Queen of Shadows (30 page)

“Forgive him? For what?” Miranda asked, blinking. She hadn’t really been listening, but she remembered quickly enough. “Oh, that. I guess. I know he didn’t mean any harm.”

“You should tell him that. He’s really nuts about you—right now he’s convinced you hate him and he’s on the verge of
hara-kiri
.”

“I’ll e-mail him,” Miranda assured her.

“When are you going to tell me more about this other guy?”

Miranda smiled a little. “What do you want to know?”

“You said you met him at rehab. What does he do?”

She cast about in her mind for a suitable description that wouldn’t be too much of a lie. “He’s in law enforcement,” she said. “He’s the one that took me there in the first place.”

“And the other night, you slept together?”

“Yes.”

“I thought you weren’t ready for men.”

Miranda cut up the last half of her pancake to make it look like she was eating it. “David is different,” she said, though it sounded weak even to her ears without any sort of background story. “I trust him. I don’t think I can ever trust any other man again.”

“Do you love him?”

“Yes. Very much.”

“I guess I’m happy for you, then.”

“You guess?”

Kat made a face. “To be honest, honey, he seemed like kind of a dick. But I only met him for about thirty seconds, so I could be wrong.”

Miranda laughed. “He’s not. I promise. He’s just . . . he has a lot of responsibility, and he’s not very good with normal people. He’s sort of a fanged teddy bear.”

Kat looked even more dubious. “I am going to get to meet him again, right? As best friend I reserve the right to kick his ass to the curb if I don’t approve.”

Miranda smiled at her, warmly, feeling grateful as well as ashamed. There was so much she wanted to tell Kat, and she wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to. The secrecy of the Shadow World was what kept it from destruction. The Signets worked diligently to keep vampire kind out of the media and off the radar. Did she have the right to let a human in on its existence?

“We’ll all hang out,” Miranda told Kat. “It takes him a while to warm up, but you’ll like him once you get to know him.”

Kat insisted on paying the bill, and Miranda was relieved to leave the café. She’d gotten used to the pressure of a room full of humans, but it was still a strain, especially after a night of performing and two hours in the ER surrounded by the injured and dying.

She told herself it was that, and not the thought of what was in her fridge, that made her so anxious to get home.

Kat let her out at her door with a hug and cheek-kiss. “Call me,” she said firmly.

Miranda agreed, and watched her go, making sure she had pulled out of the parking lot before turning the deadbolt and switching on the living room lamp.

She felt sick to her stomach from the pancakes, and by the time she got her coat and boots off, she was so nauseated she flew to the bathroom, where her dinner made an inglorious return engagement.

It was Thursday. David had said she should be feeling more normal by now. She contemplated calling him, but didn’t want him to worry. She’d see him tomorrow anyway after her show. She just had to keep it together until then.

He was probably going to be angry with her. He’d wanted her to let his blood work its way out of her body this time, and turn her properly at the Haven where she’d be protected and he could control the situation. She knew he was right.

But she was so hungry . . . and nothing was helping. It couldn’t hurt to keep his blood alive in her veins for one more day, could it?

She flushed the toilet and washed her face with ice-cold water. Her reflection looked green around the gills, and the flush of power had faded from her face, leaving behind an ashen pallor much like the one she’d had that first night. She couldn’t stand to be that sick again.

Just this once.

Miranda fetched the bag from the fridge and set it on the counter, wondering how to go about it. Should she heat it? Put it in a glass? Stick a straw in it? She’d never seen David actually drink from one, but she couldn’t picture him sucking on the bag like a Capri Sun. Surely he used a glass.

She opened the cabinet. A champagne flute? No, something for a red.

She settled on a coffee mug so that she could put it in the microwave for a few seconds. That had to be better, more like . . . more like fresh from a person.

