Of Shadow Born (41 page)

Over at the door, Olivia, who was following the blood trail Jeremy had left, piped up, “It was a piece of metal.”

“A piece of metal?” David repeated. “Could you be more specific?”

“Jeremy showed me a drawing of it so that if Hart had taken it out of the box I’d still recognize it. A flat metal oval, perhaps two inches long. Antique gold. It had some kind of script etched into it that neither of us recognized, and at four points around its edge were little prongs.”

Prime and Queen looked at each other. “Did it look like this?” Miranda asked, flipping her Signet over and holding it out toward Olivia.

She came over to the Queen and got a closer look. “Yes, almost exactly like that,” she said. “The writing was completely different, though.”

“What would humans want with another Stone of Awakening, or whatever it is?” Miranda wondered. “Do they have Signets to clip it to?”

“I’ll start researching it as soon as we get home,” David said.

Miranda returned her attention to Olivia, who was leaning on the desk heavily. She looked exhausted. “Are you okay?” Miranda asked.

“Jeremy staked me,” Olivia reminded her. “The wound is closed, but it still hurts like a motherbear. I tried to come after him once I got away from the Elite who caught me, but I blundered right into the fray—thank God you two were already there, or . . . wait, why were you there? You were supposed to meet me outside! You wanted to snatch the box from Jeremy on his way out but without risking your lives, remember?”

Miranda gave David a look, sheepish. “Why don’t you tell her, Mr. Mastermind,” Miranda told her Prime.

“I knew Jeremy was on to you,” David said. “We planned all along to come in; we just didn’t tell you because he was spying on you, reading your texts. He might have changed his plan if he’d known ours.”

“But why come in at all?”

“Because we knew Hart was on to Jeremy.”

Olivia’s mouth dropped open. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“No. We have an ally with a spy in Hart’s Elite. He got us intelligence that Hart was aware of your intentions and planned to have his crossbow guards in place when you got here. If you had walked into this room without us, you would have been turned into a porcupine.”

Miranda added, “With you and Jeremy setting off the alarms and distracting the Elite, it was the only chance we’d have to get the Widget and to rescue you from Jeremy. That depended on you—and us—all sticking to our supposed plans. We expected Jeremy to just ditch you, not really hurt you. I’m sorry about that.”

Olivia shook her head, straightening. “I see now what Jeremy was talking about with you people.”

“I want to know why Hart freaked out when he saw you,” Miranda said. “I get him wanting to keep Cora enslaved, and I get him wanting to kill us if he didn’t want the circle to form, but why would you scare him so badly? You’re not even the one who killed him.”

“He spoke of prophets,” David mused. “He must have been told you were going to do something important. We’ll need to learn more about that, too.”

“Beats the hell out of me,” Olivia said, bending down to where Hart’s blood-spattered Signet had fallen and picking it up.

Before anyone could say a word, all three of them were struck utterly dumb, as Olivia lifted the Signet by its chain . . . and the stone blazed to life.

Twenty-one

“We’re on in five minutes,” David said. “Are you ready?”

Olivia’s voice was tense. “Not really, no.”

“You’ll do fine,” he reassured her. “They’re already your allies—you have nothing to prove here.”

She took a deep breath. “It’s the rest of the Council I have to worry about.”

“The ones worth knowing will pay state visits over the next few months. The rest you don’t have to worry about for a decade. Relax, Prime.”

“Easy for you to say,” she said. “You’re not a living violation of thousands of years of tradition!”

David smiled. “Yes, I am. They just don’t know it yet.”

“So am I, for the record,” came another voice, as Deven signed on. “My advice is, if you want to get along with everyone, you should probably make other friends besides the deviants and the people who’ve shagged them.”

He could practically hear Olivia’s eyebrows shoot up. “Wait, who shagged whom?”

Now David laughed, and said, “Prime Olivia Daniels of the Northeastern United States, virtually meet Prime Deven O’Donnell of the Western United States.”

“A pleasure,” Deven said. “I look forward to watching you make the Council squirm. Having done it myself, I can assure you it’s great fun.”

David frowned listening to him—Deven sounded a little subdued. “Everything all right over there?” he asked.

