Host

  Use the binding, Audric had suggested. Okay. An icy wind blew against my body and I shivered in reaction. “You are mine,” I said to the beast, “bound to me. Let the child go.”

  The thing that no longer resembled Gramma cocked its head, the movement human-slow. Its shoulders rose and fell, an almost pensive shift of muscles.

  “Let the child go. You are mine. You must obey,” I said, drawing on the mage visa, the one function I had mastered, to instill my voice with command.

  The glamour quivered across its features again, revealing patches of alabaster skin, blond hair, and one vivid eye in a mishmash of features, the beautiful Jane Hilton on one half, Gramma on the other. The new face, the face Lucas had left me for, looked startled, then astonished, and said, “You!” The lovely half snarled in anger and rippled, and the human visages vanished, leaving only succubus in its wake. The beast smiled, canines longer and razor sharp. Cissy fell silent. I wasn’t sure she was breathing.

  I rushed it, blades flashing. It snapped back a dozen steps, demon-fast. “No, no, no, mageling.” A shield snapped open just in front of my toes, the energies throwing me back, feet burning like lightning. In mage-sight, the shield was an ocher-yellow dome seething with earth energies. It was a mage construct, which meant there were mages nearby, Dark mages, helping this beast. Whether willing or under compulsion, it was bad on all sorts of levels. “You constrained me once,” it said. “My master’s master freed me of your lowly incantation.”

  My master’s master? Death and plagues. Is she talking about the Dragon? Audric and I circled the shield, reversing midway, back and forth. My socks stuck and pulled free of the ice beneath my aching feet with each careful step. Gramma sniffed, head raised, searching for a whiff of the Stanhope genetic strain, but was unable to locate Ciana. I looked around for Rupert or Ciana’s father—my ex-husband, Lucas—or Thaddeus Bartholomew, their cousin, all descendents of Mole Man. I would have prayed they’d all remain indoors, but I knew they wouldn’t. I knew they hadn’t. That would be too easy and men never made anything easy. The succubus’s eyes glowed brightly as it located prey off to my right. Seraph stones. What was I going to do?

  From my angle, I could see Ciana standing on the high porch, her nightgown fluttering in the rising breeze. She was watching me, and in her hand was the pin gifted her by the seraph Raziel as protection from evil; it glowed a brilliant gold, as if she held a star in her fist, shielding her. The succubus was looking away from the girl and down, on street level, at Rupert.

  My best friend was standing in the doorway of the shop, sleep-creased, half-naked. His face was blank, empty. Seraph stones. He was spelled. So was Lucas. In my side vision, I saw Ciana’s father walk onto Upper Street; he stared at the beast as if it held his heart in one hand. On his neck, smudges of Dark energies glowed, old scars left from imprisonment beneath the Trine, activated by the growing power of the beast. But the queen hadn’t seen him. Yet.

  “Audric,” I warned. Cold wind tore through my pajamas. My calves cramped as my feet froze. Cissy had gone limp. Above me, Ciana watched, her face serene, waiting.

  “I see them.” Face blank, Rupert reached toward the beast. Audric stepped to block him, arms out wide. “Now might be a good time to try the anticonjures you’ve been working on.”

  My mind cleared, taking on the crisp clarity of incipient battle. I lifted one of the small, drilled, and polished Dalmatian jasper nuggets, the opaque black-and-white stones hanging from thin string loops on my necklace. I had made a batch of the anticonjures—supposed to disable most lower to mid-level incantations—but hadn’t tested them. I had no idea if they would diminish the lure of a succubus or make things worse. If the succubus’s allure was a higher level conjure, they probably wouldn’t work at all.

  I ripped a nugget from its temporary loop and tossed it to the ice at Rupert’s feet. It bounced. Exploded. Time slid sideways, a slow-motion vision, a dozen things happening at once and I saw/felt them in overlays of sensation.

  Snow and ice blasted over Rupert, the concussion throwing him backward. Audric and I hit the snow, my skin abrading in a wide patch along calf and lower arm as I slid. My ears popped painfully. The succubus’s shield fell and she howled, sharp canines reflecting moonlight. The knife at Cissy’s throat bit down. Blood drenched her nightgown. Snow and ice tumbled from the air like hail. As ice-shrapnel fell, the beast changed its grip and reached for Rupert, lying prone, stunned. The beast smiled in a parody of lust and delight. Lucas stepped closer, his expression hungry, arms out in entreaty. Wordless, I rolled to my knees. I couldn’t reach them in time.

