Wings of Fire (40 page)

“I have to go to them,” she said.

“Yes. Go,” Antony said.

She looked up at him and he nodded, a frown between his brows. He shifted his gaze to Fiona and the woman. He drew in a stream of air. “Shit. She’s pregnant.”

“I know.”

Parisa approached the pair and dropped to her knees in front of them. She had forgotten how beautiful Fiona’s eyes were, slightly upturned and silvery blue, the color of Christmas ornaments. Her chestnut hair hung past her shoulders. “You found us,” she said, but her cheeks had a sunken appearance and her complexion was very pale. She had been drained and revived how many days ago?

“Of course we did.”

“What happened the first time? Why were they waiting for you? I wanted to tell you but I couldn’t. I’d been drugged.”

“I know. It’s okay. They knew we were coming because Commander Greaves has a voyeur-link with me but we figured it out and played him.”

Fiona nodded, her hand moving in slow motion up and down the woman’s shoulder.

Parisa glanced at her. “How long has she been in the facility?”

“Three days.” She hugged her closer, kissed the top of her head. The woman burrowed her face into her neck. Her tears hadn’t stopped.

“Can you tell me, Fiona, whether or not you’re ascended? You said you were from Boston—was that Mortal Earth?”

“I was taken from Mortal Earth, and the best I can figure is that we’re all partially ascended. We can survive on Second Earth, but none of the blood slaves has ever had vampire fangs.” She looked around. “I was kind of hoping that there was another woman already here, waiting for us. She was Tibetan and she wore a bracelet with her name printed in English letters—Dohna? Did you find her in Toulouse?”

Parisa’s shoulders sagged. “I’m so sorry, but she died that day. She was gone by the time we got there. I’m so sorry.”

Fiona looked beyond Parisa’s shoulder, but not at anything in particular. “I lost so many over the years,” she murmured. “Hundreds over the decades.” She blinked then glanced around. “So where exactly are we? What is this place?”

“Madame Endelle’s palace?”

Her eyes widened. “You mean the palace of the Supreme High Administrator?”

Parisa nodded.

“Well, that is something.” She looked around once more, still stroking the woman’s arm. “She’s not here then?”

Parisa turned and ran her gaze through the room as well. “No, but you won’t mistake her when she arrives. She’s very tall, imposing, and…” She struggled for the right word. “… fashion-challenged.”

Fiona didn’t smile, she just nodded. “Can you tell me something? What are these men exactly? They … well, they’re all so
big
.”

“Warriors of the Blood.”

Once again her eyes widened. “You mean,
the
Warriors of the Blood, the ones known as Guardians of Ascension of Second Earth, came to get us out of that place?”

At this point, Parisa realized that the pregnant woman had finally grown quiet. She was watching Parisa carefully from red-rimmed eyes and a swollen nose.

Parisa couldn’t help but smile, though, at Fiona’s astonishment. Maybe Fiona could be awestruck, but Parisa’s introduction to the warriors, especially Medichi, had been so, well, earthy, that she couldn’t summon the same kind of hero worship. “Why shouldn’t the warriors have come for you?”

“Well, I’ve known for decades that they were all that stood between Greaves and a takeover not just of Second Earth but of Mortal Earth as well. Knowing that they took the time to rescue us—that’s something. I won’t soon forget this.”

Parisa thought of Jean-Pierre and of his certainty that this woman was his
breh.
She wondered what Fiona would say to that if she knew. She’d probably be stunned.

Still, it was hardly something she needed to share immediately, and she did want to tell Fiona about the Warriors of the Blood. “They’re good men. Honorable. They didn’t know, none of us knew, that Greaves was doing this, enslaving women to provide dying blood for his death vampires. Although it certainly makes sense. But though there have been rumors for decades, until you somehow escaped the basement that day and came to me while I sat beneath the tamarind tree, Greaves and Rith had kept his operation a secret.”

Fiona nodded, tears in her eyes. “Thank you, Parisa. Thank you for coming for me. I would have died soon. I know that now. I really had lost all hope. But why were you there in that garden, held prisoner in that house? When I saw you, I thought you were Rith’s wife or something.”

