Born of Ashes

That had been so long ago; he couldn’t even remember which century. And he sure as hell couldn’t remember the day he’d lost hope, all hope, that things would change.

Then he’d met Marguerite.

He sipped his tumbler and smiled. These memories at least still had the power to give him some ease.

You ready for me, Warrior? Those had been the first words she’d ever spoken to him, right after, How happy I am to meet Grace’s brother. Imagine meeting a beautiful woman for the first time, in a fucking Convent, and that’s what she says, You ready for me, Warrior?

What he’d done after still smote his goddam conscience because as soon as Grace left to do Sister Quena’s bidding, he’d taken Marguerite. He’d taken a goddam devotiate in a goddam Convent.

He was going to hell, no two ways around that. But then he was in hell, so what was the difference?

Somehow he’d lost his innocence along the way. Any man who’d lived for a couple of millennia had a lot of skeletons in his outbuildings, but this had to be his worst yet.

But Marguerite had been a willing, panting, back-scratching participant. When he’d met her, she’d been half hidden behind the door. When his sister had turned away, Marguerite had bared a breast to him.

The image of that breast had become forever fixed in his head, burned there like a silver cross against the bare skin of a fictional vampire. There had been such perfection in that shape, beautifully round but with the slightest hint of teardrop, sloped inward at the top and weighted at the bottom. The nipple had been hard and puckered, as though she’d just had an orgasm. That’s when it hit him and that’s what had done him in. Sister Marguerite had just shown him her orgasm.

He jerked off to that breast almost every night and any other time the mood struck him, which was often.

He loved and hated this obsession. She hadn’t lived long enough to really know her mind—not even thirteen decades. And for at least a century she’d been trapped inside a Convent. But he just couldn’t keep away from her.

Another memory returned, the first time they’d made love. You gonna talk to me, Warrior? Use that fucking voice of yours? The one that makes me come?

Shit, yeah.

He’d split his resonance twice. He’d work up to fifteen through the decades, just for her. She’d be screaming against the palm of his hand at fifteen, shaking, convulsing. God, he loved fucking her.

Her family had discovered her excessive love of males and had put her away in the Convent for rehabilitation. That’s when the sisters had detected her Seer gift and called in Stannett to monitor her progress. Thorne still didn’t know why Stannett hadn’t done it sooner. But thank God for whatever reason the bastard had.

But that’s when Thorne’s treachery had begun because he could have told Endelle about Marguerite, and her Seer powers, a century ago, maybe even altered the course of the war. But he’d feared losing her. She was the only thing in all this time that had kept him sane and loose so he could keep on saving the world.

Yeah, that’s right. Keep thinking that way, asshole.

But why shouldn’t he be allowed some peace of mind, some relief? Marguerite had eased his twitches when his head spun hard, when Darian’s heinous plans piled up on him, when Endelle griped at him for hours on end, when he had to account for another batch of dead Militia Warriors, when years of loneliness stretched before him like a vast ocean of fucking cactus-infested desert. Yeah, Marguerite kept him loose. She almost made him believe in a divine plan.

He threw back a hefty shot of his Ketel One and poured another two fingers.

So now his woman was locked up in the Fortress.

He took his Droid from the deep pocket of his kilt and checked the time. Ten forty-five and Endelle still hadn’t given him a mental shout. He shared a mind-link with her. Why the hell hadn’t she contacted him?

He sipped again. He hated waiting.

Then he felt the vibration deep within his mind.

Yo, Thorne. Endelle kept things simple.

I’m here. Fucking waiting, Endelle.

You sound slurred, even in your head. You need to cut back.

How about you cut the shit and tell me what happened.

Nothing happened, not a goddam thing. I’m still locked out and the bastard won’t even show his face at the door.

He felt her anger like a white-hot stream of fire through his head. He sat back on his stool. The woman was pissed and sometimes all that rage gave him a headache. What are you going to do?

Fuck if I know.

Then his rage kicked in, meeting her fury with an answering flaming bolt of his own.

Settle down, she snapped, which felt like a boomerang flying through his head.

The hell I will. The hell if I can. He’s going to hurt her. You know he will.

I’m contacting Daniel Harding.

What? He shouted the word through her head. Greaves owned Harding, and as head of COPASS he was about as useful as a bug on a windshield.

