Of Shadow Born

by Dianne Sylvan

  “Oh, God,” she murmured. She knew what she had seen.

  Suddenly she couldn’t stand to sit there anymore. She grabbed her guitar and pushed herself up off the couch.

  The guards were used to her bursting out of the suite hell-bent on the music room; their Queen’s idiosyncrasies had stopped worrying them no more than a year into her tenure. She waved them off, so they wouldn’t feel it necessary to follow her, and all but ran down the hall.

  Once inside, she returned the guitar to its stand and dropped heavily onto the piano bench.

  Even the worst realizations felt a little less overwhelming with her fingers on the keys. She shut her eyes and let her hands talk for a moment, starting with one of her favorite pieces—the main theme from The Piano—and then improvising her way around it for a few minutes. The rolling melody translated through the dark echoing depth of the Bösendorfer eased some of the tension that had tightened all her muscles even before she woke from the dream. Still, the thought remained:

  He killed them all for us. All those people. And . . .

  Something occurred to her that she hadn’t really put together before, and she found herself fighting back tears.

  He knew them. From a long time ago. They were his friends once, and he killed them . . . for us. To stop the Awakening . . . but it happened anyway.

  She stopped in the middle of a chord, causing a rather harsh sound from the piano, but she needed one hand to pull out her phone.

  Without a greeting, she said, “They were your friends.”

  He didn’t seem surprised to hear from her. Nor did he pretend not to know what she meant. “Yes.”

  “Even after David said he didn’t want to see you again, you did that for us.”

  “Yes.”

  “And it’s killing you.”

  A pause, then: “Yes.”

  The weariness, the ache in that one word nearly made her weep, but she held herself together and asked, “What can I do to make it better for you?”

  Another pause. “Don’t waste it,” he said.

  He started to hang up, but she interrupted, “Deven—”

  “Yes, Miranda?”

  “I know you would do it for David . . . and you have to save me to save him, but . . .”

  “Miranda,” he said, a sort of gentle firmness in the word that brooked no disagreement, “I thought by now you would understand—things aren’t like they were three years ago. If I never expected to still love him after all those years, well, let’s just say I was utterly blindsided by you.”

  “By me?”

  “Yes . . . I would do anything for you. Anything. Ask for the stars and I’ll do what I can.”

  They sat in silence, he thousands of miles away, she safe in the Texas Hill Country, sitting at a piano. “I don’t need the stars,” she finally said. “But I would like to see you happy for a change.”

  A quiet chuckle. “I’ll do what I can. Good night, my Lady.”

  “Good night.”

  She was still sitting there, staring at her phone, when David found her a little while later. Still in his coat and armed from his night in the District, he poked his head into the room first as always and inquired, “Clear?”

  Miranda lifted her head and nodded.

  As David approached her, he saw her expression and frowned. “What is it? What happened?”

  She looked up at him, down at her phone, back up. “I think Deven just sort of told me he loves me,” she said.

  David stared at her. “He did?” He sat down in one of the chairs nearby.

  She recounted the conversation, and his expression grew more and more thoughtful.

  “I’m sure he says that to a lot of people,” Miranda ventured, but even without the Are you kidding? look David gave her, she knew better.

  David said, “I wonder if perhaps he’s picking up on your empathy, too. He’s always been something of a guilt-ridden mess on the inside, but I’ve never known him to show it. Whatever this connection thing is could be changing all of that. Of course, it might also be that the two of you have something now that you never did before—genuine friendship, which for Deven is a rare and precious thing.”

  Miranda looked down at her hands, still on the piano keys. “For me, too.” She smiled a little. “All of my friends have a tendency to get killed or justifiably run screaming.”

  He got up from the chair and came over to her, leaning in to kiss her forehead. “Not all of them, beloved.”

  She leaned against him for a moment, closing her eyes. He couldn’t give her the kind of reassurance she craved, but the solidity of his presence was no trifling thing. She remembered how she had broken down over his scent, and here it was, warm and real and alive, with her.

  “Tomorrow is the solstice,” David said, voice vibrating against the side of her head. “Have you spoken to Stella about this ritual of hers?”

  “I have. She asked if her friend Lark could help her, and I didn’t see any reason not to let her. They’re going to work in one of the unused rooms in our wing—I’m having the furniture cleared out tonight so they’ll have all the floor space they need.”

  “Wouldn’t they be better off in a shielded room?”

  “Stella said that the way they do their rituals, they create a sphere of energy that protects them, then take it down when they’re finished. Plus they often work outside, where it’s a lot harder to keep a permanent shield. There’s a storm in the forecast or they would have found a place in the gardens somewhere.” She shrugged. “Stella swears there’s nothing I can do to help. She gave me a list of things she needs, and I gave it to one of the Elite to take care of.”

  “What kinds of things? Eye of newt?”

  She leaned back to give him an irritated look. “Candles, incense resins, that type of thing. And white paint.”

  “Paint?”

  “To draw some sort of symbols on the floor.” Before he could object, she said, “Nobody’s used that room for anything in ten years—Esther told me so. And I looked at the floor; it’s in pretty rough condition. If we need the room later, we can refinish the floor. I think it’s worth some sanding if we get answers.”

