Shadowbound

by Dianne Sylvan

  “We need to get out of here,” he said, looking up at the sky, which continued to lighten. She watched the holes in his neck—not the neat punctures they usually left, but ragged tears from all four teeth—close up and disappear.

  “Sorry . . . about that,” she said.

  Deven kissed her forehead. “Barely a scratch.” They had perhaps an hour before the sun was high enough to hurt them. “I think we’re on the edge of town—we might be stuck here for the day. Let’s see if we can find someplace a little more comfortable.”

  “You don’t have a car?” she whispered. She didn’t have the strength to summon her voice.

  “No . . . I’m on my own. I was the only one who could get here fast enough.”

  “Wait . . . how did you get here? There’s no airport.”

  “I’ll explain later.” Straightening, he picked her up off the ground and carried her out of the pen. Just getting out from under the open sky made her feel far less afraid.

  The next quarter hour or so faded in and out, but when she opened her eyes again, she could smell hay, and the same earthy animal stink as in David’s stables. Here, though, the smell was old and faded, just like the machinery smell in the other building. Nothing but owls and mice had lived here for a long time.

  Miranda looked around curiously; most of the barn was far below. They were in a hayloft. Usually a place like that would have gaps in the planks that let sunlight reach in, but up here, whoever had built the place had taken extra care to keep the wind and rain out to protect the hay, and it was comfortably dark, especially since Deven had found a faded canvas tarp and was basically making them a hay fort to block out any remaining sunlight.

  Miranda couldn’t lie there and not help; she forced herself up and grabbed a small bale, stacking it near the entrance. It looked almost like a little house, or like the stable in a Nativity, the thought of which would have made her laugh if she hadn’t been so tired.

  “We need three Wise Men,” she said.

  He lightly squeezed the back of her neck, a surprisingly reassuring gesture. “We’ll have to settle for two badass Signets. Go inside and get comfortable. I’ll get a look at what our defenses are and whether there’s an animal or, if we’re really lucky, a human around we can get you fed on.”

  Miranda had to move slowly; the wounds were still deep, and without feeding she couldn’t heal them completely and stay conscious. She knew as soon as Deven had made certain their defenses he’d come to her aid; they didn’t have time for her to lie around whimpering. She spread another tarp over the floor of their tiny hideaway and pushed and shoved the hay beneath into something resembling pillows, then sank back into it with a grunt.

  “We’re on an abandoned farm outside town,” Deven said, returning from his recon. “According to my phone there’s nothing for miles—I’m barely getting a signal. If there are any Morningstar left on the property, they’re biding their time. I called David,” he added before she could ask, reaching down to pull off her boots. “He knows you’re all right. He may have already tried to call you. I persuaded him to stop at a motel and come the rest of the way close to sunset—otherwise he’d be stranded in the car for twelve hours losing his mind. Now, just relax . . . let me take care of this mess.”

  He held his hands above her body, moving them slowly over her; she felt healing energy sighing softly into her, bathing each wound in warmth and leaving a slight vibration behind. As the pain abated she was able to watch him more closely, and the difference in his energy from the last time they’d met was amazing. He was clearer, even stronger, and his power flowed almost effortlessly where, back when he’d healed Kat, it had taken twice as long and had knocked him out for most of a day. He had, since she’d last seen him, tapped into something fathomless.

  She remembered what Jonathan had said about the “Weaver” who had helped them. Whatever this guy was, he was powerful . . . frighteningly so.

  They settled in together to wait out the sunlight, Miranda’s head resting on his shoulder. The barn creaked softly in the wind, and though she could feel the sun burning outside, she felt protected; the quiet, broken by the droning of insects and the passage of birds overhead, coupled with the warmth to take some of the horror of the night away.

  “Okay,” she said. “Tell me how you got here so fast.”

  “A really big slingshot.”

  She elbowed him in the ribs. “I’m guessing it had something to do with your new friend,” Miranda said.

