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That strange tobacco scent seemed to be getting stronger.
Whatever.
She turned in a circle, enjoying the feel of her leg without the weight of the ankle guard for the first time in decades. Her other leg now seemed strangely heavy. What an odd sensation. She moved away from the chair and turned in ever-broadening circles.
She saw from her peripheral vision that Thorne had risen from his seat as well.
She sure hoped he didn’t intend to prevent her from doing what she needed to do.
She slowly shifted her turning circle in the direction of the open door. “No,” Thorne said, but his voice held a restrained note.
She faced Endelle and Fiona and grinned. She called out a resounding, “So long, suckers.” She lifted her arm and vanished, at the same time setting up a trace-block. Nether-space, her first ride in a century, felt damn good.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, f**king, yeah.
* * *
With preternatural speed, Thorne moved to the exact spot where his woman had just vanished. He’d known from the beginning that this day would come because he’d known his woman’s heart and her mind and her spirit from the first second he’d been with her, even before he’d entered her body.
Except she’d asked if someone was smoking a pipe.
And now a new nightmare was on him, because in this space where she had disappeared, he could smell her in a way he had never smelled her before. But it seemed all wrong, because it was a rich floral scent, like the red roses his sister, Patience, had once grown. How could this fire-woman smell of flowers? Beyond that, why the f**k did she smell like anything, for God’s sake? Was there to be no peace for him, ever?
He started crying out, shouting. He lost track of himself, of time, of space. His shouting morphed into some kind of strange primal screaming that he couldn’t even hear, like maybe he was producing a sound that only dogs could detect.
Then he fell into a hole so deep there simply was no bottom and he screamed the entire way.
* * *
Endelle stared at Thorne and then at Fiona whose ears had started to bleed and who was crying and thrashing on the floor. She had to get Fiona out of her office, out of the building, but she was afraid to leave Thorne alone.
Alison. She had to get Alison over here to take Fiona away.
Her phone. Where was her phone?
Oh, yeah.
She leaped on her desk and slid over the marble, knocking her laptop to the floor. She really did need to start carrying her stupid phone with her.
Dammit, her own ears hurt now. She didn’t know a man could make a sound like that. He stood very straight, his whole body rigid, but with his neck arched and head thrown back, shouting at the ceiling.
She found her phone on the floor, right where she’d last thrown it, down by one of the curled woolly mammoth tusks that supported the desk. From that position, her head resting against the hard ivory, and with fingers that trembled, she tapped the damn screen.
When a sleepy Alison came online, she shouted, “Get your ass to my office, now. We have an emergency but all I need you to do is fold here then fold Fiona back to your house. Got it?”
“Uh … okay … got it.”
Half a second later, and wearing a long, rumpled blue silk nightgown, Alison appeared. She looked at Thorne and winced. She appeared ready to drop to the floor herself. Then she looked at Fiona.
She went to the latter, put her hand on her shoulder, and the two of them, thank God, vanished.
Endelle used the same phone and tapped for Central. She cut off Jeannie’s usual polite greeting. “Fuck that, Jeannie. Listen up. Get Luken over to my office and Horace as well. Now. We’ve got some kind of something going on. It’s sort of—oh, f**k, just do it.”
She thumbed her phone and waited.
Luken showed up about ten seconds later, straight from one of the Borderlands where he battled death vampires, his sword in hand, his arms shaking with adrenaline, blood spatter all over him.
He saw Thorne and cried out, “What the hell is this?” Then, “Endelle, where the f**k are you?”
Endelle rose up from beneath her desk, threw her phone back down by the tusk, then put her hands over her ears. “Don’t let him hurt himself. I think, oh, God, I think it’s the goddam breh-hedden. Shit motherfucker.” She rounded the desk to stand a few feet away from Thorne. But Luken was a take-no-prisoners kind of man, and carried more natural brawn, more sheer muscle than any of the other Warriors of the Blood. He had the best heart and when he saw what he needed to do, goddammit, the man just did it!
Despite the painful resonant noises Thorne was making, the high piercing keening sounds, Luken positioned himself in front of Thorne. Thorne’s cries kept increasing in resonance and volume until Endelle, as Fiona had done before, dropped to the floor.
Horace arrived next and immediately fell to his knees, also covering his ears.
Endelle crawled under the table so she could see what was happening. Luken, his face pale now, caught Thorne’s left arm. When Thorne drew back his right hand and made a fist, Luken moved in with a series of swift preternatural punches that bobbed Thorne’s head back a whole bunch of times, until the keening stopped and the leader of the Warriors of the Blood fell on his back at Horace’s feet.
Oh, thank God that noise had stopped.
Jesus H. Christ.
Endelle sat back on her heels then crawled around the side of the desk. She’d lost an awful lot of red feathers in the past fifteen minutes, and her fluffy capris now had a bunch of bare patches that would need reworking. Her mind felt like someone had sandblasted her gray matter from one cauliflower-shaped mass to the other. She had a hard time forming coherent thoughts.
A moment later Kerrick appeared. His battle gear was also streaked with blood, black feathers, and other horrible things. His bare muscled arms were the same. In addition, he had a cut that dripped blood onto the hardwood floor near his black battle sandals.
“What’s going on?” he asked. “I just talked with Alison. She thought maybe you’d need me.”
Endelle released a heavy sigh and flopped an arm in Thorne’s direction. “Seen this before? Or something like it?”
Kerrick moved to stand over Thorne. His lips curved and his emerald eyes filled with compassion. “Thorne’s turn, I take it?” He glanced at Endelle.
She nodded, then stretched herself out on one of the zebra skins that littered the floor of her office. It felt good to be lying on her back and staring up at the ceiling. She extended her arms then clasped her hands beneath her head.
Her administration was like a goddam three-ring circus. All she lacked were a few elephants trumpeting and monkeys swinging from chandeliers.
