Of Shadow Born (39 page)

Still speechless, Deven took his hand and stood, slowly and shakily. He had no idea what to make of what he was looking at: It was to all appearances a young man with straight, silken auburn hair nearly down to his waist, strands of it braided back from a fair, breathtakingly beautiful face. There was a scrolling vine sort of tattoo beside his left eyebrow, done in what looked like henna. He wore a strange cloak-coat hybrid that dusted the ground and obscured the shape of his body, and a silver ring on his left middle finger that looked remarkably like those worn by the Priestesses of Elysium.

Finally Deven found his voice: “Who are you?”

A kind, even affectionate smile. “My name is Nicolanai Araceith,” he said. “Most people call me Nico.” He held up one hand and, in it, held an oval-shaped dark stone . . . labradorite. At the same time he released Deven’s hand and tucked his long hair behind one ear.

One
pointed
ear.

“You called,” Nico said. He reached up and brushed his fingertips along Deven’s jawline, the touch eliciting a slight shiver. “I am your answer.”

* * *

Nearly midnight, and Olivia’s entire body was one live wire of tension as she and Jeremy crouched behind the Dumpster in the back alley of the Haven. She could see the side entrance—and the guards flanking it—and the security panel that would allow access only to one of the Elite standing there. He would have the key card, and his fingerprint and voice would be recorded in the system.

“Are you sure you don’t want to split up once we’re in?” Olivia whispered. “I get the artifact, you go for Hart?”

“No,” Jeremy hissed back. “You need a lookout and I’ll need backup just in case the Elite find us before we’re done. It’s better if we stick together. Don’t worry—just do as I told you and it will be fine.”

Olivia sighed. She had hoped he would change his mind. It would simplify things. If she alone went to break into the storage vault and retrieve the artifact, she could slip back out of the building and rendezvous with the others. Then Jeremy could deal with Hart as he saw fit, and if he made it or not, fine. Now she had to find a way to separate from him once they had the artifact. He wasn’t going to let her out of his sight easily.

“On three,” he whispered. “One . . . two . . .
three
.”

They both broke cover and made for the entrance, Olivia to the right and Jeremy to the left. She heard him toss the small glass bottle full of explosive he’d been gingerly carrying in a foam case in his belt.

It exploded in the pile of trash he’d aimed for—not loudly enough to raise the whole building’s alarm, but enough to surprise the guards and draw their attention. In that momentary lapse, Olivia slipped up behind one guard and rammed a stake through his back.

The second guard realized what was happening and tried to call for backup, but Jeremy was on him already, his sword flashing through the darkness to take the man’s head.

“Hurry,” Jeremy said.

Olivia patted her guard down. “Here it is.” She pulled the key card from a special pocket in the shirt of his uniform.

Jeremy already had out one of the numerous gadgets Morningstar had given them and helped her drag the guard up to the security panel; Olivia pressed his hand against the sensor while Jeremy ran the card.

VOICE KEY REQUIRED.

Jeremy clicked the device, which held a perfect, clear recording of a dead man’s voice:
“Elite Twelve, Robert Eckhart.”

VOICE KEY ACCEPTED.

She heard the bolt shoot back, and the door opened. Grinning at each other, they dropped the body in the shadows with its companion and entered the Haven.

Jeremy gestured to the left, and she followed him to the stairwell. They had eight minutes until the patrolling guards came across the bodies and the unguarded door; at that point the alarm would go up and the building would lock down, though there was still at least one exit point they could use. Both moving silently, they made their way down to the sub-basement where the artifact was located.

She took down the guard at the door and dragged him into the stairwell. The sub-basement was a labyrinth of corridors, but they had been over the plans a thousand times, and even without him leading she would have found the hallway in question easily.

They both stopped. Olivia peered down the hall, eyes picking out all the little round sensors that dotted the walls. It looked exactly like the plans had indicated.

She dug in one of her belt pouches and removed four small pieces of equipment: a band to go around each of her hands and a pad that attached to the toe of each boot. All four were flat on one side but had spikes protruding from the other.

