She had her act down pretending he didn’t exist. At least in that, she was doing the right thing. She needed him to know that she just didn’t have a choice.

She couldn’t stay at administrative HQ. She couldn’t work with Endelle. She couldn’t continue to be Thorne’s Convent whore. She couldn’t remain in Metro Phoenix Two.

In fact, from the moment she’d landed in Madame Endelle’s office, the moment she’d read the woman’s formidable powers and the force of who she was in all her glorious nine thousand years, Marguerite had pretty much decided that the only way she could do what she needed to do was by going rogue. She fully intended to slip through the Trough at one of the Borderlands, so that her power signature would be permanently invisible to the electronic grids of Second Earth.

She wanted freedom, anonymity, and men, lots of men.

She couldn’t have that here, not with Thorne as powerful and as possessive as he was. No fucking way in hell.

So she pretended to have no further interest in him and no need of him. In fact, she had a very strong feeling that he might even be relieved to see her go.

So, it was all good.

Except she couldn’t quite get rid of the knot in her throat.

As for Fiona, she was amazed by the power the woman could create through her obsidian gift and her channeling ability. Completely stunned. But the sure knowledge that she would actually miss her was a new kind of surprise.

Marguerite had never been a woman’s woman. Parisa’s reaction had been more of the usual. But she would miss Fiona, her sister in obsidian flame, and she’d also miss Grace, Thorne’s sister and her Convent roommate.

Part of her, therefore, was sorry about having to take off, and sorry about all the pain and frustration she’d be leaving behind, but she’d envisioned this day for the past hundred years and like hell she was going to let one lover and two friendships alter her plans.

As the final cut scored into the back of her ankle, she screamed long and loud until Fiona, or was that Endelle, gripped her leg and healing flowed.

Once the wound eased up then disappeared, she flipped around in her seat and stared down at the two halves of the guard, at the thing that had kept her bound to both the Creator’s Convent and the Superstition Fortress.

“I’m sure the calluses will disappear in the next twenty-four hours,” Endelle said.

What the fuck did Marguerite care about calluses? She was free.

Free at last.

Free. At. Last.

Free at long fucking last.

But as she looked at the two smoking pieces of stinking plastic, another smell rolled in her direction, a very strong, strange, but quite pleasant smell of cherry tobacco. Her grandfather used to smoke a pipe that smelled similar, only this scent was sweeter and even kind of gave her a buzz. In fact, it actually tightened her nipples and made her want to put her hand between her legs.

She glanced in the direction of the open door, looking down the hallway. Maybe one of the execs had lit up a pipe.

“Does someone here smoke a pipe?”

She watched Endelle and Fiona exchange a glance, then almost as though they were one person they turned and looked at Thorne. He lifted his head from his hands. “Are you smelling something?”

She shrugged. What did she care for a tobacco smell, or the plastic, or Endelle or Fiona or the red variety of obsidian flame, or gold, or this fucking war? She had some serious dating to do.

She gained her feet and kicked the two pieces of the ankle guard. Both Fiona and Endelle rose as well, but they parted like the Red Sea so that she had a perfect view of Thorne.

That strange tobacco scent seemed to be getting stronger.

Whatever.

She turned in a circle, enjoying the feel of her leg without the weight of the ankle guard for the first time in decades. Her other leg now seemed strangely heavy. What an odd sensation. She moved away from the chair and turned in ever-broadening circles.

She saw from her peripheral vision that Thorne had risen from his seat as well.

She sure hoped he didn’t intend to prevent her from doing what she needed to do.

She slowly shifted her turning circle in the direction of the open door. “No,” Thorne said, but his voice held a restrained note.

She faced Endelle and Fiona and grinned. She called out a resounding, “So long, suckers.” She lifted her arm and vanished, at the same time setting up a trace-block. Nether-space, her first ride in a century, felt damn good.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, fucking, yeah.

* * *

With preternatural speed, Thorne moved to the exact spot where his woman had just vanished. He’d known from the beginning that this day would come because he’d known his woman’s heart and her mind and her spirit from the first second he’d been with her, even before he’d entered her body.

Except she’d asked if someone was smoking a pipe.

And now a new nightmare was on him, because in this space where she had disappeared, he could smell her in a way he had never smelled her before. But it seemed all wrong, because it was a rich floral scent, like the red roses his sister, Patience, had once grown. How could this fire-woman smell of flowers? Beyond that, why the fuck did she smell like anything, for God’s sake? Was there to be no peace for him, ever?

