Wings of Fire (Guardians of Ascension #3)

She didn’t seem distressed as she looked at him. By now, after seven months of living with a Warrior of the Blood, she knew the score. She understood the ever-present danger in which they all lived. She was very pregnant.

She nodded. “What happened?”

“We’re not sure.” He explained the sequence of events and Jean-Pierre’s strange behavior.

Alison just stared at him. “Didn’t Kerrick go through something similar at the Blood and Bite? I mean, before we got together? Didn’t he end up here at the Cave with all you boys around him?”

Medichi felt himself pale. “I had almost forgotten how crazed he was. So, you think this is the breh-hedden?”

She glanced down at Jean-Pierre. “What would you have done if the first time the breh-hedden struck, you found that the woman you needed to be with, to protect, had been abducted by a madman?”

He thought back to that moment of seeing Parisa for the first time in the kitchen of his villa, of having caught her tangerine scent, of having been driven toward her in a hypersexual way. He recalled the complete loss of rationality, of reasoning. He’d turned into some kind of Neanderthal caveman who had to have his woman.

Marcus had done him the profound favor of punching him on the jaw and bringing him back to his senses.

All so primal and to a large degree humiliating.

What man enjoyed being so out of control?

Alison dropped to her knees beside the couch. Jean-Pierre’s battle gear was still blood-spattered but she’d seen it before. He’d once asked her how she bore it and she’d said simply, When I see the blood, I know that other lives, innocent lives, have been spared, so I’m grateful.

Alison was a pragmatic, soothing presence.

She put her hand on Jean-Pierre’s head, a light touch. She didn’t stroke his forehead or pet him, just settled her hand on him. He’d experienced that touch more than once, and he knew that right now healing waves were passing through Jean-Pierre’s mind.

After a minute, the warrior began to move. His eyelids fluttered, his fingers shifted, even his left knee drew forward.

A few seconds more and his eyes opened. He leaned up on his elbow.

Alison sat back on her heels, her hand falling away. “How do you feel, mon ami?”

He glanced down at his chest. “Was I wounded?”

She shook her head. “Do you remember what happened?”

He glanced up at Medichi then Parisa. “Where is Zach? Santiago?”

“Thorne sent them home to get some sleep,” Medichi said.

Jean-Pierre sat up, a deep furrow between his brows. He pushed a fist into the couch beside his hips and started to lift himself up, then fell against the back cushion. “Mon Dieu, my head feels as though it will explode. What happened? My throat, it hurts.”

“So you don’t remember the farmhouse.”

He stared straight ahead, his lips parted, the furrow growing deeper. “The farmhouse. Toulouse.” The city name rolled elegantly off his Frenchman’s tongue. “Oui, I remember some things. Battling. I saw Rith. And I saw…” He gave a sudden harsh cry and bent forward, his elbows on his knees, his long fingers pulling his hair out of the cadroen. He started rocking back and forth. “He has her. He has the woman. He has Fiona. Mon Dieu, mon Dieu.”

Alison put her arm around his shoulders. “Yes, Rith has Fiona. That’s right. You’ve remembered correctly.”

He rocked and rocked.

Medichi heard a strangled sound beside him. Parisa held the tips of her fingers to her lips. Tears ran down her face.

He put his arm around her and drew her close against him. Despite his bloody shirt and harness, she buried her face against him.

Medichi stood very still, offering what comfort he could but for some reason, watching Jean-Pierre rock back and forth took him on a hard, swift journey thirteen centuries back. He had rocked just like that, except that he’d held his dying wife in his arms. He spoke the words that shot through his mind. “Jean-Pierre, she’s not dead.”

Everyone looked at him. Even Jean-Pierre ceased rocking and stared. Medichi said it again: “She’s not dead. Fiona is not dead.”

“How can you know?”

He released Parisa and looked at her. “Will you find her for Jean-Pierre? That will give him some peace.”

She nodded but winced. She took a deep breath. He remembered her headaches.

“I see her. She’s in a long room with five other women. There were seven in Burma and one just died in Toulouse. How I hate this man.” Her voice quavered as she added, “All of them are on cots even though the sun is shining through the windows.”

“Are you certain she lives?”

Parisa nodded. “I can see her chest rising and falling.” She suddenly clutched her head. “I’m sorry. I have to close this.” The moment she did, she gave a little cry. “Oh, God that hurt.”

“It doesn’t now?” Medichi asked.

