Queen of Shadows (3 page)

She watched the darkness of the alleyway close around her and heard the sound of her guitar case scraping along the ground. One of the men already had her purse and was rifling through it while the one dragging her threw her to the ground.

She wasn’t afraid. Fear was for the unknown. She knew exactly what was going to happen.

Hallelujah . . . hallelujah . . .

It disconcerted them that she didn’t fight, but they beat her anyway, a sharp kick to her stomach causing her body to involuntarily curl around itself to protect her abdomen. Another kick to her kidneys, and she cried out from the pain. One of the men dropped to his knees and hit her in the face, hissing at her to keep quiet or she was dead. She saw the flash of a knife, felt the blade held to her throat.
Don’t scream, don’t move. Do as we say and you get to live.

She knew better.

They pushed her onto her back, and she stared up at the storm clouds she could barely see between the buildings. It was raining hard, but neither she nor her attackers noticed the downpour.

The night was hot and humid, but she felt cold when her clothes were ripped aside—cold, always cold.

This is the way the world ends . . . not with a bang but a whimper.

Zippers. Laughter. Hands shoving her legs apart.

Tears filled her eyes and spilled over, but she was still, just staring blankly with dead eyes up past the shoulder of the first man who forced himself into her body. The pain was a thousand miles away, as were their voices. All she could feel was cold, and all she heard was music, endless lines of melody filling her head until the world went dark at last.

First was the smell. Garbage, engine exhaust. The sickening musty smell of sex and an undertone of blood.

Then came sensations, one by one: pain first in her hands, then in her rib cage, then sharp and hot between her legs. Her face felt huge, her tongue swollen in her mouth.

Sounds. Men speaking. The voices were familiar and sent a knife of fear through her belly.

Someone nudged her back with a foot, but she didn’t move, didn’t betray her consciousness. She knew that if they saw she was awake, they would kill her. Why they hadn’t already, she didn’t know.

She heard a grunt and felt something hot and wet hit the side of her face. Oh. That was why. Another zipper, this one going upward, and a chuckle. He was done.

It wasn’t over. She was still alive and they weren’t leaving.
Oh God. Oh God.

The numbness that had overtaken her before no longer shielded her from the horror of what was happening—fear crawled over her body and she fought the panicked need to run away. She wouldn’t make it two steps, assuming she could even get to her feet. The pain told her quite well that she might be able to crawl, but that was it.

Movement, and someone seized her by her hair and pulled her upward, exposing her throat. She couldn’t stop the scream from erupting.

“Well, look at that,” the man with the knife against her jugular said, his breath fetid against her face. “Pretty little thing’s awake.”

He stroked the blade along her jawline. “You know, baby, you’ve got just about the sweetest little pussy I’ve ever fucked. Doesn’t she, boys?”

Grunts of agreement all around. She wanted desperately to struggle, to bring her knee up into his crotch, to do anything; but it was too late. She was too hurt, too weak. The time to fight was long past. She’d let it pass. She had given up her life instead of trying to survive, and this was the end of it.

The end. Please, let this be the end. Let them just kill me . . . at least then it’ll be quiet . . . please . . .

He was laughing, and withdrew the knife. She could feel his hips against hers, and to her disgust, he had an erection again. “Maybe we’re not finished yet,” he said. “I think I’ve got one left in me.”

“Gordon, let’s do her and get out of here,” another of the men said anxiously. “Somebody’s gonna come by.”

“Keep watch,” Gordon snapped. His free hand groped her breasts beneath her torn shirt, then dropped down to undo his pants.

He wasn’t coordinated enough for the operation, though, and had to loosen his hold around her neck to force her back to the ground. For just a second, he lowered the knife.

Some instinct she had never felt before surged up through her battered body. Rage, red-hot and fanged, boiled her from the inside and seized the opportunity that chance had granted it. A sound she’d never known she could make tore from her throat—half scream, half snarl.

She threw herself backward into the man and knocked him off balance, then twisted her body toward him, clawing at his face. She felt something mushy beneath her thumb and shoved her nail into it, eliciting a scream from Gordon as he fought her off. She fell sideways, reaching out to grab the knife foolishly by the blade; it sliced into her palm, but she won it free, rolling up onto her knees in time to see Gordon scream again, his hands covering his eye, blood gushing from beneath his fingers.

She had his eyeball under her nails.

The other men, panicked, started toward her, but the sight of her covered in blood, half naked, brandishing the knife at them while their leader scrabbled at his punctured eye, gave them pause.

