Born of Ashes

Parisa said, “I’m ready to leave this place. But first, does anyone have a match, or maybe a reckless hand-blast they’d like to throw?”

“Yes!” Fiona cried. “I want to burn this place to the ground, let all this mahogany catch fire and collapse into those horrid basement cells.”

Parisa gasped. “You’re … glowing.”

Fiona looked down at her arm. “Yeah. That’s been happening a lot lately, especially when I get a little worked up.”

Jean-Pierre released Fiona’s hand and turned around. “As much as I would like to see this place destroyed, what if we turned it into a rehabilitation center here in Burma? Make something good come of it. There will be such need in the coming years and decades, because who knows all the evil that Greaves has orchestrated during these years.”

Fiona chuckled. “Why did you have to say something so reasonable? I was ready to let you possess me again, so that together we could make a nice bonfire.”

She hooked her arm in his and he overlaid her forearm with his hand. “But you see, I know you, Fiona. The first thing you did, a week after you were released from the hospital, was to yell at Endelle until she granted funds to create your rehab center for the blood slaves.”

Jean-Pierre felt a buzzing at his waist. He slid his warrior phone from the slit in his kilt. He slid his thumb over the front and drew it to his ear. “Allô, Jeannie.”

“I love it when you speak French,” she said. “But I’ve got one irritable ruler of Second Earth on my ass. She wants the four of you back at her admin offices. I guess it’s daylight there in Burma. We’re just closing in on ten. Do I have permission to fold the four of you to HQ?”

He relayed the information to the rest of the party and received three nodding acknowledgments in response. “Fold at will, Jeannie.”

“You got it. On three.”

He still held Fiona’s arm as the glide through nether-space moved them swiftly from one location to the next.

* * *

Endelle was on her knees, feeling the goddam ankle guard still stuck on Marguerite’s foot. She’d been trying for the past half hour to get it off, but nothing worked.

But what she really hated were the thick calluses on the woman’s leg from having worn the damn thing for so long.

“Fuck,” she muttered. She sat back on the floor in her office. She still wore her fabulous capri pants covered in orange feathers, which came from the red jungle fowl. She wore a black leather bustier on top, something that kept Thorne’s gaze turned away from her quite a bit.

Marguerite’s first words to her had been, “Whoa, mama! You’re the hottest thing I’ve seen … like … ever.”

Endelle was so fucking pleased. She liked this woman. Marguerite had wide brown eyes and long brown hair and was as short as shit among their tallish group. Yep, the woman was only about five feet five inches in her stockings, but once they got this damn ankle guard off her, Endelle thought she’d let Marguerite borrow a pair of her stilettos. That would jack up her height a solid five inches.

Something about the way Marguerite chewed on her lower lip and kept looking her bustier over in a way that said, I want to fucking wear that, led her to believe the powerful Seer was ready for a little party time.

Which of course made Endelle glance at Thorne about a dozen times and wonder what the hell her second-in-command was going to do now. He either stood nearby with his arms compressed over his chest and his hands balled into fists, or he paced the room over by the east window. Something was bugging the shit out of him. So, between his restlessness and Marguerite eyeing the black leather bustier like she meant to steal it off Endelle’s chest if she could, she just got a really uneasy feeling about what the fuck was going on.

Whatever.

First things first.

She wanted a full report from Jean-Pierre and Fiona about Rith’s demise, but first she needed to get Marguerite situated. Dammit, she couldn’t believe she lacked the power to get rid of this fucking ankle guard.

She could hear Parisa and Fiona in the hallway beyond. She stretched her hearing. The women were talking about setting up a rehab center in Burma.

Whatever.

She disliked what she was about to do, since it involved making use of obsidian power to remove a stupid ankle guard, but she was out of options.

She called out, “Fiona, get your ass in here. We need to do your channeling shit for this stupid…” She launched into a long stream of profanity that had Marguerite doing some dance-like shoulder moves and making a club-like whistle.

Endelle sat back on her heels and stared at her.

Marguerite just shrugged. “I like the way you roll.”

Endelle chuckled.

When Fiona appeared in the doorway, with Parisa, Endelle jerked her head. “In fact, all of you get in here. I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but I don’t have enough power on my own to break through Stannett’s preternatural lock. Goddammit.”

The party in the hallway moved into her office.

