by Caris Roane
“A team of powerful ascended women, that’s who.”
He leaned down, caught her lips, and kissed her. She kissed him back, pushing herself a little farther up his chest, wondering just how far down this road they really were.
She loved Leto, so very much. Her heart was given, that much she could feel within herself. Maybe she did have parts missing, but she had a powerful instinct that time would make those ghost-like parts of her more real. At least, she hoped so.
She was about to make a comment on how much everything was changing when a sudden light filled the room. A moment later, Greaves was just there, standing at the foot of the bed, his hands behind his back.
“My, Leto, how you’ve grown?”
“Greaves. What the fuck are you doing here? And how the hell did you get through two layers of mist and one of them Endelle’s?”
The Commander simply lifted a brow. “Are you kidding?”
Then he began to pace.
Grace couldn’t reach the sheet to cover her body so she huddled next to Leto. He sat up, leaning over her, shielding her with his massive chest. Her heart started thumping.
She couldn’t believe the enemy was in Leto’s bedroom.
She waved a hand, and now wore yoga pants and a tank top. Good enough. She put her hand on Leto’s shoulder. I’m clothed, she sent.
He didn’t relax, not even a little. Clearly, nudity wasn’t their biggest problem.
“I think I’ve been amazingly forbearing and gracious,” Greaves said. He slid his hand along the smooth edge of the footboard. “Nor did I need to announce my presence. I could have struck and slain you both, but that hardly would have been gentlemanly, now would it?”
“You won’t kill us,” Leto said. “COPASS, by law, would be forced to take action. Endelle would insist on it. You still don’t have a majority of Second Earth Territories in your camp. COPASS would have had to submit to the majority’s will.”
He shrugged. “Perhaps.” He wore his usual immaculate dark wool suit. His bald head gleamed. He stopped pacing and turned toward Leto. “Perhaps I don’t care anymore. I think you and I both know exactly what is at stake in this room right now. Do you think I don’t know that you took half my army away from me? Or that Warrior Marcus has turned my less-than-successful bombing attempt into a PR nightmare?” He waved a hand toward Grace. “Or that her return hasn’t made my life a nightmare?
“But there is something more, Leto. You wounded me. I trusted you and you betrayed me. I had wanted to believe in our friendship, I even had thoughts at times that we could become more than friends. I know it’s foolish of me, but you hurt my pride and that is the truly unforgiveable sin.”
Grace extended her thoughts to Casimir. Why wasn’t he here? He was supposed to be Leto’s Guardian of Ascension. Yet she could tell he wasn’t in the cabin, wasn’t anywhere near.
Greaves rocked back on his heels, then smiled. “No, my dear Leto, I’m finishing this tonight. Don’t bother trying to fold or use your telepathy. None of it will work. I didn’t just add my mist, I shrouded your cabin. No one in. No one out. Not even Casimir, I’m ’fraid.”
Grace still had her hand on Leto’s shoulder. He was still in his beast state, but his body had heated up, almost burning beneath her fingers. She could feel his rage vibrating along his skin. Even if he had wanted to hold back, to try to reason his way out of the situation, she knew that he had suffered too much, endured too much, to do much more than engage in battle with Greaves right now.
Leto rose from the bed, his chin low. He folded on battle gear without flexing a single muscle. He lowered his body into a fighting stance. “Bring it,” he growled.
Greaves had thrown down the gauntlet, and because Leto was a warrior first, he had to do battle by every honorable code in his body. But he was no match for Greaves.
He would die in this battle.
And Grace would die with him.
Worse yet, the world would fall to this monster because obsidian flame could not function without her. With the triad out of the way, Greaves would gain the advantage. Over the centuries, he had gathered enough weaponry, turned enough death vampires, created a big enough army, and garnered sufficient support from enough territories to complete his dominion of Second Earth.
Grace felt her obsidian flame power rumbling deep within the earth. She sat up and allowed the power to flow up through her legs, inhabiting her more forcefully than ever before.
