Host

Chapter 4

E li aimed the barrel of the flamethrower up at the queen’s face and pulled the trigger. A ten-foot-long burst of fire shot into the night and hit the beast’s face, scenting the air with hyssop, rosemary, and scorched meat. The queen’s high-pitched squeal echoed between the buildings. The fire went out and Eli ducked under an ungainly swipe. He had blinded the succubus. It dropped Cissy. Jacey screamed. I saw the girl tumble to our left. Dead, surely dead. I heard a thump and grunt.

“Got her,” Rupert shouted. Relief swept through me.

“Inside!” Audric said to his partner. “Set the ward.”

I had a quick impression of Rupert, still half-naked, carrying the child, running through the frozen street, Jacey at his heels. Humans attacked, slashing at the beast, leaping back.

Three Flames arrowed in, hitting soft tissue in the queen’s underarms, its groin, its ripped belly, retreating, hitting again like pulsars. Each site flamed blue before darkening with a puff of acrid smoke. Well-fed Darkness healed fast, but these wounds gaped and seeped. As I watched, the Flames darted into an open wound and disappeared inside, burned, sliced, and reappeared as the Darkness wailed and raged and beat its own body, trying to rid itself of the pain.

Shots rang in the night. Blood splattered. Humans shouted. It looked like we were winning, yet, as I watched, one eye formed into an orb and the beast’s face healed. To compensate, the Flames grew in size, from basketball-sized to globe-sized, three feet across and too bright to look at, dazzling as small suns. The entire street was lit by their glory.

In mage-sight, the beast’s energies reached nearly twice my height, its physical form bulked with prehistoric musculature. If it struck me, it would shatter my mage-brittle bones. If it scored a direct hit, it would kill me. I was still going in. How stupid was that? I carefully placed my feet in the proper positions, unable to feel the uneven ground beneath me. Nausea from the stress of battle gripped me; I shuddered with cold, waiting for Eli’s order.

A second arc of fire shot through the night, hitting its face. “Now!” Eli shouted. “Now!”

I attacked the Darkness. Mage-fast, trusting my balance on unsteady, numb feet, I dashed in, cutting, cutting, thrusting into the succubus’ belly with the blue-glowing tanto. I flew from the sleeping cat to the dolphin, through all three forms of the crab, abridged versions used by a mage with only one blade.

With each strike, the tanto sang against my palm, long bell-like tones of pleasure and fury. The smell of holiness, if there was one, had to be the scent of the burning blade. Roses, lilies, herbs, and wildflowers. The scent of sunlight and the ozone of lightning. The dust of fresh-mined stone. Guns boomed, aiming higher at the queen, hitting its shoulders and chest. The succubus shrieked, an earsplitting howl.

Screams went up around me—terror and pain. I whirled away from the beast. Devil-spawn swarmed in. I executed the whirlwind, a slashing figure eight, a wild move, suitable for dispatching numbers of the small reddish creatures at once. Black blood flew, a wide spray of acidic droplets that burned through my pajamas like fire on my flesh.

Instead of driving the spawn back, instead of granting a respite, my move triggered an unexpected response: the usually mindless creatures regrouped and darted in, their symmetry and organization distinctly unspawnlike. One took a bite out of my calf, ripping my pajamas, bloody gouges from razor-sharp teeth and three-fingered, clawed hands. I felt a conjure sizzle over my skin and the spawn dropped away, lifeless on the snow. Cheran, I knew. I was losing blood but at least I was no longer cold or paralyzed with uncertainty. I dashed in, striking, wishing I was stronger, taller, a lot taller.

The queen was thrashing, roaring, head back, a man held in its left fist, his limbs whipping bonelessly. Its right hand made a sweeping motion, as if drawing in threads of yarn. The spawn followed in its wake, attacking a grouping of humans at its feet.

“It’s directing spawn,” Eli said of the queen. He pulled me beneath the porch of Rupert’s loft for a moment, our backs to a brick wall. Breath heaving, I lowered the tanto with its blue-light blade. My muscles protested the sudden stillness, my back tight, threatening to spasm. My left side ached, the old injury that had never quite healed. My feet were numb. I ignored them all.

