Bloodring

by Faith Hunter

  Icy water hit me like a frozen fist. Desire morphed into rage. Mage-fast, I came up off the planking and launched myself at Audric. I hit him square in the chest, sending the water bucket he carried flying. Before it could land, I was on him, ripping the staves from beneath his arms and striking a tattoo of blows across his body. I heard a bone in his hand crack and snarled when he jumped back.

  Staves materialized in the half-breed's hands, blocking six strikes, eight, fourteen. I backed him around the small porch, hearing soft yips and low growling. The sound, deep and menacing, heated my blood with battle lust. It came from my throat. I wanted blood. I wanted to see the half-breed dead.

  Audric laughed. "Fight me, little mage. Fight. Already your heat is waning. Fight!" He advanced on me, sweeping long strikes, moves I had seen as a child on the practice floor but had never tried, let alone mastered. I blocked most. The rest landed, leaving bruises on top of bruises. Pain slowly cleared my head.

  "Audric," I gasped, blocking the opening moves of the walking horse.

  "Are you back in your own mind, little mage?" he asked, transforming the horse move into the dolphin midstrike. The bamboo staves slapped my thighs, searing pain that brought tears to my eyes. Had they been weighted sword-staves, my femurs would have broken.

  I retaliated by sweeping a stave up between his legs. He blocked it at the last moment. I risked a look at his face. "Yes. My heat is gone," I admitted. "Will it stay gone?"

  "An hour. If we are lucky."

  "An hour." I laughed, the sound wretched. I blocked a swipe that would have dislocated my jaw.

  "You fight better when you fight by instinct rather than with your mind. Two levels better. Do we run, or do we tell Rupert what we are?"

  "We tell," I said. I broke through the master's stance and touched him hard over the heart with the tip of my stave. Audric jumped back, crossing his staves in an "enough" gesture. I stepped back as well and crossed my staves, accepting the end of the match.

  "Rupert and Jacey, both," Audric said.

  "Yeah." And if they hated us for it, we could run. But if they wanted us to stay, it would at least be with full knowledge of the consequences. "I like the staves. Well balanced. Small enough for my hands."

  "They were mine as a child. I'm glad you approve." He looked down at his broken finger. "Nicely done, mage. I don't suppose you know any healing incantations?"

  I shook icy water from my hair and picked up the bowl that had once held my lunch. The bowl had survived being knocked to the floor. The food hadn't been so lucky. Applesauce and cottage cheese were all over the place, ground into the boards by our feet. "A couple of healing chants are in my repertory. You clean up the porch. I'll heal your hand."

  "Done," he said. "And after that, we tell our friends what we are. Then we'll go up on the mountain to find the rest of the amethyst. And we will take along your Hand of the Law. What?" he said when I flinched slightly. "I have no doubt you can control your peculiar reaction to the stone and your attraction to the kylen. We need to find the motherstone. It may help us. So may he."

  By two—bandaged to keep the mended bones from rebreaking, in Audric's case, and with ribs taped, in my case—we were in the shop with Jacey and Rupert. I had a rune of forgetting ready just in case they decided to turn us in, but I hoped I wouldn't have to use it.

  While Audric poured and served tea in the shop's tiny salvaged porcelain teacups, I started the confession. "I have something you guys need to know. Something I haven't told you. Something that would put you in danger if it was discovered." Not able to stay seated, I stood and paced in front of Jacey and Rupert. Jacey was working on a bracelet of green and brown yarn and tumbled amber nuggets, her eyes on her work. Rupert sat back in his chair, legs outstretched, and watched me as I paced, speculation on his face. "If you want me to leave when you hear it, if it's too dangerous for me to be here, knowing what I'm about to say, I'll sign over my share of the shop to you and take off. I'll be gone by nightfall."

  "You're a mage?" Jacey said.

  I stopped so fast I nearly tripped over my feet. "What?"

  "Rupert and I think you're a mage. Probably a stone mage."

  Audric laughed, the sound of his chuckles low and astonished. I looked from Rupert to Jacey. She raised her head at last and stared at me. "We talked about what we'd do if it was true. What we'd do if you were caught and us with you. Rupert saw your scars. No human would have survived the venom and viruses from a spawn-attack that severe. You had to be either a neomage or a mule." Jacey placidly returned her eyes to her work as she spoke. "It's not like we're orthodox."

