He could have had Nico. And now…
“What do you want me to do?” he asked.
Miranda either didn’t hear the genuine entreaty in his tone, or didn’t care anymore. She took a step back and shook her head.
“I want you to go to hell,” she said, and walked away.
*****
When the drug finally loosened its grip enough that he could fight his way awake, and he could at last open his eyes, Nico immediately wished he were still unconscious.
He didn’t have words for most of what he was looking at. The only term he could think of for the kind of room he was in was clinical; it bore some resemblance to the infirmary at the Haven. He was in its center, on his back, but had enough freedom of movement to look from side to side.
Freedom of…
That was when he realized he was tied down. He pulled upward against the restraints on his wrists — surely even a vampire at half strength could undo most human engineering—but he was held down tightly at wrist, ankle, and neck…by steel.
He didn’t remember anything after feeling the affects of the dart crawl through him. It could only have been Morningstar’s doing…but what about Stella and Kai? Were they here too? Had they been killed? The idea made him nauseated.
“Good evening, pretty one,” came a voice. “It’s nice to have you with us.”
He jerked his head upward to look, but couldn’t. Obligingly, the speaker moved around to the side until he was in Nico’s line of sight.
It was a human…probably. Male, relatively young, at least on first glance. Looking more closely Nico could see his skin was a strange, sick greyish tone, and was wrinkled…no, not wrinkled. Cracked. Long seams ran up his bare forearms and over his face, following the contours of the bones, the skin so thin and dry it was splitting bloodlessly from what was either old age or magic.
He couldn’t be that old. That meant something very powerful was keeping that body together…or something very powerful was attempting to rip it apart.
“Who are you?” Nico asked, keeping his voice calm. “What did you do with my companions?”
“Oh, Good, you do speak English,” the man said, nodding with approval. “This would have been so much more difficult if you didn’t. As to your friends….I assume they’re back at the Night-walkers’ home. Putting them out was really just for convenience; you were the only one I needed.”
“And why do you need me?”
“My associates and I have questions which you are uniquely qualified to answer.”
Nico’s blood went cold. He knew what that meant. He’d heard David tell enemy captives I have questions for you and it always ended in screaming. “I won’t tell you anything,” he said in what he hoped was a brave-sounding tone.
“Oh, I don’t expect you to—not with your voice. But perhaps introductions are in order — I know you’re called Nico, and that you used to be an Elf. We certainly were surprised to find out you all still existed! You were supposed to have been wiped out centuries ago.”
The man was cheerful, friendly. It was a contrast both to his somewhat ghoulish appearance and the way he was looking at Nico, slowly from head to foot and back again, evaluating something, coldly, calculating. It was a look Nico might have called lustful, but there was nothing sensual in it—covetous was a better word.
“Here among my people I’m known as the Prophet,” he said. “And you see…I need to know more about you, Nico. There’s no data on your people anywhere anymore. I know what I can expect from a human, and I have no use for vampires, but Elves…you might be the answer I need.”
“I don’t understand,” Nico said. “What could you possibly need from me?”
“As I said…data. Obviously you’re of no use to me in and of yourself—you’re a halfbreed, the worst of both worlds. But there aren’t just a whole lot of real Elves running around, and before I go trying to find one, I need to know if I’m wasting my time. You might be an abomination to your own people, but there is something you have that makes you unique, and ideally suited to my…explorations, let’s call them.”
“What do I have?”
The Prophet made a gesture, and two other humans appeared. They began bustling around, opening drawers and tearing open packages. Nico could just barely see what they were doing, but one was filling a row of at least a dozen syringes from at least that many vials. The other produced an ordinary pair of scissors, and, with a nod from the Prophet, began cutting through Nico’s shirt.
“You can’t possibly be comfortable in that costume,” the Prophet said reasonably. “As to what it is you have that I need…why, you have vampiric healing ability. It gives me free rein to learn what I need to without fear of killing you, at least, at the outset.”
“Why not just kill me?” Nico demanded. “Kill one of us and we’re beaten, remember? Your whole war would be over with in minutes.”
The Prophet made a dismissive noise. “There are ways the survivors could still be a threat. In the time before, there were only four of them left when we were defeated. It’s just a matter of what they’re willing to sacrifice. But you…” He helped the other human peel back Nico’s shirt, cutting through the sleeves entirely to take it off in pieces before moving on to the rest of his clothes. The air in the room was freezing, and Nico’s heart was pounding in his throat. “I’ll need what I learn from you regardless. Your sacrifice will help the righteous once again take control of the Earth. We were so very, very long asleep.”
Nico tried to make sense of that, but the only thing he knew was fear—mad instinctive terror was crawling all over him, the ancestral memory of all his people who had been dragged away by Inquisitors and chained to a table to scream their lives out. He thought of Deven, who had been a hundred times stronger than Nico, suffering the same fate until he was thrown into a dungeon to rot from the inside out. Now here Nico was…he was going to die just as his people had, alone and afraid—
No.
I will not give them the satisfaction. If they want to kill me, so be it. But I will not make it easy for them.
