Obsidian Flame (51 page)

Quite perfect and yes, magnificent.

*   *   *

Marguerite heard a strange cacophony of sound; the faint flapping of wings, the roaring of a crowd, and in the distance the boom of thunder.

Oh. The military review spectacle.

She had one thought: Why wasn’t she dead? She hurt in so many places, all at once, that she couldn’t focus on anything. And she was so weak.

She opened one eye and saw a beautiful bank of black-striped white fur.

Oh, God, the tiger, but she couldn’t move. Neither could the tiger, apparently.

Where was Thorne?

Thorne?
she sent.

No response.

Another roar of the crowd and shouts in what must have been Russian.

She pushed up on her elbows and shifted her head the opposite direction. She gasped.
No.

Thorne leaned up against the side of the cage, shoulders slumped, head rolled forward, barely breathing, unconscious. Blood seeped from deep wounds down his chest, his arms, his legs. His usually golden skin was very pale. Too pale.

She
felt
that he was near death, almost gone.

Again?

Thorne.

Warrior.

Invincible.

She was close enough to reach out with her hand and touch his ankle. A tremor seemed to pass through his body, up his leg, abdomen, torso, which forced a deeper breath, a slight movement of the head, then nothing.

“You can’t die,” she whispered. “You can’t die. Not now. Not like this.”

In the distance, another round of thumping hit the air. Fireworks. Of course.

She was cold. She had on a sweatshirt, but the air was frigid; nighttime in Russia in March.

Thorne needed to get warm.

She tried folding the comforter from Thorne’s bedroom, but she couldn’t—as though she was blocked somehow. Of course she was blocked. Greaves would have had enough power to do that. She’d tried a hand-blast on the tiger and had failed.

Greaves seemed to have blocked most of their powers.

Awareness dawned. She would die here in minutes, from the cold and from the loss of blood. They would both die.

She laid her head down and stared at the bottom of Thorne’s bare foot, smeared with blood. She closed her eyes.

How had it all come down to this, lying in a filthy cage, blood leaking out of her from a dozen wounds, and the man she loved dying? How had this become her life? Why was this her life?

Her mind flashed back and back, to her father’s barn, the place where the animals shifted around uneasily while he laid the strap over her bare back and made her bleed.

She was still covered with wounds and bleeding.

Why?

Through her years at the Convent, sister-bitch had done the same thing.

So why was she still here—only this time she was about to die?

Why?

She opened her eyes again and watched Thorne’s chest rise and fall in soft, almost panting breaths. She didn’t want him to die. Of all the things that could happen in this situation, she didn’t want him to die. He didn’t deserve death, this beautiful warrior who had fought so hard, for so long. He didn’t deserve to die.

Second Earth needed him. Deep into her bones, this is what she
felt,
what she
knew.

Hell, she needed him. She caressed his ankle. “Don’t die, Thorne. Not like this. Not ever. Stay with me. Please.”

Her eyes burned but like hell she was going to cry. Fuck that.

Creator help me.

Odd to be praying, but shit, if she didn’t get some kind of guidance or wisdom or strength or help, her man would die and Second Earth would fall to that monster.

She closed her eyes again. With her hand still resting on Thorne’s ankle, she reviewed the past several bizarre, incredible days. She had started out on a man-hunt, looking for sex and enjoying her freedom; then the visions had started, all that emerging power that she hadn’t asked for.

The need to whine about it rose up within her but she suppressed it quickly. She was pretty sure that her whining about how powerful she was had gotten her into this mess.

She had some chops, some serious chops, so why had she failed in this situation? After all, she’d gotten Grace out of the Convent without getting either killed or abducted by that freak, Casimir.

But why had that worked?

She thought back to how she’d gotten there in the first place and a very simple truth settled into her brain: pure vision.

She winced. Oh, God, she’d been arrogant, seeing only that she’d helped rescue Grace when in fact what had made the situation doable at all was that Brynna had connected with her and made the impossible, possible.

But when Thorne had asked just minutes ago whether she thought she should repeat the process, she’d insisted it wasn’t necessary. The truth was, she hadn’t wanted to connect with Brynna again, or any other Seer for that matter. She had come to view these kinds of connections, or any kind, as a stumbling block to her freedom.

She rubbed Thorne’s foot. His skin was in that halfway place between cold and warm, not quite gone. Almost.

Okay, so a tear leaked from her eye, maybe two.

She drew in a deep breath.

She’d really fucked up. She’d been so stubborn and willful, so intent on living how she pleased, on pursuing her freedom, that now she had no freedom at all. Just death. And Thorne’s death as well.

She opened her eyes and looked up at him.

She loved Thorne. She really loved him. She’d said those words before, but she’d qualified them saying that she loved him
as much as she was able.

But now she understood something about herself: She was capable of love and worthy of love. That part of her that had been broken began knitting together, as though two parts of her soul reached across the chasm of all her past pain and began forging something strong and powerful. Her chest swelled as healing came to her and a couple more tears leaked out of her.

So what was she going to do now to get herself and Thorne out of this completely impossible situation? Was there anything she could do?

