“Hmm … apparently not. Lord Prime, would you mind having a look at this?”
David ended his call with a sigh and came over to where they were standing. “At what?”
“You read ancient Greek, correct? What do you make of this dialect?”
David frowned at the screen, eyes narrowing, and was silent for the better part of a minute. “That’s …”
“All Greek to you?” Faith quipped, earning an eye roll from the Prime and a groan from the Queen.
David shook his head. “The interesting thing is that it’s not all Greek. It’s more like what would happen if you took ancient Greek, Latin, and at least one form of Gaelic and made evil mutant babies from them … but there’s a fourth element to it, too, that I don’t recognize at all.”
“You can’t read it?” Miranda was baffled. She’d seen him effortlessly plow through handwritten Russian and Deven’s half-drunk Irish.
“I can pick out a few phrases. Can I get a printout of the carvings?” he asked. “I might be able to translate it all, but I’ll have better luck if I take it home and run it through a few searches to see if I can identify that fourth language.”
Novotny nodded and hit a red button on the machine; across the room, a printer buzzed to life.
Finally, David was starting to get interested in the thing. “What else can you tell us?”
“From the initial readings, it’s definitely silver and very old—in fact …” Novotny entered something on his tablet computer, bringing up a window full of numbers, and said, “Based on those scans you had me do of your Signets back when you first became Prime, I’d say the three are nearly identical in age.”
“So you’re saying Lydia was telling the truth,” Miranda said, giving David a pointed look.
Novotny gave an indefinite shrug. “About the item’s age, certainly. Its origins, however, will take a good deal more research to uncover. Just from the surface impressions the workmanship is also quite similar—but it could easily be a forgery from the same time period. We’ll have to match the metals; I’ll take a sample.”
He touched the tablet’s screen and something inside the imager whirred; Miranda saw a thin metal arm extend toward the talisman and scrape very lightly over its surface, then retract.
“Is it giving off any kind of energy?” David asked.
“Not so much as a quiver, Sire. It might as well be a paperweight.”
“You’re kidding,” Miranda said. “There has to be something coming from it—some kind of magnetic field or something.”
“I’m afraid not, my Lady. If you’ll recall, the amulets used by Marja Ovaska to shield her movements from the network emitted a low-level electromagnetic field even once they had been used up. The only thing coming from this is the same kind and level of electricity you’d expect from a metal object, metal being a conductor and all. But unless there’s some sort of energy we aren’t equipped to scan for, there’s nothing.”
“Sometimes a cuff link is just a cuff link,” Faith muttered.
But the Prime was staring at the printouts he’d fetched, looking unconvinced. “No … not this time. If I’m interpreting this the right way, the carvings are phrased in the imperative; it’s a set of instructions.”
“Like an incantation?” Miranda looked over his shoulder at the pages, but aside from being able to tell it was a diagram of the talisman, she couldn’t make heads or tails of it.
“Maybe. Regardless, we need to keep that thing under lock and key until I decipher this.” He looked at Miranda. “The box, too.”
She started to protest, but rationality intruded just in time; they needed to analyze the box as much as the talisman. A lot more people had probably touched the box itself over the years; there could be all sorts of evidence in the crevices and grain of the wood. It would take several days to get a full battery of tests run, and it would certainly be safe here at Hunter Development.
She held the box out to David without looking at it. When he took it from her hands, she got a violent chill.
“Good Christ,” David said, handing off the box to Novotny and putting his arms around Miranda. “Whatever that thing was doing to you … I’m glad to get rid of it. I don’t like this at all.”
Miranda buried her face in his shoulder for a moment, drawing on his strength and calm until she felt settled again and her insides stopped shaking. “Did you feel anything when you touched it?” she asked.
“No. Apparently it likes you better.”
She looked over at the imager, at the seemingly innocuous piece of decorative jewelry that could be … anything. Was it her imagination, or did it feel like something inside it was … not sleeping, exactly, but … waiting for something?
“Can we leave now?” she asked quietly.
David squeezed her around the middle and let her go. “Yes. You go on down to the car; I want a word with the doctor, but the sooner you’re out of here the better. Faith, accompany the Queen downstairs before you go back on patrol, please.”
“As you will it, Sire.”
It wasn’t until she was safely in the car, a dozen stories away from the lab and the talisman, that Miranda felt she could breathe again.
Faith got in next to her for a moment. “Are you all right?”
“I don’t know. Why is that thing affecting me and not David? And what exactly is it doing? What does it want?”
The Second scoffed, “Want? It’s a hunk of metal, my Lady. It’s not alive.”
Miranda shook her head and tapped her Signet. “Neither is this, but it has a will. It knows who’s meant to wear it. Ask any of us—they may not be alive, but they want things.”
“And you think this thing wants you for something?”
“We need to find Lydia. She’s the only one who can give us any answers. Divert as many units as you can to the search.”
“Already done, my Lady. We’ve been combing the city since she disappeared outside Anodyne, but so far there’s nothing.” Faith checked her phone. “If there’s nothing else, I need to get back on shift—the second I have any news, I’ll let you know.”
“Sure. Go on … I’m fine. Really.”
