by Faith Hunter
A beat. If I cut myself free of the glue, would I fall off of the sphere or restick?
I was dead anyway, I reminded myself. Which really sucked big-time. But at the same time, I was still alive. Sorta. Since I didn’t have a soul, I figured that meant I had about a minute to help Zadkiel and Raziel before my consciousness vanished, yet I had a feeling that nothing was the same in this odd reality, not even time. My otherness body still held two swords. Using the shortsword, blinking to reconcile the two divergent worldviews, I cut through the strands that held my feet, and then through the strands imprisoning Raziel. He saw me in both places and blinked once, as if startled.
Screaming his battle cry, he spun away. With a scent of ozone, lightning bolts flashed from his hands and thundered into the foul trap. The rank smell of Darkness burning and the smell of singed seraph flesh filled my nostrils. Below me, my body lay prone in the mire. Still dying. I had a moment to feel sorry for myself; I hadn’t wanted to end this way.
Swords swinging, I raced to the seraphs. Raziel fought dragonets: one with its fangs buried in his hip, its legs clawing in my seraph’s thigh and calf; another with its fangs in the juncture of his shoulder and neck. Seraph blood ran in rivers, and the dragonets absorbed each drop. Zadkiel fought Forcas, taking sword blows to his forearms, still secured by dragonets and the red trap. With three slashes, I cut through a beast on Zadkiel’s leg; clean swipes that missed seraph flesh yet cleaved the Darkness in quarters. Instantly, it repaired itself.
“Use blood,” the Mistress murmured. “The sacrifice of blood and life defeats evil.”
“I’m soulless. What good is the blood of a mage?” When she didn’t answer, I flipped the shortsword and repierced the wound that wasn’t there over my left elbow. On the surface below my feet, my heart beat. In the otherness, blood that was more than blood spurted from my arm into the air. I directed it over my blade, flipped it, and cut through the Darkness in a long arc, the crimson blade glowing with mage-life. I whirled the sword and cut again, slicing through the dragonet. Screaming, it fell away. I took the others as quickly, their bodies flopping on the red web.
Startled, Zadkiel looked at me. His face was burned, wings leathery and crusted over with scabs, leaking from the nevus, drained nearly powerless. But his eyes still glowed with holy light. Forcas embraced him, fangs in Zadkiel’s spine, its body huge, dwarfing the seraph. With my bloody blade, I stabbed the beast’s calf. Forcas reared back, pulling its fangs free. Its mane of horns fluttered in an unseen breeze. I twisted my blade from it. Blood spurted over me and through me.
I aimed my bleeding arm up between the fangs, into its white maw. On the surface of the trap, my heart beat, a thump of life and power. My lifeblood pulsed into Forcas’ pale, bloodless maw, a gush of sacrifice. Raziel screamed my name. The Darkness pulled the chain from its neck and swiped it through Zadkiel’s blood.
Zadkiel hit Forcas’ mouth closed with his elbow. I flicked the tanto into his palm, and he drove the blade up from its jaw through the top of its head. In a single liquid motion, Zadkiel bent and retrieved the sword and shield at his feet, seraph-steel swinging. Wrist sure and strong, he cleaved Forcas in two. In the place of otherness, the pieces fell, thrashing like snakes.
The sword cut through it again. Screams echoed in the cavern. The beast looped and spiraled, a writhing coil, trying to reknit. Trying to heal. One snakelike segment flipped high, red chain links catching the light as it landed on Raziel and slithered down his body.
With a flip of his wrist, Zadkiel sent its other parts spiraling away into the dark in different directions. He whirled, seeing the sphere, the Mistress chained within, and me. When I looked for the section of Forcas that wore the linked chain, it was gone.
That was bad. I knew that. But more dragonets were coming, a swarm of the snaky, insectoid beasts. Raziel was wrapped with dragonets, a dozen or more latched to his body, his flesh burned and scored, smoking. Zadkiel hacked at others.
My sight was dimming again, growing tighter, spear points of images. “Raziel,” I whispered, and held out my arm to him. “Blood of sacrifice.” For a fractured moment, his eyes met mine, filled with fear and battle-lust and a strange kind of tenderness. He extended his blade and I dribbled blood on it. With the death-blessed blade, he attacked the dragonets, killing one, then another, calling his battle cry.
