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Vitae
Once I escaped the wafers’ convention insanity, I eased into my Mercedes, soothed by luxury. My recent acquisition was luxurious, but there was a certain kingliness of being behind the wheel. Shields under me might not treat me as I deserved, but the German car manufacturer knew how to pamper their clientele.
Rather than park in my too-small space, I parked across two spaces reserved for mere wafers. I strode across the parking garage, passing Terrance’s truck, Ignis’s Camaro and the motorcycles of the Shield’s juveniles. The wait for an elevator stretched on in an interminable doldrum. The ride itself progressed so slow I’d have thought snails were lifting the car.
I must address the slipshod repairs the putti did on this elevator.
The serene classical instrumental ended, replaced with what unsophisticated wafers called modern music.
Caelum’s been mucking about in the programming again.
A century later, the elevator doors opened.
The disaster within took me aback. Our sanctum’s condition had been disgraceful on my last visit, but insult piled upon injury to height that rivaled a great pyramid. Something had splintered the polished woods and shredded rich tapestries that decorated our walls. Broken stairs climbed to the upper level looking as if elephants had trampled them.
I spoke through clenched teeth. “Anima, report.”
Silence.
I drew my fighting batons, compressing my essence to push up their shafts and form glowing crescent moon blades. Someone had cleared my chamber’s destroyed entrance.
Sidhe had smashed the adjoining wall in, debris laying across Mare’s shredded down mattress and smashed bedsteads.
Mare’s room!
I seized wreckage, hurling it without a care for where it landed. Her coverlets were shredded. Ripped clothes littered the room. Not one of her splintered furnishing remained undamaged. Everything, even her lingering scent, had been fouled.
My legs buckled, leaving me at the foot of a once pristine four-post bed, clutching a destroyed pillow sham so tainted I could no longer scent Mare on its threads.
Fury returned, holding back bottomless wells of sorrow.
Thank the Creator.
Testing my growing Sidhe powers against Mare’s prison had protected her egg, else it too might’ve been stolen. The prospect froze my blood only to transform it into a red and gold inferno.
How dare they?! They will suffer a thousand deaths for this blasphemy if I have to infuse their bodies with my essence for a century!
I opened the library—my library—to find it ravaged, vandalized and bereft of even a single one of my fine books. The sheer scope of the damage took my breath away. In half a day, the thieves had wiped away countless hours spent scavenging and restoring old literary treasures and tomes of knowledge.
Someone will pay for this too.
The brigands had spared neither my study nor the bedrooms. The control center gaped—an empty tomb. Only crooked wires remained, bent along grooves torn into the drywall.
Violet and emerald energy pulsed around my skin, biting at me as it illuminated my aura. The Sidhe invaded my sanctuary. They’d broken my antique furnishings. They’d taken my automata. They’d stolen the millennia of knowledge assembled in my library. Worst and by far the most unforgiveable, they’d blasphemed all that had remained of Mare.
Primeval rage seared my veins. I wanted to tear the building down with my bare hands, but knew senseless destruction wouldn’t help. I took hold of myself. I could not act like the spoiled air or water shields. I was a civilized elder and would comport myself as such.
I turned my back on the carnage and crossed the upper floor for the glassed-in tunnel to the greenhouse garden. I had to think. It had been some time since there’d been any need to contact a shield without the benefit of the automata.
Back then, they dwelt within our sanctum and we had a viewing pool.
The garden would help me regain my composure. Thriving plants, rich soil and tranquility would balm the deep gouges to my spirit. What awaited me did quite the opposite.
The vindictive destruction dealt my garden rivaled the rest of the sanctum. Someone had spray-painted the statuary of a Divine One surrounded by putti—small angelic creatures often confused for cherubim—into a mockery of its glory, leaving it as the only stone left unbroken.
An elven blade impaled the statue’s heart.
I waded across the wasted garden to the statue.
I accept your challenge, Sidhe. You will rue this day.
I yanked the sword free.
The statue disintegrated.
“You want war?!” My voice rattled the garden’s roof. “You’re nothing but the arrogant get of fallen terrorists and corrupt magic.” I slid the sword across one palm, coating the blade in my blood. “I will give you a war you cannot imagine.”
