Gates of Rapture (The Guardians of Ascension) Read online

  He breathed again, but his shoulders strained forward and his spine arched.

  The section leader wiped his forehead, which did little more than smear blood into his sweaty hairline. Gideon was a Militia Warrior operating at Warrior of the Blood status, thanks in part to his vampire DNA but in more recent months to Warrior Jean-Pierre’s newly acquired ability to channel warrior powers.

  Everything was changing.

  Finally, Leto was able to speak again. He looked up at Gideon once more. “Give me details,” he said, clenching his fists. He had maybe three minutes.

  Gideon’s nostrils flared. “We tracked them into the mountains. The mist-dome seems to be holding. At every juncture within ten feet of the dome, the detail would turn away, but each time they did, another one of their group, observing at a distance, would lay down another transmitter.” He tossed the small black box onto the desk.

  Leto stared at it. His cheeks cramped as a round of nausea swept over him. Still, he persevered. “Do we know exactly what this is yet?”

  “The techs think it might be some kind of satellite mapping technology. We tried to get them all, but this is a huge perimeter.”

  “Shit,” Leto muttered. “They’re mapping the location of the colony through negative space.”

  “That’s what it looks like. Maybe they can’t see the mist, and maybe the mist turns them away, but laying out these transmitters will eventually create a map.”

  “It also means we’ve run out of time.” He wasn’t even sure they’d get through the three days set aside for the warrior games.

  Gideon seemed to settle into himself as he said, “Agreed.”

  Leto turned the box over in his hand and breathed through another heavy vibration. This news wasn’t good, but his current physical situation right now was even worse. His vision had started the paring-down process; soon he would see everything through a black tunnel.

  Brynna sent, You’ve got two minutes.

  Got it.

  He turned back to Gideon. He was really feeling the change coming. His lips parted and he started breathing through his mouth. He leaned forward in his chair. Could he even get the next set of words out?

  “You and your men get cleaned up and double the patrols. Let’s get as many of these transmitters as we can. That should buy us some time.”

  Gideon nodded, turned, and left the room. Thank God.

  His breathing grew rougher, heavier. This one had come on so fast.

  Shit.

  “Get up,” Brynna said. “Now.”

  He pushed up from the chair. Sweat popped all over his body.

  By the time he stood, he was hunched and shaking. “Get me out of here,” he said, between clenched teeth.

  He felt her palm on his shoulder. He cursed long and loud as the slide through nether-space began. He didn’t know why, but it hurt like a bitch to dematerialize when the transformation started.

  He arrived in the basement of his cabin. He’d built his home deep in the forest, at the edge of the mist-dome, to keep what he went through as private as possible. He collapsed on the hard stone floor, laid and mortared by his own hands. He curled up in a fetal position, trying to stop the process.

  “You gotta let go,” Brynna said. “Stop holding it in. Just let go, you idiot-bastard.”

  He huffed a laugh. “I … don’t want … this.”

  “I don’t know why not,” she said sarcastically. “You look so comfortable on the floor sweating like a pig.”

  “Now get out of here. You know what happened last time.”

  “Hey, the scars are almost gone.”

  Again, he chuffed a laugh. Brynna was a powerful vampire. She’d stayed once, they’d fought, he’d cut her up some but she’d healed within an hour.

  “Leave.”

  “Fine. Just don’t soil yourself again.”

  He coughed and laughed at the same time. “Bryn, you’re such a prick.”

  “Thank you. Best compliment ever. Adios.”

  As she dematerialized, he felt the faint movement of air over his boiling skin. The shaking started.

  He breathed hard.

  During the past few months, he’d tried everything under the sun to get over this condition, including weeks of therapy with Alison and even a blood transfusion.

  When the shaking built so that he felt like every joint in his body would come apart, he let go of any hope that he could stop the process. In the hopelessness, however, came a kind of release, and he gave himself over to the change.

