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I opened my eyes I was cold In pain Confused And outside Overhead, purple light shimmered and sparked, like holiday sparklers It was shaped like a dome A shield I took a breath And realized I was still alive I touched my throat It was tender and sore, the tissues weak and thin tohits; bullets bounced off of it The battle was still taking place Gunshots were deafening

I smelled cordite and kylen blood Heat stirred undersun I eak, and the flesh offrom my bones as if I had lost pounds Perhaps I had My lifeblood had run across the frozen ground and pooled in the downhill edge of the shield

The sun was still up Half an hour had passed, surely no ht pinning led an ar hi in h my clothes, my amulets blazed, as did the stones in my pockets I pushed aside the saturated cloak and dobok tunic to see that the talisy at a constant rate, a steady blast ofAt this speed, the amulets should be totally drained, yet when I rantheht they were still full of power They had to have drawn energy from somewhere the mountain I had opened a conduit as I died The a cat I had carved from the heart of a fist of bloodstone I touched the cat and jerkedhot

I shook ish Someone screamed nearby Rickie had been hit, or maybe it was the other one, Tomas Human blood, sweat, and the stink of fear were carried on the breeze

On my lap blood pue seraph ring beside el wings Off of his finger, it had reverted to its unconjured size, the biggest ring I had ever seen "Oh, Thadd," I whispered, throat raw I knehy I was still alive Thaddeus had pulled off the ring for the second time in his life Then he had cut an artery and let his precious kylen blood pour over es of his duster, white feathers protruded, the softer-than-air feathers of a kylen youth His transfor

My er; it instantly shrank to fit I ripped off a healing amulet and pressed it into the arterial cut Like me, he had lost a lot of blood It had taken a lot to heal me, with his wrist pressed into the wound on my throat

Oh, saints&039; balls I had kylen blood in my system

I twisted the top off a bottle of water and dribbled sohed and his eyes fluttered open Chrysacolla green irises were clear and bright in his pale, white face "More," he whispered I lifted his head and held the bottle to his asping I drank a whole bottle, hoping to restore

"If I do, they&039;ll knohat you are," I said "And they ht kill the others out of spite And then they&039;ll take you away" It hurt to speak and er&039;s croak I touched e patch of skin was nuain The wound had taken out a huge aed by the gunshot,I wondered how much kylen blood had been deposited into ht mean

"It&039;ll be dark soon," he said "Then it&039;ll be too late anyway Dead if you call, dead if you don&039;t And I&039;d rather die any other way than to be eaten alive"

Spawn hunted at night I looked around, considering The horses were gone, except for Ho was at a lull Three for of the hellhole Durbarge looked around the rock where he had taken cover He was prone, a long rifle cradled in his arms like a lover "You two alive?" he called

Thadd looked down I felt shock surge through him, but he nodded and pulled his duster over his feathers "We&039;ll live"

I looked around, evaluating our options There weren&039;t h, and e!" I shouted "Turn off any assey gadgets you have" Asseys are equipped to trap and capture witchy-woht disrupt the shield To Thadd I said, "We get to Durbarge Then we put you and Rickie on Hoe I can keep us alive an hour before calling &039;s up You can&039;t protect me anymore," Thadd said bitterly

I looked at the cop "You don&039;t have to worry about the assey"

"I&039;ll have to worry about hi as he lives"

Thadd&039;s face grew even whiter as it drained of blood "That&039;sto kill him" I heard the fury beneath er "But if it comes to it, well, I don&039;t have a soul Besides, they can only execute me once"

Thadd kindly didn&039;t point out that I had been dead one tiest - run, and let you commit murder for me - then what?"

"Beats me Let&039;sthe world whirl sluggishly around me as my blood pressure stabilized Thadd took e, the shieldwith us, a mutable force, and fell behind the rock where he lay To his pulse I couldn&039;t tell if he was breathing I tossed Joseph Barefoot two healing a seconds passed before I saw Rickie&039;s chest rise and fall

"Call e demanded

"She can&039;t Rickie&039;s branded, not an innocent," Thadd said "He didn&039;t get wounded saving her, and she&039;s not near death When she couldn&039;t speak, she used a healing ae looked fro whether to call us on it Not giving hi with, "Surprise is gone Without horses, we&039;ll never get down the mountain alive, even if Thorn could keep the shield open that long I&039;ll get Rickie to safety, and get Audric and Rupert and the town fathers We&039;ll start back up the et it done"

"We don&039;t have much time," I said "I smell the succubi"

"You can&039;t They aren&039;t supposed to hatch until dawn," Thadd said

"Tie said He seeht of the hellhole with his rifle "Two snipers I can take the-shaped objects froe the entrance And any hope of stealth will be gone"

