Wolrd of Ascension 01 - Ascension

  Relax? Really? She smiled but she took his words to heart, drew in a long deep breath, and concentrated. She felt the vibration.

  Just as she appeared by the vehicle with Kerrick in front of her and his hands still holding hers, an enormous blast sounded on the other side of the house. The walls shook. The garage sat on the opposite side of the house, separated by a courtyard and a wing of bedrooms, which she suspected was exactly what had just saved them.

  “So Darian’s army just blew up the rest of my house.”

  Kerrick nodded then thrust a hand toward the vehicle. “Get in.”

  She mentally hit the lights, both for the garage and the headlights for the Hummer.

  “Maybe I should fold us somewhere else?”

  “Too late. Greaves’s army has a fix on you, with death vamps ready to trace no matter where we go, and believe me, if they’ve sent a regiment to your home, they’d be happy to send another regiment in pursuit. They’d engage me in such a way that I’d be forced to leave you unguarded. Then you’d be dead. Right now only the call to Thorne will get us out of this.”

  “Lead on,” she cried. She vaulted around to the passenger’s side then hopped in. She started to tell him she had forgotten the keys but there was nothing holding her back. She pointed to the ignition and started the vehicle. She could use any of her powers right now, in the presence of this warrior, and it wouldn’t matter. He wouldn’t be freaked and he wouldn’t judge her. Maybe he wouldn’t even get hurt.

  She turned toward the garage door and began forming the thought to open it. Instead his words zipped through her mind: No time, duck down. He aimed his hand at the door, fired away, shattered the back window of the Hummer, and sent the garage door flying off its hinges.

  The Second Earth vampire had power!

  A heartbeat later he backed out of the garage at the devil’s own pace.

  He turned, skidded, and shifted into drive.

  He hit the accelerator.

  The tires squealed.

  He didn’t bother with the driveway. He drove straight through the wire fence and the hilly open desert away from the front of the house. The Hummer’s lights bounced over the terrain like a lantern swinging wildly.

  As her eyes adjusted, she looked around. Greaves’s army attacked, heading toward her house on the ground and in black combat gear or flying down out of the sky. Some of the soldiers looked normal, but the rest were death vampires bearing the hallmark beauty of their kind as well as the pale, almost bluish tint to the skin. Those soldiers in flight wore the same gear Kerrick did right now: kilts, gladiator sandals, and weapons harnesses. However, the weapon of choice involved bullets rather than blades.

  “Oh, God.”

  One good spray from an assault rifle and game over.

  “Get down,” Kerrick’s deep voice thumped inside the Hummer.

  She dropped low in her seat though she felt compelled to keep an eye on what was happening.

  A death vamp flew close then lifted his rifle.

  Without thinking she raised her hand, blew out the front windshield, and knocked the warrior down. The resulting bounce of tires caused her stomach to lurch. Oh, God, they’d run him over.

  Kerrick cried out, “Keep doing what you’re doing. Right now you’re our best weapon. Goddammit.” He jerked the heavy vehicle to the right, bounced down into a wash, then climbed up the other side all in the space of seconds. The maneuver left behind a platoon of foot soldiers.

  More death vamps, in flight, headed toward the Hummer.

  With one hand on the steering wheel, Kerrick held out his right hand and a pistol appeared. A death vamp landed on the hood. Kerrick fired, chest center, and blew the vamp backward. Another crunch under the wheels. Alison’s stomach heaved north.

  Her peripheral vision caught movement. A death vamp flew at window level. He slowly raised a pistol. Her eyes widened. Once more she sent a blast, which in turn sent the death vamp spiraling out of control and piled up at the base of a saguaro.

  “Goddammit, Central. Where’s Thorne?”

  He fired his pistol until the trigger clicked on empty. He folded another weapon into his hand and pulled the trigger, the sound deafening inside the Hummer. Death vamps fell right and left and still more came. He fired as he drove through the desert, up and down gullies, busting apart creosote, sideswiping tall spindly ocotillo, and crunching fat barrel cacti.

  Alison kept aiming her palm at anything that drew close. Her heart had ramped up, doubled its beats. She had never been so frightened in her life.