At that, Parisa laughed. “Oh, God no. He abducted me from Warrior Medichi’s villa three months ago. I was as much a captive as you. I just wasn’t being used as a blood slave.”

“A blood slave.” Her gaze grew unfocused again. And once more she looked around. She frowned slightly.

Parisa turned to see what she was looking at. Ah, Jean-Pierre, and he didn’t look happy. His arms were crossed over his chest, his brows low on his forehead.

Fiona glanced at Parisa then back to Jean-Pierre. She asked very quietly, “Do you know why that warrior is staring at me? He looks angry.”

Yes, he was angry, and yes, Parisa knew why he stared at Fiona, but she wasn’t about to start explaining the
breh-hedden
to the recently freed captive.

However, there was one truth she could relay. “We have all been so worried about you and the other women, especially when we found that your Dohna had not survived. Warrior Jean-Pierre took it especially hard. He was there when Rith folded you out of the back bedroom in France. He’s been furious since that he couldn’t prevent it.”

“Where were we just now, that house I mean?”

“Would you believe outside the capital of New Zealand Two?”

For some reason Fiona laughed. “How strange.”

“How long had you been in Burma? In that house?”

“Always.”

“You mean all these years, all these decades, that’s all you’ve ever known?” She was shocked.

Fiona nodded. “We were allowed exercise in the garden until, well, three months ago.”

“When I arrived.”

“So it would seem.”

“Fiona, how on earth did you survive? I felt like I was going mad.”

She shook her head back and forth. “I don’t know. For a long time I held out hope that I would see my family again, my husband, my two children. The day I … begged for your help would have been my daughter’s birthday. I went crazy. I knocked one of the medical technicians out cold and escaped to the garden and there you were. They put me through death and resurrection right after as a punishment. It was too soon, only two weeks, it was hard to survive—”

“I know. I watched. I didn’t expect you to come back from that.”

“You saw me?” Fiona asked. “Oh, yes, now I remember. You were there. I felt you.”

Parisa nodded. “How did you find the strength to come back?”

She sighed. “I truly had made up my mind to die, but at the point of death I think I met an angel, albeit a rather strange one. His name was James. He encouraged me to keep going.”

“James? His name was James?”

“Yes.”

Parisa felt a shiver cross her shoulders. “Alison knows someone called James. He encouraged her in a very similar way.” Was it possible it was the same man, the same ascender?

“Who’s Alison?”

“Alison is only recently ascended. She’s bonded with, um—” Parisa glanced around. Behind her, sitting on one of the terraces with Luken, was Kerrick. “There. Do you see the black-haired warrior? Alison is his …
breh.
That’s another word for a special mate. More than a wife. A man can be a
breh
as well. Alison is … very powerful in this world. She’s also … oh, there she is.” She materialized next to Kerrick and soon after put her hand on her stomach and winced.

“She’s very pregnant.”

At that, the young woman beside Fiona lifted her tear-stained face. Alison was beside Kerrick, a hand on his shoulder. He stood up and put his arms around her. He appeared to be whispering to her, and Alison patted his arm and smiled at him.

“He’s so tender with her.”

“Yes, he is,” Parisa said. “She’s not doing very well right now with her pregnancy. The doctor assures her she’s fine, but you can see she’s suffering. She always has her hand to her stomach. She’s a healer … of the mind.”

“Of the mind?”

“Yes, she was a therapist on Mortal Earth.”

Alison closed her eyes and appeared to be trying to relax. After a moment, she patted Kerrick and crossed the thirty feet or so in Parisa’s direction. Parisa rose, weaving a little; she had been too long on her knees. The marble was hard.

Parisa introduced Alison to Fiona. Fiona introduced Kaitlyn, of Lake City, Florida, Mortal Earth. With Alison so close, Parisa drew back and gave her space to work. She asked questions of both Fiona and Kaitlyn, how they were feeling in general. There was something so kind in her tone that both women relaxed.

A minute later she called the healer Horace over, which was Parisa’s cue to return to Antony. There would be plenty of time later to get to know Fiona and perhaps all the women.

Jean-Pierre drew close. “How is she doing?” His arms were still crossed over his chest, the lean corded muscles straining. His hands made fists, released, then made fists again. He still scowled.