The queen gestured. Too far away to help, we watched as a group of spawn attacked with military precision, taking down three humans who were erecting a barricade. The attack was quick and brutal, and they began to feed on flesh while it still quivered with life. The beast devoured the man it had been holding, energy for healing. “It’s in charge,” Eli said, knocking over a stack of firewood, creating a makeshift fence between us and the fight in the street.

“Looks like,” Audric replied, ducking into our temporary haven. He was slicked with sweat, which was freezing in the cold wind, a white, rimming crust on his dark skin, which glowed with the mage energies of his half-breed heritage. He was smeared with black and red blood. His skin was scorched and blistered from the acid, but he seemed not to notice. “Shield,” he instructed me. With a single thought I activated a shield I had devised. It allowed in beings of Light, people I liked, and necessities like air, but kept out bad guys and bullets. Or had, once.

“What do they want?” I asked, winded. “Besides Stanhope blood?”

“That’s not enough?” Eli asked, breathing harder. He handed me my longsword and bent over, trying to catch his breath.

“Their strategy is structured, which is unheard of,” Audric said, sinking into teacher mode, the tone he used when training me in savage-chi. “Watch them. With this kind of organization, they could have taken a Stanhope with no fight at all.”

“They couldn’t find them,” I said. “Rupert and Ciana were behind the ward until I turned it off, and Lucas ate something when he was a prisoner on the Trine. I think it changed the way he smells.” And Thadd smells like kylen, but I didn’t say that and no one asked.

“It could have taken a Stanhope since. So what else do they want?” Audric asked.

“Chaos and—” Eli cut himself off as a new thought formed. He stood and leaned over the pile of wood, so close to the shield he was nearly touching it, watching the bedlam as a score of humans circled the succubus, firing shotguns up at it, the sound of four-aught buck incredible. Bodies littered the snow. “This is the third time they’ve attacked the town itself,” he mused, his voice growing steady, his breath evening out. “Each attack has utilized different methodology, tactics, and combatants. And this time they’re firing the roofs, so this time, maybe they came prepared to finish us off, to take out the town after they get their blood donor. A two-fer.”

“More aims than those, perhaps,” Audric said.

“Collect Stanhope blood, wipe out the town or damage it substantially, kill or capture our mage,” Eli said, twisting his back and delts in a series of stretches. “And it could have sensed the presence of a second mage.”

Audric nodded and finished the thought. “And felt the time was propitious for taking both.” Propitious. I wanted to laugh, but didn’t have the energy. Only a second unforeseen, a half-breed, a master of savage-chi, would use a ten-dollar word during a prolonged battle.

“Or maybe it’s been training troops just for tonight,” Eli said, repositioning his weapons and the night-vision goggles hanging on his chest. “Maybe the previous assaults were sorties to train and get the layout of the place.” Audric lit up as the thought found a home in his mind. The men shared one of those chest-beating manly looks that always excluded women. Ugh. Big trouble. Protect the women and children. Blood, guts, and glory. Ugh.

I was too drained to comment. All I wanted to do was fall to the snow and sleep. Unlike Eli, I couldn’t seem to catch my breath.

“Time for the big guns,” Eli said. This time when he spoke into the ear wire, it was sotto voce, but mages have a broad audible range, and I heard what he said. “Deploy the W-T-seven, asap.” He looked at Audric, a wide grin splitting his face. “A big-ass gun. Big enough to take out Godzilla.”

I hoped the W-T-seven was all he claimed, as the succubus had drawn in a thunderhead of energy. In mage-sight its aura was flashing with black lightning, a big, ugly monster. Like the ugly paintings in ancient Pre-Ap cathedrals and museums.

Rupert, dressed now in flannel, jeans, and a jacket and carrying an armful of clothing and weapons, dashed from the doorway. To avoid an energy backlash, I flicked the shield off as he entered the shelter. He tossed me the green marble sphere that set the ward over the shop and loft. I fumbled the catch, which thankfully no one saw or I’d have been the victim of ribbing. Mages were supposed to be so much faster than humans. Gesturing the men away from the wall at our backs, I thumbed on the ward, protecting Ciana, Cissy, and Jacey. A weight seemed to lift off me. Careful to keep the differing energy patterns separate, I opened the shield again.

