Wings of Fire (10 page)

Medichi turned back to the sky. There were only four riding down the Trough. “You got this?”

“Is that an insult,
amigo
?”

Medichi laughed. “Fuck off.” He lifted his arm and dematerialized, but not without catching sight of Santiago’s middle finger as he vanished.

He arrived in the middle of Endelle’s office to face a screaming woman.

“You hung up on me! You hung up on me!
You hung up on me?
”

She combined the last phrase with telepathy and split-resonance and it fucking hurt. He almost dropped to his knees. Holy shit. He felt like his brain was about to explode and only barely kept his balance.

He saw stars, then something passed in front of him, creating streams of air. He stepped back automatically, getting out of the way, until he bumped against the wall by the door. Shit, Endelle was in one wild state. She was in full-mount, her wings shifted color constantly like a kaleidoscope gone awry, and she left a trail of fireworks behind her in red, all in red, as she raced from one wall to the next. She wore some kind of dress made up of what must have been hundreds of peacock feathers trimmed around the “eye.” What with the fireworks, the wind, and all the “eyes,” she looked like a one-woman spectacle event.

Sure, he’d hung up on her, but she couldn’t be that pissed about a hang-up. Maybe he needed to explain. “I wasn’t about to leave Santiago with four death vampires on the ground while he was still in dematerialization mode. He could have been killed.”

“I don’t think she’s upset about the hang-up, Warrior Medichi.”

At these words, Endelle slowed her movements and actually stopped in front of her desk. She glared in the direction of the west wall.

Only then did Medichi realize he wasn’t the only man in the room, if you could call what was there
a man
. His gaze followed Endelle’s to the never-used fireplace on the west wall.

Owen Stannett.

Holy shit.

High Administrator of the Superstition Mountain Seers Fortress, manipulator of COPASS, law unto himself, lying bastard, enemy to Endelle.

Owen. Fucking. Stannett.

He had all but robbed Endelle of Seer prophecies, which provided critical foreknowledge of the war. The Superstition Fortress was the most powerful in the word, probably because of its proximity to the five major dimensional access points on Second Earth. Every continent had at least one access point, but the North American continent had five, in the desert Southwest, all close to the Metro Phoenix area. A lot of power was focused in this part of the world.

Stannett was one of the main reasons Endelle and her administration were so fucking hamstrung in the fight against Greaves. The bastard had wined and dined COPASS to the point that he’d gotten several critical laws passed, one of which meant that Endelle could not cross the threshold of the Seers Fortress except by express invitation from its High Administrator. So guess who never got invited?

That Stannett had then constricted the flow of information came as no surprise, but every attempt to get the law repealed had failed. The committee insisted there needed to be a clear separation between the sanctity of Seer devotion and the activities of the State.

Naturally,
naturally,
Greaves had built his own powerful network throughout the world by securing the most talented Seers from those Territories aligned with him and settling them into the Fortresses at Mumbai, Johannesburg, and Bogotá.

Therein lay the difference between a dictatorship and a democracy. Greaves could do whatever the hell he wanted, but Endelle was bound not just by the laws of the land, but also by the ingrained rights of the local High Administrators to manage their Territories as each saw fit. Autonomy was a critical factor in creating a thriving world, both economically and politically. Every Seers Fortress had an allegiance first to its High Administrator and to the local needs of the people. Endelle could request information, but the High Administrators could respond in whatever way they felt was best for their people. So global Seer information for Endelle was much less reliable. Without her Superstition Fortress prophecies, she was up shit creek without a fucking paddle.

To say Medichi loathed Stannett was to say the sun was warm.
Loathed
was too small a word because in the beautiful way power plays trickled down and down and down, mortals and ascenders died every day as a result of the war, of the heinous depredations of Greaves’s ever-increasing death vampire army, and of the lack of information Endelle needed to counter the enemy’s Seer-based moves.

The question of the hour remained: What the hell was Owen Stannett doing in Endelle’s office?

He was dressed in heavily embroidered white leather, complete with fringe, like a Las Vegas lounge entertainer. He had styled his dark brown hair with a lot of mousse into a lovely wave that rode the entire right side of his head. He met Medichi’s gaze, unsmiling.

