Shadowstorm (The Shadow World Book 6) (35 page)

Very few people had ever been able to stand up to the look on David’s face—nearly all of them had fallen dead to the ground for trying. Most were either insane or had nothing to lose. It was difficult to say where Nico fell along that spectrum.

Nico glanced toward the left, and David barely had time to register what he was doing before a large vase shattered and the shards flew toward Lesela’s face.

He wasn’t Prime for nothing, though—his reflexes kicked in and he ground the shards into powder with his mind before they could reach her. Half a breath later a table next to the chair he’d been sitting in collapsed and broken pieces of wood, ends in splinters, sailed toward him.

David held up a hand and combined a shield with telekinetic energy to block not only the broken wood but anything else Nico might throw at them. “Stay behind me,” he commanded Lesela, who was all too happy to obey.

David held up the shield with part of his mind and reached toward Nico with another, trying to get hold of his neck and break it—it was the only way to put him out that would last more than a few minutes. But Nico had already observed, dissected, and learned how to do what David was doing, and shut David out.

Something bright glowed in the corner of David’s eye, and he realized what it was just in time: embers from the fireplace. David shored up the shield and they bounced off, but he also had to concentrate enough to extinguish them before they burned the house down.

Nico looked annoyed. “Fine,” he said. “We’ll do it your way.”

“What does that—”

David pulled his attention back to Nico just as a fist of energy struck him, and it felt like the room was being sucked out from under him. His vision greyed out and everything lurched forward—

He tumbled into the grass, hitting the ground rolling and coming back up to his feet with his sword already drawn…but he wasn’t looking at Nico anymore, or the guest suite at all.

David spun around trying to get his bearings. Where the hell was he? Nico had apparently learned the trick of how to Mist someone else the way David and Miranda did on the New Moon. Normally he’d be impressed, but right now he had to hurry.

He recognized the trees around him—he wasn’t far from the Haven. He shut his eyes and grabbed hold of the memory of the guest room, lassoing it with energy and hauling it toward himself with enough force that he was sure he’d regret it later.

Even passing through space, between worlds and beyond reality, he heard a scream.

David reappeared exactly where he’d stood, expecting to be thrown again or at least have something fly at his head.

Nico was gone.

Breathing hard, David sheathed the Oncoming Storm and looked around—where was Lesela? That must have been her screaming, so…

A soft whimper got his attention, and he found her on the other side of the bed where she had apparently run in a futile attempt to escape. The thick smell of blood hit him like an earthquake a split second before he saw it spilled all around her where she had fallen.

He knelt beside her, desperately trying to remember how Miranda had healed her cat, how Deven did it all the time—surely he could too.

One look at her and his heart sank. The tears in her throat were huge and ragged, but they weren’t her only wounds; he couldn’t say for sure what the weapon was but she’d been stabbed as well, right through the abdomen. There was so much damage it would take Deven to heal her, and there wasn’t time.

Nonetheless, he hit his com: “Deven, get back here now. Lesela’s down.”

Suddenly a hand seized his forearm—bloody, shaking, but with an iron grip born of the desperation of her final minutes. He covered her hand with his, meeting her pain-glazed eyes.

“Help is coming,” he said. “Just hold on another minute.”

She gave him a soft, regretful smile. “Tell him…”

He knew what he was hearing.

Last words.

He leaned closer, still holding onto her hand, his other touching her face, trying to offer some comfort, any comfort. “Go on.”

She took as much of a breath as she could and murmured something in his ear that, at first, didn’t make much sense. He simply filed the words away and kept his attention on her until—

“Well now…where were we?”

David lifted his head and looked at Nico, who had returned to the doorway, covered in blood but still utterly indifferent to his own actions.

Before the Prime could say anything, though, the Elf’s head snapped around to the left with a horrible crack, and he dropped to the ground, silence falling with him.

Behind him, Deven’s eyes were pure silver, almost burning, and his teeth were out.

He was at Lesela’s side in a heartbeat, but he had to know, as David had known, that it was too late. The light had gone out of the Elf’s eyes, and her hand went limp in David’s.

