Shadowflame

by Dianne Sylvan

  David looked chagrined as he wiped the blood away. “Sorry to get you out of bed. You’re dismissed.”

  Mo smiled, gathered his supplies, and left. “Let me know if you notice any other stray poking things poking you.”

  David blinked a few more times, focusing his gaze on Miranda, and smiled at her. “I’m fine,” he insisted. “It wasn’t a disaster.”

  She glared at him, unwilling to concede the point. “It could have been. Hart could have easily made that thing as a bomb and conveniently let you have it knowing you couldn’t resist taking it apart.”

  “It wasn’t a bomb,” he said, which wasn’t in the least bit reassuring. “It was a pressure-sensitive trigger designed to destroy the tech if someone got it open. It wasn’t intended to do any real harm to the person unless they happened to be staring right into it at the time. Hart is a technophobe—and as much of a psychopath as he is, I honestly believe him that this came from somewhere else. And in answer to your question”—he turned to Faith—“of course I could make something like it. What little data I got suggested it’s not nearly as complex as the coms. It was a lovely little thing, though. Beautifully crafted. I wish I could have studied it more.”

  “You’re hopeless,” Miranda said. “I’m going back to bed.”

  She pushed herself out of the chair and left the workroom, pausing to let the guards know everything was all right and commend them on their quick response. They looked as frightened as she had been. It still surprised her how loyal they were to him—and now, her—and how invested they were in the Pair’s welfare. It was unsettling to know that her fate governed the lives of so many people . . . Faith had said so to her a dozen times, but it had yet to fully sink in.

  Miranda knew better than to think she could really sleep until David joined her and she could run her hands over his body to convince herself he was really okay. But she also knew his fastidious nature and knew he would clean up the workroom before coming to bed. There was no point in even trying to rest until then.

  She picked up her guitar from where she’d left it earlier, leaning next to her chair by the fireplace. Then she sat down cross-legged on the sofa with her guitar and picked at it mindlessly for a few minutes, letting whatever needed to be played arise.

  Esther had been in, kind soul, and added another log to the fire at some point; the woman was a born nurturer and no doubt had been at a loss as to how to help David after the accident, so she did what she could do: She made the room comfortable. She’d straightened up the room, built up the fire, and hung a bundle of some kind of herb from the mantel, probably one of her Mexican folk charms. Esther knew all kinds of arcane things for protection from the Evil Eye, to bring money, to lure in a lover . . . she had trained with a curandera when she was human and would have been one herself if she hadn’t been brought across. Miranda loved everything about her, especially the way she still called Miranda reinita, “little Queen.”

  The Queen closed her eyes and started humming, then let music and voice both evolve into an actual song, one she’d covered onstage a dozen times.

  Like you’re trying to fight gravity on a planet that insists that love is like falling and falling is like this . . .

  When she finished the song, she looked up at the Prime, who was watching and listening while he leaned against the bedpost, smiling softly as if nothing in the world existed but her. He had taken off his shirt, and the firelight bathed his bare skin in flickering gold.

  Was it stranger that the Elite cared so much about him or that she did?

  “Come to bed, beloved,” he said.

  She set her guitar aside and rose, holding his gaze until she was close enough to fold herself gratefully into his embrace.

  Faith went into the city with David, Miranda, and her bodyguards Thursday night, but they split up as soon as they reached Austin. Miranda, Jake, and Lali disembarked and headed toward the Bat Cave studio, where Miranda would have her first recording session; Faith and David stayed in the car, bound for a high-rise in the heart of downtown Austin, with everyone set to rendezvous in front of the Bat Cave at three A.M.

  David was understandably tense. Word had gone out about the drama with Hart, and now he was waiting to see how the other Signets reacted. He anticipated that twelve total would side with him without any argument, and seven with Hart; that left six wild cards who could be swayed either way. Some would be easy enough, like Tanaka, who always maintained his neutrality but considered David one of his oldest friends and, given the evidence presented by Cora, would throw in his lot with David. He required only good reasons and good evidence before making a move, which was understandable, given that he was the parliamentary leader of the Council and was expected to stay as fair as possible.

