Shadowflame

by Dianne Sylvan

  “Are you going to finish that?” Kat asked.

  Miranda looked down at her swiftly melting mound of ice cream and brownie. “I don’t think so. Go ahead.” She slid the bowl over to Kat, who grinned and picked up the spoon.

  “So, I know this is a weird question, but, do you still pee?”

  Miranda snorted, almost inhaling her beer, which caused Kat to laugh, too. “Yes,” Miranda answered. “Much more if I drink other things besides the usual.”

  “Same deal if you eat real food?”

  Miranda nodded. “Our digestive systems aren’t really built for solids, but in small quantities it’s okay. Stuff like ice cream that melts into a liquid is a lot easier.”

  “So no more breakfast tacos,” Kat said, sounding a little sad. “That would suck.”

  “Not really. I don’t want food anymore, for the most part. A lot of us have a sweet tooth, but I don’t remember the biological reason for it—something to do with our body chemistry and glucose. Other things, though, I just don’t really miss. The main reason any of us eat regular food is to pass as human.”

  Kat paused with the spoon partway to her mouth and said, “You know . . . I know that a lot of people would envy you for the whole immortality thing, but I don’t think I do. I’m not sure I would want to outlive . . . everything.”

  “I haven’t had much time to think about it, to be honest. Faith said that the reality of it doesn’t really hit home until you’ve outlived a typical human life span.”

  “Speaking of life spans, doesn’t it bother you that he’s got three-hundred-something years on you and you don’t know all that much about him—who he loved, where he lived, how he spent all of those years?”

  “Sometimes. But really, do you know that much about Drew? You’ve only been together about as long as David and I have. You probably don’t know every detail of his past yet—imagine if he had ten times more stories to tell.”

  Kat thought about it, then nodded. “Fair point.”

  It was rare for Kat to show any interest in the details of life as a vampire. Miranda didn’t volunteer anything she didn’t ask about; she knew that Kat was trying hard not to think of Miranda as some kind of monster who drank blood, and Miranda was grateful for that. As much as she’d objected to David’s neglecting to tell Kat everything that was going on, the Queen was finally starting to agree that Kat already had enough to deal with, and there were some things she just didn’t need to know.

  A lot of things.

  A few bites later Kat set down the spoon, suddenly looking a little green around the gills. “Ugh.”

  “You okay?” Miranda asked. “Do you need something fizzy?”

  “No, I just . . . excuse me.”

  Kat darted away from the table, headed for the restrooms, and Miranda kept an eye on her until she’d rounded the corner, then nodded to Lali, who was stationed at a booth nearby, to watch the door and make sure no one approached Kat while she was down the hall alone. Miranda caught the waitress’s eye and asked for the check; she had a feeling that Kat wouldn’t be up for much else after dinner.

  Sure enough, when Kat returned she looked pasty and nauseated. “Sorry,” Kat said. “I don’t know where that came from. I’ve been doing a lot better this week, but apparently the baby doesn’t like nachos.”

  “Would you like me to take you home?” Miranda asked.

  Kat looked torn. They’d both been excited about the new local band they were going to see, but clearly Kat wasn’t feeling up to standing for two hours in a crowded bar surrounded by drunk people.

  “It’s okay,” Miranda told her. “Really, Kat—Nice Marmot will have another gig. Maybe we can find somewhere to see them that has actual chairs.”

  Finally, Kat nodded. Her eyes were bright with tears. “If you’re sure you don’t mind . . . I think I need to lie down.”

  “Come on, then, Harlan will get us there.”

  Miranda kept a steadying hand on Kat’s shoulder as they left the café; Lali, who had been able to hear their conversation, was already out front, and the car pulled around as soon as they’d gotten to the curb.

  “I don’t think I’d like the vamp thing, but the service sure rocks,” Kat said.

  Miranda grinned and waited until Kat was in the car to go around and get in herself. “Rank hath its privileges.”

