Host

A t the sound of her shriek, the wheels dipped and spun, throwing me flat. I landed hard and my training took over. Instinctively, I rolled to my hands and knees, but the ship dipped again and one shoulder rammed the wall. My right arm was instantly numb; pain bit in at my elbow and along my gauntlet-covered hand. The wheels steadied and I looked up to see Holy Amethyst standing at her chair, keening like a banshee, her eagle face lifted to the dome overhead, her beak open in a warning cry. Anger lit her narrow, feathered face and crackled into the air.

Demon bones. This can't be good.

The singing stopped and Amethyst's cry fell away. Her wings unfurled, two sets shaped like butterfly wings, a third set sweeping away from her body to reveal a downy, many-breasted torso and hips swathed in white linen. I caught a glimpse of her feet, which were rounded and hooved, like horses', but shining like gold.

Above the railing, faces appeared. Faces of seraphs. I was in trouble.

Flames zipped into the ship and past me, trailing blue plasma so bright I closed my eyes, blinking hard. I rocked back on my heels and cradled my injured arm, my elbow brushing across my blades. The tanto sizzled with power, burning my flesh through the chain mail of my right arm, the blade issuing a high-pitched hum, a sensation like bees buzzing, crawling over me.

Rise, my mage visa said.

Not entirely certain that was a good idea, but not having any other ones, I stood. I had an instant to remember the serpent and the venom and wondered if it was still pumping into me. I no longer heard my heart beat. Perhaps I was dying. That seemed to happen a lot when I was in the otherness, the here-not-here. Hysterical laughter bubbled up between my lips and I swallowed it down hard, wiping away my tears.

Malashe-el, moving with the speed of its kind, was suddenly in front of me and caught me up in a hug that bruised my ribs. It smelled of brandy and lilacs, and its arms seemed to offer a measure of safety. Though we had once been mortal enemies, I clung to it.

The daywalker withdrew and brushed its fingers over the chain mail at my forehead, its labradorite eyes like blue-gray opals. It had been made of evil and holy matter, mixed and formed to follow its master's call, shaped and bred to be a killer. I had wondered in past days if it had been built to destroy a cherub, yet the daywalker, the being of legend, had decided against the Dark. Light brightened its odd eyes. Behind it, Amethyst screamed again, but when Malashe-el didn't flinch, neither did I.

"You are a warrior like your Raziel," it said, acknowledging the significance of the scarlet armor. That thought had been in the back of my mind, and I agreed, touching my breastplate with a clink of metal. The scarlet steel was the same shade as Raziel's flight feathers.

As seraphs gathered and hovered just beyond the rotating gyroscopic bands of the lavender wheels, the former daywalker lifted the seraph stone on my chest. Purple light played within, muted, but growing brighter. "Yet Zadkiel has placed you under his protection. He plays a dangerous game with divisive politics."

Malashe-el's tone made the words sound felonious and Holy Amethyst, Zadkiel's mate, screamed again, this time in agony. She fell again to the gilt chair and covered herself with her wings, rocking like a grieving child hiding from a painful world.

The seraphs beyond the wheel walls swept hard with their wings, maintaining position, but several had drawn swords and more were congregating by the second. Emotions were gathering like an electric charge on the air and I had a feeling my window of safety was closing. I had so much to ask, and no time at all. "How did I get to a Realm of Light?" I asked, voicing the most useless question of all. "Mages are mortal. And soulless."

"As am I. Yet, my place is here. And here there is no time."

"Give her to me!" Amethyst begged, her voice like an owl's. I had no idea who she spoke to, but whoever it was, it couldn't be good. "Though I did much for her, the little mage has defied the sanctity of my wheel. This is blasphemy."

I wondered what she had done for me, except ask dangerous favors that put my life at risk. At my thought, the cherub hissed and swiveled her lion face toward me. Exposing long fangs, she lifted black lips and growled like a jungle cat.

Mortal and soulless, mages can't call on the One True God, God the Victorious, for help. Prayer doesn't work for us. Theologians insist that the Most High doesn't hear us. Other theologians contend that if he doesn't hear an intelligent creature, it proves he isn't real and never was, but that was a theological argument for passionate believers and heretics. I was just in trouble, so I said a silent prayer, in case the One True God heard me. Just in case - the excuse for prayer when uttered by atheists and agnostics for millennia.

