Seraphs (Rogue Mage #2)

Seraphs (Rogue Mage #2) Page 26

I opened my eyes. I was cold. In pain. Confused. And outside. Overhead, purple light shimmered and sparked, like holiday sparklers. It was shaped like a dome. A shield. I took a breath. And realized I was still alive. I touched my throat. It was tender and sore, the tissues weak and thin to my fingertips. The shield I had opened was taking hits; bullets bounced off of it. The battle was still taking place. Gunshots were deafening.

I smelled cordite and kylen blood. Heat stirred under my skin, coiling like a snake in the spring sun. I was weak, and the flesh of my arm looked desiccated, wrinkled, hanging from my bones as if I had lost pounds. Perhaps I had. My lifeblood had run across the frozen ground and pooled in the downhill edge of the shield.

The sun was still up. Half an hour had passed, surely no more. Thaddeus Bartholomew lay across my body, his weight pinning me to the ground. I wriggled an arm under him and pushed, rolling him over as I sat up. His arms flopped, one landing in my lap.

Through my clothes, my amulets blazed, as did the stones in my pockets. I pushed aside the saturated cloak and dobok tunic to see that the talismans were discharging energy at a constant rate, a steady blast of might. Unconsciously, I had drawn on them as I fell, dying. At this speed, the amulets should be totally drained, yet when I ran my hands over the necklace, stopping them cold, they looked pretty good. In mage-sight they were still full of power. They had to have drawn energy from somewhere... the mountain. I had opened a conduit as I... died. The amulets had been powered by the Trine, through the sleeping cat I had carved from the heart of a fist of bloodstone. I touched the cat and jerked my fingers back. It was blistering hot.

I shook my head and wiped blood from my face, my mind still sluggish. Someone screamed nearby. Rickie had been hit, or maybe it was the other one, Tomas. Human blood, sweat, and the stink of fear were carried on the breeze.

On my lap blood pumped from Thadd's wrist, kylen-sweet. There was a huge seraph ring beside me on the frozen ground, turquoise in a silver setting of angel wings. Off of his finger, it had reverted to its unconjured size, the biggest ring I had ever seen. "Oh, Thadd," I whispered, throat raw. I knew why I was still alive. Thaddeus had pulled off the ring for the second time in his life. Then he had cut an artery and let his precious kylen blood pour over me. To heal me. Around the edges of his duster, white feathers protruded, the softer-than-air feathers of a kylen youth. His transformation to adult kylen was now far along.

My mind cleared fast. I shoved the ring on his finger; it instantly shrank to fit. I ripped off a healing amulet and pressed it into the arterial cut. Like me, he had lost a lot of blood. It had taken a lot to heal me, with his wrist pressed into the wound on my throat.

Oh, saints' balls. I had kylen blood in my system.

I twisted the top off a bottle of water and dribbled some between Thadd's lips. He coughed and his eyes fluttered open. Chrysacolla green irises were clear and bright in his pale, white face. "More," he whispered. I lifted his head and held the bottle to his mouth so he could drink. He drained the water and lay there, gasping. I drank a whole bottle, hoping to restore my body.

"Call mage in dire," he said, his voice grating.

"If I do, they'll know what you are," I said. "And they might kill the others out of spite. And then they'll take you away." It hurt to speak and my voice sounded worse than his, a stranger's croak. I touched my throat again. A large patch of skin was numb and weak-feeling, as if it might burst open again. The wound had taken out a huge amount of tissue. My vocal cords must have been damaged by the gunshot, maybe destroyed and rebuilt from nothing. I wondered how much kylen blood had been deposited into my bloodstream. And what that might mean.

"It'll be dark soon," he said. "Then it'll be too late anyway. Dead if you call, dead if you don't. And I'd rather die any other way than to be eaten alive."

Spawn hunted at night. I looked around, considering. The horses were gone, except for Homer. The fighting was at a lull. Three forms hid behind boulders, one under the overhang of the hellhole. Durbarge looked around the rock where he had taken cover. He was prone, a long rifle cradled in his arms like a lover. "You two alive?" he called.

