Bloodring (8 page)

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.

“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 Marla 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 Marla 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 Marla 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 Marla 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, coming 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?”

Touché,
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 Marla. 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.”