Not to mention it would be hypocritical to lecture Miranda about diplomacy and then start trouble himself.
“Why don’t we get down to business,” David said.
Hart actually smiled, though it wasn’t a particularly friendly expression. “And what business is that, Lord Prime?”
“Cut the crap, Hart. What are you doing here?”
Hart regarded him silently for a moment before saying offhandedly, “You’re going to have your hands full with that woman.”
“She has a name.”
Hart lifted his hands. “All right. Pardon my tone. I’m just saying, you know how the others talk. You have a reputation to protect—my advice would be to rein her in before that shrewish tongue gets you in trouble.”
David didn’t bat an eye. “The only person in this building about to be in trouble is you. And if you think I don’t notice that you’re dissembling, you’re a fool.” He took a sip of his whiskey, then asked, “Are you after Kentucky again, James? Because you’re not going to get it.”
The Prime made a noise something like a snort of derision. “I have more important things to worry about than a state full of vampires swilling home brew and fucking their sisters, David.”
“Then what do you want?”
His pale eyes narrowed and he said, “You’re telling me you don’t know?”
“If I did, trust me, you would be on the first plane back to New York.”
Hart’s gaze turned speculative, and for just a moment David saw something in his face—not quite fear, but very close, and equally astonishing. Then, even more surprisingly, Hart was perfectly honest.
“You and I aren’t friends,” Hart said, his tone almost becoming amiable; it wasn’t as if how he felt about David—or vice versa—were any big secret. “I’ve opposed you at every turn, and frankly I think you’re a limp-wristed, bleeding-heart child with no business playing at the grownups’ table.”
“And I think you’re a relic of an age best left behind,” David replied, “and also an arrogant, raping, pretentious swine. Your point being?”
“Call off your dogs,” Hart said. “Whatever you want from me, name it. I’m done with this game.”
David felt his eyebrows shoot up. “My dogs?”
“The Red Shadow, David. Whatever reason you sent them after me—a vendetta, to prove something, I don’t give a damn—name your price. I’ve lost five of my Elite in the last four months and my Court is scattering to the winds. There’s unrest in every state. You know damn well what happens then—some little deviant upstart like you slips in and has my head.”
“Deviant,” David said, rubbing his chin. “I haven’t heard that one in a while.”
“I’m serious. Everyone knows it’s the Shadow. You’re the only Signet with ties to the Shadow. What little intel we’ve gathered points toward you or someone here in Austin as the Alpha. Insult my belief in our supremacy, insult my virility, but don’t insult my intelligence.”
David leaned forward, frowning. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I don’t know any more about the Shadow than you do. How do I have ties?”
“That girl, the one who trained your Queen. My sources say she was one of them. She had to have been working for you.”
Finally something made at least a little sense. “Sophia Castellano? I didn’t even know she knew Miranda until later. She was acquainted with my Second, and she told Faith she had left the Shadow.”
“No one leaves the Shadow. How do you think they’ve maintained their secrecy for so long? Either they die on assignment or the Alpha kills them. There’s no retirement plan. This Castellano woman was either trying to get inside your Haven for something or lying about ever being an agent.”
“But I thought they only worked alone,” David said. “How could more than one be in your territory causing problems? That doesn’t sound like their tactics.”
“Oh, it’s them all right. Elite disappearing, not even a second’s static in the line, no witnesses, and their bodies reappear after obvious torture—but there’s no evidence whatsoever on the bodies or anywhere else. No mere gang is capable of that kind of ghost operation. Then there’s this . . .”
Hart reached into his coat pocket and tossed a small object to David, who caught it and held it up to the light. “The hell?”
“You’re the technomancer. You tell me. I recovered it near the corpse of one of my Elite.”
David frowned and examined the tiny device in his hand. It was some kind of wireless communication device, obviously, but he’d never seen one quite like it. It was made of silver metal, the same size and shape as an in-ear hearing aid, and completely seamless except for the hole that sound came through. The metal was the same color and sheen as the coms his Elite wore, but it was much harder and there were absolutely no markings on it.
