Seraphs

As I was closing the book, a loose, folded page fell to the floor. It was as brittle as the Book of Enoch, though it was thicker, heavier paper, and larger than the book's pages. I opened it, revealing a handsome script penned in ink. I read the words. "Now, the End of Time has come. Watchers fight on both sides of the Holy War, some allied with the Dark, some with the Light. Those allied with the Light search and hope for grace, for forgiveness. Humans are caught between, neither of the Dark, nor of the Light. They alone are able to choose."

It wasn't dated or signed. But when I looked at the note with mage-sight, it glowed softly. Though a mage may not have written the words, sometime, somewhere, a mage had held the note. Had imbued it with power. The Book of Enoch showed no such energies. It didn't shine with power at all.

I turned the sheet of paper over and over. Lolo? Had she put the page where I might find it? Was this one more in the long list of her intrigues?

"You ready to go?" a voice whispered. "I have all my research done." I looked up at Ciana, her head again peeking around the stack of books.

"And how many books are you checking out?" I whispered back.

"Seven. Miss Sennabel says they're reprints from Pre-Ap times. And they're really cool. Is that okay?"

"If Sennabel says they're appropriate for your age, sure." I stood, tucking the mage-marked note back in the Book of Enoch. Maybe some other mage would need it someday. If the library and the books survived whatever was coming to Mineral City.

On the way out, I tucked the thin volume into the crook of Sennabel's arm, along with the gloves. "Thank you," I said. "If you would like to come by Thorn's Gems at closing, we could have tea or coffee. That is, if you live close enough for me to walk you home after."

"I'll be there," the plump woman said, her face lighting with pleasure. "Tea would be lovely. I'll bring shortbread cookies and some strawberry preserves I put up last summer."

"Great," I said, meaning it, as I followed Ciana out and into the street. Together we walked to Thorn's Gems, where my stepdaughter curled up in a corner to work on her report, and I went to work filling Internet orders. From the nook beneath the stairs, I heard the far-off cry of the lynx. Hunting? A warning for me? What else could go wrong in my life?

False dusk deepened throughout the day as blizzard-strength winds blew in and back out. Disputatious, the storm deviated from the forecast, heading farther south than expected. As blizzards went, this one was a bust for Mineral City, but heavy clouds remained, hiding the surrounding peaks, settling onto housetops, turning the town dim and murky.

As the shop was closing and false night was falling, Sennabel opened the door with a jaunty clanging of the bells overhead and peeked inside. She was dressed in a bright blue cape, a red tunic, and leggings. Her hair had been freshly washed and plaited, coiled into a crown. Hanging prominently around her neck was a necklace of glass beads with a focal stone of pale green agate carved into a turtle. It wasn't expensive, but it had been crafted and sold in the shop. Over her arm she carried a covered basket that smelled of cinnamon, yeast, and honey. Sennabel had clearly left the library hours earlier and gone home to get ready.

Taken together, it was a public affirmation of me. A lump rose in my throat at the extra time and care that had gone into planning for what had been, to me, a nearly insignificant visit. I felt dowdy and callous and ill-prepared. All I had done was make tea on the shop's gas-log heater, though I had gotten out the good china and the silver spoons Audric had dead-mined from his claim, and some starched and ironed linen napkins.

Behind Sennabel came Polly, the elder's wife, equally stylish and well dressed, wearing full skirts and a Thorn's Gems necklace. My mouth fell open. Sennabel seemed delighted at my surprise. "I hope you don't mind," she said. "I brought another - "

The display window beside her shattered. Instinctively, I covered my face, ducking as glass shot in. An explosion sounded outside. Screams echoed, full of terror. Through the open door and empty window the warning sounded. "Spawn! Devil-spawn! To arms!"

With an expression of disbelief, Sennabel touched her face. Blood trickled on one cheek, and she stared at her hand in confusion. Polly fell, bumping the librarian to the side. A spawn gripped her waist, its teeth buried beneath her breast. Mage-fast, I grabbed Sennabel and spun her inside, out of the way. As she was falling to the floor of the shop, cape swirling wide, I pulled the tanto from my right sleeve and raised it over Polly. With three fast cuts, I severed the spawn's head from its body. For an instant, its eyes rolled up and looked at me. In a death spasm, its teeth clamped down tight. Belatedly, Polly screamed. I pushed her inside and grabbed the walking stick from the umbrella stand at the door.

