But that trail had unearthed the unhappy news that Leto had been deleting files for years, which had been causing a corresponding amount of chaos at his Estrella Mountain War Complex for the past two decades. In terms of a scheme, not half bad, really. But what else had Leto been up to? Naturally, Greaves had set more than one of his trusted counterintelligence workers on the entire host of Leto’s activities, especially anything from the past year, which encompassed Greaves’s push to a final, decisive battle that would cover all seven continents of Second Earth.

And now he knew the truth.

How utterly unfortunate.

Greaves looked down the long avenue lined by enormous wintry trees, not yet leafing out. He loved everything about the location. He’d spent a fortune lighting the route since the event would begin in the late afternoon and continue into the night to best display the fireworks. The forecast was perfect: snow on the day before the event. He wanted everything cold and gray, preferably overcast. Steely skies would be absolute perfection.

He drew his phone from his pocket and mentally touched the screen. He was rarely forced to make personal calls, but this one was necessary since Casimir couldn’t be reached with a simple bolt of purposeful telepathy. Casimir, as a Fourth Ascender, had sufficient power to create an almost impenetrable mist around his Paris apartment.

Greaves hadn’t wanted to bring Casimir into his plans, but the advent of royle wings with Warrior Medichi and his woman, Parisa, had forced his hand. He needed a powerful ascender on staff, but loathed having to ask for help. Casimir was an undisciplined vampire who tended to act in his own best interest, despite his professed alliances.

He really despised the man on so many levels, but right now he needed him. Leto was one powerful vampire; only a Fourth Ascender would have a shot at rendering Leto unconscious so that Greaves could turn him over to his specialty death vampires. Neither Greaves nor Casimir, under the current law of the land, given their respective power levels, could directly murder anyone. There was, however, nothing on the books against assisting the occasionally necessary process.

Casimir picked up on the third ring.

“Five minutes, at the platform. Just fold directly to it.”

“No greeting, Darian? I’m disappointed beyond words.”

Greaves didn’t make use of profanity, or at least not very often, but right now he knew a strong impulse to let loose. Casimir’s manners, how should he put this, bugged the shit out of him. Always, the man attempted to get up a flirtation.

But rather than let Caz goad him into a display of temper, he drew a very deep breath and smiled. “Five minutes,” he said quietly. He mentally thumbed his phone and put it back in his pocket.

Five minutes and he’d take care of one more nuisance.

* * *

Warrior Leto was through. He’d reached the end of his rope and he knew it. There was nothing more to be done.

Despite the cold, perspiration beaded on his upper lip.

He wore a heavy wool coat over thick wool trousers, regulation. It had snowed in Moscow Two, just a couple of inches, nothing significant, but it was fucking cold. He had on gloves and a fur Cossack hat.

He stared down the long, extremely well-lit avenue, five miles straight and very wide. This avenue was the prime reason Greaves had worked so hard to turn the High Administrator of Russia Territory. Moscow Two was a perfect stage.

Some of the most beautiful buildings of Moscow One had been re-created in the Second city: parts of the Kremlin, St. Basil’s Cathedral with its onion domes in a bunch of different colors, and the Kutuzov Triumphal Arch. In some ways the Second city was a caricature of the ancient city that had developed over centuries. But sending Greaves’s army, the one he’d been building for decades in secret, the one drawn from Militia Warriors and death vampires from all over the world, would produce spectacle at its finest.

Camera crews were set up all along the route. Right now the flying bots zoomed back and forth, the remote operators testing all the equipment. Grandstands also lined specific parts of the route, each one built tall and hung with Greaves’s newly created insignia, a stylized mythological phoenix in black, maroon, and gold. Each grandstand would house hundreds of hired actors to shout and applaud nonstop.

As for himself, he was ill, in the only way that a death vampire could become ill. He hadn’t taken dying blood for over two weeks. The cramps were nearly unbearable at this point. He’d even taken to using ibuprofen to ease some of the pain. Unfortunately, his vampire healing capacity tended to throw it off, just not the withdrawal-based cramps. He’d made a decision to let the addiction run its course. The abdominal seizures would become unbearable but he wasn’t taking dying blood again. Never again.

Eventually, he would be unable to eat. Therefore, though ascended, he would die of starvation, a process that would take months.

Too fucking bad.

