“Aha,” Deven said, nodding. “Now we come to it. You were the ones who banished her in the first place, and now that she’s returning, you want to do it again while there’s still distance between her and us.”
“Until your Circle is complete, she is vulnerable. Our first mission is to stop the formation of the Circle.”
“And how do you plan to accomplish that?”
The Shepherd took a few steps back and made a quick gesture. “We’ll start with you.”
Dev looked around at the humans surrounding him. They were all drawing their weapons, preparing to spring.
A dozen superhumans, one Prime.
No contest.
They came at him from all sides, twelve against one, and he dropped flat on the ground so that their blades clashed into each other rather than meeting flesh. It was a cheap trick, but it almost always worked on people who dove into a fight rather than coming in slowly. The adrenaline of attack overrode self-preservation. He rolled to the right, hitting two in the knees and taking them down, using their bodies as a springboard, backflipping and spinning to take two heads in one stroke, with a third on the follow-through.
The remaining eight attacked in pairs, each from a different side; Deven met each blade with his, driving two pairs back toward the nearest wall.
They were good. They were very good. Whoever had trained them had been a master . . . but not an adept . . . and certainly nothing like the Alpha.
Another head hit the ground with a dull thud, its associated body not five seconds later. The humans were fast—fast enough to challenge him, which he liked. It was so hard to find warriors of his caliber anymore. Their style was a pastiche that wasn’t terribly elegant but was quite effective. One of them even showed some creativity in her attack strategy—so they weren’t just running through a program but could adapt.
He coaxed them all into a circle again and stood at the center, fighting them all at once. Another faltered, just for a second, just long enough for Ghostlight to slip in past his guard and slit his throat.
And there, Deven realized, was the problem with Morningstar’s plan: These humans might be fast and strong like vampires, but they were still mortal. Their leaders had sacrificed a Prime to imbue them with strength and then neglected to supply them with Kevlar.
Another man went down with a gurgle of blood, and Deven braced his foot on the body to pull the sword out of the man’s chest. Five to go.
He focused his attention on the one that seemed strongest. They fought along the alleyway just long enough for Deven to memorize his moves and then throw them back at him—the human favored a one-two-three combination that he used over and over, and it was child’s play to take it, reverse it, and use it against him.
Three . . . two . . . one . . . and the man got close enough that Deven seized him by the shoulders, spun him around, and broke his neck.
Deven turned back to the remaining three and pointed at them with Ghostlight’s dripping blade. “This is your last chance,” Deven said. “Leave my city now and abandon this foolish quest, or die here in the street choking on your own blood.”
He didn’t actually mean it, but he wanted to see if he was right, and he was—whatever was driving them would drive them until they killed their target or fell dead themselves. Kamikaze soldiers . . . not good.
They all three attacked at once, and he immediately shifted back into the power-dance sight that he shared with David—he could see their actions a split second before they were made. It was hard to do with two opponents, and nearly impossible with three, but he specialized in the impossible.
He dodged a punch, then used one human’s momentum to fling the other across the alley. When she got back to her feet and came at him again, he passed his shorter blade into his right hand, leaving the left free, and hit her so hard in the chest her sternum shattered and nearly got his hand stuck in the crisscrossing bones of her rib cage. She barely had time to scream—there was no more air in her lungs, no way to cry out, only the last wet sounds of her heart sputtering still.
He jerked free of her, letting the body fall to the ground in a heap. As he dropped her, he turned toward a faint noise and threw the knife; it hit the man coming toward him, the force flinging the human backward several feet before he fell down dead.
They’d saved the best for last, and this one showed no signs of tiring. Dev and the human circled around each other, blade on blade like the clanging of bells, until Deven snaked in and sliced open his arm. The human jerked backward but didn’t fall. As he regained his balance, Deven lowered his sword, spun, and kicked the man in the side of the head, knocking him to the ground unconscious.
An eerie silence fell once the sounds of battle and the groans of the dying were hushed. Deven stood over the bodies, looking around for the Shepherd, but it was no surprise the man was gone.
He stared down at the last one left alive as he sheathed Ghostlight and took out his phone.
“Dispatch, I need a prisoner retrieval team to these coordinates, as well as a crime scene analysis and body disposal team. Have interrogation room six prepared.”
“As you will it, Sire.”
“Also send a message to the analysts to get me a copy of the sensor readings for this block for the last two hours.”
“Consider it done, my Lord Prime.”
Before he could even lower the phone it was ringing, and he didn’t have to look to know who it was. “I’m all right.”
“What the hell were you thinking?” Jonathan demanded, his anger almost as loud as his fear.
“I was thinking, ‘I’m surrounded, so I’d better kill these bastards.’”
“You should have Misted out of there. You didn’t need to fight.”
“Of course I did. Morningstar needed to see that we’re not all so easy to kill, and our people needed to see that Morningstar isn’t invincible. They’re enhanced humans, but they’re still humans. And now we have solid data to look at and one of theirs we can question. I’d call that a win.”
“Damn it, Deven . . .” Jonathan trailed off; he didn’t have much of an argument, and he knew it, though Deven could hear how scared he had been.
