Host (32 page)

We could be here a month, a day, or an hour. Maybe our air would hold out beneath the conjures. Maybe we would all die of suffocation. Maybe we could roast a couple of succubus snails for dinner. Chuckling at my own morbid whimsy, I pulled a bottle of water from a low pocket on my cloak and drank while I had the chance. Beside me, Eli did the same.

I figured Azazel was off somewhere, sometime, healing his wounds, so he could fight his little war healthy. It looked like the Dark Prince had planned for all contingencies, even his own wounding. I screwed the top back on and tucked the bottle into my cloak.

“Cheran, can you still kill spawn at a distance, burning them the way you did before?”

“Oh yeah. Of course I could do it better if you gave me back my anklet.”

“Not gonna happen, mage boy,” Eli said for me.

“I figured.” The mage flipped two knives, blades flashing in the light of the illumination amulets. He caught them deftly, a cocky grin reshaping his face. “We need weapons, Consulate General.”

“No shit,” Eli said.

I had pulled the longsword when I landed against the wall, and Azazel had thrown the femur. I checked the position of the succubus, arms flailing at the Flames, the form of Jane shrieking like a fishwife. My sister lay nearby on the church's burned, scarred floor, still breathing, but drugged or unconscious. Blood coated Rose's neck where the queen had fed.

I couldn't tell if my twin still had her amulets. Rose was an earth mage, like the new acting priestess of Enclave. She needed something alive, or once alive, to cast a conjure. Or an amulet made of something that lived or once lived. I had a few thoughts about that, but anything I could figure out had to be a last-ditch effort to destroy the Dragon because they were drastic measures and we were all going to go blooey. A bloody messy way to die.

I walked, mostly upright, to the spot where I had first landed. A dim glow showed me my longsword, deep under the muck of slime. “Ducky,” I said, and plunged my hand into the glop. I pulled the sword free and, wishing for wash water, cleaned it off on my cloak.

“You might think that slime would be acidic,” Cheran said conversationally.

Eli, who had moved with us, said, “You'd think.”

“Eli, are you guarding me?” I asked.

“Just followin' orders, ma'am.” He rested his hands, fingers hanging loosely, on his gun butts. “Your head champard suggested it might be wise.”

“Mmmm.” It wasn't much of a response but it was all I had. “Cheran, you want to help? Open up your mage-sight and look around. You see a big bone? A femur bone of a seraph.”

“You mean like this one?” He toed the tip of the bone with his foot. He had been standing on it, and no way did I think he hadn't known. Best bet, he had spotted it in mage-sight and was planning on claiming it for himself, though his face looked bland and innocent.

I pushed him away and fished Barak's bone from between two rocks. It still retained a lavender glow from the snake-wheels. I now had my swords, one Flame-blessed, one with my bloodstone prime amulet, and a seraph bone given in sacrifice; I still had the Dragon's link; and my pain was receding. With a flash of thought, I felt around in my dobok for the cross, not finding it. Beneath a particularly deep glop of muck, I spotted it. I cleaned the cross in the wan light. “Yeah,” I said softly. “Okay.” I was ready to get my sister back from a succubus bitch.

“Audric,” I called, now able to shout. When the big man looked up I said, “Remember that errand I sent you on? Do you still have them with you?”

“Yes, mistrend. I do.”

Ignoring the formal word, I said, “I'd like them now, please.”

Audric came forward and knelt at my feet. Shock flashed through me. I was about to order him to get up when I realized he was on the ground so he could open a canvas satchel.

I swallowed back the command.
Seraph stones. Can I be any more stupid? Audric knelt at my feet to swear fealty, not as a matter of habit
. He might kneel for me if he screwed up and drew my blood while practicing. Or not. Audric flipped back the top of the satchel.

Inside were stones that looked like black opals to my human sight, but when viewed with mage-sight, appeared as Dark and Light in one conjure. Thin, blue, wirelike strands of Light overlaid and enwrapped the Dark amulet-bombs.

Audric said, “Things are going to get interesting shortly.” Eli snorted at Audric's word choice, but the big half-breed went on. “Throw these, or use them as land mines?”

I considered the playing field and the number of the opals. Someone could lose a hand throwing them. “Set them up as mines.” Audric nodded his approval.

I experimented with a deep breath. My lungs ached and creaked like rubber folded over and rubbing against itself. The rib bones were sharp and grinding, but Cheran's handy-dandy amulet was working. I swung my blades, the motion painful but not debilitating. I checked the position of my weapons and tucked the femur into my belt, the cross looped through beside it.

The Waldroup brothers shuffled closer, exhaustion clear in their postures. Ernest touched the shield separating us from the Ravens and jerked back when it shocked him. “One question,” Shamus said, blinking into the night, steadying his brother when the old man wavered on his feet. “Why didn't the Dragon attack us in small groups? Why do all this?”

