Shadow’s Fall

by Dianne Sylvan

  “Jacob said to expect a call just before sunset,” she told the Prime. “He sounded fairly optimistic.”

  “What else did he say?” David asked, eyes closed, body relaxing gradually under her care.

  “He said they have a suspect in custody for the car bomb—one of the servants, a recent hire. They’re pretty sure he was working for someone, but he won’t talk, even under interrogation.”

  David snorted quietly. “Jacob is not an interrogator. They should send the bastard to me.”

  “Don’t underestimate him,” Miranda admonished gently, taking a moment to rub some of the tension out of his shoulders. “Jacob can be fierce when he needs to be.”

  “Well, there’s not much need for it anyway,” David said, his voice growing more and more drowsy the longer she worked on him, her hands moving in slow circles down his arms, then over his back, under the water. She leaned him back to wet his hair and set to massaging his scalp, and finally she caught a ghost of a contented smile on his face. “I think our mysterious bomber’s been identified.”

  “Jeremy Hayes,” Miranda agreed. “If Faith really saw him Mist, it explains a lot … except who the hell he is. For that we need more information … we need …”

  “Don’t say it,” David said suddenly, eyes opening, gaze hard. “Even if we can find them, I’m not asking for their help. We’ll figure this out on our own.”

  “I know,” she replied soothingly, nudging him back into the water. “I know how you feel. I wasn’t suggesting otherwise. We’ve got resources of our own, and we’ll find out who Hayes really is … just rest for now, baby. Just rest for a little while, and then we’ll go back to work.”

  He sighed and let her go back to her ministrations without further comment. Before long, he was sound asleep.

  Miranda rested him back against the side of the tub while she bathed herself, watching her husband sleep, wondering in the back of her mind where the hell Deven and Jonathan had disappeared to right when they were truly needed … and hoping against hope that whatever they were doing, they weren’t out there making things even worse.

  The Cloister had stood for hundreds of years, hidden among the forests of northern California, surrounded by mist and the scent of the sea. Within its hallowed walls were kept the secrets of the Order of Elysium—their history, their laws. About two dozen vampires made up the priesthood of Persephone, and they were among the few immortals left on earth who kept Her religion safe from the vagaries of time.

  The Order had traveled to these shores back in the days of the earliest human settlers, hoping to escape a period of vampire-hunting hysteria that swept through Europe in the Age of Inquisition. Since then it had mostly been left behind by the Shadow World, a relic of an age long forgotten, drifting through the years until their time would come again to step forward and lead their people back to their Goddess. They were patient. They watched the stars for omens, and they waited.

  The High Priestess, Eladra, was more than a thousand years old. Her disciples, known as the Acolytes, had not left the confines of the Cloister for centuries. They, and only they, had access to the ancient rituals that had once defined vampire civilization—rituals that, it was said, had helped create the Signets themselves. Legend had it that the Acolytes were each as powerful as a Prime, if not more so.

  But for all their power, they died like every other vampire.

  Eladra sank to her knees at the foot of the altar, her hands at her chest, groping for the wooden shaft that jutted from her sternum. Her eyes were wide with agony, but there was no real surprise on her pale, lined face as she stared up at her killer. She knew the omens, she watched the stars, she knew that death was coming for her … and death stood over her, impassive, and watched her die.

  The stone walls of the Cloister had kept out the world, but now instead of a shelter, they were a tomb. One by one the Acolytes fell that night—by the sword, by the stake, slaughtered one by one, until the entire priesthood of the Dark Mother lay dead, their blood running thick over the cold floor.

  In the silence that followed, he knelt in front of the altar where the collected ritual texts of the Order were kept in an enormous leather-bound book. Each branch of the Order had a copy of the common liturgy and rites, but this one was the one that held the secrets of the Awakening; only the inner circle of the priesthood had been trusted with the future of their kind. There might be others with the texts, or the arcane ability, but as far as anyone in the Shadow World knew, only the Cloister had been prepared to perform the ritual at the appointed hour. They were the only chance vampirekind had to call their Goddess back.

  As the pages went up in flames, beatifying the dead in a golden halo of firelight, Deven turned to the High Priestess’s body. He stared at her for a long moment while the flames spread over the tapestries that hung behind the altar.

  “Forgive me, Mother, for I have sinned,” he said softly, then closed Eladra’s vacant eyes in benediction.

  Eighteen

  When the Cloister caught fire, it could be seen for miles, even among the dense rain forests of the Northwest. The smell of burning wood—and burning bodies—would hang heavily in the air for days and nights. The humidity of the coastal forests and the stone walls of the Cloister itself kept the fire from spreading. The walls would still stand, but there would be nothing inside them but blackness.

  Jonathan stood at the brow of the hill, watching it from far away, almost hypnotized by the beauty of the flames—pink and orange and almost white, such butterfly colors to signify the end of one of the few things about their world that was still beautiful. From this distance it looked small and insignificant … until it burned.

  He waited a while longer, then gave up his vigil and went back into the cabin.

  If anyplace counted as the flat-ass middle of nowhere, this was it, a private getaway owned by someone who owed the Signet a favor. No phones, no Internet, intermittent cell service. It had unreliable electricity and running water from a well for part of the year. But they had come prepared.

