Seraphs (11 page)

Forcing the rising heat back down again, I pushed the kitchen table away and got a bag of earth salt. Though used, it was potent enough to scry for Lolo. The old bat and I had a lot to talk about, not that I’d ever call her that to her face.

I poured water into my sterling silver conjuring bowl and lit a candle before sitting within the circle, at the open space in the salt ring. Spine erect, I crossed my legs yogi-fashion and closed my eyes, blew out a tension-filled breath and drew in a calming one. Again. And again. Serenity fluttered close, just out of reach, held at bay by mage-heat that still quivered through my nerves. I had a feeling I wasn’t going to get any closer to calm today, and dropped the final handful of salt, closing the conjuring circle.

Power seized me. The fire of creation burned along my nerves and bones, pulling at me, tempting me, but as usual in the last few weeks, I batted away the temptation to take creation power for myself, to use as I willed, and stabilized the energies needed to scry for Lolo. Once, rejecting the temptation would have been difficult, nearly impossible, and many mages never gained any kind of restraint. I should have been worried about having such control, as it had been the gift of an outside force, but I wasn’t. Never had been.

My heart beat slowly, my blood pumped, breath moved through my lungs, and all glamour fell away. Scars bright, my body pulsed with a pink coral radiance, and a lavender underglow, as if I sat on a pillow of lavender light. But there was no big purple cobra this time, so maybe I was getting lucky. Luck, fickle and random, was something else I didn’t like to depend on. Only fools depended on the providence of good fortune.

My loft shone with power. Every window and doorway, and even the floor surfaces were charged with pale energy, glowing with subtle shades, their purposes working together to form the harmony that was my home.

Calm, relaxed, I called on Lolo. After several minutes, the water in the bottom of the bowl began to shimmer, brightening with an image. In it, a female form sat on a pile of pillows in a dark room. A flute played in the background. Drums beat a slow, steady rhythm. Candle flames bent in an unseen breeze. The priestess was in her chambers, attended by her musicians and acolytes. Finally, she had deigned to answer my call.

I repeated the incantation for scrying one last time as the vision came clear and tightened on the face of the seated woman. Lolo’s black-on-black eyes looked out at me from the water, her lips turned up serenely. Her voice filled my head.
What you want, girl?
she asked, her Cajun accent present even in her mental voice.

“Four things,” I said aloud. “I want to know how to call for seraphic help without calling mage in dire.”

Yes,
Lolo said.
I can teach you dis ting. It part of you visa.

“I want to know what the visa can do and how to use it to its full potential.”

Dat too,
she said.

Good. Small steps. Now the bigger things, I thought. “I want to know if you were involved in the breeding of Thaddeus Bartholomew.”

Lolo’s eyes flickered once, and her tranquil smile faltered. I’d not have noticed had I not been watching her so closely. “Last, I want to know about the seraphs in the pit of Darkness.”

Her hand lifted and the vision wavered as if I had lost focus for a moment. And then she was gone. The water went dim and I could see the silver bottom of the bowl.

I had lost her. Though I tried twice more to call the priestess of New Orleans Enclave, I failed. The water in the bowl remained only water, reflecting back the candle flame. I swore silently, thinking I should have put stones on the bottom for added power. When I knew my attempts would continue to be futile, I recharged the defensive amulets placed around the loft; not that they seemed able to keep the incubus out, but they were all I had. Marginally satisfied, I reached over and opened the circle, the energies flowing back into me.

As I cleaned up the salt, I thought about Lolo’s face when I asked my last questions. Her shock. Her dismay. There had been no disbelief, no denial, only surprise that I had asked the questions. Only distress that I knew to ask. And something akin to alarm. Perhaps I hadn’t failed after all.

At the end of the workday, I was feeling antsy. To banish the remnants of mage-heat, I dressed in work clothes and went out back to the old post-and-beam stable, one of several in a row. Zeddy, Jacey’s teenage stepson, was there before me, mucking out the stalls by lantern light as the geldings—Audric’s palomino Clydesdale and my huge black Friesian—and Rupert’s mule munched feed and hay. I grabbed a shovel and started on the far side of the barn, feeling the pull of muscles in my shoulders and back. The air inside was brisk but not miserably cold, heated by the bodies of the horses and the activities of two workers. Building up a sweat, Zeddy and I worked in silence, Jacey’s stepson nearly a match in size for the workhorses. We had cleaned the stalls and most of the common area when the horses threw up their heads, inhaled and blew, snorting. Clyde stamped in agitation. The mule trumpeted a heehaw of fear.