As one of the humans moved closer, a scalpel in his hand which he touched lightly to Nico’s chest, wrath surged through the Elf, and he shoved outward with his power.
Both of the assistant humans flew backwards; one hit the wall, the other managed to steady himself on a cabinet.
The Prophet chuckled.
It was a nasty, reptilian sound.
He stood at the head of the table and leaned down so his face was two inches from Nico’s. The closeness made the Elf’s skin crawl, as did the dry cold feeling of the Prophet’s hand sliding down Nico’s arm…but not nearly as much as the near-sexual satisfaction in the Prophet’s voice.
“Good boy,” he said. “Now…do it again.”
*****
Miranda wanted nothing more than to turn around the minute she walked out of Kai’s room and go back—she’d never seen the look on Deven’s face before, and it made everything inside her hurt. But if she was going to help Nico she had to hurry before—
Her heart sank as she heard the faint slip-and-rattle of the outside shutters closing down. It was nearly 6am.
There was nothing she could do to help him until sunset; the only person she could even send out to the scene was Stella, but Stella was still unconscious.
Exhaustion nearly knocked Miranda over. The show at the Paramount, the arrest, now this…even a Queen’s energy tapped out after so many blows.
She returned to the Signet Suite, defeated, praying to anyone who might listen that Nico would be okay until they could find him…she dreaded the thought of what they might do to him in twelve hours.
David lay on the bed where the Elite had left him, on his back, hands on his stomach. He looked awful. Not just-returned-from-the-dead awful, maybe, but still ashen white with dark circles around his eyes.
She managed to peel off her clothes and force herself into the shower so she could r
inse off the stink of the jail; then she fell onto the bed and dragged herself up next to him, taking his hand and wrapping a leg around both of his.
Before she could drop off she grabbed her phone and told it to wake her in five hours.
`She must have hit the wrong number, though, because just as her eyes fell shut, the alarm went off, blitzkreiging her awake. She groped for the phone to see what had gone wrong and nearly sobbed. The alarm was right. Five hours had passed.
She checked over David quickly: still out, but he did look better in some indefinable way. Maybe the effect would prove to be temporary and both he and Kai would wake up. She could use all the help she could get.
Miranda pulled on clothes and all but sprinted to the Batcave.
David had programmed her into the system for just such an occasion—well, maybe not the occasion of him being under a coma spell, but incapacitation of any kind.
The room lit up as she entered, and she sat down and put her palm on the security screen; it took a minute for the network to scan and recognize her with all its various metrics, but chirped and beeped to life obligingly as soon as it was sure she was who her handprint claimed she was.
She had no idea what a lot of the system did, much less how to work it, but luckily it was programmed to respond to her voice.
“Give me sensor grid data for…12:42 am.”
The city of Austin appeared in front of her. She touched the screen to zoom it, and dragged the image around until she identified the street corner where the attack had taken place. 12:42 was when Stella’s distress call had come through.
“Scan back twenty minutes and replay at 1 ½ speed.”
She watched, biting her lip. There they were: five dots moving in a cluster along the street. One human, one vampire, one classified as “other” since David hadn’t felt the need to program in “Elf” just yet, and two…well, they read as vampires, but their vitals were off. That should have sent up a flag.
A moment later the group stopped. The human’s heart rate soared; then one by one she, vampire, and Elf all disappeared. So did the two “guards.”
An alert flashed on the screen: COM MALFUNCTION STAR-ONE.
Sure enough, at the same time some distance away, the light that represented the Prime went out, while hers stayed lit.
Mere minutes later Stella and Kai reappeared, as did David. 12:42.
Stella’s first call hadn’t failed—whatever was on those darts had blocked it.
Years ago David had reprogrammed the network to recognize magic, but he couldn’t plan for everything. If there was one way to fool the sensors there must be more. Morningstar had found a way, and used it to snatch Nico. There was no trail—she had the system look for any signals that appeared out of nowhere somewhere else, but nothing came up. Wherever he was, he was still blocked; Signets were pretty obvious on the grid.
How had David caught Ovaska? He’d explained it, but it was hard to visualize, since she hadn’t been there—she’d been bleeding in a cell at the time. It was something to do with pressure and temperature…he was looking for something that wasn’t there instead of what was.
Trouble was she had no idea how to do that, or what to look for. That was way past her programming pay grade—he’d written search algorithms on the fly in order to track them down. She was hardly an idiot, but she didn’t have an armload of degrees and take things apart for fun. She was not in her wheelhouse.
God, if only they’d all been in one group like they were supposed to be! Even without Deven there, Morningstar wouldn’t have dared try to take Nico if he had the Prime and Queen of the South with him. They would have…
Understanding dawned. She put her head in her hands.
“We received this video anonymously several days ago.”
“You bastards,” she muttered. “You absolute bastards.”
It had all been a diversion. The murder charge…Morningstar had gotten their hands on that video somehow and sent it in knowing exactly when she would be arrested. They must have someone working in the Department who could get the evidence into Maguire and Myers’ hands at the right moment—and at a moment when everyone in Austin knew exactly where to find her. And knowing she and David and their personal guards were all occupied, that left them free to lure the others away and kidnap their intended target, Nico.