“Fine,” Deven replied shortly. “Olivia, I’m assuming before David left New York he hooked you up with all of his favorite software.”

“Yes, Sire,” Olivia said. “He was quite thorough.”

“None of that ‘Sire’ nonsense, Olivia. You’re one of us now. We hardly stand on ceremony.”

“Sorry, S—um, Deven,” she said hesitantly. “This is all very weird to me.”

“Everyone says that,” Deven told her. “By the fifth year it will all be routine. If you need any help, any at all, you need only ask.”

“David has already been very good to me,” she said. “I haven’t really thanked him.”

“No need . . . my Lady? Hmm . . . we’re going to have to figure out your terms of address. We’ve always considered Consorts based on their relationship to Primes, and with one exception Consorts have always been women—we had a devil of a time deciding what to call Jonathan. A female Prime . . . you’re something new, in more ways than one.”

“Lucky me.”

“On the plus side,” Jacob said, his icon appearing on the screen, “the two Primes most likely to raise a fuss about it are dead now.”

“Prime Jacob Janousek of Eastern Europe, meet Prime Olivia Daniels of the Northeastern United States.”

“Welcome aboard,” Jacob said, a smile in his voice.

“Have you kept any of Hart’s Elite?” Deven asked Olivia. “I can’t imagine many stayed behind.”

“Four,” Olivia said. “Luckily organizing the Elite is one thing I have plenty of experience at. With the population density here I don’t think it will take long to fill the ranks, especially if what I’m hearing about Hart’s standing with his people is true.”

David smiled; she was already sounding like a Prime. She was going to be fine . . . he would make sure of it. “Let’s get started, shall we? First up, I believe Jacob has a report on the situation in Australia . . .”

* * *

As the chat program shut down, Deven finally let himself breathe, putting his forehead in his hands, eyes closed.

“I thought you would stay on with David after and tell him what’s going on,” Jonathan said from where he sat on the bed. He was still in his pajamas and needed a shave, but he had to look a hundred times better than Deven did at the moment.

“Now isn’t the time,” Deven murmured without looking up. “We needed to present a calm and united front for Olivia. She’s under enough stress without thinking one of her new allies is going batshit insane.”

Jonathan chuckled; that was a phrase Miranda often used, especially when describing herself as a human. But the concern was still in his voice as he said, “Maybe you should go back to bed, love. You still look exhausted.”

“I
am
exhausted.”

“Even after sleeping for fourteen hours straight? You practically passed out and fell on the bed without even saying a word to me. I had to undress you and tuck you in, and then you didn’t so much as twitch all day.”

Deven turned sideways in his chair and leaned his head on the back. “I don’t remember. I don’t even remember how I got home.”

“All I know is, I could feel how upset you were . . . and then it was like you were having some sort of breakdown. Then out of nowhere you went from breaking down to just sleepy, and a little while later you were home. What’s the last thing you remember?”

He shut his eyes again and tried to think. “I was up on the Tower Bridge . . . I started to walk home . . . I remember . . . I remember seeing St. Anthony’s, but . . . after that everything fades away.”

Jonathan sounded reluctant to ask, but did anyway: “Were you drinking?”

“No. That’s just it—if I had been, it would make sense.”

“Had you taken anything else? You do keep a wide variety of substances around the house.”

“Nothing, Jonathan,” he said, exasperated. “I swear. Besides, you can tell when I’m on something—did it feel like anything I’ve done before?”

Jonathan shook his head.

Deven felt an extremely uncharacteristic urge to curl up in a ball and weep, but resisted . . . barely. “Then I’m going crazy, aren’t I,” he said. “Just as I thought.”

He knew the answer to that. Whatever divine plans David had gotten them into, there was one thing none of them could escape whether mortal or not: time.

Deven, it appeared, was running out. He should have had another fifty years or so, but given the life he’d had, it made sense that he would start to fall apart earlier. It was only a matter of time before he shut down completely—either that or he would pass into a psychotic state and have to be put down like a rabid animal.

“I’m sorry,” he said softly. “I wish I knew a way to unbind us so you wouldn’t be chained to me for this. You’ve already dealt with enough because of me.”

He felt a hand on his head, moving around to his face, and looked up; Jonathan’s eyes were bright, anguished. “Do you really think I would want to live? And would you make me, after what Miranda went through?”

