Jean-Pierre laughed then drew her up against him, her back to his front. He wrapped his arms around her as he once more looked Peter over: his hair, his forehead, his ears, just like his own ears, his nose, just like his own nose, his chin, so very stubborn and familiar. This was the gift of life, the surprises, like holding his breh in his arms while looking at a son he had never known existed, the true answer to a riddle to which he had always assigned the wrong answer.

Yes, this was the true gift of life.

* * *

Thorne sat in his usual spot at the Blood and Bite, at the top of the bar so he could keep an eye on his men. He rattled his tumbler around. It now held one finger of seltzer water and two fat ice cubes.

Sam moved forward and refilled.

If any of the brothers noticed he wasn’t hitting the Ketel One, no one said a word, but then they rarely did, not to him, not to the goddam leader of the Warriors of the Blood.

He was the man. No one questioned him. No one ever questioned him. Why would they? For two thousand years he’d been on duty, serving, loyal, reliable, a good warrior, a consistent leader.

None of the brothers even asked him about Marguerite once it became known she’d been his lover for the past century. He was that trusted among his men, that trusted by Endelle, so trustworthy that no one challenged him about the century’s worth of lies he’d been telling—celibacy and all that shit.

He had a full house tonight, one of the rare occasions that all seven of his warriors would be battling, which meant this was exactly the timing he needed to start working things out.

He’d already handed out the night’s assignments: Medichi at the Superstitions with Luken, Marcus and Jean-Pierre at New River, Santiago at Awatukee, Kerrick at the White Tanks, and Zacharius downtown.

“Where will you be, jefe?” Santiago asked. He had a lovely redhead under his arm. Santiago seemed to like redheads. She had one hand on his chest and was petting him over and over like she meant to wear a hole in his silk shirt.

Well that was the million-dollar question, wasn’t it? “I have a meeting with Endelle,” he said. A lie, of course. “I’ll catch up with the rest of you later.” Another lie.

Since the woman practically climbed Santiago’s leg, and the brother turned into her and gave her one helluva a deep kiss, he started drifting in the direction of the red velvet booths.

Luken had already disappeared with a blond chick. Zach was on the dance floor. The last Thorne had seen him, he’d had his fangs buried deep. The Blood and Bite, situated in south Phoenix, Mortal Earth, was meant for the warriors of Second Earth, a place Endelle sanctioned for R&R for the Militia Warriors as well as the Warriors of the Blood. Enthrallment of mortals was encouraged in order to keep the nature of their vampire world on the down-low. But any warrior who hurt a mortal suffered major consequences, and Sam Finch, the owner, kept a strict eye on all the doings.

The rest of the brothers, the ones bonded with their goddam brehs, huddled at the bar in one big fat happy group, talking about other things, like how to get along with a woman who could feel you all the time, whatever the hell that meant. Jean-Pierre, the latest addition to the club, did more listening than talking.

So Thorne drank his seltzer alone, which was pretty much all he needed right now.

His recent freak-out in Endelle’s office, the one that had only ended when Luken had punched his lights out, had actually aided his current mission because the warriors had been giving him a boatload of space.

So it looked like everything was working out for him.

He turned to Sam and said, “I’m headed out to see Endelle.”

“I will let them know, jefe.”

Thorne took one last look around, one last gander at the mated brothers. He felt like a piece of shit for what he was about to do, but he just didn’t have a choice. He lifted his arm and dematerialized.

He ended up in the foyer of his home in Sedona. He whipped his warrior phone from the slit in his battle kilt and thumbed it.

“Jeannie, here. How may I serve?”

“Hey, Jeannie.”

Silence returned then a very soft, “Please don’t do this.”

“I’m heading out.” He’d shared his plan with Jeannie. He’d known the woman for centuries now and he trusted the hell out of her. She had instructions to let Endelle know what was up.

“Please, Thorne. What will they do without you?”

“I guess they’ll have to figure it out.”

“How long will you be gone?”

“You know the answer.”

“Yeah, as long as it fucking takes.”

For that, for her use of one of his favorite words, he actually smiled. “Love ya, Jeannie. You’re the best.”

“Right back atcha, jefe.”

For a long moment, he held the phone to his ear as though there was something else he needed to say. But after a few more seconds he realized he was just damn sad that he was taking off like this, like a deserter, but he didn’t have a choice.

He just didn’t have a choice. He’d given two thousand years of his life in service to Second Earth, but this he had to do for himself.

