Seraphim

Seraphim

Michele Hauf

www.LUNA-Books.com

To Jesse Marvel Hauf, aka Bob

Because this story is filled with all the things guys like:

Danger, adventure, sword fights, giant bugs, fire demons,

poison-dripping castles—with just a touch of romance.

But you know what? We girls like that stuff, too!

Love, Mom

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

SIXTEEN

SEVENTEEN

EIGHTEEN

NINETEEN

TWENTY

TWENTY-ONE

TWENTY-TWO

TWENTY-THREE

TWENTY-FOUR

TWENTY-FIVE

TWENTY-SIX

TWENTY-SEVEN

EPILOGUE

COMING NEXT MONTH

PROLOGUE

France—1433

The black knight’s sword-tip drags a narrow gutter in fresh-fallen snow. The tunic of mail chinks against outer protective plate armor. Footsteps are slow. It is a struggle, the short walk from horse to a wool blanket laid upon the snow. There, a squire stands waiting to disassemble the heavy armor and remove it from the knight’s weak and weary shoulders.

Thick white flakes have begun to blanket the muddy grounds surrounding the Castle Poissy, making foot battle difficult, slippery. Yet successful.

Mastema de Morte, Lord de Poissy, Demon of the West, has fallen, his head severed by the very sword that now draws a crooked line in the snow.

“You did well,” the squire says, not so much encouraging, as merely words spoken to break the hard silence that follows the soul-shredding events of the evening.

The squire, lank and awkward in a twist of teenage limbs, takes to the removal of armor. Gauntlets are tugged off and deposited on the blanket with a cushioned clink. He unscrews the pauldrons starring the knight’s shoulders, and lifts the heavy bascinet helmet off the mail coif. Working from shoulder to leg the squire carefully, noiselessly, sets aside the pieces of armor. Wouldn’t do to draw attention to their dark hideaway a quarter league from the castle. Earlier, the squire had found the perfect spot tucked away inside a grove of white-paper birch limning the river’s edge. The Seine flows in quiet grace, accepting with little protest the fallen soldiers who have given up the ghost in battle.

“Hold out your arms and I’ll lift the tunic from your shoulders. Steady.”

It is difficult not to sway. The knight’s legs feel cumbersome, leaden. Arms are weak from swinging the heavy battle sword. Though forged and designed especially for the bearer, the weapon had become a burden after what seemed hours of blindly swinging and connecting with steel plate armor, chain mail, and human flesh and bone. Though it could have been no more than a quarter of an hour from the time of entering battle to the moment of success.

This act of participating in war, in bloodshed and mindless cruelty is new. But necessary. And not mindless. Not in any way.

The tunic, fashioned of finely meshed mail, is lifted from shoulders, lightening the weight on the knight’s tired, burning muscles. Carefully the squire works the mail coif from a tangle of dark, sweaty hair that has slipped out from under the protective leather hood.

Suddenly granted reprieve from the heavy weight of steel and mail—and revenge—the knight’s muscles wilt and limbs bend. The hard smack of cheek against ground feels good. Cool snowflakes kiss feverous flesh and melt tears of the new season over eyelids and nose and lips.

The squire, sensing the immense toll battle visits upon his master, allows the silent surrender to rest, a dark oblivion rimmed with promises of salvation that only angels can touch. He lifts the mail tunic and places it in the leather satchel spread across his horse’s flanks. Necessary tools this heavy armor and meshed steel, as they travel the unseasonably frigid desolation of France from one village to the next in this insane quest for revenge.

Insane, but certainly warranted.

“You have felled both Satanas and Mastema de Morte,” the squire offers, holding observance over his silent master. “But three to go.”

“This one…was for Henri de Lisieux.” It hurt to stretch a hand up to brush the snow from a bruised and aching face. The knight squinted against the sharp bite of cold. It is not natural, this heavy snowfall. But what since the coming of the New Year had been natural? “Have you caught wind of where the next de Morte plans to strike?”

“Nay,” the squire responded. “But I wager word will be bouncing off the tavern walls in the next village. If you can find a de Morte foolish enough to venture out after the death of two brothers. I fear Abaddon de Morte will remain sealed behind a fortress of stone once word of another brother’s death reaches his ears.”

