Wings of Fire (42 page)

Oh, God. She
desired
this man, this warrior. She began to ache very low and a blush warmed her cheeks.

His nostrils flared and his lips parted.
“Mon Dieu,”
he whispered.

She returned to stand by the balustrade, afraid of what she was feeling. More than anything, such a reaction seemed completely inappropriate. She shifted her gaze back to the desert, the dark sky, and the stars. The air was very dry, which was so different from both Burma and New Zealand.

“Fiona,” he said very softly, his voice a caress. He had moved closer. She could feel the heat of his body behind her. “I have something for you. At least, I am almost certain it belongs to you.”

She turned back to him. The light from the rotunda cast his face in shadow. His hand was outstretched, and as he turned so that the light would cross his arm, something small and gold glinted in his palm. She drew in a soft breath. He held the one thing, the only thing she’d been able to keep, all these years, from her life in Boston in the late 1800s. She couldn’t withhold a small cry.

Her gold locket.

She knew where she’d hidden it—behind the armoire, on the carpet. But she had been drugged when she left that house. When she awoke on the cot in the unfamiliar house, her first thought had been that she would never see her locket again. She had wept.

Now as if by some extraordinary miracle, the warrior called Jean-Pierre, who had a lovely French accent, held her only cherished possession.

She took it from him with trembling fingers.
“Merci,”
she murmured.

She opened the locket and there they were, portraits of her lost family, long since dead after so many decades: husband, daughter, son.

For a reason she could not explain, she drew close to Jean-Pierre, shifting to stand in the shadow of his shoulder. She flattened the locket on her palm and held it slanted toward the light so that he could see.

“My husband. He gave this to me the day before I was abducted. Our eleventh anniversary. These were my children. My son Peter—oh, that’s your name, Pierre, isn’t it? And this was my daughter, Carolyn.” Her heart felt as if a stone had formed at the very base. She hurt.

“I always regretted that I did not have a family,” he said. “I was married once, but it was not a good marriage. Then the revolution came.”

“The French Revolution?”

He nodded, smiling faintly.
“Oui.”

“You’re very old then.”

He laughed and the gleam in his eyes, the humor, eased something in her chest, made the stone in her heart not quite so heavy. He turned back to look into the rotunda. “Do you see the warrior there, with hair just past his shoulders, dark brown hair, his eyebrows slashed over his eyes? Yes?”

Fiona saw him.
“Oui,”
she said.

He met her gaze and smiled. “Thank you for saying
oui.
”

She smiled as well. She nodded. “I’ve always loved the French language. My grandfather was French, but I’m not fluent, unfortunately.”

He held her gaze for a very long time, and for some reason a desire for coffee once more drifted through her. A very strange sensation. He seemed to give himself a little shake then said, “That man is Warrior Marcus. He is four thousand years old.”

“No,” she whispered. “How is that possible?”

Jean-Pierre shrugged. “Warrior Medichi, standing with his arms around Parisa, is out of Italy in the 700s. Warrior Thorne, who has his fist wrapped around a tumbler of vodka, is two thousand years old. I am the youngest of them all.”

She felt her palm folding around the locket and glanced at her fist, the gold chain dangling down. The stone felt heavy again. “What am I supposed to do now?” she asked. She looked at the marble and saw splashes of water, single drops one after the next. It couldn’t be raining. She hadn’t seen a cloud in the sky. Oh, the drops were her tears. When had she started to weep?

She felt his arm slide around her shoulders. He pulled her close to his chest and she let him, though she couldn’t say why. It just felt so right.

He smelled so wonderful, as though he had spilled some coffee on the leather of his weapons harness or on his skin. She was tall for a woman, and her nose nestled against his neck. How odd that she trusted him like this, without knowing him. But then he’d carried her away from that house of torture, away from Rith, and death, and slavery. Why wouldn’t she trust him?

And he had brought her the thing she cherished most in the world—her locket.

She wept anew.

***

Jean-Pierre held heaven in his arms. His heart pounded in his ears. All he heard was
thump, thump, thump.
Desire flowed over his body, waves one after the other, washing over him, receding, only to crash again.