Snipping off a corner of the bag, she poured enough to halfway fill the mug, and the rich coppery smell of it hit her like a sledgehammer. Her legs almost buckled beneath her, but she held herself up and punched twenty seconds, watching the cheerful I WENT BATS IN AUSTIN! logo turn in circles.

She took the cup out and sniffed it, then took an experimental sip.

Miranda moaned softly. As soon as it hit her tongue, she felt warmth and renewed strength trickling through her. One sip turned into a swallow, and before she knew it she had drained the mug and was refilling it with shaking hands. The orgasmic rush she remembered from drinking David’s blood returned, though not as intensely. She had to force herself not to gulp—the thought of vomiting blood was the most disgusting thing she could imagine, and it would be such a waste. She didn’t know when she could get any more.

She ended up sinking to her knees on the floor, her hands splayed out on the tile, heady joy and pleasure rocking her back and forth. The painful burning and itching in her mouth was gone, and so was her fatigue and weakness. Her vision was acute again, the colors in the room sharper. She hadn’t realized how dull her senses were becoming as the week had worn on. Now everything felt right again.

It was wonderful.

She was laughing as she fell asleep on the kitchen floor.

David Solomon had been the first Prime to computerize all his records. Everything in his Haven was stored electronically; everything was beyond state-of-the-art, because if he didn’t have the technology he wanted, he simply created it. The com system, the network connecting all the Signets all over the world, the sensors that now helped protect Austin—he had a dozen patents to his name already and was in progress on several more, including a new kind of solar cell that harnessed the vampires’ universal enemy as a source of renewable energy to power not just the Haven, but all its systems and even the cars.

At first the other Signets had laughed, but eventually they caught on to the convenience and efficiency. California was the first to buy a software license and join the network; Deven knew a good thing when he saw it. After that, most of the others fell in line. Even a few Signets who were outright antagonistic toward California, and by extension the South, had expressed interest in upgrading their archaic communications.

The only area where Faith had really seen a problem was when it came to research. Everything David had brought with him from California, including all their information on the original Blackthorn syndicate, was on a server. Anything dated before the Signet changed hands was still kept in hard copies in the archives of the Haven. Auren had been particularly disdainful toward technology, so all his old patrol reports were still on paper, handwritten.

That meant that when David asked her to find out more about Ariana and Bethany Blackthorn by going through Auren’s files, she wanted nothing more than to beat him about the head with the 1954-1955 bound reports until he had a better idea.

“All I’m asking is for you to pull relevant files,” the Prime said. “Eventually I’m going to try to scan and upload all of Auren’s old shit so we can go through it and save what we want, then shred and burn the rest. All it’s doing right now is taking up space. Just bring me what you think I should look at.”

“How the hell do I find it?” Faith asked. The task ahead was daunting, to put it mildly. The archives consisted of eight rooms lined floor to ceiling with shelves of files, some so old they were falling apart or unreadable. “Is any of it in order?”

“Yes, Faith.” This newfound patience of his, though refreshing in some senses, tended to make her even more impatient in response. “Auren’s archive will be the most recent, so it will be in room eight. According to Bethany, she and Ariana were only here for about four years before Auren died, so look for anything that corresponds to that timeline, pull it, and bring it to me.”

“And why do I get this honor? Am I the secretary in command now?”

David looked at her from the array of electronic bits and half-constructed sensors he was working on to further refine the network in town. “I don’t trust anyone else in those rooms,” he said. “There could be a thousand kinds of sensitive information in there, and it’s for our eyes only.”

Grumbling, Faith stalked off to the archive hall, where each room’s number was hung on its corresponding door. Room eight was on the left end. She unlocked the door with her com and let herself in, trying not to choke at the dust and the stuffy smell of neglected space.

“Oh, Jesus,” she muttered. “This is going to take me all year.”

Faith took a minute to get her bearings; near as she could tell, the files were in something like chronological order. She started to sort through the first stack, finding as she’d figured mostly patrol reports that were essentially useless now.

