While we ate, we talked of innocuous subjects like the weather, the kirk and the political situation in Mineral City, food, beer, and the ice cap that had mysteriously disappeared from the top of the Trine, followed by a six-foot snowfall to the east. I had caused the snowmelt, but almost no one knew that and I wasn't telling. Mysterious woman of secrets, that was me. Over dessert - which was coffee Lucas brought, tea for me, divinity, and cheesecake - we talked about the latest seraph updates. The presence of an SNN news crew in town. Ciana. Nothing more personal. Until he said, "I almost died down there."

I put down the teacup with a rattle. His lips were tight, the expression bleak, ashamed. In my vision I'd seen the underground cell where he'd been kept in the pit on the Trine. Seen the strange, radiant food they had fed him. I'd seen what a Darkness did to him while Lucas was drugged - a daywalker with his fangs in Lucas' throat, sucking his blood, stroking Lucas possessively. A daywalker whose eyes changed from a lucid blue-green by day to a glowing red by night, a walker who called himself Malashe-el, who gave me his true name and therefore gave me power over him. A daywalker who attacked me, tried to kill me, and apologized for it. Strange and stranger. I still didn't know what it all meant.

"I stayed alive for three things," Lucas said, drawing me back to the present. He took my fingertips, holding them lightly. "One was Ciana. She needs me. Marla isn't evil, but she can't give a child what she needs to feel secure and loved." I nodded, watching our hands, my tongue thick in my mouth. "Two was to tell someone what they're doing down there."

I sat up, mage-sight opening. The room brightened as the energies became visible and I could see Lucas' life force, his aura. It was a wondrous, shimmering blue-and-gold halo that followed the contours of his head and shoulders, and spilled across the table as if reaching for me. In two places a shadow swirled, small spots near his jaw.

He smiled wryly. "It's your lucky day, Thorn St. Croix Stanhope." Before I could correct him on the name, he said, "You're the one I'm supposed to tell." Fear flushed through me. With my free hand, I clutched for the walking stick hilt, but I'd left the sword by the door. "The Darkness' name is Forcas. It was once a Minor Darkness, but when its boss was captured with a chain and Mole Man's bloody sacrifice, it got promoted. Now, it's conjuring with Stanhope blood. Mole Man's blood. My blood."

I put it together with the history of Mineral City. Mole Man was the Cherokee name given to local war hero Benaiah Stanhope, Lucas and Rupert's several-greats grandfather, after a not-so-small mopping-up operation at the end of the Last War. He went with a group of winged-warriors into the hills, underground, tracking a Major Power, its human helpers, and half-human offspring. The battle lasted three days, during which the mountain, now called the Trine, cracked open. Light and Darkness spilled out over the land in battle dire - the spiritual warfare between Light and Dark. The townspeople prayed. Benaiah gave his life to save a high-ranking seraph, using his blood sacrifice to coat the chains that bound the Major Darkness. The seraphs came back out. Benaiah died underground; his body was never recovered. Hence the name Mole Man.

"I think it's making a chain - an antichain, maybe," Lucas clarified, "to free the Dragon that the seraphs captured and bound using Mole Man's blood."

An antichain. Like an antidote. Now that would suck Habbiel's pearly, scabrous toes. When I found my voice, I asked, "Why are you telling me this?"

Lucas stroked my hand. "You're a licensed mage. Your visa links you to a Realm of Light. You can call on seraphs. And this town is about to need some. Pretty badly."

I almost told him I didn't know how to use it, but I kept my mouth shut. There was a lot I didn't know about the visa and GPS band, just as there was a lot I didn't know about being a mage. I'd left Enclave in my fourteenth year, when my mage-gift came upon me all at once. At puberty mages were supposed to find their gifts, their source and method of using the energies of creation. They weren't supposed to have their minds ripped open and the thoughts, hopes, and emotions of all twelve hundred mages in Enclave dumped in. Mages weren't supposed to go insane. I was different and that difference nearly killed me.

It resulted in my being drugged, carted out of Enclave, and shipped here. I was only half trained. I had no idea how to use the visa I'd been granted. And I had never shared my story with him. I almost told him all this. Almost.

Before I could speak, he stood and began clearing off the table. I sat and wrestled with his words and what he might want from me. Sipping my tea and watching him move. Lucas wasn't liquid grace. He wasn't sex in motion like Eli Walker on a dance floor. He didn't smell like a brothel/candy store like Thadd, or set my body to quivering, throbbing, mating heat. But when he moved, my eyes were inexorably drawn to his butt, flexing in tight jeans. Lucas had a wonderful butt. I remembered the feel of it flexing under my palms -

"You didn't ask my final reason for staying alive," he said.

