Obsidian Flame (24 page)

Would anyone?

You are beloved.

—
Collected Proverbs,
Beatrice of Fourth

CHAPTER 11

Thorne had needed every ounce of patience he’d learned over the past two millennia in order not to push Marguerite. He had felt her restraint and he knew something was terribly wrong, but he hadn’t been a leader of men and women, of powerful warriors and powerful vampires, without having come to recognize a pivotal moment, a moment of dynamic change.

He had feared the worst when she had hesitated: that she wouldn’t be able to make the leap, wouldn’t be able to accept and embrace the challenge in front of her. No, he didn’t comprehend the scope of what she was going through, but he felt the weight of it, the size of it. After all, he had pierced the sheath protecting her obsidian flame power and he had hurt her. The entire experience had spoken the truth to him about who she was when it came to her most essential courage and what she was going through.

But the nature of the broken vision had stalled her out, had meant something terrible to her—a personal loss so great that she couldn’t even speak her thoughts out loud. He’d been tempted to steal inside her mind and read exactly what was going on, but that was a violation he would never commit.

So he had waited. And she had chosen.

She had chosen for Grace and for the Convent devotiates.

She had chosen against her life of freedom.

He folded directly to the club and found Brynna half sloshed with four empty tumblers in front of her. He leaned down to her and looked her in the eyes. “Marguerite needs you. She asked for you specifically. Will you come with me?”

Brynna squinted. “Goddamn, you are so handsome. Oh, I shouldn’t have said that. Okay, yeah, sure.” She turned to the other Seer with the red hair. “I have to go. Don’t know when I’ll be back. Marguerite and this hunk need me. Maybe a threesome!” She laughed at her joke then turned serious eyes on Thorne. “I don’t do threesomes.”

He had another quelling moment of fear. Would Brynna be of the least use in this state?

Well, he hoped like hell a few fingers of vodka wouldn’t matter.

“I’m going to fold you out of here. You ready?”

“Sure. Fold away, gorgeous.”

He thought the thought, and the next moment they were back in the bedroom. Marguerite was outside on the patio, standing in the cold in her bare feet, her jeans, and her red sweatshirt. He felt her sadness, a deep pain that he would probably never understand. But she was so young by ascended standards, just a little over a century, and her life thus far had been brutal on many levels.

Brynna went to her. Thorne was right on her heels.

“Whadya need, Sister-Seer?”

Marguerite turned to her and blinked. “You’re drunk.”

“Yeah … little bit. Whazzup?” She giggled.

“Brynna, I need you to help me get to pure vision, right now. We have an emergency. Can you do that for me?”

Brynna threw her arm forward. “Pure vision? Shit, yes. Piece a cake. Of course I’ve never done it before.” And then she laughed. “Okay … emergency … must focus. Here’s the thing. I can barely achieve 70 percent accuracy, but I’ll do what I can.”

“Good. How do we do the communal work, you know, more than one Seer at a time?”

Brynna put her hand on Marguerite’s shoulder and said, “Like this.”

Thorne couldn’t imagine what went on between the two women, but what he could observe was that each head jerked backward, as if lightning had just shot back and forth between them.

He felt Marguerite call to him telepathically. He didn’t wait, but pushed into her mind, and oh, yeah, his woman had power because there it was, the vision, complete, perfect and moving at exactly the right speed to be seen and understood, to be witnessed.

But for a long time, what he saw there didn’t make any sense at all. Yes, it was the Convent. Yes, he saw Grace at times, then not at others. There seemed to be some kind of strange cloaking substance, very much like mist, but it moved in strange patterns.

What is that?
Marguerite sent.

I think it’s mist.

And those are death vampires, in the long hall where the cells are located. Is that … Leto?

Yeah. Why the hell is he at the Convent? Shit, he really doesn’t look so good.

It’s weird that he’s there,
Marguerite sent.
But why is he separated from Grace when they’re in the same cell?

That’s the mist.

Oh, shit … that’s Casimir, isn’t it?

Thorne finally understood.
This is Casimir’s doing. I think this is a kind of mist called shifting mist.

Thorne was stunned. Shifting mist required enormous power and he sure as hell had never seen it before. So this was definitely an attack. Death vampires, a Fourth ascender, and shifting mist: Holy hell, how was he supposed to orchestrate a battle against shit like this?

The vision ended with death vampires slaying the devotiates, Leto dead, and Casimir folding Grace straight out of her cell, taking her back to his home in Paris One. He could sense the level of Seer accuracy that the women together had not only overcome Stannett’s future stream block but had achieved pure vision. There was no question in his mind that what he was seeing was exactly what would happen if he didn’t intervene.

And what the fuck was Leto doing in his sister’s convent cell? How did he even get there? Had he folded to her? If he had, why would he have done that? Why would he have put her in jeopardy like this?

Okay, one dilemma at a time.

He withdrew from Marguerite’s mind in order to make certain of one thing: whether or not he could replay the vision in his mind. He focused on what he had seen, and yes, there it was, the entire vision from beginning to end. If he wondered for a moment how that was possible, he let it go. Time later to dissect the how of things because he had only minutes to take care of business.

He let go of the images for a moment to make sure Marguerite was all right. She stood wide-eyed with shock, even trembling.

Brynna blinked several times. “Sweet mother of God, they’re all going to die.”

He put a hand on each shoulder and looked from one woman to the other. He squeezed. “Listen to me, no one is going to die tonight except all those fucking death vampires, have you got that? This is what I do. Will you both trust me to get this job done?”

Two nods.