The stench of sulfur filled the shop. A massive dose of battle-lust thumped through my blood. Mage-sight flicked on, and my flesh burned bright. I reached for my amulets but saw spawn attack a man in the street, his body a silhouette on the snow. First, I had to get outside.

"Audric!" I shouted, whipping the blade from the walking stick sheath. I slammed and locked the door to the shop and whirled to the broken window. Four spawn, their naked molelike bodies mottled shades of red and gray from dove to charcoal, were crawling inside, three-fingered hands ripping out broken glass to make the hole bigger. Spawn blood coated the sharp edges, black in the evening light. Rows of razor teeth snapped, their reddish bodies writhing. I dropped the sheath and beheaded two, slicing the arms from another. A dozen more shoved the dead from the window and wriggled in.

At the top of the stairs I heard Audric's battle cry, "Raziel! By blood and fire!"

The window of the door cracked and shattered. Spawn crawled through the new opening. Claws scrabbled on the porch above the door, on my porch. Behind me, Polly's screams had subsided to a panicked litany, "Get it off get it off get it off get it off!"

A fleeting look showed her peeling at the spawn's head, their blood mingling in a gory rush. Jacey and Sennabel were bent over her. Ciana peeked around the opening beneath the stairs. She had been researching online. I sliced and cut, taking down half as many as I needed to protect them. "Ciana. Bring me the marble sphere from beside my bed!" In a flash she raced around the corner and up the stairs. Her seraph amulet was blazing at the presence of the spawn. Dodging her, Audric and Rupert ran from the stairwell, swords drawn, and scythed into the pack rushing in.

A horde converged on the broken windows. Time dilated and stretched, my blades spinning in apparent slow-motion. A smell like rotting roses and stagnant water blew in, for a single breath overriding the spawn stench of sulfur and brimstone. Outside, a man fell to one knee in the street, stabbing a spawn with a long-bladed knife. Another spawn rushed from behind, sinking its teeth in his neck. From the side, a second blade dropped, cleaving through the top of the beast's head to its spine. It fell, shuddering like an insect. A second twisting sword thrust decapitated it. Eli stood over the injured man, pouring fluid over him from a clear bottle. I had a second to wonder what he was doing. And then spawn were inside.

Audric and Rupert took up positions to my left and right, Rupert at the door with its broken window, Audric eight feet from me, standing in front of Jacey and my visitors.

I spun into the swan, the move flashy, used to cut multiple opponents at once. Five spawn fell to the floor. My feet slid in bloody muck, my shoes smoking. I kicked spawn bodies to the side. I wasn't wearing battle boots. The leather of my shoes smoldered, sliding on blood or sticking to the wood floor with each step. The black blood ate through my copper-colored tunic, burning my flesh. I ignored the sting of the acid blood. If I lived, I'd heal.

In the street, something long and multijointed raced past, too fast for sight, leaving the impression of many legs and an armored exoskeleton. Bodies were lying on the snow in the gathering night, dead humans and spawn tossed together.

Ciana shouted, "Thorn. Here." Underhanded, she tossed the sphere. It lifted from her palm, twirling and spinning beneath the lights overhead. I stabbed the tanto into the body of a squirming spawn and reached up, over my head, to catch the sphere.

"Outside," I said to Audric. He leaped over the opening in the window. Rupert sprinted through the broken glass of the door. "Behead the spawn. Then stay put," I shouted to the women, pulling the tanto from a lifeless body. "You too," I said to Ciana.

Two strides took me through the window, landing beside and behind Audric. The snow cooled my heated shoe soles, icy wind cut through my clothes, and my skin rose in chill bumps even as my night vision sharpened. I opened the ward stored in the sphere. Instantly, the entire building came alight. Spawn screamed and plummeted from the wood porch and metal roof, surprising me. I hadn't expected residual power to cross them. "Nice," Audric said as he and Rupert whacked at spawn. "Too bad you can't do the whole town."

