Wings of Fire

“Is there a chance he won’t let them go?” Thorne always had the final word.

Antony nodded. “Yes.”

“What about the Militia Warriors? Could we take some of them instead?”

He shook his head. “I wouldn’t want to chance it. Death vampires can easily overpower a Militia Warrior. It takes a minimum of four Militia Warriors to take down one death vampire.”

Parisa blinked several times. The profound difficulty of the war came into much sharper focus for her. “I know I must have heard that statistic before but until just this moment I didn’t get it. No wonder Greaves has an advantage. He’s creating death vampires left and right.”

“And supplying them with the necessary dying blood.”

She felt ill. If she hadn’t been sitting down, she would have fallen back into her chair.

Of one thing she was certain: Somehow Thorne had to give them enough Warriors of the Blood to bring Fiona and the blood slaves home.

***

Greaves repressed his fury. Rith was not at fault for what had just happened, or rather for what hadn’t happened, when he made use of his voyeur-link to Parisa.

As soon as the voyeur session had ended, he had folded to Rith’s home in the south of France. He wanted to see for himself what Parisa had voyeured, and here he was.

He walked in the Toulouse garden, Rith beside him. The visual part of the voyeur had worked perfectly. He would never mistake this place for anything other than the setting in which the preternatural event had occurred. But another part had failed, some imperfection in the link.

“Parisa appears to have a connection with the woman, Fiona. Were you aware of it?” Greaves spoke in his usual tone, but Rith’s stare had gone blank.

“I was not aware of a special connection, but I believe I might know when it occurred. Do you recall that when you first met Parisa in Mandalay, her dress bore grass stains and her hair was askew?”

Greaves nodded. He slowed his steps to watch Rith carefully as he spoke.

“For some reason, the blood slave Fiona had succeeded in escaping. She approached Parisa, begging for assistance. When I tried to draw her away, Parisa got caught in the ensuing struggle.”

“I see. And there was physical connection, touch involved?”

“Yes.”

Greaves nodded again. “One small correction, though, my dear Rith. We call them donors, not slaves. There will be no acknowledged slaves in the Coming Order. Please make use of the correct term.”

Rith bowed. He seemed genuinely distressed. “Of course, master. Forgive me.” When he rose back up and met Greaves’s gaze once more, Rith continued, “But please help me to understand exactly what has happened. Are you saying that Parisa voyeured our blood donor in this garden? Here in Toulouse? And you say they spoke? Are we undone already in this facility? I hesitate to move everyone since I am draining a female even as we speak.”

Greaves narrowed his eyes. Rith had not been himself since the gifted mortal escaped his Mandalay home. That was clear to him now. Something about Parisa’s escape disturbed Rith. Greaves wished he had known. He didn’t like waves, even small ones, in his extensive organization. If he’d known that Rith would be knocked out of stride by losing control of the mortal-with-wings, he would never have agreed to Julianna’s plan in the first place.

However, as upsetting as Rith’s disquiet was, Greaves had a greater reason to be disappointed in his mind-link scheme. Though the plan had seemed clever at the time, a serious flaw in the usefulness of the link had emerged—Greaves had been able to see the entire exchange but not to hear it. He had vision through the link, but not hearing.

He didn’t know why it had failed, only that it had, probably because the woman was more powerful than even he understood. In addition, he could only make use of the link when the woman opened it. He had truly believed that successfully engaging the voyeur capacity of the infamous mortal-with-wings would have afforded him more access. But it hadn’t. He struggled even now to calm his temper.

He did not normally give himself to profane speech, but in that moment he had succumbed.

When Parisa had made contact with Fiona, Greaves had felt the mind-link vibrate within his head. He had opened the link and flowed along the preternatural highway until he could see all that Parisa saw through her voyeur’s window. He had experienced a tremendous flush of excitement because the applications of the link with the woman, now ascended, seemed endless in scope.

The moment he recognized the blood donor walking in the garden, he had breathed a sigh of pure exhilaration. That is, until he saw the woman look around and he noticed that though her lips were moving, no sound was coming forth, which meant that though Parisa was speaking telepathically to the woman, he’d been unable to capture the conversation, either side. What good were pictures without words in such a situation?

