“I’m scared,” she whispered. “This whole thing is too big for me . . . but after everything we’ve been through, I can’t give up on us.” She drew back and looked in his eyes, and in that moment his heart rose up from the floor and remembered how to fly. “I am still, and will always be, your Queen,” she said. Then, she smiled. “Any questions?”
Fifteen
It was one thing to watch a building blow up from a distance, too far away to hear the screams of the dying. A rumble of thunder, a flash, flames, smoke . . . then sirens shrieking out into the night as the human authorities raced to extinguish the inferno . . . too late to save anyone. From nearly half a mile away, it might be any city fire. Perhaps a faulty gas line had ruptured in a restaurant.
Most people would hear the noise, maybe even smell the smoke, then go back to their lives, uninterested, perhaps seeing a news story about the accident and remarking to a friend that they had heard the explosion.
From that far away Olivia could almost pretend it was an accident and not mass murder.
This time would be different. This time the Haven had once been her home.
She had at least earned clemency for the servants and Elite—she had begged Jeremy to see reason, especially since nearly all of McMannis’s Elite had been hired after Jeremy was deposed, so they had nothing to do with what happened to Amelia and Melissa. Perhaps they worked for a villain, but their complicity in his deeds didn’t make them deserve the same fate. He had to see that. He had to.
But it wasn’t until she threatened to leave that he relented. He needed help, and he was basically out of allies. If the choice was only kill the Primes or kill no one at all, Jeremy was willing to spare the others. He wasn’t happy about it, but Olivia didn’t really care. After seeing what had happened in Chicago, she couldn’t let him do it again.
It turned out that Jeremy couldn’t use the same method for Hart or McMannis as he had for Kelley, anyway. Just in the brief span of days since Kelley’s demise, the other two Primes had overhauled their security systems and had barely left their Havens. Both had brought in extra hands—hired thugs off the street, she supposed—and locked down their Havens as much as possible. With all those eyes on the Havens there was no way to plant bombs, no way to even get close enough to bar the windows and doors shut. They’d be killed before they even reached the building. A different strategy was called for.
“All right,” Jeremy said, spreading a roll of blueprints and plans out on the table in their shabby, anonymous motel room. “Jameson finally came through—we’ve got a new diagram of the system.”
Olivia leaned over and studied it. “It looks a little patched together.”
“Very. McMannis was in a hurry to get new alarms in place—I suppose he expected me to strike all three of them within days of each other. I’d rather give it time for him to let his guard down.”
The lamplight made him look sinister . . . or at least it didn’t hide it. Olivia held back another gut reaction, which was to flinch when he leaned closer. She’d been deliberately shoving away her intuition for days now, but she knew one thing: This would not end well.
Still, she waited . . . waited to figure out what to do. She didn’t want to stop him from killing McMannis or Hart, but the more time passed, and the more plans they made, the more she realized that he might not stop there. If he looked far enough, every Signet in the Council had something to do with Jeremy’s downfall, even if it was just turning a blind eye . . . and that blind eye would be taken for an eye.
“The good thing is, in his haste, he left a security hole,” Jeremy was saying, bringing her back to the table before her. “The guard shift changes at two A.M.—the standing guard isn’t allowed to leave his post until the new guard arrives, but if you compare the personnel lists, you see that over here”—he tapped an exterior Haven door with his pen—“the incoming guard for this station is returning from a patrol, meaning he has to enter the building from the outside. If we catch him and use his key, we get in without tripping the system.”
“What kind of identification are they using?” Olivia asked. “It can’t just be a key.”
“Key cards and fingerprint scanners,” Jeremy replied. “McMannis is working on a more sophisticated system, but the kind he really needs only exists in the Southern U.S. and there’s no way in hell he’s getting those designs.”
Olivia snorted softly. “Solomon would probably give him fake plans anyway to make sure they failed.”
“I was thinking of doing something like that with Hart—his system is already more secure than McMannis’s, but after what happened with the harem I’m sure he’s working on an upgrade.”
“This is probably a dumb question, but why don’t you just Mist inside? You did it to set the explosives in Chicago.”
“That was outdoors in line-of-sight,” Jeremy replied with a self-deprecating smile. “To be perfectly honest I’m dreadful at Misting. My control is iffy at best if I can’t see where I’m going and haven’t been there before. Since McMannis took power he remodeled the west side of the Haven, so I have no idea what I’d be Misting into. You should have seen me sneaking around the Southern Haven peeking in all of the interrogation rooms so I wouldn’t accidentally land in a wall.”
That was news to Olivia. “I thought all Signet-level vampires could Mist the same.”
“Oh, no. There are a few who can’t at all, and then there are others, like the West, who can go great distances and even take someone with them. I wish I could—that would simplify things quite a bit.”
“All right, so we get in at two A.M. at this location. What then?”
Jeremy pulled another sheet of designs out of the stack and laid it over the security grid. “Knowing McMannis, he’ll figure his security is sufficient and won’t have bothered moving to a bunker. I made sure my style was obvious enough in Chicago that they’ll be assuming I’ll stick with what worked, an external attack. They won’t be expecting a surgical strike.”
