However, she slid next to Luken, touched his arm, and once more thought the thought. She traveled back through nether-space and with Marguerite in her arms, she touched down to face the same arc of warriors and their brehs.

She glanced at Thorne in Luken’s arms. His complexion was now perfectly white.

She could feel that he was gone.

She separated from Fiona’s body and returned to hers. It felt weird to be back. She opened her eyes and felt stronger for the recent connection to Fiona. She rose from her chair and moved with lightning speed back to Thorne.

Horace already had his hands over Thorne’s body and two other healers were working on the various deep cuts, but nothing was happening.

Endelle looked down at Thorne.

He couldn’t be dead. He just couldn’t.

Two more healers worked on Marguerite. She was unconscious but breathing.

“How we doin’?” she asked Horace.

“He’s lost so much blood. There … just isn’t anything left. He has no heartbeat.”

Endelle shook her head, back and forth, over and over.

This could not be happening.

This was Thorne, her second-in-command, the one she had come to rely on in all things, the one who had helped her to not feel so alone for, oh, about twenty centuries. And he was dead.

Her throat ached.

This couldn’t be happening, couldn’t be real. She needed to do something, but what? She didn’t exactly have the power to bring vampires back to life.

But this was Thorne.

Thorne.

Her closest friend. Her best friend. A man she loved with all her heart. Her family.

Oh … God.

She had to do something.

She glanced at Marguerite, then at Havily. If there had been any life left in Thorne, Havily could have brought him the rest of the way back. But a dead man couldn’t drink, couldn’t swallow.

“Feed Marguerite, or she’ll die.”

Havily raced in Marguerite’s direction and before a handful of seconds passed, Marguerite nursed on her wrist drawing all that extraordinary power down her throat.

Endelle turned once more to stare down at a dead man.

Everything she despised about the war began to flow through her veins. Her mouth turned down, dragged down by all the hatred she felt, for all the ways this war had been a hopeless, useless endeavor for centuries, the never-ending creation of death vampires by the enemy, the incessant battling at night and wearing out of her warriors, the constant political manipulations by Greaves.

To end here, in this room, with Thorne dead, filled her with a fury the likes of which she had never known. She could feel the vibration of her rage. Her black hair swirled around her. A wind that only her ire could create moved in great swells and slammed into the warriors and their brehs.

She couldn’t let this be the end.

She would not let this be the end.

She glanced at Fiona, then Jean-Pierre. “Get your woman out of here or her eardrums will bust open even wider than before.”

Jean-Pierre didn’t wait. He put his arms around Fiona. They vanished.

She turned to face the rest: Kerrick and Alison, Marcus, Medichi and Parisa, Luken, Santiago, Zacharius. “I want you to get everyone out of this building, then you must leave.”

Marcus called out, “I’ll take care of the building. Just hold on.” He closed his eyes and a split second later, an alarm sounded. From her office she could feel the massive and abrupt folding of thousands of employees.

She glanced at Marguerite, who now stared at her wide-eyed, still sucking at Havily’s wrist. She popped off with a sudden smack and pushed Havily’s arm away. “I’m staying.”

Endelle nodded. “Yes.”

As Havily rose to her feet, Endelle gave her a shove. “Go with Marcus.” Her voice trembled. Her arms shook.

No one challenged her. They just left one after the other, stricken, ill, frightened. She sent Horace and his healers away as well.

When the last of them left and when she checked the building and found that the high-rise was also empty of people, she waved a hand. The alarms grew silent.

Marguerite leaned over Thorne and kissed him on the lips.

Maybe that was the last straw in this horrible farce called ascension. She wasn’t sure, but she lifted her arms to the ceiling and she screamed long and hard then she called for James over and over.

The windows rattled, the walls vibrated. Her hair whipped around now, a pure reflection of her rage and of her determination.

When James didn’t appear, she let her power flow from her in pulsing waves. The windows went first, blowing out into the desert.

“You will come to me,” she shouted, splitting her resonance a dozen times. “You will come to me now and you will give me back what was taken from me today or by God I will not hold back and my soul and my body be damned for what I am about to do, so help me God. Do you hear me, Luchianne? The vows I took, the laws I promised to obey, mean nothing to me if this man remains in this lifeless state.

“I have served and I have been ignored and I will be ignored no longer.

“If you do not send your Sixth healers to me right now, then I will begin Armageddon myself. I will use every power at my command, including obsidian flame, and I will take this dimension down to ashes.”