  "My uncle on my mother's side," Rupert said. "The one who was elected to Congress? If we ever need to run, I can call him and request sanctuary in an Enclave somewhere. We can move, lock, stock, and barrel, and take everything in the storeroom, of course. "Thorn's Gems as an Enclave business would increase our value a hundredfold. If we could advertise that all our stock has mage-stones, we would be rich in five years and could live anywhere we wanted. Jacey already talked to Big Zed, and he agreed. So. Are you a mage?"

  Big Zed was Zedikiah Senior, Jacey's husband. Which meant he now had an idea what I was too. And because I hadn't been flayed or tortured this morning, it appeared that he hadn't turned me in to the AAS. "Yes," I said, the word a breath without tone. Tears sprang to my eyes. "Really? You really don't want me to leave?"

  "Really," Rupert said. He stood and set down his empty cup, crossed the room, and gathered me in his arms. "We're family. When my brothers and parents discovered I wasn't straight, they dumped me—for years. So did my friends, all except you. Even though you weren't a mountain native and hadn't lived here long, you accepted me."

  "And when I got pregnant and wasn't married to Big Zed, you and your foster father took me in, gave me a place to live. Helped me get the paperwork done to get married, even though I was showing and Big Zed was a widower with kids and the elders didn't want to approve it." She smiled softly. "And you got me that dress. That beautiful white dress."

  I sobbed once into Rupert's shoulder.

  "Because of you, I got married wearing a real wedding dress, with an elder to officiate, even if he was a minor elder and shaking in his boots. In spite of their feelings toward me, my parents came, and I know you had something to do with that. We're family, you and me." Her grin widened, lighting her gamin face. "You're pure flame." It was the highest compliment Jacey could give. She turned to Audric. "And you?"

  Audric went still, his eyes on Rupert. "I'm a half-breed. Humans call us mules. We call ourselves the second-unforeseen."

  "That explains a lot," Rupert said, his words heavy with meaning. Half-breeds were seldom physically whole, most missing internal and external genitalia.

  "Our time together isn't as … complete, as what you would experience with a human," Audric said. "You may not choose me for partner now that you know what I am, and now that you know my disfigurement can't be reversed by surgery, as you once suggested."

  "Sex isn't everything," Rupert said, his hands massaging my back. I wasn't certain he knew what he was doing, but it felt good on my bruises, so I leaned into him, putting my ear over his heart. It beat with a strong sound, a steady double thump of love. "I don't consider you disfigured," he said to Audric. "Never have. Stay. As long as you want. Forever. As a half-breed, you'll outlive me by twenty or thirty years. Plenty enough time to do something else with your life after I'm gone."

  Audric's body loosened as tension eased out of him. "Seraphs are in town. Thorn went into heat, though it's in abeyance at the moment. We may be discovered. You still want us to stay?"

  "Yep," Jacey said. "We do."

  I pushed Rupert away and bent over Jacey, hugging her.

  She hugged back one-handed, holding her work in the other, patting me as she might one of her children.

  As I stood, my eyes were drawn to a figure standing in the front window. It was a businessman in suit, hat, and periwinkle blue scarf. He had beautiful e
yes like labradorite, clear and blue-green, like the gulf. He bowed slightly when he saw me and walked away. He looked familiar somehow, but I couldn't place him.

  Long before dark, Rupert, Audric, Thaddeus Bartholomew, Ciana, and I headed up the mountain. We made a motley crew, as if we had been put together from different fashion magazines. Thadd, having traded in his jumpy gray horse for a calm, barrel-chested bay with a black blaze and four black stockings, was dressed as before in jeans and several shirts. A tan cowboy hat hid his reddish hair, and the layered shirts hid his now-deformed back.

  He glanced at me beneath the rim of his hat, and I hated it that he looked so good in jeans, sitting on a horse. I hated it almost as much that he seemed to have come to some sort of acceptance of me and our bizarre situation. He tipped his hat, eyes rueful. I had presumed he'd stay angry, blaming me for the incipient wings, but it seemed he recognized it wasn't my fault that his mama slept with a kylen, hid the resulting pregnancy, and then lied to him for his whole life. I didn't want to like him, but I was beginning to.

