“Of course she does and the good news is, for a few hours, you’ll all get a break. Greaves will have his army present at the arena to make a strong statement to the world about his power and promises of a Coming Order, blah, blah, blah, so there won’t be any activity at the Borderlands, thank you, God.
“Besides, our girl has some serious chops.” Her gaze landed on Kerrick. “Tell them what you did last night and why it’s not so fucking hopeless.”
He wiped his swollen bloody lips with the back of his hand. “I forged minds and let her experience some of my recent battles.” The words came out thick and slurred.
Expletives rounded the group.
“No fucking way,” Zach cried. “And she took it? How? I can’t even do that.”
Endelle shook her head. “She’s powerful, more than even she knows, more than I suspect even I know.”
Several gasps followed the last part of this statement, which pleased her to no end because it reflected their view of her as one approaching omniscience. Nice.
“We’re done here. I’ll see all of you at the arena tonight and for Christ’s sake arrive early in dress uniform, including you, Warrior Marcus. Alison Wells means something as-yet-to-be-defined to Second Earth and also to this ape over here.” She jerked her thumb toward Kerrick.
“And as for you,” she cried, glaring at Kerrick. “Get the fuck back to Queen Creek and do your goddam guardian duty. I’ll send Horace to you to get you fixed up.” She didn’t wait for an argument. She waved her arm and Kerrick vanished.
She then pointed to Marcus. “You, asshole. One more word to Kerrick about Helena and I’m taking your left nut.” Just to let him know she could, she mentally gave a little tug, which made Marcus’s eyes pop, then she gave a sharp twist. He doubled over. “What do you say?”
“Yes, Madame Endelle,” he wheezed, his face turning a pretty strawberry-red.
She inclined her head to her second-in-command. “Thorne, get Horace. See to Kerrick first.”
“Of course,” he said.
“And for fuck’s sake, get some sleep.”
She didn’t wait to hear another word. She took a breath, turned her back on her warriors then just as she dematerialized, she smiled.
Goddamn but she loved her men, and a little roughhousing now and then was a good thing. A stiff drink helped. A good lay. Taking the vein. Without a whole variety of steam valves for testosterone, the whole world would have exploded by now, the earth’s magma along with it.
* * *
As Kerrick awaited Horace, he stood over Alison once more, his sword drawn, the one tangible means he had of protecting her, yet it was useless in this situation. She slept deeply now, her lips parted. She looked even younger with the comforter drawn partway up her cheek, her fingers curled around the edge.
His heart ached as he looked down at her. He wanted her in his world and he wanted her safe. In the short time they’d been together, she’d become a litany in his head, must protect, must protect. He’d never been so obsessed before but then again, Alison was like no other ascendiate he had ever known and yeah, she was the center of the breh-hedden for him. He was hooked in deep.
Making love to her had been flat-out erotic, intense, and drive-a-car-at-two-hundred-miles-an-hour satisfying. She matched him in power, this woman, this mortal, this ascendiate, and he was falling for her fast, an asteroid getting close to the earth’s gravitational pull and getting sucked straight in.
He’d been inside her head. He knew she had strength. He knew she’d go the distance even if the endgame was hopeless. Still, right now, asleep in her bed, she looked incredibly vulnerable. Dammit, his chest seized, drawing into a painful knot.
I can’t lose her.
Yet what chance did she have? She would be fighting the Commander’s most powerful general, a former Warrior of the Blood, an ascender with incredible ability.
His phone buzzed. He folded his sword into the far corner of his bedroom, palmed his phone, then thumbed. “Give,” he said, his tone flat.
Jeannie’s voice, weary at the tail end of a shift, came online. “Horace begs admittance.”
“Granted. Go home, Jeannie.”
“I’m off in about thirty minutes. So, tell me, duhuro, does she have a chance?”
The soft concern in her voice wrenched the knot in his chest all over again. “I don’t know.”
“Aw, shit.”
“You said it, but I have to go.”
“You get some rest, too.”
As the line went dead, Horace materialized a few feet away.
* * *
Once again Alison found herself inside a dream, flying at full-mount over White Lake. The water shimmered beneath her in the dawn’s light, reflecting pink streamers of clouds. The breathtaking view sent her heart soaring.
Guardian. How the word called to her. Guardian of Ascension. Guardian of the Lake.
As though she had been flying all her life, she drew her feet perpendicular to the water then spread her arms wide, which brought her body to a position of standing in midair, the gentle flapping of her wings supporting her. She slowed the rhythm, which allowed her to descend to the calm surface of the blue-green water.
Her bare toes slid into the water and her fangs emerged. Wings and a pair of fangs. So, she was ascended and had acquired the promised vampire traits. How at ease she felt with the lake, with flight, with her fangs. She even wore leather flight gear, like a warrior—a kilt and a weapons harness over her chest, covering her breasts and riding up to cross her shoulders then travel down her spine. The fit was perfect.
Again … guardian.
