The Seeker

by Elizabeth Hunter

  The long, curving blades of the southern warriors took the heads of the Grigori. They thumped on the ground like falling rocks, and gold dust mixed with the cold, drifting fog.

  Runners ran to other watch points.

  Grigori are here. The Fallen is coming.

  Singers and scribes spread through the haven, running along the boundaries and watching the footpaths.

  “The fields,” Patiala told her mate. “They will come through the cane fields where they can remain hidden.”

  “The river—”

  “Watch the road.” She spread her hands over the map of the property. “The Fallen might come from the road. But the Grigori are cowards. They’ll come through the fields.”

  Meera dressed in linen, the loose pants and shirt the easiest wardrobe for practicing magic. She wore no weapons, though her mate had many. Her battle would not be fought with blades but with magic.

  Sari sat next to her, meditating before the fire.

  “Have you fought an angel before?” Meera asked.

  “Not directly, but you have.”

  Meera frowned. “I haven’t.”

  Sari turned to her. “Somasikara, you have. You have fought, and you have won.”

  She nodded, knowing what Sari was trying to say. “I only find that a little reassuring.”

  “The hardest part isn’t going to be killing this angel. The hard part is going to be letting him hurt our mates.”

  “I know.”

  Rhys and Damien bound their weapons to their bodies, their talesm alive and pulsing with power. Both had shared magic with their mates that morning. Both were redolent with innate and shared magic.

  “Missing your black blade?” Rhys asked.

  Damien gave him a grim smile. “This will be quite unlike any other battle we’ve fought. I don’t think a black blade would even work against him.”

  “Do we have any idea what Bozidar’s power is?”

  “Sight.”

  “So he might have seen this coming?”

  “It’s possible.”

  “We have to provoke him. None of this works unless he is provoked.”

  Damien slapped Rhys on the shoulder. “He’s an arrogant archangel who calls himself the gift of heaven. And you’re you. Provoking him should be the easy part.”

  The young Grigori stole through the cane fields, tripping over his own feet, rising, running. He gave no thought to snakes or the usual dangers in the dense cane. He only knew that it had been days since the prostitute had fed him, and he was voracious. His father had said there was a rich feasting waiting for all of them, but the Grigori knew Bozidar had been talking to him. Others were there, but his father loved him the most.

  The feast is waiting for you. The sweet souls of the Irina will fill you to the brim.

  It was all he thought of. All he wanted. He could see lights and trees in the distance. The haven was close. He could smell them.

  They would be his.

  The trip wire caught him unawares. He planted face-first in the mud, caught in the tangled net of tall grass. He didn’t feel the pierce of the silver blade at the back of his neck.

  His death came too quickly for him to feel anything.

  Roch killed the Grigori, releasing his soul, only to find three more soldiers piling on top of him. They were running like rats through the wet, green fields.

  He sent a sharp whistle up as he fought them off. Push, shove, kick, elbow. No one fought elegantly in the mud.

  An arrow sang over his head. He ducked down and it punched through the chest of the Grigori riding his back. Roch kicked out and rolled over, his clothes caked with mud, hoping that none of his brothers or sisters mistook him for the enemy.

  It was dark. It was muddy. The fog wasn’t helping. In the thick of battle, the line between scribe and Grigori was harder than ever to discern.

  “Ya domem.” His mate’s whisper snaked through the cane fields, hitting its Grigori target without even touching him.

  Sabine ran to the edge of the field. “Again?”

  Roch struck out and pierced the spine of one Grigori, but two more still struggled. “Again!”

  “Domem man!”

  The stunning spell left both the Grigori reeling, and even Roch was a little woozy. He managed to kick both the men to their bellies and dispatched them before he ran out of the fields.

  He grabbed Sabine by the waist and kissed her hard. “You gorgeous, vicious little thing.”

  “I try.”

  “You succeed.” He grabbed her by the hand. “Let’s check on the others. These bastards don’t seem to have an end.”