“He is the…Demon of the North,” the knight managed through breathless gasps. Lying in a state of weary triumph, surrender to the bittersweet kiss of winter is effortless. “We shall be on to Creil and meet the man on his own domain.”

“Insanity.”

“Is there any other way?”

The squire sighed, and kicked at the fresh-fallen layer of white flakes with a tattered boot he’d peeled off a dead man’s foot less than a week ago. “There is another way, it is called retreat.”

“Not an option, squire. Do you live in fear or faith?”

He wanted to simply mutter fear, for of the two ’twas that to which he clung most often. To him, faith was a whole new world, one he’d hoped the abbe Belloc could lead him toward, far away from the sins of his past.

“It is fear…for now.”

“Then I shall have to keep the faith for both of us. We ride.”

The squire had known that would be the command. As he had come to know every rational suggestion he made would be immediately discounted by this false knight of vengeance. But whom had he left in this world to listen to anything he should say? “Tomorrow then, we ride to Pontoise, it is six leagues from here. We shall keep our eyes wide and our ears open for any word of the North Demon’s plans.”

“We shall ride tonight.”

“Six leagues?”

Unhinged, the squire thought of the knight sprawled on the ground. Completely lunatic.

“It is what must be done.” The tone of his master’s spoken words had changed since the first morn of the New Year. Commands and utterances had become deep and alien, laced with an unwelcome evil.

“Very well.” Resigned that he would get no sleep this night—as he had not gotten for the last two nights they had ridden by moonlight—the squire rubbed his itchy eyes. With resolute regard, he toed a mass of the black hair that swirled around his master’s shoulder. “If you intend to continue this charade I wonder should you cut this off. These luxurious curls are a dead giveaway that you are a woman, my lady.”

“I’ve no intention of disguising myself as a man. It is unnecessary. Rumors run rampant of a black knight come to exterminate the de Morte clan. Who would suspect a woman?”

“True. But the road is a dangerous ride, my lady. You are a beautiful woman. Would not you prefer the safety of disguise over the possibility of further harm to your person?”

“There is not a brand of harm left in the tattered kingdom of France that can further wound this blackened heart.”

“Really?” He hated to challenge her so, but the squire knew otherwise. This woman’s heart glowed a brilliant silver.

A lightning swift hand lashed up and unfastened the dagger from the belt the squire wore at his ankle. Another dead man’s gift.

Seraphim d’Ange handed Baldwin Ortolano the weapon, handle first. “Do it then.”

ONE

Lucifer de Morte tightened his jaw and clamped his eyelids shut. The sheep tallow used to oil his saddle oozed between his leather-gloved fingers.

“Just last night,” Mastema’s emerald-liveried messenger said in a tone too soft and fearful to blossom from a whisper. “I rode all night, my lord. I beg thee forgiveness.”

At a dismissing flick of Lucifer’s fingers, the messenger bowed and backed from the private chamber positioned deep in the center of the fortified lair. Lucifer remained stiff, his hand fixed in a scrubbing position on the cantle of his saddle.

To his right, a blazing fire spat angry sparks across the tiled Istrian-marble floor. The hearth—forged of iron—resembled a demon’s mouth, complete with curved fangs, and above the gaping jaws, carved recesses for eyes where the flames danced high, animating the macabre face in wicked design. Overhead, suspended from the pine-beamed ceiling, a stuffed eagle, preserved and mounted with its eight-foot wingspan regally spread, silently mocked Lucifer with its glistening ruby eyes.

The black knight, the messenger had said. Again.

In a rage of motion, Lucifer pushed away from the saddle stand and crossed the room, scattering tallow and steel saddle furnishings in his wake. His sword, propped by the hearth, flashed violently as he swung the jagged-edge espadon through the heat-festered air.

He spun once, his anger, the pure force of his loss, drawing the pain up through his arms and to the end of the espadon. With a grunt and a thrust, he dashed his blade against the stone wall. Steel clanged dully. Limestone chips spattered the air. He thrust again. Clang. And again. He smashed his sword against the wall until his arms burned with exertion and foul sweat poured from his scalp.

Staggering to the wall, to which his back connected with a jaw-cracking thud, Lucifer finally dropped his sword with a clatter. A spark from the hearth leapt into the air and landed an amber jewel upon the deadly steel.