Finally, without another word, he thumbed his phone.

He waved a hand and changed out of his battle flight gear. He wore jeans, a wife-beater shirt, and heavy steel-toed boots. He folded a thick wad of twenty-dollar bills into his hand and stuffed it into his pocket.

He folded straight to the New River Borderland, and with the power of his two thousand years he jumped into the Trough and slammed through nether-space. The ride done this way, through the space between the dimensions, had the effect of wiping out his power signature on Central’s or Militia HQ’s grids—any grids for that matter, Greaves’s Command Center included. No one would be able to locate him on Mortal Earth.

So, yeah, he was going rogue.

When he touched down on New River Mortal Earth, he looked around. Just a few houses. A few cars.

He had only one problem: How the hell was he going to find Marguerite in a dimension that had seven billion people on the goddam planet?

* * *

Marguerite drove across the barren stretch of I-10 between Albuquerque and San Antonio One, her right hand on the wheel and her left arm lazing across the door. She had the top down on the vintage Chevy she’d stolen in Phoenix. She had crisscrossed the country a dozen times since folding the hell out of Endelle’s office.

She’d left Second Earth via the downtown Phoenix Two Trough, set up mist around her own sweet self, and hunted for just the right vehicle.

Damn, she loved this car.

She loved her freedom.

Freedom was her air.

She had her long hair twisted on top of her head in a banana clip so that the sun could find her shoulders every second of every day. She’d become a sun worshipper since she’d seen the damn thing so infrequently during her prison term.

She wore a bright red halter that revealed a lot of cleavage, and she let her skin burn. At first it had blistered and peeled and blistered and peeled, but she didn’t care. She had the power to heal it up, but why? She’d spend hours in front of the mirror in one cheap motel room after another watching her skin tone deepen and darken.

Now she had a dark rich tan and meant to keep it that way. Her really cutoff cutoffs helped as well, since the frayed edge lived in the seam between her hips and legs when she sat down. When she stood up, the pockets dipped below and looked like two flags against her Coppertone skin.

A vast shimmering appeared on the highway a quarter mile distant.

Oh, shit.

She slammed on the brakes and pulled over.

Owen Stannett, wearing the usual embroidered leather, appeared on the hood of her car. She hated that smile so much that she almost puked. But what she really hated was that weird wave of hair on the side of his head. What a freak.

She leaned back in her seat. “What do you want, motherfucker?” She didn’t have her leg shackled anymore and she was beginning to figure out that her red variety of obsidian flame carried a lot of power with it. She spent every part of her day working her powers. She had powers no one even dreamed of.

“Darian has big plans for you, honey. He sent me to find you and now I’m here. Time to go to work, sweetheart.”

“In your dreams, perv.” She waved a hand and Owen flew backward up into the sky until he winked out of sight.

She put her car in gear and drove on. Stannett wasn’t a fighter. He wouldn’t be back until he was sure he could subdue her. Still, she felt confident she could take him.

There was just one little problem.

If Darian was on her ass, one little orbit flight for the Fortress Fuck wouldn’t stop the little peach.

Now what was she supposed to do?

Then she smiled. So what if Darian came sniffing around. She was gaining power every day. If she had to, she’d battle him herself, to the death if need be, because like hell was she ever going to be shut up in some fortress or Convent or any other fucking facsimile that one of these shit-eaters dished up for her.

Her smile broadened. There was one thing she was going to do as soon as she hit San Antonio. She was going to find herself a hair salon and get tricked out with something short, wavy, and platinum blond.

Afterward she’d hit a bar. She’d spent the last week getting the lay of the land, flirting with men, figuring out what she was dealing with. But now it was time to get serious, time to start living out all those bed-thumping fantasies that had kept her going for the past ten decades.

Oh … yeah.

The purpose of ritual is to train the soul,

And to ease the suffering of the spirit.

—The Creator’s Handbook, Sister Quena

Chapter 25

Jean-Pierre could see within Gideon. He could see where the warrior held back and in what ways he needed to move beyond his present ability. Endelle called this a facilitation power, newly emerged, a gift of the breh-hedden. He had seen glimpses of it in prior months, even years, but once he bonded with Fiona, the gift grew stronger and stronger.

Two weeks had passed since he completed the breh-hedden with Fiona and so much had changed, for him and within him. He could feel Fiona, just as the other bonded vampires could feel their brehs. She was at the rehab center and had a slight pain in her right hip because she had been sitting too long. So strange to know what she experienced at all times.