by Faith Hunter
Around us, the succubus larvae had abandoned the walls and were crawling closer. White pupae, the bloodless color of Rupert’s skin, hundreds of them. Another touched a land mine and exploded. I was so shaken, I didn’t even cringe.
Above us, Amethyst was screaming, a wail of horror. But she wasn’t fighting. She doesn’t know how, the visa informed me, the mental voice didactic and unemotional. In battle, a cherub depends upon her seraph-mate to direct the energy and weapons of her wheels. They are true mates, joined mentally and spiritually, much less powerful when separate.
Zadkiel wasn’t fused mind to mind with Amethyst. He had broken their merge. I sobbed, the sound desperate, frantic, full of the hoarse tones of fury and failure and wild grief.
Lucas was holding back Thadd, who was ripping off his clothes, shrieking to be let go, needing to mate, caught in rut like an animal. But he had been fighting. He had the seraph stone. Or…I put my hand on the pocket he had touched eons earlier. The seraph stone rested there, warm against my skin. He had given it back to me. So that if something attacked us with the rut, I would be spared. Stupid kylen. All my champards were giving up so much. Were giving up too much. For me.
Cheran was standing, his entire body quivering. I could read his need at a distance, his mind filled with desire, stimulated by the seraphs. When Azazel dropped the conjure, it had allowed all the scents to merge. Cheran turned, his face filled with lust, and focused on Rose and me. There was danger in his need. I didn’t want to have to kill him.
I looked at my twin, glowing and powerful, full of the force of life and death. I touched the pink quartz amulet carved into a rose that I carried on my necklace and jerked my fingers away when it burned.
From the pouchlike folds of my dobok, I pulled the spur of binding, the spur that could be used to make me a slave to Darkness. It had been a part of Darkness, part of a dragonet. It was composed of life, a tool for an earth mage. My cloak, lying forgotten in a torn and bloody heap at Rose’s feet, was splattered with Azazel’s blood and the slime of succubus larvae. I bent and wiped the spur across it, then smeared it into the pool of Rupert’s blood at my feet.
“Can you use this?” I asked her.
Rose, bright with the energies of sacrifice, took the spur and stood, bracing her feet, the cross in one hand, the spur in the other. She whispered to me, leashed power in her voice, her eyes shining of the might of death, “Are we the weapon? The two of us together?”
“Yes,” I said, my voice low, clogged with tears. Hating it. Hating it all. “We are.”
“No,” Audric said.
“You want his death to be for nothing?” Rose asked, her voice fierce. She threw back her head, glowing with death. “I have Rupert’s life force within me. I hold his spirit, if not his very soul. He wanted this. He wanted his death to mean something.” Her face took on a sly cant. “Would you take that away from him before he finds the Light? Would you waste his death, waste his life?”
Audric looked at the body of his partner for a long moment. With a slow hand he reached out, hesitated, his fingers a hairsbreadth from Rupert’s face. I heard his breath hitch in his chest. I bent and placed my fingers over his. Together, we closed Rupert’s eyes. I sensed Audric’s mouth moving, his words silent, the warrior’s prayer for the dying. My tears fell on Rupert’s ashen face, mixing with the blood and gore there. And I knew what I had to do.
“Burn the larvae,” I whispered to Rose. “All of them.”
“As they die, their energies will fill me,” she said. “I can’t protect you.”
“Don’t worry about me,” I said. I reached out with my mind, with my hate, and touched the pile of stone near me. I had never lifted anything so massive, but I understood the physics of gravity and mass and my mind did the equations with an ease I’d never experienced before. Without a qualm, I summoned the purple snake. It slithered from beneath a pile of charred stone, as if it had been waiting for the call. It coiled around itself, hissing with glee and warning. I put my hand on the snake and spoke a single word. “Rise.” I felt the snake tense, taking weight and mass into itself, as we lifted the pile of stone. It was so easy. So simple.
The stone rose. Holding it five feet off the floor, I shouted, “Get under here!” When they were all in place, Rupert’s body pulled into the very center, cradled in Audric’s arms, Lucas holding his brother’s hand, Thadd and Cheran fighting, held down by Eli and Jasper and the elders, I opened a protective shield around the champards and elders, pulling the power to maintain it from the snake. Overhead, Amethyst shrieked as if she were dying. Her ship—my ship—had powered back up.
