Obsidian Flame

She shook her head. “I don’t understand.”

Leto dropped down behind Grace and put his arms around her. She seemed to freeze at the intimacy. “You may not have her, Casimir. She is mine. Mine.” The last word held such reverence that Grace gasped and leaned into him, reaching up to touch his cheek.

The woman was torn. This was not going to be simple.

Casimir’s head spun, a dizzying sensation, like he was on a carnival ride that was moving too fast. He wanted to draw a sword into his own hand and take Leto’s head here and now, but he had never learned the art and now regretted it. He wanted to do battle, but he’d never been a soldier. He made love, not war.

He heard a soft growling sound and realized it was coming from Leto and that Grace was leaning harder against him, her shoulder turned into his chest, her nose searching along his skin, her arm up around his neck. “You are the forest,” she whispered.

Leto began to drag her backward across the cell.

Casimir started to follow and a new growling sound emerged, one that came from him this time. He couldn’t allow this.

But a pair of legs covered in blood-red flight pants barred his way. He looked up, ready to sneer, but Marguerite held a wooden stool in her hand and it caught him on the forehead, spinning him to the side. He felt the cold stone floor as his face smacked against it.

Then nothing.

* * *

Marguerite turned toward Leto and Grace, who were now sitting against the far wall near Marguerite’s old cot. She glanced left then right. The mist had disappeared. For the first time, she heard the sounds of battle outside in the hall, the grunts of men doing the work of war, the sliding rasp of steel against steel and the occasional cry or shriek when a blade found purchase.

But as her gaze returned to Grace and Leto, never would she have thought that her pious cellmate would have engaged with two men in the space of minutes. Perhaps there was more to Grace than she had ever imagined.

Leto’s pallor had changed. For a few moments, while caught in a killing fervor, he’d almost regained a healthy look. Now he looked like a ghost.

Grace petted his cheek. She lifted her sleeve to wipe his forehead. “You’re sick again.”

He nodded, but caught her hand and kissed her fingers one after the other, over and over, perhaps trying to get rid of Casimir’s scent.

Marguerite glanced back at Casimir. He’d already begun to stir. She tested her folding capacity with a quick thought. She felt the vibration but pulled back. Thorne.

You safe?

Yep. I’ve got Leto and Grace. I’m taking them back to Diallo’s home.

Good. Looks like we’re about done here. The mist has broken up.

Should have. I clobbered Casimir with a stool.

She heard him laugh. That’s my girl. And Santiago just got the last of these bastards. We’ll do cleanup then see you in a few.

Marguerite smiled. She loved that he’d just spoken to her as though she was one of his warriors. Damn righteous.

When Casimir moaned, she moved swiftly to Grace and Leto, put a hand on each, and thought the thought.

Once her feet touched down on the patio of Diallo’s courtyard, and Grace and Leto were sitting at her feet in the same intimate embrace, she blocked her trace. There was only one problem: Leto now writhed in agony from the fold. If you were hurt or ill, a fold could be a real sonofabitch.

* * *

Thorne turned and looked up the hall. Santiago and Luken were headed his way. The mist was gone.

The other direction, Zacharius strode toward him, shoulders hunched, sword still in hand. He had thin streamers of blood in two stripes across his face. He’d lost his cadroen in the fighting, and his mass of thick curly black hair hung down around his shoulders and sides. Shit, his hair was long—at least to his waist now. Rumors were that he could make his hair move just with a pointed thought or two, but he denied it. Thorne sure as hell hadn’t seen anything like that.

“All clear,” he called out. Zach had a deep booming voice and large dark blue eyes.

He turned back to the two others. Luken had his phone to his ear. “Aw, Jeannie, you kill me.” He even smiled. “Another time. Let’s get this war wrapped up and then maybe I’ll do it.” He thumbed his phone, still smiling. The women at Central were the bomb, always had been, always would be.

Luken tipped his chin at Thorne and said, “She wants to set me up with her cousin.”

Thorne laughed. Jeannie had been trying to set each of the warriors up with her cousin since the beginning of time.

He glanced from one warrior to the next. God, he missed this. No question, he needed to get back.

He was about to say something to that effect when Luken whipped his warrior phone from the slit pocket of his battle kilt. “Yeah, Jeannie.” His expression grew somber. After a few seconds, he said, “We’re on our way.”

He turned to Zach. “We’ve got twelve death vamps at the Superstitions.”

“Holy shit.”

“Get out there, get me some blue skin.”

Zach nodded, lifted his hand and vanished.

