Master of Shadows (13 page)

Flo’s was a bare-bones establishment, with wooden booths and green checkered tablecloths made of tough plastic designed to be wiped down between customers. The walls displayed cheap prints of bowls of fruit and vases of ugly flowers. The vinyl flooring was cracked in places, though scrubbed ruthlessly clean thanks to Miranda’s werewolf strength. The tableware was battered stainless steel the waitresses wrapped in paper napkins between meals. Still, a job was a job, and given the economy, Randi was glad to have it.

So she delivered the chicken and a charming smile to table twelve. “Here’s your lunch, Mr. Williams. Enjoy.”

The burly UPS driver smiled back and nodded at Hannah, who was practically dancing around the dining room. “Hannah’s in a good mood.”

“She threw out the Rat Bastard.”

His smile took on a feral gleam. “It’s about time. I was about to lay for the creep in the parking lot.” Miranda wasn’t the only one who’d noticed the bruises.

“He finally pushed her too far.”

Williams frowned. “Hope there’s not going to be trouble.”

“He left town last night.”
And he won’t be coming back.

“Good.”

Miranda noticed table eleven’s iced tea was getting low and headed over to refill it.

Hannah grinned happily at her on the way to the kitchen, and Miranda savored the warm glow she felt. At least one thing she’d done last night had turned out.

Unlike her panic at that magical contact. She’d blasted back at the source of that brush of power, then spent more than an hour heavily shielded. It was only after she’d calmed down that she realized the magical signature wasn’t Warlock’s. Though she did recognize it.

Dammit, she’d fireballed La Belle Coeur.

Miranda frowned, hoping the witch was all right. Luckily, Belle was very powerful, so she doubted she’d actually hurt her.

One way or another, Miranda had lost a valuable opportunity. If she’d been a little less paranoid, maybe she’d have been able to establish communication.

When they met at that damned tea party last month, Belle had offered to protect her from Warlock by taking her to Avalon. She’d have been truly safe for the first time in her life.

Miranda sighed. In retrospect, she should have taken Belle up on her offer, and dragged her mother along, kicking and screaming if necessary. Warlock and Gerald Drake could have kissed their asses.

At the time, Joelle had told her Warlock would declare war on the Magekind if the two of them accepted the protection Belle offered. Innocents would die, and they’d be responsible. Miranda had listened to her mother.

And Joelle had been the one to die.

After recovering from last night’s scare, Randi had spent two hours gingerly reaching out, hoping Belle would attempt to contact her again. Unfortunately, she hadn’t dared broadcast too strongly, because that might attract Warlock’s attention. She sure as hell didn’t want to do that.

Dammit.

Miranda would just have to hope Belle tried to contact her again. And next time, she’d make damn sure not to blast her.

 

It was Isolde
.

 

Tristan jerked himself
out of the dream with a strangled shout, his heart pounding like a warhorse at a gallop. For a moment, he didn’t recognize the intricately carved bed with its fairies and dragons.

Belle. He was in Belle’s bed. They’d made love. But where the hell was she?

Tristan rolled naked out of the bed, his heart still beating hard with the aftermath of the nightmare. Sweat beaded on his upper lip, and he wiped it away.

Spotting a piece of cream stationery on the bedside table, he plucked it up and read the flowing lines in Belle’s lovely handwriting.

 

Implication being that he would have drunk said breakfast from her pretty throat. In retrospect, it was probably just as well. He wouldn’t have enjoyed explaining why he woke sweating buckets and breathing hard. Isolde was not a memory he liked to share.

Feeling off-balance, Tristan looked around for his clothes. Thoughtful hostess that she was, Belle had conjured clean slacks and a fresh Polo shirt that matched his eyes. She’d left them stacked with his sword belt on the dresser, apparently knowing no Knight of the Round Table liked walking around unarmed. Tristan dressed, buckled on his sword, and wandered downstairs, feeling out of sorts and grumpy.
Fucking dream.
He hadn’t had a nightmare about Isolde in years. Apparently his subconscious had noticed the resemblance between his former wife and his new lover, and had elected to sound the alarm.

Which was just too bad. Damned if he’d go running because of a bad dream. It had been fifteen hundred years. It was high time he got over Isolde.

For one thing, Belle was nothing like his wife, despite the slight physical resemblance. She was funny and intelligent, loyal and courageous. Betrayal was no part of her honest soul. She wanted to save every man she met, even the ones who went blood-mad and tried to kill her. She took responsibility for their weakness and flogged herself for her failure to recognize it.

It apparently didn’t even occur to her to blame the Majae’s Council, though eliminating weak candidates was its job. Anybody she made love to had been first vetted by that group of witches. If her lover went mad, it was because the council had failed to predict he would.

But Belle never blamed anybody but herself.

All true. So why did unease crawl through his mind like a worm eating an apple?

Dammit.

Tristan left Belle’s
house to find the night clear and almost painfully bright. Avalon stood around him in all its glory, its châteaus, castles, and palaces shimmering with moonlight and magic, surrounded by a riot of vegetation. Gardens, topiary, and old oaks were interspaced with burbling fountains and moonlit statuary. Vampires and witches walked the cobblestone streets, arguing and laughing and flirting, enjoying rare moments of downtime. Their happiness made him feel oddly empty.

Tristan frowned. He had no desire to go home to his silent house. It was too damned early for that anyway.

I’ll head for the Lord’s Club.
Maybe Arthur would be there, or one of the other Round Table knights. He needed company to drive off Isolde’s restless ghost.

