Wings of Fire (20 page)

***

Time, even this hour-long dinner, had given Parisa a little perspective. Her gaze kept flipping to the bruise on Antony’s wrist. He’d had thirteen centuries to get used to taking blood and she hadn’t. Not that she’d hesitated. She’d fantasized about it dozens of times, from the first moment she’d voyeured Antony, watching him enthrall mortal women at the Blood and Bite, gaping as he took their blood at wrist and neck—and once, shockingly, at a woman’s ankle.

Desire streaked through her at the memories. At the same time another part of her brain recoiled:
You can’t really be a vampire. This has to be a dream. Maybe a nightmare.

Had she really sucked on his wrist and swallowed his blood?

Vampire.
She kept rubbing her tongue over her incisors. More than once she thought the thought just so she could feel her fangs emerge, then disappear. The whole thing was so unreal.

She glanced at Antony. “Will you be battling tonight?” What a strange question to ask, and yet it was the right one. Antony was a warrior and fought death vampires every night of his life.

He leaned close and put an arm around her shoulders. “No,” he said quietly. “Thorne wants me to stick close to you, at least until we can figure out a safer arrangement.”

She shivered, and he laid a hand over hers. She knew he meant to offer comfort, but a terrible feeling of being contained came over her—boxed in, controlled. She pushed his hand away.

“What is it?” he asked.

She shook her head. “Not here.”

“Okay.” His arm slid away.

She let her gaze skip from warrior to warrior, then to Havily who was still ignoring Marcus, and finally to Endelle, now standing beside her throne-like dining chair and holding Santiago’s dagger in her hand. She tossed it back and forth, feeling the weight. Where was Alison? Oh, yeah … baby troubles.

Parisa felt confused. She had left her prison but right now she felt as though she’d locked herself into another one. A different kind of prison, with different rules of service and war. But still a prison.

She stood up as the caterers were arriving with bowls full of flan. The sight of the egg-custard dessert, so different from Burma and rice and turmeric, made her gag.

“I need to leave,” she stated. She felt light-headed. “The food was lovely, Madame Endelle, but I have to go.”

No one was listening to her. Santiago had just said something suggestive about the dagger and Endelle was chortling, her head thrown back.

Her chair scraped on the marble as she pushed it back. Her linen slid to the floor. She was turning away from Jean-Pierre, who had risen to his feet as well. She knew Antony was at her back.

“What is wrong,
cherie
?” Jean-Pierre’s hand was on her arm.

Parisa stared at it. Rith always had his hands on her arms, controlling her, enthralling her. She shook his hand off. She backed away.

Antony slid in front of her. “Leave her alone,” he said to Jean-Pierre, too loudly.

“She is not well. Look at her.”

“Don’t fucking touch her, Jean-Pierre.”

Parisa backed away from the sudden anger. The table had become a tableau of frozen movement. Everyone stared at Jean-Pierre and Antony, then slowly each gaze turned to her.

Only then did Antony leave his bull-like stance with Jean-Pierre and meet her gaze. He frowned. “What is it?”

“I want to go home. Now.”

“That’s fine. Are you all right?”

She shook her head. “Just please take me home.”

He nodded. He walked toward her, a hand outstretched. Rith used to do that. He would stretch his hands out, first one then the other.
Look at me,
he would command. She would meet his gaze and be lost.

“Don’t touch me.”

Antony lifted both hands in surrender but kept coming. She kept moving backward. She stepped past the boundary of the wall. In some part of her mind she knew she was now on the terrace, and it was bounded by a low balustrade, nothing more.

But Antony kept advancing on her.

“I can’t take you home if you don’t stop moving. I have to touch you to fold you back to the villa. Do you understand?”

She nodded. Some part of her understood. Sort of.

He stopped suddenly but she kept moving backward. A breeze, hot and full of rich desert scents, blew over her. The stone railing stopped her progress, hitting her low at the top of her thighs. She blinked, glanced over the edge, then jumped back in Antony’s direction. “Oh, God.”

Suddenly Endelle was there. “What the fuck is the matter with you?” She scowled. “This is ascension, chickie. Get used to it quick.”