The next moment a shimmering in the air brought Medichi whirling in the direction of the latest arrival. He crouched, brought his sword to the ready, and waited.

Thorne.

Thank God.

Medichi could breathe again, but he said, “Look who’s showed up, after how many decades of playing hide-the-Seer in the Superstitions.”

Thorne dipped his chin to Medichi but shifted all his attention to the man by the fireplace. “Stannett.” He offered a nod that was polite and challenging at the same time.

Stannett had the balls to make a slight bow, as though he were at the court of Queen fucking Victoria. “Warrior Thorne” eased from between the snake’s smooth lips.

Medichi addressed Stannett and expressed his deepest convictions: “What the hell do you want, you motherfucking sonofabitch?”

Stannett spread his hands wide. “I come in peace this evening, Warrior Medichi. I need you to believe that.”

He looked and sounded so sincere. Medichi hated that smug bastard’s face. The night was young and had already been full of death vampires and battle and this asshole had the nerve to say he came in peace? Did he not comprehend his role in the fucking war? Or what his actions had cost the world?

Medichi’s heavy arms jerked and twitched. He was just short enough on sleep and patience that he didn’t exactly have the ability to suppress the impulse. He launched at Stannett ready to tear apart all that fine leather and anything else he could get at, preferably the vampire’s slimy heart.

He didn’t get far. Though Owen backed up against the fireplace, and actually looked frightened, Thorne had moved with preternatural speed and now stood between Medichi and his quarry, blocking him, protecting Stannett.

Medichi was powerful, one of the most physically powerful men on Second Earth. Even Thorne couldn’t match him muscle for muscle. But then Thorne didn’t need to. He had one hand on Medichi’s chest and was pushing him backward, not by might, but by wave after wave of modified hand-blast energy. Jesus H. Christ, Medichi couldn’t imagine the level of power required to control a hand-blast like this. It didn’t exactly hurt, but the pulses shoved him backward one step at a time.

“You’re not helping,” Thorne said. “You’re. Not. Helping.” He repeated it until Medichi calmed the hell down.

Medichi was breathing hard, one breath after another. He saw red as he glared at Owen.

Thorne got into Medichi’s face. “You calm now, buddy? If I take my hand away, you gonna stand right there and be good for me? Look at me.”

Medichi finally shifted his gaze away from Owen and blinked at Thorne. “Sure,” he said.

Thorne wasn’t buying. “You want to try that again?”

“If you let me at him, I can make him talk,” Medichi said quietly. Every muscle in his body was jumping.

“Stannett will fold out of here before you can touch him, you know that.” He sounded so reasonable. “And you won’t be able to follow him to the fortress. He can block a trace just like Rith. Would you use your head? Just for one little minute?”

Medichi wasn’t insulted—not when Thorne was right. From the second he’d realized he’d been staring at a time-delayed hologram of Parisa, that Rith had abducted his woman essentially right from under his nose, Medichi had lost a good portion of his rational mind. He was more beast than man, the darkest parts of his ascended vampire nature in the fore.

Why wouldn’t he be? Parisa had been gone from him for three months and guilt was like a gut-eating worm in his soul. Sure, Jeannie might get a fix on her at any time now, but it didn’t change what had happened.

Thorne cupped the back of his neck and held his gaze in a hard stare. “Stannett has critical information about the war straight from his most powerful Seer. All right? If you pull another stunt like this one, I’ll have to take you out of here, but the bottom line is that Stannett requested your presence.”

Medichi frowned. “He did?”

“Yeah. So, how about you pull it together.”

“Yes, Warrior Medichi,” Stannett said. “I have news that concerns you as well as the woman, the mortal-with-wings.”

Medichi grew very still as these words settled into his brain. All the previous jumping and twitching melted away along with his urge to pound his fist into Stannett’s pretty face.

“We good now?” Thorne asked. He commanded the Warriors of the Blood for a reason. He was damn powerful. Then Thorne smiled, a little off to the side of his mouth. “Yeah, I want to kill him, too, but we can’t do it just yet. Not if he knows anything that will help us keep Greaves from taking over Second Earth.”

