* * *
Leto couldn’t just leave Grace in so much pain, but he had his teams to lead. He stood up and looked at Endelle. “I need to get my warriors down to Peru now. Can you help Grace?”
Endelle smiled. “Leave her to me, Warrior. Get your men to Nazca.” When Endelle drew her phone into her hand and a moment later started barking orders at Alison, telling her to get her ass down to the Seattle Colony, Leto knew he could trust the situation.
He turned and headed to the landing platform. He wasn’t surprised that Thorne, Jean-Pierre, and Arthur followed him. Diallo was waiting for him and Leto filled him in.
Diallo frowned. “The Nazca Colony only has a population of four hundred and you say several hundred death vampires will be attacking?”
“Yes.”
“It would be a slaughter.”
“Not if we can help it. I’m sending the squadrons now.” He glanced at the top of the ramp. Gideon stood there awaiting orders. Leto placed a call to the colony’s Militia HQ and folding coordinates were laid in within seconds.
Leto met Gideon’s gaze and let the orders fly. “To Nazca. Now.”
The squads began to fold in brisk succession, eight at a time. Within one minute a hundred warriors had folded to Peru, and the second hundred began folding equally as fast.
Leto nodded to Diallo. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw that Alison was already with Grace.
He turned and ran up the ramp with what he now thought of as his own squad. Once he reached the top, he, Thorne, Jean-Pierre, and Arthur folded to Nazca. Gideon would remain behind to keep the warriors en route to the battle zone until at least a thousand Militia Warriors were doing battle.
Once Leto touched down, and thanks to long training, he moved swiftly away from the landing site, mounted his wings, folded his sword into his hand, and took to the night skies.
Out in the desert, the moon lit up the skies like a beacon. It was so bright that the ground seemed to be covered in snow.
His warriors, male and female, battled death vampires all over the sky, but it was to the colony that Leto headed. He knew that any colonists attacked by death vampires would die within seconds. No mercy would be shown.
He pulled his wings in tight, dipped and corrected to miss battling squadrons. He aimed for the now visible world of the colony. There was a main street and low simple buildings made of stone blocks, carved out of the land.
He could hear screams coming from houses and alleys between. Once he reached the ground, however, he retracted his wings and entered the first house he came to. There was a lot of blood and too many bodies. He raced through and found a death vampire in the back room with a teen ascender, drinking her down, raping her.
He threw a dagger into his kidney, which brought the death vamp arching back and off the young woman. Leto moved swiftly and with his sword took the bastard’s head.
The girl pushed away from the monster, then crawled to the other side of the room. He didn’t want to leave her, but he had to go. “Hide,” he said.
She held her neck and nodded. She slid quickly beneath the bed.
He left by way of the window, jumping out.
His night progressed in exactly that way. He went from house to house hunting for evil, finding it, striking it down.
He came upon four death vamps in a house on a hill near a small dry streambed. These pretty-boys were huge, and he recognized them for what they were. They belonged to a group of recruits brought from Third Earth, something Greaves had been doing for the past year. No one knew exactly how he’d been doing it, but Greaves was a vampire with many tricks.
Leto knew he wasn’t a match for these vamps in his current state. When three of them turned and stared at him indifferently, while the other continued drinking a woman to death, Leto felt the vibration go down his left leg, then his right.
For the first time, he did exactly what Brynna had been encouraging him to do all along: He let his beast take over. At the same moment he mentally adjusted the belt of his kilt as well as the buckles of his shin guards and battle sandals. He got rid of his weapons harness altogether.
“Motherfucker” came out of one of the oversized death vamps. “Where the hell did you learn to do that, traitor?”
Leto smiled. Now, there was one of the great ironies of his life—that a death vampire would call him traitor.
His sword almost felt small in his beast-sized hand. “What’s the matter, pretty-boy? You afraid of me?”
“Just because you can morph like a Third Earth warrior? Hell, no. There are still four of us and only one of you.”
“Bring it, asshole. Let’s see what you’ve got.”
Leto felt more powerful than he ever had before. He held out the palm of his left hand and let a hand-blast fly. The sound was almost deafening in the small house.
The death vamp on the left took it in the chest. He flew backward, hard into the wall. His ribs were smashed in. He wouldn’t be breathing anymore.
Leto aimed another hand-blast at the second death vamp, but since the bastard had decided to deliver his own deadly blast, the searing energy met in the middle, soared upward, and blew part of the roof off.
All this activity had the advantage of getting the fourth death vamp off the woman. But knowing the power of these Third Earth death vamps as he did, Leto was still no match for their combined strength and skill, so he used his primary advantage: his battle experience.
He folded behind them, shoved a dagger through the back of one, then folded outside the building and waited.
Two to go.
“Get him” came from inside. “He’s out there. I can smell him.”
Leto cloaked himself in mist. He listened. He felt the air move behind him. He swung his sword and took the bastard’s head off. It hit the stone lane with a terrible thump.
Only one left.
Leto looked up the lane. He extended his vision and saw a number of colonists rising up to look at him. He waved them down and they disappeared.
Good. The people were hiding. Part of the strategy among all the colonies was to teach the people to move the most vulnerable well way from the buildings when the death vampires came.
