Wings of Fire (Guardians of Ascension #3)

He thumbed his phone. “Hey, Jeannie.”

“Endelle patching through.” The line went dead. Jeannie didn’t even greet him, which meant the scorpion queen was in a mood.

“Medichi,” Endelle snapped. “Get your fucking ass over to my office pronto.”

“I’m alone at the White Tanks Borderland, Mortal Earth, and I can feel the air cooling down. You know what that means. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

“I mean now, asshole,” she shouted into the phone. “Thorne’s sending Santiago to take your place.”

“I said—” He wasn’t going to argue with her so he thumbed his phone. He might not have been thinking clearly, though, because in some part of his fatigued, stressed mind he realized he might have just hung up on the ruler of Second Earth.

Shiiiit.

But he had another problem right now. The air grew arctic, a sure sign a few pretty-boys were on the way, floating down through the dimensional Trough like Mary-fucking-Poppins.

His phone buzzed again. He ignored it. He wasn’t leaving the Borderland until Santiago arrived, and he sure as hell wasn’t letting Santiago arrive with death vampires already on the ground.

He held his sword at the ready but didn’t mount his wings. He kept his gaze fixed on the night sky overhead. Hooray for preternatural night vision. And there they were, dim shapes at first, clearer as each second passed.

The air moved next to him. He turned, ready for a different kind of attack if necessary, but Santiago materialized, his eyes glittering, his sword held in exactly the same position as Medichi’s, body crouched.

Medichi nodded.

Santiago smiled then looked up. “I am feeling a slight chill in the air. What about you, hermano?”

Medichi turned back to the sky. There were only four riding down the Trough. “You got this?”

“Is that an insult, amigo?”

Medichi laughed. “Fuck off.” He lifted his arm and dematerialized, but not without catching sight of Santiago’s middle finger as he vanished.

He arrived in the middle of Endelle’s office to face a screaming woman.

“You hung up on me! You hung up on me! You hung up on me?”

She combined the last phrase with telepathy and split-resonance and it fucking hurt. He almost dropped to his knees. Holy shit. He felt like his brain was about to explode and only barely kept his balance.

He saw stars, then something passed in front of him, creating streams of air. He stepped back automatically, getting out of the way, until he bumped against the wall by the door. Shit, Endelle was in one wild state. She was in full-mount, her wings shifted color constantly like a kaleidoscope gone awry, and she left a trail of fireworks behind her in red, all in red, as she raced from one wall to the next. She wore some kind of dress made up of what must have been hundreds of peacock feathers trimmed around the “eye.” What with the fireworks, the wind, and all the “eyes,” she looked like a one-woman spectacle event.

Sure, he’d hung up on her, but she couldn’t be that pissed about a hang-up. Maybe he needed to explain. “I wasn’t about to leave Santiago with four death vampires on the ground while he was still in dematerialization mode. He could have been killed.”

“I don’t think she’s upset about the hang-up, Warrior Medichi.”

At these words, Endelle slowed her movements and actually stopped in front of her desk. She glared in the direction of the west wall.

Only then did Medichi realize he wasn’t the only man in the room, if you could call what was there a man. His gaze followed Endelle’s to the never-used fireplace on the west wall.

Owen Stannett.

Holy shit.

High Administrator of the Superstition Mountain Seers Fortress, manipulator of COPASS, law unto himself, lying bastard, enemy to Endelle.

Owen. Fucking. Stannett.

He had all but robbed Endelle of Seer prophecies, which provided critical foreknowledge of the war. The Superstition Fortress was the most powerful in the word, probably because of its proximity to the five major dimensional access points on Second Earth. Every continent had at least one access point, but the North American continent had five, in the desert Southwest, all close to the Metro Phoenix area. A lot of power was focused in this part of the world.

Stannett was one of the main reasons Endelle and her administration were so fucking hamstrung in the fight against Greaves. The bastard had wined and dined COPASS to the point that he’d gotten several critical laws passed, one of which meant that Endelle could not cross the threshold of the Seers Fortress except by express invitation from its High Administrator. So guess who never got invited?

That Stannett had then constricted the flow of information came as no surprise, but every attempt to get the law repealed had failed. The committee insisted there needed to be a clear separation between the sanctity of Seer devotion and the activities of the State.

Naturally, naturally, Greaves had built his own powerful network throughout the world by securing the most talented Seers from those Territories aligned with him and settling them into the Fortresses at Mumbai, Johannesburg, and Bogotá.

