Faith Hunter - Host

Cheran was standing, his entire body quivering. I could read his need at a distance, his mind filled with desire, stimulated by the seraphs. When Azazel dropped the conjure, it had allowed all the scents to merge. Cheran turned, his face filled with lust, and focused on Rose and me. There was danger in his need. I didn’t want to have to kill him.

I looked at my twin, glowing and powerful, full of the force of life and death. I touched the pink quartz amulet carved into a rose that I carried on my necklace and jerked my fingers away when it burned.

From the pouchlike folds of my dobok, I pulled the spur of binding, the spur that could be used to make me a slave to Darkness. It had been a part of Darkness, part of a dragonet. It was composed of life, a tool for an earth mage. My cloak, lying forgotten in a torn and bloody heap at Rose’s feet, was splattered with Azazel’s blood and the slime of succubus larvae. I bent and wiped the spur across it, then smeared it into the pool of Rupert’s blood at my feet.

“Can you use this?” I asked her.

Rose, bright with the energies of sacrifice, took the spur and stood, bracing her feet, the cross in one hand, the spur in the other. She whispered to me, leashed power in her voice, her eyes shining of the might of death, “Are we the weapon? The two of us together?”

“Yes,” I said, my voice low, clogged with tears. Hating it. Hating it all. “We are.”

“No,” Audric said.

“You want his death to be for nothing?” Rose asked, her voice fierce. She threw back her head, glowing with death. “I have Rupert’s life force within me. I hold his spirit, if not his very soul. He wanted this. He wanted his death to mean something.” Her face took on a sly cant. “Would you take that away from him before he finds the Light? Would you waste his death, waste his life?”

Audric looked at the body of his partner for a long moment. With a slow hand he reached out, hesitated, his fingers a hairsbreadth from Rupert’s face. I heard his breath hitch in his chest. I bent and placed my fingers over his. Together, we closed Rupert’s eyes. I sensed Audric’s mouth moving, his words silent, the warrior’s prayer for the dying. My tears fell on Rupert’s ashen face, mixing with the blood and gore there. And I knew what I had to do.

“Burn the larvae,” I whispered to Rose. “All of them.”

“As they die, their energies will fill me,” she said. “I can’t protect you.”

“Don’t worry about me,” I said. I reached out with my mind, with my hate, and touched the pile of stone near me. I had never lifted anything so massive, but I understood the physics of gravity and mass and my mind did the equations with an ease I’d never experienced before. Without a qualm, I summoned the purple snake. It slithered from beneath a pile of charred stone, as if it had been waiting for the call. It coiled around itself, hissing with glee and warning. I put my hand on the snake and spoke a single word. “Rise.” I felt the snake tense, taking weight and mass into itself, as we lifted the pile of stone. It was so easy. So simple.

The stone rose. Holding it five feet off the floor, I shouted, “Get under here!” When they were all in place, Rupert’s body pulled into the very center, cradled in Audric’s arms, Lucas holding his brother’s hand, Thadd and Cheran fighting, held down by Eli and Jasper and the elders, I opened a protective shield around the champards and elders, pulling the power to maintain it from the snake. Overhead, Amethyst shrieked as if she were dying. Her ship—my ship—had powered back up.

“Hurry,” Rose said, still standing outside the levitating stone. She laughed and closed her eyes. Instantly, heat gathered around her body in a tube of power, a ring of might, like a prime amulet, but large enough to encircle her. Her own shield, powered by Rupert’s death force.

My heart cold as stone, I glanced at the scene taking place on the church floor, the powerful Azazel, the changing seraphs. I focused on the snake, gazing into its myriad dark purple eyes, all watching me adoringly. The snake’s body and tail rippled, forming a perfect ring around me, and power surged through it, a charmed circle. If I’d not been dead inside, I might have laughed. I eased my hand away from the levitating stone.

The seraphs would destroy me after I saved them, and would attempt to kill all under my protection. I would do what I could to protect the ones still living. I had betrayed Rupert. I had failed him. I’d rather die than fail another. I drew on the gifts of omega mage, pulling in energies, sucking them through the snake.

Feeding.

The energies were a wild, almost feral mixture of stone from the church, magma from the center of the earth, and the might of the wheels. When I was glowing, my mage-attributes flaring like a torch, as bright as my twin’s, I pulled the Flame-blessed blade and held it, point down, over the wire amulet on my wrist. The amulet opened with a faint click and slid from my hand. I laid the tanto blade along the length of the snake’s neck, added Mole Man’s cross, and held them all together. With my other hand, I dropped the wire amulet over the snake’s head, sliding it over the tanto blade and cross. I secured the amulet to the snake, tanto, and cross, making a bizarre and deadly necklace. Flying by the seat of my pants. Becoming the prophecy that hung over my door. A Rose by any Other Name will still draw Blood.

“Hurry,” my twin whispered, her voice a full-throated rasp of desire. “Oh, God, hurry.”

The snake and the tanto began to hum, a strange disharmony at first that softened and smoothed and changed key until they were singing a minor-key variation of three notes. In mage-sight, they shared similar energy patterns, a soft violet aura of compatibility. They had merged, the Flame and the wheels, the amulet and its iron ore bomb in Alabama, into a single weapon. And the gold cross blazed with light. No…with Light.

From the Fallen, lightning shot into the night, black lightning, burning the sky with Darkness. Thunder boomed all about us, shaking the floor, the walls, sending rocks sliding, except where I had them levitated.

About Azazel, energies churned, swirls of Light, painfully bright, throwing out heat like a small star, and clouds of blackness, darker than the reaches of space, colder than the farthest reaches of hell. A storm of hot wind and icy currents built in the center of the old church.

I closed my human eyes and blended the mind-skim into mage-sight. I was too empty to feel the usual nausea. Too empty and too full of power. I reached out with my mind, into the otherness of light and heat and the glowing river of time.

Time slowed. My heart beat.

The flesh of my face burned, blistered, my eyes watering in a slow-motion flush of protective tears that scalded down my cheeks. And I heard the Waldroup brothers praying the Lord’s Prayer. “Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name….”

I took the snake into my hands, allowing it to wrap about me, undulating coils of muscle. Moving faster than the gathering energies that were Azazel, I slid Mole Man’s link, the link of binding, over the blade and followed it with my own prime, the four-inch stone ring. I held the snake’s head and the tanto toward the swirling maelstrom of energies that were Azazel.

The suggestions for Trapping Darkness in Stone came to mind, but I discarded the incantation for something more complex, and yet far more straightforward. Something that used the elements in my current possession. The math swirled through my mind, clicking into place with solid mental snaps.

I said simply, “Stone and iron, Flame and steel. Consume.”

Purple light raced at me through the earth, forging channels through rock and stone and earth and deep water, gathering power as it moved, ripping energy from the iron ore deposit in Alabama, from minerals and stone and unmined ores as it passed, faster than light. The snake’s and tanto’s hum rose in pitch, merged perfectly, a duet of death.