Wings of Fire

Medichi looked the opposite direction. “Hologram,” he cried. He did not say a word to Colonel Seriffe but began to run.

Jean-Pierre, his instincts burning, hurried back to Fiona’s bedside. He moved between her bed and the window.

And yes, he folded his sword into his hand and stared at what must be an imposter—or a dreaded hologram—out on the lawn.

***

Parisa left the hospital by the front sliders because she saw Antony halfway down the greenbelt, his hands on his hips. He had changed into kilted battle gear and looked around as if trying to figure something out.

“Antony,” she called to him. “What are you doing?”

He turned to face her and waved her forward.

Strange.

She had an appointment in half an hour with the officer in charge of the Militia Warrior Training Camps, Female Division, and she didn’t want to be late. She decided to work on her folding skills instead of just walking to Antony’s position.

But as she thought the thought and entered nether-space, she could have sworn she heard Antony behind her crying out, “Noooo!”

As she touched down, another thought skidded through her mind—where were the scars on Antony’s back?

She blinked at “Antony,” who wasn’t smiling and who looked odd. The hairs on the nape of her neck rose. No. Oh, no.

She lifted her arm to fold, but she wasn’t fast enough. “Antony” smiled and put his hand on her shoulder before she could think the thought. The image of her warrior dissolved before her eyes. Rith appeared, smiling, a dark light in his eye.

He had deceived her again and just like that she was flying through nether-space, at his mercy. She had no time to respond and she felt like such a fool as she landed hard, stumbled, and fell to a hard, dusty terra-cotta floor.

She tried to rise but couldn’t. A powerful field held her pinned down.

The air barely moved through the stuffy, dark building. She looked around. A single torch burned at the far end. The walls were also terra-cotta in color and carved with symbols she didn’t recognize.

She felt a slight breeze, but Rith was nowhere to be seen.

“Parisa.” Antony’s voice drew her to lift her head up. The field barely allowed her to do that. She could hardly see him from her position on the floor. But there he was, standing with his hands pushing at an unseen barrier.

“Did you trace after me?” she asked. Dust got in her nose, and she sneezed.

He nodded.

“Oh, God, what have I done?” she cried.

And where was Rith?

***

Medichi’s instincts had overrun his good sense. A vampire, capable of appearing in the form of any other Second Earth ascender, would have more plans in place than just taking Parisa away again.

So he’d followed a trace that in previous encounters had been blocked. And now he was trapped. He stood in the middle of what looked like some kind of religious shrine. And just like Parisa, he was boxed in by a preternatural field.

Air movement made him automatically flex his wrist as he attempted to draw his sword into his hand, but—surprise—it didn’t work. In the distance, in an adjoining room perhaps, he heard the rattle of a cart. At that moment, he knew fear, the kind that drew his stomach into a knot.

The air in the chamber was stifling—the smell of a room that hadn’t had a window opened in years. He glanced around. Centuries maybe.

A single torch burned at the far end of the space. An opening led to another part of whatever hell this was.

“I can’t move,” Parisa called out, but she coughed again and dust billowed up around her.

“Lie still.” Was that the best he could do? Tell his woman to lie still?

He spent the next several minutes testing the shield around him. He’d seen this kind of shielding before. Alison had been able to create it during her one-on-one arena battle with Leto. This was not one of Medichi’s gifts, but apparently Rith excelled at it.

He mentally pushed against every boundary but found the composition impenetrable.

A man appeared at the open doorway near the torch. He was pushing a cart that carried medical equipment. He wore a mask and green scrubs.

Medichi felt his heart give way as he recognized the tubing. “No,” he shouted, but the man, with dark skin and Asian features, ignored him.

The cart stopped beside Parisa.

Medichi battled the field, punching at it, throwing himself against the invisible wall. He aimed high, he aimed low. He levitated but the swift movement caused him to hit his head on the top of the shield and he fell onto the floor … hard.

The man knelt beside Parisa, waved his hand, then propped her up to a reclining position. The field seemed designed to restrain Parisa exclusively, because the man had no trouble reaching her. He could do whatever the hell he wanted. He had control over her, but she couldn’t move, even if he shifted her position.

He elevated Parisa’s arm and strapped it down to a flat board. He inserted a needle attached to the tubing, and immediately the blood started to flow.

