Queen of Shadows (10 page)

The Elite who grabbed Helen’s arms and dragged her out of the room cast Miranda strange, half-fearful looks on their way.

“I’ll get her restrained and ready for you,” Faith told the Prime.

“I’ll be there in a moment.”

Miranda lay shaking on the floor, only barely aware that David knelt beside her.

“You didn’t have to do that,” he said. “I could have stopped her.”

She shook her head miserably. “All over again . . . I could feel it, it was like . . . like that night, and . . . I couldn’t help it. I wanted to kill her. I
tried
to kill her.”

She’d thought she was done weeping, but now she wondered if she ever would be. She broke into hoarse sobs, her hands fisting on the floor.

His hand touched her shoulder lightly, asking permission, but she didn’t care what he did. She didn’t struggle as, once again, he lifted her up off the floor and carried her back to the couch; but this time, instead of simply laying her there, he sat down, still holding her, and let her cry.

She would never have expected to be grateful for that, but she clenched her fingers in his shirt and wept into his shoulder completely unself-consciously.

His chest moved beneath her hand as he sighed.

“This is my fault,” he said. “It was too soon to start our work tonight—you needed more time for the memories to move away from the surface. Exhausting you like this let them take over.”

She took a deep breath and, by some miracle, got herself together enough to try to ground. It wasn’t a terribly successful attempt, energy-wise, but she did feel calmer and asked, “What did she do?”

“She’s a traitor, Miranda. Because of her, four of my Elite were murdered tonight. She’s also been working with those who have killed humans all over the city and want to drive us to war.”

“What are you going to do with her?”

Another sigh, this one full of regret. “She’ll be questioned as to her involvement with the insurgents. It may be that she was coerced into helping them, or maybe not. Either way, her actions have earned a death sentence.”

“Are you . . . Faith said . . . what exactly does ‘questioned’ mean?”

He met her eyes. “Don’t ask what you don’t want answered.”

She sat back, suddenly realizing she was in his lap, and moved away from him, sickness gathering in her stomach where the fear had been before.

He wasn’t human. None of these people were. They drank blood, they were immortal, and . . . he was going to torture Helen. She
knew
Helen. So did he. To become a guard in this wing she must have been with the Elite a long time, and he was just going to walk in there and . . . and then kill her.

The way Miranda had tried to kill her. The way Miranda had killed those men.

“I think I’m going to throw up,” she groaned.

He didn’t say anything as she stumbled away from the couch, but when she reached the door he said, “To your left,” keeping her from vomiting in his closet.

She fell to her knees painfully in front of the toilet, retching, but nothing came. She closed the lid and leaned her head on the seat, afraid to get up just yet.

If there had ever been a time when life made sense, that time was far fled. She had blundered into the rabbit hole, and there was no going back.

“If I asked, would you kill me?” she whispered to the empty bathroom. “How would I taste? Like a sad little girl? Or am I damaged goods now?”

There was no answer. She forced herself to her feet and over to the sink, where she washed her face with ice-cold water, wishing she could see herself and hoping she never would again.

When she returned to the bedroom, he was gone. The door to her room was standing open, and she could smell food. Her stomach growled even though it had been in a tumult only minutes before.

Numb, too tired to care anymore, she went to her room to eat.

“God
damn
it.”

The Prime stormed out of the interrogation room into the waning night, leaving the corpse of a once-trusted ally in a pool of her own blood.

“I don’t know what happened, Sire,” the Elite who had been watching the cell said, pleading in his voice. “No one went in or out of that room before you arrived.”

David whirled around on him and caught him by the throat, lifting up slightly. “If you’re lying to me,” he hissed, “I will cut out your lungs and feed them to you.”

“I swear . . . I swear, Sire. Question me however you need to.”

He dropped the guard, who looked like he was about to piss himself, and stalked away from the building. He was halfway across the garden by the time Faith caught up with him.

“We searched her while she was unconscious. I don’t know where the stake could have come from, much less how she managed to get it through her own heart.”

He stopped, taking a breath, appalled by his own lack of control. “Have the car brought around. I’m going into town to hunt.”

“It’s getting late—”

“Just do it.”

Faith nodded once and stepped away to call Harlan while David stood brooding beside the driveway.

Helen had deliberately ripped off the sleeve of her uniform to display the Seal of Auren on her shoulder before she’d somehow staked herself, alone, in a locked room with a guard. How long had she been working for the enemy? Almost every attack had occurred somewhere that a patrol unit had conveniently been absent from. She had to have been sending the duty schedule to her masters. But why had they chosen to up the stakes and start killing the Elite now?