Thadd looked down. I felt shock surge through him, but he nodded and pulled his duster over his feathers. "We'll live."

I looked around, evaluating our options. There weren't many. The men were in close proximity to the assey, though, and maybe I could cover us. "Durbarge!" I shouted. "Turn off any assey gadgets you have." Asseys are equipped to trap and capture witchy-women - unlicensed mages. The devices might disrupt the shield. To Thadd I said, "We get to Durbarge. Then we put you and Rickie on Homer and send you down the mountain, out of seraph range. I can keep us alive an hour before calling mage in dire. Maybe."

"Durbarge already knows something's up. You can't protect me anymore," Thadd said bitterly.

I looked at the cop. "You don't have to worry about the assey."

"I'll have to worry about him as long as I live," Thadd said.

"Or as long as he lives."

Thadd's face grew even whiter as it drained of blood. "That's murder," he whispered.

"I'm not planning to kill him." I heard the fury beneath my words and felt a spurt of surprise at my own anger. "But if it comes to it, well, I don't have a soul. Besides, they can only execute me once."

Thadd kindly didn't point out that I had been dead one time today already. Instead he said, "And if I do what you suggest - run, and let you commit murder for me - then what?"

"Beats me. Let's move." I rose to my knees, then my feet, feeling the world whirl sluggishly around me as my blood pressure stabilized. Thadd took my elbow, and I said, "Now!" We ran toward Durbarge, the shield moving with us, a mutable force, and fell behind the rock where he lay. Tomas and Eli fell over Rickie, stanching blood, checking his pulse. I couldn't tell if he was breathing. I tossed Joseph Barefoot two healing amulets. Long seconds passed before I saw Rickie's chest rise and fall.

"Call mage in dire," Durbarge demanded.

"She can't. Rickie's branded, not an innocent," Thadd said. "He didn't get wounded saving her, and she's not near death. When she couldn't speak, she used a healing amulet on both of us." Durbarge looked from me to Thadd, his face debating whether to call us on it. Not giving him a chance to dispute, Thadd outlined my plan, ending with, "Surprise is gone. Without horses, we'll never get down the mountain alive, even if Thorn could keep the shield open that long. I'll get Rickie to safety, and get Audric and Rupert and the town fathers. We'll start back up the mountain by dawn, if I have to shoot someone to get it done."

"We don't have much time," I said. "I smell the succubi."

"You can't. They aren't supposed to hatch until dawn," Thadd said.

"Time isn't always linear in a hellhole," Durbarge said. He seemed to reach a decision, and pointed to the left and right of the hellhole with his rifle. "Two snipers. I can take them out with these" - he pulled two egg-shaped objects from a band at his waist - "but they might damage the entrance. And any hope of stealth will be gone."

Eli chuckled. "I think it's pretty well gone now, bro. I don't think a couple hand grenades will make much of a difference. And Rickie's as stable as we can get him." He held one of the healing amulets to the light. "Pretty nifty little suckers. Hope you got a lot more."

My lips curled at the thought of needing a lot more.

Durbarge assessed his lethal weapons as if checking their weight in each palm. He explained how they worked, and said, "Let's do this, then. On three. One." Durbarge pulled a pin from the first grenade. "Two." I dropped the shield and Eli provided cover fire as the assey pulled the second pin. "Three." He stood, and threw one in a long arc. The second grenade followed it in a slightly different direction.

I snapped the shield back over us and dropped to the ground, not because I needed to, but because Durbarge did. The explosions overlapped, vibrating through the earth, hurling debris and shrapnel into the air. Shattered rock, dust, and traces of blood hit the shield and rained to the ground in a circle around us. The quiet afterward was absolute. Durbarge pointed two fingers to Eli, then to the right, to himself, and then left. I dropped the shield and they separated, rising from the ground and dashing up the scree on either side of the entrance of the pit at a dead run. I could have told them not to bother. I could smell dead humans.

Minutes later, Thadd was on Homer, Rickie sitting up strapped to his back, straddling the Friesian's rump, and heading downhill at a fast clip. I snapped the shield back over us and met Durbarge's one good eye. "Why didn't you call for help?" I asked. "You could have gotten troops here. Gotten seraphs here. That's what the AAS does, isn't it? Talk to the Seraphic High Council?"

