“By the power vested in me by the state of California and the county of Sacramento . . .”
It was all gone. Jonathan was gone, and he had left Deven behind—had all but forced Miranda to trap him here, to turn the one true thing he’d ever possessed into a mockery of itself, as if by pasting him into their bond he could forget what he had lost and they could have a merry threesome for all time.
There was nothing now. No home, no Consort, no place for a broken-down Prime who had never belonged anywhere, until he found the other half of his soul . . . and now he would never belong anywhere again.
He sobbed quietly into his hands for a moment, overcome with so much pain it drowned out the whole world.
And then, the thought arose again, realization stabbing through the sorrow:
He was free.
The cold that he had clung to for days settled back around him like a cloak. He stretched out his senses, groping around the Haven until he found what he was looking for.
The grief threatened to rise again, but he shoved it down with sudden anger—there was no time to bawl like a baby. He had work to do and he had to hurry before the others knew he was awake. There was only one thought that mattered: End this.
He had absolutely no doubt that whatever they had done to free him from their clutches was only temporary—they must have a plan for him, another path to force him down at knifepoint.
Not this time. He forced himself out of bed, into clothes; he picked up his sword without looking at it, afraid of what he might feel if he thought about anything too closely. He had to hurry before the ice in his heart fractured and left him bleeding on the ground . . . and before they realized he had gone and tried once more to cage him.
They would not take him alive again.
• • •
Nico woke almost immediately after Stella and one of the Elite helped him back to his room. He was exhausted, but it was always difficult to sleep for the first few hours after intense Weaving; as soon as he’d regained consciousness he was up and in the shower.
Hunger pulled hard on his body as he put on clean clothes. It was normal to be ravenous after such work . . . but now, that hunger was different, centered in his jaw, in the feeling of sand in his veins. He felt dry on the inside, painfully itchy.
He knew that he couldn’t live off donated blood forever if he wanted to maintain his strength, but the thought of going into the city was still too frightening. He couldn’t imagine stepping into the teeming mass of humanity, with all its fear, until he had learned better command of his new senses. He didn’t want to lose control and hurt anyone . . . and he was closer to that possibility than he had admitted to the others.
Nico held on to the back of a chair with both hands, steadying himself. They all thought he was just as strong and capable as he had been before—he had even managed to fool Stella into believing it, when she was standing in the Web with her mind pressed to his. Powerful she may be, but she was still young and inexperienced, and she would see what he wanted her to: namely, himself, in one piece, unafraid.
And there was more work to do. He couldn’t put off binding himself to Deven. If he waited long there was too much risk that Deven would wake before it was done. Nico couldn’t bear the thought of force-bonding Deven with the Prime aware of the violation, but moreover, Nico wasn’t sure he was strong enough to bind them if Deven tried to fight it. He had already used too much power on too little rest.
There was no alternative, though. In an hour or two he would crash for most of the day, but then, as soon as he woke, he had to act . . . before his conscience and his heart stole away what remained of his courage.
Over on the bureau, a small carved box waited: Jonathan’s broken Signet. He would need it for the binding, though he was almost afraid to touch it. It was a holy relic, a symbol of love and sacrifice . . . and pain. He hadn’t even opened it since Miranda had brought it to him.
For now he focused on what was easily fixable: his hunger. The room he was in had a small refrigerator and microwave, whose uses he had learned back in California, and the Queen had told him how long to warm the bagged blood to make it reasonably palatable.
He turned toward the fridge, but before he could move, something seized him around the neck and hauled him backward so hard he choked. The cold edge of a blade pressed into his throat.
There was a low hiss at his ear, even as a scent he knew very well reached him and he realized, horrified, what was happening.
“All right, Weaver,” Deven said, his voice ice cold, his sword’s blade cutting lightly into Nico’s skin. Nico was too frozen with fear to struggle, but if he had, he would have been beheaded in seconds. “Now that you’ve done what you intended to do to me . . . you’re going to do something for me.”
• • •
“It’s done,” Miranda whispered, sitting on the edge of the bed. “He really did it.”
David was upright now but still on the floor where he had fallen the second they both felt the bond snap—that same agony they had felt when he died overcame them for just a few seconds, and they had reached for each other in sheer panic. But then the pain vanished as if someone had cut the power to it, and Prime and Queen passed out from the relief. She had woken to Stella’s voice asking if she was all right.
Miranda and David stared at each other. There were no words, really—that endless drain they had been feeling for days, the constant pull of grief threatening to suck them down into its maw, had just . . . gone. There were no more energy leaks, no sense of continual hunger to offset the loss. Everything that had gone wrong the night she put her hands on their bond was quickly shifting, becoming right again.
She felt strong, complete. Herself. And yet . . .
“I feel . . .” She trailed off, looking for the right description. There wasn’t one.
David nodded. “So do I.”
She would never have believed it possible, but she felt . . . sad. Neither of them had believed they should keep Deven in their bond, even if they could, but it still felt like she had lost something vital . . . something that could have been wonderful, if only things were different. It was like losing a limb she hadn’t known she had, and now she could feel its phantom pain.