  The wild expression in her eyes settled with her mate’s touch. “Were we foolish? Are you weaker?”

  “Your song makes me strong,” he said. “A little wild, but strong.”

  Their mating had been done with no fanfare or ceremony. Sabine didn’t want any, and neither did Roch. They hadn’t even told Patiala they’d done it, though Roch suspected Rhys and Meera could tell.

  No magic bullet had struck its target, but Roch could tell that whatever mating magic they’d shared had steadied her in ways he couldn’t before. He was feeling more edgy, more erratic, giving him a better glimpse into her mind. It was a process and would continue to be a process, but in the middle of battle, he decided a bit of an edge wasn’t a bad thing.

  He caught movement beyond a stand of trees. Dark shadows hidden by the fog.

  It was a young singer, a girl who worked in the kitchen, set upon by three Grigori. Roch couldn’t tell if she was dead or alive, but she wasn’t moving.

  “No!” Sabine screamed.

  Before Roch could catch what she was doing, Sabine had flicked a lighter from her pocket and grabbed a flame, hurling it toward the three men who fed from her sister.

  “Sabine, no!”

  The flames arrowed toward the Grigori and enveloped them. Roch ran over and dragged the singer from beneath the burning, screaming men.

  She was dead. Her lips were blue and her gold eyes stared into the grey dawn sky.

  Sabine screamed and laughed and screamed again. The Grigori curled and howled on the grass.

  Roch glanced at the cane fields, hoping all the scribes and singers had run toward the house, because all hell was about to break loose.

  “The cane fields are on fire.” The sentry ran into the library, her eyes wild.

  Patiala looked up. “Sabine.”

  The sentry nodded.

  Patiala grabbed her bow and walked to the back porch overlooking the fields. “Bring me another quiver.”

  The sentry ran off as Patiala grabbed the first arrow. With the fields on fire, the rats would be fleeing their cover. “Get the scope,” she barked at her assistant.

  “It’s foggy,” her spotter said.

  “I trust you.”

  Her angle wasn’t perfect, but she hit the first Grigori in the shoulder, spinning him around so she had a clear angle on his back. The second arrow pierced his spine.

  “Dust,” her spotter said.

  “Find me another one.”

  Where was the Fallen? Patiala bit back a curse and resisted the urge to abandon the house and find her daughter. She needed to trust Meera. She needed to trust Rhys.

  “Dust,” he spotter said again.

  And again.

  And again.

  Patiala picked off the Grigori one by one, but she was no match for the Tomir warriors moving like shadows through the haven.

  But still there was no sign of the Fallen.

  The old man patted the hound dog on the head and glanced at the laughing raven that perched on the top of his house.

  “Are you afraid?” the bird asked.

  “Who are you?” He was irritated he couldn’t discern the raven’s identity. This was a trickster. A dragon sent to mock him.

  “I am your audience,” the raven said. “I came here for a show, but you are boring me. Are you afraid of the Wolf?”

  “I’m not afraid o
f a mongrel woman.”

  “She’s old.” The raven taunted him. “She killed Nalu, who was far more powerful than you. I think you’re afraid. You probably should be.”

  The old man turned back to his fishing pole. “My sons can win this battle for me. That is why I made them.” Soon he would rid himself of these vain Irina and turn his attention back to the real prize, a city filled with vulnerable humans ripe for the taking. And he would rid the city of the lurking power he’d sensed weeks ago.

  This territory was his and his alone.

  “Your sons will spill their blood and take your spoils.” The raven’s message was as annoying as his voice. “But why would you want your sons to enjoy the fruit of this battle?”

  “The prize of an old warrior?” He picked his teeth. “I like softer flesh.”

  The raven transformed into a black cat, sliding between the old man’s legs. “Don’t you know who waits in that haven, Bozidar?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “No you don’t. If you did, you’d never let your sons enjoy this prize.” The cat clawed up the old man’s back and hissed. “Somasssssikara.”