  Jonathan set about building a fire; the first quiet drums of rain had already begun, and soon the little ramshackle room would be freezing. He banked the coals from earlier and fed them.

  He cranked up the water in the ancient shower to let it run until it grew as hot as it could get, then closed the room to hold in the steam. He fetched blood from a bag and warmed it in a plain glass tumbler, probably risking life and limb by using the tiny microwave. It was human blood, which had pleased them both; this far out in the middle of nowhere they’d been lucky not to have to make do with deer, but lumberjacks, it seemed, hurt themselves regularly, so the local clinic was well stocked.

  Jonathan went about the duties of a typical housewife, preparing a comfortable home and meal for his bread-

  winner, who would come home exhausted and distant, and need his helpmate to whisk away dirty boots and bring him a glass of whiskey.

  Jonathan tried not to think about it in those terms. He tried instead to focus on what Deven was going to need—and better yet, what shape he would be in when he got back from tonight’s grisly errand.

  David and Miranda might find fault … no, they almost certainly would. But this time the fault lay in both Prime and Consort’s hands. Jonathan had agreed with the plan. It was ugly, but it was necessary. If the ritual to activate the Stone could be performed only once, on this new moon, then it had to be stopped. The only way to be sure of that was to make sure no one was alive to perform it and that the text was destroyed. Goddess, demon, whatever the rite tried to summon … her chance was long gone now.

  Finally, finally, Jonathan heard the back door to the cabin swing open and shut, and he reached back with his senses to verify the energy signature of his Prime. He waited a moment to see if Deven spoke.

  Nothing.

  Jonathan heard him slowly removing his weapons and laying them out on the table where a length of cloth already waited to hold them while they were cleaned. Ghostlight,
its blade wiped cursorily but still smeared with dark blood; four hilted stakes, each with wood shafts that would need replacement; two long knives, bloody; two wood-tipped throwing stars, bloody.

  He didn’t interrupt. This was a sacred ritual to Deven, one of the few he had left. Jonathan let him keep it in silence.

  Ghostlight was cleaned first, sheathed, and placed on the mantel. The other knives got similar treatment, but the stars and stakes would have to be refitted with new wooden parts and sharpened, and they’d keep until later. Dev placed them all together in a locked box until he had a moment to care for them.

  Jonathan followed him into the bathroom, where he began the next phase of purification: his clothes. Red Shadow standard black BDUs, soaked and stained with blood and grime, stripped off and dropped with far less ceremony than the weapons; they were essentially disposable. The only thing Deven kept were his boots, of course, wiped down carefully and lined up by the door near the rest of the weapons.

  When he was undressed, Deven climbed into the shower, and still, neither of them spoke as he scrubbed and rinsed smear after smear of blood from his body, none of it his.

  Jonathan picked up the discarded clothes and looked them over. No rips or slices. The Cloister had no armed guards. It depended on its remote location and secrecy for protection; it had apparently not occurred to the priesthood that any of the Order’s members might want to hurt them. The blood was mostly splatter, except for what looked like a handprint around the left ankle … had someone in her death throes begged for mercy? Had Deven given it?

  He probably had … but Deven’s brand of mercy was to deal out a swift death, not a long life.

  Jonathan had clean clothes waiting when Deven emerged from the steam a very different creature: softer, smaller somehow, his hair falling into his weary eyes, his thin body looking frail instead of graceful. Jonathan held out a huge towel to fold the Prime into and held on to him for a long moment, feeling the mix of emotions twisting around themselves in Deven’s mind. Satisfaction, yes, and triumph, but also a deep sadness he was trying not to let surface.

  “I’m fine,” Deven said, almost sounding angry. “Stop looking at me like you think I’m going to keen like a widow. I’ve been an assassin for most of seven centuries—why should this be any different?”

  Jonathan just looked at him for a moment before he said, “You just killed your sire, Deven.”

  “So?” Deven withdrew from Jonathan’s embrace. “She wanted me to be her successor—it’s really rather poetic when you think about it.”

  Another long look. Deven shook his head, losing patience, and turned to go to bed, where a special sort of nightmare would likely be waiting for him this time.

  Deven paused at the bedroom door. “Call Miranda,” he said softly. “Tell her not to worry anymore.”

  Jonathan nodded.

  Miranda leaned the side of her head against the chimney and sang quietly into the darkness, punctuating each line of the song with a sip from her beer:

  The stars at night are big and bright …

  Deep in the heart of Texas …

  Out there, in the glow of the city far below the stars, her husband and her friend were in mortal peril, again, trying to bring the city back under control. This was the third night of the insanity. Somehow Jeremy Hayes had brought in dozens, if not hundreds, of vampires he had hired to tear the city down, and ordered them all to strike, to cause utter chaos, to destroy the Pair’s hold on their own territory using the bodies of innocents whenever possible.

  Last night David had given up trying to coordinate from the Haven and moved an entire mobile command unit to the Hausmann, one of the few vampire-owned establishments that hadn’t already been vandalized. From there he ran the sensor network and coordinated all the teams, including the visiting Elite from California and, in a surprise move, another cadre of loaner warriors, this one from Eastern Europe.