Whatever their game, it was working. They were finding and exploiting holes in his security, and by doing so learned where he was weak. He would be impossible to kill outright, but if they kept poking and prodding, they’d find a place to slip in, as he had done with Auren. If they weren’t eliminated, it was only a matter of time. He’d seen the strategy before.

He paused midstride and narrowed his eyes.
Seen it before
.

“Star-three,” he said into his com.

Faith popped up at his elbow. “Yes, Sire?”

He turned to her. “While I’m in town, I want you to go into the archives and pull all the files on the Blackthorn syndicate.”

Her eyebrows lifted. “You don’t think . . .”

“This is starting to sound too familiar,” he replied. “The feints, the slowly rising body count, starting with humans . . . the Blackthorn took responsibility for Arrabicci’s assassination, and I’m well aware that they hate me.”

“But Prime Deven had them all executed,” Faith insisted. “The entire cult was wiped out. There aren’t any Blackthorn left.”

“Perhaps not. But either a few survived the wars, or someone has been taking a page from their playbook. Regardless, I want to see the files.”

“Yes, Sire. Are you sure you don’t want me to accompany you into the city, things being as they are?”

He shook his head. “Even assuming they can kill me, they’re not going to try yet. They’ll work at chipping away my authority so that when they do take me out—theoretically—there won’t be a huge resistance.”

She didn’t like it, but he didn’t care. He had already fed once tonight, but the energy he’d expended trying to teach Miranda had left him hungry again. He couldn’t think clearly with his veins itching and burning in his throat, and a yawning emptiness in his stomach.

He settled into the car, directing Harlan to one of his usual hunting grounds.

Just before they pulled away from the curb, he signaled for Harlan to wait and rolled the window down, beckoning to Faith.

“Check on Miss Grey when you finish with the files.”

And if there was a knowing little smile on his Second’s face as he rolled up the window, he chose to ignore it, for now.

The myth was that vampires could not catch or carry disease. It was close to truth, but not true.

Their lives depended on speed, ironic considering their lives and physical ages never moved. They could regenerate skin, tissue, even bone within a matter of hours, sometimes minutes, depending on the wound and the strength of the individual. It was that rapid healing that kept them from dying unless their bodies were completely destroyed by fire or sun. Severing the head meant there was no time to heal and no way to focus power enough to recover before death took its toll.

Wood was another matter; something in the cellular structure of wood slowed down the healing process almost to the rate of a human. The heart was the most popular strike because it caused almost instant death, but any major artery pierced by wood could be fatal if the stake wasn’t removed and the bleeding wasn’t stopped fast enough.

By the same token, communicable diseases were killed by their white cells as quickly as they could heal a bullet wound, but if the disease was advanced in the human it came from, it could linger as long as several hours.

Diseased blood tasted bad. That was another way they avoided it. Every human’s blood held layer upon layer of taste and scent, conveying a full profile of the human’s health, living environment, and habits. Many of those same flavors could be scented as well so the predator could avoid tainted prey.

He could tell at ten meters if someone had a cold, allergies, or an unusual diet; vegetarians tasted cleaner, but sometimes a greasy burger was exactly what was called for. He could smell drugs, cigarettes, alcohol. He could taste ancestry as easily as he could taste cancer. They all had their preferences, but there was no reason to be indiscriminate.

Drugs and alcohol worked the way diseases did. He’d fed on a lot of hippies in the sixties just for the high. Everything humans did with their bodies and their energy affected how nourishing they were to his kind.

Sex, too, had its own range of tastes. Vampires drank desire, pleasure, and pain in the blood, often with equal abandon.

He didn’t ask her name. She didn’t ask his.

The club crowds were thinning by the time he got to the city, but there were always places to find suitable prey. The mortal population of Austin had no idea how many of its Sixth Street bars and dance clubs were owned by vampires who set up the perfect hunting grounds for their real clientele. The bouncers let in only the healthy and clean. They provided cheap drinks and kept out the scum. Ignoring the fact that entering such an establishment was likely to end in holes in one’s neck, they were safe places for humans to enjoy themselves . . . with a hidden cover charge.

She was in her midtwenties, shorter than him, with small hands and intelligent green eyes. She had been about to leave after a hard night of partying. Her boyfriend had dumped her that very day and she’d come to get wasted with her friends, hoping to hook up with someone to make her forget.

He was well acquainted with the club. He owned it. He had his own booth and his own private room in the back that he had used at least once a week as long as he had lived in Austin.

