by Faith Hunter
Enough chitchat. I threw back my cloak and pulled my walking stick blade, the steel a harsh sound in bright daylight, the bloodstone hilt warming in my hand. I reached under my dobok for the white onyx fish amulet that carried a shield of protection, the shield that moved with me. Somewhere behind me, down the Trine, the lynx called, a full-throated scream of sound. Thanks for the warning, I thought, taking a step toward the center of the men.
A sharp pain took me through the throat. The explosive sound of a gunshot instantly followed. I blinked in surprise. My knees buckled. Pain carried me toward the ground.
I looked up as I fell, seeing Thadd’s mouth open. Hearing the beginning of his ringing cry, the words lost beneath the roar in my ears and the blast of the gun. The men scattered, moving behind rocks. Thadd fell over me. The shot echoed. A barrage of others followed; cover fire, return fire. Another round landed in the frozen dirt near me, a puff of motion.
I couldn’t breathe. The air in my lungs was hot, burning, trapped. Blood fountained over me. I tried to force a breath and sucked hot blood into my lungs. My throat made a sucking sound as my windpipe spasmed shut. Blood pumped onto the ground around me. I’m dying. The thought was curious, a vague paradigm, surprisingly without fear. I’m really dying. Blood pumped again, into the air this time, in a crimson spray.
My mind was suddenly lucid, my thoughts coherent and orderly, an overlay of facts and possibilities, transparent, cold, and deadly. I had taken a shot through the throat. Left to right, clean in and out. Carotid clipped. Esophagus gone.
My blood pumped, arching up, then down to splatter the ground, steaming in the cold, a bright, glistening scarlet. I’d be unconscious from blood loss in seconds.
They had known someone was coming. It had been an ambush.
They had used guns, not creation energies. A trap for humans by humans.
I had taken a step forward, into the shot. Had they been aiming at someone else?
I couldn’t call mage in dire because I couldn’t speak.
We would all die.
In the corner of my eye shadows moved, a glint of metal in the sunlight. They were coming. Ahh. They wanted me—alive. They had intended to kill my companions to get me. They wanted my blood.
I thumbed the fish, and the shield snapped into place with a shock wave of might. In mage-sight it was a purple bubble of overlapped energy, like feathers layered over us. Lightning sparkled through it. Thadd raised up, drenched in blood, his face shocked white. He started to place his hands over my throat and then pulled back. I could read his panic. How do I put pressure on a throat wound? I can’t. She’s dead.
The world darkened around me, my sight telescoping to a tiny pinpoint of light, centered on Thadd. The muscles of his shoulders moved. His mouth pulled down. I thought he was speaking. Realized he was screaming. In pain. He fell over me.
I opened my mind, reaching out to stone. Reaching. Pulling it in. Too late . . .
The light shrank down. And died.
Chapter 26
I opened my eyes. I was cold. In pain. Confused. And outside. Overhead, purple light shimmered and sparked, like holiday sparklers. It was shaped like a dome. A shield. I took a breath. And realized I was still alive. I touched my throat. It was tender and sore, the tissues weak and thin to my fingertips. The shield I had opened was taking hits; bullets bounced off of it. The battle was still taking place. Gunshots were deafening.
I smelled cordite and kylen blood. Heat stirred under my skin, coiling like a snake in the spring sun. I was weak, and the flesh of my arm looked desiccated, wrinkled, hanging from my bones as if I had lost pounds. Perhaps I had. My lifeblood had run across the frozen ground and pooled in the downhill edge of the shield.
The sun was still up. Half an hour had passed, surely no more. Thaddeus Bartholomew lay across my body, his weight pinning me to the ground. I wriggled an arm under him and pushed, rolling him over as I sat up. His arms flopped, one landing in my lap.
Through my clothes, my amulets blazed, as did the stones in my pockets. I pushed aside the saturated cloak and dobok tunic to see that the talismans were discharging energy at a constant rate, a steady blast of might. Unconsciously, I had drawn on them as I fell, dying. At this speed, the amulets should be totally drained, yet when I ran my hands over the necklace, stopping them cold, they looked pretty good. In mage-sight they were still full of power. They had to have drawn energy from somewhere . . . the mountain. I had opened a conduit as I . . . died. The amulets had been powered by the Trine, through the sleeping cat I had carved from the heart of a fist of bloodstone. I touched the cat and jerked my fingers back. It was blistering hot.