"Yeah," I agreed, sucking in deep breaths and stretching, preparing while I could.

South of us, across the street, spawn crawled through broken windows into shops. People screamed. Gunshots exploded with flashes of light. Though spawn are hard to kill with bullets, humans often resort to them, and cordite scented the air. West, to our right and downwind, Thadd and the assey Durbarge stood together in the night, hacking a six-foot-long beast, something that looked part centipede, part wolf. Three women stood to the side, watching, seemingly calm.

Odors of sulfur and brimstone were interspersed with the more repulsive smells of rot and dying flowers, scents reminiscent of incubus, but less harsh, more sour and cloying. Looking fast, I scanned the street upwind and saw a woman knocking on a door. In every particular she was human, but for the smells that gusted on the frozen wind and the fact that she was naked beneath a sheer gown. In mage-sight she looked like a mannequin, her flesh dull. She was glamoured. A man opened the door of the house, light falling on her face.

I knew her. Jane Hilton. The woman who claimed to be Lucas' wife. Opening her clothes, she reached in for the man. He touched her breasts. Fell on her. Feathers and fire. A succubus. At another house, a second succubus knocked on the door. It too opened, and inside a man and woman fought; the woman to keep him inside, the man to reach the beast who called to him. She too looked like Jane.

I scanned the three women watching Thadd and Durbarge. They were succubi as well, but were visually different from the Janes. I started in shock as a light fell across them.

They looked like me. Crack the Stone of Ages, they looked just like me. Except they were voluptuous, like sex toys made for a man's erotic dreams, and they had no scars.

As I watched, Thadd dispatched the thing he fought, cutting it in half. Spinning, his seraph ring spitting sparks, he attacked the nearest succubus, slicing her across her huge breasts. She squealed and raised her arms in defense, the sound of an animal in pain. Thadd wouldn't confuse us. Not a kylen. But the smell of her blood was a mingling of the familiar. I stood still, the longsword hanging in my hand, trying to parse the scents. A spawn attached itself to my ankle and I flipped the blade, decapitating it. The smells blew away. My mouth felt strange for a moment, a bitter taste coating my tongue.

A shadow from above warned me and I lifted the tanto, the blade meeting a body, catching on bone with a jar I felt to my teeth. Spawn legs went one way, the torso the other. It would have landed on Rupert's shoulders and bitten into his neck before he could respond. None of us were dressed for battle and, like mine, his neck was exposed.

To our right, Eli Walker fought three mole-bodied beasts with a sword and a strange-looking gun. All I could see of the weapon was a two-foot-long, inch-wide barrel with a bag strapped beneath his arm. He beheaded a spawn with the blade, turned, and fired. When he pulled the trigger mechanism and squeezed the bag, a cloud shot out the barrel, ignited by a spark. It was a one-handed flamethrower, but the flames it shot weren't ordinary fire. Spawn liked fire, dancing in rings of it at Dark Feasts. But with this fire they screamed and burst into flame. Above the stench of roasting spawn, I smelled eucalyptus and rosemary, kirk oils used for anointing.

Just beyond Eli, Zeddy fought in front of Jacey's door, bleeding from multiple bites, lit by the ambient light from the window. A horde of spawn tore at him. My weight on one heel, I twisted toward him, an instability in my stance.

Three spawn sprinted demon-fast at me. Lifting the sword to block, I reached for a throwing blade, my fingers tingling. The hilt caught on the sheath strap, altering the downward momentum of my hand. I lost my grip and dropped the throwing knife and the tanto into the snow. Almost in slow motion, they disappeared into a drift.

Panic caught at me. I looked up, repositioning my feet. I still had the sword and slashed at the attacking spawn, taking off a hand and part of a head in a fountain of blood. My face and neck burned where it splattered. My hands, coated with spawn blood, were blistered, but I felt nothing. They were numb. The spawn fell back. I saw Zeddy fall. Spawn swarmed over him. "Zeddy!" My voice sounded thready, my breath uneven.

Trying to pull a second throwing knife, I stumbled, my feet clumsy. White-hot pain ripped across my thigh. I looked down as a spawn claw, three-fingered and venom-tipped, dug in. Heated blood pulsed through my leggings and sopped the torn fabric. Acid pain burned inward from the wound. The claw jerked back, taking a chunk of my flesh with it.

