Shadowflame (13 page)

She raised an eyebrow at him. “Why are you so free with the advice? Why don’t you give me the same grief he does?”

Jonathan snorted. “In case you haven’t noticed, we’re not the same person. I’m a Consort, which means I read people very well, so I knew you were fantastic from the get-go. Deven tends to reserve judgment. But the worst thing you can do is let him intimidate you.”

“I hate to say this, and I hope it doesn’t upset you, but right now I don’t really care about his respect so much as I care about my foot planted on his ass.”

The Consort broke into a loud and contagious laugh that had her laughing, too. “All right,” he said. “You kick his ass, Miranda. He’s earned it.”

They clinked their bottles again and leaned back against the bricks to finish their beer as the cold night kept turning overhead.

Neither of them spoke for a while, but finally just to break the silence David observed, “You cut your hair off.”

Deven lowered his glass. “Yes.”

“How’s being a roadie for the Cure working out for you?”

Deven shot him the finger, and they grinned at each other. “You’re looking well,” Deven noted. “Much better than last time I saw you.” Crossing one knee over the other, he added, “Of course, now you have your lovely firebrand to keep you warm.”

David’s eyes narrowed. “Are you jealous, Deven?”

For once, Deven lowered his gaze first. “The Council is all atwitter about your break with the Northeast. I haven’t heard much, but so far the gossip has been in your favor. Considering everyone hates Hart, it’s not surprising, but still, the fallout is going to be interesting.”

David didn’t point out the change in subject. Deven had, without saying a word, answered the question. “I’m not going to lose sleep over Hart. Miranda’s actions may have been rash, but they were right.”

Deven smiled. “At long last you have a mate who shares your idealism. I hope that she doesn’t become as cynical as I am once she’s outlived her humanity.”

“You’re more human than you like to admit.”

“There’s no need to be insulting, David.” Dev sipped his drink and added, “She has no reason to be threatened by me.”

“Oh? After you show up and practically piss on me, when I hadn’t even told her about us yet—”

“You hadn’t
told
her?” Deven sounded genuinely incredulous, a rarity for him. “We were together ten years, I was your first and only long-term male lover, and you didn’t tell her? What the hell have you two been talking about for the last three months, then? Horses and circuit boards?”

David had to admit that Deven was right, and saying that he’d expected Faith to have related the story to Miranda wasn’t entirely honest . . . he had thought that, true, but knowing Miranda, if she
had
known, she would have wanted to talk about it with him as soon as she heard the story.

“I feel like a bit of an idiot about it,” David said a little irritably. “I think part of me wanted to play it off like one of my many disastrous love affairs instead of what it really was.”

Deven’s eyes locked on his. “And what was it, David?”

David stared at him . . . God, he’d forgotten how good it felt to fall into those eyes, and how dangerous it was, for they went on forever and there was no way out. “It was a tragedy,” David replied softly. “Perhaps the greatest tragedy of my life.”

“Worse than Elizabeth?”

“Yes.”

“Worse than Anna?”

David shut his eyes against the memory, stacking the pain of that loss against the pain of losing Deven . . . “Yes. You put me back together after Anna, but would you care to guess who put me back together after you?”

Deven sighed. “No one did. You were alone.”

“Exactly. All those years on my own, living with your ghost, knowing you were happy with your new Consort and I had suddenly become useless to you, and you really wonder why I didn’t want to tell Miranda about it?”

Deven looked like he wanted to say something, but paused, then told David, “You don’t need to protect her from me. She’s a strong, capable woman who can fend for herself.”

“I know that.”

“But she is young and needs to learn to pick her battles. She could have found a less combative way to help that girl, and you could have had time to find out what Hart was really doing here.”

“I did, actually, or at least part of it. He’s having a little assassination problem—he claims the Red Shadow is behind the deaths of several of his Elite.”

Deven’s brows knitted in surprise. “Based on what?”

“He found something—a silver earpiece. I tried to analyze it but it had a self-destruct mechanism and nearly put my eye out last night. Hart claims it’s Shadow technology, but he has only hunches and hearsay to back it up. He also thought I had something to do with it because of my predilection for gadgetry and because Miranda learned to fight from a vampire claiming to have been a former member of the Shadow.”

Deven looked even more dubious. “They don’t have former members, do they? I thought joining the Shadow was a lifelong commitment.”

“Faith said she met Sophie in a bar, and they hit it off and got drunk together. In the course of the night Sophie told her she was ex-Shadow.”

