Host (5 page)

As I watched, the creature seemed to grow, its form expanding, its glamour slipping and slithering across its body. The smell of sex-demon blossomed out, fetid and cloying. While not able to transmogrify—to restructure their energies into almost any physical body—powerful minions of the Dark often appeared physically attractive to humans. Not so this Darkness. Though once it had been able to assume and maintain the shape of its victims, it seemed to have lost that ability. Or maybe it felt it no longer needed camouflage. The queen was all about being a BBU, which could mean she would be bigger and badder and uglier in the future, as she matured. That was a scary thought.

Cissy straddled its thigh, her feet kicking, tendons in her neck straining as she tried to take the weight off her throat to breathe. To the succubus, I said, “Better deal. I kill you and no one gets handed over.” A thin rivulet of blood, near black in the scant light, rolled down Cissy's throat, into her collar. The blade cauterized the wound even as it cut her.

“Call mage in dire,” Audric demanded as we circled the queen, feet icy in the snow.

“Can't. Cissy isn't close enough to death for me to summon seraphic warriors.”

“I say she is,” he said.

Uncertainty snaked through me. My breath puffed in tiny, rapid clouds. If I called mage in dire, every adult in town could die. When seraphs came to fight evil, humans died. Always.

Gramma smiled, drawing its lips back to reveal sharp teeth, jaw stretching forward, squaring off. I had seen this transformation before. It wasn't pretty. The succubus drew its illusion back around itself like a cloak, smile narrowing and teeth reshaping into human-molar bluntness. But Cissy's blood and burned skin were no illusion. She mewled like a kitten in the grip of a hawk. Gramma kissed the top of her head, snuggling her close. “Not to worry, poppet. It won't hurt much. And not for long.”

“Cissy?”

It was Ciana, my stepchild, above and behind me, on the porch of Rupert's loft. Gramma's nostrils flared as she scent-searched, but her eyes never rose to the girl. Ciana possessed a pin with camouflage properties. She didn't become invisible, exactly, but it did seem really hard for evil to find and focus on her.

“No seraphs,” I warned. I didn't have to explain what could, what
would
, happen if she called the High Host for help. She had seen humans die in the presence of the holy ones. But I wasn't sure we could save Cissy without help. The beast bulked larger as I watched. It had grown in power since I'd seen it last. I didn't think I could use verbal ploys against it this time. “Not yet,” I added.

“All right,” the young girl said, sounding far calmer than I felt. Her trust in me had always been terrifying.

Use the binding, Audric had suggested. Okay. An icy wind blew against my body and I shivered in reaction. “You are mine,” I said to the beast, “bound to me. Let the child go.”

The thing that no longer resembled Gramma cocked its head, the movement human-slow. Its shoulders rose and fell, an almost pensive shift of muscles.

“Let the child go. You are mine. You must obey,” I said, drawing on the mage visa, the one function I had mastered, to instill my voice with command.

The glamour quivered across its features again, revealing patches of alabaster skin, blond hair, and one vivid eye in a mishmash of features, the beautiful Jane Hilton on one half, Gramma on the other. The new face, the face Lucas had left me for, looked startled, then astonished, and said, “You!” The lovely half snarled in anger and rippled, and the human visages vanished, leaving only succubus in its wake. The beast smiled, canines longer and razor sharp. Cissy fell silent. I wasn't sure she was breathing.

I rushed it, blades flashing. It snapped back a dozen steps, demon-fast. “No, no, no, mageling.” A shield snapped open just in front of my toes, the energies throwing me back, feet burning like lightning. In mage-sight, the shield was an ocher-yellow dome seething with earth energies. It was a mage construct, which meant there were mages nearby, Dark mages, helping this beast. Whether willing or under compulsion, it was bad on all sorts of levels. “You constrained me once,” it said. “My master's master freed me of your lowly incantation.”

My master's master? Death and plagues. Is she talking about the Dragon?
Audric and I circled the shield, reversing midway, back and forth. My socks stuck and pulled free of the ice beneath my aching feet with each careful step. Gramma sniffed, head raised, searching for a whiff of the Stanhope genetic strain, but was unable to locate Ciana. I looked around for Rupert or Ciana's father—my ex-husband, Lucas—or Thaddeus Bartholomew, their cousin, all descendents of Mole Man. I would have prayed they'd all remain indoors, but I knew they wouldn't. I knew they hadn't. That would be too easy and men never made anything easy. The succubus's eyes glowed brightly as it located prey off to my right.
Seraph stones.
What was I going to do?

