T he children of men are gathered. That had been the prophecy. The words had gone out to the world, Romona not waiting for my approval before she uploaded the entire diplomatic session on the cell phone. God the Victorious had spoken, superseding my request to review and cut footage.
The children of men are gathered. Did it, could it, mean what I thought? What I hoped?
I had never been to visit Thaddeus Bartholomew, had never been to his room in the town's one hotel, but I seemed to be making a habit of slinking my way into men's bedrooms. And to be the recipient of predictions and prophecy. Predictions could be thwarted and bypassed. Prophecy could not. I pushed away the thoughts. Later. I could deal with them later.
The kylen was asleep when I opened the door, his big body stretched out on the sagging mattress, a down coverlet pulled over him. The blinds were closed, throwing the room into murky shadows, turning the chair in the corner into a hulking monster, transposing the open armoire into a gateway from another realm.
Gloved hands moving clumsily, I closed the door behind me, the latch snicking softly. I took my first breath. Scents of caramel and vanilla, a hint of brown sugar, and beneath it all something peppery, like ginger, filled my head, rich and heated. The scent of kylen, part mage, part seraph, and part human. The smell of sex and need and desire.
Mage-heat slid over me and into me, tightening my breasts and weakening my knees. Desire pooled in my belly and breasts. I stared into the need, into myself, considering.
The Most High had done some strange things in his creation, and mage-heat was up there among the strangest. If the Most High had done it. If mage-heat was more than an accident, and was planned by the creator of the universe. If there was such a creator.
The thought was blasphemy, but the existence of the creator had been questioned by others, people a lot smarter than I. I had questioned it myself until today. But now I was beginning to have suspicions about my own doubt. Did the One True God exist? Had he created the universe and all that was in it? Did he give a flying flip that we were here? Did he bother with our paltry, petty lives? Had he really created the children of men - the mages, the kylen, the Stanhopes? And if so, what were we? The next evolutionary step of humankind?
It sounded so ludicrous, like a really bad Pre-Ap movie. Attack of the Killer Tomatoes. Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Or worse. The films about superheroes, Superman, or the X-Men.
The children of men are gathered. The old things are passed away. Seraph stones. I drew on my amulets to control my rising heat. If I was right, then Lolo's quest for a soul had some merit. Maybe a lot of merit. If mages were indeed a branch of the children of men, those special, anticipated beings prophesied about for millennia, then God the Victorious owed us souls. Owed us the opportunity for immortality just like the humans had. Owed us....
Thadd's breathing stuttered. Halted. Resumed at a faster rate.
He was awake.
Slowly he turned on the mattress, sheets swishing, and met my gaze across the room. "You shouldn't be here," he said, his voice a sleepy growl.
"Yes, I should." I think.
He rolled from the bed, his big body lithe and muscled in the half-light. He was naked. Aroused. Reddish hair, penny-bright, covered his legs and arms, redder than the hair on his head, brighter than the scruff of beard that covered his jaw. Brighter still was the hair at his groin, his manhood rising in the middle of his body. I stared and licked my lips, hungry for him. Wanting to feel his touch.
"You should go," he said as he crouched, a warrior's stance. He was holding himself back, his control a fragile silken rein, easily broken. Violence and passion were intertwined for mages and kylen, twin desires, too often overlapping.
His hands rose, half reaching, half gesturing me away. His kylen ring was not on his finger - the ring that had hidden the truth of his genetic heritage even from himself - the reason why our heat was rising so fast. I glanced to his side and saw the ring on the table. He had been fighting the change ever since he discovered what he was. I wondered why he had taken it off now, allowing the transformation into pure kylen to proceed at the accelerated rate.
"Come here," he demanded.
My body softened, need pooling in me like magma, hot and melting. Breath shallow and fast, I kept my place, feasting on the sight of his body.
Wings, feathered with the two-tone plumage of a kylen youth, stretched up behind his shoulders and along the length of him, to his knees. He half spread them, the lighter-than-air bones lifting to the sides, feathers rippling. The wings had achieved their full length, useless for flight, ornamental only, but with cardinal-crimson flight feathers, darkest at the tips, lightening to white down beneath the wings, speckling white and red at his shoulders.
Paeans of song darted through me, mage songs, about the wonders of mating with kylen, the unbearable heat, the taste and smell and touch of them. The feel of seraph-down tickling along a stomach...