Lucifer raked his fingers through his tangled mass of dark hair. He squeezed his scalp until he saw crimson behind his closed eyelids. The color of blood.

The black knight’s blood.

Some fool bastard had taken it upon himself to exterminate the de Morte clan. Why?

No! It mattered not the reason. Lucifer knew well there were hundreds, perhaps thousands of reasons; the bones and scarred flesh of those reasons buried copiously beneath the frozen French soil or floating down the murky waters of the Seine.

But why now? Why, after nearly two decades of de Morte reign, had some demented soul finally decided to exact revenge? And to succeed?

Mastema had been beheaded in the middle of the battlefield. He always surrounded himself with his own men. Always. After learning of their brother Satanas’s death on the field but five days earlier, surely Rimmon, Mastema’s Master of Arms, must have been at his side, his eyes peeled for oncoming danger?

With a guttural grunt, Lucifer kicked at the flaming ember that simmered on his sword blade. It sailed through the air, a sizzling missile launched by hatred, to land in the fire with a grand explosion of heat and blue-red flame.

Still panting from the toil of his anger, Lucifer stood before the blaze, fists clenched at his thighs. Heat blistered his face in delicious warmth. He could feel the sweat bubble upon his flesh like the surface of a witch’s cauldron. So difficult at times, this sheath of mortality that he wore.

But obviously not a challenge for much longer, if this black knight would have his way.

Satanas had lived south of Paris in Corbeil; his nickname, the Demon of the South, as the villagers had taken to calling him. Hell, half of France used the monikers years of destruction and debauchery had attributed to the de Morte brothers. Mastema, the West Demon, had resided in Poissy. Sammael, the Demon of the East, resided in Meaux. The four brothers surrounded Lucifer, who lived in Paris.

But if the black knight was systematically attempting to erase the de Mortes from the planet, north would be his obvious next move.

Abaddon.

Squeezing his fists so tight the tallow and sweat and his own blood mixed to a hideous ooze, Lucifer decided on his course of action. He would not leave his own fortress to aid his youngest brother. Abaddon was an ox in size and vigor; he did not require Lucifer’s help to flick away an offensive gnat like the black knight.

But he would send out a scout—no, a mercenary—to track this vengeful knight, and stop him in his tracks before Abaddon even need worry about defending himself against the revenge the de Morte family surely deserved, but would never tolerate.

The road to Pontoise stretched a long white ribbon this chill January eve. Flakes as light yet massive in size as swan’s down fell quietly through the night. Seraphim blew a breath through her nose. Ignoring the ice-fog that lingered in a pale cloud before her, she slipped the leather hood from her head. She scratched a hand over her newly shorn locks and eased her heels into Gryphon’s flanks to pick up the pace.

Gryphon had been her brother Antoine’s prized mount. A fine black Andalusian bred for battle stealth and stamina, it measured near to sixteen hands. The beast’s coat glimmered a blue sheen under sun and moon. “Power,” Antoine had always whispered, as he’d brush down Gryphon’s coat—a formidable partner to sword and shield.

Behind Sera, Baldwin dutifully followed on his borrowed roan, clad in borrowed clothes and borrowed life. He was a reluctant squire to Sera’s bold, black knight. The man—teen—had been studying under the tutelage of the abbe Belloc, an ill attempt at penance against his former life, when Lucifer de Morte’s raid upon the d’Ange castle the first morning of the New Year had taken down all but a handful of household servants and knights.

Much as Sera would rather shoulder the quest for revenge entirely herself, she took comfort in the young man’s company. There was no favor for a lone woman riding the high roads by night. Even if the disguise of armor and distempered countenance did fool some, it certainly would not fool all. And as Baldwin had implied, she might be physically prepared to fight off attackers, but mentally, there were no promises.

Sera had endured much since her mother’s illness had rendered the taciturn matron useless about the d’Ange castle a decade ago. But she had endured so much more in the short days since the New Year had begun.

The moment she allowed herself to stop, to think on what had occurred just weeks earlier, the nightmare would engulf her.

Never. I will not allow it.

“Oh my—bloody saints!” Baldwin hitched a clicking sound at his horse and rode up alongside Sera. “I—I’m so—damn—so sorry!”

