Of Shadow Born

by Dianne Sylvan

  She took down the guard at the door and dragged him into the stairwell. The sub-basement was a labyrinth of corridors, but they had been over the plans a thousand times, and even without him leading she would have found the hallway in question easily.

  They both stopped. Olivia peered down the hall, eyes picking out all the little round sensors that dotted the walls. It looked exactly like the plans had indicated.

  She dug in one of her belt pouches and removed four small pieces of equipment: a band to go around each of her hands and a pad that attached to the toe of each boot. All four were flat on one side but had spikes protruding from the other.

  She hadn’t believed such little things could hold on to a concrete ceiling, but they had tried them out, and they worked almost miraculously. These Morningstar crazies had some amazing toys at their disposal.

  Olivia quickly slid the pads onto her hands and feet and turned to Jeremy, who gave her a boost. She smacked her hands into the ceiling and then lifted her legs up to do the same with her feet.

  She had bound her dreadlocks up close to her head so they wouldn’t drag, and she wasn’t wearing a coat, so she was able to press herself flat against the ceiling and make her way toward the vault door without anything hanging down to trip the uppermost sensors.

  “Careful, Spidey,” Jeremy said, smiling. “You do have the charge, right?”

  “Got it,” she answered with a grunt, focusing all her energy on pulling one limb at a time and moving toward the door. She was considerably lighter weight than Jeremy, otherwise it would have been him up there. It took longer than she had expected, but they had allotted enough time. Three minutes later she was in front of the vault door.

  She freed one hand and reached into her belt pouch again, this time taking out a small charge. She slapped it onto the door just above the lock and flattened herself against the ceiling completely. “Go,” she said.

  Jeremy hit a button on his phone, and with a muffled POP! and a puff of black smoke, the vault door swung open an inch. Coughing, Olivia pulled it open until it was just shy of the first sensor, then swung her legs down, around the door, and in, letting go in time to drop her hard inside the vault.

  She landed in a crouch and looked around—exactly as the plans said, it was a ten-by-ten room with steel shelving, most of the shelves lined with orderly rows of boxes, files, and various containers.

  Unable to restrain her curiosity, Olivia peeked into a black case; it held bars of solid gold imprinted with an eagle. Her eyebrows shot up—one of those would be enough for a vampire to live on for fifty years or better.

  Focus, Olivia. Ebony box, carved lid.

  It was where she expected it to be, in the back right corner, third shelf from the top. The box was five inches square at most and had the same symbol carved into it as had been on the business card left for her and Jeremy in Australia. She cracked open the lid to make sure the artifact was in there; it was.

  She grabbed it and stuck her head out the door. “Got it! Stand back!”

  Jeremy ducked back around the corner, and Olivia reached into her pouch one more time, this time for a handful of what amounted to digital firecrackers.

  She took a deep breath. Here we go.

  Flicking her wrist, she flung the tiny charges out into the hallway, where they went off as they hit the walls and floor. After the pop! of the charge, there was a click and a swish, then the hard thud of stakes flying from either side of the hallway to hit the walls. The noise was deafening for about thirty seconds, until most of the sensors had been tripped; then there was a brief respite of silence.

  Olivia bolted down the hallway as fast as she could move, barely avoiding the two stakes that hadn’t been triggered already. She skidded to a halt next to Jeremy.

  “Give it to me,” Jeremy said. “Now.”

  She frowned. “I thought I was going to carry—”

  “Now, Olivia.”

  She knew that tone. Damn it. She handed over the box reluctantly. Now she’d have to get it back from him before she made her escape.

  “Thirty seconds,” Jeremy said. “Ready for phase two?”

  They had waited to set off the stakes in case finding the artifact took longer than anticipated; the idea was that the alarm would bring the Elite running, distracting as many as possible so Jeremy and Olivia could get to the second floor, where Hart was tonight, with fewer enemies to face between here and there.

  “Let’s go,” she said.

  They ran for the stairwell again as the earsplitting klaxon of the alarm began to go off all around them.

  Olivia heard the rushing clomp of boots. “They’re coming!”

  Jeremy shouldered the next door open and dispatched the guard there; it was the first floor, one floor down from Hart, but if they stayed in the stairwell they’d be easy targets. There was a plan for that, too, though—Jeremy led the way to an empty room that had once been used for Elite training.

  The building had been designed with a wet wall—essentially a crawl space that held all of the plumbing for easier access. According to the plans it was wide enough for a fairly thin vampire to fit; they’d measured carefully to make sure neither of them would get stuck.

  Olivia drew her knife and began prying the panel off the wall. “Remember,” she said, “the panel one floor up opens into a bathroom, so we should have a few seconds to climb out without being seen. From there we take the left-hand hallway—there will be Elite from there all the way to Hart.”

  “I’m ready for them,” Jeremy said. “And I’m ready for you.”

  Olivia started to ask—

  Pain struck her in the back, right between her kidneys. She cried out and fell, scrambling to reach the stake jutting out of her body. “What are you doing?” she cried. “Jeremy—”

  He stood over her, his face hard and impassive. “I’m sorry, Liv,” he said. “I wish it didn’t have to be this way. Thank you for all you’ve done for me . . . I mean that. But I knew you’d turn on me, and I was right.”

