by Faith Hunter
"Close your eyes!" I yelled, running toward the pile of rocks. There was a blast of lavender light as the shield absorbed the cairn and two humans inside. Ciana screamed at the sensation of it closing over her and rolled to the ground. A bigger detonation rocked the clearing as the shield closed over Audric. He was knocked to his back on the wet ground. Ciana slapped at her body as if ants were crawling all over her. "Make it stop!"
Audric's eyes traced the shield over his head. Tiny lightning bolts of power raced through it, visible to mage-sight. "What have you done?" he breathed.
It was an accusation. He should have been thanking me. "Saved us all," I snarled, wanting to hit him, wanting to draw blood. I controlled the urge with effort and turned my back on him. "Thadd! Can you get over here? I've activated a shield."
"I see it. Will it take me?"
A human couldn't see… no. Thadd knew he was kylen. He had taken off the ring once, enough to begin the process of mutation. He was probably going to see a lot of things. "Yes, it'll hold," I said. Combat readiness and bloodlust had overtaken fear. They thrummed through me, twin flames. I drew two small throwing blades, wanting to fight, but my enemy was too cowardly to face me. Too human to fight face-to-face, might to might.
With each breath I smelled cordite from the gunshots, the stink of human panic, the smell of kylen like caramel and brown sugar. The peppery scent of ginger was growing stronger. With each blink of my eyes, I saw the landscape in rich shades of purple and green and opulent tints of stone. Far uphill, behind a rock outcropping, I saw black and red, a sinuous cloud of Darkness—human and half-breed. My entire body clenched.
Battle rage spiked in Audric. Swords overhead, he roared with the need to race uphill and draw blood.
"Shut up, Audric," I growled. Faster than human sight, I ripped off my outer shirt and gathered up all the bigger pieces of the amethyst we had unearthed, wrapping them in the T-shirt and tying the arms into a sling. In an instant, the power of the stone melded to my body.
Ciana had stopped screaming, her face now cradled against Audric's chest. Thadd ducked and ran to us, blasting into the shield. Light sparked and forked like lightning across the shield. "Let's go," I said. "Downhill, back toward town."
"What about the horses?" Thadd asked.
"Took off. I smelled blood," I said. Homer was hit. Rage ripped through me. I threw back my head and screamed my fury. The sound echoed across the mountainside. They hurt my Homer. I gasped, drawing in drafts of air across my tortured throat. "We'll have to walk back," I said, my damaged vocal cords making the words grate.
"We've come miles," Thadd said.
"Unless you sprout wings and fly us down, we don't have much choice," I said, heedless of his face hardening.
"They've stopped shooting. Maybe they're gone," Rupert said.
I looked at him, his face white, hands shaking. Rupert could fight. Normally, Rupert wasn't afraid of anything. But suddenly Rupert was petrified. Something was wrong. But the thought was swept away when Audric said, "Let's go."
I moved to the head of the shield, needing to rush the enemy, to draw blood. I laughed, the sound as harsh as breaking stone. Great time to learn I was one of the unlucky mages who got trapped in battle lust.
We moved out downhill, a ragged group of humans and supernats. I ground my teeth at Rupert's slowness. The others could have come closer to my pace, giving me the release of speed, but my best friend had no such hidden traits.
Our progress was slow. Uphill, the swirl of Darkness followed for a time before it stopped, moved a few yards, and stopped again. I watched them over my shoulder, drawing on mage-sight, switching to mind-skims, terrified of trying a blended scan while on the run. They weren't following us. Which was very strange.
I navigated over a fallen tree, around a snow-covered depression. Full night would be on us soon. We had traveled north for two hours on horseback and climbed more than a thousand feet. We would never make town by nightfall. I wasn't certain I could maintain the moving shield for long. Already, the lightning bolts overhead flickered and blinked.
The shards in my shirt pulsed. A single blast of light erupted from the amethyst I carried, from the ground, from all around us. I dropped to my knees, blinded. The energies around me bucked, twisting in a spiral that stabbed with pain. All the might arching over us wrenched in a whirlpool spasm. And was yanked out.
The shield was sucked into the ground in a sudden rush. My back arched in agony. I tried to scream, but my breath was sucked away. Half an instant later, an explosion rocked the Trine.
"Thorn!" Audric shouted.