Something inside Medichi finally let go. His next breath came from way down deep, and his shoulders settled down. Shit, they’d been tightened into a pair of bowling balls.

He glanced at the High Administrator of the Superstition Seers Fortress. “Sorry, Stannett. Lost my head.”

Endelle decided to enter the conversation. “Why don’t you just tell Medichi what you told me.”

Stannett drew in a deep breath. “One of my Seers witnessed something in the future streams about the mortal-with-wings, the woman Parisa Lovejoy, the one with the amethyst eyes. Is this the one you are missing?”

“Yes,” Medichi barked at the same time as Endelle.

“For three months now, Stannett,” Endelle said. “You’d know that if you didn’t spend all your time in that Seers Fortress of yours with your balls in one hand and your dick in the other.”

Stannett’s left brow rose and he appeared to swallow, bile maybe, or maybe his rage. Endelle could be hard to take.

“Maybe this was a mistake,” he said, his right arm rising in the air, the universal signal that he intended to dematerialize.

“Now, now, Stannett, come off your high horse,” Endelle said. “We’re here and we’re listening. But what I really want to know is why you’ve broken your silence after all these years. That’s not like you, which means there’s something else going on, something you may or may not want to tell us. In fact, I think it chaps your hide to even be standing here in my office.”

A dozen thoughts streamed over his face, quiet messages of frustration, anger, maybe a sense of being torn. Finally, he smiled, that oily false smile of his. He lowered his arm then waved the hand as though the visit were casual. “We need to be better friends than this, Endelle. I’ve always thought so.”

“Hard to be friends with a python.”

For some reason, Stannett laughed. Medichi had the impression that Endelle could hurl a thousand insults at him and it wouldn’t matter. He’d made up his mind about something.

He settled an elbow on the mantel of the fireplace, which drew his leather jacket open. Medichi scowled. He wore a red leather vest cut low to reveal a lot of black curly chest hair. He was a strange man, affected, weird. Just looking at him made Medichi uneasy.

“Spit it out, Owen,” Endelle said.

“Very well. I shall speak plainly. The future streams have revealed an impending battle, a very big battle.”

A wind suddenly flew around the room and struck Medichi in the back before moving on. What the hell? His gaze landed on Endelle. Her arms were held aloft and power streamed from her but in no particular direction, just a wind that flowed around the room. It hit him again. Damn. So much power. Yeah, she was a little upset.

“What do you mean, a big battle.” Endelle scowled and punched at the air with two fists. “Like army-to-army?”

“That’s exactly what I mean, except—” He broke off. He looked serious.

The flow of wind hit Medichi again.

Endelle’s nostrils flared. “Except
what,
Stannett? Would you spit it out, for Christ’s sake. We’re not children here.”

“The prophecy is all tied up with the mortal-with-wings and the possibility of her death. Apparently if she dies you lose big-time, and Greaves gains everything.”

“In what fucking way can this woman, a mortal, not even ascended, be critical to the outcome of a war?” Endelle’s thick black hair was writhing around her shoulders. Medichi had seen her temper a dozen different times, but he’d never seen her hair display her rage before. That was considered a Third Earth ability.

Stannett looked grim, his mouth a tight line. “The future streams rarely reveal the
why
of anything. You know that, Endelle. What I can tell you is that more than one of my Seers has recently predicted a major battle, as well as the failure of your administration, if the woman dies.”

Medichi couldn’t let this go. “And what kind of accuracy rate does the Superstition Fortress have anyway, you motherless piece of shit? And why should we believe anything you have to say. You haven’t helped us in years. Why now? Why would you give a good goddamn fuck now?” He couldn’t bear the thought of
his woman
dead while the man stood there like he was reading an article on how to make headcheese.

Endelle turned to face Medichi. She shook her head at him and mouthed a couple of curse words then sent him another blast of wind, this one with grit attached. He breathed the wrong way and drew some of that grit into his lungs. He bent over and hacked like he’d swallowed half a dozen fur balls. Okay, he got the point: He wasn’t helping.

“My warrior makes a lot of sense, Stannett. Accuracy is always a problem with Seers, the future being as unpredictable as earthquakes.”