James appeared ten feet away, holding himself steady as the wind of her rage struck him first on one side then the other. “We all die,” he said.

“Fuck that,” she cried, splitting her resonance three times. “Bring the healers now. Or I will destroy this planet, one rock, one drop of water, one ascender at a time if I have to.”

James winced then nodded.

Three women appeared, hooded in a way that led Endelle to believe they were being kept from seeing her.

He will need blood, one of the healers sent.

Endelle didn’t give it a second thought. She dropped to her knees and offered her wrist. The healer closest to her moved to the top of Thorne’s head and gestured with a draped arm for her to take up the position on Thorne’s left.

She leaned down and put her hand on his face. “Come back to me, my friend, my companion. Please. I can’t go forward without you. Second Earth needs you. We’ve always needed you. Forgive me for being the scorpion queen. Just please come back.”

When the healing began, she closed her eyes and let the healers work. One of them took her arm. After half a minute when Thorne latched onto her arm, trashed her skin, then began to suck, she began to weep.

* * *

Marguerite knelt between two of the healers, reaching forward to touch the tips of Thorne’s ice-cold fingers. With her free hand she kept wiping at her face. Havily’s blood had restored her thoroughly. She felt more alive than she had in a long time, drugged almost.

And thank God for that, because having seen Thorne in this state, as in deceased, kept sharp claws tearing on the insides of her chest.

Worse. She kept looking at Endelle, whose face was a stream of tears over reddened cheeks. Her black hair hung in a heavy grieving mass down her back, quiet now as opposed to writhing with fury as it had been earlier.

She was an incredible ascender, so powerful and so passionate. Endelle loved Thorne, that much was clear to Marguerite, and the taste of that love felt passionate yet not romantic, which made no sense and yet every sense. They had never been lovers. Thorne had once said that it just would have been too weird even though at various times he said he’d been tempted. Endelle as well.

And why wouldn’t either of them? They were both magnificent.

But Endelle loved him with a passion that transcended romance and sex. She would die for him.

Marguerite shifted her gaze back to Thorne. His fingers were warmer now. She gave thanks. The man she loved was being restored and returned to her. She felt humbled and changed.

Everything felt different to her now, but maybe that always happened when death was met head-on and somehow vanquished.

She leaned forward and slid her fingers farther down his palm. Did his hand twitch?

The stream of power emanating from the healers tingled the hairs on her arm. She looked down the length of his legs. His kilt was hanging partially off him, sliced through. His weapons harness was gone. The shallowest cuts were gone and the deepest ones were simply closing up. His skin wasn’t nearly so pale. Some of the golden color had returned.

Endelle leaned back and drew her bleeding, torn up arm to her chest. Her eyes were bloodshot.

“Endelle, did you do this for me?” The gravelly voice hit the air, striking Marguerite’s heart like a deftly swung mallet.

Thorne.

Marguerite drew in a long deep breath. He was alive. Sobs jerked her chest several times, but she kept them quiet. She just had a feeling.

“You’re back,” Endelle said, wiping at her face.

“Thank you.” He turned to look at her.

Marguerite could hardly keep from pushing the healer next to her aside so that she could throw herself on Thorne, but she couldn’t move, not with Endelle’s face so contorted in grief and pain. The Amazon seemed hardly able to breathe.

Her lips however, did move, as though she was trying to say something, but couldn’t.

She turned and met Marguerite’s gaze. So much pain in those ancient, lined eyes. Her mouth moved once more, but nothing came from between her lips. Finally, she sent, I give him to you, Marguerite. Take good care of him. He was the sun to my earth. I just didn’t know it.

Marguerite nodded.

Endelle turned back to Thorne, her mouth moving again so strangely, her still-bleeding wrist held against her chest. Finally, she just vanished.

Marguerite heard Thorne groan as though he was in pain. She knew he couldn’t see her because of the robed figures but she could sense that he needed a minute.

This time, his stomach jerked uncontrollably.

She couldn’t imagine what he was experiencing, but that it had to do with Endelle restrained her.

* * *

Thorne stared straight up into the ceiling of Endelle’s office. He felt as though his heart had been ripped out of his chest; he just didn’t exactly understand why. But when he’d reawakened to life, he’d turned to look into Endelle’s eyes and it was as though he could see straight into her soul, into every thought she’d ever had, into the absolute depths of her suffering.