Queen of Shadows

by Dianne Sylvan

  “Sure.”

  Kat drove away from the hospital, and Miranda kept her arms crossed over her chest, feeling the coldness of the bag seeping through her shirt. What was she doing? Had she lost her mind? She’d just stolen blood from a hospital. It might have been meant for babies or someone’s crippled old mother. She was riding in a car with her friend as if everything was normal, and she had blood in her pocket.

  “Wait here,” Miranda said when they reached the apartment complex. “I’ll be back in five minutes.”

  She unloaded her guitar and went into the kitchen, taking the bag and stowing it in the fridge—for a second she wondered what shelf it should go on. The crisper? She stuck it behind the milk, then went to change.

  She forced herself to eat most of a short stack of pancakes, though it was a struggle not to throw them right back up again. She had barely eaten anything since the burrito Faith had fed her, but it wasn’t for lack of appetite like the nurse had thought. She had tried to eat. She’d tried tempting herself with all her favorite foods, even ice cream from Amy’s. Everything tasted like sawdust and ash.

  It had surprised her that she was dehydrated, though. She’d been drinking water continuously, though it never seemed to slake her thirst. She’d bought a case of Vitamin Water so that she’d be getting at least a few nutrients.

  The amazing thing was that she felt amazing. She was constantly hungry and thirsty, sometimes to the point of crying, but when she could put it out of her mind, she felt like Superwoman. Since she’d left Sophie’s she felt like she could fly. She didn’t want that feeling to go away.

  As soon as she saw the blood in the cooler, it all made horrible sense.

  “So Drew’s a wreck,” Kat was saying over her coffee. “He feels terrible. Are you planning to forgive him?”

  “Forgive him? For what?” Miranda asked, blinking. She hadn’t really been listening, but she remembered quickly enough. “Oh, that. I guess. I know he didn’t mean any harm.”

  “You should tell him that. He’s really nuts about you—right now he’s convinced you hate him and he’s on the verge of hara-kiri.”

  “I’ll e-mail him,” Miranda assured her.

  “When are you going to tell me more about this other guy?”

  Miranda smiled a little. “What do you want to know?”

  “You said you met him at rehab. What does he do?”

  She cast about in her mind for a suitable description that wouldn’t be too much of a lie. “He’s in law enforcement,” she said. “He’s the one that took me there in the first place.”

  “And the other night, you slept together?”

  “Yes.”

  “I thought you weren’t ready for men.”

  Miranda cut up the last half of her pancake to make it look like she was eating it. “David is different,” she said, though it sounded weak even to her ears without any sort of background story. “I trust him. I don’t think I can ever trust any other man again.”

  “Do you love him?”

  “Yes. Very much.”

  “I guess I’m happy for you, then.”

  “You guess?”

  Kat made a face. “To be honest, honey, he seemed like kind of a dick. But I only met him for about thirty seconds, so I could be wrong.”

  Miranda laughed. “He’s not. I promise. He’s just . . . he has a lot of responsibility, and he’s not very good with normal people. He’s sort of a fanged teddy bear.”

  Kat looked even more dubious. “I am going to get to meet him again, right? As best friend I reserve the right to kick his ass to the curb if I don’t approve.”

  Miranda smiled at her, warmly, feeling grateful as well as ashamed. There was so much she wanted to tell Kat, and she wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to. The secrecy of the Shadow World was what kept it from destruction. The Signets worked diligently to keep vampire kind out of the media and off the radar. Did she have the right to let a human in on its existence?

  “We’ll all hang out,” Miranda told Kat. “It takes him a while to warm up, but you’ll like him once you get to know him.”

  Kat insisted on paying the bill, and Miranda was relieved to leave the café. She’d gotten used to the pressure of a room full of humans, but it was still a strain, especially after a night of performing and two hours in the ER surrounded by the injured and dying.

  She told herself it was that, and not the thought of what was in her fridge, that made her so anxious to get home.

  Kat let her out at her door with a hug and cheek-kiss. “Call me,” she said firmly.

  Miranda agreed, and watched her go, making sure she had pulled out of the parking lot before turning the deadbolt and switching on the living room lamp.

  She felt sick to her stomach from the pancakes, and by the time she got her coat and boots off, she was so nauseated she flew to the bathroom, where her dinner made an inglorious return engagement.

  It was Thursday. David had said she should be feeling more normal by now. She contemplated calling him, but didn’t want him to worry. She’d see him tomorrow anyway after her show. She just had to keep it together until then.

  He was probably going to be angry with her. He’d wanted her to let his blood work its way out of her body this time, and turn her properly at the Haven where she’d be protected and he could control the situation. She knew he was right.

  But she was so hungry . . . and nothing was helping. It couldn’t hurt to keep his blood alive in her veins for one more day, could it?

  She flushed the toilet and washed her face with ice-cold water. Her reflection looked green around the gills, and the flush of power had faded from her face, leaving behind an ashen pallor much like the one she’d had that first night. She couldn’t stand to be that sick again.

  Just this once.

