The music room was so silent a human could hear a pin drop.
Miranda let out a breath. “Invisible superbeing,” she muttered, echoing David’s dismissal of the whole concept of deity. “I guess it’s not any crazier than talking to that painting of Queen Bess across the room. But if there’s any way you could let me know you actually hear me, I’d feel a lot better about this.”
Echo answereth not. The world was full of humans who believed in God even though they personally had no evidence to back up that belief and had to go on faith from the experiences of others. She at least had a conversation with an overly friendly raven under a tree. That was more than most people got.
She felt David approaching, and sure enough there was a soft knock a moment later. He opened the door partway. “Clear?”
“Yeah. I’m pretty much stuck for the night. How was your conference call?”
He came in and closed the door behind him, saying, “Surprisingly productive.”
When he looked over at her, he paused. “What are you staring at?”
Miranda’s breath had gotten stuck in her chest, hemmed in by her heart flying all around inside her rib cage. “What . . . what is that in your hand?”
He looked puzzled. “This? It was on the floor outside the door. I think one of the servants was dusting in the corridor. Why do you look so spooked?”
She couldn’t answer. She could only stare at the object in question in mute astonishment:
A black feather.
• • •
“I had an idea,” the Witch said, ushering Miranda into her room after the Queen knocked on her door. “It’s pretty simple, and sometimes I just get gibberish, but it’s only as hazardous as a tarot reading and might give us more concrete information.”
“What, a Ouija board?” the Queen asked, sitting down where Stella directed her, on the floor in front of the table Stella had commandeered as an altar. It was almost exactly the same as the one she kept in her apartment, but this time Stella had added a careful drawing of the Seal of Elysium, as well as a plump pomegranate.
“Actually you’re not far off. It’s called automatic writing,” Stella explained, joining her on the floor and busying herself lighting candles and a stick of incense. “I go into a light trance, nothing scary, and then just let my pen move over the paper, the idea being if Persephone has something to say she can use my hand to do it without having to nuke my brain.”
Miranda watched her lay out a few sheets of notebook paper and a pen, which the Witch scribbled with first to make sure the ink was flowing. “And you can get good information like that?”
The Witch nodded. “It’s kind of hard to do the first time, because your conscious mind doesn’t want to give up control and you end up pushing the pen—just like with a Ouija board. But the cool thing is that whereas tarot is all symbols and can be interpreted wrong or misunderstood, automatic writing gives the spirit or deity or whatever a chance to say stuff flat-out without having to speak in riddles. Sometimes they still speak in riddles, but the chances of getting a direct answer are way higher.”
“What do you need me to do?” Miranda asked.
“Wait until it seems like I’m pretty well under, then ask a question. Just see where it goes from there.”
Stella had pulled a rather large book off one of the shelves in her room—a photographic coffee table book about horses—and rested it in her lap with the paper and pen. She and Miranda sat facing each other, and the Witch took a deep breath and closed her eyes.
Miranda wasn’t sure where to look. If she sat staring at Stella it was bound to make the Witch uncomfortable, but she needed to know when she’d hit a trance state. Miranda settled for looking over at the altar but keeping her senses trained on the human to alert her to any energy changes.
There were, as before, strong wards on the room, but this time it looked like Stella had changed her strategy a little—instead of just encircling the room with protective power she had interlaced that Circle with a matrix of energy that radiated out from the altar itself. There was a piece of polished labradorite the size of Miranda’s palm sitting in the middle of the altar, and she could feel power thrumming within it; the Witch had harnessed the stone’s energy, coupled it with her own, and was using it as the anchor for the structure she’d built. It was like the wards were now reinforced with steel beams.
Miranda was even more impressed with the Witch than usual—Stella had learned new ideas about how to work magic after the time she’d spent digging around in the Signets’ bonds, and now she was adapting her own work to reflect what she had discovered there. Miranda wondered if Stella would have been strong or skilled enough to create such a thing when they’d first met even if she’d known it was possible.
Miranda felt, or heard, or both, movement in front of her, and she returned her gaze to the Witch, whose eyes were still closed. Stella’s hand moved slowly to pick up the pen and hold it over the paper. Stella had been right; the trance hadn’t caused a major energy shift in the room. It was definitely gentler than the Drawing Down.
Miranda cleared her throat. She felt a little silly, but not an hour ago she’d been talking to the empty air, so, “What do you want me to know?”
Stella’s hand lowered the nib to the page, and Miranda watched, craning her neck closer to see if she wrote actual words or just scribbles. One letter at a time appeared on the paper, disjointed and irregular at first but then gaining confidence, becoming more legible.
It took almost a full minute to complete the first word:
YOU
Miranda read the word aloud, quietly, to encourage Stella, or Persephone, to keep going.
MUST
Sweat was pouring down Stella’s face, but she seemed otherwise okay. The Witch’s facial expression remained perfectly blank; the sweat was the only sign she was burning energy at all.
NOT
Miranda’s heart began to beat faster with a sudden urgency. Her nails dug into her knees, even a few seconds of waiting becoming too much . . . she could feel the import of the words, whether a commandment or an admonishment.