Was he holding her too tightly?

Was she falling out of his arms because he wasn’t holding her tightly enough?

He could not tell.

He was lost in the sensation of her nearness, her quiet sobs, the grief she had lived with for over a century.

He heard voices behind him, gentle voices, the kind that belonged to healers. He wasn’t surprised when Alison addressed him. “Jean-Pierre, Horace and I think the women should go to the hospital for a day or so. I’ve contacted Colonel Seriffe and he’s going to send several squads of Militia Warriors to guard them in case Rith tries to reacquire them.”

“Bon,”
he murmured. But he did not want to let the woman go.

Alison put a hand on Fiona’s back. “We think you should go as well, Fiona.”

“Of course.”

Without another word, Fiona withdrew from him and moved back inside. She did not look back, which was just as well. She must still be in shock. Both Horace and Alison followed behind her. He did not wait too long before returning to the rotunda as well.

His gaze, however, remained fixed on the back of Fiona’s head. He watched her like a hawk after prey, except that she was not prey. She was the woman meant for him, his
breh.
Already the bonds were forming, tightening. He could feel them, and for a moment he could not breathe.

She returned to Kaitlyn, the young one pregnant with child. She helped her to her feet but the woman collapsed. They were both surrounded very quickly, healers anxious to help. Within less than a minute, a medical team had the pregnant woman on a gurney and was rolling her in the direction of the east entrance, where a long, long drive led to the valley floor below.

He did not attempt to follow. He remained in the center of the rotunda, alone, bereft, and angry, such a strange combination of emotions. But above all he did not wish to be with the woman Fiona, he did not wish for this entanglement and bonding. Whatever the
breh-hedden
might be, he knew in the depth of his soul that this was not the right path for him. He loved the company of women, a lot of women, and he was a warrior. Why did he need anything else?

Fiona would have a new life here, but that did not mean he had to be part of it. He was a Warrior of the Blood, and his duties would always keep him at the Borderlands, battling death vampires. Fiona’s path lay elsewhere.

The difficulty seemed to be, as he breathed in through flared nostrils, he could scent her on his skin, the sweet smell of croissants, the heady aroma of a boulangerie.

But the scent would fade. In time, as she left his warrior world, he could forget her as well.

***

Medichi had his arm around Parisa’s shoulders. He watched the last of the women being transported to the hospital, not by folding, but by ambulance. He felt peaceful and full, like he’d feasted at a banquet, an odd sensation, but it felt right.

They’d brought the women home. They’d done some good. Six women and a baby would survive now because of Parisa.

The healers departed.

Kerrick had his arm around Alison as they dematerialized together. Then Marcus and Havily. Havily had apparently taken a break from her nightly darkening work with Endelle to meet the survivors and offer what comfort she could.

One by one, the warriors folded away, heading with Thorne to the Blood and Bite for a drink before taking up arms at the Borderlands again.

Endelle never did emerge from her meditation room. She hadn’t stopped working in the darkening long enough to come and see the women.

Jean-Pierre was the only warrior left in the rotunda. He stood off to the side, his expression blank, eyes hollow, lost. He looked like a man with nowhere to go. He’d brought his
breh
back to safety, and now she was headed to the hospital.

Medichi whispered to Parisa, “Shall we try to comfort him?”

“Yes. Of course.”

He let his arm slide off her shoulder, but not without his fingers catching and pressing her arm. He followed her to the Frenchman.

“Jean-Pierre,” she said softly. “Thank you.”

He turned toward her, his brow furrowed, eyes full of pain.
“Cherie?”
he murmured. He didn’t appear to have heard her.

“Thank you,” she said again, but before he could stop her, she slid an arm around his neck and hugged him.

Both of his arms found her back.

Medichi felt the deep growl form in his throat, an ancient response he tried hard to control. Earlier, at the villa, he’d almost gone mad when Jean-Pierre had dared to hug Parisa, but something in the expression of the warrior’s eyes, so full of pain as though he’d had his heart ripped from his chest, stopped him. He didn’t like that another man was touching his woman but the part of him that could think, that could recognize his warrior brother was hurting—well, that man crossed his arms over his chest, and hid his clenched fists beneath those arms.

