She didn’t bother to argue. With the war ramping up, nothing else seemed to matter. Besides, Braulio wouldn’t tell her a damn thing until he was ready.
“I’m with you, Endelle,” he said. “I’ll be close by when you need me.”
“Are you talking future stream shit?”
He nodded.
“Fine. Whatever.”
He offered her half a smile, then just vanished.
She headed back to Thorne’s command center since she really wanted to see what was happening in the Seattle Colony.
So Greaves had finally figured out how to locate the hidden colonies. She had a feeling that Nazca and Seattle were just the beginning, and she suspected he meant to move fast. One more flank to cover.
Once at the center, she moved to stand in front of the largest central screen. A few seconds later, Thorne arrived with Grace on his arm. When he reached Endelle, he smiled down at Grace then kissed her on the cheek.
Jesus, he looked so different. He was a new man—but maybe that’s what happened to any man when he got laid on a solid, regular basis. Marguerite was good for him, and so was the breh-hedden.
When Thorne inclined his head to Endelle and took his seat in front of the same screen, Endelle said, “Thought I’d watch the action from here.”
Thorne tapped a few buttons and spoke softly into his com. “Donna, we’re ready to link up.” He waited for a moment. The screen suddenly came alive. “Thanks, we’ve got it.”
He shifted slightly and spoke to Endelle over his shoulder. “Once we had a visual at Apache Junction Two, which started up about ten minutes ago, we gathered two hundred squadrons and began folding them down to Mortal Earth.”
Endelle stood back and watched Thorne work. He was all business these days, more sure of himself, relaxed, willing to take criticism in the name of building a stronger administration and army, and still he battled at the Borderlands a few hours every night. “Just to stay fit,” he’d told her a couple of weeks ago.
She crossed her arms over her chest and took a couple of deep breaths. Her gaze was fixed to the back of his head. Yep, like an amputee watching a limb walk around by itself. She wondered if she’d ever get over the absence of the mind-link she had once shared with him.
Grace moved to stand off to Thorne’s left.
Endelle glanced at her. Grace stared back then sent, They were raping Diallo’s wife when I found her. She’d almost bled out by then.
Shit.
Exactly.
But you brought her out?
Grace nodded.
Endelle narrowed her eyes. How?
The explanation involved Grace’s obsidian power, the same power she’d employed to locate the attack at Nazca.
“Love that you can split into an apparition. Reminds me of my darkening work, although it sounds more powerful and more versatile, like you can go just about anywhere.”
Thorne was tapping away at the computer, and the next moment the screen split into four segments, each a live feed from the in-flight video crews that were flying over the colony.
To her infinite pleasure, the Thunder God Warriors were making mincemeat of a bunch of blue-skinned, black-winged sociopaths.
“Hot damn,” Thorne shouted. The room, which had a dozen techs on different monitors, burst into shouts and applause.
Endelle could see Militia Warriors engaging four-to-one against each death vamp. Militia Warriors were limited in that way—it was the rare warrior who could take on a death vamp by himself. Her Warriors of the Blood were the truly gifted and could battle as many as eight at a time. Luken, the biggest of her warriors, often battled nine or more on a regular basis. He was one fit brute.
But the squads of four Militia Warriors were brilliantly trained and took down the enemy like dominoes falling one after the other.
As new squads peeled off the colony’s landing platform, at least three Section Leaders were directing the action, speaking into their coms and aiming traffic as needed. Many of the squads headed south into the valley’s grain fields, but more and more of them were sent into the forest. Their activity would be difficult to track, but guerrilla work was part of the training.
“Are you streaming any of this to Marcus?” Endelle asked. “He’ll want to send this out to our allied High Administrators all around the globe.”
“He was my third phone call after you and Seriffe.”
“Good.” Something inside Endelle began to ease. She had hated her break with Thorne when Marguerite entered the picture, but right now she saw the results. Thorne in this position, essentially commanding all aspects of the war against Greaves, was exactly what she had needed.
As for Marcus, who headed up her PR, he would be eating up the videos. Ever since he’d returned from a two-hundred-year vacay on Mortal Earth, he’d been piling the electronics. She now saw one of the results: He could mobilize his PR crews within seconds of any situation. She approved. On the other hand, one of the other results bugged the shit out of her since she now had a website called MadameEndelle.com, and all the other crap that Marcus called “a critical social media platform.” Thanks to a thing called “tweets” that Marcus and his breh, Havily, formulated on her behalf, Endelle was enjoying a surge in popularity.