Gates of Rapture (Guardians of Ascension 6)

He didn’t want to leave her body, but he also wanted to make sure that he didn’t accidentally hurt her wings. They were strong yet fragile. Plucking a feather hurt like a bitch.

He slipped out of her, and her knees buckled for a moment. She caught herself and carefully began drawing her wings in. When her back muscles had thinned out, she finally stood upright.

She folded a towel into her hand, and without apologizing or showing any sign of embarrassment, she cleaned up.

He stood smiling at her, like an idiot, his wings still at full-mount and flapping lazily.

He was happy, so goddam happy.

She grinned in response.

He spent the next hour with her in the bathtub, soaping her up, rinsing her off, kissing her, and making love to her all over again, but this time very slowly. Even then, he ended up sloshing most of the water onto the floor.

When he helped her out of the tub and passed her a towel, he realized she’d grown quiet, almost still. She was thinking hard again.

“What is it?” he asked.

She met his gaze as she dried off. “Just thinking about our last conversation in the kitchen and about becoming more real in your life. I keep thinking how we completed the breh-hedden so early in the process. I worry that in not connecting fully we’ve made ourselves vulnerable, if that makes sense.”

He tossed his towel onto the sink, crossed to her, and took her in his arms. “I think about it as well, and I agree with you that we’re vulnerable. I feel it, too.”

“We’ve both had it rough,” she whispered.

Death vampires had disrupted their lives early on, perhaps forcing each to draw inward, to fail to connect on a deep level with others.

He squeezed her again, and she grabbed his arms and returned the hug. “We’ll stick close right now,” he whispered, kissing her hair. “And just keep talking to me. I’m here.”

* * *

The next morning, Greaves paced the long conference room in his Command Center at Estrella Mountain. He’d come to consult with his generals once more, but the level of vampire testosterone bouncing around the room had given him a headache.

For the first time in months, he missed Leto. He hadn’t really understood the warrior’s value until precisely this moment when his generals were shouting one another down and crying for blood, insisting on launching every weapon within the Estrella Complex right now, at this very moment, to blow the Camelback Parade Grounds all to hell so that the spectacle event would have to be canceled.

He wanted to torch the room, burn them all alive, and start over, maybe create a new life for himself.

He rarely felt like this, as though he needed to question every aspect of his life and, yes, to start over. His mother, Beatrice of Fourth, had invited him to partake of her baptism program and be redeemed through her graded pools in the way Casimir had. If he’d understood the process, he would experience within these baptisms every wrong he had ever committed against another human or ascender, followed by searing remorse.

He smiled at the idea. That would be a lot of remorse, indeed.

He glanced briefly at the men shouting at one another across the table. One of his generals threw a sheaf of papers into the air, another who was much given to profanity let loose with a string of beauties, while a third had been yelling so long and so loud that his face was beet red and his eyes were bulging.

Greaves continued his pacing. The bombast and railing fell into a muffled background noise as he pondered what he should do about the forthcoming obsidian flame spectacle.

His generals wanted him to attack, but would that be wise?

What would Leto have recommended? Patience, then more patience, to be wary of a trap, to be careful with public relations, and to never underestimate Endelle.

But Leto wasn’t here and Endelle had chosen this moment in history to make a very public demonstration of her latest preternatural good fortune.

The trouble was, he still didn’t know what the triad could do. If he attacked, could obsidian flame respond with equal force?

When the shouting of his generals once more pierced his mind, he simply raised both hands and, using several carefully combined resonances, said, “Enough.”

Two of his generals passed out. The rest gripped their heads and grunted in pain. Resonance combined with mind-speak had wonderful applications.

At least the bombast had ceased.

“I know you would all prefer to torch the planet, but we need to be a trifle more restrained than that. I think limiting our destruction to the Camelback Parade Grounds, at the height of the spectacle event, will accomplish all that needs to be accomplished. With luck, we’ll destroy the triad, and then we can proceed with greater confidence. After that, we’ll begin a systematic destruction of all the hidden colonies on Mortal Earth.”

Now that a decision had been made, his staff calmed down.

“The spectacle event is scheduled to begin at eight o’clock this evening, as you know. Please have rocket launchers in place and be ready to fire on my orders. Are we clear?” He didn’t wait for an answer. He lifted his right arm and folded back to Geneva.

* * *

Julianna dipped down and smelled the roses Owen Stannett had sent her. The fragrance was lovely. Too bad it didn’t help her present mood.

She reached for the note again. How many times had she read then reread his tidy little message? How many times had she screamed at the ceiling of Greaves’s bedroom?

So Grace was back, beautiful, perfect, little-miss-spiritual Grace of Albion was back. Whoop-dee-fucking-doo.

She stretched her arms overhead, then reached for a long-handled, bamboo back scratcher. The thing about having so much destructive sex with Greaves wasn’t the pain, it was the frequent itching as her skin healed.

She closed her eyes and lightly rubbed the narrow tines over the her middle wing-locks. She cooed and sighed.

Greaves had gone crazy with his claw again. And again.

She really did belong with the Commander. And though she had no serious interest in Casimir anymore, her delicate female vanity was wounded. She needed relief from that wound, just as the bamboo tines were giving her relief from her itchy wing-locks.

She wanted justice because Casimir had walked out on her.

No man had ever walked out on her before. Ever.

Well, one had, a century ago, but she’d made him good and dead with her special hand-blast ability, so he no longer counted.

The truth was she didn’t really blame Casimir, at least not nearly so much as Grace. She wanted to hurt Caz, of course, but her true desire was to see Grace dead. But how and when to attack?