I shook my head and wiped blood from my face, my mind still sluggish. Someone screamed nearby. Rickie had been hit, or maybe it was the other one, Tomas. Human blood, sweat, and the stink of fear were carried on the breeze.
On my lap blood pumped from Thadd’s wrist, kylen-sweet. There was a huge seraph ring beside me on the frozen ground, turquoise in a silver setting of angel wings. Off of his finger, it had reverted to its unconjured size, the biggest ring I had ever seen. “Oh, Thadd,” I whispered, throat raw. I knew why I was still alive. Thaddeus had pulled off the ring for the second time in his life. Then he had cut an artery and let his precious kylen blood pour over me. To heal me. Around the edges of his duster, white feathers protruded, the softer-than-air feathers of a kylen youth. His transformation to adult kylen was now far along.
My mind cleared fast. I shoved the ring on his finger; it instantly shrank to fit. I ripped off a healing amulet and pressed it into the arterial cut. Like me, he had lost a lot of blood. It had taken a lot to heal me, with his wrist pressed into the wound on my throat.
Oh, saints’ balls. I had kylen blood in my system.
I twisted the top off a bottle of water and dribbled some between Thadd’s lips. He coughed and his eyes fluttered open. Chrysacolla green irises were clear and bright in his pale, white face. “More,” he whispered. I lifted his head and held the bottle to his mouth so he could drink. He drained the water and lay there, gasping. I drank a whole bottle, hoping to restore my body.
“Call mage in dire,” he said, his voice grating.
“If I do, they’ll know what you are,” I said. “And they might kill the others out of spite. And then they’ll take you away.” It hurt to speak and my voice sounded worse than his, a stranger’s croak. I touched my throat again. A large patch of skin was numb and weak-feeling, as if it might burst open again. The wound had taken out a huge amount of tissue. My vocal cords must have been damaged by the gunshot, maybe destroyed and rebuilt from nothing. I wondered how much kylen blood had been deposited into my bloodstream. And what that might mean.
“It’ll be dark soon,” he said. “Then it’ll be too late anyway. Dead if you call, dead if you don’t. And I’d rather die any other way than to be eaten alive.”
Spawn hunted at night. I looked around, considering. The horses were gone, except for Homer. The fighting was at a lull. Three forms hid behind boulders, one under the overhang of the hellhole. Durbarge looked around the rock where he had taken cover. He was prone, a long rifle cradled in his arms like a lover. “You two alive?” he called.
Thadd looked down. I felt shock surge through him, but he nodded and pulled his duster over his feathers. “We’ll live.”
I looked around, evaluating our options. There weren’t many. The men were in close proximity to the assey, though, and maybe I could cover us. “Durbarge!” I shouted. “Turn off any assey gadgets you have.” Asseys are equipped to trap and capture witchy-women—unlicensed mages. The devices might disrupt the shield. To Thadd I said, “We get to Durbarge. Then we put you and Rickie on Homer and send you down the mountain, out of seraph range. I can keep us alive an hour before calling mage in dire. Maybe.”
“Durbarge already knows something’s up. You can’t protect me anymore,” Thadd said bitterly.
I looked at the cop. “You don’t have to worry about the ass
ey.”
“I’ll have to worry about him as long as I live,” Thadd said.
“Or as long as he lives.”
Thadd’s face grew even whiter as it drained of blood. “That’s murder,” he whispered.
“I’m not planning to kill him.” I heard the fury beneath my words and felt a spurt of surprise at my own anger. “But if it comes to it, well, I don’t have a soul. Besides, they can only execute me once.”
Thadd kindly didn’t point out that I had been dead one time today already. Instead he said, “And if I do what you suggest—run, and let you commit murder for me—then what?”