  The old man rose to his feet. He hadn’t known the haven guarded a keeper, not that he’d tell the annoying messenger taunting him.

  Somasikara?

  The lure of such a soul was too powerful to resist.

  The old man flipped off his bright red hat, walked off the porch and across the road, passing through the wards with barely a hitch. He shrugged off the itch along his skin. Their wards were nothing to him. Not now. Not with his blood staining the ground. His sons had made their sacrifice, and he reaped the benefit.

  Havre Hélène would be his.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Meera felt him as soon as his step breached the wards. “He’s here.”

  “Where?” Ata asked.

  She frowned when she realized where the massive movement of power was coming from. “He’s coming from the river. He’s coming right through the front gate.”

  “Arrogant,” Sari said.

  “Yes.” Ata’s paint was washed away. She had returned to the hardened warrior they met in the swamps. The two Dene Ghal stood on either side of her, their jovial expressions absent as they watched the Wolf strap twin silver blades to her waist and pick up a silver-tipped spear. “We go.”

  I’m not ready yet!

  Sari glanced at Meera as if reading her thoughts. “Come, sister. Go with me.”

  Their mates were already at the house, assisting Patiala and waiting for word of the Fallen.

  “Send a runner,” Sari said to the scribe by the door. “Bozidar approaches the house.”

  As soon as Meera reached the door of the tent she smelled it. “Smoke?”

  “The cane fields are on fire,” Ata said. “That’s not our concern. Begin the spell as we walk. It takes time to build.”

  Ata sang with them as Sari and Meera walked hand in hand. The Dene Ghal siblings guarded their steps. Meera had heard the woman griping at her brother the night before, wishing her mate had come with her to fight instead of watching their young child.

  Meera felt no such envy. She wished someone else had the burden of this magic because the spell, while she knew it would be effective, was also horrible.

  They would have to wait until their mates were in agony, near death, before they unleashed its true power. Anything less than that meant the spell was unlikely to work.

  “Ashmala, the star that shines

  Ma’alk, the first eternal mind

  Baruk, who blesses us

  Taraná, who feeds us—”

  Meera and Sari invoked various names of the Creator-Who-Was as they walked across the warded ground of Havre Hélène.

  It was a binding spell, whispered over and over, the simple brilliance of it centered on building and focusing empathy, a human trait unknown to the Fallen. For as Vasu had said, the Fallen were created to be servants of the Creator-Who-Was. They were not relational. They were created with no need for empathy. For those who followed the will of their maker, it was their highest and most primal need.

  But empathy was human. Empathy was vulnerability. Empathy required something angels were not capable of.

  Empathy, in the end, could destroy them.

  The spell repeated and built, drawing on the mating magic of the Irina, with the singer focused entirely on her mate who would be provoking the rage and violence of the angel he was battling. Meera and Sari had to stay connected to their mates, understand and measure the pain, then release at the very moment it was strongest in order to fling the agony back to the angel. The spell would bind the violence and rage inflicted by the angel into its own soul, creating a self-repeating magic that would eat the monster from within.

  She could already see Sari’s face tense with pain. Damien was being pummeled by something, but her voice never wavered.

  Meera, on the other hand, felt nothing.

  Rhys, what are you doing?

  He ambled through centuries-old wards, a crooked old man who straightened as he grew closer. The swagger became pronounced halfway down the oak alley. His shoulders drew back. His chin jutted out at a petulant angle.

  “The old man.” Rhys had known something was off about that human. The fact that not a single one of them had picked up any hint of magic from Bozidar’s disguise warned him that this evil could not be underestimated.

  Damien stood next to Rhys, watching the man approach. “You know,” Damien mused, “they choose their human form.”

  Rhys frowned. “And?”

  “And this angel, somehow, decided that this form is attractive,” Damien muttered. “Is that a fake tan? I wonder if his teeth are capped like those politicians you see on the television. He looks like a politician.”