“I think it wants the flying wonders to mate with the succubus queen,” Eli said in disgust. “I think it set this up so seraphs will sin, so they'll be forced to join the Dark against the Host. That Final Battle humans fought a hundred years ago? It ain't over. That's what I think.”

“They been taking a breather for a hundred years?” Shamus asked me, incredulous.

I looked up, shrugging. The seraphs had tilted and tucked their wings to land. The Ravens seemed to see them for the first time, their motions slowing to match the diminished speed of the descending three, as if caught in the time change. “I agree with Eli,” I said.

“And your twin?”

“I'm going after her. Forcas and the Dragon took her and kept her alive for some reason. We get her back and we mess up some part of the plan.”

“We need to be fighting before the seraphs land,” Cheran said. At Eli's blank look he said, “Mage-heat. I'm already feeling it, thanks to our winged friend here. It's going to get worse when the conjure that's keeping the smells down is canceled and the seraphs and you humans smell the succubus and larvae. It's going to be a mating orgy in the middle of a bloodbath. If we're fighting, Thorn and I won't be affected and we can stop it.” After a slight pause he added, “Maybe.”

I didn't trust Cheran any more than I could throw him, uphill, over my shoulder. But he was right. Pulling three amulets off of my necklace, I said, “We need to get through the queen's shield. I have anticonjure amulets, which may work now that it's damaged, but they kind of explode.” I was just glad they hadn't gone off when I pressed them into the shield. How stupid could I get?

Eli laughed. “More than just kinda explode. They'll rock your world.” He raised his voice. “Down, everybody. Thorn's going inside.”

M
y champards ringed me. Audric said, “Land mines are in place around the dais and the outer perimeter. I marked a pathway if we need to regroup. Champards, to arms.”

I hadn't thought about a place to regroup but it was a dandy idea. I squatted behind a low pile of roof rubble, and steadied myself with a hand. Beneath my palm, beneath a layer of ash, I felt thin slate slabs, roof tiles, burned and fallen in. I turned one over, looking at it in mage-sight.

I couldn't use stone for conjuring if it had been open to the elements, and had unconsciously disregarded the stone of the old church, whose inside and outside walls were exposed and damaged by the Dark. But the church had been burned, then protected from the elements under a conjure. The rocks in this pile had gotten so hot, they'd burned free of wind and rain contaminants, and the shields had kept them that way. They were slime free. I looked around, reconsidering. There was plenty of stone and some of it glowed with pure creation energies. I bet Azazel hadn't thought about that. And when it dropped its conjures from the church, all the stone was going to be available to me.

I also once used the contaminated Trine.
I banished the thought.
No. Not again.

Feeling a bit more secure, I aimed at the damaged shield, tossed an anticonjure, and covered my head. The concussion threw me to my hip, and I rolled, catching myself on closed fists. I pushed up in the same instant, pulled swords, and raced toward the succubus, toward Jane Hilton. I opened with the dolphin, nicking its thighs and forcing it away from Rose, who rolled her head groggily. I cut Jane deeply. Screaming, she—no, it—began to bleed.

A conjure sparkled over and she raised her arms defensively, begging, “Stop! Stop!”

Human blood gushed and splattered. Human blood drenched Jane's pink dress. Pink! Shock roiled through me and I moved back, lowering my blades. This wasn't the succubus! I was killing a human. Seraph stones. I had attacked a human….

The scent of succubus rose all around and I heard Thadd groan with want. Thadd who had the seraph stone, but who couldn't fight because of his wing. If he was having mage-heat difficulty, the seraphs were in deep trouble. Audric urged him to fight, to stimulate battle-lust.

Eli danced up beside me and hit Jane with a blast of the holy oil he used in his gun. The scent of eucalyptus and conifers filled the air, mixing with succubus scent and her pitiful screams. When she was drenched, oil and blood mixing, he reset his weapon and said, “Throw one-a them exploding things at her. Let's see what she's got under that skin.”

I started to argue, but he fired again. This time a flame shot out, hitting Lucas' lady love in her bleeding chest. The scream that followed was nothing like human; it cleared the conjure from my head. I tossed another anticonjure into the midst of the inferno. Jane exploded.

Or rather, the glamour of Jane exploded away and the queen rose up from the center of her, burning and raging, all claws and teeth. “There she is,” Eli sang out, laughing, flamethrower to the side. “Miss America!”

The fear staying my hand, the fear of killing a human, was stripped away with the sight of the queen as her Big Bad Ugly self. Walking-stick blade held to the side, perpendicular to the ground, tanto low, at my thigh, I attacked. I cut, letting the weight of the longsword do the work. Flames zipped through the wounds, burning, leaving hideous gaping holes. The reek of succubus gagged me and I forced down the sour taste. I cut and cut, splattered by acidic blood, not human blood. Foul Darkness. My champards fought at my side, even Thadd, hounded into action by Audric.

