Bloodring

I curled deeper, savoring the muted pulse of power in the heated springwater. It swirled around me, a dull flush of stored creation energy, slowly released from the smooth stones on the porcelain bottom of the antique bathtub. The heat soothed childhood scars that traced up my limbs, puckered and pale. Scars that still throbbed each long winter, aggravated by the cold. Warmth seeped into my bones, easing winter's ache.

Feeling totally safe for the first time in nearly two weeks, I let my neomage attributes slip free and sipped a Black Bear Brew, the label on the ice-crusted beer bottle blurred by rising steam. A full moon shimmered through the stained-glass window at the back of the loft, and wavering heat rose all around me. Soft light cast by the outer ring of candles whitened the protective ring of salt enclosing me, keeping me safe as I recharged energies exhausted by the Salvage and Mineral Swap Meet and the trail.

A year ago, Lucas would have slid into the big tub and wrapped his arms around me, cradling me against him, kissing the pale length of the few scars my amulets allowed him to see. We would have celebrated my success with wine and passion.

"Dragon bones," I said, pushing away the memory. I refused to spend another second grieving over the woman-chasing cheat I'd had the bad taste to marry.

I drank again and slipped lower into the potent bath, finishing off the beer. On my empty stomach, it went straight to my head. I had done well at the swap meet, appearing as little more than an anonymous shadow in the security monitors. The rock hounds and salvage miners selling their wares would remember only a mild-mannered, nondescript, middle-aged woman who bartered in a lethargic voice for trinkets, not Thorn of Thorn's Gems, a woman for whom the costs would have soared. Our recent success had instantly bred price increases.

Most of the folk who had traded with me, bargaining for all last year's remaining rough stock, wouldn't remember me at all. I had released a rune of forgetting at the conclusion of each deal and come away with fabulous buys. But I'd done it fairly, so no one would have the need to search for a young witchy-woman, accusing me of haggling with unlicensed enchantment.

While selling and trading for rough stock for the next year, I had found and purchased some exquisite cabochons I could use as is, and three charged stones from the time of the beginning of the neomages. They contained wild magic that tingled against my fingers and were likely dangerous, but I hadn't been capable of passing them up. The seller hadn't known what he offered and they came to me for a song.

I had done so well that I should be having a party, singing and dancing and discharging bursts of rowdy wizardry. But as that would get me tossed out of my home, likely in bite-sized, cube-shaped pieces, I was happy to settle for a moment of quiet revelry, even if I did have to celebrate alone. Humans were such spoilsports.

The doorbell rang, a low-pitched chime. A slow, spiraling dread twisted through me. The bell echoed in the hollow of my loft, insistent. Evil happened when callers came after midnight.

Life had taught me that early. I jerked when it chimed again and stood, too fast.

Water surged over the rim of the tub in a tiny tsunami. Almost in slow motion I saw the power-charged water splat on the earth-made tile, swirl, and melt into the salt ring, paralyzing the protection for a moment before it broke the circle and opened a pathway. A hard tremor gripped me as power flowed back into the water around my calves. I slipped, regained my balance, and stepped from the tub to the dark tile. Force rippled up from the baked clay into me, an electric sizzle of might that actually hurt.

"Sweet seraph!" I swore softly. The bell rang again as I dried off, chilled and miserable. Leaving the gas logs and candles burning, I belted on a robe and slid my feet into suede slippers. I was halfway out the door when I remembered the omen of the bloodring.

Surely not... Still moving fast, I raced to the back windows and pushed aside the draperies. A bloodring swirled around the full moon. I choked off a second curse. I'd never heard of a bloodring appearing twice in as many days. Only omens and portents of great significance came more than once. I paused, hands on the jambs, hanging half in, half out of the loft as icy air swirled under my robe. Reaching back inside, I grabbed the walking stick and swept the blade from its sheath, gripping the bloodstone hilt in my right hand, the guard curving over my fingers. I slipped it through the robe's belt, angling the blade down along my robe, hiding it. Into my tight left sleeve I slid a shortsword I kept at the coat rack.

With a swipe at the amulet set into the doorknob, I damped my neomage attributes so I'd stop glowing and ran down the stairway. It was chilled and damp, the treads creaking under my padding feet. At the foot of the stairs I found the keys to Thorn's Gems on their ring and tightened the robe's belt, securing the longsword at my side.