Malashe-el cocked its head almost as if hearing my prayer. "It's not safe here," it thought at me, arms tightening like steel bands around my waist. As if he'd been invoked by a magical charm, her seraph now stood beside Amethyst, holding her human-looking arm, his deep purple wings half-furled, his beautiful face expressionless as a block of marble.

"Go," Malashe-el said. Ducking a shoulder, it rammed into my chest. Hard.

Not expecting the shove, my feet in improper position, I rocked back, hitting the wheel wall. Stunned, I plummeted over.

A moment of shock immobilized me and I tumbled past the hull in open air, buffeted by the strong turbulence whipping off the rotors. I had a single jumbled glimpse of the wheels rotating at sickening speed. The city spread out below me. Empty. The streets were all empty.

My heart beat. Far away. And again as fear slammed into me. My right arm and ankle impacted the nearest wheel with quick, hard cracks, spinning me toward the next wheel. Pain shivered through me. Heart ramming my chest wall, I fell.

Crack the stone of ages, I'm going to die. Desperate, I drew on stone, on all my amulets.

Instantly I was back in my body. Vertigo knocked me backward. My head banged hard, nausea rose in my throat as the world spun about me. Light flashed overhead. I was sprawled on the floor in the stockroom. On my chest was a two-handed fist of amethyst. It was looking at me, which was way weird, and it was humming, a faint vibration through my palms. I had drawn on stone. This stone. I had drawn on the wheel, using it to - what?  -  save me from itself? Themselves? Scripture used "wheels" and "wheel" interchangeably, and no one knew if the living ships were singular or plural. Either way, Amethyst would kill me for that. Another blasphemy.

Using my left foot and arm, I scuffed my way against the floor and into a sitting position, back to the wall. When I inadvertently moved my right arm and ankle, pain jolted through my limbs and I hissed.

"Shhh. They'll find us," a voice whispered.

I jerked in surprise, which spiraled the pain higher and I bit down on a curse. To my left was a little girl, squatting down, arms tight around her knees. Mostly hidden under a shelf filled with racks of storage bins, she was little more than a shadow.

"Who are you?" I asked as I cradled my hand and pulled up my sleeve.

"Shhh," she said again. "Kimmer is It, and he's real good."

"Hide and seek?" I asked, lowering my voice. My wrist and forearm were purple, as if from a hard blow. I was almost afraid to stress it, but I flexed my fist closed. The pain increased, though not as badly as I had feared, and I opened and closed my hand several more times, feeling intense relief.

Mages have brittle bones and a single hard blow can shatter them. Our broken bones don't heal as quickly as humans', either, and a bad break can mean permanent disability, even with healing incantations. I had survived a ruined left hand only after seraphic intervention and what I suspected had been Lolo's far-reaching incantation.

"Hide, seek, and tag, and the winner gets a prize."

I flexed my right foot up and down, easing my jeans leg up to view the ankle. It was in even worse shape, but I curled my legs under me and stood, forcing the foot to carry weight. Pain shot through me, bringing another surge of nausea. I leaned over the boxes of stone and dropped my head into my arms. I was still holding the amethyst, and the crooning grew louder.

"You're the devil woman, aren't you?" she said. When I grimaced, more from pain than from her question, she confided, "My daddy says you're going to hell, but my mama says she'll take sanctuary from the Dark Lord himself if it means keeping us alive."

"Isn't that just peachy," I managed. I placed the fist of lavender stone back in its case. From the outer hallway, squeals erupted and feet slapped against the floor. "Tag! You're it!" a young voice shouted gleefully.

Beside me, the little girl duck-walked from under the shelf and stood up. I'm short, not quite five feet last time I stood against a ruler, and the girl came to my elbow, making her five years old or so. She was dressed in orthodox black. "I'm Estrella." She put out her hand and I took it in mine. She gave me a firm shake, well taught by her parents in that at least, and scampered away.