To my right, I heard the prayers of the elders begin, “I will love thee, O LORD, my strength. The LORD is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer; my God, my strength, in whom I will trust; my buckler, and the horn of my salvation, and my high tower….”

Shocked, I danced back. They were quoting the Eighteenth Psalm, one I had particular fondness for, as it claimed victory over Darkness and called the Most High a rock. It was a psalm for stone mages, a specific and distinct sign of approval and support. I saluted them with the tanto and returned to the attack in the ugly forms of the crab. The sounds of battle were bright in the night. Battle-lust began to rise in me, my heart pounding, wounds forgotten.

An icy wind blew, circling through the broken walls and through the arched windows. The winter air was frigid, freezing the slime and blood pooled on the broken, burned floor into a slushy mess. Footing was precarious. Nearby, the seraphs were inches from the church floor.

I swung backhanded with the longsword and caught the blade in the queen's shoulder joint, jarring me to the spine, ripping me from battle-lust. I yanked to free it. The succubus clawed me, catching my chest and ripping aside the battle cloak, scoring my skin beneath in its claws. Three knives landed with hard thunks in the beast, distracting it from me.

I wished the champards had saved the big-ass gun. We could use it about now. I gave a final hard wrench. I felt a snap and I fell back, taking the hilt with me.

Beyond it, there was a three-inch length of steel and a cleanly broken blade. Shock and alarm shuddered through me, trailed by the pain of loss. I loved that sword.

I tucked the amuleted hilt into my dobok and pulled the kris, now holding only short blades. This wouldn't do. I resheathed it and lifted out the war ax, sliding my hand through the loop at the base before gripping the handle. Its head was smaller than a human's war ax, but with a wider flange at the cutting edge. I swung, finding its balance. I didn't like it. Not at all. Like I had a choice.

Tanto in one hand, ax in the other, I leaped back to the fighting. Rupert moved in on one side of me, watching me with tight eyes, fighting with his named blade. He knew where we were. He had recognized his death dream. “I won't,” I said to him. “No matter what. I refuse.”

The elders were chanting verse six: “…and my cry came before him, even into his ears. Then the earth shook and trembled; the foundations also of the hills moved and were shaken, because he was wroth.”

The earth beneath our feet began to tremble. “Crap,” Eli said, appearing at my elbow. “The big bad mojo is back.”

“Thorn?” Rose said. Beneath the conjure of the Apache Tear, her mind touched mine, static-filled visions of horror, things she had seen. Things that had been done to her. I faltered.

Rupert, as if he knew what had happened, shouldered me back. “We've got it here. Take care of the girl.”

I sheathed my blade and secured the ax, kneeling at Rose's side. I gathered her up, easing her from the cold church floor to a slab of blackened wood in the corner, under a patch of the roof that was protected from the wind. She was cold, shivering, and I pulled off my battle cloak, wrapping it around her. Rose was little more than skin and bones. Azazel and his minions may have kept her alive, but they hadn't fed her much. She was filthy, her hair in loose clumps, bald scalp beneath, her clothes rotted.

“You can be near me?” Rose whispered. “Without going crazy?”

“Yes.” I tapped the Apache Tear hanging around my neck. “A conjure to keep my mind separate.”

Rose's fingers brushed the Tear, and her touch overrode the conjure. I glimpsed a dark place, a cave, and a seraph face close above hers, a face I had seen before—Forcas, in his glamoured state. Too close. Too intimate. She shivered again and forced the vision away as she focused on me. We hadn't been together in ten years, since I was spirited away from Enclave for my own sanity's sake. We shared a moment of gladness, a burst of joy and relief that I—we—felt to our toes. Rose laughed softly and the laughter brought on a coughing spell.

I showed her where in the cloak pockets I kept bottled water, and opened one for her. “You haven't eaten in a while,” I said. “Take it slow.”

She took three sips, her throat working as if it hurt to drink. “How many weeks have I been gone?” she asked. At my blank look, she said, “I was taken on Monday the twelfth. What day is it? How long have I been prisoner?”

“Rose,” I breathed. “Rose, you've been gone four years.”

She held the bottle away in horror, her eyes, so like my own, wide. “Four years?” she whispered. She shook her head. Her gazed tightened on my cheek scars and my remade throat, glowing white in the night. She reached out and touched them, her fingertips cold as death.

“Yes,” I said, my throat clogging.

Beneath the conjure that kept us separate and me sane, I felt her mind as it tried to grasp the concept. Her thoughts were muddy, disjointed, her pulse faster than my own and thready. “Did it find you?” she asked, her tone full of shame.

“Find me?”

“Forcas. It was looking for you. I never told it where you were. I swear.”