“You checked this for fingerprints?” David asked.
“Of course,” Hart snapped. “You’re not the only Prime with resources.”
David smiled. “Oh? Then you had this sent to a lab and analyzed?”
“Why? Obviously it’s one of your little inventions.”
David was itching to crack the thing open, but he feigned indifference as much as he could. “Given that I have my own intelligence network and my own Elite, why would I need an organization like the Shadow at my beck and call? As I understand it, they hire out to humans as assassins and spies, to go where human spies can’t go. That’s why the Council has never bothered tracking them down—they’re no threat to us.” He turned the device over in his palm again, considering it, and said, “Besides, they predate me by at least a century. Prime Deven heard about them as early as 1500. He’d heard that the Alpha was an Italian connected with the Medici family.”
“Surely the organization has changed hands by now.”
“Not necessarily. It’s difficult to maintain that kind of secrecy if you have to hand over control to someone else. From what little I know about them, they sound like the kind of network that was created by one person who trained each agent individually.”
Hart let out a slow breath and downed his whiskey in one long swallow. “Then you give me your word that you are not involved in this.”
David stared at him for a moment, then down at the device, then back up. “I will do you one better, Lord Prime. Leave this thing with me. If you give me a chance to tear it apart and analyze it, see what makes it tick, I can learn more about its manufacture and send you all my findings. Knowing how it’s made and where it came from might help you track down your killers.”
For a moment Hart looked dubious, but finally he agreed with a nod. “Done.”
Then Hart set his glass down and stood. “If you don’t mind, then, Lord Prime, I shall retire for the morning. We can meet again after sunset to discuss anything else—there are a few finer points I’d like to go over with you about the upcoming Council, but I think that’s best saved for later.”
David stood as well and bowed. “I bid you good morning, then, and good rest.”
Hart nodded, still curtly, but with a slightly less dismissive edge than before; David could hardly believe it, but it almost seemed like he’d won some grudging respect from the Prime in the last hour.
Hart was escorted back to his suite by one of the door guards, and David sat back down in his chair still holding the earpiece. He was madly curious about it. Was it really Red Shadow technology? Or something else? Whatever it was, it wasn’t his.
David had considered using earpieces for the coms, but in the end he’d gone with the wristbands because they were harder to lose in battle unless the wearer’s hand was severed. He’d never been entirely happy with any of the in-ear models he’d tried, and their reception of outgoing speech was iffy. Plus, he’d created the coms with the DNA sampling system, and that would have been much harder on a piece a tenth the size. For his purposes wrist coms worked just fine.
Depending on what he found when he got the earpiece open, however, there might
be some new tech inside that he’d want. He didn’t much care about Hart’s problems, but there were plenty of reasons to want the earpiece in his possession.
He hadn’t lied to Hart—he knew little of the Shadow because there was little to know. They worked for insanely wealthy humans, not vampires; they were mercenaries with no moral code, and they never worked in groups. It was highly unlikely that they were involved in this . . . but still . . . whoever was clearly had advanced tech, and that could pose a problem.
He lifted his com. “Star-three.”
“Yes, Sire?”
“Report to the first-floor study, please.”
“Two minutes, Sire.”
Faith joined him, still looking a bit frazzled, and he gestured for her to take Hart’s vacated seat and pour herself a drink.
“What did you learn?” she asked.
David held up the device. “We have work to do.”
Miranda was angry that night.
Kat couldn’t help but think back to the night she’d seen her friend onstage months ago, back when the worst thing Kat could imagine was that Miranda was strung out on drugs, and she had walked offstage and fainted. Kat had had no idea what was really going on—the possibility would never have occurred to her in a thousand years.
And despite everything she’d seen, Kat still wasn’t totally sure she believed it.
