Shadowflame Part 21

In fact, Miranda wanted to smack the s.h.i.t out of every couple she saw-the more affectionate they were, the more she wanted to strangle them. What kind of moron are you?she wanted to yell at them. He's f.u.c.king your sister! She only cares about your money! He posted those pictures on the Internet! She's leaving as soon as she gets her birthday present!

It was possible she was a little bitter.

"So," Kat said as they walked out of the studio into the frigid night, "how are . . . things?"

"The same. You?"

"Basically the same, but with even more barfing."

"How long does that last?" Miranda asked, motioning to Lali and Aaron to follow at a distance but stay un.o.btrusive.

"It depends on the person-it's supposed to be a first-trimester thing, but for some people it never stops."

"Sounds awesome."

"Oh yeah." Kat shifted her bag on her shoulder, and Miranda thought about offering to carry it but knew it would irritate Kat to be treated like an invalid-she already rolled her eyes behind Drew's back when he fluttered around her. "Look at me, I'm a breeder. Bun in the oven. In the family way. Up the duff. The rabbit died."

Miranda smiled, her eyes on the grimy sidewalk that was wet with yet another round of late-autumn rain. She was wearing gloves in addition to her coat; she had been taken aback by how deeply the cold affected her, thinking back to when it was weird to her that the Haven burned its fireplaces in August. It also made a lot more sense to her now that the vampire population of Texas was much higher than in, say, Canada, though she'd heard caribou blood was tasty.

"I noticed a lot of red eyes when I got there tonight," Kat was saying. "Were you mojo-ing them?"

"I guess. I'm curious to see if it comes through on the recording."

"I've been meaning to ask you something-what happens if your CD sells like hotcakes and you're famous? Can you tour? Won't people ask a lot of questions?"

"Who believes in vampires?" Miranda asked wryly. "I was thinking about it, too, and I figure, people who think anything about my weird behavior will sound like loonies in the press, and if I need to I can address them head on and make them sound even more loony. As for touring, well . . . I can be away from home for a few days at a time. I probably can't do anything international, though."

"His Highness can't police things without you?"

"It's not that. This thing, this connection between us . . . if we go too long without touching, it starts to make us crazy. Physical contact reinforces the balance of power. Apparently once we learn to manage it we can go a week, but right now I get twitchy after about three days."

Kat raised an eyebrow at her sideways. "So you're still touching, even though you're not sleeping in the same room?"

"We're spending time together. Just not like before. I just . . . I needed some s.p.a.ce, Kat."

Kat held up her hands. "I know, sweetie. I'm not being judgmental. I just want to know you're okay."

Miranda wanted to stop and kick a rock, but there weren't any around. "I'm not okay. Not by a long shot. But we're doing the best we can. It's just going to take a while. It helps that he's so torn up about it-and that I can feel he's sincere. I'm not as angry knowing how bewildered and confused he is . . . The guilt feels nice, too."

Kat chuckled. "Bloodthirsty wench."

"Exactly."

"What I texted him last week still holds, just so you know."

Now Miranda's smile was genuine. "I appreciate that, Kat."

"What about . . . the other two? Have you heard anything from Jonathan?"

"No." Miranda's voice went flat when she said it, and Kat took the hint and changed the subject.

"So what do you want to do tonight? It's pretty early yet. Ice cream?"

What Miranda really wanted was blood . . . her thirst had escalated in the last three weeks, compensating for the sheer amount of energy she spent working out, sparring, performing onstage, and stalking the streets of Austin looking for a fight. Somehow, though, she didn't think hunting would be a good girls'-night-out activity.

"Movie?" she asked. "We could go to the Alamo Drafthouse, watch stuff blow up, drink Guinness milkshakes."

"You can have a Guinness shake," Kat pointed out. "I'm out of commission for the next seven months or so, remember? But a movie sounds good. We'll eat fries with a f.u.c.kton of queso and indulge in some testosterone poisoning. I've been wanting to see the new Johnny Depp. He gives me the tickle."

