Wings of Fire

James didn’t say anything, just stood beside her staring out at the quiet battlefield. But his comforting stream of power continued to pulse through her hand and up her arm.

As she stared out at empty airspace to the rim opposite, nothing looked changed. Of course, the environmental teams had already been through repairing horticultural battle damage. Second Earth’s version of tree-huggers. Whatever.

“He attacked because of the future streams,” James said. “You need better Seer information.”

“Yes, I do.”

“You must make a change. You know what I’m referring to.”

“It will break Thorne’s heart.”

“Yes, it will.”

Endelle had been avoiding this moment for over a century, from the time she’d first seen Thorne’s woman hidden deep within his mind. She hadn’t meant to invade such a private space, but the memory had glowed bright, the way the ribbons of the future streams were said to glow.

So she had pushed her way into the memory and seen what she was never meant to see.

Thorne’s woman was a Seer with third, perhaps even fourth dimension capacity, well beyond anything she had ever known before, and Thorne had been protecting her from Second Earth involvement all this time.

But dear God, what would it do to Thorne if she used his woman as a pawn in this terrible game of war?

***

Greaves sat down in a chair covered in crushed purple velvet. He repressed a shudder. The vampire opposite him had the fashion and decorating taste of a pimp from a few decades past. Greaves deeply disliked him, the way he lounged so casually, several lines of cocaine splayed out in precise order on a glass coffee table in front of him. All he needed was two half-naked women draped over his shoulders to complete the absurd portrait.

“You’ve always hated my hedonistic inclinations,” Casimir said. He smiled. He had large, beautiful teeth, the body of a god, the appetites of Lucifer. His booted foot swung up and back. His snug white pants concealed none of his considerable assets. If Greaves had been otherwise inclined, he would have thought Casimir was trying to seduce him.

“Not your hedonism. You of all men should know that I share your proclivities.” He waved a hand around the room. “But I do find your outward expression quite ridiculous.”

The vampire leaned his shoulders more deeply into the black leather of the couch. “What do you want, Darian? I take it this isn’t a social call … unless you want it to be.”

Greaves ignored the invitation. He swung many ways but he drew the line at sex with the Prince of Darkness. Even a sociopath had his standards.

He sighed.

The moment had come.

He had been dreading this interview for a good number of centuries. He had believed he would never be required to make the request because his plans had been going so very well. But then, he had hoped against hope that the Upper Dimension would not become involved, that his seizure of smaller realms would have lulled it into believing that his ambitions were negligible—until too late, of course.

However, now that three of the Warriors of the Blood had completed the breh-hedden and increased their powers exponentially because of the women involved, the handwriting had simply appeared on the wall in a way he could no longer ignore. If he’d had any doubts on that score, they were settled by the fact that the most recent bonding had resulted in the loss of his voyeur-link with Parisa. Then there were the wings the happy pair shared. Not to split metaphors too heavily, but the use of royle wings had been the nail in his coffin.

God, what a show that had been, and such a peaceful sensation. Talk about spectacle. It really was too bad that he hadn’t been able to use the footage in his propaganda campaigns, but the energy the couple used showed up on film only as strange flashes of light.

It had been no accident that his minions had failed to kill them all. Forces were at work, some based in destiny and accompanying misfortune, some in the fulfillment of myth, some by the hand of an Upper ascender. It was because of the latter that he’d orchestrated this unfortunate meeting.

He had no choice now but to speak words that brought bile rising from his stomach. “It would seem I need your help.”

The large white teeth made another appearance. “The cost will be high.”

He nodded. “Naturally.”

Casimir glanced at his well-manicured nails, buffed to a gleam. “I saw your mother recently in one of my visits home.” Casimir was a Fourth ascender.

“And how fares the great philosopher of Fourth Earth?”

“Beatrice is lovely as always. She has not aged a day.” He laughed at his little immortal joke. “She is as sanctimonious as ever, though, quite judgmental—I despise her for that—but beautiful. You have her eyes, you know. Sometimes it is most unsettling to see you, my friend, and at the same moment to recognize Beatrice’s large round eyes. Yes, very unsettling.”

“Is she still building things?” Beatrice had always had a passion for architecture.

