Bloodring

Chapter 8

Ciana's knock woke me. I crawled from warm blankets, tossed on my robe, sheathed and hid the kris, and opened the door. The sleep had done me good. I was myself again, clearheaded, as Ciana came in and plopped into a chair.
She kept her eyes downcast, her mouth in a firm pout, more angry than sad. I didn't try to draw her out; she would talk when she was ready. I poured us juice and put sliced, thawed fruit and cookies on a plate.
Without speaking, I put the treat on the table beside Ciana and gathered up my clothes from this morning so I didn't have to think about my wardrobe. I added heavy underclothes, boots, and a scarf, and tossed my leather cloak over the stand near the door. Taking the clothes, I moved behind the screen, strapped on the kris, and started dressing.
"Seraph stones," she swore, her tone cross. "It's cold as devil blood in here."
I didn't tell her not to curse out loud. Not now. "I hadn't noticed," I fibbed, shivering in the icy air, pulling on thick underleggings, waiting, knowing she wasn't finished. Not by a long shot.
Her tone growing more quarrelsome, she said, "Don't you ever start a fire?"
"Yes." I pulled on the loose outer pair of leggings, securing my amulets around my waist, settling T-shirts and tunic atop them.
"No one will tell me anything!" she shouted, her voice thick with tears. "What's happening to my daddy?"
I stepped around the screen and sipped from a glass of juice. Plum and peach, and colder than the air in the apartment. It made my teeth hurt. "I'll tell you everything I know."
Ciana's blue eyes, so like Lucas', were drowning in grief. I knew for a certainty that fear left unchecked could warp a child. I remembered my own pain and fear when I was a neomage tot, cold, bleeding where talons had raked my flesh, in pain, alone, Dark sorceries swirling about me. And again when I was a little older and my long-awaited gift came to me, ripped me open, and laid me bare. I wouldn't let her suffer.
"I expect you to keep all this to yourself," I said. "No friends, and not Maria." When she agreed, I said, "Your daddy sent Uncle Rupert some metal boxes of amethyst rough. Some documents suggest it came from the Trine, but we don't know why it would have been gathered here, sent to Linville, then sent back here. And it's possible your daddy had some of it in his backpack when he was attacked. If so, the attackers took it. He's alive as far as I know, but he's probably hurt. The police and your new uncle Thadd are going to find him if they can. Uncle Rupert, Audric, and I will help."
Ciana stood when I finished the summary and wrapped her arms around me. "I hate it when I cry. It's sissy and silly and dumb and makes me feel like a baby."
I lay my cheek on her head and smoothed her dark hair. "I hate to cry too, but sometimes we need to."
"Did you cry when Daddy left you?"
An electric shock zinged through me and I drew a breath of cold air. "Yes. I did."
"Me too. You were the best thing he ever did. Then he started acting weird and left you, and I had to go back to Mama. She's my mom and all, but she's not very nice. I miss living here with you and Daddy and Uncle Rupert."
"I miss you too," I said, my own tears gathering and falling. Wisely, I said nothing about the Maria complaint. Never step between a child and her parent. "You ready for kirk?"
"Yeah." She breathed and pulled away, handing me my walking stick. "Let's go."
Hand in hand, we walked into the cold, into a world locked in perpetual winter. Some summers the snow hung around until July and came back by the end of August. In midwinter, piled snow reached the tops of display windows. The streets and sidewalks were cracked and broken, last repaired over half a century ago when a winged warrior was due to arrive for a ceremony lauding a great battle fought here. I guessed that Mole Man had been honored, but I could be wrong. I hadn't learned local history, my own was enough to keep me occupied.
My boots and walking stick clicked on the ice. From up ahead and behind us came other clicks as the townsfolk braved the cold for kirk, their own boots and walking sticks sharp on the ice. The kirk-goers were somber, most wearing dark wool suits, long dresses, capes, and hats, and sporting the perpetual frowns of most dogmatic orthodox fundamentalists.
After the Last War, when the seraphs didn't pick a religion and validate it, when there had been no sighting of a One True God, religious violence had erupted across the globe. Angels of Punishment had appeared on the scenes, swords raised, and humans had died by the thousands. Since that time, the differing religions had built an uneasy alliance. As long as no blood was spilled in the name of the Most High, the unseen God, the seraphs didn't intervene.
However, if an undocumented mage was discovered, they would direct the proceedings and lead the pack in tearing her - me - to pieces.
I nodded to an elder's wife and she waved back gaily. Polly was the spouse of Elder Jasper, the youngest elder in Mineral City. She took the hand of an older woman who slipped and nearly fell, and they walked on together.