She wasn’t sure yet what she meant to do or even what she could do, but before she could act or even contact her obsidian sisters, Greaves threw something at her and a searing pain sliced through her shoulder.
She turned to look at the source of the pain, but movement was incredibly difficult and hurt like hell.
Her right shoulder was now pinned to the wood headboard with a long thick dagger.
A loud, heavy growl flowed through the room, a beast enraged, and Leto began flinging powerful hand-blasts at Greaves one after the other. But Greaves barely broke a sweat as he met each one with the open palms of his hands, apparently absorbing all that energy.
My God, the power Greaves had.
Get out of here, Grace! Leto shouted within her mind. Do what you can to escape. Now.
She reached for the knife and, grinding her teeth, pulled it out. She screamed and fell forward. She tried to fold but couldn’t, just as Greaves promised. She didn’t know what to do, or what else she could do given the situation. And she was in so much pain her mind had turned to mush.
But she had to focus. She worked at ordering her thoughts. What about her power to acquire abilities? Could she somehow make use of it now, in this terrible situation?
Maybe if she joined forces with Leto, but my God her shoulder her hurt. She could barely move her arm.
She reached deep for her healing abilities. Her obsidian power amplified them so that the wound began to close. She whimpered in relief.
And what of obsidian flame? Could she bring her obsidian sisters through Greaves’s shroud?
She sent a telepathic message to Fiona, but even though her obsidian power was in play, it couldn’t pass through the shroud. The same with Marguerite.
She looked up. Leto seemed to be holding his ground, still flinging hand-blasts, but for how long?
* * *
Leto hurled the hand-blasts one after the other, as though his desperation to keep Grace safe had amplified his power. But for all that, Greaves met each blast effortlessly. At least the swiftness of the blasts did keep Greaves from attacking Grace again. But why did she remain on the bed?
“I see you have a new form,” Greaves said.
Leto didn’t answer. Anger fed his power, and he flicked his wrist three times and rushed power at Greaves.
But his former master shunted them aside. “Your abilities have expanded.”
“Yes. So has my motivation. I want to live now. I didn’t before.”
“You should always be prepared to die.”
“Fuck off.” He shunted a couple of Greaves’s hits aside while powering up. But he felt Grace’s presence suddenly and simply allowed her to enter his soul very deep. He knew what she was after and felt her acquire the same power.
Good thinking, he sent as he flipped another blast at Greaves.
As soon as she left, and he could sense her reshaping her powers, he hit Greaves with all he had. Grace joined him.
Grace’s unexpected blasts struck Greaves in the chest, and he flew back against the wall by the fireplace. Leto knew better than to stop, and Grace must have had the same idea because they advanced on him and rained hand-blasts at him in quick succession. His body jerked and started to smoke until finally he fell limp.
Leto moved to stand over him. Was this possible? Had he and Grace together defeated the monster?
Grace approached him. “Is he dead? I can’t believe we might have actually killed him? Is he dead?”
The answer came swiftly as the body vanished and Greaves called to them. “Come, come, my c
hildren. Did you think killing me would be so simple? Or that even together you had enough combined power to destroy me?”
As Leto turned, Grace with him, the next blast flowed over Leto’s body like a sheet of molten ore, heavy and burning hot. This time he was thrown against the same wall, and Grace with him. He had no illusions about what had just happened. This blow would finish them both. All Greaves had to do now was bring in his death vampires.
So was this how it would end for him and for his woman, smashed up against the wall, in the same place Greaves had just inhabited?
He opened his eyes to slits. He could manage nothing more. Grace was in a heap next to him, her limbs bent at weird angles and blood flowing from her nose and mouth. He smelled burning flesh. He tried to reach her mind, but nothing was there.
* * *
The pain was beyond Grace’s comprehension or tolerance.
Before she could make sense of what she had done, she apparitioned and the moment she did, the pain was gone. At least Greaves couldn’t prevent her from doing this.
