Wings of Fire (Guardians of Ascension #3)

The death vampire flew backward, his wings flapping slowly. He lost control, sliding into a roll that aimed his body toward the earth. He was soon flat on his back in a messy tangle of wings. He wasn’t breathing.

Santiago had only two death vamps left and he fought both with a single sword that moved in a whir of motion from one to the next. She began to understand how it was that only eight Warriors of the Blood were holding back the tide of war.

She grew calm and as the death count mounted, she shifted her attention to her voyeur window. She gasped. Fiona was sitting up in bed. “Parisa?”

I’m here, she sent. Do you know where you are in the farmhouse? The warriors are battling death vamps at the back of the house on the stone drive.

“Come straight through…” Her speech was slurred. “… then take the hallway to your left. Go to the end. The door on the left is mine.”

Jean-Pierre was free. Parisa called to him. “I have her. I know where she is.”

Jean-Pierre moved back to her, his sword held at the ready and off to his right side. “We will fold.” She nodded.

With his left arm he held her firmly and folded her directly to the door, away from the carnage. When she touched down, she moved just as Fiona had told her, to the hall, then headed down to the end.

Jean-Pierre was right at her back. “Do not open the door, cherie.”

She waited for him, her hand on the latch.

He moved in front of her but kept his sword out of her way. The identified swords could be deadly. He gave the door a hard shove.

Rith was there, in the far corner, as though waiting for her. He had Fiona in his arms. He smiled and disappeared.

“Can you trace to them?” Parisa shouted, desperate.

Jean-Pierre had the same idea because he moved in their direction then vanished but was immediately back, stunned. “Merde. The bastard blocked his own pathway. How in the name of heaven did he do that?”

Parisa turned around. “Maybe there are survivors in the other rooms.”

Jean-Pierre moved swiftly past her into the hall, his sword again ready for action. He crossed the hall and pushed the door open. Parisa looked within. Empty.

She glanced down the hall. Santiago, spattered with blood, his brows in a tight furrow, looked at her and nodded. He also shoved doors open. “There’s no one here.” He hit another. He stood and stared. Oh, God, she could tell by the way he froze that something was in there.

Parisa felt weak as she watched the warrior pale. He lowered his sword and moved on slow feet into the room. His lips worked. He was saying something.

Parisa didn’t want to know what he had found but she followed him anyway. She had to. No more holding back or hiding from the truth of what this new world was all about.

She felt Jean-Pierre at her back. “Non, cherie. This must be very bad.”

“I know,” she responded. She kept walking. She reached the doorway and saw the familiar machinery hooked up to a woman with coloring similar to the Burmese women. Her eyes were open. Blood had pooled onto the floor from open tubing still connected to her arm. Her lips were blue, her pallor, despite her dark skin, the color of ivory silk.

Santiago knelt beside the bed, his knees in the blood. He took the woman’s hand. He put the lifeless fingers first to his lips then to his forehead.

Parisa once again felt that flinty sensation in her chest. She drew close to Santiago and put her hand on his shoulder. He clutched at her hand, and this time when his lips met her fingers there was nothing flirtatious or teasing in the touch. His cheeks were wet. “Who would do this?”

The question was rhetorical.

The answer simple.

Greaves.

Greaves was the author of it all, the supreme creator, the monster.

Jean-Pierre heard Medichi’s voice. He turned and made way for the warrior.

As Medichi moved in, Jean-Pierre returned to the hall. Zach stared into the room. “Jesus. Would you look at this.”

Jean-Pierre glanced at him. They were all feeling it, the shock of what was being done to these women.

He did not want to stay close to the murder scene. His feet turned back down the hall, down to the small room at the end, where he had witnessed that bastard Rith holding the woman Fiona, one hand over her mouth, one around her waist. The woman’s eyes had seemed not quite focused. Parisa had called it … drugs.

He stood in the doorway. The window was boarded up, the room dim like twilight. There was a strange scent in the space, though, like a Parisian boulangerie, where bread was made. They were in France. Perhaps that explained the aroma. He moved toward the bed, his brow pinched in a hard frown. He reached down to the linens and drew the top one to his face.

Oui, the scent was there. He breathed it in. Such a delicate aroma, like a very fine croissant, buttery, like bread but better.

He took another breath and another. He had his eyes closed.

“Jean-Pierre?” Zach called to him.

