Obsidian Flame (4 page)

Probably not, because as he thrust into her and thrust and thrust, she screamed her orgasm. But he kept it up, looking up at her when he could, watching the ecstasy on her face, savoring the pleasure she felt. He brought her a second time and a third.

He was in trouble now, though. He could feel the vibrations in his body and had to work to keep from changing back.

At the same time, he had to have her.

He rose up and while she was still caught in the remnants of an orgasm, he shoved himself deep inside, which sent her once more flying up. He landed on top of her, pressing her into the mattress, grounding her.

He fucked her, hard. Shoving into her, pulling back, shoving in, watching her thrash some more beneath him. Her moans had turned into wild grunts and cries.

He was two men now, one in the throes of sex, the other struggling to hold his shape as José. His lower back tightened, his balls ready to fire off.

When the orgasm came, when he began to jerk, he lifted off her, supporting himself with his arms, his hips bucking into her. He looked down at her. “Look at me,” he commanded.

She opened her eyes, which were wild with passion. She could hardly focus. He kept pumping as he held her gaze. This was his woman and he loved her. This was his woman, Marguerite, and he had a drive toward her now like nothing he had ever known. He had loved her for a long time in the Convent, but not like this. He spent every last drop his body had made for her, the body pretending to be José, but his seed belonged to him, couldn’t belong to anyone else, and that’s what he put inside her.

The vibrations were getting stronger now. Despite the fact that he had a powerful desire, even a need to remain connected to her, he had to get away. Now. Or he’d morph back.

And like hell was he going to reveal this little secret. It might just be the only way he’d keep from killing her lovers if she continued down this path.

He pulled out. He didn’t like abandoning her like this, but he had to keep up his ruse.

He grabbed his jeans from the floor and went into the bathroom. He counted to ten. “My brother just left a text,” he called out. “He needs a ride. I gotta go.”

He dressed in rapid movements. When he reached the door he looked back at her. She looked so beautiful sprawled as she was. She looked confused as well, but he couldn’t help himself as he said, “You know the way out. Call a cab. Just don’t be here when I get back. My brother has a temper and besides, I don’t like women in
mi casa
in the morning.”

Okay, maybe that was mean, but she shouldn’t have been bonking José.

He saw her eyes flash and knew her temper wouldn’t be far behind, so he hightailed it. He ran out to the truck, and because he wasn’t sure if Marguerite would cheat and use her folding skills to reach the front door, he got into the vehicle the old-fashioned way by opening the door and sliding in. He did, however, ignore the key as he touched the ignition to start the truck. He wasn’t surprised that just as he started backing out she opened the front door.

He almost stalled out, his foot jerking away from the accelerator, because there she was, buck naked, and flipping him off.

There was so much he enjoyed about Marguerite, but it was her spirit that got him. She stood in the doorway, facing the front yard, without a stitch on and not caring who saw her. She was the kind of woman that would go down battling, nothing less.

“Asshole,” she shouted.

He almost put on the brakes. He wanted to head straight back into the house, carry her into José’s bedroom, and do her all over again. But the vibrations were getting stronger and he was sweating into his jeans.

He looked away and gathered his wits. He pointed the truck in the direction of the bar. When he was at last in a different part of town, and several miles away, he pulled the truck over, morphed back into himself, then released a long deep breath.

He was covered in sweat and gave one full-body shiver. Well, that was fucking weird.

He jumped into the back of the truck, woke José up, handed him the keys, and wiped his memory. He folded back to Marguerite’s hotel room and heard the shower running.

He stretched out on the bed and waited.

He smelled roses and what do you know, he was smiling.

Okay, was it wrong to be enjoying himself?

The truth was, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d smiled like this. Maybe a century ago, before his sister Grace had sequestered herself in the Convent, and before her twin, Patience, had been killed by death vampires. Yeah, maybe that far back.

*   *   *

Owen Stannett had everything set up, ready and waiting, candles lit, incense burning, shutters drawn to dampen the noise of Mexico City nightlife. He’d even had a new red leather chaise-longue made up for his favorite activity. This would be his first venture into the future streams since leaving Second Earth.

He’d spent the last three weeks hunting for Seers through all the known rogue colonies on Mortal Earth and hadn’t found a single one. However, since these colonies weren’t in any way hidden from Second Earth, they were accessible to Greaves. The Commander had probably already done his own reconnaissance and removed any Seers he found to his favorite Second Earth Fortresses in Mumbai, Johannesburg, and Bogatá.

Both Endelle’s administration and COPASS knew where these rogue colonies were and kept track of all movements in and out of them. Designated liaison officers from Second Earth interfaced with the local governing entities to make sure that everyone was behaving and not alerting Mortal Earth to the presence of either the dimensional world of ascension or the inflammatory nature of vampire biology.

His search had been a huge disappointment given his plans to create his own Fortress in Mexico City One. However, he was convinced there had to be a conclave of Seers somewhere, maybe someplace secret, maybe heavily misted by an unknown entity.

So tonight he would begin searching in the future streams, something he’d been avoiding. One of the drawbacks of future stream work was that any Seer’s activity could be detected by other powerful Seers. Granted, there were only a handful on Second Earth who had that level of power, but it sure as hell only took one, and the one he was avoiding was Marguerite Dresner.

Essentially, his activities in the future streams were only as successful as his ability to remain undetected. What he had going for him, however, was fairly substantial, since Marguerite hated being a Seer and avoided the future streams. So despite a certain vulnerability, he’d made the decision to launch his new life on Mortal Earth, which meant he needed to round up a batch of Seers, lock them up, and put them to work on his behalf.

