***

Rith seethed. An unusual state for him.

Even though the Seers had predicted Parisa’s escape, he had not meant for her to leave; he had meant for her to die. But just when he’d folded to her bedroom to get the job done, he’d found the bed empty. After a quick search through the house, he’d discovered her nude in the backyard. Disgusting. He still couldn’t believe she had escaped. He still couldn’t believe she’d cared so little for modesty that she’d flown into the air with nothing on.

Worse, of course, now Greaves had a link with the woman, a very intimate mind-link. Rith despised her for it.

He was in France now. He had several emergency transfer locations. This one was just outside Toulouse Two, in the south of the country. The blood donors were situated quite nicely in three bedrooms at the end of the hall. Drugged, of course. The necessity of moving them had created a great deal of anxiety and more chatter than he could tolerate.

He sat very still in front of his desk, in his Herman Miller Embody Chair, his feet flat on the floor, his shoulders relaxed, and his spine perfectly aligned. His computer was in front of him.

He’d developed a program to track the predictions from the Seers Fortresses of the highest-performing groups, Mumbai, Johannesburg, and Bogotá. The program ran constantly. He could watch it stream; anytime two or three Fortresses delivered the same prediction, the various reports were automatically shuffled into a separate document.

But the information that came through was always the same—Greaves would make use of the newly forged mind-link to his advantage.

He couldn’t let that happen. Not if he could help it. But he was nothing if not a great believer in acting on Seer information.

From the time he had learned of Parisa Lovejoy, the mortal-with-wings, he had wanted to capture her for the Commander. Greaves would have use of her, and he would do anything for his master. There had just never been a hint from the Seers about a possible mind-link. If he’d known, he would never have abducted her.

He stared at the streaming reports and found the movement comforting. When it came to an end, he started from the beginning just to watch the documents flit by.

He trembled, a long shudder down his body. He had a very simple problem. He needed to get Parisa back. Well, the truth was that he needed her dead, but clearly that meant first he needed to kidnap her again.

He took a deep breath, but another shudder traveled the length of him. He was not a sexual man; he did not have that capacity because of a certain unfortunate event several hundred years ago. But he believed his desire to have Parisa back came very close to that sort of base need and drive. He craved to have her once more under his control.

He had almost succeeded during the woman’s ascension ceremony. He’d teased her mind with an image of himself, and she’d folded to him. He shook his head. So very close.

What a coup that would have been … except for the fact that he didn’t have permission from Greaves to go after Parisa again. He was playing with fire.

What no one knew was that because Rith also had limited voyeur ability, he was able to find Parisa anytime he wished to. He had but to open what he called his little window, think of her, and there she was. Right now, she was seated in the library of Warrior Medichi’s villa. He listened for a few minutes and realized she was attempting to voyeur Fiona. What a coincidence, but not a surprise.

Unfortunately, he couldn’t share this information with Greaves—for the simple reason that Greaves didn’t know he had the ability to voyeur. Indeed, he’d only been able to voyeur two people so far, one of them being Parisa. The other was Greaves himself.

What a tightrope he walked.

The phone on his desk rang, a soft chime. He answered it quickly. “Yes, master.”

Greaves’s deep, pleasant voice filled the space. “Good evening, Rith. I hope your day has fared well. How are the donors doing?” He was always polite. Just hearing from his master made Rith smile.

He put the phone on speaker then shifted slightly to his right. He had a bank of monitors, with cameras fixed on each slave, just as he’d had in the Burma location. All the donors were asleep. “The sedative is working quite well. All shipments should proceed as usual.”

“Excellent, but then I would expect nothing less of you. I just checked my messages and discovered that you had called. I trust nothing is amiss.”

Rith took a deep breath then plunged into the delicate issue. “I called to request permission to secure the captive again.” He held his breath. He had little hope of having the request accepted—he knew Greaves was working his own plan—but he had to try. He had to.

Silence returned to him, not pressing, which was good, but silence nonetheless.

Finally, Greaves said, “You have need of this captive?”

Rith nodded, then became aware he hadn’t spoken aloud. “Yes, I do.”

“I realize that for you to place your request was no small thing, but I am sorry. I am waiting only for Parisa to open her voyeur window to begin utilizing the link. Though I am disappointed with the limitations of this link, I have great hopes of entrapping a warrior or two.”

“Yes, of course, master.”