“I find that unlikely,” said Deven. “The girl may have been a hell of a warrior, but if you were the Alpha, how would you react knowing one of your employees was spilling her guts in public?”

“There is that. I’m guessing that the Alpha would have killed her—but Sophie died in the battle here, months after she told Faith who she was.”

“Not terribly efficient for an organization that’s supposed to be untraceable,” Deven pointed out.

“How much do you know about them, then?”

The Prime circled his glass around in his hand, the ice clinking. “I’ve heard all the usual rumors. All that can really be verified is that they’re a network of operatives who hire out to human clients for insane amounts of money. They answer to a single individual called the Alpha. They always work alone, and I’ve heard none of them even know each other. Code names, that kind of thing, all very cloakand-dagger. I can’t imagine why they would start picking off Hart’s Elite, unless a human has a grudge against him and hired them, which I admit isn’t impossible.”

“Do you think that an earpiece like that is something they’d use?”

“If the stories are true and they’re all solo, with whom would they be communicating?”

“The Alpha?”

“Maybe. But it seems like it would be more efficient to use phones or, perhaps, something like your coms. An earpiece is too easily lost.”

“That’s what I thought. Plus, they’re supposed to be the ultra-Elite; one of them just dropping evidence like that is pretty sloppy.”

“And completely out of line with their MO,” Deven added. “As I understand it, most of their work is totally covert, but sometimes people hire them not just to kill someone but to send a message. In that case they always leave something behind, a calling card of sorts.”

“Which is?”

Deven knocked back the rest of his whiskey and reached for the bottle. “The victim’s left hand.”

David dropped his glass.

Seven

For the first time in her memory, Cora was alone.

She sprawled on her back on the huge soft bed that was miraculously all hers—not only did she not have to share it, she could sleep there as much as she wanted, roll around and disrupt the covers, even jump up and down if she liked. It had thick blankets and velvety sheets that kept her warm all day long, and it was about the most wondrous thing she had ever seen.

She could sleep all day without the fear that sweaty hands would seize her and drag her across the room. She didn’t have to listen to the other girls wheezing and whimpering. There was no screaming, no cursing, only the sound of the fire crackling.

Wonders were hardly scarce here, though. She had an entire room to herself! There was a guard outside, but he didn’t bother her except to knock on the door and bring her blood.

All the blood she wanted!

She drank so much the first time, just because she could, that she was sick to her stomach, but after that she took things slowly and carefully and managed to keep down more and more each time she fed. She kept the leftovers in a small refrigerator in the room, and warmed them in the microwave as the servants had shown her, but if she had wanted, she could have requested a brand-new bag every day. Every day! Just for her!

Even that next night she felt stronger. Her limbs no longer shook. She wasn’t freezing all the time. Her skin felt less stretched over her bones.

She spent hours in the large bathtub, just soaking and splashing like a child, or standing under the scalding hot shower spray and scrubbing herself over and over with lavender-scented soap. Then she dressed herself in the nondescript but comfortable clothes the Elite had brought her: black cotton pants and a short-sleeved shirt which were apparently standard issue for sleeping and working out at the Haven. She had never worn pants before, but she loved them. She had plush socks on her feet and a hairbrush all her own.

It was an unbelievable amount of luxury for a woman who had spent so many years sharing a room with eight other women.

Those few people she had encountered so far seemed taken aback by her naïve appreciation for such commonalities, but for her they weren’t common.

She had not yet seen the Queen again, which was fine by her; in person, the Queen had been terrifying, though she had swept in like an avenging angel—or goddess—and taken Cora in like her own fledgling. The Prime, too, had been frightening, but he had given her a reassuring smile and spoken to her in her own language, a courtesy she would never have expected for a nothing like her.

Cora had been spared a last meeting with the Master, but she knew he was gone, just as she had known there would be consequences even before she found out what had happened to the other girls. He might come back for her, or kill her. He might simply abandon her and find another slave. But for now, at least, she was at peace.

Finally she began to get a little bored, or at least a little interested in what lay beyond her door. She didn’t want to interact with anyone if she could help it, but she was curious about this huge place that was, for the moment, her home.

She poked her head out and saw that her guard had gone; it was shift change, so another would be along in a few minutes. She knew they would be unhappy if she wandered too far afield. But surely it wouldn’t hurt just to walk down the hall and back again? She wasn’t strong enough to get much farther than that anyway.

Cora took the hooded jacket that had been given to her and put it on to keep the late autumn chill off her skinny arms. She had no shoes, but she didn’t intend to go outside, and the floors here were so immaculate she could have eaten off them. Certainly the Haven she had lived in was never this clean. Here there was no dust, no underlying reek of unwashed bodies and sex. She smelled furniture polish, fireplace smoke, and candle wax.