  Miranda fetched the bag from the fridge and set it on the counter, wondering how to go about it. Should she heat it? Put it in a glass? Stick a straw in it? She’d never seen David actually drink from one, but she couldn’t picture him sucking on the bag like a Capri Sun. Surely he used a glass.

  She opened the cabinet. A champagne flute? No, something for a red.

  She settled on a coffee mug so that she could put it in the microwave for a few seconds. That had to be better, more like . . . more like fresh from a person.

  Snipping off a corner of the bag, she poured enough to halfway fill the mug, and the rich coppery smell of it hit her like a sledgehammer. Her legs almost buckled beneath her, but she held herself up and punched twenty seconds, watching the cheerful I WENT BATS IN AUSTIN! logo turn in circles.

  She took the cup out and sniffed it, then took an experimental sip.

  Miranda moaned softly. As soon as it hit her tongue, she felt warmth and renewed strength trickling through her. One sip turned into a swallow, and before she knew it she had drained the mug and was refilling it with shaking hands. The orgasmic rush she remembered from drinking David’s blood returned, though not as intensely. She had to force herself not to gulp—the thought of vomiting blood was the most disgusting thing she could imagine, and it would be such a waste. She didn’t know when she could get any more.

  She ended up sinking to her knees on the floor, her hands splayed out on the tile, heady joy and pleasure rocking her back and forth. The painful burning and itching in her mouth was gone, and so was her fatigue and weakness. Her vision was acute again, the colors in the room sharper. She hadn’t realized how dull her senses were becoming as the week had worn on. Now everything felt right again.

  It was wonderful.

  She was laughing as she fell asleep on the kitchen floor.

  David Solomon had been the first Prime to computerize all his records. Everything in his Haven was stored electronically; everything was beyond state-of-the-art, because if he didn’t have the technology he wanted, he simply created it. The com system, the network connecting all the Signets all over the world, the sensors that now helped protect Austin—he had a dozen patents to his name al
ready and was in progress on several more, including a new kind of solar cell that harnessed the vampires’ universal enemy as a source of renewable energy to power not just the Haven, but all its systems and even the cars.

  At first the other Signets had laughed, but eventually they caught on to the convenience and efficiency. California was the first to buy a software license and join the network; Deven knew a good thing when he saw it. After that, most of the others fell in line. Even a few Signets who were outright antagonistic toward California, and by extension the South, had expressed interest in upgrading their archaic communications.

  The only area where Faith had really seen a problem was when it came to research. Everything David had brought with him from California, including all their information on the original Blackthorn syndicate, was on a server. Anything dated before the Signet changed hands was still kept in hard copies in the archives of the Haven. Auren had been particularly disdainful toward technology, so all his old patrol reports were still on paper, handwritten.

  That meant that when David asked her to find out more about Ariana and Bethany Blackthorn by going through Auren’s files, she wanted nothing more than to beat him about the head with the 1954-1955 bound reports until he had a better idea.

  “All I’m asking is for you to pull relevant files,” the Prime said. “Eventually I’m going to try to scan and upload all of Auren’s old shit so we can go through it and save what we want, then shred and burn the rest. All it’s doing right now is taking up space. Just bring me what you think I should look at.”

  “How the hell do I find it?” Faith asked. The task ahead was daunting, to put it mildly. The archives consisted of eight rooms lined floor to ceiling with shelves of files, some so old they were falling apart or unreadable. “Is any of it in order?”

  “Yes, Faith.” This newfound patience of his, though refreshing in some senses, tended to make her even more impatient in response. “Auren’s archive will be the most recent, so it will be in room eight. According to Bethany, she and Ariana were only here for about four years before Auren died, so look for anything that corresponds to that timeline, pull it, and bring it to me.”

  “And why do I get this honor? Am I the secretary in command now?”

  David looked at her from the array of electronic bits and half-constructed sensors he was working on to further refine the network in town. “I don’t trust anyone else in those rooms,” he said. “There could be a thousand kinds of sensitive information in there, and it’s for our eyes only.”

  Grumbling, Faith stalked off to the archive hall, where each room’s number was hung on its corresponding door. Room eight was on the left end. She unlocked the door with her com and let herself in, trying not to choke at the dust and the stuffy smell of neglected space.

  “Oh, Jesus,” she muttered. “This is going to take me all year.”

  Faith took a minute to get her bearings; near as she could tell, the files were in something like chronological order. She started to sort through the first stack, finding as she’d figured mostly patrol reports that were essentially useless now.

  An hour later she was still going through them and her patience was wearing perilously thin. She tossed another handful of papers onto the stack on the floor; at least she’d have a box of them to incinerate later so that in that distant era when David had time to spare for archiving, he could skip over them.

  The entire Haven was full of people who could be doing this. Surely she had more important work to be going on with. She could have assigned a couple of green recruits to this and gone back to the city for another round of patrols. She didn’t trust the peace any more than the Prime did, but he was using the momentary respite to tighten the network. She wanted to be out on the streets making sure the Shadow World knew who was in charge.

  Aggravated, she pushed another stack of papers onto the floor, sending a cloud of dust up into the air. She coughed violently and cursed Auren for not at least using file cabinets for all the accumulated garbage of decades of rule.

