Bloodring (Rogue Mage #1)

Bloodring (Rogue Mage #1) Page 4

I checked the clock over the door. I had half an hour before opening. It might be enough time. "I have to go back upstairs." I was running, taking the stairs to my loft with renewed energy dancing through me. From below I heard Rupert call a muffled "But Thorn, we - " as I slammed the door and clicked the latch. I fell against the door, taking in the apartment.

My pulse was thrumming, a basso tone in my ears. This was dumb. I didn't even know whether I could actually do it. I might hurt myself. I might expose myself, but I had to try, didn't I? If I could find and rescue Lucas, then no seraph would have to come to Mineral City and intervene. And find me.

I shoved my body from the door and flew to the tub, grabbing candles and the bag of coarse salt. Not sea salt, but salt mined from the ground. Salt of the earth, of power I could draw upon. I dropped them at the edge of the dark turquoise tile floor in the kitchen area, added stones from the bath, the bed, the windows, and the tables, piling them in a pyramid of pink marble, white quartz crystal, agate, others. From pebbles to fist-sized rocks, rounded smooth with my grindstone, not by river water and nature.

I added some jewelry imbued with wisdom and sacrifice: a jade netsuke on a silver chain, three antique crucifixes, two hung with the Christ in agony, a free-form fire opal wrapped in silver wire, and my own half-drained, blackened-steel-mail amulet necklace, which I removed from around my waist. On the necklace were stones keyed to my central nervous system.

I dumped artificial greenery from a heavy silver bowl; flowers and leaves scrolled around the rim. The bowl was Pre-Ap, sent to me by Lolo ten years ago but never used for neomage purposes. Lastly, I took up my damaged wedding ring, symbol of commitment and betrayal, its stones the tint of blood and living things, rubies and emeralds.

I shoved the kitchen table against the cabinets, exposing the floor. The tiles were poured stoneware from clay collected in Mexico, near a battlefield where seraphs, humans, and demons had once fought an earth-rending war. The glaze was composed of mineral pigments Lolo had charged to my protection before shipping to me on a summer train. Taking up the bag of unused salt, I poured a heavy ring in a circle six feet in diameter, leaving a foot of space open for me to enter.

I positioned candles around the outside of the ring, dithering about the number until I settled on just three. There was both power and risk in numbers. If a nearby seraph found me, then he found me. I filled the bowl at the sink and set it in the exact center of the salt ring, springwater sloshing gently. I set my ceremonial knife, hidden in plain view in the cutting block, to the side of the stones. Lastly, I pulled the Book of Workings from the shelf beside my bed, finding the incantation I needed in the index and placing the open book on the floor by the bowl. Three empty stones went into the bowl, bringing the water lapping to its top.

I sat within the circle, at the open space in the salt ring, crossed my legs yogi fashion, and closed my eyes. Spine erect, I blew out a tension-filled breath and drew in a calming one.

Again. And again. Serenity fluttered just out of reach, distanced by fear. I didn't know what I was doing.

I'd been removed from Enclave for my health and sanity long before I would have learned how to do this. I knew the theory. I knew how it was supposed to be done. But I'd never practiced a skill I thought I'd never need.

I breathed, calm just beyond my reach. The silence of the loft settled about me. A brittle tranquility finally rested on my shoulders. My breath smoothed. My heart beat slowly, methodically. All glamour fell from me. Behind my closed lids, my own flesh was a gentle radiance, the brighter glow of my old scars tracing down my legs and arms. I opened my eyes, seeing now with mage-sight.

The loft pulsed with power, a place of neomage safety I had created in the humans' world. Stones were everywhere, at bath and bed and gas fireplaces, every window and doorway, the floor. From them, every aspect of my home glowed with pale energy, subtle harmonious shades of lavender, green, rose, red, yellow. The great human scientist, Einstein, had once reasoned that mass and energy must somehow be different manifestations of the same thing. Mage-sight saw that energy in everything.

As I closed the circle with two handfuls of salt, power seized me. Power from the beginning of time, heard as much as felt. It hummed through me, a drone, an echo of the first Word ever spoken. The first Word of Creation. The reverberation was captured in the core of the earth for me to draw upon, a constant, unvarying power of stone and mineral, the destructive potency of liquid rock and heat. I trembled as vibrations rolled through my bones and pulsed into my flesh. I could see the thrum of strength, the force, the raw, raging might of the earth, a molten mantle seeking outlet. Finding me. I was a crucible for incandescent energy, mine to use.

Power. The need for it, the lust for it, rose in me. Waves of lava bowed my spine, clawed my hands into weapons. I can take what I want. I was the strength of the earth, the might of the core, the power of its creation. A scream built deep in my chest.

