Shadow’s Fall

by Dianne Sylvan

  “What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?” Jeremy asked, then frowned. “No, let me try again: Heaven must be missing an angel … wait, do angels travel armed? I don’t remember my Bible very well.”

  She recovered enough to ask, “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “Having a beer with a beautiful woman, last I checked.”

  “How long have you been back in town?”

  Jeremy smiled again. “You’re assuming I left.”

  “Have you left Hart’s service or are you here on his behalf?”

  He took a swallow of his beer and pondered the label for a moment. “It’s funny: I find I quite like Texas beers, but I don’t care much for Australian.” He tilted the neck of his bottle toward her glass. “Always hated Guinness—it’s like drinking moldy bread.”

  “What are you doing here?” This time she put a note of command in the words. He didn’t seem to notice.

  “There was a time when I favored more upscale, snooty bars than this … like your Anodyne, I believe. Nowadays … I’d much rather be around people who make an honest living. You might be surprised—most of Hart’s Elite are a lot like yours. Not politically … they’re all as pigheaded as he is up in the North … but when you get them out of uniform, they’re just regular people who do a job, then want a beer.”

  Faith had no idea what game he was playing. If she went just by his tone and posture, he seemed tired, resigned. But he wasn’t just here for a drink. She knew better.

  “I’ll ask you one more time, and then I’ll get testy,” she said.

  “No need for either.” He set the bottle down and faced her directly. “I shouldn’t be here at all, but I felt that, given our recent history, I owed you at least this much.”

  “A beer?”

  “A warning.” He reached up and touched her neck, fingers light; she didn’t let herself react. “And an apology. Whatever happens … I’m sorry to bring all of this to your door. I wish things could have been different.”

  Faith held his gaze. “What are you going to do, Jeremy?”

  He sighed. “I never wanted to hurt anyone. For what it’s worth … I would have liked to sit across the table from your Prime and call him an ally.”

  “Jeremy—”

  “Leave town, Faith. If you value your life, leave Austin.” Jeremy slid off the stool, smiling as he shook his head. “I know you won’t, of course … but I had to at least try.”

  Again, their eyes met. “Loyalty,” she said.

  He nodded. “Unto death.”

  Then he vanished into thin air.

  Faith stared at the place he’d been standing for a long minute before she pulled back her sleeve and said quietly into her com, “Star-one … Sire, we have a serious problem.”

  Before the Prime could even reply, alarms began to erupt from her phone and her com:

  “This is Elite Twenty-six reporting an Alpha Seven near the intersection of …”

  “Patrol Team Three is under fire! I repeat, we are under fire!”

  “ … reported at Nepenthe. Team Eight and APD are en route …”

  “ … requesting immediate backup! This is not a drill!”

  “ … at least three dead humans, in full view of a crowd at the Riviera nightclub …”

  Faith hit the ground running.

  “Fan out!” David ordered. “Thirty-eight, Nineteen, Twelve—I want you blocking off the back exit and side windows. Anyone you catch fleeing the scene, you bring them to me. Forty-four, get those hostages secure and report back.”

  He barely paid attention to the affirmative responses on his com; he was otherwise occupied. The front of the building, which had not long ago been a Mexican restaurant, shuddered as the doors ripped off their hinges and crashed in opposite directions.

  Three vampires emerged from the gaping hole, blades drawn, murder in their eyes. They didn’t even blink when they realized whom they were fighting … but then, he didn’t give them much time to blink.

  David took the first one’s head on one swing, the second’s on the follow-through, then spun and rammed his sword through the third vampire’s midsection, eliciting a scream of pain. The vampire went down, and David kicked him onto his back and stood on his neck.

  “Who are you working for?” he demanded.

  Gurgling, the vampire tried to push him off balance. David made an impatient noise, drew the wooden stake from his coat, and killed him.

  He heard something whistling toward his left ear and snatched the crossbow bolt out of the air, snapping it in half with a growl. “Forty-four, the hostages?”