“No. I don’t know what’s happened. The voyeur never hurt before, not even a twinge. But now it’s like knives in my head.” She took a few more deep breaths then shifted her gaze to Jean-Pierre. “She is alive, Jean-Pierre. I’ve seen her.”

He put his head in his hands, his elbows still on his knees. “What has happened to me? Why do I feel as though a rock sits in my chest? Why do I care so much about this woman I do not know?” He grew very still.

Medichi could barely breathe. How long would it take before Jean-Pierre figured it out?

Not long. “Non! C’est impossible. Pas moi. Pas le breh-hedden. I love women. All women. I cannot devote myself to one, not now. Jamais! Fuck.”

Medichi bit his lower lip hard. He understood the frustration. Completely.

But it was Parisa who started laughing. She laughed so hard that more tears ran down her cheeks.

Jean-Pierre’s fury expanded. “You laugh at me?” he cried.

She nodded then laughed some more. “Oui. Non. Oh, Jean-Pierre, all of us have felt what you’re experiencing right now.”

She cast an arm in Medichi’s direction. “Do you think I wanted this? To be enslaved by the breh-hedden? To be dragged into this war in this violent way? No, but here I am.” She wiped her cheeks and the laughter fled her as suddenly as it had come. “Fiona has lived for over a hundred years as a blood slave and if you are being brought into her life—to protect her, to love her, to care for her … I think it’s the very least she deserves.”

A shared meal

A glass of wine

A sweet dessert

And you

—Collected Poems, Beatrice of Fourth

Chapter 14

Parisa stood in the shower, savoring the hot, hot, hot water beating on her neck and shoulders. she had hidden herself away in the guest room so that she could be alone for a little while.

A sad light had passed through Antony’s eyes, but he hadn’t argued. He’d simply kissed her on the forehead, said he would take a shower as well, then prepare a light repast. Yep, he’d really said light repast. The warriors often slipped into speech patterns that belonged to prior centuries, even earlier languages.

So she was showering in the guest room. She felt like a wrung-out towel.

Poor Jean-Pierre.

Poor Fiona, who must have known, even drugged, that she had been close to a rescue.

Instead, Rith had used her as bait. All the other blood slaves had already been moved to another location. Except the one who had died. The only consolation was that twenty-four death vampires were now well and truly dead.

She planted her hands on the wall of the shower stall, the tile cool beneath her fingers. She stretched her neck. That felt a little better.

She had seen the small clock in the foyer, the one that sat next to the magnolia centerpiece. It had been not quite noon.

She did have one satisfaction. She had cut Rith. Funny how she had always thought of herself as a nonviolent person, but right now all she wanted to do was hurt that horrible man.

Exhaustion suddenly dragged at her body.

Though it was only noon, and she’d had a good night’s sleep, it was all too much—her recent escape from Burma, having entered into an extremely intimate relationship with a man she barely knew, ascending to Second Earth, the presence of fangs in her mouth, learning to battle by having Antony’s memories downloaded directly into her mind, dematerializing, battling alongside the Warriors of the Blood, for God’s sake, and watching the breh-hedden overtake yet another warrior. And not to mention the headaches that now accompanied her voyeur window.

But underneath everything was a fear that Antony would one day want more from her than she could give. Her heart had been broken once just a few months before her wedding. After that, she’d lost interest in pursuing a relationship of any kind. She had a very specific drive toward Antony, a very powerful need, but beyond that she preferred to keep thinking in terms of her life, not theirs.

She felt caught in a maelstrom and yes, she had chosen to ascend and yes, she had worked to try to rescue Fiona and the other D&R slaves, but it was all too much.

Oh, whatever.

She shut off the water and dragged the towel from the nearby rack. She caught the towel under her arm, bent her head sideways and squeezed the excess water from her hair. She was just a little pissed off at how hard life was right now so she dried her body as though punishing her skin, then did the same thing to her hair. She made little huffy cries of protest but to what? Fate? Life? God? Or the rough towel work?

Why was life always so damn hard? Even when she was a child, things hadn’t been easy. Her parents had moved her around so much that she’d never had any real friends. Early on she’d learned that life could be cruel. She thought she’d made peace with it, but right now she was just mad all over again.

She stomped around the bathroom a few times, punching at the air … until the smell of sautéed something—onions, maybe mushrooms, definitely Italian sausage—floated through a vent. Her stomach rumbled.

And just like that all her angst fled. If Antony was also cooking pasta, she thought she would die and go to heaven.