Shadowflame

by Dianne Sylvan

  Deven met her eyes. “Who are you working for, Marja?”

  She smiled. “Not you.”

  She glanced over at Miranda. “The contract stipulates: one live Signet, physically intact, to be delivered tonight. As they say, I can kill two birds with one stone. I can destroy the woman who destroyed my life, and I can make myself obscenely rich and finally get out of the game. This is what I learned from you, Sire. Cold, calculating efficiency. This woman is important to my client, and to my desire for justice . . . and you . . .”

  She ran her fingers down the shaft of the stake, pondering a moment longer, before she finished, “You, Sire, are expendable.”

  She smiled. Then she drove the stake into Deven’s stomach.

  Eighteen

  Deven held back his scream, just barely, but his head fell back and hit the wall, eliciting a strangled sound of pain that Miranda herself could feel throughout her body. Blood erupted from the wound, running in coppery dark rivers down over his legs, pooling on the floor.

  Marja stepped back to avoid the blood and said, “There, now. That’s the first problem dealt with. Now I just have to keep you quiet until my client arrives in an hour.” She turned to Miranda. “Either you can stay where you are and not make trouble, and watch your friend bleed to death, or I can give you another shot of poison, and you can scream and writhe on the floor in your own blood while he bleeds to death. Up to you.”

  Miranda glared at her, wanting nothing more than to fling herself at the bars and tear them down to get her hands around Ovaska’s throat, but she was still too injured and unfocused to Mist, and not strong enough to tear down walls.

  Ovaska watched all those thoughts cross Miranda’s face, her own expression deeply satisfied with Miranda’s impotence. “Enjoy your last few moments together,” Ovaska said to Miranda. “I’ll be back soon.”

  She slammed the outer door shut and locked it.

  Miranda’s hand was still in agony, but she forced energy into it to at least partially mend the broken fingers, and got up on her knees. “Deven!”

  His head was hanging down, eyes closed, but she could hear him breathing, a shallow rattling in his chest. The blood was still flowing from his abdomen.

  Miranda dragged herself to her feet and held on to the bars. “Can you heal it?” she asked.

  Deven could barely focus on her enough to reply, but he said, “Can’t . . . stake’s still . . . in there. Can’t pull it.”

  Miranda tried reaching through the bars, but he was chained at least two feet beyond her reach. Her heart was thundering around her rib cage as she tried to assess the situation for a solution: Deven’s cell was still open, but hers was locked.

  Miranda pushed herself over to the door of her cell and pulled on it as hard as she could, shaking it, trying to make it budge. If she could get it open, she could get into Deven’s cell and pull the stake, and he could heal the wound before he bled to death . . . but she had to get the door open . . .

  “Miranda . . .”

  She stopped midshake and turned to Deven. “Just hold on,” she said. “Just stop the bleeding as much as you can. I’ll get that thing out of you, I just have to—”

  “Miranda . . . I’m done for. Unless I can draw power from Jonathan, even if the stake comes out, I won’t last long.” He closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the wall. “You have to save yourself. Whatever that woman wants with you, it can’t be good.”

  “Let me think,” Miranda said. “I’ll get us out of this.”

  “Miranda . . .”

  “I’ll think of something!” she said, and she turned to him, tears in her eyes. “I’m not going to let you die.”

  Deven smiled. “Why not?”

  Miranda shook her head around her tears. “I’m not going to be the one who has to tell David you’re dead. It would kill him to lose you. Jonathan, too. Literally.”

  Their eyes met, and to her astonishment Deven’s were shining, too. “I’m sorry,” Deven said softly. “I’m sorry about David.”

  Miranda hung her head against the bars. “I forgive you,” she whispered. “Thank you . . . for Sophie. She was . . .”

  “She was a good friend,” Deven finished, his own voice fading. “That’s all you need to remember about her. She was your friend.”

  “I don’t want you to die,” she said, crying through the words. “Tell me what to do to save you.”

  “You’re too weak from the poison to Mist,” Deven said. “There’s nothing else you can do.”