It was three hours before dawn when he escorted her into the room, and two hours before dawn when he escorted her out.

She had such soft skin, pale and sweet like vanilla ice cream. Her nails dug into his shoulders as he parted her thighs with an expert hand, teasing her. While he stroked her body, his power caressed her mind, and she cried out, her muscles tightening around his fingers.

She was already sweating by the time he peeled the tight T-shirt from her torso, exposing the flat plane of her belly and the swell of her breasts to his mouth. Too flat, almost . . . he would have preferred she were softer, with more curve at the hip, perhaps fuller lips . . . but she tasted like summer, like a woman who had never seen death or deliberately caused anyone pain, and he drank in that innocence, then drank her blood.

His teeth found purchase in her throat, and to distract her from the pain, he opened her legs again and entered her, the combined pleasure of it almost too much to bear for them both. She wrapped her legs around his waist and lifted her hips to meet his, and thank God, she didn’t bother with the theatrical moaning most human women did. It would take a far greater fool than he not to recognize a faked orgasm.

The real thing, though, was almost as good as blood. Life energy was their true nourishment, and the most usable form for his kind was the blood, but there were other forms that, though lacking in staying power, were far more enjoyable.

He lifted his lips from her throat and licked delicately at the wound to speed its healing, his senses reeling with satisfaction. Everything else simply melted away.

He was so grateful that he brought her twice before finishing himself, then again before releasing her. Women, he had always felt, had gotten a raw deal sexually speaking. It was so easy for men, but women took work, and they put up with a lot from the dicked gender. The least he could do was make it worth their while.

She was breathing hard, the last tiny tremors still running through her body, her eyes shut tightly. Neither felt the need to speak . . . but as he lay on top of her, supporting himself with his arms, he looked down and realized for the first time that she had red hair.

Six

“I want to go for a walk, please.”

The new door guard, a dreadlocked man named Terrence, still seemed a bit bewildered at his sudden promotion, not to mention nonplussed as to how to handle his charge. He never knew whether to smile at her or bow or what. She found it oddly endearing.

Samuel grinned at her. He’d never been rude, but after Helen’s arrest, his attitude toward Miranda had gotten much warmer. She wasn’t entirely sure why, but as with so many other things here, she just didn’t ask.

“Terrence here can accompany you,” Samuel said.

Miranda sighed, but she knew there was no way around it. They were under orders not to let her venture out alone. All the stubbornness in the world on her part wouldn’t persuade them to disobey their Prime. “Okay. I’ll be ready in five minutes.”

She went back into the bedroom and put on her shoes and cardigan, then pulled her hair back into two quick, slightly puffy braids. When she opened the door again, Terrence bowed, then let her lead the way out of the Prime’s wing.

Things had changed in the week since Helen’s death. Miranda had woken from her nightmares with something new fluttering weakly around in her heart. She didn’t know what to call it, but it got her out of bed and drove her to practice grounding even though David had decided not to push her for a while. He’d told her to practice whenever she felt up to it, and to let him know when she was ready to learn more. That sudden kindness after the way he’d come at it the first time made her wonder about him, though she wasn’t sure what exactly to wonder.

After that he’d disappeared. She barely saw him for days. Whatever was happening had apparently gotten much, much worse, and the Court simply didn’t have time for her anymore. There was a tension in the Haven she could practically taste even through David’s shield.

It hadn’t taken her long to start exploring. A guard followed her everywhere, but they kept their distance as long as she didn’t try to get herself in trouble or wander off somewhere forbidden. None of the Elite had a clue what to make of her, this battered little woman with her frightening power. Those who had seen what she did to Helen had passed on the story, and now she had a reputation.

Miranda couldn’t decide if having a reputation here was something good or bad, but as the days went on, she decided she liked it. She felt safer knowing that she made them nervous.

At first, their deferring to her the way they did to the Prime bothered her, but after a few days it became second nature to her. So did inclining her head at them in acknowledgment of the bow . . . which was exactly what David did.

“Why are they treating me like this?” Miranda asked Faith one night as they took a stroll through the gardens. Faith had come to see her several times, checking on her welfare and then, to Miranda’s surprise, engaging her in conversation, trying to learn more about what made the Prime’s new pet tick.

Faith knew exactly what she meant and glanced over at the guard who had been shadowing them on their walk. “Promise not to freak out over what I tell you?”

“I promise.”

They took the long path that looped around the garden perimeter and over toward the stables, an area Miranda had not yet ventured toward. It was another hot night, but not blisteringly so, and signs pointed toward an early fall this year. The end of the summer was apparently quite a celebration among their kind—longer nights and a decline in the crime rate made life easier for the Shadow World.

