Of Shadow Born (15 page)

She knew the answer, and it filled her with despair. Normal people who lost a spouse suddenly and violently would take years to recover, and some never did at all. She of all people knew the depths to which pain’s serpentine roots could dig into the soul and coil around, squeezing out every breath of happiness. The prognosis for a woman losing her soul mate was even grimmer.

Once again, the enormity of the future before her sprawled out in her mind, and she wanted to curl up and wail; she could rule the South, she could live without David, but could she do it . . . forever?

She felt bent beneath the weight of her life as she wandered through the Shadow District, passing the front windows and entrances of bars and businesses that only a few weeks ago she had laughed in, danced in, drank in. The thought of laughing—really laughing, hard and breathless, to the point that she snorted loudly and made everyone around her laugh even harder—seemed so beyond comprehension it might as well have been some curious phenomenon she’d read about in a magazine.

She might have felt guilty, or at least self-indulgent, over how poorly she was handling things, but so far no one had suffered; the territory was safe, her Elite managing just fine. She hadn’t retired to her bed to waste away. And Deven had said that even David had lost his mind for a few days when he thought she was dead; Faith had mentioned that once, too, that the Prime hadn’t moved or spoken, just curled up in a ball.

Miranda couldn’t imagine him doing that. She couldn’t imagine her Prime being so completely lost that he simply stopped functioning. But Dev swore it was true, swore he’d had to call David out as he had Miranda, set him back on his feet.

She paused, suddenly amused. At some point she had apparently decided to love the Prime of the West, and he her, with a fierceness that she would never have believed possible only three years ago. David would be pleased.

Wavering on her feet, she dug in her coat for the broken Signet, her fingers closing around it. “I miss you, baby,” she whispered. “I don’t know how . . . what the . . .”

Something felt odd. She flipped the Signet over in her hand, feeling along its polished surface, the stone cool against her fingertips. It took a moment to realize what was wrong.

It usually hurt.

She yanked the amulet out of her coat, walking over to the pool of a streetlight, even though she could see just fine; it was an old human habit, wanting to verify things in light even when they were obvious.

Miranda stared at the Signet, unable to breathe.

When she had put it in her coat that evening, the stone had been cracked, several shards missing; they were mostly in the box in her room, but she guessed a few tiny slivers would never be found. The edges of the shattered stone were sharp and hurtful when her hand had squeezed it, the pain grounding her out of her thoughts and into the harshness of reality.

Now the stone was whole.

Not only were the cracks healed, the missing shards were no longer missing. It might as well have regrown itself in the course of the night.

It wasn’t possible.
Was it?
Was this what happened after one broke, so that whoever was in charge of such things didn’t have to make a new one? How could that even happen?

David would have had a theory already, something to do with crystalline molecular structures.

She stared into the ruby for a long moment, willing it to relight, but it remained dark . . . whole, yes, but still asleep, waiting, she supposed, for whoever came to take it after she finally died.

She was so focused on the Signet that she almost didn’t hear the footsteps before it was too late.

The noise hit her ears a split second before the stake sang through the air where her body had just been. She twisted backward, the cylinder of wood grazing the sleeve of her coat, and spun downward into a crouch, one hand stuffing the Signet back into her pocket and the other unclipping Shadowflame.

She straightened in a blur of motion, drawing the sword just in time to meet the blade that swung for her neck.

There was no time to think, no time to do anything but act; she parried the first attacker’s sword while another tried to dive in on her left, her leg flashing out sideways to connect a boot heel in his rib cage. She rammed Shadowflame into the first one’s throat and pulled the blade on the same breath, spinning around to slice open a third attacker on the follow-through.

She leapt backward, giving her a few feet to sweep the situation with her senses: seven of them, one of her, all of them armed, all of them thirsty for exactly one thing—her blood.

They had no idea what hell they had just unleashed upon themselves.

