Wings of Fire (28 page)

The warriors each turned in a full circle and folded their swords into their hands. Fists pumped weapons, fingers adjusted grips. She had held a sword with the full advantage of Antony’s memories, and she knew how complete a warrior could feel with his sword in hand. She wished for one now, but she knew it was ridiculous to think she could square off with a death vampire no matter how vivid the memories.

Santiago took point. He slipped quickly through the mist, disappearing, then returned with equal speed. Without a word, he waved the warriors forward and whispered, “Two layers.”

Antony put his arm around her and kept glancing over both shoulders. It seemed ironic to her that once inside the double dome, he relaxed a little and let his arm drop away. Given the circumstances, she was probably in more danger inside the domes than out.

The warriors remained grouped at what proved to be the far end of a garden and the back door of a small stone farmhouse. Chickens pecked in the gravel yard and a wooden table sat outside the door. The place looked empty.

“No one’s here,” she whispered.

None of the warriors spoke. Each faced the house, waiting.

Antony whispered, “Go ahead, Parisa, see if you can contact Fiona.”

With his arm around her, she relaxed enough to open the voyeur window. She thought Fiona’s name and came suddenly into a small whitewashed room. The woman’s beautiful chestnut hair was fanned out on a pillow. Her arm hung off the side of the bed, her hand limp. She was asleep in what was afternoon in France? Something wasn’t right.

Fiona,
she sent, a sharp word through Fiona’s mind.
We’re here.

The hand twitched and at almost the same moment, a violent headache struck Parisa’s mind, just like the one she’d experienced in Antony’s library. Voyeuring had never been this way, ever. Had her ascension to Second Earth caused an unexpected problem? She stumbled backward and would have fallen, but Antony caught her.

“Are you all right?”

“Headache again. Give me a minute. I can see Fiona. I still have the window open. She appears to be asleep on her bed.” The pain sliced through her like a knife. Tears rained down her face. She wanted it to stop. She held her hands over her lips to keep from crying out. She took deep breaths, one after the other. Only after an excruciating half minute did the sensation finally ease, then disappear.

“Oh, God,” she murmured.

“What is the matter,
cherie
?” Jean-Pierre asked, frowning.

“Headache,” she said wiping at her face and smoothing her damp hands on her soft flight pants. “It’s been happening lately when I voyeur. I’m okay now. Let me try again.”

Once more she opened the voyeur window. Again, she called to Fiona in sharp telepathic tones then finally shouted,
Wake up. Fiona, we’re here. Wake up.
Each time the hand would pop up and down. Once her foot moved.

“I think she’s drugged,” Parisa said. “She can only move her hand and her foot.”

Zach glanced back at her, his curly black hair moving like a cloud over his back. “Then let’s go. Let’s see if they have anything planned for us.”

The warriors moved as a quick organized unit, knees bent, swords held at safe angles away from one another.

A sudden shimmering covered the entire back of the house, in front of the wooden table. The next moment, an array of death vampires, sixteen strong, appeared.

Parisa stopped in her tracks. Antony turned to her. “Stay put, but watch for Rith. Don’t look him in the eye if he comes to you.”

She nodded. Her vision grew blurry in the wake of a burst of adrenaline that pounded her heart. The warriors spread out, preparing for battle at a ratio of four-to-one, which she knew from conversations with both Havily and Alison was fairly SOP for the warriors. They fought hand-to-hand with death vampires every night.

What were sixteen more?

Another shimmering, however, brought eight more into sight, and more than one of the warriors muttered, “Shit.”

Antony took a step back toward her but the battle was just suddenly on. Death vampires moved like the warriors did, with preternatural speed.

Parisa drew her dagger out of the harness. In the distance, she heard Rith cry out, “I want the woman alive.” He sounded so certain he would prevail.

Rith. She’d heard his voice but where was he? Safe, no doubt, near the house.

Something cold settled within her chest, her heart turning to flint.

Rith.

Her gaze sought him and found him in the doorway that led into the house. He watched her.

