Wings of Fire (Guardians of Ascension #3)

“Yeah.” Fighting would be best. He’d go mad if he had to sit around for hours with nothing to do but wait for some inexplicable blip.

“One more thing, keep a lid on this Seer information for now, until Endelle and I and maybe Colonel Seriffe can work out a strategy, okay?”

“You don’t want the brothers knowing?”

“Not yet.” Thorne scowled. “Got it?”

Medichi didn’t exactly agree with the decision but yeah, right now his job was focused more on the keep-Parisa-safe part of the model rather than oh-God-Armageddon-is-coming.

Okay. One fucking problem at a time. Right now that meant he needed to work to keep death vampires from reaching Mortal Earth.

He folded back to the White Tanks.

The hour was nine at night in Burma, which meant seven thirty in the morning in Phoenix. Almost time for Antony.

Parisa had been opening her voyeur’s window every fifteen minutes, but she focused her efforts on just his bedroom. If she voyeured Antony himself, she was afraid she’d find him battling death vampires—and she really didn’t want those images in her head. She’d made the mistake only once during the early part of her captivity. Once had been enough.

The Burmese slaves were outside her room. Every once in a while she’d hear a cough or a shifting on a mat.

She pushed the covers back and rubbed her arms. Her nerves had taken on a life of their own and seemed to climb up her arms, then back down, then up and down. She had been on edge all day, ever since Greaves’s visit. Something wasn’t right, and Rith still followed her with cold eyes. She shuddered thinking about it.

Her thoughts once more turned to Fiona, as they often had throughout the day. Fiona had begged for her help—but what could Parisa do when she was just as much a prisoner in Rith’s home as Fiona was?

She rubbed her arms again trying to soothe her fiery nerves.

Yeah, what could she do?

Fiona rarely fought the bindings, but tonight she couldn’t help it. She didn’t care how many times the female assistant, the one with the cruel black eyes, slapped her and hit her. She didn’t want to give her blood one more time. She didn’t want to die again. She didn’t want to come back from the dead again.

She fought until she felt a sharp prick deep into the muscle of her upper arm. She turned to her left and watched the young male assistant depress the plunger on a syringe. She blinked up at him. He was the one new to the job, the one who perspired into his surgical mask. She’d heard him vomiting more than once. Good.

Except … she heard their words now as from a great distance, and though she tried to swing her arms away from their grappling hands, she couldn’t. She felt her arms strapped down hard to the table. She heard the evil woman laugh like a monster, chortling deep and long. She felt the prick on the inside of her right elbow, then the left side.

They would drain her from the right, then start refilling her from the left. Her eyes closed. She felt so sleepy. Maybe this was a good thing, a good way to die. She even smiled.

The next thing she knew she stood in a strange place and it was night, although there seemed to be light coming from somewhere. She looked around. She didn’t know where she was. She wore the usual, a tank top and pajama bottoms, nothing else, not even shoes, never shoes. How could a slave escape without shoes?

A man sat on a bench, a rather smallish man with gray hair. He cooed low in his throat and tossed sunflower seeds to a group of birds clustered around his feet. Pigeons. Black ones, white ones, brown ones, and every mix between. She wrinkled her nose. She’d never cared for pigeons. They nested in every crook and corner of every city in the world.

“You must go back, Fiona.”

The man spoke. He lifted his eyes to her. They were ancient eyes, not lined exactly but surely he had seen a lot of life, much more than her 125 years.

“I’m going home this time,” she said. How surprised she was by the strength in her voice, the determination. “Today is my daughter’s birthday. She would have been one hundred and seven. Yes, I know. She was mortal and would be long since buried in the earth, but don’t you see”—she felt herself smile—“there is nothing for me here. And I’m tired, so very tired. Yes, I want to go home.”

He tilted his head. His lips were compressed and grim. “We each have a job to do, Fiona. Yours is to live, and I can promise you that something extraordinary awaits you if you’ll but try.”

Her gaze fell to the pigeons. She shook her head. “Do you know what I’ve endured?”

“No, because I’ve never had to suffer as you’re suffering. I’ve had my own trials, of course. Every human, ascended or otherwise, has trials to endure, some worse than others. But I beseech you to hold on just a little longer. You must live. Think of the young pregnant woman who came in three days ago.”

“She will lose her baby,” Fiona said. Her voice sounded flat. “The baby never survives the mother’s first death and resurrection.”