  “True.” He looked like he wanted to say more, but he returned to the chair, something troubling in his eyes.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “This thing they’re doing . . . I have a bad feeling about it.”

  Miranda groaned. “God, you don’t have precog now, too, do you?”

  He laughed. “I don’t think so. It’s nothing that strong. Just a feeling of unease I can’t shake. Do you feel it?”

  “Well, I will now, thanks a lot.”

  “It’s not that I can see anything going wrong, but . . .”

  She missed being able to simply intuit what he was thinking and finish his sentences; she had depended on the bond so much for that, it was difficult to read him just as an individual. Even when they’d met and she was human they’d had something connecting them, that force of nature that had driven them together.

  Still, she had some idea what he was thinking just because she knew him. “You don’t know what would be worse: for the ritual to work, or for it not to work.”

  “That’s it in a nutshell. If it doesn’t work, we’re still adrift, not knowing anything. But if it does work, we could learn something we really don’t want to know—something that makes it all worse.”

  “I’m not trying to tempt fate here or anything, but . . . what could possibly be worse?”

  He smiled faintly; she couldn’t help noticing, in spite of the conversation, how amazing he looked sitting there in his coat, hands on the arms of the chair, utterly and effortlessly regal. He no longer had the drawn, exhausted look he’d had when he returned. She had always thought he had the most ridiculously perfect posture—straight but not rigid, every inch a king, unless he was sprawled out on the couch or bed, in which case he reminded her more of a drunken octopus.

  “. . . staring at me,” he said a
little more loudly, and she felt herself blushing. She hadn’t heard a word he said.

  “Sorry, what was that?”

  The smile grew a tiny bit. “I said that I have an irrational dread of the whole thing—some part of me knows I’m not going to like what we discover.”

  Miranda closed the piano and stood up, coming over to slide into his lap. “I think even learning something awful is better than knowing nothing,” she said. “I also think there’s not a thing we can do about it right now. The sun’s coming up.”

  He was staring at her mouth. “I hadn’t noticed,” he replied.

  She grinned and kissed him, her hands winding around his neck. The response was as enthusiastic as she’d hoped; he wrapped a hand around the back of her head and the other arm around her waist and pulled her as close as he could, kissing her hard enough to bruise her lips.

  “Come on,” she said breathlessly, all but jumping off his lap and hauling him to his feet.

  They had barely reached the door when she felt his hands on her hips, spinning her around so her back hit the wall. He pinned her there, gripping both of her wrists in one hand above her head.

  In between kisses she frowned . . . He knew she didn’t like being held down or pinned. “Hey,” she murmured, pushing against his arm as a reminder.

  The only response was a low hiss in her ear and a tightening of the hand around her wrists. He pushed her harder into the wall and bit her solidly on the neck.

  It was hardly the first time he’d done that, and usually it was an intense turn-on, but something about it made her stomach lurch this time. She could feel something akin to anger radiating from him . . . that wasn’t right. Miranda twisted hard to the side, wrenching her wrists free. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” she demanded.

  Their eyes met, and she gasped.

  She hadn’t been imagining it before. His eyes were black, two cold obsidian chips that seemed to glow in the room’s low light. There was no humanity in them whatsoever, nothing she recognized, only darkness.

  “David!” she said desperately. “Wherever you are, get back here!”

  He blinked, frowning, and in half a second the black was gone and he jerked back, almost stumbling away from her, blue eyes wide and horrified.

  “What . . .” Confused, he looked around the room, then back at her, a touch of fear making its way into his voice. “What just happened?”

  Miranda leaned back against the wall, crossing her arms over her chest. “I don’t know.”

  “God, Miranda . . .” He groped sideways until he found the chair and sank into it, putting his face in his hands. “What’s wrong with me? How could I even think of hurting you?”

  She took a few deep breaths to steady herself. “Don’t freak out about that,” she said. “Honestly, you being a little more aggressive than usual isn’t the scary part. You checked out on me . . . your eyes went black. I don’t know what I was looking at, but it wasn’t you, or at least, not all you.”

  Shame, fear, and repulsion were all evident in his face as he replied, “You mean you hope it wasn’t all me.”

  “Tell me what you were feeling,” she said. “Did you go somewhere? Did you feel . . . possessed or anything?”

  “No,” he answered. “I was there. As much as I ever am anymore . . . but sometimes . . . just now . . . something comes over me, like a shadow wrapping its hand around my throat. I can feel it . . . like when I killed that human. Or when I saw you fighting in the city that night. All question of reason or logic is swallowed whole and all I can think of is blood. I’m off-balance in a way I never was when we were bound.”

  Miranda bit her lip, watching him for a moment. Finally she recalled, “Stella said it looked like whatever was changing you wasn’t done yet. Maybe that’s the problem—you’re caught between two lives and they’re at war with each other.”

  David looked up at her, anguished. “I don’t want that one to win.”

  “I know you don’t. Neither do I.”

  “You were right,” he said, closing his eyes. “No matter how awful it is, we have to know what’s happening. We can’t go on like this. The Witches may be our only hope.”

