Seraphs

"Too late, little mage." The words echoed across the buildings. "Too late to change the course of this night."

Eli swore, or perhaps prayed. He lifted his flamethrower and hefted a plastic bag of baptismal water.

I followed his aim up, into the black sky. Above the town hovered a leathern, seared shape, crackling with dark energies, wings outspread, clawed hands reaching wide. Its naked body was muscular and strong, but disfigured, flesh puckered and scarred, wings featherless, the skin between the bones thin and ridged with scar tissue. It was a huge being, power rippling across ruined flesh like black lightning. Yet its face was wholly, flawlessly exquisite, as if carved from a slab of perfect white marble. The face of a seraph, created by the Most High to be entrancing, captivating. Not a Fallen Watcher. Something much worse.

I almost cursed, but swallowed down the words before it could hear and think it was summoned. It was a Major Power, and I knew - I knew - it was Forcas. One of the true Fallen. A seraph who had gone his - its - own way. It looked at me, meeting my eyes.

Eli wound up like a pitcher and threw the water. The bag hit Forcas on the arch of its foot, rupturing and splattering. The water sizzled and smoked into vapor. Forcas laughed. Eli fired his flamethrower. A gout of fire rose into the air. Forcas inhaled, drawing the blaze up its body to its face and into its lungs, still laughing. Eli stepped back, rigid with shock.

It swept its wings open. The cloud-smeared sky and distant moon shone through the scorched skin stretching between the wing bones. With a tremendous rush of frozen air, the wings closed and opened. Eli raised a gun, firing a barrage of shots, the bullets filled with holy water. With a negligent wing, Forcas knocked him aside and landed. An amulet hung on a thong around its neck. The spur. Sweat trickled down my spine, prickling like broken feathers.

I raised my sword, a puny weapon in the face of such might. It pointed one long, slender finger at me, holding my eyes. Its irises, in that white, perfect face, were violet, like the velvet of flower petals, but brutal, cold, pitiless. Its voice boomed, "I have you again, body, blood, and spirit."

My damaged side spasmed. The pain spiraled out, smoldering, entwining my torso, piercing through the invisible wound where a talon had speared me twice. But there had been no physical wounds. Psychic injuries only. A taloned hand reached for me.

My legs gave way and I fell, twisting my knee and thigh muscle where the spawn had clawed it. A dead walker broke my fall and I gasped, whispering mage in dire again.

Ciana looked at me from across the street, her eyes looking older through the shield, wiser, and full of grief. Her mouth formed my name. I rolled from the walker to the blood-soaked snow. My side contracted again in unbearable agony. Forcas laughed. "Mine," it said.

The pain exploded. Violent violet pain, the color of Forcas' irises, a ruthless anguish, ripped through me. Lying on the snow, my head lolled down, my face in the frozen mass. Dying. I was dying.

From somewhere, some distant place, lavender eyes watched me, eyes so similar to Forcas', yet darker in hue and full of mercy. Eyes... I had seen these eyes before, in the face of a cobra, in my dreams, and, once, on the Trine. The eyes of Holy Amethyst's wheels. Eyes. Wheels within wheels, covered with eyes. Like the Mistress herself. Eyes. The eyes of El Roi, the god that sees me. I knew it, but I didn't understand, didn't know where the knowledge of the name came from.

I heard the wheels softly singing, like bells and wind instruments, and the bellowed breath of a distant galaxy. "We cannot come. We cannot. We are not yet healed. Are caught in time. Sooo sooorry..."

Taloned hands wrapped around my waist and lifted me. The agony, which couldn't grow more, penetrated deeper, a torture so great my breath froze solid in my lungs. Forcas pulled me close to his face, his strong white teeth bared in a grin.

A fireball landed on the snow with a spit of sound. Eli's flamethrower? Shooting at us? Two other blazes, brilliant white, round balls of lightning moving in unison, touched down on Forcas' hands. The Darkness roared and wrenched away. My body flipped in the air, my hair a spiral around me. I landed again on the snow, face to the sky, and air whooshed out of me in a pained grunt. Fire was dancing all around me, coiling, curling balls of energy, gusting blue smoke, seven globes the size of conch shells, moving and whirling in concert.

One landed on my face and I flinched, but there was no pain. Closing my eyes against the brightness, I managed a breath, cold air blistering my lungs, the movement of air fluttering the flame. It landed on my scarred hand, settling like a bird at its nest. I opened my eyes and watched as six others chased Forcas into the sky. Ridiculous sight. Tiny, spherical flames chasing the oversized Darkness.

