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Page 4

  Once the job was done, he spoke into his phone. “Jeannie, fold me back to the basement. Now. ”

  “You got it. ”

  He felt the vibration.

  Once in his dwelling, in the dark cavernous room below his house, he dropped prone to the cement floor then stretched his arms straight out. He had no outlet for the pain he felt, for the fury. All he could do was this: take a moment to grieve, then reaffirm his vows of continual vengeance, of living his solitary existence, of devoted service to Endelle as a Guardian of Ascension.

  Why take a vow,

  When all vows are broken?

  —Collected Proverbs, Beatrice of Fourth

  Chapter 2

  Alison stared at her fingers, still held in an upward claw-like position. She kept testing the pull on her arm. She wasn’t even certain how long she’d been standing there, mystified by what she had done.

  Sweet Jesus.

  A pocket of time.

  Surely she had just passed all the bounds of nature now.

  So what did that make her? Like she didn’t know—a freak, a one-woman sideshow.

  She glanced at the shattered window, at the shards of glass, lit up by the nearby parking-lot light standard, a glittering glass rain suspended two stories above the earth. So exactly how long had she been standing here, frozen in place, stunned by the enormity of what she had done, of what she was still doing?

  She looked once more at all the splintered glass, just sparkling away, unmoving, a visual poem suspended in time.

  A lump formed in her throat about the size of her car, and not the little Nova, but the super-sized Hummer. Her eyes felt chili pepper hot all over again. She just didn’t understand who she was. How could she be doing this, standing in her empty-shelved office, her hand outstretched, her fingers cupped, a piece of time held within? Where did all this preternatural ability come from? And what possible purpose could it ever serve?

  The unity family hung by the sheer strength of her powers just three feet or so beyond the windowsill, heads aimed at the asphalt parking lot as though diving into a pool.

  She drew her arm back slowly and felt the hard pull on her muscles. Time retreated for her, a lethargic reversal. The statue came back to her followed by the glass fragments, all returned in perfect accord to re-form an unblemished window. She had never tried out any of these skills before, stasis of objects, retrieval of time pockets.

  The statue now sat in her palm, and she released her hold on infinity. She felt a strange quick vibration around her that drifted away, ripples in a pond. In the distance a sonic boom sounded, action–reaction.

  She settled the statue once more on the coffee table then returned to sit in the wing chair. Energy sang through her nerves and caused the little hairs on both arms to stand upright. She trembled.

  She took a deep breath then another. She straightened her shoulders. What a strange evening this had become—her sister pregnant, her heart crushed all over again, and now a couple of new powers.

  Perfect.

  When she felt hysteria rising, like a geyser in her chest, she put a hand over her mouth and drew in a long deep breath through her nose. She closed her eyes and forced herself to relax.

  She had a client coming soon, in the next ten minutes or so, her last client. She needed to hold it together just a little longer, then she could go home and have a meltdown if she wanted. Right now, she needed to be professional.

  Okay. She relaxed and put both hands out in front of her as though holding the world at bay. She breathed.

  She heard a siren in the distance, not unusual around such a large medical complex. The hospital was just a mile down the road.

  Her heart rate slowed down. She could breathe better.

  So she wasn’t normal, who was? So her soul had this strange new gaping wound because her sister was having her second child? So she had a problem she would never be able to solve in this lifetime, on this planet? So did millions of people. Why should she be any different even if she was so very different? She wasn’t starving. She had a good profession and a house she owned. She had a family who loved her with a capital L. Yeah, she had some serious losses she was grappling with, but who didn’t in this hard-edged, unfair, and at times brutal world?

  She nodded to herself several times and shored up her determination. She sealed up the deep wound then set her mind on her future, a most excellent future.

  She nodded.

  Okay.

  * * *

  When his phone buzzed against his abdomen through the pocket in his kilt, Kerrick finally rose from the cement floor in his basement. This was just the first wave of fighting. He needed to get cleaned up and moving. Unless, of course, Endelle still wanted him on guard-dog duty.

  He extended his senses, as he had in the bar, and reached for the caller’s identity. Thorne was on the com but the hell he was going to answer his phone right now. Endelle was going to have to find someone else to serve as the woman’s guardian. Thorne could do it himself, or any of the other warrior brothers. Serving as a guardian to a female would make him vulnerable and he took pains never to be in that position, so yeah, his brothers could pick up the slack.