Another child, no more than two years old, ran through the workroom. Arms in the air, squealing like a baby piglet, she made a loop of the center storage area and ran back out, leaving my ears ringing. This child was dressed in summer-sky blue, and reminded me achingly of my twin. Though technically identical, Rose had hair a shade more blond than my own scarlet, and it was straighter than my sometimes kinky snarl. Just like the little girl.

Instinctively, I reached out for Rose, calling to her, needing her, feeling the loss of my sister as a deep wound never healed, far more painful than my ankle and wrist. It was nothing like the formal scrying I had tried before, no ritual to prime my mind, no carefully prepared incantation, not even a simple calling. This was a wordless plea, emotion only, the voice of loneliness, a bitter, aching need I seldom looked at, rarely acknowledged.

"Rose," I whispered.

Nothing answered. Not even the raucous, blaring demand of her mind that met mine when I first came into my gift and our minds touched with such power and intensity. Nothing. I sighed, the breath an admission of defeat.

"Thorn?"

I stilled, froze, the immobility of marble. "Rose?" I whispered. Quickly I stepped away from the wall and, with a thought, opened a narrow charmed circle. Inside the protected space, I gripped the amethyst. If I had to steal the power of the cherub's wheels to find my sister, I'd risk the consequences. "Rose?" I said louder, insistent, throwing my mind at the universe to find her.

She didn't answer. Yet, something had changed. Now, instead of the blackness of night or the blackness of nothingness, there was...something...a pulsation, a susurration. A soughing, like the soft roar one hears in an empty shell.

"Rose?" I closed my eyes and concentrated, steadying my breathing, drawing on the amethyst that purred beneath my hand. Behind my closed lids, I saw soft light, a confused blurred scene, and black strings, like vines that curled all in one direction, images that made my already queasy stomach roll. My heart pounded a painful tattoo against my chest. My breath was an aching rip of tissue. I gripped the amethyst so hard my bones ground.

I realized I was seeing through someone else's eyes, seeing eyelashes and the scene beyond, and it was another's sickness I was feeling. The eyes were crossed, perhaps, and...she? Rose?...blinked once, a slow and drugged movement. "Rose?"

The muzzy vision I saw through her eyes began to focus, a scene of wood and stone and brick arched over her head. The roar increased, and I recognized a sound like the surf, like the ocean pounding nearby. Was Rose near the sea? In a stone building near a waterfall? She blinked once more and closed her eyes. All the sensations dimmed, the roar last to fade. And Rose was gone.

Was it my sister? Had I found her? Had I sensed her? Was she alive, just as the Darkness had asserted? Or had I focused in on a sleeping mage, my imagination and hope making her drugged or sleeping mind seem familiar? Terror and elation scoured through me, tears stinging my eyes. If I had found her once, I could find her again. If. If it was Rose.

I didn't pray often, but now I said a quick prayer of thanksgiving. For the first time in years, it was possible that I wasn't alone in the world of humans. It was possible I had found my sister. Maybe. I clicked off the charmed circle, put the stone away, closed the metal top that housed the amethyst, and secured the metal straps in place.

Rose had been a licensed mage in Atlanta, the largest city in what was left of the United States of America. The city had once taken up most of the state of Georgia, and even now was a sprawling megalopolis. It was also home to the largest number of mages outside of an Enclave. Rose had been one of many.

On a night of portents, a night of a bloodring, Lolo the priestess had called us both, warning us that danger was near. A bloodring was a ring of scarlet far out from a full moon, a ring caused by ice crystals that picked up only the red wavelength of light, and against the black sky, it foretold peril - general peril like earthquakes, personal peril for mages, danger to all and sundry of my kind. My sister had been getting ready for a diplomatic event when Lolo called. She had warned Rose, as she had warned me, to be careful, to go armed.

According to police sources, someone - or something - had crashed through Rose's door and attacked her. Neighbors had called the police when they heard screams. All that had been left of my twin had been a trashed room and a large pool of blood. Because the blood hadn't been sucked from the floor, and because Rose had been living under the largest mage-dome outside of an Enclave, the cops had ruled out an attack of Darkness. At first. But when no body turned up, when none of the other mages stationed in Atlanta had been able to scry her, they had reluctantly admitted that Darkness might have been involved. I had always believed that. Now I knew it for truth. Darkness had stolen my sister and kept her drugged -

My thought cut off. No Darkness would keep her aboveground, where daylight might free her. Aboveground. Because that was where she had to be. That was what I had seen in the vision through her eyes, morning light. And because it had been dawn light, not nighttime, that meant she was somewhere on the eastern seaboard. Rose was close by. Waking from whatever had been done to her. Waking alone, to danger.