  In the end, however, Hart would make the next move. If he never spoke of the incident again and never returned to Texas, there might not be a fight. If assassins started showing up in Austin, it would be obvious to whom they belonged. If Hart was smart, and Faith doubted he was, he would let the matter drop and keep his distance from now on.

  But Hart had been bested by a woman, and that would rankle him to the point of madness. He hated women pathologically, with religious fervor that rivaled the Blackthorn gang’s hatred of gays. It was Miranda’s act of defiance that would drive any plans he had for revenge. His bloody message left on the corpse of an innocent woman had made the point quite succinctly.

  David was quiet on the drive. He brooded far less now that Miranda had come into his life, but he was still prone to long periods of stewing, and Faith could guess at least a dozen of the subjects that might be on his mind tonight.

  “Is it Hart, the Council, the attack on the Queen, her sudden bout of telekinesis, what to do with your new houseguest, your Queen’s security tonight, the Red Shadow’s involvement with Hart, its involvement with Sophie, or the exploding hearing aid that’s got you all knotted up?” she asked.

  David leaned back in his seat and groaned. “It wasn’t any of those things until you brought them up. Thank you, Second.”

  “Then what were you mulling over?”

  “Signet history. Why we threw away our own past. How much there is out there to learn and what it could do for us. Imagine if there are powers we don’t even know we can access—things even more miraculous than Misting. Pairs can combine their power and boost one or the other’s abilities, but I’ve never heard of a case where one took on the other’s abilities and used them without any training or prior talent. What if we can all do that?”

  Faith smiled. “Then Jonathan could borrow Deven’s fighting ability and Deven wouldn’t constantly bitch about what a horrible warrior he Paired with.”

  “There has to be a way to find out more. Archives somewhere. Journals. Something. I can’t believe that nobody in our entire history has agreed with me on this. We can’t all have been that stupid.”

  Harlan pulled up to the front entrance of the building, and Faith and David got out; the Prime leaned in to tell Harlan something, probably a reminder of their rendezvous plans, then straightened, adjusting his coat. It was another cold night; since the hard freeze the night of Hart’s arrival, the weather had been insanely frigid with the constant threat of ice on bridges.

  They took the concrete steps up to the glass front of the building, where a security guard met them and asked for ID.

  David smiled and opened the neck of his coat, revealing the Signet.

  The guard nodded and unlocked the door.

  Near the elevators, a gray-haired man in a white lab coat was waiting for them. Their steps echoed in the empty atrium, only a few lights on at this hour.

  “Sire, Faith,” the man said. “A pleasure to see you again.”

  “Doctor Novotny.” David shook his hand and the doctor turned to lead them to the elevator. “You said you have made progress.”

  Faith watched the human as they took the elevator up to the twelfth floor; he was reasonably comfortable in their presence, but he still se
emed a bit twitchy once the doors slid shut and he was trapped in the small chamber with two vampires. Novotny was hardly psychic, but a human in a coma would have been able to sense something strange about David. Usually it wasn’t anything they would be able to pinpoint, but it was instinct for mortals to edge away, to keep one eye on the door. If there had been ten people in the elevator, by the time they got to their floor, it would have been Faith and the Prime in one corner and all ten humans clustered on the other side. Those who knew what they were, or were gifted enough to know what they were sensing, tended to be much more relaxed around them.

  Novotny’s research lab took up the entire twelfth floor and was accessible only by a special elevator code. The company, Hunter Development, was one of several that David worked with when he needed something done he couldn’t design, fabricate, or investigate himself. Naturally he owned about 80 percent of it.

  The doctor led them to a locked room that scanned his retinas, fingerprints, and voice before allowing them access. Inside were two long tables and a variety of machines whose purpose Faith could only guess.