“I just want it over,” Deven said. His own eyes were burning, and before he could stop it, a tear ran down his face, onto Jonathan’s hand. “If I asked, would you—”

His phone chimed; he didn’t even have to look to know it was one of the Elite on Haven duty. “Yes?” he asked, wiping his eyes and sniffing.

“Sire, there’s a . . . person . . . here to see you.”

Deven and Jonathan exchanged a quizzical look. “Can you be a little more specific, Elite Twelve?”

“I think you’d better see for yourself.”

“All right . . . I’m on my way.” Deven shook his head, completely nonplussed. “What the hell was that about?”

Jonathan frowned. “We should both go. Give me two minutes to put clothes on.”

Moments later they left the suite, headed for the front doors of the Haven. The novelty of the situation momentarily banished the despair from Deven’s mind, and about a dozen possible scenarios occurred to him, each one less likely than the last. Very few people in the Shadow World would know how to find the Haven, and even fewer would have the temerity to just show up on the doorstep unannounced.

Elite 12 was waiting for them near the doors. “I showed him into the reception room just over here, my Lords. He’s unarmed, as far as I can tell.”

“As far as you can tell?” Jonathan asked. “What does that mean?”

Deven reached the door first and pushed it open, readying a firm and commanding interrogation as to what exactly was . . .

He froze with a gasp. A half-step after and at his side, Jonathan halted as well.

“Good evening,” came that gentle, accented voice, sending Deven’s heart into orbit as suddenly, between one breath and the next, he remembered . . .
everything
.

Rising from a chair, his dark eyes glinting with humor at their expressions, the Elf smiled.

* * *

There were certain advantages to being the Signet’s pet Witch.

Stella settled happily in the reserved box that would give her a perfect, unobstructed view of the stage; Lark, next to her, was already agog at the first-class treatment they’d received, starting with the limo that had picked them up at Stella’s apartment, and continuing with the concierge who showed them past the people waiting in line around the block and into the posh theater, where they were offered wine, fruit, and adorable tiny pastries while they waited for their seats.

“Do you think we warded your place enough?” Lark asked as they got situated. “You could go back to the Haven, you know—they said any time.”

“I don’t think those Morningstar people are after me,” Stella told her for the tenth time, but she kept any trace of impatience out of her voice. In fact, hearing her friend’s worry for her made Stella want to hug her around the middle until she squeaked. “I’ve got my com, and an emergency signal for my phone, and a patrol team diverted to my neighborhood for the next month to be sure, but I think they’ve realized they have to change tactics—Miranda and David are just too strong for them.”

“But they can still destroy the circle until they find their last member, right?”

“Yeah. But I don’t think it’s going to be that easy. From what I hear, this Olivia is proving herself to be one tough-ass Prime.”

“That is so cool, a girl Prime,” Lark said. “Feminism finally hits the vampire world.”

The houselights dimmed, announcing it was time for everyone else in the theater to be seated; the Travis Auditorium was part of the university’s performing arts complex, and it had seating for about two thousand
people. Miranda had chosen it because it was fairly small and had a more intimate feel than a lot of her other options. She wasn’t quite ready to get back on a big public stage like the one she’d been shot on only months ago.

A large, hairy guy in a suit came out on stage, and Stella knew immediately who it was—Grizzly Behr, a local music legend, producer of Miranda’s first album and head of the Austin Live Music Association. He came out into the spotlight and gave an introduction to tonight’s performer, calling her “luminous,” “a genuine phenomenon,” and “a true survivor.”

He had no idea how true that was. Stella shook her head in amazement.

She looked across at the other luxury box and saw a familiar profile: David, sitting alone with two Elite guards standing at the door, his eyes on the stage.

Stella spared a moment of Sight—no one would notice up here—and Looked at him, curious. She’d been right; the transformation that had begun when he came back into his body was complete now, and he was once again part of a whole, energy flowing steadily from him to his Queen and back again. Only now, Stella could also See the other connections—the one to Deven that had formed long ago, and other more tenuous bonds that would connect him to all the others in Persephone’s circle of Signets, her chosen children, led by the Thirdborn.