  “How did you . . . never mind.” Deven sighed. “Yes. He has the ability to create portals from place to place. It’s hard work, though, and doing it on such short notice to an unfamiliar location wiped him out. I’ll have to take a plane back.”

  “Does this miracle worker have a name?”

  “Nico.”

  She reached up and touched his Signet, silent for a moment, before saying quietly, “You really were dying, weren’t you.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why didn’t you tell us?”

  “Because you couldn’t have done anything . . . and because I don’t think I really wanted to get better.” He shut his eyes for a moment. “If Nico hadn’t appeared out of nowhere determined to help, I probably would have just given up.”

  “Even if it meant taking Jonathan with you?”

  “I didn’t want to punish him, too, but by then, all I wanted was for it to end. I would never have killed us on purpose, but if I could just lie back and let it happen . . . you have to understand . . . after everything I’ve destroyed, it was no less than I deserved.”

  Miranda felt tears burn her eyes. “You can’t really believe that.” She knew, though, that he did, and the hollowness of such a thought, along with the memory of a time when she’d have been perfectly happy for him to die, filled her with such sadness, when she was already feeling hurt and vulnerable, that she turned her face into his neck and wept.

  She heard an affectionate chuckle. “Don’t cry, love . . . you can’t be rid of me that easily.”

  She lifted her head. “It’s not just that. It’s been a really shitty day, and . . .”

  “You wish David were here.”

  She nodded, sniffing. “I never should have come here. I don’t know what I was thinking. It was stupid.”

  Deven used the hem of his shirt to wipe her eyes. “Seeking love is never stupid. No one is immune to missing those they’ve lost.”

  They were silent for a while; Miranda knew she should sleep, and her body was craving it, but her mind wouldn’t be still. She kept remembering the terror of waking up staked to the ground . . . of feeling the sky lighten overhead, knowing that she couldn’t free herself . . . thinking that after everything, she might die alone on a filthy floor and never see David again . . .

  “You’re projecting, my Lady.”

  “Sorry . . . I’m just so tired of this constant feeling of impending doom hanging over my head. I just want a little time to pass without fighting for my life or being afraid of whom I’ll lose next.”

  “I wish I had comforting words for you, but . . .”

  “I know. It’s far from over. I just have to suck it up and deal. It just . . . it hurts.”

  “If you dwell too much on your sorrow and fear, you’ll end up on the ground with a dying heart,” Deven said. “Trust me, Miranda . . . you don’t want that. Just deal with what’s in front of you, and trust your own strength. Take solace in what you love.”

  “I am,” she said, tightening her grip on his hand again. “Take your own advice.”

  The sun was well up outside by now; the main part of the barn was run through with shafts of light that kept the hayloft from being as dark as she might have liked, but still, it was safe and warm.

  Her phone rang. It took a moment of groping with the ache in her arms, but she found it in her pocket. “Hello?”

  “Thank God you’re safe.” David’s voice crackled and skipped from the poor signal.

  “Hey, baby. Where are you?”
<
br />   “. . . motel about an hour outside Rio Verde . . . be there as soon as I can. Have you fed?”

  “No. Not a whole lot of people wandering around the barn. But I’m okay for now.”

  “I’ll have some with me when . . . get there. You only have to last until sunset.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  Most people wouldn’t be able to hear the rough edge of worry in his voice, but she certainly could as he said, “Tell Deven he’d better take good care of you or I’ll yank his piercings out . . . and I won’t start with his face.”

  “Understood,” Deven said, leaning toward the phone. “Now stop pacing around your room and go to sleep.”

  “Fine . . . both of you get some rest. We’ll all be home soon.”

  “How are you really feeling?” Deven asked after they hung up. “You don’t sound fine.”

  She drew a shaky breath. “I’m hungry. It’s getting harder to ignore. I’ll make it until sunset, but I’m probably going to get good and bitchy pretty soon. Distract me . . . tell me more about this Nico of yours.”