I turned to the Mistress. “Dying sucks, you know that?” I thought at her. My heart beat a final thump, a soft, rubbing sound, tissue against tissue, nearly bloodless. Slowly, I fell back toward my body, seeing the otherness world in slow motion, with crystal clarity. Seeing the river of lava flowing below the otherness, scintillating with lights. In both realities, Forcas was gone. In one reality, two dragonets still attacked.
Sword hacking, Zadkiel tossed the attackers away and tore through the red adhesive bars of the cage. “Amethyst,” he crooned. A long arm scooped her up, the other slicing through the chains binding her. They dropped with a clang of cold demon-iron. “Amethyst, my cherub,” he breathed, cradling her. As she touched him, his flesh reknit, flowing across his bones with a patina of blue and lavender light. Feathers that had been burned away budded and spiraled out, the white feathers of a kylen child. The deeply scored chain marks across her body radiated gently, healing. I caught myself on my arms, balancing over my physical body. In both realities—the otherness, as well as in the human world—Forcas was still gone. Dead? Had we truly defeated him? If so, maybe my death was worth it.
“My mate,” the cherub whispered. “My flame.” Her wings unfurled, several sets of them aligned along her body, each smaller than the seraph’s. Her many eyes stared at Zadkiel. “The Dragon comes. We must away.”
The Dragon…. Ahh. I remembered the links of chain smeared with the blood of two seraphs. Three including Barak. Does a Watcher count? Vibrations thrummed through the crimson net like footsteps. Like a heartbeat.
Zadkiel spread his wings. They were covered with pale down, white at the root, soft violet at the tips. Though only partially healed, he was beautiful. The two together would be my last sight—only pinpoints of vision left. My elbows began to give way. “Bring her,” the Mistress said, turning several eyes to me.
“No time. She gave herself for you,” Zadkiel said. “She will be remembered.”
The red threads beneath me thrummed faster. My sight was dimming. Numbing cold spread through me and I settled into my body. I was cold. So cold. In some small part of my faltering mind, I thought, This is a bad way to die.
“Save her!” Raziel screamed, his beautiful voice raw.
“Quickly, my love. Bring her,” Amethyst agreed. “Time is enough.”
Zadkiel shouted with frustration, scooped me up in his other arm, and threw me over his shoulder. A tendril of… something… grabbed my ankle and whipped away, smeared with my dying blood. If I hadn’t been dead, I’d have laughed.
Chapter 28
I came to on the surface, surrounded by the smell of blood. I was lying on ice, cradled in my filthy, bloody cloak, shivering. On the night wind I smelled seraphs, mage-blood, decaying devil-spawn, daywalker blood, and the overriding reek of the blood of a Major Darkness. And, oh, yes, seraphs. Heat wisped through me. I stuttered a laugh and dragged air into my lungs. They made an awful sucking sound, like wet rubber being pulled apart. I was alive. I was pretty sure of it. Hurt too bad to be dead. I coughed hard, the sound like leather ripping, causing a shocking pain through my ribs.
“She laughs. I like her laughter,” Amethyst tinkled.
The moon winked over the shoulder of a seraph. Zadkiel lifted his head from my stomach. His lips had been touching me. Healing me. Mage-heat strengthened, delicate fire in my veins. He placed my amulets on my bare stomach, and the heat dimmed. “Can you control it?” he asked.
I considered his question, but before I could answer, another did, his voice like baritone bells. “Yes. I believe so.”
Zadkiel laughed, heat burning in his eyes. “I hope so, Raziel. I have n
o time to satisfy the cravings of a mage in heat.”
The unexpected laugh and the odd emphasis on the word time resonated in my mind for a moment before sliding away in exhaustion. Zadkiel’s face filled my vision. “Be safe, little mage. I thank you for the return of my mate, the Mistress, Holy Amethyst. Complete her healing, Raziel, and take her to her home. Wait there for us. We will come soon. The Dragon is striking. Battle has commenced as he seeks freedom.”
“Mate?” I croaked, the first thing I ask after being brought back to life. Weird.
“Not as you think of mates,” the cherub said, her voice like tiny bells in a night breeze off the Gulf, amusement in the thought. “But purposes met and satisfied, even when one of us is away from the Most High, alone in the river of time, on earth.”