Slowing to human speed, I ran into the display room, to the shop's front door, silhouetted by moonlight through the glass. I flipped on a light, unlocked the door, and gripped the hidden hilt of my blade. I threw open the door, the bells overhead ringing jaunty, clashing notes. Icy air blasted in, chilling my bath-wet skin, carrying with it a scent that rocked me back a step. The unexpected smells of caramel and vanilla, a hint of brown sugar, and beneath it all something peppery, like ginger.

My body clenched in reaction, then went slightly limp, my hold on the sword hilt lax. I looked up. Glacial eyes stared at me, the greenish blue of the ocean in spring. Shaggy red hair fell over his brow. Full lips were stern above an almost square chin, shadowed with a red-gold haze. And the smell. I breathed it in, the scent as rich as a candy shop.

"Are you Thorn St. Croix Stanhope?" he asked, shifting into the light. His coat gapped open with the movement, exposing a sigil pinned to his lapel. A badge of office, half hidden in the folds of cloth. He's a cop. Seraph stones! I'm caught. Hand sweaty, I stepped back again, gripping the sword's hilt to draw it. I had left my amulets at the bathtub. I had no defenses without them. Adrenaline whipped through me, fear throbbing in my veins.

Yet he didn't attack. He was alone. A single human cop would never attack a mage. We were too dangerous.

Indecisive, I drew in a breath, all movement arrested by the smell, rich and sweet. Oddly disorienting. And then I felt the tug of blood, the pull of earth and sex. I felt him flow into me like a wraith, as heated as the stones in my bath, as potent as the springwater I had charged with their stored power. And I knew what the smell meant. This man, this cop, this stranger on my doorstep in the middle of the night, was a child of the seraph Baraqyal, a third- or fourth-generation descendant of the winged warrior and a mage. This was a kylen. I shook my head to clear his scent. At the gesture, the skin over his cheekbones tightened; his eyes narrowed.

Fear rushed through me, chased by doubt. A kylen on my doorstep? A kylen who wasn't drawing his weapon and taking me into custody, or ripping off his clothes to mate? Time, always fluid, slowed to a sluggish honey-thick construct with the flush of fight-or-flight instincts, endorphins and hormones. He isn't here to mate, as a kylen would come to a mage. And he isn't here to arrest me. And then I realized. He doesn't know I'm not human. Stranger still, he doesn't know he's not human. Time snapped back to its accustomed speed. My brain kicked into gear and I released shortsword hilt, trusting the tight sleeve to hold the kris blade in place.

What had he asked? I gestured to his sigil with a jut of my chin. "What's happened? Why would a cop ring my bell after midnight?"

"I could be a rapist," he said with a faint smile, "or a thief here to clean out your shop." Involuntarily, unaware of the power of his breeding, he called to me, his blood promising a touch I recognized and craved but had never known.

Holding on to the door frame with the other hand, seeking the balance that had fled from me, I pointed to his badge. "No. You look like a cop. Mean." And wished I could pull the words back out of the air.

He laughed and unclipped the black sigil with its State Police Department emblem of a hand and open book on one side and a holographic ID on the other. "Insulting, but correct. Thaddeus Bartholomew, detective with Carolina State Law Enforcement."

He was a Hand of the Law, not an Administration of the ArchSeraph Investigator. Okay. That offered me a measure of safety.

"May I come in, out of the cold?"

Instantly, I saw my bed, silk covers tossed back for the night, an antique novel on the comforter, the pages curled and brittle, the book nestled into the deep, thick down. My bed and a kylen in the same room. Warmth spiraled through me. I'd heard tales about mages and kylen and their attraction for one another but had never really believed them. Until now. An icy draft swept up my robe and I clutched the lapels close. The cold helped, brought me to myself enough to see that he was staring at me.

Crack the Stone of Ages. I'm going into heat. With a cop. Very bad idea. "Yes. Come in. I have a fire." I took a deep breath to settle myself. This sucked Habbiel's pearly toes.

I pressed my palm against the bloodstone handle of the blade along my side. A sizzle of power from the mineral shot up my arm, into my heart, into my mind. Suddenly I could reason. I stepped back from the doorway, my mind clearer as the cop entered Thorn's Gems.

Something was wrong with this. There was a child of Baraqyal in Mineral City, a thousand miles south of where he belonged, a kylen living outside of a Realm of Light, a kylen whose mind was sealed to me. So far as I knew, the mind of any mage within miles was an open book - hopes, dreams, fears, hatreds, petty irritations - my problem living in Enclave surrounded by others of my kind. But here was a part-mage, part-seraph, part-human who was as sealed to me as a full-blood human being.