  Miranda watched Deven’s blood falling, drop by drop, onto the cold floor, drop by drop his life draining out of his body, the light in his Signet beginning to dim.

  “Jonathan,” Deven whispered, his eyes slowly closing. “Oh, love . . . don’t keep me waiting long . . .”

  “No,” Miranda whispered. “No . . .” She took a deep breath, planting her feet solidly on the ground and holding on to the bars hard.

  She lifted her eyes from the blood trail to the stake jutting out of Deven’s body, right through his solar plexus, making his breath labored, his healing ability unable to stay on top of the damage as it tore through his flesh over and over again each time he inhaled. If she could just get her arm far enough through the bars, she could get her hand . . . around it . . .

  Miranda gasped.

  She slid her hand through the bars again, extending her palm toward the stake, and drew up all the energy she could, trying to remember how she’d done it before . . . with Hart . . . she had acted without thinking, acted from emotion, from anger . . . and one thing Miranda knew how to do was manipulate emotion.

  She reached down into herself and dragged out all the anger she could find: anger at Marja Ovaska for killing Drew, for attacking Kat, for poisoning David, for killing Jake and Denise . . . for bringing fear and violence to the streets of her city . . .

  Miranda pushed that anger out along her arm, then focused her mind on the stake as if she were mentally wrapping her fingers around its hilt, feeling the wood grain against her fingers, the slickness of Deven’s blood around the wood, as she grasped it, and with the force of her anger, pulled.

  Deven cried out in pain as the stake flew out of his body, yanked so hard that it was flung back into Miranda’s cell and hit the wall.

  Breathing hard, barely able to stay conscious from the effort, Miranda held on to the bars. “Deven!”

  He was icy white and not moving; she couldn’t even hear him breathe. He hung limp in his chains . . . but the blood had stopped flowing.

  “Deven? Are you still there?” she asked.

  Several interminable seconds later, she heard, “Nice . . . work . . .”

  Miranda slid down the bars onto her knees. She couldn’t keep herself up anymore. “How long can you hold out?”

  “Maybe . . . half an hour.”

  “Okay. That’s a start.” She turned and crawled over to the stake where it had landed on the floor. The point had been blunted when it hit the wall, but with enough force it could go through flesh. So they had a weapon; that was step one.

  If she could get Ovaska into her cell, she could attack, and with the door open she could get out and call for help, find the keys to the shackles, and get them out of here. The only thing she could think to do was feign unconsciousness.

  “How can we get her in here?”

  Deven sighed. “Make a lot of noise.”

  Miranda nodded, leaning against the bars to rest for a moment. Exhaustion was dragging her down and she just wanted to sleep . . . no, she wanted to go home and fall asleep in her own bed with David beside her . . . the longing to have him with her was suddenly overwhelming. She just wanted to hear his voice, feel the reassuring strength of his presence, anything . . .

  “Your husband is really amazing in bed,” Deven said suddenly. “I love that thing he does with his tongue—”

  “Shut up!” Miranda snapped, her attention whipping back to center, and with it, the realization that she was on the verge of
cracking. Now was no time to pine herself to death—she had to act. “You’re such a bastard,” she said, though she was almost grinning as she spoke.

  Deven managed a smile. “Better. Now get up . . . or I’ll give you the play-by-play of the night with the handcuffs—”

  “Like you’re really into bondage,” she muttered halfheartedly, focusing her energy on moving back to the corner of her cell. The farther she could get Ovaska in, the more room she’d have to take her down. Miranda fought hard to ignore the pain in her hand and shoulder, the slow creeping madness of being cut off from David, the burning in veins that needed blood, badly, to help her recover from her injuries and the poison . . . soon she’d have time to rest, and she could feed and sleep. But now she had to focus.

  “Okay,” she said. “Try to look dead.”

  “No . . . problem . . .”

  Miranda tucked the stake out of sight under her arm, took a deep breath . . . and screamed at the top of her lungs.

  “This way!”

