Shadow’s Fall

by Dianne Sylvan

  “Nice, Stell,” she muttered. “Way to use your dad.”

  She’d call him back. Later. She would.

  She grounded again and went back to the video.

  “ … just wanted you all to know I’m okay, and that I love you all. I’m going to sink into a nice Vicodin coma now, so … talk to you later.”

  Miranda smiled wearily at the camera. The video went dark. Stella hadn’t Seen a thing … but Miranda being very obviously in a hospital bed like that went a long way toward proving she was human.

  Unless it was staged.

  Stella had absolutely no idea how to go about proving Miranda was a vampire. The only thing she’d been able to think of was watching the video footage for more psychic anomalies. She’d even done a web search for others who had similar theories, but the two she’d found were run by crazy people who had no evidence other than the Constellation article and its aftermath. One of them even thought there was some kind of conspiracy to hide the truth; he claimed that other websites trying to investigate Miranda Grey had been yanked off the Internet with no explanation.

  Facts: Miranda never went out during the day. It wasn’t just that she was a night owl; she had literally never been seen in the sunlight. She didn’t travel—what was that thing about vampires crossing running water? She had some kind of scary dark energy underneath a flawless set of shields. No one had ever seen her eat, either. She was rarely photographed by the media; there were a lot of fan videos of her concerts, but she was almost never in magazines or on TV.

  But the porphyria explained the daylight thing. And it would make traveling pretty awful. And she had a reflection—that much had been made clear in the Rolling Stone interview … assuming it wasn’t staged, too.

  It was absurd. There was no reason a normal person would think Stella was anything but nuts for thinking Miranda was anything besides a quirky celebrity and a great musician.

  But that darkness …

  Stella couldn’t deny her own Sight. And she couldn’t shake the conviction that came from somewhere deep in her heart that the woman in that hospital bed wasn’t human. Maybe she wasn’t a vampire, but … she was something.

  Lark had been skeptical, but she also knew that Stella wasn’t the type of person given to wild flights of fancy, so she must be on to something. She’d agreed to help if Stella could figure out which way to turn. So far, she had nothing.

  She looked up at the clock. Shit—time to go to work.

  Stella closed her laptop and straightened her socks. She gave herself a quick once-over in the mirror. Yep, still her. Still a bit of a chubby pixie, freckled and bespectacled, with a fire-engine-red bob with brown roots just starting to show. She had a black spiderweb tattoo on her right shoulder, with a cheerful cartoon spider hanging on a thread down near her elbow. She was wearing one of her favorite outfits: a ruffled pink skirt with a black skull-and-crossbones T-shirt, over-the-knee striped socks, and combat boots. Foxglove would roll her eyes, but Revelry didn’t have a dress code, as long as her bits and boobs were covered.

  She grabbed her bag and left the apartment, waving to the landlord, who was sitting out in front of the building with her ancient Pomeranian. There were only eight apartments on the property, which had been built about a century ago and was covered in ivy. The place was practically falling down, but it was crazily cheap for something in South Austin, and Stella had always loved it. It was also only a few blocks from the store.

  Revelry, an occult book and supply store where most of the Pagans in Austin came to shop at one time or another, was in a small strip of funky businesses with an eco-friendly paint store and a taqueria; it was adjacent to the South Congress trendy shopping district but just removed enough not to be mobbed by tourists on weekends. Revelry hosted monthly Full Moon gatherings that helped introduce new people to the community, and it had a classroom in the back where Foxglove held her Wicca 101, herbalism, and astrology classes.

  It was where Stella and Lark had met three years ago—Lark seeking refuge at UT from small-town Texas, Stella still living with her dad and attending community college part-time—at one of Foxglove’s Full Moons. Lark had been a practicing Wiccan for a year by then, but Stella was brand-new to both Witchcraft and the Wiccan religion … all she knew was that she was different, and she had to know more about her powers. Just as a spiritual path, Wicca didn’t require more than a year or so of classes, followed by a lifetime of personal exploration; but Witchcraft, the art of spellwork, took years to master, as did learning to fine-tune a psychic gift. It confused a lot of outsiders that there was a difference between the practice of Witchcraft and the religion of Wicca, and that a person didn’t have to be Wiccan to be a Witch.