Dis de moment of absolute choice, Lolo's voice rang within my memory, of ultimate danger. What you do with all dis might?

With a single motion, I slid the necklace of amulets over my head. The scream withered unreleased.

I pulled in a breath burning with freedom from the power crave. A breath that refreshed and satiated, yet ached deep in my lungs. I could breathe; I could think. I returned to myself.

The loft was unchanged. There was still a pulsing glow to the room, but now the power appeared distilled and clarified to my mage-eye. A sharper vision to remind me that I had stepped close to the abyss, stared into its depths, and conquered myself.

The Book of Workings was constructed of blackberry ink on handmade paper. Unlike the rest of the room, the book and its pages contained little luminescence. The book itself wasn't a thing of power. At the top of the page was written in ancient calligraphy, "Scrying for a Human." Not a spell, not really an incantation, nothing so mundane; only a guide, a map of sorts, showing me the way to use my gifts. Strangely, the directions were in the final third of the book, the section dedicated to warfare, and required mage-blood and three candles.

I studied the recipe and my arrangement for the invocation. Lucas was taken with violence and blood. Those facts led the way. I hung the crucifixes around my neck, in contact with my amulets, and took the fire opal pendant in my left hand with the netsuke, the two stones connecting with each other. A soft resonance of energy gathered each time stone met stone, as crystalline matrix touched matrix.

I swiveled on my backside and faced the bowl, took up the knife in my right hand and slipped the wedding ring onto my left little finger. I stared into the water and improvised.

Dangerous. The muted warning slipped through me, unheeded memory. From the Old Testament, I paraphrased lines suggested in my book for finding a human.

"And the revenger of blood find him," I chanted. "And the revenger of blood find him. And the revenger of blood find him." With the point of the knife, I sliced my finger. The sting shocked through me.

"We send, and they shall search out the land and bring us word again..." A trail of blood slid down my finger and collected in my palm, a growing crimson pool.

"Then shalt inquire, and make search and ask diligently." I dropped the netsuke and amulets into the blood, smearing both before dangling them on their chains from my wrist. "And behold, if it be truth, and the thing certain, that such an abomination is wrought among you"  - this was the dangerous part, the creative words I tossed into the mix - "that evil has been done to this man, in the spilling of his blood. That ye seek Lucas Stanhope to save him." Setting down the knife, I pulled the ring from my finger and placed the gold circle into my blood. My shivers became a hard shudder, a quake of energy that roared through me in a heavy wave. "Find me such a one as Lucas."

I dropped the gold band into the water. Three drops of blood followed, soft, distinct splats. Three candles, three stones, three drops of blood. Three and three and three. My blood swirled into the charged water. "Show me Lucas." Blood diluted, spreading, as it spun lower. "Show me Lucas." My blood touched the stones in the bottom. The water stilled, darkened. Power rose from the earth. My blood thrummed in my ears. The stones on the bottom of the bowl wrenched energy from the depths of the land. They heated. A thin mist of steam rose.

As he slipped a ring onto my finger, I saw Lucas, his face, full of love and tenderness. The vision dissipated in a surge of mist.

In its swirling whiteness a form took shape. Lucas, naked, on our bed. He was laughing, his beautiful blue eyes blazing with passion. Lips swollen with kisses, his body full with his need. He held out his arms, the wedding ring I made for him on his finger. A woman came to him, draped by a diaphanous gown, a floating gauzy thing that slipped from her shoulders.

Pain slithered through me. How could he...?

Lucas moved up her body in a sensual glide, his face between her breasts. Her head fell back and Jane Hilton laughed low, the sound lost beneath the resonance of energy humming in my mind.

The power of truth steamed up from the water. The certainty of history.

A tear slid down my cheek. He had given himself to me. And then he had slept with that woman. Slept with Jane Hilton while married to me.

I was seeing history. Two histories. One of my marriage and the vow of eternity together. Then this one of Lucas' betrayal. The memory of my wedding ring as I picked it up had been of commitment and betrayal. I hadn't performed a scrying. I had miscalculated. I had performed a truth vision.

I blew on the steam, blinked away the vision, and wiped my face on the scarf at my shoulder, smearing my makeup. Dangerous indeed, but not as I might have expected.

Blood was still liquid on my hand. I would try again. Lifting three more stones from the pile, I placed them in the water, which had evaporated in the steamy visions, leaving just enough space. When the water settled, I plunged my hand into it, the netsuke and fire opal tinking on the stones at the bottom.