“Beats me. Let’s move.” I rose to my knees, then my feet, feeling the world whirl sluggishly around me as my blood pressure stabilized. Thadd took my elbow, and I said, “Now!” We ran toward Durbarge, the shield moving with us, a mutable force, and fell behind the rock where he lay. Tomas and Eli fell over Rickie, stanching blood, checking his pulse. I couldn’t tell if he was breathing. I tossed Joseph Barefoot two healing amulets. Long seconds passed before I saw Rickie’s chest rise and fall.
“Call mage in dire,” Durbarge demanded.
“She can’t. Rickie’s branded, not an innocent,” Thadd said. “He didn’t get wounded saving her, and she’s not near death. When she couldn’t speak, she used a healing amulet on both of us.” Durbarge looked from me to Thadd, his face debating whether to call us on it. Not giving him a chance to dispute, Thadd outlined my plan, ending with, “Surprise is gone. Without horses, we’ll never get down the mountain alive, even if Thorn could keep the shield open that long. I’ll get Rickie to safety, and get Audric and Rupert and the town fathers. We’ll start back up the mountain by dawn, if I have to shoot someone to get it done.”
“We don’t have much time,” I said. “I smell the succubi.”
“You can’t. They aren’t supposed to hatch until dawn,” Thadd said.
“Time isn’t always linear in a hellhole,” Durbarge said. He seemed to reach a decision, and pointed to the left and right of the hellhole with his rifle. “Two snipers. I can take them out with these”—he pulled two egg-shaped objects from a band at his waist—“but they might damage the entrance. And any hope of stealth will be gone.”
Eli chuckled. “I think it’s pretty well gone now, bro. I don’t think a couple hand grenades will make much of a difference. And Rickie’s as stable as we can get him.” He held one of the healing amulets to the light. “Pretty nifty little suckers. Hope you got a lot more.”
My lips curled at the thought of needing a lot more.
Durbarge assessed his lethal weapons as if checking their weight in each palm. He explained how they worked, and said, “Let’s do this, then. On three. One.” Durbarge pulled a pin from the first grenade. “Two.” I dropped the shield and Eli provided cover fire as the assey pulled the second pin. “Three.” He stood, and threw one in a long arc. The second grenade followed it in a slightly different direction.
I snapped the shield back over us and dropped to the ground, not because I needed to, but because Durbarge did. The explosions overlapped, vibrating through the earth, hurling debris and shrapnel into the air. Shattered rock, dust, and traces of blood hit the shield and rained to the ground in a circle around us. The quiet afterward was absolute. Durbarge pointed two fingers to Eli, then to the right, to himself, and then left. I dropped the shield and they separated, rising from the ground and dashing up the scree on either side of the entrance of the pit at a dead run. I could have told them not to bother. I could smell dead humans.
Minutes later, Thadd was on Homer, Rickie sitting up strapped to his back, straddling the Friesian’s rump, and heading downhill at a fast clip. I snapped the shield back over us and met Durbarge’s one good eye. “Why didn’t you call for help?” I asked. “You could have gotten troops here. Gotten seraphs here. That’s what the AAS does, isn’t it? Talk to the Seraphic High Council?”
“Troops are on the way, but a blizzard has formed up over the Mississippi River valley and is heading this way fast. There wasn’t time for a mobilization before the storm hits. And seraphs don’t listen to us much anymore,” he said, as if it were a well-known fact, instead of mere supposition. “Haven’t in two, three decades.”
“Invaders don’t have to listen to the conquered,” Joseph said. Durbarge didn’t reply to the heresy, and Joseph went on. “I told the men. Some operatives are gathering, but they come from the outlying hills and have to prepare for the storm first, so their families are safe. They’ll be here at noon tomorrow.”
“Too late,” I said. “It has to be today. I can smell something from the entrance. Something that wasn’t there the last time I went in. It smells like the queen smelled. It’s a little late to be asking this, but does anyone have a better plan?”
“You mean better than following a sexy, redheaded, sword-wielding neomage into a pit, battling spawn, dragonets, a major Dark mojo, and trying to kill some kinda aphrodisiac larvae like in some bad, Pre-Ap, B-grade movie?” Eli asked with a roguish grin. “Can’t think of one.” He looked at his watch. “We got one hour till sunset. Let’s boogie.”
