Shadow Rising (The Shadow World Book 7)

by Dianne Sylvan

  She’d expected some attrition after that, but not a single Elite or servant had quit. With the higher pay in their employ than any other Haven, the considerable benefits package, the prestige, and the state-of-the-art training and security systems, the Elite knew a good thing when they had it.

  That was one of the best things about having so much money—she could do right by those who continually risked their lives for her.

  “Five minutes, Ms. Grey,” the producer said from the doorway.

  “Thanks Alicia.”

  Miranda stood, straightened her outfit, rearranged her hair. “Damn, do you have the set list ready to go? I forgot my notes.”

  David smiled. “It’ll be on the screen by your feet. Don’t worry. Just go out there and slay them all.”

  She leaned down and kissed him. “Be back in an hour.”

  She nodded to her guards, who flanked her as she left the green room and took the hallway to the stage door. She could hear the emcee announcing her, and the ensuing applause, and took her guitar from the producer who held it out.

  A sea of humans in glittering gowns and tuxes got to its feet when she walked out, and she breathed in their affection and excitement, letting it buoy her up past her own anxieties and into the space where nothing mattered but keeping them as happy as they were making her.

  “Good evening, everyone! I’m so glad to see all of you here tonight. I hope it’s all right that I didn’t bring the Empress…the only way to get her in the building was to chainsaw a big hole in the back wall and that seemed like a bad idea. So tonight it’s just you, me, and my old friend here.” She patted her guitar, eliciting a cheer. “I’d like to start with one I think you’ll recognize even without the piano.”

  She launched into the opening chords of “Bleed,” and the cheer grew even louder.

  It was only an hour-long set, but it felt so amazing to perform again…just like it had felt the night she’d been arrested and Nico kidnapped. It was getting to the point that every show she did was a shake of a fist in the faces of their enemies, a reminder that they couldn’t break her. She wouldn’t be driven offstage by cowardly humans any more than she would by a cowardly Prime.

  She had just completed her first encore when she saw something moving off to the right of the stage. Though there were waiters moving among the tables the whole time, and there was clapping and singing along in the crowd, something about this particular motion set off a warning bell in her head, and she locked onto it with her empathy while trying to keep her conscious mind on the next song.

  Something wasn’t right about the woman at the farthest table. She was staring off into space with an odd expression, something that might be dismissed as a glaze from too much wine, but underneath it was a kind of blankness Miranda recognized but couldn’t quite name until the woman stood with a dreamlike slowness and took something out of her handbag.

  Miranda’s hands froze on the strings. Her first thought was of Morningstar’s bullets, but the terror that she might have to endure that again was nothing compared to the realization that the woman was turning away from her…toward the crowd.

  The first shot went way over the people’s heads, but people were staring at Miranda in confusion until someone followed her gaze and saw what was happening.

  Screams erupted all over the ballroom, and panic took over; people began to bolt for the doorways, tipping over chairs, and the first gunshots only spurred them on.

  One man in the first row of tables went down with blood blossoming on his white shirt. The woman who’d been sitting by him dropped to her knees beside him, wailing, trying to cover his body with hers while another bullet punched into her back. Meanwhile the panic was rising, people scrambling in the cacophony of screaming and glass breaking and gunshots.

  Miranda knew there was no way they could all get out through the exits without bottlenecking, which would make it impossible for the Elite or the cops to get in.

  Another man fell. Then a teenaged girl.

  Miranda took a deep breath.

  This was it, then.

  Time to go to work.

  She stripped off her guitar and dropped it, pushed her coat off her shoulders, and jumped down off the stage, just in time for another human on the other side of the room to pull out a gun and, with the same expressionless face, open fire on the crowd.

  Miranda exhaled, holding out her hands, and seized the bullets in midair with her mind. She pushed them hard downward so they all impacted harmlessly with the floor.

  Then, she turned her attention to the shooters, taking mental hold of their weapons and jerking them away. She had a sinking feeling that wouldn’t be enough, though, and she was right—the minute they were disarmed both humans threw themselves at her, grabbing knives from the tables and coming for her with faces full of pure rage and hatred. Neither looked entirely human anymore, all the more so in their gala finery, the woman’s perfect makeup running from sweat and the man’s perfectly ordinary features marred with violence.

  The woman reached her first. Miranda didn’t want to hurt her—she was under a spell as deep as those cast on Morningstar’s warriors, but Miranda had no way to know if the woman had volunteered like they did or had been chosen at random. The only way to know more was to take her alive.

  It was clear, though, that wasn’t going to be an option. The woman attacked her with a steak knife, slicing into Miranda’s arm, and stabbed at her again but missed thanks to the corset.

  Miranda jumped back and drew Shadowflame. “Lay down your weapon,” she commanded, grabbing hold of what parts of the woman she could and pushing.

  It almost worked—the woman stumbled, a cry escaping her. But the spell on her was strong, and Miranda realized it was still working—there was some kind of connection between her and the person casting it. As long as that link existed he could work his will on the mortal.

