Bloodring

Chapter 17

I slithered across the floor, panther grace in my limbs. Kylen. His scent flooded me, sweeping into my nostrils, my lungs, converging on the beat of my heart, swimming out through my vessels, weakening my muscles, warming my flesh. His voice a strangled sound, Thadd clawed at his back, his arms up and bent backward, his chest broad, ribs and abs pulling, stomach flat and taut. Scents flooded me, arching my back.

He pivoted and I saw what he was clawing. From the tips of his shoulders, at the top of his humeri, and angled down his back were two wide slashes of swollen, inflamed tissue. Something was trying to emerge from his body.

Wings.

I raced across the room to his jacket and shook it hard. The ring dropped to the rug. It was huge, maybe a size twelve, maybe bigger, I'd never seen one so large. When I picked it up, a tingle slithered up my arm, inviting me to put it on.

Ignoring its siren call, fighting the demand to mate, I launched myself across the room to Thadd, mage-fast, and slammed into him. His hands came forward as if to stop me, and I slid the ring onto his finger. He wrenched and dropped to the floor, pulling me with him. He landed hard, me on top, my hands going for his belt buckle. Audric pulled me away.

We were all breathless. The smell of kylen was so strong in the loft, it was like a bakery, and I wanted a taste of everything offered. Instead, Audric found my prime amulet and hooked it onto the necklace of amulets around my neck. The mage-heat rippled and faded, leaving me drained and empty. I dropped my head onto Audric's chest and sighed. The remnants of heat pulsed once, falling to a bearable itch I could ignore. If Thadd would put his clothes back on. Maybe.

"What am I?" he asked, his voice still tortured, but stronger.

"From the look of your spine, I would speculate that you are a third-generation kylen," Audric said. "And I am yours to command."

"Not possible," Thadd said. For a Hand of the Law he was pretty unwilling to consider possibilities, even with wings trying to grow out his back. "My mother's human. And my father was killed in Arizona, mopping up a nest of spawn. He was a cop."

"Of course he was," Audric said, sarcasm increasing with every word. "Certainly. You've seen pictures? Seen your parents' wedding certificate?" The big man pushed me aside and I caught my balance on the couch arm. "You've watched home movies of your father? Met your paternal grandparents? Been to their house for a barbecue?" He stalked closer to Thadd with every question, and Thadd's face paled. "You've met your cousins on that side of the family? Maybe danced at a wedding or two? Been to a funeral?"

"My father was an orphan. He had no family."

"Your mother lied," I said. "You are kylen. Call her." I licked my lips, eyes on his body.

Audric handed him a throw from the foot of the bed. "Put this on or our little mage will try to have you for breakfast."

"Mage," he said, drawing my attention. "I knew he was more than human, though not what precisely he was. More important, how could the asseys have been in his presence and not seen him for what he was?"

"Part of the purpose of the ring, I think. It's spelled to be forgotten immediately, like a fragment of a dream. It kept you from identifying him immediately. It made me sleep. Kept the mage-heat from being so strong, until now."

"And now?" Audric asked.

"Not so good now. I can smell his blood." And I liked it.

"This isn't possible," Thadd said again, settling the throw across his shoulders for a moment before tossing it aside with a hiss of pain. The fabric seemed to irritate the raised flesh. "She's a mage. What are you? You're too big to be neo."

"I am a second-unforeseen," Audric said, bowing again, "and yours to command."

Thadd looked him over from head to toe, as if measuring the big man. "Command. Crap." He walked to my dressing area and turned his back to the long mirror, looking at himself over his shoulder. I could see him from two viewpoints. Verrry nice. "What…?" The words died as confusion warred with duty and honor.

"You have options now, kylen. And you need information to make wise decisions. Do what Thorn suggested. Call your mother." Audric handed my phone to the cop.

Thadd grimaced and set the phone down, pulling a small device from his pocket. It had a little door on front and he flipped it open, punching in numbers. His satellite phone. I stared at his back where ridges had lifted his skin into bumps and irregular crests, some pointed and sharp, ready to cut through the skin. His fingernails had brought blood to the surface in long weals. He smelled heavenly. I wanted to touch him, to run my hands over his raised flesh.

"Mom? Yeah. Okay." He sounded curt, a hint of outrage in the foundation of the words and a strong trace of disbelief. "I'm… fine." He took a breath, preparing himself. "Tell me about the ring. Tell me about my father. No lies, Mama. Tell me the truth." He paused a moment. "Yeah. I took it off." The silence after that was longer. A lot longer.

