Queen of Shadows

by Dianne Sylvan

  One of the lieutenants met him at the doors as he entered. “Sire, the Blackthorn girl is asking for you.”

  “Thank you, Patrick. I’ll see her now.”

  He took the right-hand staircase to the second floor instead of the left and made his way to the hallway of suites where the rare visitor from outside the territory stayed. Primes seldom left their realms, but once in a while a second in command or someone high up in another Court came to pay their respects. He’d had a constant stream of guests the first two or three years. Right now there was no one but Bethany Blackthorn.

  Two guards stood outside her door; they bowed and stepped aside to let him enter.

  He did the polite thing and knocked. There was no reason to start things off on the wrong foot.

  “Come in,” he heard.

  He’d put her in one of the small suites—just a bedroom and bath with a sitting area by the fire, much like Miranda’s but nowhere near as comfortable.

  She looked small and out of place sitting in one of the chairs, her posture stiff, her dishwater hair hanging board-straight on either side of her face. She might have been beautiful once, but abuse had left her wraithlike, her eyes far too big for her face. Their unwavering azure was the only thing about her that seemed alive.

  She sat with the pale spiders of her hands clasped between her knees, as unreactive to his arrival as she had been the night they’d found her, neither cowed by his power nor enraged by his supposed crimes. “Sire,” she said. She sounded so young.

  “Bethany,” he replied, taking the other chair. “Are you feeling better tonight?”

  “Yes.” She stared down at her hands. “They’re taking good care of me. I don’t deserve it.”

  “Why not?”

  She frowned and gave a one-shouldered shrug. “I’m a Blackthorn. We’re the enemy. Or you are. My father said you were the devil.”

  “I’m sure he did. What do you think?”

  “I think he was probably right. But you saved me. And Ariana . . .” She swallowed at the name as if it stuck in her throat. “What do you do when the angel is worse than the devil?”

  He folded his hands, elbows on the arms of the chair. “What can you tell me about her plans, Bethany? It’s important that I know so I can stop the remaining members from killing anyone else.”

  She looked up at him curiously. “You care about humans,” she said. “My father said that humans were put here on this earth for our use.”

  “But we all came from humans,” he pointed out.

  “That’s right. We used their bodies and then we use their blood. Once we have what we need, they don’t matter. It’s God’s will that we are superior.”

  He nodded. He’d heard this line of “reasoning” before, and as with any form of zealotry, there was no arguing with it. “Even if that’s true, your sister’s people were responsible for the deaths of our kind as well. And if they’re allowed to reorganize, there will be more death. I cannot allow that. What can you tell me?”

  She shrugged again. “Not much. I was a pet, not a member of the group. She hated me from the time we lived in California. I was Father’s favorite—he wanted me to go to Auren, but she lusted for power. I think secretly she was glad that Father was murdered.”

  “Can you tell me why there’s no record of you anywhere? Everyone from the original family has been accounted for except you.”

  She made a sound that might have been a laugh. “No, they haven’t. There were others. Anyone who didn’t want to become warriors for the cause, anyone who disagreed . . . we disappeared, over time. Father had a fondness for me, though, because I looked so much like my mother. He let me stay and kept me safe even though I was a traitor. As soon as he was dead, Ariana got her revenge. She was going to give me to Auren’s Elite as a toy.”

  “I see. And you know nothing about her larger plans for the organization?”

  “She had a plan?”

  He couldn’t help but smile at the unexpected touch of humor. “She did intend to kill me and turn the Signet over to someone.”

  “Not Ariana. She would have kept it for herself. She only acted demure while Father was alive.” Bethany picked at the edge of her sleeve for a moment, then said, “They all believed in her. She pulled them together after Auren died. Without her, they’re nothing.”

  “I wish I could believe that.”

  She looked up and met his eyes, her own suddenly full of pleading. “They’re going to kill me,” she said. “As soon as they find out I’m still alive, they’ll hunt me down. They’ll think I was in collusion with you.”

