Queen of Shadows

by Dianne Sylvan

  A note of hysteria entered her voice. For two weeks she’d had the comfort of his power standing between her and the madness, but now it was just her will, and she knew it wasn’t strong enough. She’d never been strong enough. Just like her mother . . .

  “You can do it. Listen to me, Miranda. You can.”

  “I can’t . . . I can’t . . .”

  The protected room wasn’t enough. Any second now the walls would fall and the voices would pour into her, and that would be the end of it—she’d go mad, she’d die, and never have that precious silence again—

  Heart racing, gasping for breath as if she were drowning, she flailed in her chair, panic so thick and black around her that she could no longer hear anything, or see, and there was nothing left but screaming.

  She came back to herself slowly, barely even aware that she was once again shielded and no longer cold.

  For a moment she kept her eyes shut, listening. There was a drum beating against her ear, and everything else was so quiet . . . she clung to the tentative peace jealously for as long as it lasted before awareness crept back in.

  She blinked and tried to make sense of her surroundings. She was still in the training room, but everything seemed very tall all of a sudden, and the chair was hard beneath her butt.

  Floor. Not chair.

  Miranda moved her hand over smooth fabric, squeezing slightly, feeling muscle beneath. There was an arm around her. She was leaning into someone’s shoulder.

  She drew back and looked into his stormy blue eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said hoarsely.

  One of his hands was in her hair, toying with a few strands. “You have to do this,” he said to her softly. “You can’t stay here forever.”

  “Are you sure?” she kidded wearily.

  Something passed through his eyes, and he sighed. “I’m sure.” The hand moved down to her arm, then lifted to brush a stray lock of hair from her eyes. “No one can save you except you, Miranda.”

  “You saved me once.”

  He smiled briefly. “No, I didn’t. I only brought you in out of the rain.”

  “But what if . . . what if I learn how to do this, and I get better, and I go back to Austin, and . . .”

  “There’s no way to know the future except to step into it. But I promise you, I won’t let you go until I’m sure you’ll be safe.”

  She laid her head back on his shoulder and closed her eyes. “Don’t let go yet.”

  Miranda sat on her bed with her guitar, her fingers absently plucking a few notes, her heart, as her mother would have said long ago, as low as the rent on a burning building.

  She stared off into space without thinking for the better part of an hour before a knock at the door made her look up.

  “Come in,” she said listlessly.

  Almond-shaped eyes and shining black hair announced Faith’s arrival, as did the light glinting on her weapons.

  The Second looked her up and down and said, “He wasn’t kidding. You do look like hell.”

  Miranda shrugged. “Just losing my will to live, thanks.”

  “I take it the lesson ended badly.”

  She rested her chin on her guitar. “You might say that.”

  “Try again tomorrow,” Faith said. “This kind of thing takes practice—nobody gets it right overnight.”

  “I think I’m hopeless.”

  “You are if you say you are. If I were you, I’d say something else.”

  Miranda wanted to throw her guitar on the floor in a fit of pique, but the instrument didn’t deserve that kind of treatment. There was nothing in the room she was willing to break, either—the servants would just end up cleaning up after her, and she didn’t like that. “Everybody around here is just full of clever advice,” Miranda muttered irritably. “It’s like a house full of Goth Yodas.”

  “I’m not here to give you advice. I was thinking more along the lines of a distraction.” A hint of mischief appeared in Faith’s eyes. “Want to see something fun?”

  “Only if it involves getting blind drunk.”

  “Come on,” Faith urged, taking the guitar from her and putting it in its case, then pulling her to her feet. “Grab your sweater and get moving or I’ll be late.”

  Miranda knew a lost argument when she came up against one. She didn’t waste her remaining energy protesting.

  For such a small woman, Faith covered a lot of ground very quickly. Miranda had to practically run to keep up with her as they left the Prime’s wing of the Haven, then left the building itself. Miranda was familiar with most of the garden paths by now, but Faith took her along a different one, leading toward one of the larger outbuildings.