The thought ripped through her so fast, that her whole body jerked:
Obsidian flame.

Hope flared.

She reached deep into her mind and released her power. It flowed through her in a heavy rush, then evaporated as though in this cage it had no power.

She heard laughter within her mind then Greaves’s voice.
Did you think I would permit you to release your power? How absurd.

Marguerite slammed her shields in place and felt the bastard leave her mind.

She was really sick of all these assholes having control, but dammit, what was she supposed to do now?

*   *   *

Thorne floated among the galaxies, so at peace, just like before yet not quite. He didn’t seem to be as aware as he had been earlier in this state after Marguerite had split open his obsiddy power, which had in turn launched him into a true out-of-body experience.

James had been with him then.

Now he was just alone, as though he was neither here in this space, nor there, in his body.

But he was at peace.

Oh, yes, that much he could feel.

He waited for Marguerite, his wildcat, to start punching at him, send lightning bolts into his obsidian flame power, forcing him to rejoin his body.

But nothing came, as though she were dead as well.

Yet he knew she wasn’t.

Just him, in this floating place of peace.

No more responsibility.

No more war.

No more making love.

He would miss that.

Something moved inside his spirit at thoughts of Marguerite, of making love to her, of loving her. She had been his light, his sanity, his beacon. She didn’t deserve to die in that cage, bleeding to death because Greaves was a monster.

He didn’t deserve to die, either, yet how peaceful it was just floating among the stars.

His spirit moved once more:
Marguerite.

He didn’t want to leave her.

A wrestling began, a struggling between two worlds deep in his soul: a longing to remain, a need to go back and to finish what he had started.

But this sense of peace was not a new sensation. He had felt this recently while lying in bed with his arms around Marguerite, feeling her hair tickle his chin, putting his hand between her breasts to feel her heart beating, or yes, taking her, then taking her blood. In all those moments, he had felt peace, a mountain of it, he just hadn’t seen it before.

She’d given him peace for a century but he’d dismissed the sensation as negligible. Yet here he was hanging between life and death, and understanding that there was nothing small about what she’d brought to his life.

She’d brought the tremendous force of all that she was, nothing held back. She’d kept him sane. Why had he believed that was nothing? Why had he always thought of her as just his Convent lay? In a century of sharing her bed, even for half an hour at the most each time, what was there she didn’t know about him? Sure, they’d done their gymnastics and it had been great, but when all that was pared down, when he would finish inside her then look into her eyes, how many times had he thought:
I trust this woman.

She had his back.

She’d proven herself over and over.

She’d doubted her ability to love but anyone willing to lay down her life knew a helluva lot about love.

She had laid her life down over and over.

She’d done it for him. And for Grace. And for a dozen Convent devotiates.

As he contemplated her, something else arose: that the love he felt for her had nothing to do with the
breh-hedden
.

He loved her.

Now she was dying and she needed him.

But how was he supposed to get back where he needed to be, as in back in his goddamn body, when he was all but dead?

He began to claw his way back, but it was like pushing against clouds. There was no resistance, no way to gain traction, not even a direction to find.

There was only one avenue that held the smallest bit of hope. He reached deep into his mind and flew toward the speck of light he’d come to know as his obsidian flame power. But even that source of light was dull. When he reached it, however, he dove within and felt a faint pulsing sensation. Maybe it was all he needed.

But what the hell was he supposed to do now?

Another question surfaced. Why had he failed in this situation?

For such a long time, he’d believed the war was on his shoulders, his alone. But in the past year what had happened? Alison had become Endelle’s executive assistant and had calmed the scorpion queen down a lot. Havily’s darkening ability had given Endelle more sleep, which in turn had eased Thorne because Her Supremeness was quiet in his head for a few hours every night. Marcus had taken over administrative duties and kept dozens of High Administrators from defecting. Medichi and Parisa together had an amazing power to end a battle with the use of
royle
wings. Even Jean-Pierre was increasing the powers of the Militia Warriors through his own emerging ability.

No, he wasn’t alone in this responsibility.

Then there was the untapped obsidian flame triad power. Who the hell knew what gift the three women together would bring to the table.

On some cosmic level, therefore, he finally saw that he wasn’t alone in this. He was surrounded by gifted ascenders, each with a job to do. And he wasn’t alone.

He wasn’t alone.

And this wasn’t just on him.

So what was on him, especially here, in this cage with his
breh
dying?

Simple. He needed to make sure that she lived.

After that, whatever role he would need to play in the future, he would embrace fully, but not as one who acted alone and bore the sufferings of the world on his shoulders alone.

Which meant …

He sent a very soft mental call to Marguerite:
Get Fiona.

*   *   *

From deep with her mind, Marguerite heard the words,
Get Fiona,
but she couldn’t make sense of them. Had she fallen asleep? Something smelled so funny, like blood and animal. She opened her eyes. Oh, yeah, dead tiger.

Get Fiona,
came once more, stronger this time and … it sounded like Thorne.

Thorne was dying. Maybe dead already. She was close. She was so damn cold.

Fiona. The gold variety of obsidian flame. Fiona, who could channel things.