The next moment he was beside her. She didn’t hesitate but slashed at his arm. She struck home. He cried out, recoiled, and took a step back. Antony turned, ready to use his sword, but at the exact same moment Rith folded away.

The war in front of her hurt her virgin eyes. She had never seen the warriors engaged in battle like this. Each had six to contend with and several of the death vampires, in full wing-mount, had launched into the air.

The moment that happened, the warriors fell back in her direction. Before she understood the intent, she was surrounded by them in a wide circle. Because she was theirs to protect, none of the warriors mounted his wings.

She held her dagger aloft in warning, but all movement became a blur of speed. Through the batting of wings and swipe of swords, death vampires fell. She kept turning in that broad circle in case her blade was needed.

Zacharius leaped into the air, spun in a circle. He took an arm and part of a wing and sent a death vampire spiraling out of control. He came back to earth, met steel with steel, lunged, and another death vampire fell backward screaming.

The screams were all around her as swords slashed and clanged.

She turned. Jean-Pierre withdrew one of two daggers from his weapons harness with his left hand as he battled in lightning speed with two death vamps. He threw the dagger at the same time, a powerful throw in an upward motion that pierced the abdomen of a flying death vamp up through the fleshy part below the sternum.

The death vampire flew backward, his wings flapping slowly. He lost control, sliding into a roll that aimed his body toward the earth. He was soon flat on his back in a messy tangle of wings. He wasn’t breathing.

Santiago had only two death vamps left and he fought both with a single sword that moved in a whir of motion from one to the next. She began to understand how it was that only eight Warriors of the Blood were holding back the tide of war.

She grew calm and as the death count mounted, she shifted her attention to her voyeur window. She gasped. Fiona was sitting up in bed. “Parisa?”

I’m here,
she sent.
Do you know where you are in the farmhouse? The warriors are battling death vamps at the back of the house on the stone drive.

“Come straight through…” Her speech was slurred. “… then take the hallway to your left. Go to the end. The door on the left is mine.”

Jean-Pierre was free. Parisa called to him. “I have her. I know where she is.”

Jean-Pierre moved back to her, his sword held at the ready and off to his right side. “We will fold.” She nodded.

With his left arm he held her firmly and folded her directly to the door, away from the carnage. When she touched down, she moved just as Fiona had told her, to the hall, then headed down to the end.

Jean-Pierre was right at her back. “Do not open the door,
cherie.
”

She waited for him, her hand on the latch.

He moved in front of her but kept his sword out of her way. The identified swords could be deadly. He gave the door a hard shove.

Rith was there, in the far corner, as though waiting for her. He had Fiona in his arms. He smiled and disappeared.

“Can you trace to them?” Parisa shouted, desperate.

Jean-Pierre had the same idea because he moved in their direction then vanished but was immediately back, stunned. “
Merde.
The bastard blocked his own pathway. How in the name of heaven did he do that?”

Parisa turned around. “Maybe there are survivors in the other rooms.”

Jean-Pierre moved swiftly past her into the hall, his sword again ready for action. He crossed the hall and pushed the door open. Parisa looked within. Empty.

She glanced down the hall. Santiago, spattered with blood, his brows in a tight furrow, looked at her and nodded. He also shoved doors open. “There’s no one here.” He hit another. He stood and stared. Oh, God, she could tell by the way he froze that something was in there.

Parisa felt weak as she watched the warrior pale. He lowered his sword and moved on slow feet into the room. His lips worked. He was saying something.

Parisa didn’t want to know what he had found but she followed him anyway. She had to. No more holding back or hiding from the truth of what this new world was all about.

She felt Jean-Pierre at her back. “
Non, cherie.
This must be very bad.”

“I know,” she responded. She kept walking. She reached the doorway and saw the familiar machinery hooked up to a woman with coloring similar to the Burmese women. Her eyes were open. Blood had pooled onto the floor from open tubing still connected to her arm. Her lips were blue, her pallor, despite her dark skin, the color of ivory silk.

Santiago knelt beside the bed, his knees in the blood. He took the woman’s hand. He put the lifeless fingers first to his lips then to his forehead.