  “Now, you have to stay where I put you, and keep out of sight. Got that?”

  “But where are we going?”

  Faith opened a locked side door with her com and ushered Miranda inside.

  “Over here.”

  At first it was too dark to see, but she could definitely hear; there were the sounds of a crowd, maybe dozens of people, above and before her, milling around and talking among themselves. Slivers of light penetrated the gloom, and Miranda puzzled out that she was under some sort of bleachers. She chose not to think of the possibility of spiders.

  Faith tugged her arm and maneuvered her into a corner where a larger pool of light was falling. “Stand here, and you can look without being spotted. Can you see?”

  Miranda looked out through the gap in the slots at the huge room bordered on all sides by bleachers like the ones she was hiding under. It strongly resembled a gym, down to the geometric figures painted on its floor—there was a central circle and several marked-off circles beyond it.

  “Vampires play basketball?”

  “No, no. Those are sparring rings. This is where the Elite holds group combat training. If you look over to your right, you’ll see the latest batch of cadets.”

  She did. Seven people stood more or less in a line, some looking very nervous. They were all dressed identically in a simpler version of Faith’s uniform, dyed gray instead of black. None of them wore a com. There were four women and three men of a range of physical ages and ethnicities, but the one thing they all had in common was that they were in fantastic shape.

  “Stay here until I come back for you,” Faith instructed.

  Then she was gone before Miranda could ask what the hell was going on.

  At the far end of the room, a pair of double doors swung open, and Faith marched in, flanked by several more Elite. The room fell silent.

  Miranda scanned the crowd. Were all of them here? How many Elite were there, anyway? If there were that many working for the Prime, how many damned vampires lived in Austin, and how in the world did they all stay fed?

  “Welcome,” Faith addressed the assembly. Her voice carried easily throughout the broad expanse of the room. “Honored Elite, you have been called here tonight to witness the final selection of three new brothers in arms. Each of you has stood here awaiting this moment, and each of you triumphed. Tonight we cheer the triumph of the new guard.”

  The crowd applauded.

  The Second turned her attention to the seven recruits. “Twenty of you began this trial a month ago. Now you are seven. In an hour you will be three, and you will join the best of the best in the Shadow World. You will be inducted as full Elite warriors, pledging your lives and your loyalty to the Prime of this territory.

  “To be a part of the Court is to be exalted among vampire kind. Allies of the Signet have always been the strongest, fiercest, and most cunning. To be Elite is to stand out even from the exalted—we are the Prime’s hundred swords. Those of you who are victorious tonight will take your places in an Elite that is the envy of the world.”

  Miranda watched Faith, fascinated by how utterly she held the others in her sway. Not one dared to look away from her, and they didn’t look like they wanted to; if they were the best, Faith was better than the best, and seeing her among them, Miranda finally saw it. The weapons didn’t m
ake the Second—the Second made the weapons.

  She envied Faith. She envied them all their shared purpose and strength.

  When her speech concluded, the Elite applauded again, this time with cheering, and Miranda could feel the sincerity of their shouts. These weren’t a mindless army of soldiers just obeying orders. They believed in something. They were willing to die to defend their leader and their home.

  The crowd went quiet again as the trial began. First, the recruits were pitted against each other; there was some sort of rating system at work, like at the Olympics, but Miranda had no idea what went into it. As the recruits fought, Faith and several other Elite observed them, making notes.

  Right away Miranda could see two standout warriors among them. The first was a middle-aged-looking black man, the second a rail-thin strawberry blonde who looked like she was about sixteen. They had radically different fighting styles, but both were a blur of motion with and without blades.

  After about fifteen minutes Faith called a halt to the sparring, which Miranda realized had mostly been a warm-up; now Faith ordered one of the recruits into the main ring, and one of the Elite went up against him.