  “They won’t lay a finger on you,” he told her. “I have you under double guard and digital surveillance. No one comes in or out of the Haven without my knowing, even assuming they can find it in the first place. Don’t worry, Bethany.”

  “But . . . what are you going to do with me?”

  He rose. “I haven’t decided yet. So if there’s anything further you know, I would appreciate it greatly if you shared it soon. After all you’ve been through I don’t want to cause you more suffering, but I will if it’s necessary. Your family has its cause and I have mine. I’m sorry you’ve been caught in the crossfire. If you cooperate, I’ll do what I can to ensure your safety.”

  She returned her gaze to her hands. “I believe you,” she said.

  He started to leave, but her voice called him back. “Thank you.”

  He turned and nodded to her. “It is my duty to protect those under my rule, Bethany, until they become law-breakers. As far as I know you’ve done nothing wrong.”

  “I didn’t mean for that,” she said, and for just a second he saw something burning in her eyes. “I meant thank you . . . for killing my sister.”

  Sixteen

  When Sophie opened the door that Tuesday night, whatever acerbic greeting she’d intended died on her lips. She stared for a minute, looking Miranda up and down.

  Sophie shook her head. “Girl.”

  Miranda gave her the same eyebrow she often gave Miranda. “What?”

  Sophie gestured for her to come in, as always, and for a while Miranda didn’t think she was going to say anything else; she put Miranda through the usual warm-ups and basic sword drills with only occasional commentary on her form.

  Then she took her own sword from the wall and without ceremony dove in for the attack.

  Miranda countered, but in minutes she was disarmed. That was normal, but today it left her angry and frustrated. She’d been hoping that the changes in her senses would do . . . something. Help her move faster, maybe, or keep her on her feet longer. If anything, it hampered her; she was so busy being impatient that she kept getting knocked on her ass.

  Sophie stood over her, the look on her face unreadable. “Get the fuck up,” she snapped.

  Miranda did so, but anger bubbled up in her throat. This time when Sophie attacked she was ready, or thought she was. She swung her blade hard, throwing her energy with it, but her carelessness cost her, and Sophie merely kicked her in the stomach and slapped the sword from her hand.

  “Quit wasting my time,” Sophie told her. “You think just because you’ve been sucking off a Prime that you’re something special? I’ve got news for you, little girl. You’re no better than you were a week ago. In fact, you suck as bad as you did the first time I met you.”

  “Fine,” Miranda bit back. “What’s the right way to do this?”

  “I told you. Stop fighting like a human. If you want to be a vampire, you can’t keep thinking like a meat puppet. Let it go.”

  “Let go of what, being human?”

  “Yes, damn it.” Sophie slammed her sword into its sheath and faced Miranda with arms crossed. “Becoming one of us is a gift. It elevates you beyond the limits of mortality. But it’s not a game and it’s not pretty. It’s bloody and dark and dirty and it goes on forever. Once you cross this bridge, there is no going back. You’re selling your soul to this life, Miranda. Are you ready? And moreover—are you worthy
?”

  Her eyes bored into Miranda’s for the better part of a minute before Miranda said, quietly, “Show me how.”

  “Get up.”

  Miranda rose, gripping her weapon tightly. Her entire body felt like it was made of iron.

  “Go into your Sight. Set your shields, set your stance.” Sophie circled her, her pace deliberate and slow. “Now reach deeper into it. There’s a power inside you you’ve never been able to access before. You still can’t, not totally, but it’s there, and you can touch it.”

  “Yes,” Miranda said. She sought within herself and found what she’d experienced that first night with David, the sleeping shadow, waiting for blood to call it forth. “I feel it.”

  “Imagine it’s air. Breathe it. Let it fill you up.”

  The energy crawled up her spine, scalding her, and she nearly lost her ground, but before Sophie could command her to, she hauled herself back under control.

  The power of her senses from before was nothing compared to what she felt now. She could feel the entire room around her, stretching out from her own skin, the empty space connecting her to Sophie, to the floor, the ceiling, the walls. The sword in her hand was as light as a feather and felt like it had grown out of her palm.