I forced my gloved hand into my pocket and around the seraph stone there. In a single, fluid move, I pulled it from my battle cloak and tossed it to him. "Catch," I said.
On instinct, faster than any human could have, Thadd reached out and caught the stone. And the heat flaring between us died. The need didn't fade away. The instant he touched the stone with his bare hand, it was simply gone, as if ripped away, as if a spear point had been yanked out of flesh, leaving a gaping, empty wound. I closed my eyes hard against the loss and blinked away the tears that gathered.
"What - ? What happened?" Thadd asked, looking around the room. Slowly his shoulders relaxed, wings folding tight against him, his bare feet long and lean on the floor. There was no doubt that his desire was gone, wilted away, so to speak. Grief and relief blended within me.
"What is it?" he asked, turning the stone over in his palm. Thadd was unconcerned at being naked in front of me, almost unaware of his state, of my regard, of the barren and aching space between us. I wanted to cry, and struggled for the nonchalance that seemed so very far away.
I fought to speak normally and pretty much succeeded, only a little waver giving me away. "It's the seraph stone Zadkiel gave me," I said. "I knew it had healed me, but I wasn't sure what else it could do. Until now."
"How does it work? Are there more of them?"
"I don't know, except it requires the touch of skin to make it most effective. I wore it on my amulet necklace in the battle and when you showed up I went into mage-heat. With it in my pocket, I felt mage-heat. In your hand, nada. Nothing. No mage-heat at all." Which hurt like plagues and death, but I was through whining.
"I was guessing it worked along the lines of battle dire and bloodlust. Both can reduce mage-heat to varying degrees. I thought the Host found a way, or was given a way, to bring it under control, maybe by stimulating the same chemicals that blank desire during near-death warfare. But now, after experiencing it - " I stopped myself and licked my lips again. They were full and swollen as if Thadd had kissed me. The sting of loss spread through me and I pushed it away, chasing my thread of thought until I found it. "The stone works too fast to be promoting a chemical reaction. I think it's something else, a conjure, maybe."
Thadd nodded and turned, picking up a pair of jeans, sliding into them, buttoning them on his hips, hiding his form beneath the conformity of clothes. I tried to ignore the sadness that settled into me at the loss of the vision of his naked body, like something Michelangelo would have carved, had he ever found such a magnificent model. Moving the stone from hand to hand as he worked, Thadd pulled a modified shirt over his wings and his arms with an efficiency that proved he had been practicing, and buttoned it in place.
"What do you think it means," he asked, "that a seraph gave this to you?"
"'The children of men are gathered. The old things are passed away,'" I quoted. "I think it means that all the humans alive now, the human remnant, and all the mages, and all the kylen, are the children of men, the final result, the ultimate genetic pool of the humans who survived the Last War. I think the mages were the first to demonstrate the changes that are coming to all humans. I think the Stanhopes are another phase of that change. If so, it means that the last days are drawing to a close. The end is near."
He quirked a half smile at me, not concealing a gentle mockery. "That's pretty melodramatic."
I told him about the consulate meeting that was playing over and over again on SNN, creating a worldwide sensation. I quoted the entire prophecy. And then I told him about Rupert's vision of the old church and the huge snail-like things that crawled up the walls. I told him about Rose, captured and drugged and lying on an altar in Rupert's dream. About how I was supposed to murder Rupert, but that I had changed the tools available to fate, or to God the Victorious, to make the vision come to pass. I told him about the dreams I had been having, dreams that mirrored Rupert's in so many ways.
As I talked, his amusement fell away, leaving him introspective, reflecting. He turned the stone again, his eyes searching mine. "We can change predictions," Thadd said, repeating my own thoughts, "but we can't change prophecy. Was I there? In Rupert's dream?"
"I think so. You. Lucas. Eli."
"And the things that looked like you?"
"I think they were his dream-interpretation of the succubus larvae." I took a deep breath, wondering if he would laugh at me. I plunged on. "I think the mages and the kylen weren't an accident, that we were planned for and expected by someone. Maybe by the Most High."
The small smile spread. He was amused at me and not trying to hide it.
"I think that we're necessary to ending the war between the Light and the Dark that's been raging for so long. For eons."
He shook his head at my whimsy.
