Bloodring

by Faith Hunter

  I could see Lolo's conjure forming round circles of power, like tiny, interconnected diamond drills, a rivulet of them, corroding into the strands of the Darkness' conjure as she wrapped her incantation around it. But as each strand of the dark conjure was cut, another grew to take its place, a spider lace of glowing red and black strands. Desperately, my vision again drawing to a pinpoint of perspective, I drew on the amethyst.

  The Dark conjure centered on a perfectly round hole, ringed with threads of power. I directed the amethyst energy through the center hole, pulling the image of Lolo's linked droplets with me. As it passed through, I reshaped the links into a weapon, a talon, a thorn. And ripped back out through the hole, taking the strands of the trap with me.

  I was pulled from the grip of the thing that held me, up through the limestone cavern, up through the earth. Lavender light, forked lightning bolts of power, flared close around me and far off in bright sparkles of purpose and luminous tones. Two words, sung in a sad, lonely voice like bells: "Little mage…" Not the voice of the Darkness. Not the voice of the trapped mage, but an unknown voice.

  Suddenly I was free, lying on my side in the loft on the cold floor. I pulled in a breath, a golden, glorious breath, that sent pain ricocheting through my air-starved torso. The inside of my charmed circle was filled with glowing lavender, a mist I inhaled and exhaled, a richness of power so bright it tingled against my flesh, along my nerves. The water in the bowl was boiling, a rising fog in a semispherical shape over me. The charmed circle was warm and steamy. And I was drunk, bombed, plastered on the energies.

  I raised myself up on one elbow, hearing surprise in Lolo's mental voice. "What you done, gurl? What you done with dat purple power? What happen you? Where from you get dat?" Her mental voice faded to nothingness.

  With a finger, I broke the circle. All the power looped back into the silver bowl and the amethyst in its bottom, a silent whirlwind of might that vanished with a wet splash. I rolled over onto my back, concentrating on breathing, staring up at the circling ceiling fan.

  Audric stood at the edge of the circle, his two swords drawn, eyes wide with bloodlust.

  "There's nothing here to kill, big man," I said through lips that felt numb and swollen. "No demons followed me back."

  "Something had you." He stepped across the broken circle of salt and stood over me, looking down into my face. "I could smell it. Demon-blood, human blood, mage-blood, a stranger's. And sulfur and acid. Darkness!" he said, his tone joyful. "Where is it?"

  "It was a trap. Lolo helped me escape. We left it behind, but it has Lucas." The sense of inebriation faded with my admission.

  Audric's face fell, disappointed that he had no demon to fight. "And the amethyst?"

  I held up my hand and he sheathed the shortsword before pulling me to my feet. "I can find it. I think. Maybe," I said, trying to find my balance, remembering the lightning bolts in my vision, bright sparkles of purpose answering my call from far away. "The Power called me 'little mage'…"

  "And?" Audric kissed the blade of the longsword before sheathing it.

  "The same words you used earlier." I rested both hands on the tabletop, feeling steadier. "You called me little mage. And you aren't the only one," I said, remembering the bell-like voice from the vision.

  Something shifted in Audric's eyes. He turned toward the door and I snatched at his arm, holding him, though he had the bone structure and muscle mass of his human parent and could have wrenched free easily. "You knew how to call Lolo," I said. "Or she called you. You knew exactly who and what I was before I screwed up in the alley, didn't you?"

  Audric inclined his head slowly, the motion regal, doing that weird second-unforeseen thing he did. "You are ready to hear this, I think. Your Lolo sent me to you. Some half-breeds do not wish to be bound to a seraph for war, but rather to live free, choosing their own battles. This is my desire, to be free, always." His lips nearly smiled before sorrow took it away. "There have always been rumors of banished mages, free mages. I searched for such a one and Lolo sent me to you, to fight beside. Next time, you will enclose me in the circle with you. And together, we will battle the Dark."

  Uh-huh. Sure we would, I thought drunkenly. Like I was going to let myself get trapped again. But I didn't say that. After a slight hesitation while the room pirouetted around me, I said, "You want to fight. I see it in your eyes. Why don't you want to bind with a seraph or a battle mage?"