Miranda laughed. "Lucky you. I haven't had a tickle in weeks."

"Man, that sucks . . . having a guilt-ridden undead stud at your beck and call and not wanting to take advantage of him."

"All right," Miranda said, stopping. "I'm going to call Harlan and we'll bring up the movie schedule on the computer in the car. From this point in the evening, I declare a moratorium on relationship talk, baby talk, and vampire talk in general. Tonight we're going to just be two friends looking for some escapism."

"Sounds like a plan," Kat said.

Smiling, almost believing it would work, they shook on it.

The Winchester Bank building was one of the Prime's favorite vantage points from which to watch the city go by. It wasn't the tallest in Austin, or the flashiest, but it suited him sometimes with its stone gargoyles and half-crumbling architecture. There were nights when he felt like a young G.o.d, untouchable; on those nights he took to the tallest skysc.r.a.pers. On other nights he felt like a fading relic in a world that would be content to go on without him. Those were the nights when he sought refuge atop the Winchester.

Time seemed determined to slog ever onward whether he went with it or not. In fact, at the Haven it was as though time had crawled backward to an earlier, more sorrowful era . . . and if only it were a new beginning instead of falling apart.

David could feel Miranda on the streets below, walking with Kat; he could sense her but was too far away to hear anything specific unless Miranda wanted him to . . . and she never did, anymore. For weeks she had kept him almost entirely shut out of her mind, her body, and her life. He wanted to howl his loss and shame at the night above, to fling himself off the building if he thought for a moment that it might help him atone, but all he could do was tell himself, over and over, She's still here. She stayed.

She stayed, and though she avoided him for large parts of the night and slept by herself, she didn't torment them both with her absence longer than necessary; she came in to see him every morning, and they sat in their chairs by the fire and talked about what they'd been up to, had a drink, made a few jokes, and tried . . . just tried to keep going.

She spent more time in the city than he did, so she was usually the one who prowled the streets of the Shadow District to keep their presence at the forefront of everyone's minds. They were rarely seen together.

Meanwhile he was still enmeshed in the investigation. Coordinating investigations among the West, his Elite, APD, Hunter Development, and the FBI forensics unit took a lot of time and diplomacy. Faith's discovery-that the stakes were carved of the exact same wood, thereby connecting the a.s.sa.s.sin to the West-had led them to Volundr, and though the smith had finally wheezed out four names in the midst of choking on his own blood, David wasn't confident that any of them would prove a viable lead.

Still, the Prime had been true to his word, and as soon as Volundr broke and gave up the names, David turned him over to the Elite, who had cleaned and fed him and were now arranging transport to return him to his home, along with what Faith considered an obscene amount of money . . . blood money, a penance that would do nothing to erase the sound of the smith's screams from David's memory . . . or the feeling that even as desperate as they were to find their killer, the ends may never justify the means.

The wind whipped past him, catching the hem of his coat, but he was far enough from the edge that it didn't hit him too hard. The dreary weather suited his mood.

His phone rang: a voice call rather than data. That first week he'd received a text from Kat that simply said, Your b.a.l.l.s + my gun, you rat b.a.s.t.a.r.d. He hadn't been able to think of a clever reply.

He glanced down to see who it was and took a deep breath.

"h.e.l.lo?"

"Are you alone?" Deven asked. His voice had two simultaneous effects on David: His stomach clenched with anxiety, but his heart quivered with something else entirely. It was maddening that as much as he wanted to stay away from Deven, the investigation kept forcing them back together.

"I wouldn't have picked up otherwise. What do you need?"

His brusque tone apparently surprised the Prime, who said uncertainly, "I wanted you to know I got the list you sent me and I'm bringing them all in for questioning."

"You could have told me that over e-mail."

"Fine," Deven snapped. "I was checking up on you. Excuse the h.e.l.l out of me for caring."

"Well if you want to know, Deven, I'm lousy," David replied acidly. "I spent the evening torturing an old man. There's a murderer on the loose threatening my Elite and my Queen. She could strike again at any time and I have no idea how to find her or what her endgame is. Not to mention, my wife is barely speaking to me. Your Consort may have instantly forgiven you, but mine isn't so enlightened, or whatever you and Jonathan call your little arrangement."

