Faith Hunter - Host

“We can’t get out of the mountains in time, not without seraphic help or a lot of government helicopters,” I said. “We’re trapped.”

“Fat chance the government will help us,” a voice shouted from the rear of the room. “The tax base here isn’t big enough for them to bother.” More laughter ensued.

I said, “A couple of satellite phones and some old Pre-Ap ham radios are the only way we can reach the outside world. I understand that the army has been called, but they can send only one small group of special forces, and none before night falls tomorrow. We’re on our own. We need all of our warriors, the orthodox, the Jews, the reformed, the progressives, the Cherokee, and the EIH. Like your ancestors, we have to put aside matters of dogma and religious doctrine. We have to bury the mounting hatred. We have to pull together, all of us. Or we will fall prey and dinner to that thing on the Trine.” Finally, I saw some speculation on faces, a wisp of what could have been shame. And a growing alarm.

“Will you prove yourselves to be the equal of your ancestors and fight together? Or will you prove they were an anomaly? Will you fight? Or will you hide?” I stepped between my champards and down to the floor as the human congregation craned around to see. “Whatever you do, do it together. As one. As your ancestors did. Make them proud.”

A knobby hand reached out to me, veins blue and knotted, skin delicate and bruised. “Will you lead us?” a fragile old woman asked, holding me with watery eyes.

Shock zinged through me. Blow it out Gabriel’s horn. Me? I managed to keep from giggling hysterically at the thought. “No. I’m not a general.”

Jasper stood in the crowd and called out, “We have to ask who among us has such training. I believe that we will find such a person here in this room. Today.” He walked to the dais and climbed two steps as I moved down the aisle toward the front doors. “After all,” Jasper continued, raising his voice, “hasn’t time proved that the Most High puts his people where he will, ready for his hand? People of faith have always found what was needed when the attack of Darkness was imminent. And yes, people of faith includes our town mage.”

Shock rippled through me. Tears gathered again.

Our town mage. A person of faith. As Ciana might have said, how cool is that?

As the doors closed behind us, I had a glimpse of Eli, who had stayed behind. He slipped into an aisle seat beside an EIH fighter and an elder who was a leader of the progressives. Interesting. I heard Romona Benson say softly into her mike, “Who is this mage who speaks of faith, who fights alongside humans and seraphs, who carries a blade anointed by a member of the High Host? And when will the Most High show his face to the world? Will we ever see him?”

Wrath of angels, I thought with a spurt of real fear. Romona was questioning the Most High. The last reporter to do that on air had been struck down with a deadly aneurysm.

Another quandary came to mind. I was going to be famous. Tears and blood. Royally ticked off about that, I followed my champards into the winter morning. The doors to the old church closed behind us with a resounding thud.

Midway down the long steps, Rupert stumbled. A mind-skim flashed on as a gust of wind blew in my face and I scented human blood. I reached out. Audric caught Rupert before he tumbled to the street.

I threw my cloak aside and helped Audric settle Rupert on the leather sofa in his loft apartment across from mine. Blood had soaked through the bandages along his spine, through his clothes, and down his legs into his boots. Audric cut through his saturated shirt without ceremony. The half-breed was a competent battlefield medic when needed.

He pulled Rupert’s pants and boots off, tossing them to the floor in a bloody heap. The bandage, a mound along the right side of Rupert’s spine, was soggy with blood, half-clotted and gummy. He had lost a lot of blood.

As Audric worked, I turned up the gas fireplaces to heat the room. In the linen chest, I found old sheets and raced back to find Audric on his knees beside Rupert. My friend’s breathing was fast and shallow, his skin tinged a pale ash. That couldn’t be good. How had I stood at his back and talked for so long and not smelled it? I touched the visa hanging on my necklace and wondered at the way it steered my mind into channels of its own choosing. It seemed to have a lot of authority over me and I didn’t like that at all. It gave me the willies.

“Do you have any healing amulets left?” Audric asked.

“No. I’ll go fill some. Fast as I can.” I raced for the door, but stopped at his next words.

“No time. Wake Ciana.”

My mage attributes flared up and mage-sight snapped on, battle-ready at his tone, grim and spare as death. Ciana, Rupert’s niece, had worked through the night putting injured humans under seraphic healing domes, using the pin gifted by her Raziel. She had fallen asleep at dawn, so exhausted she hadn’t waked when I carried her up the stairs, undressed her, and put her to bed in the nook where she slept when she visited her uncle.

I turned on my heel and raced across the room, pulled back the purple-flowered drape that provided the girl with privacy. I stopped fast, rocking on my toes, barking my knee on the bed frame, taking in the scene in a single heartbeat of time.

Cissy lay spooned against Ciana, both girls curled under a down comforter and lavender flannel sheets. They were bathed in sparkles of soft pink light, sparkles that shifted and moved as if with currents of their own, centering in two places: Cissy’s throat, where purple bruises and a single healing laceration were all that remained of the succubus’ damage, and Ciana’s chest, on the pin shaped like seraph wings.

There were additional sparkles on the Pre-Ap ring Ciana wore on her thumb. Marla had found the Stanhope ring in her jewelry box—imagine that—and Rupert had sized it down to fit his niece. The chunky bloodstone in its plain setting didn’t look like an amulet, but it appeared to be involved in whatever the seraph pin was doing to heal Cissy. No. Not just the pin. Ciana was drawing on seraph power herself, directing the pin’s energies into the wounded child in her arms. Not even a mage had that ability. And certainly not while asleep.

I remembered Lucas’ words in the heat of battle. What are we? He had known in that moment what I fully understood now, looking at the little girl, frozen in shock for two more heartbeats. Whatever the Stanhopes were, they weren’t fully human. I touched the edge of the sparkly glow and it glimmered against my fingertips, a painless twinkle.

“Thorn?” Audric said, his tension grating like a buzz saw.

But I couldn’t hurry. Rupert might need this…whatever Ciana was doing in her sleep. In her sleep! I closed off the sight and extended my mind in a skim, breathing in, smelling-sensing-reading her. In a mind-skim, seraphs smell like living things and really good food and sex. Darkness smells of dying plants, mold, brimstone, and sulfur. Humans smell like their perfumes, the dyes in their clothes, with the underlying musky odor of males and the ripe scent or fresh-yeast bread fragrance of females. Half-breeds have their own odor and mages smell like, well, like mages. Ciana smelled like sunshine on spring grass—nothing like a human child. I pressed my hand through the sparkles and I stroked her hair. “Ciana? Baby? Wake up, darlin’.” She blinked once, focusing up at me.

She smiled as if she knew what I was sensing. I wanted to go deeper, perform a concentrated search on her, but Rupert groaned and I kneeled at the bedside instead, stuffing my worry into a convenient niche in my mind. “Ciana, Rupert was injured in the fight. I know you’re tired, but is there—”