  “Good.” Sophie fell into her own ready stance and said, “Now, stay in that place as you fight. Hold on to the shadow. Let it move you. Dance with it.”

  She raised her sword and brought it toward Miranda, where the blade hit its twin with a sharp clang. Miranda breathed in the darkness, and suddenly she could see Sophie as if there were two of her, the one before her and an afterimage. The afterimage was going to spin and kick—

  Miranda wasn’t there to feel it. She stepped effortlessly out of the way and spun herself, driving her sword up in a graceful arc to meet Sophie’s. For the next few minutes she lost herself completely in action and reaction, point and counterpoint, like two melodies merging into harmony.

  It didn’t last long, though. Soon her arm felt as heavy as lead, and exhaustion pushed her down to the floor, her sword falling uselessly to the ground. She was breathing hard and drenched in sweat the way she hadn’t been since the earliest days of her training.

  Sophie, still flawless and unruffled, said, “Now you know what it feels like.”

  Miranda couldn’t speak, but when she looked up at her teacher, she was smiling.

  Being friends with the hottest act in town had its benefits. Kat got to watch the whole show from the wings instead of out in the crowd, and she was doubly thankful tonight. The place was so packed that the heat in the room was as intense as a Texan July, and two people had already been taken out by bouncers to get fresh air.

  If Miranda noticed, she didn’t seem to care. She was on fire. Kat had never seen her so fierce. It seemed like her energy had ignited the audience, too, and they were dancing and jostling each other and it was a minor miracle a riot hadn’t broken out.

  The power in the singer’s diminutive body was amazing. Her voice soared off the rafters and showed no signs of fatigue after two whole hours of solid performing.

  It was a marked contrast to the last time Kat had seen her play, months and months ago. She’d been so sad back then, slave to whatever drug she’d been hooked on. She’d been a pale imitation of the Miranda Kat had first met back in college, the girl who caught everyone’s attention with her razor wit and doll-like beauty.

  Nowadays a doll was the last thing Miranda brought to mind. She was like a blade that had been tempered, purified in fire. Even her hair was aflame in the stage lights.

  No wonder Drew had fallen so hard for her. Kat felt awful about the whole thing. She’d pushed them at each other when, now, it was obvious that Miranda was hung up on this David guy, and all her talk about not being ready for men was a smokescreen for not having the one she wanted.

  In the few days since David had come waltzing back into her life, Miranda had changed again. There was something about her that was different physically, but Kat couldn’t put her finger on it; regardless, she was acting like an amnesiac who had suddenly remembered she was royalty. It might have been annoying if it hadn’t been so . . . believable.

  Seeing her now, Kat felt like a fool for even considering Miranda and Drew as a couple. He was a sweet guy and had a lot going for him, but he was way too meek for a force of nature like her. As arrogant and cold as David had seemed, Kat had to admit he had charisma. She wanted to know more about him, though, before she made up her mind. Not just any guy was good enough for Miranda, no matter how disgustingly hot he was.

  One thing was absolutely sure: He was no drug counselor. If she’d had to put him in that world, she’d have pegged him as a drug lord. No way someone with the money to afford those clothes worked for human services. Particularly not given how he’d looked at Kat and Drew like they were from another species.

  Miranda finished her last song to an eardrumpulverizing ovation and bowed, saying something to the audience about how awesome they were and good night. She walked off the stage, pulling her guitar over her head and handing it to a sound tech . . .

  . . . then stopped, wavered on her feet, and passed out cold.

  “I’m telling you, I’m fine,” Miranda told the nurse for the hundredth time. “I just got overheated, is all.”

  “Miss Grey,” the round, stern black woman in blue scrubs said, “you’re severely dehydrated and you said yourself you haven’t eaten in three days. We need to do some blood work—”

  Miranda snorted.

  “—to find out why you’ve lost your appetite, and we need to get some fluids into you.”