I remembered the river of lava in the otherness. That river?
Zadkiel placed a warm stone on my stomach where his lips had been. “For your prayer, your incantations, your blood, and your sacrifice; for all these, I thank you. And for your willingness to gift us your life, though it was not needed in the end. I thank you.”
I didn’t think it politic to mention that he had been willing to leave me to die in the pit while some big papa Dragon came looking for supper.
“Thanks be to the wisdom and compassion of Amethyst. You are healed,” he finished. “Be blessed. Be at peace.” He swiveled his head to his mate and said, “Call your wheels.” Amethyst looked to the heavens with all her eyes and sang one perfect note of calling, a tone so beautiful nothing could resist it. I tried to rise from the ground where I lay to reach her. Pain arched through me, paralyzing. This was healed?
With Amethyst cradled against his chest, Zadkiel, the Right Hand of the ArchSeraph Michael, spread his patchily feathered, burned wings and gave a single mighty thrust. Wind like a tornado, scented with mint and pepper, swirled around me. And they were gone. I was left, cold and drained, on the frozen and cracked ice at the lip of the pit of the hellhole. Blackness closed in around me.
Pain woke me. Two balls of flame, plasma-bright, zipped from my stomach with a sizzle of energy and danced in the air, blinding me. I closed my eyes against the glare.
Warmth trickled into my bones from the stone on my torso. I’d been touched by two seraphs in the same night. Three if one counted Barak. Did one count a Watcher? Yet I still felt no mage-heat. A green flight feather poked my thigh. I had forgotten about the gift. At my waist, my amulets glowed, giving me strength. On my belly was a seraph stone. I’ll never be able to swear that way again, not without a chuckle.
Slowly I sat up, stiff muscles creaking. My injured arm was healed, another ugly scar marking my skin. The wound in my side was no longer bleeding, but the pain when I moved was electric, stealing my breath. The scent of battle clung to me, incubating in the warmth of my body. The stenches of smoke, old blood, and death roiled out of my clothing, nauseating me. I reeked. I found a bottle of water in my cloak pocket and finished it, before attaching the seraph stone to my necklace. I thought it might be a black agate, and it felt hot against my fingers.
Overhead, a sickle-shaped moon rested its lower point on a distant mountain. The sun was a golden glow in the east. Morning. I had survived the night, underground.
“Hours have passed as you healed,” Raziel said. “There is great battle in the heavens.”
In mage-sight I found him, a faint glow perched in the limbs of a tall spruce, green branches framing his scarlet radiance. His crimson wings were tightly furled, wrist tips high over his head. His cloak hung loose, moving in the slight breeze. He was a bright ruby hue of energy, eyes like gems. I felt his gaze all the way to my toes. “Amethyst is wounded. She is failing. You must relinquish her wheels.” He tilted his head, a half smile hovering on his lips and I could have sworn he was curious. Seraphs are never curious. Never.
“I don’t have her wheels to give up.” I shifted on the frozen ground. In a single heartbeat, everything changed.
A roar shivered the air. Forcas crashed from the mouth of the pit. The beast had been in pieces last time I saw it. What did it take to kill a Major Darkness?
Forcas was carrying Eli in one clawed hand, Durbarge in the other, and Malashe-el was hooked over its shoulder, impaled on a horn. Neither man looked so good. The daywalker looked dead.
Light blazed. Raziel opened his wings and stepped off the limb, hands throwing. Lightning hit the ground in a brilliant blast. Thunder boomed, eardrum-cracking, deafening. Raziel rocketed toward the Darkness, wings outspread, gathering the lightning. Thunderheads built overhead. The wind roared, buffeting me where I lay.
Light illuminated the cleared area, shining from Raziel’s battle armor. Armor and sword hadn’t been there only a moment before. Electricity crackled along the red-gold plate. His face was set in stern lines, his eyes glowing with battle-lust. Instinctively, I rolled under the overhang of a boulder. Too weak to rise, I curled tight, making myself small.
The seraph and Forcas met in the mouth of the hellhole with a crash. The humans fell and rolled close to me, Eli facedown, Durbarge looking at the sky. His eye was open and didn’t blink. His patch was gone, the empty socket black in the night. Malashe-el rolled down the incline and landed below me in a heap of tangled limbs. The Dark and the Light fought sword to sword, blades ringing.