Had Lolo known that was possible? Had she sent him? Or were the state cops working with the AAS, looking for fabled runaway neomages? Or looking specifically for me? Fear roiled through me, clearing my head, and I reached out with a silent skim, little more than a whiff, hoping he was head-blind. He had no blood scent, but I could - almost - hear the cop's thoughts. He believed I was guilty of something. I dropped the skim fast. What did he think I'd done?

He stamped his feet free of snow and closed the door, sealing out the cold, sealing us in, alone together. His eyes fell to my shin, exposed between the lengths of velvet, scars whiter than white. One-handed, I pulled the robe close, tightening the knot, my palm firm against the bloodstone prime amulet. The blade pressed against the flesh of my lower leg through the robe.

"Are you Thorn St. Croix Stanhope?" he asked.

I nodded, an idiot puppet, staring into his eyes, shivers running up my spine, weakening my limbs, the mage-heat he had stimulated beginning to grow. I had been a Stanhope until I took back my maiden name. But those words didn't come.

"Is there a place we could talk?"

"Yes." Talk I could handle, as long as it was general - the weather, the state of the union under the new president, the military's readiness to combat Darkness. But if it became personal, if I gave myself away, I would be in trouble. Within days I would be either dead or insane; neither option was appealing.

I led the way up the steps to the second story, the former hayloft of the two-hundred-year-old livery that had become both Thorn's Gems and my home. His footsteps followed close behind me. Heat wrapped around me like a warm fist as I entered the loft, covertly lifting the walking-stick sheath and hiding it in the robe beside the sword. Bartholomew stopped just inside the door. I could feel him scanning the open space as I crossed the width of the vast apartment and stepped behind my dressing screen.

Dropping the robe, I strapped a blade sheath to my lower left arm and inserted the blade, pulled on silk undies, slacks, and a bulky sweater over a silk tee to hide the curved blade of the shortsword. Fuzzy socks protected my cold feet and ankles, suede slippers went back over them. Silently, I resheathed the longsword in the walking stick. I could feel his apprehension from across the room, his assessment. He didn't like my being out of sight. He was thinking about his weapon.

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

"You going to answer that?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Ma'am, I - "

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Ciana is your daughter?"

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

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

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

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

"Actually"  - he turned back to me, his gaze penetrating and merciless - "we have a report that Lucas was attacked in an alley and dragged off."

The words were like a blow to my stomach. My fingers curled into fists, my reaction surprising to me. I was supposed to be over Lucas. "Is he hurt?" I whispered.

"We don't know, ma'am."

My breath stuck in my throat, throbbing, as I tried to make sense of it. "He's missing?" And then I knew. The bloodring. "He's been kidnapped."

The cop's eyes were steady, watching me. "It appears so. But no ransom demand has been delivered."

"When did it happen?"

"Monday at dusk. But we learned of the attack only this morning."

Monday. While I was eating stew on the trail from Boone. Misery throbbed along the length of my scars, their sensory pathways laden with pain and blanked luminescence.

"Does Ciana know?" I asked.

"I spoke to her and Maria earlier this evening."

I should have been there for Ciana. I should have checked my messages. Shame and a feeling like grief lashed my nerve endings. "Are they all right?"

"As well as can be expected."

And then the pieces clicked into place. I knew why Bartholomew was here in the middle of the night. Warrior instincts flung anger heat through my limbs. My muscles tensed with battle readiness. "Let me guess. I'm your 'woman scorned' suspect."

Thaddeus' brow quirked slightly and when he spoke his words were careful. "There would seem to be an awful lot of women in that category."

My anger vanished in a whip crack of laughter, the sound shaky with adrenaline overload. "You could say that. Lucas is charming and beautiful, and he sleeps around. A lot." But I noted that he hadn't discounted the idea that I might be a suspect.

I looked from the clock to the phone and answering machine, which blinked a tiny red light. I hadn't bothered to listen to the messages. It was so late. If I called now, Maria would have a hissy fit.

I couldn't sit still. Throwing off the afghan, I walked across to the kitchen, poured water into a kettle, and lit the gas stove with a match from a box on the table. The lighting mechanism on the stove had died ages ago and I had never bothered to replace it. A fire amulet worked well enough, and I had matches for when there was company. I set the kettle on the burner.

