Queen of Shadows (34 page)

Then, and only then, would he rest.

He heard a noise like a wind chime, and Faith slid off the table and took out her phone. “I’ll be damned,” she said. “An e-mail from Sophie.”

He looked up at her again. “Sophie . . . not Sophia Castellano?”

“You know her?”

“You mentioned her once before—something about her being a former agent of the Red Shadow.”

Faith frowned down at the screen of her phone. “The hell . . . Sophie says that the Blackthorn gang is planning to attack the Haven.”

David laughed. “And they’re going to find it, how?”

“I don’t know. She doesn’t say. She just says they’re coming . . . tonight.”

“What makes her think so?”

“Again, she doesn’t . . .” Faith trailed off, and when she looked up, her eyes were wide. “She says they have a spy in the Elite.”

“Even if that’s true, there’s no way they can get in.”

“Not even if they had someone inside?”

David’s laughter faded. “Impossible.”

“I’m e-mailing her back—damn it, I should have gotten her phone number, we could make short work of this.”

David moved to his laptop and pulled up the com system. “There’s no way they could have someone inside,” he muttered. “I’d know. I’ve gone over everything a hundred times since Elite Seventy turned on us. There’s been no unusual signal activity going in or out of the Haven . . . they’d have to communicate somehow. What the fuck are they using, then, Morse code? Smoke signals?”

He ran a secondary search for transmission anomalies, but he knew there wouldn’t be anything—everything from cell phones to radios showed up on his monitors, and he watched them all.

Something beeped.

“What is that?” he asked. “There’s something . . . or, there was something . . . Saturday night, there was a single burst transmission from the room where we had Ariana. It was less than a second long . . . and it came twice more this week.”

“What kind of transmission?”

“I don’t know. With all the com chatter that night it got lost. It’s not from a com, it’s . . . Christ.”

“It’s Christ?”

“No, no . . . Who’s the guard in the visitor’s wing right now? Send him to that suite immediately.”

“What’s he looking for?”

“Anything that looks like a GPS device.”

Faith gaped at him. “Bitch stuck a GPS in the Haven?”

“That’s what it looks like. It transmitted three times—Saturday, Tuesday, and yesterday—and then shut down. It was such a short-lived signal it was logged in the system but didn’t trip security. She planted it the night she escaped and I wasn’t watching the transmission logs.” He all but slammed the screen of his laptop shut. “They’ve got us mapped, Faith. Sophie’s right. They’re coming.”

Faith and the Prime stared at each other.

He said, very, very calmly, “Plan Alpha Delta Nine.”

“Yes, Sire.” She lifted her wrist and hit broadcast mode. “All Haven Elite and personnel, incursion code Alpha Delta Nine. Battle stations. Double coverage on every door. Windows closing down in twenty seconds.”

David leaned over and hit the override switch that would close the metal shutters, then flipped several more security switches, turning on firewalls to protect the network and scramble any outgoing frequencies.

“I don’t suppose you’ve got sensors covering the Haven, too,” Faith said hopefully.

David smiled wickedly. “As a matter of fact, I do. They were the first test system before the grid went live. I didn’t think we’d ever need it, but I left them in place anyway.”

A diagram of the property came up, and within seconds each vampire within its borders was highlighted as a red dot; most of them were in motion, the Elite headed to their stations for an invasion, the servants migrating to the secure rooms belowground.

Faith leaned over his shoulder. “Holy fucking mother of shit.”

There were red dots moving steadily toward the Haven in groups of ten or twelve, approaching through the forest from three sides. David added them up quickly in his head.

“Eighty-three,” he said. “How many Elite do we have?”

“Thirty-two in house,” she replied. “The rest are out on patrol. I can send out the recall signal—”

“No,” he told her, rising. “They need to stay put and defend the city. We can handle a siege here. Secure all the entrances as well as the underground tunnels. There’s no way they can get in—all we have to do is keep them out until sunup. I’m going to get the rest of my weapons. You check the entrances.”

“On it!”

David quickly connected his phone to the computer system so he could monitor the sensors from anywhere in the Haven and left the server room, locking it down; the door and walls were steel-reinforced, and the only way anyone could break in was with a battering ram.

He emerged from the stairway and strode down the hall to his suite, and Paul, the second door guard, said, “Sire, is it the Blackthorn?”

“It looks that way—where’s Samuel?”

“He said Faith called him to the front doors and he took off running.”

David took his sword down from the wall, then grabbed two long daggers with smooth, tapered wooden blades and strapped them to his waist.

As he was about to leave the suite, he saw something out of the corner of his eye that made his blood run cold.

