Of Shadow Born

by Dianne Sylvan

  Probably not as tense as I am. Olivia sat down on her bed. “Would it make you feel better to go over the plan again?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  She nodded, picking up her sword to give it a polish, needing something to do with her hands. She was wound up so tightly it would be a minor miracle if she could sleep that day.

  She didn’t bother telling herself she was just nervous about invading the Haven. She was, but only marginally; it was a simple enough plan, and she understood her role very well. If anything went wrong, she had an escape route. No, what was really twisting her up inside was knowing what she was about to do to Jeremy.

  He was probably going to die. Beneath his cool and calculating behavior she could see things unraveling . . . but still, she hated it, hated the duplicity.

  She had never been above lying in service to the Signet when it was required of her. Her job had demanded occasional underhanded acts, but always in the name of what she believed to be the greater good. This time she was acting for the greater good against her Signet, throwing in her lot with others.

  She had been surreptitiously texting with David for a week now, setting up the plot, giving him information. Every time she hit Send she felt sick. After all the betrayal Jeremy had faced, how could she do it to him, too? Olivia knew that whatever happened she would never forgive herself for it.

  But she had made her choice. Regardless of her personal crisis of conscience, it was the right thing to do. She wasn’t going back.

  Despite her involvement with Kelley’s and McMannis’s assassinations, Prime Solomon had promised her asylum in her pick of three territories: the South, the West, or Eastern Europe. All three of those Primes supported her. If she didn’t die in the attempt, she would likely be safe for however long she wanted to be.

  There was always a chance Jeremy would survive, too, and be himself again one day. Olivia had asked for clemency for him because of what had been done to his family, and the Primes had agreed that they wouldn’t deliberately kill him; they would let him have Hart but take the artifact so Morningstar didn’t get it. From there, if Jeremy stopped in his killing spree, they would leave him alone, but if he made a single move on another Signet, all bets were off.

  It was a much better deal than she’d expected them to offer. He had killed David, but David stood by what he’d said to her before, that Jeremy had only been acting to save his daughter. He agreed that Jeremy had become a threat and would probably need to be eliminated eventually, whether it happened tomorrow or not, but he hadn’t been anxious to deal death to someone who had been victimized by Hart and McMannis.

  She chose her words carefully as she asked Jeremy, “So . . . have you given any thought to what we’ll do after this?”

  He gave her another unreadable look. “After I get the artifact to my contact with Morningstar, we head for Mumbai.”

  She took a deep breath. “Why Mumbai?”

  “India is next.”

  Ice formed in her stomach. “Why India? What did he do?”

  “Varati was a known associate of Kelley.”

  “But . . . he didn’t actually do anything to you directly?”

  Jeremy snapped, “Are you questioning me?”

  Olivia flinched at the sudden, unexpected rage in his words. “No, no, of course not. I just want to understand so I can help you plan.”

  He glared at her, then went back to whatever he was doing on his phone. “You have to trust me, Olivia. I know what I’m doing.”

  “Of course you do.” She forced herself to smile. “You’ve gotten us this far.”

  After another tense moment, his gaze lost some of its coldness, and he said, “Good.” He stood up. “I’m going out to hunt—I need some air, if you don’t mind keeping an eye on things here.”

  “As you will it,” she responded automatically.

  He didn’t quite slam the door, but close enough to startle her. As soon as he was gone she felt her entire body relax; she hadn’t realized how tightly she was holding her muscles, her body understanding that it might need to fight or flee any second.

  She put her head in her hands. One more night. Just one more night, and this would all be over. Maybe she would bear the guilt forever, but at least she wouldn’t have to be in constant fear that her boss was going to snap and kill her for looking at him wrong. She didn’t want to kill him, and she didn’t really want him to die . . . but she had to get away. Tomorrow night, if fate was on her side, she would be on a plane to Austin, safe, and free.

  Nineteen

  I can’t do this anymore.

