Gates of Rapture (The Guardians of Ascension)

  He marveled at the sight his force presented, flying in perfect formation as a well-practiced regiment could do, up and up, still stacked five high, still the breadth of the lake below.

  As they passed overhead, moving between him and the direct sight line of the sun, shadows rippled over him.

  Pride swelled his heart.

  Whatever the results of the forthcoming battle, he would never forget this moment as long as he lived.

  He tapped a second com and reached Luken. “There are three Third Earth death vampires behind Greaves. Only your warriors will be able to take them. As soon as Endelle engages Greaves, attack only those vamps.”

  “Understood, boss.”

  Thorne smiled. How many times had he heard Luken call him “boss” while he had been the leader. A hundred? A thousand? More than that, no doubt.

  He knew when Luken had communicated with the warriors, because as another unified group, they launched high into the air, but still below the Militia Warriors that were now almost in place.

  Greaves’s force remained static, submissive to his will. But he had apparently been so focused on Endelle that he’d failed to observe Thorne’s maneuvers. When several shadows passed over him, he looked up and seemed to weave in the air for a moment as though surprised.

  He must have issued orders, because his pretty-boys suddenly began an upward drive in the direction of the now descending Militia Warrior force. A few seconds later, the battle in the air began as swords clashed and maroon-vested death vampires began fighting squads of Militia Warriors.

  Thorne turned to face north and could see the flotilla in the distance. He touched his com and spoke with Horace, directing him to begin an approach; the battle had commenced and healers would be needed soon.

  As for obsidian flame, he pivoted in the air and said, “I want you to stay back with Horace and the support line of warriors. If you’re needed, I will call you forward. But even Endelle would prefer that you remain separate from the battle.”

  The women nodded gravely. But it was his sister who drew close and said, “If you need us to fight, we will.” Both Marguerite and Fiona nodded in agreement.

  They were brave, these women, none of whom was built to wield a sword. But each had the same spirit as his warriors, willing to do all that was required of her.

  “Thank you,” he said, looking from face to face with great affection. “I promise I will summon you as needed.” But he was relieved as he watched them fly north in the direction of the flotilla.

  * * *

  Endelle allowed herself to feel the being she had become. She flexed her new wings, grateful that she still had her arms and legs and wasn’t in too different a shape from her usual flight arrangement.

  She experimented for a moment, flapping the butterfly-like panels. Just as she suspected, she could move quickly and make much sharper turns. She also found that because the change was genetic, her body knew what it needed to do.

  What bemused her, however, was just how much she perspired from every cell of her skin as well as her wings.

  Greaves began to advance on her, a satisfied smile on his face. He moved through his advanced levitation and gained speed.

  Shit, if he plowed into her, he could knock her into the water, and she had the worst feeling she would never get out. Wings and water did not mesh at all.

  Her genetics began to speak to her about the fluids she shed. They had a purpose, but she couldn’t quite make it out.

  Greaves had completed half the distance.

  On he came, his protective plates writhing as he floated. His eyes were almost black as he stared at her. He lowered his chin.

  She knew what would happen. He was a bull charging her, and only speed would get her away.

  Greaves drew within fifteen feet, formed a missile with his body, then charged.

  But she had the ability to flit in this form. She twisted a couple of times with her wings and was suddenly thirty feet away and to the southeast. She flapped her new wings, hovering. She smiled. Damn, she liked this form.

  She waited for Greaves to charge her, but for some reason he didn’t move as he watched her from a distance. He looked as though he was injured as he held a hand over one of the plates. But exactly how had she hurt him?

  His hand fell away as he straightened and looked up at her.

  Endelle wondered if when she’d twisted and whisked away, she’d struck him with her foot, but she didn’t remember making contact.

  All around her, Thorne’s force battled death vampires. She could hear dozens of war cries sounding again and again. She heard the flapping of wings, sword rasping against sword, and occasionally a scream of pain.

  She also heard water splashing and the rumble of speedboats below her.

  When Greaves once more sped up his levitation and came barreling toward her through the air, her perspiration increased. It came from every part of her body, wings included.

  As he drew near, she moved but not quite fast enough. He caught her right hip and sent her spiraling. She moved her wings but couldn’t quite catch air. She tumbled in the direction of the water. She calmed her mind and allowed her new body to right itself so that her wings went through a new wicked twist.

  She now floated just a few feet above the water. Her heart was a jackhammer.

  She searched for Greaves, but couldn’t find him.

  On instinct she began to fly straight up. As she did, hands clamped around her feet and began pulling her down once more toward the water.

  She looked down. Greaves’s morphed body looked strange, as though he’d been pelted with baseball-sized balls of hail.

  Down he dragged her. As hard as she flapped her wings, she had no strength to withstand his physical and muscular superiority as the being he had become.

  If he got her under the water, she would drown.

  But there was something more, something that worked at her subconscious mind.

  She sweat profusely now, but the flapping of her wings sent all that perspiration into a spiral above her.

  Then she understood.

