Bloodring

by Faith Hunter

  During a lull in business, at around three o'clock, I felt a flicker of heat curl tightly within me. I knew the dratted kylen was nearby even before he stepped into the shop. He glanced at me, then at each of my partners, nodding to Rupert, man to man. Something about that little nod irritated me, and I started to steam. Thadd didn't notice my ire, tucking his hands into his pockets as he meandered around. He was dressed in jeans, flannel shirt, and Western boots, soles scuffing the floor as he studied the displays with their busts and acrylic stands shaped like posed hands and feet. Each stand was draped with necklaces, bracelets, anklets, and rings. Small statues and carvings took up corner space in each display unit. Thadd turned over a price tag and his brows went up. Thorn's Gems is pricey, but our designs deserve it.

  I finished with my customer, bagged her purchases, and made change. After she left, I leaned across the case, watching the kylen cop. He examined a selection of garnets and a collection of emerald jewelry, the stones dug from the nearby hills, and some carnelian and smoky quartz that was set with red and white bamboo into primitive designs. Thadd lingered over the citrine and peridot and studied a necklace of chunky moss agate nuggets that I favored. When he reached me, he didn't pause, but glanced at leopard-skin jasper and malachite and moved on. That ticked me off again, though I couldn't have said why.

  Rupert and Jacey watched the cop, as well, a wary look in Rupert's eyes as he rang up a sale, curiosity in Jacey's. She polished the glass-topped display where her customer had left a smear. Behind Thadd's back, she glanced at me, brows raised. I shrugged in reply.

  When he reached the front door again, the kylen cop paused and took in the whole room. His eyes fell on the framed needlepoint above the door to my loft. Few people even noticed it. The frame blended into the brick, and the silk pattern was beige and brown. Thadd stepped to the doorway and studied the saying stitched with fancy letters into the silk. A ROSE BY ANY OTHER NAME WILL STILL DRAW BLOOD: the prophecy given by Lolo when my twin and I were born. The rose and the thorn, working together as a single unit, a warrior unlike any other. Meaningless once Rose was killed and I was unable to live with my own kind.

  Thadd stepped aside for the last customer to leave, and turned his gaze to Rupert. When the door swung closed, I said, "What do you want?"

  "To go up on the Trine and search for the amethyst," he said to Rupert.

  Up on the Trine? Now? I was pretty sure my mouth dropped open. Rupert looked just as incredulous.

  "I know you have access to a horse," Thadd said, "and I've rented one. We can leave right now and be back before dark."

  "In case you haven't noticed," Rupert said, "I'm working."

  "No one's in the store right now. The girls can handle it."

  "Girls?" Jacey and I said at the same instant.

  "Girls?" I repeated. "We are not his shopgirls, his children, his employees, or his harem. We aren't just passing the time of day in here between tea and the garden club. This is a business. We all work." I rounded the display cabinet, fighting the heat that was trying to rise, letting it branch off and fuel anger. "Maybe it doesn't seem like valuable work to a big-time VIP, like a Hand of the Law, but it's important to our bellies, our creditors, and our retirements. Rupert isn't going anywhere. Girls?" I said, the last word a bit shrill.

  Audric stepped from his storefront and leaned against the doorjamb, his arms crossed. I'd been aware of him all day, his shop just as busy with sunny-day bargain hunters as Thorn's Gems. Now he looked bored and amused. I figured the bored part was just for show. "You really shouldn't call them girls, you know," he said. "Partners, women, ladies, maybe, but not girls. They get riled. Now you have to bring them chocolate to make them happy."

  "The man has chocolate?" Jacey asked, putting a fist on one hip. "If he has chocolate, he can call me anything he wants."

  "What about me? Do I get chocolate too?" Rupert asked. "Queens are girls."

  Exasperated, Thadd blew out a gust of air. "I don't have chocolate. Allow me to rephrase. I need you to saddle a horse and go with me to search for the amethyst."

  "On horseback?" Rupert asked, hand over his heart in dramatic horror.

  "The shop has a horse," he repeated. "I asked."

  "Correction. Thorn has a horse. A huge, vicious beast, ten feet tall, hooves the size of dinner plates and teeth that belong on a dinosaur. No way in Habbiel's celestial citadel will I get on top of it. No."