  She tried to think through the pain—she had to get the stake out or she couldn’t heal, but all she could think of was making it stop hurting. “Jeremy . . . please . . .”

  “Give my regards to David Solomon,” Jeremy said.

  She heard the scrape of the wet wall panel being pulled off, and he climbed into the crawl space and was gone.

  Moments later, the door of the training room flew open and guards poured in.

  * * *

  David lowered the scanner. “Everything’s going according to plan,” he said. “Are you ready?”

  Miranda nodded. “Let’s do it.”

  The door where Jeremy and Olivia had entered was still unguarded, and David’s scanner worked on the same principle as the sensor network but didn’t need actual sensors; it couldn’t tell the difference between a vampire, a human, and an animal, but would tell them how many living things were between them and their goal.

  They went through the door and shut it just seconds before the patrol was set to come around the corner; there was no time to waste, so they hit the ground running for the second floor.

  Miranda glanced around her as she ran—Hart’s Haven was purely industrial on the first floor, utilitarian like an office building; but as soon as they reached the second, all of that changed and it became far more like the Austin Haven. Fine furnishings, elegantly painted walls and trim . . . the major difference was the lack of natural light, as there were far fewer windows.

  Over their heads an alarm was blaring, and Miranda reached out with her mind, sensing the emotional signatures of dozens of vampires above and below her. A great many of them were headed to the second floor, and nearly a dozen were already there.

  “This way,” David said, checking the scanner again. “Hart’s quarters are down here.”

  Suddenly Miranda froze in her tracks and half-screamed. A dull but piercing pain bit into her back and a wave of dizziness hit her. “I’m shot!”

  David stopped an
d looked at her in confusion. “No, you’re not.”

  “I can feel it! A stake—wait—there’s nothing there?”

  “I promise you’re fine.”

  She realized what it felt like—not as if she had been staked, but as if David or even Cora or Deven had been staked, a distant pain that faded quickly. “It must have been one of the others—something’s wrong.”

  “It will have to wait. Come on.”

  But the few seconds’ lapse had been enough. Thundering footsteps from either direction turned into Elite running out of the stairwell at one end of the hall and the double doors at the other end. When they saw Miranda and David they immediately drew their weapons.

  Miranda grinned. “All right, now we’re talking,” she said, and drew Shadowflame.

  David shook his head, but he, too, was smiling, drawing his own sword. “You really are something, beloved.”

  She took the left, he took the right, and the fight was on.

  Twenty

  The guards dragged her up the stairs by her arms, blood trailing behind her as it dripped down her back. Every stair caused pain to shoot through her body.

  Once they had her on the second floor, they opened a side room without much furniture. One of the guards stripped off her weapons and her belt; another one punched her in the stomach. She groaned, and they released her arms, letting her drop in a heap on the ground, where they kicked the stake deeper into her back, then kicked her in the stomach again when she jerked back to try fruitlessly to pull the wooden shaft.

  “Tell the boss,” she heard one say. “She wasn’t alone—find the other one.”

  Yes, find the other one . . . and kill him, if you don’t mind.

  Olivia forced herself up onto her hands and knees, daring to look around the room for her weapons—they were on a table, her sword on top of the pile. If she could just get it . . .

  The first guard kicked her again, sending her back to the ground on her side; she tasted blood, and knew—didn’t fear, knew—she was about to die. Jeremy had seen through her, had known her for a traitor; the others were waiting outside to ambush him and take the artifact, but he probably knew that, too, and would get the drop on them. At the very least he would escape. Another blow made her vision gray out. One of the guards leaned down, grabbed the stake, and yanked it from her back as hard has he could; Olivia screamed, and they laughed.

  “Let’s see how many places we can stick this before you bleed out,” he said with a nasty smile. “Twenty-four, get her up.”

  I’m going to die. This is it.

  Well . . . fuck if I’m going to make it easy for them.

  As two of the guards bent to seize her arms, she summoned all of her strength and threw herself as hard as she could into his legs. He made a mew of surprise and flew backward, hitting the ground hard.

  She rolled onto her hands and knees again but this time didn’t wait for them to reach her; she jumped up to her feet, pushing as much energy as she could spare into the wound in her back. They were going to kill her—there were six of them and one of her and she had no weapons—but she would die as a warrior.

  The first one was so shocked he didn’t even have time to counterattack; he went down with a crushed larynx, gasping and clawing. He’d be back, but not before she could get to her weapons. The next took a swing at her, and she blocked it, spun around, and kicked him in the side of the head so hard his neck broke. He’d be down for an hour or more.

  The man she’d knocked over was back on his feet and had his blade drawn. The other three did the same, and she was surrounded again.

  All she had to do was move the whole thing over ten feet and she could get her sword—

  Olivia dove into the man she’d knocked over before; he was still a little dazed from the impact with the floor, and now he and the tiles met again, even more violently this time. She aimed low and ducked under the sword that sliced at her head, hit the ground in a roll, and came up only five feet from the table. They were on her already, and she lunged forward, hand outstretched toward her weapons—she was so close—

  Something smacked into her hand, and her fingers closed around it.