Anima
Anima cowered, wings mantled close around her and her many eyes squeezed shut. The garnet imbedded in her forehead burned with a fury that threatened to split her head.
She needn’t have feared Vitae. She dwelled safely within a storm’s eye of mist and magic, creation and infinity. Only her kind could traverse the infinite gulf between Creation and the true world of spirit and soul.
Atlanta’s translucent phantom surrounded her, stretching out in all directions from her perch above the Shield’s sanctum. The dark fog of taint mired the city, worsening every moment. It failed to compare with the dark star in the garden that was Vitae.
Anima was just as able to violate stricture and show herself to Vitae as she had Quayla. She was just as able to answer his summons with only her voice. She was not the computer equipment or other devices ripped from the control center by Dolumii, Gherrian and their cohort.
Those devices augmented her abilities, but she was a true—if young—cherubim. She’d been created to See all.
What she saw in her Shieldheart terrified her.
Anima had not cheered when Quayla had slain him, but she had not shed a tear either. Vitae had assaulted one of his own, a sin tantamount to choosing selfishness over all of Creation. He required redress, but their Divine One had been laid low.
The Isaac commanded I watch and not interfere.
Anima lifted an eye-tipped finger to the sapphire eye embedded in her forehead, opening herself to Quayla’s essence and peering within.
Nothing came to her sight.
Mirror pools dotted the swirling nebulae surrounding her tranquil island. Liquid looking glasses of Eden-born spring water orbited her, offering their sights to any of her eyes. In olden times when the pools had peered out mortal eyes, Hadley Cox’s Romani ancestors named the experience second sight or opening their third eye. They’d never understood how some of their people could glimpse the secrets of the universe—not that the Roma had alone been touched by the cherubim. The changes made to chosen mortals had given them sharper senses, keen enough to peer through glamour or glimpse the Watcher’s other mirrors—visions of other places and times reflected against the inside of their eyes.
Modern times granted the cherubim crafted eyes in addition to those born. The sheer number of technological lenses—as well as mortal eyes—made searches akin to touring constellations one star at a time.
Anima had lost Quayla after her flight from Circlestone’s tower. The Watcher needed to find the water phoenix. Unlike the downtown convention center, seeds populated the area around around Caelum’s workplace, making Anima’s search one of finding the nail in a mound of needles.
Anima needed a shield worse than ever to help her cleanse and redeem Vitae from the sins he’d perpetrated on himself.
She pressed the eye-fingertip harder against the stone, squeezing eyes shut to narrow her focus. Will forced Quayla’s encased essence to reach out to its origin. Anima could almost feel Quayla amid the countless motes of essence, almost, but not enough to locate her.
Anima pinned a lip beneath teeth to forestall a curse on the verge of escaping. She grabbed a section of spirit Atlanta and pulled it closer, shifting and sliding, enlarging and shirking her shire in search of hope.
Dunham
Dunham strolled away from the circle of standing stones and Ignis’s screaming. The base of each standing stone contained the stolen and modified nests of Atlanta’s Shield. A spell inscribed on the basin contained all five phoenixes, but he’d built additional, custom cages within the spell boundary to ensure his prizes didn’t escape.
And one already has.
A pentagram of phoenix energy burned on both the center stone of the main circle and another identical stone linked to the first. Off to one side, a control console managed the robotic arms that could lift the cages off of the stones or allow Dunham to communicate to the wireless intercoms installed within the vacuum-sealed cells.
“Good afternoon, Terra. By what should I call you?”
A husky female voice rumbled out of the speaker. “Do I hear Ignis screaming in the background?”
“Yes.”
“Do you intend to torture me as well?” Terrance asked.
“That will depend on how cooperative you are,” Dunham said.
“This is an interesting cage,” Terrance said. “I can destroy the interior glass, but something tells me you’ve planned for that eventuality. Should I assume the viscous substance beyond will prevent, punish or both any such attempt?”
“That is correct.”
“I wonder how thoroughly you have thought out this course of action,” Terrance said.
“I hope that I have been thorough enough,” Dunham said. “Your name, shield?”
“Terra is fine. Will you be giving me your name?” Terrance asked.
