His gaze shifted to Carolyn, and he straightened his shoulders. “The baby needed a change but I took care of it. Just wanted you to know.”

“I suppose now you want a medal.”

“Hell, yes! You’ve changed his diapers. Whew!”

Carolyn went to him, drew close, pressed herself against his chest, and kissed him on the lips. “Sorry, Ethan gave him some of his chili last night.” Ethan was the oldest of the three boys and enjoyed tormenting his family in as many creative ways as he could conjure. Fiona adored that about him.

“That explains it.” But he laughed.

He turned his wife into the hall, smiled at Fiona over his shoulder, then herded Carolyn in the direction of the main rooms. In the distance, one of the boys started to scream, a very normal sound in the Seriffe household.

Fiona smiled. Maybe there was a lot about her life that she couldn’t figure out right now, but being part of this family had brought her great joy.

So, yes, as she followed Carolyn and Seriffe down the hall, as she watched her daughter bend over and pick up her now wailing toddler, as Seriffe took the hands of both his older boys, as the family turned almost as one to look at her, yes, she knew joy.

Whatever else ascension held for her, this moment, this pleasure, made every struggle, every difficulty worthwhile.

The thought that once she folded to the outdoor chapel she would begin a new day with Jean-Pierre, however, left her caught once more in that in-between place: longing to move into the future, but clinging to the past.

We are born of ashes

In the spiritual death and rebirth

Of ascension.

—The Creator’s Handbook, Sister Quena

Chapter 2

Jean-Pierre stood on the periphery of the small outdoor chapel, shook his head, and muttered, “Mon Dieu.”

His disgust was profound. To call what amounted to an ugly collection of rough-hewn wooden benches a chapel was ridiculous. The entire space defined security nightmare. How could he, or the other Warriors of the Blood, protect the women and children who would attend the christening today?

There were no walls, only a slight inclination of the hill and dense forest beyond. He glanced in a slow half circle from right to left, at the slope of the hill near Thumb Butte, rising not steeply but littered with large boulders and flanked by tall ponderosa pines. He stretched his preternatural senses hunting for the enemy but he found nothing, merci à Dieu.

But would it remain the same throughout the ceremony?

If he were the enemy, oui, he would strike.

The benches were bolted to cement slabs like a Mortal Earth picnic ground. Pine needles covered everything. There was nothing in his opinion that was right for this ceremony. He did not understand why the High Administrator of the Convent, Sister Quena, did not send some of the sisters to at least sweep the needles off the benches.

His ire rose but then these days he was never far from a certain portion of rage. Pissed off. He loved the American phrase. Oui, he was fucking pissed off.

The air near him moved, setting his warrior instincts on fire. He thought the thought and brought his identified sword into his hand.

Had the enemy arrived so early to do battle? Very well.

He dropped into a crouch. Even though he had battled half the night, give him more, give him much, much more. He was a Warrior of the Blood and he was ready.

* * *

As Thorne materialized, he touched down on a thick carpet of pine needles and met one pissed-off-looking warrior. He smiled, planted his hands on his hips, then laughed.

Jean-Pierre drew upright and his sword vanished. He released a long breath and rattled off a few French words that probably composed one fine string of French obscenities.

“You look a little tense,” Thorne said, then he laughed again but even to his own ears the sound had a dark, bitter ring. He glanced around. “What a shithole.”

“Exactement. So why are Alison and Kerrick having the baptism here? Is there not a proper chapel inside the building? I understand the convents have some of the most beautiful chapels in the world.”

“The head sister here wanted it this way.” He thumbed behind him in the direction of the locked-down facility. “Sister Quena runs this place like the inmates are convicted felons instead of devotees.” Well, not all of them had arrived here devoted. He knew of at least one who had been consigned here by her parents and who was now restrained with an ankle guard to keep her from folding out of the facility.

“Yeah, the chapel here would have made better sense. I’ve seen it. The walls are covered with gold and pearl mosaics. I guess we’re not good enough to be inside, our hands being covered in blood.”

Jean-Pierre shrugged. “Then the sisters are hypocrites. They would not be so ungenerous if death vampires invaded their precious chapel.”

Thorne snorted. “Oh, they’d need us then, but Sister Quena would no doubt tell us we were merely the instruments of the Creator.”

“Of course.”

Thorne sighed. He turned in a circle. He couldn’t exactly tell Jean-Pierre the other truth: that he knew about every foot of the inside of the Convent, that he’d been within the walls a thousand times, maybe ten thousand, and not because his sister resided here. Grace had lived in this place for over a hundred years, by choice, because of her intense spiritual devotion. But that wasn’t why he’d been here so much.