An hour later she was still going through them and her patience was wearing perilously thin. She tossed another handful of papers onto the stack on the floor; at least she’d have a box of them to incinerate later so that in that distant era when David had time to spare for archiving, he could skip over them.

The entire Haven was full of people who could be doing this. Surely she had more important work to be going on with. She could have assigned a couple of green recruits to this and gone back to the city for another round of patrols. She didn’t trust the peace any more than the Prime did, but he was using the momentary respite to tighten the network. She wanted to be out on the streets making sure the Shadow World knew who was in charge.

Aggravated, she pushed another stack of papers onto the floor, sending a cloud of dust up into the air. She coughed violently and cursed Auren for not at least using file cabinets for all the accumulated garbage of decades of rule.

Under the stack, she saw something odd: a metal box.

She pulled it out and wiped the lid off. It was a nondescript gray, the sort of thing where people kept important papers locked up in case of fire, and was about legal size; it had no com lock, of course, but regular locks were no real obstacle for her. She took out her pocketknife and jimmied it open easily.

The contents were bundled in plastic sheeting, taped shut, and labeled: AUREN: PERSONAL EFFECTS.

Now
this
was interesting. She took the box over to a table, pushed the files that were on it off onto the floor with a satisfying thump, and set the box down, taking out the bundle and slitting the tape with her knife.

A handful of loose items fell out: a passport, a few expired credit cards, other detritus that was probably in the Prime’s wallet when he was assassinated. She wondered who had gone through his clothes; it hadn’t been her, and David had been far too busy to care what happened to Auren’s Visa card. There was an assortment of keys—she was thankful for the com system, so she didn’t have to carry so many. He’d seemed to have one for every locked door in his wing. There were also a handful of pens in half a dozen colors.

The last item surprised her: a black hardbound book, worn with age. She paged through it gingerly.

Auren had been something of an amateur artist. The book had mostly been used for sketches, though there were a few scattered journal entries written in what looked like German. Faith recognized images of the Haven gardens, the stables, one of the huge oak trees flanking the driveway; there was even a sketch of the Signet. The drawings were rendered in pen with touches of color here and there. A few were smudged in a way that suggested Auren had been left-handed, just like David was.

She should take this to him. He spoke German; he could translate the journal entries. Who knew what Auren had written down in his final days?

Faith turned to the last few pages, and her mouth dropped open.

A few rough sketches had been blocked in of a woman’s face, and one had been completed. It was a remarkable likeness, and underneath Auren had written ARIANA. He had even drawn her wearing the Queen’s Signet that she had never earned in life. She was smiling out from the page, coy and flirtatious.

There was just one problem.

The woman in the drawing was blond.

Ariana Blackthorn—the Ariana Blackthorn they’d executed—had black hair and hazel eyes. This one had blue. She also looked a good five years younger.

“Son of a bitch,” Faith said.

She shut the book and rushed from the archive room, calling into her com, “Elite Forty-Three, I need the status of the Blackthorn girl.”

There was no answer.

She tried again and got only silence. The same result came from trying to raise the other guard on Bethany’s door.

Cursing, she switched to broadcast mode. “Security to the visitor’s suites immediately.”

A beep. David’s voice:
“Faith, report.”

She set off for the hallway where the girl was staying at a dead run. “Sire,” she said, “We have a very serious problem.”

Seventeen

Miranda had a hard time concentrating that night. For once she was glad when the show was over. She’d been waiting for Friday long enough.

She bounded down from the stage and barely took the time to gather up her stuff and wave good-bye to the sound and light guys before heading off toward home.

She was in a fantastic mood, almost giggly with anticipation; she wanted to get home, shower off the makeup and sweat that had accumulated in the last few hours—oh, and shave her legs. They were like two bottle brushes, and that wouldn’t do.