Checking my weapons, I found the walking stick sword restored to its sheath beside the tanto that I had last seen in Forcas’ jaw. Two throwing blades had been left in the corridor outside the Mistress’ prison. The silver-hilted sword I had worn over my spine now belonged to Barak. I had only my two blades and a single throwing knife, amulets, and a feather, which I may or may not be able to use. Ducky.
I tested the amulets on the necklace tied to my waist and I found them half empty, or worse, drained to uselessness. The seraph stone felt like a null, a stone with potential power, but sealed, locked away. Beyond the ledge, lightning flashed and hit the ground near me. Dissipating energies flayed my body. Eli yelped nearby. If I’d been human I would have been hurt too. Instead, power flowed into my amulets, restoring them. But not enough.
Through the mountain beneath me, I felt familiar tremors, regular and evenly spaced, like footsteps. I remembered the Dragon who had been imprisoned by Mole Man’s sacrifice and blood, remembered the chain drenched with seraph blood, the links made with the blood of Mole Man’s progeny. Made with Lucas’ blood. Raziel had mentioned a war in the heavens. My muzzy brain put it together. Crack the Stone of Ages. Forcas’ boss, the Dragon, is loose.
The last time it was free, it took dozens of seraphs and the self-sacrifice of a human to chain it. I closed my eyes. The Dragon was loose, the Mistress was wounded, and someone seemed to think I had her wheels. I can’t do this. I don’t know how. But I had to.
I gathered myself, seeking my center, that calm place of nothingness in my mind. And I reached down, below me, into the rock heart of the mountain. Ancient energies reached back to me; the might of stone, cold and hard and without remorse. I pulled them in, fast, storing them in my blood, my muscles, my nerves, and bones.
Drawing on the strength of the Trine, I opened the blended scan, feeling a sickening lurch as the otherness caught me up, the world and my stomach surging drunkenly. Through my torn and acid-pocked dobok, light flared, yellow and dark blue. I pushed away the tattered cloth and pulled the pear-shaped citrine nugget and the sapphire owl out, the wild-mage-stones glowing. Through the otherness, they scintillated like small suns. I touched the owl and felt the otherness settle as power trickled into me from the sapphire.
I had a moment, a moment in time, to study the sensation. Finger on the amulet, I saw movement, the river of energy, of Light. It flowed beneath me, through me, picking me up and floating me along the current. It meandered through its flat plain: the river of time, I was pretty sure. Whatever that meant.
In the world, lightning hit the ground again, a huge burst. I felt my body jerk as the power crackled through me. But it wasn’t important. Almost as a
n afterthought, I directed the energies into the amulets at my waist. I felt Barak’s feather shimmer with power.
Swords clashed, seraph-steel and demon-iron. I smelled fresh seraph blood. The footsteps of the Dragon were growing nearer as his might pounded the mountain I was drawing upon. The earth quaked. Dust rained down from the boulder, covering me. Beside me, the river flowed. In it were stones and boulders and eddies—incidents and people?
From the otherness, I studied the entrance to the hellhole; sickly yellow-orange-reddish light emanated from the rocks and from the ground. The stone of the mountain itself had been polluted, a malevolence much more powerful than the first time I saw it, as if my ability to see it was growing. Or as if it was gaining power. Tears of Taharial, I’m pulling that into me. With a wrench, I cut off the draw of power. Something was coming. Something big. Fear tightened my body.
Relinquish her wheels, Raziel had said. I recalled the huge purple cobra that had entered my conjuring circle, the snake made of eyes, the snake that had filled my lungs. A snake that was part of Amethyst’s wheels, I was sure of it. I concentrated on the purple eyes that had nearly drowned me, remembering their concentrated stare. “Come,” I said.
Overhead, in the otherness, thunder boomed, a concussion that knocked Raziel and Forcas to their knees. Hanging above us was a massive, interconnected ring of lavender stones, faceted amethyst hoops the size of a football field pulsing. It looked like a gyroscope turned on its side, concentric wheels within wheels, each turning its own way, each releasing mists of blue plasma. And on one end, a golden nosecone, its navcone, bursting with Light. It was Amethyst’s wheels, her vast crystalline ship, healed and whole.
