Wings of Fire (Guardians of Ascension #3)(54)
Author: Caris Roane

“Are you all right?” Havily asked. “You’re very pale. Antony, look how pale she is.”

“I see it.”

Parisa heard them talking, but the throb in her head worsened. She could still see Fiona. She trailed after her in voyeur fashion, but the pain intensified so much that she finally shut down her voyeur window.

A moment later the pressure in her head eased, but tears tracked down her cheeks. “That hurt so much and I’d had such success.”

“It’s okay. It’s okay,” Antony said, his fingers stroking her forearm lightly. “This was your first try. I take it you communicated with Fiona? You squealed a couple of times.”

She glanced at Antony, who had slid from his chair and was now on his knees and leaning over her. He wiped at her cheeks. “I spoke into her head and even though she wasn’t able to answer back, telepathically I mean, she responded to my questions aloud and I could hear her. It was just as all of you said—Rith removed the slaves in a vehicle, a Hummer actually. He drove for about fifteen minutes then dematerialized the group somewhere.”

“As a group?” Jean-Pierre asked. “That would be a shitload of power.”

Parisa smiled. Shitload sounded like sheetload. She loved his accent.

“What else can you tell us?” Antony said.

Parisa tried to recall the conversation word for word and began relating it as best she could. She ended with, “One of the women who worked in the Burma house as a servant was tending to Fiona, ordering her around. She kept asking Fiona if she was going crazy, probably because Fiona was talking out loud.”

“I’m wondering,” Havily mused. “You said Fiona was walking in a garden. Was it daylight?”

“Yes. Yes it was. Oh, that’s significant, because it’s still daylight here.”

“What about the shadows? Were they long or nonexistent?”

“Very long—as in it was almost evening.”

“That’s excellent. Now, what of the gardens. What kind of plants did you see?”

“Lavender. I saw lots of lavender. Juniper, I think. The garden had rocks, herbs maybe, I’m not sure.”

Once Parisa had answered all pertinent questions, Antony called Carla at Central.

Parisa could hear her squeals, sounds that echoed her own earlier cries of excitement. By the time Antony got off the phone, he was smiling. Carla felt certain, given all the information they’d been able to provide, that they might be looking at the Mediterranean region. If her hunch was correct, she would have a fix on the location of the death and resurrection slaves within the next few hours.

Was it possible?

Antony, however, frowned.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Well, now we need to get Thorne’s approval to go after them. I’ll want at least some of the Warriors of the Blood with me.”

“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.