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His aide moved toward him quickly. “We’re not sure. Parts of White Lake have disappeared from view.”
Mist. Then he felt it. Endelle’s mist. Fuck.
He glanced at the papers in hand. Nothing had been prophesied about this. So what the hell was going on that he didn’t know about? What critical information had Marguerite’s teams blocked from him in the future streams.
He felt the quicksand around his ankles again. Maybe he’d been hasty in killing Stannett after all.
* * *
As Alison floated in the air just above the blue-green waters of White Lake, she realized that the dreams she’d had of the lake had shifted over time. But perhaps that was a reflection of the nature of life. Paths were chosen and discarded. The journey branched and new roads were taken.
One dream had showed her backed by nearly twenty women; opposite the women were almost twenty warriors at Warrior of the Blood status.
But in recent days the dream had changed to involve obsidian flame, one of the most powerful elements to have emerged in Endelle’s administration ever.
As she flapped her emerald wings and set her gaze above her, the blue vortex appeared. Kerrick floated opposite her, a protective presence, her original Guardian of Ascension. His white wings were magnificent in the midday light. Imagine vampires living fully beneath a strong desert sunshine.
Leto floated beside Kerrick, ready to assume his duties as the new gatekeeper to Third. Her throat grew tight looking at him, so different now. He was deeply fulfilled and more powerful than ever. She knew that look. Kerrick had become this man when he’d completed the breh-hedden with her, more determined than ever to do his duty and to be all that he could be.
She remembered her battle with Leto, how frightened she’d been at the impossible task of fighting a Warrior of the Blood with three thousand years of experience. Kerrick had downloaded his battle memories—that was one of the reasons she’d won the battle. The other reason had been more complex: She had relied on her own gifts and abilities so that in the end she had defeated Leto and saved his life, by reversing a pocket of time and creating shields that his sword could not penetrate.
Now she was here, a vampire and a breh, executive assistant to Madame Endelle, and saddled with the ominous task of opening the gateway to Third Earth. She was a healer of the mind and had been during her adult years on Mortal Earth.
She could see the blue vortex now swirling above her, calling to her as though from the time of her ascension the portal had been living inside her, a task to fulfill when the time called.
James had explained what needed to be done, yet how strange to think that she was the one to do it, of all ascenders, the youngest, the least experienced.
Her nerves, however, felt like a car with the revs too high. She took numerous deep breaths.
Behind her, obsidian flame waited to support her.
Finally, she felt the timing was exactly right. She turned and nodded to Grace.
This was it.
Grace had already dipped within Endelle’s soul and acquired her levitation ability.
Alison felt obsidian flame’s power come to life behind her. She rose in the air and a moment later she was speeding toward the vortex, a stream of power lifting her up and propelling her at the same time.
She opened her mind, focusing on the portal to Third. She spread her arms wide and, as though the portal had always been part of her, she held her power open.
She then invited Grace to enter her soul and to acquire the same ability to connect with the portal.
Grace dove within, which made Alison smile because the woman had incredible gentleness as her blue flame power slipped into Alison’s soul. She could feel the slight pressure deep within as Grace found the lock to her portal ability, inserted her preternatural blue flame key, and acquired the same ability.
A moment later, Grace departed, leaving behind a strange emptiness. Grace then sent, What would you have us do?
Alison took a deep breath. She knew instinctively what needed to be done, so she returned, Do what you normally do. When the triad feels the need to connect with the portal, just let the power flow.
Understood.
Alison waited, but it couldn’t have been more than seconds before she could feel the rumbling beneath her. The obsidian power began to stream like a vast wave of energy, moving through Alison and past her, amplifying the connection to the portal until a slivery stream of light shot in the direction of the gateway.
The result was music, like a heavenly choir humming the most beautiful harmony she had ever heard. The music swirled around her and through her. She cried out in a kind of spiritual ecstasy.
The blue vortex spun faster and faster and suddenly blossomed, for she could describe it no other way. She could feel that the portal was opening—and at the same time she could also see the breach that Greaves apparently had created to bring his Third Earth death vampires through.
Though it has not been my privilege to travel to either Fifth Earth or Sixth, it has been the experience of my several millennia as an ascended being that the truism The grass is always greener has never been more accurate than in our dimensional world.
—Memoirs, Beatrice of Fourth
Chapter 21
Greaves reached White Lake in time to see Alison, supported by obsidian flame, open the portal to Third. He saw the breach he had created with his own substantial power now fully exposed.
He tried to fold his death vampires through at that moment, but he couldn’t reach them.
Then the worst happened as the breach sealed itself, re-forming with the now open portal, a beautiful blue blossoming aperture ready to move ascenders freely between the two dimensions.
Again, he located his hundred and tried to fold them, but then he felt it, a Sixth ascender blocking Third. At almost the same time, the portal began to close up.
“No,” he screamed long and loud, so that waves of energy pulsed from his body, radiating in a large circle around him.
Alison hadn’t just opened the portal as his Seers had foreseen over a year ago. She had closed it as well, allowing no breach, no means by which he could continue to secure Third Earth death vampires.
He watched as obsidian flame and Alison began to sink slowly back to earth, back into Endelle’s mist.
When Greaves understood that he would be unable to bring his force through the now healed portal, he knew that his last chance at winning this war without invoking his virus-based morphing ability had just disappeared.
He folded back to Estrella.
All his generals and aides turned toward him, waiting. For a long moment, he couldn’t speak the words. He was stunned at what had just happened.