Audric pulled me into the kitchen to give the cop some privacy, which was fine by me. The ring had pretty much kept me from smelling kylen, but now my whole loft smelled like vanilla and caramel and ginger. I could sit anywhere and enjoy the scent, the view, and the lovely vision of us together that kept flashing into my awareness in full-color, three-dimensional images.

"Little mage," Audric said. "As I said, I had an indication he was more than human. Did you know he was kylen?"

"Oh, yeah. I knew."

"Would you have known had you not damaged your prime amulet?"

I shrugged, watching the cop. "He's been deprived of his birthright. He's like me, an untrained mage."

"Not quite. Because he received no instruction at all as he grew, he is in far worse shape than you. He is half human, the other half a strange mixture of seraph and neomage. Because he was denied his gift at the onset of adolescence, he may never be a powerful spell caster. His gift may be damaged, though that will not matter to the archseraph. He'll be sent to a Realm of Light, for training." Audric slowly shook his head, the bald dome reflecting light from the windows.

"It won't matter if his gifts are ruined and unusable; they will want him anyway. But in a Realm, he'll be lost, an outcast, isolated, perhaps imprisoned. And because he may well be without the ability to use any of his gifts, he'll be worthless to them, useless, as the second-unforeseen were without use until we became warriors. His life as he knew it is over. They will take him. Unless…" he said.

"Unless what?"

"Unless he chooses, as we two chose, to say nothing. To live as he desires, instead of as the archseraph chooses. He may be willing to keep our secrets if we keep his. An association of sorts, with self-preservation as its establishing bylaw."

That sounded pretty good to me. Positively ducky. If he could pull it off it meant no hot pincers, no shackles, no going insane. "Sure." I wondered if that meant I'd get a chance to—

"If he agrees, you will have to give up any thoughts of taking him as your mate."

I kept my face on the kylen, my expression unchanged, though my body reacted to the words. I fully recognized that if I took Thaddeus Bartholomew to my bed, I would conceive and bear a litter of half-mage, half-kylen pups. My mind twisted through the screwy genealogy. It would make my children one-half mage, through me, and through their father, one-fourth human, three-sixteenths mage, one-sixteenth-seraph. They could be powerful, or they could be powerless. That part would be a crapshoot. But one thing was certain. I would be found out and destroyed. My children taken away and raised by the seraphs. "I couldn't have him anyway. They wouldn't let me."

"No. They wouldn't."

Thadd hung up the phone, moving slowly, as only humans can move. I had found the leisurely motions disconcerting when I came here as a child. Now they spoke of safety and home. The kylen should be able to move nearly as quickly as I, however, which had to be another response to the ring's workings. Only a seraph could conjure a ring that could juggle so many different incantations at one time.

He met my gaze. "She lied to me. My whole life." It was an indictment he laid at his mother's door, and equally at ours for revealing the hidden and unknown to him. If not for us, he would never have discovered the awful secret his mother had kept for so many decades. Her fault. Our fault. With Thadd the only innocent party. That his mother had slept with a kylen was no sin in the eyes of the world, that she had hidden the pregnancy and then the child was.

"And what will you do now, kylen?" Audric asked. "Will you turn us in and yourself as well? Arrest your mother? Arrest your father, a being you have never met, but who may wish to meet you, develop a relationship? Or will you take a different path?" At Thadd's questioning look, he said, "Keep our secrets. Let us keep yours."

The air in the loft swirled with anger pheromones as the cop looked at us, at the phone in his hand, and then to the mirror and the wing bone structure that had tried to sprout. I wanted to trace my fingers down the ridges, run my tongue across the red scratches. And I knew I could never take the chance. I hooked my fingers around my restored prime amulet, drawing on its protection.

Thadd placed the phone in his pocket and walked to his shirt, pulling the torn fabric gingerly up his arms and into place on his back. He unkinked the tie and draped it around his neck. Slipped into the holster and suit coat. Audric tensed as the cop touched his gun, but the moment of danger had passed.

Dressed, Thadd extended his hand and stared at the ring, which had shrunk to fit his slender fingers, spelled, both man and ring. A mighty amulet, created for a kylen by a kylen or a seraph. His father? Had to be. "Can you scry for the amethyst?"

My mouth opened slightly. I had no idea. I started to say so, but Audric held up a hand. "Do you agree, Hand of the Law, that we will protect one another? That we will keep one anothers' identities undisclosed?"

