Death's Rival (37 page)

As we stood in the silence of the magics of the change, both fully skinwalker and
fully cat, I said,
He bound you. Not me. He bound you. How . . . ? Oh, crap. It must have been because
his blood was in your mouth, in my mouth when we shifted.
Even caught in the magic, I felt my breath hitch.
I had vampire blood in my mouth at the time of the shift into cat.

Beast was bound to Leo Pellissier. I stared at the silvered chain and cuff that encircled
her foreleg.

Best huffed, amused.
Leo will be good mate.

The pain of the shift slid into me. “Well, crap.”

Love Jane Yellowrock? Then meet Thorn St. Croix.

Read on for the opening chapter of Bloodring,

the first novel in Faith Hunter’s Rogue Mage series.

Available from Roc.

No one thought the apocalypse would be like this. The world didn’t end. And the appearance
of seraphs heralded three plagues and a devastating war between the forces of good
and evil. Over a hundred years later, the earth has plunged into an ice age, and seraphs
and demons fight a never-ending battle while religious strife rages among the surviving
humans.

Thorn St. Croix is no ordinary neomage. All the others of her kind, mages who can
twist leftover creation energy to their will, were gathered together into enclaves
long ago; and there they live in luxurious confinement, isolated from other humans
and exploited for their magic. When her powers nearly drive her insane, she escapes—and
now she lives as a fugitive, disguised as a human, channeling her gifts of stone-magery
into jewelry making. But when Thaddeus Bartholomew, a dangerously attractive policeman,
shows up on her doorstep and accuses her of kidnapping her ex-husband, she retrieves
her weapons and risks revealing her identity to find him. And for Thorn, the punishment
for revelation is death. . . .

I
stared into the hills as my mount clomped below me, his massive hooves digging into
snow and ice. Above us a fighter jet streaked across the sky, leaving a trail that
glowed bright against the fiery sunset. A faint sense of alarm raced across my skin,
and I gathered up the reins, tightening my knees against Homer’s sides, pressing my
walking stick against the huge horse.

A sonic boom exploded across the peaks, shaking through snow-laden trees. Ice and
snow pitched down in heavy sheets and lumps. A dog yelped. The Friesian set his hooves,
dropped his head, and kicked. “Stones and blood,” I hissed as I rammed into the saddle
horn. The boom echoed like rifle shot. Homer’s back arched. If he bucked, I was a
goner.

I concentrated on the bloodstone handle of my walking stick and pulled the horse to
me, reins firm as I whispered soothing, seemingly nonsense words no one would interpret
as a chant. The bloodstone pulsed as it projected a sense of calm into him, a use
of stored power that didn’t affect my own drained resources. The sonic boom came back
from the nearby mountains, a ricochet of man-made thunder.

The mule in front of us hee-hawed and kicked out, white rimming his eyes, lips wide,
and teeth showing as the boom reverberated through the farther peaks. Down the length
of the mule train, other animals reacted as the fear spread, some bucking in a frenzy,
throwing packs into drifts, squealing as lead ropes tangled, trumpeting fear.

Homer relaxed his back, sidestepped, and danced like a young colt before planting
his hooves again. He blew out a rib-racking sigh and shook himself, ears twitching
as he settled. Deftly, I repositioned the supplies and packs he’d dislodged, rubbing
a bruised thigh that had taken a wallop from a twenty-pound pack of stone.

Hoop Marks and his assistant guides swung down from their own mounts and steadied
the more fractious stock. All along the short train, the startled horses and mules
settled as riders worked to control them. Homer looked on, ears twitching.

Behind me, a big Clydesdale relaxed, shuddering with a ripple of muscle and thick
winter coat, his rider following the wave of motion with practiced ease. Audric was
a salvage miner, and he knew his horses. I nodded to my old friend, and he tipped
his hat to me before repositioning his stock on Clyde’s back.

A final echo rumbled from the mountains. Almost as one, we turned to the peaks above
us, listening fearfully for the telltale roar of an avalanche.

Sonic booms were rare in the Appalachians these days, and I wondered what had caused
the military overflight. I slid the walking stick into its leather loop. It was useful
for balance while taking a stroll in snow, but its real purpose was as a weapon. Its
concealed blade was deadly, as was its talisman hilt, hiding in plain sight. However,
the bloodstone handle-hilt was now almost drained of power, and when we stopped for
the night, I’d have to find a safe, secluded place to draw power for it and for the
amulets I carried, or my neomage attributes would begin to display themselves.

I’m a neomage, a witchy-woman. Though contrary rumors persist, claiming mages still
roam the world free, I’m the only one of my kind not a prisoner, the only one in the
entire world of humans who is unregulated, unlicensed. The only one uncontrolled.