"Need help?" Eli took the third spawn down with a gout of flame. In two swings he beheaded the ones I had injured, fighting the way he danced, with fluid grace. I pointed at Zeddy, and Eli called to anther man, dim in the night, who sprinted over to Jacey's stepson.

I pulled my last two knives, holding them by the hilts in one hand, the blades opposite one another, one pointing forward, one back. I had dropped the walking stick sheath in the shop, abandoning it for the tanto. Now I swung the makeshift weapon, knowing it was good only for stabbing, as the knives weren't made for cutting. A tip caught on the fabric of my tunic. I sobbed once in frustration.

"Watch my back," Eli said to Rupert. He slid his gun barrel into a loop at his waist and stepped to me. Brusquely, he jerked my blades free of my clothes. With his knife he sliced off the hem of my tunic and bound it around my thigh, pulling on the knot until I gasped with pain.

"I've seen you fight," Eli said, standing watch as I put weight on the leg and repositioned the blades. "What's wrong?"

My leg felt numb. Had I been wearing my dobok, that claw would have been less than a scratch. "Death and plagues. I don't know," I said, my mouth tingling. "My hands feel strange."

I looked from my leg into Eli's face and the surprise etched there. I had cursed in the presence of Darkness, a foolish, deadly thing to do. Too late now, my brain said, and I looked past him into the shop, my eyes arrested by the sight of the women.

Polly, the elder's wife, and Sennabel, the local librarian, had come to visit me, just like they might any other woman in town - any human woman. They had come for tea. And I hadn't been able to protect them. Tears gathered in my eyes. My hands felt heavy, the blade tips drooping to the ground. One had bitten Polly, and spawn venom was often deadly to humans. I was useless. I hadn't been able to kill the spawn. I hadn't been able to call for seraphic help, because I didn't know how to use the visa. I was useless, just like always.

"Thorn. Toss some light amulets around so we can see," Eli said.

I pulled several clear quartz nuggets from loops on my necklace and threw them into the street. My hand seemed to rise and fall in slow motion, as if pulled by a heavier gravity. The amulets cast pools of illumination that brightened splatters of blood, dead spawn, and clusters of fighters. I saw Audric and Rupert back-to-back, fighting spawn, swords slashing. Across the street, Zeddy went down again, landing on the motionless body of the man who had gone to his rescue. I started toward him but stumbled.

A succubus stepped in front of me. She wore my face, her - my - hair plaited in a war-braid. Unlike the other succubi who looked like me, this one was small-breasted and lithe. But for her red-irised eyes, she was an exact duplicate, down to the scars on her cheek. And she was dressed in a dobok.

She raised a sword toward me in the sitting lion and cut across my body. My block was ugly, but it stopped her blade. The jar vibrated up my arm into my spine. I slipped on the crusted ice, landing on one knee. The succubus bent over me, pressing the point of her blade against my neck, her eyes holding mine. A triumphant grin lit her face as she reached for my waist. I felt the heat of her fingers against my side. She was going after the amulets.

Her head wrenched back and she fell across me, drenching me with blood, Audric's sword buried in her chest. A small shock speared me. It was like seeing myself die, a prophecy of my own demise. She landed across me, and I was showered with the sweet scent of mage blood, my blood, tainted with brimstone. A Dark mage glamoured to look like me? Or one created with my blood to look, feel, smell, and react like me? A Dark clone? Dark mist flowed out of her flesh as she slumped to the street.

"What was she supposed to do?" Eli asked. "Take Thorn's place?"

"Not with those eyes," Audric said, twisting his sword back and out of her flesh.

Across the street, I spotted Ciana and screamed. My throat tore on her name. She was stepping over ruts and across dead spawn, walking with a measured, steady gait. She passed a group tearing into a man's body, eating. They didn't look up. Drawing on the bloodstone hilt, I lunged toward her, stopped by a four-foot-long serpentlike thing with hundreds of jointed legs. It hissed and snapped. Before I could react, Eli hit it with flames. I cut its legs off in a two-foot-long swath, my sword dragging through the snow beneath it. The thing tumbled to one side, burning, the stench like rotten meat and butyric acid. I gagged, stumbling away, screaming for Ciana through the gathering smoke.