The lake waters were oddly warm and soothing. She sustained her position with her wings then looked up, straight up. A beacon of light, heavenly light, shone down on her and she knew she looked into Third Earth. She was overcome by a swell of love for what she saw, a deep intense and quite familiar longing. Tears touched her eyes. She felt the most profound need to rise into the air, to reach Third Earth. She started beating her wings as hard as she could but her body wouldn’t move, as though the lake anchored her, held her in place.
She looked down and the lake once more called to her, begging for her protection.
Guardian.
Alison struggled to consciousness, picking her way through her fatigue as through a dense fog. In the distance, maybe a thousand miles away, she heard Kerrick’s voice within her mind. Time to wake up, Alison. Endelle is about to remove her protection.
She opened her eyes and saw the vaulted twigged ceiling of Kerrick’s Queen Creek home. She was in the guest bed, cocooned in the warmth of the comforter. She even wore flannel. She released a sigh, for in this moment she felt very safe.
She stretched again and felt a few leftover twinges. Nothing to complain about. Kerrick’s healing had been wonderful. Her mind moved backward. The training had been intense before … and after.
Oh, God, how he had made love to her last night, right after she’d hurt her wrist!
The vampire had been … incredible. She sighed and just for a moment, before the day, or rather night, and whatever it would hold, crashed down on her, she savored the memory of being so connected to her warrior.
She closed her eyes and smiled. She sighed a few dozen times.
And what was the potion he’d put in her breast that had the ability to travel all the way to her …
Alison. It’s time.
She heard his voice again, right in the center of her brain, less patient this time. Time for what? Dinner, maybe?
Sleep still swirled throughout her body and for just a moment she recalled the dream of wings and of flying, of feeling a profound protective drive toward the lake.
Alison. How strident he sounded. Did she really have to get up? She wanted to call him to her, to beg him to come to her bed for a few minutes, okay, maybe a day or two, and just hold her. Okay, maybe not just hold her but they could do that, too.
The sweetest sensations of desire began teasin
g her breasts and the tender place between her thighs. Now would be very nice, Kerrick and his hands. Oh, those hands. Kerrick and his …
Alison. The voice this time had a dagger’s edge.
She sat up, sleep streaming away from her. Kerrick sounded urgent. That was right. He had trained her to fight, but he hadn’t told her the why of it.
Adrenaline started punching at her. She put a hand to her chest as her heart rate increased.
She slipped from bed and made her way to the formal living room. Kerrick waited for her there and he wasn’t smiling.
She looked him up and down. He had on a very strange short black leather tunic and a sleeker version of the sandals he wore when fighting in flight gear. He looked like a modern version of ancient Rome. His hair was pulled back from his face, probably contained in the cadroen.
The picture? So gorgeous.
She had a dozen reasons already to believe she had entered a new world, but the sight of his partially bare, muscled thighs and a purple cape flung over one shoulder put her just a little bit farther from Kansas.
She moved toward him and caught sight of a glimmer beneath the cape. When she was close enough, she pushed the cape aside. A brass breastplate, also sexy as hell and molded to his pecs, bore an insignia—a silver sword crowned with a mossy green laurel wreath, simple, beautiful, powerful.
“What is this?” she asked. A prickly sensation traveled suddenly down her spine.
“The emblem of the Warriors of the Blood.”
Another question, one she didn’t want to ask, slid past her lips. “Why are you dressed like this?”
His expression hardened. She felt his distance as though he had moved to another continent, Australia maybe.
Had he even made love to her last night?
She searched his eyes. “What’s going on, Kerrick? Is the house surrounded? Don’t I have even the smallest chance?”
He met her gaze but retained his posture, as though the soles of his leather sandals had rooted into the tiles. “Last night, what I couldn’t bring myself to tell you was that COPASS agreed to the Commander’s demand that you do battle in an arena this evening, one-on-one against his top general, the warrior called Leto.”
She tilted her head. “The one at the alley? The one who used to be a Warrior of the Blood?”
He nodded.
She really couldn’t have heard him right. “Let me get this straight. I’m to battle a man, a vampire, one powerful like you, in an arena, in front of thousands of people?”
He nodded.
She shook her head. “This can’t be happening. How am I supposed to do battle after a single day of training?” She thought of Darian, her former client, then murmured, “He must really want me dead.”
She shook her head in disbelief. She recalled the moment in the downtown alley when she had chosen, chosen, to demonstrate her power because she knew something momentous would happen, an action that had led to the opening of Second Earth to her. But how, how, had her journey brought her here, to a place where she would have to attempt something so impossible? “And I can’t refuse the challenge, can I?”
This time his head did a back-and-forth wag, only very slowly. “You entered your rite of ascension when you sent the hand-blast up into the Trough. I’m sorry, Alison. No going back, not at this point. And until your ascension ceremony takes place tomorrow night, you’re fair game. Again … I’m sorry.”
She wanted to kick something. “Is this why you’re so angry? Why you’re as cold as ice this evening?”
His chest rose then fell. “Yes.” He thawed a little, his shoulders falling. He rubbed his fist over his forehead. “I tried last night to change things but Endelle wouldn’t talk to me. I even called Harding who heads the fucking Committee, but he was about as useful as rat shit.”