She regarded him slyly, for to turn her head any more than a fraction of an arc pained fiercely. Exhaustion from this night’s battle clung to her muscles. She needed rest. Even the chill air could not rouse her to any more than dull interest. “What be your concern, Bertram?”

“Your…” He gestured at her head with long, pale fingers that she’d always remember as clutching a bible. Or a toad. The makeshift squire stretched his mouth to speak, but after a few more gesticulations and widemouthed gasping, couldn’t express his obvious dismay with any more than, “I’m just so sorry.”

Sera rubbed a hand over her scalp, assuming his chagrin to be directed at her hair. “’Twill grow back.”

The sound of her own voice, abraded and sore, was an odd thing. She did not recognize the deep rasping tones. New, shiny scar-flesh had begun to appear beneath the scabbed wound on her neck. Little pain lingered. Save that which seeped from the tear in her soul.

“But…it’s so—oh—Mother of Malice! Why did you command me do such a thing in the dark of night, my lady? It is hideous! You look a sheep shorn by a swillpot. It juts here and there and—Heaven forgive me!”

His dismay made her smile. Briefly. Soon as she realized her swing toward mirth, Sera checked herself and drew on a frown. Much easier lately to touch sadness than any sort of joy.

“It is but hair, Bernard.”

“Baldwin is my name, my lady, I have it on very good authority from my mother and father.”

“If you insist.”

The man was not averse to correct her; nor should he be. His forthright manner was one of many reasons Sera had invited him along on her quest. Baldwin Ortolano would do whatever the situation required to survive, be it honor-bound or criminal. A favorable ally to have.

There was also his plea not to be left behind at the castle d’Ange in the blood-curdling wake of battle. Sera could not have ridden away, leaving the teen alone, fearful, and so lost. Especially when she felt virtually the same. Alone, lost—but not fearful. Never choose fear.

One final scrub over her lighter, choppier coif brushed off a scatter of half-melted snow. “It will grow back.” Her words did not work to cease the man’s sorry head shaking. “Come, Baldwin, I find it quite refreshing. I have lived four and twenty years, each morning being a struggle to pull a comb through such a long tangle of hair. So many treacherous curls, all coiling and slipping over my…shoulders.”

She made sure her sigh was as inaudible as possible. So much had been lost in so little time. Now, the last vestments of woman had been shorn from her head, making her more an anomaly than she had ever before felt.

But regret would not serve her mission.

“Now, you see, I’ve only to give my head a shake and it is done.”

“’Tis a fine circumstance we’ve not a mirror in our supplies.”

Sera yanked her leather hood up over her head. Lined with thinning white rabbit fur, the hood provided a bit of softness to ease the mental pain. “I shall keep it covered if it vexes you to look upon it.”

“That is all well and good, but I fear your reaction when finally you do come upon a mirror. You were always so beautiful, Seraphim—”

A twinge of regret spiked in her breast. “The removal of my hair has made me ugly?”

“Oh, er…nay.”

Sera straightened her neck, lifting her head regally. Insistent revenge pounded back the regret with relentless gall. The luxury of her past was no more. Tomorrow only promised trial, which must be faced with iron will. “I should hope so. As you have said, I cannot risk anyone discovering I am a woman.”

Mustn’t allow any more time to ruefulness. Last night had been for Henri de Lisieux, her fiancé. Five days ago, in memory of her brother Antoine, Satanas de Morte had fallen. The future held justice for her mother and father.

And Seraphim d’Ange.

“With your hood up and those smudges of dirt on your face, I wager you shall pass as a man in the next village,” Baldwin offered. “But you mustn’t bat those long lashes or allow any man to look upon you too closely.”

She felt for her dagger, secured at her waist inside a thin leather baldric. “You could cut my lashes, as well.”

“Don’t be silly, I would blind you in an instant. What a fine pair we’d make, the blind black knight and the postulant-cum-squire-former-toad-eater, traveling the countryside seeking to extinguish the minions of Lucifer de Morte.”

The black knight. At both battles Sera had heard the moniker. Issued in awed wonder as she’d exacted her revenge with a mighty swing of her blade and then, mission accomplished, had ridden off into the darkness.