"Let me find grace in your eyes," I quoted from Genesis, still trying to banish the memory of truth. I bounced around, paraphrasing the Old Testament, choosing verses that seemed appropriate, my words soft and slightly slurred. "Can we find such a one as this is...? Thou shalt find Lucas if thou seek him.... Come and I will show you the man you seek," I finished.

The mist swirled, revealing the back of a man's head. He was bent over a bowl of oatmeal on a table, eating. Reddish hair, shaggy and long, curled over his collar. He sat up, spoon bouncing into the bowl without a clatter. Thaddeus Bartholomew looked around the room, his strange green eyes taking in every patron and server, wary, on alert. But he saw nothing suspicious.

Heat sparked in the pit of my stomach, coiling, expanding. An image of Thaddeus, naked on my bed, took shape in my mind, separate from the vision, vibrating with a different kind of power. A look of perplexity crossed his face, followed by a deeper kind of shock. His pupils widened. He half stood. The mist faded on the vision, thinned, and was gone.

The water was glowing to my mage-eye, but no longer hot. My hand rested in the water on top of six stones. An imperfect number giving me an imperfect vision. Or had it? Hadn't I asked to be shown the man I seek? The man who sought Lucas?

Pulling my hand from the warm water, I dried it on my scarf and looked at the clock. I was late. I broke the salt circle, releasing all the stored power, returning the loft to its mundane appearance, and myself along with it. I dumped out the water and swept up the used salt, pouring it into a separate plastic bag, which I labeled truth/lust. I placed the pile of stones at the fireplace where they belonged, heated stones for warming my bed at night. I stowed all my other neomage equipment - bowl, book, and candles - in its place, even sweeping up last night's used salt from the tub, which I had forgotten.

I bandaged my finger, knowing scar tissue would pucker it slightly, a remembrance of today, before refolding my scarf to hide the makeup smear I could wash out later. I damped my skin from pearly to human, and freshened my makeup, all in three and a half minutes. I was almost out the door, only a bit late, when the phone rang. And I knew it was Lolo.

With trepidation I picked it up. "Good morning, Lolo."

"C'est le fol de mon sang?" the Cajun woman raged.

"Fool of your blood?" I felt my own blood drain to my feet.

"Oui! Le fol! 0, c'est tous les soirs, moi, je me couche avec des larmes dedans mes yeux - "

"In English, Lolo," I interrupted. "I can't - "

"You makin' trouble, gurl! De police, dey trouble. Les seraphs, dey trouble what to come. Trouble in de sky, trouble in de deep. Danger come, and you make blood sacrifice on de full moon, scream you power to heaven. All hear. Fol, fol de mon sang, you."

My pulse pounded in my ears. The moon was full. I had forgotten. Forgotten that, for a stone mage, Luna in her glory resulted in malformed incantations and attention from on high. I sat slowly, my couch cushions sighing softly.

During the Last War, the full and new moons were when practitioners of black magic, humans who had joined the Dragon of Darkness, the Big D, had done blood sacrifice of innocents and attacked seraphs, wounding many to the point of death. Even now, seraphs remained on hyperalert during the full and new moons, watching for a resurgence of blood sacrifice and black magic. And I, the only unlicensed neomage living outside of protective Enclave, hiding in plain sight, had just spilled my own blood in the full moon. Glory and infamy. What had I done? Can one even perform black magic by accident? Doesn't intent have to be part of the ritual? Or is spilling blood enough?

"I make a protection aroun' you. But dat no enough. I fear. I fear fo'you."

"I'll be careful, Lolo."

The call was disconnected without good-byes, as always, and I slowly replaced the receiver. What had I done?

"Did you see?" Ciana burst through the door of the shop and slammed into me, enveloping me in a hug that crushed my waist and forced out a grunt of pain. "My Daddy got kidnapped." The words came muffled from my clothing as I caught my balance.

My heart clenched and I wrapped her in my arms. "I saw. It was awful. But I'm here, darlin'." What could I say? Should I lie and tell her everything would be all right? It might not be, even if we got Lucas back. He had been injured, maybe pretty badly. I remembered the boots kicking him.

"He's dead, isn't he?" she asked, her tone wounded, perfumed with fear.

"Oh, Ciana, no, I hope not." I rocked her, tears gathering in my eyes.

"I'm praying about it. After school, I'm going to kirk and praying to God the Victorious to save him. Will you come?" she begged.

Shock tightened my hands on her shoulders. To the kirk? Dangerous thoughts overlapped about Lolo's warning, about my fear of the High Host, about human whispers that their cries were no longer heard, or that the Most High might have turned against the earth and the life he created. And the secret blasphemies that no one had seen God, not ever, that he might not exist, might not ever have existed. About the danger I was already in, and that I shouldn't call attention to myself by going to kirk too often or too seldom, all washed through me as I opened my mouth to answer. In the end nothing could stop me from helping Ciana. "Of course I'll go with you. If Maria doesn't mind."

