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“What do you mean, a phone? Why the f**k did you disrupt my meeting?”
Marcus offered her a profound you’ve-got-to-be-kidding look, then spoke rapidly. He outlined a disembarkation procedure for the High Administrators. Havily was already on the phone, initiating some kind of preset emergency strategy.
Jean-Pierre wasn’t surprised when off to his left, and away from the group, Marcus’s team began to appear.
A moment later Marcus spoke with three senior members of his team then levitated and took over Endelle’s place among the High Administrators.
For a long moment, as Havily joined Marcus’s staff, Endelle stood with her back to Jean-Pierre. Her fingers plucked at the feathers of her calf-length pants. She watched and listened to Marcus for about thirty seconds. Jean-Pierre wanted to interrupt her, to press her over their current disaster, but Thorne shook his head.
Finally, Endelle shifted to face Jean-Pierre and Thorne. “Guess I should have called Marcus right away.”
Thorne nodded.
Jean-Pierre felt ready to jump out of his skin.
Thorne put a hand on her shoulder and very quietly said, “We need permission to break into the Superstition Fortress.”
She opened her mouth to speak, but Thorne filled her in on Fiona’s sudden abduction and Endelle listened.
Finally she turned to Jean-Pierre and said eloquently, “Well, shit motherfucker.”
“We will never find her,” Jean-Pierre said, “without the aid of Marguerite. Rith blocked his trace as he did in Toulouse. Please tell us we may go to the Superstitions and do this thing.”
Thunder drifted down the valley,
Only an echo now.
The last of the rain fell to earth.
She crawled into the safety of her bed
And slept.
—Collected Poems, Beatrice of Fourth
Chapter 20
Endelle turned and looked at the crowd that she and Fiona had saved, over twenty thousand people. If Fiona hadn’t come through in that moment, if she hadn’t grown into her obsidian flame abilities, if she hadn’t allowed Endelle to possess her so that together they forged sufficient power to move all these people through time and space as though they were slicing soft butter, not one of them would be alive.
Marcus had told her that the explosion had rocked Las Vegas Two; he’d seen a special report that included helicopter views of the scene not five minutes ago.
If Greaves had succeeded in his plan, if the explosion had happened a minute sooner, if Fiona and Marguerite hadn’t worked in beautiful tandem to get the information to Endelle, all these important High Administrators aligned with her government would be dead. The ensuing chaos would have cost her the war. She had no doubt about that.
She owed Fiona everything right now.
As for the Fortress, she turned back to look at Thorne, at his red-rimmed eyes and the way he breathed hard through his nostrils waiting for her to say the word, just say the f**king word. His woman was imprisoned by a sociopath apparently intent on creating a super-race of Seers. If Endelle didn’t stop Owen Stannett right now, what would she have to face in the coming months or years? Just how much power had Stannett amassed?
She had tried throughout the afternoon to talk sense to Stannett, to force him to own up to his end of the bargain, but he was making use of his old tricks, stalling and ho-humming until she had mentally pulverized his nuts, in her hands, about a thousand times.
And there was something more. She’d also tried contacting COPASS again, trying to impress on that worthless entity that Owen Stannett needed to be removed from service as High Administrator of the Fortress, but all that came back to her was a voicemail from Daniel Harding, chairman of COPASS and secret death vampire, in which he spoke one word: “Nonsense.”
So here she was, hamstrung for the one millionth time.
And as she once more cast her gaze at the crowd, as she watched the High Administrator of Mongolia Two Territory, his very pregnant wife, and their small entourage fold into the night, she drew a deep settling breath.
“No more,” she whispered.
She turned back to her men, two of her tough, powerful Warriors of the Blood, two who had been so faithful, who fought every night against death vampires that Darian Greaves sent to wear them down, night after night at the Borderlands, battling to keep two worlds safe. And now each of them was fighting to save the woman he loved.
Fine.
She called out, “Havily, get your ass over here.”
Havily left her place near Marcus’s execs and moved to stand beside Endelle. The woman waited for instructions, which was exactly what she needed.
Damn, her heart felt heavy. What she was about to do could land her in prison, perhaps even worse.
She turned back to Jean-Pierre and Thorne. She put a hand on Jean-Pierre’s left shoulder then cupped Thorne’s face.
She nodded and let her hands fall away, back to her sides. To Havily, she said, “I want you to witness what I have to say to my men. Do you understand? This is a serious legal matter and you will be called upon in the future to answer for what you have heard here tonight. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Madame Endelle.”
She nodded. She glanced from Jean-Pierre to Thorne and back. “I hereby grant you permission to breach the Superstition Mountain Seers Fortress, to take in hand and remove from that place the gifted Seer and recent transfer from the Creator’s Convent, Marguerite, bringing her to my office as soon as you have apprehended her. I understand the legal ramifications of taking this action. May any subsequent suit against this action fall exclusively on my head.” She nodded briskly several times. “Go get Marguerite then bring Fiona home where she belongs.”
* * *
Thorne changed into clean battle gear. He wished he had time to shower, to clean the blood off his skin, rinse it the hell out of his hair. Not that Marguerite would give a rat’s ass. How many times had he gone straight from battle to the Convent, pulled her out of bed, and taken her in just this state.
He’d tried apologizing once, but she’d told him to shut the f**k up and do me. No, Marguerite wouldn’t care. But the flight gear, yeah that was fresh.
His heart hammered in his chest at the thought of busting her out of the Superstition Fortress, having her with him, keeping her by his side.
But as Jean-Pierre talked over the situation with Jeannie, orchestrating a tight fold to the entrance to the Fortress, he slammed the brakes on all his hopes about what Marguerite would do and where she’d go once he got her the hell out of that place.
He realized that the moment Endelle gave permission for the invasion, he’d turned about sixteen again, excited to see his girlfriend. He’d even had the ridiculous thought that once she was out, she’d move in with him, live with him in his Sedona house.