The Queen made no move to escape, no effort to call for backup. She flung herself into their midst with a hiss and gave herself over to the bloodred haze of rage, letting her body take over, meeting sword slash and fist with such force that even seasoned fighters who knew their quarry were caught by surprise.

She had three of them down in less than a minute, and the other four circled her, suddenly made wary by the groans of their dying comrades.

“Come on!” Miranda snarled at them. “If you’ve come for my life, take it! Four against one, you can do better than that!”

Shadows moved beyond the streetlight, and four became eight . . . became ten. She was surrounded.

She knew she should Mist away, reappear back at the car and call in Elite to pursue them . . . but something deep within her, perhaps her precognitive gift or perhaps just wild suicidal desperation, kept her rooted to the spot, her heart clamoring for their blood.

One of the attackers turned his head just enough that she saw the glint of something in his ear.

“Morningstar,” she spat at them. Her voice rang off the night air. “You can take a message back to your boss, then. I am Queen of this territory. I paid for my Signet with blood and death, and neither you nor anyone else will take it from me.
You cannot defeat me, you bastards. I dare you to try.
”

They accepted the dare.

* * *

Olivia heard the sounds of battle long before she saw it: the old familiar clang of steel on steel in its age-old rhythm, the cries of pain, grunts and yells of both male and female voices, heavy sounds of bodies hitting walls.

Warring instincts flared up: Part of Olivia wanted to run toward the fighting, and part of her wanted to run away.

But the Prime had already decided for them and had broken into a run.

Olivia caught up in time to see a rather surreal scene playing out before her: a street in the Shadow District, out in view of everyone, where at least a dozen black-clad men and women were attempting to take out a single opponent. All around them, Olivia could see faces peering out windows, watching fearfully, all of them no doubt terrified that gang violence had at last erupted to destroy the tentative peace of Austin.

But, she realized as she drew closer, that wasn’t the issue here. They weren’t watching the whole fight . . . just its epicenter, where a single woman was engaging every one of her attackers two, sometimes three at a go.

She was as graceful as a dancer; her sword was a silver flame in the night, almost liquid in motion, so fast the blood that sprayed from the wounds it inflicted didn’t seem to even touch the steel.

But there was something more at work here—Olivia had seen someone fight that way before, throwing her entire body and mind into the fight as if she had nothing to lose . . . someone who didn’t care anymore whether she survived the fight. Her desires had contracted to a single pinpoint: make someone pay.

Olivia saw a sword slip past the Queen’s guard, saw it pierce her shoulder; the Queen hissed, but merely spun toward its wielder and beheaded him with a single stroke. She paused long enough to pull the blade from her body and throw it on the ground. She was bleeding badly, but it didn’t stop her, nor did the half-dozen or so other wounds she had sustained already—a couple of lacerations on her arm, bruises on her face, and the way she held herself suggested a cracked rib or two.

She had six of them down before she truly began to wear out, and Olivia saw her falter.

At her side, the Prime sucked in a breath that was half a gasp and half a snarl. Olivia looked at him, saw how mesmerized he was by her—and before Olivia could ask if he recognized her, he had already set off for the fight, sword drawn.

The attackers fought the Queen until they had driven her back toward the wall of the building behind her, but she didn’t give up, even though she was growing weaker from blood loss and, it seemed, the waves of sorrow she was emitting so strongly that Olivia felt tears in her own eyes. Whatever her intention in taking on this fight, Olivia knew that the Queen was at the end of her strength . . . she was about to give up.

It happened so fast. One of the men parried her sword’s stroke and knocked the blade from her hands, another kicking her in the side; she went down to her knees, then rolled onto the ground with a groan of pain, arms clenched in front of her abdomen. Olivia could see blood seeping out between her fingers.

The attacker stepped in closer, raising his sword to swing down in the final strike—

—and it met another blade, hard enough to throw off a spark as the two swords grated along each other’s edge, bringing the attacker face-to-face with his own death.

Olivia saw the shock in the man’s face turn into instinctive horror as he realized what he was looking at—who was on the other end of that sword—and tried, in vain, to turn and run.