I knew what the Darkness had done to her. I could see it in her mind. And if Forcas had been standing before me I would have killed it dead with my bare fists.

Rose stroked my jaw. “It's okay, Thorny. It's okay. I didn't get pregnant and bear a litter of…
things
. There was enough earth and life nearby for me to draw on to keep it away after that one time. I survived it. And I'll keep on surviving it.”

“Why did it want us?” I asked, an answer I had waited for, for what seemed like forever.

“It said we had a weapon that could burn its master unto death. A great Prince of Darkness.”

“Azaz?” I whispered, truncating the name so it would not be a true calling and bring the beast here.

“Yes,” she breathed, her mind clearing more with the name.

“And if we could kill Azaz, then we could be used to kill seraphs of the Most High.” I looked at my twin, pulled off a glove, and brushed away dried blood from her chin. She swallowed painfully and touched her neck where punctures still dribbled blood. “We could be a weapon to use against the High Host, if he could convert us.” Rose closed her eyes and turned away. I wondered how close she had come to breaking. How close she still was.

“Azaz is free,” I said, stroking her arm when she cringed. “And the only thing I learned about a weapon was about us. I think that we, together, are supposed to be the weapon.”

The elders had reached the tenth verse and were speaking of God. Their sonorous voices incanted, “And he rode upon a cherub, and did fly: yea, he did fly upon the wings of the wind.”

As if it had been called—which it had, called by scripture—the sky brightened, throwing a lavender brilliance into the church. Overhead, the wheels hovered, rotating like a gyroscope on its side, whirring softly. Over the gunwale leaned the cherub, her lion face staring down. I didn't think it an accident that the cherub chose to watch us with the mien of a man-eater.

Rose ducked her head, shading her eyes, her mouth parted. “What is that?”

“It's a cherub,” I said, pulling on my battle glove. “And she's pretty pissed off at me.”

“Thorn,” she chided.

I chuckled. My twin
would
scold me for coarse language, even during a battle. “Rosie, that weapon Forcas was looking for? I think it's us. Mind to mind. And joined to seraphs.”

Her lips parted, startled, making her look like a baby bird, hungry. “Oh,” she said.

“I did it once, joined to a seraph's mind. Not its body,” I said, reading her thoughts, “just its mind. And we were…” I took a breath at the remembered power. “We were almost invincible.”

“Theoretically it's possible. In school—”

A concussive force threw us across the rubble. I rolled over Rosie, protecting her with my body, tucking her into a crevice of debris. Shaken, I spun on a knee to see that the seraphs had touched down. The conjures holding back time had blasted away. Azazel stood in the midst of the stunned seraphs. He was glowing with might, with intense seraphic power, shining with aqua-and peach-toned energies, a small sun of power. His sunrise-tinted wings half lifted, taut for battle, his eyes bright with aqua light and black sparks of might. He was dressed in battle armor—overlapping discs of aqua light, fine as scales. So much for any wound I had given him.

The six seraphs, dull by comparison to the sparkling Dark, attacked. Instantly Azazel threw lightning, blasting against the seraph shields and the walls of the church. The sound of battle was so loud it beat against my eardrums, a physical sensation.

Rose quivered, delight and horror on her face. “Seraphs. They're fighting each other. The EIH were right all along?” she asked, confusion growing.

I gripped her chin and jerked her gaze to me. “I don't know. But the beautiful one? That's a Dragon. A Darkness. Not a seraph.”

“Forcas' Lord,” she whispered, understanding. Helpless tears pooled in her eyes, spilling down her cheeks, washing clean trails through the accumulated filth. I pushed her behind a pile of rubble, burned pews and stained glass from the church windows, and stone from the walls. Stone I could use. Wood Rose could use. I placed a spar in her hand, turning her face to me, away from the battle. “Rose,” I shouted over the screams and the sound of thunder, “you can fight. You're a gifted and well-trained mage.
You can fight
.”

Her fingers clamped down on the wood, her eyes raking the pile of rubble. In an achingly familiar gesture, she dashed away the tears with a wrist. She took a calming breath, and I could hear her mind settle with the childhood chant, “
Stone and fire, water and air, blood and kin prevail. Wings and shield, dagger and sword, blood and kin prevail
.”

My mind cleared with hers and, remembering the Apache Tear, I pressed it close. I loved my sister, but it was hard to think with her in my thoughts.

“Yes, it is,” she said. And I chuckled again.

The elders were chanting, “Yea, he sent out his arrows, and scattered them; and he shot out lightnings, and discomfited them.” From the elders emanated strange energies, the power of spiritual warfare. Not human, mage, or seraph. Something else entirely. The men were kneeling, facing a large shadow at the front of the church. The inner walls had burned away, revealing that a cross had once hung there. Now it was a cross-shaped scar on the stone.