Shadowbound

by Dianne Sylvan

  She kissed him, once on the mouth and again on the top of his head. “I’ll let you get back to work.”

  She knew, as she left the workroom, that he’d be sitting there staring at those images for an hour or more, mind in a twist, before giving up and going to bed, but there was nothing she could do, really, except give him room to brood. Even after everything they’d been through, he still had a hard time dealing with emotions; anything that made him feel deeply scared him just a little. He’d try to think his way through it logically—even more laughable considering the situation. There really was no rationalizing his way through an emotional attachment to an ex he had a mystical connection to, who had at some point become his wife’s best friend. Having a soul mate should have simplified things, yet as they all knew by now, the heart wanted what it wanted, and usually it wanted to misbehave.

  Miranda opened up her senses, casting about the house to see if she could feel Deven; he and Jonathan always stayed in the same visiting dignitary suite, but since there were still a couple of hours left in the night he might be somewhere else in the Haven.

  She had to smile when she figured it out: the study where the ice cream and liquor cabinet were, the same place she had stumbled across him that night years ago when she’d asked him about his tattoos and he had told her the story behind his loss of faith. Fitting, she supposed, to find him there now.

  He didn’t seem surprised to see her. This time, though, he wasn’t drunk, but was sitting in one of the big leather chairs, cross-legged, the Codex open on his lap.

  He said in exasperation without looking at her, “Why does it matter to either of you how I came by my knowledge? Can’t you accept that I’m old, I know things, and that’s it?”

  “Because if you don’t share what you know, we could waste a lot of time chasing our tails.”

  “If it were relevant, you would know about it,” he retorted. “No one ever needed to know I could read Elysian Greek until tonight. I shouldn’t have to lay my entire past bare just in case some piece of it proves of use to you.”

  She sat down. “All right, then. How about telling a friend about something that’s obviously hurting you?”

  He glanced up at her for just a second before averting his eyes to the book again, and she saw in his face that she was right.

  She pulled her knees up to her chin. “It’s getting harder for all of us to hold ourselves apart. Whatever the purpose of this connection, it’s making us function almost like one big Pair—sharing strength, sharing emotions. It’s still tentative, still uneven among all of us, but like you said, the more we use it, the stronger it gets. There’s no telling how much worse it’s going to become, but you’re not going to be able to hide everything from everyone anymore . . . you might as well start with me.”

  Finally, the anger clouding around him seemed to fade, and he snapped the book shut and laid both palms on it for a minute, eyes closed.

  He took a deep breath and said, “The woman who rescued me from the Inquisition and made me a vampire claimed that her Goddess had sent her to find me. She was a Priestess, she said, and was taking me to live in a safe place where I could study and live in peace . . . and one day take her place, not just at the head of her cloister, but as the leader of the Order of Elysium itself. Her name was Eladra.”

  Miranda’s mouth and heart both fell open, and for a minute she couldn’t find words. “Eladra was your sire,” she said in a hushed voice. “You were her heir.”

  “She thought so. I couldn’t accept it. I didn’t believe in her Goddess, and the God I had loved had abandoned me to tormented death. I couldn’t just jump ship from one religion to another without one hell of a conversion experience. I stayed there for a few years, trying to force myself to fit in. Finally, I ran. I never saw her again until the night I killed her . . . and all of my other teachers, and everyone who had taken me in and cared for me. Two centuries later I joined a branch of the Swords of Elysium anonymously on another continent because I wanted their weapons for the Red Shadow. Only members had access to their swordsmiths.”

  Miranda shook her head. The truth was no easier to accept now than it had been the night of the Awakening. “You killed everyone who mattered to you just to save our lives . . . and it didn’t even work.”

  This time the smile was genuine, as was the pain beneath it. “No, Miranda . . . I was trying to save everyone who mattered. And not just for you two, but to try to stop everything that’s happening now before it started. I can never make amends to Eladra—never thank her for saving me and giving me a home. But at least you’re still alive, even though I failed you . . . and everyone else.”

  Neither spoke for a minute. She knew he was done talking for now. Her heart was full of a dozen conflicting emotions, but sorrow was the one that spoke loudest, and it urged her up off the sofa and over to his chair, where he looked up at her without speaking, then sighed and moved over so she could sit down.

  Perhaps Nico had saved him from dying in despair, but it still clung to his back waiting for another chance to drag him down into the darkness. She couldn’t do whatever it was Nico had done, but by God, if there was anything she could do, she would.

  He was stiff in her arms for a while, trying to maintain the distance, and she just kept sending love and understanding along the link the whole Circle shared, and after what seemed like forever, she felt a slight shudder run through him, and he gave in.

  Deven burrowed his face into her shoulder, one hand winding into her hair, and eventually Miranda grabbed a throw blanket hanging over the arm of the chair and covered them both with it. They ended up much as they had in the hayloft a week ago, but this time their positions were reversed; he lay against her chest, she the one with the strength, both of them looking for something they couldn’t find anywhere else and might, just might, right here.