“Hurry,” Rose said, still standing outside the levitating stone. She laughed and closed her eyes. Instantly, heat gathered around her body in a tube of power, a ring of might, like a prime amulet, but large enough to encircle her. Her own shield, powered by Rupert’s death force.
My heart cold as stone, I glanced at the scene taking place on the church floor, the powerful Azazel, the changing seraphs. I focused on the snake, gazing into its myriad dark purple eyes, all watching me adoringly. The snake’s body and tail rippled, forming a perfect ring around me, and power surged through it, a charmed circle. If I’d not been dead inside, I might have laughed. I eased my hand away from the levitating stone.
The seraphs would destroy me after I saved them, and would attempt to kill all under my protection. I would do what I could to protect the ones still living. I had betrayed Rupert. I had failed him. I’d rather die than fail another. I drew on the gifts of omega mage, pulling in energies, sucking them through the snake.
Feeding.
The energies were a wild, almost feral mixture of stone from the church, magma from the center of the earth, and the might of the wheels. When I was glowing, my mage-attributes flaring like a torch, as bright as my twin’s, I pulled the Flame-blessed blade and held it, point down, over the wire amulet on my wrist. The amulet opened with a faint click and slid from my hand. I laid the tanto blade along the length of the snake’s neck, added Mole Man’s cross, and held them all together. With my other hand, I dropped the wire amulet over the snake’s head, sliding it over the tanto blade and cross. I secured the amulet to the snake, tanto, and cross, making a bizarre and deadly necklace. Flying by the seat of my pants. Becoming the prophecy that hung over my door. A Rose by any Other Name will still draw Blood.
“Hurry,” my twin whispered, her voice a full-throated rasp of desire. “Oh, God, hurry.”
The snake and the tanto began to hum, a strange disharmony at first that softened and smoothed and changed key until they were singing a minor-key variation of three notes. In mage-sight, they shared similar energy patterns, a soft violet aura of compatibility. They had merged, the Flame and the wheels, the amulet and its iron ore bomb in Alabama, into a single weapon. And the gold cross blazed with light. No…with Light.
From the Fallen, lightning shot into the night, black lightning, burning the sky with Darkness. Thunder boomed all about us, shaking the floor, the walls, sending rocks sliding, except where I had them levitated.
About Azazel, energies churned, swirls of Light, painfully bright, throwing out heat like a small star, and clouds of blackness, darker than the reaches of space, colder than the farthest reaches of hell. A storm of hot wind and icy currents built in the center of the old church.
I closed my human eyes and blended the mind-skim into mage-sight. I was too empty to feel the usual nausea. Too empty and too full of power. I reached out with my mind, into the otherness of light and heat and the glowing river of time.
Time slowed. My heart beat.
The flesh of my face burned, blistered, my eyes watering in a slow-motion flush of protective tears that scalded down my cheeks. And I heard the Waldroup brothers praying the Lord’s Prayer. “Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name….”
I took the snake into my hands, allowing it to wrap about me, undulating coils of muscle. Moving faster than the gathering energies that were A
zazel, I slid Mole Man’s link, the link of binding, over the blade and followed it with my own prime, the four-inch stone ring. I held the snake’s head and the tanto toward the swirling maelstrom of energies that were Azazel.
The suggestions for Trapping Darkness in Stone came to mind, but I discarded the incantation for something more complex, and yet far more straightforward. Something that used the elements in my current possession. The math swirled through my mind, clicking into place with solid mental snaps.
I said simply, “Stone and iron, Flame and steel. Consume.”
Purple light raced at me through the earth, forging channels through rock and stone and earth and deep water, gathering power as it moved, ripping energy from the iron ore deposit in Alabama, from minerals and stone and unmined ores as it passed, faster than light. The snake’s and tanto’s hum rose in pitch, merged perfectly, a duet of death.
