Faith Hunter - Host

Shocked, I danced back. They were quoting the Eighteenth Psalm, one I had particular fondness for, as it claimed victory over Darkness and called the Most High a rock. It was a psalm for stone mages, a specific and distinct sign of approval and support. I saluted them with the tanto and returned to the attack in the ugly forms of the crab. The sounds of battle were bright in the night. Battle-lust began to rise in me, my heart pounding, wounds forgotten.

An icy wind blew, circling through the broken walls and through the arched windows. The winter air was frigid, freezing the slime and blood pooled on the broken, burned floor into a slushy mess. Footing was precarious. Nearby, the seraphs were inches from the church floor.

I swung backhanded with the longsword and caught the blade in the queen’s shoulder joint, jarring me to the spine, ripping me from battle-lust. I yanked to free it. The succubus clawed me, catching my chest and ripping aside the battle cloak, scoring my skin beneath in its claws. Three knives landed with hard thunks in the beast, distracting it from me.

I wished the champards had saved the big-ass gun. We could use it about now. I gave a final hard wrench. I felt a snap and I fell back, taking the hilt with me.

Beyond it, there was a three-inch length of steel and a cleanly broken blade. Shock and alarm shuddered through me, trailed by the pain of loss. I loved that sword.

I tucked the amuleted hilt into my dobok and pulled the kris, now holding only short blades. This wouldn’t do. I resheathed it and lifted out the war ax, sliding my hand through the loop at the base before gripping the handle. Its head was smaller than a human’s war ax, but with a wider flange at the cutting edge. I swung, finding its balance. I didn’t like it. Not at all. Like I had a choice.

Tanto in one hand, ax in the other, I leaped back to the fighting. Rupert moved in on one side of me, watching me with tight eyes, fighting with his named blade. He knew where we were. He had recognized his death dream. “I won’t,” I said to him. “No matter what. I refuse.”

The elders were chanting verse six: “…and my cry came before him, even into his ears. Then the earth shook and trembled; the foundations also of the hills moved and were shaken, because he was wroth.”

The earth beneath our feet began to tremble. “Crap,” Eli said, appearing at my elbow. “The big bad mojo is back.”

“Thorn?” Rose said. Beneath the conjure of the Apache Tear, her mind touched mine, static-filled visions of horror, things she had seen. Things that had been done to her. I faltered.

Rupert, as if he knew what had happened, shouldered me back. “We’ve got it here. Take care of the girl.”

I sheathed my blade and secured the ax, kneeling at Rose’s side. I gathered her up, easing her from the cold church floor to a slab of blackened wood in the corner, under a patch of the roof that was protected from the wind. She was cold, shivering, and I pulled off my battle cloak, wrapping it around her. Rose was little more than skin and bones. Azazel and his minions may have kept her alive, but they hadn’t fed her much. She was filthy, her hair in loose clumps, bald scalp beneath, her clothes rotted.

“You can be near me?” Rose whispered. “Without going crazy?”

“Yes.” I tapped the Apache Tear hanging around my neck. “A conjure to keep my mind separate.”

Rose’s fingers brushed the Tear, and her touch overrode the conjure. I glimpsed a dark place, a cave, and a seraph face close above hers, a face I had seen before—Forcas, in his glamoured state. Too close. Too intimate. She shivered again and forced the vision away as she focused on me. We hadn’t been together in ten years, since I was spirited away from Enclave for my own sanity’s sake. We shared a moment of gladness, a burst of joy and relief that I—we—felt to our toes. Rose laughed softly and the laughter brought on a coughing spell.

I showed her where in the cloak pockets I kept bottled water, and opened one for her. “You haven’t eaten in a while,” I said. “Take it slow.”

She took three sips, her throat working as if it hurt to drink. “How many weeks have I been gone?” she asked. At my blank look, she said, “I was taken on Monday the twelfth. What day is it? How long have I been prisoner?”

“Rose,” I breathed. “Rose, you’ve been gone four years.”

She held the bottle away in horror, her eyes, so like my own, wide. “Four years?” she whispered. She shook her head. Her gazed tightened on my cheek scars and my remade throat, glowing white in the night. She reached out and touched them, her fingertips cold as death.

“Yes,” I said, my throat clogging.

Beneath the conjure that kept us separate and me sane, I felt her mind as it tried to grasp the concept. Her thoughts were muddy, disjointed, her pulse faster than my own and thready. “Did it find you?” she asked, her tone full of shame.

“Find me?”

“Forcas. It was looking for you. I never told it where you were. I swear.”

I knew what the Darkness had done to her. I could see it in her mind. And if Forcas had been standing before me I would have killed it dead with my bare fists.

Rose stroked my jaw. “It’s okay, Thorny. It’s okay. I didn’t get pregnant and bear a litter of…things. There was enough earth and life nearby for me to draw on to keep it away after that one time. I survived it. And I’ll keep on surviving it.”

“Why did it want us?” I asked, an answer I had waited for, for what seemed like forever.

“It said we had a weapon that could burn its master unto death. A great Prince of Darkness.”

“Azaz?” I whispered, truncating the name so it would not be a true calling and bring the beast here.

“Yes,” she breathed, her mind clearing more with the name.

“And if we could kill Azaz, then we could be used to kill seraphs of the Most High.” I looked at my twin, pulled off a glove, and brushed away dried blood from her chin. She swallowed painfully and touched her neck where punctures still dribbled blood. “We could be a weapon to use against the High Host, if he could convert us.” Rose closed her eyes and turned away. I wondered how close she had come to breaking. How close she still was.

“Azaz is free,” I said, stroking her arm when she cringed. “And the only thing I learned about a weapon was about us. I think that we, together, are supposed to be the weapon.”

The elders had reached the tenth verse and were speaking of God. Their sonorous voices incanted, “And he rode upon a cherub, and did fly: yea, he did fly upon the wings of the wind.”

As if it had been called—which it had, called by scripture—the sky brightened, throwing a lavender brilliance into the church. Overhead, the wheels hovered, rotating like a gyroscope on its side, whirring softly. Over the gunwale leaned the cherub, her lion face staring down. I didn’t think it an accident that the cherub chose to watch us with the mien of a man-eater.

Rose ducked her head, shading her eyes, her mouth parted. “What is that?”

“It’s a cherub,” I said, pulling on my battle glove. “And she’s pretty pissed off at me.”

“Thorn,” she chided.

I chuckled. My twin would scold me for coarse language, even during a battle. “Rosie, that weapon Forcas was looking for? I think it’s us. Mind to mind. And joined to seraphs.”

Her lips parted, startled, making her look like a baby bird, hungry. “Oh,” she said.

“I did it once, joined to a seraph’s mind. Not its body,” I said, reading her thoughts, “just its mind. And we were…” I took a breath at the remembered power. “We were almost invincible.”

“Theoretically it’s possible. In school—”