I smiled back and shrugged, tucking my hands into my cloak pockets. "I know how it sounds. But look at the evidence. Battle Station Consulate was established and licensed by the High Host, not by an existing enclave. That's the way Enclaves were originally created. We have two mages, one kylen, two sigils, a Flame-blessed blade, three foretellings, a seraph stone that stops mage-heat, a mountain with a hellhole and three peaks, and new forms of Darkness. A succubus queen has laid eggs that then were moved to a safe place, and that place became part of a predictive dream that showed my sister, battle, and seraphs in a killing heat. We have a Dark tornado and a Dragon, which may be the same thing. I could list more, but - "
"I get the picture. So what do you want with me?" he asked, still amused. Big tough man humoring the little woman. It made me want to sock him. So I did, verbally.
"I want you to go public."
His face hardened. "No."
I looked pointedly at his wings. "You can't hide it anymore. I want you to meet me at dusk on the street in the center of the sigil, and swear to become my champard. That puts you under the protection of Battle Station Consulate. Under my protection. And under the protection of the High Host."
I watched as the logic of the argument made a home for itself in his mind. His face changed slowly, the stubborn cast fading, deliberation and something like respect growing. And his amusement was back, broader and wider. He chuckled and ran a hand through his too-long red hair, leaving it in stiff peaks. "You came up with this all by yourself?"
"I think I did. I'm not really sure how much I'm figuring out and how much God the Victorious is feeding me."
"If he exists. And if he speaks to mages, against all the theology of the kirk about the Most High speaking to soulless beings."
I didn't agree with the disclaimer, I simply watched him.
"If I'm under your protection," he said, "then I'm technically under the protection of the High Host."
"Provided we do it formally, with all the ceremony required. Then they can't take you away to a Realm of Light without asking my permission. If they want you, it becomes a catch-22. They can't take you unless I agree. And if I want to fight it, this battle station could technically be described as a Realm of Light."
"Mineral City?" he said, laughing. "A realm?"
I wasn't insulted. He had a point. But my concerns were elsewhere. I jutted my chin at the huge ring lying on his bedside table. "Why did you take off the ring?"
Thadd's face fell, all amusement draining away. He looked down, busying himself buttoning his shirt, not meeting my eyes. "I couldn't stand the pain anymore," he said after a moment. "I haven't slept in three weeks. Pain meds weren't touching it."
One hand reached back to stroke his feathers, fingers sliding through the down. As he moved, his scent expanded and filled the room, stronger, more demanding. Just the smell of him was intoxicating. "I decided to let it take me at a time of my choosing.
"I think I'm a third-generation kylen," he said, extending his wings. They were six feet on a side, looking ludicrously small in comparison to a seraph's twenty-three-foot wingspan. "Flightless. And besides" - he folded his wings and shrugged as seraphs shrug, wing-wrist bones touching together behind him - "though we have no idea what I can do, maybe if the transition is complete, I'll have something to offer when the Darkness returns. Something you can use."
I understood that he meant some power, some talent for manipulating creation energies. He meant that he would be willing to share his gift, whatever it was, in conjures that I would control. Seraph power was very different from mage power, and mages couldn't wield it. But if he gave me control over it, helped me to utilize it, things might be different.
It was an offer of unprecedented generosity. Kylen were notoriously tightfisted when it came to their gifts, a power that could be much greater than any single mage possessed. In the case of a kylen who had not transformed in the womb, but had been under the constraint of a restrictive conjure his whole life, power of any kind was questionable. It might mean Thadd possessed a volatile wild magic, unstable, powerful enough to wipe Mineral City off the map. It might mean he possessed nothing. Or any amount in between. But it was more than I'd had available to fight the Dragon a moment ago.
Prompted by the visa, I lowered my head in a bow and said, "This mage is honored at the offer of your might." I raised my head and searched his eyes, in which amusement still lurked. But now it was the devil-may-care mirth of the soldier who faced insurmountable battle. "So, you'll meet me? Just before sunset?" I asked.
"Why not," he said, laughing the words. "I gotta die someday. But since I may bleed out all over the streets of this misbegotten town in the next few hours, there's one thing I want." He tossed the seraph stone to the mattress, stepped to me, and opened my battle cloak. In a single motion, he slid one arm around my waist, gripped my neck in firm fingers, and jerked me close. His mouth found mine. Heat flared between us.
I breathed into his mouth, the taste-smell-feel of him waking my mage-senses. I closed my eyes, knowing this was stupid, but needing him, wanting this so very much.
