Something in her tone set off warning bells in Miranda’s mind. “Wait . . . are you all right?”
Marianne looked at her again, and for just a second Miranda saw something in her eyes that made the warning bells double in volume and echo throughout her being: fear. “Yeah, fine. Come on in. He’s awake.”
Taking a deep breath, Miranda turned back to her bodyguards. “Minh, stay out here and keep watch. Stuart, with me.”
Marianne stepped back to let her into the house, and as she lifted her arm to open the door her sleeve fell back. Miranda didn’t allow her reaction to show, but she knew what she was looking at. Track marks.
Right then Miranda wanted to be anywhere but in that house.
Marianne ushered her into the living room. Miranda looked around, swallowing her unease, trying to digest the strangeness of the sight before her. It felt like she’d stepped back in time. The room was exactly as she remembered it, down to the photographs hanging over the fireplace. She saw her own face, and her mother’s, all around her, frozen at different points in time, the frames filmed with dust.
Behind her Marianne shut the door and locked it, startling Miranda.
“How are George and Jenny?” Miranda asked, unable to stand the weird silence any longer.
“George is in Plano,” Marianne replied. “We’re separated.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Don’t be,” Mari said flatly. “He’s an asshole.”
Miranda had to laugh at that. “Well, yeah, but I wasn’t going to say so.”
“Jenny’s . . .” Marianne took a deep breath, and Miranda saw that flicker of fear again. “She’s in second grade now.”
“Is she living with George, or with you?”
“Right now she’s . . .” Marianne shook her head, denying what Miranda couldn’t guess. “She’s fine. Come on, let’s get this over with while he’s still lucid.”
Miranda followed her through the living room into the hallway, past what had once been their bedrooms, to the extra room that had served as Marilyn’s art studio once upon a time. Miranda could smell antiseptic, and the closer they got the stronger other smells grew: that indefinable odor of old age, and another that she recognized as that hospital smell of sickness and soiled linen. She could hear monitors beeping quietly.
Marianne stood back and let her go in first. Miranda had to force herself; she was beginning to understand what a colossal mistake this was. She shouldn’t have come. What did she have to prove to these people?
“I’m sorry,” Marianne said softly behind her. “I’m sorry.”
Miranda turned back to her. “What?”
Marianne was crying, melting back against the wall. “They have Jenny. They have Jenny. I’m sorry.”
The Queen felt something thud into her back.
She spun around and felt another impact, this one in her shoulder. The pain hit a few seconds behind as a third, then fourth, then fifth shaft struck her torso.
Crossbows. It must be—
She didn’t have time to finish the thought, and she didn’t have time to draw a weapon. Someone moved up behind her, something struck the back of her head, and she knew no more.
• • •
“You are without a doubt one of the oddest men I’ve ever met,” Olivia noted.
David smiled. “Why do you say that?”
“Tell me everything you’re doing right at this moment.”
“Well, I’m talking to you, and I’m creating a comparative data matrix from sensors in Sacramento and those in Austin as well as from observational data from the attack on Varati in Mumbai so we can get a better idea of the physical limits of Morningstar’s thugs—in a few minutes I’ll have the first stab at an upgrade for the sensor network that can register that specific variety of human. I’m also refining the software that runs the camera I used for Miranda’s Rolling Stone interview. And I’m reverse-engineering the earpieces to see if any of the technology will be useful for my own communication system.”
“And?”
“And what? Oh, right—I’m also working my way through a pint of Rocky Road.”
Olivia was laughing. “I rest my case.”
“I’m not odd,” David replied. “I’m just busy. Three hundred fifty years is enough time to develop a lot of hobbies. I collected stamps for a while.”
The scanner in front of him beeped, and he set aside the mostly empty pint and returned his attention to the earpiece. He’d examined several of them since all this had started, but most had the same kind of explosive charge hidden inside as the first one he’d opened; he’d finally worked out a way to disable the charge, but the first two times the laser hadn’t been calibrated exactly and he’d destroyed them. This time it seemed to be working—steady as his hands were, he was having much better luck using an automated mechanical arm he’d borrowed from Hunter Development to do the cutting.
He heard someone speak to her, and she sighed and said, “I have to go—we’ve had Elite trials going on all evening and my First Lieutenant has a group of finalists for me to look over.”
“Good luck,” David told her. “Call if you need anything.”
“Will do.”
As he hung up, David paused to check on the computer running the comparison matrix of Morningstar data; it was still happily plugging along. It had taken a couple of hours to write the program itself, but actually running it took no effort on his part except to keep an eye on it for glitches.
He started to return his attention to both the laser and the ice cream—
—and between one breath and another, pain lanced through his body, a dozen burning points of entry he recognized immediately as crossbow bolts at close range. He tried to stand, but the pain was so intense none of his limbs were cooperating, and only through all of his will did he manage to grab the edge of the table and avoid hitting his head.
The room swam in and out of focus. He couldn’t think—he knew that it wasn’t he who was injured, and the intensity of the pain told him he wasn’t catching echoes from New York, Prague, or Sacramento. So far his awareness of the others’ emotions and pain had been minimal—and he was fine with that—but that meant there was only one place it could be coming from. Miranda.
