Faith Hunter - Host

Audric settled beside Rose and me, easing Rupert to the floor between us. An avulsion separated his entire left side, a slab of tissue hanging out. I saw intestines and something that had to be his liver. Rupert was nearly gone.

I fell to my knees. Hands shaking, I ripped off every healing amulet I had, mine and Cheran’s, and dumped them into his wound. Gloves blood-slicked, I tried to force the huge slab of flesh back in place, trying to close the wound. I heard a shaky litany, “No, no, no, no, no, no”—my own voice, shocked and breathless. I held up the tanto, but the flame sizzled and I knew it hadn’t enough power to heal the fearful wound.

There was little bleeding; most had bled out. Audric was drenched in Rupert’s blood. More spread in a small pool at my knees.

Rupert was dying. Unless…Unless I could get a stasis shield, the shields that can keep a human alive long enough to be healed. Raziel had given one to Ciana in the pin she wore.

“Raziel,” I shouted, rising. “To me!” My seraph met my eyes, his alight with the joy of war. He saw Rose at my side and his eyes widened. He touched Cheriour and started to us.

Azazel swept once with his left wing, a long arc. The energies of a conjure fell away like black dust. The smell hit them. The scent of succubus. Everything went still.

Slowly, Zadkiel raised his burned head. The seared Ravens scrabbled, trying to rise, rattling charred arms and wing bones, metatarsals like long sticks against the floor. Raziel turned from me, hunger on his face. An icy wind blew straight down into the church, whipping the scent of succubus high.

Azazel chuckled, the sound like gongs and bells, angelic. Horrific.

“No. No!” I screamed.

To one side, the last Raven standing began to pant, his eyes bulging, his hands tearing at his clothes. An aqua light washed over him, a wave of bright mist that coated all the seraphs. Raziel stepped away from me as if I no longer existed.

“No,” I gasped, whipping my eyes to Rupert. His mouth opened, trying for breath, but only a whisper of air passed.

The visa, silent for so long, informed me what was happening. The seraphs are losing their heavenly bodies, not in transmogrification, but in a baser transfiguration. They acquire sublunary bodies, just as did the fallen Watchers when they joined with the daughters of men.

Sublunary bodies meant they were stripping themselves of power. “How do I stop it?” I asked. But the visa had no comment. “Answer me!” I shouted to it, my mouth dry, my skin hot with fear. In the nave, explosions went off, the small land mines planted by Audric triggered by converging snails. I covered my face against shrapnel, deafened by the sound.

The elders had started over on the psalm. They reached a verse that said, “He brought me forth also into a large place; he delivered me, because he delighted in me.”

God. They were talking about God the Victorious. About his willingness to deliver humans out of the hand of death. About his care and love. The love of God. The same God who was allowing this to happen.

Fury rose up in me, hotter than magma, the fury of years lost, of lives lost. I rose straight and shouted at the sky, “You claim you care! If you love, if you love at all, then fix Rupert! Fix him!” I raised the tanto and screamed at the sky, “Fix him!”

A hand brushed my boot. “Too late,” Rupert whispered, his voice rustling like paper. “Use me. Like Mole Man. To bind the Dragon. The dream. The pink quartz sword,” he coughed, blood bubbling up his throat. He was drowning in his own blood. His image wavered in my tears, his energies stuttering in mage-sight like a flickering candle.

“We will not sacrifice you,” Audric said fiercely. He shifted Rupert more upright, so he could inhale, and Rupert made an awful sound, wet and thick and tortured. “Help him,” he demanded of me.

“He’s dying,” Rose said, her voice dreamy, her eyes on the wound.

I felt all the blood drain from my limbs. Rose. She was an earth mage. The rarest, most generous, the best of healers. And, if not controlled, the most deadly of all mages. Earth mages could heal from the brink of death. And they could steal the life of another for the power it gave them. I remembered the prophecy at our birth. A Rose by any Other Name will still draw Blood. The prophecy that claimed Rose and I together would become a weapon. Or perhaps, if I let her use me, a killer.

A killer, like in Rupert’s dream. The sword tipped with a pink quartz nugget wasn’t Rupert’s prophesized murderer. Rose was. Rose, who had always been associated in my mind with rose quartz. I should have figured it out. I should have understood.

“I could have saved him if I had drawn power. But it’s too late. He’s…almost…” She smiled, breathing in his scent in a mind-skim, and finished, “…lost.”

“Take me,” Rupert said, his voice a breath. “Use me.” He lifted a finger as if to reach for her, a plea in his eyes.

Rose inched across the icy floor and took his hand. “As you will, so mote it be,” she said. Rupert took a breath, wet and sucking, his mouth working. Agonal. Dying. And Rose dipped the wooden cross she held into his wound.

“No.” Audric said, his grip tightening on his lover. But I could see the knowledge of death in Audric’s face, a desperate pain.

“No,” I repeated. But I was paralyzed. Watching.

Shrieks and pain-filled cries echoed off the stone church walls. Lightning threw the scene into sharp relief and dark shadows. Rupert’s blood glistened in a huge pool, reflecting the lightning. Thunder rumbled.

Power filled Rose fast, flowing from Rupert into the cross, into her hand, into her core. Her body began to glow with mage energies. She threw back her head and laughed, a reckless sound, full of glee and joy and power. Rupert’s mouth fell slack. His pupils widened. His life force being sucked away. On his last breath, he whispered, “Audric…”

My sister laughed, the sound echoing off the church walls, joyous and blissful. Laughed as she killed my best friend.

And Rupert died.

His spirit, his energy, filled Rose. And the cross became a weapon.

With a wordless cry, Audric fell across Rupert, fists bunched, his grief like a hot iron charring into my heart.

Rupert was gone. My tears fell, ignored, burning my face, dripping onto my dobok.

I looked up at the church, taking in the scene in a dazed sweep. The six seraphs were in the process of transfiguration into something less than seraphic. Light blasted from their eyes and from between their joints as power left them to swirl around Azazel in a rainbow hue of force. Their armor disappeared, leaving them clothed only in sharp, mottled energy patterns, not human energy patterns, not seraphic. Something between. In defiance of the edicts of the Most High, they were becoming the lesser, sublunary beings that were Watchers. Cursed.

Around us, the succubus larvae had abandoned the walls and were crawling closer. White pupae, the bloodless color of Rupert’s skin, hundreds of them. Another touched a land mine and exploded. I was so shaken, I didn’t even cringe.

Above us, Amethyst was screaming, a wail of horror. But she wasn’t fighting. She doesn’t know how, the visa informed me, the mental voice didactic and unemotional. In battle, a cherub depends upon her seraph-mate to direct the energy and weapons of her wheels. They are true mates, joined mentally and spiritually, much less powerful when separate.

Zadkiel wasn’t fused mind to mind with Amethyst. He had broken their merge. I sobbed, the sound desperate, frantic, full of the hoarse tones of fury and failure and wild grief.

Lucas was holding back Thadd, who was ripping off his clothes, shrieking to be let go, needing to mate, caught in rut like an animal. But he had been fighting. He had the seraph stone. Or…I put my hand on the pocket he had touched eons earlier. The seraph stone rested there, warm against my skin. He had given it back to me. So that if something attacked us with the rut, I would be spared. Stupid kylen. All my champards were giving up so much. Were giving up too much. For me.