I have to go through channels. Don’t have a choice.

And neither did he.

Apparently, Endelle knew that as well, because she sent, Just give me a few more hours, that’s all I ask, then—here she offered a mental sigh—well, then you gotta do what you gotta do.

He grew very still, his tumbler poised in the air. Endelle had just given him permission to break the law. The only trouble was, busting into a Seers Fortress could be a death sentence.

On the other hand, right now he didn’t fucking care.

* * *

Jean-Pierre was just a little pissed off. He could not get through Fiona’s very thick skull.

During the most recent training session, in the now familiar room in Militia HQ, he had pushed her … hard. He spoke to her about the need to engage in a full-possession while channeling. He spoke of the advantages: the most certain increase of power and the possibility that she might have great need of possession-based channeling at some point in the immediate future. He reminded her, more quietly, of their recent lovemaking, that she no longer had the same fears of feeling trapped as she once had, even that she could allow him to take her blood. All to no avail.

Fiona was a very stubborn woman, now more than ever it would seem.

She even stood chest-to-chest with him, her arms back, and her face like a fury ready to take his head off. “I won’t do it, Jean-Pierre. I’ve made up my mind about this. I’m keeping this part for myself.”

“You are being ridiculous and very willful, like a child.”

“Like a child? You would say that to me? Simply because I am telling you that I am unwilling to do something, you tell me I’m like a child?”

There was only one response he could give, but it came out like a dog’s bark. “Oui.”

“Oui?”

“Oui.”

She planted a finger on his chest. “Let me tell you something, buddy, you’re the one who’s being stubborn and you’re not listening to me. I have spent the past two hours channeling every one of your abilities, from hand-blast to preternatural speed to kinetic movement of objects around this room, and not once did you need to possess me in order for me to get the job done. What do you have to say to that?”

What could he say? She was right. “You are right.” He dropped his hand to his abdomen. “But what I feel here, as a man who has battled in this war for over two centuries, is a powerful instinct that tells me you are wrong. Very wrong.”

She drew back, maybe three inches. “That’s your opinion.”

“Why will you not trust me, that I might know better in this situation, this circumstance? You have only known your powers for a few months now.”

“I’ve been telepathic since I arrived on Second Earth all those decades ago.”

He nodded. “But you cannot even mount your wings when the doctor said you should. What if your resistance to working your obsidian flame power is connected?”

At that, she stepped back perhaps an entire foot and stared at him, her eyes wide, her lips parted in something like horror. “You know how hard I’ve tried to mount my wings. That is unfair of you, Jean-Pierre.”

He closed the distance between them. “But what if they are connected? Please listen to me, chérie. Take your obsidian power the distance.”

She whirled away from him and put her hands to her face. He hoped she did not cry. He watched her back move up and down as she took very deep breaths but he did not hear the sounds of weeping.

But he also knew that he was right. In this, he was right.

As he watched her, as he thought how hard he pushed her, he felt confident in not just his position, but also exactly how he was treating her, as though he understood very deep things about her.

His gaze shifted to the carpeted floor. He had felt the same way earlier, when speaking with Seriffe, as though he could see into the very core of the man, as though he could understand in what ways the man suffered and what he should say and should not say. This was peculiar. He wondered if there was a meaning to this, something he did not yet perceive.

A wind swept through his mind, leaving him dizzy. Change had come to him, he could feel it, but he did not understand what it meant.

Fiona’s shoulders fell as she turned back toward him. Neither her eyes nor her cheeks were wet as her hands dropped away from her face. Good. This was good.

“Let me think on what you’ve said. And I do trust you, Jean-Pierre, very much. I respect you … infinitely.”

Infinitely. His heart warmed and he put a hand to his chest. To be respected. That was a good thing.

He nodded several times, and once more drew close to her. He took her hands in his and kissed the backs of her fingers, one hand to the next.

Her lovely patisserie scent floated toward him, and something more, that which was just Fiona, that which he carried in his mind and as a beautiful flavor on his tongue. His body responded. Merde. It took so little for him to be suddenly ready for her, to desire above all things to take her back to his house and into his bed, to keep her there for, mon Dieu, all eternity.

But these things were not practical, not in this moment, not in this war. Still, he could not help taking her in his arms and bending down to possess her lips, her mouth, and to penetrate her with his tongue at least in this way.