The cabinet where he kept Miranda’s book and the Queen’s Signet had been pried open, the door cracked and splintered and hanging partway off its hinges.

He jerked it the rest of the way open and saw that someone had torn through the contents of the cabinet, tossing things aside until they found what they wanted.

The metal box had been jimmied open, the wooden one inside left empty.

Someone had stolen the Signet.

Faith ran down the hall out of the East Wing, checking as she passed that everyone she saw was at the ready, weapons drawn; they had been trained in how to handle an invasion, even though such a thing hadn’t happened in decades. Few interlopers were ballsy, or stupid, enough to lay siege to the Haven. Almost every assassinated Prime was killed beyond the walls of his home.

“Elite Twelve, is the West Wing secure?” she asked.

“Secure and ready.”

“Sire, what’s your position?”

David’s reply was terse.
“I’m in my suite. Tell Samuel I need him back here. I think Paul’s gone rogue on us—he broke into the suite and then abandoned his post.”

She halted. “Samuel’s not there?”

“No—he’s not with you?”

“No.”

Normally she enjoyed hearing David curse, but lately it seemed to be happening with unfortunate frequency.
“I’m running a trace on his com,”
he said.
“He’s in the building, near the front doors. I can’t raise him or Paul. The insurgent signals are converging on the entrance—get everyone there
now
.”

“Sophie said they had a man inside,” Faith realized, starting to run again. “I’m on my way.” She hit broadcast. “All available Elite to the front doors!”

Faith raced down the hall and around the corner toward the front entrance . . .

. . . just in time to see Samuel swing the double doors open.

Then all hell broke loose.

Twenty

Sophie pulled her little black car up behind the stables and parked; before she even had the key out of the ignition Miranda had leapt out.

The horses were out in the paddock, clearly distressed, whinnying and pawing the dirt the way they did before a storm broke. Miranda climbed up on the fence to get a better look at the Haven.

An animal hiss escaped her lips. She could see dark figures streaming into the Haven like ants and the broad front doors standing open. Even if Faith had believed their warning, it had come too late. The enemy had taken them by surprise and found no resistance at the doors. Miranda could only hope that the Elite were strong enough to drive them back.

“Hurry,” she called to Sophie and hopped down. “We have to get in there.”

“Hang on a minute. Do you have any sort of strategy here, or are we as stupid as I think we are?”

Miranda was staring at the Haven, wishing she could see through the shutters; from out here it looked almost normal, but even at this distance she could hear breaking glass and the clear ring of metal on metal.

“We fight our way in and take out as many as we can.”

Sophie snorted, hard. “Not to be a pain, here, but there are exactly two of us, and you’ve never even been in a real fight, much less as a vampire. You can win one on one, but if we go in the front it’s us against all of them. If we want to help, we need a plan, which is what I told you in the car.”

“Fine, fine. Ideas?”

“We need to go in where we’ll have the greatest advantage and do the most damage.”

“Side entrance,” Miranda said. “There’s one over there—but the doors are electronically locked.”

“Locks are the least of our worries. Come on.”

They slipped past the stables and around to the side of the main building. Miranda was grateful for her borrowed clothes; Sophie had dressed her all in black, and though the T-shirt was tight across her chest, the rest fit well enough. The two of them looked like paramilitary, except that instead of guns, they were armed to the teeth with swords, and Sophie had insisted she also carry a wooden stake in her belt.

Once on the far side, Miranda looked back around the corner at the front entrance—seconds later, something whistled down from the roof, and one of the insurgents fell to the ground with a cry, a crossbow bolt in his chest. There were more whistles as the Elite picked the enemy off from above. The rest of the insurgents—Miranda counted at least thirty still pushing their way in—clogged the doors, trying to shove their cohorts out of the way before they, too, were shot.

They were trying to destroy her home. They were killing her friends. They might already have killed Faith . . . or David . . . They wanted to tear apart everything the Signet stood for. Her vision seemed to turn red, but she kept her anger under control—she had to save it for what was ahead.

Miranda ducked back and joined Sophie at the garden door that she and Faith had walked in and out of a dozen times when Miranda lived here. Sophie was fiddling with the door handle. Miranda was about to remind her that the lock was electronic, when Sophie grabbed her arm and hauled her back, saying, “Move!”

There was a small explosion, a puff of black smoke, and the door swung open.

“Hasn’t been a lock made that I couldn’t get into,” Sophie said. “Some require a little less finesse than others .”

“It’s too bad you didn’t bring anything else that blows up. We could use a nice flamethrower or something.”