He started crying out, shouting. He lost track of himself, of time, of space. His shouting morphed into some kind of strange primal screaming that he couldn’t even hear, like maybe he was producing a sound that only dogs could detect.

Then he fell into a hole so deep there simply was no bottom and he screamed the entire way.

* * *

Endelle stared at Thorne and then at Fiona whose ears had started to bleed and who was crying and thrashing on the floor. She had to get Fiona out of her office, out of the building, but she was afraid to leave Thorne alone.

Alison. She had to get Alison over here to take Fiona away.

Her phone. Where was her phone?

Oh, yeah.

She leaped on her desk and slid over the marble, knocking her laptop to the floor. She really did need to start carrying her stupid phone with her.

Dammit, her own ears hurt now. She didn’t know a man could make a sound like that. He stood very straight, his whole body rigid, but with his neck arched and head thrown back, shouting at the ceiling.

She found her phone on the floor, right where she’d last thrown it, down by one of the curled woolly mammoth tusks that supported the desk. From that position, her head resting against the hard ivory, and with fingers that trembled, she tapped the damn screen.

When a sleepy Alison came online, she shouted, “Get your ass to my office, now. We have an emergency but all I need you to do is fold here then fold Fiona back to your house. Got it?”

“Uh … okay … got it.”

Half a second later, and wearing a long, rumpled blue silk nightgown, Alison appeared. She looked at Thorne and winced. She appeared ready to drop to the floor herself. Then she looked at Fiona.

She went to the latter, put her hand on her shoulder, and the two of them, thank God, vanished.

Endelle used the same phone and tapped for Central. She cut off Jeannie’s usual polite greeting. “Fuck that, Jeannie. Listen up. Get Luken over to my office and Horace as well. Now. We’ve got some kind of something going on. It’s sort of—oh, fuck, just do it.”

She thumbed her phone and waited.

Luken showed up about ten seconds later, straight from one of the Borderlands where he battled death vampires, his sword in hand, his arms shaking with adrenaline, blood spatter all over him.

He saw Thorne and cried out, “What the hell is this?” Then, “Endelle, where the fuck are you?”

Endelle rose up from beneath her desk, threw her phone back down by the tusk, then put her hands over her ears. “Don’t let him hurt himself. I think, oh, God, I think it’s the goddam breh-hedden. Shit motherfucker.” She rounded the desk to stand a few feet away from Thorne. But Luken was a take-no-prisoners kind of man, and carried more natural brawn, more sheer muscle than any of the other Warriors of the Blood. He had the best heart and when he saw what he needed to do, goddammit, the man just did it!

Despite the painful resonant noises Thorne was making, the high piercing keening sounds, Luken positioned himself in front of Thorne. Thorne’s cries kept increasing in resonance and volume until Endelle, as Fiona had done before, dropped to the floor.

Horace arrived next and immediately fell to his knees, also covering his ears.

Endelle crawled under the table so she could see what was happening. Luken, his face pale now, caught Thorne’s left arm. When Thorne drew back his right hand and made a fist, Luken moved in with a series of swift preternatural punches that bobbed Thorne’s head back a whole bunch of times, until the keening stopped and the leader of the Warriors of the Blood fell on his back at Horace’s feet.

Oh, thank God that noise had stopped.

Jesus H. Christ.

Endelle sat back on her heels then crawled around the side of the desk. She’d lost an awful lot of red feathers in the past fifteen minutes, and her fluffy capris now had a bunch of bare patches that would need reworking. Her mind felt like someone had sandblasted her gray matter from one cauliflower-shaped mass to the other. She had a hard time forming coherent thoughts.

A moment later Kerrick appeared. His battle gear was also streaked with blood, black feathers, and other horrible things. His bare muscled arms were the same. In addition, he had a cut that dripped blood onto the hardwood floor near his black battle sandals.

“What’s going on?” he asked. “I just talked with Alison. She thought maybe you’d need me.”

Endelle released a heavy sigh and flopped an arm in Thorne’s direction. “Seen this before? Or something like it?”

Kerrick moved to stand over Thorne. His lips curved and his emerald eyes filled with compassion. “Thorne’s turn, I take it?” He glanced at Endelle.

She nodded, then stretched herself out on one of the zebra skins that littered the floor of her office. It felt good to be lying on her back and staring up at the ceiling. She extended her arms then clasped her hands beneath her head.