"Mama thinks it's funny," Ciana whispered into my waist, her arms tightening. "She keeps watching the TV when daddy falls. And on top of that, she called me a liar."

I rocked her against me, finding Rupert on the far side of the store watching us, his eyes filling with tears. Rupert loved kids, and Ciana especially. He worried because she was being raised in loveless, chaotic, emotionally tumultuous homes, by parents who lived apart and hated each other. He held up a mug, mouthed cocoa, and pointed at the seating area. "Well, that sucks Habbiel's pearly toes," I said to Ciana, nodding at Rupert. Of course we would part with a small serving of the shop's fantastically expensive, imported chocolate. "I'm sorry, darlin'."

Ciana sobbed and hiccuped into my clothes.

"Come on." I pulled her toward the small kettle where milk now simmered. "Let's get some hot cocoa into you and get you calmed down enough for school. And I'll be here at five for the trip to the kirk," I promised, dread already building in my heart.

"Tell Thorn why Maria called you a liar," Rupert said softly.

"You won't laugh, will you?" Ciana looked up at me, her dark hair mussed, her blue eyes - so like Lucas' - wet with tears. She sat in my favorite chair and curled her legs under her, legging-covered knees and leather shoes sticking out beneath her school uniform tunic. Ciana was eight and very bright, far too intelligent to lie to successfully. My dread grew.

"Never," I said, stirring cocoa and sugar into the steaming milk.

Her face a careful blank, Ciana said, "I saw a devil-spawn yesterday."

I stopped stirring the cocoa, swirls of clumped chocolate rising and dropping as the milk whirled.

"I was in the hills at the base of the Trine and he came up to me." Her voice grew challenging as she spoke, ending on a mutinous note.

I put down the mug and bent over her, shoving her hair back and inspecting her throat. Lifting her wrists, staring into her eyes.

"Stop that." Ciana pushed me away, a half grin replacing the defiance, knowing my inspection meant I believed her. Devil-spawn made a mockery of the sacrament. Children of a Dark seraph and a human, born in litters like rats, they drank blood and ate human flesh, among other abominations.

"He didn't attack. He just talked to me and took off. Like, vanished." Her hands made little finger snaps as if scattering water. "Poof, you know?" She wiped the last of her tears.

"I know." Everyone had seen video feed of captured devil-spawn. "Poof" was an accurate description of their speed. "Why were you out on the Trine at night?"

"It wasn't night." Ciana took the mug and stirred, the tink-tink of silver against stoneware the only sound. "It was Monday, before sunset."

My eyes flew to Rupert's. "Before?" He shrugged, uneasy. Spawn came out only at full night. No wonder Maria had called Ciana a liar.

And then the meaning of a daytime sighting sank in. Daylight meant she had seen a daywalker. The stuff of legends. "It talked to you?" I asked, fighting to keep my voice steady.

"He. And he was way cool. He had green eyes, not the red you always hear about. And he was gorgeous." She paused to blow on the cocoa and drink. "Really long black hair, you know? Braided down his back, but some had got loose and flew in the wind. Way, way cool. He wanted to know about you."

The words fell on the room like a box of stone dropped from a great height. Lolo's warnings sank into me, bloodrings, portents of danger. "Me?"

Rupert pursed his lips.

"Yep. He wanted to know all about you. Where you lived, where you worked, what you did for a living." She looked slyly up at me. "If you were married or a virgin. I told him right off you were not a virgin."

"Ciana!"

"Spawn only want virgins, right? And he kissed my hand."

When it came to mating, spawn captured human virgins for their masters, but any neomage flesh was prime breeding material for the Dark Powers. And spawn would eat anything. I didn't share this with Ciana. Little was known about daywalkers; they were near mythical, their origins unknown, perhaps the issue of a mating between a Darkness and a captured kylen. They supposedly could pass as human, and had the power to glamour their appearance. There were rumors about them, but nothing concrete. Scholars debated whether they had ever existed, had been eradicated, or had gone underground at the end of the Last War.

"He kissed your hand?" Rupert said, his body very still. I watched as he worked to cover deep emotion with casual curiosity. "You didn't say that when you called. How?"

"Like a Frenchman in one of your Pre-Ap movies. Like this." Ciana hopped to her feet and took Rupert's hand. She bowed over it, hovered, and smacked her lips into his knuckles. Then she hopped back into the chair and drank more cocoa. I watched Rupert, his eyes going dark before he turned to the percolator and freshened his cup, blue robes fluttering.

