Bloodring tsc-1 Read online

  Ciana sobbed and hiccuped into my clothes.

  "Come on." I pulled her toward the small kettle where milk now simmered. "Let's get some hot cocoa into you and get you calmed down enough for school. And I'll be here at five for the trip to the kirk," I promised, dread already building in my heart.

  "Tell Thorn why Maria called you a liar," Rupert said softly.

  "You won't laugh, will you?" Ciana looked up at me, her dark hair mussed, her blue eyes—so like Lucas'—wet with tears. She sat in my favorite chair and curled her legs under her, legging-covered knees and leather shoes sticking out beneath her school uniform tunic. Ciana was eight and very bright, far too intelligent to lie to successfully. My dread grew.

  "Never," I said, stirring cocoa and sugar into the steaming milk.

  Her face a careful blank, Ciana said, "I saw a devil-spawn yesterday."

  I stopped stirring the cocoa, swirls of clumped chocolate rising and dropping as the milk whirled.

  "I was in the hills at the base of the Trine and he came up to me." Her voice grew challenging as she spoke, ending on a mutinous note.

  I put down the mug and bent over her, shoving her hair back and inspecting her throat. Lifting her wrists, staring into her eyes.

  "Stop that." Ciana pushed me away, a half grin replacing the defiance, knowing my inspection meant I believed her. Devil-spawn made a mockery of the sacrament. Children of a Dark seraph and a human, born in litters like rats, they drank blood and ate human flesh, among other abominations.

  "He didn't attack. He just talked to me and took off. Like, vanished." Her hands made little finger snaps as if scattering water. "Poof, you know?" She wiped the last of her tears.

  "I know." Everyone had seen video feed of captured devil-spawn. «Poof" was an accurate description of their speed. "Why were you out on the Trine at night?"

  "It wasn't night." Ciana took the mug and stirred, the tink-tink of silver against stoneware the only sound. "It was Monday, before sunset."

  My eyes flew to Rupert's. "Before?" He shrugged, uneasy. Spawn came out only at full night. No wonder Maria had called Ciana a liar.

  And then the meaning of a daytime sighting sank in. Daylight meant she had seen a daywalker. The stuff of legends. "It talked to you?" I asked, fighting to keep my voice steady.

  "He. And he was way cool. He had green eyes, not the red you always hear about. And he was gorgeous." She paused to blow on the cocoa and drink. "Really long black hair, you know? Braided down his back, but some had got loose and flew in the wind. Way, way cool. He wanted to know about you."

  The words fell on the room like a box of stone dropped from a great height. Lolo's warnings sank into me, bloodrings, portents of danger. "Me?"

  Rupert pursed his lips.

  "Yep. He wanted to know all about you. Where you lived, where you worked, what you did for a living." She looked slyly up at me. "If you were married or a virgin. I told him right off you were not a virgin."

  "Ciana!"

  "Spawn only want virgins, right? And he kissed my hand."

  When it came to mating, spawn captured human virgins for their masters, but any neomage flesh was prime breeding material for the Dark Powers. And spawn would eat anything. I didn't share this with Ciana. Little was known about daywalkers; they were near mythical, their origins unknown, perhaps the issue of a mating between a Darkness and a captured kylen. They supposedly could pass as human, and had the power to glamour their appearance. There were rumors about them, but nothing concrete. Scholars debated whether they had ever existed, had been eradicated, or had gone underground at the end of the Last War.

  "He kissed your hand?" Rupert said, his body very still. I watched as he worked to cover deep emotion with casual curiosity. "You didn't say that when you called. How?"

  "Like a Frenchman in one of your Pre-Ap movies. Like this." Ciana hopped to her feet and took Rupert's hand. She bowed over it, hovered, and smacked her lips into his knuckles. Then she hopped back into the chair and drank more cocoa. I watched Rupert, his eyes going dark before he turned to the percolator and freshened his cup, blue robes fluttering.

  "Did you feel his breath on your hand while he kissed you?" he asked. "Was your skin cold after? Or wet?"

  Ciana shrugged, watching us over the rim of her mug. "Gramma says Mama is a convert to some Dark Power hiding in the hills."

  "You called Gramma?" he asked, suppressed dread in his voice.

  "I called her and my friends. A spawn is way cool. You think the spawn is the Power she's talking about?"