But what did they want him for? If all they wanted to do was kill a Signet they could have done that right at the scene. Nico wasn’t recovered enough yet to do any serious magic, and he had no other defense against trained killers. It would have been easy. But no, they took him, and went to a lot of trouble to do it. Why?
Information, perhaps. Directions to the Haven, secrets of the inner workings of the Shadow World…which they could have gotten more easily by capturing an Elite. No, logic and her instincts told her they wanted him for something very specific, something they could only get from him.
Whatever it was it couldn’t be good. Whatever it was…it was unlikely they planned to let him walk away.
Stella might know some kind of location spell like all the Witches on TV. If nothing else she might be able to identify the magic used and that could lead them to occult shops, well-known practitioners, something…anything.
First she had to wake up, though. Miranda had no idea when that would be or what condition Stella would be in.
She kept playing the footage, changing the target statistics over and over to find something that would point her in the right direction.
Miranda closed her eyes. “Hey…Persephone?…You probably noticed a rather large pile of shit has just hit the fan, and…Nico’s Your child too…maybe the one who needs Your love the most. He gave up everything he knew to be part of this fight. Just…I don’t need a miracle, although I wouldn’t kick one in the head…just…please help. Help me find him. Maybe You can act through somebody, send me news, or…I don’t know. But please.”
She didn’t feel like anyone was listening. But a minute later there was a knock at the Batcave door, and a pale, clammy-looking Stella poked her head in.
“Mo told me not to leave,” she panted. “But I’m okay. Really. I don’t feel any magic on me and my energy’s coming back. I can help.”
Miranda sat back and pulled her feet up into the chair. Stella came into the office and leaned on the desk; she was, in fact, looking better by the minute, although the worry on her face made her look ten years older. “How?”
“I don’t think I can do a straight-up location spell for this—I probably have the juice, but there are whole parts of town I don’t know, and with something this emotional I’d have trouble focusing. But you know what can focus like a motherfucker? That.”
Stella was pointing at the monitor. “Nico helped David redesign part of the grid here in town as a prototype for the other territories. He was telling me about it a while back — they used Elven magical architecture as inspiration. That means if I can see what the computer sees, I might be able to follow the patterns since they’re modeled after magic I already work with — Weaving.”
“I have no idea what most of that meant, but I get the gist. How do we go about it?”
“Not a clue.” Stella put her hands in her disheveled hair. “I was hoping you’d be able to come up with the next step.”
Miranda’s heart sank, or rather, plummeted. “I don’t know enough about networks, vampire or Elven, to even venture a guess. We need—”
“You need me,” came a tired voice from the doorway.
She nearly threw herself across the room and tackled her Prime, who looked way worse than Stella and sounded half dead…but he was awake.
“How did you come out of it?” Stella asked. “You guys were both way under.”
“I don’t know for sure,” David replied, carefully moving from door to desk and taking the chair Miranda happily vacated for him. “It felt like being trapped in a locked room knowing there were monsters all around that I couldn’t see�
��I kept trying to open the door and couldn’t, until out of nowhere it fell open and something shoved me through.”
“Star-Two, this is Elite-44…um…you asked to be notified when the Prime woke. He seems to have vanished.”
“Yes, thank you, Elite-44,” Miranda said wryly. “You can stand down.”
David was switching the system over to his profile without even looking at the monitors. “I’m pretty sure I know what you need, Stella—it’ll take a minute.”
Miranda moved around behind the chair and threaded her fingers through her Prime’s hair, sending energy into him to help him recover. He took a deep breath and bowed his head a moment while the network beeped and blinked to itself.
“I’m glad you’re here,” she told him softly. “And glad you’re okay.”
He looked up at her. “I think ‘okay’ is pushing it,” he replied. “I don’t know what they’re doing to him, but thank God I can’t feel it…or I can’t over the worry.” He kissed her hand, and asked hesitantly, “What about Deven?”
She held his eyes a moment and then shook her head. “He may come around. But I said some pretty ugly things…and it might have worked. I just hope I have a chance to apologize.” Miranda looked over at Stella, something horrible occurring to her. “I hate to say this out loud, but if Nico doesn’t make it, what will happen to David?”
The Witch frowned. “Nothing. I mean, it’ll probably hurt like hell, and it might take you out of commission for a while, but it won’t kill you. The link is deep but it’s not a soul bond like you guys have.”
“He’s not going to die,” David said firmly in that tone that the heavens themselves would roll over to obey. “I won’t allow it.” A faint smile crossed his face. “Even if I can’t pick up a damn sword.” He gestured for Stella to come closer. “All right…tell me how your spell usually works.”
“Sort of like you see on TV. I get a map and focus on it. Some spells use the blood of the lost person, or of a relative, and the blood draws a path to the destination. Others actually burn the paper. I don’t really want to get blood or fire anywhere near all of this.”
Shadowstorm (The Shadow World Book 6) Page 18