"Did you feel his breath on your hand while he kissed you?" he asked. "Was your skin cold after? Or wet?"

Ciana shrugged, watching us over the rim of her mug. "Gramma says Mama is a convert to some Dark Power hiding in the hills."

"You called Gramma?" he asked, suppressed dread in his voice.

"I called her and my friends. A spawn is way cool. You think the spawn is the Power she's talking about?"

Rupert groaned. "Gramma is... not... actually one who should be talking about Maria or anyone else. Gramma has problems of her own."

"Very diplomatic," I murmured, wondering what he thought he was hiding from Ciana. I bent over the chest where I kept the pendants I had already imbued with power, my right hand hovering over each, searching for one charged with protection from supernatural evil. I chose a slab of agate with bright bands of purple and lavender and removed it from the case before stringing it on a silver chain.

"Is that for me?" Ciana asked, coining up behind me, leaning over the case. "It's way cool." She touched the stone, sending it swinging on its chain.

"Yes." I looped it over her head and tucked it beneath her uniform tunic. "Way, way cool," I said, mimicking her Pre-Ap TV slang. "Keep it out of sight at school, but wear it when you go outdoors and at night."

"It's beautiful." She fished the pendant out and held it up to the light. "Is it magic?"

"There's no such thing as magic," I said, sticking it back out of sight. And there wasn't. Not really. No matter what the humans called it. "The foul neomages make magic," she said, clearly quoting someone else.

I nearly choked. Rupert replied, "Neomages draw upon the leftover force of creation to imbue things with power. More like prayer, not magic, no matter what the orthodox say about it. And we don't believe in mage hating." He thunked her head like a melon and she grinned up at him. "Remember that."

"Gramma says all neomages make black magic and should be burned at the stake."

"Grampa had to have been spelled when he married her," Rupert grumbled under his breath. "She's more orthodox than a kirk elder. Maybe she should be burned at the stake."

"If it isn't magic, why do you want me to wear it when I go out?"

"Just... wear it. Please."

Ciana shrugged again and tucked it into her shirt, out of sight. "It's pretty. Mama will want it if she sees it."

"Tell her Thorn made it. That'll change her mind," Rupert said. Ciana laughed, shrugged into her coat, and swung her backpack on. "Bye, guys. I'll see you after school." Her face fell and her eyes sought me. "How will I know if something bad happens to Daddy if I'm at school?"

"We'll keep the TV on," Rupert said. "If anything happens, Thorn'll come get you."

"Promise?"

I touched three fingers of my right hand over my heart in a seraphic gesture. "Promise."

"Okay. And we'll go to kirk together?"

"Yes," I said. "Together."

"Cool. Bye." And she was gone, shoes crunching on snow.

"So." I faced Rupert, his eyes shadowed and still. "Why did you ask the questions about how the daywalker kissed her hand?"

"If it was a daywalker." When I didn't reply he said, "It was important to know if the daywalker breathed on her or licked her skin."

"Why?"

"Why did you flinch when Ciana asked if the pendant was magic?"

Touche, I thought. "Because it is." Rupert blinked. He'd clearly not expected that answer. I was glad I had chosen the agate, because I couldn't lie to him worth angel bones. "The agate was from a batch I picked up last spring at an estate sale. Paid a pretty penny for it too. Supposedly it's neomage stone from the early Post-Ap days. The heir said it was charmed against evil. I'm hoping she was right, but I didn't want Ciana to accidentally blurt that out to Maria. That witch might take a hammer to it out of spite. Your turn."

Rupert looked apprehensive. "Well. Nothing. Just old wives' tales."

"Reeeeally?" I drew out the word, watching as Rupert squirmed. I knew every old wives' tale ever told. Tales, yarns, fables, and parables were part of the earliest neomage training, and there was nothing about daywalkers in the instruction.

"If a daywalker takes your scent, he learns all about you. If he licks you, he's marking you as claimed territory. For sex or food."

"Not good." I didn't think I'd gotten the whole truth. We were both dancing around full disclosure this morning. "If she really saw one," I added, testing the waters.

"If," he agreed, uneasy, pushing back a lock of black hair, busying himself arranging the high-end display pieces of Mokume Gane, known as wood-grained gold, formed of gold and copper with precious stones. He uncovered small stone sculptures I had carved, and polished one of Jacey's chrome and glass sculptures. The silence built between us. Rupert believed Ciana, and he was rattled. Worse, Rupert was frightened. I'd never seen my best friend afraid of anything.

"If what?"

We both looked up at the fresh voice and took the interruption as a sign we'd gotten close enough to the truth this morning. Other revelations could wait. Perhaps forever.