The armor she’d plucked from the dead body lying in the bailey of her family’s castle had been of smoked steel, dark enough to be considered black. With little time to pick and choose, she’d lifted a set of scaled gauntlets and slid them over her blood-stained fingers, following with a breast plate. It was the only armor that would fit her frame; tall and slender, with broad shoulders and remarkably muscled arms. She hadn’t the stout torso or powerful, heavy thighs of a spurred knight. But on more than one occasion Antoine had teasingly accused her of hailing from a lost tribe of Amazons.

Indeed, the lot of d’Anges were a hardy breed. Sera had gotten her height and persistent work ethic from her father; her thick black hair, blue eyes, and undaunted pride from her mother. Years of practicing in the lists alongside her father’s knights had gifted Sera with the arm strength to swing her sword and deliver the killing blow.

Ah! Two weeks ago she would have never thought such a thing. The killing blow? ’Twas a term used only by knights and thieves and, well…men. Much as Sera had always embraced her power, her freedom and lack of feminine wiles, her mind-set had been irreversibly altered by one vicious act.

And she would not rest until that act was served the justice it deserved.

“I don’t like it,” Baldwin muttered. “Not at all.”

“I have already told you I shall keep my hood upon my head. Cease with your whining, squire.”

“I am not a squire, I am a postulant. I’ve subscribed to the Catholic church. Get that straight. And it is not your damn hair I am whining about!”

Sera chuckled, her breath freezing before her in a manner to match the clouds that puffed from Gryphon’s nostrils. “For a man who wishes to serve the church you’ve quite the cache of oaths spilling from that mouth.”

“Aye, and I’ve paid penance for them a thousand times over. I cannot control my tongue. There are just so many words, and at times so very few of them to express my feelings. I try to control it. I know the Lord cringes with every damn—every bloody—every—”

“Squire!”

“Forgive me, my lady.”

“It is, my lord,” she corrected with a stern rasp. With a painful jerk of her head, she shot him a steely look. “Don’t forget it, either.”

He ceased what might have been another tirade at her casting of the eye. She’d honed the evil eye to an art form on the lackwit scullery maids that dallied more than dutied in her father’s home. That, and the mongoose eye always served her silence when she wished it.

“Now, pray tell what it is you do not like besides this new coif with which you’ve gifted me?”

Sera slowed Gryphon and Baldwin sidled up beside her. His pale blond lashes were frosted with tiny icicles. “What you have become,” he said boldly. “What you are becoming. This is not you, Seraphim. You have killed two men—”

“I know what I have done.” She heeled Gryphon in the flank and the gelding clopped two paces ahead of the squire. “It is what is necessary,” she called back, the deep grit in her voice gifting her with an authority more suited to a man. “I am adapting. A week ago my soul was torn to shreds and stolen away by Lucifer de Morte. With that evil triumph in hand he stole my family’s souls, as well. I will not rest until I can reclaim what was taken from me. An eye for an eye, squire.”

Gryphon dug heavy hooves into the snow and pounded ahead, leaving the shivering squire in a wake of fine, diamond-glittering particles of winter.

An eye for an eye, indeed. Seraphim d’Ange had changed drastically upon the entrance of the New Year. A change Baldwin could attribute to the surprise attack laid on her father’s home, and all she had suffered from such.

But she was wrong about her stolen soul. The woman still possessed a soul. The evidence of such blazed brightly in her pale blue eyes, and in the fire that lit her path toward the ultimate goal. Mayhaps it had been damaged, for it had been stripped and beaten and bruised by that bastard Lucifer de Morte, the leader of the de Morte demons.

Was Seraphim d’Ange’s soul beyond repair?

Baldwin prayed not. For she would need a soul intact to battle the devil himself.

Tor’s breaths powdered the air before his gray suede nose. Dominique San Juste spied a village just ahead, settled like a giant’s stone tossed amidst a thatch of forest. A fortuitous discovery, for he was weary, peckish, and he’d already once caught himself dozing.

He knew Tor would not stop should his master fall in a dead sleep to the soft pillowing of fresh-fallen snow. Dominique imagined the elegant white Boulonnais might be waiting for that very incident. The stallion would suddenly notice the loss of weight upon its back and, without pause, pick up into a gallop and be off, never to be seen again.