The cold seeped into my boots, through their hobbled soles and fur insoles, into my tripled socks, to my feet. Though the fur industry was closed down, proclaimed inhumane and cruel, interdicted by seraphs, there were still fur clothing items made every summer when animals who had died in the blistering ice or through starvation were exposed by snowmelt, thawed, and gathered for use. My boots were lined with beaver. So were Ciana's, and even with the thick fur, the temperature was deadly dangerous should we remain outside too long.
After plowing a half mile through crusted snow, we reached the kirk, a stone building with no heat, no electric lights, no padded seats, no comforts of any kind. Under the arched porch, we stamped our boots clean before we entered the incense-scented, candlelit dark. Inside, we paused, allowing our eyes to adjust. I put my walking stick in the stand near the door and moved to the walls where frescoes of the last local battles had been painted - seraphs and humans depicted fighting a Major Dragon as light blasted up from the deeps.
With the new knowledge of the Mole Man, I studied the frescoes closely, noting in one the beast being pulled from the ground bound in bloody chains. Mole Man's sacrifice. A disembodied face in one corner had Lucas' eyes. A polished brass plaque beneath it read, BENAIAH STANHOPE - MOLE MAN.
It was true. And now the Stanhopes were in danger. One was missing in a trail of blood. One had seen a daywalker. Another had been brought a long distance. In the fresco, rock avalanched down three mountainous, raw rock peaks, towering into the heavens, newly created from the original, single hill. Dark smoke poured from the ground of the Trine.
An elder moved from the shadows and sprinkled us with holy water, flinging his hyssop branch, the water icy, miserable. The water had come at great expense from the Dead Sea, and had been perfumed with essential oil of rosemary and stored in quart jars. It was considered a great blessing to be splattered. I could have done without it.
Kirk services are different in every town. In primarily Jewish communities, the Sabbath of ancient times is still observed on Friday night and Saturday. Muslims answer the call to prayer a traditional five times daily. Orthodox Christians worship daily, though reformed and progressives worship less. In the United States, Hindus, Buddhists and other Eastern religions tend to worship at home due to the dearth of temples.
After the Last War, it was clear the Christians' Christ hadn't made it back to earth or lifted them to the heavens in a Rapture, yet the angels had come and so had the plagues and the wars and the destruction of the world as the church had long predicted. Deciding that the Second Coming was delayed, survivors had created worship practices unique to each town.
In Mineral City, elders had been authorized to promulgate the religious continuation of Jews, Christians, and the local Indian population. Jewish services are held in the kirk building on the Sabbath, and Sunday services are Christian, though very different from Pre-Ap ceremonies. According to rumor, many of the local American Indians have returned to the religious practices of their ancestors, building their own places of worship deep in the hills.
Neomages don't have souls, yet my parents had been reformed Christian, attending services in the tiny Enclave church, with the few other soulless mages so inclined. Church-going had seemed a waste of good playtime to Rose and me, but if there was one chance in a billion that the seraphs had it wrong, or any hope that the Most High might change his mind and give mages souls later - allowing us into heaven along with the human elect - our parents were going to see to it that we were prepared.
At the front of the kirk, we knelt on the hard stone floor. Ciana bent her head and folded her hands, her beautiful hands, so like Lucas', like Thadd's, that I was brought up short by the sight. I should have realized Thadd was a Stanhope the first time I saw him.
My own square, worker-woman hands stole beneath my cloak and tunic to my amulets and gripped handfuls as I followed her lead and bowed my head. And because I had promised her, I prayed for Lucas. To live. To find safety. To be saved.
I felt nothing. I always felt nothing when I prayed, but I wasn't human, and prayer was for humans. There was nothing in the holy scriptures about neomages. We had not been prophesied, not in any religion mankind had ever professed. The Administration of the ArchSeraph had proclaimed us soulless at some point after the mage-war, eliminating us from the elect. So it did no real good for me to pray. If God the Victorious existed, he wouldn't hear me.
Did he exist? Had God the Victorious known mages were coming? Had he cared? Blasphemy, all my thoughts, and blasphemy was always a prelude to disaster, a prelude to a seraph with his sword raised and humans dying. If I prayed for nothing else, I always prayed to avert such a disaster for Mineral City, prayed just in case he was real and might hear me. And this time, I concentrated on Lucas, fearful for the first time in ages, that I'd bring the wrath of angels down on the small town.
When we left the kirk, my knees were aching and dusk was settling onto the earth as the sun fell below the mountain peaks. I lifted a hand in greeting to Elder Culpepper; he nodded once, censure on his face. I hadn't been to kirk in three weeks and two days. I knew he knew that. And I was leaving before the Jubilee.
Even though having a child to remove before the holy revelry began was a proper excuse, he would remember.