“I’m sorry, darling,” Deven said, looking up to see the two vans pulling up to the scene. “I have to go—we can talk more when I get home.”
Jonathan hung up without answering, something he often did when Deven’s behavior infuriated him beyond words. By the time Dev got back to the Haven the Consort would be calmer, halfway through a bottle of Woodford Reserve, and would be able to put emotion aside and listen to reason.
While he waited for the Elite teams to get the scene under control and drag the still-breathing human to the van, he made another call.
Miranda answered without preamble, “What’s going on? It feels weird over there.”
“Hello, love . . . is David in? I have some news about our pest control problem.”
“He’s in the shower—what happened?”
He smiled. “You’ll never guess who I met tonight.”
• • •
Miranda had to leave after the screaming started.
She knew better than to sit in on the interrogation, but still, part of her was morbidly curious; she knew her husband was an accomplished torturer and had no doubt that Deven was similarly gifted, but there was something especially horrible in what they were doing tonight that made her want to hear at least a little bit of it.
“For the record, this is pretty messed up,” she said. “Torture by conference call?”
David, surrounded by his monitors with the sensor network, a Signet territory map, and other information on the four screens at his workroom desk, had queued up a recording program directly in front of him and was setting it up. He looked over at her, his eyes hard. “Then leave,” he replied, not harshly, but firmly. “If you don’t think you can handle it, it’s better if you’re not here; you might unintentionally make a sound or speak and alter the dynamic.”
; David brought up another window, where there was a readout of vital signs: Deven had attached sensors to the prisoner’s body so they could pay attention to heart rate, pulse, temperature.
Despite the nausea she already felt in her stomach, she tried for a joke. “What’s the strategy—good vampire, bad vampire?”
David smiled and shook his head. “Assuming Dev still does things the same way as he did in the forties, right now the prisoner is chained wrist and ankle against the wall, just a few inches off the ground to put additional pressure on his joints and eliminate the sense of stability of being on the floor.”
“So, no table full of torture implements to show the guy and scare him?”
“Not necessary. The scariest torture implement will be the one doing the talking.” David lifted a finger to his lips to quiet her and turned up the volume, crossing his arms to listen.
Miranda heard a chair scrape over the ground, the creak of leather. “You’re an excellent warrior,” Deven said. He was calm, his tone light, and Miranda tried to imagine him in all his Goth regalia, all five foot four of him, 150 pounds soaking wet . . . he’d scare the ever-loving piss out of the mortal just by sitting there.
“I met your boss this evening before I had the pleasure of meeting your team,” Deven went on. “He didn’t really fit the profile of a fanatical religious type. Trust me, I know them when I see them.”
As he spoke, the human’s heart rate was rising. Miranda shot David a quizzical look, and David pressed an image into her mind of Deven toying with a wicked-looking knife as he spoke, repeatedly drawing the blade along his thumb to raise a line of blood that closed as the human watched.
“What shall I call you?” When the human didn’t immediately answer, Deven added, “You’re going to want to talk to me. I just singlehandedly killed eleven of your compatriots—you saw me do it. Do you think for one second you aren’t just as disposable to me? If you don’t talk, I’ll find another who will. If you do, I will show you mercy.”
There was still no reply, but a few seconds later Miranda heard something whistle through the air and impact hard in the wall; the human’s heart rate went through the roof and he whimpered before he could stop himself. “West Twelve,” he blurted.
“I assume that designates where you’re stationed and your standing within the garrison.”
A long moment of silence passed, the only sound the human’s heavy breathing. Clearly whatever mystical abilities he’d been given didn’t include withstanding intimidation. Whenever David questioned a vampire, it often took hours; Miranda suspected this would take maybe twenty minutes at the rate it was going.
“All right, West Twelve,” Deven said. “Here’s how this is going to go. I could sit here for hours, winning your trust, being sympathetic, and gradually prying pieces of information from you without you even realizing it. But to be honest, I’m terrible at that. My teachers were always so disappointed, but I prefer a more direct approach.”
The chair scraped again; footsteps approached the far end of the room where the man was hung. There was an odd noise that Miranda figured was Deven yanking the knife out of the wall. Then the Prime’s voice grew quieter, but deathly serious, all levity gone.
“You’re going to tell me everything you know about the Order of the Morningstar, the Shepherd, and whoever pulls his strings. And you’re going to be thorough and detailed and not try my very limited patience.”
Miranda silently willed the man not to argue, not to try and be a hero. Just talk. Just talk, damn it.
“A-and what if I don’t tell you anything?” West 12 asked.
Deven answered with a question of his own. “Did you know that human blood tastes better when it’s infused with heightened emotion—lust, anger, fear? Some of us are junkies for one or another. One of the most popular things to charge blood with is pain. And pain and fear together . . . it’s like candy, and I for one have a bit of a sweet tooth.”
Miranda heard the human struggling in his chains, and a low hiss told her that the Prime had extended his teeth—a surefire way to terrify just about any human. It was an atavistic fear that even those familiar with vampires would try to get away from.