“Miss Thorn?” Zeddy said. “Something feels wrong.”

The stink of brimstone and sulfur blew through the cracks in the barn.
Seraph stones.
I gripped the shovel and moved to the doors facing the back of Thorn’s Gems. Holding the shovel like a bowstaff, a martial art weapon, I eased open the door to the night, the lamplight a wedge revealing snow trampled with three-toed footprints. “Spawn!” I shouted, as something crashed against the door and I jumped back. Mage-sight kindled instantly, turning the world shades of pink, indigo, purple, and pale yellow.

The big barn door slammed just as a three-fingered, clawed hand tried to thrust its way in. Without thinking, I rammed the blade of the shovel, severing the fingers. A howl sounded through the closed door.

“Spawn never come this far down the Trine,” Zeddy said, his voice shaking.

I knew differently. Spawn went anywhere they wanted. I scanned the barn. I had no weapons but the shovels, a crowbar, and a toolbox that housed a claw hammer, nails, and a couple of screwdrivers. I could throw a shield over the barn, but that would just send the spawn next door to eat my neighbors’ horses. Or my neighbors. A thud landed on the roof, followed by several others. Something scrabbled again at the barn door. “How loud can you scream?” I asked. “If we make enough noise, Audric will hear us. He’ll come.” With battle-lust in his eyes and enough weapons to start a small war, I could have added, but didn’t.

“Yellin’ I can do,” he said.

We let out bloodcurdling screams, and I drew on the visa, adding decibels to mine, until the horses reared and I had to stop or have the animals tear down the barn. Zeddy took his shovel to the post-and-beam walls, beating them, and when that proved unsatisfying, he dropped it and beat the walls with his bare hands. The horses pranced in alarm, terrified of the noise and our scent of fear, and of the reek of danger that gusted in through the chinks in the walls and beneath the door. If they started bucking, we were toast.

More spawn landed on the roof. I smelled smoke.
Seraph balls.
The spawn had brought fire. The hair on the back of my neck rose, even as defensive incantations and tactics presented themselves in the corners of my mind and were discarded. I hadn’t recharged all my amulets. Most were half empty, yet even if they had been fully charged, they would not have been enough. Smoke wafted in through the chinks. I rammed the shovel at the wood walls, my voice shrill, fighting panic, trying to think.

If I turned my back on the town and shielded the barn from flame, I might live but my neighbors would die. If my shield missed even a corner of the barn, that part of the building would be vulnerable to fire. Smoke would penetrate the shield, suffocating us. Worse, the section of the barn enclosed by the conjure would be filled with hungry spawn.

I hadn’t expected an attack. Spawn liked mule trains and the rare, lone, unwary traveler. They didn’t attack cities. Spawn didn’t plan an attack at all, as they were beasts of opportunity.

I started coughing. Homer snorted and pranced, ears back, eyes rolling. The mule, overlooked in my worry, heehawed and kicked in a circle.

Claws scraped the frozen ground and a body scrabbled under the door. I beheaded it with the shovel, ichor flying and burning holes in my shirt. It took three strikes to cut through the spine. Spawn were faster than humans and half-breeds, some said faster than mages, and they healed from almost anything except a beheading. It sounded as if there were dozens more. We were in trouble.

In the lantern light, I fingered my amulets. One that I would never utilize in warfare presented itself to me. Coughing, I said, “Zeddy, get over here. Keep the horses calm.” When the big teen slid between the workhorses, I said, “Cover their eyes if you have to, but stay put. I’ll try to put out the fire.” He dropped his shovel and clutched the animals’ halters. I flicked my thumb over an amulet and opened a small shield over them. The horses, Zeddy, and the mule were protected from projectiles and attackers, but not from airflow. It was a pretty nifty defensive weapon and I had never figured out how the first neomages came up with it. Nifty, that is, unless smoke was about to smother you.