He smiled, remembering something Arthur had done to taunt death vampires. He made a raspberry sound with his lips. “Come out and play,” he shouted, letting his mist melt away.
He wasn’t going to hide this time.
The last death vamp leaped through the window, and it was game on. He was huge, like Leto, and had Third Earth skills. But Leto had been a warrior for three millennia while it seemed this bastard had been relying on size alone to win his battles.
Leto circled, his sword held out and away from his body. He watched the bastard’s eyes; when they shifted he lunged, blocked, stepped back, then whirled. With another swift lunge, he caught the pretty-boy up through soft part of the belly.
His scream swallowed up the night air.
Leto withdrew his sword. The death vamp fell forward and Leto, also with the practice of millennia, took his head.
He leaned back, bent his knees, and roared into the air.
He pivoted and headed back to the main street on a run, his gaze strafing the sky above, then every shadow nearby. By now, a thousand militia warriors were swarming the town. There were bodies of death vampires everywhere, some moving slightly, others inert.
Gideon had the north end secured and Diallo had already arrived to begin repairing the mist that had been burned away.
The air smelled of smoke and blood and fear.
The fighting was thickest now at the southern end, but the battle was almost over. His warriors were steadily collecting death vampire bodies and moving them to Gideon’s position.
Standing off to the side, Leto watched Gideon direct traffic. He had his warrior phone to his ear, issuing removal orders either to the morgue at Apache Junction Two or to the one at Central Command. Headless bodies and the detached heads began disappearing as fast as they were collected.
The mission proceeded with great speed, all the warriors moving on lightning feet. Months of training had paid off.
Gideon kept sending repeat details to scour each house, each garden, each nearby ravine, and especially the underground cisterns, hunting for the enemy. There was no way they were leaving a single death vamp behind.
Leto approached Gideon, knowing that he would look strange to the warrior, but it couldn’t be helped. Besides, in this form, Leto had vanquished four Third Earth death vamps. Not half bad for a beast-man.
Gideon’s eyes widened a little, as did the eyes of a number of the Militia Warriors near him.
Leto shrugged. “Better get used to it. Apparently, this is my new look.”
Gideon glanced around and ordered everyone back to work. “We’re bringing in backup squads to patrol through the night.”
“How many?”
“Twenty.”
“Good.” That would put eighty warriors on the ground. “And the healers?”
“As soon as the fighting in the south is done, we’re bringing them in. Horace has forty ready to go. But, Leto, we have at least twenty dead colonists, and several of our warriors didn’t make it.”
It could have been worse. It could have been a disaster. That’s what he thought but that’s not what he said. “We’ll need counselors in here as well.”
Gideon nodded. “Mei-Amadi will take charge of that.”
“Do we know how the colony was identified by the enemy? Did any of your men find transmitters?”
“Yes,” Gideon said. “They’re everywhere. But we knew it was just a matter of time.” He looked up. “Diallo feels confident this renewed layer of mist will eradicate the position of the colony. If Greaves’s army wants to come back, they’ll have to work for it.”
Several hours later, the Nazca One Colony was well in hand. Gideon sent dozens of Militia Warriors to search out the last of the transmitters.
Leto folded back to the landing platforms. He was the only one at that location. The grounds were quiet, as they should be. The hour had to be near two in the morning.
He was about to fold when he sensed something behind him. He turned around and watched a large shimmering appear in the desert. He drew his sword into his hand and was about to sound the alarm all over again when Greaves appeared with a contingent of ten Third Earth death vampires. On top of that, Greaves held both hands out in front of him. Leto could feel the hand-blast gearing up.
He saw his death in this moment as sure as Greaves was standing there. He couldn’t legally kill Leto, but he could wound him as near to fatal as he could get, then order his death vamps to finish him off.
Leto had only one thought: But Grace just got back.
Like hell, however, he would take this lying down. He lowered his chin and built up his shields as fast as he could. He drew a dagger from his weapons harness.
Greaves just smiled. “I’ve been waiting for this moment for months now.” He let loose with a hand-blast that roared at Leto like a freight train.
Leto’s shields buckled, and he was thrown off the platform and rolled downhill. The whole time, he worked at rebuilding his shields, but it was as though they’d been melted. Still, he had to try.
He glanced in Gideon’s direction, but he couldn’t see him. Greaves had put a mist around the battle. Of course.
Leto had just gained his feet when another blast hit, but to his surprise, it didn’t even touch him.
Another shimmering brought a new entity between Leto and Greaves. He was tall and bald but with writing on his skull—tattoos, maybe.
“Casimir,” Greaves called out. “What are you doing here?”
“Making sure Leto stays alive.”
This was Casimir? And he was here to defend Leto? What the hell?
What Leto saw next was a shower of energy that met in the middle between both men. Light and sparks flew up into the sky.
“I can do this for hours, Darian, and I have permission from Endelle to engage however I can to protect Leto. I suggest you get the hell out of here and take your pretty-boys with you before I blast your mist to hell and the rest of the Militia Warriors below decide to take on your men. What do you say?”