My eyes whipped to his and my face flamed. Seraph stones. I looked around. The table was clear, dishes washed and put away. A lot of time had passed while I remembered all the good things - the very, very good things - about being married to Lucas Stanhope. "What?" I asked. Not in answer to his question, but to find my place in the entire conversation. "What did you say?"

"The third reason I came back was to say I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Thorn. I hate that I hurt you. I hate that I cheated on you. Marrying you was the best, smartest thing I ever did. Breaking up was the worst and dumbest." Lucas held up his hand. He was wearing the wedding ring I'd made for him, beaten gold and a series of ruby chips, similar to mine. How had I missed seeing it on his hand? I stared at it, appalled.

Though Rupert had shown me how to work the gold and answered questions while I fashioned it from a nugget found in a creek three mountains over, I'd made the wedding ring totally without help, for the man I thought I'd spend my life with. My best friend had watched as I heated and hammered and shaped, watched as I set the stones, not once telling me the marriage was a mistake, though his disapproval had been clear even then. Rupert had known his brother was a cheat.

"I love you," Lucas said. "I want you back." When I didn't answer, he walked to the door, carrying the now-empty food bag, the top folded over and rolled down.

I followed him, feeling as if I was saying something with the action, but not knowing what and not knowing how to stop saying it.

"I intend to court you," he said, his voice a low burr. He looked over his shoulder at me. "I intend to win you back. Marry you again." His eyes were resolute, unwavering, fixed on me like blue lasers. My belly did a little somersault, thinking he might kiss me. Might. My heart thudded.

"You're married," I whispered, remembering the utterly beautiful face in the moment I discovered he had remarried. I hated him for that, for marrying a beautiful woman. "You married Jane Hilton. She said so on live television."

"She lied. I never married Jane. And in my heart, I never left you. Never," he said, one hand holding the door open. When I didn't reply, he released the door, turned away, and walked down the steps. Cold air blew in from the stairway.

I wasn't sure what he had thought I might say, and I had a feeling he was disappointed by my reaction, but I didn't know what to do about it. I followed him down, shutting the loft door behind me, hearing our feet echo on the steps.

At the shop entrance, Lucas waited as I found the key and opened the door. Night had fallen while we talked. It was after six and the town was shut up, the citizens safely inside their homes. Only fools and evil walked alone in the dark. The sleet was long gone and the temperatures had dropped, the cold so intense it was blistering. Overhead, the clouds were breaking up. A black velvet sky peered down at the town, the moon bright, throwing shadows on white snow. Lucas stepped outside.

I lifted a hand to tell him to wait. I would get my sword. I would walk him safely home. Instead, he mistook the gesture for something else and pulled me to him, arm hard around my waist. His mouth came down on mine.

Warmth and need rose so fast they shocked me. His lips were demanding, beguiling, and punishing all at once. I heard a moan and knew it was me. One arm slid low on my hips to support me. The other hand slid around my neck to cradle my head. My mouth opened. His kiss deepened, hardened. Distantly, I heard the bag drop. My arms went around him.

He smelled of soap and beer and roast duck. He tasted of something else entirely. Something new and unpolluted, an unknown seasoning that flooded my mouth, faintly reminiscent of anise and nutmeg, sweet as honey. I knew it hadn't been part of our meal. Want rose in me like a primeval spring, splashing joyously, to puddle low in my belly. My fingers slid through his dark hair, against his scalp.

His palm was hot against my face. His tongue touched mine. I reeled deeper into the kiss, nearer to the taste of him. That strange taste. I could hear myself moaning, knees weak, the world spinning around me. My head lolling back, I remembered to breathe, and he kissed my throat, his lips hot on my flesh. Where he touched, cold followed, the air chilling. Lucas pulled me tighter, backing me against the doorjamb to keep me from falling. I clung to him as his mouth sucked the soft skin above my collarbone.

I ran my tongue over my bruised lips, tasting him. It was like the otherness, some part of me noted. The sensation I wasn't able to name when I blended two mage-senses into a single scan. An otherness I had been afraid to practice, afraid to use because it left me dizzy and befuddled. Now Lucas produced the same effect in me.

Lightheaded, faint, I pushed at his shoulders. Lucas pulled back, his blue eyes black in the dim light of the moon. "Whas at - " I stopped and licked my lips; they felt tender, swollen. "What's that taste?" I managed, only a little slurred. "On your mouth? Like anise?"