All the others of my race are restricted to Enclaves, protected in enforced captivity.
Enclaves are gilded cages, prisons of privilege and power, but cages nonetheless.
Neomages are allowed out only with seraph permission, and then we have to wear a sigil
of office and bracelets with satellite GPS locator chips in them. We’re followed by
the humans, watched, and sent back fast when our services are no longer needed or
when our visas expire. As if we’re contagious. Or dangerous.

Enclave was both prison and haven for mages, keeping us safe from the politically
powerful, conservative, religious orthodox humans who hated us, and giving us a place
to live as our natures and gifts demanded. It was a great place for a mage-child to
grow up, but when my gift blossomed at age fourteen, my mind opened in a unique way.
The thoughts of all twelve hundred mages captive in the New Orleans Enclave opened
to me at once. I nearly went mad. If I went back, I’d go quietly—or loudly screaming—insane.

In the woods around us, shadows lengthened and darkened. Mule handlers looked around,
jittery. I sent out a quick mind-skim. There were no supernats present, no demons,
no mages, no seraphs, no
others
. Well, except for me. But I couldn’t exactly tell them that. I chuckled under my
breath as Homer snorted and slapped me with his tail. That would be dandy. Survive
for a decade in the human world only to be exposed by something so simple as a sonic
boom and a case of trail exhaustion. I’d be tortured, slowly, over a period of days,
tarred and feathered, chopped into pieces, and dumped in the snow to rot.

If the seraphs located me first, I’d be sent back to Enclave and I’d still die. I’m
allergic to others of my kind—really allergic—fatally so. The Enclave death would
be a little slower, a little less bloody than the human version. Humans kill with
steel, a public beheading, but only after I was disemboweled, eviscerated, and flayed
alive. And all that after I
entertained
the guards for a few days. As ways to go, the execution of an unlicensed witchy-woman
rates up there with the top ten gruesome methods of capital punishment. With my energies
nearly gone, a conjure to calm the horses could give me away.

“Light’s goin,’ ” Hoop called out. “We’ll stop here for the night. Everyone takes
care of his own mount before anything else. Then circle and gather deadwood. Last,
we cook. Anyone who don’t work, don’t eat.”

Behind me, a man grumbled beneath his breath about the unfairness of paying good money
for a spot on the mule train and then having to work. I grinned at him and he shrugged
when he realized he’d been heard. “Can’t blame a man for griping. Besides, I haven’t
ridden a horse since I was a kid. I have blisters on my blisters.”

I eased my right leg over Homer’s back and slid the long distance to the ground. My
knees protested, aching after the day in the saddle. “I have a few blisters this trip
myself. Good boy,” I said to the big horse, and dropped the reins, running a hand
along his side. He stomped his satisfaction and I felt his deep sense of comfort at
the end of the day’s travel.

We could have stopped sooner, but Hoop had hoped to make the campsite where the trail
rejoined the old Blue Ridge Parkway. Now we were forced to camp in a ring of trees
instead of the easily fortified site ahead. If the denizens of Darkness came out to
hunt, we’d be sitting ducks.

Unstrapping the heavy pack containing my most valuable finds from the Salvage and
Mineral Swap Meet in Boone, I dropped it to the earth and covered it with the saddle.
My luggage and pack went to the side. I removed all the tools I needed to groom the
horse and clean his feet, and added the bag of oats and grain. A pale dusk closed
in around us before I got the horse brushed down and draped in a blanket, a pile of
food and a half bale of hay at his feet.

The professional guides were faster and had taken care of their own mounts and the
pack animals and dug a firepit in the time it took the paying customers to get our
mounts groomed. The equines were edgy, picking up anxiety from their humans, making
the job slower for us amateurs. Hoop’s dogs trotted back and forth among us, tails
tight to their bodies, ruffs raised, sniffing for danger. As we worked, both clients
and handlers glanced fearfully into the night. Demons and their spawn often hid in
the dark, watching humans like predators watched tasty herd animals. So far as my
weakened senses could detect, there was nothing out there. But there was a lot I couldn’t
say and still keep my head.

“Gather wood!” I didn’t notice who called the command, but we all moved into the forest,
me using my walking stick for balance. There was no talking. The sense of trepidation
was palpable, though the night was friendly, the moon rising, no snow or ice in the
forecast. Above, early stars twinkled, cold and bright at this altitude. I moved away
from the others, deep into the tall trees: oak, hickory, fir, cedar. At a distance,
I found a huge boulder rounded up from the snow.

Checking to see that I was alone, I lay flat on the boulder, my cheek against frozen
granite, the walking stick between my torso and the rock. And I called up power. Not
a raging roar of mage-might, but a slow, steady trickle. Without words, without a
chant that might give me away, I channeled energy into the bloodstone handle between
my breasts, into the amulets hidden beneath my clothes, and pulled a measure into
my own flesh, needing the succor. It took long minutes, and I sighed with relief as
my body soaked up strength.

