Finally, he told his staff the truth. The elevated spirits began to dissipate, just like his own. He would change that in a moment, but even he needed time to digest the ugly reality that he would not have his Third Earth force with him today.
At last, he waved a hand over his body. He changed from his elegant Hugo Boss suit into very basic black sweatpants and nothing more.
His generals backed up. He could see the shock, even the disapproval on their faces, so of course he had to give them a small demonstration of things to come. He let his claw emerge.
He smiled as the same group took another step back.
“Don’t worry, my friends. All is not lost.”
He then closed his eyes, and oiled up his body, top to bottom, in order to facilitate the coming change.
“I want a formal presentation at once,” he ordered.
His generals fell into line, each now restored to composure, eyes intense and focused on him.
“All begins and ends here,” he said, his voice filling the space with a faint resonance, nothing to harm his men this time but sufficient to build determination within each soul.
He glanced from face to face, warriors all, each having given himself fully to the Coming Order.
Greaves was not a man of sentiment, but he moved forward and went from man to man, cupping each at the back of the neck with his palm. No words were spoken as he passed down the line.
When he was done, he stood back and said simply, “You have your orders.”
The line broke as each man moved to his station in the room to sit before a computer screen and to monitor the ranks under his command. If so moved during events at White Lake, he would order an outright attack.
As it stood, however, mobilizing the entire army served no purpose since Leto had stolen half his force. For the moment, Greaves had lost the military advantage he’d worked so diligently to create, but he saw no sense in expending warriors when he might have need of them later. If during the coming battle he actually failed, he would fold to his Geneva stronghold, recover, then rebuild.
He had made his decision about how he would morph during the coming battle. He would hold nothing back. By the rules of war, approved by COPASS, both he and Endelle could do their worst.
And so he would.
He was therefore taking a small contingent to White Lake, not even a full regiment, just five hundred seasoned death vampires. They were an exquisite force of pretty-boys, all with blue-tinged skin and glossy black feathers when in flight. His force, if nothing else, would be a beautiful, terrifying sight to behold.
With him, he also had his diminished squad of three remaining Third Earth death vampires from the original lot he had snuck through the breach in the portal over the past six months. The majority had already died—some at the hands of Thorne five months ago in Moscow Two, and the rest more recently because of Casimir and Leto’s combined efforts.
When an aide called out that the mist from White Lake had just disappeared, Greaves bid his generals to await his orders, then folded to his landing platform at the mouth of the vast Estrella Mountain underground barracks. His death vampires stood in formation, lovely to behold in black kilts and maroon weapons harnesses. He’d ordered his own form of the cadroen, so that his men presented a uniform appearance.
He smiled. Using a form of mass telepathy, he communicated in a firm mental voice, Today we vanquish our enemy.
As one, each right fist pumped the air and a deafening battle cry filled the cavern.
* * *
Endelle stood on the bank of White Lake, her mist withdrawn. She felt deeply sobered by watching Alison fulfill a destiny that Alison had predicted at the time of her ascension. Obsidian flame, Leto, Thorne, Kerrick, and Alison flew toward her, and landed one after the other in an arc in front of her.
Each ascender was equally sobered, as though in some mystical way, they knew as a group that what happened next would be pivotal.
By prior agreement, she folded everyone to the Apache Junction Two landing platforms. Once down the ramp, she turned, let the group gather around her once more, and ordered obsidian flame to use Marguerite’s Seer ability to have a look at White Lake.
Fiona, Marguerite, and Grace faced one another. Endelle could feel the power flow from deep in the earth. Thorne stood near them, ready to anchor all that power as needed.
Endelle knew the moment when Marguerite entered the future streams; it was as though a switch clicked. The same switch got flipped again as Marguerite withdrew. But her face was pinched, and her eyes wide, as she met Endelle’s gaze.
Endelle knew that Marguerite had seen something about the battle that horrified her. She had a split-second decision to make about what the group should know and finally called out to Marguerite, “Come here and show me what you’ve seen. Just me, do you understand?”
She nodded and moved past the other two women to reach up and put her hands on Endelle’s face. Marguerite let the vision flow.
When Endelle watched the images pass by in a swift wave, she watched the nature of her own transformation. She saw Greaves as well. She didn’t understand how her new form could battle his and possibly win. She was still herself, except without flight gear, and her wings had changed, morphing to enormous, ethereal, floating panels without feathers; more butterfly than bird. Her hair floated in a mass of iridescent pastel shades. Her na**d body, while still very female, also bore what looked like a flame pattern of the same pastel shades and very iridescent. The effect was beautiful but not exactly the lethal presence she would need to defeat a monster.
In the vision she flew in Greaves’s direction; then the prophetic images faded to nothing. Was she flying to her doom? Because Greaves looked like a man now covered in impenetrable plates like a medieval knight, yet made up of his biological material.
She squeezed her eyes shut for a long moment absorbing what she had seen.
She simply couldn’t believe what would be required of her or how the form she had chosen could actually battle Greaves.
When she opened her eyes, she drew a deep breath and told Marguerite to remain silent and not to share the images with anyone.
“Endelle,” Thorne called out. “This isn’t right. You should tell everyone.”
“Perhaps I should,” she said, straightening her shoulders. “But there is part of the vision that concerns only me, which I intend to keep private between me and Marguerite. The rest, however, I can communicate, but I want all the Warriors of the Blood in the folding hangar as quickly as possible, in flight gear, their brehs with them.”
Thorne got on his com and started barking orders one after the other.