Terror overwhelmed the pain. She was five hours away. By the time he reached Rio Verde, even breaking every speed limit in Texas, it would be too late to stop whatever they had planned for her.
Sinking to his knees, he groped for the phone. Miranda’s phone went straight to voice mail; he changed contacts.
It didn’t even finish the first ring. “What the hell is happening over there?”
David ignored the question. “Tell me you have a Shadow operative closer than five hours to Rio Verde.”
“Shit, David, I don’t even know where Rio Verde is. Give me a minute.”
He closed his eyes, trying to breathe, trying desperately not to panic. She was alive; she must be. The pain from the bolts was still screaming at him, but it hadn’t gotten worse. They most likely had shot her down and then dragged her into captivity.
“The closest I have is Houston,” Deven said. “That’s still three hours out.”
“That’s two hours closer than I am. Send them—please. I don’t know what else to do.”
“I already gave the order. What could have happened to her in that crappy little town?”
“It has to be Morningstar.” David grabbed the table again and dragged himself to his feet. He picked up the phone with one hand while calling Harlan on his com. “Elite Five.”
“Yes, Sire?”
“This is an emergency,” he said. “Have the second Escalade out front in five minutes.”
“As you will it, Sire.”
The guards outside the workroom gave him looks that were both quizzical and worried as he half-staggered past them. The only thought in his mind, Get to Miranda, played on repeat so loudly in his head it crowded out the pain.
He had no doubt that Deven could f
eel his rising panic. “Keep breathing,” Deven said. “She’ll be fine—she can take care of herself.”
“It’s going to be too late,” David panted. He reached the front doors of the Haven, where Harlan already had the vehicle waiting. There was so much they could do to Miranda in five hours . . . assuming they didn’t just kill her . . . she was in pain . . . He had to have faith that whichever Shadow operative Deven had sent could save her.
“Just get on the road,” Deven commanded. “I have an idea . . . let me call you back.”
“But what—”
Deven hung up before David could finish the question, and David climbed into the SUV, saying, “We’re going to Rio Verde. I want you to get there as fast as possible.”
“Yes, Sire. On our way.”
Harlan had the car on the highway in less than ten minutes. By then the pain from the crossbow bolts had become a continuous low-level ache, but he knew better than to think Miranda was safe—most likely she was unconscious. It gave him the clarity of mind to call the Houston satellite garrison and order a team of Elite to head for Rio Verde as well. He didn’t know what they would be driving into, but he had to assume he’d need reinforcements.
After that there was nothing he could do but wait and send as much reassurance down the bond as he could, trying to reach her even if she couldn’t reply, just to let her know help was coming, and no matter what darkness her attackers had dreamed up for her, she wasn’t alone.
Six
The Queen woke alone.
At first, nothing made sense. Her body hurt; she had felt that variety of pain before, and knew it for what it was, but when she focused on one of the wounds, she couldn’t heal it. When she tried to move her arm, agony stabbed through her wrist, forcing her to lie still and bite down on her tongue to stop a scream. And though she could smell the metal-and-petrochemicals reek of a warehouse of some sort around her, directly above the night sky was exposed.
Think, Queen. Think. How long have I been out? What happened?
Marianne. Marianne had sold her out to Morningstar—Miranda had figured out that much before she lost consciousness. The Order had Jenny and threatened to harm the child if Marianne didn’t lure Miranda into the ambush.
The room began to solidify around her. She tried to focus on the details to help her ignore the pain. It wasn’t a warehouse—not big enough, and the floor was dirt, not concrete. It smelled like it had once held large machinery. But why she’d be able to see the sky, she didn’t . . . know . . .
Oh God.
She was in a cage, or rather, a pen with eight-foot sides, open at the top. The ceiling of the building had been partially removed in a square about the size of the pen. She was on the ground, on her back, directly beneath the hole . . . staked to the ground. Up above her, the night was beginning to pale.
They were going to burn her alive.
A deep, instinctive fear shuddered through her, and before she could stop herself she tried to jerk her arms free, but the wood shafts nailed through them holding her on the ground sent such pain through her body that she cried out. She felt the wood penetrating her arm, separating tendon and bone, injuries that would cripple a human at the very least. She moaned softly and tried to hold still.
The sound seemed to summon whoever was guarding her. She heard bootsteps approaching the cage. She finally turned her attention to the rest of the room and counted at least ten others by sound and scent. She didn’t look at them; she didn’t want them to see her afraid.
They were all standing around the steel bars staring down at her. She could feel their disgust, their loathing—to them she was human-shaped vermin they were entitled to exterminate. They watched her with all the compassion of a collector pushing pins through a dead butterfly.
Now that she was finally in the same room as they were, she could feel the difference between them and ordinary humans; the magic on them that gave them the ability to fight vampires had a signature to it sort of like a scent and sort of like heat, but not quite either.