  Elite 44 responded, “Secured, Sire. All alive.”

  “Good. Hold your position. Faith, where are you?”

  “On my way, Sire. The fire at Nepenthe is under control—three casualties, one fatality, no mortals present.”

  There was another voice, this one male: “This is Elite Seventy-two reporting an Alpha Six as well as an Alpha Seven at Corsican and Tenth. We’ve got two vampires cornered and are requesting backup.”

  Faith said, “Team Fourteen, reroute to Corsican and Tenth.”

  “Acknowledged.”

  David retrieved his stake and sheathed it as he entered the building, where he met Elite 44 and the others he’d ordered to breach the place. “Report.”

  “Four assailants,” Elite 44 told him. “We took them all out.”

  “Get the hostages to the Hausmann for assessment and then report to Faith.”

  “Yes, Sire!” they all said in unison, and dispersed.

  David spared a moment to call Miranda. “How’s the network holding up?” he asked.

  Her voice was tight with tension. “Fine. I’m watching the entire spectacle at a nice, safe, useless distance.”

  “Good,” he replied. “I don’t want you anywhere near the city tonight. As many humans as we’ve had to rescue, you’d be recognized in a heartbeat. The Hausmann is already at capacity.”

  “I recalled every off-duty Elite in the city,” Miranda said with a sigh. “We’ve tripled patrol teams, and I have the entire District on lockdown. Every club and bar is closed and being searched, and every vampire is being questioned. Do we have any idea where all these bastards are coming from?”

  “All I know is they’re in league with Hayes. No one seems to know his endgame—they were all hired in small groups over the past week to cause chaos, but they’re not organized in any significant way. There are similar situations in a few other cities, though nothing like we have here. The idea seems to be to spread us thin and wear us out.”

  “Well, it’s working,” Miranda observed. “We’ve lost two Elite and have four more injured. As good as we are, we’re not equipped for this kind of mass insanity.”

  “Don’t worry, beloved. They have to stop at dawn, and that gives us time to plan. Right now we’re catching them as fast as they—”

  “Sire, we’ve got another Alpha Six in progress about two blocks from your location. What are your orders?”

  “Send me the coordinates, Faith,” David answered. “Miranda, I’ve got to go.”

  “Be safe,” she said. “Please come home in one piece.”

  David hung up in time for the location of the attack to come up on his phone and, without giving himself time to think about how exhausted he already was, Misted directly there.

  As he emerged from the darkness, sword drawn and blood on his mind, he saw that the situation was already under control; a group of vampires clad in Elite uniforms had surrounded two others, who had been in the process of feeding out in the open on a pair of young women who looked like they were on their way home from clubbing.

  The Prime paused. The Elite on the scene were all unfamiliar. In fact, they were wearing—

  “My Lord Prime,” one of the warriors said, bowing. “We have this one under control.”

  “Who the hell are you?” David asked.

  “Elite Thirteen, Western United States,” the warrior said. “At
your service.”

  David frowned. “You’re Deven’s people.”

  “Yes, Sire. We were dispatched from San Diego at sunset by the Consort and ordered to place ourselves under your command.”

  David momentarily considered telling the Elite to shove off, but the truth was, they needed the help, and he knew firsthand just how accomplished the Western Elite was. “Very well.” He quickly brought up the network on his phone and set up a temporary loop to Elite 13, which he patched in to Faith. “My Second will be with you in a moment. I don’t suppose … your boss didn’t let you know where he was, did he?”

  “No, Sire. The West is currently in our Second’s capable hands, and the situation is normal.”

  “Lucky Thomas,” David said. “Thank you for coming.”

  Faith arrived a moment later. “You don’t have any reservations about trusting them, given the current situation with Deven?” she asked.

  “I’ll worry about that after the city finishes imploding. Get them to work. I want a sit-rep in thirty minutes.”

  “As you will it, Sire.”