If it was Rose. Once I had seen into the mind of my twin with perfect clarity. The glimpse just now had been too brief, too clouded and confused, for me to be certain. But it had felt familiar. It had.

Thoughtful, worried, so excited my stomach ached and my heart rate wouldn't settle, I turned off the light and locked the door to keep out other inquisitive children or snooping adults. Limping, I made my way through Thorn's Gems, my mind in a snarl, grateful that my ankle could support my weight, wanting to whap Malashe-el, wondering why the daywalker had thrown me over the side, giddy with success at possibly finding my sister. Worried that she was in danger I couldn't fight. Especially if I couldn't find her, get to her.

The shop was empty now, the nighttime visitors gone. The place felt different this morning, more alive than before. Warmer, from all the body heat and the logs that had blazed all night long. Different. Better. And that surprised me. I had expected to feel invaded, violated by the presence of so many humans. Instead, even the room felt happier.

I had to be nuts. Rooms didn't feel happier; people and mages did. And I was not happy because I had housed a horde of humans under my roof, under the protection of my gift, all night. No way. My feet echoing on the bare board of the stairwell, I climbed to the second floor.

In the loft, Audric and Rupert were eating breakfast at my table. They went silent, watching me as I limped in. I kept my eyes down, thinking over the discoveries of the morning as I dished up a bowl of hot oatmeal, added a bit of my costly, hoarded sugar, and poured cold milk over it. Sugar and cacao, unlike coffee and tea, were best grown in warm weather, and so were hard to come by in a mini ice age. Sweets and chocolate had become an indulgence of the wealthy, but every now and then I treated myself. I figured that visiting a Realm of Light, stealing a ride on a cherub's wheel, and nearly getting killed were good enough reasons for full-scale pampering.

I made an ice bag before I joined my champards at the table, still not meeting their eyes. Propping my foot on a chair, draping the ankle with the bag, I ate, ignoring the way their eyes met, before they applied themselves to their own breakfasts.

When I could no longer stand their speculative silence, I told them what I had discovered. Most of it. But not all. I kept the part about Rose to myself, hugging it to me like a treasure.

After breakfast, Audric went downstairs to saddle his Clydesdale and try to get my errand done. Rupert washed dishes, standing at my sink, his back to me. Once again I smelled blood, and spotted a smudged, fresh mark on his shirt. "You're bleeding again, aren't you?" I said.

He stilled a moment, his hands in the water. When he shrugged, his shoulders moved stiffly, and when he spoke, his voice was carefully emotionless. "The wound keeps opening up. Ciana tried twice to close it. Wore herself out using that pin of hers." He rinsed the last bowl and washed the mugs, the only sound in the loft the splash of water, oddly silent after a night marked by the myriad sounds of motley humans. When he had dried the last dish, he stood unmoving, back to me, as if waiting for something.

Not knowing what to say, I asked, "What will it take to heal you?"

"I don't know." When he didn't go on, I stood and went to the sink to stand beside him. Rupert was a little taller than the average human male, a little over six feet, so that meant that the top of my head didn't reach his shoulder. I leaned against his deltoid, wrapping my arms around his, sliding my hand through his damp fingers. He seemed to take comfort from the touch and he said, "I had a dream."

I squeezed his hand, staring at the blank wall over the sink with him, wordlessly encouraging him to continue.

"There was this crowd of people in a stone building. You, me, Ciana, Lucas, Audric, Thadd, some others from town. And a bunch of seraphs were all around us, hovering in the air, beating the air with their wings. I knew three of them, Raziel, Zadkiel, and Cheriour. Three with black wings and black tunics."

I tightened my grip. Rupert was describing my own dream.

"And there was this green feathered one with silver hair," he said.

"Barak."