“Good. Now come back in the house and get warmed up. It’s goddamn cold out here.” The temperature-regulating shields weren’t universal to the colony site. Even his feet were cold.

Marguerite hooked Brynna’s arm, and though the Seer stumbled a little, she guided her back into the bedroom.

As Thorne closed the door, he knew one thing. He was going to need some major Warrior of the Blood help on this one.

*   *   *

Change.

From the window of his hotel suite, Casimir stared at the Eiffel Tower all lit up, a lively backdrop to a night sky and his favorite city in the world, any dimension, Paris. He had lived at the Plaza Athénée for a decade, one of his favorite residences ever. His children had lived here since the day they were born. He’d made a good life for himself on Mortal Earth. His current support of Greaves was earning him another small fortune.

But after seeing Grace in Moscow Two, holy fuck, he was in trouble.

He’d lived in all four dimensions during the course of his life, his very long and in many ways satisfying life, but he’d never faced this; an unexpected erotic scent of a woman, an ascended vampire, a devotiate, which had only one but quite impossible interpretation: the
breh-hedden.
He honestly didn’t know what to do. And he always knew what to do.

He still couldn’t believe the vision or whatever it was that had taken Leto right out from under his stasis power. If he hadn’t hesitated, Leto would already be trussed up and in Greaves’s tender care. But he’d stood there for a few seconds too long, in frozen hell beside Greaves, on the main stage of the forthcoming military review spectacle site, ready to incapacitate Leto. Then an angel had appeared beside Leto, with really long blond hair, light eyes, and a glow around her entire being.

He’d just never seen anything like it before, the opaque quality of her presence, the power that beat in waves all around her, and the stunning sight when at the moment Leto put his hand in hers, they both vanished. But it was perhaps an even bigger surprise that Greaves had been completely unaware of her presence.

After Leto disappeared, all Greaves had done was complain about Casimir’s hesitation, blaming the failure of Leto’s capture on that. Of course he was right, yet just as he’d opened his mouth to explain his hesitation to Greaves, he had held back. If Greaves hadn’t had even the smallest perception of Grace, then this was very significant in ascended terms. Caz had a deep gnawing sensation that this could become critical to him in the future, perhaps even a point of negotiation or survival.

But how the hell was it possible, in any dimension, for this woman to be his
breh
? Even if he wanted to pursue Grace, what could they possibly have in common? He was a Fourth ascender and she was a saint. He was a sadist, a hedonist. He might be a devoted father, but in terms of good qualities, that was pretty much it and he knew it. Which made him completely unworthy of Thorne’s sister, and frankly not interested
at all.

But here he was with a perpetual hard-on because of his sensory recall of the woman’s scent, like fresh earth and sweet wildflowers. He wouldn’t have minded displaying his oh-so-worthy arousal except that in addition to being aroused beyond comprehension, he’d stopped craving the woman currently sharing his bed.

The exquisite Julianna matched his sadistic tendencies and enjoyed sex with equal abandon. But a woman who had spent the last century in a convent would really not enjoy an S&M threesome with a Goth abducted from a seedy local club, fucking her and drinking from her until she was almost drained of blood.

Right now he was screwed. He couldn’t see how to move forward but he knew he couldn’t stay where he was. How strange that one moment in time had altered his life forever.

He could hope that Grace would die as Greaves intended in their forthcoming little Convent adventure, but even as he watched the Paris lights twinkle, he knew he had to bring Grace home with him.

He hissed softly. He needed some relief. Now.

He walked to the master suite, gently gliding his fingers up and down his erection as he moved. At this hour, his boys were asleep along with their au pair, so he didn’t have to worry about being seen in the act.

He found Julianna asleep, which was good.

In a very swift move, he folded off his clothes then tied her spread-eagle to the four posts of the bed. As he positioned himself to straddle her neck, she blinked up at him ready to squawk. But he was too needy, and when she opened her mouth to yell at him, he inserted himself. He grabbed the headboard and mouth-fucked her as the image of Grace swirled through his mind, as the recollection of her scent brought him close to the edge.

He didn’t care that Julianna was struggling beneath his rough efforts. All he cared about was giving himself up to what he needed now more than life itself.

He came shouting. He came and came as he imagined burying himself between Grace’s legs and drinking at the same time from her neck.

When he was done, he rolled off Julianna, who was gagging with all that he’d given her and struggling against the bindings.

When she could finally talk, she glared at him. “I might have enjoyed that if you’d let me participate. What is wrong with you? You’ve been in a weird mood since you returned from Moscow Two. What happened out there?”

“Do you want to go back to Greaves?” He released her from the restraints then stretched out on the bed next to her.

She sat up, wiping a hand over her mouth.

He couldn’t look at her. He just stared up at the mirrored ceiling. He had his arm thrown over his forehead. He closed his eyes.

She drew close and stroked his fingers very lightly. “I’ve grown fond of you,” she said, her voice small. “I … I thought you enjoyed my company.”

“Something’s happened, something completely beyond my control and I know I can’t give you any longer what you’ll need of me.”

“So … you’re dumping me after having stolen me away from my heart’s desire? You’re letting me go because of something mysterious that I’m guessing you won’t even tell me about?”

“It’s not personal, Ju-Ju. I’ve even had a few times with you in recent weeks that I thought maybe we were soul mates. We certainly are evenly matched in bed. It’s a fucked-up ascension thing. The problem is, I won’t treat you right during the next few days or weeks or however long it takes to resolve this situation and you need to go.”

But he felt the woman vibrating with rage next to him. He understood who she was, that she would find some way to punish him for being so summarily dumped, so he simply thought the thought and she was gone.