Queen of Shadows

by Dianne Sylvan

For the hundredth time she considered giving up on this little mission and trying proper channels . . . but that would involve filling out endless paperwork, and worse yet, dealing with her father. She’d much rather break the law.

  The whole place was government-issue circa 1970, the predominant color hospital green. Everything was dingy despite the pathetic attempts to liven up the place with encouraging posters and announcements on neon paper. There were hardly any patients here anymore; the county facility had given way to a more modern, more politically savvy building farther from downtown that looked more like a school than a concentration camp. This place was slated to close next summer.

  A bored-looking young woman sat playing solitaire on the front desk computer, but Miranda walked right past her to the building map. It looked for a second like the receptionist might have noticed her, but Miranda paused, infusing the energy of her shield with what Sophie called a deflector, the subtle mental suggestion to look the other way, and the woman went back to her game with a yawn. It was one of the little shielding tricks Miranda had been working on and apparently was one of the primary ways vampires moved through the city unnoticed by humanity when combined with their incredible speed and grace.

  Miranda’s speed and grace were questionable, but one thing she did have was power.

  She scrutinized the map until she found what she was looking for, tucked her guitar case behind a listless potted ficus tree, and walked right down the hallway, her boots clomping purposefully on the linoleum floor. She was still in her stage clothes because they made her feel tough and untouchable: she’d borrowed the look from Sophie and rather liked it, at least for a few hours a night. Black pants, black boots, black corset top with rivets and buckles, heavy silver jewelry, and a lot of makeup she’d retouched after sweating it off onstage . . . all she lacked were the piercings. She’d even invested in a long black coat to sweep around in.

  Of course, after an entire show in that getup, she couldn’t wait to pry the top off and put on her sweat pants, but in the meantime, it was nice knowing that she looked a little scary.

  The hospital’s layout was miraculously precise. Most of the government buildings she’d been in had seemed designed by monkeys. She found 48-D without too much trouble.

  A security guard was making rounds of the hallways. He was more alert than the receptionist and wouldn’t be so easily fooled by her tricks. She would have to be more direct.

  She strode right toward him, and he looked totally flabbergasted that a random civilian was wandering the halls of the nuthouse at this hour. “Excuse me, ma’am, this area is off limits—”

  She smiled her most winning smile, which wasn’t terribly winning, and looked him in the eyes. She had learned how to open her shields only a tiny bit, enough to let selected people in, and how to thin them and change their texture so she could screen out some emotions and read others. It was all energy, all subject to her concentration and will. She reached out to the guard, a balding man of about forty-five whose most pressing desire, aside from getting rid of the troublesome redhead in front of him, was to have a cigarette.

  Child’s play.

  Miranda took delicate hold of that desire with a wisp of her power and tugged at it lightly, saying in a low voice, “It’s all right, sir. You’re on break. You need to go outside and have a cigarette.”

  He frowned. He wasn’t a terribly strong mind, but he didn’t want to lose his job. She didn’t want to cause him any trouble, really—she was the one doing wrong, not him. So, she revised her plan, and said, “Go finish your round. I’ll be gone when you get back. You won’t think of me again, and no one will ever know I was here.”

  Finish his round—that he could do. He walked off without looking back at her, his steps slow and purposeful as before, the edge of anxiety that arose when he had seen her eroding into the usual boredom of his shift.

  Miranda nodded, satisfied. Now she had to hurry.

  It was, of course, locked; the medical records department was open only from eight to five on weekdays, and this was a secured file room for old cases, a dumping ground for records from all over the county. It was likely nobody had been in there for a month or more. So much was going digital these days, and ancient files like these were the lumbering dinosaurs that kept getting shoved from one building to another. No one cared much about patients who had been dead for so long. When the building was emptied in a few months, it was likely all these histories would be destroyed, their statute of limitations on usefulness long since passed.

  She smiled to herself. Personal medical histories were kept under lock and key here, but in a very literal sense—there was no key card, no electronic pad, no combination. Perhaps the Haven should loan some of its technology to the Department of State Health Services instead of just the Department of Defense.

