Burning Skies (Guardians of Ascension #2)(17)
Author: Caris Roane

A few months ago, shortly after he’d been introduced to the exquisite properties of dying blood, he’d constructed the forge deep within the Commander’s compound, well into the belly of the earth, on the lowest level not far from the vast room used to test all manner of weaponry, including incendiary bombs.

He had labored hard over the forge. The ventilation alone had been one bitch of a challenge. Because the compound existed beneath the Commander’s famous peach orchard, the ducting had to be routed a good mile from his current position.

But he’d gotten it done and now he had a proper workstation.

Sometimes life’s simplest pleasures were the best.

He could think in the space he’d created for himself. Right now he pounded the hell out of a strip of glowing red metal the old-fashioned way, on an anvil, beating it so that it would fit the small wrist of a woman. Yes, his newly emerging death vampire nature had strong appetites and by God he indulged them.

For one thing, he really liked keeping his blood donors close at hand.

He glanced to his right, and desire flowed down his chest and into his abdomen, then low into his groin. A mortal woman hung from her manacled wrists, her dark eyes blank now from her new reality, her body a sagging weight barely supported by watery knees. He liked his donors weakened through the trauma and sheer fatigue of hanging from manacles. He liked his women worn out when he was ready to take what he’d earned. He also liked them draped in white gauze, a sacrificial symbol that pleased his vampire soul.

He laid a message over the mortal’s mind: Your life gives me life and for that you are blessed.

He enjoyed delivering false hope. Her gaze flickered toward him, despair giving way to possibilities. But his sudden burst of laughter drew the blank stare once more as she looked away, her body sagging a little more.

She would feed not only him this night but also several of his personal attendants, those death vampires he’d recruited to serve as his guards and general lackeys.

He often did the hunting for his blood donors by himself, slipping quickly down to Mortal Earth before Central’s grids could happen upon his powerful signature. Other times, he would take his squad with him. He had sufficient advanced power to fold them straight to Mortal Earth, which would keep them off Endelle’s Central grid for a good long while.

He knew how the grids worked. They scanned back and forth looking for the signature of the death vampire, but Metro Phoenix took in a vast section of real estate and so far, in the past four months, he and his squad hadn’t been caught once.

God, he loved his life, a new life, the life his master had given him when he’d insisted that Crace drink a small goblet of dying blood. The thought of that first experience still aroused him, every damn time.

But it was the months that followed that had fulfilled him, the increasing physical strength, the clarity of mind, of purpose, the incremental bursts of expanding power.

Power was the real drug, the real erotic pressure on the pleasure points of his brain.

He’d never been happier.

He’d never been more powerful.

He’d also left his former life behind.

He rarely traveled to Chicago Two and he no longer had contact with his wife, Julianna. How odd to think that at one time she had been everything to him, the center of his world and his ambitions. But dying blood had changed all that. Now she was a fly in the ointment, and every text he received from her made him want to destroy his f**king BlackBerry. The woman needed to move on. Rumors had it she was screwing everything in sight, no doubt to try to attract his attention.

Whatever.

A muffled noise struck his ear. With his newly improved preternatural hearing, he detected movement beyond the steel door of his forge.

“This had better be good,” he shouted, the ring of metal on metal a seductive rhythm in his ears. The blood donor actually jumped.

He glanced at the steel door to his right, rivets gleaming.

The door opened and a fellow war-maker appeared, a relatively short vampire by the name of Rith. The bastard also took dying blood but he clearly made use of the antidote immediately afterward since he showed none of the hallmarks of the ordinary death vamp: no porcelain skin, no faint bluish tint to his complexion, no increased physical strength, no blackening of the wings, no beautifying of the features.

Rith was odd looking. He had short straight black hair, a wide forehead, and a broad nose. His eyes were black and deep-set. There had to be something of the Orient in his DNA. He stood maybe five-seven in his bare feet.

Unimpressive.

The idiot would be improved a thousandfold if he gave up the antidote.

“I do have news,” Rith called to him from across the space, “and I think you’ll be interested in this.”

“The mortal-with-wings?” Crace asked. Four months ago, when the fiasco involving ascender Wells drew to a close, Greaves had shared with him intriguing if highly improbable info from the future streams about a mortal-with-wings.

At the time, Crace hadn’t believed it was possible. The only mortal ever to have wings before an ascension was the original ascender herself, the famous Luchianne. When nothing came of the Seers’ rumors, Crace had thought it a hoax. Had it proven otherwise, had there really been such a mortal, Crace would have been at the head of the line to go in pursuit. Such a mortal would have had enormous power.

“No. Sorry,” Rith replied. “Still no follow-up on the original report. But I do think you might prefer this one.” Rith even smiled.

At that Crace stopped striking the strip of metal. Rith intrigued Crace for the simple reason that he didn’t know the man’s thoughts. He had f**king powerful shields. In addition to that, Rith cloaked every facial expression, every tell his body might provide as to a clue to the bastard’s mind. In this Rith was a genius. For all Crace knew the vampire could be happy as sin or in a dry riverbed of despair. There was no way of knowing.

Rith waved a piece of paper in his direction. The forge was probably 130 degrees. Rith remained near the door and held it open with his foot, no doubt enjoying the cool air from the hallway beyond.

“Bring it to me,” Crace stated. He smiled. He liked to think Rith suffered.

Rith didn’t hesitate, though. He moved forward and the door slammed behind him. Nor did he pay the smallest heed to the woman hanging not far from the door, even though she whimpered, hoping to attract his attention. Good thing the bastard walked quickly or Crace would have felt the need to punish.

He shoved the metal back into the coals and took the dispatch. He read the contents in a quick sweep then frowned. The communication indicated that an ascender, Havily Morgan, had just appeared in the future streams as a threat to the Commander’s plans for world domination.