“Cissy’s alive,” he said when I focused on him. I closed my eyes in gratitude. Maybe it was true that God the Victorious didn’t listen to mages, but he had heard somebody’s prayer. “Put these on.” Rupert dropped my battle boots in the snow and draped my battle cloak around my shoulders. The warmth trapped in the lining was like a furnace to my skin. I realized how cold I was. I had gotten dangerously hypothermic. Stupid, stupid, stupid. My champard had noted my condition and acted to correct it, but that didn’t negate my stupidity.

I smiled my thanks at him as I thumbed on an amulet for heating water and dropped it at my feet. Immediately the snow and ice melted, the puddle warming to steam. My feet felt like they were in boiling water, but the conjure was for bathwater, a maximum of one hundred four degrees. The water tinged red as blood softened and melted. Muscles and tendons ached, and my soles felt as if I had sliced them with knives and walked through salt.

I dropped in a healing amulet and dipped my hands in, sliding the ripped socks off and tossing them away as I massaged my toes and scrubbed my feet. Snowmelt wasn’t beneficial water for stone mages, but any port in a storm. My ring-shaped prime amulet and the hilt-prime flared brighter, offering me protection from the snowmelt, the loss of power that came from contact with unpurified water, as they had from frostbite. Blood flowed freely, but I could deal with that later. My neomage attributes brightened, my skin closer to its normal pearly hue, and I realized how stupid—and lucky—I had been. On my necklace, various amulets were emitting a sort of hum as they responded to the state of my stressed body.

In the street, two snow-el-mobiles whizzed up, slinging snow and ice from the runners. Half a dozen ragged men jumped from them and spread into formation, joining the attackers from the front and sides. I looked away long enough to pull the boots on over my wet and bleeding feet. When I looked back up, a third snow-el-mobile scattered the combatants and hissed to a halt. Mounted on the back was a four-foot-long black metal pipe attached to a black box about eighteen inches on a side. A magazine coiled from a spindle on one side. The WT7. Eli was right. It was a big-ass gun.

“Sixty-six caliber, loaded with shells designed to explode a millisecond after contact, composed of standard ammo and salt mined from the shores of the Dead Sea,” Eli said. “Mixed with a few atoms of seraph-steel.”

I looked up from securing my cloak. Audric stared at him as well. “Seraph-steel?” he asked. “Where did the EIH obtain seraph-steel?”

“Some unallied Watchers are a little less fastidious than the High Host would like.” Into the mike he said, “Fire at will.”

The Earth Invasion Heretics believed that seraphs and Darkness alike were invaders from another planet, here to continue a conflict that destroyed their home world and to claim Earth for their own. It was a conspiracy theory of the lowest order. I thought it was a bunch of hooey, but I was willing to be proved wrong. There was a lot I didn’t know about the High Host.

The kirk actively sought out EIH operatives for punishment, which varied from branding to death—very messy death, with lots of blood and gore. The operatives fighting the succubus didn’t seem very concerned with that at the moment, however. All were men, all dressed in layers of rags, from their ratty knit caps to the strips of old car tires bound to their feet in lieu of boots. Their pants were tattered, coats were full of holes, but their pockets were bulging and each carried assault rifles, holstered handguns, and myriad knives. One had an ax strapped to his back. What they did without in terms of personal comfort, they made up for in weaponry. It was impressive. And I had seen them fight. They seemed to know little in the way of fear.

These were stone-hard mountain men, bred to war from generations of hardscrabble survivalists. There was no way they had gotten here this fast from their homes high in the surrounding hills. They had been nearby. Waiting. Another question to ask later, when there was time. If there was time.

The gunner leaped to the back of the el-mobile and cradled his weapon like a lover. The big gun boomed. In the back-flash of fire, I caught sight of an amulet on his chest, a ring of shells sewn onto his coat, a mage-made talisman. On the snow-el-mobile was another, this one made of fish bones shaped in a rune of protection. Spawn balls. The EIH are working with a sea mage.

“Ready?” Eli asked. The men with me nodded, checking their weapons. “Let’s boogie.”

