The river of energy and Light flowed beneath me, through me, floating me along the current. In the world of humans, lightning hit the ground again, a huge burst. My body jerked as the power lashed through me. Eli yelped. Almost as an afterthought, I directed the energies passing through the stone beneath me into the amulets at my waist.
"You use the omega-sight." Amethyst, her eagle face cold, watched me in the otherness. "I have done this. I showed you how. I will be punished." She bowed her head.
Below her, swords clashed, seraph-steel and demon-iron. Forcas, blinded and bloodied, thrust up through the violet light of the wheels' weapon and stabbed Raziel. Bright blood gushed. Raziel placed a hand over his wound. Slowly he dropped into the river, landing on his knees, the water-lava chest high. The weapon firing at Forcas ceased. The footsteps of the Dragon shook the ground with an earthquake. Dust rained down, pattering on me, and cracks opened in the earth. But beside me, the river flowed. The river of time? I didn't care what he called it, Raziel was dying. "You can save them," the wheels said plaintively. "You can save them all. Join with Raziel."
Amethyst shrieked in fear. "Punished. I will be punished."
"Blasphemy. Mages cannot do this," Raziel said, his voice weak.
"Not blasphemy," the wheels sang. "Hope. If a seraph and a mage join their prime amulets, they become one spirit, as the seraph and my cherub became one."
"We mate, I die," I said.
"Not mate body to body. That you may not do," the wheels said. "But merge."
From the entrance to the hellhole, from the rocks and the ground, emanated a suffocating yellow-orange light, the heart of the mountain itself, polluted, malevolent. Death and plagues. Whatever was coming was something big. Fear tightened my body.
"Throw off your amulets," the wheels cajoled.
I looked at myself in the otherness. Every bone ached. Every muscle, every sinew, every half-healed wound. Even my blood ached, what there was of it. The wound in my side was a swarm of writhing worms and my life force flowed out through it to Forcas.
"We can try," Raziel said. Floating in the river of time, he gripped an amulet, one that looked much like a prime, and tore it from a thong around his neck. I ripped my prime amulet off, flipped it around, and pressed it into his palm.
Both worlds fell away. Light, sound, smells, textures blasted at me, smothered me, flailed me like barbed chains, rolled me like water, and trapped me there, dying.
I fell. And fell. A thought flashed in my awareness. What had Forcas said when he held me in his claw? Something about the whole flower. Rose? My twin?
The otherness crashed around me. Raziel pulled me beneath his wing, against his side. Surprised, he murmured into my ear, "A third place, but not a place. A here-not here."
I had no idea what he meant. I was too tired to care.
Raziel was a crimson flame in the lava of everything and nothing. Standing, he drew his sword, shouting a battle cry, a note of true sound, a gong of challenge in a language I couldn't understand. I saw the tones as they left his throat, floated a moment, and entered the river. Turning my head, I saw Forcas in the real world. It bent its body in a violent arc, and buried its fangs in Raziel's neck, clinging to him. In this third reality, a netting of conjure emanated from Forcas through the air to me, like the web of a spider. A vein of the web traveled up to the Mistress, holding the ship and cherub in a conjured snare. I understood what the new sight was revealing. I had called them all to me. I was killing them all.
In the otherness, flowing down the river toward me, came another Darkness. A monstrous thing, so huge it blotted out a third of the nothingness-sky. Around its neck was a glowing chain and, where the links touched, blue light flared, but instead of harming the beast, it gave the Darkness power, pulling power from Raziel, from Amethyst, from Zadkiel. From Barak. It drew power from me. The chain smelled of Lucas, of the blood of Mole Man. It smelled of Uncle Lem, my foster father, of Gramma, and of three seraphs.
Raziel hissed a breath and we understood together, mind-to-mind, knowing, what was happening. The Dragon wore the chain Forcas had forged, the chain made with the blood of Mole Man's progeny and smeared with all of our blood. Forcas had given it to his Master, the antichain to the one that had bound the Dragon in Mole Man's battle. With this weapon the Dragon was freeing itself.
