Page 4 of Gates of Rapture (The Guardians of Ascension #6)

Grace laughed, even though her heart was breaking. Her decision to leave had suddenly become very real, and she would miss both Beatrice and Casimir. She could feel change washing toward her, a break of endless waves that would not stop just because Grace wished it otherwise. “Just say it.”

Beatrice sighed. “ Be true to yourself . There. Now you may mock me for my lack of originality.”

Grace wanted to laugh. “I want to do just that but I don’t understand who I am?”

“Understanding comes in its own time.” Beatrice put a hand to her chest and breathed a sigh of relief. “Oh, that is much better. Don’t you agree?”

“You are quite absurd, my friend.”

“Yes. And I am vain. That I will admit. I am terribly vain. My greatest flaw. Something I am certain I passed on to my son.”

Grace laughed again. She might even have asked how she could know herself better, but at that moment she heard the tinkling of a bell, which meant that one of the apprentices was moving at a quick, levitating pace up the long marble hall.

Everyone on Fourth moved with advanced levitation.

Very few walked about as Grace did. Her own levitation powers were minimal compared with others’ on this world.

But as the bell drew closer, Grace could sense that something was wrong.

No one ever hurried as they moved about Beatrice’s home.

Casimir was in trouble. She could feel it now. She released a heavy breath and drew in an even deeper one. He was still at the pools.

Grace rose just half a second before Beatrice. The ball of yarn slipped from her forearms to drop to the marble and bounced off to Beatrice’s right.

The apprentice appeared, a petite black woman with diamonds laced through her braids.

“What is it, Eugenie?” Beatrice called out.

The woman put her palms together, her hands slanting toward the floor. “Forgive me, mistress, but Casimir says he must speak with Mistress Grace.”

Grace wanted to run to him. Her lover, her former lover, was in such agony, day in and day out. By Casimir’s account, the process was like having molten lava poured over his soul one minute out of every two.

“Where is he?” Beatrice asked.

“On the deck beside the third pool.”

“The third pool,” Beatrice cried. “Foolish vampire. He should not have done so. He had not even completed the proper sequence of baptisms for the second pool.” She nodded. “We will come to him at once.”

“Thank you, mistress. He… that is, we had to use the restraints.”

Grace repressed the tears that rushed to her eyes. She wanted to run to him, to fold to him. She even started to, but Beatrice held up her hand. “You must calm yourself. More is gained in situations like this with a tranquil spirit.”

Grace drew back then took yet another deep breath. Beatrice was right. She had learned one thing while sitting at Beatrice’s knee: As restrained as Grace was, and as much as some of that restraint had to leave, there were times when it was necessary.

Grace nodded.

Beatrice rose a foot above the polished marble floor and began to move in that same form of levitated flight, but very slowly.

Grace, lacking the power to achieve the same kind of movement, walked beside her in a measured maddening cadence. But not for a second did she lose that terrible urge to run to him.

***

Leto sat in his executive chair in the Seattle Colony’s Militia Warrior HQ at the far northern end of the narrow valley. The tremors were increasing. He had a little over four minutes.

Gideon stood in front of his desk wearing blood-spattered flight gear that also had bits of feathers and other debris stuck to it. He spoke quickly. He knew the drill with Leto. Everyone did. There weren’t many secrets in the relatively small community.

“The death vamps are getting closer. We ran into a couple of squadrons and took care of business. We offed eight of them. Big motherfuckers. We collected several more transmitters.”

Leto wanted to know more, but he spasmed deep in his gut and held up his hand. Thank the Creator that Gideon fell silent. This change was coming fast.

Leto rested his forearms on his chair and breathed through the agony that flowed within his veins, the latest turn in his splintered life.

The addiction to dying blood was gone, at least the part that was like knives slicing up his intestines.

When he had served as a spy and in order to sustain his mission, he took dying blood at Greaves’s insistence.

For decades, Greaves had turned numerous members of the ruling council of Second Earth, known as COPASS, into hypocritical versions of death vampires.

Greaves provided the dying blood so that his followers wouldn’t actually have to do the killing of mortals or ascenders themselves.

He also provided the antidote, which served to halt the physical changes that dying blood created in the individual, even if the searing addiction remained.

A few months ago, when he’d been at the point of death, Leto had taken Havily’s blood, which had miraculously cured him of his addiction. Havily was Warrior Marcus’s breh, and the sharing of her unique blood with Leto had been a great kindness for which he would be forever grateful.

But something terrible remained, an incomprehensible residue that lived in his body. When the morphing occurred, he became like a tiger pacing the jungle floor, restless and starved, ready to attack.

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.