  A thumping sounded on the roof. Alison sent a blast up. The top of the Hummer lifted, separated, then fell off the back of the vehicle. From her side mirror she saw a winged death vamp slide down the side of the wash then struggle to gain his feet.

  “Shit,” Kerrick cried out. “Thorne, where are you?”

  Alison turned around and cried out. In front of her at least twenty death vamps rained down from the sky directly in the Hummer’s path.

  Do your best, Alison, or God help us, he sent.

  She blasted away with her hand in a wide arc in front of her, but she knew her power had weakened. She’d never thrown so many hand-blasts in her life. Not all the warriors fell. Her left shoulder jerked backward.

  She felt a strange curdling in the pit of her stomach. Another winged death vamp landed on the hood of the Hummer. Kerrick pulled the trigger, but only a series of clicks followed.

  The pretty-boy aimed his pistol directly at her, a feral look in his eyes, a smile pulled back over thick, heavy fangs. Alison lifted her hand, but the blast that followed had little effect. She was finished.

  Time slowed.

  So this was how she was going to die?

  She laughed. So much for ascending to Second Earth. She hadn’t even survived a handful of hours.

  She closed her eyes and waited.

  A brilliant light flashed in front of her eyelids.

  The next thing she knew, she stood before a tall handsome man with long light brown hair. He was almost as tall as Kerrick and just as muscled. His hazel eyes were badly red-rimmed like he hadn’t slept in a year.

  He scowled at her. “You’re hit.”

  She didn’t know what he meant exactly. No one had hit her, but her mind felt as if it was moving in circles at the bottom of a drain. She couldn’t see very well. She glanced around. She had landed in some sort of very dark rec room that housed a bunch of really ugly couches. A pool table was on its back, all four legs up in the air, two of them bent at a weird angle. On the other side of the room was a long bar fronted by several tall stools. An assortment of gleaming hard-liquor bottles in a variety of shapes and sizes decorated a row of cabinets.

  She weaved on her feet. Pain pierced her shoulder suddenly, like someone had just taken a chain saw to the joint. She glanced down. Blood soaked her shirt and sweater. She pulled the neck of the T-shirt away and sure enough, blood pumped sluggishly from a bullet wound.

  Well, what do you know? She’d gotten hit.

  Oh. That’s what the guy with the red-rimmed eyes had meant.

  At least she wasn’t dead.

  At least, she didn’t think she was dead.

  Her knees gave way. She had a vague impression of someone catching her as everything went black.

  Let the healer come,

  For when the wounds are well-tended

  A land is saved.

  —Collected Proverbs, Beatrice of Fourth

  CHAPTER 12

  Kerrick stood near the pool table, Alison in his arms. Christ, they’d barely made it out alive.

  Guilt powered down on his head, tensing his neck and tightening his chest. This was what happened to the women in his life. Proximity meant danger. Danger meant injury and death.

  Goddammittohell.

  Blood still seeped from her shoulder. She needed help. Now. “I think you’d better call one of the healers. My powers don’t encompass torn arteries.”

  “We don’t need to,” Th
orne said. He grimaced, his brows drawn into a deep furrow as he stared at Alison. “Endelle is on her way.”

  “Thank God. In the meantime, pressure on the wound would help.”

  Thorne stepped close and with the heel of his palm stanched the flow. “She’s very beautiful,” he murmured.

  “Yeah,” Kerrick muttered. Dammit, he shouldn’t have taken her at the neck earlier. What the hell had he been thinking and just how much blood did she have left? The level of Alison’s powers demanded she battle her way into Second and she needed every resource, including a decent amount of red cells. What the hell had he been thinking?

  He hadn’t.

  Ever since the breh-hedden had taken hold of him his brain had been functioning on fumes. If he hadn’t been working her out on the couch, this wouldn’t have happened. He needed to get a grip. Now.

  “So why the emergency lift?” Thorne asked, shifting his gaze to Kerrick. “How many death vamps were there? I’ve seen you battle eight by yourself and barely break a sweat.”

  “There were dozens. A regiment.”

  “What the fuck?”

  “Greaves sent his army.” Which was another part of the truth. He’d been prepared to take on two or three squads of death vamps but not a regiment.

