“Yes.”
“And what of me?” Greaves asked. “Will I be allowed to visit?”
Stannett bowed. “Of course … master.” Just the right emphasis on that last word.
And there it was, the subservience he sought. “And will you be willing to partake of dying blood and the accompanying antidote? I require this of all my servants.”
“No.” Stannett’s chin dipped. “I cannot agree to this since there is some evidence that dying blood by its nature affects a Seer’s ability in the future streams.”
The response was reasonable. Still, Greaves didn’t like that he wouldn’t have some external command of the man once the agreement was struck.
He tapped his fingers together once more. “I will agree to your requests on one condition.”
“Anything, master.”
His take on Stannett was that the man would do whatever he needed to survive, including betray Greaves. However, if Stannett could actually fulfill his requirement within the future streams, then he would have earned Greaves’s support.
He waved Casimir back to his couch. Caz folded in the blink of an eye.
To Stannett, he said, “I’d like to test your abilities. We have a little situation that needs tending to. Thorne’s sister, Grace, appears to have some sort of emerging power of an inexplicable nature. Although I was unable to witness her manifestation in Moscow Two, Caz tells me that she somehow appeared beside General Leto before Casimir could initiate the prearranged hand-blast that would render him unconscious.
“I have recently learned the Leto has engaged in subversive activities against me, and he must be eliminated. Because Grace was instrumental in saving him, I want her taken care of as well. You will work with Casimir to get the job done. Use your control of the future streams to organize your strategy. And I want this accomplished before the military review.”
Though Stannett’s expression hardened, and he still refused to glance at Caz, he bowed once more. “Yes, master.”
Greaves repressed a smile. He had several pleasures in his position and in his life, but one of the most satisfying was the pairing of one unhappy force with one dominating force to get a job done. The resulting friction always satisfied some dark place in Greaves’s soul.
But as he glanced from one to the other, he finally did allow himself to smile—though not in amusement. Stannett had Third Earth abilities and Casimir was a Fourth ascender. Together they had as much power as Greaves. If they were smart and got this job done, well, his future was made.
Especially since what Grace had accomplished made it a strong possibility that she was the third member of the obsidian flame triad. Of all the tasks before him, making certain that these members did not combine their power was one of his most pressing concerns.
* * *
“You have to get him out of here,” Sister Quena cried, her sharp cheekbones flaming. “He is a traitor and a man. Everything about his presence here is offensive in the extreme.”
Grace sat on her stool beside her bed and pressed a cool, damp cloth against Leto’s forehead. Hours had passed since she’d brought the warrior from Moscow Two but instead of improving, his pallor now matched the cloth, a sort of grayish white. Sweat poured from him and he shook from head to toe. She didn’t know what to do. His addiction to dying blood was tearing his body apart and it shouldn’t be.
She’d gone to the Convent’s library and researched this part of a death vampire’s suffering—how long he could survive without dying blood and what sort of symptoms would accompany the deprivation. Essentially, Leto’s withdrawal wasn’t running the usual course.
Unfortunately, she suspected that the aberrations he presented had something to do with the terrible call of the breh-hedden on his body.
Grace could no longer pretend she wasn’t Warrior Leto’s breh, or that he wasn’t hers, as strange as that seemed. But with his scent thick in her nostrils, her sinuses, her brain, all the poetry she’d written throughout the years, the erotic, forbidden verses, kept rushing back at her until she ached so fiercely she wanted to scream.
At the same time, she was so worried for this warrior that her heart kept pounding in her ears. She just didn’t know what to do. But her instinct, above all, was to protect him while he was in such a vulnerable state.
“Are you listening to me?” Sister Quena shouted. “I want him removed. I shall contact Madame Endelle myself to let her know that her faithless one has somehow tried to seek asylum in my convent.”
“I’ll leave,” Leto said, but the words came out little more than a whisper. He tried to rise but he’d grown as weak as a kitten and simply fell back against the hard mattress.
After another breath, he tried again.
Grace put a hand on his shoulder holding him down. “Rest, Leto. I will see to this.”
“James,” he whispered.
“What?” She leaned closer.
“Find James.”
“Who is James?”
But his eyes closed and his breathing grew to a light pant. She understood then that he was near death.
“Devotiate, I will call the regulators if you do not step out of this cell. I will call Madame Endelle and she will take him.”
