Panting, sweaty, her wings wafting, slowly, his wings sustaining them in the air, his hips quieting, at last the sexual pleasure began to dim but was replaced by something new, a kind of warm exhilaration, a different kind of ecstasy.

She opened her eyes and met Antony’s gaze. His eyes were full of light, even more than usual. But her gaze was drawn away by colors playing over his shoulder. His wings flapped very gently, very steadily to hold them aloft, several feet above the bed.

She blinked. “Your wings are on fire.”

“Yes,” he whispered. “And so are yours.”

She turned her head to the side and saw the expanse of her wing, and Antony’s. Swirls of energy rose off both. The colors dazzled—gold, amethyst, blue, and green.

She shifted to meet his gaze once more. He seemed different. His hair danced around his shoulders as though the energy they had created blew it around like a soft breeze.

He was smiling. She was still in his mind and she knew his thoughts—he’d never been so happy.

Me, too. He nodded and smiled.

But the energy transformed suddenly. Antony winced, his back arched, and she felt him struggle. She knew, however, that she had to hold him in place.

She took the jolt next. It made her want to pull away but she forced herself to remain. Then she realized that this time he had kept her from moving, from disconnecting.

The click happened right there, chest-to-chest, a deep bond and joining. She stared into his eyes. He returned it.

The next moment, Parisa arched and cried out. “The pain. Oh, God the pain.”

“Oh, God. In your mind. So deep. The voyeur-link.” She knew he felt her pain because they were connected. “Is this what you’ve been experiencing?”

“Yes,” she whispered, tears tracking down her cheeks. “I can feel the link straining, almost trembling.” She arched again. Once more she cried out, then opened her eyes to look at him.

The pain stopped, an ending so sudden that she gasped. “Oh, my God. The breh-hedden just broke my link with Greaves.”

“Holy shit.” He smiled. “I can feel it, too. He’s gone. The bastard is gone.”

Another unexpected benefit of the bonding experience.

She was ready to embrace him, to speak of love, to explore what this bonding might mean for both of them, even to make love again. But a sudden, terrible understanding arose: Something bad was about to happen to Endelle, to Thorne, to all the Warriors of the Blood, to Colonel Seriffe and his contingent of Militia Warriors.

“Do you feel that?” he asked. “The danger, to everyone?”

“Yes. What do we do?” It was not an expression of doubt but a concern about strategy.

She flowed through Antony’s mind and picked up on the drift of his thoughts. He was riffling through all the books and articles he had read, and all the anecdotes he had ever heard about royle wings.

She began to peruse his memories at the same time, an amazing download of material. He then released all those thoughts and looked into her eyes once more.

He smiled.

She smiled.

So they both knew what needed to be done. But dear God, it seemed quite impossible.

Worse, if this failed, they would both be dead along with all those they loved, within the next hour.

Would this be it, then? Would their lives and their love be over so very soon?

“How about you open your voyeur’s window and have a look.”

Parisa nodded. She took a deep breath and thought of Endelle. The window opened and Her Supremeness came into view. She was dressed in a light blue flight suit, at full-mount. “Her wings are dark blue.”

“She has the power to change the colors of the feathers at will.”

“Wow.”

“So where is she?”

Parisa panned back. “At the Grand Canyon … and she’s not alone.”

There is some anecdotal evidence from ancient times to suggest that royle wings form the basis of the concept of the modern-day spectacle. However, more recent historical records do not corroborate oral traditions.

—From Treatise on Ascension, by Philippe Reynard

Chapter 24

The Ascension Liberation Army.

Greaves.

What a fucking poser.

Endelle stood on the rim of the Grand Canyon, at one of the narrower points. A late-afternoon glow had settled on the land, bringing all the sharp and rolling contours of the canyon into beautiful relief. It wouldn’t be long before dusk descended. What the hell was Greaves up to?

A mile below, the river was hardly visible, a distant blue-green line. On Mortal Earth, because of all the dams, the river looked mossy green. But rushing all the way to the Sea of Cortez, untrammeled by dams as it was on Second Earth, it looked a little different.

Whatever.

What didn’t look different was Greaves.

She extended her vision—in her case real Third Earth shit—and she could see him, plain as fucking day, seated on a dais, lounging, sipping a cup of tea, the saucer in one hand and in the other, his white delicate teacup with pinkie held high. Well, weren’t we just so damn pretty this afternoon?