He turned but couldn’t quite see the warrior. He lifted the cloth to his nose and closed his eyes again. In the distance, he heard Zach call for Medichi.

What did the warriors know of good French baking?

He kept breathing, deeper and deeper. He widened his nostrils. He opened his lungs. The aroma dove into his brain and made circles, a hundred circles, a thousand. The scent became a whirlwind and swept through his body, changing him into something he had never been before.

Animal.

He ripped the linens from the bed, bundled them into his arms, and squeezed them against his chest. He picked up the scent and drank it into his body, into every cell. Blood from the battle came away but it didn’t matter. He pressed once more. All that mattered was this scent and bringing it into himself, into his body, into his soul.

He left the linens on the bed. He hunted the scent through the room, but only the bed held it. He opened the old armoire but there was nothing inside. Still, a whiff of croissant rose to his nostrils. He dropped to his knees and smelled every corner of the bottom of the armoire. Nothing, yet the scent was stronger.

He pressed his chest to the floor.

The scent was coming from the bottom and from the left. He crawled on his knees and sniffed like a dog all the way to the back. The scent grew stronger and stronger.

He reached with long fingers and found what he hunted. It was cool on the tips of his fingers. Metal, perhaps.

He pulled it out from under the armoire. It looked like a locket, but his vision was not clear. He pressed it to his nose and smelled the heavenly bouquet. His heart ached deep in his chest, like a wound that had just opened up and would never again be healed.

He put the piece of jewelry into his pocket and turned back to the bed. There was nothing more of the scent to be found. The chamber was sterile, not lived in, at least not very long.

Everything in his life that had come before seemed so very small in this moment. All that mattered now was finding the woman, Fiona, the one who had a scent like a French boulangerie. He returned to the place where he had seen Rith disappear with the woman. He found the trace. He pushed against it. He tried to fold himself after the trace again, but landed back in the small bedroom over and over.

He began to pace in a circle, a lion trapped in a cage. He punched the air and cried out. He roared. He punched and punched. Again he folded into the trace. Again, the block pushed him back into the room. Over and over he punched the air.

He roared and shouted.

He heard voices calling to him but could not make sense of them. Was it her? Was she speaking? Summoning him? What was being done to her? Was she being hurt? Raped? Killed?

He could not bear the thoughts, and the part of him that was man disappeared. His arms stiffened straight to his sides. His fists clenched tight, his back bowed. His fangs emerged. He roared at the ceiling and could not seem to stop.

Hands pressed on him now, held him in place.

He felt a vibration and still he roared through nether-space, flying through time and darkness and hunger.

His feet touched down and he fell into an abyss as deep as hell.

Medichi stared down at Jean-Pierre. He drew his phone from his pocket and swiped his thumb across the front.

“Jeannie here. How may I serve?”

“I need you to get Alison for me. We have a problem at the Cave.”

“One of the warriors hurt?”

“Not exactly. Let’s just say I think Jean-Pierre needs Alison’s help. We’re not really sure what happened.”

“I’ll send her.”

He thumbed his phone then returned it to his pocket. He didn’t know what he was looking at. Jean-Pierre had passed out. His behavior at the farmhouse near Toulouse Two had stunned him. Zach as well. Parisa and Santiago had been with the blood slave and hadn’t seen the worst of it but they’d heard the roaring.

The sound had been like a hurricane, like great winds had poured through the house. He still didn’t know what had happened.

Zach said he thought it was the breh-hedden stretching its claws out once more, but Medichi hadn’t experienced anything like this, and he sure as hell hadn’t passed out. Jean-Pierre was still out, lying on one of the ratty brown leather couches on his side, his body completely quiet, unmoving. Not even his eyelids moved.

Parisa slid her arm around his. “Will he be all right?”

“I don’t know what’s wrong with him.”

“Do you think Rith caused this? Affected his mind?”

“I don’t know. He seemed crazed but I don’t know why. He kept partially dematerializing then bouncing back like he’d hit some wall he couldn’t penetrate.”

She squeezed his arm. “I think I understand. He was trying to reach Fiona.”

Medichi looked down at her. “So you think it’s the breh-hedden, too? You think this woman, Fiona, is the one?”

She released a heavy sigh. “I don’t know. Maybe. Oh, God, probably.”

A faint movement of air sent Medichi whirling around. At the same moment, he stepped away from Parisa and folded his sword into his hand, ready for who the hell knew what.

But Alison materialized and his shoulders slumped. He folded the sword away.