Miranda shrugged again. “It doesn’t bother me. Anyone else it might, but I guess I’m used to you.”
She knew it was strange. Two days ago she had been out walking in the garden and tripped over a stone, and Terrence had appeared beside her to grab her arm and steady her; she’d wrenched away from his grasp and nearly decked him, settling for a mild panic attack. His hand had been too big, his grip too firm. She’d apologized for the freakout, and he’d apologized for the liberty. She didn’t want anyone touching her. She’d always been a rabid defender of her personal space, but now the minute anyone—especially anyone male—got within ten feet, her heart started to pound.
David was different. The only thing she could figure was that having his mind bordering so closely to hers day and night made her instincts accept him as nonthreatening. Perhaps it was because every time he’d physically touched her, she had gotten the psychic sense of him asking for her consent, never assuming. Perhaps it was because nothing about him reminded her of . . . those others. Of everyone in the Haven, she was the least afraid of him.
She was well aware how ironic that was, considering he was by far the scariest bastard she’d ever met.
“Well, I’m glad you’re used to me,” he said, and then seemed to regret saying so; she hadn’t been looking for any sort of subtext in the statement but . . . had there been? Was it her imagination, or did he actually look a little embarrassed?
The two weeks she’d been at the Haven she had been trying to make up her mind about David Solomon. At times she wished desperately to hate him for trying to save her, and in almost the same minute she wanted his approval; other times he terrified her. Still others, she found herself wondering if, in another time and place, if he were human, maybe . . . but part of her mind had still been trying to settle on an opinion, until now. The ever-so-faint sheepish undertone in his voice swung the jury. Yes . . . I like you . . . fangs and all. If someone asked me who you were, I would say, “My friend.”
“Do you want to tell me about what’s going on?” she asked then. “Maybe I can help.”
He rose, and for a second she thought he was going to kick her out of the room, but instead he walked over to the corner by the desk and opened a cabinet. The lamplight picked out the edges of a row of bottles and another of glasses. He filled one, then turned to her with a questioning look.
“Got any margaritas?”
“No,” he replied, “but I can call for some if you like.” She shook her head quickly. That’s exactly the sort of thing someone who was used to having servants would do. “No, that’s okay. What about Coke?”
“With or without rum?”
“With. Lots.”
There was a small fridge beneath the bar, and he retrieved a soda. As the door was closing she caught a glimpse of a thick plastic bag with a white label. Her stomach twisted.
He saw her staring. “Emergency supply,” he explained as he poured her drink. “It’s only good for about four days after it’s donated before the life energy leaches out, but it’s still stronger than animal blood. We have a contract with the blood and tissue center for a limited amount per month. It’s saved more than a few lives here.”
“Do they know what you’re using it for?” She tried to sound nonchalant, but the thought still intruded: God, he drank that. It was in there because he drank it. He probably liked the taste, the smell.
“Of course,” he said, returning to the couch and handing her her drink. She kept herself from shooting it out of sheer force of will, and took a sip, letting the alcohol burn her tongue and the bubbles fizz merrily along with it. “My people are known to the United States government on several levels. It’s a relatively recent phenomenon, but keeping good diplomatic relations helps us all coexist. My predecessor wasn’t so open-minded, so when I took the Signet I had to do a lot of damage control.”
She took another swallow of her drink, this one bigger. She still couldn’t shake the mental image . . . David, bending over someone’s neck . . . using those teeth to pierce a human’s flesh, and sucking from it, his lower lip stained red. His eyes had gone silver when he was angry; did they do the same when he fed?
Then there was the human. The bite would hurt, but he had said vampires used their psychic power to keep their prey calm, and that it was . . . what had he said? Intensely pleasurable. Was that why so many people thought they were romantic?
He was watching her again, and she felt herself flush. She knew he could hear some of her thoughts.