  She drew her wings in, which of course plummeted her more quickly to a sure death. At the same time, she focused on the fluids leaking from her, increasing the volume and letting them flood Greaves.

  He screamed and released her. She flitted back into the air, barely escaping the lake’s surface. She glanced down. Greaves was writhing in the water. It wasn’t sweat that she perspired, but droplets of acid. How grateful she was to have trusted the image in the future streams.

  Greaves thrashed in the lake for some time, but it was clear the water wasn’t helping and that his protective biological plates were being eaten away. She couldn’t imagine the pain that he experienced right now.

  Endelle remained in her elevated position. She wouldn’t go near him until she was sure he was completely subdued.

  At last, Greaves’s plated form floated on the surface, faceup. His eyes were closed. He was still alive, but barely.

  Thorne, I need you, she sent.

  A few seconds later, as he approached, she added, Not too close. She then explained about her acid-based, built-in defense mechanism.

  He kept his distance. Glancing at Greaves, he said, “That explains the deep pockmarks and oozing blood.”

  “I can’t believe he’s still alive.”

  “What do you want to do with him?”

  Endelle thought about summoning obsidian flame to make use of some serious hand-blast capacity and incinerate him on the spot. She also thought about having him tried for war crimes.

  “Can we even contain him?” Thorne asked. “Or will he just dematerialize and go heal himself somewhere?”

  A number of boats arrived. She glanced to her right and saw that the triad was in one of the foremost, all eyes cast in Greaves’s direction. Fiona had her hand to her mouth and finally looked away.

  But it was Grace who called out, “Madame Endelle, would you consider relinquishing him to Beatrice
? Can you give Greaves a choice?”

  Grace was suggesting that Greaves be granted something he had never granted a single person whose life he’d been the means of ending.

  Fury filled her. She wanted to pluck Greaves out of the water and continue to bathe him in acid until his flesh and bones were completely dissolved.

  Behind her the sounds of battle had grown fainter and more distant. Thorne’s regiment had done its job.

  She stared down at Greaves. She wanted him dead for two thousand years of misery that he had brought down on her, on her warriors, on all of Second Earth.

  She lifted her wings and felt the perspiration forming once more. But Grace was suddenly in flight and hovering above Greaves. She called out, “I promised Beatrice I would try. Let Greaves go to his mother, to enter the redemption program. It will be punishment enough. Then he can become what he might have been if he had not been tortured and abused as a child. Please, Endelle, let Beatrice try.”

  Endelle didn’t want Greaves reprieved. She wanted him to pay for everything he had done.

  She looked at Thorne, but he just shook his head. Your call on this one, he sent. But you need to make the decision quickly. Every warrior here will want him dead. Soon, you won’t have a choice.

  So this was to be her call. She had seen Casimir’s change. He was a new man, and his conscience would demand penitence for centuries to come. She knew that the redemption program was its own form of punishment that essentially lasted a lifetime because of the rebuilding of the conscience.

  Greaves would suffer.

  He was also beginning to recover. Greaves had powerful self-healing abilities. He began swimming to shore, lumbering through the water. She called out to the triad, “Once he reaches the bank, cast an energy field over him while I figure this out. Alison has that ability.”

  As she pondered what had to be the hardest decision of her life, she watched the triad pull together. Only by shifts of shoulders and arches of necks could she see the early part of the process. Once Grace took possession of Fiona, the earth-based power rumbled and began to stream, a silver river of energy above them.

  Greaves reached the bank and started to rise to his feet, even with all the deep pits and rivulets of blood. Fiona turned in his direction. The next moment he lay flat on the grassy bank, a beautiful gold, red, and blue field of energy pinning him down.

  Endelle turned away from the flotilla, rising higher into the air. She needed to think.

  The lake was full mostly of dead or dying death vampires. Colonel Seriffe and Thorne had trained the warriors well.

  Even the Third Earth death vampires were dead. Santiago flew above their bodies. She could sense that he was stationed there to make certain they didn’t have an unknown power to rise. If any of them did, he was ready with his ruby dagger in one hand and sword in the other.

  The rest of the sky was full of Militia Warriors patrolling back and forth. Occasionally she could spot her Warriors of the Blood. Just a few knots were still battling over the lake far to the south.

  Retrieval boats zoomed past below, and by order, Militia Warriors flew down to escort them in case any of the death vampires in the water weren’t really dead.

  She began to feel weary in her new form. Of course all her battle adrenaline was gone. She even felt a pressing need to get to solid ground and morph back to her ascended form.

  She returned to Greaves’s position, created some mist, and went through another painful morphing process.

  By the time she was done, she had little energy to do more than sit in her flight suit and stare into Greaves’s eyes.

  He had changed as well, but his body, as to be expected, was pitted in many places to the bone. Even parts of his skull were exposed. He lay naked and trembling, his eyes full of pain. But he was healing, that much was clear to her.

  “I’ll give you the choice, Greaves. We can try you at COPASS in Prague for war crimes that Marcus has well documented and to which many, many people will testify and for which you will undoubtedly be executed. Or I can send you to Fourth, to your mother, and to the redemption pools. Which will it be?”

