Host

by Faith Hunter

  “What kind of experiment?”

  “To see if mage-heat could be stopped by the amulet Zadkiel gave me.”

  “So? You had to kiss him?”

  I let the smile grow. “Yeah. I did. And it worked. Mage-heat died.”

  “Meaning that you…” He stopped whatever he was about to say and shoved his hands into the pockets of his jacket. It was the frustrated action of a little boy, and I was certain he had no idea he looked so adorable. The smile left my face at the thought. Lucas Stanhope was not—not—adorable. He was a cheat and a heartbreaker.

  “Meaning you didn’t have sex with him?” he said, half question, half declaration.

  “I didn’t.”

  When I said nothing further, he moved up beside me and we resumed walking toward the store. And the consulate. Criminy. The consulate. Can I make my life any more complicated? A silence built between us broken only by the wind whistling through the town and higher in the mountains and by the crunch of our boots.

  Lucas started to speak once and bit down on the words. I waited. “Where do I stand?” he asked at last. “With you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You put me in the position of consort in the consulate. That announced to the world that we have a relationship, that we share a child. But afterward you left and went to another man. Where does that leave me? Consort or not?”

  I watched my boot toes as they emerged beneath the cloak with each step. Left, right, left. I might die tonight. Or he might. The whole town might. I owed him honesty at the least. Kindness at the best. “I love you, Lucas. I think I’ve loved you since the first time I saw you.”

  When he touched my arm I shook him off, fighting the bitterness that welled up in me, tightening my throat, making words difficult to speak. “But I can’t trust you. Because you can’t help but look at any and every female you pass. You can’t help but come on to them, flirt with them, and make sure they fall in love with you.” I heard the long-repressed hostility in my voice but was incapable of controlling it, and I held up my palm when he tried to interrupt. “It’s your nature, Lucas. You’d seduce and sleep with my twin if she were around.”

  “You keep bringing up the past,” he said. “I’m different now. I really am.”

  I looked at him, sadness welling up like water between the rocks of old anger. “I was pretty busy at the consulate meeting. A little overwhelmed. But I had a moment to notice you noticing Romona Benson.”

  Lucas had the grace to flush. But at least he didn’t deny it. “Is that why you went and ‘experimented’ with my cousin? Who has wings, for crying out loud. Wings.” When I didn’t answer, Lucas put out a hand again, touching only my cloak, turning me to him. He looked bewildered and, at the sight, I wanted to give in, wanted to bring him back and comfort him. I crossed my arms instead, knowing it was a protective gesture, knowing he would know that.

  “I remember how you looked in his bedroom, in his bed. You looked all tousled and beautiful, the way you looked with me, when we were married. And I could have killed him.” He held out his hands, flexing them into fists, and a fearful wonder touched his voice. “I wanted to kill him. My own cousin. With freaking wings.”

  My resentment eased, leaving my heart just a bit lighter in spite of all the danger and uncertainty in my life. “Yeah, well. That’s what the experiment was for, I guess, to see if kylen and mages can be in the same place without causing mage-heat. It worked.”

  We stopped at the entrance to Thorn’s Gems and I looked sidelong at him. In mage-sight, Lucas glowed with a nonhuman energy pattern, a bright blue aura. Beneath his skin, blood coursed in veins and arteries, blood that throbbed and flowed in a rich, royal blue configuration. Totally not human. I said, “He’s going to be my champard. Thadd is.”

  Lucas’ mouth turned down hard. “I’ve been reading about the duties of champards. They include sex.”

  “Sometimes,” I agreed gently, “for some mages.”

  “And you’re going to make him your champard?”

  “At dusk. In the sigil in the street. But I’m not making him mine for mating. I’m making him a champard so he can be part of the plan I worked out. So I can protect him.”

  “And me? Us?”

  I opened the door to the shop and stepped inside. The heat within blasted my face after the cold of the street, and I stopped in the doorway, my back to him. “You divorced me, Lucas. There is no us.” I closed the door, closing him out of my life, closing him into the cold.