“It’s all right,” he told her, staring into his drink, then lifting his eyes to her. “I don’t blame you for feeling revulsion. Any sane person would. But we do what we must to survive. At heart, we want the same things as your kind do.”
“Really? What do you want?”
He lowered his glass, clearly surprised by the question, but thought about it a moment before he said, “I want peace in my territory. I want whoever is behind this brought to justice so no one else dies.”
He told her, then, what was going on, or at least an abridged version of it: the attacks in the city, growing more frequent and more violent; Helen’s betrayal and the holes in security it had exposed, which he was now confident were filled; and, in less detail, the street war in California and the vampire cult known as the Blackthorn.
“They began as a single family, around the time I was leaving Britain. Imagine Puritan vampires, if you can—religious zealots who favor austerity of lifestyle, feeding on those they consider sinners. They were all but extinct for over a century, then reappeared in California and assassinated the Prime there, expecting to put their leader in the Signet. Needless to say, the stone didn’t wake for him. The territory fell into chaos. I helped the deceased Prime’s Second end the war, and the Signet chose him. One of his first orders was to exterminate the Blackthorn. Any member of the syndicate we found, we killed. If any survived, they ran from California and didn’t return.”
“And you think they’re here,” she concluded.
“I don’t know. Certainly the methodology is the same. They gradually undermined Arrabicci’s authority, killing off his Elite until we were spread so thin that the Queen was left unguarded just long enough to take a crossbow bolt to the heart.” He again got that haunted look on his face, then added, “I saw it, but I couldn’t stop it. Everything happened so fast.”
“Did they shoot the Prime after that?”
David shook his head. “They didn’t have to. A Pair—that is, a Prime and his Queen—is bound by blood and soul. What kills one kills both. The Queen went down, and in less than a minute Arrabicci just . . . fell, dead, without a scratch on him. The bond between them enables them to share their power, but in doing so they also share their fates.”
“That sounds awful,” Miranda observed, sucking the liquor off an ice cube. She’d become a lightweight these past few weeks, and he’d had a liberal hand with the rum. She was feeling a bit blurred around the edges.
He smiled. “It does, doesn’t it? From what I hear, it’s wonderful.”
“Your friend, the one in California, does he have a Queen?”
“A Consort.”
“What’s the difference?”
The smile turned wry. “The difference is, if you called Jonathan a Queen, he’d break your neck.”
“They make gay Primes?”
“Only one, as far as we know. As I’ve said before, vampires are slow to evolve.”
“I’ll bet the Blackthorn loved that.”
“That’s part of why they singled out Arrabicci in the first place. Deven was his most trusted ally, and probably the single most accomplished warrior vampire kind has ever seen. The Blackthorn demanded that he execute Deven or be killed himself. I think his exact words were, ‘Go fuck yourselves, and I’ll see you in hell.’ ”
Miranda nodded, understanding. “And you’re friends, so they hate you, too.”
“For that and a dozen other reasons, not the least of which is that I helped wipe out their en
tire clan. If there are any left, they’ll be out for vengeance as much as for their crusade.”
She leaned sideways into the couch cushions, yawning hugely. It was a good thing she hadn’t had any painkillers so far that evening. It took so little to wear her out. She remembered a brief time back in college when she could outdrink a fraternity pledge, but like everything else in her life, it had become a shadow, an indistinct ghost from Before.
“Do you miss your wife?” she asked sleepily.
It was several seconds before he answered. “It was a long time ago.”
“Did you love her?”
“Yes. Very much.”
“How did she die?”
He finished his drink, but didn’t set the glass down. “She was convicted of witchcraft and burned alive in the village square.”
Her eyes shot open. “Oh my God.”
David nodded. “My son was sent to another town, on the other side of Britain, adopted by relatives. He died of cholera at age thirty-two.”
“But . . . where were you?”
“I was in prison,” he replied. “I was sentenced to die as Elizabeth had, but someone intervened. Afterward, I thought it best to leave Thomas to his life, believing me dead, instead of forcing him to face what I had become.”
