Born of Ashes (Guardians of Ascension #4)(100)
Author: Caris Roane

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 f**king 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 ni**les. There wasn’t a damn thing left to the imagination, especially when Marguerite arched her back just a little bit, which pushed her br**sts 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.”

“But I—”

“Not one more f**king word, Marguerite, have you got it? This isn’t the Convent and it’s not the Seers Fortress. We have all the liberty in the world around here, which means we have to be civilized. So for starters, just keep the f**k away from the warriors who are mated with their brehs and you and I will do just fine.”