When the Burmese servant had arrived to take Fiona back to her cell, he had cut off Parisa’s voyeur window with a prolonged punishing slash of his mind. Yes. He’d been angry. He still was. He could not believe that with his vast array of preternatural power, he was somehow deaf in his voyeur-link with Parisa. Yet so it seemed.

Still, he controlled his temper.

“We are in no immediate danger, but you can always leave a donor behind if you’re forced to vacate quickly. The women are meant to serve the greater good. Please don’t get squeamish about this.”

Rith shook his head. “Not squeamish. Orderly. I merely prefer to keep the shipments as regular as possible.”

At that, Greaves smiled.

“Do I amuse you, master?”

“You please me. You always have an eye to efficiency, and your indifference to the lives of the donors is very uplifting.”

Rith nodded. “I know how to sustain the correct priorities. I have learned well from you.”

Greaves recalled the garden from Parisa’s voyeur perspective. He put himself in her shoes, especially since she was so well connected to the Warriors of the Blood. It would be just a matter of time, probably less than twenty-four hours, before the Toulouse location was discovered. “I take it you have an escape plan in place?”

“Of course, master. Across the seas this time I think but I will not allow the slaves, that is, donors, outside anymore. Shall I take them at once? It would be no hardship.”

Greaves pondered the situation. “No, I think not. I want to make use of the voyeur-link again, to see if I can improve its function. I’ll let you know what the opposition plans to do. I have no doubt a rescue attempt will occur. So make your plans, be sure to secure at least twenty death vampires as previously discussed, and keep me informed. And now I must return to Geneva.” He did not wait for further conversation, or to hear Rith’s final obsequious salutation. He lifted his hand and was gone.

***

“You think I like saying no?” Thorne’s voice thundered through the Cave.

It was now nine in the morning and all the Warriors of the Blood were present, except Marcus. He’d served his two nights a week battling; the rest of the week he performed the difficult office of High Administrator of Desert Southwest Two.

Parisa took a step backward, forgetting that Medichi stood right behind her. Thorne had been thundering for a few minutes now, pacing the length of the room, glowering. Yes, the warrior glowered.

Antony’s large hands landed on her arms and steadied her. He leaned close and whispered against her ear, “You okay?”

She nodded, her head brushing his chin and cheek. A lovely rush of sage distracted her for a moment until Thorne reached the end of the room, headed back, and met her gaze.

“You don’t understand what you’re asking,” he cried. “I’ve got five critical Borderlands to protect here in Metro Phoenix Two, every goddamn night. And you want to take them all with you on this mission? Right now the warriors need to be resting and sleeping, not out in some other part of the world doing battle. And if the grid does pick up another anomaly after nightfall, how am I supposed to keep death vamps from riding down the Trough and feasting on mortals without warriors guarding the access points? Answer me that.”

Parisa couldn’t. She knew the Trough was the space between dimensions, and that most of the death vampires weren’t powerful enough to just fold through. They had to ride through the Troughs in order to get to Mortal Earth.

“I don’t know, Warrior Thorne,” she said. “I don’t have an answer. I just know that I can’t leave those women there.”

“At least they’re alive,” he barked, now standing in front of her. His skin was flushed, and the whites of his eyes were bloodshot. “But every time a death vamp reaches Mortal Earth unimpeded, through the Trough, women die. Some men, too, but mostly women are the targets. What do you think I should do?”

Parisa made a quick decision. She moved into Thorne and touched a cheek with each hand.

He stepped away from her. “What are you doing?”

“Let me show you.”

He shook his head, but he didn’t move when she lifted her hands to his face again. His gaze flickered with something like panic but he held still. She closed her eyes and let the memories of Fiona’s death and resurrection flow.

His whole body jerked. He gasped at first, clearly resistant, then lowered his shields. It was like feeling a dam give way, her mind flowing into his as the images rocketed through. The only part of the memory she withheld was what had happened to Fiona after she drank the small glass of blood. At that moment, she removed her hands from his face.

Thorne stumbled back a few steps, his eyes squeezed shut. “Shit, shit, shit.” He repeated the word about a dozen more times. He ended up leaning his hips against the pool table. He stared at the black tile floor and shook his head.

He looked even more wrecked than before, so she crossed to him then put a hand on his arm. “Now do you understand? I was only held there for three months and not as a blood slave. Fiona said she was taken from Boston in 1886.”

“Jesus. She’s been a blood slave that long? Even before the days of the defibrillator?”