  The shakes diminished as he pushed himself to his feet. He stripped off his clothes. They would be no good to him anyway in the next few minutes. They wouldn’t fit. He’d learned that much—to get rid of his clothes before the change ripped them to shreds.

  He bent over slightly and felt the inordinate swelling of his shoulders and arms, as though in an instant he’d packed on forty pounds of muscle. His thighs expanded and he grew from six-six to a powerful six-eight. Even his cheekbones spread slightly, giving him the look of a predator.

  He tore the cadroen from his long black hair. His hair moved around his head in powerful emotional waves, settling at last to hang beside his face.

  He was something greater, more powerful, yet more animal than he’d ever been. He hated this man-beast. He was a demonic version of the warrior he’d been and the opposite of the vampire he’d cultivated in himself for millennia. Warrior he might have been, but like Antony Medichi he considered himself a gentleman, with fairly refined tastes, a preference for an excellent port, long games of chess, and discussions of philosophy and religion.

  That his centuries of service had led him here, to this beast-state, humiliated and infuriated him.

  The next stage began, a vibration in his chest and throat, a new round of humiliation ready to come forth.

  He chuffed. He even tried to restrain himself. But an image of Grace, folding away with Casimir and disappearing from his life all those months ago, streaked through his mind like a bolt of lightning. She was his woman, and she had left with that bastard, Casimir.

  The ensuing roar came from so deep in his chest that he felt the sensation into his testicles. With his knees bent, he roared at the low basement ceiling, over and over, but this time the sound was different, full of a kind of resonance that had never been there before.

  He felt as though he were calling from the distance of tens of thousands of years ago, when humans were swamp-creatures and battled in small territorial tribes. Was this what he was, a throwback to ancient times? Was this the result of the slavery to dying blood that Greaves had forced on him as a sign of his loyalty?

  That he could form coherent thoughts was a complete mystery and an equal punishment, since he couldn’t always act on those thoughts. And once he was well into the process, he wouldn’t be able to fold.

  His brain seemed to be split so that while he observed his conduct as if at a distance, the rest of him was locked into this barbarous state and equally barbarous feelings.

  His right hand flexed, longing for his sword. He wanted to kill, but not in a general sense. His desire was more specific. He wanted to kill Casimir, to slay him for having taken his woman, having lured her with his scent and his power, having stolen her from him.

  He moved in an oval in the small, dark basement. There was one ground-level window at ceiling height with steel mullions. He couldn’t fit through the window, though God knew he’d tried to escape his self-imposed prison more than once during his episodes.

  The healing of all the bruises and cuts had taken a couple of days. He’d even tried to tear through the stone and mortared walls so that his fingers were bleeding and torn down to the bone.

  He was a beast.

  Throwing his head back, he roared long and loud, sending shudders through his house and a trembling through the earth.

  The beauty of the world

  Is only appreciated

  With arms opened wide.

  —Collected Proverbs, Beatri
ce of Fourth

  CHAPTER 2

  The painfully slow, meditative walk to the pools took at least fifteen minutes, but just as Grace came within sight of Casimir, a terrible roar reached her ears and stopped her feet. She couldn’t move. She could hardly think.

  She’d heard Leto’s roars before, even across three dimensions, but none of them had sounded like this one, like an animal with a leg caught in a trap, the metal teeth grinding against bone.

  Beatrice continued on, the silk of her skirts rippling as she floated.

  Grace knew Casimir needed her; she could feel his pain. But Leto’s agony had been calling to her for months. So she paused where she was, unable to make her feet move.

  Another roar reached her, full of anguish, a call of the wild that drove inside her chest and pummeled her. At the same time, the resonant sounds descended into the well of all that was female until she was weak with need.

  What was she to do now?

  She forced her feet forward.

  Oh, dearest Creator, is it truly time to say good-bye to Casimir?

  A few minutes later, Grace knelt beside him.

  He was so different from the vampire she had known on Second Earth.

