Of Shadow Born (12 page)

The eyes that lit on her were black as damnation, without even the narrowest ring of iris showing; they seemed to glow, lit from within, like a night sky full of stars. She couldn’t look away . . . it felt like falling, or flying, or dying . . .

Now he gasped, shutting his eyes tightly against some sudden pain, and she flinched as he cried out, curling up on himself, hands clenching the comforter so hard they shook.

Olivia watched, horrified, as agony gripped the Prime’s body, and he writhed against the torment with strangled moans—one minute he was trembling like a leaf, the next drenched in sweat, struggling weakly to get his coat off.

Again she acted before she could think better of it. She dove to his side and helped remove the coat, then unbuckled the sword and pushed it off on the floor. She could feel heat radiating from his skin. She got the shirt off him, which seemed to be enough—he twisted onto his stomach, giving her a look at the black-line tattoo of a hawk that covered his entire upper back.

It was, she thought crazily, beautiful work—she would place it at around sixty years old, given the technique, and had been done by a master of the art. She couldn’t help but touch the lines, out of curiosity; most vampire tattoos were raised a little more than a human’s would be.

The line beneath her fingers shifted.

She gasped yet again and jerked her hand back, then shoved herself back from the bed, eyes going huge with shock. Her heart was in her throat—what she was seeing couldn’t be real, couldn’t be happening—

The tattoo was
changing
.

Mesmerized, she watched some of the lines fade, others darken . . . The bird’s head, which was in profile, changed shape, the skin erupting in blood as if a needle were digging into it. The wings altered, their edges seeming to sharpen. Blood ran down the Prime’s back onto the bed, but within seconds the flow had stopped, the lines healing themselves.

Another spasm of pain hit him, and he turned his face into the pillow and screamed.

Olivia wanted to run, to hide; she had never felt fear like this, never seen anything like what she was seeing . . .

. . . except something about it was oddly familiar . . .

Her hand flew to her mouth as she made the connection. Aside from the tattoo, she had seen something like this before . . . when a human became a vampire. She had been one of the lucky ones whose transition occurred peacefully in her sleep, because she was prepared for it and it was done with care; she’d woken up wanting to shag everyone in sight, but with rest and feeding she was fine, no screaming required. But many of them went violently, awake and able to feel every second of their bodies changing, and the way it hurt . . . it looked just like this.

But he was already a vampire . . .

It seemed to go on forever, but later she would check the clock and see that the whole thing lasted about two hours, with the pain coming on him in waves, periods of intense fever alternating with screaming torment, and there was nothing she could do but stand watch.

Finally, the fever broke one last time, sweat soaking the bed. He began to shiver, and she could sense it was almost over; she grabbed a blanket and started to cover him. He whimpered softly and curled up again, as if the touch of the fabric were painful, and she got another view of his back.

The tattoo had finished its transformation. Once a raptor, it had redrawn itself line by line into a raven.

* * *

“David!”

In the middle of the afternoon, Deven woke with a start, sitting bolt upright in bed trying desperately to catch his breath.

Jonathan jolted awake, too, but not quite so violently; he stared at his Prime, blinking confusion from his eyes. “What the hell was that?”

Deven could only shake his head; his heart was hammering wildly, and before he could even frame a sentence, it felt like a giant invisible hook had dug into the skin of his back and was dragging itself through the flesh.

Jonathan saw his facial expression and was clearly alarmed. “Are you all right? What’s happening?”

“My back,” Deven hissed. “Is it bleeding?”

Wide-eyed, Jonathan looked, then said, quizzically, “No . . . it’s fine. Does it hurt?”

The pain was already starting to fade, but it left him dizzy, nauseated. He fell back onto the pillows, hands over his eyes to try to block the faint light of midday that had seeped into the room. His head began to pound, and suddenly the room felt like it was a hundred degrees. He kicked the covers off with a grunt.

“Talk to me,” Jonathan said.

Deven let out a long breath, pushing his pulse lower with his will. “I’m fine.”

“You said David’s name,” the Consort told him. “Were you dreaming about him?”

“No . . . I don’t know. I don’t remember. Are you sure that’s what I said?”