Forcas cursed the Most High, a curse so foul it shivered the air. The spheres divided into groups of three to Forcas' left and right, arranged themselves into arrow formations, and attacked. Darting beneath its wings, they pierced Forcas' sides. I blinked my eyes against the flare of colliding energies, brilliant plasma streaking the night. Minions of the Light.

Relief swept through me, so intense I sobbed. The Flame on my hand wavered with the sound and darted up to perch on my mouth. Suddenly I could breathe, could think. The fireball, a searing orb of light, seemed to wink at me, and danced away, taking my pain with it, leaving something else in its place, some other emotion. One so improper for a battle that it took a moment for me to identify it as it bubbled up in me. A blossoming euphoria. The blaze jetted away, joining its brothers as they harried Forcas, who hovered in the air above me, wings beating.

I was sure they were Flames. More correctly, Minor Flames. Though I had never seen them, I had heard of the self-sustaining, intelligent creatures. Spirit and energy, they were thought to be composed of plasma and were members of the High Host, part of the Seraphic Council. They were warriors, holy beings not capable of transmogrification, beings who always looked like fire. Historically, they followed seraphs at the call of battle dire.

High above the town, Forcas pulled its sword, demon-iron sweeping up, a shivering cold like black light dancing off the blade. The Flames whipped in and out, slicing and burning where they touched, then darting away before the Power could react. Forcas bellowed and I covered my ears at the sound, a low-pitched roar of fury and pain. Harried by Flames, Forcas ducked and wove, swatting with its blade. Its blood, blacker than the night sky, splattered to the snow with spits of steam.

At Forcas' head, light appeared, blinding, wrenching, taking away the night. In its midst was a seraph. He had heard my call. I sobbed, sucking in air, lying on the snow in the blood of daywalkers at the feet of a Major Darkness, staring at the battle in the heavens.

The teal-feathered seraph in scintillating battle armor threw power from one bare hand. Bolts of white light stabbed at Forcas. Only inches from its body, they spread into crackling pools that skimmed away, moving in smooth arcs, bouncing off its shield. From Forcas' sword, blackish-purple light burst outward. The seraph vanished and reemerged, as if flashing out of and into reality. The black-light power slid past him. The seraph drew his shield, a glistening disc that bent light like abalone shell. Their wings beat the air.

I rose up on my elbows as energies shivered above me. The hair on my arms and head lifted, electrified. The seraph, dusky-skinned, with curling, smoke-colored hair and a widow's peak, drew his sword in a steel-on-steel swish, a harsh sound like pulsing blood and slicing pain and death. The blue steel, silvered and gilded with light, raised up, trapping Forcas between the Minor Flames, the earth, and escape.

The seraph screamed his name, the word echoing off the distant hills like thunder, like massive brass bells. "Cheriour! Cheriour! To me!" At the words, the Flames darted in, formed three groups, and attacked Forcas' eyes. The Power screamed, a desperate sound, and whirled in place, scattering the Flames. Two were slammed to the earth and lay on the snow, pulsing slowly. Wounded.

Cheriour's wings rose, tips touching, far over his head. His scent flowed into the street, lemon mint and sage, spicy and cool. My body clenched in reaction, my eyes fastened to him. The down beneath his wings was pale, shading to black at the tips. His armour shimmered, an aurora borealis of might. Bombarded by the remaining Flames, Forcas curled its body in an impossible coil and shot up, high into the sky.

The seraph raked his teal-irised eyes over me where I lay. A golden disc rested on the center of his chest, a sigil, a seal of office in glowing amber. In a burst of thundering light, Cheriour followed Forcas into the sky.

I blinked at the explosion and curled into a tight ball. I knew this seraph. In the lexicon of seraphs he was known as a "terrible angel," a seraph charged with the pursuit and retribution of criminals, his sigil protecting him from mage-heat. He was the Angel of Punishment who had judged me, and allowed me to stay in Mineral City. Though I hadn't known his name, I remembered his power flowing over me like a cloud, intimate as a lover. I had survived his touch, but when such a seraph draws his sword, humans die. Always.