When he finished this speech with a flick of his wrist that sent a wave of energy piercing Greaves’s shoulder, Greaves waved his arm. Just like that, he and his death vamps were gone.
Leto had too much adrenaline in his system. He held his sword in a tight fist, and his whole arm shook. He’d faced death and would have died just now except for the aid of the one vampire he despised the most: Casimir.
The bastard turned around and faced Leto. He looked so different without his long hair. But there was something more. His dark eyes held a light Leto had never seen before.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” Leto asked. “And what do you mean you’re here to protect me?”
Casimir’s smile quirked. “Is that any way to address the vampire who just saved your ass?” He looked Leto up and down. “Like the new look you’re sporting. Bigger.”
Leto took two deep breaths. “Grace is mine.”
At that, something of the old Casimir showed through. He rubbed the top of his head. “We’ll see about that. I think she should have a choice.”
Leto would have launched on him, but Casimir just held up his hand and Leto couldn’t move, which made him mad as hell. He roared.
“Relax, beast-man. I’m here as your Guardian of Ascension. That’s all. I relinquished Grace months ago. She’s yours.”
Leto had no reason to believe Casimir. “Shut it, asshole, and please just return to Fourth Earth.”
“No can do. Greaves wants your ass in a sling—or did you not notice that he outpowers you about a hundred-to-one?”
Leto noticed.
“Yeah,” Casimir drawled. “I think he was a little ticked off that you oh-so-easily dispatched the other Third Earth vampires he’d sent to get this job done. Oh, and maybe because you defected back to Endelle’s side.”
Leto knew many definitions for the word nightmare, but right now, this situation in which Leto owed Casimir his life, had just created a new meaning. “What about Grace? Are you here to guard her as well?”
“Nope. Just you.”
Yep, nightmare. Leto was many things, but he wasn’t a fool. If Greaves had targeted him and had staked Leto out in order to finish him off, Leto was in for it.
He needed Casimir. Nothing could have put a fire on his nerves worse than that.
“You’re not staying in my house.”
Casimir just lifted a brow. “I’m not staying anywhere on Second Earth.” With that, he vanished, though Leto could sense he hadn’t dematerialized. As a Fourth ascender, he had powers that Leto couldn’t relate to, like going invisible—which he was pretty sure Casimir had just done.
Leto turned in a circle. He still held his sword in his hand. He focused and sure enough, he could sense Casimir’s presence.
Don’t be an idiot, Casimir sent. You need me right now, and I’m sticking around. I owe Grace at least that much, to keep you alive. Adios. At least for now.
This time, Leto knew that Casimir had gone. So had Greaves’s mist. He glanced down in Gideon’s direction, but no one seemed the wiser about what had just happened.
He let out a heavy sigh and headed back up the hill. Once at the landing platform, he folded to the Seattle Colony’s landing area then headed to HQ. The Militia Warriors on duty reported that the colonists were all in their homes; no lights were on anywhere since they were still on high alert. The warriors folding back from battle were immediately sent home to clean up and recoup.
He glanced out the window at the contest grounds, visible beyond the empty tents.
“Have all the competitors returned to their continents?”
“Diallo gave the order shortly after the last of the Militia Warriors folded to Nazca.”
Leto nodded, but his heart was heavy. So much for the warrior games.
He wa
sn’t under the illusion that Greaves had actually started the war, not by attacking one insignificant colony on Mortal Earth. Greaves had probably been testing the waters. But whatever this attack had been, it was just the beginning. The transmitters had been all around Nazca, one small colony in a relatively insignificant corner of the world. That meant that Greaves was probably tracking all the colonies.
He sent out a telepathic thread toward Grace. Where are you?
Leto? Are you back?
Yes.
He heard her sigh, or at least he thought he did.
Thank God. When you’re done with all your duties, I’m at the cabin, having a glass of a very nice German wine I found in your fridge.
Listen, I’m going to fold straight to the shower, but I don’t want you to join me. I don’t want you to see me like this because I’ve been battling.
Well, I confess you won’t have to twist my arm on this one. But, Leto, when you get here, I really need you to break open my obsidian flame power. I’m done with these headaches, and as I told you before, I’m done holding back from my role in the triad.
He felt a jolt go through him, an awareness that what Grace had just said to him was no small thing. Grace was staying. That’s what went through his mind. If she meant to embrace her obsidian flame power, it meant she was staying.
Something in his chest opened up, and he released a deep sigh. Relief washed through him. Grace was staying. He wouldn’t have to bid her good-bye anytime soon. Maybe things weren’t completely settled between them, but until this moment he had felt she could easily walk away.
On the other hand, would Casimir’s sudden return have an effect on her? Would the breh return? Jesus H. Christ, a Guardian of Ascension. What exactly did that mean? He wasn’t, that is, he couldn’t possibly be in a call to ascension to Third Earth, could he?
Battle fatigue had started settling in, however. He set aside this new development in his bizarre life and focused on Grace.
I’ll fold there after I’ve taken care of a couple of things.
Okay. I’ll be waiting.
He left orders that HQ was to contact him at his cabin if he was needed for anything. When he felt confident that the situation was stable, he thought the thought. The next moment he was washing blood and debris down the drain of his shower.