“Dunham.”
“Ah, Caelum’s boss. Interesting. Are you in possession of our eggs?”
“I am.”
“The kudzu elemental was yours as well?”
Dunham lifted a questioning brow toward Viviane. “Yes.”
“You are some kind of Fae Kissed then, druid most likely, meaning you have taken our eggs and used a spell on them so you can control us. To what end?”
Dunham lifted his finger from the communicator. He was supposed to be questioning the phoenix, but despite the polite tone of the dialogue, the conversation had somehow gotten away from him. He was Dunham Heffernan. Regardless of anything else he was, he was the CEO of Circlestone Industries, and he had presided over more than a few adversarial meetings.
Dunham depressed the button once more. “While I appreciate the astuteness of your mind, I’m afraid I must insist upon asking the questions here.”
“Very well, ask a question.”
“Why did your divine not step in to contain the situation at the Marriott?”
“Don’t tell him a blighted thing,” Ignis’s screams redoubled.
“Though you will undoubtedly torture me or try to force obedience through my egg, I must maintain solidarity with my brother. So, it seems our conversation is over, Mister Heffernan.”
“Until I compel you,” Dunham countered.
“That won’t be a conversation, sir. That will be an interrogation.”
Touché.
Dunham took the Terra’s egg from Viviane, rounding the stone circle to the corresponding cage. He kneeled in front of the double-layered glass bell jar. Swirling dark liquid prevented him from seeing the Terra or the line of illuminated runes inside the cage’s border. Matching runes illuminated the outer basin and the standing stone behind both basin and cage.
The front of the base stone extended outward. A beveled protuberance housed a wide socket, though not so wide as the girth of the silver and iron framed emerald pulsing in Dunham’s hand.
Dunham closed his eyes, blocking out the screams. He brought to mind the incantation Viviane provided. Unlike with Caelum or Ignis, Dunham didn’t exert pressure on the egg. There was no reason to assert his dominance, the earth phoenix already understood.
Understands too much really.
Energy pulsed through Dunham in time with the beat of his heart. Viviane’s tutelage included drawing in elements for power. He’d wielded the power of the world’s lushest forests. Ingesting essence from the captured nests had swelled his abilities several octaves over his former pinnacle.
The kudzu creature had been meant to draw the shields in, but he’d never expected it to grow ten stories tall. The carnage offered by the monster at only one quarter height would’ve proved sufficient lure. The plant elemental had been meant to weaken them, allowing Viviane’s Sidhe and her recruited coven to kill the phoenixes.
Timing had been everything.
He’d had to lure all of Atlanta’s shields before they could regroup and replace their nests. Capture had been too risky, but death put them right where he wanted them.
The kudzu’s regeneration almost made the others unnecessary.
He hadn’t liked enlisting outside help. The precaution was sensible, but the coven, the Sidhe knights and the cleanup crew weren’t loyal to him—in other words, they weren’t trustworthy.
Dunham glanced at Viviane. She lounged against the billiard table examining her nails. He knew her inattention was feigned. He knew she protected her own interests observing his every action.
She acts as if after all this time I would betray her.
Dunham offered the egg to the stone socket. The stone loosened, opening like a living maw to take the fabulous ovum. It stretched wide like a toddler trying to fit a gigantic jawbreaker.
She stopped me from getting the last egg. Did she create the crack so that the Aqua could escape too?
The socket settled in around the Terra’s egg and returned to a state of rigid stone. Enough of the egg protruded that he could apply pressure or even break the magnificent inspiration that Fabergé never managed to match.
Viviane’s sweet alto broke the silence Dunham hadn’t noticed. “Dark thoughts? Still brooding about losing Quayla?”
“Among other concerns.”
“Your revenge is at hand, sweet boy. This should be a moment for champagne, not sour grapes.”
Viviane had saved him. She’d raised him. She’d identified Dunham’s druidic abilities and seen him educated in their use. She’d even helped him learn ways to remain in his prime rather than die decades before when his years should’ve been spent.
But why? Why does she need me?
A dark chuckle threatened escape.
Why did she need Arthur? Why does she play with mortal lives?
Dunham looked at her.