He waved a hand, a sensual, delicate motion. “Her latest project is some sort of rehabilitation center surrounded by a lake. The lake is supposed to have healing properties, and the inmates are baptized in it. Can you imagine? I’ve dubbed it the lake of fire.” He chuckled, but the sound had resonance and floated around the room until it settled on Greaves’s shoulders, a heavy weight.

The time to negotiate had begun. “So tell me your price.”

Casimir’s teeth gleamed once more in the dim, dim light. “Oh, I think you know what I’ll require, at least at the beginning.”

Greaves felt his mind slide around loosely. How stupid he had been. He had thought perhaps wealth, or an endless supply of mortal women, or the right to half his kingdom, but he should have known better. Casimir always went to the heart of things. He preferred to draw blood at the outset.

“So you want Julianna.”

He shrugged. “I have gazed upon her, so yes, of course.”

That was a lie. Casimir may have actually seen Julianna, true, but her beauty was not what drew him. Greaves’s unfortunate attachment to Eldon Crace’s former wife was what Casimir had noticed.

Greaves sighed. His left hand twitched, but he didn’t bring forth his claw. There would be no point. A Fourth ascender had advanced powers and would not be intimidated by anything so vulgar.

The question in life was always the same: What are you willing to do to get the things you want?

Oh, damn.

***

Rith trembled on his chaise longue in the underground cavern of his St. Louis Two blood donor facility. He pulled himself out of the future streams, sweating and nauseous.

Not only had his plans with Parisa failed, but his future had taken a terrible turn.

He had been such a fool from beginning to end where Parisa Lovejoy had been concerned. She had been the cause of this new horror. He should have gone with his instincts and killed her at the outset. Even if he had secured her death later—while he had her in his control at his temple, say—his future might not look so bleak.

Instead, like a complete novice, he’d ignored the rising level of her powers and assumed his energy fields would keep both of his prisoners trapped so that they couldn’t dematerialize. By the time he’d lit the torch at the end of the room, they were gone.

Now the ribbon of light belonging to Parisa had combined with Warrior Medichi’s ribbon to forge an impenetrable prophetic signature, which he could no longer read. The couple had completed the breh-hedden. Whatever their futures might be, whatever roles they might play in the war, were now lost to him, lost to most of the Seers of Second Earth.

Still, Fiona, the one who had been the Commander’s first blood slave experiment, had risen to prominence in the future streams, a glowing light that he had been unable to resist reading.

He had picked up her ribbon of an intense silver-blue and ridden her prophecies. What he had found there made him rise from his chaise longue and head into the makeshift lavatory. He threw up into the bucket of water.

He had seen his death in glorious Technicolor at the hands of Fiona. Then he had seen his death at the hands of the Warrior Jean-Pierre. After that, he had seen Greaves himself, his beloved Commander, plunge a blade straight through his heart.

How was he to forge a life from the future streams when his own death had been foretold in three different ways?

***

A week after the battle at the Grand Canyon, Fiona sat in a large conference room at Madame Endelle’s administrative headquarters. The wall of windows to the east gave a view onto an expansive stretch of desert. It never failed to surprise her, since all she’d known for most of her hundred-plus years on Second Earth was a green garden and a large tamarind tree. Her eyes welcomed the change, surprisingly. But she supposed that from the moment of her rescue, when she was brought to Madame Endelle’s palace, which overlooked miles of the same Sonoran Desert, she would always think of vast blue skies, clumps of cactus and creosote, and tall stately saguaros, as the representation of her freedom.

Alison sat beside her. She looked very pregnant but very relaxed now. Each time she tensed up, she closed her eyes, calmed her body, and ran a soothing hand over her swollen abdomen. She was communicating telepathically with the infant now, getting better every day at helping Helena draw in her temporary wings and keep her sloshy amniotic haven from spasming.

Fiona had loved being pregnant, carrying her children—lovely Carolyn with her soft honey-brown curls and Peter who came out charging forward, ready to take on the world.

Fiona smiled at the blond beauty. Fiona was tall but still two inches shy of six-foot Alison. Height was a good thing when a woman was attached to a Warrior of the Blood—better kissing distance.

Parisa had made an effort to discover on Fiona’s behalf the basic events of her family’s lives. Her husband, Terence, had remarried five years after Fiona’s disappearance. He’d had a second family to whom he had been utterly devoted. She could smile at the thought. Terence had been a good man, a wonderful loving husband and an excellent father, his hand neither too heavy nor too light. Of course he would have married again.