To Santiago, Luken said, “We’ve got another eight at the downtown Borderland. Gideon and his crew are barely holding on.”

“On it, jefe.” Another blink of the eye and he was gone.

The word stung. Santiago had always called Thorne jefe. But for now, that job belonged to Luken.

Luken turned and met his gaze straight-on. “Sorry, boss. I should have let you—”

“No, you shouldn’t have.”

“It’s just that you’ve been gone and then you sent Alison that message to have me take over.”

Thorne clapped him on the shoulder. “You did good. The job suits you.”

Luken thumbed his phone then put it away. He smiled. “I’ll happily give it up the second you come back. Which will be—?”

Thorne shifted his gaze to the cold stone walls of the Convent hallway. When would that be?

Now that Leto was coming in from the cold …

He shifted his gaze back to Luken. “I’m thinking tomorrow, but I’ll let Jeannie know for sure.”

“Tomorrow.” The usual smile turned to a grin. Luken lifted his arm. “If you don’t, I’m coming for you.” He flipped Thorne off then vanished.

Thorne drew in a deep breath. He headed to Sister Quena’s office to give a report and to make sure that none of her devotiates were harmed.

After that, time to deal with Leto.

Forgiving oneself for committing the most heinous of crimes,

Requires endless prayer and atoning deeds.

Even then, may the Creator have mercy on your soul.

—Collected Proverbs, Beatrice of Fourth

Chapter 13

Thorne paced beside the hospital bed inside the colony’s infirmary. He still wore battle gear, and his heavy sandals sounded like thunder on the hardwood floor.

Much he cared since Leto looked like shit. His eyes were squeezed shut and his breathing shallow. He was so damn pale. Just how close to death was he? But then he was essentially a death vampire, so maybe this would be normal during the withdrawal process.

The vampire warrior was old in ascended terms. Thorne had known Leto from the first day of his ascension. He had fought beside him all those centuries ago. Leto had been one of them, a brother-in-arms for millennia, having ascended in 1201 BC and having served as a Warrior of the Blood most of that time, a good thousand-years-plus before Thorne’s ascension.

Thorne had looked on him as a mentor given his age, his power, his general sense of fair-mindedness. His defection, so close to the time that Patience had died and Grace had gone into the Convent, had deepened Thorne’s grief. He’d gotten drunk with Leto, laughed at his jokes, ignored his bad moods, scoffed at his professions of bedroom prowess, all the usual.

But as he paused at the bottom of the bed, stunned by Grace’s tenderness toward Leto, he knew only one thing: He didn’t want Leto to die. He wanted him to live, to have a real life in a world without war, to settle down with a woman, maybe even Grace, to father a dozen children, to see them grow up into decent vampire ascenders, for Christ’s sake.

Which begged the question—even if Leto survived, what would Second Earth give him? More battling as a Warrior of the Blood? More death and destruction?

Thorne’s chest swelled first with anger, then with purpose. He wanted more for all his men, a chance at life, a good life, but how the hell would that ever be possible given the current state of things, given the current administrator’s inadequacies?

A faint hiss and arching of Leto’s neck, a tightening of his features, forced Thorne to settle the hell down. Getting pissed about things right now wasn’t going to help this situation. Leto was in deep shit on several levels.

From Thorne’s conversations with Endelle, he knew that James, from the Council of Sixth Earth, had convinced Leto over a century ago about the necessity of serving as a spy on their behalf. They had needed him to provide the Council with an ongoing record of Greaves’s war efforts. To what purpose, though, who the hell knew, because to his knowledge the Council hadn’t acted once to relieve Second Earth of the burden that had become Darian Greaves.

Did this Council understand what they’d put Leto through?

Leto had been the finest of warriors. A fine, elevated grain ran through his temperament. He was smart and he’d studied throughout the centuries: philosophy, science, all the religions. And like any good warrior, he despised death vampires.

Did the Council understand what it had cost Leto to partake of dying blood?

Thorne understood. They’d ruined him. Even he could see that Leto’s will to live had shrunk to the size of a tick’s ass, and guilt was sinking him into the grave.

Now he was here, having been rescued by Grace straight off a massive spectacle platform in Moscow Two.

Thorne glanced at Grace. She sat beside the bed in an aura of calm, dabbing at Leto’s forehead with a damp cloth. Her unoccupied hand rested on top of Leto’s and he already knew the truth. The goddamn breh-hedden had found its next pair of victims, this time with a kicker. According to Marguerite, Grace was also scenting that bastard, Casimir.