She was barely perceptible, sitting beside Zeddy. A conjured shield was wrapped over her and the downed man, rendering them nearly invisible. If I hadn't known where to look, and if her pin hadn't blazed like a campfire in mage-sight, I would never have seen them. How had she opened a shield? Humans couldn't manipulate creation energies.

I wiped my mouth, which was bleeding from some injury I hadn't noticed. I looked from my blood to the shop, which still glowed in mage-sight like a beacon. This was twice Ciana had gotten past my ward without burning herself to a crisp. How? Questions for later. I repositioned the knives, feeling clumsy and jittery. Uncoordinated.

"What's wrong with you?" Eli demanded, stomping on a jerking leg and breaking it into small pieces. When I didn't reply, he pulled me around and slapped my face. My head whipped back, the pain a keystone my mind could grasp. My cheek stinging, I met his eyes. His fingers dug into my shoulders and his mouth landed on mine, the kiss hard and searing and tasting of beer. He pulled back, his amber eyes blazing. "Snap out of it, girl."

I nodded and took a breath, searching for my center, placing my feet with care as he released me and triggered the flamethrower, burning a cluster of spawn to crisps. Only minutes since the start of the attack, yet spawn were everywhere, scuttling up and down the street in a well-coordinated attack. Spawn couldn't coordinate their own bodily functions, let alone a battle. I searched for a Darkness directing the fighting. The war-torn street was full of men throwing up barricades in front of homes and elders chanting prayers and hurling plastic bags of water. Thadd and Durbarge fought back-to-back in the night.

From the north, the direction of the Trine, forms darted into the street, human-shaped but demon-quick, carrying blades and guns. "Daywalkers," Eli whispered. "I count nine." Six moved toward Thadd and the succubus he still fought. Durbarge fell to the ground, barely moving. The remaining three walkers came for us, moving slowly, spreading out in a three-pronged attack pattern. "Hold this," Eli said, thrusting a cross into my hand. "And hit 'em with these." He gave me two bulbous plastic bags sloshing with fluid.

"Bags of water?" I asked.

"Wastewater. From the kirk." He laughed, as if that weren't bizarre. "Used baptismal water and purification water is cheaper and more plentiful than water from the Dead Sea. It slows them down, makes them easier to kill." His tone said I should have known that. "Especially vampires," he added.

"Daywalkers aren't vampires," I said, my lips swollen and numb. "Day. Walkers. It..." I licked my lips, losing track of my thoughts for a moment. "It sorta defeats that whole 'beings of the night' thing." I must have sounded witty, because Eli laughed.

The three walkers surrounded us, moving like hungry lions, half-crouched. I shook my head and set the bags of water on the snow at my feet, assuming the walking horse stance, the cross held with the weapons in my left hand. My arms were heavy, my grip weak; I was afraid I'd drop them.

The two nearest Eli attacked; he drew knives from his belt and threw. "They're sexless, half-demon things that drink blood," Eli said, drawing breath between strikes. "I'll give you the sunlight part, but try the cross. Holy icons work."

Holy icons? A human was giving me advice about holy icons and fighting Darkness. A human. Tears rose at my uselessness and I looked down at the cross, two hunks of wood wrapped with lengths of metal. It had no power, no stones for me to draw on. And I had no soul and no faith to give it power. Watching the walkers tease Eli, I sheathed the two throwing knives and gripped the cross in my scarred fingers, movements clumsy. My hands felt strange, stiff and buzzing. The walker nearest me grinned, showing fangs like slender needles.

Beside me, Eli fired his flamethrower. The daywalker blazed into a fiery dervish even as he turned to the next. It crouched, grin wiped away, fangs flashing, shock on its human-looking face. Eli held up his cross and picked up my two bags of baptismal water; the beast reared back as Eli aimed and tossed. The bags burst on contact and the walker screamed, batting at its body. I was still standing, feet planted in the ice.

"Thorn! Move!" Eli shouted. The world smelled of eucalyptus and rosemary, roasted meat and rotten things. The third walker laughed and darted forward. I stared at my death. Time slowed, dragging at my mind.