  Jacob wanted answers about the explosion. David needed help getting things under control so he could give Jacob answers. It was logical, then, for Jacob to send as many Elite as he could spare, which amounted to only a dozen, but that was damn fine by David; the sooner they got this over with, the sooner they could turn their attention back to the explosion and what the hell was going on in the bigger picture.

  Miranda knew that David had been reluctant to accept outside help, for fear of appearing weak, but the word had already gone out that the South was under a massive and coordinated attack, and rather than delighting the Council by falling into riot and looting, the South had circled its wagons and was eliminating the threats one by one with a ruthless efficiency that had, Miranda could tell, shocked the shit out of most of the other Primes. David enfolded the loaner Elite into his own troops seamlessly and already had half the city back in hand that second night. The uprisings in other cities had been far easier to put down, but it was still just a matter of time. Tonight, the new moon, there were only pockets of resistance left in Austin, and while David ran the network and dispatched teams to hot spots, the vampires of the Haven showed the world once again what they were made of.

  Faith had thrown herself into the fray like a berserker; she was at the head of every major operation, kicking down doors and slicing off heads and hauling in witnesses without breaking a sweat.

  Miranda was worried about her. There was something wild and almost desperate in her eyes these last few days—like she was looking for one fight too many. David was pretty clumsy with emotions, but Faith did her level best to make it seem like she didn’t have any at all; Miranda, however, could feel Faith’s all-business exterior cracking, and it was only a matter of time before she did something stupid. If they could just get the city calmed down again, Miranda would talk to her.

  Then there was Miranda, poor left-behind Miranda, too chicken to fight in case someone might see her and figure out her super-secret alter ego.

  She really did try not to be angry at or feel sorry for herself. There was more than just her career at stake, here—until they found a way to stop the Awakening ritual, she was vulnerable, and there was no telling what was going to happen to her when those Elysium crazies did their magic hoo-hah and tried to suck the life out of her.

  But so far there was no deus ex machina ringing her up to deliver good news and tell her that the truth was the Stone was really just a very Goth paperweight or change purse or something. She didn’t know what to expect or when to expect it … Would she just drop dead? Would it hurt? Would it really kill David, too? Or had there been some kind of mistake, and Lydia was right all along?

  As the hours ticked by, her hope that Jacob—or even Deven—would call with a reprieve diminished, until it was just Miranda, sitting on a roof, singing to the sky.

  Her phone rang.

  Miranda listlessly dug around for it in her pocket. “Hello?”

  “Don’t hang up,” came a British accent, almost unrecognizable in its gravity.

  “Okay,” she said. She no longer had any fight left in her. The enormity of her own failure in all of this, confronted with the insanity of the thought that she’d ever get to choose what life she wanted to lead, had drained all the fight from her body and voice. Maybe it would be better if …

  “It’s done, Miranda.”

  She frowned. “What’s done?”

  “The ritual … the Awakening. It won’t happen. It can’t happen. Ever. You’re safe. I give you my word.”

  She stared out over the Haven grounds, uncomprehending. “Wh … what did you do?”

  Jonathan sighed. “I did nothing, Miranda. Don’t worry about the details this time … This time just let it go, all right? The ritual can’t be performed.”

  “Why not?”

  He paused, then said quietly, “There’s no one left to perform it.”

  Miranda felt herself go cold. “He killed them … all of them … to save us.”

  “Down to the last Acolyte. Down to the servants. Twenty-eight total. He slew them all and then burned th
eir bodies and their texts. The priesthood of Persephone is no more, Miranda. That thing around your neck is just metal and will be forever.”

  She clutched her beer bottle as if it were a life preserver. “Just like that … he just … killed them all …”

  “Yes. Every last one, with his own blade. He couldn’t trust an agent to do this.”

  “And … what will that do to him?”

  “Why do you care?” Jonathan asked harshly. “He doesn’t have feelings, right? It’s all just a game to us both.”

  Miranda caught herself halfway through a sob, and Jonathan’s voice immediately gentled. “I’m sorry, Miranda. I don’t mean to be a bastard.”

  Miranda was crying, though why, she didn’t know; it could be relief, but it didn’t feel like relief. It felt almost like capitulation, like she had lost something precious, some chance she’d never get again.

  “Thank you for letting me know,” she half whispered. “We’ll talk later once things settle down, okay?”

  Now he sounded relieved. Deven getting David’s forgiveness would take a while, but at least Jonathan still had a friend in Miranda. “Yes. Of course. I’ll check in on you tomorrow night.”

  They hung up, and Miranda wiped at her eyes.

  She looked down at her Signet, turning the amulet over and exposing the Stone. She was glad, of course, that she wasn’t going to die, but …

  What if they’d been wrong about what it did? What if … what if Lydia was the one who knew the truth, and now all those vampires were dead … What if Deven had destroyed the entire Order of Elysium and all the knowledge of Signet history they might have been able to share—knowledge they still needed, even if this Awakening never took place—and it was all for nothing?