  The last of the battle lust drained from his eyes, and Audric pulled his arm away. "When you're ready to tell me your story, I'll tell you mine. Little mage."

  The thing in the deeps had kept me prisoner for longer than I had realized, time not moving below-ground as it did above, in one of the weird little quirks of Einstein's theory of relative time. It was nearly ten p.m. when I broke the grip of the Power and found myself on the floor of my loft, muscles stiff and cold where they had lain in contact with the floor for hours. Ciana was already asleep in the guest bed in Rupert's apartment, and Audric, deprived of the chance to kick ass and bleed demons, went away disappointed. I just crawled into bed and fell into a deep, serene sleep.

  Even asleep, I was aware of the amethyst, however—a pulsing, breathing plea of power and might. It offered itself to me, asking nothing in return except to be used, consumed. And in my dreams I was filled up, drunk, reeling with the energies it shared.

  Chapter 18

  Before dawn I woke, the sheets warm around me, the air I breathed frigid, the cold scalding my delicate nasal passages. A noise had woken me, and I quickly sent out scans for danger. Outside, a scream sounded and echoed, and reechoed, anger on anger. It was the lynx from the mountainside. It screamed again. And I knew, suddenly, that it was right outside my window.

  All in a single motion, I lifted my amulets over my head, rolled from the bed, and drew the sword from my walking stick, steel swishing. On bare feet that protested the cold floor, I moved to the back of the loft, pushed aside the drapery, and looked out over the melting snow. Sitting on the ground near the stable, its tail wrapped around its feet, looking for all the world like a prim housecat, was the lynx.

  It looked up at the twitch of the drape and opened its mouth. It spoke, the sound a growl, almost a greeting, nothing like the sedate meow of its tamer cousins. Its long canines caught the moonlight.

  Scientists had been claiming that predator animals were changing to fit the colder ice-age environment, growing longer, sharper fangs needed to bring down larger prey, and producing longer claws. I was seeing the evidence firsthand. The lynx's fangs were more than two inches long. It was staring at the window. I moved closer to the glass. The large cat met my eyes and then looked over its shoulder for a long moment before glancing up at my window again. Suddenly it jumped from its sitting pose, a long arc that took it uphill. In three bounds, it was gone.

  Enclave teachers would call it a portent. I shivered in the cold and started back to bed. Halfway there, I stopped and returned to the window, the sword in my hand. Placing a palm by the windowpane, I looked out. Exactly where the lynx had been was a human figure.

  My nostrils flared; my hand tightened on the sword as battle instincts blazed. A daywalker. Just as the predator cat had stared at me, the child of Darkness stared. My mage-sight flashed on its own. The daywalker glowed with Darkness and with Light and I remembered seeing it up close once before. Near my spring … but the thought flitted away, as insubstantial as an echo. The beast held out its hand, the gesture imploring. Its lips moved.

  "Come. Come to my mistress. Hurry. There isn't much time." Its eyes widened, remarkable, shining eyes like labradorite stone, green and translucent blue. It blinked and said, "Please."

  A scream sounded and I rose up in bed, the dream shattering, evaporating like fog. The lynx called from the Trine, its voice waking me. I rolled back over and slept.

  * * * * *

  When I woke again, it was morning. I dressed quickly and was ready for my workout when a chill raced along my arms, settling l
ow in my abdomen. Something was coming. Walking stick in hand, I raced from window to window, looking for danger, for the lynx, as if the dream warning had been real. There was nothing. Just early risers and the crowd spilling out the kirk doors after dawn service. Yet the sensation persisted, like the scent of battle, like the smell of blood. To disperse it, I flew into the forms of primary-level savage-chi.

  I was ten minutes into my workout, flat on my stomach starting the cluster of lion moves, when my door rammed opened and rebounded off the wall. Audric stood in the breach in his black dobok, scarlet sash tied at his waist. He had a weighted wooden stave in each hand, the kind used to simulate swords for midlevel practice, when bruises and cracked bones are acceptable but blood loss is not. Before I could rise from the floor or speak, he attacked.