  His spiritual reformation had turned him inside out. The guilt he lived with now was beyond anything she could have foreseen. She didn’t know how he survived reliving portions of his life from the victim’s point of view, experiencing just how much pain his selfishness and abuse had caused others.

  He wept now and his body shook. He stared at her, unable to move. At first she thought the tremors held him captive, but with a start she understood that invisible restraints held him in place, pinning him over his hips, his knees, and his elbows.

  His gaze implored her.

  When the next roar reached her from Mortal Earth, however, she threw her head back. She felt Leto’s pain this time, his need, his desperation, his call to her, soul-to-soul, breh-to-breh.

  “Don’t … Grace.” Casimir’s voice was hoarse. “Wait until I’ve completed the program.”

  Still kneeling, she once again looked down at him. “The time has come. I have to leave today. Now. I can’t explain it.”

  “I have seen part of my future. If you could wait, it would be so much safer for me.”

  She couldn’t hold back the tears. “I feel the need to fold to Leto deep within my bones. I have to go.”

  “Grace…” His voice was all breath and tremor as he extended a shaking hand to her.

  “Why did you enter the third pool?” she asked.

  His lips curved though his brow was crumpled in pain. “I thought to change the future. But today, probably because I entered a pool before I should have, I saw something about my destiny and about Leto.”

  Grace put a hand to her throat. “What did you see?”

  “That you were right: Our destinies are intertwined with Leto’s, and I have a task to fulfill.”

  She feared asking the question, but she had to know. “What task?”

  His body relaxed. “It doesn’t matter. You must do what is right for you, and I’ll go where I’ve never gone before—” He actually smiled.

  She squeezed his hand. “And where would that be?”

  “Where my conscience leads me. How’s that for a change?”

  The next roar struck, still something only Grace could hear. She rose to her feet. Casimir turned to her and strained against the invisible binds. Grace saw Beatrice nod. The restraints disappeared, and he grabbed her ankles. She looked down at him. “I must go.”

  “I want you to know that you taught me about love. You loved me when you had no reason to. I will never forget that.”

  She backed up, and the weakness of his grip caused his fingers to slide over the tops of her feet and across her toes. She turned and moved as if in a terrible dream back across the gardens that separated the pools from Beatrice’s home.

  “My boys,” he called after her. “You must promise to always be part of their lives, no matter what happens. You must promise.”

  She stopped for a moment. She had been a mother to them all this time, and now she had to leave. Mind-to-mind, she sent, I will return and we will talk, very soon. I will not disappear from their lives. Please stay here, Caz. Please stay and live. Complete Beatrice’s program. I fear more than life itself that you will die if you follow me.

  I have my own path to follow, he returned.

  She couldn’t bear it anymore. She lifted her arm and folded, one dimension, two, then three, traveling through nether-space straight through the pathway that Leto’s roars had created for her, a shining blue pathway, like his eyes, lit and glowing, calling, begging, all the way from Mortal Earth.

  When she arrived, when she materialized, the room was dark except for one small window. She adjusted her vision, turned, and saw a madman, wholly different from what she had expected. Leto was naked and so changed physically, she didn’t recognize him at first.

  He was also fully aroused, hunched, and moving like an animal, a beast. His long hair swirled around his shoulders as though it were alive. But he didn’t seem to see her, so she called to him. “Leto.”

  He turned, his eyes widening. He seemed to freeze as he stared at her in disbelief. His nostrils flared then he closed his eyes, squeezing them shut as if in pain. His body shuddered.

  Only then did the forest scent of him rush at her, forcing her to step back and back. This was so different from five months ago. She didn’t understand what she was seeing or what was happening to him, what he had become. But the scent she recognized.

  Oh, dear God in heaven, that scent!

  She breathed in, taking a lung-expanding breath, drawing in the sweet, yet bitter and very male tendrils of herbs and fir resin. Desire moved through her, a wet wash of sensation. Her nipples hardened and puckered almost as though she had already orgasmed.

