The Shadows

by J. R. Ward

  Even though she hadn't been alone with him in . . . many, many months.

  In fact, after they had ended their . . . relationship, or whatever it was, he had all but moved out of the mansion. No matter what time she had come or gone, she had not seen him face-to-face, and only on occasion caught a glimpse of his big shoulders as he headed in an opposite direction from her.

  That he was avoiding her had been a treacherous relief at first. It was going to be hardest leaving him, and harder still if they had continued their assignations. But lately, as her time grew shorter and shorter, she had come to decide that she needed to tell him. . . .

  Dearest Virgin Scribe, what was she going to say?

  Selena looked up and down the corridor, as if the perfect little monologue might obligingly march on by, at a pace leisurely enough so that she could memorize it.

  For all she knew, he had forgotten their time together. By his own admission, he was well versed in finding female diversions of the human variety.

  No doubt he had wiped the slate well clean.

  And then there was the reality of him being promised to another.

  She dropped her head into her hands. For her entire life, she had taken comfort and purpose from her sacred duty--so it was a shock to discover that as she drew closer and closer to her demise, the one thing she was driven to get right was her departure from a male who was not her own. With whom she had had an affair of the very shortest duration.

  There had been many nights that she had spent in her bedroom up at the Great Camp, attempting to convince herself that what had happened with Trez was pure folly, but now, as time was running out? A strange clarity was focusing her. It mattered naught the why. Only that she accomplished the goal of telling him how she felt before she died.

  She did not want to approach him too soon, however--rather embarrassing to pour out her soul to a potentially indifferent vessel and then linger for nights, weeks, months.

  If only her expiration came with a date, as if she were a carton of milk--

  Qhuinn emerged from the hospital room, and the tight expression on his harsh face cleared away her tangle of preoccupation.

  "I'm so sorry," she murmured. "He is refusing again?"

  "I can't get through to him."

  "The will to live can be complicated." She reached out and put a hand on his shoulder. "Know that I am here for you both. If at any time he changes his mind, I shall come."

  "You are a female of worth, you really are."

  He gave her a quick, hard embrace and then stalked off down the corridor, as if he were leaving the facility. But then he paused in front of the closed door to Doc Jane's main examination room. After a moment, he pushed through.

  As she prayed there was a solution for the two brothers, another wave of exhaustion, the bigger brother of the one that had swept her off-kilter in front of Tohrment, shambled through her body, making her throw out a hand to the wall lest she fall down.

  Panic o'ertook her, her heart beating wildly in her chest, her head flooding with do this, do that, run away. What if this was an attack? What if this was her final--

  "Hey, are you all right?"

  Training her wild eyes toward the sound, she found that Tohrment was coming out of the exam room.

  "I . . ."

  All at once, the whirling sensation receded unexpectedly, as if she had been approached by a mugger who, having been confronted by the Brother, had reconsidered his attack.

  Beneath her robing, she lifted one leg and then the other, finding none of the deadly resistance she was so terrified of.

  "Selena?" he said as he strode toward her.

  Leaning back against the wall, she went to brush over her chignon, and discovered that her forehead was damp with sweat.

  "I believe I shall tender myself up to the Sanctuary." She blew out her breath. "I shall refresh myself there. It is needed."

  "That is a great idea. But are you sure you'll be able to--"

  "I'm just fine."

  Closing her eyes, Selena concentrated and . . .

  ...with a twirl of the world and a spin of her molecules that her brain, rather than something in her body, initiated, she was relocated up to the Scribe Virgin's sacred, peaceful place.

  Instantly, sure as if she had taken a vein, her body was both eased and strengthened, but her mind did not follow suit--in spite of the lovely greens of the tree leaves and the blades of grass, the pastel colors of the tulips that were perpetually in bloom, the resplendent white marble of the dormitory, the Treasury, the Temple of the Sequestered Scribes, the Reflecting Pool, she felt pursued even though she was in arguable safety.