Faith didn’t look convinced, but she got out of the car, just as David arrived to get in. They had a brief conversation outside before David slid onto the seat beside Miranda.
He looked at her speculatively. “You know,” he said, “I think before we go home there’s somewhere we should stop.”
“Oh? Where?”
He smiled and spoke to Harlan: “Take us to Amy’s on Sixth, please.”
Faith wasn’t surprised to get the call; to be honest she would have been more surprised not to.
She stood in the elevator with her arms crossed, watching the floor numbers tick upward. A knot of guilt—small but still significant—had already formed in her stomach the second she left the Pair … but she wasn’t really doing anything wrong. She was entitled to a hunting break every shift, which she rarely took. Everyone else took breaks, and who knew what they did on them?
Why was it that she spent so much time lately justifying her own behavior to herself?
The elevator dinged and the doors slid open, revealing a hallway with three sets of double doors; she didn’t have to wonder which one she wanted, as it was the only one with two uniformed guards standing at attention outside.
She nodded to them, and they returned the gesture. They had been expecting her, but aside from that, she knew them both from the tournament. They were top-tier lieutenants who had both faced her team in the finals.
“Glad to see the femur’s healed,” Faith said to one of them, who spared her a smile before opening the doors for her.
Faith sighed resignedly and walked into the suite to face the two vampires waiting for her there.
“You summoned me, my Lords?” she asked.
Jonathan, who had a book open in his lap, smiled. “I’m sorry about the timing, Faith. I didn’t think you’d be busy this time of night. Can
I get you a drink?”
She shook her head. “I wasn’t busy exactly, but I am on duty. It’d be best if I wasn’t out of contact long.”
Deven was sitting at the table changing out the wood shafts on several throwing stakes. “We’ll keep this brief.”
“What can I do for you?”
The Prime picked up one of the stakes and looked down its length, checking the angle. “You don’t seem surprised that we’re still here.”
Faith smiled mirthlessly. “That’s because I know you, Sire. And, if I may speak freely …”
“You may.”
“The thought that you could stay out of all of this is, frankly, laughable. In fact, the only thing that would surprise me is if you didn’t have something to do with Lydia being here in the first place.”
He put the stake down and lifted his eyes to her. “As a matter of fact, I didn’t. I was fairly sure she was working with Hart, but at the very least she attempted to collude with him.”
“Wait—she was working with Hart? How? Why?”
The Pair exchanged a look, and Faith could tell there was a certain degree of tension, and disagreement, between them … not exactly a novel situation where they were concerned. “We’re not sure,” Jonathan said. “We found several notations in Monroe’s files indicating Lydia met with Hart at least twice, but we don’t know what for. I was of the opinion that we could learn a lot more from her, but someone apparently disagreed.”
Faith didn’t even try to hide her dismay. “You killed her?”
Deven shrugged. “She was a threat. She has resources, and if she was in collusion with Hart, she was a liability. And trust me, I’ve dealt with enough zealots to know she wasn’t going to tell us anything useful. We’re just lucky we found her before she completed her mission.”
“I don’t know about that,” Faith said. “She gave Miranda some kind of metal talisman thing tonight before she disappeared.”
“That much we knew already. I’m assuming David took the thing to one of his labs as soon as he could.”
“Yes. Do you know what it is? Lydia said it was a power amplifier.”
Another look passed between them before Deven said, “What you need to know, Faith, is that Lydia was a member of a powerful, and very old, vampire cult. They are true believers, and they believe a war is coming.”
“A war between whom?”
“Good and evil, perhaps. Vampires and humans. Some vampires and other vampires. It doesn’t really matter—the important thing is that they believe this war has to happen … and they are willing to make it happen.”
Jonathan said, “Deven thinks Lydia wanted to win Hart to the Order’s side, possibly with the goal of inciting war between Hart and David. I’m not so sure—at least, I don’t think the entire Order is involved, just a fringe group that got tired of waiting for their apocalypse and decided to speed up the timeline. Up until Lydia arrived, we weren’t aware they had any intention of acting; as far as we knew, the Order was not an immediate threat to anyone, just a bunch of monastics off chanting in the forest.”
“What does that have to do with the talisman?”
Deven leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms. “Have you ever heard of the Goddess Persephone?”
Faith blinked. “Of course I have. It’s Greek mythology. She was kidnapped by Hades and became Queen of the Underworld—most versions of the myth say against her will.”
Deven nodded. “Well, according to the Order, not only was she willing, she sought Hades out. She was no sweet young princess, but a huntress, and a bloodthirsty one at that. She also had a twin sister, Theia, who was a sparkles-and-bunnies healer sort of Goddess, and the two were constantly at odds. So one day all the gods were hanging out at a bar or something, and they started discussing how those pesky humans were spreading like a virus and fucking up the planet. The two sisters decided to have a competition to see who could do something about it. Theia created a race of beings to help teach humans how to be nice to each other. Persephone created vampires to eat humans.”
Faith frowned. She had absolutely no idea where this was going. “Okay.”
“Well, time wore on, and humans forgot the old gods. The Order believes that Persephone is asleep, basically, but they have a thousand-year-old prophecy that says she’s going to wake up … or, rather, that they’re going to wake her up.”