Jean-Pierre met his gaze. He began to smile as though he realized what he was doing. Maybe it was something that he saw on Medichi’s face, but Jean-Pierre flipped him off with Parisa still in his arms.

It was so Jean-Pierre. Medichi wasn’t surprised that a moment later, he released Parisa, then without a word lifted his arm and vanished.

“Oh,” Parisa cried. “I wish you boys would give a girl a warning. That just creeps me out. One minute he’s hugging me and the next, poof, he’s gone.”

She turned to face Medichi but he still had his arms crossed. She looked at his arms, then up at his face, and rolled her eyes. “Are you kidding me? You’re mad because I hugged Jean-Pierre?”

“Uh … yeah. New dimension here. Vampires. Warrior, caught in the
breh-hedden.
”

But Parisa shook her head, chuckled, then walked toward him in a way that meant if he didn’t unfold his stubborn arms she was going to bang her head against them. What do you know, his arms opened like automatic sliding doors. He wrapped her up and a wave of something very close to his earlier sense of peace flowed through his chest. He couldn’t believe he was feeling like this—almost … happy.

“I’m so proud of you” were the first words that left his lips.

She wiggled to free herself enough to look up at him. “We brought them home, Antony.” Then she smiled even though tears flooded her eyes. “We brought them home, out of slavery, out of certain death.”

“
You
did. You put the pressure on, you kept your window open, you made sure it happened. Yeah, I’m really proud of you.”

When his phone buzzed, he almost didn’t answer it. But what the hell. “Give.”

Thorne’s voice rasped through the line. “Come over to the Cave and bring Parisa with you. Endelle’s here with news.” The line went dead.

Medichi scowled at the phone. What the hell was going on now, and why did Thorne have to be barking orders at this time of night? Besides, with Parisa tucked under his arm, he’d started getting a certain idea about just what they should be doing next … to celebrate their hard-won victory.

So, shit.

“Thorne wants us at the Cave.”

“Why?”

“Endelle’s there. Apparently she has some kind of announcement to make.”

Parisa pulled away from him and looked around the rotunda. “She’s not here?”

“I know, I know. But that’s Endelle for you.”

The heat of an argument

Brings truth rushing to the surface.

—
Collected Proverbs,
Beatrice of Fourth

CHAPTER 20

“What do you mean there are twenty-one more facilities like the one we just raided?” Thorne’s voice held a dangerous edge.

Parisa stared at him then shifted her gaze back to Endelle. The woman’s hair seemed strange, as though she’d been in a wind tunnel. She didn’t seem to care.

She planted her hands on her hips. “Why the fuck are you arguing with me. Let’s just say that my source is irrefutable and if any of you are guessing who it is don’t say the name out loud and for shit’s sake shield that thought.”

Parisa didn’t know who they were talking about. She glanced at Antony, who stood beside her. He met her gaze but shook his head. Maybe he would tell her later or maybe it just wasn’t important.

“I want to take charge of this,” Parisa said. She took a step forward almost without realizing that she’d just done either of these things: spoken aloud or moved toward Madame Endelle.

“You?” Endelle cried. Her upper lip curled.

“Why not?” Parisa returned. She planted her own hands on her hips so that she mirrored Her Supremeness. She still wore her makeshift version of battle gear, the buckled female weapons harness, the dagger with the ruby embedded in the hilt, black cargo pants. She could even mount her wings if she needed to.

Endelle looked her up and down. “You playing at warrior or what?”

“Yeah. I am. And in case you don’t know, I’m entering the Female Militia Warrior Training Camps as soon as possible.”

Endelle laughed. “Oh, I don’t think so.”

“Why the fuck not?” Parisa cried. She had mimicked Endelle’s speech pattern without even thinking about it.

For the first time, Endelle narrowed her gaze. “You’re serious.”

“I’m serious.”

“Why?” She glanced around at the men. When her gaze landed on Antony, she added, “You may want to think twice. Your man doesn’t look very happy about this decision.”

“He’ll get over it or he won’t,” Parisa responded. No, Antony wasn’t happy about it, but right now she didn’t care.