"Troops are on the way, but a blizzard has formed up over the Mississippi River valley and is heading this way fast. There wasn't time for a mobilization before the storm hits. And seraphs don't listen to us much anymore," he said, as if it were a well-known fact, instead of mere supposition. "Haven't in two, three decades."

"Invaders don't have to listen to the conquered," Joseph said. Durbarge didn't reply to the heresy, and Joseph went on. "I told the men. Some operatives are gathering, but they come from the outlying hills and have to prepare for the storm first, so their families are safe. They'll be here at noon tomorrow."

"Too late," I said. "It has to be today. I can smell something from the entrance. Something that wasn't there the last time I went in. It smells like the queen smelled. It's a little late to be asking this, but does anyone have a better plan?"

"You mean better than following a sexy, redheaded, sword-wielding neomage into a pit, battling spawn, dragonets, a major Dark mojo, and trying to kill some kinda aphrodisiac larvae like in some bad, Pre-Ap, B-grade movie?" Eli asked with a roguish grin. "Can't think of one." He looked at his watch. "We got one hour till sunset. Let's boogie."

I chuckled, slung my bag of goodies over a shoulder, and drew two blades - the walking stick blade and the tanto - and tabbed open the moving shield. "Stay close."

With them trailing me, I levered myself up over the ledge to the mouth of the cave and stepped inside. Fear skittered up my spine.

Barak slammed his fist against the wall, drawing blood. The kylen was leaving. This was not acceptable. He raced to the bars and gripped them, oblivious to the pain of demon-iron as he shook them in the unyielding stone. His eyes, once a rich and vibrant shade of silver, had acquired dim red flecks. They grew with his anger. The bars held firm.

Across the passageway, a mage in heat moaned as the smell of his blood reached her. The sound brought up his head, and his nostrils quivered as he caught her scent. He swallowed, the muscles of his throat working harshly. "No," he whispered. "I will not." Slowly, the red lights in his irises began to fade and die. When they were gone, he stepped away from the doorway and fell to his feathers, dropping his head into his arms. "I will not."

It wasn't yet sunset, but I had learned to my chagrin that spawn, while nocturnal, were sometimes active in the protection of the pit when the sun was up. Once stirred to life, they were the same vicious little beasties they were at night. However, even with the gunfire and explosions, no one, and no thing, met us at the opening.

The passageway descended and the ambient light dropped off. I handed each man an illumination amulet and a healing amulet, and advanced into the dark at human speed. The air grew foul with the scent of death and sulfur, an acidic cloud. The men strapped on gas masks, looking like huge bipedal insects. No one had thought to bring a mask for me, but mage eyes and lungs are different from humans', and the gases didn't bother me as much.

Moving silently, following the map in my memory, we were down two levels by the time the sun set. A stagnant breeze blew up from the deeps. Chittering started ahead and to the sides as spawn began to wake.

At the sound, my amulets blazed into life, as did the stones in my pockets and in the bag I had slung across my back. The first spawn peered around the bend at our left. Before it could yowl a warning, I dropped the shield and beheaded it. "To the right," I said. "Fast." We made one more level before the alarm was sounded.

At a juncture of corridors hewn from the mountain of the Trine, new scents collided with the smell of waking spawn. Dragonets. Seraph. Mages. A ululating cry echoed through the tunnels. And the swarms attacked.

"Jehovah sabaoth!" I screamed. Moving with mage-speed, my skin blazing like a torch in the night, I advanced into the horde, blades flashing in the swan and the whirl-wind - moves created specifically for fighting spawn, taking off body parts. The spawn - always hungry, pulled their injured under them, feasting as others advanced to attack.

"Jesus," Durbarge prayed, easing to my right, slicing with his own blades, beheading and maiming. He began his war chant, which I thought was from 2 Samuel. "And darkness was under his feet. And darkness was under his feet."