  The hilt of her sword.

  There was no time to wonder. She spun around and met the next slash with the clang of metal on metal. They hadn’t been expecting her to reach the table, and she took advantage of their astonishment—not to kill them all, but to do the smart thing and run like hell.

  * * *

  Miranda pulled Shadowflame free of the guard’s torso in time to meet the swing of another sword. It was almost unfair, the way the Pair was decimating the Elite who kept arriving from other floors to save their employer; the Prime and Queen together were an unstoppable force.

  She felt energy that seemed endless flowing into her—from where exactly she wasn’t sure—fueling her body and her reflexes, making her movements so fast she could barely see them herself. It was child’s play. She’d always been a good fighter, and she’d learned even more from Faith and David, but overnight her skills had heightened exponentially . . . and so had David’s.

  She’d never seen anything like it.

  They had the first wave of Elite down in about ninety seconds. When the second group arrived, they were confronted with the bodies of their comrades thrown all around the hall, most disconnected from their heads, some run through with stakes.

  Through the din, as the next group attacked, Miranda heard the clang of a blade that sounded heavier than the Elite’s. She tried to see through the mob, but she was too short to get much of a vantage point.

  There was no need. The unfamiliar warrior fought her way through the Elite until she reached where the Pair were slowly edging toward Hart’s door.

  The woman was mocha-skinned, hazel-eyed, and dreadlocked. Her arms were tattooed all the way down to her fingers. She was bloody and had dark circles under her eyes—the kind they tended to get when fighting through a significant injury.

  “What the hell are you doing in here?” the woman yelled. “You were supposed to wait at the rendezvous!”

  “Olivia,” David called loudly to be heard over the fight. “Nice to see you again.”

  “Likewise, my Lord.”

  Miranda shoved a guard back into one of his comrades and looked at Olivia. “You’re hurt,” she said. “Move back—let us handle this.”

  “Jeremy’s already in there,” Olivia returned. “He staked me—he was on to me the whole time.”

  Miranda and David exchanged a look. “Let’s get moving,” David said.

  “Come on!” Miranda told Olivia. “Stay next to me!”

  They fought their way to the double doors at the end of the hall, adjacent to another door that Miranda knew had once been the harem room. Miranda grabbed the door handle and turned it, but of course it was locked, so she took a step back and kicked it in.

  The doors flew back so hard they slammed into the interior walls.

  Miranda charged into the room . . . and paused.

  Sixteen Elite armed with crossbows pointed at her stood surrounding Hart, who was sitting casually behind a large oak desk.

  Jeremy lay on the floor in front of him, bleeding, breath coming in harsh gasps. He had wounds from at least four stakes in his back—and that was just what Miranda could see.

  David and Olivia took care of the last of the Elite that had come down the hallway, then they sought refuge in the room with Miranda, taking a moment to shut the doors before finally seeing what they were facing. Olivia stayed behind them, just as Faith would have done.

  Hart was examining a stack of papers and didn’t even look up at first. “There you are,” he said. “What kept you?”

  “Killing off half your Elite,” David said, stepping forward.

  Hart made a noise of amusement. “Bodyguards are a dime a dozen. Getting Jeremy Hayes to walk back into my Haven, along with you two, well, that’s impressive.”

  He pointed toward Jeremy, and one of the guards went over
to the fallen Prime and pushed him down, grabbing a small black box from him. “Here it is, Sire,” the guard said, and set it on the desk.

  “Let me guess,” Hart said to Jeremy. “You’re working with Morningstar.”

  “You know about them?” Miranda asked.

  A quiet snort. “I know a lot more than you think I do. I’m sure you’ve been told by now that Lydia wanted my help in getting her ridiculous Awakening under way, but I refused. The last thing in the world the Council needs is all of you banding together like some kind of deviant sports team. I knew, as does Morningstar, that if any one of you dies, Per-sephone’s little fan club can never exist.”

  “That’s why they’ve been trying to kill me,” Miranda said. “And Cora last week.”

  At the mention of Cora, Hart’s energy suddenly flared with poisonous black rage. “That little bitch,” he snarled, almost to himself. He turned hate-filled eyes on Miranda. “If you hadn’t given her the idea to run away, I could have kept her on a leash until she died, and that would have been the end of it—before it even began.”

  “You knew Cora was one of us,” David said, nodding slowly. “You found out somehow what was going to happen, maybe even a long time ago, and tried to stop it by enslaving her—and then when you couldn’t, you tried to kill us.”

  Hart’s anger faded, and he shrugged. “Oh well. A month’s delay in the grand scheme of things is nothing.”

  “But how did you know?” Miranda demanded. “Who told you?”

  He just stared at her. “Do you think Queens are the only people who have visions of the future? That’s a rather arrogant assumption, don’t you think? Prophets come in all forms.”

  “So what form was yours in?” Miranda asked.

  “No,” Hart said. “You don’t get to die knowing everything. That wouldn’t be nearly as satisfying for me.”

  “You do realize that if you kill us, the Council will come down on you like a sledgehammer,” David pointed out.