Medichi shouted but got no reaction at all.

Parisa stared at her arm for a long moment. She tried to wiggle, to move, but couldn’t do anything. Her beautiful creamy complexion was covered in orange dust. Her dark hair had a fine coating as well.

After a moment, as the first bag filled up and the man clamped the tube in order to change out the bags, tears began to stream down her face. “No,” she cried. “No, no, no.” Only then did her gaze turn to Medichi.

In a terrible hard flash, he traveled back thirteen centuries, only this time the blood was draining from between his woman’s legs because she’d been raped.

Medichi blinked, trying to clear the images but couldn’t. He couldn’t meet Parisa’s gaze because he didn’t even see her. He just saw his wife’s pleading expression as life drained out of her, the white cotton gown torn, bloodstained, her breasts bared to the room.

How the hell was he back here again, after all this time?

He sank to the floor, his knees bent, his arms clasped around his legs.

How the fuck had he ended up here … again?

He closed his eyes and drew a long deep breath through his nostrils. He’d failed Parisa as he’d failed his wife and even though his mind understood that life couldn’t always be controlled, what stupidity of his had brought him back here? This couldn’t be an accident that he sat on this floor powerless to help the woman he loved.

Death is a mirror.

—Collected Proverbs, Beatrice of Fourth

Chapter 22

Parisa had been counting. The med tech was on the third bag. How many bags of blood could the human body supply? Already she was feeling funny, a little faint, light-headed, even … happy. She had heard euphoria was a sign of blood loss.

The roll of another set of wheels on terra-cotta sounded behind her. She craned her neck to look. A second cart approached. This time a woman arrived wearing blue scrubs and a mask, yelling in a foreign tongue. The med tech sat back on his heels and flipped her off.

The rattling of her cart got really loud, and the next thing Parisa knew her other arm was being strapped down to another board. But a bag of blood, not her own, hung from the side of the cart. The needle punctured her arm. The blood flowed … into her. Thank God.

She looked from one arm to the next, her mind refusing to make sense of what was happening to her. Only when a third technician entered with a defibrillator did the pieces of the puzzle finally fit.

Images raced through her head of seeing Fiona drained, filled, shocked. Drained, filled, shocked. A century of death and resurrection. A century of seeing other women come and go, giving blood one last time and unable to make the journey back.

This couldn’t be happening. Even though she knew that death vampires hunted mortals and ascenders alike, she had thought herself safe because she was ascended. Wrong.

What had brought her here to this place? Because she’d seen Antony on the stretch of lawn in front of the hospital? Because she’d trusted him? Because she’d been too quick to act?

She blinked. She’d started to feel so safe and in control of her life. She’d started to believe that all would be well. She’d been laughing with the other women, powerful women, in Fiona’s hospital room. She’d plotted her course. She would go to the training camps and become a warrior, make a difference in the war.

She stared at Antony, sitting on the floor with his arms clasped around his knees, his jeans now dusty. What had he said to her? You keep yourself apart.

She’d started to change that, she really had, or thought she had. But as her mind drifted over her decision to enter the training camps she realized she would be learning skills but probably not encouraging friendships. Her body would become tough and she’d learn martial arts and the ability to defend herself, to make use of the sword and dagger and the ability to attack the enemy. She’d learn major flight skills as well.

But that was all external activity and skill-acquiring.

It came to her in the strangest flash that all she’d be doing is switching one controlled world for another. The new world just involved making war. The previous one involved reading and shelving books, keeping her world tight and controlled. But there was something very tight and orderly about a library, not unlike the military.

She would have no real friends, no real connections, not even a true relationship with Antony.

Air movement off to her right, just beyond the first tech, brought her gaze to … Rith. He smiled. “This is where you always belonged. Keeping you like a beloved pet in Burma sickened me every day. Now you no longer fill the future streams. Your ribbon has disappeared.” He laughed. “You must thank me, you know. The Commander suggested you be removed from this world … permanently. Dear Parisa, there was a time when I wished for that as well but then a new plan occurred to me, a more complete plan.” He waved his hand over the medical equipment.

“I don’t want this,” she screamed. She tried to lift even one of her arms but both were secured in place. “I’d rather be dead.”