“Kill the fucking bitch!” Gordon shrieked.
“Kill her!”

Other weapons came out. More knives, but no guns. Small-time thugs used to lording their power over vulnerable women. They’d found a perfect victim in her—small, frail, alone, and weak. She hadn’t even fought. They had assaulted women as a team for years, leaving bodies here and there in Dumpsters and trash cans. No one had ever reported them to the police—because they chose women no one would ever miss, who could be used up, killed, and thrown away. Like her.

She could feel what they were feeling—Fear. Anger. Hatred. But mostly fear. They didn’t know what to do, but there was no way she could fight them all, even if she weren’t injured and cornered. They were going to kill her.

But she wasn’t going to make it easy for them. Not again.

When they came toward her, all attacking at once, she stepped back, and her entire being screamed,
“NO!”

The sheer force of her emotions flew outward, hitting them all like sledgehammers, and as one they were knocked backward by it, knives skittering across the concrete. She lashed out again and again, beating them with her agony the way they had with their fists, violating them with her violation. They were screaming, writhing. She didn’t stop.

She stood over them in the now-pouring rain, blood oozing down her thighs, her hands fisted at her sides, and ground her emotions into them like putting out a cigarette in someone’s arm. She made them feel the fear and pain of every woman they’d raped and killed, imagining their last thoughts. The women had mothers, daughters, boyfriends waiting at home who would never see them again. They had hopes and fears and possibilities that Miranda had never had. These pathetic little men had taken all of that away. Their hatred for women had made them bold.

One of them was begging for his life. She stared down at him, and he flinched from her eyes, eyes no one had seen in months. He had a wife, kids. Please. He offered her anything she wanted if she’d just let him go.

She stared, feeling nothing. “No.”

She didn’t know how she knew, but she knew what to do. The mind was tethered to the body, and she imagined reaching in and snapping the cord as if she were snapping his neck.

He stopped begging.

Now the others started. Even Gordon, who lay in a pool of his own blood not far from the pool of hers, where he had thrust his thick, blunt penis into her body over and over again, then watched and jerked off while the others did the same, begged for mercy.

Had the other women begged? Yes, most of them had. They hadn’t fought, but they had appealed to hearts that were little more than lumps of rotten wood. Women always went for the emotions. Men went for fists. That was how the world worked.

Snap. Snap.
Glassy eyes fixed on the walls. Struggling limbs put to rest. Those rotten hearts that felt nothing but contempt for those they destroyed shuddered into stillness.

She turned on Gordon.

She didn’t hear his words, was unmoved by his begging, even when he crawled to her feet and sobbed. How many others were there? How many for Gordon? At least a dozen over the years; she could feel it. A dozen women’s voices cried out to her as if they stood beside her. The choir of the dead, her own voice joining them, once an angel’s song but now a scream.

Snap.

Slowly, she turned back around, her eyes falling on the one thing that made any sense: her guitar. They had left it unmolested on the ground, near the strewn contents of her purse. Cell phone, discarded; wallet, emptied; girl, fucked.

It occurred to some part of her to wonder what time it was, how long she’d been in this alley waiting to die. It was still wet, but the rain had passed. She was soaked, and the cold was gradually penetrating her mind, her body shaking so violently she couldn’t stay on her feet.

She fell hard to her knees, feeling the pain distractedly. It faded into the din of other injuries. Her whole body was on fire, even her skin.

Her eyes lowered, as always, this time to her hands. They were bloody and filthy, her bitten nails crusted with the remains of Gordon’s eye and dirt from her feeble struggles on the ground. Such small hands. Mike had always said she had lovely hands. He’d loved holding them, her palm disappearing into his broad one. Once, her hands could have done anything. She’d majored in psychology for a while, anthropology, even considered med school. She wanted to make a difference. She might one day have been a counselor assigned to a young woman like her.

She was sobbing quietly, but she heard the footsteps and froze.

Someone was coming toward the alley. Someone familiar.

She recognized it immediately: the darkness from earlier tonight, a time that felt like a thousand years ago. She knew it was the same person and wondered how she had mistaken it for the men who now lay dead around her. They were nothing alike.

Fear gripped her again, but she couldn’t stand. She couldn’t move. If he had come for her life, he could have it. It didn’t matter anymore.

A shadow fell over her.

