Of Shadow Born (31 page)

Still . . . that morning, lying awake in her bed in the motel, blankets over the windows and the staff paid not to ask questions, she considered the growing likelihood that she would have to kill her boss.

She didn’t want to. She had killed plenty of people, but she never liked taking life, especially that of her own kind. It was one reason she had stayed in her homeland when looking for a career; she knew it was less likely she’d have to take heads in war after war the way other territories required. Western Europe had offered her a position just based on her reputation as a fighter, but Western Europe tended to explode into violence every few years, and the Prime there wasn’t terribly invested in brokering peace.

But if Jeremy couldn’t be satisfied with revenge, if his hatred continued to metastasize and destroyed what was left of his conscience, many more would die to slake that thirst for blood, and she wasn’t going to let that happen. She had been caught off guard in Chicago—she honestly hadn’t been able to believe what was happening and at first thought it was a mistake, that he had accidentally locked all those people in the Haven and would help her get at least one door open . . .

The look on his face when she wanted to run and help them was acid-etched in her memory. She had been genuinely afraid, for a moment, that he would turn his sword on her.

One way or another, after he got his vengeance, he had to stop. She would do what she had to do.

She put her hands over her eyes and did what she often did when sleep eluded her: She painted. In her mind, she started with a blank canvas and gessoed over it to smooth out the substrate, then began the background. What was this one? A night scene, of course, but the idea that came to mind was of a forest beneath a blanket of stars. Black, but with a touch of indigo and phthalo blue, applied thickly in swirls so that the texture would be visible . . . or maybe starting with Prussian blue, adding in black to get the right level of darkness, and masking off the stars so pure white shone through.

Would the woman be in this painting? Probably. Olivia never planned for her, she just sort of showed up. She was strangely comforting to Olivia—whatever kind of delusion or dream the woman was, she kept Olivia from feeling entirely alone.

Olivia wished she were here now.

Under her pillow, her phone vibrated. Olivia held still, keeping the pillow over it so Jeremy wouldn’t hear from the other bed and wake demanding to know who she was talking to.

She listened, but he didn’t stir. Good.

She slid her hand under the pillow and pulled the phone out. She wasn’t expecting to hear from anyone—it was a burner phone she’d gotten in Illinois, so it had to be either a telemarketer or a wrong number, probably from Chicago or thereabouts.

A text message. She frowned. The originating number was blocked, and the message said,
Your technical support request has been forwarded to your service provider, Raven Telecom. Please call 512-555-2976 for more details.

Wrong number, then. She’d never even heard of . . . Raven . . .

Her heart began to pound.

It was an Austin number.

* * *

Deven disconnected his laptop from the satellite and shut down the triangulation program, satisfied.

“Well?” Jonathan asked from the bed. “Did it go?”

The Prime smiled, stretching and standing up. “Oh yes.”

Jonathan nodded, but asked, “How can you be sure this is going to work? We don’t know anything about this person or her loyalties.”

Deven climbed into bed next to him and settled into his arms with a sigh. “I can’t be sure. But seven hundred years of learning how people tick tells me that as soon as she realizes what she’s gotten herself into, she’ll make the call.”

“You’ve been wrong before.”

“Maybe twice.”

“True.” Jonathan squeezed him around the middle, and Deven chuckled and wound himself around his Consort, nipping his ear in the process. Jonathan growled and in one quick motion flipped Deven onto his back, pinning his wrists up above his head. “But both of those times were in the last couple of months, so you can see my concern.”

Deven sighed. “True. Perhaps one day I’ll learn to stay out of things . . . after a few more people have died and I’m left without friends.”

Jonathan frowned down at him. “This time no one’s going to get hurt,” he said. “All you did was send her a phone number that might save her life. What she does with it, and what he does, is not up to you. Most of the things you’ve done over the years have worked beautifully—don’t judge yourself so harshly.”

Deven smiled ruefully. “I don’t know any other way to judge myself.”

