Host (Rogue Mage #3)

A s if he could hear the voice of the visa, the seraph's eyes bore down, raking me from head to boot tips. Black motes flashed in his irises, and every pore on my body tightened. The seraph said, "It has been said among men: History is written by the victor. As above, so below. As below, so above. They are a reflection of one another."

Tears of Taharial. Is this a victor or one of the losers? And which one would be more dangerous? The seraph's eyes flashed again, dark with amusement. Hearing my thoughts? I drew on the visa. What I got back was, Caution. Big help there. The snake tasted the air beside my face, its forked tongue quivering. Its body tightened painfully on my thigh and my waist.

The seraph's wings lifted slightly, flight feathers ruffling as if finding a breeze. Outside, a fierce wind was blowing, catching up snow that struck the sides of the dome of shielding and sizzled. A broken branch hit with a thud and a spit of energy. Where had the wind come from? No time for distraction. The visa prompted, this time forcefully, and I said, "In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth."

I could have sworn I saw something glisten at his lip but he smiled again. "I have power over all the earth," the seraph said, opening his fists, showing me his palms, the universal gesture of peace that even the seraphs utilized. His wings settled with a snap. "Without me, nothing was made that was made. Nothing."

Something odd about his phrasing made my heart race. Flight or fight. It wasn't a perfect quote but it was close to the King James words, "All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made."

The visa whispered to me, Close but no potatoes, which made a hysterical titter quiver in the back of my throat.

"You have nothing to fear from me, little mage," the seraph said. "I have long worked to bring the prophecy to pass."

"Prophecy?" The one hanging over my door? A Rose by any Other Name will still draw Blood? That prophecy? Or the one Jasper had uttered - "The children of men are gathered. The dragon breaks free. All the old things have passed away." No, not a new prophecy. The seraph's words indicated that this one had been around a while.

So, maybe it was the one in my dreams about a certain mage, one the seraphs foretold. "A mage, one of the foretold ones.... She is near." Foretold mages. No such thing. Except in my dreams.

Lucky me. Lots of foretellings, no explanations. The snake spread its hood, its mouth open to reveal a black tongue and white fangs that snapped down from the roof of its mouth, the action so much like the daywalker's that it shot a singular spark of fear through me.

"The prophecy among the Host," the seraph said, "that a mage, a child of man, the result of seraphic purpose, would someday be born." He tilted his head, his hair moving like a spray of aqua silk over his shoulder, resting on his wing. "History is written by the victors," he repeated, holding out his hand in entreaty. "Join with me."

I stared at the hand, skimming hard. It didn't smell like the Dark. This was a member of the Host. Beautiful, lovely, his hands shaped to create. Shaped to pray. To help. Not a Dragon. Hadn't Eli questioned me about why the big bad uglies appeared as they did? Hadn't he suggested that an incantation or curse might have deprived them of their beauty?

The snake was warning me. Opening both senses together, I blended the skim and the sight into the new sense I as yet had no name for. Vertigo rocked me. Nausea rose again in the back of my throat, sour and acidic. I braced my knees, trying desperately not to fall or throw up. I breathed him in, the wonderful scent of seraph.

"Join," he said, his voice a mournful bell. "Together we will retake what was mine and was lost. Together we will rule. The Most High will never share his throne with another. Even the Bright and Morning Star sits to his side. I offer you the throne itself, to rule with me. Beside me. Together we will heal the earth and restore the heavens. We will make right what was ruined by war and hatred and selfishness."

As he spoke I parsed the fragrance into its disparate components. I caught first his own unique seraph scent - charcoal and spring earth - and recognized them as the odors I had detected beneath Barak's own sweet flower aroma. But beneath his seraph scent were fragments of others, like pepper and mint, like honey and chocolate, like sweets and sex and spring flowers.

"I will free the mages," he said, "that they no longer live in gilded cages, free them to rule the earth; over the humans who fear them, who have killed them. And I will give them the souls they crave, that they may attain immortality."

Souls. To banish forever the fear and permanence of death. To have what humans had. But what had I seen when Barak died? Lolo's soul? The Flames spun around me, seven Flames, plasma trails bluing the light. They weren't attacking, as they had any Darkness that came near. They were hanging back. This wasn't a glamour. This was a seraph.

