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Casimir’s teeth gleamed once more in the dim, dim light. “Oh, I think you know what I’ll require, at least at the beginning.”
Greaves felt his mind slide around loosely. How stupid he had been. He had thought perhaps wealth, or an endless supply of mortal women, or the right to half his kingdom, but he should have known better. Casimir always went to the heart of things. He preferred to draw blood at the outset.
“So you want Julianna.”
He shrugged. “I have gazed upon her, so yes, of course.”
That was a lie. Casimir may have actually seen Julianna, true, but her beauty was not what drew him. Greaves’s unfortunate attachment to Eldon Crace’s former wife was what Casimir had noticed.
Greaves sighed. His left hand twitched, but he didn’t bring forth his claw. There would be no point. A Fourth ascender had advanced powers and would not be intimidated by anything so vulgar.
The question in life was always the same: What are you willing to do to get the things you want?
Oh, damn.
***
Rith trembled on his chaise longue in the underground cavern of his St. Louis Two blood donor facility. He pulled himself out of the future streams, sweating and nauseous.
Not only had his plans with Parisa failed, but his future had taken a terrible turn.
He had been such a fool from beginning to end where Parisa Lovejoy had been concerned. She had been the cause of this new horror. He should have gone with his instincts and killed her at the outset. Even if he had secured her death later—while he had her in his control at his temple, say—his future might not look so bleak.
Instead, like a complete novice, he’d ignored the rising level of her powers and assumed his energy fields would keep both of his prisoners trapped so that they couldn’t dematerialize. By the time he’d lit the torch at the end of the room, they were gone.
Now the ribbon of light belonging to Parisa had combined with Warrior Medichi’s ribbon to forge an impenetrable prophetic signature, which he could no longer read. The couple had completed the breh-hedden. Whatever their futures might be, whatever roles they might play in the war, were now lost to him, lost to most of the Seers of Second Earth.
Still, Fiona, the one who had been the Commander’s first blood slave experiment, had risen to prominence in the future streams, a glowing light that he had been unable to resist reading.
He had picked up her ribbon of an intense silver-blue and ridden her prophecies. What he had found there made him rise from his chaise longue and head into the makeshift lavatory. He threw up into the bucket of water.
He had seen his death in glorious Technicolor at the hands of Fiona. Then he had seen his death at the hands of the Warrior Jean-Pierre. After that, he had seen Greaves himself, his beloved Commander, plunge a blade straight through his heart.
How was he to forge a life from the future streams when his own death had been foretold in three different ways?
***
A week after the battle at the Grand Canyon, Fiona sat in a large conference room at Madame Endelle’s administrative headquarters. The wall of windows to the east gave a view onto an expansive stretch of desert. It never failed to surprise her, since all she’d known for most of her hundred-plus years on Second Earth was a green garden and a large tamarind tree. Her eyes welcomed the change, surprisingly. But she supposed that from the moment of her rescue, when she was brought to Madame Endelle’s palace, which overlooked miles of the same Sonoran Desert, she would always think of vast blue skies, clumps of cactus and creosote, and tall stately saguaros, as the representation of her freedom.
Alison sat beside her. She looked very pregnant but very relaxed now. Each time she tensed up, she closed her eyes, calmed her body, and ran a soothing hand over her swollen abdomen. She was communicating telepathically with the infant now, getting better every day at helping Helena draw in her temporary wings and keep her sloshy amniotic haven from spasming.
Fiona had loved being pregnant, carrying her children—lovely Carolyn with her soft honey-brown curls and Peter who came out charging forward, ready to take on the world.
Fiona smiled at the blond beauty. Fiona was tall but still two inches shy of six-foot Alison. Height was a good thing when a woman was attached to a Warrior of the Blood—better kissing distance.
Parisa had made an effort to discover on Fiona’s behalf the basic events of her family’s lives. Her husband, Terence, had remarried five years after Fiona’s disappearance. He’d had a second family to whom he had been utterly devoted. She could smile at the thought. Terence had been a good man, a wonderful loving husband and an excellent father, his hand neither too heavy nor too light. Of course he would have married again.
Her adored children had not fared so well. Her son had died in a trolley accident at the age of twenty-five while pursuing a law degree. Her daughter, Carolyn, had drowned while out yachting two years later, but her body had never been recovered.
Fiona had shed a few tears that neither of her children had been able to live their lives, that each had died relatively young, neither having married or borne children. But in truth she had already grieved her losses for so many decades that a few days after receiving the news, her sadness had dimmed appreciably. More than anything, she needed time to recover and to gain a solid footing in this new world. That the fate of the blood slaves in the remaining twenty-one facilities weighed on her mind gave a strong indication in just what direction her first service to Madame Endelle’s administration would go.
Alison opened her eyes. “Sorry about that but it’s getting better.”
“Good,” Fiona said. “I’m so happy for you. There is nothing so wonderful as carrying one’s children.”
She felt a thousand years older than the therapist beside her, and perhaps in terms of experience and suffering she was. But the woman had a gift. There were moments when Alison reached out to Fiona, put a hand on her arm or her shoulder, and oh, such peace would flow, and some of that deep sense of being so very old would lighten, even disappear. She could even breathe more easily for a time.
She lived with tension constantly—that she would be taken again, spirited away, used for another century. She believed the sensation would go away in time, but how much of it? A decade? Two decades? She was a relatively wise woman, but damaged in her spirit. Who wouldn’t be after an ordeal that had lasted longer than a century?
“Now. Let’s talk about your future,” Alison said. “For the moment, Madame Endelle would like you and the other women to stay at the palace, at least for the next few weeks for security purposes, while you get your bearings. She’d also like you to consider taking charge of the remaining captives. We can see that each has turned to you for leadership and guidance since you’ve been here.”