Eli, to my left, shouted from Isaiah, "Thou shalt be visited of the LORD... and the flame of devouring fire." As he yelled, he pumped the bag under his arm and shot gouts of fire from his flamethrower. Spawn screamed and burned and died.

The EIH fighters drew swords and shouted together, "I will draw my sword, my hand shall destroy them. " The words brought me up short, and I misstepped. Teeth sank in my calf, above the battle boot. Pain shocked through me. With a single swipe, I beheaded the beast and kicked its teeth loose, the head flying away into the swarm. I settled myself with a simple crab move, wondering at the heretics' choice of scripture. They were speaking from Exodus, the words of the enemy of the people of the Most High.

"Jehovah sabaoth!" I shouted, the words that came to me the first time I went into battle, as all battle cries that fight Darkness are given.

"The seraph I told you about is close," I said to Durbarge and Eli. "I smell him." And a mage was close too, gibbering, insanity like a festering wound in her mind. "Take me, take me, take me, take me, take me," she cried silently. I tripped and fell, landing flat. Eli stepped over me, shouting my name, firing his flames. But the mind of the mage pulled me down into the cramped and flashing corners of her tormented memories.

I see him. His wings are iridescent green, softening to a paler green, like new leaves, on the underside and down. Silver hair curls around his high brow, gray eyes flecked with silver, and a narrow jaw with pointed chin. Barak. Baraqyal. The seraph.

His nevus pulses with fear and desire. Demon-iron shackles him to the wall of a chamber set aside for torture. Laughing daywalkers cut into his wings, hacking with demon-iron blades and with human steel. Severing them.

Gagging with reaction, with horror, I jerked back out of her mind. But not before I saw through her eyes, across a shadowed corridor. The seraph she desired was there, in a cell, only feet from me. Holding my weapons blade-down, I curled under Eli's feet, between his legs, letting him fight over me. He held swords, and handled them the way he danced, with effortless ease. "Seraph? Barak?" I shouted.

"Here, mage!" he belled back, filled with joy. "Here I am! She sent you to me!"

She. The mage near him? No. Not her. Seraph stones. He meant Lolo. Suddenly, I was sure of it. I had the mage's vision of him just now. And in a dream, in the vision of Lolo's past, I had seen within the mind of the priestess a silver-haired seraph with green wings. Barak. Baraqyal. The name of the first seraph to take a mage as lover.

"Thorn?" Eli called, taking the head of a spawn with a back swing, and another one's arms with the follow-through. "What's going on?" When I didn't answer, he said, "I want you between my legs, but not like this. Get up!"

My glove-covered knuckles brushed the smooth floor of the passageway. Suddenly I glimpsed a secret truth, saw it fully formed in the way of my people - a mage-truth. Barak, Baraqyal, had been the lover of Daria, the first mage to mate with a seraph, the first mage to produce a litter of kylen. I had questioned it before. Now it was all a horrifying kind of certainty - if Lolo was also Daria. "Yes," I said. Beside me, a spawn fell, a leg half severed, its mouth working, sharp predator teeth rimed with blood. Almost mechanically, I brought the tanto down, beheading it. The blade jarred twice, on the thing's spine, and on the stone beneath. A second one fell across the first, burned and smoking.

If Lolo had known he was here, then had she set all this up? My birth? Thadd's birth? Machinations and devious, conniving schemes, set in place so we could - what? Rescue her lover? Take his place? Had she allowed so many to die, just so she could free Barak? Could Lolo have done this? And worse, if she had done all that, was I being foolish to assign only one motive to the wily old woman? Either way, could I leave him here, being tortured?

"Thorn?" Eli shouted.

Mage-fast, I spun from between his legs to my feet. "This way!"

Blades blurring, my flesh shining with speed and battle-lust, I ducked into a constricted cleft and out the other side. Raced along a narrow corridor. The tunnel was empty. No guards, no spawn. Holding swords low for defense, I looked into a cell.

Behind me, I heard a cry of pain and the grinding sound that flesh makes against rock. Eli squeezed into the tunnel and raced to me. "The others are too big to make it through. They're holding the pass. What are we - Holy moly. It's a seraph," he said.