I fell to the ground, hitting hard, my breath knocked out by the explosive concussion. I couldn't see, but I knew the shield was gone. My power was gone, all that astonishing might, stored in my body, stored in my amulets. All drained. All empty. The amethyst I cradled was muted and vacant, its energies pulled through the ground, back up the hill to the motherstone. I screamed.
When my sight returned, I was flat on my back, staring at the sky. Exhaustion flooded me, as fatiguing as a plague. I sheathed the small blades and lifted my walking stick. The act of drawing the longsword left me exhausted. My hands fell to my sides. Fear rushed in to fill the rage gap. I had lost it all. All that power. Nausea gripped me and I rolled to empty my stomach on the earth. The groundwater soaking me began to burn, an acid tincture on my entire body. I screamed, gagging.
I had gorged on the amethyst stone. I had drunk it down until my body was full. The power had permeated my flesh, pulsed into my bones. I had been near it for days, had drawn on it, used it, been intoxicated, drunk, stoned, on the power. And now it was gone.
I was in withdrawal. I gagged again, the taste bitter with bile. A tremor rippled up my body. It was like the DTs. My insides wanted to climb out of my skin.
A shot exploded. Another. My friends scattered. More shots sounded. I lay on my back, acid snowmelt burning and freezing. This was my fault. This trip up the Trine, this attack, this danger, all my fault. I had wanted to find the motherstone, the lodestone of amethyst, of power. I had succeeded, bringing us to this destruction.
Risking being shot, I lifted my head to spot my friends. Thadd was farthest uphill, lying with his weapon in both hands, returning fire. Rupert was squatting behind a rock, looking at his cupped hands, seemingly calm. Audric was curled on the ground, Ciana beneath him. He was bleeding. The smell of half-breed blood came to me, mingled with the cordite. Audric's been shot. He was shot protecting Ciana.
And then I smelled the scent of Darkness. Using the last of my energy, I opened my mage-sight and focused tightly on Audric. A tendril of Dark energy curled from his wound. The round buried in his body had been infused with Darkness. Audric groaned in agony. Rupert didn't look up at the sound, but knelt, face slack, holding the thing he had picked up earlier, cupping it in his hands—a perfect target. A cloud of Darkness swirled about him. He had fallen for a trap.
Above us, the Darkness moved, swarming downhill, mostly humans, but several moving demon-fast. Toward us. One of them moved like the wind, dancing in savage-chi, like a mage. Others moved like half-breeds. Hundreds of them. We were going to die.
I looked at Audric. He was near death already. Near "dire," that mystical word. His blood, spilled defending a child and a mage, the severity of his injuries, meant I had a way to salvage some of this. I looked down at the town. Mineral City was far away. Enough distance to allow the humans there some safety. The Mole Man's blood would—should—protect Rupert, and Ciana's age meant additional security for her.
I had no choice. I forced myself into a stable sitting position and pulled out my drained prime amulet. I set it on the earth and dumped all the amethyst I had on top of it. I could hear the approaching Darkness, screams and thump of feet. Shots peppered the earth around me, missing such easy targets. They wanted us alive.
Moving too slowly, tired beyond imagining, I pulled an earring out of my ear and stabbed my hand with the pointed ear wire. Pain shocked
like an electric jolt. Blood welled in the hole, and I held my palm over the amethyst. Three drops fell as I chanted a traditional call for help, the nursery rhyme call created by the earliest mages, teenagers attacked by humans and their nuclear weapons in the Mage War. There were seraphs nearby. If they heard me, they would come. "Mage in battle, mage in dire; seraphs, come with holy fire."
I repeated the phrase. And again. Audric howled in agony. Ciana, protected beneath him on the ground, screamed with him, terrified. I kept repeating the phrases as shots infused with Darkness peppered the earth, and the swarm of Dark soldiers churned down on us. I would die today. Either by the Darkness that was only yards away, or at seraphic judgment.
Innocent blood had been spilled. I had claimed "mage in dire," the time-honored call for help, to be used only after an innocent's or supernat's fatal wound, administered during a struggle with Darkness. The words reverberated in my head. Mage in battle, mage in dire—seraphs, come with holy fire…
A shadow fell over us. Wind whipped the air. He landed, toes touching down, body clad in battle armor, red-gold overlapping scales that caught the coruscating light. Twenty-four feet of scarlet seraph wings formed a canopy over us. My entire body clenched. Dread and wonder replaced the fear in my veins. He was utterly, beyond words, beautiful. "Down the hill," he said, his voice indescribable—like music, magic, an orchestra in heaven.
