Free Bloodring by Faith Hunter Page A

intelligent to lie to successfully. My dread grew.
    â€œNever,” I said, stirring cocoa and sugar into the steaming milk.
    Her face a careful blank, Ciana said, “I saw a devil-spawn yesterday.”
    I stopped stirring the cocoa, swirls of clumped chocolate rising and dropping as the milk whirled.
    â€œI was in the hills at the base of the Trine and he came up to me.” Her voice grew challenging as she spoke, ending on a mutinous note.
    I put down the mug and bent over her, shoving her hair back and inspecting her throat. Lifting her wrists, staring into her eyes.
    â€œStop that.” Ciana pushed me away, a half grin replacing the defiance, knowing my inspection meant I believed her. Devil-spawn made a mockery of the sacrament. Children of a Dark seraph and a human, born in litters like rats, they drank blood and ate human flesh, among other abominations.
    â€œHe didn’t attack. He just talked to me and took off. Like, vanished.” Her hands made little finger snaps as if scattering water. “Poof, you know?” She wiped the last of her tears.
    â€œI know.” Everyone had seen video feed of captured devil-spawn. “Poof” was an accurate description of their speed. “Why were you out on the Trine at night?”
    â€œIt wasn’t night.” Ciana took the mug and stirred, the tink-tink of silver against stoneware the only sound. “It was Monday, before sunset.”
    My eyes flew to Rupert’s. “Before?” He shrugged, uneasy. Spawn came out only at full night. No wonder Marla had called Ciana a liar.
    And then the meaning of a daytime sighting sank in. Daylight meant she had seen a daywalker. The stuff of legends. “It talked to you?” I asked, fighting to keep my voice steady.
    â€œHe. And he was way cool. He had green eyes, not the red you always hear about. And he was gorgeous .” She paused to blow on the cocoa and drink. “Really long black hair, you know? Braided down his back, but some had got loose and flew in the wind. Way, way cool. He wanted to know about you.”
    The words fell on the room like a box of stone dropped from a great height. Lolo’s warnings sank into me, bloodrings, portents of danger. “Me?”
    Rupert pursed his lips.
    â€œYep. He wanted to know all about you. Where you lived, where you worked, what you did for a living.” She looked slyly up at me. “If you were married or a virgin. I told him right off you were not a virgin.”
    â€œCiana!”
    â€œSpawn only want virgins, right? And he kissed my hand.”
    When it came to mating, spawn captured human virgins for their masters, but any neomage flesh was prime breeding material for the Dark Powers. And spawn would eat anything. I didn’t share this with Ciana. Little was known about daywalkers; they were near mythical, their origins unknown, perhaps the issue of a mating between a Darkness and a captured kylen. They supposedly could pass as human, and had the power to glamour their appearance. There were rumors about them, but nothing concrete. Scholars debated whether they had ever existed, had been eradicated, or had gone underground at the end of the Last War.
    â€œHe kissed your hand?” Rupert said, his body very still. I watched as he worked to cover deep emotion with casual curiosity. “You didn’t say that when you called. How?”
    â€œLike a Frenchman in one of your Pre-Ap movies. Like this.” Ciana hopped to her feet and took Rupert’s hand. She bowed over it, hovered, and smacked her lips into his knuckles. Then she hopped back into the chair and drank more cocoa. I watched Rupert, his eyes going dark before he turned to the percolator and freshened his cup, blue robes fluttering.
    â€œDid you feel his breath on your hand while he kissed you?” he asked. “Was your skin cold after? Or wet?”
    Ciana shrugged, watching us over the rim of her mug. “Gramma says Mama is