by Faith Hunter
The flames seemed to like the destruction and they darted forward to test the new rock barricades.
The soldiers quickly reloaded, and the SMAW fired again, taking out the third tunnel. The weapon was loaded again, even as Vonn shouted into his mic over the rumbling, “Regroup!” The entire platoon moved in and Claire and I thumbed our Shields back on, covering us mortals with mage energies. The two groups of flames moved out ahead, leading the way.
The tunnel sloped down and narrowed. The air quality got increasingly worse, and tears gathered in my eyes from the stench of chemicals and decaying flesh. We passed five more tunnels and the flames investigated each. Though it left us temporarily unprotected, we snapped off the Shields each time so I could scent-search for our quarry. Watching the flames, I stood for a moment before each tunnel opening, flipping from mage sight to mind skim and back. I didn’t want to try a blended scan; I couldn’t afford to be weakened, even for a moment.
I smelled only Darkness in each of the tunnels, and the flames seemed to agree, zipping around, buzzing with that peculiar sound that meant disgust. I had Vonn blow the first few tunnels, but on the fifth one I smelled something else close by. The flames seemed to burn a brighter blue as they raced down it. And they didn’t come back. The flame by my ear crackled with excitement.
“Kylen,” I said, breathing deeply of the scent.
“My brother is wounded,” Eldratos said.
I reached for the Shield amulet. And the attack hit. A wave of devil-spawn rushed at us from a side-tunnel just ahead, flowing over floor and walls and even the ceiling like water over stone, thousands of them, squealing and cawing, their raucous cries grating and deafening in the echoing space. It was too late to use the Shield. If I raised it, they’d be inside the conjure’s radius with us, and the soldiers’ guns would be almost as dangerous to use as the spawn were themselves. And while I’d been thinking that through, my hand had reflexively drawn my sword and cleaved through three of them. I let the Shield amulet swing free on its thong and drew a short sword with my left hand, flowing into the cat stance.
The soldiers on either side of me opened fire with automatic weapons as I took down a half-dozen more, the big rat-like creatures falling to become victims of the ravening appetites of their kin. Eldratos and Raziel danced straight into the wave of spawn, swords slicing. Eli took up a place at my back, his weapons firing with steady determination, his short-sword beheading any wounded spawn that raced behind me. Audric, drawn by his battle-tie, worked his way through the melee until he stood behind Raziel, facing outward to form an impenetrable triangle with Eldratos, his blades a whir of motion and splattering gore.
We killed maybe fifty in the first minute of fighting, my flesh burning where it was exposed to the splatter of spawn blood, my ears ringing with concussive blasts of our firepower. Another fifty fell in the next half minute. But even with the spawn stopping to feast on their dead, it wasn’t going to be enough. We were going to be dinner.
Faster than I’d ever seen one move, a big spawn leaped over the dead bodies of his brethren and launched at me. By instinct, I raised my left arm to cut him from the air, but he seemed to adjust the trajectory of his leap to the side in midair. And his teeth latched onto my forearm. The pain was razor-sharp and burning. I felt my mage-brittle bones snap like twigs. I went down to one knee. More spawn swarmed me. I screamed.
Light brighter than the sun filled the cavern. The spawn shrieked, the sound so piercing my eardrums fluttered with pain. Fire raced down the tunnel. The spawn biting me fell away in flames, its flesh consumed in the space of two heartbeats. Before I dropped to the ground to shield myself, I was pretty sure I saw its bones roasting. The air burned; I couldn’t even take a breath. And then it was gone, leaving only the stench of cooked spawn and moaning humans. I blinked in the sudden dark.
Eldratos stood over me, one leg to either side, his wings furled so that they brushed my cheek, the one with all the scars. I shuddered with pain and cradled my arm. The kylen bent over me and reached down to take my broken bones in both of his hands. I hissed as he straightened them, the tiny grinding and clicking of fractured bones making my heart skip a beat. I might have screamed but for the blast of healing he sent into me. Burning and icy, it shocked through my arm, and I felt the bones heal. The pain slid away.
