Seraphs

by Faith Hunter

  In the second generation, the crossbreeding of seraphs and kylen with neomages was banned following an accidental discharge of wild-magic that killed many. The neomage population stopped expanding with the edict. Without seraphs to stimulate mage females into heat, neomages don’t breed easily or quickly. **See section: Mage Breeding Habits.

  By seraphic decree, kylen now mate only with humans, and all offspring are taken at birth to a Realm of Light. Mage-powers demonstrated by the first generation have been diluted with the human gene pool, and the wings have vanished entirely from recent generations. Yet kylen, who have vastly longer life spans than humans or mages, are known throughout the protected domains as wizards who answer the call and will of the High Host.

  Though I had some answers, I was left with more questions than when I started. What were Allied Ones? What was a nomadic human clan? I didn’t remember that from schoolroom studies. What did it mean to be burned almost to nothingness? And what was this about the New Orleans Enclave being the site of the first mage-heat, and the birth-place of most of the kylen? I had lived there for fourteen years and never heard that. Was Daria still living? The photo was grainy and blurred, the face unfamiliar.

  Next I searched for succubus. That was enlightening. A succubus was a noncorporeal demon who could temporarily coalesce to take on the physical form of a human female, or who could possess a human female to lure human men into sexual sin. Occasionally a succubus would then bring the man to its master or kill him, sort of a demonic black widow. I couldn’t see Gramma—who had to be eighty—being successful at the possessed part at all. A succubus had to be sexually alluring and Gramma . . . wasn’t. Not by a long shot.

  Next I looked up queen, and found thousands of sites, books, and papers relating to human queens, queen bees, Pre-Ap queens who were beheaded, queens who used to be human males, which had to be painful, and hundreds of other types of queens. I didn’t find one single reference that might fit the daywalker’s obscure words.

  On a whim, I tried succubus queen and hit pay dirt. A succubus queen was purported to be half human, half demon, a rare supernat capable of casting a glamour that could fool even seraphs. When bred with a Major Darkness it could produce thousands of eggs. The hatchling larvae would all be female succubi—true female beings, capable of giving birth when mated to anything male. If Gramma had been replaced with a succubus queen, or been possessed by a succubus, capable of a glamour to hide her physical appearance, that might fit. Though why a sex demon would want to possess Gramma was a mystery.

  Still not satisfied, I looked up more sites mentioning Baraqyal. The name turned up on an incomprehensible site dedicated to seraph watching. Seraphs had groupies, much like mages did, and not all were totally rational. The keeper of this site surely wasn’t, with whole sections ranting about seraphs, mages, evil, sex, and demons, none of it comprehensible except the dictionary of seraphic names, which was organized and coherent enough to have been imported from another site or created before she lost her mind.

  There was also a Web page listing the traits of seraphs, including their limitations, which was a surprise. Most humans seemed to think they were omniscient, omnipresent, all-powerful beings. They weren’t. According to both current and ancient theology, their power and knowledge were finite, often held in check by the Most High.

  In another section, I found pictures of seraphs, which made my blood pound and my breathing speed. I shifted from page to page and found a picture of my own special seraph, Raziel. He looked back at me in full color, with blazing ruby irises, scarlet feathers, crimson hair upswept in a breeze, and muscles that looked as if they had been chiseled from marble.

  My knees went weak. Heat, never far away, threatened. My seraph. It was how I thought of him, in lots of carnal circumstances and positions. Dangerous thoughts in light of the death penalty imposed upon mages who mated seraphs. Reluctantly, I went back to my search. But I book-marked the page and the picture.

  Baraqyal was listed as one of two hundred Watchers, fallen but repentant seraphs, as referenced in Enoch I. I hadn’t heard of Enoch I. But the description matched the seraph I’d seen in the pit on the Trine, the silver-haired one with clipped wings. Barak was in a list of nearly a hundred missing Allied Ones, most not seen in decades. A quick search proved that Enoch I was not available on the web. Neither was a picture of Barak, and that bothered me.

  I hadn’t known there were repentant seraphs among the Fallen, and that most had joined the Allied Ones. There was an awful lot I didn’t know, not with my neomage schooling and training cut short, terminated by the priestess of the New Orleans Enclave, and most of the Internet information was confusing. But one thing was clear in all the accounts of Baraqyal, Barak, and kylen. They had been in the same Enclave where the first litters of kylen were born. Where the first mage-heats took place.