In the blended scan, the seraph's face was utterly beautiful, glowing with the light of heaven, energies like a halo around him, an aura of holiness. On the silver chain around his neck, his sigil glowed with the sunset colors of burned persimmon, shrimp, and fuchsia. Motes of black-light sparkled through it, like the light of a million black holes in space.

I stepped toward the seraph. The Star of the Morning. The angel. I took another breath, hearing my heart beat, a slow resonance as the otherness took me up. My mind continued to isolate the odors. Mint, pepper, honey, chocolate, spring flowers.

The scents in the blended scan were like...Zadkiel. Raziel. Barak. Yes. Barak smelled of spring flowers. I blinked, stopped, and looked down. My glove rested on the ice at my feet. My hand was bare, scars whiter than burning linen, palm outstretched. In it was the prime ring I wore on my chest. A bit of black chain mail dangled from it. I had pulled the prime free.

Overhead, light broke through the clouds, a half dozen seraphs intoning, "Omega mage!" Their voices were slowed, tolling like the bells of war. "Destroy her!"

Smells. Raziel and Zadkiel and Barak. All seraphs who had been at war in the Trine with me. All who had given their blood in battle against evil. Fear and the beginning of comprehension spidered up my spine. The hair on the back of my neck rose. The wheels/snake reared back, bulking in height, tightening on my leg and waist, stealing my breath.

With a snap, the seraph snapped free the oval ring around his neck and extended it toward me. It was metallic, pulsing with lavalike energies, a sigil of great power. "Join with me," he said, the tone gentle but with a hint of steel in it. "We shall rule."

I understood. I had gotten what I asked for when I called it to me. The ring was the link made of Mole Man's blood. The link that freed the Dragon, Azazel. He could take it off, but he couldn't get rid of it. Unless someone else helped. Accepted its curse? And the Dragon had me, the only living omega mage, in a shield of protection. Offering my prime amulet to him.

I drew on the otherness; time slowed to the consistency of honey. The light overhead expanded to noonday brightness. Huge brass bells were ringing, tones angry. The Flames buzzed around me, a slow circlet of lightning. Ozone lifted the hair all over my body in a painful electric charge. Nausea rose in a wave. My hands felt tingly and numb.

Mage-fast, I pocketed my prime. I pulled the cross from its loop, the cross stained with Mole Man's blood. And the blood of the beast that Benaiah Stanhope had chained with his sacrifice. The beast that was Leviathan, Azazel, and looked nothing like a Dragon, but surely was one. My hands blurred with speed even as Azazel reacted, fingers closing on the link. Faster than I could see, I speared the end of the gold cross through the link the Dragon held.

As if coupled to my mind, moving in tandem with my hand, the snake struck. Seraph fast. It buried its fangs in the back of my rebuilt left hand, driving deep into my bones. And through the cross and link, into the hand of the True Fallen seraph beneath it.

Overhead, the light exploded.

I never lost consciousness. I never closed my eyes. I never turned off the blended scan and its enhanced awareness. As if I stood outside myself, I saw my body as I flew above an empty plain, arms and legs pinwheeling. I heard my heart beat, assuring me I was in the place of time-no-time, place-no-place.

As in my last vision of myself, when I stood on the deck of Holy Amethyst's wheels, I wore scarlet armor over black chain mail and silk, and bloodred boots. I carried a shield on my arm and a sword in each hand. Here, both glittered with the light of Flames.

I was represented as a battle mage. A battle knight. In my belt I carried a long bone, the femur of Barak. In this reality, it glowed with peculiar light. If a rain cloud could glow, it would look like the femur. In my left hand with the hilt of the tanto I carried the cross-speared Dragon's sigil. The gold cross sparkled with Light and Dark, the blood of the combatants in Mole Man's sacrifice. The sigil was cold and a strange aqua mist was rising from it.

Blinking, I moved my feet under me to land. In that instant, I was back on Earth, falling into a tangle toward the snow. The seraph lifted his head, opened his mouth. He bellowed with fury, raising wings and arms toward the teal shield. And he changed. His skin blazed with aqua light, as if his very atoms softened, separated, and caught fire. He exploded into a fine mist and...transmogrified. A true transmogrification. A reshaping of atoms and luxons into a different form.