  It seemed to happen so quickly, but in truth it had been coming for a long time. Once the water had begun to seep through the dam, it was inevitable that the dam would eventually break.

  He spent what remained of the night curled up on top of the Tower Bridge, staring sightlessly out at the river. He came here often to think, the way David liked to stand on tall buildings and survey his domain, but really, the bridge was more a place to hide. From atop one of the towers, as he sat cross-legged with one hand resting on the safety rail that was in place for maintenance workers, not visitors, the high cool air brought the smells of the river, of asphalt and car exhaust, of a dozen or more foods.

  Eventually, as the night waned, he Misted down from the tower and began the walk to where the car would be waiting. Sacramento didn’t have a dedicated Shadow District, at least not since the 1940s when the Blackthorn wars had caused such chaos; the District had spread out, blending in among the human businesses. As a result, there was no sense in strutting about to be seen. Here it was better to be known simply by reputation. Probably less than half the vampire population of the city would know him by sight.

  Havens weren’t always located near government seats, but most were. Several Primes back, the Western United States had kept its Haven in San Francisco, because of its much higher vampire population, but once the warring factions all over the territory were ruthlessly subdued, he was content to keep it here in Sacramento and allow Lieutenant Murdoch to run things in the Bay Area.

  There weren’t many humans about at this late hour, close to four A.M.; on some of the side streets he took to cut through the neighborhood, the sound of his footsteps echoed hollow on the pavement, louder than the sounds of passing cars a block over, louder than the buzz of streetlights.

  Each step felt heavier than the last, as if the entire weight of the earth’s atmosphere were pushing down on him—but not just down, in from all sides, very slowly crushing the life out of him, squeezing out anything remotely resembling a soul. Every night it got worse . . . harder to breathe, harder to move.

  He was too tired for sadness, too weary for despair. All he really wanted was to curl up right here on the filthy concrete and fall asleep. Whether he woke again or not was irrelevant. He could stay asleep until the sun burned the flesh from his bones . . . except that would end Jonathan as well, and the one thing he would not do was have his Consort’s death on his soul on top of everyone else’s. Jonathan deserved better.

  He nearly laughed. Yes, Jonathan deserved better . . . he always had. Whatever god had chained such a kind spirit to such a withered heart had inflicted cruel and unusual punishment on Jonathan—if there was such a thing as past lives, the Consort must have been an absolute dick in his last incarnation to deserve this life.

  Tomorrow night the assault on Hart’s Haven would go down, but now that the plan was set and the pieces in place, he had no further part to play. It was David’s game this time, and he was glad of it; he was tired of intrigues, tired of things going wrong.

  As if on cue, his phone alerted him to a text: 5.1 Claret. Mission complete.

  Without breaking stride he sent back an acknowledgment, then sent a message to the client informing her to make the bank transfer for the final payment.

  Somewhere in Buenos Aires was a severed left hand where a drug lord had been.

  Three more humans were scheduled to die in the next few d
ays: an executive in a multinational corporation, a Japanese inventor, and the dictator of a small Mediterranean island nation. There was also a priceless relic stolen from the Iraqi Museum of Antiquities about to be stolen back, and a kidnapped child who would be on his way home to his wealthy mother by tomorrow midnight.

  All in all it would be a billion-dollar week.

  Only a handful of years ago, that would have pleased him.

  He didn’t realize he’d stopped walking until he saw the light.

  Warm light saturated with color fell on the sidewalk through windows of stained glass, on either side of a pair of arched doors; over the doors were carvings of angels and saints, worn with age but still easily discerned.

  St. Anthony’s, of course. He’d passed it a thousand times, usually looking away to avoid any uncomfortable memories welling up. On the rare occasion he let himself linger, he ended up stopping at the bar between here and home and shooting whiskey until he was too drunk to walk, whereupon he had to call Wu and have the car brought to him instead of meeting it.

  He hadn’t set foot in a church in at least two hundred years, and he didn’t now, but for once he let himself stand and watch the building for a moment.