Up and down the street, the sounds of battle penetrated: shouts, screaming, the crack of gunfire. I unwound from the snow and struggled to my feet. Scant moments had passed in the battle between the Light and the Dark. Around me, the more mundane battle between humans and Minor Darkness continued, humans and spawn and daywalkers in clusters, fighting in the light of my tossed amulets, or lying on the snow, still with death.

No humans had fallen at the appearance of Cheriour. Not yet. But from where I stood, I could see a man and a succubus coupling on the snow. Cries of pleasure and passion mingled with cries of pain. Similar sounds came from open doors up and down the street. If the seraph returned, if his sword was still drawn, there would be a slaughter. I looked for Eli and spotted him with a group of elders fighting two walkers, standing over the bodies of another elder and a succubus, dead. Had they killed both, executing kirk judgment?

I had to destroy the succubi before Cheriour returned. Disregarding the hurt in my side and chest wall with each breath, I chose a group of fighters who needed help. Bending, I picked up my sword and two throwing knives, and cleaned them on the snow before positioning them in their sheaths. The cross, half buried in a rut, went into my waistband on my left, near the wound that wasn't, the wood icy and soothing against my skin.

When I tried to stand upright, pain erupted from my side. I caught myself with an arm around my waist and fought for breath that wedged in my lungs, an inferno of torture. I held myself, pressing the cross against me, and finally found air, a sweet agony of frigid oxygen. Sword of Michael, I thought, more prayer than curse.

As I inhaled, I smelled vanilla spiced heavily with ginger, and knew Thadd was near. A Minor Flame swooped close and halted as if inspecting me. I was pretty sure it was the one from before, though I couldn't have said why. It landed on my hand again. Seemingly satisfied, it soared away, leaving me blinking, my night vision lost, my pain undiminished.

"Are you hurt?" Thadd asked from behind me.

"I don't know," I managed, looking around. The battles had moved on for the moment, most taking place in the wash of illumination from my amulets. I tried a breath and agony shot through me like a red-hot spear. I gasped. "Maybe. But I don't think it's a physical injury. It's something that happened first in a vision and then when I was fighting a daywalker. And again just now." Three times injured in the same place. Was that significant, even if Forcas hadn't touched me with the spur this time?

"You want to explain?"

Bent over, I tottered to a set of narrow steps leading from the street to a store and sat, leaning back against the small porch, stretching my spine as much as I could. My feet burned with cold through the thin indoor soles and I flexed my toes to restore circulation.

The cop followed and settled beside me, a gun dangling from each hand, exhausted, watching for attackers. As my breathing returned to normal, I told him about being trapped below the Trine, and of the spur that pierced my side. I told him about the daywalker. And because the fighting had passed us by for the moment, I told him about the poisoning and my hands. He listened without comment.

"Dragonet," he said when I finished. At my expression, he explained, "That's my guess. Dragonets have been reported in the nearby mountains." He jutted his chin at a bloody pile of chitinous body parts. "Like that one. It's why I'm still in Mineral City. Dragonets have spurs." He glanced at me once and then away. His scent was changing, the smell of honey growing, the smell of ginger fading. His heat was overtaking the fight-or-flight of battle. "Seraph blood can heal psychic wounds," he said diffidently.

"Yeah, well, when he comes back, after he finishes killing off half the town, maybe he'll fix me up good as new."

Thadd laughed softly at the bitterness in my tone. "Good point."

Something crashed in the center of the street. Faster than the detritus that blasted out from the impact site, Thadd rolled over me and pulled me beneath the porch. We huddled in the narrow crawlway, his body over mine, his arms supporting his weight to keep from crushing my thinner, more brittle bones. A spray of acid followed the explosion, the heated mist boiling the snow, polluting the air with brimstone and sulfur. Things, sizzling and hot, fell from the sky, hitting the buildings like thunder. Fighters screamed, both human and Dark.

Thadd grunted and lifted a hand. Blood smeared his palm. Shrapnel had cut him. His scent grew in the small space, and my amulets glowed, fighting the heat his blood and body were stimulating. My arm snaked around his waist, my eyes on his hand. I wanted to lick the blood. Another explosion sounded in the street, the vibration of the blow shuddering through the earth. I slid a hand inside his coat and found the warmth of his chest through his shirt.