  Standing in my tattered dobok, I stood with my back against the kitchen counter and ate a huge bowl of oatmeal, needing the carbs and the sugar. I usually hoarded the sugar, doling it out in drips and drabs, but this time I had put as much as I wanted on the hot cereal. If I died tonight, why leave a perfectly good sweet uneaten?

  Spooning in the oatmeal, I stared at my loft, the one place in the world that was mine. I had bought and paid for the building. I had decorated the apartment to my tastes and mine only, surrounding myself with the greens and taupes and teals I liked best. I loved this place. I never wanted to leave it. But for weeks, it had seemed as if I might have to leave it at any moment. I was always saying goodbye to my life.

  Full, I set the dishes in the sink, unwashed. Stripping, leaving my clothes in a pile on the loft floor, I filled the silver bowl with charged stones and dumped them onto the bed, dropped down, curled around them, and pulled the comforter over me. I fell into a dreamless sleep. When I woke, it was after four, a dull afternoon light glowing softly through the windows, predicting the storm brewing. I was refreshed in a way I hadn’t been in a long time.

  I rose and took a hot shower to loosen muscles that had stiffened in sleep, and added several drops of eucalyptus oil to a rag I draped over the rail. The medicinal scent in the warm wet atmosphere cleared my head, and I inspected my body in the writhing steam. The soles of my feet were paler and thicker now, not the bright shade of thin, healing skin. My calves and shins were healed over, my knuckles and the backs of my hands were the bright white of scar tissue. My throat was one solid scar. Other scars crisscrossed my body. Ugly. My side, however, was worse—a black ring with a hot, red, central depression. It looked infected, though it didn’t hurt. In mage-sight it was even darker, swirling a sickly mustard yellow.

  I stretched in the steam, eyes closed, head down, water pouring over me. The shower door opened. I whipped into battle mode and struck out fast, flowing into the claw—fingers curled and stiff. I aborted the savage-chi move, just as Audric caught my wrist in his big paw. “Audric?”

  I tried to cover myself, grabbing the towel from the door and holding it over me. “Get out!” I said, my voice sharp in the confined space.

  “No. Turn around.”

  “You’re not welcome in my bathroom, champard,” I said, retreating into formality.

  “You are my mistrend. You face battle tonight. You are not up to your usual strength or speed. You need a massage to loosen your muscles. Turn around.”

  I stared at him, feeling the towel molding itself to my body as the shower wet it through. I backed into the stall corner, tile icy on my spine as he entered and closed the door, trapping me.

  Audric was a big man, nearly seven feet tall, with skin the brown of his African ancestors, a bald head, and steady eyes. In one hand he held a bottle of oil, in the other was a loofah and a cloth. Clothed, the half-breed was intimidating. With a towel wrapped and tied around his waist, the fabric just as wet as mine, his hairless, naked chest streaming and his feet bare, he was even more daunting.

  “I’m not really comfortable with this,” I said stiffly, knowing that, if I had stayed in Enclave, such massages, and even casual nudity, would have been part of my daily life. My champards would have lived with me, sharing every detail of my day. But I had grown up in Mineral City, with its stern kirk and unyielding elders, its repressed sexuality and its unremitting cold. Naked skin was seen only on hands and faces and, very rarely, on arms and shins. Never in my sh
ower except for Lucas. My face burned from more than the hot water.

  Audric, standing patiently, being blasted by water, raised his brows in amusement. I was a spot of comic relief to everyone today, it seemed, and it stiffened my spine against the cold tile. “I am your champard. A mule,” he said, enunciating the insulting term. “While I could break every bone in your body, I can’t rape you. It’s not physically possible.”

  I couldn’t stop the glance at his midsection. “You could try,” I said. And blushed a deeper shade when Audric’s laugh rumbled through the hissing shower. “Meaning the broken bone part,” I clarified, mortified.

  “Turn around.” So far as I knew, Audric hadn’t seen the wound on my side. And he’d never seen me naked. Well, except for the times he and Rupert had cared for me after my injuries. Which had taken days. Weeks. Okay. I was being stupid. And I hated that.

  Audric held out the cloth in his hand. It was a pair of my undies. “You may put these on if it makes you feel better.”

