Audric took an unwitting step back. “I will keep my vow to you,” he said.
I quoted, “‘I will hold you in the highest regard, and I will serve you and train you to the best of my ability. I will dress you for battle, and should you die by the sword, I will dress you for burial. All that, I swear.’ That pledge? The sworn regard that allowed you to call me stupid? Made you attempt to shame me in front of our friends? Well, you didn’t shame me, Audric. You shamed only yourself. And Rupert. You shamed him too.” I turned and swept past him and up to my room.
I was halfway there when the alarms sounded.
I stopped, not sure what it meant, the hooting blaring sound, and then I knew. Darkness. Something was attacking. With mage speed, I raced to my room and threw off my clothing, pulling on skin-tight undergarments and slithering into the new dobok. I hadn’t worn the new leathers yet. We had picked them up in Birmingham, where a group of licensed mages had opened a leather shop specializing in fighting leathers. The armor tingled against my flesh, the creation energies worked into them by Earth mages, defensive conjures that protected against the claws, fangs, and saliva of minor Darkness. They were black as night, conjured to form to my body, and they slid onto me like a second skin.
My door opened and Audric entered without knocking. He too was dressed in new fighting leathers. Boots came to his knees, battle cloak on his shoulders, armed for war. Moving almost at combat speed, he shook out my battle cloak and buckled it in place around me, slammed weapons into the various sheaths, then tied my amulet necklace in a new configuration around my chest.
Without meeting my eyes, he asked, “Have I been so horrible?”
“A total ass,” I said.
He tucked more amulets into the special pockets that kept each in place. “I miss him,” he said softly. “There is a hole in my heart where he once lived.” I sobbed and he took a cloth, wiping my face where a day in the open had chapped it. He met my eyes, waiting to see how I might respond. “You had accomplished so much else, saved so many others. My heart did not accept what my intellect knew—that there was no other choice.”
My throat closed up again and my reply was strangled. “I couldn’t save him.”
“I know. And I . . . accept that.”
“So easily? After that . . . um . . .”
“Contretemps in the lobby? It’s been . . .” he waggled his head side to side, the bald pate catching the lamplight, “coming to me for some time. That . . . discussion was the slap in the face I needed.”
“Just to be clear, you gave yourself the slap.”
“Indeed.” He smiled and tucked the cloth with my tears into a pocket in my dobok. “Let us go forth and fight Darkness, my mistrend.”
Laughter sputtered out. “Sure. It’s what we battle mages do.”
My champards—all except Ciana, who was placed in the care of Lucas, Zoeheret and three of her handpicked second unforeseen—met in the otherwise empty registration area. Clemet and Clovis joined us. We all wore black leathers, new, all alike except for four of us. The new second unforeseen wore spelled cloth, rough and coarse. Eli’s leathers had been designed with a Western flare, embossed all over with roses and thorns. Rose had no need of protective leathers. She was Death Itself. She met my eyes from across the room, holding me still with her gaze. “If I go too far, stop me,” she said.
She meant kill her. Kill her if she killed one of us. I nodded slowly, and my visa blazed as if in witness. “I so swear.” My champards echoed around me, “I so swear.”
The possibility of losing Rose as I had lost Rupert weighed on my mind, feeling as if an avalanche had buried me. I stood wrapped in thought until Eli discreetly cleared his throat, bringing me back to the present. Straightening my shoulders, I walked through my team and out into the night.
Audric stopped us, standing in the moonlight, and pointed at four of the biggest second unforeseen. “You were with me when we brought in the crates. You were with us when we marked the cardinal points around the inn.” They looked puzzled but nodded. “Bury each stone at the exact place we marked. Exact place. Understand?” They nodded again. Audric was choosing my embassy land. The inn’s staff and owners would be ticked off, but other than that, it was a good choice.
“Bury them fast,” I said. “Accurately, but fast. And then get away. I’ll charge them remotely.”