From somewhere, I heard Eli whisper, "Oh, crap, crap, crap."
The wild mage-stones on my chest vibrated, humming with the flowing energies. Before me, from the surface of the river, a finger of lavender energy rose from the water-lava-energy flow. A long, sinuous snake of power with purple eyes, many eyes, hundreds of them. A snake body composed of eyes. I understood. It was a vision of the life force of the wheels. Amethyst's wheels. They were alive. Sentient. Separate from the cherub. "Yes. Your wheels," it sang. "Yours. Call us."
Around the wheels Flames whirled, flashing. Seraphs came toward us, moving fast through the river. Zadkiel and Cheriour. One - Barak? - was silver. Another was emerald green, one was golden, another was black as jet. Inside the wheels, Amethyst lay covered with her wings, her eyes all closed. Malashe-el lay on her chest, crying, his fists clenched in her feathers. In the place-no place of the otherness, I touched the snake with my sword and pointed at the mouth of the hellhole. From it a bright orange light issued, light filled with shadows and Dark things that writhed. "Seal it up," I said.
"This beast has great power," the wheels sang to me. "I cannot do this thing alone." The seraphs all watched me, waiting.
"Seal it up," I said to them, not really sure what I was asking.
As one, they all drew swords and flew into the hellhole.
"Breathe, Thorn," I heard Eli say. "Saints' balls. The seraph is dying too."
In front of me, Minor Flames danced. I watched them from the aspect of death, lying on the stone of the Trine. Behind me, Forcas was dying, and he was taking Mistress Amethyst, Raziel, and me with him. I recognized the trap as a version of the one that had imprisoned the cherub for a century. I figured I had one chance in a thousand that it could be broken by Minor Flames. Maybe one in a million. Or the anticonjure might kill us. Or I could die before I got done. Or hell would freeze over and I'd do it right by chance.
"Can you see the conjure that binds the cherub, the wheels, the seraph, and me to Forcas?" I asked the Flames.
They bobbed up and down. "Yesss," they hissed, the clean, pure hiss of fire.
"Can you..." I envisioned a saw composed of blue flames, diamond-bladed, cutting the threads of the Dark conjure. "Can you do this?"
"Yoursss to command," they said together.
"Do it," I said. The Flames divided into three batches of five - surely not an auspicious number - and attacked the incantation.
On Earth, Eli cradled me against his chest. Nearby, Durbarge rolled slowly to his knees, his face ashen with blood loss. I had meant to kill him, I remembered, to save Thaddeus Bartholomew. Too late. We were all dead anyway. He stumbled across the broken ground to the rocket launcher that Rickie had dropped what seemed eons ago.
To Joseph Barefoot the assey said, "If we can fire these shoulder-mounted rockets into the hellhole, the nuclear warheads might seal it up."
"Nukes?" Joseph said. "Mighta been nice to know we were carrying some real firepower."
"Yeah," Durbarge said, his voice so tired it whistled on his breath. "Yeah. Well. Last-ditch weapons to stop that thing from getting free."
Joseph wiped a hand across his face and it came away bloody. "The Indian always gets it in the end. Just don't expect me to yell Geronimo."
"No," I tried to say. My lips moved, papery against one another.
Durbarge looked at Eli. "Stay down. Get Thorn back down the mountain in one piece. I don't know exactly what she is, but she's something important. Call the person on this card." He handed the miner a business card. "She'll be taken care of."
Overhead, the wheels lurched drunkenly and pulled back from the earth. On the ground, Forcas released Raziel and the seraph dragged himself away. The wheels began firing into the body of the Darkness. I saw Eli turn from the light show and take Durbarge's card, tucking it into a pocket. The assey and Joseph Barefoot, the leader of the EIH, turned and headed toward the lair. From within it, light flashed, and rumbles echoed through the heart of the Trine.
The scents of seraphs filled the air with all things alive and good. I sobbed, the sound smothered by the concussions belowground. My last sight was Durbarge and Joseph, silhouetted by blinding light as they entered the mouth of hell.