Warrior Kerrick drew up beside her. “She needs Alison. I’ll get her on the phone.”

“No, don’t,” Parisa cried. She reached a hand toward Kerrick, who paused with his BlackBerry halfway to his ear. “I don’t want Alison. I don’t need her. I just—” She couldn’t finish the sentence. She took a deep breath, and her gaze fell to the bruise she’d put on Antony’s wrist. Her mind was an ocean that flowed first to one continent then back to the other.

She felt dizzy again and weak. So weak. She put a hand on Antony’s arm. “Please take me to your home. Now. Please.”

To sweep someone through nether-space was always one of the great pleasures of my ascended vampire life, second only to the giving and taking of blood.

—From
Memoirs,
Beatrice of Fourth

CHAPTER 10

Medichi didn’t wait for permission. He didn’t even glance anywhere but at her face. He slid his arms around Parisa and thought the thought. The next moment he stood holding her in the foyer of his villa.

But he didn’t know what to do with her except release her.

She took several steps away, leaving him with a cold weight in the center of his heart. He’d been foolish. He knew that now. He had somehow thought that just being together would make for a quick transition into ascended life. He’d become convinced of it when he’d seen her amazing recuperative powers. When she’d taken his blood, he’d believed himself home free.

Foolish, indeed.

He gave her space. He even turned away from her to take a couple of steps to the central table of the foyer, the one that held an intricate and tall arrangement of white magnolias. The table was made of thick wood and, despite his size, he didn’t hesitate to turn and lean his hips against it. Almost everything in his villa was warrior-sized. He crossed his arms over his chest and waited.

“You’re angry with me,” she said, her eyes haunted.

“I’m angry with myself. I’ve been very stupid about this, about you. I’ve been thinking with my dick and that’s about it.”

At that, a smile tugged at the edges of her lips.

“Glad I amuse you,” he said.

“Your turn of phrase amuses me.”

She was a librarian. She would notice things like that. He felt his lips curve, then he sighed. “I want to do right by you here, Parisa. Tell me what you need from me. I’m not without a lot of experience.”

“Thirteen centuries’ worth,” she murmured.

“Yeah. And a few decades.”

She nodded. “Precisely. I’ve had a total of three decades of living and none of them here, none of them in this dimension.”

An hour or so ago he’d felt like a thin sheet of glass. That’s what he saw in Parisa now, only for her it wasn’t sexual as it had been for him. He thought he understood her better in this moment than he had all along.

He lifted off the edge of the table and moved a few feet away. The foyer was a large space, meant for mingling during large parties, the serving of cocktails, even dancing if anyone wanted to. There hadn’t been a dance here in over a hundred years. That’s how bad the war had gotten, the seemingly inexhaustible war.

He sat down on the floor as if he were sitting at a campfire, crossing his ankles then settling his forearms on his widespread knees. The ceremonial black tunic hung low and kept necessary things private. The cape and brass breastplate were back at the palace. Whatever.

She seemed surprised as she looked down at him. “What are you doing?”

He shrugged. “Giving you time and space and all my attention. No one is here to force you to do anything. Endelle might bluster and try to bully you, but common sense always wins with her in the end. Still, I think since Alison’s ascension she’s grown more capable of listening to reason. Not much more, but
more.
As for me, if I’m too possessive right now, I can’t take the full blame for that. Your scent clogs all my logic and most of my sensitivity.”

She released a deep sigh, so he knew he’d done the right thing for her. Space. Funny, it was the last thing he needed.

“So what happened?” he asked.

“What do you mean?”

He glanced at his loosely clasped hands then met her gaze straight-on. Shit, he was going to ask the hard question, the one he’d never been able to answer. “I never knew what happened the day that Rith took you. Do you think you could talk about it? Tell me? Tell me how I screwed up?”

Her arms fell away from her chest. “How you screwed up?” The question didn’t seem to make sense to her.

“I was your guardian. I let some preternaturally powerful asshole drag you off and I didn’t even notice, not for half a minute.”

She took a step toward him. “So you really didn’t see me disappear?”