The four blinked, taking in what I was saying. Their knowledge of Enclave politics told them exactly what I was doing and their part in it. “Yes, ma’am,” the smallest of them said. “And we’ll light a fire at the ward wall when it’s done. It can be seen from the shore.”
“Why are we going to the shore?” I asked.
“That’s where the Darkness comes.”
I nodded and stepped outside. The city was locked down. No one and nothing moved, the streets were deserted; not so much as a stray cat could be seen. No lights brightened windows. The only sound was the eerie, hooting alarm. The ward was up, a ghostly aura rising in an arc to a central point. The ward-gate was empty, vacated by the soldiers who were supposed to keep watch, which wasn’t a surprise, considering the pile of dead devil-spawn just beyond the gate. There were hundreds more feasting on the dead, a writhing mass of ripping fangs and tearing claws, and still more Darkness converging from the river. “Moving ward,” I said and we gathered close. I thumbed on the portable ward and it passed over me in a wash of dull light. “Stay close.”
Weapons drawn, we moved through the ward-gate and crawled over dead spawn. Squealing spawn tore the flesh from the bones of the dead. Spawn are always hungry. Always. The live ones didn’t even look up as the ward moved them out of the way. I had learned a lot about imbued amulets and had added silence, muted scent patterns, and forgetfulness to my ward’s protections.
In the distance, the Enclave dome was blazing bright as a sun, the moon rising over it. Powering it. It was the first day of the three-day full moon. Moon mages were the most powerful creatures on the face of the Earth for three days out of twenty-eight. Their ability to collect and use creation energy then rivaled even a seraph’s. Working together, they could bring down a flight of dragons.
Even with multiple mages working, excess creation energy reflected off the dome, dropping through a converter conjure that allowed all mages to draw from the energy, and flooding into the power sink far below ground. The Enclave power sink was overflowing, which meant that no one would notice me using it. “Stop,” I whispered. I gripped my prime, seeking out all stone in the vicinity that hadn’t been claimed as a power sink by another mage. There were four locations, buildings all made of stone, all available for my use, but none of them storing power. “I need a minute.”
“Here?” Cheran demanded. Eli did something that made the Steel mage grunt in pain, but I was too busy with the trails of power below ground to pay attention.
“There is a light in the city,” Audric said with approval. “The boulders have been buried.”
I sank to my backside on the street and spread my awareness, finding a trail of converted Moon power to siphon off and into the power sink at the inn and at each of the four empty sinks in the old city. It was difficult to establish a continuous flow, one with a timer that would shut the flow down when the moon set, but I might have succeeded. Partially.
“Thorn!” Cheran hissed. “They scent us.”
I opened my eyes to see my ward ringed by spawn, four as large as good-sized boars, red eyes glowing, their magics foul to my mage sight. Rose pressed close, her skin touching mine, close enough for her thoughts to reach me had the thought pathway not been sealed. I patted her shoulder, standing. “Let’s see where they’re coming from.”
“You throw the best parties,” Eli said. Thadd laughed, the tones seraphic. Cheran cursed. The hired second unforeseen nodded at Audric, blades held ready.
We moved toward the Enclave at an angle, until we saw the shore of the Mississippi. Its waters were thrashing with spawn. Thousands crawled out of the river, squealing with hunger. They were
climbing the bodies of their dead, up the city’s ward walls. Cheran Jones cursed.
Someone must have moved too far from me, because the ward sputtered, flashed, and closed. Our commingled scents hit the spawn. Their screams and stink hit us. As one, the spawn lifted their noses into the air and shifted position. Attacked.
My champards circled me, blades flashing silver in the moonlight. The corpses piled up. Not one spawn stopped to feast. That told me this attack was more than coincidental. It was directed at us. As blood flew, Rose began to glow, absorbing the energies.
Swords swinging, Audric shouted. “Pull back!”
“Where?” Thadd asked, his seraphic might blazing. “There’s a mountain of spawn at the city. And the Enclave won’t let us in.”
As blood spattered, the acidity blistering our skin, I drew on the pooling energies and managed to raise another ward. It was weak, but it was enough. Spawn were trapped on both sides, and my fighters dispatched the ones inside, leaving bloody sand beneath our feet. Rose blazed, so full of death-power she was drunk and laughing.