From my angle, I could see Ciana standing on the high porch, her nightgown fluttering in the rising breeze. She was watching me, and in her hand was the pin gifted her by the seraph Raziel as protection from evil; it glowed a brilliant gold, as if she held a star in her fist, shielding her. The succubus was looking away from the girl and down, on street level, at Rupert.

My best friend was standing in the doorway of the shop, sleep-creased, half-naked. His face was blank, empty.
Seraph stones.
He was spelled. So was Lucas. In my side vision, I saw Ciana's father walk onto Upper Street; he stared at the beast as if it held his heart in one hand. On his neck, smudges of Dark energies glowed, old scars left from imprisonment beneath the Trine, activated by the growing power of the beast. But the queen hadn't seen him. Yet.

“Audric,” I warned. Cold wind tore through my pajamas. My calves cramped as my feet froze. Cissy had gone limp. Above me, Ciana watched, her face serene, waiting.

“I see them.” Face blank, Rupert reached toward the beast. Audric stepped to block him, arms out wide. “Now might be a good time to try the anticonjures you've been working on.”

My mind cleared, taking on the crisp clarity of incipient battle. I lifted one of the small, drilled, and polished Dalmatian jasper nuggets, the opaque black-and-white stones hanging from thin string loops on my necklace. I had made a batch of the anticonjures—supposed to disable most lower to mid-level incantations—but hadn't tested them. I had no idea if they would diminish the lure of a succubus or make things worse. If the succubus's allure was a higher level conjure, they probably wouldn't work at all.

I ripped a nugget from its temporary loop and tossed it to the ice at Rupert's feet. It bounced. Exploded. Time slid sideways, a slow-motion vision, a dozen things happening at once and I saw/felt them in overlays of sensation.

Snow and ice blasted over Rupert, the concussion throwing him backward. Audric and I hit the snow, my skin abrading in a wide patch along calf and lower arm as I slid. My ears popped painfully. The succubus's shield fell and she howled, sharp canines reflecting moonlight. The knife at Cissy's throat bit down. Blood drenched her nightgown. Snow and ice tumbled from the air like hail. As ice-shrapnel fell, the beast changed its grip and reached for Rupert, lying prone, stunned. The beast smiled in a parody of lust and delight. Lucas stepped closer, his expression hungry, arms out in entreaty. Wordless, I rolled to my knees. I couldn't reach them in time.

A thunk sounded over the ringing in my ears. The succubus shuddered and dropped its arm. A knife hilt protruded from its neck below the clavicle. Snarling, it almost let Cissy fall.

From the street, I threw the remaining two amulets at the queen. They exploded at her clawed feet, ripping into the rutted ice. The smell of succubus, of dead things, stagnant water, and rotting flowers vanished in a blast of sulfur and brimstone, the scent of Darkness. Lucas was knocked to the earth and rose shaking his head as if waking from a nightmare. I had a single glimpse of his horrified face. The anticonjure had worked. Sort of. Its shield was gone and its conjure of allure was nullified, but it wasn't dead. Another knife appeared in the body of the creature, the sound lost in the concussion of the blasts.

“Audric?” I shouted. I was deaf but needed information. Who'd thrown the knives? I rolled to my feet and raced forward.

“Not mine,” he shouted, the words muffled in my damaged ears.

My longsword and tanto slashed in the lion rising, aiming along the succubus's torso beside and below the child held against its breast. I cut the beast deeply, leaving four wounds in its hide, and danced back when it slashed out with claws that hadn't been there before. Cissy, who I had thought unconscious, whimpered in pain, her tears bright pink in mage-sight. She inhaled, the sound harsh in the night.

The succubus pulled one knife from its chest and dropped it to the street. It fell slowly, time still out of sync, to the rutted snow. The blood-covered blade glowed Dark in mage-sight. I sliced through the beast's right Achilles tendon and it staggered. So I severed its left, leaving it flatfooted and immobile for a moment. Darkness healed fast. The succubus wasn't a fallen seraph or demon, not in the scriptural sense of the word; it wasn't a spirit being; it wasn't immortal. Like spawn and other minor Darkness, it could be killed.

