Born of Ashes (Guardians of Ascension #4)(32)
Author: Caris Roane

She shoved both hands into her thick black hair and pulled at the braids dangling past her shoulders. She whirled away from the balcony and paced into the rotunda. She took a deep breath, levitated, and mounted her wings all with one thought. Jesus, mounting wings was a rush, about as close to sex as any other function got.

She rose into the air, plowing in smooth sweeps of her wings so that she rolled beneath the rounded ceiling. She ended up on her back with the tips of her wings flapping ever so slowly, like swimming in a pool and staying afloat with just a sweep of the hands.

What was she going to do? Creator help her, what was she going to do? Marguerite was a gifted Seer and for the first time in a hundred years she had a card to play against Owen Stannett. She could trade Marguerite to Stannett and gain access, at long last, to the information from the Superstition Fortress that could turn the tide of war … at long f**king last.

But the price—!

The inestimable value of two souls, one of which she had loved for two thousand years.

Talk about a crucifixion.

* * *

Fiona lay in bed beside Jean-Pierre. His back was to her, the dark blue comforter under his arm so that his hair was spread out for her to see. He slept heavily, his breathing almost labored, the sound of someone whose sleep had been uneasy for a long time.

His hand rested on his hip and she kept her fingers on top of his. Without the connection, he would wake up.

The man was in hell.

Whatever the breh-hedden might be for her, Jean-Pierre suffered more, as though his male protective instincts had come online with all the subtlety of a summer monsoon.

She owed him this, just to stick close for a while so that he could sleep. Her arm hurt, though, from the unsupported position.

In order to change that, she needed to get closer, something she did not want to do. His coffee scent, even while sleeping, still made her almost anxious to repeat everything they’d just done together. While showering, however, she’d concluded that she ought to be a lot wiser about their relationship. They’d taken a big step, a huge step, a massive leap, but how smart could any of this really be?

For one thing, she knew Jean-Pierre had issues, something she thought had to do with his wife of many decades ago. Then there was her own little struggle: She never wanted to be close to a man again, to get tangled up in the hopelessness of trying to be a couple, or a family, in any dimension.

She shifted her hip in his direction because her arm was close to spasming. She had to get closer, but she so didn’t want to.

She rotated her shoulder, which turned her arm over but still kept her connected. A little better.

She put her palm beneath her cheek and watched his thick hair move up and down with his breathing. She huffed a sigh. So she was obsidian flame, a vampire with “a duty, a sense of purpose, built on a foundation of power.” Jean-Pierre had posed the question to Endelle, but Fiona had answered it, then Endelle had jumped and levitated around her office … again.

Endelle seemed to think that her gold variety of obsidian flame might end up having something to do with her telepathy, since it was her strongest power.

She sighed once more. Her eyelids grew heavy but just as she might have fallen asleep, her bicep, tweaked as it was, started to spasm. Aw, hell, there was nothing for it.

She moved in behind Jean-Pierre, tucking her hips low so she could bend her knees and spoon him.

He didn’t exactly wake up. He just pushed backward to get closer still, took hold of her hand, and drew her arm to his chest. She was now so close to him that she had to push all that glorious hair away from his back because her face was also smashed up against him.

She took a deep breath of his exquisite coffee smell. Though desire rolled through her as it always did when she caught his scent, a delicious lethargy took hold of her as well. She closed her eyes with the heat of his body taking her that last final step into the oblivion of sleep.

* * *

Sated. Oh, so sated.

Casimir left his nearly comatose partner stretched out on her back, in his Paris bed, her arms flung wide, his fang marks all over her br**sts, her abdomen, her navel, and lower. She had taken her fill of the hopeless young gothic woman he’d seduced out of a club an hour earlier.

He and Julianna had drained her almost to the point of dying blood, but neither of them would ever go that far. They might be hedonists, even sadists, but they weren’t murderers.

The young woman lay naked and unconscious, bloody and bruised on the fine silk of the sofa. Her short hair was bleached white, her lips tattooed black, and she had piercings in a number of places, most of which Julianna had ripped from her, savoring the screams, in the course of the taking.

Naturally, Caz had misted a tough barrier between the back bedrooms and the living rooms. He would never want his babies distressed by the activity in the living room.

He thought the thought and her skimpy black leather bustier, mini skirt, and torn stockings reappeared on her body. On her feet, combat boots. Cliché, in Caz’s opinion, but the ensemble had worked for Julianna.

Extending his preternatural voyeurism, he sent the special window flying back to the club where he’d found the woman and moved to scope out the alley in the back. With no one around, he simply returned her to lean against the wall. With any luck, she’d be well used again before she woke up and their misdeeds were laid at the feet of mortals.

Pulling his voyeur’s window back in and shutting it down, he gathered up all the superfluous silver loops, studs, and bars and sent them clinking onto the cement next to the goth.

He stared down at the couch and clucked his tongue. The fabric was a mess. He shook his head. He had so much power. With barely a thought, he had been able to send the fully clothed goth back to the club. But he couldn’t seem to remove stains from silk.

The three of them had been very active … well, two of them had been active. The goth party girl had lost her smiles about two minutes in, had screamed for about forty minutes, then lost consciousness before the big climax.

Surprise.

Vampires are real.

So was his current dilemma.

The silk used to be gold.

Gold silk.

The color snagged his mind, worked him over, forced him to think.

Gold.

Then suddenly all the pieces concerning the attack at the Convent fell miraculously into place. And sure enough, as he reviewed the battle, as he dwelled in particular on Fiona’s aura, he saw … gold.

Part of him was delighted that his mind had finally figured it out. The other part, the one that understood the implications, was appalled. This kind of power could be vast—as in monumentally vast. It could also be lethal, deadly as hell.