by Faith Hunter
My mind cleared fast. I shoved the ring on his finger; it instantly shrank to fit. I ripped off a healing amulet and pressed it into the arterial cut. Like me, he had lost a lot of blood. It had taken a lot to heal me, with his wrist pressed into the wound on my throat.
Oh, saints’ balls. I had kylen blood in my system.
I twisted the top off a bottle of water and dribbled some between Thadd’s lips. He coughed and his eyes fluttered open. Chrysacolla green irises were clear and bright in his pale, white face. “More,” he whispered. I lifted his head and held the bottle to his mouth so he could drink. He drained the water and lay there, gasping. I drank a whole bottle, hoping to restore my body.
“Call mage in dire,” he said, his voice grating.
“If I do, they’ll know what you are,” I said. “And they might kill the others out of spite. And then they’ll take you away.” It hurt to speak and my voice sounded worse than his, a stranger’s croak. I touched my throat again. A large patch of skin was numb and weak-feeling, as if it might burst open again. The wound had taken out a huge amount of tissue. My vocal cords must have been damaged by the gunshot, maybe destroyed and rebuilt from nothing. I wondered how much kylen blood had been deposited into my bloodstream. And what that might mean.
“It’ll be dark soon,” he said. “Then it’ll be too late anyway. Dead if you call, dead if you don’t. And I’d rather die any other way than to be eaten alive.”
Spawn hunted at night. I looked around, considering. The horses were gone, except for Homer. The fighting was at a lull. Three forms hid behind boulders, one under the overhang of the hellhole. Durbarge looked around the rock where he had taken cover. He was prone, a long rifle cradled in his arms like a lover. “You two alive?” he called.
Thadd looked down. I felt shock surge through him, but he nodded and pulled his duster over his feathers. “We’ll live.”
I looked around, evaluating our options. There weren’t many. The men were in close proximity to the assey, though, and maybe I could cover us. “Durbarge!” I shouted. “Turn off any assey gadgets you have.” Asseys are equipped to trap and capture witchy-women—unlicensed mages. The devices might disrupt the shield. To Thadd I said, “We get to Durbarge. Then we put you and Rickie on Homer and send you down the mountain, out of seraph range. I can keep us alive an hour before calling mage in dire. Maybe.”
“Durbarge already knows something’s up. You can’t protect me anymore,” Thadd said bitterly.
I looked at the cop. “You don’t have to worry about the assey.”
“I’ll have to worry about him as long as I live,” Thadd said.
“Or as long as he lives.”
Thadd’s face grew even whiter as it drained of blood. “That’s murder,” he whispered.
“I’m not planning to kill him.” I heard the fury beneath my words and felt a spurt of surprise at my own anger. “But if it comes to it, well, I don’t have a soul. Besides, they can only execute me once.”
Thadd kindly didn’t point out that I had been dead one time today already. Instead he said, “And if I do what you suggest—run, and let you commit murder for me—then what?”
“Beats me. Let’s move.” I rose to my knees, then my feet, feeling the world whirl sluggishly around me as my blood pressure stabilized. Thadd took my elbow, and I said, “Now!” We ran toward Durbarge, the shield moving with us, a mutable force, and fell behind the rock where he lay. Tomas and Eli fell over Rickie, stanching blood, checking his pulse. I couldn’t tell if he was breathing. I tossed Joseph Barefoot two healing amulets. Long seconds passed before I saw Rickie’s chest rise and fall.
“Call mage in dire,” Durbarge demanded.
“She can’t. Rickie’s branded, not an innocent,” Thadd said. “He didn’t get wounded saving her, and she’s not near death. When she couldn’t speak, she used a healing amulet on both of us.” Durbarge looked from me to Thadd, his face debating whether to call us on it. Not giving him a chance to dispute, Thadd outlined my plan, ending with, “Surprise is gone. Without horses, we’ll never get down the mountain alive, even if Thorn could keep the shield open that long. I’ll get Rickie to safety, and get Audric and Rupert and the town fathers. We’ll start back up the mountain by dawn, if I have to shoot someone to get it done.”
“We don’t have much time,” I said. “I smell the succubi.”
“You can’t. They aren’t supposed to hatch until dawn,” Thadd said.