Through the swirling waters and swimming spawn, I spotted something dark beneath the surface, glowing with sickly energies, reddish-yellow with purple undertones. “Audric!” I called and pointed.
Whatever they were, they were big. They spanned the river surface, rising from the deeps. Tentacled, with massive central heads/bodies, these Darkness were eight-armed, green-skinned, with bumps and ridges on the surfaces of their deep-toned tentacles. The skin on the underside of the arms was whitish and smooth with round mouths, each with a single spur-tooth. Each head was centered with a single eye, platter sized, oval and glossy. The underside of the heads was both maw and claws.
“Kraken,” Audric ground out. “It’s been nearly fifty years since they attacked last. They threaten the Enclave.”
From Enclave’s fleur-de-lis power blasted, the shimmering silver of moonstones and icicles, a burning might that scored lines of black death across the krakens, severing tentacles. An energy weapon. The creatures thrashed, flailing, heaving themselves ashore. Toward Enclave.
We were trapped here and my champards were no match for such creatures. I shouldn’t have answered the alarms.
One kraken turned to us. Three limbs snaked high and slammed down, just missing us. Sand sprayed. Dead spawn smashed against the ward. It wavered. “Thorn!” Thadd shouted.
Suddenly all the stones in New Orleans were fully charged, and I poured power from them into my ward. The closest tentacle thumped high and landed only a foot away. Then it curled closer and wrapped slowly around the ward. The suckers pressed close on the energies. The mouths began to feed.
The kraken had the ability to absorb the energies of the ward conjure. This was not good. My ward thinned. I could feel the loss in my bones and pulled harder on my power sinks.
The ward wavered. A tentacle coiled in. I reached for more power. Clemet and Clovis rushed the tentacle. Hacked and tore into it. Caustic blood splattered. Faster than I could follow with human sight, the suckers opened and spat bursts of darkness. Clemet fell. I got a partial ward back up, but a second tentacle wrapped around Clemet and pulled him away. A smear of blood marred the sand. Rose absorbed his death energies and laughed. Cheran cursed, “Bones of watchers!”
Clovis fell at my feet, his body riddled with darts, each pouring poison into him. I struggled to close the ward overhead, but a small section remained open, like the puckered top of a bag. The suckers drew off more power. I hit my knees as creation energy raced through me, straight to them. I was nothing more than a conduit. The kraken was stealing the creation energy in my power sinks through me.
It reached a tentacle up and through the top of the ward. Audric severed it, splashing us with caustic blood, and the squirming flesh fell inside with us. Rose knelt and touched the tentacle, pulling its death inside her, petting it as it died. Clovis’s eyes went wide and he dragged himself as far from Rose as the ward allowed.
Another tentacle struggled into the top. Through a space in the straining muscles of the kraken, I caught a glimpse of the Enclave. Krakens had wrapped themselves around the dome. More than a dozen of the Dark monsters. Though their flesh was scorched, they seemed able to ignore the blasts of defensive light that stabbed from the dome-top.
With a sound like thunder, the Enclave dome cracked.
The energies of the dome flickered, as if the mages powering it were stunned into immobility. It seemed the entire world went still.
A second crack sounded.
A final kraken pulled itself from the river. Massive beyond belief, as large as Enclave itself. It called out, a sound like an oboe if the instrument were the size of a freight train. It rattled my ward with might. River waters rushed in before the beast like a tsunami, engulfing the ward. Water poured through the hole at the top. Drenching us. My power faded at the contact.
The huge beast shoved the smaller creatures away and wrapped its tentacles around the dome. Beneath it, the light of Enclave went dark.
A third crack sounded, shaking the ground. The lesser krakens on the beach stared across the sand to the Enclave and their leader, making slurping sounds but standing immobile.
I dragged power in and closed the ward. I was shaking, fingers white on the sand. I didn’t know when I had fallen. My amulets were sapped, nearly empty.
