Of Shadow Born

by Dianne Sylvan

  At least the earthquake had bought her some time. She could tell the Elite weren’t prepared for what would happen. She hoped none of them had been killed, or at least no more than the ones she had killed herself.

  Olivia sagged back and put her hands over her face for a few seconds, fighting back a few screams of her own. She knew she should go back, but if she did they’d kill her. As hurt as she was, and as weak, she’d be easy prey.

  Not that they weren’t already.

  There was no way to have known how many guards McMannis would have. Australia didn’t have a sensor network or any kind of tracking system they could tap into. They’d researched where all the Elite would be at the appointed hour.

  She heard something in the distance. Shouting? Dogs? It didn’t matter, she couldn’t stay here. She pushed herself off the tree and started running again.

  It took nearly an hour to reach the rendezvous point, where the car was hidden off the road. Olivia fell onto the seat with a cry of pain and lay there a minute to try to get her thoughts back in order.

  Go. Go. He told you to leave him if things went wrong. Go back to the motel and wait.

  She stared at the treeline, willing Jeremy to appear, but after ten minutes she had to get moving; he wouldn’t want her to get caught waiting for him.

  She pulled into the motel parking lot and rested her head on the steering wheel. Her heart was still hammering. She could still feel the ground moving. She could hear battle sounds and her own breath coming hard. She had lost one of the twin blades she had taken to using in Chicago, but she didn’t care—it had saved her life.

  She dropped the key card twice trying to get into the room and cast a hunted glance around the parking lot before locking the door behind her. It wasn’t likely they would have followed her this far, and the motel was far outside the Shadow District of Brisbane.

  Collapsing on the bed, she took out her phone, checking just in case . . . she might not have heard the ring in the state she was in . . . but no, there was nothing.

  She needed blood. Soon. In the mini fridge there was a bag left that was just on the edge of expiring, but it would keep her going until she decided where to go from here.

  They’d been so stupid. The plan had made sense, but it depended on one thing: McMannis didn’t know when they were coming. How had he found out . . . how could he have? She and Jeremy were working alone, so there was no one to turn on them. Unless the room was bugged somehow . . . but how would McMannis have known where they were?

  A few minutes later she felt calm enough to get up and fetch the blood, which she warmed a little in the microwave before gulping down half the bag. She wanted to leave a little, in case . . .

  Olivia leaned forward, elbows on knees, taking deep breaths. It was probably better this way. The Jeremy she had known—from before his family was murdered—was long gone, and the new one was not a creature whose story would end well. Whether he succeeded in killing Hart or not, what happened after would most likely result in his death anyway.

  What was she going to do?

  Her phone was still in her hand; almost without meaning to, she pulled up the last text she’d gotten, Jeremy giving her the all-clear outside the Haven. She’d joined him at the door where he’d killed the guard and used the guard’s finger on the print scanner; they’d slipped inside, exactly according to plan. There would be only a few minutes—eight, if his calculations were correct—before someone came along and saw the dead Elite, but it was thirty seconds to McMannis’s quarters, thirty seconds to the exit on the other side, leaving seven minutes to kill McMannis. Minimal loss of life was her goal, and there should have been only three or four casualties other than the Prime himself.

  She stared at the text, then deleted it.

  The previous message popped up . . . the Austin number.

  Sudden hope leapt in her chest. Maybe . . .

  There was a faint knock at the door.

  Olivia froze, every muscle tightening to launch her at an intruder, but no one burst into the room. She approached the door sideways and avoided the peephole in case someone thrust a blade through it—she’d seen it done—and risked a glance out the curtain.

  “Oh my God—” She threw the door open.

  Jeremy fell into her with a grunt, the smells of fire and blood heavy in his ripped and stained clothes. She dragged him inside and locked the door again.

  “I thought you were dead,” she all but sobbed, helping him to the bed.

  “Very . . . nearly,” he said hoarsely.

