“No more,” he muttered, bending until his head touched the rail. “Let me wake up. Wake me up.”
“I’m trying to,” he heard Her say gently.
He tried to ignore Her, and reach out to the forest as he’d done so many times, to wrap the feeling of trees and rocks and water around him; there was nothing else in this place that might offer comfort.
But the memory intruded of the last time he had been here, in the real world, and whom he had been here with. This place, too, his last sanctuary, was tainted by the life he didn’t want.
“Here without the burden of all your cares, you are brighter than the sun.”
It’s not real. It’s not real. None of this is real. Wake up…wake up.
“You’re going to have to try harder, dear one. Or…stop fighting, and rest.”
Get away from me.
The dreamtime was swimming and lurching all around him, conscious and unconscious fighting for control, and both fighting against the drugs that were keeping them asleep. That’s what I get for buying the good stuff.
Suddenly he felt something take hold of the forest, grip it in iron hands, and say in a voice that shook the dreamtime, “If you think I will allow you to throw away what I have given you, child, you are mistaken. If it’s firepower you want—”
The energy that thundered through him—conscious, unconscious, the whole of damned creation—was so intense that, had it touched a wire, it would have knocked out the power to the entire Southern United States. It was lightning in a very fragile bottle that should have shattered. His vision was thrown into the Sight so hard he couldn’t breathe, just in time to see the wave of power flood the entire segment of the Web visible to his gift, strike the edges, and ripple back, over and over until it finally began to settle, leaving every strand glowing the color of moonlight on snow.
Deven sat bolt upright in the chair he’d passed out in at the clinic, that soundless thunder deafening inside his head. He was drenched in sweat and panting. Bewildered, he stared around the little room, momentarily clueless as to where he was or why.
His eyes fell on the IV pump by the chair. Drugs. Right. Except…
…why wasn’t there a needle in his arm? The IV tube simply dangled off the pump, attached to nothing. But if he wasn’t taking anything, why was he even here?
He pushed himself up and grabbed his coat off the hook on the door, and all but staggered out of the clinic—no one noticed. People stumbled out of the place all the time.
“Jesus,” he muttered. The sound made his head start pounding fit to split.
There was a bus stop half a block up the street, and by a miracle he got there and fell onto the bench, teeth chattering with the sudden blast of cold. He forced his coat on and curled up in a ball.
Oh, I must look like a proper junkie now. Well done, Prime.
He snorted at the last word. He hadn’t been Prime of anything in almost two years.
He sat up, still dizzy, and tried to ground, but the dizziness only grew worse, as did the headache and the shaking. He might have mistaken it for withdrawal, except for one last thing:
His hands started burning.
“No,” he said, crossing his arms. “Not this. Not now. No.”
There was a frightening amount of power moving around in him, and he had no idea where it was from—a check of the barrier he kept over the Signet bond showed nothing had changed. Whatever this was, it had hit him alone, and with every passing minute it grew worse, and worse…
History repeating. There was only one thing to do.
He forced himself to his feet, took a moment to figure out which street he was on, and Misted from the bus stop to Brackenridge Hospital.
Chapter Two
“Bring on the wonder, bring on the song
I’ve pushed you down deep in my soul for too long…”
Miranda wanted nothing more than to wipe the last two years from the calendar…to expunge its memory, from the night after Jonathan and Deven’s wedding to now.
There was no joy in it anywhere; every single night had hurt. Even the triumphs—her music career was soaring, she had two new Grammys and a host of other awards—were tinged with grey from the shadows in her heart.
Here in the Haven time stood still, or rather, life stood still—the months wore on, and they waited for something to change. They prepared themselves for the war they knew was upon them, but no shots were fired.
She couldn’t complain. She was holding herself together better than Nico and certainly better than Deven. But she was surrounded by people she loved who were suffering. No one, empath or not, could withstand that forever.
The only people in the Circle who weren’t in constant pain were Cora and Jacob, who had the luxury of being on a different continent. Cora had found someone to help train her gift, and Jacob had been conducting his own research into the Order of Elysium—research that had yielded several books of linguistics and history that Nico was now using in his translation efforts, but that was about it. The Order seemed to have gone underground. Whether that was due to the threat of Morningstar, or because they didn’t want to help the Pairs whose number included the Prime who had slaughtered their High Priestess, Miranda couldn’t say…but she knew there would be no help from them, at least not unless something significant changed.
Everyone just hurt so much. It wasn’t killing her, or driving her mad; she wasn’t losing her will to live the way Nico seemed to be. She was strong enough to carry it. But it was so hard to be in her home, to go through the motions of her life as if things were the same—as if one of her best friends wasn’t dead and the other nothing more than a shattered shell of who he had once been; as if her world wasn’t under the threat of genocidal war that could break out any second…
…as if she weren’t a serial killer.
Even with all the connections and relationships she had gotten into, she was lonelier than she had ever been in her life.
There was, however, one bright spot.
Twenty-two months ago, Stella had woken the Pair up to inform them, voice quivering, that they had a houseguest. Prime and Queen had immediately headed for Nico’s room ready to decapitate invaders but also mad with curiosity, and had not been disappointed.