Miranda closed her eyes and could practically see it: Deven took the knife in his hand and drove it into the human’s arm, almost all the way through. The human screamed . . . then screamed again when Dev clamped his mouth on the wound and sucked hard.
She didn’t visualize whatever happened next: The scream went on, punctuated by begging, promises to talk, and more screaming. She knew why. There were so many places on the human body to cut and drink from, so many that hurt so much worse than the throat, especially if the vampire used his influence over the mortal mind to drive that pain and fear up to a fever pitch. Deven would carefully avoid any major organs, but he knew exactly where to place the knife, what angle to press it in at, what speed to pierce the skin.
Despite his words, she knew he hadn’t learned the method from a mentor. He had learned it by experiencing it himself.
Miranda pushed herself up out of her chair and stumbled from the room, having just enough presence of mind to close the door quietly so the slam wouldn’t distract anyone. The man’s terror, beyond reason and civility, had dug its claws into her heart, and it drove her down the hall, away from David’s workroom, toward the music room.
David had been right, and she’d been an idiot. She had no business in that room. Needless to say her curiosity was satisfied.
She forgot, sometimes, what they were capable of. Even now. She knew David wouldn’t feel a shred of guilt no matter what horrific sounds the human made before Deven finally showed him that final second of “mercy” and broke his neck, slit his throat, or stabbed him in the heart; David would simply sit there listening, evaluating the human’s words for nuances and details, supplying a question here and there . . . so very civilized. And he would probably listen to the recording several more times without caring one whit about the suspect’s life.
She also knew, without having to ask, that he felt no guilt over the lives they had taken on the new moon. He had been the first to surrender to the need, but even then, she suspected he had only really resisted in the first place for her sake. It didn’t scare her—she had known who he was long before she relinquished her humanity. Primes, he had told her once, were required to do things that no one else could, no matter how ugly the task.
She couldn’t judge him for it. She, too, had killed, both humans and vampires. He had found her that first night in the alley bleeding and barely sane, surrounded by the corpses of four men. She had used her empathy to hurt her enemies in ways a sword couldn’t, and she would most likely do it again . . . no, she would do it again.
Miranda reached the music room and closed the door behind her; she sank onto the piano bench, shut her eyes, and grounded herself, breathing slowly and deeply, and the panic faded, as did the shame—yes, they were killers . . . both of them. This wasn’t really about torture; it was about what she had done and would have to do again. No, she wasn’t okay with it. But the facts were the facts, and she was going to have to find a way to live with it. They had too much to do; there was too much at stake. The means were monstrous but necessary, even though the ends were still undefined.
And she was going to keep telling herself that until she believed it.
• • •
Deven finished scrubbing the blood from under his fingernails and emerged from the bathroom, stretching idly.
“That was pretty much a bust,” Jonathan said from his chair, where he sat reading. “I suppose it was too much to ask for the guy to know all their plans.”
“He was just a foot soldier. If we really want to know their inner workings, we need to question the Shepherd.”
“How do you propose we do that?”
Dev reached for the clean T-shirt he’d left on the bed and pulled it on. He’d already showered once tonight, after the fight, and was very careful not to get any bloodier than
he had to in the interrogation. He’d gotten away with stained hands and a few smears on his shirt; not bad.
“No clue,” he replied. “I think it’s safe to assume this was a test—they had a few casualties with Varati and wanted to see what they’d be up against with a fight-trained Prime. Varati was a good ruler, but he was no warrior. His Second was responsible for the Elite’s skill in battle. Whether they killed me tonight or not, they would learn something valuable about us, just as we learned about them.”
“I’m sure your reputation preceded you,” Jonathan said wryly.
“Even if it didn’t, it’s following me. I have no doubt the Shepherd watched the whole thing and then reported back to Crazy Fucker High Command.”
Jonathan shot him a familiar look. “Oh, you mean he called you?”
“You’re still upset with me for getting into it with them, I see.”
“You could have been killed, Dev.”
Deven sighed. “I seriously doubt that.” He picked up the knife he’d fought with from the desk where he’d sat to clean it and strapped it back in place. He felt dangerously exposed unless he had at least three weapons at all times—one for each hand and a backup. “I’ve fought against much more formidable odds than twelve to one, especially considering they were human. At no point did I feel remotely in jeopardy—and even if I had, I could have Misted out any time I liked.”
“As if you would.” Jonathan shook his head. “I thought you’d shaken the suicidal tendencies thanks to the Elf’s handiwork.”
“I came home without a scratch, Jonathan—how much less suicidal could it have been? It was a calculated risk. I wanted to learn exactly how strong they are, and I did.”
“To hell with how strong they are,” Jonathan snapped. “I almost lost you to an emotional black hole and just when I get you back, you start courting death again. You can’t expect me to just sit back in silence while you stalk around town getting into fights that could kill us both.”
“What do you expect?” Deven demanded. “In all the time you’ve known me, have I ever walked away from a fight? Did you think that the Elf would magically turn me into some kind of pacifist or something more acceptable to you? I’m never going to change, Jonathan. I’ve told you a thousand times you cannot fix me. Stop trying.”
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