“Very sure.” Jonathan watched him, eyes slightly narrowed now, appraising. “You know, I’ve seen you have a lot of nightmares, but nothing like that has ever happened—most of the time you just mutter for a while and that’s it.”

Deven absently bent his arm back around to touch his back, reassuring himself that there weren’t any welts or jagged gashes. Nothing.

“Do you need a Coke?” Jonathan asked with a smile.

Deven smiled back in spite of himself. “No . . . I think I’m all right, love. As far as I know it wasn’t a precog episode . . . unless you’ve ever had one that felt like being tattooed by a chainsaw.”

“You didn’t flail like that when you were actually tattooed, did you? If you did, I hope you tipped your artist extra.”

“No . . .” He put his head in his hands, and Jonathan tugged the blankets back up around him, adding his arms for good measure. Deven let himself relax back against Jonathan’s chest. “I remember . . . I remember the night David got his back done . . .”

He didn’t go any further. He suspected Jonathan wouldn’t want to hear how unspeakably sensual it had been watching the needles dig into David’s skin, blood welling up ruby-bright in the wake of black ink . . . It had taken all of Deven’s will to wait until they left the studio before he tore the shirt from David’s back and baptized the barely healed black lines with his tongue.

“Do I really talk in my sleep?” he asked, hoping to change the subject.

He could hear Jonathan smiling. “Mostly in Gaelic, so I can only pick out the curse words. Sometimes you pray in Latin.”

Deven was glad, in that moment, that Jonathan didn’t speak Gaelic.

He tried to think back and remember what he’d been dreaming this time, but his mind felt like it was full of mist; the most he could summon was a feeling, the slightest pale whisper of . . .

“I was dreaming about him,” Deven said softly. “I don’t know what, but . . . it was like, just for a second, he was here.”

Jonathan sighed into his hair and held him close. “Where do you think he is now?”

“Nowhere. Gone.”

“Do you really believe that?”

Deven didn’t answer right away. He knew what he wanted to say: that death was just the end of the story, fade to black and that was all. But the thought hurt, now more than it ever had. He had never wanted so much to believe in an afterlife as he did now.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said, winding his fingers through Jonathan’s.

Jonathan didn’t contradict him, but he knew what the Consort was thinking: that it
did
matter, very much, and while the thought of either heaven or hell for a vampire seemed ridiculous, they were both thinking . . . hoping . . . that wherever David was now, he had found some measure of peace.

* * *

After the pain, there was only darkness.

Then there was turpentine.

The ceiling came into slow focus: exposed ductwork, industrial lighting. Metal creaked, rattled. Beyond that, the faint sound of something rasping . . . no, brushing. A brush hitting a flat surface that gave slightly with each stroke.

Painting. Someone was painting.

The room smelled like turpentine, acetone, toluene. Paints and solvents. Underneath that was the old, faded smell of automotive exhaust, as if the building had once been used as a garage.

There was another sound, too, that took a moment to understand: a whooshing in and out, expansion and contraction . . .

Breathing.

Breathing.

Alive.

A shift, creaking bedsprings. The scent of laundry detergent, sweat, blood . . . dried blood . . . not human.

The brushstrokes stopped. Feet on stairs.

A face came into view.

Compassionate gray eyes ringed with blue-green, a lovely olive-mocha skin tone that suggested mixed race; long, dark dreadlocks that fell down around her shoulders. Black tank top spattered with paint. Her neck, chest, and all the way down her arms were covered in complicated tattoos of vines, roots, and snakes that seemed to almost move in the dim light of a nearby candle.

Her voice was a soothing contralto. “Awake at last.” She stared down for several minutes, seeming to search for something, before asking, “Do you know who you are?”

Silence. Her words seemed to translate through several languages, inflection and vocabulary so alien at first, twisting around themselves—English. American English, touched with a faint accent.
Do you know who you are?

Do you know who you are?

A breath in, a breath out. Words. There had to be words there somewhere. “No.”

She nodded, unsurprised. “Let’s take it slow, then. Can you sit up?”