“Tears of Taharial,” I hissed, jerking my arm away.
“He does weep for us all,” Eldratos said.
“Yeah. Um, thanks,” I said. I had no idea what he meant, but tested my arm by picking up my small sword lying in the ashes of crispy critter. The hilt was warm to my hand, but not hot.
“Are you well, my mistrend?” Audric asked.
“Peachy,” I said, “thanks to the winged wonder here. What did you do?”
Eldratos smiled, and it wasn’t exactly a peaceful, heavenly smile. It had an edge of darkness to it that made me wonder if killing anything with life was harder on the beings of Light than I previously knew. “I am not certain, mage of Raziel,” he said. “I drew upon you. And upon your wheels.”
I swallowed hard. “I don’t have any wheels. Only cherubs have wheels.”
“So you say.”
Vonn said, “Sorry to break up your little confab here, but we need to get a move on.”
I shook my head and pointed down the open tunnel. “That way. Kylen close by—injured.” Claire and I reactivated our Shields and we moved out together. I noticed that several of the soldiers had quickly applied pressure bandages to wounds and activated their Healing charms to deal with spawn bites and claw scrapes. And no one had died. I turned my attention to the tunnel, its irregular walls illuminated by flames’ light.
“How far ahead?” I whispered to the flame at my shoulder, not knowing if it could speak in human language.
“Fooolloooow.” Then the flame zipped ahead and disappeared into a cell sealed by doors made of demon iron. I could feel the bars’ icy cold leaching the warmth from the air. When I looked at the cell door with mage sight, it was covered with a woven net of energies, lines of force that zigzagged back and forth across the opening. The cell entrance was warded with something I didn’t recognize, cooked up by the Dark.
Raziel was just ahead, and I lifted a hand, touching his flight feathers. He understood without words. “I see it, my mage. This is another new thing. The Darkness has learned how to create that which is new, which has never before been known. Only mankind may create that which is new. Only mankind was gifted with imagination by the Most High. Not the Light. And not the Dark. This is . . .”
“Troubling,” Eldratos murmured, finishing his thought. “Troubling.”
The two members of the High Host studied the construct and I let my mage sight go. Which allowed me to see beyond the spell into the rough cell. I nearly hissed in shock. The kylen lying on the cell floor was naked and crusted over with blood, his back looking like raw meat. His wings were gone. They had been severed close to the shoulder. And he lay on the wings. There was so much blood coating them that it took me a long, horrified moment to figure out that the wings had once been white, the pure white of a dove. The seven flames were working on the kylen, zipping into and out of his body, which they did when they killed Darkness or when they healed beings of the Light.
One flame zizzed back through the bars and hovered slightly above my head, hissing and spitting sparks. “Hurrrrrryyy. He faaaailssss.”
I didn’t know what that meant exactly for a creature that was probably as immortal as the seraphs, but I also didn’t need to find out. “Raziel?”
He turned to me and held out a hand, his scarlet irises seeming to glow in the dark tunnel. “Join with my brother-son and me. We will destroy this working together.”
“Ummm.” It wasn’t the most informative response I’d ever made.
“Trust,” Raziel said. “Trust.” He smiled that smile that made my heart race and my knees wobble and my seraph stone grow hot to the touch as it tried to block the mage heat trying to rise. I d
idn’t reply, but sheathed my short sword and placed my hand in his outstretched palm. His flesh was warm and smooth and just touching him made my toes curl and things low in my belly heat and grow heavy. Thankfully, I wasn’t expected to clasp Eldratos’ hand too, as Raziel took it in his.
Instantly we were in Otherspace, the world there bright as day, and the others we fought with were gone; yet we still stood in the tunnel, the cell bars glowing like black sparks and living shadows before us. I looked around, seeing that I was dressed as I often was in this place: in scarlet and black chain-mail and articulated plate. The hand Raziel clasped was wearing a black glove that looked like leather but felt like metal. In my free hand was a sword I’d never seen before. Here in Otherspace, weapons and clothes were symbolic of a person’s state of mind and spirit, and I had no idea what a glowing seraph steel blade with a blue light of sparkling energy at its tip and along its edge might mean. The symbolic sword had a gold-plated crossguard—or solid gold; I couldn’t tell—and a hilt wrapped in what felt like dragon skin. Just feeling it through the glove made me remember what fighting them had been like, and my toes curled in my boots.