She still had to move slowly. Years of starvation and abuse had left her weaker than a newborn barn cat, and sometimes her legs simply gave out beneath her and she toppled to the floor, bruised and embarrassed.

The hallway turned out not to be terribly interesting. It was lined with closed doors, but she spent some time looking at the artwork and decorative objects as she made her way along the corridor. She peeked into a few open doors, finding a few unused bedrooms, a chamber full of antique weapons, and a study of some sort.

Finally she took a left-hand turn down a hallway that had far more light than hers. She realized what it was: windows.

Almost giddy with excitement, Cora made her way toward them, and her breath caught when she looked out. She hadn’t seen the outside world in so long . . . she had had glimpses when the van carrying her and the other three girls arrived here, but before that, it had been years. There were no windows in the harem room. The Master hated natural light, even from the moon, and didn’t want to give them any ideas about escape or suicide, not that they could have if they had been so inclined.

She stared out, hand to her mouth.

It was so beautiful.

The hallway was on the second floor, looking out over a garden labyrinth and beyond it, a forest. The stars were burning in their diamond finery, and by the half-moon’s light she could see deer picking at the outermost shrubs. The garden was full of night-blooming flowers, and though she didn’t know their names, some were familiar, whispering to her of a long-lost life lived on grassy hillsides, punctuated with youthful laughter and the sound of cows lowing in the distance.

Cora stood there staring at the world, her mind whirling, her heart so full it hurt, for a long time. She watched owls swoop down from the trees to snatch small creatures from the grass. She watched a buck with gleaming silver antlers make his regal way along the edge of the wood. She watched the stars turn, and she wept with silent joy.

She was so absorbed in witnessing the night that she didn’t hear footsteps, but she felt someone move up beside her.

She shrank back, turning, ready to run—or try to run, whatever her body would let her do.

“Don’t be afraid,” he said softly. “I won’t hurt you.”

Now, instead of staring at the window, she stared at him.

He was a young-looking, slender vampire, stranger than anything she had ever seen at the Master’s Haven. He had an angelic face run through in several places with silver rings, and his hair was dark; he wore a short-sleeved shirt that showed tattoos covering both of his arms from wrist to shoulder. On one side was an angel with a sword; on the other, a winged demon holding a dove.

She saw the amulet around his neck, this one glowing faintly emerald green, and she swallowed hard around her fear, dropping painfully to her knees.

“Forgive me, Sire,” she whispered.

“For what?” he asked curiously.

“I did not avert my eyes.”

He made a disgusted noise and muttered something about a dickless bastard, then gently lifted her chin with his hand so their eyes met. “Never avert your eyes to anyone, Cora,” he told her. He spoke nearly flawless Italian save for the lingering traces of some lilting accent. “Now, get up.”

She obeyed, wiping her eyes.

He joined her at the window, looking out as she had. “This place is magnificent,” he said, maintaining his distance but speaking to her casually. “I wish my own Haven had a tenth of its beauty.”

Cora swallowed again and asked, haltingly, “Where do you live, my Lord?”

“California. I think you’d like it; our home reminds me a lot of Italy.”

“How . . . how did you know my name?”

He smiled. “I heard all about you from Prime Solomon and his Queen. Your room is down the hall from ours.”

“Your Queen is here with you?”

“My Consort,” he corrected. “His name is Jonathan.”

“Oh . . .” She suddenly knew who he was; she had heard the Master ranting about him, his deviant ways, his perversions . . . he had made him out to be some kind of twisted monster, not . . . like this. “You are Prime Deven.”

“I am. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Cora.”

He took her hand and kissed it lightly, and she blushed. It was the most courtesy a man had ever shown her. She had been so afraid of the Prime of the South, but this Deven was different; she knew by instinct that he had no interest in doing the things to her that Hart had done, no interest in touching any woman out of rage or lust. It was comforting.

“My Master hates you,” she said.

Deven chuckled. “I know. It gives me such pride, as does knowing I could tear his limbs off with one hand. He likes to think he’s strong, but if he were half as powerful as he claims to be, he would have laid me low long ago. He knows he can’t. And, Cora . . . he isn’t your master now. You are a free woman, your own master.”

Cora digested this for a moment, but it left her feeling shaky in her stomach, panicky. “What am I to do?” she whispered.