There was also a tiny bit of blood left in the bag in her fridge. She wanted to be sure it was gone before David arrived. She still wasn’t sure how she was going to explain what she’d done . . . but he was just going to have to understand. It wasn’t as if she’d turned herself into a vampire. Aside from rebuilding her strength and keeping her from going crazy, drinking that single pint of blood had changed nothing.

Miranda swung down off the bus, smiling at the driver. She’d been riding the same line for a long time now, but only in the last few months had she paid any attention to anything besides her own navel. Now she exchanged jokes with the driver, a flirty older Hispanic man named George who recognized her from the papers.

She could afford a car now, if she wanted, but it seemed pointless when the only places she ever needed to go were on the bus routes and anything was better than trying to park in downtown Austin on a weekend. She was lucky—public transit wasn’t exactly at New York City level here. If she had wanted to go anywhere out of her usual neighborhood, it would have taken considerable planning and several hours’ travel time.

She walked the last block to the apartment humming softly under her breath. A half moon rode the sky overhead amid clouds that heralded a cool, breezy night. It had been a gorgeous spring.

Summer was shaping up to be even better.

Miranda went about her usual post-show routine, but this time in a little bit of a hurry. It was almost eleven, and David was supposed to be there at midnight. She took a hot shower, still with the unscented soap, and threw on her comfy jeans and a T-shirt while she puttered around the house, her hair bunched up on top of her head, her skin cool in the warm apartment air.

She was about to head to the fridge when she heard a knock at the door. A glance at the clock told her it was only 11:25.

She grabbed her phone from her bag as she went to the door, cuing up her messages. Damn it, she should have checked earlier—there was one from David at 10:00, probably saying he’d be early.

Miranda held the phone to her ear as she unlocked the door.

“Miranda,”
David’s voice said apologetically,
“I’m going to be late. We’re having a server glitch that I have to fix before I can leave, but it shouldn’t take more than an hour—”

The door opened.

Miranda lowered the phone, hitting the END CALL button with her thumb. “Can I help you?”

The woman standing outside was skinny and blond, with blue eyes that were at once icy and aflame.

She wasn’t alone.

“Samuel,” Miranda said. “What are you doing here?”

He didn’t respond. He didn’t look at her, and neither did the other man—vampire—with the woman. A slow ripple of disquiet went through Miranda’s stomach.

She started to slam the door, but the woman caught it and forced it back, shoving Miranda hard into the room. Miranda grabbed the edge of the couch to keep from falling over, her phone tumbling from her hand to the floor.

“You must be Miranda Grey,” the woman said, tipping her head to one side, her smile only partly sane. Her voice was as high as a child’s, almost singsong.

Miranda stood up straight and crossed her arms. “Who are you?”

“My name is Ariana Blackthorn,” she replied.

“That’s impossible. Ariana Blackthorn was beheaded.”

The smile took on a nasty edge. “Nonsense, child. No one can kill me. I am the rightful Queen of this territory. A bow is appropriate.”

“I don’t see a Signet.” Miranda risked a glance around the room—there was nothing she could use as a weapon except for David’s knife in her purse. Even that wouldn’t do her much good unless she could saw through Ariana’s neck.

They’ll send help. Just buy some time.

“No matter,” Ariana said. “I’ll have it as soon as I snatch it from your Prime’s cold corpse.”

“And how are you planning to do that?”

She snorted. “Do I look stupid to you?”

Miranda shrugged. “Mostly just crazy. And kind of ugly, actually. I’d recommend Paul Mitchell hair care and maybe a sandwich.”

“Dear girl,” Ariana said, “You really are quite something. If you had ever been one of us instead of a mere insect, you might have been a force to be reckoned with. But you won’t get that chance, I’m afraid.”

“Let me guess. You’re going to kill me.”

“First you,” she confirmed with a nod. “Then your murdering, meat-fucking bastard of a Prime. But not until I have enough forces to take over the city. All of my allies are converging as we speak. I admit your darling did deal us quite a blow. His little network has been annoying to me. That will be the first thing I tear down once we have taken the Haven.”

