Endelle didn’t want Greaves reprieved. She wanted him to pay for everything he had done.
She looked at Thorne, but he just shook his head. Your call on this one, he sent. But you need to make the decision quickly. Every warrior here will want him dead. Soon, you won’t have a choice.
So this was to be her call. She had seen Casimir’s change. He was a new man, and his conscience would demand penitence for centuries to come. She knew that the redemption program was its own form of punishment that essentially lasted a lifetime because of the rebuilding of the conscience.
Greaves would suffer.
He was also beginning to recover. Greaves had powerful self-healing abilities. He began swimming to shore, lumbering through the water. She called out to the triad, “Once he reaches the bank, cast an energy field over him while I figure this out. Alison has that ability.”
As she pondered what had to be the hardest decision of her life, she watched the triad pull together. Only by shifts of shoulders and arches of necks could she see the early part of the process. Once Grace took possession of Fiona, the earth-based power rumbled and began to stream, a silver river of energy above them.
Greaves reached the bank and started to rise to his feet, even with all the deep pits and rivulets of blood. Fiona turned in his direction. The next moment he lay flat on the grassy bank, a beautiful gold, red, and blue field of energy pinning him down.
Endelle turned away from the flotilla, rising higher into the air. She needed to think.
The lake was full mostly of dead or dying death vampires. Colonel Seriffe and Thorne had trained the warriors well.
Even the Third Earth death vampires were dead. Santiago flew above their bodies. She could sense that he was stationed there to make certain they didn’t have an unknown power to rise. If any of them did, he was ready with his ruby dagger in one hand and sword in the other.
The rest of the sky was full of Militia Warriors patrolling back and forth. Occasionally she could spot her Warriors of the Blood. Just a few knots were still battling over the lake far to the south.
Retrieval boats zoomed past below, and by order, Militia Warriors flew down to escort them in case any of the death vampires in the water weren’t really dead.
She began to feel weary in her new form. Of course all her battle adrenaline was gone. She even felt a pressing need to get to solid ground and morph back to her ascended form.
She returned to Greaves’s position, created some mist, and went through another painful morphing process.
By the time she was done, she had little energy to do more than sit in her flight suit and stare into Greaves’s eyes.
He had changed as well, but his body, as to be expected, was pitted in many places to the bone. Even parts of his skull were exposed. He lay naked and trembling, his eyes full of pain. But he was healing, that much was clear to her.
“I’ll give you the choice, Greaves. We can try you at COPASS in Prague for war crimes that Marcus has well documented and to which many, many people will testify and for which you will undoubtedly be executed. Or I can send you to Fourth, to your mother, and to the redemption pools. Which will it be?”
He lay shaking as he closed his eyes. She knew him. He was one manipulative bastard and was no doubt trying to figure out which course of action would give him the best advantage going forward.
When he finally opened his eyes, he sent, Beatrice.
“As you wish.” She focused her thoughts on Fourth Earth. She and Beatrice had been friends for millennia. When she gave Beatrice the news, the woman grew very silent.
Endelle added, You have Grace to thank for intervening.
I am coming to you returned to her, and a split second later Beatrice appeared in an elegant peach-silk gown and beautifully coiffed red hair, looking as Grecian as ever. She nodded to Endelle, but it was to Grace that she said a soft thank-you.
She waved her hand over the monster that had tormented Second Earth for so long. He now wore a long white robe. Endelle was just about to have obsidian flame release the energy field when Beatrice took him exactly how he was, prone and caught by the field.
Endelle sat with her hands clasped around her knees. She was exhausted from morphing and trying to stay alive as she battled Greaves. Her hip ached where he’d struck her.
And now he was gone, taken away to Fourth in an energy field.
She couldn’t believe it. After all this time, after centuries of being unable to deal effectively with Greaves, suddenly he was just gone.
She hardly knew what to think or to feel.
She remained on the bank of White Lake and watched her team perform all that they needed to do. The speedboats rescued dozens of wounded Militia Warriors from the waters, those who had been injured during battle against the death vampires. The healers moved from boat to boat and worked on the injured.