“Crap in a bucket,” a tinny voice called from across the street. “Thorn?” I shook my head to clear the fear and the dregs of the blast away and saw Eli standing in an open doorway, his slight form backlit by lamplight, night-vision goggles on his face, a bulbous weapon slung across his body.

“Can you burn it?” I asked, my ears popping, adapting to the pressure changes.

He looked down at his weapons and back to the succubus and shook his head. “Not dead. Not something that powerful. We're gonna need help with this big sucker.”

“I was afraid of that,” I said. Eli's flamethrower was effective against smaller creatures, and had once burned Forcas' eyes to slow it down, but to kill the bigger baddies, I would need more firepower. Which was scary on top of scary. It limited our options, because I didn't know how to use my visa to call for seraphic support, and the succubus hadn't given us an opening to call for help in the traditional manner. So far. When it did, that help probably wouldn't come in time. Someone would die. Then lots of someones. Save the town to let it die by holy salvation; a catch-22.

Another knife hit the succubus and it roared, bulking huge, its body nearly six feet tall, its energy patterns swarming nearly two feet higher. Its transformation from Gramma to Big Bad Ugly was complete: a square jaw filled with jagged teeth, black lips and white gums, upper and lower tusks, unblinking slit-eyes like a snake's, and skin banded in orange and black scales. And it had claws that a full-grown lion would envy. It had evolved since I'd last seen it unglamoured. It was huge, far more powerful. Yet it hadn't seen Lucas or Ciana. Why not? That was probably important.

The answer opened out before me almost like a response to prayer. Lucas had been exposed to seraphic forces. So had Ciana. The queen could only locate Rupert, and until I turned off the ward on the loft, it hadn't even been able to smell him well. Though I knew the outcome would not have been different, guilt slithered through my mind.

The succubus looked at me and shook Cissy. “Give me one of Mole Man's blood or this one will feed me,” the queen said. “Others will follow.”

“Oh, merciful savior,” a voice echoed through the dark. “My baby.” Jacey emerged from her doorway, nightgown showing beneath a drab shift. She held knitting needles like weapons in one hand, a blue-coned acetylene torch flaming in the other. A mother come to do battle for her child. But she wasn't a warrior. “Thorn?” Fear coated her voice.

Dancing to avoid its flailing free arm, I cut the succubus again, aiming for its hamstring. Even moving with mage-speed I barely avoided an immense, swiping fist. The beast was slowing, but not enough. Unless it fell, I couldn't take its head. It could heal from most anything else. And a queen might heal from that too for all I knew. I stabbed its groin and raced back. The fight had lasted only moments but it felt like hours. I was growing clumsy with cold.

Lights flashed on along the street, throwing rectangles of brightness onto the snow. Rupert moaned, pushing himself into a sitting position, touching his head as if his ears hurt. “What—” he stopped, staring at the scaled beast clutching his godchild in its arms. “Cissy,” he breathed. Scantily clad humans poured from doorways, drawn by the anticonjure explosions. Some carried axes, others shotguns and long-bladed knives. Moments passed, fractions of seconds that felt like days. Like Ciana, Jacey stood, waiting on me. Trusting me. I was breathing hard, the frigid air burning my lungs.

A third knife slammed into the beast, catching it in the hip joint with deadly accuracy, missing Cissy by a quarter of an inch. It shrieked, an agonized sound, and I feared the queen would crush Cissy in anger, but the succubus held the girl high, staring at the black blood pumping from its femoral artery.

A fourth knife thunked into the base of its spine, hilt quivering. I whipped my head, scanning the night. Like me, the attacker was circling the succubus, but even with mage-sight open, I wasn't seeing him. Cheran was shielding himself.

To my left and right, the Steins appeared out of the night, automatic weapons at the ready. Unlike the rest of us, the town's only Jewish family was dressed for war, in padded clothes, coats, gloves, and boots. At the sight, pure agony arched through my feet. The man to the left wore a yarmulke instead of a battle helmet, as if battling Darkness was a holy act. Maybe it was. The woman to my right had knotted her hair into a tight fighting queue, her face rigid with resolve, fear nowhere to be seen.

Her confidence restored my own. All minor Darkness could be destroyed. The succubus could be killed. The Steins' people had been battling Darkness for six thousand years. I took a breath, settling myself.