“Time isn’t always linear in a hellhole,” Durbarge said. He seemed to reach a decision, and pointed to the left and right of the hellhole with his rifle. “Two snipers. I can take them out with these”—he pulled two egg-shaped objects from a band at his waist—“but they might damage the entrance. And any hope of stealth will be gone.”
Eli chuckled. “I think it’s pretty well gone now, bro. I don’t think a couple hand grenades will make much of a difference. And Rickie’s as stable as we can get him.” He held one of the healing amulets to the light. “Pretty nifty little suckers. Hope you got a lot more.”
My lips curled at the thought of needing a lot more.
Durbarge assessed his lethal weapons as if checking their weight in each palm. He explained how they worked, and said, “Let’s do this, then. On three. One.” Durbarge pulled a pin from the first grenade. “Two.” I dropped the shield and Eli provided cover fire as the assey pulled the second pin. “Three.” He stood, and threw one in a long arc. The second grenade followed it in a slightly different direction.
I snapped the shield back over us and dropped to the ground, not because I needed to, but because Durbarge did. The explosions overlapped, vibrating through the earth, hurling debris and shrapnel into the air. Shattered rock, dust, and traces of blood hit the shield and rained to the ground in a circle around us. The quiet afterward was absolute. Durbarge pointed two fingers to Eli, then to the right, to himself, and then left. I dropped the shield and they separated, rising from the ground and dashing up the scree on either side of the entrance of the pit at a dead run. I could have told them not to bother. I could smell dead humans.
Minutes later, Thadd was on Homer, Rickie sitting up strapped to his back, straddling the Friesian’s rump, and heading downhill at a fast clip. I snapped the shield back over us and met Durbarge’s one good eye. “Why didn’t you call for help?” I asked. “You could have gotten troops here. Gotten seraphs here. That’s what the AAS does, isn’t it? Talk to the Seraphic High Council?”
“Troops are on the way, but a blizzard has formed up over the Mississippi River valley and is heading this way fast. There wasn’t time for a mobilization before the storm hits. And seraphs don’t listen to us much anymore,” he said, as if it were a well-known fact, instead of mere supposition. “Haven’t in two, three decades.”
“Invaders don’t have to listen to the conquered,” Joseph said. Durbarge didn’t reply to the heresy, and Joseph went on. “I told the men. Some operatives are gathering, but they come from the outlying hills and have to prepare for the storm first, so their families are safe. They’ll be here at noon tomorrow.”
“Too late,” I said. “It has to be today. I can smell something from the entrance. Something that wasn’t there the last time I went in. It smells like the queen smelled. It’s a little late to be asking this, but does anyone have a better plan?”
“You mean better than following a sexy, redheaded, sword-wielding neomage into a pit, battling spawn, dragonets, a major Dark mojo, and trying to kill some kinda aphrodisiac larvae like in some bad, Pre-Ap, B-grade movie?” Eli asked with a roguish grin. “Can’t think of one.” He looked at his watch. “We got one hour till sunset. Let’s boogie.”
I chuckled, slung my bag of goodies over a shoulder, and drew two blades—the walking stick blade and the tanto—and tabbed open the moving shield. “Stay close.”
With them trailing me, I levered myself up over the ledge to the mouth of the cave and stepped inside. Fear skittered up my spine.
Barak s
lammed his fist against the wall, drawing blood. The kylen was leaving. This was not acceptable. He raced to the bars and gripped them, oblivious to the pain of demon-iron as he shook them in the unyielding stone. His eyes, once a rich and vibrant shade of silver, had acquired dim red flecks. They grew with his anger. The bars held firm.
Across the passageway, a mage in heat moaned as the smell of his blood reached her. The sound brought up his head, and his nostrils quivered as he caught her scent. He swallowed, the muscles of his throat working harshly. “No,” he whispered. “I will not.” Slowly, the red lights in his irises began to fade and die. When they were gone, he stepped away from the doorway and fell to his feathers, dropping his head into his arms. “I will not.”
It wasn’t yet sunset, but I had learned to my chagrin that spawn, while nocturnal, were sometimes active in the protection of the pit when the sun was up. Once stirred to life, they were the same vicious little beasties they were at night. However, even with the gunfire and explosions, no one, and no thing, met us at the opening.