  Apparently, Barak had allied with the winged-warriors, the seraphim, in the Last War. He was also a Watcher, a fallen but repentant seraph. Was Barak really Baraqyal? If so, then another part of the puzzle that started and ended with Lolo, the priestess of the Enclave of my birth, was making sense.

  Little facts and bits of memory were beginning to fall into place in the depths of my mind. Thoughtfully, I signed off the Internet. I had to have a long chat with Lolo.

  Chapter 14

  Friday was my day to work in back, while Jacey and Rupert handled shop business. With the clearing weather, there should have been a lot of walk-in traffic, but things seemed awfully quiet when I came down the stairs dressed in jeans and layered T-shirts. Jacey was sitting at a display, with an adding machine, pencil, and notepad, doing the books and Rupert was resetting a cabochon in an old setting. Repair work. No customers.

  “You guys look relaxed,” I said.

  Neither looked up. Rupert said, “Taking it easy after a wild morning trapping demons, chanting, and getting blown up.”

  Ouch. “Sorry about that,” I said.

  “You got a customer in back, though,” Jacey said. She hit a button and a paper strip unrolled from the machine. “I turned on the heat.” I didn’t like the way she said “customer.”

  When I stepped into the work space, I found a woman I had passed on the street and at kirk. She was midfifties, face wreathed in wrinkles that had been created by laughter. Dressed in layers, like me, but in proper skirts and blouse, she had thrown her overcoat to the side and stood with hands clasped behind her back, inspecting globs of glass on Jacey’s workbench. She wore pink, which meant she was a reformed or a progressive. I couldn’t remember what her name was. I cleared my throat.

  She flushed and looked up with a hesitant—guilty?—smile. Had she been stealing? Thinking about pilfering? Her first words cleared up that question. Hand outstretched, she crossed to me, saying, “I’ve never been to a mage for help before. I hope you’ll forgive me. I don’t know the proper protocol.” At a loss for words, I accepted her hand. She shook mine once, firmly, and let go. “I’m Sarah Schubert. My husband and I own Blue Tick Hound Guns. We want to purchase mage-steel.”

  I tried to keep my brows from touching my hairline. “Oh,” I said. Mage-steel was used in blades and other devices that required a strong temper, yet an elastic flexibility. “I can’t help you.” At her blank look, I added, “There are different kinds of mages. You need a metal mage. Specifically a steel mage specialist. I work only in stone.”

  “Oh. Well, of course,” she said. “But you have diplomatic contacts at Enclaves.” From her sleeve she pulled a sheaf of papers, tightly rolled. “You can contact a steel mage, send him these drawings, and he can quote us a price. Our go-between. Yes?”

  I had no idea. But I was a licensed neomage, with the visa and the GPS bracelet and whatever authority came with them. Traditionally, licensed mages made contracts with the outside world for trade. I realized the silence had stretched too long. “Um. Sure. I can make the contacts.” I hoped. Maybe. Unless I screwed up. I didn’t even know any steel mages. They were a minuscule mino
rity in the small number of metal mages. The skin along my spine started to itch. Seraph stones.

  “Look, Sarah, I’m new to this,” I said. “Really new. You would be my first trade negotiation. I might not do it right. I might take longer than someone who’s been doing them for a while. Maybe you better go to someone else.”

  “I appreciate your candor. But you’re here. Atlanta is the next closest option.” She rattled the papers in her hand. “Someone else might be faster, but you’re Mineral City’s neomage. You’ll try harder to get us good value for our money.”

  Heaven help me. She meant it. She was claiming me for the town. I had been revealed as a mage for a long time, but this was the first time anyone had openly accepted me for what I really was. I couldn’t keep a small flame of delight from igniting in my chest. I took the drawings. “Sure.” The word felt huge, as if it wanted to lodge in my chest. “These aren’t your only copies, are they?”

  We agreed that I would handle the trade negotiation via phone, Internet, postal service, and “mage ways,” as she called scrying. And that I’d take expenses and a percentage for my time. Sarah seemed pleased with the four percent I asked, assuring me I could have gotten more. But I had no idea what I was doing. I just hoped Blue Tick was happy to pay me anything once it was all over. When the particulars were settled, we shook on it and Sarah left. Out the back door of the shop, which surprised me.