  You could have told me that first, I thought. I took the soaked panties and made a little “turn around” motion with my finger. Audric laughed harder and turned around. I pulled them on and held the towel to my front again, as I faced the shower stall wall and leaned into it. “Okay,” I said. And when I heard the grudging tone, I added, more politely, “I’m ready. Thank you.”

  Audric said nothing, but his big hands descended onto my shoulders, fingers and heels of his hands pressing into the tight flesh. My blush melted away like soft wax. I groaned, sounds of physical bliss that resembled sexual pleasure. Sounds that would have had Lucas charging in with battle-lust in his eyes. After a moment, I mumbled, “You can shower with me anytime.”

  “Move your hair,” Audric said, still with the timbre of laughter in his words, and I gathered the long mass to one side, giving in to the relief of the massage. So much for the stern kirk elders. Pleasure—one point; rules and regs—zilch.

  When the hot water part was over, Audric dried me off as if I were a child and carried me to the bed, where he finished my rubdown, his hands efficiently working my muscles, stretching my joints and tendons, and prying up under my shoulder blades. As he worked, he talked and I mumbled responses and the rare question. I learned a lot of things, some important, some not, but one that had been troubling me was resolved. Audric had never heard of a mage who could blend a skim and mage-sight into one scan. Until me. Lucky me.

  When he was done, it was five, and night was falling fast. Feeling really good, better than I could remember, maybe ever, I plaited my hair into a battle braid and let Audric help dress me, strapping and binding me into the new dobok and fastening the teal belt across my chest. I hadn’t noticed it earlier, but the belt was tooled and dyed with tiny scarlet leaves the color of my hair. The color of Raziel’s wings.

  “I’ve filled all the vials on the bottom of the belt with holy water,” Audric said, tapping the four at my hip, “and all the ones on the top with salt. The throwing knives in the middle are positioned to be drawn with either hand, hilts turned for easy withdrawal. Drinking water is in your cloak, lower down, near the hem.”

  He spun me as he talked, rechecking the position of each blade, some of them my old ones, some the new ones gifted me by Cheran. “But it won’t be like drawing weapons from your old dobok. The straps are new and stiff. I would prefer you had a few weeks to get used to fighting in it, but your old one is ruined. It needed to be replaced the first time you went below ground. Same with the new blades, but they’re sharper and keener and better balanced than the old ones. I think you’ll find them more than acceptable after a few passes.

  “That’s the good news. The bad news is that the military is delayed. They’re putting down an incursion on the outskirts of Atlanta. A couple million spawn massed at sundown yesterday and attacked. They got through the mage-shield that protected the town.”

  If I had been building any confidence at all, those words knocked it out of me. My plan had depended on the army and the EIH showing up to kill spawn by the thousands. Audric patted my shoulder awkwardly. With the exception of the massage, he was better at killing things than offering comfort.

  “Where’s Cheran?” I asked, as Audric knelt and held out socks for my feet. I let him slide them on and then inserted my feet into the boots he steadied, stepping forward to force them on as we talked.

  “He’s in the city jail, his visa, amulets, and papers piled up on the desk nearby but out of reach. He’s tied up with antimage shackles left by Durbarge and the Administration of the ArchSeraph Investigators. The witch-catcher effectively stopped him from using his conjures, and the manacles are holding him tight.”

  A witch-catcher was a mask with rods that inserted into the mouth to stop a mage from speaking a conjure. They were said to be quite uncomfortable. Guilt flared at the thought of the mage’s discomfort, but then—he had tried to kill me.

  “Metal rods?” I asked.

  “Replaced with wood,” Audric said, as if I’d insulted him. Which I had, by not relying on my champard to do all that was necessary for my protection. But the pique didn’t last. He grinned. “He’s getting splinters.”

  I laughed with him and after a moment, he added, “Eli found the shackles and offered them to us.”

  I absorbed that. “Eli did? Not the town fathers?”

  “Eli,” Audric repeated. “If it should be proved that the man who would swear fealty to you is an assey, undercover for the AAS, I will kill him.”

  “Yeah. Well. Let’s try not to kill any of our friends until after we bind the Dragon, okay?”