Thadd laughed softly and lifted my torn tunic. He pushed the cross to the side and placed his wounded hand on the bare flesh of my side. Instantly, as with the touch of the Flame on my mouth, my pain subsided, but this was a deeper ease, a profound relief. He stroked along my side, his blood smearing my skin. His lips found mine, filling me with the taste of vanilla and honey and brown sugar. I cupped his head and pulled him closer, sighing into his mouth. His hand pressed hard over my side, kneading the muscles, his seraph ring heating on my skin.

I pushed aside his coat and shirts, stroking along the valley of his lower spine. Heat gathered between us, a throbbing of blood that settled deep in the pit of my abdomen and high in my breasts.

Thadd's body slipped between my thighs and settled at the center of me, thrusting with a gentle pressure. I sighed into his mouth and his tongue swirled against mine. I pulled him closer, wanting the weight of his body, moving my hands up his back. I touched softness. Feathers. Thaddeus had feathers where before were simply raised ridges. Wings had sprouted on either side of his spine.

My fingers moved into them, stroking. His scent grew. He moaned against my lips and moved a hand up, cupping my breast. I traced his wings, the humeri longer than my hands, the bones lighter than air. The primary feathers were nearly fourteen inches long. They quivered beneath my palms. A thought insinuated itself into my mind. He would soon be unable to hide the fact of his part-seraphic heritage. I bit down on his lip, sucking it inside my mouth. He groaned and I thrust up at him, grinding, wanting him closer.

"What manner of Darkness are you?" The words belled through the night. Thaddeus pulled away, gasping. I groaned in want, my fingers sliding from his feathers. The sound of combat intruded, the clash of sword and the crash of energies. I smelled ozone and sulfur and blood. My heat began to ebb. Sense returned. Crawling on our elbows, we scuttled to the edge of the porch.

Hovering above the street, his wings beating powerfully, Cheriour fought swarming fiends, beasts leaping up to the seraph from the street, ten feet into the air. Dragonets.

Each was unique. One was shaped like a centipede with a wolf's head, a pair of human hands, and barbed hooks at every joint. One was a striped serpent, its mouth open like a striking rattler, but it was furred in shades of orange and black. Its tail was hooked, a poisonous barb like a scorpion. Another was scarlet, with tendrils like kelp dragging along the earth. They had dozens of sets of leathery bat wings, each spanning a foot, and with them spread, they could jump from the earth as if they had springs. I was pretty sure I had seen them before, in the vision while I was trapped underground, when I was first speared in the side.

They moved with the quickness of demons, so fast that I wasn't certain of their number. Maybe ten. Yet they smelled unlike any demon in the texts or histories. There was little sulfur, ichor, or acid; rather, they smelled like Lucas. They smelled like Stanhopes. The seraph hesitated, his defense slowed by the vow to protect the blood of Mole Man.

As we watched, the scents of heat and blood and seraphs and Stanhopes mingling in my nostrils, the furred scorpion's stinger whipped up and under Cheriour's shield. The seraph bellowed with pain and fury, bringing his sword down on the beast, the blade flashing with reflected light. The furred serpent was cleaved in two, the halves rolling into ruts in the street, thrashing as if in pain. But still alive, even after the touch of seraph-steel. The wounds sealed over with gelatinous caps the shade and texture of clotted blood.

"That's not good," Thadd said, pulling a semiautomatic from a thigh holster.

The two halves pulsed, palpitations that ebbed and flowed beneath fur. Faster than I thought possible, a rounded bone protruded from the neck opening: the top of a skull. As one half grew a head, the other grew hind legs. Wings sprouted on both. The new beasts were smaller than the original, but the transformations were fast, energy for the metamorphoses sucked from the air and snow, leaving hot air currents blowing into the street and the snow evaporating. There had been dragonets in the Last War, but none since; none in so long that they had fallen into the category of legend. And none quite like these.

Resting on his elbows, his head bumping against the porch overhead, Thadd pulled back a sliding mechanism on the top of his gun and checked the chamber. A brass cartridge gleamed inside. A sterling silver tip protruded from it, shining in my returning night vision.

"Holy water?" I asked. Holy water was imported from the Dead Sea at dreadful cost, but it was known to be deadly against Darkness. If one had enough of it - and there was never enough.

"Yeah. A drop in the tip. It's designed to shatter just after impact, depositing water-coated shrapnel." The chamber closed with a metallic click as I gathered my bloody sword to me and pulled a throwing knife, missing the tanto. "How's your side?" Thadd asked.

I paused, surprised. I was out of pain, my mind clear. I wasn't cold, though I was dangerously underdressed for the temperatures. I met his eyes and said, "What did you do?"