I flicked off the shield as swarms of spawn scampered down the sides of buildings and out of alleys, pursued by Flames with a diameter of three feet. They chased the spawn straight at a massive vehicle racing down the street with a horrid roar, spitting smoke. It was the town’s old fire truck, usually stored in an old barn on Lower Street, and powered by rare and expensive gasoline. The truck barreled into the swarms, scattering the midsized reddish creatures as if the Flames had planned the move. The men with me shouted war cries and raced into the night behind the truck, joining the fight, leaving me alone as the vehicle careened around a corner.

A mage-conjure whispered across my skin and spawn stragglers fell smoking to the street. Other spawn shrieked and slowed, stumbling. I had to learn that conjure. Above me, in the wake of the truck, I heard a whir. In the night sky were two beasts with dozens of wings, dragonets, darting down. If it had been safe to curse, I would have let out a string of them. Instead, I pulled an amulet I had created just for such creatures and tore after them. I had to be close for the incantation stored in the amulets to work. Real close.

In the middle of the street, the succubus queen was on one knee, blackened and scored, so badly wounded it no longer screamed, but fought for life. If it fell, the fighters would behead it.

The orthodox had joined the fight, their black clothing making them hard to spot. They were fearless warriors, believing that their place beside the Most High was assured if they fell fighting his enemies. The sound of their prayers resonated in a continuous burr of scripture as they called on God the Victorious to grant them success. In mage-sight, they gleamed as I raced past, their faith and zealotry adding energy to bland human flesh. Or maybe, as they believed, it was the spirit of God the Victorious filling them with his holy presence. I didn’t know. Soulless beings like me had no way to confirm or deny the claims of the religious. But part of me wanted them to be right, wanted the Most High to have a continued interest in humanity and the world all claimed he’d created.

One man looked up as the dragonets whirred overhead and fired a dozen shots into the air. The dragonets soared in the night sky and seemed to home in on one form in the melee below. They dropped into the midst of the skirmish, ten feet long and sinuous, exoskeletons bristling with dagger-sharp spines and barbs, legs with multiple joints, spikes at each bend.

At the sight, battle-lust pulsed into my bloodstream, and I swung both blades in perfect arcs, powerful strikes that took off spawn limbs and heads with ease as I raced toward the fight, cutting my way through the Minor Darkness in mindless bloodlust. With the walking horse, I dispatched three spawn that had hemmed two men into a doorway, one severely wounded.

I didn’t feel a moment’s shame at taking the spawn from behind. Fighting minions of Darkness required no honor. The spawn fell in a dozen pieces, my tanto singing in victory. I shouted my battle cry, “Jehovah sabaoth!” as spawn blood drenched the snow. The man still standing tipped his hat at me while cleaning a blade on his pant leg. He was an orthodox, his black suit ripped, torn, bloody. I recognized him but couldn’t place his name. I nodded back and stepped to the side, into the leaping cat form, blades in graceful arcs, ripping another group of spawn to pieces before they could regroup and fight me.

Ahead, my two champards fought back-to-back against both dragonets. I didn’t have time to wonder why they fought alone, without the help of other townspeople. I gauged my incline on the run and leaped high, landing on a wide leg joint, slicing backhanded to sever the poisoned stinger of its descending tail. At the taste of dragonet blood, the tanto belled a paean of triumph and joy. Planting my feet in the angles where legs met body, I raced up the dragonet, slicing through legs and wings, temporarily disabling the appendages, but knowing the beast was able to regenerate with supernatural speed. I had to get to its head.

Just as I climbed within striking distance, the dragonet reared straight up, roaring, throwing me back. My feet slipped. I bounced once on my backside, spun, and slid toward the ground. I caught myself one-handed in the notch of a missing leg, swaying wide and back, wedging both feet into crevices in the steel-hard shell.

The dragonet’s head rotated on overlapping ridges and it snapped at me, fangs flashing. Six inches of ichor-coated teeth grazed my arm. It drew away, mouth opening for another strike. I whirled the tanto and thrust up, into its open mouth and through its palate, into its brain—if it had a brain—a kill strike.