Her hands were warm and strong, capable. An artist’s hands, perhaps—but also a warrior’s. Muscle, tendon, bone engaged, inch by inch, lifting, the room spinning for a moment. A breath in, a breath out.

The bed was in a loft overlooking a room full of easels. Paintings in various stages of completion leaned everywhere: strange landscapes that morphed into the garments of shadowy figures, a woman’s hair becoming the ocean. All of them seemed to move like her tattoos did, undulating, waves cresting, tides going in and out . . .

. . . like the moon, cycling, waxing to fullness, waning to darkness . . . like life falling into death, clawing its way back to life, like black wings against a starlit sky . . .

“Whoa,” she said gently. “Calm down . . . there’s nothing to be scared of. Just breathe . . . in and out . . . there you go.”

. . . black wings . . .

. . . enfolded in wings, rising . . .

“I think we need to feed you,” she said. “You look like you might pass out again.”

Panic.
Where was this place? What was this? Who was she? Where . . .

. . . Where was the forest? Why was there no sound of wind rustling through leaves?
Where was this?

“Take my hand, child. Come . . . you have work to do.”

. . . wings . . .

There was the sound of glass breaking, of things falling over—the metal walls of the building shook.

The woman dove into the corner, arms over her head, terror written in every line of her body. “Stop it!” she shouted. “Please, stop!”

Stop?

It stopped.

She peeked up through her arms, her eyes bright with tears and wide with fear. “I’m just trying to help you,” she said quietly. “I didn’t want this.”

Words.
“I’m sorry.”

She swallowed hard and unbent herself, rising gracefully. “I should never have brought you in here in the first place—I must have been out of my mind.”

Even as she spoke, though, she was righting the shelf that had tipped over, relighting the candle; she shook her head again and held out her hand. “Come on . . . let’s get you cleaned up.”

The hand that took hers was pale, a little shaky, and strangely bare, missing something. It was, of course, connected to a wrist, and then to an arm, a well-muscled bicep, a shoulder . . .

. . . a body.

Breathing. Alive.

“I’m alive,” he said softly.

The woman sighed. “It was a shock for me, too.”

“Who . . . who are you?”

She looked relieved to get a sensible question. “My name is Olivia,” she said. “You probably don’t remember me, but I remember you.” She seemed to sense what was coming next, because she squeezed his hand firmly, and said, “Your name is David Solomon. You’re the Prime of the Southern United States . . . Does that ring a bell?”

He listened, but didn’t hear any bells. “No.”

Another sigh. “I’m sure it will come back to you. You’ve . . . been through a lot.”

She helped him stand, and the room pitched and spun, but she was strong and held him up. This close, the mingled scents of paint and coffee were both alluring and strangely comforting. Her body was solidly built, curvaceous, and she had a proud bearing, the posture of someone comfortable in her own skin. The best word he could think of to describe her was
present
; she occupied her own aura, where many people seemed to be halfway aware of themselves at best.

She was very familiar, somehow, almost as familiar as the name she had given him. The memory was there somewhere. Everything was twisted around itself in his mind, like trying to make sense of ten lifetimes at once, a thousand voices clamoring to be heard, a thousand threads of meaning trying to coalesce into a single reality. He sensed it would right itself, given time, but he also sensed he was not going to be patient about it.

Taking each step carefully, she led him down to the bathroom, pausing to grab a shirt that had been tossed over a nearby chair. She sat him down on the closed toilet lid, facing away from her, and soaked a washcloth in warm water.

“You’re all bloody,” she explained, swabbing his back. It didn’t hurt.

“Why?”

Olivia chuckled. “I haven’t the slightest idea how to answer that.”

Sudden discomfort clenched his stomach, a deep hot itching blossoming along his jaw. He felt his teeth pressing down and again, the room swam in his vision, physical sensation fighting its way to the front of the vortex of strangeness in his mind.

Hunger.

She finished her work and handed him the shirt. “Yours,” she said.

It was dirty, he noticed. It smelled vaguely of battle and fire. His fingers stumbled briefly on the buttons as dozens of mental images intruded, flashes of remembered pain, of eyes . . . green eyes, full of fear and anguish . . . a scream . . .