Ciana would be mad with worry. Maria would only make things worse. I could almost see Lucas' first wife joking about the incident, finding humor in his being hurt, laughing about it in front of Ciana. "What happened? Can you tell me?" I asked over my shoulder as I got out two mugs and a jar of herbal tea. Chamomile, passion fruit, and rose hips for their calming properties. I dumped four tablespoons into the pot, needing a powerful draught.

When I turned around, the cop was right behind me. He was wide, tapering to a narrow waist, taller than any mage, who are small and trim. Much taller than I, at my four feet ten inches. One hand was in his pants pocket, the cashmere suit coat pushed back, exposing the silver and turquoise of his belt buckle and, surely accidentally, a gun, reminding me of the danger he represented. Yet he looked so right in my home, as if he'd been there forever. "Nice house," he said.

"It was the town livery," I said, an inane comment, but the silence was charged, my emotions in a snarl. I had a powerful desire to slide my hand between the buttons of his shirt and touch his chest. Would he arrest me for assault? A witless laugh tittered in the back of my throat and I chattered to cover it. "It was built for the horses and mules used to build the railroad back in the early twentieth century. The wooden parts are post and beam, hand-hewn logs, twelve-by-twelve supports, and ten-by-ten beams for the roof structure," I pointed over his head, his eyes following my hand. "Exterior walls are four-foot-thick stone and brick." It was a charming mishmash of materials I loved, a style unique to Upper Street.

When I looked back to him, his eyes were on my hair, which was still piled high in a scarlet tumble from the bath. Then his eyes trailed down, over my ear, my jaw. My neck. To my mouth. I shivered, need purling deep inside. "Where have you been the last two days?"

I hadn't expected the question. I had expected him to say something else entirely, or hoped he would. The heat he generated quivered in my belly. "At a Salvage and Mineral Swap Meet."

"At the market in Boone?"

"Yes," I said, surprised he knew about it.

"Can anyone substantiate that?"

"I was seen by a few people I know. I have receipts for purchases - " I stopped. I had released a rune of forgetting after most of my sales, and I had been disguised for almost all the purchases. I had to be careful. Few would remember me, and the cop would think that strange. "I had coffee with Fazelle and Nova Henderson, owners of Henderson Shielded Mine. I had a spa day Sunday afternoon, after kirk services were over and locals were allowed out to work. I left for home on the Monday morning mule train, with Guide Hoop Marks. Spent the night on the trail. I got into town tonight after eight p.m. You can check."

"I will. Will you provide me the names of the people you remember from the show?"

My first stubborn instinct was to refuse. It wasn't his business whom I had seen in Boone, but Lucas was in trouble. Which shouldn't have bothered me - shouldn't, but did. I gave him the names and addresses of people with whom I had bargained while not wearing my glamour disguise, including Audric, and he copied them down in his little notebook, seeming not to note that one address was right next door. The kettle sang and I poured out two mugs of tea, straining the loose leaves with a silver strainer, and handed him a cup. He asked a few more questions that seemed to slide right out of my memory the second I answered.

And then he was leaving. I followed him down the steps to the outer door of Thorn's Gems and locked the shop behind him. Standing in the shadow, I watched as he moved through the snow across the sidewalk toward the town's only hotel.

The last hour was a blur of nothingness in my mind, a fuzz of sound and need, and when he was gone, I made it back upstairs, where I fell against the closed door. A kylen! Had Lolo sent him? Why hadn 't I been inside his mind? Was it his human genes? I had to stay away from him. But if mage-heat kicked in full force, I'd be hard-pressed not to take him in the streets.

Dizziness and need rocked me. I stripped and pulled on flannel pajamas, but heat and cold, sexual attraction and fear, seemed to have invaded my body. I couldn't get warm, couldn't get comfortable. I pulled three more bath stones from the tub and huddled with them under the down duvet on my bed, drawing from their power. When I had myself under control, I listened to messages while sipping cooling tea, hitting the button until I heard the sound of Ciana's voice. She was crying, begging me to call.

Knowing she wouldn't be able to sleep after learning her father was missing, I dialed her number. Of course, Maria answered and wouldn't let me talk to Ciana, though I could hear the child of my heart begging in the background. Instead, Maria called me a few names banned just after the start of the Last War and hung up on me. Frustrated, my last nerve thoroughly stomped on, I replaced the receiver and sipped my cold tea.