  Her knees felt so weak. She ached fiercely and suddenly.

  She felt a breath on her neck and opened her eyes.

  The beast was in front of her, leaning down from his increased height, and sniffing. His breath came in hot swaths over her chest. He licked at her neck. His hands found her arms and pinned her then slid up to her shoulders and in a quick harsh movement ripped her gown from top to bottom.

  “Leto,” she whispered, but her voice sounded hoarse. She didn’t know what it was she meant to say to him: to tell him to stop or to keep going, or to pause, or to take her.

  Yet none of it mattered.

  She also knew that he wasn’t in control of himself and that the floor was made of stone. It seemed absurd, but just as he pushed her down—in a movement so hard that she was flying backward—in her sensible Grace way she folded a mattress beneath her, the one she had slept on in Beatrice’s house.

  Still she landed hard, with so much warrior, part beast, part vampire, on top of her that for a moment she couldn’t breathe. Oh, but that stone would have hurt.

  He had hold of her head now and shifted her in an abrupt movement so that her neck was exposed.

  Oh, God.

  She needed this.

  He pushed her knees apart. She didn’t resist. How could she? With every breath she took, more of his scent ripped through her brain. She spasmed deep within, needing him, ready for him. Her hands fumbled for him, reaching, and just as she took hold of him ready to guide him into her, the tips of his fangs paused on her skin.

  Slowly, he drew back, as though the touch of her hand on his erection had stopped something. He looked at her, his blue eyes wild and intense. She knew those beautiful eyes, so sharp and clear, extraordinary. His eyes were the same. Leto’s eyes.

  He waited, trembling.

  She understood. And in that understanding, that he was asking permission, more tears tracked down her cheeks. “Take me, Leto. Take me now.”

  He dipped down quickly. His fangs struck and as he began to drink, he pushed her hand away and pumped against her until he found her entrance, then he pushed hard. She cried out
but it wasn’t pain, it was a strange and wonderful kind of relief.

  She was so wet and ready that as he began to drive into her and to drink from her, as she slid her hands up and down his swollen muscles and weeping wing-locks, as she sank her fingers into his strange long hair that moved restlessly about his shoulders, she came and screamed and came over and over again.

  * * *

  Leto felt as though he’d been on a long journey and had finally come home. Grace’s blood was a sweet-meadow elixir down his throat that hit his stomach and fired his veins.

  His beast-body had control. He wanted to pull back and hold her tenderly in his arms, cradle her, comfort her, apologize. But he couldn’t, and her cries that sounded like a bird on the wing, and were full of pleasure, forced him to thrust harder still, to savor the way she gripped him as she came then eased up.

  His stamina surprised him but now that he had her beneath him, like hell he was taking this fast. That he shouldn’t be doing this at all was something he would grapple with later, but right now, with her meadow-sweet scent pouring in waves over his brain, he was doing what he was meant to do.

  He drew out of her and pulled his fangs back. He hated leaving her neck, but he had other things in mind.

  Her lids were at half-mast, her lips swollen, her cheeks a soft peach color. She groaned and her hips lifted up toward him, her hands clutched at him.

  He chuffed and breathed at her. Her nostrils flared and her back arched. He moved down her body, biting his way so that she jerked from side to side, avoiding, begging. He reached her abdomen and the muscles rolled, her pelvis arching.

  She smelled even more meadow-sweet, and he bit her hip bones and began his descent. She thrashed on the mattress. Oh, a mattress. Smart move.

  He couldn’t believe his brain functioned at all.

  He reached her mons and opened his mouth wide. He took as much of her as he could and sucked hard.

  The groan that left her was guttural and deep, resonant. He planted a hand between her breasts and held her flat. He was strong. He slid the other hand beneath her buttocks and pressed her into his mouth, lifting her up so that she could watch.