Faith Hunter - Seraphs

While we ate, we talked of innocuous subjects like the weather, the kirk and the political situation in Mineral City, food, beer, and the ice cap that had mysteriously disappeared from the top of the Trine, followed by a six-foot snowfall to the east. I had caused the snowmelt, but almost no one knew that and I wasn’t telling. Mysterious woman of secrets, that was me. Over dessert—which was coffee Lucas brought, tea for me, divinity, and cheesecake—we talked about the latest seraph updates. The presence of an SNN news crew in town. Ciana. Nothing more personal. Until he said, “I almost died down there.”

I put down the teacup with a rattle. His lips were tight, the expression bleak, ashamed. In my vision I’d seen the underground cell where he’d been kept in the pit on the Trine. Seen the strange, radiant food they had fed him. I’d seen what a Darkness did to him while Lucas was drugged—a daywalker with his fangs in Lucas’ throat, sucking his blood, stroking Lucas possessively. A daywalker whose eyes changed from a lucid blue-green by day to a glowing red by night, a walker who called himself Malashe-el, who gave me his true name and therefore gave me power over him. A daywalker who attacked me, tried to kill me, and apologized for it. Strange and stranger. I still didn’t know what it all meant.

“I stayed alive for three things,” Lucas said, drawing me back to the present. He took my fingertips, holding them lightly. “One was Ciana. She needs me. Marla isn’t evil, but she can’t give a child what she needs to feel secure and loved.” I nodded, watching our hands, my tongue thick in my mouth. “Two was to tell someone what they’re doing down there.”

I sat up, mage-sight opening. The room brightened as the energies became visible and I could see Lucas’ life force, his aura. It was a wondrous, shimmering blue-and-gold halo that followed the contours of his head and shoulders, and spilled across the table as if reaching for me. In two places a shadow swirled, small spots near his jaw.

He smiled wryly. “It’s your lucky day, Thorn St. Croix Stanhope.” Before I could correct him on the name, he said, “You’re the one I’m supposed to tell.” Fear flushed through me. With my free hand, I clutched for the walking stick hilt, but I’d left the sword by the door. “The Darkness’ name is Forcas. It was once a Minor Darkness, but when its boss was captured with a chain and Mole Man’s bloody sacrifice, it got promoted. Now, it’s conjuring with Stanhope blood. Mole Man’s blood. My blood.”

I put it together with the history of Mineral City. Mole Man was the Cherokee name given to local war hero Benaiah Stanhope, Lucas and Rupert’s several-greats grandfather, after a not-so-small mopping-up operation at the end of the Last War. He went with a group of winged-warriors into the hills, underground, tracking a Major Power, its human helpers, and half-human offspring. The battle lasted three days, during which the mountain, now called the Trine, cracked open. Light and Darkness spilled out over the land in battle dire—the spiritual warfare between Light and Dark. The townspeople prayed. Benaiah gave his life to save a high-ranking seraph, using his blood sacrifice to coat the chains that bound the Major Darkness. The seraphs came back out. Benaiah died underground; his body was never recovered. Hence the name Mole Man.

“I think it’s making a chain—an antichain, maybe,” Lucas clarified, “to free the Dragon that the seraphs captured and bound using Mole Man’s blood.”

An antichain. Like an antidote. Now that would suck Habbiel’s pearly, scabrous toes. When I found my voice, I asked, “Why are you telling me this?”

Lucas stroked my hand. “You’re a licensed mage. Your visa links you to a Realm of Light. You can call on seraphs. And this town is about to need some. Pretty badly.”

I almost told him I didn’t know how to use it, but I kept my mouth shut. There was a lot I didn’t know about the visa and GPS band, just as there was a lot I didn’t know about being a mage. I’d left Enclave in my fourteenth year, when my mage-gift came upon me all at once. At puberty mages were supposed to find their gifts, their source and method of using the energies of creation. They weren’t supposed to have their minds ripped open and the thoughts, hopes, and emotions of all twelve hundred mages in Enclave dumped in. Mages weren’t supposed to go insane. I was different and that difference nearly killed me.

It resulted in my being drugged, carted out of Enclave, and shipped here. I was only half trained. I had no idea how to use the visa I’d been granted. And I had never shared my story with him. I almost told him all this. Almost.

Before I could speak, he stood and began clearing off the table. I sat and wrestled with his words and what he might want from me. Sipping my tea and watching him move. Lucas wasn’t liquid grace. He wasn’t sex in motion like Eli Walker on a dance floor. He didn’t smell like a brothel/candy store like Thadd, or set my body to quivering, throbbing, mating heat. But when he moved, my eyes were inexorably drawn to his butt, flexing in tight jeans. Lucas had a wonderful butt. I remembered the feel of it flexing under my palms—

“You didn’t ask my final reason for staying alive,” he said.

My eyes whipped to his and my face flamed. Seraph stones. I looked around. The table was clear, dishes washed and put away. A lot of time had passed while I remembered all the good things—the very, very good things—about being married to Lucas Stanhope. “What?” I asked. Not in answer to his question, but to find my place in the entire conversation. “What did you say?”

“The third reason I came back was to say I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Thorn. I hate that I hurt you. I hate that I cheated on you. Marrying you was the best, smartest thing I ever did. Breaking up was the worst and dumbest.” Lucas held up his hand. He was wearing the wedding ring I’d made for him, beaten gold and a series of ruby chips, similar to mine. How had I missed seeing it on his hand? I stared at it, appalled.

Though Rupert had shown me how to work the gold and answered questions while I fashioned it from a nugget found in a creek three mountains over, I’d made the wedding ring totally without help, for the man I thought I’d spend my life with. My best friend had watched as I heated and hammered and shaped, watched as I set the stones, not once telling me the marriage was a mistake, though his disapproval had been clear even then. Rupert had known his brother was a cheat.

“I love you,” Lucas said. “I want you back.” When I didn’t answer, he walked to the door, carrying the now-empty food bag, the top folded over and rolled down.

I followed him, feeling as if I was saying something with the action, but not knowing what and not knowing how to stop saying it.

“I intend to court you,” he said, his voice a low burr. He looked over his shoulder at me. “I intend to win you back. Marry you again.” His eyes were resolute, unwavering, fixed on me like blue lasers. My belly did a little somersault, thinking he might kiss me. Might. My heart thudded.

“You’re married,” I whispered, remembering the utterly beautiful face in the moment I discovered he had remarried. I hated him for that, for marrying a beautiful woman. “You married Jane Hilton. She said so on live television.”

“She lied. I never married Jane. And in my heart, I never left you. Never,” he said, one hand holding the door open. When I didn’t reply, he released the door, turned away, and walked down the steps. Cold air blew in from the stairway.

I wasn’t sure what he had thought I might say, and I had a feeling he was disappointed by my reaction, but I didn’t know what to do about it. I followed him down, shutting the loft door behind me, hearing our feet echo on the steps.