He made it about two steps before his body jerked, and a loud, sickening crack split the air, his body twisting violently and falling to the ground.

The Prime took his head in a graceful arc and turned, slowly and deliberately, to face the others.

They were all staring at him in petrified silence.

He tilted his head to one side. There was nothing human, none of that compassion Olivia had seen earlier, in his hell black eyes. “Run,” he said softly.

And they did.

Olivia watched his gaze travel from window to window around the scene and catch the eyes of all those watching the fight. No one would mistake him for another vampire; he was too well known in this city. They all understood the implications of what they were seeing.

Shutters and blinds flipped closed. Deadbolts shot up and down the street. Lights went out.

Only then did he turn to the Queen.

She was curled up on herself, one hand on the pavement while the other was still held against her middle; she stared at the ground, eyes dull.

He went silently to his knees before her, still unspeaking. Her pale, graceful hands, hands that had swung a sword and killed half a dozen vampires, were shaking, and Olivia watched with her heart in her throat as he reached out and took the one that lay on the ground, covering the Queen’s hand with his own.

The Queen was still.

Her eyes shut tight.

“No,” she whispered. “Don’t do this to me.”

He didn’t speak, and she went on, “If I open my eyes and I’m dreaming . . . if I wake up and I’m alone again . . .”

He lifted one of his hands from hers and cupped her face, palm against her cheek so softly, as if she were made of spun glass.

Slowly, she lifted her head and opened her eyes.

A ragged gasp passed through her lips, and she lurched backward, away from him. “No . . . no . . . no . . .”

When he didn’t say anything, she reached out to him, shaking even harder this time, until her bloodstained palm met solid flesh, his shoulder, then his neck, then his face. Her hand slid back down over his chest, seeking a heartbeat.

Her voice was barely a whisper, as if giving words to the thought made it real, and she was too far gone for even that much hope. “Is it . . . is it really you?”

He nodded.

“You died . . . I felt you die . . . the others saw you . . . you went to dust . . . there was nothing left but a shadow.”

Softly, he smiled. “And of shadow I was reborn.”

The sound of his voice seemed to break something inside the Queen. She lost her balance and fell sideways, landing almost in a fetal position, so far past hysterical she barely moved as shock waves of emotion wrenched her heart in all directions. She was screaming—a ghostly, keening sound, the kind of sound that was all that remained in a broken heart after every last hope had been stripped away and all that remained was too raw and bloody to even bear a loving touch.

The Prime moved over to her, gathering her up in his arms, bundling her into his coat and holding her tightly, rocking slowly back and forth with her; his face was turned up to the sky, eyes closed, but Olivia could see the tears running in silver rivulets down his face, and she knew that whatever holes still riddled the Prime’s memory, this much he knew: He was home.

Eight

She fully expected to open her eyes to her bedroom, her solitude, and feel the brief moment of terrified joy ripped away from her as reality settled back in.

What she got was a little different.

She smelled antiseptic, industrial cleanser; she could hear beeping, and whirring, and the sounds of people milling around. As her eyes fluttered open she saw a white curtain, and looking down, white sheets, and her arm stretched out across the bed, a plastic tube taped to her wrist, the needle a thin but very real presence in her arm.

“There you are, my Lady,” came a voice, and a blurry face resolved itself into Mo. “How are you feeling?”

She had no idea how to answer that. “What happened? Why am I here?”

“You were in deplorable shape,” he said, his voice becoming a little stern. “Wounded, dehydrated, underfed, exhausted—your electrolytes were, as they say, extremely out of whack. You’ve been receiving fluids and blood for several hours . . . and a little Xanax thrown in with some pain medication for a few superficial wounds you sustained during your . . . altercation.”

“Altercation.” She remembered, vaguely: blood, and screaming, adrenaline coursing hot and violent through her body. It didn’t even seem real. Had she really been attacked by a dozen vampires? How many had she killed? With numbers like that, she should have been dead.