  Miranda dug in her purse for the object Sophie had lent her for this little mission: a lock pick.

  Breaking and entering hadn’t been on their training agenda, but Sophie had offered to show her how. Sophie’s opinion was that a woman should be able to get herself out of any situation she encountered, from a bad date to a prison sentence.

  Miranda had wanted to smack the smugness off of Sophie’s perfect little face for about three weeks, but once her body stopped complaining about the work and began to respond to all those hours in the gym, she found that she was starting to like, or at least appreciate, her teacher . . . in a smack-the-smugness-off-her-face kind of way.

  A few pokes and prods had the door open in a few seconds. She was a quick study.

  As she had hoped, the case files were stored alphabetically and identified by the first three letters of the patient’s last name, then the first three digits of his or her social security number, then the year of admittance. It didn’t take long to find the one she needed.

  She left everything as she had found it, tucked the folder into her bag, and locked the door behind her, walking back out past the receptionist, who never once looked up, even when Miranda paused to retrieve her guitar.

  Flushed with success and the thrill of a teenage hoodlum leaving his first graffiti tag, Miranda climbed onto the last bus up Lamar and hugged her bag tightly to her the whole ride home.

  She checked her watch as she made it back to her apartment complex: midnight, and sure enough, Faith was waiting for her at the front door of her unit. The Second flashed her a conspiratorial grin, and then her eyes widened.

  “Whoa,” she said. “That’s some outfit.”

  Miranda looked down at herself. “Stage clothes,” she explained. “I was nervous about this and figured if I looked like a serial killer people wouldn’t mess with me.”

  Faith laughed. “Actually you look like a vampire.”

  “Is that a compliment?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Thanks, then.” Miranda fished out her keys, let them both in, and set her guitar in its usual spot, hanging her coat by the door. Faith did the same using the second hook. The apartment was blessedly warm.

  “Give me a minute to change,” Miranda said. “There’s beer in the fridge.”

  A few minutes later, clad in something much more comfortable although not exactly impressive, Miranda plopped down next to Faith on the couch with folder in one hand and a bottle of water in the other.

  “How did it go? Any problems?” Faith asked.

  “No.” Miranda shook her head. “It was almost too easy. That invisibility stuff Sophie’s been teaching me is amazing. I felt like a secret agent. And a criminal, which I am. It’s funny—I never even broke the speed limit until I met all of you. Now I’ve got breaking and entering in a government facility and theft of private records to add to my voluntary manslaughter rap.”

  “You should tell your sister about it next time she e-mails.”

  Miranda almost inhaled her water laughing. She slit the sticker holding the file shut and opened it gingerly, though the paper wasn’t nearly old enough to fall apart.

  The first th
ing she saw was her mother’s face.

  “Oh, God,” she whispered, taking the photo out of the paper clip that held it and holding it up so Faith could see. “She looks just like I remember.”

  “She looks like you,” Faith noted. “Right down to the big sad eyes.”

  Miranda stared at her mother, her fingers touching the picture’s face as if there were real skin there. She had been beautiful, once. Her red hair was cropped short around her face to manage the curls, but it was the same odd color as Miranda’s. Her eyes were the same oak-leaf green, and though she was smiling in the photograph, there was, as Faith had said, sorrow behind her eyes.

  The next photo was her hospital intake photo, disturbingly like a mug shot. There was no smile in this one. All the light had gone out of her face, and the last bit of life had burned out of her eyes. She stared blankly toward the left of the camera, looking distracted and distant, her skin sagging, dark circles heavy under her eyes. She reminded Miranda of herself the first time she’d looked in a mirror after returning to Austin.

  Miranda’s eyes ached with tears as she paged through the first few pages of forms, all filled out on the first night her father had taken her mother to the hospital.

  “Marilyn Suzanne Grey,” Faith read over her arm. “Preliminary diagnosis . . . paranoid schizophrenic . . . delusions . . . unresponsive to medication . . .”

