Wings of Fire (Guardians of Ascension #3)

So fuck her but she was just a little fucking skeptical.

“Whatever, Shorty.” She used a little old-fashioned levitation to gain her feet since there was nothing pretty about trying to create leverage with a stiletto.

She planted her hands on her hips and stared down at James again. “No disrespect intended, but I’ll believe the whole Braulio thing when I see him. Right now we have other fish-ass to fry. When Alison first told me about you and … him”—she jerked her thumb at Leto—“I thought maybe we were going to see some real action, get some real help. Hah. I don’t know if you’ve noticed but according to the future streams we’ve got one assfucking coming any minute now and I ain’t got the troops to pull off a win here. Then there’s this whole thing about Alison leading a charge into the third dimension and right now she’s turned into the pregnant-bitch-from-hell. You read history much? When has a pregnant woman ever been fit to beat down the gates of Hades?”

The expression that overcame James’s face made her frown. She didn’t understand what she was seeing. His light blue eyes seemed full of clouds. He smiled but it wasn’t a smile. He looked lit up with a thousand lightning strikes. She almost thought she was looking at some bizarre version of … affection … but that was just stupid. He also didn’t look like he was going to give an answer to what was for her a really serious question.

What-the-fuck-ever.

The clouds disappeared and the blue of James’s eyes returned, but he shifted his gaze downward to the marble floor at his feet. He blinked several times. His attention seemed focused elsewhere. Maybe he was thinking or maybe someone from Sixth was shouting into his head. She’d like to shout. She’d like to shout at this Council he referred to until she was as hoarse as a nymph servicing Zeus himself.

Finally, he met her gaze again. “I can’t give you a definitive answer. What I can tell you is that the Seers of Sixth still predict that Alison opens the pathway to Third—but other futures, darker possibilities, have been predicted as well. This is a delicate time in the history of the dimensional worlds, and the hour of fulfillment draws near. You must be careful, Madame Endelle. I beg above all things that you will be careful. Some of our Seers have also foreseen the demise of Second Earth, a fall to the Commander that will last longer than a hundred thousand years.”

She leaned forward. “Then help us, goddammit! Give us what we need to get rid of this bastard forever!”

She felt the heat in her face. If she felt even a little more than she did right now, she was certain she would pop some blood vessels in her eyes.

James appeared to grow an inch or two, or maybe he was just lifting up on his heels. His nostrils flared. “Don’t think for a moment I haven’t considered it, not just for Second but for Third as well. The Council, for all its preternatural power, is weak, ineffectual. They can move mountains but they will not help the human soul.”

Endelle closed her eyes. A great wind filled the room, emanating from the Sixth dweller himself. She took a peek and found Leto crumpled on the floor, shielding his head and face with both arms. More of that lightning had appeared in James’s eyes, but he finally closed them. He grew calmer and the wind eased.

Sweet Jesus, Mary Mother of God, and all the Disciples thrown in.

“I’ll be disciplined for most of what I’ve just said to you. I beg your pardon. I allowed my frustrations to speak.” He gestured to Leto. “I want him kept alive, and that means that when the time comes you will offer your protection. For now, he goes back, but not without relaying to you the information he came to give.” He turned to Leto. “Tell her what you told me then return to the Commander’s Estrella Mountain compound. If you fear for your life at any moment, I have given you a trace back to this room, and no one will be able to follow you. But for God’s sake, man, don’t use it unless you are about to die.”

The light blue eyes were now a strange brown color and flashing wildly. He lifted an arm. The wind swirled once more through the room; thunder sounded as he vanished. Her hearing disappeared for a moment until her eardrums released a nice pop. Wow.

“What an exit,” she cried.

She blinked a few times then turned her attention to Leto. He was a former Warrior of the Blood who had defected a century ago. His turning had put a hole in her heart, but now it would appear she really had been wrong about him all this time. Her first inkling had come when Alison fought him in an arena battle. Once Alison had subdued him, he had allowed her to dive into his mind. There she’d found this supposed truth about him: that he’d been serving as a spy for decades and he answered to James. If Leto was coming forward now, it put him in severe jeopardy. If Greaves ever found that he’d communicated with Endelle, he was toast.

He rose to his feet, a little unsteady, but he crossed the small rotunda and offered her his hand. She took it.

