Of Shadow Born (6 page)

“Be careful,” Miranda told her. “This is not a good world to be lost in.”

The woman’s blood was flavored with anger and Vietnamese food, and it was enough to satisfy her. Miranda carefully wiped her mouth with her sleeve in case her lips were stained and turned back the way she had come.

Was all of Austin this quiet? It was so strange that these humans were going on about their lives, oblivious that the creatures who had stood between them and death were just . . . gone. Had the Elite regrouped or were they still on lockdown? Had someone else already claimed the Signet? No . . . that couldn’t happen. She was alive.

The Queen was alive . . . and she was alone.

Miranda wavered on her feet, nausea hitting her at the thought, but she clamped down on it.
No. Not now. Think about it later. Right now just keep walking.

She should be going insane, shouldn’t she? More than that—her power should be out of control, burning her out from the inside . . . but it wasn’t. Her shields held firm, and if anything she felt stronger than she had before. This wasn’t what was supposed to happen . . . was it?

She would have to look in the database of Signet history that David was building. He might know . . .

Miranda gasped and nearly fell, knees suddenly giving out. She threw herself sideways just in time to grab a tree trunk and stay upright. Again she had to fight the pain tooth and nail:
Not now. Later. Just keep walking.

I can’t do this. I can’t . . .

I have to. Keep walking. Stand up, Queen.

She made her way back to Stella’s apartment by sheer force of will. She was concentrating so hard on the simple act of walking that at first she didn’t notice anything amiss.

As she approached the building, a slightly run-down but very Austin sort of place with lots of wind chimes and a concrete Virgin Mary birdbath, her eyes narrowed.

Stella’s door was open.

Miranda knew her mind wasn’t entirely on point right now, but she remembered very clearly locking the door when she left. The key was in her pocket.

Wary, hand moving up to the hilt of her sword, Miranda edged toward the apartment door, leaning her senses toward the building to catch any sound or flicker of emotion. She slipped around in the shadows, drawing Shadowflame slowly and silently.

She was nearly at the door when she heard a noise behind her: a car door slamming.

Miranda jerked her head toward the sound and bit her lip as she saw Stella walking toward the apartment from her beat-up old Camry; she had a paper coffee cup in one hand and her keys jingling in the other.

The Witch made a tiny squealing noise of fright when Miranda’s hand closed around her arm and hauled her away from the door.

“What the—”

“Shh.” Miranda pushed Stella behind her. “There’s someone in there.”

Stella went pale. “In my apartment?”

Miranda waved a hand to shush her again. “Stay here.”

She inched toward the door, listening hard: one person, rooting around for something, not very concerned with stealth . . . which meant they either knew Stella was out or didn’t care if she caught them. Miranda didn’t like either idea. She also didn’t like the certainty building in her mind that the intruder was a vampire.

Vampires moved differently from humans. Their energy was different. Now that she had spent the last few days completely separated from her own kind, that difference was almost startling.

She heard the intruder move toward the door and braced herself.

As soon as he cleared the threshold, Miranda’s sword was at his throat, and she said quietly, “Don’t move.”

The vampire darted sideways, trying to bolt, but Miranda was ready for him; she lashed out with her booted foot and sent him flying into the column that held up the front porch. He stumbled but regained his equilibrium and threw himself back at her with a flash of silver: Two long knives appeared in his hands.

They fought from Stella’s front door out into the courtyard, Miranda spinning in midair to avoid his blades, the intruder ducking Shadowflame with expert grace. He was obviously well trained, and though his fighting style wasn’t as graceful as what Miranda was used to, it was effective; she felt one of his knives slip past her guard and slice into her forearm.

Annoyed, Miranda pushed energy into the cut and closed it. She spun again, this time twisting the sword when it met the knives, and one of the intruder’s blades flew out of his hand, embedding blade first in the dirt nearby.

As he stepped back, trying to reach the blade, she returned his laceration with one of her own, opening a long red ribbon in his chest. He staggered, shocked, and his eyes locked on Miranda’s throat, where her Signet had fallen out of her collar and hung shining in the darkness.