Stella’s hand was shaking slightly. The next few letters became increasingly hard to read, but they were still clear enough.
BLAME
Now the Witch faltered, hanging on to the pen, and her trance, as hard as she could. Fatigue was wearing on her, threatening whatever connection she had opened.
Miranda watched, hand lifting to her mouth, as the last word formed haltingly, letter by letter, each taking a monumental effort.
Y OU R SELF
Miranda swallowed and read the whole sentence softly. The pen fell from Stella’s hand and rolled off the book onto the floor; whether it was the plastic clattering or a coincidence, Stella’s eyes snapped open right at that moment.
“What did you get?” Stella asked. She looked down at her lap and froze. “Fuck, that can’t be good.”
Before Miranda could say anything, her com chimed. She lifted her wrist closer to her mouth, still staring at the words in front of her.
“Star-two,” she said.
“Miranda,” David said, “I need you to come to our suite . . . right now.”
She stammered for a second. “Why?”
“Please . . . just come. Now.”
Miranda got to her feet and left the room—she’d thank Stella later—and took the short series of hallways back to her own, a strange combination of numb and terrified. She knew that tone in David’s voice. It wasn’t just the bad news tone, like the one she’d heard when Jacob called earlier that night; it was a tone that meant he had to tell her something he knew would upset her, something that had already upset him. He was trying to remain professional for the sake of anyone who might have been listening until he had her alone.
He was waiting in his chair in front of the fireplace, his laptop open on the coffee table, his face that long-cultivated mask of neutrality that she had learned to see beneath even before she was his Queen.
“Sit down,” he said gently.
“What’s going on?” she asked. “What happened?”
He took a couple of breaths to choose his words. “A few minutes ago I got a call from Ken Gregory of the U.S. Marshals. He had finished settling your sister and niece into WITSEC in El Paso. Everything went smoothly. She was supposed to check in with him once a day. Yesterday she didn’t call.”
There were already tears in Miranda’s eyes, and she didn’t try to stop them from emerging. That same bones-deep foreboding she knew far too well had gripped her as soon as she walked into the room. All she could do now was wait.
“Gregory sent uniforms to the apartment. There was . . .” He met her eyes. “There was blood in the living room, signs of a struggle. The Crime Scene Unit is still there now, but their initial finding is that there were two large pools of blood and that the amount was indicative of fatal blood loss. They didn’t find any bodies, but . . .”
He passed his hand over his forehead, and she saw the mask crack; he’d been trying not to react, hoping it would keep her calm if he was calm, but whatever he had to say next was too much to let him feign complete stoicism.
He leaned over and turned his laptop toward her. “There was a flash drive placed very deliberately between the two pools of blood. There was only one thing on it . . . a video. Miranda . . . you don’t have to watch this. I don’t want you to. But you have to decide for yourself.”
She was shaking inside and out. “Show me,” she said hoarsely.
David closed his eyes a second, nodded, and hit play.
The video was shockingly clear, not the sort of shaky-camera, dimly lit thing she expected. It was in the apartment living room. There were four men in black, complete with ski masks: two standing in front, the other two holding a struggling woman and a little girl on their knees.
The camera zoomed in on their faces, the tears flowing down over the duct tape that silenced their screams. Their hands were bound behind their backs. There was a black eye forming on Marianne’s face and blood already smudged on her shirt. Miranda would have bet her entire fortune that Marianne got the wounds trying to protect Jenny.
One of the standing men pulled a knife from his belt.
Miranda pushed backward, trying to put more distance between herself and what she was seeing, her entire being begging her to look away . . . but she couldn’t. She had brought this down on her sister. She had to witness this.
Miranda felt David’s fingers twine through hers, and she gripped his hand hard, tears streaming down her face as the humans who believed themselves among the righteous murdered an innocent mortal woman . . . and her seven-year-old daughter.
There was no sound. Marianne and Jenny died in total silence, Marianne’s last words of comfort to her child lost in the cold silence of the recording.
The screen faded to black, and Miranda thought it was over, but Morningstar had left her one last message. A row of still photographs appeared across the screen, images she knew: Marilyn, Marianne, Jenny, and then a photo of Miranda herself when she’d still been human. One by one, a red X crossed out each picture . . . except for her own.
Miranda stared at the screen, her brain refusing to process the implications.
Finally, she asked very quietly, “Does this mean they killed my mother?”
David made an indefinite noise. “I was looking into that right before you got here . . . as far as I can tell from a quick glance through her records, no. She committed suicide; they’re not taking credit so much as they’re making a point . . . showing their intentions.”
“Wipe out my bloodline,” she said hollowly. “My mother had no siblings . . . my maternal grandmother is dead . . . and now . . . I’m all that’s left.” She leaned forward and closed the laptop screen, banishing the image from her sight, if not her mind. Even so, her words grew less and less steady, her temporary calm fracturing, falling apart. “They . . . they slit the throat of a seven-year-old girl . . . for the sake of their war . . . because of me. Of us. A world they had nothing to do with. How could . . . how could anyone look at that little face and just . . . she was seven years old!”