Thadd nodded stiffly. "Yes. For now." Audric dropped his hand and Thadd looked at me. "Can you?"

"I never thought about it," I said. "Maybe." I could ask the lavender stone in the storeroom to show me where it came from… and gain even more of it. Lovely, lovely purple stone, lovely lavender energies. And it would be all mine. I'd be drunk, gorged on power. That was almost as good as mating with a kylen. Almost. "I'll try. Later."

His tone diffident, Thadd said, "I came here in an official capacity. To tell you that Jason Stanhope is dead."

I was glad I was sitting down. He'd done that little drop-and-punt thing again.

"The body was drained of blood and pretty chewed up. An elder was found nearby, burned to a crisp. You know anything about it?"

"First I've heard," Audric said. "Have you told Rupert?"

"Yeah. Just now. Ciana was listening to music," he said at my concerned look. The cop glanced at the bigger man. "Not a lot of love lost between the brothers, was there?"

"Jason was a drunk, a wife abuser, and a gambler," Audric said. "He brought nothing but shame on the family for the last ten years. Jason had also been branded twice; once for cursing, once for blasphemy. His lack of self-control in front of kirk elders was well known."

I was surprised. I had known Jason was a troublemaker but hadn't known he'd been kirk branded.

"The family had it done privately," Audric said. "The elder who performed them put both in inconspicuous places." Audric looked back to the cop. "When did he die?"

"Last night. We think between two and four a.m. The body was resting on top of El-car tracks in the mud. We know exactly when the El-car went down the road, and the body was discovered at six a.m., already cold."

"Cop El-car?" Audric asked. Thadd nodded, and Audric said, "I'm guessing that the public knows this already, or you wouldn't be telling us so much."

Thadd inclined his head, composed. Except that his shirt had no buttons, he looked like his ordinary self. I was hoping the shirt would gap a bit, but his posture was pretty good. "The body was discovered by an SNN reporter. Her screaming woke half the block. The rumor mill got it all correct except a few details. Even SNN got it right."

"Imagine that," Audric said, the mocking tone again in his voice.

"One of the details they didn't get was the rock dust they found at the scene."

"Amethyst dust," I said, instantly. "Ground-up amethyst."

"And how do you know that?"

I smiled at the kylen and opened my mage-sight. "I smell it on you." I pointed at a pocket. "You put some of it there." He looked at the pocket and scowled at me. "And if you didn't have as big a secret as we do, you'd take me in because of that." I peeled myself off the couch and walked to him, moving slowly and deliberately. "But I'm a mage, kylen. You'd have to catch me first." In an instant I spun and darted across the room. It took him about three seconds to spot me coiled beside the tub. "Catch me, mate me if you can," I sang, feeling the mage-heat flare anew.

Audric sighed. "Go home, Thadd. She'll try to scry for the stone."

Clearly not happy, Thadd left the loft. But I could still smell him.

Audric stalked to a window and threw it open. "I have to go see Rupert. You, little mage, are going to have to watch your mouth."

I stood up from the tub. "What'd I do? He's the one sprouting wings."

The heat hangover lasted most of the day, leaving me with a headache that pounded with each heartbeat and refused to respond to over-the-counter meds. In the intervening hours, Rupert notified his gramma about the death of his brother and made arrangements for a funeral. The service would take place once the police released the body, though that could take weeks. Rupert decided not to feign public mourning for his brother's passing, and refused to speak of the death.

Near dusk, when the sun rested on the ridge of the mountains to the west, I felt well enough to scry for the amethyst. Rupert kept Ciana busy in his apartment making sugar cookies, while Audric and I set up the conjure. This time, Audric locked the door.

Using the excuse of needing a larger quantity of the amethyst to work with, I brought up a double-fist-sized hunk of the lavender crystal, one that appeared to have lain in contact with the ground for long years on one side, but was freshly broken off the motherstone on the other. It was both comforting and energizing to hold so much amethyst. To make the circle, I used clean salt, untainted by the mystic residue of past conjurings. I added the silver bowl and water, candles, my knife in case I needed blood, a small steel mallet, and all my amulets. Satisfied that I had everything I might need, I centered myself and closed the circle.

With the hunk of amethyst beside me, it was easy to gauge the amount of creation energy I needed for the scrying. I was able to resist the pull of the deeps, settling my amulets over my head without difficulty. In mage-sight, I was an inferno of purple light. It was becoming too easy. And maybe Audric thought so too. He said, "You okay? This is… odd."

