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I slept with the charged bath stones, still war power that I absorbed as I rested The radiance healed the effect of two days of rigorous riding and of having been in a city surrounded by technology and strange people, of bathing in water collected fromented by snowifts The stones restored energies spent hiding what I was under allaest prih h beyond the s I&039;d have to sleep with charged stones more often The princess and the pea, I wasn&039;t

In the dull light of earlyarea crowed up a racket, I stretched before e-chi, the es when they cahtened humans The movements turned violent as I whirled and slashed, kicked and blocked, channeling and expending the leftover fear and sexual energy stirred by the kylen cop

After I worked up a sweat, I took up the swords Holding the ebony walking-stick sheath, I slipped the longsword free with ht hand and fully extended the blade In my left I took the twelve-inch kris and sweated another tenon prih calmer, I was too shaky, too heated, for ht accidentally draw water, reen, and a turquoise scarf to accent green chrysocolla jewelry I would display in the shop My outer clothing was layered against the cold, slis ool-and-silk-blend trousers Winter e flesh, as there was so little of it exposed I dulled the pearl sheen and the whiter glow of scar tissue with an aed for that purpose Every scar still showed, had, ever since I daed the pri-healed human I looped my necklace of amulets around my waist under my clothes

I had fallen asleep with ood, so I dropped it, ran h the strands, and smoothedit with an oversized butterfly clip I added a bit ofthe amulets do the work of expensive products Today I added lipstick and blush

I didn&039;t exahts of Thaddeus Bartholomew fluttered deep into a seraph - a winged warrior - also longed for but denied Not that I&039;d ever even seen a seraph up close

Except twice a decade, seraphs and neoes aren&039;t permitted to be in close proximity Once every five years, a dozen seraphs chosen by the Seraphic High Host, the ruling council of seraphs, fly over each of the Enclaves and hover long enough to stie-heat coe fe, the seraphs chosen for the duty are forced to depart, their own desires unsatisfied Mages and seraphs can&039;t resist each other, and physical interspecies relations between the been disallowed by the ArchSeraph Michael The flyover concession was allowed by the council so that es had never been prophesied, but our extinction seely wasn&039;t in the plans of God the Victorious Clipping on my jewelry, I took the stairs to Thorn&039;s Gems, the jewelry shop I oithjewelry store, producing stone, lass items for retail shops across the East Coast Because Mineral City was fairly remote, we concentrated on the Internet, with a coh to survive the first few years When Chaed manifestation," wore one of our necklaces on television, our star rose fast Because of the seraph, Thorn&039;s Geht after by the rich and faroupies who followed seraphic updates as if they were scripture

Downstairs, I lit the gas fire, put on water for tea and ground beans for coffee The winter-month minutia of the shop eased me I had no time for dark fantasies, only to prepare for customers

The scent of fresh hazelnut coffee drifted from the tin percolator The Mr Coffee had died last year, and this time the town&039;s handyman had been unable to revive it I still missed the ease of its use The last twenty-five years had seen a resurgence of technology, but household items hadn&039;t yet reappeared

Water sizzled in a copper kettle resting on the cast-iron top of the gas fireplace I poured creaar into a crystal bowl, then stacked china cups and saucers Ancient silver spoons Audric had dead-e Laere stacked on folded napkins As I worked, my desire faded to a dull thump deep in my bones

"Dearie, you look diff-er-rent," a voice said "My, my, my Who is he? Give papa details"

"Can it, Rupert," I said, bending over the huntboard we used for refreshments I hadn&039;t heard hi a cup of the rich brew as an excuse not to lookup "I heard about Lucas," I added as a distraction

"Have you seen it? Henews"

I looked up as Rupert turned on the television

"And of course, Gra, that I ride to her favorite&039;s rescue, that I come stay with her until all this &039;unpleasantness is resolved, as she put it" Rupert shivered delicately "That is sooooo not going to happen"

Rupert, who had fallen in love with Pre-Apcentury, believing he was e Today he was in a drao blue in an Arabic cut, flowing robes and silky textures that complemented his pale skin Navy liner and a heavy coat of erous if the kirk elders caht inclients

The picture cleared and he tuned the TV to SNN Three digital video feeds ran siles on the left with the events of the day, and a long, narrow one on the right of a reporter dressed in purple robes made fashionable by the seraph Uriel last year in his appearance at the White House Three textin threes

The television blinked and brightened With the first instant of video feed, I was reminded of the holiday This was the hundred and fifth anniversary of the start of the Last War, and the eighty-seventh anniversary of the last great battle

"This date marks the commemoration of both the first and the final battles, the date when all mankind celebrates the end of the world," the announcer intoned I snorted Only humans could celebrate the death of six billion people "Here, the modern world first saw the death seraph Azrael as he lifted his sword over the city of Paris at the start of the first of the three great plagues - "

Rupert muted the sound and placed a hand on my shoulder On the screen, the ancient handheld video caht, the bursting prism of power as a seraph of death appeared in a cloud of fire, alighting on the very tip of the Eiffel Tower, golden wings outspread, sword held aloft Azrael, the harbinger of the end of the world

Well, sort of Things hadn&039;t quite worked out like the great prophets had expected

In the famous video, the shot tilted as the ca on the forrapher&039;s body, the seraph frarapher&039;s hand appeared at the botto color to ruby red, then bleeding as capillaries swelled and burst The twitching stopped The seraph turned and faced the camera, as if he knew it still recorded him I didn&039;t have to turn the sound up to remember the famous words as Azrael cursed the city in the nah Only one thousand people in the whole of the city of Paris survived the first plague One thousand

The screen changed, displaying the custoest, I saw the mushroo in what had been the Koreas and in China, followed by the three on the West Coast of the United States, eight in Russia, two in the former Holy Lands, and ten on the continent of Africa

In the stacked footage on the left of the screen were the twin seraphs, Mordad and Murdad, swords raised over Jerusalem and Mecca, respectively The center screen ton, DC Metatron, raven feathered, the seraph of death Not one person in the most powerful city on the face of the planet had survived the first plague, all dead in less than twenty-four hours, though the president and his cabinet had escaped into a bunker somewhere and survived Then shots of the Kreapore, Bombay, Frankfurt, Geneva, and on and on as hundreds of thousands, as millions, died in the streets, all on the first day of the first plague

The second plague folloars, pestilence, death, all displayed on the three screens, fast-tracking the end of the world as it once was Not once did the Most High appear As always, the announcer would be careful not to voice the fact that God the Victorious had never been caught on film The only time a reporter had co a massive pulmonary embolism and cardiac arrest All quite natural, or so they&039;d said No news analyst since had been brave enough to test the theory

Each of the three screens depicted store froe in months, the result of nuclear bo predicted Not that there were loat Nine in ten had died, in proportion to the rest of huh, God the Victorious, sparing no one in any socioeconoroup

The screen shifted, showing rioting in the streets as fanatics froion claimed the end of the world and the ascendancy of their own belief syste and beautiful, but dark, faces carved with anger The third great plague had punished the rioters doing violence in the nah Rioters dropped where they stood Then the plagueue of Punishe of six had perished