“I’m sure it will fade,” she said. “You can’t be bound to someone without it leaving a scar . . . right?”
“I don’t know.” He smiled. “But I do know I’m going to give that Elf one hell of a kiss.”
Miranda chuckled. “Give him one for me, too.”
Before he could reply, Miranda’s com chimed, and she heard a raspy, weak voice half whisper, “He’s gone.”
Miranda frowned. “Nico?”
“Deven . . . he attacked me. He’s gone.”
David was already on his feet and out the door, and Miranda got up and followed him, both skidding to a halt at the entrance to Nico’s room. David threw the door open, and Miranda gasped . . . she saw blood.
Nico lay on his side on the floor, one hand pressed to his abdomen. He was ghostly white and panting from the pain.
“Just relax,” Miranda said, peeling his hand away. The wound was deep but already starting to heal; he must have been far more tired than they thought, as slowly as it was closing. “What happened?”
“He . . . he woke after the bond broke . . . put a blade to my throat and forced me to build a portal from here to the city. Then he stabbed me so I wouldn’t be able to go after him.”
“Where did he go?” David demanded. “Did he tell you the exact location?”
“It was in his mind. A large, empty building . . . I think you call it a warehouse. I could hear, in his thoughts: one hour till dawn, repeated over and over.”
“Oh God,” Miranda said. “David . . .”
“We have to get there now,” the Prime said. “Do you have the strength to send us to the same place?”
“Probably not. But if you can Mist, I can show you where to go.”
“I can reach that far,” David
said. “What do you think, beloved?”
Miranda took stock of her reserves and how far it was from the Haven to Austin. “I think so—if you can help me.”
David called Harlan and told him to head for the city in the Escalade with the anti-UV-tinted windows; if they were caught in town by the dawn they could at least get someplace safe without being hurt. “I’ll send you a location as soon as I have it,” the Prime said. “Just get on the road.”
“On my way, Sire.”
Miranda helped the Elf sit up; he looked awful, blood-soaked and pale, but there was grim determination in his eyes. “Go,” he said. “I will be fine.”
The Pair stood and took each other’s hands. “Show me,” David said.
Miranda barely got a mental image of one of the warehouses in East Austin before the room dissolved and her consciousness lurched hard, spinning her through space farther than she’d ever gone before—she’d never tried Misting more than a couple of miles, but something about David’s telekinetic gift boosted how far he could go. It was so draining he rarely did it, but there was no other choice this time; by the time they got to town in a car and found the warehouse it would already be sunrise.
The world seemed to warp and bubble around her, as if someone had dropped a stone in the calm surface of reality. She tumbled forward into David’s arms, her stomach pitching, nauseated.
She straightened and looked around—they were indeed on the street in front of a warehouse, one she recognized vaguely but had never entered. It was very near the building where David and Faith had died; that must be how Deven knew it, from the days he and Jonathan had spent protecting the city while she was missing.
“Come on,” David said urgently, grabbing her hand and taking off for the door.
He opened the door slowly, an inch at a time, to avoid making noise; Miranda caught a whiff of musty air that smelled like paper, and the sign on the interior wall confirmed it: a document disposal company.
“Roof,” David murmured. “Sun exposure.”
Miranda’s heart was pounding. She could already feel the oncoming dawn, and since the day she had become a vampire she had feared that tightness in her skin, the atavistic need to hide in the dark. But she remembered, too, the morning she had fallen asleep with Deven in the hayloft. He had taken care of her, given her courage. The thought of him here, waiting for the sun, so empty and tired of being alive . . . regardless of the Circle and the war, she didn’t know whether to hope they found him in time, or not.
They took the stairs as quietly as they could and reached the door to the roof.
“Be careful,” David said to her. “Remember, he was willing to stab Nico—he’s not rational. He’ll hurt you.”
“I don’t care,” she replied. “Let’s go.”
At first, all Miranda saw beyond the door was a flat concrete plane, and it gave her a sense of déjà vu that nearly forced her to freeze—she remembered being dragged up stairs just like these, out onto a roof just like this, where her life had come to a violent, screaming end and the night had erupted into flame . . . always explosions, always fire.
David didn’t hesitate, though she knew he was remembering, too. He walked through the door out onto the roof—
—and went flying, as out of nowhere, he was kicked in the chest.
Miranda ran out, already drawing Shadowflame, but she had to halt . . . there was a foot on David’s throat, holding him down on the ground, and a blade hovering just over that.
“Deven, no!” Miranda yelled. “Don’t—”
He looked up at her, and the words died in her mouth. There was nothing familiar in his lavender-blue eyes, no warmth, nothing of the Deven she knew. There was only rage and pain, focused on a single goal: death.
“Do you think you can kill me, Dev?” David ground out. “Go ahead and try.”
Deven gave him a look of disgust. “What did you hope to accomplish by coming here?” the Prime snarled. “Did you think you would reason with me, tell me you love me, that the Circle needs me for its war?”
Miranda tried to sidle around to the right to get behind him, but Deven caught her, shaking his head and tilting a finger back and forth, scolding. “Take another step and I cut his head off,” Deven told her.