  As he headed to the shower, he folded off his blood-spattered kilt and weapons harness, his heavy warrior sandals, leather wrist guards, and sweat-soaked briefs. He let the garments drop to the cold cement floor in a trail behind him.

  Once in the bathroom he turned the lever on full force and let the water heat up.

  He reached both hands to the back of his neck, popped the leather cadroen, the ritual clasp worn by all the warriors, and released his hair. He set the clasp on the sink, the last of several that his wife of many decades ago had worked with her own hands. He touched the intricate, embroidered strap, rolling it over to look at the attached miniature carved dagger made from rhinoceros tusk, which secured the piece together.

  Memories of his wife flew through his mind, of her small nimble hands, her love of the needle and colorful silk floss. She had made several cadroen for him during the ten short years they were together. This was the last of them. Decades of making war would wear out even the toughest pieces of leather.

  He turned around then stepped inside what was essentially a car wash of a shower. He moved in a slow circle, letting all eight powerful heads wash away the remnants of the recent battle.

  His phone buzzed again, stupid fucking preternatural hearing.

  As before, he extended his senses. Thorne again. He sighed. He needed one more minute to clear his head before he engaged the next round.

  He ended up in front of the main nozzle, set at seven and a half feet with a punishing angled spray. He planted both hands on the smooth cold tile and let the hot water pound the back of his neck and work the muscles all across his shoulders. His long hair separated and slid forward to form a wall on either side of his face. Blood and sweat swirled down the drain. He didn’t usually come apart after a kill, but Christ, those kids.

  Something had changed in his world. Children had been off limits for centuries. Now the death vamps sucked as they pleased, inflicted pain as they pleased, took innocence as they pleased.

  His brain cramped. The muscles around his eyes squeezed tight. He breathed in the damp air, flared his nostrils, then tried to shut his brain down. He failed.

  Goddammit. He had reached an impasse, this no-man’s-land of vows and vengeance from which he could not retreat. His chest felt like he’d strapped on a boulder then carried the damn thing around day and night.

  He concentrated on the water beating against his skin. He sucked in air and forced himself to breathe, in and out, in and out. He calmed himself the hell down. He rubbed his left pec and winced at the agony burning beneath that had nothing to do with musculature.

  Unfortunately his hearing was too evolved and the phone buzzed again, a relentless fly in his warrior’s world.

  Thorne a
gain.

  Too. Fucking. Bad.

  He shut the water off and toweled himself dry. He wrapped the towel around his waist. He brushed out his hair in hard pulls with a stiff-bristled brush. He’d take these few minutes, goddammit. He looked at the cadroen but refused to pick it up. He’d go unbound the rest of the night, a little piece of rebellion, to hell with rules and tradition.

  He moved to his weapons locker and mentally opened the steel reinforced cabinet. He drew the double doors wide. His blooded sword and dagger lay parallel and waiting, right where he’d sent them from the alley. Using soft cloths, he wiped both weapons clean of the blood then folded the cloths to the laundry. By morning, after the night’s work was over, he’d oil and tend his weapons.

  He lived in the basement of his mansion on Scottsdale Two. He’d shaped loose living quarters from the long narrow underground room: a place for his bed, workout equipment, a locked weapons locker. He’d even spent a fortune building an after-the-fact expansive bathroom, one that fit his large warrior body and occasionally even his wings.

  His phone buzzed yet again. Not Thorne this time. He crossed to his kilt still heaped on the cement floor then retrieved the phone. “Yeah, Jeannie. ”

  “Thank God,” she whispered. “We’re in deep shit. Endelle has been yelling at Carla for the last ten minutes because Thorne couldn’t reach you. We have a sitch in Paradise Valley and she wants you on it. Now. You with me?”

  Kerrick drew in a deep breath. “Is Thorne with Endelle?” This couldn’t be happening.

  “Yep. He said to say you didn’t have a choice on this one. ”

  Kerrick pulled his phone away from his ear and released a violent string of obscenities. When he could speak in a normal voice again, he said, “Give me the deets. ”

  “Thorne wants to patch in. ”

  “Fine. ”

  Thorne’s deep, rough voice hit his ears. “We don’t really know what’s going on. You may or may not have to guard the woman. Right now there’s just a pretty-boy off the grid. ”

  “So why does Endelle have her panties in a wad?”

  “She said we’ll know more once you take care of our off-campus head case. ”

  Kerrick breathed hard through his nose. Okay. He could take care of the death vamp. After which, if there happened to be a mortal woman in need of protection, Thorne could work that out. “I’m on it. ”