“Use the gem, my mage,” Raziel said.
I flipped the sword and studied the glowing blue sapphire on the pommel. Then I studied the web of energies on the dark bars in front of me. In the center was a clear space just big enough for the stone. “Usually a blade is better for fighting Darkness,” I said, “but this does look promising.” I steadied the blade between my arm and side and pressed the pommel into the space.
Heat and light blasted out and I was thrown back, my hand wrenched from Raziel’s. And I was back in the real world—just in time to hit the stone wall behind me. “Seraph stones,” I gasped, or thought I gasped. With the world swimming and rocking before me, I wasn’t certain of anything. Except that the barred door had blown open and Raziel and Eldratos were inside kneeling beside the tortured kylen.
“We are here, my brother,” Eldratos said. “You are finally safe.”
I was still trying to get my bearings as Eli and Vonn helped me to my feet. Eli pulled me under the protection of his arm and holstered and sheathed his weapons, his hands and eyes moving down my back and limbs, ostensibly checking my fragile bones for breaks. Holding my swords away from him, I stopped his hands, watching. “Look,” I whispered. In the space between one heartbeat and the next, the two kylen had disappeared.
“No,” Claire whispered. “Not yet . . .”
Raziel stood and smiled at me. “They are now in a Realm, my mage. You have saved another. The Host sing of you and your exploits.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I just kept my mouth shut. Which was a good thing, as a flame darted up to me and tried to say something. It was mostly just the “Zzzzzzssss” of its excitement.
“Slow down,” I said.
The flame bounced up and down a moment before it stilled, hanging in the air before me. I kept my eyes to the side to preserve my vision but bent in close to hear it say, “A watcher issss here. Closssse. Come.”
It darted away and I followed, Raziel and Eli and Audric on my heels. When we found him, the sight was more appalling than what we’d just seen. The Dark liked cutting off the wings of creatures of Light, but this one had been given special attention. Most of the flesh on his back and shoulders had been peeled back, exposing blood-clotted muscle and viscera. His thighs and upper arms had been chewed on, leaving little but bone. He was healing, but only slowly. The stench suggested that he had been here a long, long time. I blinked at the sight, not able to tell what body part was what with this one. Without thinking, I flipped the sword and jammed it into the network of the working separating us from the prisoner.
I woke up an hour later, lying on something warm and wonderful smelling, like caramel. “Raziel,” I murmured, but my lips didn’t want to work right.
“Do not speak, my mage. You suffered greatly from the release of the energies. You were foolish,” I tried to figure out how to react to that, but a moment later he added, “but very brave.”
“Wrong sword,” I managed.
I felt the chuckle in his chest beneath my ear. “Yes. Indeed. But I have healed you and brought you to the surface. The others follow with mages and humans. Both your warriors and those they rescued have suffered, some greatly. I will wait here and heal them, if you’d like.”
That sounded like a personal favor to me so I nodded. “Thank you.”
“And then I will fly you back to your steel conveyance and the others of your champards.”
I perked up at that, but Raziel placed his large hand on my head and stroked down my back. I sighed with ease, as pain I didn’t even recognize I’d been fighting vanished. Either I slept or it was only an instant later when I heard the screams of the wounded and the shouted commands of the soldiers making it back to the surface. Raziel held me as the humans from the train raced forward to help and to fight off the hundreds of spawn that were chasing them.
It was always amazing to watch the ordinary people close with the spawn and hack them to pieces until there were none left. I didn’t like lying back in safety and watching while others suffered and fought, but when I tried to move, the pain of my injuries sent shock waves through me. This time, I had no choice. And eventually I slept again.
