Gates of Rapture (Guardians of Ascension #6)(19)
Author: Caris Roane

The vision moved suddenly to Grace, who sat in the grandstands near the oval track beside Leto. She held his arm and looked up at him. She wore a long loose skirt, jewelry on both her wrists, her hair curled and hanging in a golden cloud around her shoulders and down her back. An array of silver stars crowned her head.

She looked different, changed, more womanly, less like a convent devotiate. But then she’d shared Casimir’s bed. Maybe he’d brought her up to speed.

The vision panned back even farther, but what Greaves saw sent a chill straight through him. On Grace’s left were Marguerite and Thorne, and on Leto’s right sat Fiona and Warrior Jean-Pierre.

In other words, obsidian flame would start coming together tonight.

He had seen enough of the warrior games. To Stannett’s mind, he sent, I want you to focus on the hidden colony we mapped at Nazca in Peru.

Stannett merely shifted his focus. The ribbons began to move rapidly for a few seconds, this time in the opposite direction, then slowed. A sand-colored ribbon rose. Stannett dove within so that Greaves saw the very small colony, with just a few hundred ascenders in residence. Above the mossy dome of mist, now partially burned away, dozens of death vampires appeared in flight, beautiful black wings flapping. They descended on the colonists below, in close-mount, wings pulled in tight. When the screaming started, Greaves smiled.

He watched the entire vision play out until the moment Leto arrived; then the vision faded, blocked by Marguerite. But he was left with an idea that involved Leto and at least ten of his Third Earth death vampires. He was still very unhappy that Leto had proved to be so disloyal. He wanted his skin and if he could get it, he would. Given that he knew where Leto would be, this seemed as good an opportunity as any to make an effort.

As he drew out from the vision, he had his next course of action in hand. He would destroy the first of the colonies, a good beginning. And in the process, maybe he could take Leto down as well. No doubt Endelle would retaliate, which he hoped would mean that she would make some sort of use of obsidian flame. More than anything else, he needed to figure out what the triad could do if he had any hopes of winning the coming battle.

He reiterated that he wanted Stannett to put all his effort in to harnessing Seers, as many as it would take to achieve pure vision. “This is your top priority. I must have the best possible information that you can provide me. The next several days will be critical to the Coming Order. Do you understand?”

Stannett nodded gravely. “I understand, master.”

“Good.”

With his plans set in place, Greaves smiled the entire distance back to Geneva.

* * *

“But I miss Grace already.” Kendrew’s brow tightened.

“All will be well,” Casimir said. “She had to return to Mortal Earth to help a friend, but she will be back. She promised me she would.”

Kendrew didn’t look convinced, but why would he trust anything Casimir said? He hadn’t exactly provided his boys with the most stable environment—except of course for these several idyllic months with Grace, in Beatrice’s palace. He’d actually watched his boys start to relax, even to run and play as boys should.

Casimir lay on the soft silks of his bed, in the redemption gown of white linen that he wore day and night since entering Beatrice’s program. His skin felt as though it should be blistered because he was in such terrible pain, his soul no less so, but he knew the pain he felt was of a spiritual nature and would soon pass.

For now, he had much to think about.

Beatrice had tried to warn him to follow the program and to not hurry his steps. But from the time he’d made the decision to enter the program in hopes of preserving his precious hide, he’d experienced a terrible urgency to move forward as quickly as he could.

He had arrived as Grace’s breh and had taken her into his bed, making love to her for the first few weeks. He’d fallen in love with her and couldn’t imagine a life without her, yet he knew that part of his journey was over as well.

But it was when he felt his impending death as strongly as Grace did that he’d made the decision to do the impossible and to attempt to redeem his soul. He wanted to live. More than anything, he wanted to live to raise his boys, to make up for the self-absorbed behavior that had cost them their mother’s life.

How odd, though, that the call of the breh-hedden had disappeared as quickly as a sigh the moment his toe hit the water of the first pool. He had lost his ability to scent Grace and she him. Their moment of shared passion had passed.

He had never blamed Grace for the disappearance of the breh-hedden. She had simply been a light he could not hold. She had saved him by coming with him to Fourth and by encouraging him to enter Beatrice’s program. Her presence in his life had made him a better father and a better man and quite possibly had returned his life to him.

He knew the sacrifice she had made in leaving Leto behind. But at the time, he hadn’t given a blind bat’s testicle about how she felt, only that she was with him and that he’d been able to take her to bed. Now, after experiencing true remorse, and seeing from the perspective of those he’d hurt, he would give anything to undo the deed.

But here was the true punishment of remorse: that nothing could be taken back.

His only consolation was in the nature of the task he’d foreseen accomplishing in the lower dimensions. Grace had sacrificed for him, and now he must return the favor. If only he’d been able to complete the redemption program, he would be home free.

Not so now. Despite his hurrying the process today, he now faced his mortality as surely as he’d let the Grim Reaper in the door himself.

But if there was any way that he could come out of this alive, he’d do it. He didn’t care what it took.

Both Kendrew and Sloane stood by the side of his bed. The windows were open and the sheer drapes billowed, letting in the fresh Denver Four evening air.

He reached a hand toward Kendrew and smoothed his fingers over the small wrinkles on his son’s forehead. He could sense Kendrew’s confusion. Sloane stood beside him, younger and much less certain about all that was happening. His lips were turned down and he leaned into Kendrew. He relied heavily on his older brother, another point of remorse for Casimir.

“I miss Grace, too,” Sloane said.

He smiled at Sloane. “I know you do.”

Because of Beatrice’s program he had a sensitivity to others he’d never known before, so he could feel now all that his boys had suffered because of his narcissistic lifestyle. He had not done right by his children, the first he’d ever had in his five millennia of vampire life. But he would make it up to them, so help him God.