The tanto blazed cerulean blue and an electric pulse surged up my arm as I twisted the blade and ripped it free. A gush of blood followed, drenching up my arm, eating away the pajama sleeve, searing my skin, splashing from the battle cloak. With a simple flick of my wrist, I tossed a stone into its maw. The shard of amethyst bounced and fell down its throat.

“Audric!” I shouted. I didn’t look, I simply jumped, trusting the big man to catch me if he could. If he was occupied, if he missed, landing on the hard street was still a better choice than staying up here. An arm snatched me out of the air and set me down in a dancer’s stance.

“Took you long enough!” Audric shouted at me. The joy of battle lit his eyes in a mad gleam and he laughed. Rupert ripped the air with his master’s blade, holding off the other dragonet, detaching several many-jointed legs. Above me, the dragonet I had ridden coiled into an S to strike.

The effect of the amethyst wasn’t as spectacular as the anticonjure amulet, but it worked just as well. Lavender light blazed up its throat and burst from every joint. The dragonet squealed like a hog on a spike and fell to a writhing heap on the ice.

“One down,” I said, meeting Audric’s fierce glare with battle glee of my own.

He raised his head and shouted his battle cry, “Raziel! By blood and fire!” He stooped, making a staircase out of his body. It was a move we hadn’t practiced, but I remembered it from savage-chi lessons as a child. I pulled a second amethyst and ran at him. Placed a foot on his calf, a foot on his thigh, his back, his shoulder, racing up his body. He thrust straight up, throwing me into the air, the move created to scale the walls of a fortified compound. He timed it perfectly, and I plunged the tanto down at the remaining dragonet, directly into one of its six eyes. The same pulse of the Flame-enhanced blade prickled up the tanto and through my blood.

The dragonet howled, its hinged jaw open to the moon. I threw the crystal of amethyst down its maw and wrenched my body, removing the blade. Eye fluid splattered me as I dropped. Again Audric caught me, this time like a baby falling from a bough, a bloody lullaby of war.

Lavender light ripped through the beast. It fell atop the body of the first, whipping back and forth. Shouting my battle cry, I whirled to the succubus, but it was down, a dozen humans hacking into it, working at its scaled throat with swords and hoes and kitchen knives. It was bleeding out on the street. It looked like we were winning. I should have stifled the thought unborn. Murphy’s Law kicked in.

In arrowhead formation, dragonets overflew the town. There were at least six, and these babies were furred, with large leathery wings and lobster claws that looked as if they were formed of demon-iron. Two elders in brown robes fell to their knees at the sight, praying aloud, spiritual warfare. In mage-sight, I recognized the Elders Waldroup praying back-to-back, their bodies glowing with the bright light of their faith, blades in both hands.

Audric, Rupert, and I spread into a triangle to cover as much of the street as we could. Eli raced to join us. “You see ’em? These things just keep getting uglier. How many are there?” I shook my head. I didn’t know.

Jasper, one of the town’s youngest elders, appeared out of the night. He wore wool pants, boots, and a coat, with pajama bottoms peeking out the pants’ legs. His bare chest was puckered with cold and he was heaving for breath, his face drawn and white except for the blood frozen or dried in his hair. He’d taken a nasty blow. His desperate black eyes met mine.

“Call mage in dire,” he said. “You have to.”

“My mistrend has considered and rejected the call,” Audric said, his face implacable. “Last time thirty-seven died from the raised sword of judgment. What if she can’t get the holy one to sheathe the weapon? The whole town could die. It has happened before.”

When seraphs are called, they fight evil to a standstill. But after the fight, the naked swords sometimes take on a different function, the role of swords of judgment, and humans die as punishment for their sins. It was why I hadn’t called for help.

Ignoring Audric in his position of my legal spokesperson, Jasper again spoke directly to me. “They’ve disabled the town’s satellite terminus and cut the phone lines. They set off avalanches that blocked the roads and trails to the east and west and both sides of the Toe,” he said, speaking of the Toe River, which bisected the town. “We have no way to call for help. No way to get out. It looks like this time they mean to destroy the town.”

As if to emphasize his words, a wood building in the middle of the block between Upper and Lower Streets fell with a thunderous roar, sparks shooting into the sky.