Viviane was exquisitely beautiful in ways that weren’t immediately apparent. She was comely, true enough, but there was something alluring yet intangible about her.
Dunham turned his back on the stone circle and crossed the living area to his bathroom. Steam erupted from the sink spigot, but he turned on the cold to counter the heat provided by his captured phoenix.
Viviane was a Principality, a chief power in the Dark Trinity. Her existence was a constant three-way tug-of-war to win favor. It was also a war she’d been cast out of for reasons she refused to divulge.
She wants back in, and somehow, I offer her a path to do just that, but how?
He withdrew a fluffy towel from the warmer and patted his hands dry before returning to his quarters. Viviane had vanished, probably down to her rooms. He returned to the control console and opened the channel to the Terra.
“I apologize for that interruption. Please tell me why your divine was not on scene to clean up after the battle in the Marriott.”
“He wasn’t available.”
“Why wasn’t he available?” Dunham asked.
“Perhaps he was in the bathroom.”
“When will he be available?”
“It depends upon what he ate,” Terrance said.
A bark of laughter escaped Ignis’s cage. Dunham marched over to the billiard table and fished around the runed bag. He drew out a circle of celestial silver not much larger than an average key chain. A clip hung from the ring between two of the five gemstones which corresponded to the Phoenix eggs.
The construct technically remained unfinished. He didn’t have Quayla’s egg, and he’d chosen not to work the binding spells on the Vitae’s egg until he had the phoenix in his custody. Even so, the other stones had still been thaumaturgically linked to the eggs via one of the spells Dunham laid on each before he’d mounted them in the stone circle.
He slapped half the circle against the rail of his billiard table. The Terra grunted and Ignis yelped. Between them Caelum doubled over, but if he made a sound, the cage kept it from escaping. Dunham pinched the emerald between thumb and forefinger, rolling it roughly as he returned to the console.
“When will your divine be available?”
Terrance grunted. “Whenever he gets over his last relationship?”
“I am not amused.” Dunham squeezed harder.
“On that we agree,” Terrance said.
After several hours of exercising his control, he’d delivered a lot of punishment but not gotten a lot of answers. The earth phoenix was as slippery as an elf and the fire phoenix preferred pain to cooperation. As Caelum had been in Dunham’s possession at the time, he had no answers. Besides, Dunham needed Caelum in good shape for the first of many tasks.
Viviane returned as the last grains of Dunham’s patience spilled into the bottom of the hourglass.
“You said I would have control over them,” Dunham snapped.
“And you do, just not as much as you’d like.”
“I cannot wait forever,” Dunham said. “The longer I delay the more likely we’ll get a visit we’d rather avoid.”
“Then don’t. Perform the ritual now.”
“Will this sequestering interfere?”
She smirked. “Won’t know until we try, but you have plenty of essence to burn.”
“Fine.” Dunham strode up the spiral stair to his bedchamber and up to the dressing dummy which normally bore his long leather vest. Viviane slipped up behind him, hands running under his arms and over his chest. She slid the vest away, hanging it on the dummy before slipping thumbs into his shorts. Dunham stepped out of his shorts just as her hands started to explore. The edge of her fingertips caressed him enough to start a tingle, but he pushed it away with three long strides into his private bath.
The Atlanta summer water coming out of the cold feed wasn’t a low enough temperature to offer any kind of chill as it sluiced down Dunham’s skin. Viviane had known he would only use the cold to prepare himself, hence the light teasing that wasn’t followed by her stepping into the shower with him.
She knows better when I’m cleansing.
Dunham scrubbed with an old, handmade brush of natural bristles hard enough to pink his skin. He didn’t use soap or anything else that might leave a residue on him. He couldn’t risk anything unnatural hampering the spell he’d waited over a century to cast.
When his raw, new skin tingled head to toe, he exited the shower.
Viviane waited in his bedroom, holding shorts crafted from tanned lamb skin so that he could step in without effort. She drew them up onto his hips and cinched them tight with a braided leather thong. He stepped into the center of the open space.
She picked up the first yew bowl of pigments and closed the distance between him. Slender, practiced fingers dipped into the mixture of herbs, ash and phoenix essence, then painted runes onto his body. There was no seduction in her motions, nothing but business. She layered the marks on him; fire then water, earth then air and finally applied the final sigils with the concoction mixed with life essence.