  Jacey walked around to the central sitting area and plopped down into the chair she liked, pulled a piece of jewelry from a pocket, and started beading. "Rupert is afraid of horses," she said, eyes downcast.

  "I am not afraid of horses. I simply hate them."

  "Rupert is afraid of horses," she repeated. "Deathly afraid."

  "Maybe a little afraid of them," he conceded. "Take Thorn. That horse likes her."

  "Yeah," Jacey said, a small smirk on her face, eyes on the bracelet to hide her amusement. "Take Thorn. She needs a good, hard ride."

  Her double entendre wasn't remotely veiled, and Audric tried to cover a laugh with a cough. Rupert snickered. "Hey, wait a minute," I said, mortified, unable to disguise a blush. I wasn't going up on the Trine, not with a Hand of the Law, someone who didn't know about Ciana's visitor, a human who didn't know what I was, didn't know about mage-lust, and yet who had a nasty, unhealthy dose of kylen genes in his makeup. A man who probably couldn't fight worth a flip. With a human along, I couldn't fight either, unless I wanted to face the repercussions. We'd be toast. "I thought this was a business and we were all working."

  "If a Hand of the Law wants one of us to go stone hunting on horseback, then it needs to be our rock hound and lapidary, who happens to own the horse in question," Rupert said, still laughing. "Besides, it looks like the rush is over. We can handle the last few hours. Question is"—he turned back to Thadd—"can you handle our Thorn?"

  Could he be any more indelicate? I wanted to drop through the floor in shame. There was no doubt in my mind that my best pals had been discussing my sex life—or lack of it.

  "Go have fun," Jacey said, glancing up at me, smug. "All the fun you want. Or you can stay here and let us hassle you. Take your pick."

  I shifted a humiliated gaze to Thadd, not quite sure how things had come to this or how I had been maneuvered into this expedition. With as much dignity as I could muster, I walked from the room and up the stairs to change. I didn't want to go, didn't want to be alone with the cop, but I figured if I stayed any longer, they'd drop the innuendos, and simply ask Thadd to sleep with me.

  Chapter 15

  By the time I was dressed for riding, with three blades hidden on my body and enough charged stones in my pockets to make a decent stand if my life required it, Jacey's stepson Zeddy had saddled Homer and taken him out front, where he stood in the sunshine, happy to be free of his stall and feeling frisky. Zeddy exercised the Friesian daily except when the blizzards blew, but there was seldom enough activity to satisfy an animal bred to work.

  Thadd's mount was a high-strung, dappled gray, a big horse at sixteen hands, but nothing compared to Homer's nearly nineteen hands. Zeddy tossed me up as if I weighed less than his youngest sister. Of course, Sissy had turned nine before Christmas, so maybe I did. Neomages tend to be petite.

  Below me, Thadd sat astride the smaller horse, looking perfectly at ease though I had the bigger mount. Part of me had been hoping he'd be distressed by the disparity in heights, all macho outrage, poorly hidden. Not so.

  I kept hoping Thadd would grow another head or do something really outrageous to appear less attractive. But, besides being a Hand of the Law whose job description would see to my demise, it seemed he was an all-around nice guy. He sat the gray with the easy comfort of a cowboy, jeans-clad legs gripping the horse's sides. He looked good. Really good. My tummy did that little dip and curl that left me a bit breathless. Which made me even madder.

  As if aware of my irritation, Thadd gave me an amused stare, which I could feel, even through the black wr
aparound shades favored by Hands of the Law. I snapped open my own sunglasses, set them on my nose just like a human, and clicked Homer into action. Extending his long legs, the Friesian lumbered across a mound of snow the gray had to go around, and proceeded northwest at a fast clip. Quickly, I guided Homer directly north, and we moved out at a quick pace, unspeaking, me pushing the speed, nursing an annoyance I didn't fully understand but felt entitled to. The antagonism helped to stifle my awareness of the kylen and helped ward off mage-heat that wanted to rise. I let the anger settle in for the duration.

  A silent hour later and five hundred feet higher, Thadd moved up beside me at a fast trot. "So. If you were an undiscovered mine of gem-quality stone, where would you hide?"

  "Underground and under the snow," I nearly snarled.

  "So you're saying this is a waste of time?" When I didn't answer, he asked, "Or did your friends just embarrass you into this by playing matchmaker?"