I soaked up the amethyst energy like a drunkard would a bottle of rum, and sighed a long breath that I could follow with the enhanced mage-sight. A purple mist of breath. "Easy as pie," I said. Audric raised his brows, which made me giggle. Yep. I was power drunk, all right. And I wanted more.

Struggling to put on a serious expression, I said, "I'm fine," and waved him away from the circle. I took slow breaths, and when I was calm and wouldn't chortle in the middle of the incantation, I took up the hunk of crystal, setting it into the water in the silver bowl. Fine bubbles of air were trapped along its sides, like perfectly round baubles of light.

We didn't think I needed an incantation for this but hoped I could simply match my body's energies to that of the stone and then use mage-sight to look for a resonance. I pictured the ground, broken gray boulders and snow, a big purple rock protruding. When I was perfectly centered, I dropped a small shard of amethyst into the water. It plunked down, sending clear, concentric rings out from the center of impact. The shard swirled through the water fast and landed with a tap on the larger stone beneath. Without pause, I dropped in a second crystal, and a third. When nothing happened, I took up the knife and pierced my finger. Three drops of blood fell into the water. It swirled and spread, a soft cloud of ruby over the lavender stone. The water darkened as I watched, the vision as lightless as the inside of a mine. Rough walls, dirt with roots protruding. Dark, but with a strange glow, like the color of my blood in the water. There was no purple stone.

"Mage…"

I almost gasped but managed to maintain my breathing. I searched the dark vision. Dripped in three more drops of blood. Through the images, something reached out, mage-fast. A clawed hand. Bloodied. It ripped through the vision and slashed my face, blinding me. It grabbed my body. My breath stopped. It wasn't mage-fast. But demon-fast.

"Mage," it whispered in my mind. "My mage."

I struggled in the grip, fought for a breath, pulling against it. I forced my eyes open. I was no longer in my apartment. I was underground. Sulfur burned me, acid bright. The claw around my middle tightened. My breath stopped, and I couldn't turn my head. A fire burned in a brazier. Water trickled. Blood splashed softly. A flat-topped stone was in the center of a charmed circle. An altar. Lucas was spread-eagled across the altar stone.

To his side, sitting on the ground, was a mage. I was so stunned, I stopped fighting to breathe. The mage was filthy and emaciated. Dark hair hung in lank strands over her face. Her mouth moved in an incantation, her blood dripping fast into a stoneware bowl. Lucas' blood dripped nearby, a steady tink. She was shouting the prophecy Lolo had spoken as I was born. The mage was scrying for me. "A Rose by any Other Name will still draw Blood." She repeated. Her thoughts were instantly in my head, beneath the incantation of the prophecy. Help me, mage. Help me."

Our eyes met; she lifted her bleeding hand and wiped it across Lucas' side, leaving a long smear, mixing her blood with his and spreading the mixture on heavy steel links. A short length of strong chain.

The scene darkened. I still had not taken a breath. I pulled against the hold of the Darkness, fought, threw back my head, but I was immobilized in the grip of the thing. The Power. My heart stuttered, missing beats. I was caught underground. By a Power. I heard it laugh. Beneath the grating tone came the beat of a drum, the tone of a flute, and Lolo's voice, too soft to hear.

The Dark mage's eyes widened in shock and hope. "Lolo?" she asked.

With mage-sight dimming, I could almost see the mathematical properties of Lolo's incantation, like linked droplets, alternating large and small. Lolo, who was in my mind again, as she had been the last time I had used the amethyst to conjure. That was important somehow, but a problem for later, if I lived that long. My lungs burned. If I passed out, I'd belong to the thing that had trapped me. Almost out of strength, hot coals blistering my lungs, I prepared myself and suddenly went limp, resting in its grip, letting it support me.

A tremor ran through the hand that held me and I could have sworn I startled it. Prepared for the jolt of vertigo and nausea, I took advantage of the Power's surprise and stole a breath of air, converting it into a quick scan.

I could see Lolo's conjure forming round circles of power, like tiny, interconnected diamond drills, a rivulet of them, corroding into the strands of the Darkness' conjure as she wrapped her incantation around it. But as each strand of the dark conjure was cut, another grew to take its place, a spider lace of glowing red and black strands. Desperately, my vision again drawing to a pinpoint of perspective, I drew on the amethyst.