The passageway descended and the ambient light dropped off. I handed each man an illumination amulet and a healing amulet, and advanced into the dark at human speed. The air grew foul with the scent of death and sulfur, an acidic cloud. The men strapped on gas masks, looking like huge bipedal insects. No one had thought to bring a mask for me, but mage eyes and lungs are different from humans’, and the gases didn’t bother me as much.
Moving silently, following the map in my memory, we were down two levels by the time the sun set. A stagnant breeze blew up from the deeps. Chittering started ahead and to the sides as spawn began to wake.
At the sound, my amulets blazed into life, as did the stones in my pockets and in the bag I had slung across my back. The first spawn peered around the bend at our left. Before it could yowl a warning, I dropped the shield and beheaded it. “To the right,” I said. “Fast.” We made one more level before the alarm was sounded.
At a juncture of corridors hewn from the mountain of the Trine, new scents collided with the smell of waking spawn. Dragonets. Seraph. Mages. A ululating cry echoed through the tunnels. And the swarms attacked.
“Jehovah sabaoth!” I screamed. Moving with mage-speed, my skin blazing like a torch in the night, I advanced into the horde, blades flashing in the swan and the whirl-wind—moves created specifically for fighting spawn, taking off body parts. The spawn—always hungry, pulled their injured under them, feasting as others advanced to attack.
“Jesus,” Durbarge prayed, easing to my right, slicing with his own blades, beheading and maiming. He began his war chant, which I thought was from 2 Samuel. “And darkness was under his feet. And darkness was under his feet.”
Eli, to my left, shouted from Isaiah, “Thou shalt be visited of the LORD… and the flame of devouring fire.” As he yelled, he pumped the bag under his arm and shot gouts of fire from his flamethrower. Spawn screamed and burned and died.
The EIH fighters drew swords and shouted together, “I will draw my sword, my hand shall destroy them. ” The words brought me up short, and I misstepped. Teeth sank in my calf, above the battle boot. Pain shocked through me. With a single swipe, I beheaded the beast and kicked its teeth loose, the head flying away into the swarm. I settled myself with a simple crab move, wondering at the heretics’ choice of scripture. They were speaking from Exodus, the words of the enemy of the people of the Most High.
“Jehovah sabaoth!” I shouted, the words that came to me the first time I went into battle, as all battle cries that fight Darkness are given.
“The seraph I told you about is close,” I said to Durbarge and Eli. “I smell him.” And a mage was close too, gibbering, insanity like a festering wound in her mind. “Take me, take me, take me, take me, take me,” she cried silently. I tripped and fell, landing flat. Eli stepped over me, shouting my name, firing his flames. But the mind of the mage pulled me down into the cramped and flashing corners of her tormented memories.
I see him. His wings are iridescent green, softening to a paler green, like new leaves, on the underside and down. Silver hair curls around his high brow, gray eyes flecked with silver, and a narrow jaw with pointed chin. Barak. Baraqyal. The seraph.
His nevus pulses with fear and desire. Demon-iron shackles him to the wall of a chamber set aside for torture. Laughing daywalkers cut into his wings, hacking with demon-iron blades and with human steel. Severing them.
Gagging with reaction, with horror, I jerked back out of her mind. But not before I saw through her eyes, across a shadowed corridor. The seraph she desired was there, in a cell, only feet from me. Holding my weapons blade-down, I curled under Eli’s feet, between his legs, letting him fight over me. He held swords, and handled them the way he danced, with effortless ease. “Seraph? Barak?” I shouted.
“Here, mage!” he belled back, filled with joy. “Here I am! She sent you to me!”
She. The mage near him? No. Not her. Seraph stones. He meant Lolo. Suddenly, I was sure of it. I had the mage’s vision of him just now. And in a dream, in the vision of Lolo’s past, I had seen within the mind of the priestess a silver-haired seraph with green wings. Barak. Baraqyal. The name of the first seraph to take a mage as lover.
“Thorn?” Eli called, taking the head of a spawn with a back swing, and another one’s arms with the follow-through. “What’s going on?” When I didn’t answer, he said, “I want you between my legs, but not like this. Get up!”