“I will promise, however, to contact you the moment I have information of use to you where the blood donors are concerned. I also wish to thank you for how well you kept Parisa perfectly groomed, healthy, and compliant. I commend you, Rith.”

His heart softened, like pudding in his chest. “Thank you, master.”

“As for Madame Endelle and our blood donors, no doubt she’s been informed of our little operation and will want to disband it. I do expect the Warriors of the Blood to attempt to locate and assault your facility, and I suspect that they will try to do so through Parisa. With that in mind, I want you to choose among the death vampires at the Phoenix Estrella Complex, twenty of the very best, and bring them to your home in Toulouse. Then I want you to prepare to evacuate the facility upon my command. Do you understand?”

Rith was always surprised that anyone would interest themselves in his blood donors. The women involved had no particular value. Why would the warriors waste such critical time and energy on such a useless mission? But then he often found the actions of the warriors to be incomprehensible. Why, for instance, had they come as an entire unit to Parisa’s aid?

“I have no doubt they will attempt a rescue,” Greaves said. “Yes, yes, I already know your opinion. And I concur. Such a waste of military expertise on behalf of partially ascended mortal women—I am as incredulous as I’m sure you are. But we can use their absurd sense of chivalry to our advantage.”

Rith smiled. “Yes, master.”

True friendship bridges every terrible abyss.

—Collected Proverbs, Beatrice of Fourth

Chapter 12

Jean-Pierre thought the library was a sensible choice for Parisa. She was going to voyeur the woman Fiona, the death and resurrection slave, and since Parisa was a librarian by trade, she might feel more comfortable surrounded by books.

It had to be difficult for the dark-haired beauty to attempt contact with a woman she had met in such terrible circumstances. Who would want to be reminded of a captivity such as Parisa endured? But here she was, settling herself in the chair by the farthest wall, ready to do what she must.

Medichi had to be very proud of his woman. She was learning to battle with sword and dagger, and she was intent on rescuing those she had left behind. Oui, Medichi should be very proud.

Parisa now wore a loose white blouse that was gathered low on her hips.

Jean-Pierre remained in the doorway to give the young woman some space. He crossed his arms over his chest and smiled. She had been humiliated by the earlier evidence of her interest in Medichi. The two of them were so clearly in the first throes of love, embarrassed and excited by turns. It was a beautiful thing to behold—especially to see Medichi caught, because he never allowed himself to love. To chase women at the Blood and Bite, bien sûr, but never to love. Seeing him now with Parisa, so kind and attentive, his eyes shining with affection, with desire, oui, very beautiful.

He wondered, though, what the breh-hedden might mean for the rest of the Warriors of the Blood. Three already had been caught by the fever—Kerrick, Marcus, and now Medichi. Was this portentous? Was there a chance he would fall next into Cupid’s lovely web?

A shudder went through him. He had been a lover of women his entire life, and every decade or so he enjoyed a deeper entanglement, an emotional one, but always the women were unable to handle the warrior’s life and commitments. But the women who had come to his three brothers were so very powerful. Could it be different if such a woman came to him? A world at war in this way was a horrible thing. He saw how Parisa suffered, how she was struggling to grow, to meet her challenges. Could he bear to see a woman he loved suffering in all these ways? He thought not.

He glanced around the room, looking for distraction. Medichi’s library was very tall, with bookshelves all the way to the fifteen-foot ceiling. He had been collecting since the printing press was invented. Most of the books were leather-bound. Jean-Pierre liked the fragrance in the room. Leather had a strong presence, a perfect binding for fragile pages and black print, very male and very female at the same time.

A tapestry hunting scene served as a valance over tall windows overlooking the front lawn. Wooden blinds kept the light at a minimum.

Medichi drew a chair close to Parisa’s. He was not convinced that he was needed, but Endelle had assigned him to assist both Medichi and Parisa as they shaped their plan to locate and extract the slaves.

As Parisa leaned back into the chair, her dark brown hair disappeared into the chocolate color of the leather. She took deep breaths. He tried to imagine what this must be like for her, so new to ascension, so recently freed from her captivity, so overwhelmed by the breh-hedden. He admired her courage and God help her but she would need courage to be bonded with a warrior, to live as his breh to whatever degree they chose to accept the breh-hedden into their lives. He wished her well, he wished her joy and every happiness but he did not think she understood yet just how hard life would be mated to a Warrior of the Blood.