Faith Hunter - Host

Cheran’s face fell. “You can’t teach me?”

“Nope.” Well, I could, but I wouldn’t. I had learned some things about him in the short time I had known him. He was a coward, he was secretive, and he was more than the simple metal mage he claimed. His offer to put new edges on our blades had identified him as a steel mage. The gold comment had also given him away. Most metal mages have an affinity for one particular type of metal, yet Cheran Jones seemed to be both a steel mage and a gold mage. I’d have to research how unusual the affinity for both steel and gold was. “Since we’re trading information, your turn again,” I said. “Why didn’t you call for seraphic assistance on your visa?”

“I was told to teach you what you needed to function as a fully licensed mage and to watch you fight, if the opportunity presented itself.”

I felt cold settle in my bones and my fingers dropped to touch the placemat. The texture was coarse and tough and I stroked it once as if it might purr and comfort me. “You let people get wounded, you let them die, so you could watch me fight?”

Cheran made a little hand-flap motion to show its unimportance. “They’re only humans. It was imperative that I learn what you are and report back to Enclave.”

They’re only humans. I kept my breathing steady, schooling my face to emptiness, not letting him see how I reacted to his statement. How much I wanted to kill him in that moment. Cheran didn’t seem to notice. “And now that you’ve seen me fight?” I asked softly.

“You have a lovely grasp of the basics, and if you had received proper training you would likely be a first-rate battle mage by now. But you forget to draw on your amulets and stored conjures during fighting and rely too much on your blades. If you ever came face-to-face with a well-trained mage in combat, you’d lose, because you would depend on steel.”

I didn’t like it that he was so perceptive—and that I was so poorly trained. Audric had taken over my instruction in the martial arts, but I had a decade of training to catch up on and not enough time to devote to it. Unlike mages in Enclaves, who lived off the trade of mage artifacts and services, I had to work for a living in the human world. And Audric, who had no ability to twist and use creation energies, couldn’t help me with that part of fighting. I was indeed depending on blades because that was what Audric depended on. Drat. Cheran was right.

“But your biggest flaw in combat is that you care too much what happens to humans and don’t seem willing to use them as they’re intended to be used in battle.”

“Like pawns,” I said, still soft, remembering Enclave lessons learned so long ago. Lessons where mages were the generals and humans the troops. And humans died.

“Correct. Humans are disposable. You’ve lived among them so long you’ve forgotten. And, in addition to all that, you haven’t reported back to Enclave about the child. Big mistake.”

Ciana. He meant Ciana. “What about her?”

“She has a seraph artifact. The brooch has to be turned over to the proper authorities once we’re able to leave this misbegotten town. And she summoned Minor Flames. To keep her from falling into the hands of Darkness, she has to be taken into protective custody and studied.”

Fear lifted the small hairs across my flesh. My breathing sped up as the terror morphed into fury. Over my dead body. Over my dead, bled-out, chopped-up, desiccated, rotting body. And yours. I didn’t say it, though my hands were tightening for swords that weren’t there. I’d have known this was coming if I had pulverized the Apache Tear. And I could have offered him some tea with rat poison in it.

Some small part of me shuddered at the images in my mind, violent and final, Cheran in a bloody heap or dying in a toxin-induced seizure. On some level I was appalled at myself. On another, it wasn’t nearly enough. I’d kill Cheran in cold blood before I let him touch my stepchild.

Had so few days of battle, of pitched combat, changed me so much? This was the second time in as many weeks that I had been ready to kill, to murder. Was I truly willing to commit a capital crime to save someone I loved? Yeah. Hell, yeah. But I shoved those thoughts down deep inside where I didn’t have to look at them. “It’s my right to tell Enclave. Not yours,” I stated, my voice sounding remarkably calm despite the fact that my blood was boiling. Before he could pin me down I said, “I’ll handle it in the next twenty-four hours.” He had to give me that. And he did, with a regal nod of his head. The fiend.

C heran left just like he came in, without a word, though he did drop a sheaf of lesson plans on the table. I’d sooner read books on demonology than anything he offered to teach me. Though the incantation to kill spawn at a distance would be handy. So would the one that put out fire. Temptation was a real pain in the butt.

I was no longer hungry but I forced myself to eat the cold oatmeal. My jeans were hanging on my hips and I needed protein to restore my depleted reserves and fluids to reduce the dehydration. After the oatmeal, I drank a quart of water and grilled a veggie patty, eating standing at the sink, staring at the wall, wishing I had a window there, overlooking a mountain view. Forcing myself, knowing protein would help me think better, I opened a jar of peanut butter, carrying the half-full jar and a spoon around the loft. I ate, I tidied, but mostly I thought, running through possible scenarios on how to save Ciana.

In a little running debate, I kept coming back to killing Cheran. I didn’t like it that part of me chose violence before alternative possibilities were exhausted. And it wasn’t like his dying was a clean and neat solution. There was that pesky GPS locator device he wore, and the visa. The seraphs would know the moment he died and would send someone to investigate, someone with wings and a sword and a bad temper, so if I gave in to this particular temptation, I would be blasted with holy fire when the seraphs caught me. Dead in a heartbeat.

The violent part of me noted that I was smart and fast. I could plan something and be long gone when he kicked the bucket. Wryly, I wondered how accurate seraph forensics were, or if God the Victorious would just tell his winged warriors who had killed Cheran and where the guilty culprit was hiding. The violent part shut up at that one. No wonder murder had all but vanished from the list of human sins. Having talked myself out of committing murder, I felt better about myself. I wasn’t a raving battle mage with a terminal case of bloodlust and an uncontrollable desire to kill. I wasn’t. And I was pretty sure I wasn’t becoming one either.

Mental conversation ended, I was back to—nothing. But I had twenty-four hours to figure something out, which made me feel better about it all. The entire world could change in a day. It had happened at the end of the world and the start of the plagues. Maybe Cheran would keel over twitching and bleeding and just die. That was a vision that made me grin happily.

“Who are you planning to kill and do you need any help?”

Peanut butter jar in one hand, spoon in the other, I whirled to face the door. Eli was leaning a shoulder against the doorjamb, booted feet crossed at the ankles, arms crossed over his chest, and his hat shading his brow. He looked as if he’d been there a while. “I knocked. Three times. Interesting choice of weapons.”

I looked from the jar to the spoon and back to him. He looked good standing there. Maybe too good. That new, violent part of me had additional novel visions, of a less bloody, but no less physical nature. I reined them in too. The last time I gave in to physical needs, I ended up in bed with my ex-husband and that had been a disaster. I had changed the locks since, but clearly I hadn’t secured them before my nap.