  Under the stack, she saw something odd: a metal box.

  She pulled it out and wiped the lid off. It was a nondescript gray, the sort of thing where people kept important papers locked up in case of fire, and was about legal size; it had no com lock, of course, but regular locks were no real obstacle for her. She took out her pocketknife and jimmied it open easily.

  The contents were bundled in plastic sheeting, taped shut, and labeled: AUREN: PERSONAL EFFECTS.

  Now this was interesting. She took the box over to a table, pushed the files that were on it off onto the floor with a satisfying thump, and set the box down, taking out the bundle and slitting the tape with her knife.

  A handful of loose items fell out: a passport, a few expired credit cards, other detritus that was probably in the Prime’s wallet when he was assassinated. She wondered who had gone through his clothes; it hadn’t been her, and David had been far too busy to care what happened to Auren’s Visa card. There was an assortment of keys—she was thankful for the com system, so she didn’t have to carry so many. He’d seemed to have one for every locked door in his wing. There were also a handful of pens in half a dozen colors.

  The last item surprised her: a black hardbound book, worn with age. She paged through it gingerly.

  Auren had been something of an amateur artist. The book had mostly been used for sketches, though there were a few scattered journal entries written in what looked like German. Faith recognized images of the Haven gardens, the stables, one of the huge oak trees flanking the driveway; there was even a sketch of the Signet. The drawings were rendered in pen with touches of color here and there. A few were smudged in a way that suggested Auren had been left-handed, just like David was.

  She should take this to him. He spoke German; he could translate the journal entries. Who knew what Auren had written down in his final days?

  Faith turned to the last few pages, and her mouth dropped open.

  A few rough sketches had been blocked in of a woman’s face, and one had been completed. It was a remarkable likeness, and underneath Auren had written ARIANA. He had even drawn her wearing the Queen’s Signet that she had never earned in life. She was smiling out from the page, coy and flirtatious.

  There was just one problem.

  The woman in the drawing was blond.

  Ariana Blackthorn—the Ariana Blackthorn they’d executed—had black hair and hazel eyes. This one had blue. She also looked a good five years younger.

  “Son of a bitch,” Faith said.

  She shut the book and rushed from the archive room, calling into her com, “Elite Forty-Three, I need the status of the Blackthorn girl.”

  There was no answer.

  She tried again and got only silence. The same result came from trying to raise the other guard on Bethany’s door.

  Cursing, she switched to broadcast mode. “Security to the visitor’s suites immediately.”

  A beep. David’s voice: “Faith, report.”

  She set off for the hallway where the girl was staying at a dead run. “Sire,” she said, “We have a very serious problem.”

  Seventeen

  Miranda had a hard time concentrating that night. For once she was glad when the show was over. She’d been waiting for Friday long enough.

  She bounded down from the stage and barely took the time to gather up her stuff and wave good-bye to the sound and light guys before heading off toward home.

  She was in a fantastic mood, almost giggly with anticipation; she wanted to get home, shower off the makeup and sweat that had accumulated in the last few hours—oh, and shave her legs. They were like two bottle brushes, and that wouldn’t do.

  There was also a tiny bit of blood left in the bag in her fridge. She wanted to be sure it was gone before David arrived. She still wasn’t sure how she was going to explain what she’d done . . . but he was just going to have to understand. It wasn’t as if she’d turned herself into a vampire. Aside from rebuilding
her strength and keeping her from going crazy, drinking that single pint of blood had changed nothing.

  Miranda swung down off the bus, smiling at the driver. She’d been riding the same line for a long time now, but only in the last few months had she paid any attention to anything besides her own navel. Now she exchanged jokes with the driver, a flirty older Hispanic man named George who recognized her from the papers.

  She could afford a car now, if she wanted, but it seemed pointless when the only places she ever needed to go were on the bus routes and anything was better than trying to park in downtown Austin on a weekend. She was lucky—public transit wasn’t exactly at New York City level here. If she had wanted to go anywhere out of her usual neighborhood, it would have taken considerable planning and several hours’ travel time.

  She walked the last block to the apartment humming softly under her breath. A half moon rode the sky overhead amid clouds that heralded a cool, breezy night. It had been a gorgeous spring.

  Summer was shaping up to be even better.

  Miranda went about her usual post-show routine, but this time in a little bit of a hurry. It was almost eleven, and David was supposed to be there at midnight. She took a hot shower, still with the unscented soap, and threw on her comfy jeans and a T-shirt while she puttered around the house, her hair bunched up on top of her head, her skin cool in the warm apartment air.

  She was about to head to the fridge when she heard a knock at the door. A glance at the clock told her it was only 11:25.

  She grabbed her phone from her bag as she went to the door, cuing up her messages. Damn it, she should have checked earlier—there was one from David at 10:00, probably saying he’d be early.

  Miranda held the phone to her ear as she unlocked the door.

  “Miranda,” David’s voice said apologetically, “I’m going to be late. We’re having a server glitch that I have to fix before I can leave, but it shouldn’t take more than an hour—”