But the thought that Sister Quena, High Administrator of the Convent, would jeopardize her warrior, forced Grace to leave his side, to rise from her stool, and to turn to face the one Marguerite had always called “sister-bitch.”
Grace felt the earth below her rumble, that same power she had felt before. It drove upward, flowing into her feet, up and up, until she tingled with power.
She opened her arms wide and let some of that energy flow toward Sister Quena. She would not think of hurting her, or even disrupting the authority she had over Grace, but she could not allow Leto to leave her cell.
When she spoke, her voice, much to her surprise, split-resonance. “You will leave us and you will forget that you’ve seen Warrior Leto here this day. You will forbid anyone to approach this cell.”
Sister Quena blinked three times and finally bowed. “As you wish, devotiate.” The tall woman, aged in appearance despite her immortal vampire nature, turned and left to walk very slowly down the hall.
Grace took a breath and willed the energy to leave her, which it did, draining down her body and through her feet, perhaps back to the earth. She glanced down at the floor. What was this new power that had come to her, which seemed so separate from her yet was hers apparently to call at will?
The same power had allowed her to save Leto.
Small gasps behind her caused her to whirl and once more assume her post. When she sat down, she once more dabbed the cloth over Leto’s forehead. He reached for her arm and his eyes opened. “Thank … you,” he murmured.
But it was the connection of his hand on her wrist that sent her mind whirling with understanding. She had what he needed. She rose up and leaned over him, shifting sideways to sling her arm around his head and over his left shoulder.
She positioned her wrist over his mouth. “Drink,” she said. “Take what you need.”
He tried to open his mouth but couldn’t.
Grace didn’t understand where all her boldness was coming from, but using her other hand, she slipped her finger and thumb into his mouth and stroked his gums until his fangs emerged. Of course such intimate contact caused her to press her legs together. Even touching him brought all that desire rushing to the fore.
Leto groaned and his scent suddenly flooded the room, that beautiful forest smell. With a sudden jolt of unexpected energy, he jerked forward and struck.
Grace cried out, her neck and back arching in surprise and then in the utter sexual pleasure that swept over her. Desire flooded her in deep, exhilarating waves. Leto held her wrist to his mouth with both hands as he suckled. He looked up into her eyes.
She put her free hand on his hair and let her fingers glide through the thick black mass.
His color began to return, deepening to a beautiful rich olive tone, so beautiful against the crystal-clear blue of his eyes. She wanted him to live, he had to live. She felt this deep in her soul, that he was necessary to the future of Second Earth, and to her, and to the children she would one day bear for him.
She felt and saw all this as she looked into his eyes. But was any of it real or just her imaginative sensibilities? What she did know was that she craved him, in the way she knew that other women, associated with the Warriors of the Blood, grew to crave their men.
* * *
Leto stared into pale green-gold eyes and so much innocence that he felt blinded by Grace, her beauty and her purity. How could someone as lost as he was, as damned by his actions, be here in the presence of such goodness?
He knew only one thing. He had been near death, though he couldn’t understand the why of it. The addiction to dying blood, when left unsatisfied, could only result in death after months of agonizing starvation.
But as the hours had passed in Grace’s company, with his body on fire with his need for her, not only had the cramps reached an intolerable level, but his heart and lungs had begun to fail him. He’d been on the verge of heart failure for the last hour.
How had she known that her blood would relieve at least part of these symptoms, even abate the abdominal seizures to the extent that he could take deep breaths and remain stretched out instead of curled up in agony.
Oh, God, Grace.
If he stayed here, he put her in jeopardy.
He sat up. He had to get out of here. He had to make contact with James, maybe even Endelle. Yes, Endelle. He had to let her know the truth about Greaves’s army.
But the sudden movement sent black spots flying before his eyes. He fell back on the bed.
He felt Grace’s hands on him again, and her rich, earthy meadow scent flooded his body with new drives, new cravings.
“Rest,” he heard her whisper.
He wanted to talk to her, but the room spun and all he could do was focus on his breathing. He really needed to get his shit together. But how?
* * *
That evening Marguerite ordered a cosmo and munched from a big bowl of popcorn in the center of the table. She seemed okay with the popcorn, but the cosmo was bugging her stomach. Yep, she had to admit, her nerves had gotten the better of her.