Miranda risked one last look at the front. Suddenly the broad double doors slammed shut, crushing at least one invader between them and blocking the others from getting in. The enemy were shouting among themselves, dividing up to find other ways.

“Shit, they’re coming this way!” Miranda exclaimed. “Get in!”

They both ran through the door side by side and Sophie flung it shut, while Miranda dragged the nearest table in front of it to at least buy time. She shoved the table sideways up beneath the door handle while Sophie took a wad of some kind of gray chewing gum and stuffed it into the lock.

“Pressure-sensitive explosive,” Sophie explained. “When they try to open it, boom! It won’t do that much damage but it’ll make them shit their pants. Let’s move.”

There was no guard at the door, which told Miranda that everyone who was able had been diverted to the front entrance. It seemed like a bad idea—how could David know that all the insurgents were there, not trying to come around like she and Sophie had?

Her answer came seconds later when four Elite came pounding down the hallway straight toward them. Miranda recognized one as Theo, who had served as an East Wing guard a few nights during her stay.

“Stay where you are, hands in the air!” Theo yelled. “Show your coms!”

“We don’t have coms!” Miranda yelled back. “We’re friends of the Haven, we came to help. There are Blackthorn coming through this door.”

“We’re aware of that, we’re tracking them,” Theo snapped. “Who are you?”

“Sophia Castellano,” Sophie said, steel in her words. “Formerly of the Red Shadow and an ally of this Signet. I am also the bodyguard to your Prime’s lover. We need to find the Prime immediately.”

Miranda blinked at Sophie. “What’s a Red Shadow?”

“Better that you don’t know.”

Theo gaped at Miranda for a few seconds, finally recognizing her, then deferred to Sophie without question. “Our Lord Prime is with the rest of the Elite fighting in the Great Hall. We’ve already lost warriors, and they outnumber us three to one. The more swords the better—come with us. Eighty-Three, Forty-Four, stay here and keep that door shut.”

They all headed down the hallway at a graceful trot, and Miranda asked, “How bad is it?”

“Bad, my Lady. Samuel and Paul were both in collusion with the enemy and let them in through security after Ariana Blackthorn planted a GPS to trace the Haven’s location. Near as we can figure, they were communicating the one way we don’t check on.”

“Radio?” Sophie ventured.

“No, the mail. Postal mail has never been inspected piece by piece except in suspicious cases. Samuel was sending regular one-stamp letters to Ariana at a post office box. It never raised a single eyebrow.”

They took the hall that led out of the Prime’s wing, and Miranda stuck her head in the suite to see if David was there, by some miracle, but he wasn’t. In fact it looked like a tornado had blown through the room. There were no suite guards—Samuel and this Paul had already abandoned their posts and all pretense of loyalty.

She hoped they both died nasty.

They passed the music room, and again Miranda paused—the door was locked tight, but she felt a moment’s fear. “I will protect you,” she promised the Bösendorfer inside. “I won’t let you down.”

Sophie gave her a quizzical look.

“Bastards better not hurt my piano,” Miranda replied.

“
That’s
what you’re worried about right now? What about your boyfriend?”

“He can take care of himself. I know he’s a good fighter. I’ve just never seen him do it.”

“Get ready,” Theo said at her side, urging them all to the left. “We’re almost there.”

The sounds of the battle reached them first—screams, shouts, cries of agony, the solid thump of fists on flesh, the clash of blade on blade. Something fell and broke all over the tile floor, probably some statuary or another. The sounds of nearly a hundred people bottlenecked into the Great Hall were deafening.

The Elite defended both staircases and thus far the invaders had fought them halfway to the second floor, but they held their ground.

Miranda ran up to the railing, searching for familiar faces in the din. An Elite screamed in pain as he was run through with a wooden sword, and blood pooled all around his body, blood that another vampire slipped in; Miranda searched their faces, and the faces of the dead, for those she knew.

There was Samuel, decapitated and dismembered. Another Elite lay nearby, and she was pretty sure it was Paul.

Finally she caught sight of Faith in the center of the fight, exactly where Miranda expected her to be. The Second was a blur of motion, her two swords whirling all around her, and attacker after attacker dove in for the kill and never emerged. She wasted no time with banter—Faith had one objective, to put down the insurgents, and she would do exactly that.

Where was David? And where was Ariana? She had to be here. She would have come.

“Draw!” Sophie shouted. Two insurgents had broken through the wall of Elite at the head of the stairs and were making a break deeper into the building.

Miranda joined her, and they outran the enemy and faced them in the hallway, swords at the ready.

The two insurgents looked amused at the sight of two small women spoiling for a fight. Miranda knew exactly what they were going to do—underestimate her.