Therein lay the difference between a dictatorship and a democracy. Greaves could do whatever the hell he wanted, but Endelle was bound not just by the laws of the land, but also by the ingrained rights of the local High Administrators to manage their Territories as each saw fit. Autonomy was a critical factor in creating a thriving world, both economically and politically. Every Seers Fortress had an allegiance first to its High Administrator and to the local needs of the people. Endelle could request information, but the High Administrators could respond in whatever way they felt was best for their people. So global Seer information for Endelle was much less reliable. Without her Superstition Fortress prophecies, she was up shit creek without a fucking paddle.

To say Medichi loathed Stannett was to say the sun was warm. Loathed was too small a word because in the beautiful way power plays trickled down and down and down, mortals and ascenders died every day as a result of the war, of the heinous depredations of Greaves’s ever-increasing death vampire army, and of the lack of information Endelle needed to counter the enemy’s Seer-based moves.

The question of the hour remained: What the hell was Owen Stannett doing in Endelle’s office?

He was dressed in heavily embroidered white leather, complete with fringe, like a Las Vegas lounge entertainer. He had styled his dark brown hair with a lot of mousse into a lovely wave that rode the entire right side of his head. He met Medichi’s gaze, unsmiling.

The next moment a shimmering in the air brought Medichi whirling in the direction of the latest arrival. He crouched, brought his sword to the ready, and waited.

Thorne.

Thank God.

Medichi could breathe again, but he said, “Look who’s showed up, after how many decades of playing hide-the-Seer in the Superstitions.”

Thorne dipped his chin to Medichi but shifted all his attention to the man by the fireplace. “Stannett.” He offered a nod that was polite and challenging at the same time.

Stannett had the balls to make a slight bow, as though he were at the court of Queen fucking Victoria. “Warrior Thorne” eased from between the snake’s smooth lips.

Medichi addressed Stannett and expressed his deepest convictions: “What the hell do you want, you motherfucking sonofabitch?”

Stannett spread his hands wide. “I come in peace this evening, Warrior Medichi. I need you to believe that.”

He looked and sounded so sincere. Medichi hated that smug bastard’s face. The night was young and had already been full of death vampires and battle and this asshole had the nerve to say he came in peace? Did he not comprehend his role in the fucking war? Or what his actions had cost the world?

Medichi’s heavy arms jerked and twitched. He was just short enough on sleep and patience that he didn’t exactly have the ability to suppress the impulse. He launched at Stannett ready to tear apart all that fine leather and anything else he could get at, preferably the vampire’s slimy heart.

He didn’t get far. Though Owen backed up against the fireplace, and actually looked frightened, Thorne had moved with preternatural speed and now stood between Medichi and his quarry, blocking him, protecting Stannett.

Medichi was powerful, one of the most physically powerful men on Second Earth. Even Thorne couldn’t match him muscle for muscle. But then Thorne didn’t need to. He had one hand on Medichi’s chest and was pushing him backward, not by might, but by wave after wave of modified hand-blast energy. Jesus H. Christ, Medichi couldn’t imagine the level of power required to control a hand-blast like this. It didn’t exactly hurt, but the pulses shoved him backward one step at a time.

“You’re not helping,” Thorne said. “You’re. Not. Helping.” He repeated it until Medichi calmed the hell down.

Medichi was breathing hard, one breath after another. He saw red as he glared at Owen.

Thorne got into Medichi’s face. “You calm now, buddy? If I take my hand away, you gonna stand right there and be good for me? Look at me.”

Medichi finally shifted his gaze away from Owen and blinked at Thorne. “Sure,” he said.

Thorne wasn’t buying. “You want to try that again?”

“If you let me at him, I can make him talk,” Medichi said quietly. Every muscle in his body was jumping.

“Stannett will fold out of here before you can touch him, you know that.” He sounded so reasonable. “And you won’t be able to follow him to the fortress. He can block a trace just like Rith. Would you use your head? Just for one little minute?”

Medichi wasn’t insulted—not when Thorne was right. From the second he’d realized he’d been staring at a time-delayed hologram of Parisa, that Rith had abducted his woman essentially right from under his nose, Medichi had lost a good portion of his rational mind. He was more beast than man, the darkest parts of his ascended vampire nature in the fore.

Why wouldn’t he be? Parisa had been gone from him for three months and guilt was like a gut-eating worm in his soul. Sure, Jeannie might get a fix on her at any time now, but it didn’t change what had happened.