  Miranda was finally starting to understand what their relationship really was: more than friendship, less than romance, deeper than either; mutual acceptance and comfort between two people who had, by a miracle, come to love each other through trial by fire. He had been her solid ground when David died, and her shoulder was the only one he wasn’t afraid to lean on.

  She didn’t ask any more questions, didn’t try to find the words to make any of it right; she just held on, and at least for that moment, it was enough.

  Ten

  Thread by thread . . . from horizon to horizon, softly glowing lattices of light spread out in every direction around her, and for a moment she was at its center . . . she was its center, and circumference, each strand plaiting itself around hundreds of others at the touch of her hand.

  Infinite power flowed through her. Time itself lay still until she bade it to turn; millions of potential futures shifted and tipped. Within its endless transformation she could see so many lives playing out, their fates formed by the intersections and twists that branched out and touched others, then others, and eventually everyone and everything. Nothing was solitary, nothing happened in a vacuum. Every single choice made by every single being altered the Web in some way, from the flap of a bird’s wing to the march of an army.

  Her awareness shrank until she could see only her own part of the matrix, and by feeling along different strands she could sense her connections to those she loved, those she hated, those she had yet to meet. She existed in a ring of other microcosmic webs, seven others . . . one of which was still so far away she could barely see its edges . . . and one strand, brighter and stronger than the others, ran through them all. Every two matrices were also bound to each other, except for the last two, who had not yet connected.

  She wanted more than anything to touch them, to learn everything she could—in her own part of the lattice she could see the thread that made her an empath, and another that gave her musical talent. Just at a touch she could discover all of their secrets . . . but that wasn’t why she was here.

  Her eyes moved back to the quicksilver strands that connected each Pair. She wasn’t su
re what she was supposed to grasp about them, but she could see they were strong . . . yet brittle, in their way, if the right kind of power struck them in the right place. She had seen it happen, had felt it herself. From where she stood she could see exactly what a Bondbreaking would do, and what a miracle it was they had survived it . . . and miracle was the right word given its source. Since then all of those connections had doubled in strength and were growing every day. Eventually, when that eighth web came close enough for them all to touch, the circuit among them would complete and . . . they would become what they were here to become.

  Over and over again, her attention returned to one of the silver strands; it felt as though her vision was being pulled to it, her subconscious trying to show her something about it . . . but it looked just like the others. What was special about this one? She held her hands over it, afraid to touch . . . following its line from one web to another.

  As she stood examining the connections, figuring out how they worked and which way their energy flowed, she felt the telltale prickle on the back of her neck and the intrusive nudge of her gift . . . she wasn’t alone. Someone was watching her.

  Miranda blinked awake slowly, whatever she was dreaming sighing away into the polyphonic whisper of her subconscious. She would have thought it was a precognitive dream, given how her head was starting to hurt, but at least a few pieces of those always lingered; otherwise, why have them?

  Her feet were cold, as was her face. She grunted and turned over to face David and borrow some of his thermonuclear warmth. For a second the weirdness in her mind evaporated, watching her Prime sleep . . . she remembered the first time, looking down at him on the couch as he began to have a nightmare about his first wife. Then, as now, he’d looked so human, vulnerable.

  “Stop staring,” he murmured without opening his eyes. “It’s creepy.”

  She smiled. “I can’t help it . . . you’re just so damned cute.”

  One eye slit open and gave her a blurry glare. “Primes aren’t cute,” he said. “We’re the embodiment of darkness. We inspire fear.”

  Miranda chuckled. “Oh yes. Especially Primes who sleep in flannel Iron Man pants.”

  Now both eyes opened, and he grinned. “I like the Batman pair, too.”

  “Millionaire genius crime fighter pants. Yep, I know how to pick a gift.”

  He shut his eyes again. “Go back to sleep,” he said. “We don’t have to be up for another hour.”

  She started to say something, but he had already drifted off again. She could let him have that last precious hour, or she could . . .

  He yelped and scrambled backward. “Damn it, woman, your feet are freezing!”

  “That’s why I stuck them on you.”

  Rolling his eyes, he pounced on her and kissed her hard. She giggled around his mouth and was about to grab him by the millionaire genius crime fighter pants when over on the bedside table his phone rang.

  She started to tell him to let it go to voice mail, but before the words came out something cold and heavy struck her heart . . . knowledge. “It’s Jacob,” she said.

  He grabbed the phone just in time to catch the call. “Solomon.” David sighed. “Christ, who died?” As she watched, his expression became something all too familiar. “. . . Oh.”

  • • •

  The worldwide map of Signet territories was beginning to look more than a little unsettling. Australia was still leaderless. So was the Mideastern United States. And India.

  David hit the command that would change Western Europe from blue to red. He sat back in his chair, staring at it—there were power vacuums opening up all over the world, and while he had never had any reason to consider what it would take to topple the entire Signet system, suddenly the possibility, though still far away from fruition, was far too real for his comfort.

  He felt Miranda’s hands on his shoulders as she came to stand behind his chair. “So Morningstar made itself a new crop of superhumans.”

  “Let’s hope that’s all they did. This time they had two Signets—imagine if they harnessed the power of both deaths at once. Either they just hatched an army or they did something even worse.”