David Misted out from under his foot, reappearing a few feet away. He had his sword out before Deven could react, and dove in, the need to incapacitate the Prime and get him out of the open air driving him to go on the offensive.
Of course it wouldn’t be that easy. Even with a second’s lag time Deven was impossible to surprise; he was already waiting for David’s sword, and metal struck metal with inhuman force.
Miranda knew better than to jump in—she was good, but she was nowhere near their level, and she’d just get hurt. Instead she pulled two of her knives.
Focusing her inherited telekinesis on them, she threw both, using the gift to steer them toward their target. One struck home, hitting Deven’s sword arm and driving in up to the hilt.
He didn’t miss a stroke but pulled the knife and tossed it carelessly over the edge of the roof. The other one missed him but nearly hit David and struck a metal plate that was leaning near the door hard enough to bury its blade.
The two Primes fought each other all over the rooftop, and in any other circumstances Miranda would have been spellbound. She’d never seen them fight each other before, and it became clear very quickly that almost every time she’d seen David in battle he was using only half his skill. He didn’t hold back against his teacher . . . but the advantage wasn’t his. He only wanted to win, not to kill. He had to be careful. Deven, on the other hand, had nothing to lose.
She could smell dawn coming. They had perhaps thirty minutes before the sun was high enough to kill them. Miranda, no longer confident in her aim with the two of them moving so fast, looked around for some other way to trip Deven up, but there was nothing on the roof, not even trash.
There was only one thing she could do, and she hated herself for doing it, but there was no time, no choice; she summoned her empathic power, working it into an image drenched in emotion, and threw it at him.
She saw the impact and for a moment was sure it had worked. He stumbled slightly, his face going blank for a second as the ammunition she’d used hit home.
Jonathan.
But to her shock, not only did he resist the energy, he took hold of it and threw it back at her.
She should have known that he would get some measure of empathy from her and David, but she hadn’t realized it would be so strong. Being able to sense emotion was far more common than being able to use it as a weapon. A wave of pain struck the Queen, and she cried out and fell backward as her mind filled with image after image: David’s death, Faith bound to barrels of explosives, Jenny and Marianne . . .
Miranda fought with all her strength not to collapse beneath the onslaught. No one had ever used empathy against her before, so she’d never fully realized the kind of damage it caused. Despair and fear clawed at her heart. She had to drop onto one of the low brick walls that divided the roof into sections, breathing hard, holding up her shields with everything she had.
But even though Deven had turned the power back on her, it did what she had needed it to do; he had faltered, and that lapse in attention was sufficient to give David a second’s advantage. His sword got past Deven’s defenses just once, but it was enough.
Blood splattered all over the roof as a laceration opened Deven’s midsection, just below the ribs. He staggered back, his sword clattering to the ground.
It wasn’t a grave wound, just a bloody one that had to hurt like hell—no worse than the one he’d given Nico.
David stood still and watched him, expressionless. When he spoke, though, his voice was anything but impassive. “Please, Deven . . . come inside. There isn’t much time . . . just let us help you. I know how much this hurts—”
Pale eyes full of cold fury lifted to David’s face. “Do you?”
Miranda ca
me forward to stand by her Prime. “I do.”
Deven shook his head. She could feel him trying to speed the wound’s healing, but he was still weak and could only stop the bleeding. His words were halting, dragged out of him by anger. “No, you don’t. That was different . . . he didn’t choose to abandon you—he came back from the dead for you.”
She noticed, with the part of her mind that was petrified of the rising sun, that the stone in Deven’s Signet was green again. Another part of her mind felt the air shifting, the hair on the back of her neck standing up, her skin tingling . . .
“Jonathan wanted you to live,” she said, ignoring the change in the air. “He didn’t abandon you. He knew he was going to die and he made sure you could survive without him.”
“I didn’t want to survive without him,” Deven snapped. “He knew that. He was the only thing keeping me going for years—I couldn’t die because of him. But now . . . now there’s no one keeping me here. I’m free to do what I should have done hundreds of years ago . . . free to die as I should have before Eladra ever turned me.”
“If you die, we’re all dead,” David reminded him desperately. “We need you. Without you we can’t win.”
“Do you really think I care?” Deven almost laughed. “Do you think that has any meaning to me now? We’re already done for, David. The Circle will never be whole . . . I’ll never be whole. There will never be anyone who can fill that emptiness.”
“Yes, there will.”
Miranda turned toward the voice. She had felt the portal building, but not its opening; they were both too focused on Deven.
Nico stepped out onto the roof calmly and joined them. Ashen, his clothes soaked with his own blood, he had somehow found the strength to come here even lying wounded on the floor—scraping together every remaining remnant of his power for a one-way trip.
“Ah, yes, my offspring,” Deven said with loathing in his eyes. “Here to take Jonathan’s place, to step in as if you could ever be his equal.”
“I do not want to replace him,” Nico replied. He started to list sideways, and Miranda moved closer and caught his arm; he leaned on her heavily as he spoke. “Nor could I. But there is a hole in the Circle that must be filled.”
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