  While I was still getting over the shock of her circuitous egress, a second person knocked on the back door. It was the mortified, blushing, middle-aged wife of a kirk elder, wanting a charm for improving her sex life. Being exposed as a licensed mage, not having gone to jail for it, and having an elder purchase a charm for his wife seemed to have freed the citizens to use my services. But not yet freed them to be up front about it.

  After the fourth indirect visitor, I was pretty well ticked off. I wasn’t a whore or a guilty pleasure, so I hung a sign on the back door. “Mage appointments and services will be provided on Monday, noon to three. Enter at front.” After that, I had no more interruptions. I might have no appointments Monday, but at least if I did, I wouldn’t feel shameful.

  Near eleven, I finally pulled my one-piece work uniform on over my clothes and settled to work on a double fist of dark green aventurine. Overhead, a new CDS disc played, an ancient, Pre-Ap rock-and-roll singer named Rod Stew-art. He had a smoky, rough voice, but with a pathos I liked. The crystal digital storage disc had been released in a batch of Pre-Apocalyptic music, and my partners and I had been listening to new, but long-dead, artists every chance we got.

  For decades rock and roll had been prohibited, though no one knew what the Administration of ArchSeraphs had against the music. Rod’s rough voice seemed made for cutting stone. Jacey had come to appreciate a guy named Sting, and Rupert was currently listening to the Eagles, a band called Traffic, and Casting Crowns.

  I secured the large hunk of rough into a vise and turned on the wet saw, showering water and wet stone dust all over me with the first cut, and excising shapes that I would later carve and link into a necklace of overlapping leaves. The diamond-tipped blade roaring in the saw, I slowly removed roughly triangular shapes from the motherstone. The matrix was stable and tightly grained, a pleasure to work with.

  I had learned to inspect the crystalline matrix of the rock with my mage-senses as I worked, sending a skim into the heart of the stone. The aventurine responded, a green-glowing resonance, an echo of power, though I hadn’t charged it with anything yet.

  Maybe I could use a bit of the stone for the kirk elder’s wife’s sex charm. Something carved into an orchid, a bloom that looked like a male sex organ. I grinned as I worked, imagining her expression when she saw it. She’d never wear it in plain view.

  As the hours passed, I relaxed into working stone, my affront fading as I cut and shaped leaves, and then worked some rose quartz for another necklace of overlapping roses, a commissioned piece for an out-of-town customer. It was cool, and I was glad of my extra layers, wishing Rupert and Jacey were working with me, their flames and braziers helping warm the room. My hands were icy when I finally stopped for lunch. There were customers in the front and so I ate alone, juice and yogurt, while sitting at my workbench. When I went back to cutting stone, I was marginally aware that Jacey, and then Rupert, stopped for lunch too, though we didn’t speak.

  Near five thirty the light dimmed. My shoulders were aching, muscles bunched and tight from the hours of work. I had excised enough stones for a half-dozen necklaces, and several large pieces that would work up into nice focal stones. Others would consider my day boring, but I thought it was wonderful.

  I went to bed early, the previous sleepless night catching up with me. In Pre-Ap times, town activities might have kept a sleepy person awake, but, like all small towns, Mineral City now pretty much died at nightfall. Big cities could afford streetlights and mage-shields, and the citizens found protection in sheer numbers—places like Atlanta, Mobile, Daytona, and Boca Raton. But in the rest of the world, not much happens after dark, not since the coming of Darkness. So the town went silent as night fell, and I went to sleep.

  I knew I was dreaming when I found myself in Enclave and sane, alone inside my own mind. I was sitting with Lolo, who rocked back and forth in candlelight, positioned on a pile of pillows in the big front room in her house. I thought I might be able to wake myself, but I didn’t want to. I wanted to see what would happen next. And I liked the free-floating sensation of this dream. It was soothing and tranquil.