He nodded. “I understand that’s how it must be.”

“Then why should I return?”

“There is a chance she and the baby will survive if you return.”

She shook her head. “No, I’ve lost the will to go back.” She felt a tremor flow through her, a deep ache in the center of her chest. She pressed a fist between her breasts. She could hardly breathe. “It’s begun. They’re using the defibrillator now.”

The man rose to his feet. He wasn’t very tall, maybe five foot seven to her five-ten. She tried to take a step back but couldn’t move. She glanced down and laughed. She didn’t have any feet. She must be just in spirit form right now. How strange. Maybe she was having one of those near-death experiences.

Another tremor slammed through her. She cried out. She was in pain now. Terrible pain.

The man moved quickly and stood beside her. He held her arm and looked deeply into her eyes. “I am begging you with all my heart to go back, Fiona, to live just one more time. Please. It is imperative. You must live. You must try. Do it for the young pregnant woman. She and the others will not survive without your presence. You know what you mean to them. You know how many you kept alive.”

“But they all died anyway throughout the years. I’m the only one who’s lived this long.”

“You can stop the death and resurrection process, Fiona, but only if you live. Live, Fiona. Live.” His words seemed fainter, his presence less distinct.

She took a deep breath and another. A third tremor seized her. The pain felt infinite. She doubled over. She recalled the young woman’s eyes, the latest of Rith’s acquisitions, her fear, her hand pressed to her swollen belly. Could she save her?

Will you try? She couldn’t see the man anymore, or the pigeons. She could only hear his voice, and even then it was as though he’d spoken inside her head.

Fiona’s stubbornness sank into the well of her usual guilt. She had to try. She could do nothing less.

When the fourth shock pummeled her heart, she began to claw her way back from death.

When the walls have fallen down,

Open your voice and let your cries be heard.

Heaven will answer the faint of heart.

—Collected Proverbs, Beatrice of Fourth

Chapter 6

Parisa sat up in bed. Something was wrong, so very wrong.

Help me.

Fiona. She could hear her. The woman was in trouble somewhere in this horrible house.

Parisa couldn’t leave her room or the women would wake. They would tell Rith, and he would hurt her. She rarely traveled voyeuristically through the rooms, searching, but she did so now. She had to find Fiona.

She opened her voyeur’s window and traveled into the hall. The women were lined up in a row on the floor, all asleep, each head aimed in the direction of her doorway. Better to hear her if she awoke.

She moved her window past them until she came to Rith’s office. She paused outside the doorway to listen. She heard a soft rasping sound. She moved her window into place and saw Rith in the corner, his back to the doorway. His right elbow was moving rhythmically, his head bowed, his body tense. At first she thought sex, but then he lifted something into the air that glinted in the lamplight of the room.

A blade. He’d been sharpening a blade. He tested the chiseled edge with his thumb and smiled.

She backed her window out of the room and realized she was breathing hard, her heart pounding in her chest. Was he coming for her? She had no way of knowing except that her instincts were screaming.

Whatever. Right now she needed to find Fiona.

She moved past the doorway to the end of the hall. She hadn’t been beyond this doorway in life and for some reason, she couldn’t move past doors like this. She couldn’t explore a place she had never been.

So she focused instead on Fiona. Having seen her, having been with her in the garden, there was a good possibility she’d be able to find Fiona through the special window.

She closed her eyes and concentrated. She relaxed her mind and focused on the beautiful woman with the chestnut hair and silver-blue eyes.

The window opened again, but in a completely unknown space. She seemed to be at the far end of a long stone hallway lit by three large overhead round globes. Parisa moved slowly down the hall and panned left and right. Women of all nationalities were held in the cells, all curled in the fetal position, all asleep. There were six in all, but a seventh bed was empty.

The space expanded to include a large glass-enclosed area, maybe fourteen feet by fourteen, large enough to hold a table upon which a woman was strapped down, several carts of what looked like medical equipment flanking the stone wall, and a man and a woman both in medical scrubs standing nearby.

Her heart pounded again as she brought her window closer and closer to the room. She became focused on the woman on the table, whose hair was a lovely flowing chestnut. Fiona … who stared up at the ceiling, her eyes glassy, her skin terribly white. She looked … dead.

No, no, no.

Beside the bed were bags of … blood. Fiona’s blood.