  “He’s not mine,” he said a little too quickly. She peered at him curiously, taking a moment to read the surface emotions she could sense; he was unusually open at the moment, and what she saw surprised her. At the look on her face, he added, “It’s not like that.”

  “Are you sure?” she asked. “It feels like that to me.”

  He toyed with one of her curls for a while, then said, “He told me he loves me.”

  “And what did you say?”

  “That it’s not going to happen. I care about Nico . . . God knows I do . . . there’s a connection between us that runs deep. He understands something about me no one else ever could. But the fact is, I can count the actual relationships I’ve had in my life on the fingers of one hand. Of those, the only one that didn’t end in misery was Jonathan. I know that no matter what, he’ll never leave me. He’s my North Star, my constant. I don’t care what he says—he might honestly be okay with it, but I’m not. And Nico says he loves me now, but he’ll be gone in a few days, and if I indulge in what seems like a harmless dalliance, I’ll have to live with the damage I cause to the one heart that truly matters. I don’t think I’m that powerful a healer.”

  She nodded slowly. “I agree and I disagree,” she said. “I agree that Jonathan feels more than he claims to about the whole thing, even though I don’t think he’s aware of it. I think he would go to his grave defending your right to be with whomever you wanted. But I disagree that anything with you and this guy would be a dalliance. I can sense it . . . if you ever let yourself feel for him, he’d have you for good. So it’s best, I guess, that you don’t . . . of course, emotions aren’t really subject to choice. Only actions are.”

  Deven didn’t say anything to that, just shook his head.

  Miranda began to feel sleepy; exhaustion pulled at all her limbs, the strain of the night’s events finally overriding her hunger—or, perhaps, she was being helped along in that direction by the subtle yet noticeable current of energy that was still flowing through her.

  Well, that was one way to change the subject.

  With a sigh, she turned her face into Deven’s shoulder and closed her eyes.

  • • •

  Deven looked down from the stacked hay bales where he perched, trying to get enough of a signal on his phone to check in with David. How did people in this backwater plan a battle?

  Down in the barn the light was beginning to turn watery and blue. Another hour and the sun would be far enough down that it was safe outside. Best guess, David was about an hour away. The timing was a bit troublesome.

  They were in the safest possible place in the event of an attack; the only way up, assuming one couldn’t climb the walls or jump fifteen feet, was the single rickety ladder. Easy enough to defend. He had a full complement of weapons, and though Miranda hadn’t brought Shadowflame she had at least two blades on her that he’d seen.

  Miranda stirred and woke. “Everything okay?” she asked with a yawn.

  “Looks like we may have company,” he replied. “David got his Morningstar-sensing scanner thing up and limping; he’s pretty sure there’s a fuckload of them headed out here. They’ll probably arrive right before he does, so we might have to fend them off for a few minutes.”

  “How many is a fuckload?”

  “More than an assload, less than a fuckton.”

  She laughed and pushed herself to her feet. She still looked exhausted, even after hours of sleep. She needed to feed, soon, or her strength reserves would burn out. As it was, he wasn’t optimistic that she’d be able to fight. It was a testament to her newly won strength that she was upright at all after being staked to the ground all day.

  “I don’t get it,” the Queen said. “If they had more people, why didn’t they just come get us during the day?”

  “I don’t know. I know that they brought these people in from Houston, so it took a few hours to mobilize the troops and make the trip, but for some reason they still don’t seem to want to attack during daylight. I guess that’s the next mystery to solve. For now, gift horse, mouth.”

  Miranda took up her knives from the hay bale where all their weapons were waiting and buckled them on, then pulled on her coat. Deven hopped down and joined her to do the same thing, but it took him a lot longer as he had fourteen weapons total—seven he’d taken off and left on the hay bale so he could curl up with Miranda without poking her somewhere unfortunate, and seven he’d kept on.