  The rods swished the air in violent arcs, the sound like a warrior's dying breath. Placing each foot deliberately, yet moving with battle speed, he was on me in an instant. In the act of rising, I ducked under the first two cuts and whirled across the room, mage-speed my only defense.

  "Where are your practice staves, little mage?" he taunted, following me. I spun under one strike and leapt over the next. "Why are you unarmed?"

  "A little warning would have been nice."

  "Darkness seldom offers such pleasantries." He sent a barrage of blows at me, any one of which would have shattered my bones had it landed.

  "I don't have them."

  "Lies. No mage leaves Enclave without practice weapons. You're sloppy. Laziness has made you weak." A serious pronouncement from one of his kind. An insult.

  "I didn't exactly do my own packing." I jumped behind the couch, landed, and sprang back to the front. "I was drugged and taken to the nearest train station in the dead of night." He stuttered in his steps, an almost certain fatal error had the battle been in earnest instead of play. I marked exactly where my blade would have penetrated beneath his arm. "When I woke up, I was in Mineral City. Whoever packed for me packed my blades but left my staves behind. Ask Lolo next time you talk to her. I'm pretty sure the priestess opened a rune of forgetting over me and sent me here."

  Audric didn't respond to the opening about Lolo. Whirling, he slammed both mock blades into my sides, driving my breath from my chest. I strangled a scream and fell to the floor, gasping, arms around my sides. In battle, the scissor strike was used to cleave a foe in twain. Even with staves it could kill. Fortunately, Audric held back, hitting me with half force. In spite of his restraint, the staves cracked some ribs and bruised my lungs.

  "This is true? " When I nodded, not yet able to talk, he said, "I will provide you with two sets of practice staves: a weighted set for strength, and lightweight bamboo for speed. Henceforth, we will practice every dawn for an hour." Audric crossed his staves over his thighs and half bowed. With a sharp click, he tucked them together beneath his left arm. "I am pleased to be your instructor. I will attack you whenever and wherever I choose. You will defend. You will work on forms. You will take the written tests. You will fight."

  "What if I say no?" I managed from my place on the floor.

  "Each morning I will damage a different bone. After a week, you will no longer resist. You will no longer be sloppy or lazy." When I groaned, Audric laughed. Just what I needed, a second-unforeseen using me to assuage his battle lust.

  Because the shop was closed on Mondays, Rupert and I turned on the TV in the corner, made hot tea, and tinkered with some new displays that looked like porcelain hands, one white, six others pure black. If he noticed I moved a lot more stiffly than usual, he didn't comment on it. He worked silently, intent, rearranging items in the cabinets, standing back to judge the visual impact, then repositioning them.

  Outside the shop windows, kids playing hooky skated and played hockey in the streets. El-cars dodged pedestrians intent on errands, all encouraged by the warm weather. A group of sunbathers in thin clothes was lying on wooden chaises, faces, arms, and lower legs turned to the sun, soaking up a winter's worth of vitamin D and springlike warmth.

  On the TV overhead, an SNN reporter and two "experts" babbled about the warming trend on the East Coast, with one expert claiming an end to the ice age, and the other insisting that it was an anomaly, soon to be reversed with much colder weather to follow.

  I was practically upside down behind the emerald display when the SNN news anchor broke in with a seraph update. I jerked upright. There hadn't been a notable seraph update in ages. Eyes dancing with excitement, unable to sound stern and disinterested, Tom Snead said, "In an unusul turn of events, two seraphs were just seen departing from a Realm of Light." Snead's hands were trembling, and he pressed them on the reporter's desk.

  "Zadkiel, known as the seraph of solace and gentleness, was one of two chieftains who assisted Michael when the arch-seraph fought in the Last Battle. He and another seraph departed before dawn from the only holy region on the North American continent, the island once known as Manhattan." Snead ran out of breath and inhaled noisily. "Zadkiel is known to guard the powers of invocation, the most powerful form of which is prayer.

  "Because he was seen departing to the south, wearing his usual dark purple but not carrying sword and shield, some wonder if he has gone to aid the prayers of some of the faithful. Hopeful people are standing on rooftops, gathering in cathedrals and kirks, in synagogues and mosques all over the eastern seaboard.