“How did you get out of the Haven?” Miranda asked. “They had you under guard.”

“You ask that as if I were ever truly a prisoner. My boys here had it all under control.”

Miranda looked at Samuel. “You betrayed the Prime,” she said. “All this time he trusted you, and you’ve been working for her?”

Samuel spoke almost woodenly. “I am loyal to my rightful leader.”

“What’s this right you keep babbling about?” Miranda wanted to know. “You were never chosen Queen. Auren died and his Signet passed to someone else. That’s how it works.”

“No,” Ariana snarled, coming closer. Miranda held her ground even when the woman was right in her face. “That isn’t how it works. Not for me. I was his beloved, his perfect match. I would have been chosen if my sister hadn’t come along and gotten in the way—she thought she could take him from me.”

“Auren dumped you for your sister? That’s a real shame, a catch like you.”

“It’s all right. Everything worked out. I got him back, and then I got her to trust me. I’m a patient woman. I was biding my time to feed her to the wolves. We made a plan to switch places, and she would escape while I was taken to the Haven. She was a faster runner and better fighter—she thought she could elude that little bitch of a Second and I would be safer as a fake captive. Now she’s out of my way, and when the others arrive, I’ll be the one to take the Signet.”

“When is that supposed to happen?” Miranda asked.

Ariana’s smile returned. “No more monologuing,” she said. “I’m a better villain than that. Boys, take her. We have work to do here.”

They came at her, but she was ready—she didn’t give them time to get the upper hand, but threw herself at Samuel, lashing out with both her power and her right hook. He lurched sideways with a grunt of pain, and she swiveled around to land a kick in the other vampire’s gut.

She heard Ariana scream something at them but didn’t stop to chat; she threw the front door open and ran.

Miranda’s bare feet slapped the pavement painfully, but she couldn’t think about it, couldn’t think about anything but putting as much distance between her and them as possible. She had to find someplace safe and find a way to warn David. If Samuel could get Ariana out of the Haven, he could get her back in, and if no one told the Prime, Samuel could walk right back to his post without anyone ever doubting him.

She angled left, heading straight for downtown where there would be more witnesses. Her senses were on high alert, and she could feel the others pursuing her, their rage a black cloud closing in quickly, too quickly. There was no way she could outrun them. She had to hide, and the best place was amid the teeming mortal life of South Congress.

Her lungs were full of needles, but she didn’t slow down until she was almost at the bridge. Cars passed, their headlights blazing over her, and she nearly mowed down a lone pedestrian as she ran out onto the bridge where, at dusk, millions of Mexican free-tailed bats launched themselves into the sky. Tourists loved to come stand on the bridge and watch them during the summer. Far below, Lady Bird Lake was a black smudge rippled with the reflected lights of the capital city.

She heard their footsteps seconds before she felt hands close around her shoulders. She tried to fight them off, but the element of surprise was gone—they knew she was no weakling, now. Samuel seized her arms and pinned them back, though she struggled wildly, and the other vampire stood between them and the lanes where cars zipped by, oblivious.

Ariana walked up to them, as cool and fresh as if she’d just stepped out of a salon. “Well, that was fun,” she said, laughing gaily. The noise was almost lost to the traffic. “You’re just full of surprises, aren’t you? Such a waste.”

“I’m going to kill you!” Miranda was still fighting. “I’ll take your head myself!”

Ariana giggled. “Isn’t she cute?”

“Should we take her back and burn her?” Samuel asked.

“No,” Ariana said. “I want there to be a body. I want him to find her, to see her dead and feel her lifeless and cold in his arms. I want him to know what he took from me. Then on the full moon he can lose everything else.”

Ariana held out her hand, and the other vampire placed a dagger into it. The steel blade flashed in the streetlights.

Miranda started to speak again, but Ariana pulled back her arm, and suddenly Miranda’s entire chest felt crushed with agony—she gasped, then choked, looking down to see the hilt of the dagger protruding obscenely from her rib cage.