  Normally Stella worked only during the daytime, but on Monday nights Foxglove had started staying open till midnight—that had been Stella’s idea, and it had turned out to be a great one. The other occult store in town closed before sundown every day, which didn’t make a lick of sense; most magical activity tended to happen at night, and that was when people would realize they were out of red candles or copal resin.

  Pagan basically described anyone who wasn’t part of one of the big monotheistic religions, and it was an umbrella term; within the community there were Wiccans, non-Wiccan Witches, Druids, Shamans, and a wide variety of other traditions. Revelry sold books and supplies to everyone and could special-order all sorts of rare ingredients for rituals and spells that were even hard to find on the Internet. Foxglove had widespread resources and was immensely popular, so the store managed to hang on even through depressing economical woes.

  The bell jangled merrily over the door when Stella went in; she strode past the group of college-age girls who looked far too normal to shop there, and up to the counter, where Foxglove was waiting to leave.

  “Hey, I’m here,” Stella said unnecessarily. “You look nice.”

  The older Witch smiled, turning in a circle. “I have a date.”

  “Rock on,” Stella told her. “Get some for me.”

  Foxglove gave her signature eye roll and departed. She reminded Stella a lot of her grandmother, who had died when Stella was nine: plump and maternal, with short curly gray hair and an abundance of silver jewelry. She was exactly the sort of nonthreatening person who made a great spokeswoman for the fringe religions of Austin, and she’d been on the news more than once to explain, for the thousandth time, that Halloween originated with a Celtic harvest festival called Samhain, and real Witches weren’t evil or Satanists and didn’t have baby-eating orgies. Stella had Foxglove’s “Wicca, a nature-centered religion with over a hundred thousand practitioners, is the most popular neo-Pagan faith …” speech memorized by now.

  Stella logged in to the computer, checked the till, and settled down on the stool to wait for the sorority girls to decide whether they were going to do a love spell on one of their boyfriends. She could tell they weren’t actual Witches and were probably going to be really annoying, but it was better than the raving evangelists they got once or twice a week wanting to leave “Jesus Loves You So Don’t Shop Here or Get an Abortion or Be Gay or Else He’ll Love You Straight to Hell Forever” pamphlets.

  Before long, the girls had giggled their way out of the store empty-handed; Stella did a quick check with her Sight to make sure they weren’t shoplifting. Meanwhile a few other customers drifted in and out, and Stella’s mind drifted, too, back through the video she’d watched and the mental grid of things she knew about Miranda Grey.

  “Young Mistress Maguire,” came a voice, and she looked up and grinned.

  “Young Master Gandalf,” she replied with a sweeping bow.

  People called the elderly white-haired man Gandalf for fun, and occasionally he’d wear full wizard outfits to festivals and parties—complete with a certified replica of Gandalf the Grey’s staff ordered from a catalog—but in reality, he was a serious scholar of occult history and was always asking Foxglove to order him strange volumes of ritual and lore. Sometimes the
y took weeks to find, and they cost a pretty penny, but Gandalf was one of their best customers.

  “I expect you’re looking for this,” Stella said, bending down to pull a heavy book wrapped in black fabric from under the counter. “It came in yesterday.”

  His eyes sparkled with glee as he opened it, revealing a leather-bound book a good five inches thick whose title was written in gold ink in a language Stella couldn’t hope to translate.

  “Most excellent,” he said, fishing out a credit card. “I wasn’t sure Foxglove would be able to find this one, but she’s a regular Sherlock Holmes.”

  As Stella ran his card, something occurred to her. “Hey, Gandalf … can I ask you a dumb question?”

  “Let’s find out!” he said gamely.