“Do you want the vest?” She asked.
“No.”
“Are you focused? Calm?”
“Yes, and I’ll remain so if you stop nagging.”
“You will only get one chance at this. It’s prudent to be careful.”
“Agreed.” Dunham strode away from her and downstairs. He wove through the plush couches and fine side tables to the stone set opposite the stone circle. Graduated cylinders held phoenix essence at the five points of a softly glowing pentagram.
He stepped into the star drawn by burning lines of essence and inhaled a long slow breath in through his nostrils. He took another and another, centering himself for the audacity to come.
I am Dunham Colwin Heffernan, seventh son of a seventh son and this is the day I claim my destiny.
His hands swept upwards. The pentagram beneath his feet consumed the waiting essence, glowing with greater intensity. A moment later, the opposite center stone drew on the essence held in the surrounding basins. Lines of power lit the contained pentagram like blazing Vegas neon.
Dunham didn’t hesitate.
He didn’t look to Viviane.
He knew the spell by heart. He’d recited it day after day for more than a hundred years. Not once had he uttered the mantra with the casual air of rote repetition. He’d incanted the spell with the deliberate precision—a master musician caressing the notes of his most sacred song from a beloved instrument.
Dunham kneeled. He lifted a silvered feather and dropped it into a graduated cylinder holding Quayla’s sparkling blue essence. “Summuseraphi.”
Next, he picked up the white feather reclaimed from Caelum’s death in the Goblin Market. He deposited the divine token into the container of air magic. The word rang with even greater voice. “Summuseraphi.”
He split both feathers reclaimed at the church, inserting one each into Vitae’s and Ignis’s essence. “Summuseraphi. Summuseraphi.”
Lastly, Dunham added the feather cast in amber taken from the Terra’s body at the Marriott. “Summuseraphi!”
Dunham’s chest seized.
Pain lanced through his heart and the vital organ stopped beating for a three count. Energy washed out of him and the essence in his beakers drained away as if the containers lacked bottoms.
Light and thunder exploded, the shockwave stopped only by the magic circle inscribed around the center stone.
Dunham held his focus with strangling, superhuman resolve.
Light faded, revealing a golden and white bird of prey far too large for the circle caging it. Wings beat at the containment spell. Each beat landed like a physical blow, eating through his energies in gigantic chomps.
The pentagram holding Summuseraphi dimmed.
“Viviane,” Dunham choked.
She hurried forward, drawing slender thermoses from a bag.
Four wings the black of brackish water stretched from her. Each accepted a container, bending or stretching to pour essence into the mouth intended for or containing its matching egg.
The center pentagram brightened.
“By the Undying Light I command you to release me!” Even held back by the barrier, his voice shook the building.
Hold your ground, eventually the bucking horse breaks.
Summus threw himself at the barrier again and again.
Viviane delivered another round of essence, shooting Dunham a warning look.
The summoning spell design incorporated caging all five phoenixes of a single Shield, allowing the containment barriers to draw directly on all five elements. Performing the incantation with only three phoenixes seemed to drain all five essence reserves at an alarming rate.
There wasn’t any way for Dunham to foresee whether the Divine One’s recovery attempts left Summuseraphi weakened or enervated. It didn’t matter. Dunham had the tiger’s tail. Letting go ranked pinnacle above all other highly ill-advised actions.
Summus’s power fought Dunham’s will, and the collected phoenix essence. In the end, Summuseraphi transmogrified into a winged human and crumpled to his knees.
Dunham followed suit.
If Quayla or their Vitae chose that moment to assault, Dunham and all of his careful plans would have fallen.
Depending on whether Viviane bestirs herself to crush them.
He took a long, slow breath, then fought his way back to his feet. Leaden hands swept upward along his sides, moving faster and easier with every inch as Dunham drew divine power from his captor’s pentagram into his own and ultimately into himself.
Even the small amount stolen from the fatigued divine felt like the output of a fusion reactor. A second draw left Dunham’s head spinning. Seemingly infinite power thrummed in every cell.
This must be how it feels to be a god.