"Don't throw all your shame on me, boy. As I recall, there were two of us in that bed, and moreover, you started it."

"I didn't notice you having any qualms."

"I'm not saying I did. I'm just saying, don't expect me to shoulder all the guilt here just because Jonathan is older and wiser."

"Are you trying to imply that-"

"David," Deven said firmly, brooking no refusal, "I'm not going to do this again."

David fell silent, as he always had when Deven-whether his friend, his teacher, his lover, his peer, or his employer-used that tone. He sagged back against the wall of the building. "You're right. I can't fight the world and you, too."

"You have to give her time, David," Deven said, going from angry to sympathetic with remarkable speed, which told David he hadn't really been angry in the first place, only reacting to David's foolish clinging to emotional drama. A simple fact of life that David had discovered in his three hundred fifty years was that in the end, problems weren't resolved with hysterics and screaming fits. They were solved in the night-by-night work of honesty and the glacially slow rebuilding of trust. Up until now he had lived that as a given; he just wasn't the kind of person who displayed emotion. But this whole thing had knocked him so far off center that he had no idea how to react to anything anymore. The mere idea that he'd considered throwing himself off the Winchester like some kind of grief-stricken Gothic widow made him cringe.

"I know . . . I just hate that I've made her so unhappy. She deserves so much better. As a Prime, I can solve problems, put down insurrections, behead lawbreakers . . . as a husband, I'm useless."

A note of amus.e.m.e.nt entered Deven's voice. "Last time you were a husband you were still a teenager, and your wife couldn't even vote or pray aloud in church. Not even you can be instantly good at everything."

"What do I do?" David asked, barely able to hear himself over the rush of the wind.

"Give her what she needs," he replied. "s.p.a.ce, time, whatever. Let her come to you when she's ready to deal with you . . . but make sure she always knows you're there for her."

"There are days I wish she had killed me, Dev. What do I do with that feeling?"

A quiet chuckle. "You're not a coward, David. You don't run away from your pain."

"I did last time."

"This is different," Deven told him. "Last time you didn't do anything wrong . . . and perhaps you ran, but only because I drove you away. This time you can't put two time zones between you. You have to fight for Miranda . . . for her sake, for yours . . . and mine."

Dev couldn't see him making a skeptical face, but David was sure it came across in his voice. "What good does it do you if we work things out?"

"I have a vested interest in you and your Queen, dear one."

"Meaning?"

"If you split up, I owe my Second twenty dollars."

David rolled his eyes. "You're so full of s.h.i.t."

"I'll let that comment slide right by. I have to go . . . the first of those suspects is here cooling her heels in the Elite training room, and I have to go terrify her into talking."

"All right. Let me know what you find out."

"I will. I l-" Deven stopped midword and corrected himself with, "I'll talk to you later."

David stared at the phone for a minute after he had hung up.

The worst thing-well, one of a hundred worst things in this situation-was that the dam had officially broken. He could no longer pretend, to himself or anyone else, that he didn't still have feelings for Deven that were, to his continued amazement, fully requited. And though he had always prided himself on self-control, he honestly didn't think he and Deven would ever be able to be in the same room without a chaperone. Miranda's trust in him had been shattered, yes, but he no longer trusted himself either.

Emotions simply didn't jump and claim him this way. He had fought long and hard to master his heart . . . yet from the moment Miranda had come into his life, that wall he had built brick by brick had begun to fracture, overgrown by tenacious flowering vines that, with each bloom, cracked him open more and more, and now he couldn't be certain of anything except that somehow, some way, he had to make things right with her.

It was lucky they were immortal. It might very well take eternity at this rate.

His com chimed, and Miranda said, "We're going to a movie-go ahead and head home, I'll get a ride with Faith later."

Her voice had exactly the same effect Deven's did . . . no, worse. "I'll go back with Faith," he said. "You keep the car. That way Harlan can take Kat home, too. I have some work to do here in town anyway."

