by Faith Hunter
I slipped deeper into the water, looking around at the loft where I had lived for so many years. I had moved here soon after my foster father died, his estate leaving me just enough money to buy the old, decrepit two-story building. It had been bare stone and brick walls three feet thick, splintered boards underfoot. The loft had rough beams overhead, empty windows, abandoned birds’ nests in the rafters. Downstairs, in the shop, it had been worse, the floor rotten in places, the pressed tin ceiling rusted, the walls filthy and covered in graffiti.
I’d had washerwoman’s hands for the entire year it took my friends and me to renovate the building. It was mine, in every sense of the word. Going back to Enclave would mean leaving…home. The bath was suddenly less than restful and I stood, splashing water as I stepped from the antique, claw-footed tub to the turquoise tile and threw a robe on. I had laid the tile myself. Rupert had restored the tub for me. It had been a birthday present. There was no way I could take it with me….
The soft velvet reminded me of Cheran’s cloak. And reminded me that he wasn’t the only hedonistic mage in the area. The robe was new, a gift left at the shop’s front door, folded in a brown bag. There hadn’t been a tag, but the scent of seraph had proven it a gift from Raziel. The smell of chocolate still clung to the iridescent teal fabric, and it added conflict to the emotions sparring in my heart. I stroked the velvet. Mage-heat quivered low in my belly each time I wore it. I wondered if the seraph had thought about the fabric against my naked skin when he picked it out. Unholy thoughts. Wicked feelings. Ideas and hopes I would surely never have a chance to work through—or possibly experience—if I returned to Enclave, to my people. I would never see the seraph again.
Eyes closed, I breathed in the scent and sighed as the pleasure increased. And more than merely pleasure. Thoughts of naked carousing with one of the angelic Host were never far from the surface of my mind these days, though most times I could control the images. Most times. Well, when I wanted to. Which wasn’t often enough.
I set the amulets over my head. Though thoughts were relatively safe, acting on them could get me into trouble, like being dragged before the town fathers or the seraphic high council—and death by various means, all of them protracted and painful. But they could only kill me once, as I had grown fond of reminding myself.
Of course, unlike humans, neomages had no souls, so perhaps I had more to lose than most folk. For us, death was permanent, no hope of resurrection, paradise, and better things to come. However, such wonderful scents as my robe reminded me that the adverse was also true. There was no hell or damnation for us either.
Religion and politics, sex and death. “Lovely bedtime thoughts,” I murmured as I looked around the teal and cream bower I had made for myself. I had chosen the antique kitchen table, had handpicked each of the old wooden chairs that surrounded it. Had sanded the floors and refinished them. Had hung each of the tapestries. And I loved my sofa and the carved, upholstered rocker.
Unsettled, I lifted the marble sphere by my bed and set the ward on the loft and shop, drawing stored power from the energy sink at the spring out back. Like magic. But neomages don’t use magic as humans understand it. We use the leftover energies of creation, the particles Einstein postulated about in his famous equations. Which meant that mages are bound in many ways to the laws of physics.
Even back before neomages, humans knew that mass and energy are inseparably linked to each other, both having the luxon impulse as the base of their definition. They knew that each “matter with rest mass” consists of particles with light velocity. That means: every particle of matter and every particle of energy consists of luxons. Matter and energy are one thing in different stages. Humans used this knowledge to create weapons, atomic bombs whose explosions blast atoms apart. Mages draw upon luxons to create safety, health, and beauty. Most of the time. Not always. But the luxons that made up the incantation protecting my home were a good thing. A very good thing.
I drank a glass of spring water, turned down the gas flames on the fireplaces, put on warm pajamas with pink hearts on them, turned out the lights, and went to bed early.
Deep in the night, the lynx screamed, drawing me back from a dream of dying at seraph hands. I woke, shattering the images of death and destruction as the cry echoed, rocking across the hills, a deep vibrato of warning. I lay in the dark, breathing fast, mage-sight on, searching out the cause of the alarm. My ward was still on, the loft was safe, walls glowing with protective power. I didn’t smell smoke, or hear people screaming, or scent blood.