  Miranda had never been athletic. She’d taken ballroom dancing in college on a lark with her boyfriend, but that was about it. She watched the fighting mesmerized, the graceful figures like a ballet—well, a ballet with swords. The clang of metal on metal was sharp and rhythmic, the vampires moving faster than in any movie martial arts she’d ever seen.

  Her heart was in her throat, constricted with strange regret. Things would have been so different now if she had known how to do any of this that night in the alley. She imagined herself as the strawberry blonde in the ring, spinning around to kick a man in the stomach, knocking the blade out of his hand. She imagined what it would be like to be so strong that no man would ever try to hurt her again.

  The crowd oohed and ahhed as if they were watching a football game. Adrenaline was thick in the air.

  The young-looking recruit sent her opponent to the ground bleeding. A cheer went up.

  Faith nodded to her, and the girl stopped, bowed, and returned to the line where the others stood.

  It went on like that until each of the recruits had fought one of the Elite. Then Faith spent a moment conferring with the black-clad warriors, some of whom looked a bit worse for wear, some of whom had won their matches—and announced two cuts from the list. Miranda didn’t see where the two eliminated recruits went; they were there one minute and gone the next. Hopefully they were just escorted off the premises and not anything more sinister.

  Miranda was pleased to see that both of her picks were still in the running. She wondered if any of the Elite had bets going; this was way too much like Ass-Kicking American Idol for them not to.

  The best was yet to come. Next, the five remaining recruits had to face Faith.

  All at once.

  Each of them took up a position around the edge of the central sparring ring, with Faith in the center.

  Now the crowd couldn’t keep still. The minute the fight began, they were shouting, some chanting Faith’s name, others whooping and hollering. A great many were on their feet.

  At first the recruits didn’t seem to know what to do. Nobody wanted to go first, Miranda supposed, and it hadn’t occurred to them to take her on together. They were too worried about their own skins and their futures to consider cooperation.

  The man Miranda had been betting on finally lost his patience and dove in.

  That was a mistake.

  Faith stepped sideways, letting the man’s momentum carry him past her, and dropped to the ground, her leg flashing out. The man stumbled over it, his inhuman grace suddenly becoming a very human clumsiness, but he corrected himself and turned in time to avoid stepping over the line. He got himself back together and attacked again, this time with considerably more acumen.

  Meanwhile Miranda saw one of the others looking pale and scared witless; his nerves were going to make him careless, too. He drew his knife and lunged at Faith while her back was to him.

  Miranda almost gave herself away yelling a warning to the Second, but it wasn’t needed. Faith knew exactly what the kid was doing, and she parried a swing from the older man and spun around, steel flashing toward the kid on the follow-through.

  Blood. The recruit lurched to the left, dropping his knife as his hands flew to his side. Crimson soaked his gray uniform. He tried to pick his blade back up, but it slipped out of his bloody hands, and before he could try again Faith whirled and kicked him hard in the shoulder, sending him sprawling, half in and half out of the ring.

  The crowd booed the recruit. Miranda wanted to boo, too. He’d done a cowardly thing trying to stab the Second in the back. Cowardly and incredibly stupid.

  An Elite grabbed the recruit by the arm and dragged him bodily out of the ring, and that was the last Miranda saw of him.

  Faith didn’t miss a beat. The other man came at her as she turned to face him, but his fist met only empty air. Still, he hadn’t lost any strength or speed, and he’d recovered nicely from his first fumble. After another minute Faith spoke to him, and he froze where he stood, then bowed and stepped back to the edge of the ring.

  Faith hadn’t even broken a sweat.

  They were down to four now, which meant only one was left to eliminate. Faith took on the blonde girl next, and as Miranda expected, she did well; Faith disarmed her twice, but never knocked her off her feet, and Miranda thought she saw approval in Faith’s face.