  Thirteen

  Lark’s reaction on seeing the Haven for the first time was priceless.

  “Come on,” Stella told her, bumping her forward with her shoulder, laughing. “We’ve got a lot to do.”

  Lark snapped her mouth shut and nodded. “Lead the way,” she said, shifting the backpack she’d brought.

  Once she was inside the building, Lark’s mouth fell open again and she made a squeaking sort of noise. “How much money do these people have?” she wondered, falling into step with Stella down the hallway.

  “Enough that nobody’s batted an eye over anything I’ve asked for,” Stella said.

  Lark’s eyebrow lifted. “What’s that thing on your arm?”

  “This?” Stella held up her wrist. “It’s a communication device. They all wear them—it keeps track of where you’re at and even records your DNA so they know who’s who. This one’s limited access, though—I can only call Miranda or my door guard and I can’t spy on the others.”

  “How does that flat little thing record DNA?”

  “Beats the hell out of me. There’s a lot of crazy-ass technology around here. Hell, all I did was mention my laptop is a couple years old and David upgraded it in about four minutes. With his phone. While eating ice cream with the other hand.” Stella held her com up to the lock on her suite’s door; it beeped and opened.

  It was still daylight so she didn’t have any guards—there was one at the end of the hall and another posted at each exit, and special network alarms were turned on during the day. They’d had a regular cab bring Lark out, and Stella had special permission to open the front door with a day guard standing around the corner. They could have waited until dark, but Stella wasn’t sure how much preparation they’d need before the exact moment of the solstice, and she didn’t want to leave anything to chance.

  “Not bad,” Lark noted, looking around the room. “I see you’ve got your hard-core shields rocking. Not as trusting as you seem?”

  “Yeah, well, I trust Miranda and David, and mostly anyone they’ve vouched for, but I only have to be wrong once.”

  “Are we doing this in here? There’s not a lot of space.”

  “Nope. Down the hall. Did you bring everything?”

  Lark nodded and hefted the backpack onto Stella’s bed, unzipping it; there were overnight clothes and sundries, but also a cloth-wrapped bundle that turned out to be Lark’s ritual robe with everything else wrapped up in it for safekeeping: a ritual chalice wrapped again in a velvet altar cloth, a package of round charcoal tablets, a stone incense burner, and a wood box.

  “Did you find all the ingredients?” Stella asked, picking up the box and opening it. Inside was about a quarter cup of mixed herbs and resins. The combined scents wafted up to Stella’s nose and gave her the impression of some wild place in the woods, heavy on evergreen trees, with a faint berrylike undertone.

  “Foxglove gave me one hell of a look when I bought this stuff,” Lark mentioned as they transferred the ritual items from her backpack to a tote Stella had already loaded halfway with other tools. “Mugwort, myrrh, wormwood, pomegranate leaves . . . the makings of a hard-core trance-inducing blend.”

  “Did you get the critter bits?”

  “Yup. Snakeskin, a pulverized raven’s feather, and hair from a black dog. You do know all this is going to stink like ass when we burn it.”

  “I’m hoping this will even it out,” Stella said, pulling a bottle from the tote. “I knew this stuff would cost an arm and a leg, so I asked Miranda to get it.”

  “Liquidambar orientalis v. nigrus . . . Pure Black Storax oil,” Lark read. She gave Stella a wide-eyed look. “There are only like five dozen of these trees in existence. This bottle’s worth about five hundred dollars.”

  “Like I said,” Stella said with a grin. “Money is n
o object around here, especially when it’s this important. Just don’t spill it.”

  Lark, who had lifted the bottle’s cork just a little so she could smell the fragrant liquid inside, immediately recorked it and looked sheepish. “Right.”

  Stella laughed and hauled the tote up onto her shoulder. “Come on.”

  She’d spent most of the previous afternoon preparing the room. The Queen had offered help, but Stella wanted to make sure it was done right, and the only way to do that was to take care of it herself. She had, however, asked for extra hands moving the furniture out—two vampires had done in twenty minutes what would have taken her all day on her own.

  “Wow,” was all Lark said when she saw it.

  In the center, Stella had hauled a small rectangular table to use as an altar, and she’d started painting based on its position. Radiating out from the altar and filling most of the room’s scuffed and scratched floor were glyphs, protective sigils, and a variety of other symbols standing out stark white against the dark wood. They lined up with the four directions and with several celestial bodies including Pluto and Mars; she’d researched the entire configuration for days before settling on exactly what she wanted.

  Lark walked slowly around the circle, reading the glyphs to herself, until she got to one: “A triple moon and the infinity symbol? What does it do?”

  “The Order of Elysium—the vampires that worship Persephone—use it as their seal. I figured it would be a good idea to include it. The version of Persephone I’m used to and the one they call on aren’t exactly the same, so I thought we should specify.”

  Lark paused in front of the altar, then looked over at her friend. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

  Stella had been expecting that very question. She sighed, opening up the tote to start pulling everything out, and said, “I’m sure.”

  “Did you tell your friends everything that could go wrong?”

  “They didn’t need to know about all of that. They would have just tried to stop me. I need to do this, Lark. They need answers, and nobody else can help.”