Wings of Fire

He shrugged. “I believe that is your choice. Didn’t Fiona tell you it’s a matter of will?”

“Why do you hate me so much?” she asked.

“Because he favored you.”

“He? As in Commander Greaves? The one who wants me dead?” She couldn’t have heard him right. He was making no sense.

Rith nodded. “He forged a link with you, remember?”

Enlightenment dawned. Rith was jealous. “You call that favoring me?”

“What else? I’d seen you in the future streams and I told him you needed to be destroyed, but he wouldn’t have it. He wanted to make use of you. Only now, after his voyeur-link proved ineffectual and you succeeded in taking some of my blood donors, has he has decided you must die.

“But your service here is a much more fitting plan. Your blood will command an excellent price on the market.”

She didn’t understand. “Why?”

A black brow rose. “I keep forgetting that you aren’t well versed in our world yet. The drinking of dying blood always relates back to the mortal or ascender whose blood is being imbibed. You’re very powerful, you’re the mortal-with-wings, as you will always be known, and your blood will have exceptional qualities that in turn will enhance the powers of the recipient. The more powerful that recipient, the greater the benefits of the donor blood. Do you understand?”

Since her heart had started to sink, she could only dip her chin. Oh, God.

He laughed again, a hollow sound in the dim light. He was standing with his hands clasped behind his back, his expression calm, almost disinterested. “But I suppose none of this was truly your fault. You could not help the level of your power, and unfortunately Commander Greaves’s flaw is his desire to flaunt his victories. He truly enjoyed having possession of you and letting all his allies know.

“I am not encumbered by such a flaw. My purpose in life is but to serve him.” He looked away from her as he spoke, as though talking only to himself. He sighed. “Life can be cruel in a great variety of ways. His will must be my will, in all things.” He shifted his gaze back to her, his stare cold and quite indifferent.

His logic was so perverted, his intentions so vile, that a new kind of horror gripped her chest making it hard to breathe. Rith had no intention of letting her live for very long, despite his claim that he intended to profit from her blood. His purpose was deeper, more nefarious. He wanted to punish her because she had been “favored.” No doubt when he was satisfied, he would simply let her die.

“What of Warrior Medichi?” she asked.

His gaze flicked in Antony’s direction, then returned to her. “He will be executed at the hour Greaves wishes. It will not be long.”

He lifted his arm and vanished.

Dizziness drifted through her mind yet she felt strangely relaxed, even sleepy. What bag was the tech filling now? Four? Five?

***

Medichi had remained silent. There was no point in shouting at a man who had him locked in a preternatural cage of energy.

He had to figure this out.

He sat on the floor, his arms still slung around his knees, his eyes closed.

When Rith had appeared, all he’d wanted to do was rage at him but what good would that have done? Rith held all the cards and right now Medichi needed to think.

He sent a telepathic cry for help out to Endelle. If anyone could hear him, she could. But his thoughts hit a shield and bounced back to him, a lumbering sensation that rolled through his head. Another shield, another dome of mist or two, Rith’s specialty.

He had no hope of finding Endelle or one of his warrior brothers or of being found, not shielded like this, not caught below the mist. So how the hell was he supposed to get out of here, Parisa with him?

He doubted that even a telepathic link would work in this environment.

He opened his eyes and looked at Parisa. She lay quietly now, her eyes closed. He scooted closer, to the point that the field stopped him. He was only three feet away from her, three feet and completely impotent.

The blood leaving her arm filled the bag swiftly. The blood entering her body moved at maybe a third of the pace, enough room to allow for death. Of course. She had to die in order to produce dying blood. Then be brought back to life to sustain Greaves’s operation. All twenty-one facilities around the world did indeed have to be found and destroyed.

But that was a job for the future.

He rose to his feet and started to pace what amounted to his cell.

Antony, Parisa sent out to him. He paced to the end of the narrow shield and pressed himself against the unyielding boundary.

I’m here, he sent. I’m trying to figure this out. There has to be a way.

I’m sorry, she said. She opened her eyes, barely.

For what? he cried within her mind—too strongly, because she winced.

I was reckless and stubborn. I thought I understood what I could do on Second Earth to help, to make a difference, to become a warrior like you. I was fooling myself.

You wanted to serve in the Militia. It’s an honorable goal. Now he was defending her choices?