Faith walked alongside her, her eyes on the splendid riot of color that surrounded them—all shades of green, all depths of shadow, the ethereal whites of the night-blooming flowers that released their heady scents into the warm wind as they passed.

“There’s a rumor,” Faith went on. “After word got out of your abilities, people began to talk. You shouldn’t make anything out of it, Miss Grey—”

“Miranda, please. Miss Grey sounds like I’m a substitute math teacher.”

A smile. “All right, Miranda, you mustn’t give these rumors any more credit than exactly what they are, the idle gossip of a houseful of vampires where you are now living in the mistress suite off the Prime’s bedroom.”

“The mistress what now?”

“Your room. The last Prime to live here had no Queen, but he kept a series of mistresses in that room throughout his tenure. The last one was reported to have been showing signs she might become more than a mistress.”

“I’m sleeping in the Slut Suite of Whore Manor?”

“You can see, then, why rumors might fly. Add to that your abilities, and . . . the most popular theory now is that you’re being groomed to take the Queen’s Signet.”

Miranda flopped down on a bench, astonished. “But I’m human!”

“Rumor has it it’s only a matter of time.”

Tonight, Miranda followed those thoughts almost against her will as she followed the path that she and Faith had taken along the outermost edge of the gardens.

Ridiculous.
It was the sort of wild speculation that surrounded the British royalty or the latest talentless Hollywood celebutantes. Surely the people here had more important things to worry about than what she was doing here. Gossip was usually a mindless distraction from a far too serious world. Clearly the same forces were at work here.

If it was so mindless, then, why was she angry about it?

Miranda shook her head and took the path back toward the Haven, determined to practice her shielding tonight. They were going to keep talking as long as she was still here. She could deal with the stares and the bowing, but she’d always hated being whispered about.

Had David heard the rumors? What did he think of them? Probably nothing. He had to be used to the chatter; that was part of how Primes built their empires, using their reputations to bolster their power. She’d seen that much already. Faith had told her a few of the stories that surrounded him—he could vanish into thin air, move faster than darkness, and probably breathe fire and turn people into gerbils. Given what Miranda had seen him do so far, it was probably easy to foster such legends beyond the Haven’s walls.

She took the stairs back to the second floor, pretending not to notice the Elite behind her, and gave the guards a nod of thanks before shutting and locking her door.

Miranda took a minute to work a bit more antifrizz goop into her hair; the humidity had been high for Austin this year, and she could only imagine how wild she looked . . . not that she could be sure. She was looking forward to having a mirror again.

A mirror, and a life would be nice, too. Strange that she was starting to think that maybe, just maybe, she might find the latter someday.

The time before the Haven had already become a blur of pain and fear—this place was so far removed from the day-walking world that she didn’t even feel like herself anymore. That horrific night in the alley had broken her heart into a thousand pieces, but it had broken her life neatly into “before” and “after.” It had been so long since she’d had her mind, so long since she’d felt any tiny flicker of hope for the future . . . all she had to do was get strong enough to shield for herself, and she could return to Austin, and . . .

What, exactly? Go back to performing? Would that be safe? Could she even play without relying on the emotions of others for fuel? If not, what would she do, get a job like a normal person?

She stood for a moment with her brain reeling.
Normal.
She had no idea what that even meant anymore. Yes, there was hope . . . and that hope brought with it a new kind of fear that she simply wasn’t equipped to face right now.

As if fate knew she needed the distraction, she noticed that there was a light coming from under David’s door.

That was unusual this early in the evening. He was almost never there until nearly dawn. Curious, she ventured over to the door and opened it a crack to peek in.

She expected to find him at his desk working some sort of technological wizardry, but when he wasn’t, at first she thought he’d just went off and left the light on. Then she caught sight of his dark head at the end of the couch—he was lying down.

Miranda opened the door a little wider and crept over the threshold just to make sure he was okay; it wasn’t like him to be here this time of night, let alone to relax in any form at any time. Something had to be wrong.

Inching closer, she got a better look. He was, indeed, stretched out on the couch, in casual clothes like he’d worn the night he’d shown her how to ground; the coffee table was spread with papers in tidy piles, and there was an open file folder over his stomach, one hand holding it down. She smiled when she saw the empty ice cream carton on the corner of the table: Ben & Jerry’s Chunky Monkey.

He was asleep. She’d never actually seen him sleep before. It made him look younger, less grave, almost . . . cute.