  The priestess’ home was near the corner of Bourbon and St. Louis Streets, a two-story house with a black, wrought-iron balcony and tall windows with working shutters. The night was mild, a breeze billowing the gauze curtains, flickering the candle flames. The room was large, with scattered tables and chairs, fans turning lazily twelve feet overhead, casting shadows on the pressed tin ceiling. My dreams painted the room a deep rose with pale pink trim, and made the pillows a hundred shades from dusky rose to dark wine.

  Nearby, a flute played in a minor key, and drums beat a soft, steady cadence. They followed the tune of a distant trumpet that came through the windows, playing a mournful melody. On her pillows, Lolo swayed to the beat, eyes closed, her ancient skin hanging in folds, her skull nearly bald, brown skin shining through sparse, corked strands. She was alone but for the flutist and drummer, her wrinkled face smooth and relaxed.

  The room spun slowly, and I was the one sitting on the pillows. I opened my eyes, seeing the walls and fluttering curtains in a wash of power. Bowls and vases of flowers scented the air. Night-blooming jasmine and lilacs flamed with bright pink and blue energies, their very scents power I could bend and use. I held up my hands, seeing smooth, young, dark-skinned flesh and slender fingers. Not my hands. Not Thorn’s. Someone else’s hands.

  Bells draped around my neck tinkled with my movement. In the mirror across from me, I was beautiful, dusky-skinned, and power surged around me like the waves of an incoming tide swirling around coral reefs. I was Lolo. Lolo when I—she—was young.

  The seraph stepped toward me, wings folded back, his hair too long, worn loose on the breeze, silvered by moonlight. He was naked, aroused. I trailed my gaze up his body, my lips full and bruised, much kissed. I lifted a hand, holding a stem of lilac in my fingers. I waved it toward him, seeing the strength of an incantation swirl into the air like yellow butterflies.

  The sense of his gaze was no dream, but solid and real, a memory or a vision. I couldn’t remember if I had ever been old. Surrounded by my conjure, Raziel—no. Not Raziel. Another. One with iridescent green feathers and desire on his face. He moved across the room and knelt on the cushions, one hand on my shoulder.

  His wings lifted and brushed along my body, raising my flesh into prickles of tight peaks. His head lowered and I reached for him. Something clanked, capturing my hands. I caught it and pulled it over my head. Heat blossomed up like a garden blooming all at once, perfuming the air with desire. His nevus gleamed silv
er like moonlight, like his hair. A silver glow that pulsed with life.

  No. That wasn’t right. Not growing things. But like a wave of magma, rising, burning its way toward the surface. I cupped his face with one hand, and lower I found his need, guiding him to me. His body glowed, fulgent in the moonlight. The seraph fell on me, his mouth on my breasts. I arched up to meet him, screaming, “Now. Now!”

  I woke, still screaming. Mage-heat locked itself in my body, demanding, the wave of lava still rising. I rolled over, reaching for the seraph. He was nowhere to be found. I was alone in my bed, in the bitter, frozen Appalachian Mountains. My hand encountered something hard, and a morsel of my mind returned to me, fighting through the waves of need. The scent of flowers altered, sour, like funeral lilies, dying.

  I gasped a breath of frigid air and looked down at myself. I was myself, not the woman in the dream that hadn’t been a dream. My amulet necklace lay tangled in the sheets.

  A cry beckoned through the windows—the lynx, its voice coarse and low. From farther off, a wolf called plaintively. I pulled the necklace over my head. With it in place, I was able to separate the foul scent from the smell of flowers. Mold and dead leaves.

  I gripped the hilt of the walking stick and rolled from the bed. Except for the smell, I was alone. The lynx called again, the sound seeming to come from the front of the loft rather than the back, where it usually appeared. Barefoot, naked, not knowing or caring where my nightclothes had disappeared to, I crossed the room to the front windows. They were arched, like the windows in my dream. Like the windows that memory told me were in Lolo’s house in New Orleans. How had I lived here for so long without noticing the similarity? Had I unconsciously chosen this place for that reason? Tall ceilings and arched windows—

  Banishing the thought, I lifted a tanto from the kitchen table where I had left it for a thorough cleaning. One blade before me, one held backhanded, pointing to the rear, I reached the front windows and stared at the silent street. A gibbous moon hung in a black sky, silvering puffs of low clouds, rimming the buildings with pale light. Windows were dark. Churned, crusted snow and mud were rutted in the street. The smell of mold grew.