Obsidian Flame (18 page)

Thorne had been making his way back to the cabin when Arthur had waylaid him and asked for a training session. He had strong instincts about the boy, and something more, a hint that the future lay with this young man, even though he couldn’t imagine how yet. So he’d accepted.

Ettgers had joined in with his group.

It had been a good session.

Besides, he knew Marguerite had needed some time to think, to work things out in her head. He had no doubt that his woman was anxious to leave, despite the great lovemaking. She had itchy feet, and that wasn’t going to change anytime soon.

He looked up and down the lane, always on the alert, always hunting for death vamp sign, or maybe just for some clue as to how to get himself out of this mess.

“Now you’re pissed at me,” Arthur said.

Thorne looked back at him. “I don’t know what you’re seeing, but this isn’t pissed. If I was pissed, you’d be facedown on the ground with my foot on your neck.”

But Arthur smiled that half smile. “Good to know. Let’s hope I stay on your sweet side.”

“Just so ya know, not sure I have one.”

But Arthur laughed. It was a good sound.

Jesus H. Christ. The kid had killed five death vampires last night. No question he was Warrior of the Blood material, but Thorne had just enough to compassion to know that he didn’t want that for Arthur. He wanted Arthur to stay all bundled up in this secret society, to stay safe and as innocent as he could for as long as he could. But how innocent was a young man who had just gone into battle and come out with a whole lot of blood on his hands?

“So why are you here?” Thorne asked. “Why aren’t you back on Second figuring out an occupation, going to university, dating, all the usual? You must have friends you left behind?”

The minute the last question left his mouth, Thorne regretted opening the lid to this goddamn box. Arthur shifted his gaze away from him and narrowed his eyes. Damn if he didn’t look just like Jean-Pierre right now, and with a familiar haunted expression that told Thorne the war had already become personal to Arthur.

Which of course meant that someone he loved had died. Wasn’t that always the way?

Arthur remained silent but Thorne sure as hell wasn’t going to press him for more information. He wasn’t exactly built for exchanging confidences and shit.

Then Arthur seemed to come to a decision and shifted his gaze back to Thorne. “You’ve been straight with me and you haven’t tried to order me around. So here it is. I was engaged to be married and before you tell me I was too young to know what I wanted, you’d be wasting your time. I was in love with her, we were engaged, then she died in the firebomb attack at White Lake during the Ambassador’s Reception.”

Oh, shit.

Thorne got that sinking feeling in his gut again, the one that weakened his leg muscles, that felt like the earth was pulling him down, that gravity had suddenly tripled in strength.

Maybe there’d been more than one reason he’d dropped down to Mortal Earth in pursuit of Marguerite. The attack at the Ambassador’s Reception a few months ago had been aimed at one of the warriors’ women, Havily Morgan. Her warrior, Marcus, had almost been killed. Marcus had done what he could to put distance between himself and the bomb, taking the attack away from a lot of innocent people, but he’d gotten shredded and almost died.

It had been a horrible night, not least because the firebomb had taken eleven civilian lives. He had never known who the victims were. Hell, he hadn’t wanted to know. Battling at the dimensional Borderlands every night had been its own form of torture. Having close contact with grieving families—well, he couldn’t keep doing his job if he did that.

Now he stood looking into the haunted gray-blue-green eyes of a young man who had once been committed to love, to a woman, to life. There was no more innocence for Arthur.

Thorne turned away from him. He couldn’t keep feeling the depth of his goddamn despair, that the war just kept rolling on, stripping people of hope and of a future.

That big thing began to move within him once more, maybe a need for change, maybe a great unwillingness for things to continue as they’d been. Anger boiled as well, but then that was nothing new. All the warriors felt it, a persistent fury that never stopped, rage against death vampires and against Greaves and his fucking minions, against a war without end.

But this whole encounter reminded him that he needed to get back to Second Earth, especially with Greaves turning up the heat with his military spectacle review.

On the other hand, once he got back, what the hell was he supposed to do?

He was used to command.

He liked command. He’d never questioned his job.

But he sure as hell had questioned the war.

He would do things so differently.

He could only imagine Endelle’s fury that he’d jumped ship. Talk about a tempest. He’d hate to be Alison right now. Alison served as her executive assistant and now Thorne had one more thing to feel guilty about: that he’d brought trouble down on Alison’s head.

Whatever.

But even as a sharp twinge deep within his mind told him that Endelle was trying yet again to bust through the shield he’d put around their shared mind-link, he knew that change wasn’t possible with her, not if things continued as they’d always been. Endelle had a lot of excellent qualities, and yes, he admired and respected her, but for a long time now he’d had a very different take on the war and what ought to be done about Greaves.

Thorne glanced down at the sword in his hand. He’d been using a practice sword, not one identified to him. The identified swords were capricious and would always result in death if grabbed by the grip by someone other than the owner. But sometimes an accidental touch could result in death as well.

His practice sword, which belonged to Arthur, had a nice weight, evenly balanced.

“Well, fuck,” he stated. In a quick flick of his wrist, he sent the sword skyrocketing and spinning. He hadn’t done this in decades, maybe not in centuries. It was a kid’s trick and something you never did with a sword, any sword. He blurred in the direction it would come down; as it reached the apex then began to fall back to earth, he waited, worked out the trajectory to within a hair’s breadth, then caught it by the grip.

“Some move,” Arthur said.

Thorne glanced at him. “Don’t ever do that.” But he laughed. Arthur had reached the age of magnificence, the certain belief he always knew best. He would do whatever the hell he wanted and there wasn’t a damn thing to be done. Arthur was a teenager.