  Sitting beside Kat as the car eased out onto South Lamar, Miranda watched her friend lean back with her eyes closed, her hands resting protectively on her belly, something Kat had taken to doing in the last couple of weeks that Miranda doubted she was even aware of. “Let me know if we need to pull over.”

  Kat opened one eye. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to puke in your Lincoln.”

  “I’m worried about you, not the car.”

  She shook her head. “I think I’m okay, I just . . . I have this sick feeling, like I’m scared to death of something, but I don’t know why.”

  Miranda frowned. “It’s coming from your belly?”

  “Yeah. It’s like somebody spooked the little critter.”

  Before Kat even had the sentence out, dread seized Miranda’s heart. She said into her com, “Elite One Nineteen.”

  “Yes, my Lady?”

  “I’d like a security status update from your position.”

  “Everything’s quiet, my Lady. No one’s gone near the house since you left.”

  “Thank you. Star-two, out.”

  Kat was looking at her, eyes narrowed with concern. “What’s wrong?”

  “Do me a favor and call Drew, would you?”

  “Why?”

  Miranda couldn’t explain it, except that if Kat’s baby was giving her bad vibes, something was giving Miranda a full-blown anxiety attack that she was hiding by sheer force of will. Her heart had begun to pound, and she felt adrenaline beginning to surge through her veins. Shit. Something’s wrong. Something’s wrong.

  “Please, Kat, just call him.”

  Kat shrugged and took out her phone. “It’s ringing.”

  “Where’s he at tonight?”

  “The school,” Kat said, still listening to the phone ring. “Weird . . . he always picks up by the third ring.”

  Miranda called to Harlan, “Take us to 228 East Chicon, as fast as you can.” Then she said into her com, “All available patrol teams to 228 East Chicon.”

  “Miranda, what the hell is going on?” Kat demanded. “So he didn’t answer, so what? He might not have his phone on him.”

  “Okay, Kat,” Miranda told her, keeping her voice very calm despite the alarms going off in her head and her heart, “I’m going to go first and make sure everything’s okay. You stay in the car until I come get you.”

  “Um . . . okay . . . but—”

  Miranda didn’t wait for her to ask. “Harlan, pull over.” As the car rolled to a stop, the Queen shut her eyes and concentrated, forming the image of the school where Drew worked as firmly in her mind as she could. She’d never done this on her own before, but there was no time to lose . . . she knew it was in her power, if she could just . . .

  She pulled hard on the image, doing as David had shown her and relaxing her hold on her body in a certain way that made everything feel blurry and strange.

  She heard Kat gasp . . .

  . . . and next thing she knew she was tumbling onto the sidewalk outside the school, forcing herself not to be sick as she scrambled to her feet and drew her sword.

  David and Faith both sat in front of the screen while Novotny pulled up the scanned images of the scrap of paper Janousek had left.

  “I apologize for the delay in getting this finished,” the doctor said. “We had a hell of a time with it. The paper’s so damaged by age and improper preservation it’s a miracle there was any ink left at all.”

  David nodded. “I understand. I wasn’t even sure you’d be able to do it.”

  Novotny chuckled. “Of course we could. It just required some creativity on our part. But that’s why you pay us so well, Sir
e.”

  “True.”

  “Now, then.” He tapped his touch pad and the image of the paper appeared, exactly as it had been when David brought it in, but laid over a grid of red light. “Here you see both sides in their original state. Upon first glance there are three things visible: the number 4.19, part of a word, and on the other side, a symbol of some kind. We broke the image down into individual pixels, as you see here, and then had the computer match areas of equal pigmentation, rendering each in its own shade.”

  The first side of the paper, with the number on it, was magnified as Novotny spoke, demonstrating what he was talking about. “We concentrated on the darkest areas and ran them through several filters to sharpen the image.”

  Rows of pixels changed color, moving from the top of the image to the bottom, and the writing became clearer. It was handwritten, and the number 4.19 was much clearer; beneath it, David could just barely make out a word. “Scarlet,” he said.