The next time I awoke it was to the movement of the train, the slightly misaligned wheels making a clackety-clickety-clackety beneath me. I smelled kylen and human and mage, and opened my eyes to find myself in the large bed, sleeping, Ciana in my arms, her father on her far side facing me, his eyes closed in sleep. A kylen cradled me at my back: Thad once again ignored by the seraph, not stolen away to a Realm of Light. I didn’t understand it, but I welcomed it.
It was night, the car lit only by a mage light that hovered over the shoulder of Cheran Jones, who sat in a chair reading, his bunk folded against the far wall.
Eli, his forehead bearing stitches from a wound I didn’t remember him receiving, lay on a cot on the floor, one hand curled beneath his cheek. When I recovered my energy, I could offer to heal his wound so that it wouldn’t even leave a mark, but I hoped he’d refuse me. The scar on his brow wasn’t disfiguring. If anything, it made him look more rakish and dashing, and would give him one more thing to talk about with the ladies.
A hammock swayed in the corner, Audric’s leg hanging over one side. He was watching me, his eyes dark and fierce in the dim light. Uncertain, I smiled at him, feeling my lips tremble. For a moment he didn’t respond, as dour and unapproachable as he had been ever since Rupert’s sacrifice. Then he inclined his head, the merest hint of acknowledgment. Maybe we could make this relationship work yet. Maybe.
I sighed, nuzzled Ciana, and closed my eyes. We were safe again. This time.
Rolling Stone
Summer 105 PA / 2117 AD
Lucienne Diver
I gave my knee a jolt as I got to the part of my story where the daywalker grabbed the little girl. Fiona O’Connor shrieked and jumped off my lap, making all the other kids scream as well. She recovered quickly and rounded on me with seven-year-old indignation, her eyes snapping, an expression that meant nothing to me before I met the freckled menace. I wouldn’t normally put the fear of Darkness into a child so young, but Fiona was a cheeky little thing, capable, I feared, of just about anything, including wandering into a Darkling pit out of sheer curiosity. She reminded me of me as a child.
“You did that on purpose!” Fiona accused, fists jammed onto her narrow hips.
“Did I?” I asked, giving her my best innocent look. But she put me to shame. I’d seen her smile like a cherub while smearing honey cake into her brother’s hair. “You mean, like this?” My voice rose into a roar as I leapt from my seat on the lip of the town well, gathered up my walking stick and pretended to swipe at the children, who screamed in delighted mock fear and ran to their parents standing on the fringes. Listening. Smiling. In some cases readying a coin or two for me, Aoife Cleary, traveling tal
espinner . . . and more, though that was strictly need-to-know.
I smiled, brushed at the seat of my coat with frost-stiff fingers, and pulled a hat from my pocket to pass. I didn’t dare take the one from my head; I was half frozen already.
When the hat appeared, more than one person ghosted away to avoid paying, but it was one man in particular who caught my eye, as he’d meant to. He tipped his head just barely toward one of a handful of public houses still open in Kilkenny and moved quickly along. I lost sight of him as I put my back to Elder Doolan, who was hurrying from across the square to once again lecture me—a wee girlie who clearly needed a man’s hand—about the secular nature of my tales. I’d been informed on numerous occasions that if I put the fear of anything into the children, it should be the wrath of God the Victorious, not the Darkness, which, he believed, was no threat to the Virtuous . . . always proclaimed with a capital V.
If his belief had any basis in reality, I’d have more patience with his point of view. But the powers of Darkness fought the seraphs themselves. They’d hardly balk at children and self-righteous churchman. I was not going to spread pretty lies to keep his people in line. But I was happy to encourage a healthy fear of things that went bump in the night. Or even the day. News had reached even here about the daywalker who’d crawled out of a den in Carolina, in America. They’d been nearly legendary before this latest sighting.
But here in Ireland, we thrived on our myths and legends. Stories of the sidhe told of magical beings with the power to lure and glamour and compel. Were they really so different from the neomages, the seraphs? Were the baobhan sidhe, stunning fae who lulled mortals with their singing and then sucked their blood through needle-like nails, so unlike night- and daywalkers? Had the old tales been myth or prophecy?