He stretched out on the chaise-longue, the back of his heavily embroidered leather cowboy boots hitting a protective cloth covering. By nervous habit, he ran his hand over the carefully styled wave of hair along the right side of his head. The motion soothed him, eased his nerves.

The time had come. He could feel it in a smooth vibration of energy through his body.

Something big had been moving through the future streams for the last year, big but invisible, like a leviathan that surfaced in the ocean to taunt sailing ships, only to disappear beneath the waves, always pursued, never caught. He felt pretty certain this had something to do with obsidian flame, which had finally lifted its head just a few weeks ago with the blood slave Fiona, as well as with Marguerite. The women had worked together, coordinating efforts. The demonstration of their combined power had been impressive.

Yet he also understood that obsidian flame always came in threes, so another woman was destined to form the third leg of the triad. To date, she hadn’t shown up.

He let his arms rest next to his sides. He closed his eyes. The strong scent of patchouli surrounded him now, and because the air-conditioning kept a gentle stream of air flowing around the room, he could see the candlelight flicker behind his eyes.

He took deep lingering breaths as though the bottom of his lungs were somewhere near his intestines.

Slowly he let his mind open. If he moved too fast, the future streams would crash down on him, rendering him immobile and vulnerable. This at least he’d learned to manage over the centuries.

With his Seer’s eye barely open, he saw a broad spectrum of color, ribbons of light that went on, yes, forever, away from him, away from this point in time. His heart swelled and pleasure flowed through him. This was what he enjoyed most, this unexpected connection to what was his most essential gift.

He released a deep purifying breath and opened his mind just a little more. The ribbons began to move now, shimmering and rippling in waves. From his Seer’s eye, he moved to stand before the ribbons and lifted his right hand as if preparing to offer a minister’s blessing.

He lived in extraordinary times, as though the future had suddenly gotten in a big hurry and rushed toward Second Earth and Mortal Earth. He recognized the power behind this force—and it emanated from Commander Greaves. He was putting pressure on the world, on two worlds. Greaves had not lacked for ambition or for money. He had acquired the majority of Second Earth’s mineral wealth long before the value of the minerals was known. He could afford to build an army, two armies, a thousand armies.

But in response, as though the earth couldn’t easily tolerate the ambitions of sociopaths, new powers had emerged to contest Greaves’s megalomania. The Warriors of the Blood, always an extraordinary if small force against Greaves, had begun growing in power with the appearance of powerful mates, or
brehs,
in their lives.

And now obsidian flame.

He still couldn’t quite comprehend what such a powerful gift, based on a triad of connection, would mean for Madame Endelle and her administration. If he’d understood recent events, the first of the obsidian flame powers, belonging to Fiona, gave her a profound ability to channel the powers of others and even to allow a possession, which increased the preternatural power of both parties exponentially. Fiona had allowed a possession of Madame Endelle and together they had folded twenty thousand people from an arena disaster to safety. He could not fathom this level of combined power.

He knew that Marguerite was the second leg of this triad, that she had the red variety of obsidian flame, which meant that her already significant Seer abilities would be enhanced by her obsidian connection.

He positioned himself across from Marguerite’s ribbon. She was incredibly powerful. In the Seer realm—and this perhaps frightened him more than anything else—he strongly suspected that because of obsidian flame, she would now have the capacity to reach pure vision, or 100 percent accuracy in her visions. It was something he could not do, nor could any other Seer he knew. A Seer who had the capacity for pure vision would be of inestimable value to the person who had charge of her: She would be able to see events as they unfolded in the future exactly as they would happen.

He was tempted to enter her future stream ribbon to see what she was up to, but he hesitated because of her power—and because he valued his own skin. Her level of Seer power wasn’t the only significant preternatural ability she possessed. A couple of weeks ago, he’d tried to abduct her from Mortal Earth’s I-10, a major highway that crossed the lower continental United States. She’d been driving a convertible, top down, in the New Mexico area when he’d stopped her car, ready to apprehend her. But she’d delivered a hand-blast that had shot him deep into the sky as though he’d been nothing more than a rag doll. He’d been able to fold to safety mid-flight, but it had required the rest of the day to heal from all the burns. If he’d been a lesser vampire, he would have ended up very dead.

Basically, he’d given up on acquiring her, so he now turned his attention toward locating, if possible, a group of Seers that might be living in some kind of protected facility on Mortal Earth. If they existed, he’d find them in the future streams. Very little was hidden from him once he entered the ribbons of light.

So instead of taking chances with anything having to do with Marguerite, he focused his thoughts very specifically on
hidden Seers of power.

As he let his mind go very loose with this thought held foremost, the future streams began to move slowly, then gathered speed until he was watching a blur of color that became very light in hue, almost white.

Hidden Seers of power.

Finally, the line of ribbons began to slow and to differentiate into specific colors until the entire band stopped and a ribbon of burnished dark gray metal rose above the rest directly opposite him.

A female, a Seer, became visible to him.

He smiled. Yes, he enjoyed his power very much.

The woman was tall with some freckles, straight black hair to her shoulders. She had tattoos, and a hair-sized silver loop pierced her right eyebrow. She also had a small amber jewel just above her left nostril on the side of her nose. Her eyes were an unusual color: gray. A very pure gray.

Her name came to him.

Brynna.

He picked up the ribbon and it was like fire in his metaphysical hands, a wicked amount of energy flowing through his fingers.

He let her future come to him, images that began to move very swiftly; daylight, a cabin, a woman behind her, a knock on the door. He tested the women. His heart began to race. They were both Seers.