The energies slammed into me through the bottoms of my feet. Shot out from my palms where they gripped the snake and the tanto and the wire amulet. Blasted their way through my prime and the link that had once bound Azazel, the Fallen, Leviathan, the Dragon, who blazed in glory. Pure white Light ripped into the Dark seraph with concussive force, rocking me back.
Motes of black light detonated from him, shot out, whipped into the maelstrom. Azazel roared and turned to me. Fierce aqua eyes stabbed me. And he laughed, huge golden gongs of amusement and hatred mixed together in an unholy new emotion. He reached out a hand to me. I saw the black lightning gathering in his fingers, a ball of Darkness, a small black hole of chaos. But he moved slowly, outside of the singularity of time I had become. Rose turned to me, her eyes slowly focusing, her mouth opening in a time-lapse O of surprise.
“Wheels. Now,” I said to the snake.
Light stabbed down from the living ship. It hit Azazel with the destructive power of a Pre-Ap nuclear bomb. In a slow, sinuous movement of luxons, the Fallen caught fire.
Black motes shifted out from Azazel, realigning into slow-moving rivers of energies. With a thought, I slowed time again, into a honey-thick construct that I moved through with the ease of heated steel. My heart beat, a sluggish susurration, beginning to speed, but still so slow.
Faster than the explosion, I opened the charmed circle of coiled snake and backed toward the shield. Snapped it off and eased beneath the stone, pulling the snake with me. I reactivated the shield. The explosion hit. Time readjusted in a flash of changing energies.
Even beneath the shield protection, we were thrown to our knees as if a huge hand had swatted us down. Scuttling, my champards and the elders cringed together under the levitating pile of broken rock, fear turning their auras into spikes of green and red gold.
Azazel whirled like a dervish, flaming, burning, silent but for an electric hum that hurt my ears. Lightning flew, hitting the walls, exploding through them, sending some tumbling to the ground. Black-light motes sizzled and popped. The stench of burning seraph altered, tainted by the reek of brimstone. Azazel’s form was a black core, deeper than Darkness. More than night, Darker than eternity. Black-light swirling with chaotic energies older than time.
Rose turned away from me. Protected by her shield, she extended her arm, holding up the bare wood cross. Heat exploded from it in a ball of flame, expanding, rolling out from her, a conflagration. Fire rolled over the seraphs and into the larvae, a wave of destruction, scorching the bloodless succubi to ash as it moved. The new things, the creations of the Dragon, died. The flash of fire was so intense, nothing unprotected could survive it. The fire slammed, surging like a tsunami against the church walls.
The flame climbed the stone, cleansing it, heating the remaining walls red hot. Shattering the rock with the sudden heat transfer. Flames coiled up and over like a wave of fire. Recoiled. Reversed. Unbidden, time again thickened.
Rose looked at me, smiling, burning mage-bright, standing in a ring of power, a cross in her hand. In that instant, I hated my twin. Hated her. And I knew she saw it in my face. Her smile faltered. The flames rushed at us.
I released the pile of stones. With a roar, they fell over the shield, providing insulation from the heat that was ricocheting back. In the endless instant as they descended, I saw the seraphs.
Standing in the midst of the fire was Raziel, Rose’s death fire whipping away the spell of lust that had crippled him. Beside him knelt Cheriour and four other forms, each flaming, not with destructive fire, but with its own power. Transmogrifying. Wings spreading for flight.
And Azazel. In a single instant of time, his energies imploded like a black star, scintillating, dying. Surely dying….
Untouched by it all was my twin, her face full of shock and horror, perhaps realizing only in that instant of time-no-time what she had become, shining with death and sacrifice. The stone of the earth closed over us.
Chapter 24
We sat, my champards and I, and the kirk elders, buried under a dome of rock, slate tiles, and detritus, tons of it pressing against the shield. The fire was so intense that it heated the stone, heated the air inside with us, carrying smoke. The silence was broken only by a rare cough and groan of pain I couldn’t dispel. I had used all my healing amulets on Rupert. I was drained of power. I couldn’t even ease my own pain, the broken ribs stabbing me with each breath.