  “Here,” she said, handing him the blood. He took it gratefully and finished off the bag; the bruises and lacerations on his face began to fade immediately. “How did you get out?”

  “No idea,” he replied, coughing. “One minute I was surrounded, and the next . . . someone set off a charge. Not me,” he said at the look on her face. “I told you I wouldn’t kill any more than necessary, and I kept my word. But someone didn’t. Bodies were flying everywhere—I Misted outside, but it nearly killed me to. I could see Elite streaming from the doors—I don’t think there were more than a half-dozen casualties.”

  She sat heavily back down on the motel’s rickety chair, which creaked a warning. “I don’t understand,” she said. “Who would have done that?”

  “Whoever they were, I owe them a beer.”

  “It had to have been a traitor in the Elite,” she mused. “Who else could’ve gotten in?”

  “We did,” Jeremy pointed out.

  “And it must have been someone who knew we were coming and knew we would be ambushed.”

  Jeremy pushed himself up onto his feet and got them each a glass of water; she just stared into hers, but he drank his quickly, and between it and the blood his voice was far less scratchy when he spoke again.

  “Did you feel it?” he asked. “The earthquake?”

  She nodded. “I knew before that, though. I knew you’d kill him or die trying.”

  With a hand that shook slightly, he reached into his coat and pulled out the Signet.

  The stone was lit up brightly, but Jeremy flipped it over, revealing a tiny battery attached to an LED. He ripped it from the stone and stomped on the device. Olivia watched, transfixed, as the darkened stone began to glow, first almost uncertainly, but then firmly as it seemed to recognize its true bearer.

  They sat in silence for a while, digesting what amounted to a nearly Pyrrhic victory. They’d both almost been killed . . . but they had still won.

  “You did beautifully in there,” Jeremy said quietly, offering a small smile. “It was an honor to fight with you again.”

  Olivia smiled back. “Likewise, my Lord Prime.”

  He regarded the Signet in his hand. “I don’t want it,” he said. She could hear the grief in his voice, and it was perversely comforting. The last few weeks all she had heard was hate and rage. If he could still feel grief, there might be hope for him. “It isn’t right for me to take it alone.”

  His mind was far away, his eyes on something she couldn’t see, as he said, “I could break it, you know . . . smash the stone and die. No one else would get hurt since I don’t have a Queen, but I would have control over my own fate. I haven’t had that for years.”

  “Or you could stay here,” she told him. “You could retake the Haven and start over. Band together with the others to take care of Hart. He doesn’t have any leverage over you now—you could get help.”

  “I have help,” he said. “I have you.”

  She met his eyes. “I’d rather be your Second than be the one to put your body to the sunlight.”

  For just a moment, she thought she had him; something in his eyes softened, his grip on the Signet tightened.

  Then someone knocked on the door.

  They both started and drew their weapons. “I’ll go,” he whispered. “Don’t move.”

  He slipped around the bed and over to the door. He didn’t seem to have her phobia of peepholes, and stared through it, making a noise of i
rritation. “No one,” he said. “Must’ve been someone with the wrong room number.”

  Something in Olivia’s heart clenched. She didn’t want him to open it. “Don’t—”

  Too late. He removed the door chain, turned the deadbolt, and pulled the door open an inch or less.

  Olivia heard something lightweight impact with the ground, sounding like it was made of plastic. Jeremy kept his blade out, but crouched down, eyes still on the cracked door in case someone tried to push past him. He picked up whatever it was and shut the door.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  He held it up: a flash drive and a business card.

  They both looked at the drive quizzically. It was blue plastic, unmarked, and there was no explanation on the front of the card—just a phone number and the image of a blue star over an arc that brought to mind the curve of the earth.

  When Jeremy turned the card over, however, she saw that someone had written on it in black pen: YOU’RE WELCOME.

  “All right,” Jeremy said. “I’ll bite.” He moved over to the table, wincing a bit at some pain still lingering from their escape, and flipped open his computer.