  I had taken time to research incantations for emotional calm and found two that claimed to provide protection from the passion of anger and the passion of jealousy. I had instilled two aventurine donuts with the incantations and now wore them in my bra. While not intended to stop or control lust, passion was passion, and they seemed to be working pretty well. Even when the cop sat a horse like he'd been born in the saddle, butt gripped tight against the cantle, thighs wrapping around the fork, boots solid in the stirrups. I wasn't ignoring him totally, but I wasn't jumping his bones in public, so things weren't too bad.

  Ciana—who couldn't be left alone, not with a daywalker, spawn, and a blood-demon loose—rode pillion behind Audric on his Clydesdale. The palomino, like my Friesian, had been bred to work. Clyde had been stable bound too long and was raring to go, bringing excited squeals from Ciana each time he fought the bit. Audric, dressed in black denim from head to toe, and fully armed, gave the horse more rein than usual, laughing happily when Ciana shrieked. We might get lucky and find Darkness to fight. Audric was psyched.

  Rupert, goaded with liberal amounts of ridicule into accompanying us, sat on a small mule. He was glum but still made a fashion statement in fuchsia from head to toe, including his boots. I was dressed in dark green, the layers calculated to permit me to wear all my blades, amulets, and charged stones, along with a generous handful of the amethyst to use like a divining rod. I had secured all my stones in waterproof bags in case of a second accidental drenching. The walking stick went into a loop near my thigh, a shovel beside it in case we got lucky and had to dig.

  The ground was nearly free of snow, and according to local radio, the ice cap was beginning to melt. Overhead, a plane flew a grid north and south, checking it for stability. Melt ran in sheets. If the temps didn't turn cold soon, it wouldn't be long until something bad happened. Going up on the Trine would be fatal if the cap shifted and created an avalanche. We'd be buried. Of course, the town would be inundated a half minute later, so either way our danger quotient was high. Either way, we'd be dead.

  Everyone in the group except Ciana knew I was a mage, so I didn't have to pretend. I opened a massive blended scan, managing to stay on Homer's broad back and not toss my cookies when the vertigo hit. Knowing what to look for, I spotted the lightning and sparkles that had attracted my attention during my virtual trip into the Power's domain. The amethyst in my pockets throbbed in time with the pulsing energies. If the stone had been alive, I'd have said it was excited. Dropping the scan, I urged Homer to the head of the row. "I'll take point. Take our backs, Thadd?" When he raised a thumb, I slapped Homer's withers with the reins and let him have his head. Straight uphill.

  The ride was fast, wet, and exhilarating. Opening my mage-senses on the careening ride caused my control over my neo-mage attributes to slip, and by the time we were five hundred feet higher than the town, I was glowing faintly. Audric, who frowned at my lack of restraint, kept Ciana's attention on things to the sides so she wouldn't notice.

  By late afternoon, when we reached the place that had drawn my attention, we were all mud caked and tired, and some of us were ornery. A snow-covered, oval glen on the mountainside was marked with runnels of snowmelt and animal tracks, grass peeking through. The land to the east fell away in a long gulley, and the trench was running with a waterfall full of debris. To the west was a mound of broken rock overgrown with hibernating trumpet vines, honeysuckle, and ferns. It was an idyllic spot, and boulders protruding from the earth glowed with a soft resonating power. I rode Homer across the glen to the tall mound, composed of overgrown, shattered granite. It had to be a remnant of the battle on the Trine.

  I damped my neomage attributes and tossed the reins to the ground, sliding after them, taking the shovel and the walking stick, one in each hand. Homer looked down at me and snorted into my hair. "Thanks," I said. "I really needed a head full of horse snot." Taking me at my word, he nuzzled my shoulder until I gave him a sugar cube from a pocket. Hearing the others reach the glen, their horses neighing softly, the people talking, I left Homer munching spring grass, tucked the walking stick into a loop on my belt, and climbed the mound. It glowed more richly on the far side. A strong pulse answered from my pocket. I was pretty sure I'd found the motherstone.

  Brushing snow, ice, and detritus away, I positioned the shovel and put my back into digging. The soil wasn't tightly packed, but it was heavy with snowmelt and fracturing ice. I felt the activity in my bruised back, biceps, and thighs. I knew the instant Thadd joined me. He put his shovel on the north side of the mound, as far from me as he could get and still be digging in the same piece of real estate. Audric joined us with his own shovel. Rupert, complaining about saddle blisters, pulled Ciana to a pile of rock and watched.