My glove-covered knuckles brushed the smooth floor of the passageway. Suddenly I glimpsed a secret truth, saw it fully formed in the way of my people—a mage-truth. Barak, Baraqyal, had been the lover of Daria, the first mage to mate with a seraph, the first mage to produce a litter of kylen. I had questioned it before. Now it was all a horrifying kind of certainty—if Lolo was also Daria. “Yes,” I said. Beside me, a spawn fell, a leg half severed, its mouth working, sharp predator teeth rimed with blood. Almost mechanically, I brought the tanto down, beheading it. The blade jarred twice, on the thing’s spine, and on the stone beneath. A second one fell across the first, burned and smoking.
If Lolo had known he was here, then had she set all this up? My birth? Thadd’s birth? Machinations and devious, conniving schemes, set in place so we could—what? Rescue her lover? Take his place? Had she allowed so many to die, just so she could free Barak? Could Lolo have done this? And worse, if she had done all that, was I being foolish to assign only one motive to the wily old woman? Either way, could I leave him here, being tortured?
“Thorn?” Eli shouted.
Mage-fast, I spun from between his legs to my feet. “This way!”
Blades blurring, my flesh shining with speed and battle-lust, I ducked into a constricted cleft and out the other side. Raced along a narrow corridor. The tunnel was empty. No guards, no spawn. Holding swords low for defense, I looked into a cell.
Behind me, I heard a cry of pain and the grinding sound that flesh makes against rock. Eli squeezed into the tunnel and raced to me. “The others are too big to make it through. They’re holding the pass. What are we—Holy moly. It’s a seraph,” he said.
An exceptionally notorious seraph. “Meet Barak, also known as Baraqyal, the father of the kylen,” I said, hearing my bitter tone. “A Watcher. One of the Fallen Allied.”
“Dang, woman,” Eli breathed, leaning in toward the bars. Even shorn of his wings, the seraph was utterly beautiful.
Silver hair slid over his perfect body, a veil that glistened. He glamoured a kilt to cover himself to his knees, and the kilt shone like his hair, like kyanite stone. “You are not in heat,” Barak said. “You have engaged in battle dire, then, to reach me here.”
“Yeah. We did.” Two Flames buzzed into the corridor, lighting it with a brilliance that blistered my vision into a white glare. They soared through the demon-iron bars and danced along Baraqyal’s body, singing a piccolo of notes, high-pitched and pure, a beautiful song. He laughed and held out his hands; they lit on his palms and he crooned t
o them, sounds like bells, in a language no mortal could speak.
As if Barak had given them orders, they darted to the bars and sliced through them like plasma torches. Red-hot demon-iron fell to the corridor chiming minor tones, ugly sounds, off-key and dull, leaving the cell open. Lips parted with wonder, Baraqyal stepped into the hall and threw out his chest as if unfurling his wings, breathing the foul air as if it were clean. The movement cracked open the wounds on his back and the Flames darted to him, droning urgently. They did something to his back and he laughed. It was a beautiful sound.
Screams and clashing steel sounded through the cleft to the outer hallway. Gunshots echoed and cordite overrode the smell of brimstone, followed by the scent of human blood and excrement. Human death. From a doorway down the hall, Durbarge crashed, trailed by Joseph, carrying Tomas. They had found another way in. The EIH operative was badly injured, an avulsion on his thigh gouting blood. The thigh muscles had been sliced away from the bone and hung forward. The Flames darted into the wound, instantly sealing torn vessels. The seraph followed their motions, his eyes wide. I could have sworn that Barak had never seen them heal.
“The succubi nest,” Durbarge said to Barak. “Where is it?”
“Ahh,” Barak said, turning from the healing Flames as Tomas took a weak breath. “Succubi. That is the scent that caused me—” He stopped and looked into my eyes. His were silver and guileless, and I distrusted such forthright-ness. It was too easy to see his beauty and forget that seraphs couldn’t be trusted to speak the complete truth, only the parts the Most High deemed important. Worse, the Most High no longer spoke to Watchers. Did they have to speak truth at all? “You are too late,” he said. “The eggs have hatched. The larvae were moved through the tunnels and away, south.”
Too late? The thought shattered through my defenses. “Moved?” I asked.
“Their scent grew stronger for hours. At its apex, there was great movement in the tunnels to the south, movement that was both Darkness and Light, human and mage. Then all the scents were gone.” He breathed deeply, testing the air. “But for the pitiful creature across the passageway and a few spawn, most are no longer here.”