Outside the shield I primed two amulets, drawing on the cat amulet’s stored power. I cracked open a door, aimed a charm to heat bathwater at Rupert’s loft, and threw it, transferring power into it from the cat. A lot of power. It ripped through me with a searing electric charge.

The energies stored in the tossed amulet released when it landed on the stairs. Instantly the snow on the roof, porch, and steps melted, falling to the ground with a crash, like a wave on the beach, hopefully alerting Audric and Rupert while putting out the fire. I jerked back as talons reached for me, slammed the door, smoke billowing up beneath it.

Chapter 11

Outside, Audric shouted, “Thorn!” It was a battle cry. Relief whipped through me. Before I could reply, the barn door clattered. Three-fingered hands pried around it on three sides, claws gripping the wood. I slashed and hacked, severing fingers that flipped into the air, splattering black blood. Spawn shrieked in pain. With a squeal of tearing metal hinges and splintering wood, the spawn ripped the door off the barn. I almost swore as they raced inside. Long-legged, mole-bodied, and red-furred, patterned in indistinct stripes and spots, spawn had bat ears and big teeth shaped for tearing meat. And poisonous saliva and acidic blood.

I whirled the shovel. Slammed it into the face of the closest spawn, cut and slashed the next two. Audric bellowed again, this time from ground level. The battle cry was one I had never heard before. “Raziel! By blood and fire!”

My blood heating, I shouted back, “Jehovah sabaoth!”

The spawn entering the barn slowed at the words, and I knocked three to the ground before they found whatever wits they had. The shovel wasn’t sharp enough to behead them, but I did serious damage to their throats. Battle-lust and mage-speed heated my blood, burning out fear.

It was full night, the ground an unfamiliar, muddy dark from the melted snow. Audric raced to the barn entrance, moving like an African-Asian prince, his katana and wakizashi flashing in the dim light of the upstairs windows. Without losing the pace of his cutting and slashing, he threw two long-bladed knives, impaling spawn at my feet. I tossed the shovel and grabbed the hilts. Beheading the injured was the work of two swings, one left-handed, one right. The tantos blades were pointed to allow for throwing, but double-edged for cutting, and wicked sharp, the blade length more suitable for shortswords for my shorter, more slender arms. I spun them once. I liked them. A lot. They were perfect.

Blood splattered hotly across my back. Acidic spawn blood, not Audric’s. I felt the burn through my clothes. “Need light?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said shortly, breath fast but steady, his concentration focused on sounds and currents of air that signaled spawn movements.

Mages have better night vision than most half-breeds, and a lot better than humans. I swung at three spawn, taking both arms off one and sending the others back. One-handed, I tossed two illumination amulets onto the ground, where they splattered into the water. Audric swiveled so we stood back-to-back. “Horses and Zeddy are shielded in the barn,” I said.

Audric beheaded two spawn with a single swipe, his kill totals rising now that he could see. “Snow?”

“Fire.” I took one and damaged another.

“Smart. How many?” he asked, cutting the legs from beneath a beast.

I counted. “Seventeen dead or injured. Maybe six left on the ground, four on the roof. Odd thing, though,” I said, darting close to a spawn, pricking it through the lungs, and darting back. “They aren’t eating their dead. And they’re better organized than most spawn.”

“Make it four alive on the ground. Leader?”

“Could be. I haven’t seen one. Three,” I said, dispatching another. Just then two spawn leaped out of the dark, from overhead. One landed on Audric’s back, knocking him to his knees. It bit down. Audric bellowed and I switched my grip, wedging the point under the spawn’s nose and ripping toward me, taking off the top of its head. It fell, and Audric knocked the lower jaw and body loose, kicking it away. He moved with a grunt of pain. He was hurt. Maybe hurt bad. I handed him a healing amulet, hoping it would be enough.

“Two o’clock,” he said. “Red eyes.”

To my right I saw an indistinct form at the back doorway of the linen shop, its shoulder pressing against the brick. Though I only caught a glimpse, I knew it was Malashe-el, the daywalker who had fed off Lucas. Enraged, for reasons I didn’t examine, I shouted my battle cry again, lunged, and cut, taking two spawn heads at once. Malashe-el moved into the dark, beginning to fade from my thoughts. It carried a rune of forgetting, a dangerous and powerful tool. I struggled to keep it in my mind, following it with mage-sight.