The predator cat had entered my life only weeks ago, but had instantly become an omen, a portent, issuing a warning whenever trouble was headed my way. I closed down my sight and opened a mind-skim, drawing air and sensation into my lungs. Still nothing. Maybe the blasted cat was wrong this time. Or maybe it was finally reacting to whatever mage properties made animals go seriously wacko when in the vicinity of neomages for too long.
I eased the amulet necklace over my head and gripped my tanto—a long-bladed knife with a simple hilt and crossguard. I was small enough that it worked as a shortsword. Skin prickling, I stole from the bed on sock-covered feet and padded through the loft, checking each window and door, staring out the window where the moon had shone. The sky was now deep black, full of stars, the hills below a murky, smudged shadow.
Behind me, the door sprang open, banging hard. I whirled and rushed it, tanto swinging up. I recognized the shadow in the last instant and whipped aside the blade before I stabbed Rupert. He stood in the opening, chest naked, black hair standing up on one side. He was wild-eyed, his skin sheet-creased. “Thorn,” he said, his tone peculiar.
“I nearly killed you!”
“In the street,” he said, his words sleep-slurred. “It’s Gramma.”
Mage-fast, I pivoted and raced through the loft, shutting off the protective ward, grabbing my longsword, and leaving the walking-stick sheath behind as I sprinted to the front of the apartment and out onto the frozen porch over the sidewalk. The sickle moon rode high in the sky, throwing cold light on the old woman in the ice-slick street. Dressed in a summer frock, lilacs on white, wattles of flesh hanging from her bare arms. One clenched a child tight against her, and she held a blade at the girl’s throat.
“Cissy,” I whispered. It was Jacey’s nine-year-old daughter, hair loose on her shoulders, nightgown fluttering in the cold breeze. In the dark of the night, Gramma’s crazed eyes met mine. Mage-sight slammed on, and I saw a flash of dull orange flecked with shards of glowing black in her irises, like coals banked beneath ashes. The blade she held was demon-iron, and it wasn’t burning her hand. Bloody plagues.
“Gramma,” Rupert said softly at my back, the word slurred.
“It’s not her,” I said. I hoped he knew it, because I was about to have to kill the old witch. “It’s a glamour,” I said, one that looked like the Stanhope matriarch.
“Gramma,” he whispered, joining me at the rail, his flesh tight with goose bumps.
“No!” I insisted. Leaving him on the porch, I sped down the stairs and unlocked the door. I ran into the street. Silently, Audric appeared at my side and followed me into the still night. The cold bit into my feet, my socks sticking and ripping from the ice with each step. Stupid, stupid, stupid to not stop for shoes.
I drew on my two prime amulets, the bloodstone hilt and the seven-layered stone prime ring, to warm my feet. To fight the cold, I allowed my mage attributes to blaze on, my flesh glowing a pearly roseate hue. It was easier for the beast to see me, but it would also help keep me warm. Taking my lead, Audric’s less-vibrant glow brightened the night.
The smell of decaying leaves, rotting roses, and stagnant water filled the air, sour and cloying. I knew that scent. It was a succubus, a sexual demon that appeared in the form of a woman, enticed human males, had sex with them, and then ate them. From the privates up. And I knew this scent. It was specific to the succubus queen, the mother of all unholy sexual desires. It enticed by conjure.<
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Gramma, though not my idea of a sexually alluring female, was having an effect on Rupert, who watched from the porch; he was panting in fear and need. The beast saw me across ten yards of rutted snow. For a moment, scales slid over its skin like foam on the beach, the glamour of the old woman giving way to the true form beneath. It cackled, and when it spoke, it talked in Gramma’s voice. “Little mage. This child is mine to kill or save, yet her life is in your hands. A boon, and she will be set free.”
The last time I was this close to the succubus queen, it was newly born, only a month old, cocky and bragging with a teenager’s fragile ego, easy to manipulate. Now it looked deadly. The succubus pressed the edge of the blade against the girl’s throat. Cissy stared at me in horror, gasping. Her skin darkened at the touch of the demon-iron as the metal burned into living flesh.