Miranda remembered standing there, staring, trying to maintain her authoritative cool—she’d learned how to project an unflappable facade from David, but she’d probably never be as much of an expert at it as he was—in the face of the strangest, and most fascinating, creature she’d ever seen.
He looked like Nico, yet not at all. They had similar features but totally different coloring; their eyes were even two different shades of purple. Nico had said once that he was an average-looking Elf, and as exotic as they found him, they would be amazed if they ever met his brother. Miranda had always thought Nico’s opinion of himself was lower than it ought to be, and now she was pretty sure she knew why. Anyone, no matter how accomplished or beautiful, would feel like a homely sparrow next to Kaimereth Eleanari.
And damned if Kai didn’t know it.
He had turned toward the Pair from where he stood by the window, taken them in with a single disdainful glance, and said coldly, “So it was you who did this to my brother.”
Things didn’t improve much from there.
David, who was used to being deferred to by the most powerful beings on the planet, had immediately bristled, and his power-aura flared up like some kind of animal threat display. Miranda had stared at her Prime as if he’d lost his mind, unable to decide whether the Elf or David’s reaction to the Elf was more incredible.
“We are Prime and Queen of this territory,” David said icily. “Who the hell are you?”
Elf and vampire had stared daggers at each other until David said, steel reinforcing every word, “Answer my question.”
And Kai rolled his eyes.
Only a pleading look from Nico kept David from wringing the Bard’s neck. After that, the Pair stayed as far away from Kai as t
hey could when he visited—he obviously wasn’t a threat, and his presence was a healing balm for Nico’s frayed heart, so there was no reason not to let him come and go.
Over the months, things between Kai and David calmed down a bit and they could be in the same room without a venomous glaring contest; it helped that Kai clearly doted on his brother, and was as gentle and loving with Nico as Nico was with everyone. David was rather adorably besotted with Nico, and being good to the Weaver endeared Kai to the Prime…a little.
“My lady?”
The voice startled her so badly her hand banged down on the piano keys. “Yes, Harlan?”
“Ready to go when you are.”
Heart still pounding, she got up from the bench, grabbed her bag, and hit the door. “I’m on my way.”
She’d been using the coms to track Deven’s movements in the city for three days now, and while the first night he’d been to several locations in town, including the Black Door and two addresses that weren’t labeled as businesses, the second two nights he’d taken the exact same route. Chris dropped him off in the same place as before, but he walked almost two miles farther, up near the interstate and not far from UT campus: the University Medical Center, Brackenridge Hospital.
He was there for a couple of hours each night and then went to a nearby park and stayed there for several more. She wasn’t sure specifically what building or floor he’d gone to; she might have been able to get a reading that precise but it would have required logging in to David’s office, and for the moment at least she just wanted an idea where to find him and if there was a pattern.
Harlan bowed and held open the car door, and within minutes they were on the highway.
She pulled up the tracking app on her phone; they were about ten minutes behind Chris. Good. She hadn’t told Chris what they were doing—even the slightest blip in her usual behavior would tell Deven something was up. Even now, Miranda knew there was little that he missed.
Miranda had no idea what Deven might be doing at Brack. She could only guess he was after blood—he might be hitting their blood bank, or worse, feeding on patients. But why? He’d never had a problem hunting live humans, and he hated bagged blood. Had he developed his own impulse to kill, and taken it out on terminal patients? It seemed unlikely—Miranda had entertained the idea herself until David pointed out that disease made blood unpalatable.
The thought of killing made her stomach tighten. Even now, two weeks out from the New Moon, her body responded to the idea as if it were starving; luckily it wasn’t the overwhelming need it would be that night, just a momentary pull.
She was getting used to it...which bothered her, but what choice did she have? David had been absolutely right that the guilt would drive her mad if she let it, so she had focused on what positives she could: she had chosen exclusively humans guilty of disgusting or horrific crimes that had gone unpunished. Her empathy allowed her to find them easily, and there were always more. It wasn’t really the fact of killing a human that she found so terrible…
…it was how much she enjoyed it.
Most of the month she could be a regular vampire—well, as regular as a Queen could get. She could hold on to her semblance of humanity and keep her darkest impulses reined in. On the New Moon those impulses broke free, and she hunted the way vampires were meant to hunt…the way their bodies had been designed to hunt. The fear, the panic, the will to survive filling the blood with adrenaline and power…and that last second as a living, breathing person suddenly stopped…that final burst of life energy was an undeniable high.
“We’re here, my Lady,” Harlan said from the driver’s seat.
Miranda sighed. “Thanks, Harlan. I’ll call you when I’m ready to head home.”
“As you will it.”
She hopped out of the car and stared up at the hospital’s main building, dread burning a hole in her belly. Hospitals were not good places for her. She knew her shields could withstand the onslaught, but took a moment to shore them up anyway, adding an extra layer of protection between herself and the pain and sadness that were sure to pummel her from all sides as soon as she walked in the sliding doors.