He shrugged. "They all looked different, like things do in dreams, sometimes, you know? The seraphs all had wings, swords, shields, but they looked angry. Evil. The green one had that thing Audric busted up in the street fight, that spur you were carrying in your pocket."

My breathing hitched a moment. Everything kept coming back to the spur.

"The walls were crawling with these huge snails, and it stank." He snorted softly, laughing through his nose. "I never knew you could smell in a dream, but these things reeked."

I tightened my hand on his, so tight my fingers ached. Rupert was right - dreams seldom contained odors. But visions? Visions were often fully sensual, with all five senses in play. And in his, Barak had the spur, which was different from my own dreams. I remembered the moment of mage-heat earlier, a heat that hit me like a huge fist, brought me to my knees and then vanished. If Barak had the spur, did that give him power over me? But I had his flight feather. Was control mutual? Did we each have a weapon over the other? I struggled to maintain calm, to keep my breathing steady and rhythmic. "Rupert - "

"It's storming outside," he said, without letting me comment, though I noted the tense change. "Rain is blowing in through the window openings. Most are broken out and the walls are dripping with slime.

"Anyway, this green seraph, he's yelling, 'Do it. Do it now. Do it or she'll die.' And you pull that green feather out. And you give it to me. And then you pull your sword, but it's not like your sword, you know?" he said. "This one has a pink quartz nugget on the pommel. And you stab me with it."

I flinched and closed my eyes. Rupert's flesh was warm against my hands, which were growing colder than snowmelt.

"I fall to my knees," he said, "and you pull out the sword. And you point at Barak - yeah, his name is Barak. I hear you say that. You point at him with the sword that's dripping with my blood. And he gives you the spur. You give him his feather. And I'm calling to you, begging you. But you don't hear. And I can't wake up."

My throat was so tight breathing was painful. I pressed the side of my face to his arm, as if assuring myself Rupert was real and alive.

"I see this girl, she's lying on an old oak table, and you help her sit up. She looks like you, but she's skinny and dirty, covered with scabs and old wounds, like she's been sick or held prisoner or something. You give her to Eli. And Thadd picks me up and puts me on the table. I'm dying," he said. "And it hurts. It hurts so bad that you killed me."

A single tear scalded a slow path down my cheek. I wouldn't. I would not give up Rupert for Rose. I wouldn't. This wasn't prophecy. This was a dream. Only a dream.

"All these women who look like you walk in. They make the seraphs go crazy, ripping off their clothes. Their wings disappear and they look like human men. Or like beasts with human faces. They start to have sex with the women.

"Barak laughs. And he says, 'Curiosity killed the cat.' And then Barak and Raziel start to fight. And blood goes everywhere. And I wake up." Rupert looked down at me. "Curiosity killed the cat. Isn't that a weird thing for him to say, Thorn? Some dumb old saying, when it should have been scripture. Not that it's any weirder than the rest of the dream."

Rupert pulled his arm away and tilted my face up to his. With a thumb, he wiped away my tears. "Don't cry, Thorn. It's only a dream."

I caught his hand, holding it away from my face. I didn't want comfort from him, refused to accept comfort from my best friend, who had just predicted the unbelievable. Who had just foretold that I'd kill him, murder him, to get my sister back. Unthinkable. Unbearable.

The thought flitted in the back of my mind, quickly banished. Was his prediction a dream future, one possibility among many? Or was it true prophecy, the immutable future, set in stone, unchangeable and inflexible? No. No way. Not true prophecy. Only a dream. A prediction. I wouldn't consider anything else.

Without asking, I pushed him around and pulled up his tunic, lifting the cloth with cold, clumsy fingers, gathering up his T-shirt. As if to help me, he bent forward slightly and braced on the sink edge. Holding up the shirts, I exposed his back, his pale skin untouched by the sun. Beside his spine, taped to his skin, was an eight-inch-wide, ten-inch-long pad with fresh scar tissue showing at each end. The bandage was crusted around the edges with dried blood and was crimson-wet in the center.