That which is Fallen cannot transmogrify, the visa whispered. If a device could experience shock, I'd have said the visa was stunned. The seraph was no longer the winged beauty, but rather, was becoming something else.

In the Earth reality I slammed into the snow. Again. Breath was knocked out of me. My head impacted the ice. I lost consciousness. My vision of Earth vanished.

In the otherness, I landed hard, skidded along the ground on thigh and foot, sliding into the flow of the river of time. Rocks and boulders protruded above the river's surface and one of the rocks had three humps, like the Trine. Raziel had named them "rocks in the river of time for me." Whatever that meant. I was in the same place as before, but it was subtly different. I turned, my battle boots shushing through the river-lava, the heat growing uncomfortable but not burning me.

Off in the distance were small humps I took to be mountains. In the other direction were skyscrapers, like the skyline of New York City, back when humans had lived there, before it was a Realm of Light. Seraph stones. I was near a Realm of Light. Again.

The city drifted closer, buildings rising up out of the plain, windows shining with Light. A strange buzzing, like the sound of electricity in old wiring, or the sound of a million bees, filled the air. I spotted the grid of streets above me, streets I had seen below me while standing in Amethyst's wheels. Realities stacked like coins, one atop the other? Off to one side was the remembered bright spot, like the sun but more diffuse, and with a square, flashing, sapphire light beneath it. The sky was getting closer, falling toward me.

I heard myself groan. Back in the reality of Earth I was about to wake up. I had a feeling that was gonna hurt. Bad.

The lava-water boiled, a geyser of light that fountained up and rained down, creating a shining mist. In the center of it, a bulge rose from the river straight above the surface. Blood and plagues...

At first my eyes couldn't grasp a structure, seeing coral and green bands, swirls, and diamond configurations. My hackles rose and I tightened my grip on the talismans. The bulge became a body. Arms lifted out to the sides, giving it form. Webbed fingers separated, revealing long razored talons. Its back to me, the beast stood on muscular legs, skin banded green. No. It was aqua. The seraph, the Dragon, had followed me into the here-not-here in a way that I hadn't seen before.

When the Fallen were kicked out of heaven, they lost the ability to transmogrify and were denied access to the river of time. They had been stranded on Earth, bound by time as humans were. When Forcas fought the Light on Earth, it had been visible here, reflected in the otherness. But the Dragon had found a way to access the river itself. And in a completely different form. I had a feeling this was very, very bad. Hands sweating, I regripped the swords.

The Dragon shook itself free of golden droplets, flinging them away like a dog caught in the rain. A crest snapped open, running from the base of its spine up over the top of its head. An aqua tail rose above the river, muscular and smooth-skinned. Around its neck, the Dragon wore a chain, the silver burning into its neck and crest, blackened flesh hanging in tatters.

The silver chain was broken, but still in place. Mole Man's chain. Broken by the link I held skewered through with the cross.

The beast turned toward me, a Dragon with a seraphic face, the utterly beautiful face. And aqua eyes. Not the red Dragon of the Revelation, but another. An aqua Dragon, stunning and awful and beautiful to look upon.

Azazel, the visa whispered.

"Yeah. I figured that out a while ago," I said, backing out of the river, along the shore.

The beast whipped its head and golden light ripped out, a shining sun of energies. I blinked and the Dragon was gone. Standing in the water was Azazel, the seraph. He could transmogrify. He could access the river of time. That might mean he could also return to heaven.

Azazel saw the link and the cross. He threw back his head and roared again. Fangs and sharp, barbed teeth caught the light of the city overhead. The shape of his head changed, a liquid movement throwing off sparks of energy before it solidified again into the beautiful mien. On Earth, my body took a blow or was thrown. Pain spiked through me.

The aqua mist given off by the link in my hand steamed thicker. The chain glowed red and his flesh around it smoked, the smell of charred, rotting meat scenting the air for an instant.