When the smoke and heat grew too intense, I touched the snake, which lay coiled loosely around my right leg, eyes on me in the dark of the artificial cavern. Its tongue tasted my hand, much as a dog might lick its master. Wordless, I asked it to give us breathable air. Immediately a stream blew in through a crack in the rock, cool and fresh. The mélange of smells, human, kylen, half-breed, and me, all dirty, bloody, wounded, and full of despair, decreased.
In mage-sight I watched them, trapped in the dome with me, their body language saying so much more than the silence. Lucas sat crouched in the far corner, as far from me as he could get. Thadd cradled his broken wing, his face turned, as if he could see me in the dark if he looked my way. The elders Waldroup sat back-to-back, heads nodding with exhaustion. Jasper stared at me through the dark, his eyes blazing with prophetic power and zeal. Audric sat beside Rupert, his back to me, silent, unmoving.
Tears trickled down my cheeks at the sight of my teacher and the body of my friend. Cheran slept. I had chained the Dragon. And my twin had destroyed its minions, the larvae of the succubus. And it had cost me a life I held dear.
Of them all, only Eli lay close, supine, staring into the dark above him, as if he could see the domed rock above. One hand curled around my ankle, as if securing me there, near him.
An hour passed before I could no longer bear the silence. I set aside the Apache Tear. And waited.
A tapping came, at long last, Rose, assuring me that the heat was dispelled enough for humans to survive it. I recognized my sister’s mind. I was frightened of what I saw there. But I had no choice, and no time to deliberate, decide, and choose a course of action. With a word, I let go of the stone. The rock slid and fell with a crash, forming a three-foot-high, ring-shaped pile on the floor of the church. I felt the floor give and shudder with the action, but the ancient wood held.
I smelled seraph on the icy wind, rich scents of vanilla and pepper and wonderful things. But mage-heat didn’t flare, not even a little, killed by the endorphins of battle-lust and the horror of death. When the dust settled, I clambered over the stone to stand in the night, the snake slithering after me and retaking its position on my leg. More slowly, my champards followed, all but Audric.
Beside a Raven, my twin sat on a pile of old pews in front of a huge hole in the floor. The wood edges were scarred, scorched, and brittle, leaving floor space only around what was left of the outer walls of the old church—which were mostly gone. Only the front wall with the door openings still stood, staring out at the night. The dais was burned away.
The wind blowing in was frigid and I shivered: I had lost my battle cloak, seeing it last in a puddle of Rupert’s blood. The floor creaked again. The w
hole place was about to go. And I couldn’t have cared less.
Eli moved slowly to my left and waited. Thadd limped to my right. Some small, sane part of me noted that it wasn’t the proper positions for them, but I pushed the thought away. Nothing mattered now. I looked overhead, to see a cloud-thickened night sky, and the first hint of snowflakes. Two fell in lazy spirals, chunky and wet, to plop on the still-warm floor and melt. The wheels were nowhere to be seen. As if it heard my thought, the snake licked my face, a single touch of its tongue.
Ignoring the snake, ignoring the seraph, I studied my twin. Twin, not just littermate. We shared the same genetic structure. The same blood. She looked at me, her face gaunt, smeared with filth and blood, her eyes fearful and guilty. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.
My voice rasping, impassive, I said, “Death mages always are.” Rose flinched in the silence that followed my words. “The spur?” I asked, not knowing why, except that I couldn’t ask the harder questions.
Fingers fumbling, she pulled a thong from beneath the frayed dress she wore. On it dangled two amulets, one the spur, black-light motes dancing through it. She touched the spur. “I bound it to me,” she said. “I took it as my prime.”
I hadn’t known that was possible, but I didn’t quibble. The other amulet was a seraph stone. I had no reaction to that either. I wasn’t certain I’d have an emotional reaction ever again. Finally, I looked at the Raven. It was Raven One. I wondered if he had a name.
In lieu of greeting, I said to him, “Stone and fire, water and air, blood and kin prevail.”
The Raven answered back, his voice like bells chiming in a high tower. “Wings and shield, dagger and sword, blood and kin prevail.” He snapped his wings open and closed, the sound like a hand clap. “The Most High is pleased with you.”
“Well, isn’t that just ducky,” I said, hearing my vicious undertone.