  Faith held her phone out in front of her, gesturing with her free arm for the rest of the team to follow her around the corner and up the street. The green line that marked Ovaska’s trail glowed in the moonless night, leading them miles from where they had originally thought Ovaska was hiding, back to the industrial warehouse neighborhood where Sophie had once lived.

  Fifteen Southern Elite and twelve from the West converged on the trail’s end, Faith in the lead, all of them out for blood and under orders to take Ovaska down by any means necessary. Jonathan and David were right behind them, but David was still woozy from the aftereffects of the poison, and he had sent the Elite ahead instead of making them waste precious minutes waiting for their Prime.

  “Here!” Faith announced, looking up from her phone.

  They were in the middle of the street.

  “Goddamn it!” Faith exclaimed. “What went wrong?”

  “Something is degrading the trail,” David said over the coms. “Fan out and search every building on the intersection from sub-basement to roof.”

  “You have your orders, Elite!” Faith called. “Go!”

  Faith turned in a circle, watching the Elite disperse in teams to kick down doors, her heart sinking—there had to be a dozen buildings surrounding the intersection, some of them huge. They didn’t have time to canvass the whole neighborhood. The Queen and Prime might have only minutes to live.

  David and Jonathan appeared by her side. “Whatever she’s using to shield them must be interfering with the readings,” David told her, panting just a little from exertion. “I don’t think I can narrow it down any further without taking more time than we have.”

  “You said this was Sophie’s old neighborhood?” Jonathan asked. “Which building was she in?”

  Faith shook her head. “I don’t remember—hang on—” She accessed her e-mail and searched for the message Sophie had sent her with her address, months and months ago when Faith had asked her to train Miranda. She doublechecked the street names again. “That one over there, the red one on the corner. But Ovaska wouldn’t use her building, would she? That would be too obvious.”

  “Yes,” Jonathan agreed, “and that’s exactly why she’d use it. It would be the last place you’d look, especially if you’d already searched it before.”

  David turned to Jonathan. “Do you know if Ovaska was strongly gifted?”

  “No,” Jonathan replied. “She wasn’t—she had some telepathy, but nothing outstanding.”

  David nodded once and took off for Sophie’s building.

  Faith ran to catch up with him. “What is it?”

  “She has to be keeping Miranda and Deven in a shielded room like the one where I taught Miranda to use her empathy. Proximity to a room like the one at the Haven could disrupt the readings that led us here—that would explain why the trail ended. It takes time and power to create a room like that. Ovaska had neither—but Sophie might have, and Ovaska would have known about it.”

  “What if she’s got some other kind of magic, or more amulets, and not a shielded room?”

  David reached the building and angled left, looking for an entrance. “Then Ovaska just happened to choose another building in the exact same block as Sophie’s. Which do you think is more likely?”

  Faith nodded and lifted her wrist. “Report!”

  “No luck so far,” one of the team leaders answered. “We’ve only been through three buildings. They could be anywhere.”

  “No they couldn’t,” Faith said. “I need all Elite to 2421 Buckland.”

  “I can’t Mist inside,” David told Jonathan. “I’m still too scattered. Can you?”

  Jonathan closed his eyes briefly, then shook his head and opened them. “Whatever’s interfering with the signal is making it impossible to Mist—it’s like I can’t see clearly enough to get a lock on the destination. We’re going to need a good old-fashioned door like normal people.”

  Faith stepped back to look at the building’s walls, trying to figure out where the entrance was. “I’ll call Mitchell with the city planning office and get a schematic. It’ll take two minutes—”

  No sooner were the words out of her mouth than she heard David say, “Oh, God . . .”

  The Prime had gone pale, and a second later Faith knew why; faintly, somewhere inside the building, a woman was screaming.

  Miranda heard the door opening, heard Ovaska demand, “What in hell is going on in here?”

  She kept screaming, doubled over in the cell corner, until she heard the jingle of keys and the clank of the cell door opening.

  “Shut up!” Ovaska yelled. “Shut up or I’ll dose you again!”

