Most High at sunset back at base, few did while on active duty. Getting lost in the Jubilee meant taking one’s eyes off possible danger—a way to get killed. Vonn wasn’t religious himself at all, but he recognized the expression on Eldratos’ face as pure passion and true fervor, the zeal of the believer. It might be easier for the kylen; he might have actually seen the Most High. Scoggins stood to the rear of the kylen, his own eyes closed, his mouth moving in praise.
When the moment passed, Eldratos dropped his hands, snapped his wings shut, and turned to Vonn. “Yes, human?”
“My men have found something, sir.”
Eldratos cocked his head and nodded once. “Let us see this something.”
Vonn ordered a squad to prepare to move out and told Claire to hold off on setting the Circle. She didn’t like it, but she complied. The men’s weapons and night-vision gear ready, Vonn moved into the trees, Eldratos on his heels. Scoggins called out a prayer asking for protection for them all, and Vonn nodded at the elder, appreciative of the fervor of the man’s belief, even as he found it difficult to feel such zeal himself.
It was nearly pitch black when they reached MacEachern’s work detail. They were twitchy, hyper-aler
t, looking out over the woods and even overhead. Vonn saw instantly what the problem was. He’d seen pictures of the assey, Sam Wong, and the head on a pike was his. What little was left of the body scattered about the tiny clearing was torn to shreds; it was a safe bet that Wong had been eaten.
Eldratos sniffed, his eyes and nose searching over the nearby woods. “Spawn,” he murmured. Vonn picked up a bone, a femur, he thought. There were teeth marks on it.
“There’s more, sir,” the specialist said. “This way.” She led them down a narrow trail to a low ditch. In the bottom of it were two more men—or rather, the remains of two men. Not much left but bones and scraps of bloody cloth. Soldiers. Also eaten.
MacEachern said, “We found where we think they’re coming from. A hole in the ground, maybe an entrance to an old mine. About two clicks that way.” She pointed.
Vonn recalled the map and the points of reference he’d marked on it. He said to Eldratos. “Recommendation, sir. Let’s put the men to bed and secure the mage circle. Take a look at the mine site in the morning when spawn are sleeping and the troops are fresh. Close it permanently.”
“Your recommendation is wise. So be it,” the kylen said.
“Back to camp. Double time,” Vonn said.
“But, Sarge, the men . . .”
“You collected their dog tags?” When MacEachern nodded, Vonn went on. “We’ll come back for what’s left of the bodies after we deal with the problem. Let’s get back to camp for now. Good work, Mac.”
“Thank you, Sergeant.”
Back in the clearing, Vonn counted his men and nodded to the witchy woman. With a snap of her fingers, she closed the Charmed Circle, and shut out all danger. They were safe—for now.
But there were too many strange things happening, all close together. There was a missing patrol and men eaten by spawn. A first-gen kylen had asked to lead his men. A licensed witchy woman—a priestess, no less—had asked to join the rescue. Thorn St. Croix was only a mountain over. The mine site they were going to close was between his camp and the tracks the battle mage was trapped on. No way was all that a coincidence.