"Seraph blood can heal psychic wounds as well as physical ones," he said, shrugging. "I smeared some of my blood on you. I figured kylen blood might work too. You ready?"

Out in the street, Cheriour screamed a battle cry, the note painful to my ears. I smelled seraph blood, a lot of it, and knew he had been wounded badly. "Yeah. Go."

As if we had rehearsed the move, we rolled from the protection of the porch and to our feet. We were running before anything saw us, attacking the two winged halves. Thadd shot one. I sliced into the other with a double Zorro move, cutting off its legs, wings, and tail. As I cut, it spit at me, the saliva spurting into the snow, melting it with a hot hiss. As battle-lust claimed me, I called out, "Jehovah sabaoth!" Blood erupted as I removed its new head and hacked its torso in two. I jumped back and its pieces coiled into tight balls, pumping blood. Finally, its death throes stopped and it lay still.

Thadd shot again, his beast still moving. "These things don't kill easy."

I spun a throwing knife at him. It landed beside his foot, sliding along his boot sole, and Thadd's eyes went large. "Use that," I said. "Mine's dead. Cut them enough and they bleed out."

From 2 Samuel, I quoted a stone mage's battle mantra as I picked another dragonet and cut into its tail, my arm moving with the tempo of my voice, "God, my rock" - cut and cut - "in Him will I take refuge." Cut and cut and cut. The beast was a scaled, catlike thing with four-inch fangs. It whirled, its back feet and most of the tissue from one hip gone in a bloody heap. It snarled, spitting venom, and sprang at me, raking the air with razor claws. "My shield, and the horn of my salvation." Three cuts.

Choosing a move based on its form, I ducked beneath its lunge and stabbed up in the sleeping cat move, into its tender underbelly. Its momentum carried the killing stroke deeper, eviscerating it. The jar of its landing traveled up my shoulder into my spine. Its entrails splatted on the ground and uncoiled in a messy heap. I beheaded the beast with a single strike. Settling into the rhythm of fighting, I hacked it into pieces. "My high tower, and my refuge; My savior, thou savest me from violence." At my feet a second dragonet bled out, mewling like a kitten as it died. It was in dozens of pieces. "Four down, five more to go." The assault of Darkness was in a group of nine. Most of them were concentrating on the seraph overhead. Easy pickings for us.

From across the street, Eli and a ragtag cluster of humans raced from a pile of dead spawn and daywalkers toward the seraph. I picked out another dragonet. Thadd shouted advice to the approaching humans on how to kill the beasts. The group spread out and circled an eight-foot-long wasplike thing with demi-wings and knifelike claws. I shouted scripture and attacked another beast. A trio of Flames darted in and pierced its flesh to either side of my sword. They disappeared inside. The beast howled with pain.

Above me, Cheriour tilted his body at an impossible angle, his feet to the sky, head toward the earth, arms reaching down. Like me, he was chanting scripture, a single line over and over. "And behold, a pale horse." It was a quote from Revelation, and as war cries went, it seemed pretty pallid, but I wasn't complaining. His sword no longer simply cut the dragonets in two. Now he was slicing and dicing, leaving them in numerous pieces, none large enough to regenerate. And then I remembered the full scriptural quote. "And behold, a pale horse, and he that sat upon him, his name was Death." Cheriour was calling upon one of the four horses of the apocalypse. I shivered. It was warfare most extreme.

I dispatched my target and whirled, seeking another, searching up and down the street. Groups of humans were killing succubi, stabbing the woman shapes while they screamed, entreating mercy, or bared their breasts, offering sex. Beside me, humans finished off their dragonet prey. Thadd, reeking of ginger, stood over the unmoving bodies of two others.

I sucked in a breath that sounded like a bellows and lowered my blades. The muscles in my arms were stiff, my fingers frozen in place on the hilts. I hurt in a dozen new places. I was burned, bitten, and had sustained a glancing blow from a fast-moving stinger. But I was alive. Euphoria shot through me and I raised my head, howling in exultation. All the Darkness were dead. The town was saved.

Cheriour landed beside me in the street, his primary flight feathers brushing the snow as he closed them with a whoosh like storm wind. I turned to him, grinning with victory. And saw his sword. It was still drawn, raised over his head. Beside me, a man fell to his knees, then face-first onto the frozen, crusted snow.