"All right."

"Have fun," he said hopefully, but there was no reply. She was always more terse when she spoke to him in front of Kat; he wondered if the two of them were discussing his sins, Kat tearing him apart with her quick tongue . . . no. Kat wasn't a behind-the-back-b.i.t.c.hing kind of woman. She was direct. She would listen to Miranda and commiserate but wouldn't go out of her way to vilify him.

He hadn't been kidding when he told Kat he liked her or that he appreciated her friendship with Miranda. Without Kat she had no one to talk to right now. Faith had been making overtures, but Miranda needed someone who wasn't directly involved, who had known her as long as Kat had.

He tapped the back of his head against the concrete wall. Enough wallowing for one night. He did have work to do.

He pulled his coat tightly around him, drew in his power, and then allowed the edges of his body to blur, forming the picture of where he wanted to go in his mind and pulling.

He solidified on the ground a block away; he could have Misted right at his destination, but he preferred to limit the distance unless it was an emergency. Misting was useful, kept one's tracks hidden, and tended to impress the h.e.l.l out of people, but it took a lot of power. Before Miranda had come along he had rarely used it, but now that he had a Queen, he could draw on their combined power to restore himself afterward, so it was much less draining. Short trips were still best.

He'd been giving Miranda the basics of the theory behind Misting when they talked in the mornings, and he'd given her a meditation to do to prepare her for it, but it was very dangerous to undertake without a lot of practice and a lot of strength. Her first experience with it had been hard on her, even with Jonathan to guide her. David had heard of Primes accidentally scattering themselves all over the place, which wouldn't kill a vampire any more than a gunshot would, but it took days to drag themselves back together and the burnout factor was astronomical. Prime Al-Bahin was actually missing part of a finger from a botched Mist early in his tenure.

Most of the city's sensors were installed on exterior walls about four feet off the ground, but in areas where the vampire population was especially dense, he had added extra surveillance from above and below, and the device in question was at the top corner of a three-story building. He was going to have to stand on a foot-wide ledge to reach the thing.

Before he got down to business, however, he spoke into his com: "Star-three."

"Yes, Sire?"

"Faith, I'm going to need a ride home. Can you meet me at these coordinates when you're off patrol?"

"Absolutely, Sire. I'll see you shortly."

"Star-one, out."

David walked down the street without really paying much heed to the city teeming around him. He'd chosen a time and day when the district wouldn't be very busy, and the building he was headed for didn't house a club or bar. It was two stories of apartments over a set of offices, nothing glamorous enough to attract attention. He didn't relish the idea of having an audience, especially because most of the sensors went unnoticed by vampire pa.s.sersby and he wanted to keep it that way.

He glanced around to make sure no one was watching, then Misted again, reappearing thirty feet aboveground perched nimbly on the ledge, letting his instincts take over to balance him. He was probably going to pay for the energy expenditure with a migraine later, but it was worth keeping his work out of sight. The last thing he needed was people sabotaging the sensors.

He reached up to unscrew the sensor from its housing with one hand and reached into his coat with the other, pulling out what amounted to an entirely new computer system for the device.

The sensor itself was about the size of a golf ball, convex like a store security mirror, with a hard black plastic casing. He swapped out its insides in a few seconds with deft hands, removing a small screwdriver from his coat and wiring the new unit into place, stowing the old one to strip for parts when he got home.

Then he accessed the device from his phone and ran the initial calibration routine. It would have to be fine-tuned from the Haven, but it came online without any glitches, which pleased him. He needed as few problems as possible if he was going to upgrade in a few days.

Compared to this system the original sensor network had been a clumsy, buggy mess thrown together out of necessity with little finesse. In July he had switched the entire network to something a bit more sophisticated, and teams in several other cities were installing systems for those areas. Within a year he'd have every major metropolitan area in the South wired and monitored like Austin was. That would make it much easier for the satellite Elite garrisons to keep things under control. Houston, New Orleans, and Atlanta were first.