Suddenly something took hold of her mind, and the cacophony of emotions and voices that had moved through her the entire night cut off, the silence inside her so complete that it hurt. She would have screamed, but her throat was full of shards of ice. She didn’t know what to do with silence. She no longer understood it.

The silence was followed by something else she hadn’t felt in months: warmth.

She tried to shrink back from the hand that cupped her chin, but she had no strength left. She remembered—slender fingers, black cuffs, taking a basket from her. Those same fingers gently turned her head this way and that, looking her over, while she felt that warm energy gliding through her, cataloging her wounds, assessing her crumbling mental state. The touch was the most intimate she’d had in years, aside from what the men had done to her, but it was so different, she couldn’t be afraid.

Finally, a third pulse of energy touched her, and it felt like her entire body had been massaged and oiled. Pain faded, and she collapsed, limp, into a fold of black held out for her.

She could barely see, but a faint red light caught her eyes, and she stared into it, wishing she could draw the glow into her . . . she lifted one hand and touched the light, feeling something cool and hard, like stone.

She heard him speak, but not to her. “Star-three.” After a pause, he went on. “Faith, I need your team at these coordinates immediately.”

Faintly she heard a woman’s voice reply,
“As you will it, Sire.”

Then, his voice was directed into her ear: “Rest, little one. You’re safe now.”

Sleep rose up over her in sweet dark waves, and she gave in to it gratefully. The last thing she saw was a pair of midnight blue eyes.

Two

The sentence was death, and he knew it, but he still ran.

At three in the morning on a stormy weekend it was eerily quiet, even in East Austin. The slap of his feet pounding the sidewalk was answered by a distant rumble of thunder and the faint flash of faraway lightning. It had rained all day Saturday, and off and on most of the night, turning a hot August day into a sauna that drove even the most stalwart Sixth Street partiers indoors.

The East Side was the poor side of town, the minority side, and there was nobody around at this hour but whores, dealers, and apostate vampires fleeing from justice.

Wallace raced along Stassney, eastbound, past houses in various states of disrepair. He hated this neighborhood and the people in it. Working families lived here, mostly Mexican immigrants and the sons of immigrants, fat wives who come morning would herd their children and hungover husbands out the door to mass
en español
. He passed a corner store with a white-painted trailer outside that boasted
pollo al carbon
, and indeed the greasy smell of roasted chicken filled his nostrils as he dove off the road and down past the storefront.

The last time he’d fed was on a cute little college girl in town for the second summer session at ACC. He remembered the way she’d slid to the ground, her fierce struggles ceasing, as the last few drops of her blood traveled down his throat. He’d left her corpse faceup in the middle of the street, knowing who would find it and how angry they would be. It was sort of the equivalent of shooting the governor the finger.

Finally he couldn’t run anymore. Pain stabbed through both his sides and his legs started to give out on him. He blundered into a chain-link fence and grabbed it, holding himself up while he wheezed.

None of this would have happened if Auren were still Prime. When Auren had ruled the night over the southern United States, there were no rules—he could kill when he pleased, who he pleased, how he pleased. Auren had been the best kind of Prime: vicious, passionate about the hunt, with a blatant disdain for human life. That was perfect, in Wallace’s mind. Everyone had thought Auren was invincible.

Not quite. Fifteen years ago, a blade had swung, and after that everything went wrong. Now killing humans was a capital offense.

Wallace had no use for such bullshit, and he wasn’t alone. There were others who resented the new order, and the time was fast approaching when the old would be new again. He’d planned to be at the head of the pack, reclaiming his place in the world, but somehow he’d been found and followed.

He listened intently for a moment, expecting footsteps but knowing there would be none. The Prime’s inner circle of warriors, the Elite, were silent hunters with no desire save dispensing the Prime’s particular version of justice.

Half-drunk with fear, he looked around. It was as good a place as any to die. They’d be here any minute, and his blood would spatter all over the concrete.

“Good evening, Wallace,” came a sickeningly familiar voice.

He raised his head, dragged himself to his feet, and smiled.

He was surrounded. Half the Court had turned out to execute him. It was kind of flattering, but then, if you pissed off the Prime you tended to be flattered by the grandeur of your own death.

A woman stepped forward: petite, Asian, with that frail-looking build that was almost convincing until her hands closed around your throat. She fixed her almond-shaped eyes on him, dispassionate.

“Evening, Faith,” he replied hoarsely. “Fancy meeting you here.”

