Shadowflame

by Dianne Sylvan

  Miranda looked up and saw that the human staff members, every one, had huge frightened eyes, and some were shaking from the carryover of her fear.

  “They can’t do their jobs like that,” Faith pointed out. “Pull it back in.”

  Miranda nodded. She forced herself to let go of David’s hand for a minute and breathe deeply, seeking the place of silence and stillness she had fought so hard to create inside herself. With each breath she intensified her shields until she was so strongly walled off from the others that she could barely feel the air on her skin.

  The staff’s relief was obvious. They sighed, blinked, and did a little deep breathing of their own—chances were they had no idea where their sudden anxiety had come from.

  On the other side of the bed, Mo hooked up the IV and switched it on.

  Miranda watched the infused blood traveling through the tube into David’s wrist. She could hardly breathe as she waited for it to take effect.

  When it did, everyone knew.

  The Prime’s body stiffened, and he gasped. He squeezed Miranda’s hand so hard it nearly broke her fingers. A soft sound of surprise and pain escaped his lips, and sweat broke out all over his body; then, like magic, it seemed to pass, and he breathed out.

  She almost believed for a moment that it had been that easy.

  A minute later, he cried out again, and spasms began to rock through him so powerfully she heard something in his body snap.

  Wave after wave of seizures hit him, and Miranda could feel the pain, even through her shields: great hands crushing his skull, needles jabbing, claws ripping out his insides. The light in his Signet was fading in and out, as if it had a short in its wires.

  Miranda heard screaming. She didn’t understand at first where it was coming from, as no one else seemed to notice it, but then she knew: It was inside his mind, and inside hers.

  One of the nurses made a mewling noise, and Miranda’s head jerked up in time to see what might be the oddest thing she’d seen so far in her life: Lightweight objects all over the room were floating. A syringe, a pen, several medical tools whose purpose Miranda couldn’t divine, and even the intern’s necktie were suspended a few inches in midair.

  “Oxygen mask, please,” Mo said, totally calm. Miranda didn’t know if he’d seen this before, but if he was worried it didn’t show. He fitted the mask onto David’s face and flipped a switch in the wall. David’s breathing deepened somewhat and it seemed to calm him a little; a few seconds later there was an assortment of clattering noises as all the levitating items fell back down.

  The screaming in Miranda’s head went on and on, silent but deafening, and she clung to his hand, afraid to get any closer. His skin had a sick, yellowish pallor now, and another spasm arched his back. Finally Miranda couldn’t take it anymore. She buried her head in her free arm and shut her eyes tight.

  She heard Mo saying something about liver damage and jaundice. The nurses were talking, too, reading out numbers to each other and asking the intern for various things. But all Miranda really knew was the screaming, with its answering echo in her heart, and it felt like it went on forever.

  Then, finally, something indefinable began to ease. The spasms became less frequent and less hard. His pulse began to even out.

  Miranda raised her eyes hesitantly and saw that the color of his skin was returning to something like normal. He was still even paler than a vampire was supposed to be, but the yellow tinge was gone. She could hear him breathing more deeply.

  “All right,” Mo said. “We are on the downhill run. Nurse Jackie, administer a liter of lactated Ringer’s solution, please.” To Miranda’s questioning look, he replied, “To restore the electrolytes. The poison will be out of his system soon, but it’s left his body chemistry in a state of chaos. Anything we can do to bring order will help him recover much more quickly and help your energy repair the cellular damage. The less power you use, the more he’ll have available.”

  She nodded. When she spoke she sounded as if she’d been screaming for hours, though she hadn’t made a sound aloud. “Can I do it now?”

  Mo checked the monitors, then said, “By all means.”

  Miranda lurched to her feet and put both her hands on David’s chest. He was cold . . . much too cold, though his skin was damp with sweat. It barely felt like there was any life left in him. She had never really worked with their Signet-born healing abilities herself; David had used them on her, but she hadn’t needed to try them on him. She had thought he was indestructible.

  She reached into herself and found the bond between them, then started to push as much power into him as she could—but then she remembered the way Deven had healed Kat, slowly and gently, and tried to do the same, controlling the flow of energy so that it moved into the Prime gradually as a stream instead of a roaring tsunami. She allowed her awareness to sync up more with his, pushing aside the barriers she’d kept between them for the last three weeks so she could see if it was working.

  It was. She could feel damaged organs and tissues regenerating, scarred veins smoothing out, and, most important, the blood that had erupted in his skull being reabsorbed, returning to balance. Mo had been right—doing this before the poison was out would have been futile, because every time she healed him the poison would just undo her efforts until it had run its course. There was no way to know yet how long that would have taken, but she knew it would have been much longer than an hour.

  When she felt that a tentative equilibrium had been reached, she withdrew, not wanting to overwhelm his system with too much energy.

  To her relief he looked a hundred times better. Mo removed the oxygen mask. “I would say we have succeeded,” the medic said, satisfied. “We have blood samples for basic toxicology—the Hausmann has the equipment for a narrow range of tests, so we can run them before the samples die. I already sent a courier with additional samples to Hunter Development; perhaps they can get something from them if they hurry.”