  A lot of what she read was medical and psychiatric jargon, but a picture began to form: About six months before she was sent away, Marilyn Grey began to hear voices. She claimed she could read minds, and though her knowledge seemed uncannily accurate, her behavior became more and more bizarre. She said the voices were getting louder, drowning her own thoughts out.

  One evening she accompanied her husband to an office Christmas party, and after one drink began screaming—she claimed that the corporate president had molested his son, and made a variety of other accusations against personnel. Her husband, Miranda’s father, had been fired from his job, humiliated.

  “She was like me,” Miranda said softly. “She was gifted and couldn’t shield, and nobody ever taught her how. This would have been me . . . it almost was. It took longer because I had music to help control it, but . . . this could have been me.”

  She imagined her mother locked away in a tiny room, staring off into space as the minds of all the crazy people in the hospital clamored into hers. As surely as Miranda’s body had been raped, so had her mother’s mind, constantly, until she just gave up and stopped eating. The hospital, so helpful, had put her on a feeding tube, but Marilyn had somehow gotten her hands on a bottle of sleeping pills and put an end to their efforts.

  Her remains had been dutifully claimed by her husband. He had buried her here in Austin and then moved to Dallas with his two daughters.

  “Does it say where she’s buried?” Faith asked.

  Miranda nodded, swallowing, and pointed to an address. “I’ll go there tomorrow,” she said, sniffling. “I’ll go before my session with Sophie. I’ll take flowers. No . . . I’ll take rosemary.”

  “Why rosemary?”

  “Mama used to read Shakespeare to me. Her favorite character was Ophelia, and there’s this line in Hamlet where Ophelia says rosemary is for remembrance. Poor Mama . . . God, poor Mama. I wish . . . I wish she were still alive. I wish I could have helped her, or even just held her hand and told her I knew how it felt.”

  She closed the file but kept the smiling picture of her mother out. She was pretty sure she had a frame in the closet it would fit. It was the only family picture she had, or wanted.

  “I think she would be proud of you,” Faith said. “You could have ended up like her, but you didn’t. Now you’re living on your own and getting along just fine. Hell, in a couple of years you could be on tour and selling millions of CDs. Or you could be . . .”

  Miranda interrupted sharply, “I could be a lot of things.”

  Faith made an I-know-better face but didn’t contradict her. “So this means you passed Sophie’s assignment. She should be pleased.”

  “God only knows what she’ll have me do next. She said she’s going to start me on weapons this week. Imagine—me, with a weapon! I told her I’m going to chop someone’s kneecaps off.”

  “I doubt that. She says you’re doing fine.”

  “You talk to her about me?”

  Faith grinned impishly at her expression. “I just e-mailed her yesterday to check on your progress. She said, and I quote, ‘She doesn’t suck.’ Coming from her that’s high praise indeed.”

  Miranda went from outrage at the idea of the two vampires discussing her performance to the warm glow of pride—Faith wasn’t kidding about Sophie’s penchant for criticism, but it meant that when she gave a compliment, it was a real one, and a rare thing.

  “You haven’t . . . you haven’t told David what I’m doing, have you? He’d just worry.”

  “No. We don’t talk about you at all. In fact we don’t talk much, period, these days. He’s been hell-bent on finishing the network and getting it installed. He’s a man possessed, and he looks like absolute hell, but you know how he is when he gets the bit between his teeth about something.” Faith saw her look and added, “He’s feeding, and sleeping. I make him. But that’s about it. There’ve been two more attacks this past month, and he feels like it’s a race against time.”

  “I should be there,” Miranda muttered. “I could help. I could help track them down with the things Sophie’s teaching me.”

  Faith’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t get any vigilante ideas in your head, missy. The Prime sent you away from the Haven to keep you from getting mixed up in this. He’d have my ass on a platter—and Lindsay’s—if you got in trouble.”

  “Lindsay?”