My bare hand held the cross, fingers frozen around the base. Useless. The word was a gong of power in my head. The cross was a primitive thing, wood and metal. Shouldn't an icon, a thing of power, look sculpted? Be beautiful? Useless. It was useless. I was useless.

My hand, and its scars, was a dull, blotchy white on the bare wood. Ugly. Ugly scars.

The walker was roaring, a long raucous note, its mouth ratcheting wide in slow clicks of motion. Beyond it, in a circle of light, a small band of teenagers attacked two spawn. A girl fell, bleeding. Aware I was moving with mage-speed as time dragged around me, I shifted to watch, turning from the walker. In an instant, two others fell, a boy and a girl, trying to pull the first to safety. The others circled around, hacking the spawn with kitchen knives.

Distantly, I was aware of blood, of someone nearby shouting my name. Useless, the word gonged again, and something quivered across my skin. Useless. I looked at my other hand and it quaked weakly. Useless, it whispered to me. Useless. Children were dying.

"Thorn?" Eli called, his voice far away. In my peripheral vision, the walker reached for me.

I stared at my hands. I've been spelled. My brain struggled with the concept. My hands were coated with some thing. I knew how to fix that. Didn't I? Screaming, Eli crashed into the walker, striking with a blade and firing a handgun. The explosion was deafening. I smelled cordite and a wisp of hyssop, rosemary, and salt. Holy water.

Half a block away, four screaming women beat at a spawn that was munching on something small lying in the snow. Almost lazily, it reached up and grabbed a woman's wrist, pulling her down to its open mouth. It bit down on her throat. Two other women raced up, carrying automatic weapons, firing into the spawn's body.

Still holding the cross, I reached beneath my ruined tunic and gripped my prime amulet, the stone ring that incorporated my blood, that had been tied to my genetic structure by master mages at my birth. I drew on it, calling on both primes, the bloodstone hilt of the sword and the prime ring.

Heat from the amulets shot through my frozen hands and up my arms. Electricity zinged through me, arching my back, clearing a small lucid place in my mind. I dragged my gaze from the fighters. I could see the spell on my hands. It was conjured of thin bands, and dull orange energy traced around them like veins, forming gloves made of infirmity.

My brain was too drugged to form an incantation to free them; instead, I drew on the power stored in my amulets and simply directed it against the curse. Nothing fancy. Just raw power. Blue light sizzled across my flesh and deeper, into my bones. As my mind cleared, I noted the intricacy of the incantation that had formed it, a subtle and complex conjure.

Eli shook me, his singed, blood-splattered face inches from mine. "Wake up, woman," he shouted. He'd been burned, and blood trickled down his face from a cut bisecting his left eyebrow. I raised my hand, the cross in my palm resting in his hair, and touched a fingertip to the wound. Blue energies made a soft hiss against his skin. His face hard, he pulled me close and kissed me again, his lips sizzling with the same energies. "Son of a seraph," he whispered softly, the curse dangerous. But my mind was elsewhere.

I remembered the Book of Enoch and the gloves I had worn. Sennabel? No, not Sennabel. And not the gloves. It would have been too risky; they could have been misplaced, discarded, used by another. Yet, someone had known I would want that book.

The strange piece of paper inside. Ah. The note. A trap laid for me, one weakened or delayed by my wearing protective gloves. Maybe triggered by falling night. Had my touching the Book of Enoch this morning initiated this attack on the town?

Mind clearing for the first time in long minutes, I pushed away from Eli, handing him his cross, his emblem of faith, useless to the soulless, whom God never hears. Zeddy was down. Had gone down fighting to protect his family, including his half sister, Cissy, a child of nine. An innocent. I could have called mage in dire. The criteria had been met long ago. And if the seraph who answered also decided to punish guilty humans? That was the catch-22 of mage in dire. But I didn't have a choice, hadn't had one since the spawn attacked. Feeling the last of the nebulous spell dissipate, I stepped over dead bodies of daywalkers, gripped the visa, and called. "Mage in battle, mage in dire, seraphs, come with holy fire!"

Eli stepped back and looked up.

Overhead, something screamed.