  Miranda let her get one foot closer, gathering all the strength she could into her body, then clamped her mouth shut and twisted around toward Ovaska, ramming the stake as hard as she could into the woman’s thigh.

  Now it was Ovaska’s turn to scream.

  Miranda threw herself at the assassin, knocking her into the side of the cell, but Ovaska was hardly amateur enough to let a stake wound stop her. She grabbed Miranda’s arms and flung her aside, firing off a string of curses at the Queen.

  Miranda wasn’t an amateur either. Adrenaline surged through her, hot and bloody. She caught herself and used the back wall as leverage, flying into Ovaska and tackling her, and they rolled across the floor, both snarling like animals, trying to pin each other, too well matched in strength to do so.

  Miranda reached down and pushed on the stake that was still in Ovaska’s leg, driving it deeper and eliciting a cry of pain. Unyielding, Ovaska shoved her and struggled to her feet, running for the cell door, no doubt intending to lock her in again.

  This time Miranda was fast enough; she wedged her body in the doorway as Ovaska tried to slam it shut, knocking the breath out of Miranda but not trapping her. Ovaska ran for the outer door, and Miranda ignored the pain in her chest and followed.

  The cells were in a basement room—the outer door led to a stairwell. Miranda sprinted up after Ovaska’s retreating form.

  Miranda threw the door at the head of the stairs open and dove out, aiming low, anticipating that Ovaska would have doubled back to ambush her as she came out. She barely avoided the sword that whistled through the air inches from her neck, and then she hit the ground rolling, coming up onto her feet in time to leap back from another swipe.

  She didn’t have time to look around, but she knew immediately where they were. She knew this room, had fought in it a hundred times; she remembered where all the weapons had once hung on the walls. The Elite had taken Sophie’s arsenal, so the walls should have been bare, but two swords and several other blades were hanging up—hers, Miranda realized, and Deven’s.

  Miranda raced for the wall, and just as she got her hand around one of the swords she felt the sting of Ovaska’s blade slicing into her left arm. Miranda forced herself to ignore the pain and the blood and spun around, bringing the sword up to meet Ovaska’s.

  They stared at each o
ther for a few seconds. Ovaska was bleeding profusely from her thigh, and her face was disfigured with bruises from their struggle on the floor. The stake was still in her leg.

  “Who are you working for?” the Queen demanded.

  Ovaska laughed. “Your death,” she said simply, and attacked.

  Distantly Miranda heard something pounding on the wall, but neither she nor Ovaska allowed herself to be distracted. This time, with both of them injured, it was a more evenly matched fight. They fought across the broad expanse of Sophie’s studio, Miranda backflipping out of her reach then diving back in again, Ovaska spinning in midair to add more momentum to her arm. Miranda felt the sword almost alive in her hand, as if her entire body were a weapon, and she let herself slip into the space that Sophie had shown her, between present and future, drawing on a strength beyond herself until she almost knew what Ovaska would do next—

  Miranda dropped low, swiping out with her foot, knocking Ovaska off balance as Miranda struck her injured leg. Ovaska tumbled backward, wheeling her arms to regain her equilibrium, but she lost her guard just long enough for Miranda to kick her again, this time in the stomach, sending her to the ground.

  The Queen sprang back up and went in for the kill.

  Ovaska scooted back, and instead of beheading her, Miranda’s blade opened her chest, blood gushing out in its wake. Ovaska pushed herself backward again, and as Miranda brought the blade down a second time Ovaska reached down and pulled the stake from her leg, using all her remaining will to thrust it upward.

  Miranda felt the wood penetrate her rib cage, but she, too, had one last burst of strength to give, and as Ovaska fell down onto the ground again, Miranda’s sword flashed, and Ovaska’s neck parted, her body striking the concrete floor . . . followed by her head.

  Ovaska’s arm fell outstretched, her sword landing beside her with a loud clang.

  For just a second Miranda heard nothing but the hoarse sound of her own breath, and the world was held suspended, the Queen’s eyes on the fallen body of Marja Ovaska, the floor stained with their mingled blood.