Lucas stepped away fast, horror on his face. I caught myself on the doorjamb with both hands. "You can taste it?" he whispered. When I nodded, he said, "I think... it's manna. I think it's manna." With that he turned and walked away, his boots crunching on the hard-frozen snow. He didn't look back.

Searing-cold mind-clearing air brushed me. Feeling abandoned, I eased inside and closed the door. Manna? I touched my mouth, which tingled slightly. Lucas had kissed me. I'd wanted him to. And he'd eaten the food of angels.

When the sense of inebriation passed, I found myself sitting in the dark on the stairs to my loft, chilled to the bone, shivering, Lucas' bag in my frozen fingers. I didn't know what to think, not about Lucas, his declarations of love, or his intent to marry me. Marry me? Once bitten, twice shy. An old aphorism that didn't take a kiss like Lucas' into consideration. What was I going to do? I traced the contours of my mouth. It was sensitive from his lips.

I remembered the name he'd spoken, the name of the Darkness trying to do an unspeakable evil. It wasn't the beast's true name, but it was a beginning, and research might provide me more. I pulled my fingers from my mouth and my mind from the kiss. What a kiss. I shivered in the cold. Forcas. Yeah. "I can't do anything about you, Lucas Stanhope. But I can do something about that," I said, my voice a whispered echo in the stairwell.

Well, maybe. Maybe not. But I stood and went to the computer to look up the evil called Forcas. For once, the computer in the little nook under the stairs worked at the same time as the Internet, though I had to leave my amulets hanging on the knob outside. Mage energies disagreed with sensitive electronics.

Online, I discovered that Forcas was not a nice little beastie. The occult lore didn't indicate what rank Forcas once held in the angelic hierarchy, or to what order he belonged, but he was generally considered one of the minor seraphs before the fall. Since, however, he had become something far more powerful. When he lived on earth, he had been a teacher of rhetoric, logic, and mathematics. His gifts included being able to render people invisible and restoring lost property.

And according to Lucas, who had been a prisoner in the pit on the Trine, Forcas was the resident Darkness, a talented Fallen, and he had grown in power. He was practicing the Dark arts with Stanhope blood.

I closed down the computer. I was chilled through, and not just because it was cold outside. Because Stanhope blood wasn't the only thing the master of the Trine was working with. If my guess was right, Forcas also had a few ounces of my blood, taken when I went underground to keep Ciana safe. I shuddered at the memory of the pit, the smell of sulfur and brimstone harsh in my mind. Never again, I promised myself. Never.

Before heading back upstairs, I walked into the stockroom and placed my palm on one of the metal boxes that contained the amethyst, the lavender stone I had thought was dead, yet which had generated the cobra. The first time I ever touched one of the metal boxes, I had been met with a frisson of heat, a whisper of power, and the touch of mage-perception. I had known that there was stone inside, stone imbued with power. That first time, sweat broke out on my arms and tingled down my spine. Not now. Straining, I lifted the metal box to the floor.

I touched the second box, which also contained stone. And behind it was another box, similar to the first two. I studied the boxes in the dim hallway light. They were an ugly green, painted with pale white pigments, words hidden under the crisscrossed security strips. A number six was clearly visible on one, the number two in a different place on another. They were Pre-Ap, US military ammunition boxes.

I sent a mind-skim into the box under my fingertips. The first time I had done this, the stone inside had swirled around me in an eddy, testing, toying. Something had touched my mind, recoiled a bare instant before it wrapped around me, seized me, and pulled me in. Something with unheard-of might. Such power. It beat into me, demanding.

Now there was nothing, not a whisper of power. I opened the box, its hinges twanging softly, and unexpected gloom settled across my shoulders at the sight of the once wondrous amethyst. Now it was pale, almost clear, like good-quality quartz, spotted with slightly darker inclusions in half curves and spots like eyelids and pupils. After the cobra, I had hoped it might be restored.

I lifted a fist-sized specimen and sent a tendril of thought into it. There was nothing there, no tremor of energy. I replaced the amethyst and closed the lid, feeling the chill of the unheated room through the soles of my feet. Fighting dejection, I turned off the light, went back upstairs, and found my bed. I was asleep almost instantly.

The lynx sat on my back porch railing, purring, body erect, stubby tail curled around its back feet. I placed my hand on the ice-rimmed window and leaned closer to the huge black cat. It was between sixty and eighty pounds, its waterproof outer coat of hair harsh and glossy over an inner coat that fluffed for warmth. Moonlight brightened white facial hair and its pale-haired belly, and white tufts sprouted from erect ears. It was prim and proper, until it opened its mouth and growled at me. Two-inch fangs caught the moonlight. My breath fogged the glass - and I woke, the echo of the growl reverberating in the apartment around me.