But I hadn’t changed anything, not really. I hadn’t changed. Her voice drifted away. What did she mean?

He felt panicky. He could feel her leaving him. Parisa, he called to her. His heart thumped in his chest. Oh, God. Oh, God. The techs were moving around now in choreographed precision. They’d done this before.

“What are you doing to her!” he shouted. He already knew but the feeling of impotence crawled over every inch of his skin like a sudden burning. Shouting was all he could do.

The techs ignored him.

He couldn’t hold the rage back. He paced the small five-foot length of the shielded box in which he was trapped. He roared at the ceiling at the knowledge that his woman was being drained for her dying blood so that she could feed a thousand addicted death vampires and that she might or might not make it back to him.

That last thought brought him to the dusty brick floor. His knees banged hard but the physical pain was the least of what he was feeling. He lifted his hands to the heavens and roared long and loud.

He felt her die.

He felt her die.

The roaring changed to a keening sound and he wrapped his arms around his chest and rocked back and forth. What had he done? What had he done?

Even if she made it back, what could he do for her? For himself?

He was trapped. They were both trapped.

And there wasn’t a damn thing he could do.

Medichi came to an awareness that his pattern of keeping a safe emotional distance from the rest of the world, and of using brute strength to get a job done, wasn’t enough in this situation. He thought it a poetic piece of irony that he was separated from Parisa by two powerful force fields.

He’d lived unto himself, not making connections for thirteen centuries for fear of getting too close to anyone again and risking the pain of loss should they die. When he ascended and experienced his initial onset of power, he felt invincible as he exacted his revenge.

Invited into the Warriors of the Blood soon after, he’d taken on the new mantle. He had felt born again, a new creature birthed in blood and power. He was good at making war, at fighting and killing death vampires, and the rest of the warriors were the same. They were a band of brothers, eight strong.

But with all that power, here he stood, trapped and separated from Parisa, unable to help her or himself. He served as her Guardian of Ascension. He was supposed to protect her, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t protect her because he’d kept his distance. When he spoke of completing the breh-hedden it had never been about caring for her. No, he’d spoken in practical terms, that the natural bonding that occurred would make it possible to know where she was at all times, to feel what she felt, and to come to her aid with a mere whispered thought. Both Kerrick and Marcus could do this as a result of completing the breh-hedden with their mates.

But he had never wanted the connection and maybe for that reason she had so easily separated herself from him, moved to the guest room where she’d spent the night.

Now he was paying for it, paying for all the ways he’d held back from her. Would she have been more inclined to complete the breh-hedden if he had just opened his heart to her, really opened his heart, loved her, made her feel safe, that he would never leave her, walk out on her as her fiancé once had?

The defibrillator wound up, a scream in the dim torchlight. The female tech called out. Hands flew back. There was a loud thump, then another and another. His stomach turned.

Live, he shouted within Parisa’s mind. Live, dammit. What would he do if she died? How could he live without her?

The defibrillator cried shrilly again. Another shout. Another thump. Parisa’s body jerked against the dusty floor. Another dusty cloud drifted around her.

Live, he sent. Live, live, live, live. The chant grew in his mind, expanded and grew until at last her chest rose, she drew a breath, and one of the techs put a stethoscope over her heart.

When the pair leaned back and started tending once more to their equipment, when he saw Parisa’s chest rise and fall in the dim light even if her eyes didn’t open, only then did he draw a breath of his own.

He released a heavy groan. He rocked some more.

***

Parisa opened her eyes. Her chest hurt. She felt as though she’d had big rocks thrown at her rib cage, one after the other, for about a year. She saw the green scrubs of the male tech. He was packing up. His job was done.

She shifted her head to the other side. The woman, with her sour black eyes and furrowed brow, met her gaze for a split second then looked away. She, too, was packing up her supplies, impatient to be going.

So, she’d made it back.

She felt ill. Her chest really hurt and she was so dizzy. She wanted to sleep but something was left undone.

Her gaze moved around the room.

There. Opposite her. Antony, she whispered softly in her mind. She couldn’t have opened her mouth to speak if she’d wanted to.

I’m here, he sent.

She had trouble seeing him. She squinted. Antony’s dark eyes glittered in the dim torchlight. He looked angry.