  “So we don’t know what it was,” Faith said. She was standing nearby with her arms crossed, her face lined with worry.

  “Not yet. Once he is awake I will ask him about his symptoms, and that will tell us much about the culprit.”

  “I think the odds are pretty good we’re dealing with our assassin,” Faith added. “But I don’t really understand why suddenly she’d be using poison.”

  Miranda was staring at David’s drawn, exhausted face. “To hurt me,” she said. “She couldn’t just kill him without killing me, too, but she could hurt him.”

  “Going after a Prime is pretty ballsy,” Faith observed. “And stupid. She’s going to regret it.”

  Miranda gave a choked half laugh. “Not if we never catch her.”

  It was midafternoon when David woke, more exhausted than he could remember feeling in a century but otherwise comfortable. The absence of pain was such a stark contrast to the hour before he had passed out that he was confused for a minute, feeling out along his body without recognizing the sensations of warmth, softness, and relaxation.

  There was something nearby that gave off a lot of heat and was also making a rhythmic sound, like a drum . . . it was comforting, and he lay there listening to it for a long time before he tried opening his eyes.

  The first thing he saw was red hair.

  “Hey,” she said softly.

  She looked about as tired as he felt, and he sensed she hadn’t slept at all. She was stretched out beside him in the bed, propped up on one elbow, watching him wake.

  She was in bed. Their bed. Next to him.

  His heart did a cartwheel.

  “Hey,” he answered back. His voice was like sandpaper in his throat. “How long was I out?”

  “It’s Tuesday afternoon.”

  He would have expressed shock, but he could barely move. “So, most of a day. You . . . haven’t been here the whole time, have you?”

  Miranda shrugged. “Most of it. I did the patrol meetings and stuff at dawn but then I came back here.” Sh
e reached over and straightened out the comforter. “Can I get you anything?”

  “No . . . you’re enough.”

  A smile, tentative but genuine. She left her hand on his chest, right over his heart, and said, “You scared the hell out of me.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I’m not,” she said. “I mean, I’m sorry you were hurt, but I’m not sorry that we’re here now.”

  “Does that mean I’m forgiven?”

  “I don’t know. We can’t just flip a switch and have everything back the way it was, but . . . I moved my things back in here this morning. I want to be with you, for better or for worse.”

  He started to say something but heard his phone ring, and Miranda twisted backward to pick it up off the nightstand. She saw who it was and paused for a minute before biting her lip and handing it to him.

  “Go on,” she said. “I’m sure he’s been worried about you.”

  David shut his eyes, not wanting to deal with this right now when everything felt so good, but he hit talk anyway. “Hello?”

  The anxiety in Deven’s voice made him sound young. “Are you all right?”

  “I’ll live.”

  “God, David, I . . . I’m so sorry. Jonathan knew something was going to happen, but he didn’t know when or where. I should have called you anyway, just so you’d be on your guard.”

  David sighed. “It wasn’t your fault.”

  Deven took a deep breath. “I can’t stay on. I just wanted to hear your voice—Jonathan’s been saying you would be fine, but I had to hear it for myself.”

  “Really, Deven, I’m all right. I’m weak, and I feel like I could drink an entire volleyball team, but I’m all right.”

  “Let me know when you figure out what that shit was.”

  “Okay. Good-bye.”

  David didn’t wait for a farewell; talking took too much effort. He handed the phone back to Miranda. “Put that thing on silent,” he said.

  She arched an eyebrow at him. “Did you really just say that? Maybe that stuff did eat your brain.”

  “I just want an hour of peace.”

  With a smile, she turned off the ringer and put the phone back on the nightstand, then returned her attention to him. “Let me get you some blood,” she said. “I had a fresh batch brought in—you haven’t fed since the intern at the clinic. Don’t worry,” she added, knowing how he’d feel about feeding on his employees, “I asked for volunteers and offered a hefty bonus in return. The boy was happy to help, and it was much easier than going out and finding someone.”

  “Wait,” he said as she started to get up. “Stay here for a moment.”

  She met his eyes, then nodded and lay back down, scooting closer and, after a second’s hesitation, putting her arm around him.

  Being free of poison had been nothing compared to the relief of that touch.

  She burrowed her face into his shoulder, and he inhaled the scent of her hair; they settled in together as they had a hundred times before, and he felt her sigh against his skin.

  “I deserved this,” he said. “That’s all I could think while I was lying there . . . for what I did to you, and what I did to that horrible old man . . .”

  “Oh, David,” she sighed. “You can’t torture yourself . . . sorry . . . for what you have to do as Prime. I don’t like it . . . and I know you don’t either . . . but think of what will happen if this assassin succeeds and we die. There will be anarchy in the South and a lot of people will be killed. You told me yourself, a long time ago, that sometimes being Prime means doing what no one else should have to . . . that you can’t always afford the moral high road.”

  He looked at her face. “You didn’t always feel that way.”

  She smiled sadly. “You didn’t always get this upset over these things.” She ran her hand back through his hair and added, “I think we’ve changed each other, you and I.”