If she could put metaphysical fingers around his throat and squeeze, she would. But that was Fourth Dimension shit and she wasn’t there yet.

All this, an army of Militia Warriors and death vampires spread out on the opposing rim, and for what? Why couldn’t some men just let people raise their babies, their crops, a few farm animals for sustenance, and live? Why did it always come down to some asshole needing to take over the world?

Jesus H. Christ.

So Greaves had announced to the world today that he was saving Second Earth from the tyranny of an oppressive administration that must be stopped. That’s what Greaves had called her Phoenix Two operation in which her primary function was to keep death vampires from making it down to Mortal Earth and, yeah, to prevent assholes like Greaves from taking over the world. Other than that, her allied High Administrators ran their Territories however the hell they wanted to. Yeah, real fucking tyrannical.

Perfect.

Starting this morning, he had mounted a massive television and Internet propaganda campaign against her administration. He’d used every hideous photograph he could find of her, that showed her enraged—imagine that, pictures of her enraged. At least her clothes looked sweet. She particularly liked the one of her in a banana python floor-length evening gown, knees lowered and wide so that it stretched the skin out, her back arched, and her arm lifted high in a one-fingered salute. Okay, so maybe she didn’t exactly look like the ruler of Second Earth. More like the ruler of Second Earth gone wild. She was even showing some fang in that photo.

Okay, really … whatever.

Unfortunately, the ads were being shown around the world, in every Territory and every language. Marcus’s team had been monitoring global broadcasting around the clock. He’d been cursing nonstop for the past several hours. So … fuck.

And today, Greaves had a hundred television crews, also from around the world, already filming him and his army. Remote-controlled video air-bots zoomed back and forth, from her army to his. If one of those damn things even got close to her, she was throwing a fucking hand-blast.

Ascension Liberation Army.

My ass.

That lying fucking bastard.

Greaves was just one big lie from the top of his bald head to the tidy break in the cuffs of his fine wool suits.

She flapped the great breadth of her wings, a rich cerulean blue for the battle, and rose into the air a slow couple of feet at a time. Her flight suit was a lighter shade of blue. On principle, though, she wore a leopard headband and a pair of leopard-print flight slippers. Hey, a woman had her standards.

And the fuck she was going to take that pansy-ass bastard Greaves seriously. Especially since beyond the assembled Militia Warriors serving on his side were communications tents with satellite dishes. He was up to something.

The question was, how much of this was for show and just how serious was he about challenging her administration today?

Still. She was thong-climbing-her-ass pissed.

On the other hand, one of the advantages of living so long was that the phrase Now I’ve seen everything had been her mantra for millennia already. If she flat-out panicked every time some little flyspeck of a prick flexed his muscles, she’d have stroked out a helluva long time before this. Not that a vampire could stroke out, but still.

Besides, something had shifted within her since Shorty showed up in her life. Maybe it was his speaking of Braulio, or maybe it was learning that Leto, one of her dearest friends from olden times, hadn’t been a traitor after all, or maybe it was just knowing that the Upper Dimension hadn’t completely buried its head up its ass all these centuries, but she’d gained a little confidence. There must be a way out of this morass.

Also, she had one ace up her sleeve that no one knew about. She had no idea if she could count on Parisa and Medichi coming through for her, but from the moment she’d learned that they both had royle wings, well she’d sort of had a hard-on. She was the only ascender on the face of the planet who had actually seen what royle wings could do. Luchianne had had royle wings, and on more than one occasion she’d used them.

Talk about spectacle.

What a sight those times had been. But whether she could call such an untried pair into battle—well, who the fuck knew. She was just employing a little bit of faith that even though she was a profane bitch, the Creator might somehow help her inadequate troops stand against a sociopath and an army that outnumbered hers three-to-one.

As she rose higher and pulled back somewhat on her preternatural vision, she could see the breadth of Greaves’s assembled forces. His ALA was all in black with the occasional maroon slash of color for effect. Black leather kilts were the order of the day on both sides, but just to keep things simple Greaves’s army wore maroon leather weapons harnesses, which she thought was a nice touch although some contrasting embroidery would’ve livened things up a bit. If she got out of this alive, she’d tell Stannett to give Greaves a few pointers.

She rose up even higher. Off to the southwest she saw something else, something in flight, something massive.