  I had a sudden vision of Thadd and me in my bed, pillows thrown away in haste, covers sliding off the mattress. A flush burned its way up my neck. Drat. "Figured that out, did you?" I said. My words were stiff, my tone even worse. And the rocking of the big horse wasn't helping mage-heat at all, not with Thadd so near. "My friends worry about me, since Lucas took off to greener pastures. I try not to let them bother me with their teasing."

  "I think it's cute."

  "Cute?" I made an indelicate sound. Homer's ears swept back and forth, and he curved his huge neck to glance at me, eyes rolling. "FYI? 'Cute' is right up there with 'girls.' " I continued before he could reply. "Last month they tried to set me up with a feldspar miner named Ken. The poor guy showed at the shop on a Friday night with his neck washed, his fingernails clean, and a bag full of quartz rough as a gift."

  "Fun date?" Thadd asked, not laughing, for which I was grateful.

  "Agonizing." I bent under a low branch and guided Homer straight north, wanting to keep the kylen away from anything charged with power. Homer took a massive leap straight uphill, and I grabbed the pommel, holding on. "Easy, big guy."

  "What's that?" Thadd pointed to the jumble of rock and mortar Homer had just bounded over.

  "Shed, probably. You can find out more about the mountain from Rupert, but the Trine used to be one fairly small hill until one of the last mopping-up battles. People lived on the slope. We'll see foundations and roads and all kinds of stuff, until we reach the rock peaks. I haven't spent much time here, but ruins are everywhere." I pointed off to the west and to the east, to piles of moldering brick. "After a hundred years, there isn't much left but stone and brick, and even that's starting to decay."

  The gray moved up beside me, Thadd visible in my peripheral vision. I didn't look his way. "What do you know about the Stanhopes?" he asked, his tone a hair too casual for the question to be idle.

  "Less than I thought I did," I grumbled. I hadn't known about Mole Man, or about Lucas' roving eye. I hadn't known that Rupert's sweetie was a mule in hiding. "Why?"

  "There's some indication that Jason has allied with a Power or a Principality."

  A tremor of alarm shivered down my body. Below me, Homer reacted, his head coming up fast. I soothed him, stroking along his neck. "Is that part of your interrogation technique? Wait till your victim is calm and unsuspecting and then hit her with a zinger? "

  Thadd ignored me. "This case attracted the attention of the Administration of the ArchSeraph pretty fast. You've met the investigator, I believe?"

  "Oh, yeah. Captain Durbarge." The little assey.

  "He thinks Jason may owe a blood gift to a Darkness, which then would be after anyone in the Stanhope line. Stanhope blood—Mole Man's blood—is important to the seraphic host, which makes a blood-demon doubly likely and doubly dangerous."

  I didn't look around. Durbarge had speculated about a blood-demon.

  "The AASI spotted signs of devil-spawn in the hills."

  "Where?" I asked, my hand still soothing my mount. I didn't need Homer giving away that I was upset at the direction in which Thadd was taking the conversation. If the assey had been to my spring, I was in deep doo-doo. The cistern and pipes were spelled to keep long-distance and untrained observers away. A trained observer, however, would see a great deal.

  "On the other side of the Toe River."

  I made the connection fast and went from relieved to worried in a heartbeat. If Jason owed a debt to a blood-demon, then spawn would come after Ciana. Looking back at the cop through my tinted lenses, I saw he was watching me. "Where, exactly, and how many?"

  "Outside Maria's home. A small pack of five or six."

  Spawn travel in packs. If there was a daywalker watching Ciana, a blood-demon, and a spawn pack, then things were a lot worse than I thought. I wondered whether I should tell Thadd about the daywalker. But if I did, they might take Ciana into custody for her own protection. Asseys had no conscience. Any human caught consorting with Darkness, even an innocent, was carted off and never seen again.

  A faint sense of vertigo made me totter, as a distant thought battled to rise and was pulled under. Something about stones and flowers? Whatever it was, I pushed it away for later and risked a question. "Is it possible that there's a war in Darkness?"

  "A house divided against itself cannot stand," he quoted. The New Testament, the words of Jesus when he was accused of working with the devil.

  "What if it's not divided? What if one of them just wants more power than before?"

