Ascension (Guardians of Ascension #1)(56)
Author: Caris Roane

“Shit,” Kerrick cried out. “Thorne, where are you?”

Alison turned around and cried out. In front of her at least twenty death vamps rained down from the sky directly in the Hummer’s path.

Do your best, Alison, or God help us, he sent.

She blasted away with her hand in a wide arc in front of her, but she knew her power had weakened. She’d never thrown so many hand-blasts in her life. Not all the warriors fell. Her left shoulder jerked backward.

She felt a strange curdling in the pit of her stomach. Another winged death vamp landed on the hood of the Hummer. Kerrick pulled the trigger, but only a series of clicks followed.

The pretty-boy aimed his pistol directly at her, a feral look in his eyes, a smile pulled back over thick, heavy fangs. Alison lifted her hand, but the blast that followed had little effect. She was finished.

Time slowed.

So this was how she was going to die?

She laughed. So much for ascending to Second Earth. She hadn’t even survived a handful of hours.

She closed her eyes and waited.

A brilliant light flashed in front of her eyelids.

The next thing she knew, she stood before a tall handsome man with long light brown hair. He was almost as tall as Kerrick and just as muscled. His hazel eyes were badly red-rimmed like he hadn’t slept in a year.

He scowled at her. “You’re hit.”

She didn’t know what he meant exactly. No one had hit her, but her mind felt as if it was moving in circles at the bottom of a drain. She couldn’t see very well. She glanced around. She had landed in some sort of very dark rec room that housed a bunch of really ugly couches. A pool table was on its back, all four legs up in the air, two of them bent at a weird angle. On the other side of the room was a long bar fronted by several tall stools. An assortment of gleaming hard-liquor bottles in a variety of shapes and sizes decorated a row of cabinets.

She weaved on her feet. Pain pierced her shoulder suddenly, like someone had just taken a chain saw to the joint. She glanced down. Blood soaked her shirt and sweater. She pulled the neck of the T-shirt away and sure enough, blood pumped sluggishly from a bullet wound.

Well, what do you know? She’d gotten hit.

Oh. That’s what the guy with the red-rimmed eyes had meant.

At least she wasn’t dead.

At least, she didn’t think she was dead.

Her knees gave way. She had a vague impression of someone catching her as everything went black.

Let the healer come,

For when the wounds are well-tended

A land is saved.

—Collected Proverbs, Beatrice of Fourth

Chapter 12

Kerrick stood near the pool table, Alison in his arms. Christ, they’d barely made it out alive.

Guilt powered down on his head, tensing his neck and tightening his chest. This was what happened to the women in his life. Proximity meant danger. Danger meant injury and death.

Goddammittohell.

Blood still seeped from her shoulder. She needed help. Now. “I think you’d better call one of the healers. My powers don’t encompass torn arteries.”

“We don’t need to,” Thorne said. He grimaced, his brows drawn into a deep furrow as he stared at Alison. “Endelle is on her way.”

“Thank God. In the meantime, pressure on the wound would help.”

Thorne stepped close and with the heel of his palm stanched the flow. “She’s very beautiful,” he murmured.

“Yeah,” Kerrick muttered. Dammit, he shouldn’t have taken her at the neck earlier. What the hell had he been thinking and just how much blood did she have left? The level of Alison’s powers demanded she battle her way into Second and she needed every resource, including a decent amount of red cells. What the hell had he been thinking?

He hadn’t.

Ever since the breh-hedden had taken hold of him his brain had been functioning on fumes. If he hadn’t been working her out on the couch, this wouldn’t have happened. He needed to get a grip. Now.

“So why the emergency lift?” Thorne asked, shifting his gaze to Kerrick. “How many death vamps were there? I’ve seen you battle eight by yourself and barely break a sweat.”

“There were dozens. A regiment.”

“What the f**k?”

“Greaves sent his army.” Which was another part of the truth. He’d been prepared to take on two or three squads of death vamps but not a regiment.

Thorne hissed. “That goddamn motherfucker. So there weren’t only death vamps present.”

“That’s right. Good old working soldiers.” He told his story ending with, “Things would have been different if he hadn’t sent his army. That much I know. It just never occurred to me that he’d send a regiment, that he’d break such a big f**king rule. Shit.”

“Don’t beat yourself up. We knew from the medical complex that her signature showed up on the grid. Any way you look at it, you were screwed.”

Right. Whatever. “Someone else should have charge of her.”

“Doesn’t sound like it would make one lizard’s turd of a difference.”

Kerrick huffed a laugh. “No. I guess not.”

“No question we’re in for it, though. And you know what the Commander will do when he hears we used an emergency lift.”

“You got that right.” He ground his teeth. There weren’t enough obscenities to cover the scope of his thoughts. “But we’d both be dead otherwise and isn’t it kind of illegal to be dropping an army down on Mortal Earth?”

Thorne snorted his disgust. “The Committee will overlook that little indiscretion.”

COPASS. The Committee to Oversee the Process of Ascension to Second Society. “Bullshit committee.”

Kerrick had a sick-gut feeling all over again, the one laced with despair. He had been a warrior one century too long. He couldn’t seem to find his feet anymore, and by the looks of it Thorne wasn’t in much better shape.

Thorne glanced at Alison. “So, what do we have here? Endelle said she sent a hand-blast up the Trough.”

“Yep. Saw it myself at the receiving end. Straight up. A sand geyser about a quarter of a mile high.”

“Damn.”

“Where the hell is Endelle? Alison can’t lose much more blood.”

Thorne scowled, his gaze shifting back and forth as he scanned the room. “She’ll be here.”

“I need to get Alison back to Mortal Earth. I have no idea how long she can tolerate being on Second.” An un-ascended mortal couldn’t handle being in the second dimension for more than a couple of hours at a time. In a wounded state, the draining effects would rob the mortal of the much-needed energy to recover. An extended stay of longer than twenty-four hours, wounded or not, always ended in death. Only when Alison received from Endelle’s hand the ascended vampire nature at her ascension ceremony would she be able to tolerate living on Second Earth.