Parisa once again felt that flinty sensation in her chest. She drew close to Santiago and put her hand on his shoulder. He clutched at her hand, and this time when his lips met her fingers there was nothing flirtatious or teasing in the touch. His cheeks were wet. “Who would do this?”

The question was rhetorical.

The answer simple.

Greaves.

Greaves was the author of it all, the supreme creator, the monster.

***

Jean-Pierre heard Medichi’s voice. He turned and made way for the warrior.

As Medichi moved in, Jean-Pierre returned to the hall. Zach stared into the room. “Jesus. Would you look at this.”

Jean-Pierre glanced at him. They were all feeling it, the shock of what was being done to these women.

He did not want to stay close to the murder scene. His feet turned back down the hall, down to the small room at the end, where he had witnessed that bastard Rith holding the woman Fiona, one hand over her mouth, one around her waist. The woman’s eyes had seemed not quite focused. Parisa had called it … drugs.

He stood in the doorway. The window was boarded up, the room dim like twilight. There was a strange scent in the space, though, like a Parisian
boulangerie,
where bread was made. They were in France. Perhaps that explained the aroma. He moved toward the bed, his brow pinched in a hard frown. He reached down to the linens and drew the top one to his face.

Oui,
the scent was there. He breathed it in. Such a delicate aroma, like a very fine croissant, buttery, like bread but better.

He took another breath and another. He had his eyes closed.

“Jean-Pierre?” Zach called to him.

He turned but couldn’t quite see the warrior. He lifted the cloth to his nose and closed his eyes again. In the distance, he heard Zach call for Medichi.

What did the warriors know of good French baking?

He kept breathing, deeper and deeper. He widened his nostrils. He opened his lungs. The aroma dove into his brain and made circles, a hundred circles, a thousand. The scent became a whirlwind and swept through his body, changing him into something he had never been before.

Animal.

He ripped the linens from the bed, bundled them into his arms, and squeezed them against his chest. He picked up the scent and drank it into his body, into every cell. Blood from the battle came away but it didn’t matter. He pressed once more. All that mattered was this scent and bringing it into himself, into his body, into his soul.

He left the linens on the bed. He hunted the scent through the room, but only the bed held it. He opened the old armoire but there was nothing inside. Still, a whiff of croissant rose to his nostrils. He dropped to his knees and smelled every corner of the bottom of the armoire. Nothing, yet the scent was stronger.

He pressed his chest to the floor.

The scent was coming from the bottom and from the left. He crawled on his knees and sniffed like a dog all the way to the back. The scent grew stronger and stronger.

He reached with long fingers and found what he hunted. It was cool on the tips of his fingers. Metal, perhaps.

He pulled it out from under the armoire. It looked like a locket, but his vision was not clear. He pressed it to his nose and smelled the heavenly bouquet. His heart ached deep in his chest, like a wound that had just opened up and would never again be healed.

He put the piece of jewelry into his pocket and turned back to the bed. There was nothing more of the scent to be found. The chamber was sterile, not lived in, at least not very long.

Everything in his life that had come before seemed so very small in this moment. All that mattered now was finding the woman, Fiona, the one who had a scent like a French
boulangerie
. He returned to the place where he had seen Rith disappear with the woman. He found the trace. He pushed against it. He tried to fold himself after the trace again, but landed back in the small bedroom over and over.

He began to pace in a circle, a lion trapped in a cage. He punched the air and cried out. He roared. He punched and punched. Again he folded into the trace. Again, the block pushed him back into the room. Over and over he punched the air.

He roared and shouted.

He heard voices calling to him but could not make sense of them. Was it her? Was she speaking? Summoning him? What was being done to her? Was she being hurt? Raped? Killed?

He could not bear the thoughts, and the part of him that was man disappeared. His arms stiffened straight to his sides. His fists clenched tight, his back bowed. His fangs emerged. He roared at the ceiling and could not seem to stop.

Hands pressed on him now, held him in place.

He felt a vibration and still he roared through nether-space, flying through time and darkness and hunger.