A fourth crack sounded, the sands shifting beneath us. Over the distance, we could hear the screams of mages from inside. Enclave was about to fall. They were calling mage in dire, but . . . seraphs weren’t coming to help. The huge kraken had power of its own. Had it stopped the call? Was no one hearing it?
Rose watched. She was cradling a severed tentacle. In mage sight, the cut flesh glowed with her death energies. And so did the creature it had come from. The kraken released its hold on my ward, its remaining tentacles waving in the air, Slowly, it moved aside. Rose met my eyes, a look on her face that might have been ecstasy. And I realized what was happening: My twin was making the smaller kraken go away.
“Rose?” I whispered.
“My death energies can merge with the energies of the kraken,” she said. “I can . . . take it.”
“What—what does that even mean?”
“I can control it. I think I can control all of them. I just need the blood of the big one.”
“So let’s get the lady close to the Big Bad Ugly,” Eli said.
Audric lifted me to my feet. “You are exhausted.”
I nodded, holding on. “I can walk.”
Thadd lifted Clovis onto his back, cradling the second unforeseen between his wings. “Leave me. I’m dying,” the man said.
“No.” Thadd said no more.
I pushed at the ward and it began to move again. “Stay close,” I murmured, as Audric steadied my steps. “There are more spawn.”
The small kraken drove itself across the shore before us, clearing the way.
A fifth crack sounded. It seemed to echo forever. Spawn raced over my ward, fought to get inside. Still we moved toward the Darkness ahead. Finally we were there, the smaller beast, still bigger than a Pre-Ap bus, beside us, snuggling close, like a cat might.
“Okay,” I said. “I can drop the ward for five seconds. In that time, you need to get your blood and get back inside. The rest of us will be killing spawn.”
Rose just laughed, which made no sense. But I was too tired to care.
I dropped the ward. Rose sped the few feet and stabbed with her knife. Blood pulsed over her hand. Her death energies slammed into the blood and . . . Rose took control of the kraken. Her death energies swelled and flooded through it, greenish and brown and sick shades of death.
Around me, my champards were fighting. “Thorn!” Thadd shouted. “Raise the ward!” But I just watched as the behemoth dropped a tentacle tip down and Rose stepped onto it.
“Rose!” I screamed.
“Thorn! Now! Or we all die!” Thadd shouted.
The huge kraken raised Rose to his maw. Set her on
its tongue. A dome—just like Enclave but smaller—opened around Rose.
Almost as one, the krakens slipped away beneath the crashing waves, taking Rose and her dome with them.
“Rose,” I whispered.
“Thorn!”
I thumbed the amulets, raising the ward. Spawn ran squealing after the krakens, into the water. Ignoring us. It took half an hour for the army of Darkness to vanish.
The night grew still.
Black.
Silent.
The Enclave’s dome was dark for the first time since it was raised by the seraphs of the Most High seventy-seven years ago. Cracks zigged and zagged across its surface. Time passed and then a faint glow began as Moon mages pulled power from the sky and began to mend it.
We stood, beneath my ward. None of us were certain what to do.
The huge gateway into Enclave slid open. Pale light filtered out. People walked into the night. The priestess of Enclave and an armed entourage stepped out. Walked to us. I dropped my ward and my champards arrayed themselves around me. Audric threw his cloak around Thadd and took Clovis’s dead weight.
The priestess smoldered with power and beauty. She stopped in front of me. We took each other’s measure. The breeze blew across us warmly. Waves lapped at the shore.
“Enclave thanks you for your help,” she said, grudgingly.
“The consul-general accepts your thanks,” Audric said before I could reply.
“Our people will . . . schedule talks,” she said, her power brilliant in the night.
And I realized that the priestess hadn’t seen Rose’s actions or her disappearance. The priestess thought that my power defeated the krakens.
“Yes,” Audric said. “That is acceptable to us.”
The priestess of Enclave turned and walked back inside the dome. And shut the door.
We had won. For now.
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Introductions
Unbidden Bonds