Breath uneven, I peeled back the tape and raised one side of the bandage, not lifting the centermost section. I knew enough about battlefield wound dressings to know that platelets were collecting there, clotting the blood. The area I didn't inspect, the unhealed area, was about three inches long. Around the edge of the deepest wound was a raised ring, blackened, puffy, hot to the touch. I pressed my icy fingers against the flesh there, and it gave under my fingers. Rupert hissed softly with reaction.

I should have stopped, but I didn't and pressed harder, feeling the tissue beneath the toxic perimeter. "Thorn!" he said, cringing, his back arching. I stepped away, hands still holding the shirts high, staring at the wound. It was like mine, hard and ridged beneath. It was shaped in an oval, like a link. Seraph stones. We had both been marked. What in the name of the Most High did that mean? What had been done to us?

Rupert wasn't human. Neither was I. I had figured out that we were both part of some crazy conspiracy, but new bits of the puzzle kept appearing, skewing my interpretation, elements kept falling out of place, out of joint. I dropped his shirts.

I went to the bath area and dug out a box of bandages, a new addition since my life had become a constant battle. From my bowl of stones by the window I chose three healing amulets, two small, drilled nuggets and one slab of white marble about the size of my open hand. All were newly filled with power that wasn't mine to use. Might stolen from the wheels of the cherub Holy Amethyst.

In the way of longtime friends, Rupert watched me gather supplies, standing silent, not asking questions, but patiently waiting. When I returned to him, he faced away again and braced himself, unmoving against the sink. After rolling his shirt and tunic high on his back and pulling off the bloody outer bandage, I added a new layer of gauze over the center pad. On top of the clean wedge of outer dressing I pressed the slab, the two nuggets, and three shards from Amethyst's wheels, and taped it all in place. To secure the extra weight, I rolled some gauze wrappings around his torso. As I worked, I felt some of the tension go out of him as his pain lessened. His breathing evened out and he exhaled with relief. "Feel better?" I asked.

"Much. Thorn?"

"Don't say it," I said, stopping him, not knowing what he might say, but not able to hear it. Not just now. I wiped away a new, unexpected tear and placed my tear-damp hand over his wound, bowing my head. In my other hand, I gathered the seraph stone and my visa.

"I know you can't hear me," I said. "I know you don't care about mages, that we're less than nothing in your holy sight." Rupert stiffened under my hand when he realized I was praying. "But just in case they're wrong, I promise you this. In the name of the Most High, in the name of the unsayable God, I will give my own life in exchange for Rose's. I'll give my own life in exchange for Rupert's. I'll die by my own hand rather than kill one of those I guard. If I had a soul, I'd swear by it. Instead, I claim it by your unspeakable name. By your name, I do so vow."

I shuddered hard with the power of the hallowed words. Exhausted by the effort of speaking them, I rested against the body of my friend, the heat of my champard like a furnace against me. My forehead lay against Rupert's bare back, and a single tear ran down his skin, into the waistband of his jeans.

Mages didn't make vows easily or lightly. The one I had just made, calling on the unsayable God, was one of the most sacred among us. God the Victorious never heard the prayers of neomages, but if he ever bothered to hear us, it would be because of the passion of such an oath. Perhaps he would understand the weight of our words. Perhaps he would know that with such vows, we revered him. Perhaps he wouldn't judge us too harshly.

For a long moment we stood, unmoving, my head against his back beside the wound, my tears twin runnels on his skin, marking him. I could feel his breathing, feel the movement of his heart as it pulsed his blood. Blood that was no longer human.

"Did you think I believed the dream?" Rupert asked, his voice rumbling through his chest, soft and full of wonder. He turned and gathered me up in his arms, his mouth against my hair. When he spoke, the words vibrated against my skull like a benediction. "I would sooner believe you were the Dark Lord itself than that. I trust you with my life, with my heart, with my very soul, knowing you will treat them all with the same care as I would."

They were formal words, the pledge of a champard, and I recoiled at them, afraid, pulling back. I met his eyes, so wide they looked black in his pale face, seeing his trust. Fearing that trust more than anything. Because even with my claim and pledge to the contrary, I knew the might of a prediction dream. I knew that there was a chance I would break my vow to the Most High and follow the dictates of the divination. Dreams were like that. They showed only the final result, not the ultimate reasons for each action. And I feared it like my own death.