  Then again, having a mortal disease of indeterminate duration made it difficult to tell the difference between symptoms that were on the "normal" spectrum, and ones that had greater portent.

  She stayed where she arrived for quite some time, fearing that if she moved, she might trigger the expression of her disease. But eventually, she went upon a wander. The temperature of the still air was perfect, neither too hot nor too cold, and the sky overhead glowed a blue that was the color of a cornflower sapphire, and the baths gleamed under the strange ambient light . . . and she felt as though she were alone in a dark alley in downtown Caldwell.

  How much time? she wondered. How many more promenades did she have left?

  Shivering, she pulled her robing closer to her body as a familiar sense of sadness and impotence barged into her, crushing her chest, making it difficult to breathe. But she did not give in to tears. She had cried them all out some time ago, the why-me's, what-if's, and need-more-time's over now--proof that even boiling water could be gotten used to if you stayed within it long enough.

  She had come to terms with the reality that not only had she not been granted a full life, she had not really lived much a'tall--and so, yes, of course she must tender a good-bye to Trez. He was the closest she had gotten to something that was hers, something private rather than prescribed, attained, for however briefly, rather than assigned.

  In saying farewell to him, she was acknowledging that part of her life that had been her own.

  She would approach him on the morrow.

  To hell with pride . . .

  After a while, she discovered that her feet had taken her to the cemetery, and given the direction of her thoughts, she was not surprised.

  Chosen were essentially immortal, brought into existence long ago as part of the Scribe Virgin's breeding program where the strongest males were mated to the most intelligent females to ensure the survival of the species. In the beginning, the female breeding stock were quarantined up here, with the Primale serving as the sole male for insemination. As millennia passed, however, the role of the Chosen evolved such that they served the Scribe Virgin spiritually as well, recording the history of the Race as it unfolded upon the Earth, worshiping the Mother of the species, and serving as blood sources for unmated members of the Brotherhood--for whom some broke rank, and accepted mortality in exchange for love, freedom, the chance to bear young who would not be condemned to rigid roles.

  And then the current Primale had come along and relaxed even further the roles.

  Selena looked in through the graveyard's arched trellis; the marble statues of her sisters managed to loom o'er her in spite of the fact that they were quite some distance away and sequestered within their verdant bordering.

  For all the good the ancient breeding program had done, there had been one treacherous result from it, one prison that, however modern-thinking this Primale was, he could not exempt Selena and her sisters from.

  Deep in the cells of the Chosen, there lay dormant a critical weakness, a defect that came about precisely because of the limited pool of breeding that was supposed to make vampires invincible.

  A sacrifice to the intention of strength. Proof that the Mother of the Race could, and would, be curtailed by Mother Nature.

  The statues beyond filled her with terror. The elegant figures within the encircled acre w
ere not actually made of stone--not in the sense that they had been carved from blocks. They were the frozen bodies of those who suffered from the same disease she had.

  These were dead bodies of her sisters who had walked the path her own feet trod upon, frozen in poses that they had chosen, sealed in a fine mineral plaster that, coupled with the strange atmospheric properties of the Sanctuary, preserved them for eternity.

  The trembling came over her anew as a wave--

  --and once again, the quaking did not last.

  This time, however, the cessation did not usher in a return to normalcy.

  As if the sight of those frozen in the final stage had been some kind of inspiration for what ailed her, the large joints in her lower body locked tight, and then so did her spine, her elbows, her neck, her wrists. She became utterly fixed in place, immobile whilst fully aware, her heart continuing to beat, her eyes undimmed, her panicked mind hyper-aware.

  With a shout, she attempted to shake herself free of it all, tried to pull her legs up, fought to move her feet, her arms, anything.

  There was but a slight give on the left side, and that rendered her off balance. Upon a pitch and spin, she landed face-first on the ground, the fine filaments of grass getting into her nose, her mouth, her eyes.

  Knowing she was in danger of suffocating, she put all the strength she had into wrenching her head to the side so that her air passages were clear.