Behind my lids, I saw his aura flare brighter than any human's, brighter than any mage's, shocking and intense, an image like cinnamon on my tongue, the synesthesia of kylen-mage melding so intense that I couldn't separate sight from taste and smell. With his transformation so nearly complete, the mind-bending merge was concentrated into all the colors of the rainbow, all the scents of a candy store, a bakery, all the textures of heated velvet.
I arched into him, pressing along his length, rising onto my toes as he lifted me closer. I was dimly aware when my cloak fell to the floor with a swish of sound and I relaxed into the mattress beneath me, sheets cool and scented of him. Thadd settled between my legs and pressed against the center of me, needing me as much as I wanted him.
Mage-rut roared, a wild whitewater river of desire, my body preparing for him, belly quivering, breasts so tight they ached to be touched. Pain and pleasure.
A dobok isn't conducive to mating, hard to get into when standing, impossible to get out of while lying on my back, my legs wrapped around Thadd's waist. I pulled at my own clothes, mindless fingers at the fastenings. His hand found its way through an opening and stroked along my side. I hissed and clawed at him, raking his skin until my fingers touched the down at his back, beneath his wing. I pulled in a shuddering breath and stilled. Slowly I eased my hands into the cavities beneath his wings.
Heated, hotter by several degrees than my own body temperature, the nevus, the massed and coiled blood vessels that fed seraph wings in flight, pulsed against my hands. His down, softer than the finest fur, rubbed against my palms, warm and alluring. I heard myself groan as his wings lifted and fell around me, the movement creating a prism of light in the air.
His hand found my breast, stroking it into a tight point. Need raked its claws through me and I pulled at his jeans, whispering, "More. Now. Now!"
Thadd laughed, a low thrum of sound against me, his breath rapid as he worked the hooks, buttons, and Velcro straps of the dobok. I tore at his jeans, the buttonholes, the blasted buttonholes, too tight.
A polite knocking sounded.
Thadd grunted. The knock came again, louder.
"Thadd?" It was Lucas.
"Son of a seraph," Thadd grated, swearing.
"You are a son of a seraph," I said, giggling senselessly. "Which means you just swore by yourself."
Thadd chuckled with me, raising his weight off, to brace on his locked arms, hands to either side of my face. "That's your husband at my door," he said. "My cousin. And his timing either sucks or is as lucky as the plague survivors. Either way, I hate his guts."
"Ex-husband," I said as he shifted to the left, scrabbling in the sheets, spotting the stone above my shoulder, nested in a pool of pillows. I realized what he intended and said, "No!"
"Yes. This may hurt." Thadd picked up the seraph stone.
It did. Heat whipped from me. I cramped brutally, stomach muscles contracting, ovaries in a spasm as the hormonal impulse to ovulate stopped in an instant. I rolled from beneath him, curling into a ball, holding myself tight. "Tears of Taharial," I whispered, knowing it was foolish to curse so close to the Trine, but not able to stop myself.
Thadd rotated in the sheets, pulling the top one to the floor as he stood. He bent over and supported himself on his knees, breathing slowly, his thigh muscles rippling beneath the denim fabric, his wings half-spread, plumage quivering.
The knocking came again, this time banging. Lucas had heard me. "Thorn! Open up!"
"Did you lock the door when you came in?" Thadd asked, his voice rough. He looked at me. "How'd you get in anyway?"
I sat up and rearranged my clothes, pulling the dobok in place. Thadd had moved everything around, finding my breast through a rent in the padded cloth. "I stole a key at the front desk. And no. He can get in any time he - "
The door slammed open, Lucas standing in the opening, his face twisted in righteous anger. He took in the tableau, me on the bed, fully clothed, even my boots still on. Yet, the bed was rumpled, sheets on the floor, and my hair was snarled in what the kind might call disarray, the way hair looked after a riotous romping. Thadd was standing, his shirt open, jeans partially unbuttoned, feet bare, his wings half-spread. Sweet Hail Mary. His wings were spread.
Behind Lucas, Eli appeared. His mouth opened in shock and he said, "Holy crap. He's a kylen."
We looked like something out of a decadent television series, one of the Pre-Ap shows they called soaps. Three men, only one of them fully human, and the woman they all claimed they wanted. Well, sort of.
Had Lucas followed me? How guilty and stupid would I feel if I asked? Better to ignore it. If I hadn't been in so much pain from the interrupted heat, I might have laughed. As it was, I groaned in misery and pushed to my feet. I hadn't felt this bad since the fight on the Trine.