  What had it been like to have faith? He could barely remember. Somewhere in the mists of time he had worn brown robes and chanted the hours, thriving on the scent of frankincense and beeswax candles. Some time, long ago, even after he was no longer human, he had still felt the Divine Presence in the world, but it had faded, sliding inch by inch into a great ocean of regret.

  He didn’t remember the feeling of having it, but he remembered the moment the last spark of it was snuffed. He had held on to his belief in God through his uncle’s abuse, through weeks chained in the dark amid the stench of rotting bodies and hours of screaming torment on the Inquisitor’s table, through becoming a vampire, through Eladra’s attempt to indoctrinate him into her cult, through decades of wandering and learning every martial art he could find in his desperation to strike back at anyone who raised a hand to him . . . but when the moment finally came, it was almost painless, like dropping a stone in a river.

  He could see it all over again, such a simple thing: a young woman with dark hair, her face gaunt from starvation, sinking down before the doors of a church and dying there on the steps. It was Italy, in the early sixteenth century. All around her people just kept walking, ignoring the utterly needless loss of life at their feet. It was unremarkable, really. Humans died all the time. Many of them starved. Nobody cared. Yet something about that girl, lying before the church doors with her hand outstretched in silent, eternal entreaty, was the end of it.

  He had almost forgotten about that moment until he met another woman who bore a striking resemblance to her; that woman was now the Queen of Eastern Europe. Now, every time he saw Cora, he thought about it again and remembered what had run through his mind at that precise moment:

  Oh God . . . You have forsaken us.

  Considering Cora’s religious proclivities, it was rather tragically ironic. Perhaps to balance a nonexistent scale, he had made sure to take care of Cora as much as he could. He hadn’t been able to do a damn thing for that nameless girl in Rome; he could at least give Cora a dog.

  How many horrific sins had been committed in the name of the Church? He could hear, in his nightmares, the screams through the stone walls of the prison, life after life turning to demented agony as bones were broken, flesh peeled back, tongues seared. Then there were the wars, the genocides . . . midwives, gays, Witches, Elves, condemned and slaughtered. Corruption, institutional misogyny, hatred and greed disguised as piety.

  And through it all, God remained silent, not once acting to correct the behavior of His followers. Perhaps there had been miracles once . . . perhaps the Church had murdered everyone who could perform them. There was nothing like that now, only a few pale threads of magic to recall the wonder that had once filled the world. Now, everything was dark . . . just dark. A silent heaven, a bereft earth, nothing ahead but the promise of hell.

  David believed in Persephone now—he claimed she didn’t want worshippers, just warriors. Deven had once been offered a chance to walk the goddess’s path, and he had turned from it . . . and now that he had massacred her priesthood, there was no reason to believe she would want him any more than God had, assuming she was even Divine at all. Eladra had done her best; she had rescued him from the Inquisition, acting on some prophetic impulse he had never understood, and turned him, believing he was somehow special. She had wrapped him in her compassion and gently tried to teach him there was more to the universe than emptiness and brimstone.

  All she had done was sire her own murderer.

  Pain flashed in his body, and he blinked, momentarily coming back to himself to find that he had, at some point, moved closer to the church and gone to his knees on the steps, bruising them on the concrete. The stained glass filled his eyes, and all the world began to fade away, reality becoming a distant and unwelcome dream.

  God, you have forsaken us.

  A shadow passed between him and the stained glass, barely registering to his mind at first.

  Then he felt a hand on his shoulder, and with that touch an inrushing of energy like he’d never experienced before: Soft, and warm, with the taste of clear water and a touch of moonlight, it moved through him, infusing every cell with calm clarity. The heaviness in his heart lifted just a little, enough that he could think again, and suddenly he felt so weak he tumbled forward toward the ground.

  Hands caught him, kept him upright, their grip as gentle as a lover’s but strong, reassuring. He blinked over and over, trying to make sense of it—he hadn’t sensed anyone approaching, and the presence before him felt . . . strange . . .