  “Step down, harder,” he directed, eyes on my boots. “And, yes, I will endeavor to obey my mistrend’s commands.” There was amused sarcasm in his words.

  The new boots molded to my feet, supporting my ankles and instep, but leaving enough toe room to splay for balance and for fighting. I loved them instantly, and turned my ankles to see them better.

  “Stop,” Audric said, applying his strength to hold my feet in place so he could strap the new boots tightly. He was taking seriously the duties of a champard.

  I put my fingertips on his shoulder, which was even with my own though he was kneeling. “Audric?” When he looked up I said, “You don’t really have to do this, you know.”

  His eyes softened, and when he spoke, it was with all the formality of his kind. “For as long as the seraph who bound me will allow, I am yours to call, in wind and hail, in storm and lightning, in injury and healing, in this life, for as long as you will have me,” he said.

  Tears misted my eyes. I had never heard the swearing of fealty phrased like that before and I wasn’t wearing my visa to prompt me how to respond. So I dropped to my knees in front of him, looked up, and said simply, “I accept your pledge and your faith, and will hold them both in honor and love and friendship for as long as I live, or until the seraph calls you to battle dire or you ask for freedom from servitude.”

  Audric bent and placed his forehead against mine, our faces so close I couldn’t quite focus on him. “Thank you,” he said. “I will hold you in the highest regard, and I will serve you and train you to the best of my ability. I will dress you for battle, and should you die by the sword, I will dress you for burial with all honor. All that, I swear.”

  He cuffed my shoulder, lightening the moment. “But if you get yourself killed, all bets are off. I’ll kick you to the moon and back and beat you black and blue.”

  I nodded, moving my head against his. “If I get myself killed I promise not to complain at the treatment. I’ll deserve it.”

  “Indeed you will,” he said, easing back to rest on his heels. “I forbid you to die.”

  “I will endeavor to comply with that command,” I said, as stilted as any half-breed.

  “Good. I have the things you had me collect from the Trine.”

  I was blank a moment, but he pulled a canvas satchel over and opened it, reminding me that I had sent him on an errand. Inside were stones that lo
oked like black opals to my human sight, but when I viewed them with mage-sight, knowing what to expect, I saw Dark and Light in one conjure. They were amulets originally built by Forcas and meant to work like a bomb.

  Holy Amethyst, the Mistress, the cherub who owned the wheels that had claimed me, wheels I had bound, had somehow gotten a quantity after she crashed on Earth, and altered them for her own needs. The conjure had protected her wheels when she was captured by Forcas. Thin blue wirelike strands of her conjure overlaid and enwrapped the Dark amulet-bombs, changing them to suit her needs.

  They had been left on the Trine. And now they were mine.

  Audric closed them up and stood, hanging the satchel over his shoulder. “Hurry. I understand you have a kylen to meet in the street and it’s almost dusk.”

  My champards had been gossiping about me. That was good. I think. I stood and let Audric finish decking me out for war. While he dressed me, I told him my plan. I had the feeling he didn’t like it, but other than offering a few additions, he didn’t demand any changes. He was letting me have my head. That should have made me happy, for my teacher to be so agreeable. Instead it scared the dickens out of me that he didn’t restructure my battle strategy.

  I inspected myself in the mirrors of the armoires. Of the new blades, one was in the spine sheath at the back of my head, shielding my neck. Others were in loops and secured in my belt, in the cuffs of my new boots, and strapped to my thighs. The new blades were powerful and really spiffy looking, but I settled the old swords at each hip, the walking-stick longsword and the Flame-blessed tanto. I wanted the comfort of familiar blades just now, nicked and scarred as they were. I dropped my amulets over my head and stuck Barak’s feather into my belt, as Audric disappeared into the loft across the way. As a last addition, I stuck Mole Man’s cross into my belt, and secured it with loops so it wouldn’t come loose.

  Satisfied, I made several phone calls and, moments later, went down the stairs to face the night. Ringing in my ears was Audric’s promise. Should you die by the sword, I will dress you for burial. Maybe not the best thought to take with me into what might be the beginning of the last battle of the Last War.