  A thunk sounded over the ringing in my ears. The succubus shuddered and dropped its arm. A knife hilt protruded from its neck below the clavicle. Snarling, it almost let Cissy fall.

  From the street, I threw the remaining two amulets at the queen. They exploded at her clawed feet, ripping into the rutted ice. The smell of succubus, of dead things, stagnant water, and rotting flowers vanished in a blast of sulfur and brimstone, the scent of Darkness. Lucas was knocked to the earth and rose shaking his head as if waking from a nightmare. I had a single glimpse of his horrified face. The anticonjure had worked. Sort of. Its shield was gone and its conjure of allure was nullified, but it wasn’t dead. Another knife appeared in the body of the creature, the sound lost in the concussion of the blasts.

  “Audric?” I shouted. I was deaf but needed information. Who’d thrown the knives? I rolled to my feet and raced forward.

  “Not mine,” he shouted, the words muffled in my damaged ears.

  My longsword and tanto slashed in the lion rising, aiming along the succubus’s torso beside and below the child held against its breast. I cut the beast deeply, leaving four wounds in its hide, and danced back when it slashed out with claws that hadn’t been there before. Cissy, who I had thought unconscious, whimpered in pain, her tears bright pink in mage-sight. She inhaled, the sound harsh in the night.

  The succubus pulled one knife from its chest and dropped it to the street. It fell slowly, time still out of sync, to the rutted snow. The blood-covered blade glowed Dark in mage-sight. I sliced through the beast’s right Achilles tendon and it staggered. So I severed its left, leaving it flatfooted and immobile for a moment. Darkness healed fast. The succubus wasn’t a fallen seraph or demon, not in the scriptural sense of the word; it wasn’t a spirit being; it wasn’t immortal. Like spawn and other minor Darkness, it could be killed.

  “Crap in a bucket,” a tinny voice called from across the street. “Thorn?” I shook my head to clear the fear and the dregs of the blast away and saw Eli standing in an open doorway, his slight form backlit by lamplight, night-vision goggles on his face, a bulbous weapon slung across his body.

  “Can you burn it?” I asked, my ears popping, adapting to the pressure changes.

  He looked down at his weapons and back to the succubus and shook his head. “Not dead. Not something that powerful. We’re gonna need help with this big sucker.”

  “I was afraid of that,” I said. Eli’s flamethrower was effective against smaller creatures, and had once burned Forcas’ eyes to slow it down, but to kill the bigger baddies, I would need more firepower. Which was scary on top of scary. It limited our options, because I didn’t know how to use my visa to call for seraphic support, and the succubus hadn’t given us an opening to call for help in the traditional manner. So far. When it did, that help probably wouldn’t come in time. Someone would die. Then lots of someones. Save the town to let it die by holy salvation; a catch-22.

  Another knife hit the succubus and it roared, bulking huge, its body nearly six feet tall, its energy patterns swarming nearly two feet higher. Its transformation from Gramma to Big Bad Ugly was complete: a square jaw filled with jagged teeth, black lips and white gums, upper and lower tusks, unblinking slit-eyes like a snake’s, and skin banded in orange and black scales. And it had claws that a full-grown lion would envy. It had evolved since I’d last seen it unglamoured. It was huge, far more po
werful. Yet it hadn’t seen Lucas or Ciana. Why not? That was probably important.

  The answer opened out before me almost like a response to prayer. Lucas had been exposed to seraphic forces. So had Ciana. The queen could only locate Rupert, and until I turned off the ward on the loft, it hadn’t even been able to smell him well. Though I knew the outcome would not have been different, guilt slithered through my mind.

  The succubus looked at me and shook Cissy. “Give me one of Mole Man’s blood or this one will feed me,” the queen said. “Others will follow.”

  “Oh, merciful savior,” a voice echoed through the dark. “My baby.” Jacey emerged from her doorway, nightgown showing beneath a drab shift. She held knitting needles like weapons in one hand, a blue-coned acetylene torch flaming in the other. A mother come to do battle for her child. But she wasn’t a warrior. “Thorn?” Fear coated her voice.

  Dancing to avoid its flailing free arm, I cut the succubus again, aiming for its hamstring. Even moving with mage-speed I barely avoided an immense, swiping fist. The beast was slowing, but not enough. Unless it fell, I couldn’t take its head. It could heal from most anything else. And a queen might heal from that too for all I knew. I stabbed its groin and raced back. The fight had lasted only moments but it felt like hours. I was growing clumsy with cold.