“Are you finished running?” she asked. She, like all the rest of the Elite, traveled armed, but the gleaming steel blade at her hip stayed sheathed for the moment. If she wanted him to die quickly, she could have had him shot with a crossbow. If she had wanted him dead already, she could have walked forward and parted his head from his shoulders with her sword. It was the standard form of execution.

She did neither of those things. She stood and waited.

By the time Wallace realized what she was waiting for, the crowd was already parting, and any thought of bribery or clemency vanished. He was well and truly fucked.

“Sire,” Wallace said tiredly. “Glad you could make it.” A man in black emerged from the darkness as if it had birthed him, and the Elite stepped back to a respectful distance.

The ninth Prime of the Southern United States was perhaps the most terrifying creature in the world to have standing over you at the moment of your death. He regarded Wallace through those impossible blue eyes, his expression cold and calculating. He was as always dressed impeccably, in black from head to foot, except for the heavy silver and ruby amulet that hung from his neck. In the darkness the stone glowed menacingly: the Signet, the Prime’s badge of office. Few who saw that stone lived to testify that yes, it really did emit light. The myths about the Signets, and their bearers, went back thousands of years.

The most frightening thing of all was the dense aura of power that churned around the Prime like the storm clouds overhead. A vampire that strong could conceal it completely when he wanted to, and Wallace knew the display was for his benefit . . . and it had the desired effect. Wallace’s heart pounded into overdrive, and he clutched the wires of the fence, desperately looking for an escape, any escape.

“James Theodore Wallace,” the Prime said, his voice low, just loud enough to carry, though the psychic energy that underscored the words could probably be felt in the Panhandle. “You are under an order of execution for the murder of Patricia Kranek.”

“Come on, Sire,” Wallace began, trying to think of anything that could prolong the inevitable. “It was an accident. You know how it is—you get used to killing them, and then all of a sudden you’re not allowed, and it’s hard to know when to stop. Humans are so fragile.”

“The law was established fifteen years ago, Wallace,” came the reply. “You know it as well as every vampire in this territory. Hunt where you will, feed on whom you will—but a life taken, whether theirs or ours, demands a life in return.”

“A fucking human! A cow! They’re nothing to us!”

“Enough.” That single word sent bone-chilling fear into Wallace’s spine, and he pressed himself harder into the fence as if he could melt through it to the other side.

The Prime glanced over at his second in command and nodded once. A wicked smile spread over Faith’s features, and she drew her sword and made a gesture to the others.

Beheading, then . . . but not until the others were done with him . . . assuming there was anything left to behead.

The crowd swarmed past their leader, their collective roar cutting off Wallace’s weak protests. As they descended on him, he caught a glimpse of the Prime, who stood with his eyes closed, unsmiling, as if in pain.

The Texas Hill Country was the last place anyone would ever think to look for vampires, and that was precisely why it was ideal.

The Haven stood nestled in an oak-blanketed valley like a bird in the hands of a saint, its dark wood and brick edifice rising three stories from the surrounding gardens, stables, and other outbuildings that were all kept perfectly tended by a fleet of humans during the day. They came and went without entering the house, not caring who they worked for as long as they were handsomely paid. In the two centuries since the Haven was first built, perhaps a dozen humans had set foot inside; in his entire tenure, there had been none.

Until very recently.

The car slid around the circular drive, coming to a halt before the main entrance. One of the Elite jumped out of the front seat and came back to open the door for him.

As he emerged, the second car, carrying Faith and her patrol unit, pulled in behind. A moment later she fell into step beside him up to the heavy oak doors, which sailed open at his approach. His two personal bodyguards took the traditional seven steps back as they entered the building.

“Report,” he said to Faith as they crossed through the Great Hall to the two grand staircases and headed for the second floor and his private wing of the Haven.

“The city is a tomb,” she replied. “Word has gotten out about Wallace, and the entire Shadow District has shut down for fear that there will be more executions. I had the body moved to a field where it’ll get full sun exposure in the morning.”

“Good.”

“I dropped the week’s patrol reports onto your server as well as the data sheets on the new Elite recruits. You’ll also find an updated version of the map showing the locations of the attacks around the territory in the last ninety nights.”

“Including the most recent?”

“Yes, Sire.”

“Good.” He thought of the images the patrol unit had beamed back of Patricia Kranek’s body, her eyes open and staring up at the night as if she were simply stargazing. Seeing Wallace’s head tumble onto the ground had not been nearly satisfying enough, especially knowing that there were more where he came from, and that without more evidence to lead to the source of the attacks there would probably be more deaths.

