Obsidian Flame (60 page)

But she held out her hand and she smiled.

Mother,
he sent.

Come to me, my son. Let me love you again, as I did when you were very young.

He didn’t want to move forward, but he felt compelled by a deep call in his soul, by what he remembered of her. His feet shuffled in her direction because he could not stop them.

When he drew near, he saw that tears ran down her cheeks and from her mind to his mind, he felt how deeply she begged for his forgiveness for giving him up to the fosterage system of Mortal Earth.

But as much as he wanted to forgive her, he realized forgiveness wasn’t necessary. Only obliterating what had happened to him could change the course of the future now—and that was impossible, one of the few things in the ascended dimensions that truly could not be done.

Everyone had to live with their past.

How unfortunate.

You must cease this madness, Darian. Indeed, you must, or you will be lost forever.

Forever is a very long time, Mother.

I have a place you can come to. The Council of Fourth has given me permission to bring you here, if you will agree to come to me now.

You mean the place that Casimir calls the Lake of Fire? You wish to baptize all the evil out of your son?

I wish you to be healed and to become whole.

His being shook with sudden fury and he spoke aloud and with all the resonance he could summon,
“I am whole.”

The woman who was his mother, the poetess, the healer, the memoirist of Fourth Earth, fell to her knees, her hands to ears. He could see the blood flow, which meant this was not truly a dream.

Darian Greaves, Commander of the Ascenders Liberation Army, leader of death vampires, architect of a new world, lifted both his arms and drew into his body all the power he could summon. He let that power flow and aimed his hands at her, releasing a rumbling of hand-blast energy that echoed through the dream and shattered the illusion.

He stood in his Geneva penthouse, naked, pain slicing up both arms from the repercussion of having delivered so much directed power in one blast. His only surprise was that he had not taken out the entire side of the building.

But then again, his aim had been very specific. He had hit the mark. The stench of burned flesh now filled his bedroom.

He crossed to the window and mentally opened it. The air was cold and felt wonderful on his skin.

He had made his choice long ago.

How dare the woman invade his dreams and try to persuade him to be baptized. He’d rather become a death vampire a thousand times over than submit to her form of therapy.

He looked across the land and saw the future he was building, the vision he held in his mind of some of the greatest architecture ever imagined in the course of humankind.

And he saw that it was good.

*   *   *

Beatrice lay trembling, a charred remnant of the woman she had been. Her stomach churned but she couldn’t vomit because she was curled up, her flesh having been seared into that position.

“Madame Beatrice,” her assistant cried. “Dear Creator. Dear Creator.”

She wanted to tell the woman to please stop moving around her and to summon the healers, but her jaw was burned in place as well.

The pain was beyond bearing and yet her ascended mind was far too powerful to allow her to faint. Waves of agony flowed and blinded her. Or maybe her eyes had been destroyed in the atomic force that had come out of her son’s hands and decimated her.

But her ears worked.

There was a consistent shrieking. In the distance she could hear running feet, faster and faster. Why was anyone running when they could just fold to her and begin to help her?

Not running feet, then.

The pounding of drums, the signal of danger, of something gone awry.

She could hear voices around her now and she caught phrases as the conversations looped in and out of her hearing.

“… no attack, not on the property…”

“… looks like hand-blast damage…”

“… I saw no one folding in or out…”

“… is this the work of the son, perchance…”

Yes, the work of the son, the least she deserved.

Oh, God, the pain, not of her flesh, but of her heart. She had held the babe who had been Darian Greaves in her arms. She had suckled him at her breast. She had read books to him, and played with him, and prayed that his biological father’s death vampire nature would not have any place in his DNA.

As the healers placed their hands above her skin, and healing flowed, only then did her mind release, like the snap of a taut rubber band, and she flowed into the bliss of unconsciousness.

As she drifted away, she heard her second assistant say, “She failed and now we are lost. All six dimensions are lost.”

“No, there is still hope, the one who is to transform.”

Blackness engulfed her.

*   *   *

Marguerite sat on the cool tile floor in the powder room of Thorne’s Sedona house, not far from the toilet. She’d known the truth for a while; she just hadn’t been willing to accept it, or even to approach it, until she had tangible physical evidence.

Fiona had taken her to Walgreens Two and bought her three different tests.

Each one had been positive.

So there it was, staring back at her:
yes.

The test actually used the word
yes.

She so could not be pregnant. This could not be happening. She wasn’t meant to be a mother. Given how she’d been raised, how was she supposed to raise a child of her own? And now she had a job to do, a big job. She was the Supreme High Seer of Second Earth.

Her stomach boiled all over again and once more her cheeks cramped up. Surely there couldn’t be any tuna salad left after the episode at HQ?

Apparently, there was.

She twisted around to face the toilet and hurled so hard that she bounced forward and missed the toilet bowl completely. Oh, God.

She retched and retched and retched.

When she was done, she sank to the floor opposite the toilet then used her folding power to clean up. Thank God for Second Earth powers because she kept her eyes closed the whole time except for the occasional single eye squint to see what she’d missed.

She doubted she’d ever eat tuna again.

So the Supreme High Seer of Second Earth had been impregnated by the Supreme High Commander of the Allied Ascender Forces.