“What do I have to do to get your mind off such unpleasant things?” Jonathan asked.

He decided, just for now, to let Jonathan have this one. He deserved at least a few hours where he didn’t have to worry about Deven’s mental health. He gave his Consort a mischievous grin and pushed Jonathan off him easily, reversing their positions. “You know what I do to people who question me.”

Jonathan smiled up at him hopefully. “Shag them blind?”

“Damn it, my torture methods are supposed to be a secret. Who told you?”

The Consort chuckled. “I’m familiar with your work, my Lord.”

Deven lowered his head and began leaving kisses along Jonathan’s jawline, down over his throat, and around to the other side of his neck, where he bit down hard.

Jonathan groaned. “You bastard.”

“Language, Mr. Burke.”

“Oh, fuck off.”

“That’s more like it.” Deven grabbed Jonathan by the collar of his T-shirt and dragged him upright, whereupon he immediately seized the shirt and stripped it from him. “I intend to draw quite a few more obscenities from your mouth in the next couple of hours; you might as well accept it.”

“Really?” Jonathan asked, laughing, joining in the effort to get them both undressed as quickly as possible. “Well, that works out very nicely, because I have a use for your mouth, too.”

* * *

The Queen looked pleased as she walked out of the office building, red hair and coat both caught by the wind and lifted up behind her like a cloak. As she passed, he noted a pair of humans near the end of the block whispering to each other and pointing at her, but they were either unsure it was her or too intimidated to ask for an autograph.

David smiled. Harlan opened the door for her on the other side, and she joined her Prime in the car. “A productive meeting, I trust,” he said, taking her hand and kissing it.

She nodded. “Everything’s falling into place—a small show, indoors, at either Travis Auditorium or the Keeton Arts Center. The main thing is having enough security, both ours and theirs.”

“Do you have a date nailed down?”

“We’re looking at July thirteenth . . . that is, if . . .” She bit her lip, looked out the window for a minute, then finished with, “. . . if I can perform.”

He still had her hand, and he squeezed it. “You’ll be there,” he said, with as much certainty as he could put into the words. “I’ll move heaven and earth to make it so.”

She sighed. “Can we take a walk before we head home? I’d like to see the city before . . .”

He wanted so badly to allay her fears, but he couldn’t, really; they had no idea what the next twenty-four hours would bring, and there were so many ways it could go wrong . . . but if it went right . . . they had agreed the possibility of regaining their bond was worth the risk, but that was yesterday, a little further from the reality. In truth he couldn’t be completely sure what would happen, and he wasn’t going to lie to her to make her feel better when, bond or no bond, she would see right through it.

They disembarked at the edge of the District. David told Harlan to meet them in the usual place on the far side.

Miranda was smiling at him as he straightened from the car window. “What?” he asked.

“Sometimes at random I just wonder how the hell I ended up in this life,” she responded, taking his arm. “I’m not even talking about the big stuff—I never thought I’d get married. At all. The whole idea was absurd. And ending up married to a guy who looks like a model and has a brain like a supercomputer is even weirder.”

He gave her a dubious look. “I can’t decide if that means you had low self-esteem or just a completely inflated opinion of me.”

“Oh, come on. You’re not prone to fits of false modesty, which is another thing I’ve always loved about you—you know your own abilities and your limits, but you never let that stop you.”

“Even when it should,” he pointed out with a laugh. “But let’s not forget my tragic flaw.”

“Which is?”

“In emotional matters I turn into a jibbering idiot and make absolutely horrible decisions.”

She burst out laughing. “Not
every
time,” she said.

“Often enough. And badly enough.”

Miranda paused and turned to face him, taking his hands and regarding him seriously, her eyes searching his. “I’ve never said it,” she said, “but David . . . I forgive you.”

The words hit him hard, and he actually felt his eyes start to burn. “You do?”

“Yes. I never could really say it before, but losing you . . . I realized I was done with the past. I was still carrying around some anger until then, so the words still rang false to me, but . . . not anymore. And if anything goes wrong tonight, I want to be sure you know.”