  "The seraph traveling with Zadkiel is a lesser-known warrior of the Light, Raziel, called the revealer of the rock. Raziel is the seraph reputed to have given Adam The Book of the Angel Raziel. He is a ruling prince and the chief of the supreme mysteries, the seraph of secret regions."

  On the screen, fuzzy video depicted two forms rising into the clouds as the cameraman zoomed in and refocused. They could have been out-of-focus birds, except for a blast of light accompanying their departure.

  "As soon as we know more about the mission and destination of these two most senior seraphs, SNN will bring you the latest. Stay with us." Tom smiled, his ten-thousand-dollar orthodontics a searing white. The picture broke back into the weather discussion. But after that, who cared about temperatures?

  I remembered the horrible feeling from the early morning. The chill that convinced me that something was coming. I walked from the display case to the front window and placed my hand on the glass as I watched the street. Kids seemed so light-hearted, the adults so blithe. Most wore spring clothes, sweaters over T-shirts, jeans, summer boots. The orthodox women still wore the pale gray dresses of spring.

  The seraphs who had departed at dawn were coming south, possibly along the seaboard. If their flight plan deviated to the west, they might fly past Mineral City. Even with the mended prime amulet, I'd know they were near. I'd go into heat so intense I'd attack any male in sight. Even Rupert. The thought of his horrified expression made me smile, though my reflection in the shop window appeared wan.

  And if the seraphs came too close, they would pinpoint my exact location. Running could save me from humans, but nothing could hide me or save me from seraphs if they came close enough. Nothing. Feeling itchy, with a fight-or-flight urge trying to take over, I went back to work, keeping half an eye on the TV.

  Midmorning, a customer knocked on the door. He wasn't a local, but with the weather warming, the train had made two runs, bringing strangers to town. Strangers who could afford to travel in winter always made great customers, so Audric let him in.

  This particular guy was in his mid-twenties, dressed for the changing weather in a wool business suit, gloves, hat, and periwinkle blue scarf, but no overcoat. He had beautiful eyes, blue-green, like sunlight on water, like labradorite, eyes that seemed familiar. With a businessman's smile, he went straight for Rupert.

  "I'm Malcolm Stone," he said, "and I need a gift for my wife. Do you have any mage-stone or mage-silver rings?"

  My entire body clenched at the question. Jewelry created by mages and shipped out of Enclave by human traders was fantastically expensive, and Thorn's Gems seldom
had access to any. Except all those created by me, but I couldn't quite admit that. I knew I looked guilty, but fortunately neither man looked my way.

  "Nothing in stock right now," Rupert said, turning on his salesman's charm, "but we do have some imported stone from Pre-Ap Africa, and some locally mined emeralds. The miner claims that they came from the far face of the Trine, the site of one of the last battles."

  I turned away from the men, desperately worried about being discovered. Would my friends suffer for my presence? Would they receive the same fate as I if I was caught? Did I have the right to keep what I was from them?

  Malcolm ended up purchasing a ring Rupert had designed, which held a stone I had charmed to provide a sense of calm to the wearer. It was an unusual tumbled amazonite in a lovely mint green shade, set on a sterling band with a wavelike design, and he had the ring gift boxed and wrapped in silver paper.

  After he left, the itchy feeling returned, this time with a vengeance. I hadn't noticed that the feeling was at bay, but now it was a burning sensation down my back, on both sides of my spine. Something was coming. Something big. I could have sworn I heard a cat scream.

  Near noon, as I was eating a solitary lunch on my back porch, overlooking the stables and the Trine, a shadow crossed the sun. I looked up and saw wings. Huge wings.

  Mage-heat slammed into me, a beating, pulsing, sultry lust that drove me off my chair to the porch floor. I moaned, curled into a tight fetal ball on the rough planking, and fought to catch my breath. The heat washed over me in wave after wave of desire and pleasure.

  They were here. The seraphs had come to Mineral City.

  One's feathers were white and purple, and the nervure, the veins visible through the soft down of the underwing, was a purple so dark, it looked black. The other was pure scarlet, a deeper hue than a cardinal, its nervure a bright teal fading to crimson. Beautiful. Exquisite. I wanted both of them.