Faith Hunter - Host

The seraph’s wings lifted slightly, flight feathers ruffling as if finding a breeze. Outside, a fierce wind was blowing, catching up snow that struck the sides of the dome of shielding and sizzled. A broken branch hit with a thud and a spit of energy. Where had the wind come from? No time for distraction. The visa prompted, this time forcefully, and I said, “In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.”

I could have sworn I saw something glisten at his lip but he smiled again. “I have power over all the earth,” the seraph said, opening his fists, showing me his palms, the universal gesture of peace that even the seraphs utilized. His wings settled with a snap. “Without me, nothing was made that was made. Nothing.”

Something odd about his phrasing made my heart race. Flight or fight. It wasn’t a perfect quote but it was close to the King James words, “All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.”

The visa whispered to me, Close but no potatoes, which made a hysterical titter quiver in the back of my throat.

“You have nothing to fear from me, little mage,” the seraph said. “I have long worked to bring the prophecy to pass.”

“Prophecy?” The one hanging over my door? A Rose by any Other Name will still draw Blood? That prophecy? Or the one Jasper had uttered—“The children of men are gathered. The dragon breaks free. All the old things have passed away.” No, not a new prophecy. The seraph’s words indicated that this one had been around a while.

So, maybe it was the one in my dreams about a certain mage, one the seraphs foretold. “A mage, one of the foretold ones…. She is near.” Foretold mages. No such thing. Except in my dreams.

Lucky me. Lots of foretellings, no explanations. The snake spread its hood, its mouth open to reveal a black tongue and white fangs that snapped down from the roof of its mouth, the action so much like the daywalker’s that it shot a singular spark of fear through me.

“The prophecy among the Host,” the seraph said, “that a mage, a child of man, the result of seraphic purpose, would someday be born.” He tilted his head, his hair moving like a spray of aqua silk over his shoulder, resting on his wing. “History is written by the victors,” he repeated, holding out his hand in entreaty. “Join with me.”

I stared at the hand, skimming hard. It didn’t smell like the Dark. This was a member of the Host. Beautiful, lovely, his hands shaped to create. Shaped to pray. To help. Not a Dragon. Hadn’t Eli questioned me about why the big bad uglies appeared as they did? Hadn’t he suggested that an incantation or curse might have deprived them of their beauty?

The snake was warning me. Opening both senses together, I blended the skim and the sight into the new sense I as yet had no name for. Vertigo rocked me. Nausea rose again in the back of my throat, sour and acidic. I braced my knees, trying desperately not to fall or throw up. I breathed him in, the wonderful scent of seraph.

“Join,” he said, his voice a mournful bell. “Together we will retake what was mine and was lost. Together we will rule. The Most High will never share his throne with another. Even the Bright and Morning Star sits to his side. I offer you the throne itself, to rule with me. Beside me. Together we will heal the earth and restore the heavens. We will make right what was ruined by war and hatred and selfishness.”

As he spoke I parsed the fragrance into its disparate components. I caught first his own unique seraph scent—charcoal and spring earth—and recognized them as the odors I had detected beneath Barak’s own sweet flower aroma. But beneath his seraph scent were fragments of others, like pepper and mint, like honey and chocolate, like sweets and sex and spring flowers.

“I will free the mages,” he said, “that they no longer live in gilded cages, free them to rule the earth; over the humans who fear them, who have killed them. And I will give them the souls they crave, that they may attain immortality.”

Souls. To banish forever the fear and permanence of death. To have what humans had. But what had I seen when Barak died? Lolo’s soul? The Flames spun around me, seven Flames, plasma trails bluing the light. They weren’t attacking, as they had any Darkness that came near. They were hanging back. This wasn’t a glamour. This was a seraph.

In the blended scan, the seraph’s face was utterly beautiful, glowing with the light of heaven, energies like a halo around him, an aura of holiness. On the silver chain around his neck, his sigil glowed with the sunset colors of burned persimmon, shrimp, and fuchsia. Motes of black-light sparkled through it, like the light of a million black holes in space.

I stepped toward the seraph. The Star of the Morning. The angel. I took another breath, hearing my heart beat, a slow resonance as the otherness took me up. My mind continued to isolate the odors. Mint, pepper, honey, chocolate, spring flowers.

The scents in the blended scan were like…Zadkiel. Raziel. Barak. Yes. Barak smelled of spring flowers. I blinked, stopped, and looked down. My glove rested on the ice at my feet. My hand was bare, scars whiter than burning linen, palm outstretched. In it was the prime ring I wore on my chest. A bit of black chain mail dangled from it. I had pulled the prime free.

Overhead, light broke through the clouds, a half dozen seraphs intoning, “Omega mage!” Their voices were slowed, tolling like the bells of war. “Destroy her!”

Smells. Raziel and Zadkiel and Barak. All seraphs who had been at war in the Trine with me. All who had given their blood in battle against evil. Fear and the beginning of comprehension spidered up my spine. The hair on the back of my neck rose. The wheels/snake reared back, bulking in height, tightening on my leg and waist, stealing my breath.

With a snap, the seraph snapped free the oval ring around his neck and extended it toward me. It was metallic, pulsing with lavalike energies, a sigil of great power. “Join with me,” he said, the tone gentle but with a hint of steel in it. “We shall rule.”

I understood. I had gotten what I asked for when I called it to me. The ring was the link made of Mole Man’s blood. The link that freed the Dragon, Azazel. He could take it off, but he couldn’t get rid of it. Unless someone else helped. Accepted its curse? And the Dragon had me, the only living omega mage, in a shield of protection. Offering my prime amulet to him.

I drew on the otherness; time slowed to the consistency of honey. The light overhead expanded to noonday brightness. Huge brass bells were ringing, tones angry. The Flames buzzed around me, a slow circlet of lightning. Ozone lifted the hair all over my body in a painful electric charge. Nausea rose in a wave. My hands felt tingly and numb.

Mage-fast, I pocketed my prime. I pulled the cross from its loop, the cross stained with Mole Man’s blood. And the blood of the beast that Benaiah Stanhope had chained with his sacrifice. The beast that was Leviathan, Azazel, and looked nothing like a Dragon, but surely was one. My hands blurred with speed even as Azazel reacted, fingers closing on the link. Faster than I could see, I speared the end of the gold cross through the link the Dragon held.

As if coupled to my mind, moving in tandem with my hand, the snake struck. Seraph fast. It buried its fangs in the back of my rebuilt left hand, driving deep into my bones. And through the cross and link, into the hand of the True Fallen seraph beneath it.

Overhead, the light exploded.

I never lost consciousness. I never closed my eyes. I never turned off the blended scan and its enhanced awareness. As if I stood outside myself, I saw my body as I flew above an empty plain, arms and legs pinwheeling. I heard my heart beat, assuring me I was in the place of time-no-time, place-no-place.