  Rupert groaned. "Gramma is… not… actually one who should be talking about Maria or anyone else. Gramma has problems of her own."

  "Very diplomatic," I murmured, wondering what he thought he was hiding from Ciana. I bent over the chest where I kept the pendants I had already imbued with power, my right hand hovering over each, searching for one charged with protection from supernatural evil. I chose a slab of agate with bright bands of purple and lavender and removed it from the case before stringing it on a silver chain.

  "Is that for me?" Ciana asked, coining up behind me, leaning over the case. "It's way cool." She touched the stone, sending it swinging on its chain.

  "Yes." I looped it over her head and tucked it beneath her uniform tunic. "Way, way cool," I said, mimicking her Pre-Ap TV slang. "Keep it out of sight at school, but wear it when you go outdoors and at night."

  "It's beautiful." She fished the pendant out and held it up to the light. "Is it magic?"

  "There's no such thing as magic," I said, sticking it back out of sight. And there wasn't. Not really. No matter what the humans called it. "The foul neomages make magic," she said, clearly quoting someone else.

  I nearly choked. Rupert replied, "Neomages draw upon the leftover force of creation to imbue things with power. More like prayer, not magic, no matter what the orthodox say about it. And we don't believe in mage hating." He thunked her head like a melon and she grinned up at him. "Remember that."

  "Gramma says all neomages make black magic and should be burned at the stake."

  "Grampa had to have been spelled when he married her," Rupert grumbled under his breath. "She's more orthodox than a kirk elder. Maybe she should be burned at the stake."

  "If it isn't magic, why do you want me to wear it when I go out?"

  "Just… wear it. Please."

  Ciana shrugged again and tucked it into her shirt, out of sight. "It's pretty. Mama will want it if she sees it."

  "Tell her Thorn made it. That'll change her mind," Rupert said. Ciana laughed, shrugged into her coat, and swung her backpack on. "Bye, guys. I'll see you after school." Her face fell and her eyes sought me. "How will I know if something bad happens to Daddy if I'm at school?"

  "We'll keep the TV on," Rupert said. "If anything happens, Thorn'll come get you."

  "Promise?"

  I touched three fingers of my right hand over my heart in a seraphic gesture. "Promise."

  "Okay. And we'll go to kirk together?"

  "Yes," I said. "Together."

  "Cool. Bye." And she was gone, shoes crunching on snow.

  "So." I faced Rupert, his eyes shadowed and still. "Why did you ask the questions about how the daywalker kissed her hand?"

  "If it was a daywalker." When I didn't reply he said, "It was important to know if the daywalker breathed on her or licked her skin."

  "Why?"

  "Why did you flinch when Ciana asked if the pendant was magic?"

  Touche, I thought. "Because it is." Rupert blinked. He'd clearly not expected that answer. I was glad I had chosen the agate, because I couldn't lie to him worth angel bones. "The agate was from a batch I picked up last spring at an estate sale. Paid a pretty penny for it too. Supposedly it's neomage stone from the early Post-Ap days. The heir said it was charmed against evil. I'm hoping she was right, but I didn't want Ciana to accidentally blurt that out to Maria. That witch might take a hammer to it out of spite. Your turn."

  Rupert looked apprehensiv
e. "Well. Nothing. Just old wives' tales."

  "Reeeeally?" I drew out the word, watching as Rupert squirmed. I knew every old wives' tale ever told. Tales, yarns, fables, and parables were part of the earliest neomage training, and there was nothing about daywalkers in the instruction.

  "If a daywalker takes your scent, he learns all about you. If he licks you, he's marking you as claimed territory. For sex or food."

  "Not good." I didn't think I'd gotten the whole truth. We were both dancing around full disclosure this morning. "If she really saw one," I added, testing the waters.

  "If," he agreed, uneasy, pushing back a lock of black hair, busying himself arranging the high-end display pieces of Mokume Gane, known as wood-grained gold, formed of gold and copper with precious stones. He uncovered small stone sculptures I had carved, and polished one of Jacey's chrome and glass sculptures. The silence built between us. Rupert believed Ciana, and he was rattled. Worse, Rupert was frightened. I'd never seen my best friend afraid of anything.

  "If what?"

  We both looked up at the fresh voice and took the interruption as a sign we'd gotten close enough to the truth this morning. Other revelations could wait. Perhaps forever.