Olivia’s stomach twisted remembering Chicago. So many dead . . . and she had helped lay the bombs and block the exits. She had honestly thought that most of the Elite were out that night . . . or that was what Jeremy had led her to think. She had racked her brain trying to remember their conversations, trying to pinpoint whether he had said for sure how many would be trapped in the Haven, trying to figure out if he had lied or just been vague . . . The difference between the two was huge when there were a hundred lives at stake.
At least the Australian vampires wouldn’t have to suffer the same agonizing fate. She told herself it was enough.
Her hope—a faint and fading one, but a hope all the same—was that after McMannis was dead, the Signet would remember Jeremy and Jeremy would remember it, and he would be loath to throw it away; he might give up on Hart for the time being, choose to stay and rule his territory, and look for a less hands-on way to get rid of Hart. Plenty of people wanted Hart dead. Surely if they all pooled their resources they could make it happen no matter what kind of security the bastard had.
When trying to decide whom to attack after Kelley, Olivia had lobbied for McMannis for exactly that reason, though she’d told Jeremy it was because they would need more time to strategize for Hart since he already had better security and getting hold of the plans would be difficult, if not impossible. Australia’s Haven was isolated from the rest of the world, and despite McMannis’s being a cowardly jackass, things had remained peaceful here since he stole the Signet.
The plan was straightforward, which Olivia liked—the more complex something got, the more places it could snag. They would get into the Haven, find McMannis, kill him, and get out in a matter of minutes, hopefully before a single alarm went off. She knew they could do it—once she had slipped back into her role as Second, her training came back to her in full force, and she knew they were both up to the task.
Still . . . that morning, lying awake in her bed in the motel, blankets over the windows and the staff paid not to ask
questions, she considered the growing likelihood that she would have to kill her boss.
She didn’t want to. She had killed plenty of people, but she never liked taking life, especially that of her own kind. It was one reason she had stayed in her homeland when looking for a career; she knew it was less likely she’d have to take heads in war after war the way other territories required. Western Europe had offered her a position just based on her reputation as a fighter, but Western Europe tended to explode into violence every few years, and the Prime there wasn’t terribly invested in brokering peace.
But if Jeremy couldn’t be satisfied with revenge, if his hatred continued to metastasize and destroyed what was left of his conscience, many more would die to slake that thirst for blood, and she wasn’t going to let that happen. She had been caught off guard in Chicago—she honestly hadn’t been able to believe what was happening and at first thought it was a mistake, that he had accidentally locked all those people in the Haven and would help her get at least one door open . . .
The look on his face when she wanted to run and help them was acid-etched in her memory. She had been genuinely afraid, for a moment, that he would turn his sword on her.
One way or another, after he got his vengeance, he had to stop. She would do what she had to do.
She put her hands over her eyes and did what she often did when sleep eluded her: She painted. In her mind, she started with a blank canvas and gessoed over it to smooth out the substrate, then began the background. What was this one? A night scene, of course, but the idea that came to mind was of a forest beneath a blanket of stars. Black, but with a touch of indigo and phthalo blue, applied thickly in swirls so that the texture would be visible . . . or maybe starting with Prussian blue, adding in black to get the right level of darkness, and masking off the stars so pure white shone through.
Would the woman be in this painting? Probably. Olivia never planned for her, she just sort of showed up. She was strangely comforting to Olivia—whatever kind of delusion or dream the woman was, she kept Olivia from feeling entirely alone.
Olivia wished she were here now.
Under her pillow, her phone vibrated. Olivia held still, keeping the pillow over it so Jeremy wouldn’t hear from the other bed and wake demanding to know who she was talking to.
She listened, but he didn’t stir. Good.
She slid her hand under the pillow and pulled the phone out. She wasn’t expecting to hear from anyone—it was a burner phone she’d gotten in Illinois, so it had to be either a telemarketer or a wrong number, probably from Chicago or thereabouts.
A text message. She frowned. The originating number was blocked, and the message said, Your technical support request has been forwarded to your service provider, Raven Telecom. Please call 512-555-2976 for more details.
Wrong number, then. She’d never even heard of . . . Raven . . .
Her heart began to pound.
It was an Austin number.
* * *
Deven disconnected his laptop from the satellite and shut down the triangulation program, satisfied.
“Well?” Jonathan asked from the bed. “Did it go?”
The Prime smiled, stretching and standing up. “Oh yes.”
Jonathan nodded, but asked, “How can you be sure this is going to work? We don’t know anything about this person or her loyalties.”
Deven climbed into bed next to him and settled into his arms with a sigh. “I can’t be sure. But seven hundred years of learning how people tick tells me that as soon as she realizes what she’s gotten herself into, she’ll make the call.”
“You’ve been wrong before.”
“Maybe twice.”
“True.” Jonathan squeezed him around the middle, and Deven chuckled and wound himself around his Consort, nipping his ear in the process. Jonathan growled and in one quick motion flipped Deven onto his back, pinning his wrists up above his head. “But both of those times were in the last couple of months, so you can see my concern.”