In her stilettos she was still taller than Leto so that she looked down at him. His gaze flew over her hair. From her peripheral she could see that it writhed.

She rolled her eyes and calmed the hell down. Her hair settled down as well. “Usually I can control it but I’m upset right now. So, Warrior, are you telling me you didn’t desert me?”

He shook his head and tears filled his eyes. “I would never have done so without cause.”

“I never understood.”

“James approached me. Greaves is very powerful, and the Sixth Dimension Council needed access.”

“Alison told me but I never stopped being mad about it. I didn’t even believe it. Fuck. All right. Whatever. So what is it he wanted you to tell me?”

“First, James voyeured the extraction in New Zealand, so I know the first group has been brought safely here to your palace. But what you need to know is that Greaves has twenty-one additional death and resurrection facilities around the world. Rith heads them all. Essentially, Rith runs the organization. Also, Fiona was his first successful experiment during a time well before proper sterilization methods were employed or before electricity was used to revive the heart. Because of her ability to recover, she became his guinea pig.

“More generally, Sixth brought me on board because the Council needed to know the breadth of his power as well as the nature of his plans. Greaves apparently has some fourth dimensional abilities, one of which allows him to shield his operations from Sixth Earth. But in order to intervene, Sixth needs incontrovertible proof. I’ve been transmitting evidence for years.” He looked weary, painfully weary. He had intense blue eyes but they were shadowed now. He was just short of Medichi’s height, and his shoulders were as broad as Kerrick’s. He had long black hair, which he still wore in the cadroen. All these years she thought he’d kept wearing it as a fuck-you to her and to the Warriors of the Blood. Now she thought it might have a different meaning altogether.

“But Sixth won’t help us.”

“I honestly don’t know what they plan to do. James has let a few things slip over the years. Things are not well in the Upper Dimension. Apparently, if Greaves gains a foothold here and succeeds in dominating Second and Mortal Earth, he creates a domino effect that moves upward.”

“How is that even fucking possible?” She moved in a circle now, around Leto. She pulled at her hair. “And how about we add just a little more pressure to this situation?” She shook her fist at the ceiling, “Thanks for nothing, assholes!”

Leto chuckled. “You really think that’s going to help?”

She shrugged. “Well, it helps me.”

Goddammit.

Fiona knew she should feel something other than what she did. She should be ecstatic, right? She should feel relieved, right? Happy, delirious, exhilarated? Right?

All she felt was numb, even cold.

Of course her blood hadn’t entirely regenerated since the recent drain. There was always a lag time.

Still. She’d been rescued, taken out of the hands of that quiet monster, Rith, out of the service of the self-styled Commander, out of continued blood slavery.

The healer, Horace, had his hand on Kaitlyn’s head; Alison held her hands. She was in shock and not doing well. Her abduction was only part of the reason she was listing in the direction of death. Her husband and young son had been murdered in front of her by death vampires. She had been next in line to drain, as well, and Rith hadn’t withheld the truth; she would lose the baby once she completed her first D&R.

It was all too much. She honestly didn’t know, despite the efforts of the healers, whether the woman would make it, but it didn’t look good. The one thing Fiona had gotten really good at was predicting with fair accuracy the length of a woman’s life as a blood slave.

She rose to her feet and moved to stand at the far terrace, far away from the other blood slaves and from the warriors. Looking back into the rotunda, she caught glimpses of other enormous round rooms, all sparsely furnished but made of beautiful white marble, streaked with gold, very much like a palace. Why were the spaces so empty? What did that mean?

Sconces lit each rotunda at four-foot intervals.

At least there was fresh air flowing in from the open walls, but because it was night, there was just an impression of blackness beyond.

September in Phoenix. She expected it to be hotter, but as she drew closer to the opening she felt the cool air blowing down from the ceiling, creating a shield between the heat and the comfortable indoors.

She passed through the shield into the starry night. She couldn’t see very much, just open land for what seemed like miles, dark clumps, maybe cactus. In the distance there was the glitter of buildings, perhaps the center of this dimension’s Metro Phoenix.

Rith had kept the women informed over the decades: where they were, what was happening in each dimension, how many dimensions there were. He’d at least provided them with books to read. She had wanted to marvel at all that she learned, but because she’d been a prisoner and her blood drained from her body every month, she fell short of being able to work up enthusiasm for things she believed she would never see, never experience.