  “Do you know anything about vampires? Like, real ones?”

  He looked surprised. “What, aren’t the movies enough for you, young lady?”

  Stella rolled her eyes. “Real vampires, Gandalf.”

  Most people would have laughed at her—even here at Revelry, where everyone was a little weird to begin with—but Gandalf raised a feathery white eyebrow. “Why would you think there was such a thing?”

  “I … I met someone, and she seemed … she had this aura.”

  Gandalf grew serious and shook his head. “That’s not a road you need to go down.”

  She froze halfway through handing him the receipt to sign. “So they’re real.”

  He took the strip of paper and the pen she offered and signed his name in a quick scrawl. “Listen, Young Miss Stella … there are some things you don’t need to know. You go poking around under certain rocks, certain nasty things come out and bite you.”

  “I won’t poke anything,” she insisted. “I just want to know the truth—and how I can spot them. Isn’t that a good thing? If they’re around here, I’d like to be able to run like hell when I see one.”

  “Don’t run from dark things, Stella. If you run, they chase after you.” Gandalf took the book and slid it into his ratty old leather messenger bag.

  She tried to ask again, but he waved her off, and before she could come up with a way to convince him, the phone rang, and by the time she’d told the voice on the line what Revelry’s hours were, he was gone.

  As soon as she was alone, she called Lark.

  “Dude,” Lark said, “I was just about to roll a joint—are you coming over?”

  “No, I’m at the store. Look, I found something out. Gandalf came in and basically admitted there’s really such a thing as vampires.”

  Lark whistled. “Well if anybody would know, he would.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  “So now what?”

  “Well … I was thinking … maybe if I dug around at the vamp fetish clubs based here in Austin, I might find someone who knows the real thing.”

  “Oh, Jesus, Stella, you’re not going to go to some place where people wear fake fangs and talk about the eternal torment of being sexy, are you?”

  “Come on, Lark, they’re harmless—they have to be or they get raided by the cops. Dad told me all the fetish clubs are really careful not to cause trouble or break any laws. And I’d stick to the public ones.”

  “But … leather corsets and people biting each other for fun?”

  “Would you come with me?”

  Lark didn’t miss a beat. “Fuck yeah!”

  “Why have you been carrying this?” David asked, not sure he wanted to know the answer but unable to help himself.

  Faith looked absolutely beside herself with shame, standing in the corner of his workroom where they’d immediately headed as soon as she showed him the innocuous-looking gold piece. “I don’t … I don’t know.”

  “Do you have some sort of warm and fuzzy feelings for him, Faith?”

  Her expression changed, and her voice hardened. “I don’t think that should be at issue here, Sire.”

  “If your loyalty is in any way compromised—”

  “It isn’t,” she interrupted. “I assure you. We met twice during the summit, and that was it. I found that on the floor after he left and stuck it in my coat pocket to return to him, but with all the drama I never got a chance.”

  They stared at each other. David knew she wasn’t being entirely truthful. But Miranda had been absolutely right; it wasn’t his business. Although … thinking about Faith going to bed with Hayes again made his blood boil. He didn’t have any right to hold it against her, but he wanted to … and it bothered him.

  David turned back to his worktable, where he’d put the cuff link in a blastproof scanner he’d built after Hart’s earpiece had nearly taken his eye out. It was calibrated to tell him if there was any sort of charge or signal going to or from whatever he put inside it. Though it wasn’t as precise as a handheld tool, it would at least tell him if the thing was dangerous.

  He turned on the scanner beam and mentally reached into the case, lifting the cuff link up and passing it slowly through the green light, first one way, then another, then turning it in a circle to get the entire surface.

  A moment later the computer beeped. He glanced over the scan results and let out his breath.

  “What is it?” Faith asked. “A transmitter? A recorder?”

  He very deliberately did not laugh. “It’s a cuff link, Faith.”

  “What do you mean? It has to be some kind of techno-thing … right?”