Now that she was within a square mile of Deven she could get a laser-precise reading from his com, and there he was, up on the fourth floor.
Hospital security didn’t even blink as she walked past; she had long ago learned how to deflect human attention, which came in extra handy when wandering around a hospital in a long black coat with five weapons and a necklace that glowed, all the more so when one was a global celebrity. A number of reporters had asked her over the years if she found it difficult being recognized everywhere, but the truth was, she was very rarely seen even when she was in plain sight. It was a subtle part of her protections, a veil rather than a shield, her own personal Invisibility Cloak. She didn’t disappear, but people’s awareness would slide right off her. It wouldn’t fool a strong psychic, but worked very well on the paparazzi.
The building was quiet. Visiting hours had been over for a while, and she was far enough from the ER that she couldn’t sense much from it. Brack had one of the busiest emergency rooms in the state, as it was a trauma center and got all the violent crimes in the area. Thank God Deven hadn’t gone in there.
She hit the button for 4 in the elevator, and when the doors opened, ducked sideways around a corner to get her bearings.
The light in hospitals was so garish and painful to vampire eyes. The faint flickering of fluorescent lights always gave them a headache, and between the uniformity of the hallways and the smells and the undercurrent of suffering that made her skin crawl, she wanted to run back the way she’d come right then and there.
When she read the sign, however, curiosity banished the urge.
The children’s ward.
Miranda checked her phone again and followed the signal until she heard someone talking, and stepped back again, this time around a rolling metal rack stacked with folded blankets.
She peered around the edge and saw a nurse’s station. A doctor in a white coat stood there, holding a tablet and indicating something on its screen as she spoke in a low voice.
Standing next to her, looking at the screen, was Deven.
Miranda’s first reaction was surprise. It had been a while…three months?…since she’d personally laid eyes on him, and he looked very different from the Deven she had known. The black had long since grown out of his hair, and he’d cut it off so it was all his natural color, a fairly ordinary dark brown. Gone were the Goth trappings, and there wasn’t a single piercing visible anywhere. In fact, he was…scruffy. Actually scruffy.
She couldn’t help the thought: It was really hot.
He was wearing what she could only describe as normal-people clothes: a leather jacket over a grey Henley, jeans, boots. Miranda had learned how to spot expensive clothes on men thanks to her husband, and knew the jacket alone had probably set Deven back two grand, but it was still so…ordinary. His Signet was mostly hidden, though its chain poked out of his shirt collar.
The doctor finished showing him whatever it was, and smiled. Miranda mentally leaned her ears toward them.
“Thank you,” the doctor said. “Is there anything else you need?”
His voice was weary, lifeless. “Just keep everyone out.”
The doctor nodded and turned to have a word with the charge nurse; Deven walked away.
Miranda waited a moment before following.
He walked past several doors before finding the one he was looking for, and eased it open about an inch and looked in. The room was dark. He slipped inside.
There was no way she could see what he was doing without giving herself away. Frustrated, she waited where she was.
He came out a few minutes later and moved on to another room.
She followed carefully as he made a circuit around the ward; he didn’t stop at every room, and some took longer than others. She had a suspicion as to what was going on, but she wanted to see.
<
br /> Finally, he reached where he’d started and left the ward altogether. She had to leave more distance in the bright hallways, but with her phone it was easy enough to catch up again. She looked up at the sign here:
Neonatal Intensive Care Unit
Same drill. Deven moved from room to room, but this area didn’t take as long; there were only about 20 beds that she could see.
As she walked, she bolstered her shields again: even after visiting hours, she could still feel the lingering presence of sadness and hope. She didn’t get much of anything off the inhabitants of the alien-looking plastic beds. She wasn’t sure how to describe it. She guessed most of them were significantly premature, but it wasn’t that they weren’t alive, it was that while pain was physical, suffering was an emotion that depended on context these babies didn’t have yet. She couldn’t decide if that was comforting or not.
Finally, she saw her chance: an open area with curtained bays instead of closed off rooms. The room was dimly lit from a bright lamp that was shining inside one of the bays. She moved into the one opposite, which fortunately held only an empty bed. From there she had a perfect view.
Deven drew aside the curtain of the bay closest to the window, revealing a clear plastic bed—incubator, if she recalled correctly—with a variety of tubes and wires connecting it to the bank of machines nearby. She could barely see inside, but then a tiny pink hand flailed up in the air.
Her heart was held in her throat by a tangled net of emotions. She held onto the curtain with one hand and just watched.
Deven slid his hands into the holes in the incubator’s side and gingerly plucked some kind of tubing out of the way. He didn’t seem stymied by the equipment the way Miranda would have been. Miranda shifted a little to the right to get a better look at the inside of the box.
It was, of course, a baby, wearing nothing but a diaper and a pink knit cap on her downy head. Miranda didn’t know much about babies but this one had to be pretty new—she didn’t have that fat rounded-off look babies got once they’d been eating for a while. This one wasn’t eating anything, though. She had a tube down her throat.
Shadowstorm (The Shadow World Book 6) Page 4