The intruder’s eyes widened with realization, and before Miranda could move in for the kill, he turned and bolted.

She was so surprised that he ran, she hesitated, and he disappeared into the night while she was still gaping at the spot where he’d been.

“Son of a bitch,” she panted, sheathing Shadowflame.

Miranda stepped over to where his knife had fallen and yanked it out of the earth. Behind her she heard Stella let out a breath. “What . . . the hell . . . was that about?” the Witch wanted to know.

Miranda turned toward her, but something caught her attention: a glint in the corner of her eye, on the sidewalk in the intruder’s flight path. She bent again to get a closer look . . .

“Son of a bitch,” she said again.

She picked up the small metallic device and shook her head.

“What’s that?” Stella asked.

Miranda held it up so the Witch could see it. “An earpiece,” she said. “I’ve seen one just like it before.”

“So . . . what does that mean?”

The Queen faced the Witch, pondering the blade in her left hand and the earpiece in her right.

“It means it’s time for me to go home,” she said softly.

Three

That night Stella did arguably the first smart thing she’d done all week: She called her father.

He arrived at her place inside ten minutes, took one look at the mess of Stella’s apartment, and said, “All right, start at the beginning.”

Just then Miranda emerged from the bathroom, where she’d been washing the dried blood off her already healed arm. “Detective Maguire,” she said. “Nice to see you again.”

Stella’s dad blinked at the Queen in astonishment. “You’re alive?”

Miranda smiled slightly. “Seems that way.”

“What about—”

Miranda shook her head. “The Prime is dead,” she said, the words hollow. Stella knew she was trying to push as much distance between herself and her grief as she could, at least for now.

Maguire sat down on Stella’s couch. Stella had never seen her father look quite so bewildered. “And Faith?”

Miranda closed her eyes for a second, then said, “She’s gone.”

He stared at her for a moment. “I’m sorry,” he told her. “For your loss . . . I know the entire Shadow World is poorer for it.”

“Thank you. We have a more pressing problem, though—someone knows I’m here. I don’t know who they are or what they want, but they have this place marked, and that means your daughter isn’t safe.”

“She’ll come stay with me, then,” the detective declared.

“Dad—”

“No arguments, Stella. I’m not going to let you get eaten by these people. Just because the whole city’s been a tomb for a week doesn’t mean you should be alone—”

“A tomb?” Miranda interrupted. “There hasn’t been any gang violence, any territory battles?”

He shook his head. “I expected there to be. Everything I know about Signets tells me that after one dies there should be a surge of attacks—I had extra men on the street, even covered the Shadow District, but it’s like everyone in Austin is scared shitless.”

“Why?” Stella asked. “I mean . . . aren’t your people out there doing their jobs like always?”

Miranda sighed. “No. We have . . . had . . . protocols in place for our deaths. The Haven and our entire network is on lockdown, and all the Elite will be in hiding until either a new Prime claims the Signet or we send the recall signal. Often when a new regime takes over, they start by killing off all the old Elite and destroying anything connected to the former administration. We didn’t want to make it easy for them, so not only is the sensor network down, the Haven itself is locked tight. Even the cars are locked down.”

“So if your guys aren’t policing the streets, why aren’t all the bad vampires out there having a people-eating party?” Stella asked.

“I don’t know. But we have to assume that whoever came here knew who you are, Stella, and that means they probably know who your father is. Staying with him might not be as safe as you think.”

“Don’t worry,” the detective said sternly. “I’ve got a really big gun.”

The Queen smiled again, this time with a touch of pity. “You know that won’t help if they come for her.”

“Then what do you suggest?”

Miranda looked at Stella. “I take her back to the Haven with me.”

Both Maguires must have looked flabbergasted; the Queen chuckled. “Only for a few days. I need to recall the Elite and get the network back up, and then I can have the evidence the vampire left behind analyzed and learn more about what he wants. Once I know what I’m dealing with, we can make a more sound decision about Stella.”

“Do I get a say in this?” Stella asked.

“No,” Miranda and the detective said at the same time.