Audric moved counterclockwise, placing his bare feet firmly with each step, his blades in the swan. This was the beast that had nearly killed him, the thing I had left him to fight alone. He still hadn’t told me about that fight. There were lots of secrets resting uneasily between us, unspoken. “The entrance to the hellhole was sealed,” he said. “How did it get out?”
I shook my head. I didn’t know. I moved clockwise, away from the shop, feet freezing.
“You bound it once,” Audric said softly, his face hard. “Can you use that?”
Gramma ignored him, eyes locked on mine. “Send a child of Mole Man to me and I will release her. My word. You may even choose the one you would sacrifice.”
“I don’t know,” I said just as softly. I wasn’t going to bet on it. The partial binding hadn’t held for long last time.
All succubi were dangerous, but the adolescent queen was doubly so. It could reason and make independent decisions, and it was capable of breeding other succubi. Once, it had taken orders from Forcas, the Power who lived on the Trine, but that beast had been burned in battle dire, meaning the big ugly sucker was the next best thing to dead. Its boss, the Dragon, was stuck between realities, but maybe the Dragon had found another beast willing to risk everything in return for a bit of Dragon power and appreciation. Unless things had changed, the Dragon’s freedom required Stanhope blood to finish the job.
As I watched, the creature seemed to grow, its form expanding, its glamour slipping and slithering across its body. The smell of sex-demon blossomed out, fetid and cloying. While not able to transmogrify—to restructure their energies into almost any physical body—powerful minions of the Dark often appeared physically attractive to humans. Not so this Darkness. Though once it had been able to assume and maintain the shape of its victims, it seemed to have lost that ability. Or maybe it felt it no longer needed camouflage. The queen was all about being a BBU, which could mean she would be bigger and badder and uglier in the future, as she matured. That was a scary thought.
Cissy straddled its thigh, her feet kicking, tendons in her neck straining as she tried to take the weight off her throat to breathe. To the succubus, I said, “Better deal. I kill you and no one gets handed over.” A thin rivulet of blood, near black in the scant light, rolled down Cissy’s throat, into her collar. The blade cauterized the wound even as it cut her.
“Call mage in dire,” Audric demanded as we circled the queen, feet icy in the snow.
“Can’t. Cissy isn’t close enough to death for me to summon seraphic warriors.”
“I say she is,” he said.
Uncertainty snaked through me. My breath puffed in tiny, rapid clouds. If I called mage in dire, every adult in town could die. When seraphs came to fight evil, humans died. Always.
Gramma smiled, drawing its lips back to reveal sharp teeth, jaw stretching forward, squaring off. I had seen this transformation before. It wasn’t pretty. The succubus drew its illusion back around itself like a cloak, smile narrowing and teeth reshaping into human-molar bluntness. But Cissy’s blood and burned skin were no illusion. She mewled like a kitten in the grip of a hawk. Gramma kissed the top of her head, snuggling her close. “Not to worry, poppet. It won’t hurt much. And not for long.”
“Cissy?”
It was Ciana, my stepchild, above and behind me, on the porch of Rupert’s loft. Gramma’s nostrils flared as she scent-searched, but her eyes never rose to the girl. Ciana possessed a pin with camouflage properties. She didn’t become invisible, exactly, but it did seem really hard for evil to find and focus on her.
“No seraphs,” I warned. I didn’t have to explain what could, what would, happen if she called the High Host for help. She had seen humans die in the presence of the holy ones. But I wasn’t sure we could save Cissy without help. The beast bulked larger as I watched. It had grown in power since I’d seen it last. I didn’t think I could use verbal ploys against it this time. “Not yet,” I added.
“All right,” the young girl said, sounding far calmer than I felt. Her trust in me had always been terrifying.
Use the binding, Audric had suggested. Okay. An icy wind blew against my body and I shivered in reaction. “You are mine,” I said to the beast, “bound to me. Let the child go.”
The thing that no longer resembled Gramma cocked its head, the movement human-slow. Its shoulders rose and fell, an almost pensive shift of muscles.
“Let the child go. You are mine. You must obey,” I said, drawing on the mage visa, the one function I had mastered, to instill my voice with command.