  There wasn’t enough time to figure out how to break it. Not now. She didn’t know anything about this kind of magic, her grasp of Weaving was dangerous enough to harm more than it helped, and most pressingly, the woman was still coming at her.

  She tried to go for an incapacitating but not fatal wound in the leg, sending the woman to the floor, but it was no use. She just kept getting up, pushing herself forward even though her leg couldn’t support her.

  Miranda was about to go in for the kill when steel flashed in the dimly lit ballroom and the woman’s head tumbled to the ground.

  The Elite couldn’t get in through the panicking humans, but they didn’t really need to. David spun around on the follow-through and The Oncoming Storm rammed into the other human’s sternum. The man fell in a heap and didn’t move again.

  For a second Miranda prayed that was the end of it, but a moment later another human came at her.

  “What the hell is happening?” she yelled over at David, who had another to contend with himself. This one, an elderly man armed with another knife, kept driving toward him mindlessly until David snapped his neck. Meanwhile another man, large and bearded and mindless with rage, took a revolver out of his jacket and started shooting…and so did another human…and another.

  “The Prophet must be here,” David said. “Or watching somehow. I don’t know—we need to take away his toys.”

  “Got it,” she replied. “Cover me!”

  David nodded and stepped out into the middle of the room, sword raised, drawing the humans’ attention. On the far side of the room, the attendees who were trapped trying to get through the doorway saw what was happening and grew even more panicked, pushing and shoving to get out.

  Miranda realized their heightened emotional state was making it easier for the Prophet to take them over—they didn’t know how to shield in the first place, and fear left them even more wide open.

  She stepped back, climbing back onto the stage, trying to ignore the din around her while she gathered up as much power as she could. She reached toward the Haven, where
Deven and Nico responded by giving her everything they could; she pulled from David, herself, them, and then reached out to every human mind in the building, gathering them all up in the arms of her power with an iron grip.

  She wasn’t really sure what she was doing, only that she knew she could. Miranda took one last deep breath and slammed the energy into the Web that surrounded them, pushing it out into every human there, knocking them all unconscious at the same time, even those who’d already been possessed. The shock was enough to overcome the spell and send them to the floor, though she sensed the link itself was still active.

  The momentary silence was so complete the room nearly rang with it.

  Miranda sank to the stage floor, shaking. Dev and Nico gave her more strength along the bond, and it kept her from passing out, but she still knelt there for a minute, gasping.

  With the crowd littering the ground like discarded dolls, the Elite were able to carefully move them aside and get into the room. David was already giving out orders to seal the exits and get Detective Maguire.

  “I want these six, and the dead, taken to Hunter for interrogation and autopsy. Make sure the live ones are securely bound and kept in separate cells. When the paramedics get here escort them in but do not let the press within fifty feet of the entrance. I don’t give a damn what APD says, 93, just do it.”

  Miranda was freezing, and to her dismay felt herself starting to rock back and forth, unable to disengage from the Web or get her own mind together.

  David’s voice came again, this time considerably gentler. He crouched down beside her, draping her coat over her shoulders. “Just keep breathing, beloved. It’s all over for now. You stopped them.”

  She stared at the woman she’d killed. Could she have broken the spell? No…she couldn’t, not on the fly, and not without knowing more about it. “I tried not to kill her. I really did.” She could hear tears in her voice and felt irrationally angry at herself over it. Humans died by the thousands every day. This one was trying to kill her. She’d done what she had to do.

  What I have to do.

  Miranda sat quietly as the police arrived, along with a fleet of EMTs and, out front, Detective Maguire, who was utterly bewildered at the carnage before him.

  Maguire waved away the officers approaching the Pair. “Start taking statements,” he said.

  He came up the steps to the stage and stood in front of them for a minute without speaking.

  “You know,” he finally said, voice harsh with what he was seeing, “I’ve kept my mouth shut about everything up until now, but—”

  “Don’t start,” David said coldly.

  “Fine, then, I’ll finish!” Maguire practically bellowed, then looked around guiltily as a few officers looked up from their grisly work. “You people say you’re protecting us, but every time she sets foot on a stage people die. Is being famous worth all this?” He gestured back toward where the Elite and Novotny had swooped in on the dead and the other attackers and were trying to keep the human authorities from taking over.

  “Detective,” David began, a note of Oh No You Did Not Just creeping into his voice, but Miranda held up a hand and silence him.

  “You’re right,” she said.

  Maguire’s eyebrows shot up. “What?”

  “It’s not worth it,” she said. “I’m done. Until we’ve dealt with Morningstar I’m not performing again.”

  David looked as surprised as the Detective, but didn’t say anything. Maguire just took a deep breath, nodded, and turned back toward the crowd. “How exactly do you plan to deal with all of this?”

  The Prime rose slowly, straightening his coat, looking out as if he saw such things every day…which was becoming closer and closer to the truth, Miranda realized with her heart down at her feet.

  “All right,” he said quietly, beckoning Maguire closer. “We’re taking the live shooters—there’s a chance we may be able to save them if we can examine them more closely. Your people can have the dead; that will cut down on the questions. As for the survivors…I might be able to influence all of them one at a time to forget what they saw, or at least shield out the memory with a blur or a blackout. We can explain that in a few different ways. But—”

  “No,” Miranda said.