She banged her head against the bathroom wall a couple of times. A little harder and she would crack the tile. Oh, she really should have thought about birth control sooner.

Goddamn that Thorne.

*   *   *

Thorne sat on the edge of his leather couch, a towel around his hips and one draped over his head. He’d showered, but he hated blow-drying his long hair—hence the towel and pretty soon just the dry Sedona Two air. Right now he still dripped.

He had been blocking Marguerite’s physical sensations so that he could concentrate on the task in front of him. As much as he’d come to cherish experiencing what she experienced, a break now and then wasn’t a bad thing.

His knees were spread wide so he could make use of the laptop sitting on the coffee table. He was scrutinizing a number of geographic survey maps of Second Earth. He needed to understand some basic things about the planet: how many plains there were where massive armies could gather, the elevations of these areas, which hemisphere they were in—and therefore the corresponding seasonal weather—the wildlife. All the elements to consider in planning a war.

So it had come to this. He shook his head and the towel on his head swayed. All-out war would come soon, and it was his job to get the allied forces battle-ready.

He’d already sent out a summons to hundreds of Militia Warrior Section Leaders from all over the world. Seriffe would fold them directly to Endelle’s palace, where they’d be secure. Tomorrow he would begin forming his command organization, all those departments that would establish lines of communication, provide weaponry and ordnance, place orders for uniforms, create medical units, and of course maintain a food supply.

Every army needed a well-stocked supply train. Always had. Always would.

He only realized, however, that Marguerite had been gone an unusually long time when he heard her footsteps down the hall, her bare feet padding along the hardwood floor. He reopened his connection to her and felt the cool of the wood beneath her feet and the damp of her hair against her face.

She seemed to be moving strangely slowly.

He pulled the damp towel off his head and dropped it to the floor beside his feet. He turned in her direction, focusing all of his attention on her. She’d just recently returned from Prague and a demoralizing response to her well-prepared speech before an indifferent committee, so he knew she was a little down.

But as soon as he saw her face, he realized something else was wrong. Her eyes even looked red-rimmed. Nor did she meet his gaze.

“You’ve been crying?”

Marguerite never cried.

She shifted her unfocused gaze toward him then stopped in her tracks. “I’m pregnant.”

Thorne stared into beautiful brown eyes and his life seemed to just stop. His heart paused. His mind grew very, very still as though time had a new meaning all its own, something only he could see. A vision slid through his mind, of a boy and a girl, same age. Yes, twins. Both with brown hair like Marguerite’s, but with his hazel eyes. They were young, maybe two, walking in a field, tugging on flowers. Both had wings. He’d filled his woman with twins, wing-bearing twins.

A third child flew past them, laughing. She had long black hair and bigger wings. She was a little older.

Helena.

He blinked and time resumed.

“So you’re sure about this?”

She nodded, moving to stand next to him.

“Well, I’d say I’m sorry but I always wanted a family. Guess you’re not getting away from me now.”

At that she stilled and looked down at him. Her body relaxed as she frowned. “Is that what you think? That I still want to leave you, want to live my life of freedom, that I have regrets?”

It wasn’t exactly what he meant but maybe it had been the right thing to say, to bring forward. “Do you have regrets?”

And suddenly he wished he hadn’t asked because his heart started pounding. He wanted her to be happy more than anything else in the world. He’d always thought that she deserved a thousand years of unbridled lust-driven activity for the hundred years she’d been incarcerated in the Convent. But the thought of her doing that was about as pleasant to his soul as a slap on a sunburn. Yet what if she still needed to leave?

She rolled her eyes. “You are such an idiot to even ask me that. Haven’t I said enough, done enough to prove that I want to be here? I haven’t
resigned
myself to this life, Thorne, if that’s what you think. I’ve
given
myself, one hundred percent.”

At that he smiled, stretched out on the couch, and pulled her down on top of him. “Just checking. I want you to be happy.”

“I can’t believe I’m pregnant.”

His body responded to that truth, a wonderful electric vibration that passed through every muscle and landed in his groin. He’d already been half firm with her body pressed against his, but now he toughened up, got really warrior-strong as he said,
“Yeah. You are.”
His voice carried resonance, which brought a gasp from her throat.

“I love your voice, like a flow of water over coarse gravel. And the resonance. Do it again.”

So here was one important truth about Marguerite: As a sexual being she matched him perfectly. She had from the first. He’d never really known a woman like her, so game, so ready, so earthy when it came to lovemaking. He thought it a great irony that her parents had tried to beat the sin out of her, which had instead given her a ripeness for life that made her just right for him.

He slid his arms around her and pulled her up higher on his chest, dragging her body over his erection. So good. When her legs were tight around his cock, he pressed his mouth against her ear and with three resonances whispered,
“I’m going to fuck you again.”

Her whole body shivered and she so kindly rubbed her legs up and down his cock. She was too short for him to enter her in this position and still keep his mouth against her ear, but over the decades they’d made a lot of things work.

She lifted her left knee up and he smoothed his hand down the back of her thigh. He entered her with two fingers. She was so wet, always wet for him, and now she carried his babies inside her.

Life got no better than this.

Do it again,
she sent.