“I’m sorry.”
She nearly dropped her glass, and he reached out and rescued it from her, moving too fast for her tipsy mind to register. One second the glass was in her hand, the next it was safely on the coffee table. He might even have done it with his mind.
“Perhaps you should have a nap,” David told her, amused.
“I feel like I spend all my time asleep on your couch.”
“You need your rest. You’ve been through a lot.”
“Yeah.” She pulled her knees back up to her chin, groping for the throw blanket and pulling it around herself haphazardly. “’Specially if you’re going to work me over tomorrow like you did last time.”
“I’ll try to be gentle.”
“That’s what they all say.”
She drifted off, smiling, aware that his eyes were still on her as her own fell shut.
It was a beautiful, clear morning in April when Lizzie died. The smoke had to have been seen for miles.
It was the last morning he ever saw, and he had only a glimpse of it through the bars of his cell. He was lucky; he didn’t have to see her beautiful young face obscured by a column of smoke, or her rosy skin blackening. He didn’t have to watch her scream . . . but he heard her. He heard all three of the convicted shrieking as the flames licked their bare, broken feet. He heard the crowd cheering, heard the drone of the reverend’s voice.
One by one, the screams had become less and less human . . . then they had faded. David learned, years later, that in all likelihood the victims had died from smoke inhalation, so they had been blessedly oblivious to the stench of their own flesh barbecuing. Perhaps their feet had blistered, skin charring and cracking, but the poisoned air would have starved them of oxygen, and the agony may not have been as excruciating as he imagined.
Or perhaps this time the smoke hadn’t been enough—the wind may have been wrong, the wood so dry that flames raced up the pyre. Perhaps Elizabeth had died cursing his name, or begging God for release. Had her last thoughts been of him? Of their boy, already spirited away in the night, out of the pernicious influence of his demonic parents?
He remembered Lizzie as he had known her, laughing, eyes sparkling, hair coming loose from its bun. She’d been such a free spirit that she’d married later than her sisters. The men of the village thought she was difficult. Fiery, they’d said. She’d died, then, the way she had lived.
Richard Cooke, who had taken the last shift as jailer before David was to follow Elizabeth’s steps up to the pyre, whispered to him through the bars that though the other two condemned had sobbed and begged for their lives, she had spat on the reverend in contempt and held her head high as they lashed her to the stake. That was his Lizzie.
Hanging had been a more common fate for witches back then, but the Witchfinder who came to their village—who was paid per conviction—had favored a more barbaric method that would remind the witnesses of the inferno that awaited them in hell should they stray from the path of righteousness.
Twenty-first-century Austin was both far more monstrous and infinitely kinder in comparison.
David stood in the warm night wind, staring down at his city from the roof of one of its tallest buildings, watching traffic move along the streets below. From here, there was the illusion of order; things moved in straight lines, according to signals. Horns blared, and the wind carried to him snatches of music from the bars and clubs that lined Sixth Street, all of them filled to capacity on a Saturday night in late summer.
Kinder, yes . . . and yet the same ignorant hatred that had ended Lizzie’s life had dogged his steps all the way to the twenty-first century. Either humankind had learned depressingly little in the last few centuries, or he was singularly cursed.
Somewhere out there was the gang he intended to find and eliminate. They were, he was sure, planning their next assault as he stood there.
For months the California Blackthorn had been phantoms. They appeared, killed, and dissolved before they could be identified. The Elite had been unable to track them until luck finally fell their way: One of the members dropped a matchbook at the crime scene. That matchbook led to a vampire bar, which led to David exercising his interrogation skills, which led to the rest of the syndicate. Blood had flowed on the streets of Sacramento until the night was silent again.
There had been nineteen human deaths and four vampires so far this time . . . five, if he counted Helen. The only good thing to come of it was that now the com network was so secure God himself would need a password to log on.