  “So you say the thing exploded?” Novotny was asking with interest.

  David smiled. So did Faith, to herself, at the idea that David had associates as geeky as he was. “I’ve brought you what was left.” He retrieved a flat metal case about the size of a pack of cigarettes from his coat and handed it to the doctor. “There’s not much, but if you get anything off it, let me know. All of my preliminary findings are on the drive inside.”

  “Excellent, excellent. It sounds like pretty standard stuff, but you never know. Now, over here . . .”

  Opening a small door in the far wall—also encoded—Novotny retrieved another case, this one larger, and laid it on the steel table in front of them. “We ran it through the full battery of parameters.”

  Novotny opened the case to reveal a sharpened wood cylinder inside a plastic evidence bag, resting in a nest of gray foam. It didn’t look much different from when Faith had taken it from the crime scene, except that Miranda’s blood had been cleaned off and a few splinters seemed to have been picked out of it for testing.

  The scientist went on, “It was easy enough to identify it as Betula pendula, silver birch, found widely in Europe. This particular specimen can be traced all the way to the Lapland region of Finland.”

  “Finland,” David repeated. “That’s different. Can you tell if it was made there, or imported to the States first?”

  “There are traces of low-grade steel in the grooves left by the carving implement, and that steel is well over a century old—it predates the Bessemer process. Our conclusion, based on contaminant elements in the steel, is that whatever was used to carve the stake was also made in Finland. Based on traces of soil in the grooves, I can say with confidence that the stake was carved there as well.”

  “What about the person who carved it?”

  “There I’m afraid the data is inconclusive. I can tell you that he or she was right-handed based on the carving strokes, and there was no extractable DNA except that of the Queen. The blood soaked into the wood enough that it caused interference. As you know, we’ve made considerable progress analyzing vampire blood on its own, but in the presence of so many other variables, it made in-depth analysis impossible.”

  It was a strange quirk of vampire biology that as soon as their blood was exposed to air, it began to break down very quickly. To the naked eye it still looked like blood, but on a microscopic level it essentially died, the cells dissolving as if in an acid. When ultraviolet light touched it, it actually began to smoke. That made it very difficult to study, and Dr. Novotny’s people were some of the few who had had any success. Thanks to their work, David had been able to develop the DNA scanners inside the coms, primarily using skin cells.

  On the bright side it meant that human authorities couldn’t positively isolate vampire blood at a crime scene or learn anything about it in a standard forensics lab. On the downside, it meant the stake probably wasn’t going to tell them anything useful about the woman who had attacked the Queen.

  David looked disappointed but not entirely surprised. “So we’re possibly dealing with a Finnish woman, although the stake may not have been hers to begin with, and possibly a vampire because it’s so old, though we don’t know that for sure either.”

  “She moved way too fast to be human,” Faith pointed out.

  “Have you made any progress on the sensor failure?” David asked.

  Novotny shook his head. “No more than you have, Sire. We have no idea why this assassin didn’t register on the network. She was perfectly average in height and weight, based on the Queen’s description. Psychic shields wouldn’t block the sensors—they read purely physical traits. Somehow she found a way to confuse the signal, like a stealth bomber. I’m guessing some sort of scrambling device.”

  “Which gives her more than passing familiarity with the system,” Faith observed uneasily. “How many people outside the Haven know how it works?”

  “I want another check run on Elite and staff,” David said to Faith. “This time concentrate on hires since the war. Look into their prior associations, employers, friends. Find any connection you can to Finland—it’s worth a try. Flag anyone who was separated from their patrol unit or otherwise unaccounted for at any time, for any reason. Pull them in for questioning.”

  “I thought you monitored all your staff and Elite,” Novotny said. “If one of them is passing on information, when and how would they go about it?”

  “Last time it was through the mail,” Faith responded.

  “Security is tight,” David added, “but no system is perfect. I learned that the hard way.”