I looked from Lucas and Eli to Thadd, to the stone in his hand, and chose my battles by picking the smallest and easiest - and the one that made me the most angry. The mage stone. "That was just pure mean," I said.
"It's not like I'm enjoying it either," Thadd said, his voice tense with pain. "Between the stone and your men friends, I may not survive this." Still holding himself rigid, he backed up as Lucas and Eli crowded in. "But if I live through it, you can beat me up."
"Count on it," I said.
I stalked out of the old hotel into the late afternoon light and turned uphill, trudging toward Upper Street, still adjusting the dobok, which had gotten turned on the bias against my skin. My lips were bruised, my cloak was loose over my shoulders and dragging on one side, and my hair was half up in a queue, half straggling down my back. My thoughts and feelings were just as snarled and tangled.
I was unable to separate the individual strands of thwarted desire, irritation with the three men still arguing in Thadd's hotel room, logical interpretation of consulate protocol and diplomatic law, prophecy and predictions, and blasphemy. My life was a shambles. I wanted three men and could have no sort of normal life with any of them. If I chose Thadd, I'd have litter after litter of fourth-generation kylen who would probably be taken from me the day they were born and raised in Realms of Light. I'd stay in heat year-round, which would feel great, but turn me into a sex and baby-making machine.
With Eli, I'd dance a lot and have kinky sex, making half-breed babies, the physically anomalous, sterile, second unforeseen, like Audric. Bred for battle, perpetually unhappy, and probably ticked off at me for birthing them. I'd have a litter every time a seraph came near.
And if I chose Lucas, he'd cheat on me before the year was out, breaking my heart again. A small voice whispered to me that I couldn't get my heart broken if I didn't care for him. I ignored it. What did I know?
I had a sudden vision of Thadd tossing the seraph stone onto the mattress. Within easy reach. Then he tossed me up beside it. "Stones and blood," I hissed below my breath. The son of a seraph had experimented on me. He had set up the heat, tested it with a full-body clinch, and then used the stone to make sure rut could be shut off at almost any stage. It had been a test. A game.
I wouldn't just beat him up. I'd kick him so hard he'd be singing soprano for a year.
I stomped onto Upper Street and passed Waldroup's Furniture Store, seeing my ridiculous reflection in the big windows. Smoothing my hair, I slowed, adjusted my cloak, and forced my steps into a normal walking pattern as I reined in the anger. In the window, beyond my image, was a desk and chair carved in rococo, an ornate Pre-Ap style.
Even through my pique, I liked the set. If I survived the next week, I would need to furnish the Battle Station Consulate /Realm of Light. The thought of something so mundane and normal as decorating brought tears to my eyes. I had lost the opportunity for anything in my life to be normal. Of my quiet, introspective life, working stone, making jewelry, having friends who depended on me to get out of bed each day and show up for work in a store, there was little left. Next to nothing, in fact. Nothing except the half-baked plan I had devised to keep us alive.
I stopped and moved closer to the window, splaying my hand open on the glass, not really seeing the rest of the furniture in the showroom. No matter what happened with my plan, it would result in suffering. My breath fogged the window and froze, creating a glazed circle, spreading with each exhale.
It was getting colder. The puffs of white breath were denser. Snow was coming. A lot of it.
I turned to the street, pulling my cloak tight around me, and surveyed the place I had called home for a decade. It bore only marginal resemblance to the Mineral City of my memory, burned, damaged, its populace decreased by war and Darkness. There were few people out and about. Only one snow-el-mobile churning along the street. Two horses and riders moved at a fast clip. Businesses were closed. Blood splashed the dirty snow. The sigil beneath the ice glowed softly in my mage-sight. A cloud of smoke raced between the buildings, carrying the scent of burned wood and the residual, rank smell of cremated spawn. Above the town, heavy clouds gathered on the western mountains, presaging a blizzard.
A cold breeze was coming off the Trine, its three peaks wreathed in mist and cloud, white caps on the summits visible occasionally through thinning gaps. To mage-sight, the left peak appeared yellow, shot through with black, the air itself hazy with Dark energies.
Oh, yeah. All I had left was the plan. The wind caught my loose hair and plucked it from the braid, blowing strands across my face. I twisted them all back into the queue in irritation. What a mess. What a horrid mess. People were going to die. People I loved. And it was going to be my fault.