  He lay shaking as he closed his eyes. She knew him. He was one manipulative bastard and was no doubt trying to figure out which course of action would give him the best advantage going forward.

  When he finally opened his eyes, he sent, Beatrice.

  “As you wish.” She focused her thoughts on Fourth Earth. She and Beatrice had been friends for millennia. When she gave Beatrice the news, the woman grew very silent.

  Endelle added, You have Grace to thank for intervening.

  I am coming to you returned to her, and a split second later Beatrice appeared in an elegant peach-silk gown and beautifully coiffed red hair, looking as Grecian as ever. She nodded to Endelle, but it was to Grace that she said a soft thank-you.

  She waved her hand over the monster that had tormented Second Earth for so long. He now wore a long white robe. Endelle was just about to have obsidian flame release the energy field when Beatrice took him exactly how he was, prone and caught by the field.

  Endelle sat with her hands clasped around her knees. She was exhausted from morphing and trying to stay alive as she battled Greaves. Her hip ached where he’d struck her.

  And now he was gone, taken away to Fourth in an energy field.

  She couldn’t believe it. After all this time, after centuries of being unable to deal effectively with Greaves, suddenly he was just gone.

  She hardly knew what to think or to feel.

  She remained on the bank of White Lake and watched her team perform all that they needed to do. The speedboats rescued dozens of wounded Militia Warriors from the waters, those who had been injured during battle against the death vampires. The healers moved from boat to boat and worked on the injured.

  The September sun rose high in the sky, shining down on the great victory over White Lake. Her Warriors of the Blood remained in the sky, moving back and forth, helping where each was needed. Thorne floated in the sky twenty yards away, fully in command, speaking into his headset almost constantly as he directed the show.

  In stages, she began to relax. The scourge of Second Earth was gone and would never be back.

  She tried to figure out what she was feeling. Much to her surprise, she was at peace.

  There would be work still to do in the future. At the very least, she would need to start negotiations with Greaves’s generals, to do all that she could to end the possibility that one or all of them would decide to pick up where Greaves had left off.

  But beyond that, her Warriors of the Blood as well as her Militia Warriors would continue to hunt down the last of the death vampires until Second Earth was free of their horrifying and constant threat. Without Greaves to create new death vampires as he had been doing all these centuries, the threat would diminish day by day.

  When at last she made it back to the palace, having left White Lake in Thorne’s oh-so-capable hands, she walked into her sitting room and found Braulio seated in the farthest oversized purple velvet chair.

  “You did good, Endelle.”

  “I did, didn’t I?”

  He smiled, and she held her hand out to him. “Come make love to me, and afterward, I want to sleep for about a century.”

  He rose from his chair, and as he moved toward her, he said, “I’ve been waiting for this day for the last five thousand years.”

  A family is a fluid thing,

  Changing shape with each birth and each death.

  Take care to celebrate the simple joys of each day.

  —Collected Proverbs, Beatrice of Fourth

  CHAPTER 22

  A week after the battle over White Lake, Grace sat several yards away from an enormous bonfire smack in the middle of the desert. Marguerite had suggested the gathering for fun, as well as to celebrate that Second Earth had a new future.

  Grace had her arm around Thorne’s and leaned her head against his shoulder. She sighed. She swore her
happiness knew no bounds. Leto was checking on Kendrew and Sloane and would return anytime. Casimir had returned to Fourth to continue his journey through the redemption pools but had left his sons in Leto and Grace’s care. He would be returning at least once a week to spend a few hours with them and to reassure them that he was still alive and would be a proper father to them once he had completed Auntie Beatrice’s special healing program.

  The boys were confused but not nearly as agitated as Grace had seen them in former times. Leto had proved to be quite good with them, so that even he was gaining favor.

  She heard the sound of an ax against wood and shifted to look in Santiago’s direction. Once he’d learned that there would be a desert party, he’d started hauling and chopping enough logs to feed at least ten bonfires.

  Most of it was stacked off to the side, but some of it was in the shape of huge logs that either Santiago or Zacharius would take to chopping just for fun.

  As it was, the fire rose at least thirty feet into the dark night sky.

  Marcus and Havily were sitting side by side to the right of Thorne. They were seated on a huge log, arguing about something, until Marcus dragged her into his arms and kissed her. Havily laughed and leaned against his chest. He rubbed her back, then kissed her again.

  Kerrick and Alison sat on a blanket well back from the fire. Helena was with them, but because she was so active and very powerful, Kerrick had created a dome of mist over the child so that when she mounted her wings, she couldn’t just take off. The baby had learned to fly before she’d taken her first step. What a challenge.

  Grace smiled. But when had parenting ever not been a challenge?

  As for Medichi, he’d taken Parisa off into the desert at least a couple of hundred yards away. She couldn’t see them or hear them, thank the Creator. Maybe they’d further disguised their position by sneaking behind a massive saguaro or setting up their own mist. Given the distance and the darkness, a vampire could accomplish a lot with his breh.