An exceptionally notorious seraph. "Meet Barak, also known as Baraqyal, the father of the kylen," I said, hearing my bitter tone. "A Watcher. One of the Fallen Allied."

"Dang, woman," Eli breathed, leaning in toward the bars. Even shorn of his wings, the seraph was utterly beautiful.

Silver hair slid over his perfect body, a veil that glistened. He glamoured a kilt to cover himself to his knees, and the kilt shone like his hair, like kyanite stone. "You are not in heat," Barak said. "You have engaged in battle dire, then, to reach me here."

"Yeah. We did." Two Flames buzzed into the corridor, lighting it with a brilliance that blistered my vision into a white glare. They soared through the demon-iron bars and danced along Baraqyal's body, singing a piccolo of notes, high-pitched and pure, a beautiful song. He laughed and held out his hands; they lit on his palms and he crooned to them, sounds like bells, in a language no mortal could speak.

As if Barak had given them orders, they darted to the bars and sliced through them like plasma torches. Red-hot demon-iron fell to the corridor chiming minor tones, ugly sounds, off-key and dull, leaving the cell open. Lips parted with wonder, Baraqyal stepped into the hall and threw out his chest as if unfurling his wings, breathing the foul air as if it were clean. The movement cracked open the wounds on his back and the Flames darted to him, droning urgently. They did something to his back and he laughed. It was a beautiful sound.

Screams and clashing steel sounded through the cleft to the outer hallway. Gunshots echoed and cordite overrode the smell of brimstone, followed by the scent of human blood and excrement. Human death. From a doorway down the hall, Durbarge crashed, trailed by Joseph, carrying Tomas. They had found another way in. The EIH operative was badly injured, an avulsion on his thigh gouting blood. The thigh muscles had been sliced away from the bone and hung forward. The Flames darted into the wound, instantly sealing torn vessels. The seraph followed their motions, his eyes wide. I could have sworn that Barak had never seen them heal.

"The succubi nest," Durbarge said to Barak. "Where is it?"

"Ahh," Barak said, turning from the healing Flames as Tomas took a weak breath. "Succubi. That is the scent that caused me - " He stopped and looked into my eyes. His were silver and guileless, and I distrusted such forthright-ness. It was too easy to see his beauty and forget that seraphs couldn't be trusted to speak the complete truth, only the parts the Most High deemed important. Worse, the Most High no longer spoke to Watchers. Did they have to speak truth at all? "You are too late," he said. "The eggs have hatched. The larvae were moved through the tunnels and away, south."

Too late? The thought shattered through my defenses. "Moved?" I asked.

"Their scent grew stronger for hours. At its apex, there was great movement in the tunnels to the south, movement that was both Darkness and Light, human and mage. Then all the scents were gone." He breathed deeply, testing the air. "But for the pitiful creature across the passageway and a few spawn, most are no longer here."

"What about Zadkiel and Amethyst?" I asked. Barak's eyes flickered the slightest bit. If I hadn't still been seeing with mage-sight, I would never have noted it.

"They are far below. I am wounded, without weapons, unable to transmogrify, unable to fight Darkness." Quick translation, "I'm not going down with you." Big shock there.

"I won't ask you to go down with me. But give me a boon." When he didn't turn away, I said, "Give me a seraph feather." The words were as much a surprise to me as to him. His eyes narrowed, and this time he didn't try to control the reaction. Seraph feathers, freely given, were strong weapons in the hands of a battle-mage, powering her other gifts. I might be only a half-trained stone mage, but I knew the power of a seraph feather.

Barak hesitated. "Though I am not among those Powers and Principalities who rebelled and fought against the High Host in the Battle of Heaven, as a fallen Watcher I have long been away from the Most High. I have been trapped here, in the lair of the beast, for decades. The gift might be weak. Or... polluted." When I stared at him, silent, he bent to the feathers on the cell floor and reluctantly lifted one. The wing moved with a lifelike shudder as he plucked and said, "Stone and fire, water and air, defense and flight prevail. Wings and shield, dagger and sword, blood and shelter prevail."