I chuckled, slung my bag of goodies over a shoulder, and drew two blades—the walking stick blade and the tanto—and tabbed open the moving shield. “Stay close.”
With them trailing me, I levered myself up over the ledge to the mouth of the cave and stepped inside. Fear skittered up my spine.
Barak slammed his fist against the wall, drawing blood. The kylen was leaving. This was not acceptable. He raced to the bars and gripped them, oblivious to the pain of demon-iron as he shook them in the unyielding stone. His eyes, once a rich and vibrant shade of silver, had acquired dim red flecks. They grew with his anger. The bars held firm.
Across the passageway, a mage in heat moaned as the smell of his blood reached her. The sound brought up his head, and his nostrils quivered as he caught her scent. He swallowed, the muscles of his throat working harshly. “No,” he whispered. “I will not.” Slowly, the red lights in his irises began to fade and die. When they were gone, he stepped away from the doorway and fell to his feathers, dropping his head into his arms. “I will not.”
It wasn’t yet sunset, but I had learned to my chagrin that spawn, while nocturnal, were sometimes active in the protection of the pit when the sun was up. Once stirred to life, they were the same vicious little beasties they were at night. However, even with the gunfire and explosions, no one, and no thing, met us at the opening.
The passageway descended and the ambient light dropped off. I handed each man an illumination amulet and a healing amulet, and advanced into the dark at human speed. The air grew foul with the scent of death and sulfur, an acidic cloud. The men strapped on gas masks, looking like huge bipedal insects. No one had thought to bring a mask for me, but mage eyes and lungs are different from humans’, and the gases didn’t bother me as much.
Moving silently, following the map in my memory, we were down two levels by the time the sun set. A stagnant breeze blew up from the deeps. Chittering started ahead and to the sides as spawn began to wake.
At the sound, my amulets blazed into life, as did the stones in my pockets and in the bag I had slung across my back. The first spawn peered around the bend at our left. Before it could yowl a warning, I dropped the shield and beheaded it. “To the right,” I said. “Fast.” We made one more level before the alarm was sounded.
At a juncture of corridors hewn from the mountain of the Trine, new scents collided with the smell of waking spawn. Dragonets. Seraph. Mages. A ululating cry echoed through the tunnels. And the swarms attacked.
“Jehovah sabaoth!” I screamed. Moving with mage-speed, my skin blazing like a torch in the night, I advanced into the horde, blades flashing in the swan and the whirl-wind—moves created specifically for fighting spawn, taking off body parts. The spawn—always hungry, pulled their injured under them, feasting as others advanced to attack.
“Jesus,” Durbarge prayed, easing to my right
, slicing with his own blades, beheading and maiming. He began his war chant, which I thought was from 2 Samuel. “And darkness was under his feet. And darkness was under his feet.”
Eli, to my left, shouted from Isaiah, “Thou shalt be visited of the LORD . . . and the flame of devouring fire.” As he yelled, he pumped the bag under his arm and shot gouts of fire from his flamethrower. Spawn screamed and burned and died.
The EIH fighters drew swords and shouted together, “I will draw my sword, my hand shall destroy them. ” The words brought me up short, and I misstepped. Teeth sank in my calf, above the battle boot. Pain shocked through me. With a single swipe, I beheaded the beast and kicked its teeth loose, the head flying away into the swarm. I settled myself with a simple crab move, wondering at the heretics’ choice of scripture. They were speaking from Exodus, the words of the enemy of the people of the Most High.
“Jehovah sabaoth!” I shouted, the words that came to me the first time I went into battle, as all battle cries that fight Darkness are given.
“The seraph I told you about is close,” I said to Durbarge and Eli. “I smell him.” And a mage was close too, gibbering, insanity like a festering wound in her mind. “Take me, take me, take me, take me, take me,” she cried silently. I tripped and fell, landing flat. Eli stepped over me, shouting my name, firing his flames. But the mind of the mage pulled me down into the cramped and flashing corners of her tormented memories.