“Warrior Thorne.” A woman’s voice called to him from the direction of the cabin he’d shared with Marguerite the night before. He turned and saw a short redhead wave him forward. “Can you come here for a minute? Something’s happened to Marguerite and we’re not sure what to do.”

“Of course.”

He tossed the sword to Arthur without thinking. It was a natural reaction. He would have done the same to any of the warriors, but Arthur wasn’t one of the warriors.

But Arthur simply shifted sideways and caught the sword by the grip as though he’d been doing it all his life. Yep, an inch away from being all grown up.

Thorne moved in a blur toward the house and onto the porch. Once inside, he found Marguerite unconscious, on the floor. A very tall woman with shoulder-length black hair and a web tattoo on her neck had her hand on Marguerite’s arm, but his woman’s body twitched and spasmed. She was naked from the waist up.

He thought he understood the problem, or at least one of them.

“Don’t touch her,” he barked, his gravel voice acting like fire to two pairs of hands. The women jerked back, rose to their feet, and moved to stand together by the window.

“What happened here?”

The tall woman said, “She was really upset about something that happened earlier and couldn’t seem to breathe. We’re both Seers, Jane and I, and all the Seers in the colony take care of one another as a community. We sent her what we thought was hands-on healing assistance and it did seem to calm her. Sort of. I think her wings were ready to mount, which might have been a problem in this small space. But in the end she passed out. We thought we could bring her around but nothing we’ve done has helped.”

He pulled her onto his lap. Her back was wet, which meant the apertures of her wing-locks had been weeping, readying for a mount. Why the hell had she been about to release her wings?

She was out, completely unconscious, a limp doll in his arms. “Did she see something in the future streams?”

“No, we don’t think so. The situation didn’t have the flavor of a vision.” She drew a deep breath. “We honestly don’t know what happened except that she seemed to be very intent … on you.”

Okay, he didn’t quite know what to make of that, but he asked, “Did you have your hands on her the entire time?”

She nodded.

He looked back at Marguerite, sliding his fingers through her hair. Her forehead was damp. He knew what her life had been. “She doesn’t like to be touched.”

“What?”

He looked up at the woman, his lips tight. “Marguerite doesn’t like to be touched.”

“Oh … I see.” The tattoo lady frowned. The women looked at each other as though trying to make sense of this or maybe communicating telepathically.

“We’ll leave you, Warrior Thorne, unless there’s something more we can do.”

“No. And … and thank you for preventing the wing-mount but I’ll take it from here.”

They left, silent, concerned.

When he was alone with her, he rocked her gently, his gaze still on her face. Her complexion was very pale, almost as white as her hair.

How could they understand? He wasn’t even certain he could make sense of all that she had suffered. That she’d been physically beaten in the name of religion was a big part of the problem. How does the mind reconcile love and that kind of violence?

After about a minute, as he stroked her cheek with his finger and just held and rocked her, she began to stir.

She sat up still in his arms, a hand planted on his damp chest. Sword instruction was sweaty work.

“Did you have another vision?”

She shook her head. “No.” She tugged at the few fine hairs between his pecs. “You aren’t wearing a shirt.”

“I was showing Arthur a few things. So you didn’t have a vision?”

She shook her head. “No, I … shit, I must have fainted.”

He chuckled, relieved. “Okay, why did you faint? What the hell happened in here and who were they?”

“A pair of Seers who live here in the colony. They touched me, put their hands on me.” She pushed away from him and struggled to her feet. He joined her and because she was barefoot, he towered over her.

She stared up at him and scowled. “I have to get out of here, Thorne. Now. This is the wrong place for me.” She rubbed her arms like she was cold.

The movement jiggled her chest, which caused his gaze to fall straight to her breasts. And like any normal male, he lost sight of the subject at hand. His woman had beautiful breasts, full, weighted at the bottom, with large areolas. The nipples were peaked in the cool air. Before he could prevent it, a soft growl rumbled in his throat.

She rolled her eyes and folded her robe on, covering up all that beauty that suddenly had his cock doing gymnastics.

“I’m leaving,” she said. “I’m going back to the Holiday Inn.” She lifted her right arm, a sure signal she intended to dematerialize.

But before a nanosecond had passed, he blurred to her and grabbed both arms. “Not without me, babe.”

“Don’t you dare ‘babe’ me.” But her shoulders eased down and she lowered her arm.

“Please don’t leave, Marguerite. I’m begging you for at least that much. I know this situation sucks, but you feel it, too, don’t you, that we need to be here? Tell me that you feel it. That somehow fate has brought us here, together, to a place that has been hidden for almost three thousand years.”

She glanced up at him. She opened her mouth then closed it as though there was something she needed to say to him. Something was going on. “Spill it,” he said.

She met his gaze straight-on but her hands were planted on her hips. “All right, I’ll stay. I have to stay because of the visions, but I will have my own life.” Her cheeks worked. “I’m going out with the girls tonight. We’re meeting at a club for drinks.”

He frowned. Seemed harmless enough but she still looked so damn belligerent, not a good sign. “Okay,” he said, knowing full well there was a second shoe in her other hand.

“Apparently, there’s entertainment.” The slight lift of her chin also did not bode well.

“What kind of entertainment?”

The shoe fell. “Dancers.”

He lifted his brows. “
Male
dancers?”

She nodded. She also stared at him, hard, one big challenge in those large brown eyes of hers. His wing-locks swelled and he felt sudden moisture on his back. His breathing hitched up, high in his chest. He stepped toward her, his feet moving before he’d made the mental command.

“Cherry tobacco,” she whispered. “What are you doing?”

He took her arms and held her. He looked down into her face. His woman was going to a place where she would be staring at other men’s naked bodies, lusting after them.