Fortunately, his attention was drawn to a man outside in the cold, leaning against the stone porch column. The man was wearing rags, a patched hood, a fur coat so ancient the hair was falling out in clumps, the soles of his worn-out shoes tied to his feet with straps and padding. Layers of threadbare pants and gloves. Kirk brands for cursing and blasphemy disfigured both cheeks. The beggar blew clouds of mist as we exited, eyes half mad. The elder pushed me aside in his rush to reach the man. I grabbed Ciana's hand and sprinted away from the kirk, nearly dragging her, glancing back at the altercation that was breaking out between elder and beggar.
The elder raised his staff and brought it down across the beggar's back. "Get out. Get out of here," he shouted with each whap of the rod. "Get out or I'll call a seraph."
The man laughed, defeat, abandonment, and derision all mixed in the anguished sound. "What, Father. No pity? No alms for the poor?" He danced beyond the six-foot staff and raised his voice. "And why call a seraph? Even you know they aren't angels."
"Blasphemy!"
"Truth," the beggar shouted. "You fool. They didn't come from God; they came to invade our world. And more and more humans know it. The EIH knows it! You know it, if you only search your heart for the truth!"
A second elder appeared in the doorway and the beggar ran for the creek bed near the kirk. "Stop him!" Elder Culpepper shouted. Robes flapping, they chased him down the depression.
I pulled Ciana harder, moving as fast as the slick surface allowed, my walking stick digging into the ice.
"What's EIH?" she asked when we were out of earshot.
"Earth Invasion Heretics," I said softly, not wanting the elders to overhear. "And you will not speak of them in public, understand?"
"I'm not stupid," she said, expression lofty. "We got taught about anarchists and antigovernment groups in school. But everybody knows that angels and seraphs are the same thing. Right? And God will show himself when he's good and ready. Right?"
I looked back over my shoulder. The two elders were standing in the snow looking down the frozen streambed, righteous breath billowing. "Right. Sure."
"You sound like you don't believe it."
"I believe it. And I agree that God will show himself if he wants to, when he wants to." I looked down at Ciana and managed a smile. I wasn't going to be a stumbling block to her budding faith. She would suffer enough if she ever discovered that her ex-stepmother wasn't human and didn't have a soul.
"But?"
But they call themselves seraphs, not angels, not messengers. And none appeared to punish that man for blasphemy. "It's not something I can prove one way or another."
"You just have to have faith. Right?"
"Yeah. Faith." Can a soulless being have faith? As we crunched back up the half mile to the shop, Ciana's hand in mine, I ventured, "Do you feel better?"
Giana turned to me, eyes calm, face peaceful. "Daddy's okay. He'll be saved. God the Victorious promised." The breath left my lungs in a single harsh whoosh, and Ciana smiled. "And you're supposed to help rescue him. God told me so."
"God the Victorious talked to you?"
"Yep."
"Ciana." I stopped, though she pulled free of my hand and continued up the path. How did I tell my stepdaughter that the Most High didn't tell me the same thing? Words froze on my tongue and, like usual when humans talked about a faith I was genetically incapable of sharing, I chose the coward's path. Agreement. "Okay."
I paused a long moment before catching up to her. "I'll do my best." And that was absolute truth. But, as I wouldn't have a chance to help Lucas, I changed the subject. "About the devil-spawn you saw. You know that devil-spawn don't appear in daylight."
Ciana shrugged, her face serene. I was going to save Lucas. She believed it totally. Glory and infamy. My amulets warmed my waist as I drew on them in unconscious fear.
"The thing you saw," I persisted, "may have been a day-walker."
She shrugged again, her eyes turned into the dark, and I felt the cold seep up through my bones. "Ciana, a daywalker is dangerous. Have you seen it again?" When she didn't answer at once, I knew. She had seen the creature again.
* * * * *
The thing finished with him, pulling its teeth from his flesh with a pain like acid and steel, dropping his wrist again. He heard the sound of it spitting his blood into a container. Why didn't it just drink it? Wasn't that what Darkness did? Drink human blood?
Exhausted, too drained of blood and life to fight, Lucas lay in the dark watching where the thing that carried his blood scampered and disappeared. The cavern seemed less dark now and he saw a brighter rectangle nearby. Slowly, he sat up. It was a doorway. A doorway into a larger hall, indicated by a dark, dull glow.
He scooted across the cavern floor to the pale red glow and put out a hand. Cold burned him. He jerked back fast, sticking blistered fingers into his mouth. His fingers screamed with pain, and he gasped. Only now did he see the bars. Demon-iron, spelled and rimmed with ice, barred his way. He remembered the sound of mauls as they locked him in. An echo of iron on iron still rang in the distance, Darkness working metal.
Out there, something moved. He heard the splash and knew the sound was his blood being poured out. A soft gurgle of something swallowing followed.
They were using his blood for something, he knew that. Something different from the usual slaking of spawn lust and hunger. But for what?