Now, where exactly had her brains gone, because she’d already taken Marguerite’s measure, and Thorne’s, and in walked two of the hottest vampires on the face of the earth: Antony Medichi, who was one ancient Italian wet dream walking around on two legs, and Jean-Pierre, whose French accent and mellow timbre had put more females on their backs than there were crumbs at the bottom of a potato chip bag.

Marguerite had been sitting, but now she stood up, which gave Endelle a profile view of a fairly see-through nightgown and a pair of instantly peaked nipples. There wasn’t a damn thing left to the imagination, especially when Marguerite arched her back just a little bit, which pushed her breasts out just that extra inch as she called out, “Well, hello, boys.”

Several things happened at once as sudden preternatural chaos erupted all around her.

Note to self: Never sit on the floor when surrounded by über-powerful vampires, male or female.

Thorne’s foot caught her on the side of the head, which shoved her in the direction of the newly arrived foursome, and before she could right herself she had the hard heel of a flat woman’s shoe grinding into the back of her hand.

Everyone seemed to be shouting at once.

She had the worst view, and her face as well as her hand hurt like a bitch, so she folded out of the melee and ended up near the fireplace on the west wall.

She opened her eyes wide, because she was as shocked as hell at exactly who had engaged in the battle.

Jean-Pierre and Fiona remained by the door. But Medichi and Parisa had moved right into Thorne.

Thorne shouted incomprehensible things to both Jean-Pierre and Medichi about staying the hell away from his woman, but it was Parisa who had gone into cavewoman mode.

The whole time Thorne shouted at the men, it would seem that something about Marguerite’s come-on had flipped a switch in Parisa, the former-librarian-now-breh-to-a-Warrior-of-the-Blood. She was an extremely powerful ascender in her own right with her rare preternatural gift of royle wings.

Parisa was practically chest-to-chest with Thorne trying as she was to get to Marguerite. She shook her finger around Thorne’s shoulder and kept jumping up over and over as she called out, “I don’t know who the hell you think you are, but you will never talk to my man like that. I didn’t ascend to this godforsaken dimensional world, or complete the breh-hedden, just so some piece of trash like you could stand there in your goddam nightgown and make a play for him. And don’t you even think about giving me that man-never-straying-if-he’s-happy-at-homeshit! That’s pure bullshit. You hold a man down and stroke him long enough, he’ll come.”

These last words somehow penetrated Thorne’s head, and he fell silent. He even backed up about a foot, even though he held his arms wide and wouldn’t let Marguerite get past him.

“Oh, honey,” Marguerite said, “if you’re that insecure, you’ve already lost him.”

Endelle should have intervened, but damn, this was just too much fun.

She grinned so hard her cheeks hurt.

“The hell if I’m insecure. You’re one of those women. The kind myths are born out of, so full of sex and nothing else that even the most rational man in the world hasn’t got an ice cube’s chance in hell of keeping himself.”

Endelle looked back at Marguerite, waiting to see what she’d say. The woman was so satisfied with this portrait, however, that she climbed up on the arm of the chair where she’d been sitting so she could look over Thorne’s arm and stare down at Parisa. “Why, thank you,” she drawled. “That’s the sweetest thing a little uptight bitch could ever have said to me.”

Endelle chuckled, but then she had to act, because honest-to-God if Parisa didn’t launch herself, preternatural-style, into the air straight at Marguerite, a perfectly executed dive that would put her well over Thorne’s shoulder and into the face of the newly rescued Seer.

Aw, shit.

Endelle rarely used her stasis ability, but she used it now, lifting an arm and letting the power fly. She froze everyone in place so that Parisa hung in mid-flight, high in the air, her arms outstretched, her fingers in the shape of claws. She had a look on her face that meant she intended to take the woman apart. Meow.

She moved forward, grabbed Parisa around the waist, and pulled her to sit across Endelle’s right hip. Sometimes it was a thrill to be a powerful ascended vampire; she could hold the outraged female like she was a feather.

She snapped her fingers and the action resumed, except that Parisa was flailing at her side, screaming and scratching at pure air.

Parisa, totally out of control, writhed, squirmed, and flailed some more as she shouted, “Let me at her. Let me at her.”

Endelle stared at Thorne. “I want you to settle down and get a grip. No more yelling at Medichi for something he didn’t do.”

She turned to Marguerite. “Plant your ass on that chair, young lady. One more word and I’m not taking the ankle guard off because it’s getting pretty clear to me why Sister Quena put it on in the first place and why Stanny added his own level of security to the damn thing.”