The world suddenly quieted and, weapons held in defensive postures, I looked around. The spawn were all down. Audric moved among the bodies, beheading the ones still twitching. He moved with a limp. I tossed him a second healing amulet, and he caught it in the dark. We were both glowing; we had released control of our neomage attributes. He lifted a hand and touched his throat, activating his lightning-bolt amulet. His skin faded to human dullness and he picked up the illumination amulets, pocketing one and handing me the other. No townsfolk had come to help us, though we had made an awful racket.
Cowards,
I thought viciously.

When I looked back, Malashe-el stood an arm’s length before me, holding an amulet. Audric and I had forgotten all about it. Its eyes blazed red, fangs ratcheted wide.

Lightning-fast, I slashed. The walker moved faster, stabbing toward my left side with the amulet. As it moved toward me, demon-fast, I saw the talisman. A talon. No. A spur. A dragonet spur. Under my guard, faster than I could block, the spur pierced my side. Pain exploded. I stumbled. My heart stuttered as if poison pumped through it rather than blood.

From behind, I heard Audric bellow and the sound of blades slashing, grunts and the impact of weapons on flesh. I doubled over, gagging. Malashe-el caught me, seized the tantos, and threw them. He hammered the amulet into me. The world tilted. Agony like a spear of hellfire burst through me, tearing. Dazed, falling, I reached for my prime amulet. I had a moment to wonder about Audric. Burning blood sprayed over me. Pain razored deep. My fingers scrabbled to find the four-inch stone, my prime ring.

Malashe-el lifted me and spun to race away. My face was pressed into its shirt. I smelled flowers and mold. My fingers encircled the ring. Brain fuzzy, having no incantation prepared, I summoned power gathered in the melded stones of the prime. Desperate, wordless, I called to it. I felt energies gather in the prime and in my torso, centering beneath my sternum. My vision was going dark. My hand was so heavy I could barely lift the ring. I pressed the prime amulet to its chest.

The daywalker stumbled and fell to one knee. I heard the swing of a sword, and the thunk of bone as a blade impacted the walker’s calf. He dropped me, and as we separated, my heart thundered in my ears. The fall to the ground took two heartbeats, heartbeats coiled with pain from the stab wound. I hit and rolled, the breath knocked from me. My prime blazed.

I lay staring at the black sky, trying to remember how to breathe. My skin flared with pain as melted snow drenched through my clothes. Snowmelt stung like liquid fire, draining my energies pulling power from the primes to protect me. Water saturated the acidic spawn blood absorbed in my clothes, washing it against my flesh. If I’d been able, I would have screamed.

The torment flared, doubling, as I took a breath. The prime amulet in my hand was hot to the touch, flooding my body with stone power. I released it. One-handed, I felt my side. And found nothing, no torn flesh, no spur amulet, though my hand came away bloody.

I heard feet racing near me, one set, uneven. Two blades hit the ground near my outstretched legs. The tantos, by the sound of them. They’d need serious attention from the ill usage of this night.

Two breaths later, I rolled to my knees and followed the footsteps, plucking the weapons Audric had tossed out of the ground. Audric was chasing the walker in the general direction of my spring. I almost laughed.

I drew on the amulets, all of them, to stabilize my heartbeat and breathing, and to fight the poison of the psychic injury. I veered around Audric and the wounded walker. Shaken, slowed, I was still fast. The walker’s blood sprayed in arterial spurts across the wet ground, brighter in the snow as they headed uphill. Audric grunted with each breath, limping.

I herded them both toward the ring of stones and my spring. It was protected with a conjure to keep it hidden from the attention of any nonhuman, and to capture any supernat that touched its ringing stones. Circling around, I came hard from the south.

Just as Malashe-el limped past the spring, I threw one of the tantos. It thumped into the walker, the blade penetrating under its right arm. It fell, one hand out to catch itself, and touched a rounded boulder that ringed the spring.

The first part of the double-whammy conjure snapped into place with a sizzle of sound, the trap-shield rising and covering the spring and the boulders that contained the power for the conjure. This part was little more than an inverted shield, meant to keep prey in, not predators out. As Malashe-el fell and rolled, the spring erupted with part two of the incantation, drenching the walker with water, the conjure draining much of its Dark power. Malashe-el screamed, the keen long and furious, then pained, as if it were two instead of one.