“She seems very calm. She was really surprised to learn that the Warriors of the Blood had come for them, and it’s obvious to me that she’s been a huge support to the other women. Also, she just told me that from the time she was taken from Mortal Earth she’d only known the Burma house.”

“Jesus H. Christ,” Antony muttered.

“Ditto,” Parisa said.

Jean-Pierre responded with a low growl from deep within his throat.

The truth changes everything

But freedom comes through application.

—
Collected Proverbs,
Beatrice of Fourth

CHAPTER 19

Endelle never allowed anyone within her private sanctuary, her meditation room, that place where she hunted Greaves in the darkening.

Not even Thorne, her second-in-command, the man she trusted the most.

But here she was sitting on the edge of her chaise-longue staring at two men; one fucking unfamiliar to her, short, with gray hair,
gray hair!
And the other man she intended to slaughter with a quick snap of her wrist and a powerful roll of a hand-blast—Leto, the traitorous motherfuckingsonofabitch.

She didn’t hesitate. Leto deserved to die so she flicked her most powerful hand-blast, not caring in this moment that according to Alison, he was a spy. A spy for whom?

“Die, asshole,” she cried.

He flinched but for some reason, the stream of power that should have fried his ass hit the space around him and split into a number of elegant fireworks: blue, green, violet sparkles, really beautiful.

That Leto’s eyebrows climbed his handsome forehead and his mouth opened in a big round O meant he’d expected to take the hit, maybe even to die.

Which meant …

She shifted her gaze to the short man to Leto’s left and scowled. She rose to her full six-foot-five height, plus her five-inch stilettos, and stared down at the fucking bastard who had just robbed her of a very satisfying kill. “Who the fuck are you and why did you just protect this traitor and how the hell did you get into my inner sanctuary and why, if you have so much power, do you have gray hair?”

The man looked very strange—or at least his expression became quite odd, for a short man. His eyelids grew heavy as he stared at her chest then slowly lifted his gaze, up and up, to meet hers. Damn he was short—five foot seven if he was an inch. “Oh, I haven’t been into your inner sanctuary … yet.”

She could not mistake his meaning.

Her mouth fell open, flat open, almost to the floor. “You have got to be kidding me,
Shorty.
The day you see my inner sanctum is the day I mop the floor with your face—with one hand tied behind my back.”

“I’d like to see both your hands tied behind your back. Then I’d have a good long look at your
inner sanctum.
”

Holy shit. This asshole was either really confident or really stupid. He smiled, and something in that smile made her uneasy. Well, she didn’t think he was stupid, which meant …

She looked at him again. She pushed against his mind, wanting, needing to understand who the hell he was and why he had enough power to invade her space, bringing Leto of all assholes with him, and how he’d been able to deflect a hand-blast like that. “Who are you?” she asked.

“James.”

Well, fuck! James at last! “Alison’s James? Fuck. The one she dreamed about all those months ago? The one she still talks to mind-to-mind occasionally?”

“That would be a yes and another yes.”

“You’re from fucking Sixth Earth.”

“I am.”

“Then why the hell do you have gray hair? No one has gray hair, not even on Second.” She knew there were much more important matters to be discussed but really,
gray hair
?

He sighed. “The only way the Council would permit me to intervene as I have—and yes, I only have a few moments left in this interview—was if I appeared as harmless as possible. And no, I did not design the appearance I currently display. It was designed for me.” Shorty seemed a little bitter.

She nodded as though his explanation made perfect sense. Oh, hell, since he was from Sixth, he could probably appear in the guise of a troll or an asteroid if he wanted to. But right now she had one fucking question he’d better answer. “Who the hell has held up my ascension? I should be in Fourth by now, at the very least. Maybe even Fifth. Why have I been stuck in this God-forsaken, shit-eating dimension for all these millennia?”

That smile appeared again, the one that looked both bemused and pleased as hell. “I have a message for you from Braulio.”

She couldn’t have heard right. Braulio was the most powerful Warrior of the Blood ever to battle on Second Earth. He was a legend in his time and she had seen him die, struck down, sliced up by a death vampire. That had been five thousand years ago and Endelle had killed the vampire afterward, but Braulio was still dead.

“You need to get your facts straight, Shorty. Braulio died. I watched him die.”