“And this talisman has something to do with that?”
Deven nodded. “It’s known as the Stone of Awakening—a misnomer, really, since it doesn’t have a stone until it’s connected to a Signet. My sources have discovered that the theory is it functions as a key. The priests of the Order have to channel enough power through it to break the lock and release their Goddess. They need a lot of power … Signet-level power.”
“So what happens to whoever’s wearing it?”
“They die,” Deven said, leaning forward. “The Stone sucks all the power out of them—and, therefore, logic follows, whomever they happen to be bound to, say, a Queen. They’ve been waiting all these years for someone strong enough; their seers read the entrails or whatever it is they do and decided David was their chosen one. Lydia was sent to bring him across, setting the entire story in motion, and now that he has a Queen, they’re ready to push over their first domino.”
Faith shook her head slowly in disbelief. “The whole reason she made him a vampire was so she could have him killed.”
“Yes.”
“Do you believe in any of this?” she asked.
“That they can wake a Goddess from her cosmic nap? No. But whatever it really does, the Stone is definitely not an amplifier. It’s dangerous, and whatever spell is really on it, they’re going to activate it soon. Based on the intelligence we’ve gathered, my money’s on the next new moon, which is this Sunday … and that is why we need you.”
“To do what, exactly?”
The Prime fixed her with a hard stare. “I want you to steal it.”
Faith couldn’t stop herself; she snorted. “Are you serious?” She looked at Jonathan. “Is he serious?”
The Consort grinned tiredly. “I’m afraid he is.”
“You want me to steal a Signet artifact from my own Prime.”
“I want you to save his life,” Deven said. “Miranda’s, too.”
“Why can’t you just call him and tell him the thing is bad mojo? Why steal it at all?”
“Tell me, Faith … based on what you know about your Prime … if he knew what the Stone really was and what it does, do you think he would destroy it?”
“No. He’d keep it and study it, just like he’s doing now. In fact he’d want to see what it does on the new moon.”
“Exactly. We need to get that thing away from the Pair—if either of them are even in the same room with it when it goes off, it could kill them both. In fact, even the sources I have aren’t sure what its range is or how it knows whom to drain; if it’s anywhere near any Signet bearer, he or she is in jeopardy. That’s why I’m not going to touch the damn thing, and neither are they.”
Jonathan saw her expression and added quickly, “Faith, it doesn’t have to disappear forever. Our information is sketchy, but one thing is clear: It can be activated only once. If it’s not able to do its job, it becomes a chunk of useless metal. All we need you to do is get the thing and hide it for a few days, just to make sure David and Miranda are safe from it. It can be misplaced and then found again. But we need someone with security clearance to get into whatever lab it’s being kept in, and you’re the only one who has that. You can get in and out without anyone asking questions.”
“No,” Faith said.
They both looked at her.
“I’m not going to participate in one of your cloak-and-dagger intrigues,” Faith told Deven. “I’m not one of your agents, and I don’t work for you. If you want to get the Stone away from David, you call him and tell him the truth—keeping it from him is going to backfire, I promise you, and someone could get hurt. I won’t be
part of that.”
Jonathan was holding back a smile. “See?” he told Deven, no little satisfaction in his voice.
Deven ignored his Consort and laced his fingers together, regarding Faith for a long moment without speaking.
Finally, he said quietly, “Faith … this is not a request. Either you’ll help us avert this, or you’ll sign the death warrant of the man you love. Not only that, but the entire balance of power in the South will fall, and thousands of people, human and otherwise, will die.”
She felt ice in her veins at his words but stood firm. “If you want to keep them from getting hurt, you’ll pick up the phone right now and tell David what you know. He’s not a fool or a child—why do you keep treating him like one?”
“To be fair,” Jonathan said wryly, “he treats everyone that way.”
“And how dare you try to play on my emotions just to get your own way?” Faith went on. “This has got to stop, Deven. Either you trust your friends to make their own decisions, or you don’t, which means you’re no friend to any of us.”
She knew it was dangerous to bait him; she had seen more powerful vampires than her fall to the ground bleeding for saying less. But her anger was too strong to stuff back down—that he would try that emotional blackmail bullshit on her and expect her to commit an act of treason just so he wouldn’t have to be open with someone—the temerity of it was astounding. She had known him even longer than David had; she’d stood by and watched Deven manipulate everyone around him with a master’s touch for years, even since before he was Prime … and even though she genuinely believed in his motivations, she knew that one day he would cross the line, do something that couldn’t be forgiven, and where would that leave him? Where would that leave any of the people who had unwittingly danced to his tune?
Still, his face was expressionless as he said, “What if I said I would kill you if you don’t do it?”
Now she rolled her eyes. She held out her arms to her sides. “Then do it,” she said. “Go ahead. In fact, it would be the most logical thing for you to do, because as soon as I leave here, I’m going to tell my Pair everything you just told me, including the fact that you threatened their Second. And if you kill me, when David figures it out—and you know he will—he’ll unleash hell on you like you’ve never seen … and Lydia will have her war. So what will it be, my Lord?”
Shadow’s Fall Page 21