  Chapter 5

  "I said, 'If what? " Audric stood in the open doorway to his minuscule shop next to Thorn's Gems, his bald head and dark-skinned face reflecting the snow-bright light from the windows, his silver lightning-bolt necklace glistening.

  "If Ciana really saw a daywalker," Rupert said.

  Audric's eyes narrowed and he gripped the door header, arms bent though the opening was eight feet high. Audric was a seriously big man. He studied Rupert, who was hunched over a display case that needed no reorganizing. "Where did she see this daywalker?"

  "On the Trine," I said. "Yesterday afternoon. It may have sniffed or licked her hand, but it didn't bite her. She said he was pretty, with green eyes. And he went poof."

  "Gorgeous. Not pretty," Rupert said. "You opening today?"

  When he was in town, Audric manned a ten-by-twelve-foot storefront he leased from us. In it, locals could come and view some of the smaller items he had mined, or photographs of larger ones, and bargain for them—anvils, axes, china, car parts, gold, anything that survived the destruction of Sugar Grove and the hundred years since. Audric made an indelicate noise at the obvious change of subject.

  An uncomfortable silence filled Thorn's Gems as we each considered the shaky conversational ground. Kirk and secular law both required us to report any rumor of Darkness. But if we did, Ciana would be questioned, at the very least. At the worst, she would be taken into custody and disappear. Probably forever.

  The tinkle of the door chimes saved us as Jacey blew in, late as usual, her long dark hair blowing in a wind that was billowing loose powder down the street. "More snow on the way," she said, dropping her walking stick beside mine in the two-foot-tall ceramic umbrella stand and unwrapping her voluminous black wool cloak. She slipped out of hobnailed boots and into suede ballerina slippers she kept by the door, scattering snow on the wood boards at her feet, scuffing the melting flakes with her heel in lieu of mopping them up.

  "I heard about Lucas. You guys seen it yet?" she asked.

  "We saw," Rupert said, sounding stiff.

  "Your business partner's been in a dither ever since," Audric said, crossing to her and catching her up in a bear hug that dwarfed the tall woman.

  "I missed you, big man." She hugged him fiercely. "Sure you won't leave that tacky hag and come be my love? You can teach me how to dead-mine and I'll teach you hetero. I can do queen almost as well as Rupert."

  "Hey, you two," Rupert said, fists on hips, fighting an unwilling smile. "I'm right here."

  "Will not happen, sugar-pie," Audric said, releasing her with a quick kiss to the top of her head and a swipe at her flyaway hair. "My heart is taken. And your husband—remember Zed? —has a very big shotgun. Plus, his sons are big enough to give even me pause."

  Setting her patchwork satchel on the counter, Jacey opened it and removed four wide-cuff bracelets made with flameworked beads and delicas, stitched into intricate patterns with floral motifs. Beside them she added a half dozen necklaces to match, some needing pendants, which I would apply. Lastly, she lifted out a beaded chrome sculpture in the shape of a winged warrior, wings outspread, toes pointed, shield in place, sword upheld and looking realistically sharp. "The cops know anything they're not telling the media?" she asked.

  Audric lifted the seraph with a soft whistle. She grinned at him. "Glad you like it. It's Chamuel, our guardian angel."

  "Nothing they're telling us. Only the video they keep showing. Violence on SNN, with government approval. Maybe seraphic approval too. Who knows?" Rupert said.

  "Spooky." Jacey added earrings that could be sold with bracelets as sets or separately. She had been busy while I was out of town. Jacey's most productive time for finishing work was after hours and days off, as she liked to work in front of a roaring fire, surrounded by her large and ever-growing family. She had married a widower with five boys and promptly started giving them half-siblings. The total count of kids in her house was up to nine now. "I'm in the front this afternoon, right?"

  "Right," Rupert said.

  "I'm in the back now, then. In Friday's shipment, I got some stellar stock, and I want to see what I can come up with. Pure flame," she said as she disappeared into the workroom in back, her granny dress floating behind her. "Pure flame" was Jacey's trademark saying, both greeting and blessing, pure flame being what turned glass and ore into things of beauty.