  The Second cleared her throat. “The Elite who is absolutely not keeping guard over your apartment at a discreet distance.”

  Miranda rolled her eyes. “Oh, like I didn’t know about her. She follows me everywhere. You think I don’t know when a vampire’s tailing me now? I’ve had to stop myself from waving at her. I’d hate for her to feel like she’s not doing her job.”

  Faith’s smile returned. “She won’t hear it from me.”

  “Whatever. But you know, you still haven’t told me how you know Sophie. Did you meet in California?”

  She started to reply, but suddenly her com beeped. Faith frowned and said, “This is Faith.”

  “Second, your presence is required at a disturbance at Westgate and Porter.”

  “Situation code?”

  “Alpha Seven.”

  “Shit,” Faith said. “Has the Prime been called in?”

  “Not yet.”

  “I’ll do it. I’ll meet you there in twenty.”

  “Elite Twelve out.”

  Miranda’s stomach flipped. Alpha Seven was the code for a body found: human, suspected murder by vampire. The insurgents had struck again.

  Faith held Miranda’s eyes as she said into her com, “Star-one.”

  Her heart did a pirouette in her chest at the low, familiar voice. “I’m on my way, Faith.”

  The Second rose quickly and grabbed her coat. “I have to go,” she said apologetically.

  “I know. I understand. Just tell me what happens, okay? E-mail me.”

  “I will. Stay safe, Miranda. And remember what I said—don’t do anything stupid. These woods are dark and dangerous.”

  Miranda stood in the doorway watching Faith literally break into a run as she hit the sidewalk; in a matter of seconds her shape seemed to blur and vanish.

  She shut and locked the door, and though the thought of another murder was at the forefront of her mind, part of her had to admit that it made her feel better to have heard David’s voice again, even just five words to someone else.

  The woman had died trying to save her child.

  They would have killed him first and made her watch, and while she screamed and begged them to take her instead, and fought like a desperate animal to tear fre
e of their grip, they sucked the little boy dry and drew the Seal of Auren with a knife into his tiny pale chest, then turned on her.

  An icy cold front had hit that week, and the boy was wearing a San Antonio Spurs jacket over his gray turtle-neck. A knit cap with the Spurs logo was still on his little tawny head.

  At least, based on the small amount of blood that had run from the carving, the child had already been dead when it was drawn. As small as he was it wouldn’t have taken long, and it was unlikely the child had been in much pain.

  David stood over the bodies silently while the Elite searched the scene. He kept a tight rein and an iron shield over his emotions, but no one dared approach him.

  Faith knelt beside the two—posed deliberately with the woman’s arms around her ten-year-old and his shirt and jacket torn open—and dug into the woman’s purse for her ID. “Kimberly Mason,” she said quietly. “And Charlie.” She removed a small photo and held it up, showing Kimberly, Charlie, and another woman smiling for the camera at a lakeside picnic, probably that very summer. “This is Susan Davis, her partner.”

  The link among the victims had arisen after he’d put a team on researching their identities: most of them were gay or lesbian; one was transgendered; one woman worked at Planned Parenthood. The rest were Jewish. It was classic Blackthorn, purging the world of perceived sin via a blatant disregard of the Sixth Commandment.

  He wondered if Susan Davis was still waiting for her wife and son to come home tonight. Was she worried yet? Time of death had only been three hours earlier. There had been movie stubs on the victims, and the latest Pixar film was playing at the Westgate Cinema—were they due home yet, or had they been on their way to grab dinner?

  “The police are on their way,” Faith added. “They’ll handle next of kin.”

  He could just imagine that. This was Texas. The police would look for someone else besides Susan Davis to call, and it was possible that she would end up hearing from an estranged relative that her world had just come to an end.

  Children tasted young and sweet and full of life. They were so innocent and still so full of possibility. Their minds and hearts were still unjaded by decades of grinding reality. But they were dangerous—addictive—and tended to bring down the law much faster than dead adults. The drive of the species was to protect its young.