Deven sighed. “True. Perhaps one day I’ll learn to stay out of things . . . after a few more people have died and I’m left without friends.”
Jonathan frowned down at him. “This time no one’s going to get hurt,” he said. “All you did was send her a phone number that might save her life. What she does with it, and what he does, is not up to you. Most of the things you’ve done over the years have worked beautifully—don’t judge yourself so harshly.”
Deven smiled ruefully. “I don’t know any other way to judge myself.”
“What do I have to do to get your mind off such unpleasant things?” Jonathan asked.
He decided, just for now, to let Jonathan have this one. He deserved at least a few hours where he didn’t have to worry about Deven’s mental health. He gave his Consort a mischievous grin and pushed Jonathan off him easily, reversing their positions. “You know what I do to people who question me.”
Jonathan smiled up at him hopefully. “Shag them blind?”
“Damn it, my torture methods are supposed to be a secret. Who told you?”
The Consort chuckled. “I’m familiar with your work, my Lord.”
Deven lowered his head and began leaving kisses along Jonathan’s jawline, down over his throat, and around to the other side of his neck, where he bit down hard.
Jonathan groaned. “You bastard.”
“Language, Mr. Burke.”
“Oh, fuck off.”
“That’s more like it.” Deven grabbed Jonathan by the collar of his T-shirt and dragged him upright, whereupon he immediately seized the shirt and stripped it from him. “I intend to draw quite a few more obscenities from your mouth in the next couple of hours; you might as well accept it.”
“Really?” Jonathan asked, laughing, joining in the effort to get them both undressed as quickly as possible. “Well, that works out very nicely, because I have a use for your mouth, too.”
* * *
The Queen looked pleased as she walked out of the office building, red hair and coat both caught by the wind and lifted up behind her like a cloak. As she passed, he noted a pair of humans near the end of the block whispering to each other and pointing at her, but they were either unsure it was her or too intimidated to ask for an autograph.
David smiled. Harlan opened the door for her on the other side, and she joined her Prime in the car. “A productive meeting, I trust,” he said, taking her hand and kissing it.
She nodded. “Everything’s falling into place—a small show, indoors, at either Travis Auditorium or the Keeton Arts Center. The main thing is having enough security, both ours and theirs.”
“Do you have a date nailed down?”
“We’re looking at July thirteenth . . . that is, if . . .” She bit her lip, looked out the window for a minute, then finished with, “. . . if I can perform.”
He still had her hand, and he squeezed it. “You’ll be there,” he said, with as much certainty as he could put into the words. “I’ll move heaven and earth to make it so.”
She sighed. “Can we take a walk before we head home? I’d like to see the city before . . .”
He wanted so badly to allay her fears, but he couldn’t, really; they had no idea what the next twenty-four hours would bring, and there were so many ways it could go wrong . . . but if it went right . . . they had agreed the possibility of regaining their bond was worth the risk, but that was yesterday, a little further from the reality. In truth he couldn’t be completely sure what would happen, and he wasn’t going to lie to her to make her feel better when, bond or no bond, she would see right through it.
They disembarked at the edge of the District. David told Harlan to meet them in the usual place on the far side.
Miranda was smiling at him as he straightened from the car window. “What?” he asked.
“Sometimes at random I just wonder how the hell I ended up in this life,” she responded, taking his arm. “I’m not even talking about the big stuff—I never thought I’d get
married. At all. The whole idea was absurd. And ending up married to a guy who looks like a model and has a brain like a supercomputer is even weirder.”
He gave her a dubious look. “I can’t decide if that means you had low self-esteem or just a completely inflated opinion of me.”
“Oh, come on. You’re not prone to fits of false modesty, which is another thing I’ve always loved about you—you know your own abilities and your limits, but you never let that stop you.”
“Even when it should,” he pointed out with a laugh. “But let’s not forget my tragic flaw.”
“Which is?”
“In emotional matters I turn into a jibbering idiot and make absolutely horrible decisions.”
She burst out laughing. “Not every time,” she said.
“Often enough. And badly enough.”
Miranda paused and turned to face him, taking his hands and regarding him seriously, her eyes searching his. “I’ve never said it,” she said, “but David . . . I forgive you.”
The words hit him hard, and he actually felt his eyes start to burn. “You do?”
“Yes. I never could really say it before, but losing you . . . I realized I was done with the past. I was still carrying around some anger until then, so the words still rang false to me, but . . . not anymore. And if anything goes wrong tonight, I want to be sure you know.”
He looked down at the ground a moment, unable to say anything at first. “Thank you,” he said softly.
She kissed him, and his arms tightened around her. For a moment, standing there on the sidewalk while the Shadow District buzzed all around them, everything was perfect again.
* * *
She was panting, the pain in her ribs stabbing through her with every step, but she didn’t stop running until she was well away from the building. She had to get to the rendezvous point . . . even if there was no one to meet there.
Every step was excruciating. She pushed energy into her ribs—she had lost a lot of blood but she still had the strength to at least hold herself together—and into what felt like a broken ankle, then leaned back against a tree to catch her breath. She couldn’t rest long. They would be on her scent by now.
Of Shadow Born Page 24