Talking about it brought the memory sweeping back in a slow flood of horror. He told her what it had been like for him, how he’d been talking on his phone to Thorne while he kept track of her from his peripheral vision, and that only after a while had he realized that she was standing too still—not even the breeze moving through the grove touched the hem of her sundress.

He talked for a ridiculously long time about the day of her abduction, how the warriors had all gathered at the villa, how the grounds had been searched and every building turned upside down to make sure she wasn’t somewhere on the property. He talked about his sleeplessness. He talked about the limoncello.

He’d meant to get her talking, and now he couldn’t stop the flow of his own words if his life depended on it.

By then she was kneeling beside him, her fingertips touching the circles beneath his eyes. He met her eyes, wet with tears. She leaned close and kissed him on the lips.

He held very still. He wanted to drag her into his arms but he was probably always going to feel like that. He had enough sense to know that this wasn’t the time for his male aggression to be at the fore. He sighed and kept his hands clasped tightly together.

She sat as he sat, with her ankles crossed and drawn close, her knees spread. She slipped off her shoes and set them next to her. Her white flowered dress draped in folds over the empty cradle of her lap. She put a hand on his knee and drew a deep breath.

Then she began to talk.

“The house was lovely. Rith’s house. It was made entirely of mahogany. It was a replica of an old British Colonial house. You didn’t see it, did you?”

He shook his head. “Only you flying through the dome of mist.” Her hand was warm on his bare knee. “The rest of the warriors saw the house, but not me. Maybe you and I should go back, look around.”

She shook her head. “Maybe, but not yet.”

He wanted to ask her a dozen questions. They piled up on his tongue and tried to break through his front teeth but he held them back.

Her nails scraped gently at his skin. She probably wasn’t aware she was doing it. “The same day that he brought me to his house, he pierced my mind until I was screaming. When I first arrived, I didn’t know what I was doing in that beautiful home or even who he was. He told me I wouldn’t be hurt if I did as I was told, and that Greaves had asked him to house me for a week or so. Yes, he said a week or so.
What then?
I had thought. What would happen after a week?

“He left me sitting on a bench beneath a tamarind tree. It was the most beautiful garden. No one has ever had such a lovely prison, but it was like being punished by having an endless number of cotton balls thrown at you. They might not hurt, but after awhile the craziness sets in, the despair.

“So I sat under that tree. I waited for hours, not knowing what to do. Finally, I went in search of him. I found three female Burmese servants who only glanced at me. I tried to speak with them, to ask them what I was supposed to do and where Rith had gone. None of them would respond.

“I eventually found him in his study. He didn’t even seem angry when he saw me. But he took me into a back bedroom and he must have enthralled me again because when I woke up or came to consciousness, I was bound to a very comfortable recliner, like a La-Z-Boy.

“Then he entered my head. It was like whirling knives. I screamed and screamed until I was hoarse.

“When he withdrew, he spoke five words:
You do as I say
. That’s all he said to me during that first day. The lesson, however, was complete.

“Looking back, life was simple after that. When I didn’t do something exactly the way he wanted it done, he put his hands on my arms, then shot his mind into mine. The pain was brutal. But it always started with the hands. That’s … that’s why I recoiled when you reached out to me like you did earlier, at the palace. I wanted you to understand.”

He nodded, taking deep breaths. The thought of Rith going mind-diving sent his protective instincts skyrocketing. But this wasn’t about him, or his reactions to what she was saying. This was about
her.
“So what happened at the dinner to put you back there, back in your prison?”

She shook her head and released another sigh. “The whole situation suddenly felt the same to me as being in Rith’s home. Go here, sit there, do this, obey. Nothing else is important.”

“Endelle, then. You know she can be a pain in the ass.”

“It’s not that. Did it ever occur to you that you’re all living in the same kind of prison? This is a beautiful villa, but Antony, you’ve been a warrior for thirteen hundred years and it appears to be without end. You don’t do anything except make war.”

“But I
choose
to serve Endelle.”

“Do you?”

Her expression was so earnest that he was taken aback. He thought for a long moment. “Life isn’t simple, Parisa. Not as an immortal, not as a vampire, not for anyone. There are worse things than what I endure as a warrior or what you’ve endured as a captive.”