  He lifted his head.

  Deep violet eyes met his.

  Deven stared, uncomprehending, unable to breathe until the stranger offered a slender, graceful hand and said, “Come, my Lord . . . there is little time before dawn.” He had an accent, Deven noticed dazedly, something like Irish mated with Italian, and precise diction that meant English was something he had only recently mastered.

  Still speechless, Deven took his hand and stood, slowly and shakily. He had no idea what to make of what he was looking at: It was to all appearances a young man with straight, silken auburn hair nearly down to his waist, strands of it braided back from a fair, breathtakingly beautiful face. There was a scrolling vine sort of tattoo beside his left eyebrow, done in what looked like henna. He wore a strange cloak-coat hybrid that dusted the ground and obscured the shape of his body, and a silver ring on his left middle finger that looked remarkably like those worn by the Priestesses of Elysium.

  Finally Deven found his voice: “Who are you?”

  A kind, even affectionate smile. “My name is Nicolanai Araceith,” he said. “Most people call me Nico.” He held up one hand and, in it, held an oval-shaped dark stone . . . labradorite. At the same time he released Deven’s hand and tucked his long hair behind one ear.

  One pointed ear.

  “You called,” Nico said. He reached up and brushed his fingertips along Deven’s jawline, the touch eliciting a slight shiver. “I am your answer.”

  * * *

  Nearly midnight, and Olivia’s entire body was one live wire of tension as she and Jeremy crouched behind the Dumpster in the back alley of the Haven. She could see the side entrance—and the guards flanking it—and the security panel that would allow access only to one of the Elite standing there. He would have the key card, and his fingerprint and voice would be recorded in the system.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to split up once we’re in?” Olivia whispered. “I get the artifact, you go for Hart?”

  “No,” Jeremy hissed back. “You need a lookout and I’ll need backup just in case the Elite find us before we’re done. It’s better if we stick together. Don’t worry—just do as I told you and it will be fine.”

  Olivia sighed. She had hoped he would change his
mind. It would simplify things. If she alone went to break into the storage vault and retrieve the artifact, she could slip back out of the building and rendezvous with the others. Then Jeremy could deal with Hart as he saw fit, and if he made it or not, fine. Now she had to find a way to separate from him once they had the artifact. He wasn’t going to let her out of his sight easily.

  “On three,” he whispered. “One . . . two . . . three.”

  They both broke cover and made for the entrance, Olivia to the right and Jeremy to the left. She heard him toss the small glass bottle full of explosive he’d been gingerly carrying in a foam case in his belt.

  It exploded in the pile of trash he’d aimed for—not loudly enough to raise the whole building’s alarm, but enough to surprise the guards and draw their attention. In that momentary lapse, Olivia slipped up behind one guard and rammed a stake through his back.

  The second guard realized what was happening and tried to call for backup, but Jeremy was on him already, his sword flashing through the darkness to take the man’s head.

  “Hurry,” Jeremy said.

  Olivia patted her guard down. “Here it is.” She pulled the key card from a special pocket in the shirt of his uniform.

  Jeremy already had out one of the numerous gadgets Morningstar had given them and helped her drag the guard up to the security panel; Olivia pressed his hand against the sensor while Jeremy ran the card.

  VOICE KEY REQUIRED.

  Jeremy clicked the device, which held a perfect, clear recording of a dead man’s voice: “Elite Twelve, Robert Eckhart.”

  VOICE KEY ACCEPTED.

  She heard the bolt shoot back, and the door opened. Grinning at each other, they dropped the body in the shadows with its companion and entered the Haven.

  Jeremy gestured to the left, and she followed him to the stairwell. They had eight minutes until the patrolling guards came across the bodies and the unguarded door; at that point the alarm would go up and the building would lock down, though there was still at least one exit point they could use. Both moving silently, they made their way down to the sub-basement where the artifact was located.