  And that would prove to be the last move she made.

  From her vantage point, she was a camera overturned, the odd-angle view of the Sanctuary like something projected upon a screen: blades of grass close-up and big as trees, with the Reflecting Pool's temple far in the distance, nothing but the roof showing.

  "Help . . ." she called out. "Help . . ."

  Straining against her bones, she tried to remember the last time she'd seen any of her sisters up here. It had been . . .

  Too many nights ago. And even then, no one came this far into the landscape, the cemetery being rarely visited at its peripheral site save for sacred remembrance rituals--that were not due to occur for months.

  "Help!"

  With a colossal pull, she fought against her body. But all that transpired was a twitch of her hand, the fingers dragging against the lawn.

  That was it.

  Tears flooded her eyes and her heart hammered and she wished absurdly that she had not e'er asked for an expiration date . . .

  From out of the depths of her emotions, an image of Trez's face--his almond-shaped black eyes, his cropped black hair, his dark skin--came to the forefront of her mind.

  She should have said her good-bye sooner.

  "Trez . . ." she moaned against the grass.

  As her consciousness receded, it was a door that shut softly, but solidly, blocking out the world around her . . .

  ...such that she was unaware, sometime later, when a small, silent figure approached her from behind, floating above the grass, a brilliant light spilling out from beneath flowing black robes.

  SIX

  SALVATORE'S RESTAURANT, OUTSIDE OF LITTLE ITALY, CALDWELL

  With a curse, iAm ended the call that had just come through on his cell phone and braced his upper body on the counter in front of him. After a moment of arrhythmia, he yanked on his wool peacoat, the black one with the forty in a hidden pocket on the left side and an eight-inch hunting knife stitched into the lining on the right.

  He might need the weapons.

  "Chef? You okay?"

  He glanced across the industrial kitchen at Antonio diSenza, his executive chef. "Sorry. Yeah. I gotta go--and I already started the mise en place." He picked his cell phone back up. "You can finish it tomorrow."

  Antonio took off his toque and leaned a hip against the massive twelve-burner stovetop. All the equipment used for dinner service was cleaned up, the lingering steam from the dishwashers making the forty-by-twenty-foot kitchen seem like something out of the Amazon rain forest.

  Too quiet, iAm thought. And the brightly lit place smelled like bleach instead of basil.

  "Thank you, chef. Do you want me to stew the tomatoes before I leave?"

  "It's late. Go home. Good service tonight."

  Antonio wiped his face off with a blue-and-white dish towel. "Thanks to you, chef."

  "Lock up for me?"

  "Anything you want."

  With a nod, iAm left the kitchen and cut through the tiled delivery hall to the back exit. Outside, two of his waiters were loitering around their cars and smoking, their tuxedo jackets off, their red bow ties loose and hanging from their open collars.

  "Chef," one of them said, straightening.

  The other immediately came to attention. "Chef."

  Technically, he was more boss than chef here at Sal's, but he did do a lot of the cooking and recipe R & D himself, and the staff respected him for it. Hadn't always been that way. When he'd first stepped in to take over the Caldwell institution, he had not exactly been welcomed. Everyone from the waiters to the chefs to the busboys had assumed he was an African-American, and the deep pride and tradition of Italian ownership, cooking, and culture would have worked against anyone who didn't have Sicilian blood in his veins.

  As a Shadow, he understood the deal better than they knew. His people didn't want anything to do with vampires or symphaths--and certainly never those rats-without-tails humans. And Sal's was one of the most famous restaurants in Caldwell, not just a throwback to the Rat Pack era of the fifties, but a place that had actually served the Chairman of the Board and his slick boys. With its flocked wallpaper, hostess stand, and formal everything, it was Sardi's north--and had always been owned and managed by Italians.

  Over a year into his ownership, though, everything was all good. He had proved himself to everyone from the customers to the staff to the suppliers, not just stepping into Salvatore Guidette III's shoes, but filling them. Now? He was treated with respect that bordered on worship.