  The other two were a man and a woman, the former Hispanic and the latter black, and it was clear after Faith engaged the man that he wasn’t nearly as skilled as the others. He was good, no doubt about it, but there was some elemental grace lacking in his movements that the rest had in spades. She didn’t send him away when she was done with him, but Miranda knew that unless the last woman was dreadful, he’d be gone in a minute.

  Luckily the last woman, who was a tall and insanely gorgeous dark-skinned goddess that every man in the room was staring at, didn’t disappoint. To the shock of everyone assembled, the recruit actually managed to disarm Faith.

  “Hand to hand,” Faith retorted. The recruit nodded and dropped her own weapon.

  Now the true talent showed itself; Faith was wicked with blades, but her straight-up martial arts skills were unbelievable. She seemed to have four arms, all of them spinning at once, never standing still long enough for the woman to land a punch. It was almost as if Faith could see the woman’s moves before they were made, and simply not be there. Was it some sort of psychic gift of vampirism, seeing just enough of the future to know how to fight?

  Finally, Faith raised her arm, and the din in the room faded again. She was neither panting nor slouching, unlike the recruits, who all looked like they were about to fall over.

  “Honored Elite,” Faith announced, “We have chosen our three new brothers. Will each of you step forward, please.”

  She read each name, and a round of enthusiastic applause followed the recruit to the center of the sparring circle. The strawberry blonde, the older black man, and the Hispanic man all took their places behind Faith, who praised their skill and perseverance, then introduced them each by name to the rest of the Elite. The applause was thunderous.

  Miranda frowned. Why had they picked that last guy? The woman was a superior warrior—even Miranda recognized that. The woman looked shocked, but she didn’t embarrass herself; one of the Elite took her arm and led her back away from the others. Unlike the first few culls, she wasn’t taken out of the room. Maybe there was some kind of consolation prize or understudy role for her.

  Then the double doors sailed open again, and silence washed over every mind in the room, all conversations cut off midword, as the crowd, as one, turned to face the door.

  Miranda’s heart leapt.

  David Solomon entered the gym, followed by his own personal guards at a respectful distance. He wore his long coat, the Signet out where God and
everyone could see, the light that shone from it brighter than usual. Every inch of him radiated the regal bearing of one born to the crown.

  He strode into the room, across the floor, to the sparring ring where Faith stood with the three new Elite-to-be. As he passed each section of the bleachers, everyone on it stood, until every vampire in the room was on his or her feet in the presence of the Prime.

  When he stopped, his gaze swept over the crowd, and as one, they bowed to him. He gave them a nod in return, and they were free to sit back down.

  Then he faced the three, his cold eyes fixed on each of them in turn. They were clearly terrified of him, but to their credit they didn’t try to avoid the steel of his gaze.

  He moved slowly toward them, walking from the strawberry blonde, past the older man, to the last man chosen.

  Miranda’s eyes didn’t even have time to register the movement. Without a word, David turned, reached under his coat, and with a flash of steel, spun around and sliced off the man’s head with a curved sword.

  A gasp went up, and Miranda jumped back with a cry and almost lost her footing. Even over the noise she heard the sound of the head hitting the floor, followed by the body.

  She dove back for the gap so she could see again, just in time for Faith to seize the man’s sleeve and jerk it back, revealing a tattoo that caused another roomwide gasp.

  David never spoke. He simply let the others see, allowing the tattoo to speak for itself, and stood by while two Elite dragged the corpse away by its feet, leaving a smear of blood behind. Miranda didn’t see what happened to the head.

  The Prime gestured, and the other recruit was nudged into the spot where the man had stood. Her face was pale, but she swallowed hard and took her place, standing up straight. When David’s attention returned to her, she held his gaze and bowed. He smiled at her, approving, and inclined his head toward Faith.

  The Second was completely unfazed by the execution. “Kneel,” she commanded, and the three obeyed.

  “Swear now, before these witnesses and before your Prime. Repeat, and take these words to heart: I do hereby pledge my blood and my life to the Signet.”