I came awake fast. The loft was cold, silent, and very dark.

I had left the fireplaces on medium to combat the winter chill, and their flames should have cast wavering light on the walls. They didn't. The fans should have stirred the air with warming currents. They didn't. The air should have smelled of fish and potatoes and beer and candles. It didn't. I caught a whiff of fresh roses and moldering leaves. Beneath it was the dank stench of standing water, mold, and mildew.

I opened my mage-sight and scanned the room; the furnishings, walls, ceiling and floor were lit with soft blue, green, and pinkish tints. There was no hint of Darkness, but the scent continued to grow, as if it - they - sat on the foot of my bed. There were two of them.

I slid my hand across the sheets to my amulets but encountered only cotton. They weren't there. I remembered taking them off at the computer nook. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Head full of kisses and beer, I hadn't put them under the pillow before sleep. I didn't remember where they were, and broke into a sweat of fear. My hand met a solid object. The kris - no, not the kris, I remembered as I forced myself more fully awake. It was gone, broken off in the belly of a Minor Darkness. What I touched was the hilt of a throwing blade.

I slid my hand around it. The knife was beautifully balanced, but wasn't shaped right for close fighting. It needed a longer blade with a honed edge, not just a sharp point. The hilt was bone, tapered and smooth, to slide from a hand without a hitch, which was great for a throw; not great for cutting. No help against a being of spirit. But it was what I had.

I slid from the sheets, a soundless action, and placed my feet on the icy floor. As I stood, the flames came on with a quick puff of natural gas. A click and hum overhead indicated the fans were back on. The other scents faded as if they had never been. I looked around, the blade catching the light.

Had the smells been real or a dream? Had the heat gone off? Had there been an interruption in both electricity and the supply of gas, leaving only enough to keep the pilot lights lit? Then when power and gas were restored they both came on at once? Was such a thing possible? Were the two forms of power linked somehow? Or was I going nuts? I looked at the black-pig clock in the kitchen. It was three a.m. I was wide-awake.

Unsettled, I crawled back into the warm bed. Unable to sleep, I stared at the ceiling, waiting on something. Anything. Time passed. The loft warmed. What seemed like hours later, I heard an almost silent click, a distant sound, muffled and muted. A quick glance told me it was now four, and I slid from the bed again. I gathered the practice swords Audric had given me, thin and pliable bamboo staves. Careful to keep from stirring the air currents, I crept to the door and crouched beneath the bar that separated the kitchen from the entry.

Stealthy as the lynx that invaded my dreams, Audric opened my door and entered my apartment. Until now, I hadn't figured out how he got in, but my eyes were adapted to the dark and my position was perfect. I saw him pocket a key as he stepped over the threshold.

Without warning, I attacked. I got in three deadly strikes, stabs in each kidney and one cut across his spine at shoulder level before the half-breed managed to master his surprise, turn, and raise his weapons. "Dead," I said softly, feeling triumphant. I should have known better than to gloat.

Audric countered and slapped me four times with his staves, any one of which would have killed me. Even prepared, I didn't get a single block in. After that it was downhill all the way. I lost count of the ways I died. Audric killed me with the walking horse, the dolphin, and three versions of the crab, an ugly move that I should have been able to block with my eyes closed, half asleep. He killed me with the scissors, the lion rampant, the lion sitting, and the lion resting. He killed me with a half-dozen moves whose formal names I didn't know and had never seen. I had bruises on top of bruises.

When my Thursday-morning lesson in humility was over and Audric let me rest, I fell across the couch, gasping and groaning. My teacher turned on a lamp and studied me. He wasn't even breathing hard, standing over me in his white dobok, arms crossed, staves beneath one arm. The light gleamed across his freshly shaven skull. "I smelled the evil when I entered," he said. "But not as strong as before."

"Let me guess," I gasped. "It distracted you and that was why I killed you three times before you responded." When he inclined his head, I whispered, "Bloody seraphs." And then, boneless across the couch, desperately needing to rest, I told him about the lynx whose cry waked me some mornings, the dreams of Raziel, and the incubus who had tried, but been unable to gain a foothold this morning. Audric listened as if he had been solely my champard, and not the bound servant of the seraph, the winged-warrior Raziel himself.

P/S: Copyright -->www_novelfreereadonline_Com

***