“Nothing, for now,” he told her. There was such caring in his eyes, which in the darkness glittered like amethysts. “For now, concentrate on becoming strong and healthy. The Pair will let you stay as long as you want to, no questions asked. You’re safe under their care.”

“Why is everyone here so kind to me?” she blurted, then felt her cheeks growing even more scarlet. “I’m no one. I don’t matter to anybody.”

Deven put his hand on her face, and she felt warmth and strength flowing into her body that helped her stand a little straighter and get her tears under control.

Standing there with his palm touching her skin, she felt something . . . something stirred in her, and an image flashed in her mind’s eye: She saw a young man with deep violet eyes and auburn hair, standing at the edge of a wood with one hand on the trunk of a tree, smiling at her . . . no, not at her . . . at Deven. The image was gone as soon as it came, and she had no idea how to interpret it, or if it was in any way real.

“You matter,” he said, startling her out of her mental tumble. “I assure you, you do. As to why . . . well, I can tell you that the Prime and Queen are both good people, very protective of those who cannot protect themselves. At heart that is why the Signets exist, but most of us have forgotten that. And, Cora . . . I don’t have the level of sight that my Consort has, but I know one thing: You have work to do in this world. I know it.”

She was shaken by what she had seen—and all the more by his words—but she had a feeling, deep in her belly, that she shouldn’t speak of it. Not yet. “You do?”

He smiled again. “Yes, I do. Now . . . will you be able to find your room again, when you’re ready to rest? It’s just around this corner, five doors down on the right. And if you go another two doors and cross the hall, you’ll find us. We’ll be here a few days, so if you need anything, you need only come ask.”

Sniffling, she nodded. “Thank you, Sire.”

He stepped back and bowed. “Good night, young one.”

Cora wiped her eyes one last time on the sleeve of her jacket, then turned back to the window, where she stayed until her legs could barely hold her up, then made her slow way back to her room, smiling.

“Wait, wait . . . you’re telling me David had a boyfriend?”

Miranda nodded. “More like a husband, really. And he’s a total jackass.”

“Wow.” Kat leaned back in her chair, watching Miranda wriggle into the black vinyl corset top, shaking her head in disbelief. “That’s crazy. I mean, yeah, he’s a little swishy, but—”

“You think David’s swishy?” Miranda asked, pausing, a bit out of breath from trying to get the damn thing zipped. “I never noticed that.”

“It’s nothing in particular, just a . . . quality.”

“Well, I had no idea. The whole thing completely caught me by surprise.” Miranda pulled the top into place, then leaned over to wiggle her breasts into it properly. “Is it wrong that I feel weird about it?”

Kat made a face. “Mira, of
course
you feel weird. Think about it: In relationships we form concepts of people based on their behavior and what we know about their histories. Those concepts can be accurate or not, and they can be healthy or not, but regardless, if something shakes them, it shakes us, too. You knew David one way, and it turns out that way wasn’t entirely on target, so now you have to adjust. Given how close you are, that makes it even harder.”

Miranda faced her friend. “Well?”

Kat frowned, eyeing the outfit. “I liked the first one better—the red lace brings out your eyes, makes the green more intense.”

Miranda wished for a moment that she could see herself; instead she was in a dressing room with a curtain pulled over the mirror and Kat there to critique her. She’d never really liked shopping, and she liked shopping for stage clothes even less. Luckily she trusted Kat’s judgment. “You’re right. Let me try the other one with these pants—if I can get the pants zipped. Jesus, Goth girls are skinny. At least I’ve got an ass.”

“And a killer rack,” Kat commented. “Especially in that getup.”

Miranda ran her hands down over her torso to smooth the shirt, which wasn’t a real corset; she couldn’t wear a real one onstage and sing the way she did. There were also limits to the cleavage she could manage with a guitar hanging over her middle.

“I’ll bet that there are much more disturbing things in David’s past than a jerk boyfriend.” Kat returned to the subject, handing her back the first top. “He’s three hundred fifty years old, after all. And he probably didn’t get where he is by being nice.”

“No, he didn’t.” Miranda hadn’t told Kat much about David’s past, not even how he had gotten his Signet; she wasn’t sure if Kat was ready for that. “He’s been through a lot and done a lot.”

“Well, if you can deal with all of that, you can deal with a little swish. It’s not like it’s a bad thing. Bi is the new hotness, you know.”

Miranda rolled her eyes. “Only if it’s two women in a porno movie for straight guys.”

“And as for the ex being a jackass—if David still likes him, and his hubby is a great guy like you said and loves him, he must not be all bad. Maybe you should try to find some common ground. Besides David, I mean, because that could get weird.”