A sudden spike of instruction came from my amulet necklace, from the visa, and I bowed deeply, saying, "Stone and fire, water and air, blood and kin prevail. Wings and shield, dagger and sword, blood and kin prevail." The compulsion from the visa ceased. What the heck did I just do? I accepted the feather and bowed again over the gift.

Almost three feet long, it was a primary flight feather, lighter than air, and power trembled through it. A current of air lifted it. Barak could have chosen a small, insignificant feather. Instead he had given me his best. It was a lustrous, deep green that threw back the plasma light of the Flames in burgundy and silver and ocean blue. I was ashamed of my earlier distrust, and touched the feather to my forehead once before sliding it through my dobok belt. I met his beautiful eyes and said simply, "Thank you."

A surprised look crossed his face. "Much welcome, neomage. Fight true."

I walked to a clear place and dug in the bag over my shoulder, pulling out a stone jar of clean salt, never used. The supply was limited, and so the circle I made was small, barely large enough to hold me, sitting yogi-style. Prepared to draw on the stone beneath me for power, I placed an amulet in front of me, outside the circle, settled myself, and closed the salt ring, shivering with the energy that quivered up my spine.

I looked at Eli and Durbarge. "Don't kill the daywalker." At Durbarge's fierce glance, I added, "I, uh, I sorta bound one of those to me too." He reached for his sigil, before his fingers grudgingly clenched. I figured he wanted to arrest me, but thought he had better wait for a more propitious occasion. Like, if we survived the night in a hellhole.

Taking a calming breath, I opened the stone jar holding the scrap of cloth saturated with the walker's dried blood. I began to chant, "Malashe-el. Malashe-el. Attend to me. Malashe-el, attend and obey." Long minutes passed. Demon-fast, the walker appeared before me. The rune of forgetting blazed on its chest and it carried a sword of demon-iron. It swept the blade back with a swish of sound; I held up the cloth. "Hold," I said, praying the word would stay the blade. I hadn't opened a shield of protection. Demon-iron held power of its own and would surely disrupt the energies I had drawn around me.

The blade stopped at the apex of its arc, quivering slightly. "Drop the blade," I said. The walker's arms trembled with resistance until I repeated the command. Its fingers slowly opened. The sword dropped to the floor with a clang.

This was not a boy. Now it looked like a man, fully grown, in its late twenties, perhaps. Deep black hair was still long and braided, but a stubble of beard marked its chin. It wore black, a short-waisted jacket of silk velvet over a black charmeuse shirt with lace cuffs and nubby silk pants. Its eyes were red and labradorite in equal measure.

Untouched by sunlight, tainted by the dark energies in the place, my mage-sight saw it as it really was. A mesh of power the reddish-black shade of old blood passed through its body, as though the webbing of a spider wrapped it. The mesh twisted along the walker's legs, into its intestines, through its loins. The other threads were interlocking rings of blue Light, a conjure that swathed it, plunging into its body, entwining its heart and lungs.

I understood immediately that any exorcism I had done on the surface was useless here, close to the power sink of the resident evil. But I wasn't powerless. I could try to bolster the power of Light that held it. From my place on the floor I looked into its face and said, "By the power of your Mistress, see the Light." I had clearly said the correct words because the red in its eyes vanished like a mist dissipating over a sea at dawn, leaving its labradorite eyes clear and sparkling with relief, a blue-gray-green. "Bring me my blood."

"By the power of my Mistress," it whispered, and tears glistened in its eyes.

I pointed to the amulet. "Take that. When you have my blood, bring it to me."

Faster than my eyes could follow, the walker snatched up the small peridot nugget and was gone. That was easy, I thought. Too easy? Settling myself again, I tried to follow the amulet's progress through the tunnels. It led deep, demon-fast, to a place I had seen before.

I closed my eyes, envisioning the cell trapping Mistress Amethyst. I had linked the trails of the warren into a map and stored it in a stone. I gripped it now and compared the map to the walker's position. Its path led into the foulest parts of the lair, a pall of unbreathable smoke occluding many of the tunnels. Or the smoke could be a Dark trap. In a quick mind-skim, I sniffed; it was the stench of burning spawn flesh, not conjures. Suddenly, I lost the walker's trail. Seraph stones. All in one motion, I broke the circle and stood.