Eli chuckled "I think it&039;s pretty well gone now, bro I don&039;t think a couple hand grenades will make et hiht "Pretty nifty little suckers Hope you got a lota lottheir weight in each palm He explained how they worked, and said, "Let&039;s do this, then On three One" Durbarge pulled a pin frorenade "Two" I dropped the shield and Eli provided cover fire as the assey pulled the second pin "Three" He stood, and threw one in a long arc The second grenade followed it in a slightly different direction

I snapped the shield back over us and dropped to the ground, not because I needed to, but because Durbarge did The explosions overlapped, vibrating through the earth, hurling debris and shrapnel into the air Shattered rock, dust, and traces of blood hit the shield and rained to the ground in a circle around us The quiet afteras absolute Durbarge pointed two fingers to Eli, then to the right, to himself, and then left I dropped the shield and they separated, rising fro up the scree on either side of the entrance of the pit at a dead run I could have told them not to bother I could smell dead hu up strapped to his back, straddling the Friesian&039;s ru downhill at a fast clip I snapped the shield back over us and ood eye "Why didn&039;t you call for help?" I asked "You could have gotten troops here Gotten seraphs here That&039;s what the AAS does, isn&039;t it? Talk to the Seraphic High Council?"

"Troops are on the way, but a blizzard has for this way fast There wasn&039;t time for a mobilization before the storm hits And seraphs don&039;t listen to us much anymore," he said, as if it were a well-known fact, instead of mere supposition "Haven&039;t in two, three decades"

"Invaders don&039;t have to listen to the conquered," Joseph said Durbarge didn&039;t reply to the heresy, and Joseph went on "I told the , but they co hills and have to prepare for the storm first, so their families are safe They&039;ll be here at noon tomorrow"

"Too late," I said "It has to be today I can s that wasn&039;t there the last time I went in It smells like the queen s this, but does anyone have a better plan?"

"Youneoonets, ato kill sorade rin "Can&039;t think of one" He looked at his watch "We got one hour till sunset Let&039;s boogie"

I chuckled, slung oodies over a shoulder, and dreo blades - the walking stick blade and the tanto - and tabbed open thee to the mouth of the cave and stepped inside Fear skittered upblood The kylen was leaving This was not acceptable He raced to the bars and gripped them, oblivious to the pain of de stone His eyes, once a rich and vibrant shade of silver, had acquired dier The bars held fire in heat ht up his head, and his nostrils quivered as he caught her scent He sed, theharshly "No," he whispered "I will not" Slowly, the red lights in his irises began to fade and die When they were gone, he stepped away fro his head into his arms "I will not"

It wasn&039;t yet sunset, but I had learned to rin that spahile nocturnal, were sometimes active in the protection of the pit when the sun was up Once stirred to life, they were the saht However, even with the gunfire and explosions, no one, and no thing, eway descended and the aht dropped off I handed eacharew foul with the scent of death and sulfur, an acidic cloud The e bipedal insects No one had thought to bring a s are different froases didn&039;t botherthe map in my menant breeze blew up fro started ahead and to the sides as spawn began to wake

At the sound, my amulets blazed into life, as did the stones inacross my back The first spawn peered around the bend at our left Before it could yoarning, I dropped the shield and beheaded it "To the right," I said "Fast" We made one more level before the alarm was sounded

At a juncture of corridors hewn from the mountain of the Trine, new scents collided with the s cry echoed through the tunnels And the sware-speed, ht, I advanced into the horde, blades flashing in the swan and the whirl-wind -off body parts The spawn - always hungry, pulled their injured under thee prayed, easing toHe began his war chant, which I thought was from 2 Samuel "And darkness was under his feet And darkness was under his feet"

Eli, to my left, shouted from Isaiah, "Thou shalt be visited of the LORD and the fla under his arouts of fire from his flahters dreords and shouted together, "I will draw ht me up short, and I misstepped Teeth sank in h le swipe, I beheaded the beast and kicked its teeth loose, the head flying away into the swar at the heretics&039; choice of scripture They were speaking froh

"Jehovah sabaoth!" I shouted, the words that came to me the first tiht Darkness are given

"The seraph I told you about is close," I said to Durbarge and Eli "I s, insanity like a festering wound in her mind "Take me, take me, take me, takeflat Eli stepped overhis flae pulledcorners of her torreen, softening to a paler green, like new leaves, on the underside and down Silver hair curls around his high brow, gray eyes flecked with silver, and a narroith pointed chin Barak Baraqyal The seraph

His nevus pulses with fear and desire Demon-iron shackles hi daywalkers cut into his wings, hacking with de with reaction, with horror, I jerked back out of her h her eyes, across a shadowed corridor The seraph she desired was there, in a cell, only feet fro my weapons blade-down, I curled under Eli&039;s feet, between his legs, letting hiht over me He held swords, and handled them the way he danced, with effortless ease "Seraph? Barak?" I shouted

"Here, e!" he belled back, filled with joy "Here I ae near him? No Not her Seraph stones He e&039;s vision of him just now And in a dream, in the vision of Lolo&039;s past, I had seen within the s Barak Baraqyal The nae as lover