  Wonder what they'd think of him if they knew he wasn't from Africa, he did not identify as American--and more to the point, he wasn't even human.

  A Shadow was in their midst.

  "I'll see you tomorrow," he told the two men.

  "Yes, chef."

  "'Night, chef."

  iAm nodded at them and strode around the far corner. As soon as he was out of sight, he closed his eyes, concentrated, and dematerialized.

  When he re-formed, it was on the eighteenth floor of the Commodore, on the terrace of the condo he owned with his brother. The glass slider was wide-open, the long white drapes billowing in and out of the dark interior like ghosts trying and failing to escape. There had been two possible destinations for him: here or shAdoWs, and he'd picked their bachelor pad because of what was waiting inside.

  There was news from the s'Hisbe, and all things considered? iAm would rather be the messenger to Trez than the male they'd sent.

  Putting his hand into his coat, he found the butt of his gun and stepped inside. "Where are you."

  "Over here," came the deep, quiet response.

  iAm pivoted to the left, toward the white leather couch that was against the far wall. His keen eyes adjusted in a heartbeat, and the enormous black shape of the Queen's executioner came into focus.

  iAm frowned. "What's wrong?"

  The sound of ice cubes in a club glass twinkled across the silence. "Where's your brother?"

  "It's opening night at the club. He's busy."

  "He needs to answer his phone," s'Ex said roughly.

  "Has the Queen given birth?"

  "Yes. She has."

  Long silence. With nothing but the sound of those ice cubes to break it up.

  iAm inhaled and caught the scent of bourbon--as well as an acrid sadness that was so great, he released his hold on his gun.

  "s'Ex?"

  The executioner burst up from the sofa and strode over to the bar, his robes swirling after him like shadows thrown in a great wind.

  "Care to join me?" the male asked as
he poured more into his glass.

  "Depends. What's your news and how does it affect my twin?"

  "You're going to need a drink."

  Right. Great. Without further comment, iAm walked over and joined s'Ex at the bar. It didn't matter what went into which glass, whether there were ice cubes, if there was a splash of tonic. He drank what turned out to be vodka down and poured some more.

  "So it wasn't the next Queen," he said. "The young that was born."

  "No." s'Ex went back over to the couch. "They killed it."

  "What."

  "It was . . . decreed. In the"--he waved his glass around over his head--"stars. So they killed the infant. My . . . daughter."

  iAm blinked. Drank some more. And then thought, Jesus, if the Queen could do that to an innocent young born of her own body, the s'Hisbe's leader was capable of anything.

  "So," s'Ex said more evenly. "Your brother is once again Her Majesty's prime concern. There is a mandatory period of mourning and I shall depart to join in that. But following the Enclosure Ceremony and its attendant rituals, I will be sent to collect the Anointed One."

  The Enclosure Ceremony was the formal entombing of the sacred dead, a right that was reserved for members of the royal family only. And the mourning would last a number of nights and days. After which . . . it appeared their reprieves had run out.

  "Shit," iAm breathed.

  "I am happy to inform your brother, but--"

  "No, I'll do it."

  "I thought so."

  iAm sat down in the chair next to the executioner. Looking over, he traced the male's features. s'Ex had come from worse than the lower class; the male had been born of servant parents but, through his brawn and smarts, had risen to seduce the Queen. It was an unprecedented ascension through the strata of social levels.

  "I'm sorry," iAm whispered.

  "Whatever for."

  "Your loss."

  "It was decreed. In the stars."

  The male's casual shrug was belied by the way his voice cracked.

  Before iAm could say anything further, s'Ex leaned in. "Just so we're clear, I will not hesitate to do whatever is necessary to bring your brother home and provide him bodily to the purpose for which he was born."

  "You've already said that." iAm likewise sat forward and locked eyes. "And get real, you don't actually believe that astrology bullshit, do you?"