 

The Lord’s Club
had been built in the style of an English gentleman’s club—a purely male bastion of solid redbrick and cream cornices, complete with oxblood leather armchairs and dark wainscoting. It featured an impressive library, a magical wine cellar with bottled blood from every Maja in Avalon, and a movie theater that featured flicks dear to the heart of anyone with an XY chromosome:
The Three Stooges
,
Monty Python
, the entire Quentin Tarantino oeuvre, and various dumb but entertaining action movies. If your mood was more violent than that, you could usually find a sparring partner in the state-of-the-art gym and dojo that occupied the lower floor.

All of which sounded pretty good to Tristan.

But as he walked in the door, a shouted battle cry rang out, a raw howl of rage and despair.

Jolting, Tristan drew his sword and broke into a run, plunging up the sweeping staircase in vampire bounds, following his brother knight’s voice.

Sir Bors stood at the top of the stairs, naked to the waist, a sword in his hands. Sweat painted glistening trails down the warrior’s chest, and his dark hair was plastered around his shoulders in sweating strands. He wore an expression of frenzied rage on his flushed, bearded face, and his eyes were wild.

And he was alone. There was no enemy menacing him as he leaped and spun, swinging his weapon in great arcs around the broad corridor.

“Bors,” Tristan snapped, “what the fuck is going on?”

His brother knight looked around at him, white surrounding his too-wide eyes. Like Tristan, Bors was one of Arthur’s original knights. “What? I’m practicing.”

“At what, giving me a heart attack?” Disgruntled, Tristan slid his sword back into its sheath.

Bors shrugged. “I needed a fight. There was no one here, so I thought I’d make do.” His expression brightened. “Would you like a workout?”

Tristan had given him a closer look, and it wasn’t hard to put the pieces together. “You’ve been drinking.”

Bors shrugged. “Not all that much.”

“Enough. Bors, you know what Arthur told you about this.”

“I needed it.” He sheathed his sword and turned toward one of the huge stained-glass windows that lined the hallway. “It’s too quiet at home. I was hoping someone would be here, but there was nobody. So I hit the Majae’s Cellar. God knows there’s plenty.”

“That’s not the issue. It’s not good to drink that much blood, Bors.”

“Maybe not, but it makes me feel a hell of a lot better.” He flashed Tristan a reckless grin.

It was called being blood-drunk, but it was much more like being high. Too much blood gave a vampire a sense of invulnerability, speeding up the mind and body like a dose of amphetamines.

Luckily, Magi were a fairly disciplined crowd. Overindulging in blood was considered a weakness, and most vampires were far too proud to become dependent on anything.

Bors had never had a problem with the addiction either. Not until his son, Richard Edge, had gone on a rampage.

Richard had been enraged that he hadn’t been permitted Merlin’s Gift and the immortality of a vampire agent. He’d turned to forbidden death magic he’d learned from demonic alien invaders called the Dark Ones. Eventually, he’d kidnapped Arthur and tried to sacrifice him as part of a spell that would have destroyed the Magekind. Bors had fought his son and helped Arthur and Gawain kill him.

Richard’s betrayal had broken something in Bors, something that couldn’t be fixed. Now when he fought, it was with a fatal recklessness, as if he was deliberately courting death. His blood addiction only made that recklessness worse.

For a moment, Tristan considered ripping a strip off his friend’s hide. Then he sighed and drew his sword. “Come on, Bors. We’ll burn it off.”

Bors shot him a surprised glance. “I figured you’d give me a lecture.”

Tristan shrugged. “Hell, I don’t want to go home either.”

 

If they had
a prayer of avoiding war with the Magekind, Justice figured Carl Rosen was it.

Carl was the chairman of the Council of Clans, an upright, graying werewolf with stern features and cool hazel eyes. Of all the werewolves on the council, Carl was one of the few with the courage to give the Magekind a fair shake. Even better, he had the power to make it stick.

As the Justice Committee met, Carl sat, listening without comment as the members argued about the murder of Jimmy Sheridan.

The five of them met around an oval table in a quiet briefing room located in the depths of the Livingston Corporate Center. The company was owned by Elena Rollings, nee Livingston, who was both a werewolf and a member of the Council of Clans. She let the council use company facilities for meetings, held after hours so they wouldn’t raise questions from the humans.

This particular room was a pleasant one, with thick blue carpeting and soft, gray-painted walls. It still smelled faintly of the coffee and apple Danish the company’s employees had enjoyed during the day. The massive armchairs that surrounded the black laminate table were made of soft leather that cupped the butt and back in expensive comfort. Elena wasn’t cheap with her employees.

Justice sank back in his very nice chair and eyed the other four members of the committee. With one exception, he didn’t trust any of them worth a damn.

Elena, who sat to his right, was Justice’s only real ally. Redheaded and delicately beautiful, she was married to a cop named Lucas Rollings, and held the Wulfgar Seat on the Council of Clans. Which made her about as aristocratic as it was possible to get. Yet she wanted to improve the lives of the werewolves they served instead of simply increasing the political and economic clout of the Chosen.

Unfortunately, the committee’s other members included a couple of assholes. Thomas Andrews IV always used his own full name, including the number, even though the other Thomas Andrewses had been dead for years. The tanned and manicured CEO of Andrews Oil, he was a werewolf aristocrat, and he didn’t let anybody forget it.

Then there was Robert Tanner, who was worse.

“The Magekind have gone mad, just as Merlin foretold.” Tanner tapped his fourteen-carat gold Cross pen on the council table in a continuous annoying rap that was slowly driving Justice crazy. “We have to stop them before it’s too late.”

“Merlin didn’t ‘foretell’ that the Magekind would go mad.” Elena visibly fought to maintain a cool, logical tone. “Yes, he was concerned there would be a problem. But we’ve got no reason to believe Arthur has suddenly gone insane with bloodlust.”