  Lights flashed on along the street, throwing rectangles of brightness onto the snow. Rupert moaned, pushing himself into a sitting position, touching his head as if his ears hurt. “What—” he stopped, staring at the scaled beast clutching his godchild in its arms. “Cissy,” he breathed. Scantily clad humans poured from doorways, drawn by the anticonjure explosions. Some carried axes, others shotguns and long-bladed knives. Moments passed, fractions of seconds that felt like days. Like Ciana, Jacey stood, waiting on me. Trusting me. I was breathing hard, the frigid air burning my lungs.

  A third knife slammed into the beast, catching it in the hip joint with deadly accuracy, missing Cissy by a quarter of an inch. It shrieked, an agonized sound, and I feared the queen would crush Cissy in anger, but the succubus held the girl high, staring at the black blood pumping from its femoral artery.

  A fourth knife thunked into the base of its spine, hilt quivering. I whipped my head, scanning the night. Like me, the attacker was circling the succubus, but even with mage-sight open, I wasn’t seeing him. Cheran was shielding himself.

  To my left and right, the Steins appeared out of the night, automatic weapons at the ready. Unlike the rest of us, the town’s only Jewish family was dressed for war, in padded clothes, coats, gloves, and boots. At the sight, pure agony arched through my feet. The man to the left wore a yarmulke instead of a battle helmet, as if battling Darkness was a holy act. Maybe it was. The woman to my right had knotted her hair into a tight fighting queue, her face rigid with resolve, fear nowhere to be seen.

  Her confidence restored my own. All minor Darkness could be destroyed. The succubus could be killed. The Steins’ people had been battling Darkness for six thousand years. I took a breath, settling myself.

  Lucas stepped close, buttoning a flannel shirt against the freezing night, black hair loose in the breeze. He accepted a shotgun from the woman.

  “It’s loaded with Dead Sea salt ammo,” she said. Which meant the pellets in each shell were encased in a capsule of salt mined from the Dead Sea and shipped over at dreadful cost. It was worth more than gold or diamonds, but it was one thing that would kill Darkness as well as a blade. She acknowledged me, a sharp nod. I remembered her name. Gloria. Gloria Stein. She had two kids and a husband, the man locked in fighting stance beside her.

  “Thanks,” Lucas said. “Can you get Cissy free?” he asked me, placing his feet carefully to either side of a rut in the snow. “If you can, maybe I can disable it with this.”

  “And we can finish it off,” the woman said, her weapon making a smooth ratcheting sound, metal on metal.

  I took a second breath to answer yes. “Smoke,” I said instead.

  Audric looked around and up. “The roofs. Spawn.”

  “Jesus,” Lucas prayed.

  Reddish creatures scampered across the roof of my loft. They carried brands glowing with fire. Farther down the street, flames shot from the roof of the library. Seraph stones. They were burning the town.

  Ciana mumbled. It sounded like, “I can do this. I can.”

  “Ciana, no!” I shouted. Whatever it was, it would be dangerous. Stanhopes always found self-destructive, sacrificial methods to help others. Lucas looked from his daughter to the beast, started to speak, and closed his mouth on the words, his face going cold and expressionless as he studied the queen. I had never seen that look before.

  “Thorn?” Jacey said again.

  “Shut off the torch,” I said to her, turning from my ex-husband. “Fire can’t hurt that thing.” At her stricken reaction, I said, “We’ll rescue Cissy. I promise.” Stupid, stupid, stupid. Never promise the life of another. But I had. The determination on Gloria’s and Lucas’ faces convinced me we could.

  Ciana held the shining seraph pin straight-armed over her other palm, as she leaned perilously out over the street. She stabbed down. The smell of Stanhope blood filled the night and the succubus whipped up its head, searching for the source. Ciana extended her wounded hand, bloody palm down. In some small part of my mind, I was startled. I had expected Ciana to place the pin in her bloody palm, which I figured would have called Raziel to protect her.

  Her voice floated down. “Y’hee…” With each syllable, a drop of her blood hit the snow, landing in a rectangle of light from a window. Stanhope blood. The permutations and consequences of what she was doing were beyond me. I was only a half-trained mage. “…ore. Y’hee ore. Ore.”

  “Hebrew,” the woman beside me said, tilting her head toward the porch and Ciana. “She’s speaking Hebrew. Genesis one. Let there be light.”