Maguire rubbed his chin, and Stella almost smiled herself; he’d always done that when he was worried about something. She suddenly felt a little amazed by her father: All this time she’d thought he was so ordinary, but he had been up to his badge in vampires, knowing what they were capable of. His constant fretting over Stella’s safety made a lot more sense now . . . Stella was fretting a bit, too.

She couldn’t help it, though—the thought of seeing where Miranda lived gave her a thrill that overrode her sense of self-preservation. Lark would shit herself when she found out.

“Can you guarantee Stella will be safe with you?” Maguire asked. “I know you regulate your employees’ feeding, but I can’t say I’m too keen on the idea of her being surrounded by vampires.”

“Whoa . . . how many vampires are we talking about?”

Miranda glanced at Stella. “About a hundred, assuming they’re all alive. I give you my word, Detective, Stella will be under guard every moment she’s there. I’ll give her a com and put her on the network so even after she’s back in town she can call for help instantly if she needs to. Believe me, I won’t let anything happen to her. We’ve . . . we’ve lost enough already.”

Finally, Maguire nodded. “What do you need from APD?”

“Right now, nothing. Let me get my people back home and get a status report on the territory; as soon as I find out anything about the intruder I’ll send you the data and you can send out an alert to your officers.”

Which was how, two hours later, Stella wound up driving her car out Loop 360, a duffel bag full of clothes in the trunk, a cat carrier in the backseat, and a vampire riding shotgun.

She left Lark a voice mail calmly explaining the situation, though she anticipated a frantic call whenever her friend managed to check her phone. She also called in a “family emergency” to Foxglove at the shop; Foxglove knew her father was a cop, so she would probably assume something had happened to him. Stella hated lying, but she tried to be as vague as possible, hoping she could come up with something close to the truth by the time she got back to town.

Stella had no idea how to act in a car with her idol, but within ten minutes on the road, after giving her basic directions, Miranda fell asleep. With her head leaning against the window and her feet tucked up under her in the seat, the Queen looked so vulnerable and young—except for her face. Even asleep, there was pain in her face, and a kind of exhaustion Stella couldn’t even fathom.

How old was she really? Stella wondered, eyes on the road ahead. Miranda’s website bio said she was thirty, but how much of that was actual fact? She could be a hundred years old for all anyone knew, and looking at her now, Stella could believe it. There was so much weight on her heart . . . Stella remembered the night the call had come about her stepmother, shot in a robbery, and how she and her father had wandered the earth like ghosts for months . . . What must it be like to lose a soul mate?

“How old were you?”

Stella started, shooting Miranda a sideways glance. “Hey, no mind reading.”

A slight smile. “I can’t always help it. Plus . . . after all that suicidal energy work you were doing on me, I think we’re linked for a while. You might want to keep an eye on your shields for a few days.”

Stella bit her lip, then said, “I was twelve.”

“I was fourteen when my mother died . . . but she had been lost to me for a long time before that.”

“Lost, as in . . .”

“As in, committed to a mental institution. It turns out we had the same gift, but no one ever recognized hers for what it was.”

“Who recognized yours?”

Miranda closed her eyes again. “David.”

Stella immediately cursed herself for asking. “Sorry.”

“It’s all right.”

“Can I ask . . . I mean . . . how did you meet?”

The Queen looked out over the darkened Hill Country, and her eyes were bright with tears, but her voice was steady enough as she said, “In line at the grocery store.”

Stella laughed. “No, really?”

She gave a flicker of a smile. “Yes. He was buying ice cream.”

“So you can eat . . . other stuff?”

A nod. “Some of us do. Too much can make us sick, though. Most of us stick to liquids.”

“When you met, were you already a vampire?”

“No. Not for about a year.”

“Does it hurt—turning into one?”

“Yes.” Miranda looked at her gravely. “It was my choice, but it was excruciatingly painful . . . and it’s not an easy life, or a kind one. So don’t get any ideas.”

Stella laughed in spite of herself. “No freaking way. I’m not some goofy romantic teenager. I have no desire to be immortal.”