Faith Hunter - Bloodring

The phone rang. I came out from behind the screen, picked it up from the worktable near my bed, knowing it was Lolo. Not assuming it or guessing it as humans would have done, but knowing it. Knowing it in the way of my people, in the way of the neomages. The phone rang again as I carried it to him, the cord trailing. I thought I had been sent far enough to disappear, to hide from them all forever. But here was a kylen in my apartment, a man filled with questions and judgment, and I knew Lolo was on the phone. Gabriel's tears!

"You going to answer that?"

I lifted the hard black plastic receiver and said hello. A moment later I handed it to the cop, not liking Lolo's command, but helpless to refuse. The old witch. "It's for you."

A strange look crossed his face. The heavy black base cradled in one hand, he lifted the receiver and said into it, "Bartholomew."

I walked to the back of the apartment, knelt at the bathtub, pulled up my right sleeve, and plunged my arm into the charged water. Power shocked to my shoulder, deadening the fear and the heat that was beginning to prickle and burn in my bloodstream. Arm in the water, I directed into the garnet-studded hilt of the kris some of the stored energy I had released into the bath, while I absorbed more into my own body. I pulled it into me the way I would before battle, had I become the battle mage Lolo once envisioned for me, long before the attack that had ended my usefulness. Long before the blossoming of my awareness that ended my tenure in Enclave and began my outlawed presence in the human world.

Steadier, calmer, my energies more balanced, I pulled the plug. Water gurgled down as I picked up one of the wet stones and stood. I scattered the salt ring with my feet, lifted my necklace of amulets and slipped it over my head, beneath the sweater, and pulled down my sleeve. The stored power in the bath stone and in my necklace soothed me.

I glanced at the cop as he listened to the phone. He hadn't arrested me on sight to deport me to Enclave. He was a cop, but not an AASI. And while it seemed impossible that he didn't know what he was, impossible that he hadn't scented what I am, it was also true. If I could keep him from the tub and the scattered salt, he might never know. My secret would be safe. Thorn's Gems would be safe. My friends… Fire and feathers! I had to protect them. No one would believe I had kept my secret all these years. They would be arrested as accomplices.

The urge to fight, to draw blood, rose in me, but I tamped it down. Not now. Not yet. But the memory of the bloodrings sang in me, a descant of terror.

Kicking off the slippers, I curled on the big, deep cushions of the couch in front of the gas logs and pulled a green afghan over my feet as I watched Bartholomew's face. Those green-blue eyes flicked over me and stared.

"And who or what is a Lolo?" he asked into the phone.

Near the tub, my wedding ring glistened in the candlelight. The hue of the red-gold band with its spray of rubies and emeralds appeared rosier than in bright light. It had been beautiful once. Now it was ruined, the gold beaten flat, the gems shattered. Beside the ring was a damaged prime amulet, the one I had worn day and night while married. It had kept the neo-mage glow of my skin damped, and most of my scars hidden, even in the throes of passion, allowing me to marry a human. It was the most powerful amulet I had ever owned, one of two keyed to me at my birth, by Lolo, and I had accidentally damaged it. When I learned of Lucas' infidelity, I took a five-pound steel mallet to my wedding ring. In my rage, I'd chipped the amulet, rendering it useless. The amulet and my ring glistened in the soft light. Portents?

"Ma'am, I—"

Flames glimmered from the gas logs, their heat rising in waves, as curvy as the blade against my arm. By feel, I wrapped the bath stone in a corner of the afghan and set it by my toes. Listening, I pulled my gaze back to Bartholomew's strange-colored eyes, the exact shade of chrysocolla.

"Who gave you that information?" The cop's face was a gathering storm. "Ma'am, I—. Thank you, ma'am. I may consider…" He glared at the ugly black phone and hung up. I figured. Lolo had broken the connection. She hated phones.

Except for me, and the few licensed witchy-women living in human lands, no neomage used technology. The presence of so much mage-power in Enclave had a deleterious effect on technology. Meaning the stuff didn't work. To make a call, Lolo had to dress for the weather, get on a horse, ride several miles to the general store near old I-10, and trade for the use of the phone. Because the store owner knew he had something valuable to Enclave, such calls were costly in terms of bartered neomage power. Very costly. Yet Lolo had done that, at just this time. She knew he was here.

"She claims to know I'm a cop and why I'm here. She's telling me there's a bloody moon. Want to tell me what's going on?"

I wasn't going to risk an outright lie but couldn't offer the complete truth. "Lolo is a licensed witchy-woman." Which was the truth as far as it went. "She was my mother's friend and I've known her since I was a baby. She knows things. She said there's danger. And a bloodring has circled the moon for two nights. To Lolo that's a strong portent."

The cop stared at me, face impassive. I resisted the impulse to squirm. Thaddeus handed me the phone and our fingers brushed. A small electric jolt kicked its way up my arm. He inhaled sharply, as if he felt the quiver of heat, and stepped back.

Mage-heat coiled and spread through me. I had felt passion with Lucas. A lot of really, really good passion. But this was different. Hotter. Something untamed and fierce. Need swam in my veins.

As he withdrew his hand, I noted his nugget ring, a large, sky blue turquoise in a massive silver setting, the band shaped like seraph wings. I set the phone on the table and pulled the afghan closer to me, hiding beneath the velvety yarn.

"Lucas Stanhope is your husband?" Thaddeus asked, towering over me.

"Ex. My divorce was final two months and three days ago." I looked at the black pig wall clock and almost added, "And thirteen hours, twelve minutes." But I didn't.

"When did you see him last?" he asked as he pulled my rocking chair close and sat, one hand draped over the carved lion-claw arm, his dark suit made even darker by the soft dun-colored upholstery. He flipped open a thin spiral notebook and uncapped a pen.

My eyes were drawn to the working of his hands, the knuckles prominent, his fingers long and tapered, with elongated index fingers. If he brushed my stomach with a closed fist, the knuckles would feel like lustrous, polished wood. I curled my toes into the stone to block the growing pull and licked my lips, which felt swollen, as if I'd been kissed. Yep. Lucky me. I was going into heat. Had to be, though I'd never gone through one before. "He dropped Ciana off for a visit the Friday morning I left town," I said. "Ten days ago."

"Ciana is your daughter?"

"His daughter by a previous marriage. I'm guessing you know all this, so why ask?"

A faint smile touched his mouth. "Procedure, ma'am. Was the divorce acrimonious?"

I closed my eyes, feeling the familiar pain. "Isn't it always? I was—justifiably—angry at him for sleeping around on me, but I managed to put it behind me for Ciana's sake. We talk off and on, mostly about her. Are you going to tell me what's happened?"

I opened my eyes and found him staring around the apartment, up into the rafters and the lazily turning fans that pushed heated air back to the floor, around the four-foot-thick old-brick walls, some of which I'd had plastered and painted rich greens and blues. His eyes settled on my sleeping area, the armoires open, clothes hanging out, the bed turned down. The fluffed teal comforter was mounded, pillows in lavender, ruby, and turquoise, the sheets a ruby red silk. Mage-heat surged through me, offering an image of throwing him on the covers and—