She wondered if he’d ever been happy, if he’d ever smiled . . . if he’d ever been young. She remembered her grandmother saying once that she was a sad child, born old. She had a feeling that David had been born that way, too.

She started to retreat to her room, but he shifted slightly, startling her so that she froze like a rabbit under the gaze of a snake. The faint touch of peace on his face hardened, his brow furrowing, and he shook his head slightly, one hand flexing on the couch cushion. His lips moved, almost a tremor, words barely audible.

“Lizzie . . .”

Miranda held her breath and listened, her heart in her throat as she leaned closer, straining to hear.

“Lizzie, take Thomas . . . hurry . . .”

In that moment pain flashed through Miranda’s head, and she stepped backward involuntarily, clapping her hands over her ears the way she once had to try to block out the voices. This time, though, it wasn’t a voice invading her thoughts, it was an image: a little boy with brown hair down to his collar, running with his arms outstretched, giggling. He wore some kind of Pilgrim-looking costume that was stained around the hems, and he was barefoot, his skin nut-brown from the sun.

The boy ran along some kind of dirt path and was swept up into the arms of a woman waiting for him; she wore a muted dress with a high collar and her hair was pulled back in a stark knot, but her smile was warm, and beneath the dull-colored clothes she was young and beautiful, with sparkling brown eyes.

The scene began to fade, and Miranda smelled something, or rather, remembered the smell of something: smoke, and the acrid stench of . . . something burning. She heard a cacophony of shouting and wailing, and terror gripped her; she turned and ran, taking the path back from where she’d come, but there was nowhere to go, nothing but fire . . .

“Miranda?”

She flailed out at the men who tried to seize her arms—they were going to kill Thomas, she had to hide him before—

Someone shook her gently, and she gasped, her vision clearing as suddenly as it had appeared.

She was backed up against the bedroom wall, and David was standing in front of her, his hands lightly resting on her shoulders. He was pale, even for him, and looked more worried than she’d ever seen him. His eyes were an even deeper blue than usual, smoky.

“Sorry,” she stammered. “The light was on and I didn’t . . . didn’t mean to wake you.”

He shook his head and guided her back to the couch. “What happened?”

She had no idea where to begin. As long as she’d been cursed with voices, they’d been just that, or feelings; she’d never
seen
things before, especially not random events that could have been history, or just brain garbage.

“Wait,” she murmured. “Were you dreaming just now?”

He looked away. “Why?”

“I saw a little boy, and a woman. Then there was fire.”

David looked at her sharply.
“What?”

“They were kind of . . . colonial, I guess. I don’t know history that well. But they both looked so happy. Then it’s like I was her, and I was afraid they . . . somebody was going to hurt the little boy.”

The expression of suspicion on his face faded into recognition, and then something like sorrow, and he looked away from her again. “Yes. Somebody was.”

“What did I see?”

He sat back, eyes on the ground, and crossed his arms almost nervously. “You saw my wife.”

“And the boy . . .”

“Our son.”

“Do you . . . do you dream of them often?”

“No,” he answered, still not looking at her. “Not often.”

A thousand questions whirled in her head, but she knew she was prying and was fairly sure it wasn’t a subject he would feel comfortable talking about. Whatever drove a person to become a vampire, it couldn’t be pretty. She couldn’t imagine what would persuade her to give up her humanity that way . . . the thought made her feel queasy. She couldn’t even look at the needle when she got a shot.

“Oh, come now,” he said, picking up on the thought with genuine amusement in his voice. “It’s no more disgusting than the things you humans eat.”

“Not me,” she returned with a grin. “Vegetarian, remember?”

Now he was definitely smiling. “Cheese is the coagulated lactation of a ruminant mammal. It’s not even made from human milk, which would make far more sense. Eggs are essentially the menstrual period of a chicken. Honey is mostly bee spit. Shall I go on?”

She grabbed a throw pillow and threw it at him. “Oh, gross!”

The tension of the moment was effectively broken, thank God. She knew better than to revisit the subject. There were some things . . . no, a lot of things . . . she didn’t need to know.

“How are you tonight?” he asked. “It’s been a few days.”

“Not awful.” She drew her legs up under her chin; it no longer hurt to do so, and a few of her more visible bruises were fading. Her ribs and back still ached if she stayed in one position too long, and one of her wrists throbbed if she tried to play guitar for more than half an hour—not that she had, really. She’d picked at the instrument here and there when she was bored, but nothing else. “I think I might be ready to start lessons again.”

An eyebrow quirked. “Are you certain?”

“I think so. I’ve got grounding down pretty well, and I’ve been working on moving energy around.”