She’d seen Miranda change . . . seen her teeth . . . seen her bite Drew . . . and she’d felt the change in her friend from some deep place in her gut that knew a predator when it saw one. She’d watched David from across a table, all the tiny alien things about him making a disturbing kind of sense. And yet . . .
Vampires? Really?
Kat hung out in the wings as she often did during Miranda’s shows, leaning sideways against some kind of rigging, one hand steadying her and the other resting on her stomach. Funny how having a vampire Queen in her life made all her own problems seem a bit smaller.
That wasn’t comforting.
Something had Miranda fired up, though, and not in the same way as she had been that night months ago—then she had been emerging from years of slumber and shaking off her old life to find herself powerful. Tonight she was just plain old pissed off. Kat could see it. She didn’t have to be an empath to read her best friend.
Kat didn’t bring it up until after the encore, after Miranda had stalked off the stage to her dressing room and changed, after the house lights were out and the applause was no longer making Kat’s ears ring.
When, finally, they were sitting in the café—at the same table where Kat had squared off with David, it turned out—Kat stirred sugar into her decaf and said, “Okay, spill it.”
Miranda was no longer fuming but she was still gravely irate, and she lacked her husband’s ability to put on a poker face. “It’s nothing.”
“Oh, bullshit.”
Miranda smiled. “Yeah, okay.”
“Come on, Your Majesty.” Kat took a drink of her coffee and made a face; without caffeine it just wasn’t the same. “This is a no-crap zone, here at this table. I am officially your No-Crap Friend.”
A sigh. “I told you about all the other Pairs coming to visit, right? The one that’s here now is a complete dick. He has slave girls, Kat—what do I do about that?”
“Slave girls? For real?”
“Yes. They’re being kept against their will—at least Faith thinks so. I could offer them asylum, but that could cause a rift between the South and the Northeast, and David says that would come back to haunt us—this bastard has powerful friends. But I can’t just sit back and do nothing, can I?”
“Wow.” Kat sat back, staring at her friend. “Your life is just fucking weird now, you know that?”
She grinned. “Yes, I do. And I have this feeling it’s just going to keep getting weirder.”
“I can guarantee that,” Kat replied, slowly turning her coffee cup in her hand. “Look, Mira, I’ve counseled run-away teens and battered wives. I’ve taught English to Afghani women fleeing the Taliban. But when a vampire Queen comes to me and says some vampire bastard is keeping slaves, I have to be honest: I have no idea what to say.”
Miranda chuckled and shook her head. “Remember when the worst thing that could happen was getting knocked up at a frat party?”
Kat swallowed hard, looking down at her cup, her insides knotting up before she could force her emotions back down again. Damn it, if—
Too late.
“Hey,” Miranda said, staring at her keenly, “what’s wrong?”
Kat still didn’t meet her eyes. “Quit doing that psychic thing on me.”
“I’m not. I promise. I’ve just gotten a lot better at reading people. It’s . . . part of the job, I guess. You’ve been weird all night, not just now. It’s your turn to spill it.”
“It’s not important,” Kat said, surprised at the spark of anger in her own voice. “Just a human problem.”
Miranda didn’t snap back at her or even show that she heard the last statement. Kat remembered what she’d said about being empathic, that words didn’t always matter and she could feel the truth underneath them, even without trying. It was what had driven her crazy before.
Miranda reached over and grabbed Kat’s hand, then sucked in a breath. “Holy shit.”
Kat snatched her hand back. “I told you not to do that!”
“I’m sorry,” Miranda said. “I just wanted to be sure. I keep myself shielded and I’m not used to picking things up from mortals, but you’re different. You’re my friend.”
Kat did something completely out of character and also completely embarrassing. She burst into tears.
She felt Miranda shift from the opposite side of the booth to sit by Kat and offer her shoulder. Kat buried her face in Miranda’s neck, and Miranda murmured to her, stroking her back. It was as if she were putting off gentle waves of soothing heat, and if that was part of her mojo, well, Kat wasn’t going to argue with it right now.