  I uncovered the first cracked fragment of amethyst, a shard about the size of Homer's foot, traced with a fine network of shattered, high-grade quartz. It was damaged, and when I looked at it with mage-vision, its rhythm seemed offbeat from the glow that pulsed from the earth. But it still contained power, oddly undiminished by being exposed on all four sides to soil and groundwater. I set it gently aside, knowing it might crumble into pieces if I handled it roughly. Audric placed a brittle shard beside mine.

  As he set it down, a rumble sounded. We all turned our eyes uphill and froze. A loud crack, like cannon shot, echoed through the nearby peaks; a groan followed it, tortured, as if the earth itself were in pain, the worrisome signs of avalanche. But they faded, and silence settled in. Slowly, we returned to the backbreaking work. From the corner of my eye, I saw Rupert climb from his perch and lift something from a crack in the rocks, but my attention was snagged by a shard, this one a perfect crystal.

  We began to uncover amethyst in every scoop, picking the smaller pieces out of a shovelful of soil, drawing larger ones out by hand. This was not a typical stone formation, but loose and jumbled together. Whatever it was, it wasn't a mine.

  An hour later, I took a water bottle and a fist-sized hunk of rock and walked to the top of the mound. Out of sight, I marked a small circle in the soil and sat on a dry boulder in the center of it. I'd be drunker than ten monkeys attempting to scry here, but I hadn't forgotten Lucas or my promise to Ciana to try to get him back.

  Putting the new stone, freshly dug from the ground, in front of me, I set a tiny shard coated with Lucas' blood on top and drew on the amethyst, chanting softly, "Show me Lucas. Show me Lucas. Show me Lucas. Show me Lucas." My heart rate slowed, as did my breathing. I felt a sensation of falling swiftly, then, with a jerk like a prisoner at the end of a hangman's rope, I stopped.

  I was hovering above Lucas in his cell. He was emaciated, sinewy, as if hunger had stripped away fatty tissue, leaving well-developed muscle. His beard was long, his eyes closed, but he still breathed. Again, I smelled old blood and gangrene, and saw a place on his neck where something had fed.

  He didn't have long. We had to find him soon. I knew from personal experience
that once spawn started to feed, dinner died. I used my newfound ability for a blended scan to pinpoint Lucas' whereabouts. He was deep inside the left peak of the Trine. The smell of limestone came to me, indicating that the entrance to the pit was nearby. But Lucas was far, far underground. And he was still in the claw of a Power.

  I opened the charmed circle. I was useless to help my ex-husband. Dismay welled up in me and, sighing, I stood, surprised at how steady I felt. I had used the amethyst power, but I wasn't drunk. I paused, considering why.

  Hairs along my arms lifted in warning.

  Chapter 19

  The shot was so close that the round whizzed right by my ear. I dropped into a crouch and leapt. The sound of the rifle came an instant later.

  "Gun!" Thadd shouted. "Get down!"

  "No kidding," I shouted back, ducking behind a tree. More softly, surprised, I added, "It went through my hair." Shock sizzled through me. I fell against the tree, breath rasping.

  Four more shots sounded. One plunked into the tree that hid me. Another landed near my foot. Fear went through me like a missile exploding. I rolled, somersaulting behind a rock. A small gulley running with snowmelt trickled beside it and I landed in the bottom hard, jarring my bones, splashing in the runnel.

  Silence as the snowmelt permeated my clothes and drenched my flesh. I didn't feel the cold. A soft alarm sounded in the back of my mind at the anomaly—my body wasn't reacting as it should. I couldn't stop to think about that now.

  "Where are they?" Audric shouted.

  "Uphill and to the right," Rupert said, his voice shaky.

  Two more rifle shots sounded, neither landing near me. I guessed there were at least two assailants, one firing at me, one at the others. Only humans used guns. Darkness didn't depend on such puny weapons.

  No one had claimed the site, so why were humans attacking us? The ground hadn't been disturbed. Not in decades. A barrage exploded from uphill. I heard the horses scream and the sound of hooves as they stampeded. Two gunshots sounded, closer—Thadd returning fire with a handgun. Sweet seraph. Ciana was in the line of fire. Shock blossomed into a white-hot anger. Someone, some human, was endangering her.