  The Prime gestured at the screen. “Look for yourself. It’s solid gold. There’s nothing inside it, no charge on it, no radiation coming from it. It’s a cuff link.”

  “What if it has some kind of spell on it, like Ovaska’s talismans?”

  He had to grin at that one. “Whatever those things ran on, they still emitted an energy field that affected the surrounding environment. This scanner accounts for that. There’s nothing here but metal.”

  She looked like she wanted the ground to swallow her. “It’s just a cuff link. You’re sure.”

  “Yes, Faith. Would you like it back?”

  “No,” she said quickly. “You should destroy it … just in case. I’d feel better.”

  “All right, I will.” He returned his attention to the scanner to give her a moment to compose herself. He knew how much she hated looking foolish—as much as he did. “Regardless, Faith, I’m glad you gave it to me. It might well have been something dangerous. I hope if you find anything else like it, you’ll bring it to my attention right away.”

  “I will, Sire.” She sounded less flustered without him looking at her, so he stayed where he was, turning on the magnification to look at the cuff link again out of curiosity.

  “Interesting,” he said. “This symbol isn’t Hart’s.”

  “I noticed that. Is it a Signet seal at all?” she wanted to know.

  “Not sure,” he replied. “I’ll run it through the database to see if it matches either a Prime or any outside vampire organization. It might just be a designer’s emblem, but it looks an awful lot like one of ours.”

  “You don’t have them all memorized?”

  David snorted. “I can name maybe half a dozen on sight. I’ve never really needed to know them all. Now that we don’t write many letters, we don’t use them nearly as often. A couple of Primes have them in their e-mail signatures, but for the most part they’ve fallen out of favor.”

  He pulled up the Signet database he’d been building for the past few years. It had all the information he could gather on the Signets, their territories, and their history; he was even keeping a timeline of Primes and Queens and their reigns. The Signet seals were already part of the database. He set up a quick search comparing the scan of the cuff link to the Seals.

  A match.

  “Australia,” David said.

  Faith laughed quietly. “Big surprise there.”

  “No, and yes. Why is he wearing the seal of Australia if he’s working for the Northeastern United States?”

  Now she frowned. “That is a good question. Maybe he used to w
ork for Australia McMannis hasn’t been in power that long; he might have been in the previous Prime’s Elite.”

  David looked up Australia and paged back past the current Prime. “The last one was Bartlett … he and his Queen were killed eleven years ago, and the Signet was vacant for nearly three years before McMannis took over. I have Bartlett’s Second listed as an Olivia Daniels, deceased. I don’t have anything on the rest of his Elite, though. Maybe Deven will uncover something about Hayes that will link him to the Australian Signet.”

  “I don’t think he’s working for Hart because he wants to,” Faith said hesitantly. “We didn’t talk about it in any detail, but he doesn’t like Hart. I think Hart has something over him, a debt or something he has to pay, but he wouldn’t tell me what it was.”

  David was glad to hear that, though he didn’t say so. If Faith believed that Hayes was working for Hart against his will, it was probably true—and it meant that her judgment was better than he’d feared.

  He could hear Miranda now: David, baby, you’re being a dick.

  Quite true.

  He sighed inwardly. “Look,” he said, deciding just to lay it out. “I have to tell you, Faith, I really, really didn’t like you going to bed with Hayes. I know you’re an adult and that you didn’t do anything wrong, but I still didn’t like it. And I know it’s my problem, not yours—so I’m going to try not to keep being an ass about it. But you deserve honesty, and honestly, it pissed me off.”

  She blinked at him for a moment. “Um … thank you?”

  “No, just … I apologize for how I’ve been acting. You’ve given me years of flawless service and loyalty, and I act like a jilted boyfriend over something that’s not my business. And I’m sorry that we’re investigating Hayes like this and that he has to be a suspect, but you know what’s at stake here.”

  Faith had turned faintly pink, but she said, “I was never fooled into thinking he was a good guy, Sire. Whatever his reasons, I never trusted him.”