Her first thought was again of Casimir. Maybe she had sufficient power to bring him through the heavy shroud that Greaves had created over the cabin. She focused on him, and her ghost-self flew through the cabin and the dense shroud all the way through nether-space, past Second Earth, to the portal to Third.
She found herself in a room that had a wall of windows. Casimir was pacing the length. She called to him.
He turned toward her. His eyes went wide as he looked her up and down. “I saw you like this in Moscow Two when you took Leto away.”
“Yes, this is my apparition-form.”
“What’s happening? I just realized that something is wrong with my voyeur window. Is Leto all right?”
She shook her head. “Greaves has us trapped in Leto’s cabin, beneath a shroud of mist that no one can penetrate. I can leave in this form, but neither of us can fold out of the room. I’m hoping I can bring you back.”
“Let’s go.”
He moved toward her, and she put her apparition-hand on his shoulder. She thought the thought, but nothing happened. She tried several times, but she couldn’t move him back with her.
She shook her head. “This isn’t working. Just … let Endelle know. I’ve got to find some way to do this. I’m going to Beatrice. Maybe she can help.”
“Yes, go. I’ll do what I can here.”
She focused on Beatrice and began to glide past Third; then she was at the palace. Beatrice sat in her chair, the lavender yarn in a ball at her left elbow.
“My son has hurt you, hasn’t he?”
Grace explained the situation. “Can you help me?”
“Try to take me back with you.” Beatrice reached for Grace’s arm.
Once the connection was made, Grace once more attempted the return trip—but she couldn’t do it, not with another ascender.
Despite her apparition-form, she fell at the philosopher’s feet. She didn’t know what else she could do. She laid her head on Beatrice’s lap. “Did you know this would happen, that your son would take my life?”
“No, but it seemed like a logical thing for him to do. You are one of the greatest threats to his plans.”
“I learned Leto’s hand-blast skill just now.”
“You’re very powerful, Grace.”
She frowned as she fingered the silk of Beatrice’s skirt. She felt the woman’s gentle hand on her head. “I don’t want to die. I want to live and be with Leto, to share his bed. I want to bear his children, but I’m barren. My life has been so barren, so useless.”
“Don’t say that. You were always beloved wherever you went.”
“And yet I held back from love. Even after I completed the breh-hedden with Leto, it was as though I was still a ghost with him. He could be outside of me or in me, and yet could he really embrace me and hold me? Hold who I was? Oh, Beatrice, I didn’t want to be a ghost with him, an apparition. How do you make the apparition real when you’ve been a ghost your entire life?”
And there it was, the hard truth, the deep understanding that finally came to her. She had been a ghost in her life from the time she’d given up her baby for adoption. She’d lived in the shadows of life, always keeping herself safe, keeping herself from harm.
Now she was near death, as was Leto, and she had no way to help him or herself. How had this happened? Why had this happened? “I’ve lived in the shadows all my life.”
Beatrice spoke softly. “My dear, you don’t even know, do you?”
“What?”
“You stepped out of the shadows the moment you folded three dimensions and made love to a beast-man in the basement of the Cascades cabin. You’ve been out of the shadows at least that long. You just lack experience. So go. Make more experiences.”
Grace blinked. Had she moved out of the shadows? Was she more than a ghost?
And yet, as she thought about all that she’d done over the past four days, she realized she had never been that person before, taking charge, formulating enormous plans to alter Greaves’s ability to take over the world, then actually following through with the spectacle event and the mass fold of a million warriors. She was no longer the woman who’d lived in a convent for a century.
She was obsidian flame.
Which meant … that she already had the tools in her possession, had been learning them for the past several days, all that she would need to defeat the monster.
What came to her was so pure and so simple that she rose up in her apparition-form, kissed Beatrice on the cheek, then folded, not to the cabin but to the palace. This time, she wanted Endelle.