It had taken all of us to make the link that broke the chain binding Azazel. He had broken it, but he hadn't gotten the chain off. No matter what it looked like, the Dragon, this fallen seraph, wasn't completely free. It was still bound by something. My heart beat. It had been a long time since I heard it. Either time was slowing down here or I was dying there. If I died in one reality I would die in the other. I had no soul, so for me, dead was dead.

I raced from the river, choosing a level place to make my stand. The flight feather was burned to ash. I had no idea how my amulets would react to being activated here, if they would work at all, or explode and kill me, or have some other reaction. I hooked the link to my necklace. It clinked against the prime and the visa, throwing black-light sparks. I tucked the cross inside my hauberk, the metal warm.

I held the swords, the cross, and Barak's femur. The back of my hand was still punctured, the purple mist of energy was flowing into me through the puncture marks, energies from the wheels. The energy was a potent weapon, if I could use it without letting Amethyst know I was siphoning it. Or, maybe, now, it no longer mattered if she knew.

Seven globes of light blazed up through the river and whirled around my head. A purple snake slithered out behind them and coiled into a writhing mass. It opened its mouth in a parody of a smile and tasted the air. The purple mist flowing into my hand came from its mouth.

Azazel in pure seraphic form waded from the river, golden drops splattering. Yet, when I blinked, I saw it as the beast, and it hissed, its tongue stabbing out fast as a blade. Its right hand hung to the side, useless, skin blackened, fingers curled in protectively. Blood dripped from two puncture sites, and reddish streaks ran up its arm as if infected.

The vision shuttered closed and Azazel the seraph stood before me, his face gentle, his wings spread, flight feathers lifting and settling. The shadow of his wings stretched out on the ground and spread to cover my feet. I resisted the urge to step back, into the light.

"Give me the link," he said, his voice like silver bells and the sound of distant violins. "Give it to me, and I will spare your sister."

The words were a cold spear driven into my heart.

"Fear not, little mage. She is safe. My queen guards her. But the succubus hungers. She will not wait long to feast on mage-flesh." He smiled compassionately. Spreading his wings, Azazel shook golden water from his plumage. The vision of him flickered on - featherless leather wings flourished, the tint of cooked shrimp. They would make a great coat and boots. At the thought I grinned, showing teeth. Bloodlust simmered beneath my skin, making me itchy. "Liar. Father of lies."

"Not I. But I am the father of many things. War, which you love. Riotous sex that humans, in their foolishness, call sin." When I didn't respond, he said, "I will offer you a gift in good faith, to show my generosity." He gestured with his uninjured arm.

The world tilted, vertigo hitting me with the force of an avalanche. Retching, I stumbled and caught myself on the body of the purple snake, my hands on its scaled skin. Where I touched, the scales separated and eyes looked up at me.

"Thorn?"

I had an image of the night sky. Lashes blinked over the vision.

Hope and shock cleared my head. I knew this mind. "Rose," I breathed.

A foul smell filled my head with my next breath, but it was Rose's sensation, Rose's breath, Rose's lungs that expanded her chest. The smell was stagnant water and dead lilies. And the stench of spawn. A face bent over her. The succubus queen, teeth razor sharp. Rose cried out. The vision dimmed. She was gone.

I caught a glimpse of my earthly self, dressed in dobok and cloak. And then the knightly me returned, overlaying the earthly. What had just happened?

"Rose is safe. She has always been safe. If I rule the heavens, she will be safe forever."

Temptation. Ruling the world had no appeal for me. But getting Rose back...

Over my head, the Flames slowed again, appearing as long, overlapping trails of light. They dropped down, humming in a minor key. "Ssssacrifissse," they buzzed.

"Yeah," I said, hope dying and grief resting heavy on my heart. "Gotcha." Azazel offered me a way to save Rose, but the others I loved would die. Tears stung my eyes, my decision made long before this day. Moving slowly, so Azazel would follow the misdirection and wouldn't realize what I was doing, I wiped my eyes with my glowing left hand, tanto bright. The longsword making me clumsy, I released two anticonjure amulets and thumbed them on with a whispered word. I tossed them at the Dragon.

Faster than they could fly through the air, I flipped the tanto and sheathed the longsword. Took up Barak's femur bone. And I attacked.