I brushed tears away and pointed at Rupert. "He's innocent but has been spelled."
With a flick of his wingtip, the seraph knocked Rupert off his feet. My friend crashed to the ground, dropping a rock. It tumbled into a gulley and exploded. Rupert shook his head and stood on unsteady legs, looking at the smoke from the explosion and at the seraph.
"Down the hill," the seraph said. "Quickly."
Thadd, appearing from behind the seraph, ducked under the wing and pulled a still screaming Ciana from beneath Audric. Murmuring softly to her, he handed her to Rupert. When she saw the seraph, her screams ceased, her lips in a perfect 0. Looking over his shoulder and wing, the seraph scanned the hill. Thadd holstered his weapon and hoisted Audric to a fireman's hold. He nodded once, sharply, to the seraph. "Let's go. Shut up, Audric," he added. The huge half-breed's scream gurgled off into tortured moans.
Under the protection of the seraph's wings, I gathered my amulets and the amethyst and followed the others. We made it a hundred yards down the mountain. Two hundred yards. I looked back. Since the seraph appeared, there had been no shooting, but Darkness still stood on the sharp grade, supernats, watching: several half-breeds and a mage. A mage, willingly helping Darkness. A mage whose mind I hadn't sensed. I stumbled across the terrain, my overloaded senses reeling, a seraph's wings spread over my head.
When exhaustion had stolen my last breath, the seraph looked back. "They are gone," he said. He furled his wings with a sound like a storm-laden wind. A deep cloak, the color of old blood, swirled around him. His war armor glowed with the power of the High Host.
I fell against a tree, my muscles cramping. Breathing heavily, Thadd eased Audric to the ground. He hissed with pain, clutching his chest. Blackness shifted beneath his skin. Blood was everywhere, across Audric's back, his chest, smeared over Thadd's clothes. Thadd unbuttoned his top shirt and threw it away. To me it stank of sulfur, and by his expression, to Thadd as well. His ring glowed softly to my mage-sight.
The seraph knelt by me, bringing his face to my level, jaw carved of marble, eyes as pellucid as the finest ruby, red irises in a tawny-skinned face. "I heard your call, little mage. I am here, as I promised, in life and battle and love." They weren't the proper words a seraph spoke when answering a mage-call in battle extremis. They sounded personal, almost intimate. He lifted a hand to my palm, where blood still flowed. At his touch, the wound clotted over. Strength flowed into me from his fingertip. My body shuddered hard and the shivers stopped.
The proper phrases came to me from lessons learned long ago and forgotten. Voice scratchy with exhaustion, I said, formally, "I thank thee for thine assistance. And for the touch of seraph healing."
"I scent Darkness on your companions," he said, one hand moving to his sword hilt.
Fear was an icy blade pricking my skin. I pointed to Audric. "The bullets were coated with a Dark conjure. And he" —I indicated Rupert—"picked up a spelled trap."
"Foolish," the seraph said. He lifted a chin to Audric. "He will die."
My body quivered with the pronouncement, my legs folded, and I landed hard on the wet earth. Rupert settled beside Audric. Ciana, who had been watching the exchange with wide eyes, wriggled from Rupert's arms and twitched the seraph's cloak to get his attention. "So, fix him," she said. "You can do it. I can tell."
The seraph smiled. "And how can you tell this, little human child?"
"I see it there." She touched his hand.
The seraph flinched back, his eyes wide with shock. Humans did not touch the Host. But instead of reacting in anger, he looked from his hand to Ciana. "Mole Man's blood." He touched fingertips to her head as if to make certain. "You carry Mole Man's blood in your veins."
Ciana's dark head bobbed. "Yes, sir. He was my bunches-of-great-grampa. You gonna fix Uncle Audric?"
"You wish this?" he asked.
"Yes. Please," Ciana said, folding her hands politely. "And then you can save my daddy. He's been kidnapped."
"One of Mole Man's blood is in danger?" the seraph asked.
"Yes," I said. Cautious in the presence of such a volatile being, I searched for words to tell him where Lucas was without giving it away to Ciana. "He's in a… pit."
