Obsidian Flame (Guardians of Ascension #5)(46)
Author: Caris Roane

Brynna went to her. Thorne was right on her heels.

“Whadya need, Sister-Seer?”

Marguerite turned to her and blinked. “You’re drunk.”

“Yeah … little bit. Whazzup?” She giggled.

“Brynna, I need you to help me get to pure vision, right now. We have an emergency. Can you do that for me?”

Brynna threw her arm forward. “Pure vision? Shit, yes. Piece a cake. Of course I’ve never done it before.” And then she laughed. “Okay … emergency … must focus. Here’s the thing. I can barely achieve 70 percent accuracy, but I’ll do what I can.”

“Good. How do we do the communal work, you know, more than one Seer at a time?”

Brynna put her hand on Marguerite’s shoulder and said, “Like this.”

Thorne couldn’t imagine what went on between the two women, but what he could observe was that each head jerked backward, as if lightning had just shot back and forth between them.

He felt Marguerite call to him telepathically. He didn’t wait, but pushed into her mind, and oh, yeah, his woman had power because there it was, the vision, complete, perfect and moving at exactly the right speed to be seen and understood, to be witnessed.

But for a long time, what he saw there didn’t make any sense at all. Yes, it was the Convent. Yes, he saw Grace at times, then not at others. There seemed to be some kind of strange cloaking substance, very much like mist, but it moved in strange patterns.

What is that? Marguerite sent.

I think it’s mist.

And those are death vampires, in the long hall where the cells are located. Is that … Leto?

Yeah. Why the hell is he at the Convent? Shit, he really doesn’t look so good.

It’s weird that he’s there, Marguerite sent. But why is he separated from Grace when they’re in the same cell?

That’s the mist.

Oh, shit … that’s Casimir, isn’t it?

Thorne finally understood. This is Casimir’s doing. I think this is a kind of mist called shifting mist.

Thorne was stunned. Shifting mist required enormous power and he sure as hell had never seen it before. So this was definitely an attack. Death vampires, a Fourth ascender, and shifting mist: Holy hell, how was he supposed to orchestrate a battle against shit like this?

The vision ended with death vampires slaying the devotiates, Leto dead, and Casimir folding Grace straight out of her cell, taking her back to his home in Paris One. He could sense the level of Seer accuracy that the women together had not only overcome Stannett’s future stream block but had achieved pure vision. There was no question in his mind that what he was seeing was exactly what would happen if he didn’t intervene.

And what the f**k was Leto doing in his sister’s convent cell? How did he even get there? Had he folded to her? If he had, why would he have done that? Why would he have put her in jeopardy like this?

Okay, one dilemma at a time.

He withdrew from Marguerite’s mind in order to make certain of one thing: whether or not he could replay the vision in his mind. He focused on what he had seen, and yes, there it was, the entire vision from beginning to end. If he wondered for a moment how that was possible, he let it go. Time later to dissect the how of things because he had only minutes to take care of business.

He let go of the images for a moment to make sure Marguerite was all right. She stood wide-eyed with shock, even trembling.

Brynna blinked several times. “Sweet mother of God, they’re all going to die.”

He put a hand on each shoulder and looked from one woman to the other. He squeezed. “Listen to me, no one is going to die tonight except all those f**king death vampires, have you got that? This is what I do. Will you both trust me to get this job done?”

Two nods.

“Good. Now come back in the house and get warmed up. It’s goddamn cold out here.” The temperature-regulating shields weren’t universal to the colony site. Even his feet were cold.

Marguerite hooked Brynna’s arm, and though the Seer stumbled a little, she guided her back into the bedroom.

As Thorne closed the door, he knew one thing. He was going to need some major Warrior of the Blood help on this one.

* * *

Change.

From the window of his hotel suite, Casimir stared at the Eiffel Tower all lit up, a lively backdrop to a night sky and his favorite city in the world, any dimension, Paris. He had lived at the Plaza Athénée for a decade, one of his favorite residences ever. His children had lived here since the day they were born. He’d made a good life for himself on Mortal Earth. His current support of Greaves was earning him another small fortune.

But after seeing Grace in Moscow Two, holy f**k, he was in trouble.

He’d lived in all four dimensions during the course of his life, his very long and in many ways satisfying life, but he’d never faced this; an unexpected erotic scent of a woman, an ascended vampire, a devotiate, which had only one but quite impossible interpretation: the breh-hedden. He honestly didn’t know what to do. And he always knew what to do.

He still couldn’t believe the vision or whatever it was that had taken Leto right out from under his stasis power. If he hadn’t hesitated, Leto would already be trussed up and in Greaves’s tender care. But he’d stood there for a few seconds too long, in frozen hell beside Greaves, on the main stage of the forthcoming military review spectacle site, ready to incapacitate Leto. Then an angel had appeared beside Leto, with really long blond hair, light eyes, and a glow around her entire being.

He’d just never seen anything like it before, the opaque quality of her presence, the power that beat in waves all around her, and the stunning sight when at the moment Leto put his hand in hers, they both vanished. But it was perhaps an even bigger surprise that Greaves had been completely unaware of her presence.

After Leto disappeared, all Greaves had done was complain about Casimir’s hesitation, blaming the failure of Leto’s capture on that. Of course he was right, yet just as he’d opened his mouth to explain his hesitation to Greaves, he had held back. If Greaves hadn’t had even the smallest perception of Grace, then this was very significant in ascended terms. Caz had a deep gnawing sensation that this could become critical to him in the future, perhaps even a point of negotiation or survival.

But how the hell was it possible, in any dimension, for this woman to be his breh? Even if he wanted to pursue Grace, what could they possibly have in common? He was a Fourth ascender and she was a saint. He was a sadist, a hedonist. He might be a devoted father, but in terms of good qualities, that was pretty much it and he knew it. Which made him completely unworthy of Thorne’s sister, and frankly not interested at all.