She hadn’t believed such little things could hold on to a concrete ceiling, but they had tried them out, and they worked almost miraculously. These Morningstar crazies had some amazing toys at their disposal.

Olivia quickly slid the pads onto her hands and feet and turned to Jeremy, who gave her a boost. She smacked her hands into the ceiling and then lifted her legs up to do the same with her feet.

She had bound her dreadlocks up close to her head so they wouldn’t drag, and she wasn’t wearing a coat, so she was able to press herself flat against the ceiling and make her way toward the vault door without anything hanging down to trip the uppermost sensors.

“Careful, Spidey,” Jeremy said, smiling. “You do have the charge, right?”

“Got it,” she answered with a grunt, focusing all her energy on pulling one limb at a time and moving toward the door. She was considerably lighter weight than Jeremy, otherwise it would have been him up there. It took longer than she had expected, but they had allotted enough time. Three minutes later she was in front of the vault door.

She freed one hand and reached into her belt pouch again, this time taking out a small charge. She slapped it onto the door just above the lock and flattened herself against the ceiling completely. “Go,” she said.

Jeremy hit a button on his phone, and with a muffled
POP!
and a puff of black smoke, the vault door swung open an inch. Coughing, Olivia pulled it open until it was just shy of the first sensor, then swung her legs down, around the door, and in, letting go in time to drop her hard inside the vault.

She landed in a crouch and looked around—exactly as the plans said, it was a ten-by-ten room with steel shelving, most of the shelves lined with orderly rows of boxes, files, and various containers.

Unable to restrain her curiosity, Olivia peeked into a black case; it held bars of solid gold imprinted with an eagle. Her eyebrows shot up—one of those would be enough for a vampire to live on for fifty years or better.

Focus, Olivia. Ebony box, carved lid.

It was where she expected it to be, in the back right corner, third shelf from the top. The box was five inches square at most and had the same symbol carved into it as had been on the business card left for her and Jeremy in Australia. She cracked open the lid to make sure the artifact was in there; it was.

She grabbed it and stuck her head out the door. “Got it! Stand back!”

Jeremy ducked back around the corner, and Olivia reached into her pouch one more time, this time for a handful of what amounted to digital firecrackers.

She took a deep breath.
Here we go.

Flicking her wrist, she flung the tiny charges out into the hallway, where they went off as they hit the walls and floor. After the
pop!
of the charge, there was a click and a swish, then the hard thud of stakes flying from either side of the hallway to hit the walls. The noise was deafening for about thirty seconds, until most of the sensors had been tripped; then there was a brief respite of silence.

Olivia bolted down the hallway as fast as she could move, barely avoiding the two stakes that hadn’t been triggered already. She skidded to a halt next to Jeremy.

“Give it to me,” Jeremy said. “Now.”

She frowned. “I thought I was going to carry—”

“
Now
, Olivia.”

She knew that tone. Damn it. She handed over the box reluctantly. Now she’d have to get it back from him before she made her escape.

“Thirty seconds,” Jeremy said. “Ready for phase two?”

They had waited to set off the stakes in case finding the artifact took longer than anticipated; the idea was that the alarm would bring the Elite running, distracting as many as possible so Jeremy and Olivia could get to the second floor, where Hart was tonight, with fewer enemies to face between here and there.

“Let’s go,” she said.

They ran for the stairwell again as the earsplitting klaxon of the alarm began to go off all around them.

Olivia heard the rushing clomp of boots. “They’re coming!”

Jeremy shouldered the next door open and dispatched the guard there; it was the first floor, one floor down from Hart, but if they stayed in the stairwell they’d be easy targets. There was a plan for that, too, though—Jeremy led the way to an empty room that had once been used for Elite training.

The building had been designed with a wet wall—essentially a crawl space that held all of the plumbing for easier access. According to the plans it was wide enough for a fairly thin vampire to fit; they’d measured carefully to make sure neither of them would get stuck.

Olivia drew her knife and began prying the panel off the wall. “Remember,” she said, “the panel one floor up opens into a bathroom, so we should have a few seconds to climb out without being seen. From there we take the left-hand hallway—there will be Elite from there all the way to Hart.”