“I can set up a field, though, right?”
He nodded. “You know my reservations. Leto has advanced powers like you, like me. Don’t cast a field unless you know you can contain him.”
She nodded. Okay … no fields unless she was certain. So how the hell was she supposed to be certain?
She turned away from him. Her eyes burned. Dammit, she did not want to cry, only how was this right or fair? What had she ever done to deserve being condemned in this way?
She thought about the despair she had sensed in Kerrick at various points during her all-too-brief acquaintance with him.
She began to understand.
“I let you sleep as long as I could, but the contest takes place in just under an hour. Endelle sent battle gear, and you’ll need to eat. A meal has been prepared.” He sighed. “You must ready yourself to depart.”
She moved away from him intending to return to the guest room, yet her instincts wouldn’t let her. She turned back to him and drew close once more. She met his gaze and reached out with her empathy. She found his familiar despair edged with, yeah, his deeply embedded guilt.
She thought of all he had done for her, all he had given her in making love to her, in being able to handle her absurd power. She put a hand on his cheek and he caught it with his, pressing hard.
“Kerrick, you’re not responsible for this.”
His face contorted as though she had struck him.
She cried, “Dammit, listen to me and listen good. I chose to ascend even though I’d already watched you slay a death vamp, a creature who stated very clearly that he’d come to kill me, to take my blood. I knew when I threw that hand-blast into the Trough that I wasn’t going on a trip to Disneyland. Darian chooses to commit vile, despicable acts. Others cave to his seduction and trickery. You are not to blame for any of it.”
His jaw worked as she had so often seen it move, as though trying to crunch marbles. His chest once more moved up and down, this time in even deeper breaths. The therapist in Alison heard a shrill clanging of bells, a warning that something needed to be addressed right here, right now. How many times had she seen this before in her clients, that stolid look that was really only a wall of glass, which a few pertinent words and some strong coaxing would shatter?
However, that sort of effort always took nimble moment-by-moment processing and she certainly didn’t have the time right now to help him through. But she would wager her life that the despair living in Kerrick had been with him from the time he ascended to Second Earth. She knew this in the same way she knew that the sun rose in the east and set in the west.
Her feet began moving again, cool slaps against cold tile. When she reached the guest room, she saw black leather battle gear, as supple as velvet, hanging on the end of the rack. Only then did the tears come. Somehow a female battle costume suit, with leather boots, brought the reality of the situation home to her. She would be going against a former Warrior of the Blood. How the hell was she supposed to survive that?
Spectacle,
The lifeblood of a society,
A meager reflection,
A ribbon around the hardship of life,
The challenge of the universe.
—Collected Poems, Beatrice of Fourth
CHAPTER 18
Crace paraded his wife up and down the second tier aisle of the Tolleson Two arena, a long walkway around the Commander’s half of the enormous building, a path designed for exhibition, for show, for demonstration, for greeting equals, for letting those beneath one’s station know just how inferior they were.
He was in his element, that public place of societal ranking that most pleased his simple avaricious, power-hungry soul. Best of all, however, was Julianna, whose beauty and bearing were unequaled.
Julianna walked regally, her head held high, her neck encased in a stiff elegant ruff that spread to her shoulders and was attached to long lace sleeves. Her gown, all in white and embroidered with seed pearls, was cut very low, displaying her full perfect breasts. He had suckled them earlier and made her cry out more than once. His beloved had the most tender erotic breasts and came so easily beneath his mouth.
How he loved her.
/>
Yet oh, how he loved more this moment of triumph. He shouldn’t be gloating, but the ceiling began to withdraw and because he had worked for the past thirty hours to pull in every favor owed to him throughout the North American continent, as well as China, he knew this spectacle would outshine them all.
A full double orchestra played Beethoven’s Fifth, a rather ostentatious choice, but then why the hell not? His future was being decided tonight and why not let the inevitable celebration begin now?
He had paid a visit to Leto in the locker room and oh, how magnificent the warrior had appeared in his black leather kilt, bare oiled chest, and determination crowding his blue eyes. Crace’s heart swelled at the memory.
“The roof is fully drawn back now,” Julianna cried, her gaze fixed upward. She released his arm then clapped her hands since she had a particular love of fireworks.
The distant thumping started and the night sky filled with a rainbow of sparkling color. The crowd shouted its appreciation as great bursts of light revealed mystical creatures in every bejeweled shade beneath the sun. Once fully formed in the air, the creatures began to move, to fly in vast arcs above the crowd of some fifty thousand spectators. There was only one place such fireworks existed: in imaginative Beijing Two. Yes, Crace had called in a few favors—but to great effect, for as one the crowd moaned, gasped, and squealed.
In the midst of the moving glittering lights, several squadrons of trained swans flew in organized patterns, guided by actors from the nearby live theaters, all in full-mount and in splendid swirling costumes, so that very soon the upper reaches of the arena were full of that which all ascenders adored, hell, all mortals and ascended vampires alike … spectacle.
The crowd cheered and suddenly he felt the master’s presence beside him. “Well done, High Administrator Crace. An excellent beginning.”