Beatrice had said she needed to make more experiences. Well, who had more experience than the scorpion queen?
Grace found her walking through the rotunda nearest her rooms, where she stopped and stared at Grace.
“So you can see me?” Grace asked.
“Of course I can see you. What the fuck are you doing here? I thought all you cared about was getting Leto to go beast for you.”
She told her about Greaves and how he had them both trapped and dying. Endelle put a hand to her forehead. “That bastard. Okay. What do you need me to do? I can try blasting through the shroud.”
Grace wasn’t convinced anything external could help at this point. “I need something from you.”
When Endelle once more suggested an assault, Grace said, “Just trust me right now to take care of this, Endelle. Please. I can do this. I just need something from your soul, and once I’ve acquired that ability, I’ll want you to bring the rest of obsidian flame here to the palace. And then, as soon as I can, I’ll bring Leto to you.”
Endelle became very still. She grew relaxed, her shoulders dropping. Opening her hands wide, she said, “Take whatever you need.” No more questions, or suggestions, no complaints, just take what you need.
And here was the truth about the hard-bitten ruler of Second Earth: Endelle always came through.
“I need to capture your skill of living out loud. I mean, I think I’m already getting the hang of it, but I’d like a booster just in case.”
Endelle laughed. “You sure you’re ready for that?”
“Oh, yeah. It’s time. It’s been time for two millennia.”
“Then hit me, baby.”
Grace pierced Endelle’s mind and once more sank deep toward the woman’s soul. She found the lock she needed all lit up and inserted her blue flame key. The lock gave way, the door opened, and it was as though all of Endelle’s life poured over her: all the ways she met every challenge head-on, all the ways she could be cunning, all the ways she manipulated with sarcasm.
Grace drank it in.
Street smarts. That’s what Endelle had. And courage, mountains and mountains of courage. But mostly, Endelle had experience, that which Grace lacked the most, experience dealing with Greaves.
She thanked Endelle telepathically and sped back to the cabin. She moved to stand in front of Greaves. He still couldn’t see he
r or even perceive that she was near him, and he still sat in that chair, as if he had all night to finish them off.
Good. Although in this moment, she had to resist a very Endelle-like desire to slap the bastard silly.
She smiled.
Then she looked around. She let all of Endelle’s experience flow through her mind. She picked up one strategy and threw it out. She picked up another and turned it over in her mind. She felt more substantial in herself, more weighted, more real, as though having all of Endelle’s experience backing her up had sharpened her focus.
She apparitioned across the room to stare down at Leto. She blinked. She needed to do something with him, but what?
* * *
Greaves sat in the chair near the head of Leto’s bed. He’d barely broken a sweat and two powerful vampires lay facing each other in a tangle of burned and broken limbs. Neither was dead yet, and he would need to bring in a few death vampires to get the job done, but not just yet.
He savored this precise moment in his life, in his long career, in the brilliant path of his ambitions, because with just a little patience, he would see this pair good and dead; obsidian flame would be eliminated as a threat, and he could at last allow his plans to unfold.
He leaned his head back and he smiled.
Life was good.
* * *
Leto wanted to lift a thumb to touch Grace’s cheek, but he didn’t think he could. He didn’t know exactly how many bones of his were broken, but the pain was staggering. He couldn’t move, couldn’t even lift a finger. Her eyes were open, but there was little life present, if any.
How had it come down to this? What had he done wrong? How had he failed to keep Grace safe?
He had known she was at risk. The fact that she had outmaneuvered Greaves had put her in danger.
However, during the past several days with her, it hadn’t occurred to him even once to share his experience with her, and now that he looked at the situation, he felt like a complete fool. What could Grace have become if he had said to her: Take what is mine, take all that is mine; all that I have experienced, I give to you freely and fully. Learn all that I have learned.
But maybe it wasn’t too late. He was a vampire of tremendous power and ability. More important, he could communicate all that to Grace, if there was even the smallest spark left inside her.