  “I know you’ve changed me.”

  Miranda was silent for a moment, but then said simply, “I missed you.”

  “I missed you, too.”

  “I don’t know if . . .” She trailed off, searching for words, but he intuited her meaning.

  “I understand,” he replied. “I’ve never asked you for anything you weren’t ready to give.”

  “I know.” She smiled again. “That’s one of the things I love about you . . . you philandering bastard.”

  He couldn’t help but laugh, and she laughed a little, too, hugging him, and then kissing his neck. It was the first time she’d kissed him in three weeks.

  “I just wish you hadn’t fucked up so badly, so I could go on thinking you were the perfect man,” she added, sighing again.

  He snorted softly. “I could tell you a thousand stories that prove I’m anything but perfect.”

  “Truthfully, I already knew you weren’t. You listen to rap.”

  “I listen to everything.” He grinned. “Miss ‘three songs by Britney Spears on my iPod that I don’t think anyone knows about—’ ”

  “Hey, no snooping!”

  “I didn’t. That night I came home and you were singing in the shower with the stereo going, I looked at the playlist because I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.”

  “If you have such exalted taste, how did you know it was Britney?”

  They were both laughing, and it felt so incredibly good, but it was tiring, and he quieted out of necessity. “I love you,” he said.

  She took a deep breath. “I love you, too.”

  He could feel that she meant it. He had never been in danger of losing her love, only her faith in him. He couldn’t say how or when he would earn it back, but he would. He would find a way. They were a Pair. So much in the world was uncertain . . . but that much, he knew with every bone in his body now, was unbreakable. Somehow he would restore her trust and they would find a way to live with what he’d done . . . for her sake, so she could have the happiness she deserved.

  “Go to sleep,” she whispered to him.

  He closed his eyes. “Sing to me.”

  He could hear her smiling. “All right.”

  And, as she sang softly into his ear, and he began to drift off into sleep, he couldn’t help but think that being poisoned might be the best thing that had ever happened to him.

  You’re in my blood like holy wine

  You taste so bitter and so sweet...

  Running the South on her own was exhausting, but there was satisfaction in knowing that she could handle it, at least for a couple of days.

  In the evening at sunset she met with Faith for a briefing on the night’s upcoming patrols, and then just at dawn, when the shutters of the Haven had closed and the teams had all returned from the city, she met with them to go over the night’s events. Sometimes David simply took a summary report from Faith, but with the assassin on the loose Miranda wanted to hear everything herself.

  And though she didn’t have anything like David’s technological genius, she knew how to monitor the sensor network, routing it through her phone to alert her to problems. He had shown her how to run the routine on the main server that compiled all the night’s data into a single report and saved it for later reference. Technically she didn’t need to look it over, because the system was programmed to contact the administrator if anything weird happened, but she gave it a once-over anyway. There were always two Elite monitoring it from the office where the property’s security cameras were based, but they could only watch, not interpret, and David had them observing the network mostly as a backup in case on some off chance he or the alert system missed something.

  Tuesday night she had to mediate a dispute between two members of the Court. Both were nightclub owners and one suspected the other of using mind control to steal patrons. The second owner claimed the humans were migrating to her club because she had started serving food—in fact the Austin Chronicle had voted her tapas the best in the city. As petty and ridiculous as the whole thing seemed, if the issue wasn’t officially settled it
could lead to violence, intimidation, and the risk of exposure. Miranda made both owners submit to a psychic evaluation, looked into their hearts, and found something interesting: The second owner had not been coercing her patrons, but the first one had been, in retaliation for a perceived threat to his business. He’d been sending his employees over to the second club to “advertise” for his own place, meaning to compel a few humans here and there to come back.

  The Queen was within her rights to shut him down completely, but she knew from watching David deal with similar situations that a popular vampire establishment disappearing would raise a lot of questions, and besides, she wanted people to feel that the South was a solid place to do business. She slapped him with the maximum fine demarcated for the circumstances and ordered him to pay restitution to the other owner, then informed him that there would be Elite watching both establishments for any further misbehavior.

  Surprisingly, the first owner wasn’t terribly angry about the loss of income—he was more satisfied that his rival hadn’t been stealing his customers. Both left the Haven feeling that the results were fair, and Miranda was pleased.

  She’d been half afraid since the incident with Prime Hart that she had no political savvy at all and was going to have to stay out of administrative and judicial affairs, which she hated to do because it was what all the other Queens did. But it gave her a shot of confidence knowing that she could learn and that she just needed experience and patience. She didn’t have much of either, but she was working on it. Her empathy gave her an advantage in this kind of mediation, and the more she learned to use it the better she would be at all of this . . . she would never have believed a year ago that she would think of her gift as anything but a curse, but now she found herself wanting to push it further, see where its edges were, experiment . . .

  She had to laugh at herself. Yes . . . David had influenced her, all right.

  She persuaded David to take it easy Tuesday night, although he was totally recovered by the time he woke up and fed. She knew he agreed just to make her happy, but she didn’t care. She wanted to be sure he was back to 100 percent before hitting the Austin streets again.