She shut her eyes, trying to stay grounded, but another image jumped into her mind’s eye: a pen moving over a piece of paper, spelling out words.
YOU MUST NOT BLAME YOURSELF.
Miranda broke down sobbing, so angry and stricken she couldn’t contain it anymore. Even if Marianne had been a stranger, or they’d hated each other, she didn’t deserve this . . . to be forced to watch her own child’s murder, to die in terror without even understanding why. And Miranda had sat smiling at a school picture of Jenny, chuckling at the familiarity of her out-of-control red hair and those leaf-green eyes, and the thought had come to her: Jenny might have had a gift like Miranda’s. Miranda would have kept watch on her for just that reason, so that one day, if Jenny started to lose herself to her empathy, there would be somewhere she could go to learn how to control it.
She’d never liked children all that much, but that thought—all the things, from puberty to college to growing old, that Jenny would never get to do, just because a bunch of humans hated vampires enough to march to war through the blood of the innocent—made it so much worse. Marianne hadn’t led a happy life, but she was doing the best she could for her baby, trying to make sure things were better for her. It was the same struggle played out millions of times across every human civilization, but the smallness of a single life still mattered. The fleeting rush of every human life mattered.
The people Miranda herself had killed had mattered to someone, somewhere, once.
David drew her close, wrapping both arms and presence around her to give her shelter; she felt him step in and add his energy to her shields so that if she couldn’t hold them, they wouldn’t collapse.
He didn’t say anything at first, but as she started to calm down a little, she heard, “This is why I don’t want empathy.”
She let out a shaky breath. “I’m so tired of getting people killed,” she said into his neck. “Just once, I’d like to actually save someone.”
He didn’t argue that she already had; he understood what she meant. Signets were the most powerful vampires on earth, but for all their power, their war never truly ended. Whether mortal or immortal, there were always those willing to prey upon others, to crawl out of the shadows and paint the city with blood.
“It’s nearly dawn,” David told her, kissing her forehead and then her puffy nose. “You should go on to bed. I have a few e-mails to send and then I’ll join you.”
Miranda lifted her eyes to her Prime’s. “We have to stop them,” she said quietly. “We’re going to stop them.”
“We will,” he replied. “I give you my word, Miranda, we will.” Then he smiled lovingly and kissed her forehead. “Just not tonight. Get some rest.”
“Wait . . . stay here just a moment longer.”
He nodded. She returned her head to where it had been, the spot it fit perfectly where neck and shoulder met. She could feel his pulse beneath her ear. He pulled her up and around to where she was mostly in his lap and held her tight again, love moving from one to the other along their bond, soothing some of the horror, helping her get a grip on the rage that wanted badly to claw its way out of her and lay all of Morningstar to waste whether she was strong enough or not.
Miranda felt an exhausted sleep lapping around the edges of her mind and didn’t try to fight it. A day’s sleep would help put some distance between her and what she had seen; then she might be able to approach it with calm, in a way that would help, instead of falling apart or accidentally projecting all over the Haven and sending the entire Elite into a depressive tailspin. She closed her eyes and let the warmth around her, the heartbeat against her cheek, and the quiet peace of the room draw her into the dark . . .
. . . where again, and again, she dreamed in threads of light.
PART TWO
The Ten of Swords
Eleven
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Retribution came to Morningstar in the back of a laundry truck.
The guards at the compound’s front gate were used to seeing the blue and white truck bearing orderly stacks of freshly cleaned, pressed, and folded black uniforms. With dozens of soldiers to clothe, the Texas base of operations received two such shipments per week, like clockwork, from a service located in Dallas.
The base itself was in the middle of nowhere, comprising precise rows of military surplus modular buildings, three Quonset huts as barracks, and one cinder block structure that housed the Shepherd and other officers. The huts were a recent addition—before they had discovered how to create effective soldiers, there had been few recruits, but now that they could use the power of a Signet’s death to mind-wipe and program people, they could pluck humans off the street from any city, and the plan was to do so in waves. The month before, the ritual performed in Europe had created a hundred, and the next was planned for America. Most of that lot would go to Texas . . . their greater numbers meant more strikes in the cities, and that would draw out the enemy.
They were unaware that they had already drawn him out.
The same driver was always behind the wheel of the laundry truck—Jorge, an affable man who blasted the Dallas norteño station in his truck and was always laughing. He tried joking with the guards the first few trips, but they were stone-faced and disinterested in most facial expressions, so eventually he just went about his business, tried to be friendly and professional, and got in and out as quickly as he could.
The people at that place . . . they were wrong somehow. Only a few of them seemed capable of eye contact. They acted like military, but there was no indication what branch or why in hell they’d be out here. He’d done delivery routes to enough places like this that he decided it was probably better not to ask. He was getting a ton of overtime for this one because it was so far out of town; his family needed that money. So . . . best not to ask . . . but he still wondered.
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