"Ah," the seraph breathed, his face lighting with what looked like joy. He turned to the Trine and breathed in deeply, as if pinpointing the entrance to the lair with a breath. "A quest. And you too," he said, looking at me, "wish this injured one to be healed?"
"Yes," I said. "He's my friend."
"But he isn't a bound warrior," the seraph said, looking Audric over. "He is a free being. If I heal him, I bind him."
"Do it," Audric said. Darkness lumped under his skin like pustules. It swirled black in the whites of his eyes. His body was wracked with cramps, limbs drawing up in a spasm. I could feel the heat of fever from where I stood. "I'm dying. Do it. Make me yours."
"Audric?" Rupert said, his voice thin.
"Fear not, progeny of Mole Man. Though mine to call in war, he will still be as he was." The seraph bent and lifted Audric away from Rupert, cradling him like a child.
Instantly, Audric sighed and pain smoothed from his face. But as he touched the seraph's chest, anguish carved the corners of his eyes. "I am yours for beck and call," he said, voice so low it scarcely breathed into the air, "my blood and bone and sinew." The words were traditional, but his voice grew ineffably sad. Audric would no longer be free. "With sword and shield, in battle dire, I'll follow your behest. Never to fail, and never to falter, for the length of my life." Hot tears seared my cheeks, scalding on chapped skin.
The seraph touched Audric's chest, over his heart, completing the binding. "Feathers and fire, in time and without, I accept the gift of yourself. I will answer your call, guard you beneath my wings, and carry you into the Light at the end of your days."
The seraph turned to me, his red irises strange but not unpleasant. "There is no need to grieve for your friend, little mage. He is now a rock in my river of time. He will not be forgotten nor held in disdain." Which did nothing to help. Audric was bound. A slave to the High Host. I willed Audric's eyes to open, but he kept them shut, as if shunning certain pity.
The seraph's eyes moved over me, changing from kindness to puzzlement. With a single finger, he lifted my jaw and turned my face from side to side. "You have no heat, nor do I. Only magnificent battle and great use of creation energies can forestall it. We are blessed."
With the same hand, he bent and touched Ciana's head. "Your desire is fulfilled. The seraphic promise to Mole Man is remembered unto eternity." He tilted her head, staring at the mark of Darkness o
n her throat. He tapped the agate necklace on her chest, then lifted the pendant to peer closer. "Ahhh," he breathed again, "a Power would harm Mole Man's blood." He smiled widely, battle lust lighting his eyes. "It is well that I have come. This trinket is not enough to protect you, little human girl. But this—" He shifted Audric as though he weighed nothing. Feathers brushed my shoulder and I closed my eyes as pleasure and heartache washed over me in equal measure. The seraph removed a brooch from his cloak and pinned it to Ciana's chest. "This will protect you for as long as you shall live."
"Way cool!" she said, fingers tracing the winged shape of the red-gold ornament.
"Yes. It is." His eyes settled on me. He cocked his head. "You do not recall."
"Recall what?" I asked, swiping at tears with my sleeve.
"You too are a stone in my river of eternity. When the time comes," he said, a peculiar accent on the word time, "you will remember." It was more command than assurance. He carried Audric to an outcropping and spread his wings, easing them between the trees. "Soon it will be night on the face of the earth. Darkness will swarm the moment the sun falls below the horizon. Even now, they mass on one peak of the Trine. Hurry." With a single thrust of his wings, he shot up into the sky, dodging branches. And he was gone from sight.
"Seraph stones," Thadd whispered, cursing even though a seraph was still perhaps close enough to hear.
"Fire and feathers," Rupert said, less dangerously.
"Sweet seraph," I mouthed, a sense of awe finally stealing over me.
"I like him. He's cool," Ciana said. "And you're a mage. That's even cooler. Don't worry. I won't tell."
My first thought was to release a rune of forgetting over her, but taking away a first, and perhaps only, encounter with a seraph seemed a cruel punishment. And then I remembered. A seraph knew I was living among humans. I wouldn't be around long enough for Ciana's memory of me to matter.
"I see the horses. Let's get out of here," Thadd said, his face tired, his eyes on the town below us. He glanced at me as he swung Ciana up in his arms. There was compassion there. "He'll be all right. All the accounts say so."