  “Yes. We ran the number 4.19 through our database trying to match it to known organizations, codes, and significant dates, but got nothing. I would assume that scarlet refers to the Red Shadow.”

  “What about the other side?”

  “That was a lot harder, but we did the same to it, and came up with this.”

  Novotny spun the image around and flipped it, showing what amounted to half of a symbol on the screen.

  David sat forward, his mouth falling open.

  Beside him, Faith asked, “Is that what I think it is?”

  “Show me the other side again,” David commanded.

  Novotny shrugged and complied.

  “Oh, God.”

  Faith stared at the Prime. “What?”

  David put his hand over his mouth, his heart frozen in his chest. It was a moment before he could speak. “I know that handwriting.”

  Just then, his phone tolled out a network alarm, as both his and Faith’s coms burst to life and her phone began to ring.

  Miranda let her instincts guide her around the side of the building to an unlit entrance that had obviously been jimmied open. Her mind still swimming from the Mist, she slid in the door, all her senses going into predator mode. Her vision morphed into blues and purples in the darkness, showing her details no mortal could see from tiny cracks in the plaster to the footprints of mice on the tile.

  It was ten o’clock at night, and the building should have been empty. It was a small charter school that specialized in fine arts and languages, and Drew taught music both during the day and for free in the evenings to underprivileged kids. There were only three classrooms and a few offices. She’d been there twice before when she was still human.

  She listened intently, extending her energy along the hallway to look for life signs. She might be wrong . . . Drew might already have left . . .

  She heard a scream.

  Miranda broke into a run, following the tortured sound to the last classroom branching off the hallway. There was faint light coming from the door; she remembered that the classrooms had windows along one wall.

  She burst into the room snarling.

  Desks had been shoved in all directions; in the center of the chaos a figure crouched over another, and the smell of blood hit Miranda’s nostrils with the force of a gale wind.

  The figure turned and rose, and Miranda heard the sound of a sword being drawn.

  “You,” Miranda hissed.

  The assassin smiled nastily but didn’t speak. It was, without doubt, the same woman who had shot Miranda—even without her wig or the librarian glasses, Miranda knew her face.

  Behind the woman, a phone began to ring—Miranda’s eyes darted to the cell phone on the floor, then to Drew’s outstretched hand, and the blood flowing from the wrist that the woman had only partially managed to slice before being interrupted. From the amount of blood he had to have other wounds, and Miranda could tell he’d been beaten—he had tried to put up a fight, but against a vampire with a sword, there was no chance. She saw Drew’s agonized face, felt him about to scream again.

  Miranda spared a thread of power to take hold of Drew’s mind and calm him, to let him know it would be all right, that help was coming—but she didn’t have time to speak before the assassin took advantage of her distraction and dove in for the attack.

  The Queen threw herself into the fight, dodging the woman’s sword by a scant half inch and spinning around to counter the stroke.

  Miranda knew from the beginning that she was outmatched, but she didn’t care. All she had to do was keep the woman here until the others arrived, and the building would be surrounded with Elite. David would be there any moment, too, and although Miranda might not be able to take the woman down, he sure as hell could.

  They fought from one end of the classroom to the other, the assassin shoving desks at her, Miranda jumping over them and meeting her sword slash for slash.

  She could feel Drew weakening. She urged him to take his jacket off and press the fabric against his wrist—he was too far in shock to think of it on his own, but under her influence he did as she commanded, holding the jacket with a shaking hand. Miranda could hear someone speaking . . . the phone? Yes, it was Kat’s voice—Drew must have answered it.

  The woman made for the door, and Miranda flung herself toward it, reaching out with her mind to try to grab the nearest desk and pull it in the way; she saw it scoot a few inches, but that was all the concentration she could manage in the middle of a fight, and she ran for the doorway on the woman’s heels.

  The shadows inside the door frame seemed to shift and coalesce.