  "If you want to discuss theology, go to an elder." It was the perfect cop answer. I shook my head and pressed Homer uphill, a sharp grade that left Thadd behind. He seemed to realize he had lost ground both figuratively and literally. "Sorry," he said, catching up. "Knee-jerk response. The short answer is, I don't know." When I remained silent, he said, "So. Back to the stone. If you were a new mine of gem-quality stone, where would you be hiding?"

  "My best bet is up high, on the bare rock near the peaks."

  "And why is that?"

  "Because no one's staked a claim or tried to buy mineral rights in years, not even Culpepper, so the find isn't easy to locate. Only a team with ice-climbing equipment could get to the peaks easily, and I can't remember the last time anyone took to the ice cap. And because, so far as we know, the stone wasn't found before the Trine was formed, so it's likely that it came to light during or after the battle with Benaiah Stanhope and the formation of the three peaks." It was the first time I had put all that together, but it felt right. The stone must have been pushed to the surface when the Trine was formed.

  Homer tossed his head. Behind me and to the side, the gray danced several steps and neighed sharply. Homer's ears went back flat. The horses were spooked.

  The hairs on the back of my neck rose, and I tightened my grip on the saddle horn. Something was watching us. I opened my mage-sight and scanned the area. The world looked strange through the sunglasses, shadowed and sparkly, as if viewed through a prism. As far as I could tell, we were alone, but something was wrong.

  Homer came to an abrupt stop, ears back hard. He danced around, facing the town, and bowed his back to buck. I hauled on the reins with all my might.

  Thadd was having his own problems. The gray pranced, his head up high, neck arched, eyes wide with alarm. "What's going on?" he asked.

  From above us, a scream sounded, long and agonized, echoing down the slope, followed instantly by another. The gray dropped his head and kicked, throwing Thadd forward across his neck.

  The angry scream sounded a third time. Some kind of predator cat. I hoped.

  Homer bunched his muscles and took four mighty leaps straight downhill. Midkick, the gray squealed, whirled, bucked once, and followed. Thaddeus hit the ground.

  I hadn't been able to think of an excuse to bring the walking stick but had charged a malachite ring with a calming incantation and stuck it on my thumb. With a thought, I sent it into Homer. He stopped. I didn't. My body was flung forward, my hand jerked from the pommel. The horn slammed into my stomach and
all the breath left my body in a single gasp. I tumbled over his head, across a mound of snow. The world reeled by me. Upside down, I glimpsed the cat, black and white, crouched on a limb, eyes watching me as I rolled in midair.

  I landed on one shoulder, my arm knocked numb. I thudded on the muddy ground and rolled, out of control, arm flapping, useless. Into a half-frozen puddle. Snowmelt.

  Icy cold drenched me. Everywhere the water touched, power was sucked out of me in a sudden, vicious extraction. The energy in the stones I carried was damped. Lust turned to agony. I may have screamed.

  Overhead, far overhead, something moved. It flew, wings stroking, slow and lazy, taking it behind a cloud. I heard a whimper; the sound came from me.

  "Thorn!" The sky vanished. I focused on Thaddeus. There were two of him, rotating. Hands of the Law. Kylens. In a sickening lurch his faces coalesced into one, greenish blue eyes wide and a trail of blood at one nostril. He'd lost the shades. "Are you all right?" When I didn't answer, he touched my shoulder. "Thorn?"

  "Not so good, actually," I said. But feeling was sweeping back into my body, short, sharp stabs, and longer, continuous waves of throbbing. I rose slowly, pulling my upper body from the puddle. "But I don't think anything is broken. You?"

  "The same."

  "What kind of cat was that?" I'm lying in snowmelt. Bruised, drained of power, and feeling like I got hit by an El-truck, and I want to talk about kitty cats.

  "A lynx, I think. It's gone now. Can you stand?"

  "Yeah. Maybe." My teeth started chattering. A shiver gripped me in its fist and shook my entire body. "A bit chilly, though."

  Thadd chuckled, pulling me upright. "If I give you a hand, can you get on the horse?"

  "Homer. Sure. I can do that." Maybe. With a stepladder and winch. The world did a little stutter and wobble. I let Thadd balance me as I straightened my arm, testing my shoulder. I glanced down at my hands. They were gray with cold and energy loss.