She wanted to fight. She wanted a chance to save herself. But the longer the stakes held her wounds open, the weaker she felt; wood itself would no longer kill her, but no wound could heal if there was still something in it. She was bleeding slowly onto the dirt. It took a while to kill a vampire with exsanguination but it was possible, depending on the size of the wounds and the time involved. Right now it was a race to see how she would die: by blood or by fire.
The murmur of conversation rose and fell around her. She tried to pick out individual sentences, any kind of information she could save for later, but her mind was simply too addled to make sense of it. Their sense of triumph was obvious, though, as was their anticipation. They were excited about watching her die.
Finally she heard someone speaking English quietly off to one side: “Why aren’t we using this one?”
And another voice: “The Shepherd says she’s part of the Circle; they’re too much of a threat.”
“Too bad. It’s kind of hot, now that I look at it—if we had a party before dawn the Shepherd would never know.”
Miranda’s entire body went ice cold.
“Shut up,” the other snapped, then said in a low voice, “You start saying shit like that and they’ll call you a sympathizer—and when it comes time to kill all of them off, you’ll be first in line.”
“Yeah, whatever. What are we supposed to do with the woman and the kid?”
“Orders are to kill them as soon as it’s dead. The only way to be sure we destroy them for good is to wipe out the bloodlines.”
Strange . . . as she listened to them talk, trying with all her will to hang on to their words so she could remember them because she knew they were important, feeling her body growing weaker with each passing minute, feeling the first hint of dawn touch her skin and redouble her fear, she felt something happening . . . in the corner of the room, behind the two men, something was . . . wrong . . . no, not wrong, just . . . strange . . .
It felt almost as if the air and the earth in that spot were turning to water, and then into light. Behind her closed eyes she could see a soft glimmer beginning to build, first just around the edges of an oval-shaped space in the shadows, then expanding, like someone slowly swinging a door open.
There was a blast of wind—cool, damp wind, scented with evergreen and the faint taste of the ocean—nothing like the air around her. The light grew absolutely blinding; then, as quickly as it had come, it faded, and the night was as it had been.
“Did you feel that?” one of the two men asked.
The second started to reply, but all Miranda heard was a sputtering, gurgling sound. A few seconds later she heard the telltale heavy thud of a body hitting the ground.
Her consciousness was fading in and out, but she heard a familiar voice snap, “Cover the child’s eyes.”
The next few minutes were a cacophony of men yelling, weapons being drawn, and the silvery swish of a blade—through the air, against other blades, and into flesh. Miranda managed to turn her head toward the noise and saw steel catch the light, moving so fast the humans barely had time to get their hands on their own swords before they were down.
They had clearly not been expecting an attack, believing their location secret and that there was no possibility another vampire could try to rescue her in time.
Within minutes, they were all dead.
She heard chains rattling and then falling to the ground. “Get out,” the voice she knew came again. “Room two twenty-one at the Verde Inn—you’ll be safe there.” Then, a child’s cry of fear, and footsteps running away—one adult, carrying a lighter burden.
Miranda lifted her head slightly. She had to know what was happening.
Something struck the gate and it flew off its hinges, slamming into the far side of the cage.
A shadow fell over Miranda, and a glowing green light caught her eyes. Her relief was so profound she laughed weakly, the sound strangled by tears.
“Be s
till,” Deven said gently, kneeling beside her. “This is going to hurt.”
“Where’s . . .” she panted.
“He’s four hours away. Dawn is coming—we need to get somewhere dark.”
The first stake came out and she screamed, back arching against the pain. It felt like it was flaying her open from the inside. The second nearly made her black out. By the time it clattered to the ground, she was sobbing.
She had been staked and shot before, but it was nothing like this—these were thicker, rammed deep into the ground, and the wood they were made of had barely even been sanded. It scraped against the inside of the wounds and left a fire of torment in its wake.
“Breathe . . . just breathe.”
Desperate for something to cling to, she wrapped her fingers in his coat and held on for dear life. If the stakes in her wrists were agonizing, the ones in her legs were beyond that; she hadn’t known her body could feel that kind of pain without dying. They had been rammed in at an angle, through her calves. Worst of all, there were still more—several of the crossbow bolts had been left in her, though they’d been broken off in back.
“I can’t . . .” she half panted, half sobbed.
“You can, Miranda. I promise you can.” Deven carefully lifted her shoulders up off the ground and leaned her against him. With one hand, he reached up and unsnapped the studded leather collar he was wearing. “Here,” he said, tilting his head, offering his neck. “Bite down.”
She didn’t have time to question it—he didn’t give her time. He started pulling the bolts, in rapid succession, getting it over with as fast as possible. On top of everything else, the crossbow bolts had barbed heads.
Her teeth tore into the skin in front of her, dark blood spilling into her mouth, ripping deeper with every stifled scream. He didn’t even flinch.
The last bolt came out, and he put his hand on the back of her head, encouraging her to drink. Vampire blood wouldn’t do her much good physically, but just the act of feeding helped soothe some of her panic. She had never fed on her own kind, except for David, and that had only been either to turn her into a Thirdborn or in the course of sex. It surprised her how similar to David Deven tasted—like two vintages of the same wine.
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