The unrest in the city could not be allowed to escalate into full-out war. That was unacceptable.

“Sire . . . about your . . . guest?”

He didn’t speak until they had entered the East Wing. The woman stationed at the wing entrance bowed, and he nodded back to her; each member of the Elite guard that they passed did the same, and so did the lone servant making the rounds of the empty rooms with her feather duster. She had the wide-eyed look of a recent hire and was faintly awed at the sight of him; he knew she would tell her friends in the staff quarters that she had seen him, in the flesh, as it were.

The doors at the end of the hall opened into his suite. It, too, had its own guards. They bowed, and the one on the right, Samuel, held the door open for him and Faith to enter.

Once inside, he paused to remove his coat and hang it by the door. It was his second favorite. His favorite had been soaked with so much blood and filth that the only thing to do was throw it in the fireplace.

No matter. Clothes were easily replaced. A woman, on the other hand . . .

He took his usual chair and beckoned for Faith to take the other. “Now,” he said, “go on.”

She had managed to hold on to her professionalism, but now that they were alone, she shook her head and dropped her brisk demeanor. “With all due respect, Sire, you’re completely off your nut.”

“Tell me something I don’t know.” He leaned back, hands folded.

“How could you bring her here? She needs a hospital, a real doctor. She might have had internal bleeding or broken bones.”

“Two ribs,” he replied. “No bleeding. Did she wake at all while you bathed her?”

“No.”

He nodded. That was his own doing; he’d kept the woman essentially in a coma until she was clean and safe, unwilling to risk her waking up naked under the hands of a stranger. He had instructed Faith to take care of her, and she had done so reluctantly, but without complaint.

The only thing he had helped with was the woman’s hair; Faith had wanted to cut it off, as it was matted and caked with blood and God knew what else, but something in him had rebelled at the thought and he had worked for over an hour with a comb and half a bottle of conditioner, gingerly separating the long curls and scrubbing them clean. A few strands had been ripped out during the attack, but he salvaged the rest. He suspected that Faith’s lowered opinion of his sanity had formed then.

“Come,” he said, rising.

Faith followed him across the main room of the suite, to the adjoining door, which led into the small bedroom where their guest was currently sleeping. The room was normally empty. His predecessor, Auren, had kept a mistress there, as he had never taken a Queen.

It was an ideal place to house an injured woman. He could keep an eye on her and know that she was safe. The Haven was home to more than a hundred vampires at any given time, and though they were all in his employ and therefore carefully screened and monitored, he wasn’t about to bet her life on their character.

He eased the door open, finding exactly what he expected: darkness. She had slept for an entire day and all of that night even after he lifted the compulsion that kept her so far under that she wouldn’t even dream. She was sleeping naturally now.

He stood over the bed. She looked so small with her hair fanned out over the pillows. Her face was bruised, her lower lip cut, but he imagined that when she wasn’t emaciated and battered, or terrified and despairing as when he’d first seen her, she was beautiful.

“I still think this is a bad idea.” Faith sighed—she was used to her advice appearing to go in one ear and out the other, though he always listened.

They’d known each other a long time, he and Faith. She had come here with him from California when he had taken the Signet. Only she, of all the Elite, was familiar enough with him to voice her opinions freely, and did so practically every day. He was thankful for that—it was easy for someone in his position to believe himself invulnerable, above reproach, and that was what got them killed.

That was in fact what had gotten his predecessor killed fifteen years ago.

“Why are you shielding her?” she asked, frowning.

“This is why.” He dropped the energy barrier he’d been holding around the woman’s mind, and he knew Faith could sense the consequences—the woman moaned aloud, clapping her hands to her ears, trying to block out the emotions of everyone in the Haven . . . a hundred creatures whose histories were the fodder for nightmares anyway.

He restored the shield.

“Shit,” Faith said. “An empath?”

He nodded. “A mothering-strong empath, and a minor telepath, for starters. She picks up thoughts and memories attached to feelings. It’s tied in to her musical talent—she manipulated the crowd’s emotions as easily as you or I would wield a sword. As soon as the music stops, she loses control.”

“And she used it to kill those . . . men.”

“Yes.”

“I still think—”

He kept the edge out of his voice, but only just. “Faith, what do you think will happen to her if human doctors get their hands on her? Assuming she survives, she’s going to need training far more than medical care. She certainly doesn’t need more men jabbing at her and police officers dragging the details out of her. You know very well what happens to women like her.”