  Thorne hissed. “That goddamn motherfucker. So there weren’t only death vamps present.”

  “That’s right. Good old working soldiers.” He told his story ending with, “Things would have been different if he hadn’t sent his army. That much I know. It just never occurred to me that he’d send a regiment, that he’d break such a big fucking rule. Shit.”

  “Don’t beat yourself up. We knew from the medical complex that her signature showed up on the grid. Any way you look at it, you were screwed.”

  Right. Whatever. “Someone else should have charge of her.”

  “Doesn’t sound like it would make one lizard’s turd of a difference.”

  Kerrick huffed a laugh. “No. I guess not.”

  “No question we’re in for it, though. And you know what the Commander will do when he hears we used an emergency lift.”

  “You got that right.” He ground his teeth. There weren’t enough obscenities to cover the scope of his thoughts. “But we’d both be dead otherwise and isn’t it kind of illegal to be dropping an army down on Mortal Earth?”

  Thorne snorted his disgust. “The Committee will overlook that little indiscretion.”

  COPASS. The Committee to Oversee the Process of Ascension to Second Society. “Bullshit committee.”

  Kerrick had a sick-gut feeling all over again, the one laced with despair. He had been a warrior one century too long. He couldn’t seem to find his feet anymore, and by the looks of it Thorne wasn’t in much better shape.

  Thorne glanced at Alison. “So, what do we have here? Endelle said she sent a hand-blast up the Trough.”

  “Yep. Saw it myself at the receiving end. Straight up. A sand geyser about a quarter of a mile high.”

  “Damn.”

  “Where the hell is Endelle? Alison can’t lose much more blood.”

  Thorne scowled, his gaze shifting back and forth as he scanned the room. “She’ll be here.”

  “I need to get Alison back to Mortal Earth. I have no idea how long she can tolerate being on Second.” An un-ascended mortal couldn’t handle being in the second dimension for more than a couple of hours at a time. In a wounded state, the draining effects would rob the mortal of the much-needed energy to recover. An extended stay of longer than twenty-four hours, wounded or not, always ended in death. Only when Alison received from Endelle’s hand the ascended vampire nature at her ascension ceremony would she be able to tolerate living on Second Earth.

  The air shimmered suddenly. Endelle. She caught Kerrick’s gaze and without a single nicety cried, “What the hell have you done? An emergency lift? Do you know what this means?” Kerrick’s ears rang. “Did you just lose half your IQ points, Warrior? Shit!” The decibels she employed in that one word, spoken as it was both aloud and with telepathy, pounded the hell out of his eardrums and shattered all the bottles on the bar. The sudden reek of alcohol drenched the air. “You might as well have handed Alison’s head on a platter to that motherfucker. Calling an emergency lift just gave Greaves one more piece of ammunition against us. He’ll take this to COPASS and demand retribution and they’ll give it to him. So, again, what the hell were you thinking?”

  “Didn’t have a choice, ma’am,” Kerrick began. He told her what he’d told Thorne.

  She scowled as she glanced at Alison. “You know, you’re really letting me down here, Warrior.”

  Kerrick drew in a long deep breath through his nose. “Yes, ma’am. But there wasn’t much else I could do. The Commander didn’t just send a war party to Carefree, he sent a regiment.”

  “Whatever.”

  Her wings, a ruddy scarlet this time, extended to their fullest height and breadth, a reflection of her temper. She had changed her clothes from earlier in the evening and wore tight black leather pants and some kind of dark hide halter with long bristled fur. He thought buffalo, maybe.

  “You’d better take her back to Mortal Earth,” she barked.

  “But where?” Thorne asked. “And how do we sustain secrecy?”

  She huffed a sigh. “All right, let’s take care of our little troublemaker.” She drew her feathers abruptly into her wing-locks, a movement that jostled the halter but didn’t dislodge it.

  She laid a hand on Alison’s forehead. The air pulsed slowly, then rapidly all around them.

  When the pulsing stopped, Endelle straightened up. “You can take her now. I’ve given her a shield, which will last about thirty-six hours. No one will be able to locate her.”

  “It may not be that simple,” Kerrick said. “Both Alison and I have signatures that show up on Central’s grid. If Greaves or his generals located us because of our signatures, that means they’ve improved their technology. Your shield might block Alison’s signature but not mine.”