  “It could be a virus,” Olivia said.

  “I borrowed a copy of the U.S. government’s antivirus software,” he replied absently, plugging the drive in. “Okay . . . there’s a video file.”

  “Well, it can’t be of us,” she muttered. “What could it possibly . . . Whoa.”

  The video began, and she narrowed her eyes; the image was grainy, but the camera was trained on what was clearly the east side of the Haven, focused on a side door. As they watched, a slightly blurry figure darted across the yard to the door and hooked some kind of device to the fingerprint scanner. The door opened and the figure slipped inside the building.

  “Look at the time stamp,” Jeremy said. “We were already in there, about ninety seconds from killing McMannis.”

  The video continued for several minutes. At one point the camera started shaking—the earthquake, Olivia realized. They kept watching until the door opened again and the same figure came out; he (or she) looked right up at the camera and gave a thumbs-up before taking off running the way he’d come. The camera pulled back, giving a wider and wider angle, until the front of the Haven was visible. Seconds later brilliant light flashed through one of the Haven windows, and there was another vibration, much weaker than the first. The window blew out and belched black smoke. Within a minute Olivia could see flames through half the front windows.

  The video went black, and a message appeared: WE HAVE SIMILAR INTERESTS.

  Another image appeared for just a few seconds: a schematic of some kind, then another, then a photograph of a building in a city somewhere.

  “That’s the New York Haven,” Jeremy said quietly. “Whoever this is, they have Hart’s security plans.”

  IF YOU WANT TO ELIMINATE JAMES HART, WE CAN HELP YOU. WE AWAIT YOUR CALL, LORD PRIME.

  “Well, we don’t need to do that,” said Olivia. “You can just pause the video and take a screen shot of that—”

  Lines of static appeared on the screen, and it went blank.

  “Fuck!” Jeremy said, yanking the drive from the computer.

  “This message will self-destruct in five seconds,” Olivia muttered.

  Jeremy rebooted the computer to see if it was permanently damaged, and Olivia sat with the business card in her hand, watching him.

  “Lord Prime,” she said.

  He turned to her. “Yes?”

  “No—the video called you that. They know who we are, Jeremy.”

  He paused, taken aback. “How is that possible?”

  “I don’t know. But it might be a good idea to find out what else they know.”

  “I agree.” He took out his phone, shaking his head. “Maybe they saved our asses and maybe they didn’t, but they must want something in return for their ‘help.’”

  He entered the number on the card and waited.

  She heard a click on the other end of the line.

  “I believe we have mutual interests,” Jeremy said.

  Olivia listened to him repeating an address, most likely a meeting place; then he listened for a moment before hanging up.

  “They claim to have been watching us since Chicago,” he told her. “Apparently they’re fans.”

  “But what do they want?”

  “A trade—their help in breaching Hart’s security in exchange for some kind of artifact Hart has in his Haven.”

  Olivia gave him a look that was more than a little doubtful. “An artifact? They’d be willing to help kill a Prime for some pottery or something?”

  Jeremy laughed. “I think it’s something more than that. Something like the Stone of Awakening, only geared toward another purpose. Whatever it is, they can’t get it on their own.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because they’re human,” he answered. “At least that’s what the man said. I thought there was something odd about the way the person in the video moved, so it makes sense; it was a mortal.”

  She didn’t like what she saw in his eyes. “Jeremy . . . I know you want to get Hart, and I agree we should find out more about these humans, but getting in bed with them . . . it’s a terrible idea. We can get into the Haven on our own.”

  Jeremy was looking down at the card thoughtfully. “I don’t know,” he said. “They might be right. We planned tonight for days and it still fell apart—we don’t really even know why. They managed to get in, too, but you notice their agent didn’t get caught. Getting updated schematics of Hart’s system will be next to impossible unless I can figure out whom to pay off. Unless you’d rather I bombed the place,” he added.

  Olivia looked away. “You’re going to use that against me?”