  Kat, who was hovering near the entrance to the cubicle, said, “Mira . . . honey, listen to her. You’ve got to eat.”

  Miranda hopped down from the examination table, standing at her full height, which barely came up to the nurse’s nose. She was in her bra and panties, and the nurse was clearly the don’t-fuck-with-me-sugar type, but the woman moved back a foot or so anyway as Miranda’s aura hit her.

  “I want to go home,” Miranda said calmly. “I am refusing treatment. I’ll sign whatever forms you need me to.”

  The nurse looked like she wanted to give her an earful but instead just shook her head and said, “Fine.”

  Kat was giving Miranda a slightly nervous look. “What the hell has gotten into you lately?” she asked as soon as they were alone.

  Miranda looked up at the ceiling. “I’m fine, Kat. Can you drive me home?”

  “Sure. But only if you’ll let me take you out to dinner first. And only if I see you eat.”

  Miranda crossed her arms and regarded her friend for a minute. Kat was genuinely worried for her; she was only trying to help, just like she’d always tried to do. There was no reason to treat her badly. “I’m sorry,” Miranda said with chagrin. “I don’t mean to be a bitch. It’s just . . . I don’t want them to poke and prod me. There’s nothing wrong with me that a good meal and a long sleep won’t cure.”

  Kat stared her down, but eventually looked away, making an I give up! noise. “Okay, okay. I’ll go bring the car around to the exit. You sign your forms or whatever, and don’t breathe fire at anybody else.”

  “Can you take this?”

  Kat took her guitar with a grunt of assent and left.

  Miranda pulled her clothes back on, glad she’d had the presence of mind to ask the tech for her guitar before Kat had whisked her away from the club to the Brackenridge Hospital ER. Otherwise she’d have had to go back for it, and all she really wanted was to go home.

  As she put her boots on, she had to stop and breathe. This place . . . there was so much pain. Everyone here was afraid. Afraid of disease, of hurting, of death . . . especially death. She could feel the doctors and nurses moving among the patients, their calm heads like stars in the blackness of space. Their way was to find answers, to hunt down and kill illnesses and stitch together holes. What would they find if they looked at her blood right now? She had no idea, but she knew it scared
her.

  She drew the curtain aside and poked her head out of the cubicle; her nurse was nowhere in sight. Good.

  Miranda gathered her bag and left. Halfway to the exit she saw the nurse and ducked into an empty cubicle until she passed.

  The nurses’ station was near her, and she saw through the edge of the curtain that a man in scrubs was standing there filling something out while a woman in a different style of uniform—white, with a badge pinned to her shirt instead of hanging from a lanyard—waited with a large red cooler at her feet.

  “Twelve units,” the male nurse was reading off. “Five O positive, five O negative, one AB positive, one AB negative. Sounds about right. Oh, wait . . . wasn’t there supposed to be another cooler with the As and Bs? Or was that coming separately?”

  The woman opened the cooler and looked inside. Miranda saw dark red in plastic, and her stomach turned a somersault. She recognized that packaging: a bag with a black-and-white label divided into four sections, bar-coded with type and donor ID.

  The roof of her mouth started to itch again. Her hand tightened on the curtain.

  “I think you’re right,” the woman was saying. “Let me run out and check the van to be sure.”

  She hurried out of the ER, leaving the cooler behind.

  Miranda stared hard at the desk nurse. Look away. Look away.

  He turned to the left and began to dig around in a drawer for something.

  Miranda darted out of the cubicle and, keeping her intention focused on the nurse, shoved her hand inside the cooler. Before she could even think about what she was doing, she had seized one of the bags inside and stuck it inside her jacket.

  She all but ran for the exit, letting the nurse’s mind go at the last minute before she burst outside, where Kat was waiting for her.

  She slid into the passenger seat. “Thanks,” she said.

  Kat did not look at all happy with her. “Anything for you, sugarbean. Now, where do you want to eat? Kerbey?”

  “Okay. That’s fine. Actually . . . can we run by my place first? I’d like to get out of these clothes and put my guitar away.”