  Saints’ balls. Time snapped, a dizzying, fast-forward dislocation. Audric raced in and stabbed the beast, cutting across its abdomen, down, and across in a Zorro, to disembowel it. Ichor ruptured into the street and the half-breed wrenched away from the putrid mess.

  “The kid speaks Hebrew?” Eli asked, his voice tight.

  “No,” I said. “She doesn’t.”

  The beast hit the ground with a meaty fist. “Stones and blood,” Cheran swore from the shadows, foolishly, stupidly, giving power to the Dark. The succubus raised its head and roared in victory at the might of the blasphemy. I heard the mage hiss as he realized what he’d done. Cheran had clearly never been to war.

  Lucas stood flatfooted, his face etched with sorrow, looking from the beast to his only child. I didn’t know why he grieved, but my breath caught in my throat as the lynx howled again. “God in heaven,” he said softly, in the echo of the roar. “What are we?”

  What are who? Stanhopes? There wasn’t time to consider that question. The succubus dangled Cissy by the neck like a broken doll, her face ashen, her tongue swollen and protruding. She was unconscious. Close to death. I opened my mouth to call mage in dire, permitted when a child or another innocent was near death at the hands of Darkness. Shots rang out, echoing down the street. The succubus roared, shaking the child.

  In the same instant, fire shot from the roof of Shamus Waldroup’s bakery across the street. Four knives landed in the Darkness, centered between its ribs, a small compensation for the control Cheran had given it.

  “Y’hee ore.” On the ice below Ciana, her blood began to brighten, seven crimson drops lightening to a ruby glow. As if ignited by the energies of her blood, a circular grid below the snow and ice of the street began to brighten. A sigil had been placed there, perhaps below the asphalt, by a seraph. It had lain, inert, invisible to all but me, or so I thought. Now I realized that Ciana had to have seen it, somehow, with her human eyes. Impossible. Yet, the sigil was being called to life. The sigil of the seraph Cheriour, an Angel of Punishment and Judgment.

  In the street, humans jumped aside, to the left or the right
of the spreading, glowing lines. The succubus roared, shouting my name as it stepped away, as if the lines beneath its feet burned. A human raced in brandishing an ax, and buried it in the beast’s thigh. It swatted him away, leaving a bloody trail. Other humans raced in to fight; blades landed in the tough flesh and shots rang out. Warriors screamed and I smelled blood, but I didn’t watch the combat. I watched the child of my heart. I watched Ciana as she closed her fist against the flow of blood. I didn’t know what she had done, but the call of mage in dire died in my throat.

  Below Ciana, the golden streaks moved together, finishing the sigil’s outline. When they met, the sigil was complete. Seven spots of ruby light shot up from the snow, one spot for each drop of sacrificed blood. Within each beam of light, fingers of flame rose, tickling the night air, changing from ruby to purple to deepest blue, bluer than a burning torch. Fire swayed in the breeze a moment before popping free of the ground and forming round globes of Flame.

  Ciana laughed delightedly, blue eyes sparkling. My breath stopped. Ciana had called for help from the High Host. She had called Minor Flames. No human should be able to summon them, especially not an eight-year-old girl. Even I didn’t know how.

  Two of the Flames danced close to me and away, almost in greeting. I wondered fleetingly if they were the two Flames I had rescued after a battle. They had been wounded, drained of power. And I had kept them safe, mixing them in with my amulets. Later, following another battle, I had discovered that the Flames were gone. Were these two the same? Either way, I knew what to do with them.

  The faint sense of paralysis sluiced from me like water across a boulder. Time, elastic and supple, snapped back and settled. Always a liquid construct in battle, time made seconds seem like hours or hours seconds. I took a breath of the frigid air. “Thorn?” Jacey asked, her voice desperate.

  On feet that were numb with cold, I moved away from the succubus, studying the scene: the gathering fighters circling the beast, shooting and cutting, darting in and back out. Some of the warriors were bleeding badly. Cissy. The Flames hovered in the air, seven balls of plasma. My night vision was consumed by them, and I slipped in the slick blood and ichor of the Darkness. I caught myself, expecting to feel the burn of acid on my soles. I felt nothing from the body fluids of the Dark, which was bad. I had no idea how long I had been standing in the snow, paralyzed by indecision, but it was too long. There was no time for the cold or for wounds. If I lived, I could worry about injury later. I focused to the side of the beings dancing on the air.