His woman lived here as well, Marguerite, his sister’s cellmate.

Marguerite. Oh … God. He had loved her for a century now. His self-proclaimed celibacy? One big fat motherfucker of a lie. He’d been buried between Marguerite’s legs from the first day he’d met her. She was irreverent, proud, full of venom, a hellcat. She adored the male body, and he loved her, he goddam loved her. No, he craved her. Given the recent rise of the breh-hedden among the ranks, he had for a while suspected that Marguerite was his breh, but the two of them lacked one critical quality essential to vampire mate-bonding: They didn’t share a special scent with each other. Jesus, even Medichi said Parisa smelled citrusy. Oranges or tangerines, something like that.

Whatever.

He wanted to contact Marguerite right now, and he could do it, too, with just a properly aimed thought, especially this close to the facility, but the two of them rarely communicated telepathically. For one thing, he had a telepathic link with Endelle and she had enough power to track his private communications if she wanted to. The last person he ever wanted to know about Marguerite was Endelle. If she got wind of Marguerite’s extreme Seer capability, she’d use his woman as leverage and work out a deal with the High Administrator of the Superstition Mountain Seers Fortress. His woman would get shipped to an even worse prison without a second’s thought.

Endelle was nine thousand years old and the most powerful vampire on the planet. She ruled him and she had the right to send any Seer she deemed worthy straight to the Superstitions without anyone’s permission.

Thorne could never allow that, never risk it. The last place Marguerite wanted to be was in a Seers Fortress. He felt the same way but for a different, quite selfish reason: If she got moved out of the Convent, he’d never see her again, and for the past one hundred years she’d been the sole reason he hadn’t lost his ever-lovin’ fucked-up mind.

“Are you okay?” Jean-Pierre asked.

Thorne shot his gaze back to the warrior. Shit, he’d been staring at the low stone building that went on for a quarter acre downhill. He’d probably been making a growling sound. “Fine, I’m fine. I just … really hate this place.”

“You are thinking of your sister, non?”

Thorne’s pause was just a little too long but he finally managed a gravelly, “Of course.”

Jean-Pierre frowned slightly. “I never understood. I knew Grace all those years ago. She had so much joie de vivre. Why did she ever choose this life?”

Thorne shrugged. He relaxed a little. He could talk about Grace. Sort of. “The hell if I know. Whatever spurred her in this direction, she never really shared with me, only that she felt a calling. But she seems happy enough. I guess.” He shrugged again.

He didn’t get it. However, his comprehension of his sister’s actions wasn’t important; only that she seemed content. After the first decade of her internment and after about a thousand arguments on the subject, he’d learned to rest his concerns about what the hell she was doing in a convent.

Again … whatever.

He glanced around once more. “I guess we’re the first ones here. Is Fiona coming?”

“Oui.” The warrior’s voice sounded flat but it wasn’t from disinterest.

“Anything you want to talk about?”

Okay, as the leader of the Warriors of the Blood—and by the nature of the job, the one in charge of Jean-Pierre’s overall well-being—he had to ask. But so help him God, if Jean-Pierre actually unloaded on him, he’d make a couple of quick excuses and fold the hell out of there, christening or no fucking christening.

Jean-Pierre, however, gave him a skewed smile that covered only one side of his mouth and lifted ever so sarcastically. “About as much as you want to talk about why the Convent is really bugging the shit out of you.” Thorne shook his head. What an accent. Shit sounded like sheet. He might have laughed but dammit, suddenly he was painfully aware that Jean-Pierre had been going through hell for the past five months.

The man was stuck in between worlds. He had a breh, but he wasn’t bonded to her. He felt the call of that lousy myth-that-wasn’t-a-myth, the intense breh-hedden, but he couldn’t do anything about it. Fiona was all wrapped up in helping Colonel Seriffe hunt down that bastard Rith Do’onwa, the one who had held her captive for over a hundred years, and she’d been keeping Jean-Pierre on tenterhooks. She allowed him a couple of dates a month, which clearly ended up being some weird form of torture for the brother.

Jean-Pierre looked it, too. He had circles under his eyes, something an ascender shouldn’t be able to get, but then he was pulling double duty. On his off-hours he stuck close to Fiona—Endelle had assigned him as her Guardian of Ascension—but for half the night he worked the Borderlands, making war against death vampires like the rest of the Warriors of the Blood.