The glamour quivered across its features again, revealing patches of alabaster skin, blond hair, and one vivid eye in a mishmash of features, the beautiful Jane Hilton on one half, Gramma on the other. The new face, the face Lucas had left me for, looked startled, then astonished, and said, “You!” The lovely half snarled in anger and rippled, and the human visages vanished, leaving only succubus in its wake. The beast smiled, canines longer and razor sharp. Cissy fell silent. I wasn’t sure she was breathing.
I rushed it, blades flashing. It snapped back a dozen steps, demon-fast. “No, no, no, mageling.” A shield snapped open just in front of my toes, the energies throwing me back, feet burning like lightning. In mage-sight, the shield was an ocher-yellow dome seething with earth energies. It was a mage construct, which meant there were mages nearby, Dark mages, helping this beast. Whether willing or under compulsion, it was bad on all sorts of levels. “You constrained me once,” it said. “My master’s master freed me of your lowly incantation.”
My master’s master? Death and plagues. Is she talking about the Dragon? Audric and I circled the shield, reversing midway, back and forth. My socks stuck and pulled free of the ice beneath my aching feet with each careful step. Gramma sniffed, head raised, searching for a whiff of the Stanhope genetic strain, but was unable to locate Ciana. I looked around for Rupert or Ciana’s father—my ex-husband, Lucas—or Thaddeus Bartholomew, their cousin, all descendents of Mole Man. I would have prayed they’d all remain indoors, but I knew they wouldn’t. I knew they hadn’t. That would be too easy and men never made anything easy. The succubus’s eyes glowed brightly as it located prey off to my right. Seraph stones. What was I going to do?
From my angle, I could see Ciana standing on the high porch, her nightgown fluttering in the rising breeze. She was watching me, and in her hand was the pin gifted her by the seraph Raziel as protection from evil; it glowed a brilliant gold, as if she held a star in her fist, shielding her. The succubus was looking away from the girl and down, on street level, at Rupert.
My best friend was standing in the doorway of the shop, sleep-creased, half-naked. His face was blank, empty. Seraph stones. He was spelled. So was Lucas. In my side vision, I saw Ciana’s father walk onto Upper Street; he stared at the beast as if it held his heart in one hand. On his neck, smudges of Dark energies glowed, old scars left from imprisonment beneath the Trine, activated by the growing power of the beast. But the queen hadn’t seen him. Yet.
“Audric,” I warned. Cold wind tore through my pajamas. My calves cramped as my feet froze. Cissy had gone limp. Above me, Ciana watched, her fa
ce serene, waiting.
“I see them.” Face blank, Rupert reached toward the beast. Audric stepped to block him, arms out wide. “Now might be a good time to try the anticonjures you’ve been working on.”
My mind cleared, taking on the crisp clarity of incipient battle. I lifted one of the small, drilled, and polished Dalmatian jasper nuggets, the opaque black-and-white stones hanging from thin string loops on my necklace. I had made a batch of the anticonjures—supposed to disable most lower to mid-level incantations—but hadn’t tested them. I had no idea if they would diminish the lure of a succubus or make things worse. If the succubus’s allure was a higher level conjure, they probably wouldn’t work at all.
I ripped a nugget from its temporary loop and tossed it to the ice at Rupert’s feet. It bounced. Exploded. Time slid sideways, a slow-motion vision, a dozen things happening at once and I saw/felt them in overlays of sensation.
Snow and ice blasted over Rupert, the concussion throwing him backward. Audric and I hit the snow, my skin abrading in a wide patch along calf and lower arm as I slid. My ears popped painfully. The succubus’s shield fell and she howled, sharp canines reflecting moonlight. The knife at Cissy’s throat bit down. Blood drenched her nightgown. Snow and ice tumbled from the air like hail. As ice-shrapnel fell, the beast changed its grip and reached for Rupert, lying prone, stunned. The beast smiled in a parody of lust and delight. Lucas stepped closer, his expression hungry, arms out in entreaty. Wordless, I rolled to my knees. I couldn’t reach them in time.
A thunk sounded over the ringing in my ears. The succubus shuddered and dropped its arm. A knife hilt protruded from its neck below the clavicle. Snarling, it almost let Cissy fall.
