Faith Hunter - Seraphs

Many thanks to:

My Renaissance Man, for encouragement and for writing the songs.

Kim, for support, for friendship, and for tea breaks.

Tamar, for being there when I’m not strong.

Kipper, for the stones.

Ben, for the martial arts stuff.

Matthew, for keeping my Enclave bearable.

My agent, Lucienne Diver, for believing in me and for loving the world of the Enclave.

Finally and profoundly, my editor, Liz Scheier, for making me think—and write—darker, faster, and leaner. And for putting up with me. This has been the most FUN!

Claws gripped my throat, shutting off my air, and Raziel laughed against my mouth. It was a triumphant rumble, feral and heated, but the amusement had an unfamiliar edge, and fear gripped me. “Yesss,” he whispered, mind to mind, “where are the wheels?” The claws relaxed and I inhaled a scent, cloying and intoxicating, like lilacs and jasmine growing up from an open grave. “Your heart beats with the fragrance of Amethyst and her wheels. Where are they?”

I tried to open my eyes. This isn’t Raziel, I thought, instinctively hiding the knowledge deep in my mind where the whisperer couldn’t find it. And, I’m trapped. I struggled to make a fist, to grip the sword hilt, the metal cold in my unresponsive palm. In the distance, a predator cat called a warning, a portent. A lynx.

Distantly, an alarm sounded, muffled, flat tones. The door of my loft crashed open, followed by a bellow of rage. I opened my eyes. A Darkness recoiled, wrenched away, over my bed and was gone.

In a single movement, honed from weeks of sword practice, I gripped the handle of my walking stick and pulled the sword from its sheath, rolled from the bed, and attacked. Blade and sheath whirled in a frenzy, upward, together, and back out in the sleeping cat—a move that could disembowel an enemy. The sword and sheath, one in either hand, whispered along Audric’s belly. His blades shush ed over my head as I pivoted. Coming fully awake, I dashed the tears from my eyes and glimpsed the bed, covers tossed to the floor, barely visible in the predawn light. The loft was icy, the frigid cold chilling my skin. I breathed the floral reek, and the sickly sweet scent of decay. An incubus. An incubus had been in my bed.

Audric, a half-breed warrior, rotated, and my sword met his with a ringing clang of steel on steel as I leaped high and cut down, placing my feet with precision when I landed. “Where is it?” he roared, ducking under my blade. With his superior strength, he beat me back, the flats of his blades slapping my sides, the hilts bruising my ribs. “ Seraph stones! I smell it on you!”

Using his height and my own diminutive size, I danced under his arms and landed three blows with the sheath, any one of which would have been a mortal wound had I used a blade. His elbow impacted my jaw. I collided with the bed and rolled over the mattress with the momentum. The scent of old death billowed out of the cotton sheets and silk duvet. Behind me, the phone shrilled, ignored. My voice answered on the machine, the volume turned low, the greeting a murmur. I danced away from him. “Gone,” I gasped.

Audric stepped back and crossed his swords, offering a respite. “Rape?” he asked, curt as all half-breeds are in battle. His eyes raked me, assessing. More formally, he said, “You are naked.”

My breath heaved. I looked down. I was naked. My neomage attributes glowed along my skin with the rosy peach hue of mage-power, my scars blazing white like sunlight through quartz crystal. My amulets, which I had worn to bed, were missing. A fleeting look found them tangled with my pajamas, half beneath a pillow. “No,” I said, catching my breath. “You got here in time.” But my loft was icy, the smell of death rancid and choking. It shouldn’t have been able to get in. My home, the shop downstairs, even the spring outside; all were conjured to keep me safe.

“The light is odd. Purple?” Audric scrutinized my loft, his weapons at rest, his face alight with hope. “You used the amethyst in the stockroom to fight the demon?”

I inspected the apartment, breath wheezing, heart hammering with exertion, ripped from dreams of arousal and sex to battle in a heartbeat. The loft was radiant, an irregular lavender thrumming in time to my pulse. Mage-sight focused, I sought the stone in its metal boxes one floor below. There was no answering flare of power, no might I could use to fight or conjure. There was nothing. A dull headache started over my temple as I tried to draw on the stone, throbbing with my pulse and with the lavender energies I could no longer use. “No,” I said, hating the timbre of defeat in my voice. “It’s still dead. If there’s energy, it’s residual.”

Audric raised his weapons again, the blades still crossed. “And the incubus?” With his half-mage heritage, his skin glowed like mine, a dull peach sheen emanating from his dark skin.

“Got past my wards,” I stated baldly, finally catching my breath. “I’ll have to try something else. And yes, it still calls. It’s getting creative.”

“It will tempt you as long as it has your blood. Get dressed.”

I sheathed the blade, knowing it was true. A Power of Darkness on the left peak of the Trine had my blood, having collected it during battle dire. Now it wanted all I had, all I was, all I knew. If I didn’t get my blood back, I’d ultimately succumb to its lures, saddle my horse, and ride north, up the Trine, the tri-peaked mountain overlooking Mineral City, to my doom.

I turned on the overhead lights and, taking my cue from Audric’s choice of attire, dressed in white practice dobok, a padded, form-fitting, martial-arts uniform adopted by the first neomages when they created savage-chi and savage-blade. Courteously, Audric kept his back to me, opening windows at the south and north sides of the loft. A frozen wind blew through, winter having returned with a vengeance, but the chill air took with it the smell of death, or froze it out. Before I was dressed, he made the same round, closing the windows. He knelt at the gas-log fireplaces, turning the flames of both on high. I could feel their heat instantly from behind the dressing screen across the room. Below the neomage glow, I was blue with cold, yet I could still smell my mage-heat, like cookies and almonds and blood. “Weapons?” I asked.

“Bamboo staves,” he said, “lightweight.” I heard a cloth-on-cloth abrasion and peeked around the screen to see Audric stripping my bed. When he caught my eye he said, “Stinks.” Audric was typically laconic in battle mode, though he never lost the formality that marked his breed—the half-human, half-neomage second-unforeseen.

The sheets tied in a hobo’s knot, he leaned against the front door to clear a wedge of snow, letting in another blast of cold air and the uncertain sound of sleet peppering the outside world. He tossed the sheets onto the porch and closed the door. The smell of the loft improved quickly, especially when he lit two scented candles, bayberry and fig. The big man surveyed the apartment and pushed aside the kitchen table.

I sighed. When he rearranged the furniture, I was in for a hard practice session and lots of bruises. It meant he was in a good mood and wanted to share, or was in a very bad mood and wanted to take it out on me. Either way, I would be sore. Still hidden behind the dressing screen, I slid to the bathroom and took two ibuprofen. I wasn’t human, but the anti-inflammatory worked as well on me as it did on them. I’d also release the conjure stored in a healing amulet the moment practice was over. Though I was tempted, it would be cheating to release it now. I pulled on socks, two pairs, thick and warm, and slapped on soft-soled practice shoes.