David checked for a pulse, though it was unnecessary. He met Deven’s eyes. The elder Prime didn’t seem to know what to do.

“She said something,” David told him quietly. “Something I should tell you.” At Deven’s raised eyebrow, David repeated, “‘The child of the evening still lives.’ Does that mean anything to you? Was it prophecy?”

“The child of the evening…” Deven looked down, shaking his head, but not out of ignorance.

“That’s what she told me.”

“It’s not a metaphor…it’s a name. Elendala Seara.”

“Is that someone you know?”

“No,” Deven replied, closing his eyes. “It’s my mother.”

Chapter Fifteen

The door of the interrogation room slammed shut with the reverberating finality of a tomb.

“If he so much as twitches, break his neck again—don’t give him a chance to regain consciousness until I permit it.”

The four Elite he’d assigned to guard Nico’s body bowed in assent. They all looked as bewildered as he felt, and uneasy about what they’d been ordered to do. Neck snapping was considered fairly extreme as a sedative among vampires; it worked, yes, but it was difficult to heal and could take days before the victim regained the full range of motion. Anything involving the nervous system was tricky. Doing it over and over again could cause long-term, though not permanent, damage to the body, and had been known to permanently affect the mind. David could only assume that Nico would come out of it faster than the average.

But they had few alternatives. The tranquilizer Deven had dosed him with last time only worked for half an hour at most, and a few doses in Nico had already started to develop a tolerance. There was no place here they could keep him that he couldn’t escape, if he was conscious and able to move; he could Mist anywhere he liked, and even if he couldn’t he could build a portal without breaking a sweat and vanish into the city to unleash his wrath upon the entire population.

David stared through the window at his lover, who had been chained down this time despite the wrongness of it. Hopefully he wouldn’t wake to find himself bound; but if he did, and lashed out, the chains gave the guards a moment to get into the cell and put him out again. It was awful, sickening, and David didn’t know what else to do.

A moment later Deven reappeared. He didn’t look well at all—God knew what echoes he was catching from his Consort’s broken mind. And while he might be pretending not to care much about Lesela, he had insisted on taking care of her body himself.

“Did you bury her?” David asked quietly.

Deven shook his head, eyes on the window. “We need to send her back to Avilon, but we don’t know when or if that will be possible, so…I had her burned. There are guards keeping watch who will collect the ashes.”

He looked at Deven curiously. “She’s not a vampire, though—sunlight won’t burn her, and doesn’t it take an incredibly high temperature to reduce a non-vampire to ash?”

“I know how to burn a body, David,” Deven snapped. Then, he gestured vaguely and said, “Sorry.”

“Don’t be. How are you holding up?”

“I’m not.” Deven couldn’t seem to look at him—he often had trouble with eye contact when he was in tears or otherwise overcome. “I can’t take this anymore. I was barely holding it together as it was, and now…”

The emotion on Deven’s face was one David had only rarely ever seen—one most people didn’t think he was capable of.
Fear.

Unable to resist the urge to do something, anything, David reached over and took his hand, squeezed it. “You’re not alone.”

“What else can be taken from me? Who else can I lose? Miranda? You, again? Who else do I love? And none of this would have happened if—”

“Stop right there,” David told him firmly. “You’re free to feel however you feel, but at least do it from the truth, not from this delusion you have that you’re some kind of immortal plague rat. We are all culpable in all of this to one degree or another. And besides…not an ounce of blame is going to get us out of this.” David took hold of his chin and forced their eyes to meet. “So stop being a dick to someone I love, and get your head back in the game.”

Deven looked away, eyes bright. “I’ve got nothing,” he said. “If you have some brilliant plan now would be the time to share it.”

He was right. There was no more time to lose. Miranda might not have had a chance to work on her Weaving, but they had to trust that she could do it—Persephone had believed she could, and it was She who had given Miranda the ability in the first place. This was the place for a leap of faith if ever there was one.

“Come on,” he told Deven, taking his hand again. “We need to talk and we can’t do it here. Miranda will be home shortly.”