  “How in the hell did they manage to kidnap a Pair? Jeremy was injured when they took him, and didn’t have a Queen. Napolitano was a lifelong warrior and his Queen had at least a little training. He was a way more formidable force than Varati.”

  “All I know is their bodyguards were all found dead next to their limo—the driver, too. Just like Varati they attacked while the Pair was getting out of the car. Unfortunately it’s going to be hard to get more inside information; one of the bodyguards was the Red Shadow agent who’s been reporting on Napolitano for twenty years. Imagine that—not only did they make off with a Pair and kill a team of highly trained Elite, they took down one of Deven’s agents.”

  “Does he have one in every Elite?” she asked.

  “I have no doubt. Think of how long Lalita was here without us having any idea. We probably never would have found her out if it weren’t for Ovaska.”

  “Wait . . . you don’t think there’s another spy here now, do you?”

  David smiled. “Absolutely. In fact I know exactly who it is—I learned what to look for after the last time. I just haven’t bothered calling her out because I prefer to keep her right where she is and watch her watching me. She might turn out to be useful at some point.”

  She didn’t look at all surprised. “I swear to God, you two.”

  “He started it.”

  She smiled slightly, but her eyes were already back on the map. “Napolitano was in denial about Morningstar, just like most of the Council,” Miranda murmured. “Even as strong as he was, that denial made him vulnerable. None of them want to believe humans can take us out like this. But Napolitano wasn’t a rebellious upstart like some Primes I know. He was old guard, traditional. He’d been in power for ages. This has to get through to at least a few of the others.”

  David counted up the remaining territories and compared it to the calendar where he’d been keeping note of when Morningstar attacks occurred. “If the frequency of assassinations remains constant we’ll all be dead before the year is out,” he observed. “I know it won’t be that easy for them now that more of us are boosting security, but . . . still . . . the math is not comforting.”

  “And they only have to kill one of our little group to ensure we can never pull out the big gun,” Miranda added. “Whatever the hell the big gun actually is. Hopefully that much at least is in the Codex. Meanwhile we have to find Olivia’s Consort . . . maybe we should hold a ball.”

  David laughed. “I don’t think she’d be too happy with that idea. You do have a point, though . . . there must be something we can do to find this guy. Maybe there’s a divination or a spell or something in the Codex . . . if nothing else we could ask Stella to do a reading of some sort just to give us some clue we can work with.”

  “I wonder how Olivia feels about all of this,” Miranda said. “I mean, her Consort is her soul mate, so they’re meant to be together, but it still sucks having so much riding on your love life.”

  “She’s probably not too thrilled with the pressure, but a Prime without a Consort feels a constant, quiet emptiness that only one person can fill. We do our jobs, and we know we’re where we’re meant to be, but that space where you belong never stops aching. I haven’t asked her, but I’m sure by now she feels it. I started to feel it the same day I took the Signet. I just didn’t know what to call it for a long time.”

  They held each other’s eyes for a moment, neither speaking, until the computer to his left chimed to let him know a call was coming in.

  “That’s Tanaka,” David told her. “A few others will be joining in so we can all discuss additional security measures and precautions. It’s probably going to be boring.”

  Miranda chuckled and kissed him. “That’s my cue, then. I need to spend some time in the music room anyway—crazy anti-vampire cult aside, I
still have an album to finish. Let me know when you’re done.”

  As she passed by his chair and he leaned over to grab the mouse and start the conference call, he caught her hand again, and they smiled at each other, her love warming him inside and out and banishing at least a little of the anxiety he’d been feeling since Jacob had called. The world might go to hell around them, but as long as he could look up into her clear green eyes there was one sure thing in his life.

  Olivia deserved to feel that same certainty. Fate or no fate, he hoped he could help her find it, and soon.

  • • •

  Comedy or tragedy,

  I know you’ll be the end of me . . .

  There were a lot of unpleasant things in the Queen’s world, but the thing that drove her craziest was writer’s block. Enemies, she could fight; wounds could heal. Writing songs, however, was like trying to build a bridge out of smoke. Every time she thought she had a grasp on a song, it slipped out of her hands.

  There was a reason she preferred playing covers. Writing new material was torture. Weaving together music and lyrics took confident hands, and hers were more than a little wobbly.

  Suddenly, a flash of odd memory in her mind: threads of light as far as she could see, all crisscrossed and twisted around each other in what should have been chaos but was in fact an elegant, slowly-dancing order . . . her own hands reaching out . . .

  The image was so powerful for a second that Miranda had to grab the edge of the piano to stay upright.

  “What the hell . . .”

  Stella had described the universe as a giant web . . . and Miranda had dreamed of a giant web . . . she remembered pieces of the dream, now, and though watching all those threads shift had been peaceful, underneath it was an urgency . . . someone was trying to tell her something.

  She had a hunch who it was.

  “Okay,” Miranda said quietly. “So we can’t talk to each other, but you can give me dreams . . . but if you’re trying to make a point, I don’t think I’m going to get it this way—tell Stella. Stella can tell me. Just . . . be a little gentler with her this time.”