  The Prime walked into the room, sword already drawn, and the woman changed course at the last second to avoid slamming into him; she skidded on the concrete floor and nearly lost her footing but got control back in time to parry the Prime’s attack and double back toward Miranda.

  For a few seconds the woman was caught between Prime and Queen, but Faith’s voice erupted from the coms: “Incoming!”

  David grabbed Miranda’s arm and hauled her to the floor. They both dropped flat just in time with the sounds of shattering glass from the wall of windows, the click and whistle of a half-dozen crossbows, and the singing of wood through the air.

  Miranda craned her neck to see two of the stakes hit the woman—one in her shoulder, one in her chest to the left of her heart. She flew backward, her sword clattering to the ground, the light catching off something shiny at her neck that also fell as she stumbled.

  Miranda was sure she would fall, but by some twisted miracle, the woman stayed on her feet, blood streaming down her torso. She looked over and met Miranda’s eyes.

  “Give my regards to the Alpha,” she hissed.

  Then she ran forward, throwing herself into the glass wall and tackling one of the Elite who had fired at her. The two hit the ground hard, but the woman used the Elite’s body as a springboard and sprinted past the others, who were immediately after her.

  “Tracking!” Faith said. “We’ve got her on the network, Sire! Four units in pursuit.”

  Miranda pushed herself up to her hands and knees and got across the floor to Drew. She was about to com out for an ambulance, but she could already hear sirens in the distance; Faith, or David, must have called already.

  “Drew,” Miranda said. “Drew, can you hear me?”

  She knelt next to him, tears already coming to her eyes. There was so much blood. Miranda quickly cataloged the visible injuries: hand severed, stab wounds in his stomach and shoulder . . . there was at least one penetrating wound to his lower back, maybe his kidney, but she didn’t want to risk turning him over.

  David joined her. His face had that blank expressionless look that Miranda recognized, and her heart sank.

  “Keep pressure on the wound,” he said quietly.

  Their eyes met over Drew’s battered body. Miranda knew what he was thinking. There was too much blood, and they had no healer. He’d been lying there bleeding for nearly ten minutes and it would take an ambulance anoth
er two to reach them.

  “Miranda . . .” Drew whispered raggedly. “Give . . . give me the phone . . . please.”

  Miranda grabbed the cell and said into it, “Kat? Kat, honey, are you still there?”

  Kat practically screamed, “What’s happening? Miranda, where is he?”

  “Here.” Miranda choked on a sob, lowering the phone to Drew’s face.

  “Hey, baby,” he said, coughing. His breath came in shallow gasps.

  Miranda could hear Kat talking to him, could hear her crying.

  “It’s okay,” Drew said. “Kat . . . just listen to me.”

  Miranda could hear the paramedics coming down the hall.

  “I love you,” Drew told Kat. “Very much. The baby, too. I think . . . you’re going to make a great mom. I love you.”

  Softly, Miranda heard Kat say the same to him.

  “Thanks,” Drew managed weakly, looking up at Miranda. “Take care of her, okay?”

  Miranda nodded. “I promise.”

  “Good . . . that’s good . . .” His fingers barely returned the pressure of Miranda’s, then slowly relaxed . . .

  . . . and it was over.

  The paramedics and two additional units of Elite entered the classroom to find the Queen weeping into the Prime’s arms, as both knelt in a broad pool of blood, and a woman sobbed quietly over the phone that lay on the floor.

  Miranda stared dumbly at the printout David had given her, trying to understand what she was seeing. Her wornout, bewildered mind simply refused to accept it.

  “What do we do?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” the Prime replied. He looked as exhausted and heartsick as she felt. “I honestly don’t know.”

  Outside the car windows’ heavy tint, the countryside scrolled by. Miranda wanted nothing more than to fall asleep and not wake up until the world made sense again. She was completely drained, both from the fight with the assassin and from her first real Mist—it was remarkable she hadn’t ended up scattered across Austin. Between that and the weight of sorrow and guilt from Drew’s death, she was perilously close to losing it.