He looked down at the ground a moment, unable to say anything at first. “Thank you,” he said softly.

She kissed him, and his arms tightened around her. For a moment, standing there on the sidewalk while the Shadow District buzzed all around them, everything was perfect again.

* * *

She was panting, the pain in her ribs stabbing through her with every step, but she didn’t stop running until she was well away from the building. She had to get to the rendezvous point . . . even if there was no one to meet there.

Every step was excruciating. She pushed energy into her ribs—she had lost a lot of blood but she still had the strength to at least hold herself together—and into what felt like a broken ankle, then leaned back against a tree to catch her breath. She couldn’t rest long. They would be on her scent by now.

At least the earthquake had bought her some time. She could tell the Elite weren’t prepared for what would happen. She hoped none of them had been killed, or at least no more than the ones she had killed herself.

Olivia sagged back and put her hands over her face for a few seconds, fighting back a few screams of her own. She knew she should go back, but if she did they’d kill her. As hurt as she was, and as weak, she’d be easy prey.

Not that they weren’t already.

There was no way to have known how many guards McMannis would have. Australia didn’t have a sensor network or any kind of tracking system they could tap into. They’d researched where all the Elite would be at the appointed hour.

She heard something in the distance. Shouting? Dogs? It didn’t matter, she couldn’t stay here. She pushed herself off the tree and started running again.

It took nearly an hour to reach the rendezvous point, where the car was hidden off the road. Olivia fell onto the seat with a cry of pain and lay there a minute to try to get her thoughts back in order.

Go. Go. He told you to leave him if things went wrong. Go back to the motel and wait.

She stared at the treeline, willing Jeremy to appear, but after ten minutes she had to get moving; he wouldn’t want her to get caught waiting for him.

She pulled into the motel parking lot and rested her head on the steering wheel. Her heart was still hammering. She could still feel the ground moving. She could hear battle sounds and her own breath coming hard. She had lost one of the twin blades she had taken to using in Chicago, but she didn’t care—it had saved her life.

She dropped the key card twice trying to get into the room and cast a hunted glance around the parking lot before locking the door behind her. It wasn’t likely they would have followed her this far, and the motel was far outside the Shadow District of Brisbane.

Collapsing on the bed, she took out her phone, checking just in case . . . she might not have heard the ring in the state she was in . . . but no, there was nothing.

She needed blood. Soon. In the mini fridge there was a bag left that was just on the edge of expiring, but it would keep her going until she decided where to go from here.

They’d been so stupid. The plan had made sense, but it depended on one thing: McMannis didn’t know when they were coming. How had he found out . . . how could he have? She and Jeremy were working alone, so there was no one to turn on them. Unless the room was bugged somehow . . . but how would McMannis have known where they were?

A few minutes later she felt calm enough to get up and fetch the blood, which she warmed a little in the microwave before gulping down half the bag. She wanted to leave a little, in case . . .

Olivia leaned forward, elbows on knees, taking deep breaths. It was probably better this way. The Jeremy she had known—from before his family was murdered—was long gone, and the new one was not a creature whose story would end well. Whether he succeeded in killing Hart or not, what happened after would most likely result in his death anyway.

What was she going to do?

Her phone was still in her hand; almost without meaning to, she pulled up the last text she’d gotten, Jeremy giving her the all-clear outside the Haven. She’d joined him at the door where he’d killed the guard and used the guard’s finger on the print scanner; they’d slipped inside, exactly according to plan. There would be only a few minutes—eight, if his calculations were correct—before someone came along and saw the dead Elite, but it was thirty seconds to McMannis’s quarters, thirty seconds to the exit on the other side, leaving seven minutes to kill McMannis. Minimal loss of life was her goal, and there should have been only three or four casualties other than the Prime himself.

She stared at the text, then deleted it.

The previous message popped up . . . the Austin number.

Sudden hope leapt in her chest. Maybe . . .

There was a faint knock at the door.