  Rupert began arranging the new pieces in the glass counter. I paused before I put on the chrysocolla creations I had decided to wear as display, realizing I had chosen the day's wardrobe to match a certain cop's green-blue eyes. I restrained a moan. I needed to look in my reference books and find out how long neomage heat lasted. Clipping on the stone jewelry, I turned to greet an early customer.

  "Yeah, I'm open today," Audric finally answered Rupert's question. When neither of us responded, he vanished into his showroom.

  Outside, snow swirled with the wind, turning the world white, obscuring the buildings across the street. Overhead, Lucas continued to be attacked, assaulted, and dragged away.

  Wednesday's business was seldom brisk, and it slowed as snow piled up another three inches and temperatures fell. After lunch, which we shared around the gas fire in the center of the shop, we decided to close Thorn's Gems and Audric's showroom to work in the back. Larger metropolitan centers farther south or at lower altitudes had massive snow-moving equipment or snow-melting mage-devices, allowing commerce to continue all winter. But Mineral City, at over three thousand feet, and with a population of only four thousand, couldn't afford either. In blizzards, the town and surrounding hills closed down until the weather system moved on.

  Jacey and Rupert had talked about moving to a warmer clime, a bigger city, where our client base could grow, but with the help of the Internet, we really didn't have to uproot Jacey's family and move. And I couldn't go. I was safer in the backwoods, though I just said I liked it here whenever the question came up.

  I changed into work clothes, pulled a jumpsuit over the layers, and met my partners in the workroom. Such times were my greatest joy, when we worked together, the smell of solder or hot metal fouling the air as Rupert heated gold or copper or silver; the scent of gas and the blue flame from Jacey's torches as she melted and blew glass, fusing bits of found materials into beads, or welding a hunk of salvaged steel into sculpture. The faint stink of sweat as we expended energy in the warm room. The roar of my wet saw and diamond-tipped drill tools shaping stone, and the soft clicks Rupert made, nipping and cutting sheets of metal according to templates. It was a raucous multi-sense symphony.

  Occasionally, music flowed overhead if we could all agree on the artist and style. Rarely, when we could afford the gas to heat the small kiln Jacey sometimes used, it was even steamy. All the smells, sounds, sights, and movements blen
ded together and spoke of warmth and safety and home, my home since I had turned fourteen and was smuggled out of Enclave.

  I was working the hunk of bloodstone I'd carted all the way from Boone in Homer's saddlebags, not waiting for the next mule train or freight train, fearing winter weather would delay it. A diamond-tipped blade roaring in the wet saw, I slowly excised large beads in rectangles, squares, rough ovals, and free-form shapes. If the matrix proved stable, each would be a focal stone for a necklace, the red heart bleeding into the dark green outer area.

  It was a remarkable rough, and as I worked, I sent a skim into the heart of the stone and felt an unexpected hum of resonance, an echo of power. Lifting my safety glasses out of the way, I raised the remaining rough and considered it with mage-sight. The bloody heart of the stone was dark fuchsia, bordering on crimson when tilted into shadow. The very center of the stone would make a great amulet that would nest perfectly in the palm of my hand, heavy and smooth. Something carved into a sleeping cat, a sleeping bird, or a shell, and hung from a lace of leather thongs strung with dark green glass beads swirled with scarlet and gold. It would be an amulet hidden in plain view. I turned the remaining stone into the light. I could make my amulet and still get a dozen exciting focals from the double fist of rough. Pulling my glasses into place, I went back to work.

  Even with snow outside, the room grew warm, our extra layers tossed over chair backs or onto the floor. My head was filled with the acrid stink of Rupert's copper and pickling solution, and the cleaner smell of Jacey's torch melting, turning, and blowing glass. Today she was flameworking blue glass globes into small droplets, fusing in gold dust.

  As we bent over our tasks, a CDS of an ancient rock singer was playing, above the sound of my saw. Elvis Presley, long saved in crystal digital storage, blared overhead, crooning in a sexy, smooth voice. Rock and roll had been removed from the banned listing in the last year and was back in fashion, though we had listened to it for several years before it had been permitted. Elvis' mellow voice seemed tailor-made for the work we did, and he was one artist we could all agree on, though we also liked the Eagles, Patsy Cline, the Allman Brothers, and Tina Turner. We even liked Mercy Me, Avalon, and Casting Crowns, which we played when a kirk elder was expected to make an appearance.