Her limbs went numb, and she sagged in Samuel’s grasp, feeling her blood begin to flow down her chest, her heart shuddering. The pain was beyond screaming, beyond anything, but she could only make a strangled sound and stare at the dark pool gathering at her feet.

Ariana nodded to Samuel.

As Miranda’s vision went from blue to gray, and then to black, she felt her body being hauled up over the rail, and tossed, useless as a bag of trash, off the bridge and into the darkness of the lake.

She never felt the impact.

The Haven was in chaos.

“I want a full patrol team on apartment two twenty-one at Cypress Grove,” Faith ordered into her com. “Make sure Miss Grey is secure before anything else happens. Lindsay, don’t you move a muscle. Do you copy?”

She met David at the now-empty guest suite in time to hear him yell a string of obscenities and burst back out of the room, gesturing to the gathered lieutenants to follow.

“What’s the patrol team’s ETA?” he demanded.

“Eleven minutes,” Faith replied. “Where are Bethany’s guards?”

“Unconscious in the room. She’s smart—she knew killing them would interrupt their com signals. She can’t possibly know about the fail-safe, but she knows I know if someone dies. God fucking damn it.” He shot Faith a look. “And if you say, ‘I told you so,’ I’ll stake you right here and now.”

“Wasn’t planning on it, Sire. What now?”

“I run a network trace and see if we can find her. Meanwhile—” He turned, midstride, to the lieutenants and walked backward. “Double patrols through the metropolitan area. Send the word out through the entire territory that she’s on the run and likely going to ground with the survivors of her gang. If you see so much as two vampires in one place, I don’t care if they’re playing Twister, you bring them in.”

He dismissed the others and took Faith with him down the stairs to the server room. “What’s that in your hand?” he asked Faith as he took his chair.

“Auren’s journal,” she said, handing it to him. “That’s how I knew something was wrong. Look at the pictures in the back.”

When he saw what she’d seen, his face lost all expression and he went pale. “God.”

He dropped the book on the table and went back to the computer, bringing up the citywide sensor grid. With his free hand, he pulled his phone out of his pocket and handed it to Faith. “Keep trying Miranda,” he said. “I want to know she’s safe.”

Faith called, but there was no answer, only the ghostly sound of Miranda’s voice mail greeting. “Nothing.” She hit her com again. “Elite Eighty-Six. Lindsay, has the backup team arrived yet?”

No answer.

“Fuck—Sire, can you access Lindsay’s com from here?”

“Of course.” He clicked on something and brought up another grid, this one showing the locations of every com. She saw four dots representing the backup team closing in on Miranda’s apartment complex, and there in its usual spot was Elite 86’s signal.

“She hasn’t moved,” David noted. “But she’s not answering—she could be unconscious like the others. Elite Fifty-Seven, what’s your status?”

“We’re having trouble getting to the building, Sire. There’s something going on.”

“What do you mean?”

“There are fire trucks and ambulances everywhere. They pulled in just as we reached the street. I sent Elite Twenty in for a closer look, but there’s so much smoke that it’s making visual confirmation impossible.”

David met Faith’s eyes, and she saw what he was thinking. Her own insides went to ice.

He reached out with one hand and switched windows to the sensor grid. Every life form with a lower body temperature than a human’s and a body mass over a certain size registered on the network.

He overlaid the two grids.

There were three vampires leaving the location of Miranda’s apartment as four more approached it from the opposite direction. The approaching four were Elite. The other three were not.

“Oh my God, she’s there,” Faith gasped.

But when she looked up, he was gone.

David reappeared across the street from the apartment complex, and as soon as he could hear again, the cacophony was deafening. Sirens, radio chatter, and people shouting surrounded him, and the acrid smell of burning assailed him.

There were two enormous fire trucks blocking the street, and police cars lining the block to hold back the crowds.