Suddenly Malashe-el was standing right in front of me, its lovely eyes blazing with Light and filled with tears. "My Mistress says this to you. My master has your blood. He is approaching the Mistress' prison. He goes to drain unto emptiness the Holy Ones he trapped, and he carries a chain coated with Mole Man's blood."

"Crap," Eli said, understanding. Silently, I echoed the miner's mild obscenity.

We were three levels down in a pit, and the primary mission was compromised. Well, defunct actually, because the larvae were gone. But I wasn't leaving without my blood. That meant I had to battle a Major Darkness and free the Mistress and her consort while I was down here. Careful not to speak Forcas' name, I said, "The Power of the Trine trapped a seraph and his cherub about a thousand feet deeper."

Durbarge touched the patch over his eye. Clearly, he remembered that one seraph had never reappeared after our last encounter on the Trine. "A cherub?" he asked. I hadn't told him about Amethyst. I hadn't told much of anyone. He dropped his hand and a look of wonder crossed his face. "They're real? As the scriptures claim?"

"Yeah. They're real," I said. "That ship that exploded out of the Trine and mowed down Darkness not long ago? That also just happened to vaporize the ice cap? That was the cherub's wheels. I'm going down to battle the Darkness. And to see if I can free the seraph and the cherub." Fear and horror clotted my throat, but battle-lust allowed me to push through it. I looked at Malashe-el. "Show me the way." His mouth set in a thin, unhappy line.

"Count me in," Eli said.

Durbarge and Joseph glanced at one another and then at me. "Us too."

Five was not a propitious number and six was even worse, but I didn't say it. To the Watcher, I said, "What about you?" Before he could reply, I spun the short sword out of my spine sheath and extended it, hilt first. The hilt was heavily plated with silver set with garnets. Taking a chance, I said, "Daria, the priestess, gave this to me when I was a child. I think she sent me to free you." He looked at the sword and his fingers clenched involuntarily. "I can't do anything about your wings," I said, "but you wouldn't be weaponless." Prompted by the visa, I said, "Your presence would be a thing of joy."

At my words, the Flames whirled and darted behind the Watcher. Barak hissed and fell to his knees, exposing his back. The Minor Flames blazed with abandon, racing up and down the allied seraph's spine. From his torn flesh, nubs and ripples appeared, hillocks that quickly grew to fist-sized prominences. The humeri ripped through his flesh. Wings began to form. The Watcher screamed. Reaching up, he took the hilt of the blade from my hand. He curled his body around the sword, cradling it. He screamed again, body wrenching. Barak blazed like a small sun, driving us out of the room, covering our faces.

"That went well," Eli said. "Have you noticed that you live an interesting life?"

"Pre-Ap Chinese blessing interesting? Yeah. I noticed." I pulled my blades and thumbed the amulet with the map of the Trine, copying it to the bloodstone hilt of my longsword. Looking at Malashe-el, I said, "By your Mistress' power, take me to your master."

From the cleftlike opening in the tunnel wall, a chitinous clacking and snapping sounded. A dragonet skittered into the passageway, bouncing up and down on segmented legs. Its exoskeleton was scarlet and orange stripes, its carapace humped and spiked with black barbs. Another dragonet followed. And another.

Demon-fast, Malashe-el took off in the opposite direction. More dragonets poured through the opening. As one, they attacked. Eli blasted one batch with flames, and Joseph tossed a hand grenade. We all ducked. The explosion rocked the cavern. Dust and debris, some of it slimy, rained down on us.

"No!" Eli shouted over the ringing in my ears. "Grenades'll bring the roof down!"

I offered the original amulet for the map and the one for the moving shield to Durbarge. "You can use these?" I asked, not really hearing my voice. He hesitated only an instant before taking the stones. I thought he mouthed the words, "Go with God the Victorious," but I wasn't sure.

As fast as I could, I followed Malashe-el down, into the Dark.