Audric skidded to a halt, staring at the spring. It was the most complicated conjure I had ever attempted. I was apt to use raw power to bully my way through most problems. This was a thing of beauty. As an unanticipated side effect of trapping it, the pain in my side lessened. I bent over and rested my hands on my knees. Breathing was suddenly easier.

Gasping, Audric sat on the frozen ground, landing hard, his longsword across his thighs, the shortsword on the ground. Both dripped blood onto the snow. I sat beside him on a rock peeking from the ground, the remaining tanto reversed, pointing behind me. “Very nice,” he said, catching his breath.

“Thanks.” Sitting in the dark, watching the walker howl and roll in pain, I handed Audric a final healing amulet. “Put it over the fang punctures. It’ll neutralize the toxins.” A human might have died from the venom in the saliva, but Audric wouldn’t. He’d be sicker than plague-stricken monkeys, however, unless we counteracted the poison. I had made some amulets following my last encounter with spawn. I couldn’t count on the presence of a friendly, helpful seraph every time I got into trouble. Seraphs hadn’t given the human world much attention in the last few decades, and the neomage world even less.

In its cage, luminous blue and green energies and gold sparkles arcing over the spring, Malashe-el writhed and cursed and beat against the walls. Its red eyes spit hatred each time they landed on me. It pulled the tanto from its side with a gush of blood and threw the blade at the shield. It bounced off, clanging on the stones.

“Will it live?” Audric asked, breathing hard.

“Probably. If it gets control of itself in time to reserve some blood. If it gets to eat.”

“What are you going to do with it?” Audric asked after a few minutes. His voice sounded more normal.

“I don’t know. But see its eyes? They used to be blue-green, like labradorite stone. Almost incandescent.”

“Meaning?”

“I don’t think it was originally pure Darkness. I think it was created out of the genetic patterns of a Major Darkness and something else.” When Audric didn’t laugh or shoot down my theory, I said, “Either it chose Darkness, or it’s possessed. If it chose the Dark, we’ll kill it. If it’s possessed against its will, the control will lessen with daylight.” Thinking about the questions Lolo hadn’t answered, I said, “Maybe we could get some information out of it.”

Seconds passed. Audric watched Malashe-el thrash. The daywalker pulled the spur amulet from its pocket and attacked the shield, stabbing at the energies with ferocity and speed that was hard to follow. The shield was unchanged, though it sizzled with the blows. When Audric spoke, his tone was deceptively casual. “You know how to exorcise a demon?”

“Not yet. But I might by morning.”

“And the weakness in your side, left from your vision underground? I saw what the touch of that amulet did to you.” I had nothing to say to that. We both knew I had a problem.

“Hey! You want to let me out of here?” a voice shouted. “Thorn?”

“Oops. Forgot about Zeddy,” I said.

“I’ll keep watch over your daywalker,” Audric said. “You release the boy and tell Rupert what happened. Ask him to bring me a sandwich and some water. Maybe a blanket.”

“You don’t have to stay here. The trap won’t fail. The walker was drenched with water from the spring. It’s stuck until I release it.” Zeddy shouted again, wondering if I was alive. I shouted back to hold his horses, hoping the humor would give him some patience.

As if he hadn’t heard me, Audric said, “I’ll wait here until you try an exorcism. Or until it dies. But you get to clean up the spawn. They’ll stink by morning, even in the cold.”

He was right. Spawn smelled like rotting meat, their decay process fast. As helpful townspeople had yet to appear, I’d pay Zeddy to pile and burn them, but I didn’t think it would be cheap. And I wondered what the town would say about the unwanted mage attracting a horde of spawn. Whatever they came up with, it wouldn’t be nice. They would have let me die out here, and probably been tickled pink about it. Tired, aching, feeling the pain in my side like a boil, I rose and went to the loft.

I showered fast and hung a healing amulet inside my T-SHIRT when I dressed, one that would help the acid burns, the cuts, and the pain in my side. As I dressed, I realized that Joseph Barefoot hadn’t appeared to help with the spawn either. Maybe if I’d had time to hang a cloth in my window, I thought wryly.