  They both looked at her.

  She stood up, breathing slowly, grateful for the added support of the corset to help her stand as tall as she could right now, sheathing Shadowflame and putting her coat the rest of the way on.

  “No tricks, no mind games,” she said. “Let them say whatever they want. Let it get out however it’s going to. What difference does it make now? Let the press invent their own explanation—I’m tired of pussy-footing around precious human sensibilities while trying to save them from their own kind. Besides, after all the spin and all the lies, they’re dying anyway.”

  “We don’t know what they saw,” Maguire said. “Most probably didn’t see you do anything supernatural, but we can’t be sure. You’re asking for torches and pitchforks, my Lady, or at least another murder rap. And at least a half-dozen high profile investigations surrounding tonight.”

  Miranda felt a surge of pity for him. “You’re a good Detective, Mike,” she said, touching his arm. He flinched. She nodded. “But the police can’t touch me. You can’t touch any of us. This isn’t really your war…and if you stay in it you won’t just lose your career, you’ll die. All of you will. Let us fight. It’s what we’re here for.”

  “Ms. Grey,” came a voice. The man on the steps said, “Agent Rawlings, FBI. We need to—”

  “No,” she said firmly. “You may not have my statement. You may not take me down to headquarters. You won’t take another step, and if you do, I’ll kill you.”

  She drew back the side of her coat, revealing the sword…still bloodstained.

  The Agent paled a shade and froze where he stood.

  “My husband, our security personnel, and I have work to do,” she informed him calmly. “Now move aside.”

  “I’m sorry, ma’am, but you’re going to have to—”

  She took a step. He drew his gun.

  Maguire gasped and started to gesture at the Agent to back down, but Miranda silenced him with a glance.

  “Put both hands where I can see them!” he ordered.

  After years of fighting for her career, of jumping through a thousand hoops to pass for human, of going to great lengths to pacify the authorities and keep her fans in the dark, she really expected giving it all up to be much harder, but in that moment, something dark and heavy settled comfortably around her shoulders along with her coat, and she just smiled softly.

  “Humans and their guns,” she said. “Tiny little pieces of metal that make you feel like men. Put it away, Agent. You’re not going to shoot me. Not after what happened to your grandmother.”

  His eyes went huge, and he faltered in his stance. “What—”

  “Put it away, son,” Maguire said. “You’re not going to want to file that report.”

  Finally, he obeyed, and when Miranda caught and held his eyes, he moved dumbly out of the way, visibly shaking.

  She nodded to Maguire. “Stay safe, Detective.”

  David echoed the nod, then stepped to Miranda’s right and offered his arm. “My Lady.”

  She took it, but as they started to walk away she heard Maguire say in a brittle voice, “Miranda…”

  She paused. “Yes?”

  “If you get my daughter killed, I’m coming after you.”

  Miranda looked over at him and nodded one more time. “I’ll see you then.”

  Then, surrounded by her guards, they walked out of the human world and, at long last, the Queen stopped looking back.

  Chapter Eight

  MASS SHOOTING AT MIRANDA GREY BENEFIT CONCERT

  11 DEAD, 22 WOUNDED IN ATTACK

  WHO WERE THE SHOOTERS? FAMILIES WANT ANSWERS

  MASS HALLUCINATIONS? BIZARRE WITNESS ACCOUNTS


  Authorities have ruled out a list of foreign and domestic terror groups in last night’s shocking attack on a benefit concert put on by Miranda Grey’s Porphyria Research Foundation, but are no closer to finding the true mastermind of the shooting.

  “We’re still in the early stages of the investigation,” Detective Mike Maguire, spokesperson for the task force, told the media at a briefing this morning. “No one has stepped up to claim responsibility. Tips are pouring in to our hotline and will take some time to sort through.”

  Perhaps the biggest mystery of the attack, which left 11 dead and 22 wounded, is what anyone would have to gain from gunning down wealthy donors to a rare disease. A law enforcement source who wished to remain anonymous claimed, “We know they were after Miranda Grey, but we don’t know why—and we don’t know why they would open fire on the crowd.”

  Ms. Grey, who took the stage at 9pm and was still performing when the first shots rang out at approximately 9:57, has not made a statement, and her management has not responded to inquiries about her role or her welfare. It is known that Ms. Grey walked out of the Crockett Ballroom surrounded by security personnel shortly after the first responders arrived.

  Witnesses and victims of the attack claim that Grey herself, as well as a man several identified as her husband tech billionaire David Solomon, fought back against the shooters and in fact killed several, though evidence has yet to bear that out.

  “She had a sword,” one victim reported. “I swear to God they both did. I don’t understand what happened but I know what I saw. The guy just appeared out of nowhere and cut the shooter’s head off.”

  Another source from APD has verified that the six identified shooters all had valid permits to carry concealed handguns. No other link has been found thus far, though at least eight witnesses have independently corroborated that the shooters appeared to be in some kind of hypnotic or drugged state when they began firing on the other attendees.