  “I understand how you feel, Liv. But the fact is . . . I don’t care about Hart’s Elite. I don’t care how much collateral damage we cause. As far as I’m concerned they can all die bloody and screaming as long as I get Hart. But you care, and as far gone as I know I am, I still care about you.”

  She shook her head, smiling in spite of herself. “I don’t think I’ve ever had a man show his affections by not slaughtering a hundred innocents before.”

  “There are no innocents here. We’re all culpable. I could find a reason to kill every single Council member and all their employees if I looked hard enough. God knows I’d deserve it myself.”

  Olivia looked at him, her face and voice gentling as she asked, “Would it solve anything? Or are you just piling death on top of death when you and I both know nothing will ever be enough to fill the hole they left?” She leaned forward and took his hand. “Look, if you want to kill Hart, we’ll do it. But if we get involved with these humans, there are a thousand ways it could go wrong.”

  Jeremy pulled his hand back, stood up. “We were outmanned ten to one tonight,” he said coldly. “McMannis’s security wasn’t nearly as sophisticated as Hart’s will be. The same thing will happen in New York, and we won’t have a convenient human to blow the place up for us. The only way to do this is to have a foolproof plan, and the only way to do that is to know Hart’s systems inside and out. If these humans can give me that . . . we can get in and out without killing anyone, Liv. For real this time. Don’t you think that’s at least worth talking to them, finding out the details?”

  She put her head in her hands. “All right . . . but this already smells rotten. Whoever we meet had better have a damned compelling case.”

  “I agree.”

  She looked up at him, wishing she could be heartless enough to put a stake through his heart here and now, before things could get any worse . . . but she couldn’t. Not yet. Where else did she have to go now?

  An image in her mind: the screen of her phone, a 512 number.

  “So what are these crazy humans called, anyway?” she asked, giving up, for the moment, until she had time to think. She needed more information.

  Jeremy was in the process of disarming hi
mself, probably to take a shower and get the grime and blood off his skin, but he looked over at her. “The Order of the Morningstar,” he said.

  Sixteen

  Dawn broke.

  Miranda sat in her chair in front of the fireplace, hands clasped; her hands looked strangely small and pale to her right then, like a child’s.

  She realized she was rocking back and forth slightly and reached out to grab the arms of the chair, holding herself still. It was one of those things she associated with slowly losing her mind, and she wouldn’t allow herself to do it again, no matter how anxious she felt.

  A noise made her jump, but it was just David locking the suite door. She hadn’t even heard him get out of the shower, but he was already dried off and dressed for bed, in basically the same thing he always wore. Today, however, he was wearing a plain black T-shirt without any nerdy slogans or diagrams, and she felt a little disappointed.

  He took his own chair, and for a minute they just sat watching the fire.

  She couldn’t stop herself, though; she had to know. “How does this work?”

  David lifted his eyes. “The same way it did last time.”

  She crossed her arms over her belly, and she knew she was rocking again, but couldn’t make herself stop. “God . . .” Her voice became rough with tears as the memory came over her: cold tile, burning fever, and pain so intense the rest of the world faded to black. “I can’t . . . David, I can’t do that again . . .”

  He came to her, kneeling in front of her chair and gently drawing her hands away and into his own. “No, beloved . . . there are two ways, remember? You and I both went the hard way.”

  She held his hands tightly. “And what’s the other way?”

  “It’s how people become vampires when they do it on purpose. You’re asleep for almost all of it and you don’t feel a thing.”

  “How is that possible? Entire organs change shape!”

  “It’s the same basic principle,” he said. “You have to die with a vampire’s blood in your body, and you have to be strong enough to finish the transition. If your sire’s blood is strong, you’re more likely to survive. But the hard way, you die from a knife to the heart or a gunshot or something. The easy way, your sire drains your blood to the point of death and then feeds you his own before you lose consciousness; you die gently, and then he keeps you under until the change is complete.”