  “In reality all someone would have to do is leave a note somewhere that’s picked up by someone else,” said Faith, discouraged. “We’ve gotten a lot more detailed in our security screenings on hire, and we track everywhere they go through the coms, but there are always holes.”

  “Frankly I’m more concerned with motive at the moment,” David said, crossing his arms. “It’s highly unlikely a gang would have organized so quickly in Austin after the war; aside from the sensor network, we have operatives on the streets of every city in the territory listening for unrest or organization. There hasn’t been a single group formed since the battle at the Haven. They’re still far too nervous, and they’re waiting to see just how strong Miranda and I are before they try anything. To me that suggests we’re dealing with a vendetta.”

  Faith nodded. “I was thinking the same thing. Also, Sire . . . I’ve been considering the exact sequence of events, and I had an observation. The assassin posed as a reporter, which means she knew enough about Miranda to worm her way in to see her. Given how young and new to the Signet Miranda is, word of her two careers hasn’t had time to spread very far. As a musician she’s well-known locally, but not much beyond Texas. Then there are the questions she asked—she fished for information about the Haven’s location. If we were looking at someone in cahoots with one of our people, why wouldn’t they already know where the Haven is?”

  David leaned back against the table, chin lowered, a typical listening-and-mulling-over posture for him. “Go on.”

  “One more thing. The woman told Miranda she was stupid, which suggests a certain arrogance on the assassin’s part. That’s not typical of gang hit men. They generally don’t banter, and when dealing with a Signet they don’t risk wasting time with insults. Either you take out a Signet on the first shot or you die yourself. Again, I think we’ve got someone here who has a personal reason to kill Miranda.”

  Novotny considered that as he closed the case and returned the stake to its cabinet in the wall. “Is your Queen the sort of woman who makes enemies?”

  David laughed. “She’s getting better at it.”

  Miranda had already decided to like her new bodyguards, especially Lali, a petite woman originally from India who, underneath her Elite uniform, wore a T-shirt emblazoned with Om Shanti, Bitc
hes! Lali had a biting wit that seemed out of place with her quiet, melodic voice, and by the end of her first shift with the Queen the two were chatting like old friends.

  Jake was more stoic, more a stickler for professional demeanor, but he exuded calm confidence and competence, and though he looked like a Marine Corps rookie he moved like some kind of exotic jungle cat. He was from Laredo originally, son of an honest-to-God Texas cowboy, which took Miranda forever to get out of him. By the night she went into the studio, Jake seemed to have warmed to her, and even cracked a joke or two. He wordlessly picked up her guitar from the car’s trunk and carried it for her, and though she might have protested anyone else doing the same, Jake was simply being courteous, not implying she couldn’t handle it herself.

  Miranda was ready for the recording experience to be a bit grueling, but she was still amazed at how exhausted it left her. Grizzly Behr, the owner and sound engineer, was a cheerful fellow with a big beer gut, a big beard, and a big accent, and he laughed sympathetically at the way she wilted as the hours went on.

  “It sucks a goat’s balls, but it’s worth it,” he told her from the far side of the glass, where he and the producer were going back over the third take of the song they were working on. It had taken an hour to get everything set up, another for Grizzly and the producer to record some preliminary tracks to adjust the headphones and mikes, and two more to actually record the song, listen to it, go back and fix the second verse where her voice wobbled, listen to it again, record the harmony, listen again . . . Miranda was starting to hate the damn song, though Lali, in the corner of the control room keeping an eye on things, gave her a thumbs-up more than once after hearing what they’d captured.

  At least they were starting with an acoustic song that didn’t require any other instruments. There were eight more songs to go, and they were far more complicated. They were going to have to get a Bösendorfer in the studio for several of them, which Grizzly assured her was going to be child’s play. He had a larger studio room where orchestral groups had recorded, and it was big enough for a grand piano. That would be Saturday’s session, however. Tonight was simple . . . comparatively speaking.