Again he thought of Lizzie’s face. He thought of her often, but rarely in any depth. It had been over three centuries, and he had loved since then. Hundreds of people had tumbled in and out of his bed, and though he’d given his heart rarely, it had happened. He had known Lizzie for less than a decade total. Why had she returned to haunt his dreams now?
More important . . . how had Miranda seen her?
He’d shielded others before, and this had never happened. The only explanation he could think of was that Miranda was a good three times more powerful than anyone he had ever trained before. Psychically she was already as strong as half his Elite. It was also possible that she had some mostly untapped power as a medium, just as it was possible she could see and hear parts of him that no one else he had ever trained could . . . possible, and extremely unnerving.
His phone rang.
He reached for it absently, stepping back out of the wind. “Yes?”
“Let me guess,” came a familiar, deep voice with a cheerful British accent. “You’re standing on top of a building in a long black coat, brooding.”
David smiled into the darkness. “Not at all, my Lord,” he replied. “As it happens I’m at a topless bar with my face between a brunette’s thighs.”
“Liar,” was the laughing reply. “Your voice isn’t muffled.”
“To what do I owe this honor?” David asked.
Jonathan Burke, Consort of the Prime of the Western United States, had spent most of his immortal life as a bodyguard for royals, and in his spare time he was rumored to bite trees in half with his teeth. A tall, broad blond whose nose had been broken a few times, he looked far more like a linebacker than like a vampire. He was a good ten inches taller than his Prime, his polar opposite in more ways than one; Deven was quiet and serious and had fooled many people into thinking he was fragile.
David imagined Jonathan sitting with his feet propped up on his desk at the Haven outside Sacramento, drinking a beer with his free hand.
“I e-mailed you the files you asked for,” Jonathan said. “I don’t know how much help they’ll be. Your intel is probably vastly superior to ours.”
“Thank you. I want to look over
them regardless to see if there’s anything I missed.”
“You’re looking for a matchbook,” Jonathan surmised. “I hope you find one. I hate to think any of those cockroaches slipped through our fingers, but it’s possible.”
“That’s not why you called,” David pointed out.
“No, not really.” The Consort seemed to be looking for words, which was a bit unusual for him, but David waited until he said, “I saw something.”
Shit. Consorts were almost all gifted with precognition, and Jonathan’s gift was very strong. He’d foreseen Arrabicci’s death, but he was on the other side of the world when it happened and didn’t even know what he was seeing. He’d foreseen David taking the Signet—in fact, that vision had been what convinced David that the waiting was over and it was time to take Auren down.
“What did you see?”
“It was vague,” was the reply, amended with, “but it felt urgent. I don’t even know if it will make any sense to you. I wasn’t going to call, but Dev said I had better, and you know he’s always right.”
“Go on.”
“There was a woman,” said the Consort. “I couldn’t see her very clearly, but I could hear music.”
David’s hand clenched the phone so tightly he was amazed it didn’t break. “And?”
“Black water. Cold. It felt like drowning—well, I think it did. I’ve never actually drowned, but still, if I could . . . anyway, I also saw a Signet Seal, not one I knew. I think it may have been Auren’s, which makes sense given the situation. The stone drawn in the center was red like yours. It was painted on something, and it was burning.”
The Prime nodded to nobody. “What else?”
“The woman . . . she was sad. She made me think of honey and rain.”
“What happened to her?”
“She died, David. That much was certain. I saw her blood on your hands. My advice is, if you meet this woman, get her away from you as fast as you can.”
David was dimly aware that he’d stopped breathing. “Is that all?” he managed.
“No. There’s one other thing.” Jonathan delivered the rest hurriedly, as if he were trying to exorcise the knowledge from his mind by saying the words aloud. “At the end, I saw you, turning the pages of an old book. Between two pages you found a drawing of a woman, so old it was falling apart. I didn’t recognize her, but she felt . . . wrong. Then you turned the page again, and there was a note someone had written you, still folded.”
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