  Faith darted over to the guest Elite and began issuing orders while the team she’d brought saw to the humans who had been attacked as well as the corpses of their attackers.

  Whatever Jeremy’s intentions, he was getting a lot of his own kind killed. There had been two Elite lost, yes, but more sobering was the number of dead who were responsible for the violence—fifteen so far. They had about two hours before the sky lightened … how many more lives could be lost in two hours?

  David’s eyes narrowed. Now was not the time to care about the body count; now was the time to make it higher … and as soon as Austin was secured, he was going to find Jeremy Hayes and make him pay for each and every death he’d caused.

  The Queen understood that the sensor network, which now covered the entire Southern territory, was a thing of breathless technological beauty. She had heard half the Primes at the Council gathering singing its praises and expressing their desire to have something like it for themselves—those same Primes who had found David’s reliance on technology childish were now foaming at the mouth to buy copies of the software. David had no intention of selling it to them, of course; he was working on a second version with about half the features that he would license to other Signets, but the real network, the sprawling labyrinthine creation of David Solomon, PhD, existed in exactly one territory.

  Miranda knew it was a stupendous achievement. She just had no idea how the hell it worked.

  She sat in David’s chair in the server room with two monitors up at the same time; one showed the city’s sensor grid and all vampire activity therein, and the other basically showed the user manual … what there was of one. David had made copious notes during the network’s creation, but all of the coding and a lot of the details were locked in his head along with all of the passwords to get into the actual programming code. From the manual she could figure out how most of what she was looking at was set up. He had taught her the basic functions and how to interpret the grid, but there was so much going on at once in the dozen or more interlocking programs that made up the whole system, it kept giving her alerts and alarms she had never seen before.

  But if this was all she could do right now, by God, she was going to do it right. The Elite were depending on her to keep an eye on the city while they dealt with each individual threat. David couldn’t monitor the network and fight at the same time, and it was clear from the start that they needed all swords on deck.

  It was a frustrating role reversal for the Pair. For the past three years Miranda had been the one stalking the streets more often than not. She had earned her reputation quickly in Austin—first because she was so angry at her husband’s infidelity that she didn’t want to be around him, and then because he had devoted his entire attention to expanding the network throughout the South. He was so busy with his servers and gadgets that Miranda became the presence the Shadow District recognized as its Signet.

  That had worked fine until now, when she was stuck at home feeling like a fifties housewife and he was off bringing order to the streets.

  She knew that what she was doing was important. Someone had to run the servers in a situation like this, to watch for anomalies and help Faith dispatch the Elite teams to where they were needed. It could be done from the field if necessary, but with the Haven’s servers behind her Miranda could work much faster and see a much larger area at a time. David and the Elite were limited to what they could do with phones and coms. Already tonight Miranda’s keen eye had helped stop a murder before it could happen, based entirely on her gut feeling when she saw a particular group of vampires converging on an area that she knew was populated with families that time of night.

  She wasn’t helpless. She was doing her job.

  But which job?

  Miranda sat back a moment, eyes still glued to the array of colored dots representing her people and the enemy all over downtown Austin.

  She should be there. She could fight, and the Shadow World knew she was fearless; she and David together were terrifying. They could clamp down on the whole city and have this mess dealt with by morning, no problem … but she couldn’t risk being recognized by one of the humans they’d saved. Even after a memory wipe it was too risky.

  For all their planning and contrivances, she had stumbled into exactly what she’d dreaded the most: Her two worlds were at odds, and no matter what she did, one of the two would suffer for it. She could go into the city and fight and possibly cause a media firestorm, even risking the exposure of the Shadow World; or she could sit here and protect her musical career while people died.

  The worst part was that unless something miraculous happened, none of it was going to matter. The new moon was tomorrow night, and so far no one had been able to find a solution to the problem of the Stone of Awakening. It was still stuck firmly to Miranda’s Signet, and as far as anyone knew, it was still going to kill her.