“I’m ready for them,” Jeremy said. “And I’m ready for you.”

Olivia started to ask—

Pain struck her in the back, right between her kidneys. She cried out and fell, scrambling to reach the stake jutting out of her body. “What are you
doing
?” she cried. “Jeremy—”

He stood over her, his face hard and impassive. “I’m sorry, Liv,” he said. “I wish it didn’t have to be this way. Thank you for all you’ve done for me . . . I mean that. But I knew you’d turn on me, and I was right.”

She tried to think through the pain—she had to get the stake out or she couldn’t heal, but all she could think of was making it stop hurting. “Jeremy . . . please . . .”

“Give my regards to David Solomon,” Jeremy said.

She heard the scrape of the wet wall panel being pulled off, and he climbed into the crawl space and was gone.

Moments later, the door of the training room flew open and guards poured in.

* * *

David lowered the scanner. “Everything’s going according to plan,” he said. “Are you ready?”

Miranda nodded. “Let’s do it.”

The door where Jeremy and Olivia had entered was still unguarded, and David’s scanner worked on the same principle as the sensor network but didn’t need actual sensors; it couldn’t tell the difference between a vampire, a human, and an animal, but would tell them how many living things were between them and their goal.

They went through the door and shut it just seconds before the patrol was set to come around the corner; there was no time to waste, so they hit the ground running for the second floor.

Miranda glanced around her as she ran—Hart’s Haven was purely industrial on the first floor, utilitarian like an office building; but as soon as they reached the second, all of that changed and it became far more like the Austin Haven. Fine furnishings, elegantly painted walls and trim . . . the major difference was the lack of natural light, as there were far fewer windows.

Over their heads an alarm was blaring, and Miranda reached out with her mind, sensing the emotional signatures of dozens of vampires above and below her. A great many of them were headed to the second floor, and nearly a dozen were already there.

“This way,” David said, checking the scanner again. “Hart’s quarters are down here.”

Suddenly Miranda froze in her tracks and half-screamed. A dull but piercing pain bit into her back and a wave of dizziness hit her. “I’m shot!”

David stopped and looked at her in confusion. “No, you’re not.”

“I can feel it! A stake—wait—there’s nothing there?”

“I promise you’re fine.”

She realized what it felt like—not as if she had been staked, but as if David or even Cora or Deven had been staked, a distant pain that faded quickly. “It must have been one of the others—something’s wrong.”

“It will have to wait. Come on.”

But the few seconds’ lapse had been enough. Thundering footsteps from either direction turned into Elite running out of the stairwell at one end of the hall and the double doors at the other end. When they saw Miranda and David they immediately drew their weapons.

Miranda grinned. “All right, now we’re talking,” she said, and drew Shadowflame.

David shook his head, but he, too, was smiling, drawing his own sword. “You really are something, beloved.”

She took the left, he took the right, and the fight was on.

Twenty

The guards dragged her up the stairs by her arms, blood trailing behind her as it dripped down her back. Every stair caused pain to shoot through her body.

Once they had her on the second floor, they opened a side room without much furniture. One of the guards stripped off her weapons and her belt; another one punched her in the stomach. She groaned, and they released her arms, letting her drop in a heap on the ground, where they kicked the stake deeper into her back, then kicked her in the stomach again when she jerked back to try fruitlessly to pull the wooden shaft.

“Tell the boss,” she heard one say. “She wasn’t alone—find the other one.”

Yes, find the other one . . . and kill him, if you don’t mind.

Olivia forced herself up onto her hands and knees, daring to look around the room for her weapons—they were on a table, her sword on top of the pile. If she could just get it . . .

The first guard kicked her again, sending her back to the ground on her side; she tasted blood, and knew—didn’t fear,
knew
—she was about to die. Jeremy had seen through her, had known her for a traitor; the others were waiting outside to ambush him and take the artifact, but he probably knew that, too, and would get the drop on them. At the very least he would escape. Another blow made her vision gray out. One of the guards leaned down, grabbed the stake, and yanked it from her back as hard has he could; Olivia screamed, and they laughed.