The Dark conjure centered on a perfectly round hole, ringed with threads of power. I directed the amethyst energy through the center hole, pulling the image of Lolo's linked droplets with me. As it passed through, I reshaped the links into a weapon, a talon, a thorn. And ripped back out through the hole, taking the strands of the trap with me.

I was pulled from the grip of the thing that held me, up through the limestone cavern, up through the earth. Lavender light, forked lightning bolts of power, flared close around me and far off in bright sparkles of purpose and luminous tones. Two words, sung in a sad, lonely voice like bells: "Little mage…" Not the voice of the Darkness. Not the voice of the trapped mage, but an unknown voice.

Suddenly I was free, lying on my side in the loft on the cold floor. I pulled in a breath, a golden, glorious breath, that sent pain ricocheting through my air-starved torso. The inside of my charmed circle was filled with glowing lavender, a mist I inhaled and exhaled, a richness of power so bright it tingled against my flesh, along my nerves. The water in the bowl was boiling, a rising fog in a semispherical shape over me. The charmed circle was warm and steamy. And I was drunk, bombed, plastered on the energies.

I raised myself up on one elbow, hearing surprise in Lolo's mental voice. "What you done, gurl? What you done with dat purple power? What happen you? Where from you get dat?" Her mental voice faded to nothingness.

With a finger, I broke the circle. All the power looped back into the silver bowl and the amethyst in its bottom, a silent whirlwind of might that vanished with a wet splash. I rolled over onto my back, concentrating on breathing, staring up at the circling ceiling fan.

Audric stood at the edge of the circle, his two swords drawn, eyes wide with bloodlust.

"There's nothing here to kill, big man," I said through lips that felt numb and swollen. "No demons followed me back."

"Something had you." He stepped across the broken circle of salt and stood over me, looking down into my face. "I could smell it. Demon-blood, human blood, mage-blood, a stranger's. And sulfur and acid. Darkness!" he said, his tone joyful. "Where is it?"

"It was a trap. Lolo helped me escape. We left it behind, but it has Lucas." The sense of inebriation faded with my admission.

Audric's face fell, disappointed that he had no demon to fight. "And the amethyst?"

I held up my hand and he sheathed the shortsword before pulling me to my feet. "I can find it. I think. Maybe," I said, trying to find my balance, remembering the lightning bolts in my vision, bright sparkles of purpose answering my call from far away. "The Power called me 'little mage'…"

"And?" Audric kissed the blade of the longsword before sheathing it.

"The same words you used earlier." I rested both hands on the tabletop, feeling steadier. "You called me little mage. And you aren't the only one," I said, remembering the bell-like voice from the vision.

Something shifted in Audric's eyes. He turned toward the door and I snatched at his arm, holding him, though he had the bone structure and muscle mass of his human parent and could have wrenched free easily. "You knew how to call Lolo," I said. "Or she called you. You knew exactly who and what I was before I screwed up in the alley, didn't you?"

Audric inclined his head slowly, the motion regal, doing that weird second-unforeseen thing he did. "You are ready to hear this, I think. Your Lolo sent me to you. Some half-breeds do not wish to be bound to a seraph for war, but rather to live free, choosing their own battles. This is my desire, to be free, always." His lips nearly smiled before sorrow took it away. "There have always been rumors of banished mages, free mages. I searched for such a one and Lolo sent me to you, to fight beside. Next time, you will enclose me in the circle with you. And together, we will battle the Dark."

Uh-huh. Sure we would, I thought drunkenly. Like I was going to let myself get trapped again. But I didn't say that. After a slight hesitation while the room pirouetted around me, I said, "You want to fight. I see it in your eyes. Why don't you want to bind with a seraph or a battle mage?"

The last of the battle lust drained from his eyes, and Audric pulled his arm away. "When you're ready to tell me your story, I'll tell you mine. Little mage."

The thing in the deeps had kept me prisoner for longer than I had realized, time not moving below-ground as it did above, in one of the weird little quirks of Einstein's theory of relative time. It was nearly ten p.m. when I broke the grip of the Power and found myself on the floor of my loft, muscles stiff and cold where they had lain in contact with the floor for hours. Ciana was already asleep in the guest bed in Rupert's apartment, and Audric, deprived of the chance to kick ass and bleed demons, went away disappointed. I just crawled into bed and fell into a deep, serene sleep.

Even asleep, I was aware of the amethyst, however—a pulsing, breathing plea of power and might. It offered itself to me, asking nothing in return except to be used, consumed. And in my dreams I was filled up, drunk, reeling with the energies it shared.