  The Queen grimaced. “I might not be much good in a fight—my arms feel like they’re made of lead. I thought you healed all of that?”

  He looked her up and down. “I can’t really help the fatigue because it’s hunger-based. Not even I can draw blood from nowhere. I was conservative with the energy because I was worried that too much would have you unconscious for days. But I can deal with residual pain; come here.”

  She did, and he took both of her wrists in hand and concentrated on them for a moment. As she watched, his eyes darkened from lavender to deep violet, then faded back again as the pain in her arms faded. She didn’t remember ever seeing them do that before.

  Miranda started to step back, but suddenly Deven froze, tightening his grip on her arms. She turned her head to look out at the barn. “What . . .”

  There it was again: a car door slamming.

  The sun was still half an hour up. It wasn’t David.

  “They’re here,” Miranda said softly.

  He listened hard and with a sinking heart counted the doors: two, four, eight, twelve. Assuming eight passengers per vehicle . . . Focusing even more, he counted the quiet sounds of boots on the dry, hard-packed ground outside.

  Miranda shook her head, frowning. “How many?”

  “Thirty.”

  She paled. “That’s a fuckload.”

  “How many can you take?”

  “Last time I was in a group fight I was against a dozen, but they would have killed me if David hadn’t appeared. Right now? Not that many. You?”

  “In straight combat I could take out around fifteen without much trouble. From up here, with only one way to reach us, if there are no crossbows I can deal with them all.”

  “We have to assume they’ll have at least a few arrows.” The Queen crossed her arms, standing on the edge of the hayloft, narrowing her eyes. “Let me handle those. I can concentrate my strength on the most strategic targets.”

  He started to say something, but a loud noise startled them both into silence.

  Another vehicle had arrived outside, this one with a deafening diesel engine, and as it came to a stop there were a series of clanks, a grinding sound . . . and then another engine roaring to life, along with the shrill beep of something big backing up.

  “What. The hell. Is that?”

  He ignored the Queen for a moment and stared across the barn at one of the thin gaps in the slats; it only afforded an inch or two of the view, but what he saw was something
truck-sized and yellow-orange being maneuvered toward the barn.

  “It’s a bulldozer,” Deven said. “They’re going to bring the building down.”

  Seven

  Miranda just stared at him, while outside the beeping and engine grinding continued. “You can’t be serious.”

  “What else do you think it could be?”

  She looked out over the barn, evaluating the waning light and scent of the air. “Twenty minutes until sunset,” she said. “What happens if we’re exposed to dusk this late?”

  Deven didn’t seem afraid, but then, she wasn’t sure he was capable of fear; truth be told he didn’t even look particularly worried, just irritated. “Dawn and dusk are kind of a gray area. Right now a good long exposure, say a full sixty seconds, would kill us . . . and if you thought those stakes hurt, you’re in for a much more unpleasant surprise.”

  Her heart was pounding—she remembered that brief moment in Stella’s apartment when she’d been exposed. She stepped back, and again, wanting nothing more than to dive into the hay and curl up in a ball.

  “It definitely won’t take them twenty minutes to knock down the walls,” she said.

  “Probably not. Hitting a few load-bearing beams would make short work of a shack like this.”

  She made a helpless gesture. “Why the hell aren’t you worried? How can you be so calm?”

  The Prime raised an eyebrow. “I don’t know if you knew this, but the Queen I’m trapped in here with is a telekinetic empath.”

  “But I can’t move something I can’t see!”

  “And your empathic gift can’t penetrate a barn door?” He gave her a somewhat weary smile. “How disappointing.”

  Miranda shot him a look of annoyance but grounded herself and reached out toward the world outside. She tried to ignore the continuing sounds of the humans outside revving up the bulldozer and turning it so it faced the barn door; she extended her senses slowly, touching each mind she felt to give her an idea of the size of the crowd.