One of them moved in, blade ready, and Miranda took him on, while Sophie took the other. Miranda fought hard, her sword arm already aching from overuse, but she lost as much ground as she gained until she remembered she had better weapons than a sword.

She lowered her sword, held out her hand toward the man, reached into herself for her power, and
pushed
.

He began to tear at his clothes, and his hair, and scream: “No, Daddy! No! I’m sorry! NO!” He dropped to the ground in a fetal position, head covered with his arms, his sword and the fight abandoned to a less visible but far more potent attacker.

Miranda walked over, put her booted foot on the man’s neck and pushed him flat on the floor, and with one swing took his head.

Sophie had already dispatched hers with the wooden stake she’d stuck in her jacket. The insurgent lay in a spreading pool of her blood, eyes wide open.

Miranda’s head already felt like it was going to split from that little stunt, but she grounded quickly—she was probably going to have to do it again. In fact, if only she could get control of more than one mind at once, she could take out several at a time, drown them in childhood fears or reliving the death of a loved one. She could choke them on their own histories while Sophie, by far the better fighter, killed them.

She remembered being skeptical that empathy would be useful in combat.

They stepped over the bodies and reassessed the situation. So far the Elite were still holding the stairs, but the insurgents were trying to get the doors back open, and there was no way to know how many might have found other entrances already.

“We need a way to disable all of them at once,” Miranda said, shouting to be heard above the din. “I don’t think I can work on this many. At that mental depth I have to do them one by one.”

Sophie started to speak, then looked up past Miranda and grinned. “What we need,” Sophie said, “is a really pissed-off telekinetic.”

Miranda’s heart nearly burst from her body, and it was all she could do not to jump up and run to him, but Sophie kept her firmly out of the way where they weren’t seen.

David Solomon stepped out onto the balcony where the two staircases met over the Great Hall.

He wore his long coat and was fully armed, but the thing that was most frightening—the thing that made the entire fight stop and the hall fall silent—was the churning cloud of wrath that surrounded him, the silver of his aura shot through with deadly black. His eyes were pure silver, the Signet ablaze at his throat.

He stepped up onto the balcony rail. Miranda saw the Signet’s light begin to pulsate—she’d never seen it do that before, but it made him look even more terrifying.

“Elite,” he said, “Stand down.”

As one, the Elite dropped whomever they were fighting, lowered their weapons, and stepped back to line the walls of the Great Hall.

The Prime jumped smoothly off the rail, landing twenty feet below and straightening to level a steely-eyed gaze on the insurgents, who were inching closer to each other and looking like they wanted to pry the doors back open and flee into the night.

Miranda rushed to the rail to look down. David slowly, deliberately drew his sword and stood with it down at his side, and when he spoke, it was with the same calm authority she had heard him use at the Elite trials. No one could look away.

“You have staged an open attack on the Haven of this territory in an attempt to assassinate me and claim the Signet. You have failed. The sentence for such actions is death.”

The blade of his sword tilted and caught the light. “I will give you a choice. If you hand over Ariana Blackthorn, you will die a quick and merciful death. If you face me now, you will die with honor in battle. If you try to escape, you will be cut down by my Elite and bleed to death on this floor.”

As if on cue, one of the insurgents broke free of the hypnotic hold David had over them and bolted for the doors.

David raised a hand, and the man fell to the floor, screaming, with the sickening sound of breaking bones. Blood spurted from the insurgent’s nose and ran from his mouth, and he twitched, still trying to get back to his feet and run.

Faith, at the ready, swung her sword and finished him, then bowed to the Prime.

He smiled. “Next?”

Seconds ticked by before the crowd parted near the doors. The invaders fell back respectfully as a woman stepped out from behind them. She was blond and had huge eyes, a gaunt face that might once have been beautiful, and was smiling that same cruel murderous smile she had worn when she stabbed Miranda through the heart.

She came out into the center of the room and stood facing the Prime without a trace of fear. Then she lifted her hand, and Miranda saw what was dangling from it: a carbon copy of David’s Signet, only slightly smaller. Its stone, too, was flashing rhythmically.

A gasp went up all over the room.

Miranda saw David’s eyes widen almost imperceptibly. His face went absolutely white. “What’s going on?” Miranda whispered to Sophie.

Sophie, too, was astonished. “The flashing . . . that’s what happens when a Signet chooses its bearer. When the Prime finds his Queen, that’s how he knows.”

“Wait . . . it can’t be her!”

Sophie rolled her eyes artfully. “Well, now, who else could it possibly be speaking for?”