Before Deven could reply, David hauled him along into a Mist, emerging in the Signet Suite where everything was so normal, so peaceful, it made the whole night seem even more painful.

David took off his coat and disarmed, then went to change; he returned from the closet with some of Miranda’s black cotton off-duty wear and handed it to Deven.

“You’re all bloody,” he told Deven. “Go wash off and get comfortable. I think you need to stay here with us tonight.”

Deven gave him an incredulous look. “Here? With you?”

David recognized the worry in Dev’s expression and sighed, mentally tapping on his com and saying, “Star Two.”

A second later Miranda replied,
“Star-Two.”

“Deven’s in a fairly dreadful state and I think he should sleep in our room tonight, but I want him to hear your opinion.”

“Of course he should! Dev, get in bed. As your Queen, that’s an order.”

A smile flickered on Deven’s face. “You’re not really my—“

“The hell I’m not. Now do as you’re told.”

Deven smiled a little more. “Yes, my Lady.” He gave David a look of faint amusement.

David pointed silently at the bathroom.

Almost laughing, Deven did as the Queen had commanded.

David flopped down on the bed and took care of a few odds and ends while he waited for Miranda to get home and Deven to return; he ran a quick check on the sensor network, scanned the patrol reports for the night, checked for any urgent messages from Jacob that would indicate a Signet had gone down. The night-to-night work of running most of the country never stopped, not even for Elf emergencies.

They apparently had a moment’s reprieve; nothing dramatic had occurred that night at all outside the Haven, either in his territories or overseas. He was surprised—in their lives shit-storms were almost always Category 4.

Deven emerged from the bathroom in a cloud of steam. The sleeveless shirt David had filched from Miranda gave him a magnificent look at Dev’s tattoos—and biceps. David decided to pretend that wasn’t why he’d picked it.

Again, the Prime looked reluctant to follow David to the bed, and said halfheartedly, “I could take the couch…”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” David stretched out and lifted the covers, patting the mattress. “Look, I know you don’t want to cause a problem, but in case you haven’t noticed, there isn’t one. Not anymore. Miranda would be thrilled to have you here under any circumstances, and I’m not complaining either.” More quietly, he added, “I know you’re on the precipice. You can lay it all down here, for now. You need to feel safe, and we can protect you. Nothing that comes through that door will survive the walk across the room with the two of us here.”

Finally, Deven acquiesced, and lay down next to him, letting David tuck him in and draw him close. David had to smile—it was the first time in a long time they’d been in bed together like this, without any shame lurking around the headboard just waiting to pounce. Things were so different now…different from a few years ago, yes, but also different from decades ago, when their relationship had been anything but safe.

“I think you’re wrong,” Deven told him softly, still able to pick up on his thoughts. “We damn near killed each other on a regular basis and did unspeakable things to each other’s hearts, but when we were together like this, in the quiet of the morning…I knew I was safe. You were the only lover I would ever trust to protect me.”

Something dark and frightened crossed his face, and he shivered and buried his head in David’s shoulder, fingers digging into David’s arm.

“I think he might be gone for good this time,” Deven said in a harsh whisper. “Before, underneath the anger, at least there was some flicker of who he was…I can’t feel that anymore. All I feel is hate…for me, for you, for everyone and everything. I think he would kill me, or himself, except he wouldn’t get to enjoy watching me die. But the second we let him wake he’s coming after you.”

“Not if we come after him first,” David replied. “We do have a plan, Dev…it was better when Lesela was here to help, but I think what’s among the three of us will be enough, and the circumstances are as ideal as they’re going to get. But…you’re going to have to trust us, more than you ever have before.”

“I trust you as much as I am capable of,” Deven said tiredly, closing his eyes. “I hope that’s enough.”

“It’s a start.”

Finally, he murmured, “I’m scared, David…of what else he might do, who he might hurt…scared I won’t ever get him back and have a chance to make this right…and scared that even if he does come back, he’ll be so broken he might as well have died. How is he supposed to live with all of this? The guilt is going to destroy him…assuming it’s not too late already.”