Satisfied, as refreshed as if I had taken a nap, I stood, stretched, bent, and picked
up deadwood, traipsing through the trees and boulders for firewood—wood that was a
lot more abundant this far away from the trail. My night vision is better than most
humans’, and though I’m small for an adult and was the only female on the train, I
gathered an armload in record time. Working far off the beaten path has its rewards.

I smelled it when the wind changed. Old blood. A lot of old blood. I dropped the firewood,
drew the blade from the walking-stick sheath, and opened my mage-sight to survey the
surrounding territory. The world of snow and ice glimmered with a sour-lemon glow,
as if it were ailing, sickly.

Mage-sight is more than human sight in that it sees energy as well as matter. The
retinas of human eyes pick up little energy, seeing light only after it’s absorbed
or reflected. But mages see the world of matter with an overlay of energy, picked
up by the extra lenses that surround our retinas. We see power and life, the leftover
workings of creation. When we use the sight, the energies are sometimes real, sometimes
representational, experience teaching us to identify and translate the visions, sort
of like picking out images from a three-dimensional pattern.

I’m a stone mage, a worker of rocks and gems, and the energy of creation; hence, only
stone looks powerful and healthy to me when I’m using mage-sight. Rain, ice, sleet
or snow, each of which is water that has passed through air, always looks unhealthy,
as does moonlight, sunlight, the movement of the wind, or currents of surface water—anything
except stone. This high in the mountains, snow lay thick and crusted everywhere, weak,
pale, a part of nature that leached power from me—except for a dull gray area to the
east, beyond the stone where I had recharged my energies.

Moving with the speed of my race, sword in one hand, walking-stick sheath, a weapon
in itself, in the other, I rushed toward the site.

I tripped over a boot. It was sticking from the snow, bootlaces crusted with blood
and ice. Human blood had been spilled here, a lot of it, and the snow was saturated.
The earth reeked of fear and pain and horror, and to my mage-sight, it glowed with
the blackened energy of death. I caught a whiff of Darkness.

Adrenaline coursed through my veins, and I stepped into the cat stance, blade and
walking stick held low as I circled the site. Bones poked up from the ice, and I identified
a femur, the fragile bones of a hand, tendons still holding fingers together. A jawbone
thrust toward the sky. Placing my feet carefully, I eased in. Teeth marks, long and
deep, scored an arm bone. Predator teeth, unlike any beast known to nature. Supernat
teeth. The teeth of Darkness.

Devil-spawn travel in packs, drink blood and eat human flesh. While it’s still alive.
A really bad way to go. And spawn would know what I was in an instant if they were
downwind of me. As a mage, I’d be worth more to a spawn than a fresh meal. I’d be
prime breeding material for their masters.

I’d rather be eaten.

A skull stared at me from an outcropping of rock. A tree close by had been raked with
talons, or with desperate human fingers trying to get away, trying to climb. As my
sight adjusted to the falling light, a rock shelf protruding from the earth took on
a glow displaying pick marks. A strip mine. Now that I knew what to look for, I saw
a pick, the blackened metal pitted by ichor, a lantern, bags of supplies hanging from
trees, other gear stacked near the rock with their ore. One tent pole still stood.
On it was what I assumed to be a hat, until my eyes adjusted and it resolved into
a second skull. Old death. Weeks, perhaps months, old.

A stench of sulfur reached me. Dropping the sight, I skimmed until I found the source:
a tiny hole in the earth near the rock they had been working. I understood what had
happened. The miners had been working a claim on the surface—because no one in his
right mind went underground, not anymore—and they had accidentally broken through
to a cavern or an old, abandoned underground mine. Darkness had scented them. Supper . . .

I moved to the hole in the earth. It was leaking only a hint of sulfur and brimstone,
and the soil around was smooth, trackless. Spawn hadn’t used this entrance in a long
time. I glanced up at the sky. Still bright enough that the nocturnal devil-spawn
were sleeping. If I could cover the entrance, they wouldn’t smell us. Probably. Maybe.

Sheathing the blade, I went to the cases the miners had piled against the rocks, and
pulled a likely one off the top. It hit the ground with a whump but was light enough
for me to drag it over the snow, leaving a trail through the carnage. The bag fit
over the entrance, and the reek of Darkness was instantly choked off. My life had
been too peaceful. I’d gotten lazy. I should have smelled it the moment I entered
the woods. Now it was gone.

Satisfied I had done all I could, I tramped to my pile of deadwood and back to camp,
glad of the nearness of so many humans, horses, and dogs that trotted about. I dumped
the wood beside the fire pit at the center of the small clearing. Hoop Marks and his
second in command, Hoop Jr., tossed in broken limbs and lit the fire with a small
can of kerosene and a pack of matches. Flames roared and danced, sending shadows capering
into the surrounding forest. The presence of fire sent a welcome feeling of safety
through the group, though only earthly predators would fear the flame. No supernat
of Darkness would care about a little fire if it was hungry. Fire made them feel right
at home.