  “Shit,” Endelle muttered. “All right. Let me think. Okay. I can put my mist around the Queen Creek house and as far as I know even Greaves won’t be able to find you.”

  Kerrick nodded. “Yeah, I’d like to see him bust through your mist.”

  “Damn straight about that. Okay. So, we’re done here, right?” She didn’t wait for an answer but turned to leave.

  “She’when’endel’livelle!” Thorne called after her. At least three very pronounced clicks broke up the proper name.

  Yep, crickets in his mouth.

  Kerrick lifted a brow. How could Thorne even remember her birth name, not to mention pronounce it?

  Endelle turned around and scowled at her second-in-command. “What?” she snapped.

  “Could you take care of the wound, please? Neither Kerrick nor I have the ability to heal a mortal whose shoulder has been shredded.”

  She clenched her jaw. “I hate details.” She blurred back and touched the wound. The flesh re-formed flawlessly, and a vibrant pink color returned to Alison’s face. So much power. She replaced the bloodied sweater, T-shirt, and jeans with a soft white, but very short, tunic.

  “Thank you,” Thorne said, averting his gaze from Alison’s now bare legs. Endelle rolled her eyes, tossed an arm, then folded. She left behind a blast of wind full of stinging grit to remind her warriors just how much she disliked being taken from her usual routine.

  Kerrick whirled away in order to shield Alison. When the wind stopped, he turned back to Thorne, who in turn just shook his head. Endelle was one fine piece of work. “What the hell was she wearing?”

  Thorne shrugged. “I don’t know. Bear hide?”

  Kerrick snorted.

  Just as he was going to ask Thorne to give him a fold to Queen Creek, a double shimmer appeared near the bar some twenty feet away.

  Medichi … and Marcus.

  Kerrick’s jaw hardened and a hideous growl erupted out of his throat.

  Thorne auto
matically threw an arm in front of Kerrick. “How’d it go?” he called to Medichi. “And what the hell happened to Marcus? Hey, asshole, your pansy-ass life catch up with you?”

  Marcus had a huge bump over his left eye and a deep cut on his right arm that dripped blood onto the floor. He met Kerrick’s gaze and his shoulders hunched.

  “Motherfucker,” he called out, his teeth gritted. At the same moment, in a move lightning-quick, Medichi grabbed Marcus, slammed him to the floor, then put a foot on his neck. Medichi held him in place as Marcus started cursing the dust Kerrick walked on and everything else he could think of.

  “Goddammit,” Thorne muttered. “Just what we need.”

  “Take the ascendiate,” Kerrick cried, trying to shove Alison at Thorne. “Let me at the bastard! I’ll break his fucking neck!”

  Thorne turned back to Kerrick and over Alison’s body he caught Kerrick’s face with both hands, getting up close. “You just get her to Queen Creek and keep her safe,” he cried, splitting his resonance.

  Despite the fact that Alison was caught between them, Kerrick shifted his knees as well as his shoulders in a primal effort to bust out of Thorne’s hold on him. He breathed hard through his nose. He wanted at Marcus like nobody’s business.

  “Calm the fuck down!” Thorne shouted. “You have guardian duty right now. You can beat the shit out of Marcus later. Right now, take care of your woman.”

  These last words, spoken as they were aloud and in Kerrick’s head, brought his focus straight at Thorne’s red-rimmed hazel eyes. The pain of the combined mind-voice speak nearly brought Kerrick to his knees.

  He started nodding without quite knowing what he was agreeing to. However, in deliberate measures, his breathing slowed and he didn’t see quite so much red as before.

  “Ready to go?” Thorne asked.

  Kerrick nodded.

  The vibration began.

  * * *

  Kerrick stood in the middle of his Queen Creek living room on Mortal Earth.

  He concentrated on steadying his heart. When Marcus had folded to the Cave, if Alison hadn’t been in his arms, he would have gone apeshit on that bastard’s ass. It sure as hell wasn’t helping his blood pressure to think about what he would have done, what he still wanted to do to his former brother-in-law. Hatred didn’t begin to describe what he felt for Marcus.