When he’d learned the source of the dying blood—that Greaves kept women as slaves, killing them once a month then bringing them back to life with bags of regular blood and defibrillators—he’d reached his limit. Of course, the blood had to come from somewhere, but he’d blinded himself to that reality until now. That Warrior Jean-Pierre was now bonded with a woman who’d been put through that hell for over a century had finally pushed him over the edge.

He just couldn’t do it anymore.

He no longer cared that his handler, James, wouldn’t receive his regular reports on Greaves’s activities, or that Sixth Earth would be unable to properly monitor all that was going on, in preparation for what? What could Sixth Earth do? Nothing. Upper dimensions had rules about involvement in lower dimensions politically.

Yeah, he was fucking done.

So be it.

This was one of the prices he’d paid all these years as a spy. From the first, Greaves had insisted on turning him as proof of his defection from the Warriors of the Blood. As with all of the High Administrators and members of COPASS whom Greaves had turned, he supplied both the dying blood and the drug that hid the telltale signs, so that those addicted didn’t have to look like they partook of something so heinous. Hypocrisy at its best.

A faint chime sounded deep within his mind. He ignored the nausea and dove inward toward the sound. James’s telepathic voice resonated. Leto. You are in mortal danger. When the woman comes, go with her … no questions, no debate, though you will want to refuse …

The message ended.

He was done with this as well, the brief commands, without rhyme or reason, without debate, from his Sixth dimension handler.

Would he go?

No.

He was finished. If Greaves had finally stumbled on all his relatively ineffective sabotage, and was coming to finish him off, he thought the timing damn fine.

A shudder passed through him. He felt feverish now. The vomiting would start soon.

* * *

Grace sat on a wood stool in front of her small desk, holding a pen in her hand, the old-fashioned kind that required an ink pot. She had written pages and pages of her erotic poetry already today. She had begun writing this forbidden verse during the first year of her internment at the convent. And always, for reasons she couldn’t explain, one man, one warrior had been the object of her imaginings, partly because she’d known him forever: Leto.

Warrior Leto and Grace’s brother, Thorne, had been friends for the past two thousand years. She had known Leto that long as well, although perhaps not as well as Thorne knew him. Leto had always lived a warrior’s life while Grace’s preference for religious study in the course of her two thousand ascended years had taken her all over the world, on both Second and Mortal Earth. She had even lived in a Chinese Buddhist monastery, outside of Beijing Two, but that was six hundred years ago. She was as different in her life’s pursuit from Leto’s as two vampires could be. He made war. She worked to understand how all the religions of the world strove to make sense of life. But every once in a while, their paths would cross and she had always enjoyed speaking with him. He was a cultured man and she had always admired him.

She had been extremely surprised when she’d learned that he had defected to Commander Greaves’s faction. No one was more loyal to Endelle or to his warrior brothers than Leto, which led her to believe that there had to be an explanation. So when Thorne had told her that Leto had been a spy for the past century, his conduct had finally made sense to her.

According to Thorne, Leto had served the Council of Sixth Earth as a spy on the council’s behalf and his purpose in Greaves’s camp had been to document the Commander’s activities and to report to the council’s liaison, James, with all pertinent information. The council’s purpose in having Leto do this was still unknown. Thorne had then warned her to hide the information from Sister Quena, the High Administrator of the Convent, or any other powerful ascenders, since Leto’s precarious position could be endangered by a careless thought.

Of course she had deep-shielded the information, which involved the creation of a powerful but very small shield over the specific data deep within her mind. She actually visited the shield daily as part of her meditations and said a prayer for Warrior Leto’s safety and for his safe return to the Warriors of the Blood.

Because she’d sat for an hour or so, the wood stool had created a numbness on her backside. It was hand-hewn and uneven but very smooth from centuries of use. She turned the pen in her hand as she stared down at a poem she had written at least a decade ago. She smiled because she thought it beautiful and obscure, the perfect verse: He took me to the grotto, And explored the damp, weeping walls.

She sighed. This sensual part of her had always required an outlet, but it was something of a mystery. Nor did she understand exactly why she held Warrior Leto as some sort of romantic, sexual figure in her imagination. Of course he had embarked on his journey at about the same time she had gone into the Convent, a coincidence that had increased her sense of mysterious connectedness to the warrior.

She thought the dichotomy in her personality a great paradox, but contrary to much spiritual teaching, across religions, she didn’t try to suppress these longings and imaginings. She gave them form, in verse, and when she did that normally she felt satisfied and could move forward with her devotions.