“Does Drew know?” Miranda asked.
“Not yet. He’s in Beaumont at a conference. Due back in a few days.” Kat wiped her eyes on her napkin and sat up, but Miranda stayed where she was, a solid presence that Kat wanted desperately to cling to until she wasn’t so scared of drowning. “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
Miranda didn’t say anything at first, and Kat went on, “I have an appointment at the women’s clinic Thursday for a consultation. I can go back a week later for the big suck . . . but . . .”
“You aren’t sure,” Miranda said. “Kat . . .”
“I mean, I have a house, and I’ve got money from Dad’s estate—not piles of it, but I do okay. And Drew might be a good dad. But I’m . . . God, Mira, how could this happen? I’m on the fucking pill!”
Miranda had an odd look on her face, at once gravely attentive and miles away, as if she were listening to two conversations at once. Her fingers were still curled around Kat’s arm, and they were suddenly hot as she stared off into space.
“Kat . . .” she said softly, “cancel the appointment.”
“Wait, I’m not just going to—”
“I’m not telling you to keep it.” Miranda cut her off gently but insistently. “I’m saying wait. Give it two weeks. Talk to Drew. You’ve got a little time to decide . . . I know what you’ve always said you’d do, but just wait. Just a little while. I promise it will be okay.”
Kat gaped at her, her panic momentarily forgotten. “What the hell are you looking at?”
Miranda’s eyes cleared, and she blinked and took her hand away. She looked, and sounded, as rattled as Kat felt. “I don’t know. Nothing like that has ever happened before.”
She moved back across the booth, and Kat was able to breathe again. “Well, it was creepy.”
“Yeah.” Miranda looked a little dizzy and leaned her forehead in her hands for a minute before looking up at Kat. “But take my advice, Kat. Wait. Nobody’s going to force you to do anything you’re not a hundred percent sure
about . . . but make sure you’re a hundred percent sure.”
Kat swallowed and nodded, grabbing her glass of water and gulping down half of it out of sheer nerves. “Okay.”
Miranda nodded. “Good.” She pushed her hair back from her face, seeming a little nervous about the whole thing, but when she spoke again it was with conviction. “No matter what happens, Katmandu, I’m here for you. We’ll figure this out.”
Kat mustered a smile for her. As weird as Miranda’s psychic fade-out had been, there was still something incredibly comforting about having gotten the truth out—just knowing someone else knew was a load off her shoulders. If it had been a year ago, Miranda’s reassurance wouldn’t have been very reassuring, because she had been batshit insane and teetering on the edge of oblivion, but now . . . Kat might not know much at the moment, but she knew that if Miranda said something would happen, God himself would buy a ticket to watch it go down.
She was the Queen of Shadows, after all.
A woman’s duty was to serve her man. She must be quiet and dutiful, obedient, accommodating. She must defer to him in all things, for he knew best, as was ordained by God Almighty when Adam first bade Eve to lie beneath him in the Garden.
Cora stared up at the unfamiliar ceiling of the Haven while Prime Hart grunted and swore above her, her mind in the soft dark corner she had long ago created for it, a place where she was dimly aware of what her Master was doing, but it was only her body that he was invading, and she, Cora, was safe, watching from far away. There was only so far she could go, but every inch of distance was a treasure to her, and there she waited once again while he shuddered and burst hot and cruel into her body.
Sated, he rolled off her, and the cool air of the room intruded; she felt it most on her damp thighs and the forever-trembling skin of her fingers. All the girls shook. They shook because they were weak . . . because they were women, and women were weak. Cora imagined Eve trembling as Adam ground his hips into hers, wondered if the first woman had felt the shame of it as she gathered her scattered fig leaves and stumbled to the stream to wash that first fallen seed from her. Did she feel dirty afterward, as the earth was dirty, fallen, made of dung and the sticky leavings of men?
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