Faith Hunter - Host

The queen screeched, bouncing away from my twin, beating around the wound in pain. It was a horrid vision, the human-looking woman beating herself, a knife sticking from her. Black blood trickled out around the blade. I hardened myself to the image as a tiny blaze of hope ignited in my chest. If the Dragon stayed gone we might…

If. I knew better than to think Murphy’s Law would keep its ugly paws off. Yet, the Flames formed into two arrows. Both shot forward, through the small holes, hitting the succubus at the wound site and disappearing inside. Eli cheered again and the other champards gathered close, Lucas at my back. Within the shield, Rose looked around, as if trying to find the source of the screeching. Her head bobbed on her neck like a bloom on a broken stem, drunken, and she seemed to fall asleep before she ever found me beyond the shield. She lay on the floor of the church as Jane danced around her, kicking her once in her pain.

I had to figure out how to get me through the shield. I touched another blade to the tanto, this time prepared for the spark, squinting my eyes. I threw it. Off balance from the pain of my ribs, my aim not sure, it sliced through the protective barrier and sliced the queen beneath the arm, to skitter away.

Cheran appeared beside me. “We need to work on your aim.” My champards flinched, weapons ready. Cheran held out six blades, wordlessly asking permission to touch the tanto.

“You try it with broken ribs,” I said, breathless. I waved off the champards and offered the Flame blade. He touched them to my weapon, making sparks each time. Faster than I could see, he threw them. All six struck the queen, five penetrating joints, one piercing over her heart. If the beast had a heart. Her screams rose in pitch, tinny through the broken shield. Black smoke came from her wounds. Her flesh began to darken. In her rage, she kicked Rose hard, in the ribs. My twin twitched on the floor, retching. My vision darkened in rage, but there was nothing I could do. The pain in my own side stabbed hard, stealing my breath.

“What’s the plan?” Cheran asked, patting his pockets, pulling more blades.

“Last time there was a fight, you ran away,” I said, sounding puny and hating it. I offered the tanto again, and he touched three small, palm-sized blades to the Flame.

“That was last time. Let’s just say I had some bad advice,” Cheran said, face tight. He slapped a metal amulet into my pocket. My pain level dropped dramatically. “That should help with the broken ribs. You breathing okay?”

“No,” I said, trying unsuccessfully for a clean, deep breath. “I’m not.” His conjure was a lot more powerful than mine. Maybe I should have let him teach me. Then again, thinking about his poisons, maybe not.

“Cough? Hemo or pneumo-thorax?”

I was pretty sure he was asking me if I had blood or air in my lungs. “Fighting it, and maybe.” I didn’t know if Cheran was regretting not fighting before or rebelling against orders not to fight now, but it didn’t matter. I gestured with the tanto to the descending seraphs. “Soon as the last one lands, I figure the conjure containing the scents will be disrupted and the succubi will drive the seraphs insane. Rupert had a prediction, a partially prophetic dream about this. It didn’t end well,” I said.

“Partially?”

“Yeah. I gave away the sword that was part of the dream.” I looked again at Rose. She was on her side, facing away from me. I hoped she was unconscious.

“Dang, woman,” Eli said from the side, checking his flamethrower and handguns, shadows making arcs on the stone wall behind him. “You’re tellin’ an awful lot to a chicken-ass stranger.” Cheran ignored him and Eli shook his head. “Not much fuel left. Only a couple extra clips of our special ammo. I can’t use a sword worth spit. And even over the conjure that’s keeping down the stink, I smell spawn.”

Twice, I too had scented devil-spawn. I looked at the Ravens. The winged warriors had spread out, moving bent-kneed in widening arcs, sniffing the air. Something was getting through to them. “Think you can pierce that shield?” I asked Cheran, offering the tanto for blessing again. He tried, but the throwing knife bounced away and spun into the night. Cheran shrugged.

The seraphs overhead were still descending, but their flight was measured. They seemed to be moving through a veil of black-light sparkles, in slow motion. The Dragon was slowing them. That was probably another of the things it wasn’t supposed to be able to do, like transmogrify and take a bath in the river of time. If Azazel could manipulate seraphs in flight, then he could do almost anything. We were so toast.

We could be here a month, a day, or an hour. Maybe our air would hold out beneath the conjures. Maybe we would all die of suffocation. Maybe we could roast a couple of succubus snails for dinner. Chuckling at my own morbid whimsy, I pulled a bottle of water from a low pocket on my cloak and drank while I had the chance. Beside me, Eli did the same.

I figured Azazel was off somewhere, sometime, healing his wounds, so he could fight his little war healthy. It looked like the Dark Prince had planned for all contingencies, even his own wounding. I screwed the top back on and tucked the bottle into my cloak.

“Cheran, can you still kill spawn at a distance, burning them the way you did before?”

“Oh yeah. Of course I could do it better if you gave me back my anklet.”

“Not gonna happen, mage boy,” Eli said for me.

“I figured.” The mage flipped two knives, blades flashing in the light of the illumination amulets. He caught them deftly, a cocky grin reshaping his face. “We need weapons, Consulate General.”

“No shit,” Eli said.

I had pulled the longsword when I landed against the wall, and Azazel had thrown the femur. I checked the position of the succubus, arms flailing at the Flames, the form of Jane shrieking like a fishwife. My sister lay nearby on the church’s burned, scarred floor, still breathing, but drugged or unconscious. Blood coated Rose’s neck where the queen had fed.

I couldn’t tell if my twin still had her amulets. Rose was an earth mage, like the new acting priestess of Enclave. She needed something alive, or once alive, to cast a conjure. Or an amulet made of something that lived or once lived. I had a few thoughts about that, but anything I could figure out had to be a last-ditch effort to destroy the Dragon because they were drastic measures and we were all going to go blooey. A bloody messy way to die.

I walked, mostly upright, to the spot where I had first landed. A dim glow showed me my longsword, deep under the muck of slime. “Ducky,” I said, and plunged my hand into the glop. I pulled the sword free and, wishing for wash water, cleaned it off on my cloak.

“You might think that slime would be acidic,” Cheran said conversationally.

Eli, who had moved with us, said, “You’d think.”

“Eli, are you guarding me?” I asked.

“Just followin’ orders, ma’am.” He rested his hands, fingers hanging loosely, on his gun butts. “Your head champard suggested it might be wise.”

“Mmmm.” It wasn’t much of a response but it was all I had. “Cheran, you want to help? Open up your mage-sight and look around. You see a big bone? A femur bone of a seraph.”

“You mean like this one?” He toed the tip of the bone with his foot. He had been standing on it, and no way did I think he hadn’t known. Best bet, he had spotted it in mage-sight and was planning on claiming it for himself, though his face looked bland and innocent.

I pushed him away and fished Barak’s bone from between two rocks. It still retained a lavender glow from the snake-wheels. I now had my swords, one Flame-blessed, one with my bloodstone prime amulet, and a seraph bone given in sacrifice; I still had the Dragon’s link; and my pain was receding. With a flash of thought, I felt around in my dobok for the cross, not finding it. Beneath a particularly deep glop of muck, I spotted it. I cleaned the cross in the wan light. “Yeah,” I said softly. “Okay.” I was ready to get my sister back from a succubus bitch.