  Rhys couldn’t contain his smirk. It was a stark moment of levity in an otherwise tense situation. “I wonder if any of the Fallen have become politicians.”

  “It would not be a shocking revelation.”

  The angel approached, eyeing the gathering of Tomir warriors, Irin scribes, and singers. Every one of them was frozen, ready and waiting for the signal. Bozidar had grown from an average human height to somewhere around eight feet tall. His human form slowly burned away. Clothing dissolved, revealing flesh marked by raised talesm that radiated in the morning light. He was at once monstrous and beautiful in his heavenly visage.

  He eyed the gathered warriors with disdain.

  Rhys could still hear the cries and screams coming from the cane fields. Could feel the heady scent of magic flowing in the air as gold dust scattered in the breeze. Acrid smoke filled his nostrils.

  But he, like all the warriors who lined the oak alley, was silent.

  “Mongrel bitches,” Bozidar muttered as he passed a group of singers.

  An arrow flew through the shadows, striking Bozidar directly in the throat. The angel took a single step back, glanced down, and roared.

  Damien muttered, “And here we go.”

  Arrows and spears flew through the air, bouncing off the angel and occasionally piercing his skin. He batted them away, pulled them out. They did nothing to him, nor did the warriors aiming them think they would. The goal was to kill time and allow Meera and Sari’s magic to build. The goal was to antagonize him until he lost his temper and loosed his true rage on his tormenters.

  Which was why Rhys and Damien stood directly in the angel’s line of sight.

  Damien lifted a shotgun and aimed it at the angel’s face. He shot once. Twice. Bozidar turned from batting away a spear to snarl at Damien.

  “Sorry, Bozo! Was trying to improve your face,” Damien called.

  Rhys aimed to be even more annoying. He grabbed a red laser pointer from his pocket and shone it directly in Bozidar’s eyes.

  “A laser pointer?” Damien reloaded his shotgun.

  “Have you ever tried giving a presentation with someone using these? I hate them. Hopefully he will too.”

  The spears,
arrows, and gunshots all came from the trees or from the front porch of the main house. Rhys and Damien were the only scribes in the path of the angel. Everyone else was attacking from the sides.

  Bozidar narrowed his eyes on Rhys.

  “Can I have the gun?” Rhys asked. “This laser pointer might have been a bad idea.”

  “Pissing him off is the idea.”

  Bozidar reached down and picked up a giant concrete urn, growling before he hurled it at Rhys’s head.

  He dived to the side and rolled. “Well, it’s working!”

  “Somasikara.” Bozidar’s voice rumbled through the trees. “Where is she?”

  “You’re really not her type,” Rhys shouted. “She generally prefers the nonmonstrous. Also, men with beards.”

  “She’s picky that way,” Damien shouted. “Quite the diva.”

  “Did you come for the Wolf?” Rhys shouted. “I win the bet, Damien. She said he’d be too afraid to come.”

  “Well, she did kill Nalu.” Damien rolled closer to Bozidar and aimed up at the Fallen, shooting the monster in the groin. “And Bozidar is nothing to Nalu.”

  Bozidar didn’t even pause. He reached down and grabbed Damien by the foot. He flipped the scribe over his head and tossed him to the ground, where Damien landed with a hard thud. “I do not fight dogs. Give me the somasikara, and she will come to no harm. I will keep her as my mongrel pet.”

  Red-hot rage rose in Rhys, along with a burning desire to kill the angel. Hate flooded through him, souring his mouth.

  You cannot.

  Ata had warned them. The key to fighting an angel was mental control, not physical. They could never be a match for an archangel. Their only hope was turning his own magic against him.

  Bozidar started a low, guttural chant. The magic hit Rhys like a punch to the belly and he doubled over.

  Where is she? he whispered in Rhys’s mind. Give her to me, and I will leave you. Give me the memory keeper, and I will leave you in peace.