  Janousek had an operative who, he said, had information that might help, but they wouldn’t hear from him until this afternoon, which was evening in Europe. Laveau was questioning a small branch of the Order of Elysium that operated out of Baton Rouge, but so far, she’d found no evidence that anything out of the ordinary was going on. If the Order was planning to do the Awakening ritual, it was being kept hush-hush; the priest that Laveau had spoken to said that for something so important, only the highest echelons of the Order, the High Priestess and her Acolytes, would be allowed to know anything about it. If the Pairs wanted to learn the truth, they had to find the High Priestess, and the only person who might have known where she was, Lydia, was dead.

  As the night waned, the city quieted somewhat. Come dawn the entire mess would be forced to a halt—the question was, would it begin again at sundown? They would have about twelve hours to figure out a more cohesive strategy than simply putting out fires.

  To that end, Miranda had been taking advantage of what she’d gleaned from the user manual and was compiling readings on the attacks so far to see if they had originated at a common point. That point would most likely be Jeremy’s headquarters. It was looking pretty random so far—as much as she hated to admit it, it might take another night like tonight to get enough data points.

  “Star-two, this is Elite Forty in the underground garage, reporting that the Prime’s vehicle has just pulled in.”

  Miranda sighed. “Thank you, Elite Forty.”

  She issued the command to reroute authorization to David’s laptop and locked down the server room before taking the stairs up to the ground level. She was just in time; the Prime was making his way down the hall toward their suite, and she ran to him, catching him as he wobbled from sheer exhaustion.

  “Jesus, baby …” Miranda put her arm around him and held him up the rest of the way to the suite. “Are you hurt? I didn’t feel any serious injuries.”

  “I’m fine,” he insisted. “Just wrung out. I had a few cuts but they’re all he
aled. I’m just kind of disgusting—I called ahead to have Esther run a bath for both of us.”

  “Smart move,” she replied. “No way you’re standing on your feet much longer. Come on … let’s get you cleaned up and you can rest.”

  He shook his head. “Can’t. I need to review the data and go over reports from the team leaders, then coordinate with APD for tonight’s response—”

  “And you can do all of that after a bath and a nap,” she said firmly. “We can’t do a damn thing about this for a good twelve hours, and you have got to rest or you’ll do something stupid and get us killed.”

  “Oh, you mean like stealing a talisman with a hex on it?” he muttered.

  She punched him in the shoulder a little harder than she really intended to.

  David grunted in pain. “It was a joke.”

  “A bad joke.”

  “I know, love. I’m sorry. Here, can you help me get my shirt off? My shoulder’s gone all fucked.”

  “Here …” Miranda placed her hands on either side of his neck and closed her eyes, breathing out slowly, letting energy pass from her to him. The power shored up his waning strength and helped ease the various aches and pains he hadn’t had the time or concentration to heal while out in the field. Still, she helped him undress slowly in deference to his weariness. She’d never seen him so worn out.

  “It wasn’t your fault,” David was saying as she helped him into the steaming hot tub. “You didn’t know what the talisman was supposed to do. For all we knew at the time, Lydia was telling the truth. She still might have been. She was part of the Order, after all—I’d believe her story before I’d believe Deven’s.”

  “Yes, well, right now you’d believe the Easter Bunny before you’d believe Deven. We don’t know where his intel came from either. But they can’t both be right.”

  Miranda stripped off her own clothes and slid into the water beside him with a sigh. “God bless Esther,” she murmured, groping sideways for the washcloth and body wash she knew was on the side of the tub. As she had done a number of times before, she lathered up the cloth and began scrubbing David’s skin, revealing its pristine ivory beneath the dried smears of blood and grime. He was in better shape than he’d been in after that first battle at the Haven, but this time he was way more tired; the Elite had been all over the city all night long, and he had spent profligate amounts of his energy Misting from place to place to try to stop attackers from killing humans or other vampires.