Of Shadow Born (2 page)

“Beats the shit out of me. All I know is, I’m gonna go out there and rip a few throats, and there isn’t a damned soul who can stop me.”

He set down the glass and smiled. “I can think of at least one damned soul who can.”

Before Bill could reply, there was a sword pointed at his throat.

Bill’s shot glass clunked down onto the bar, spilling the last few drops of whiskey, but the bartender was standing there gaping and didn’t make a move toward it. “I—I—”

With his free hand, the pale-eyed vampire opened the collar of his coat, revealing the glowing emerald that hung from his neck. Bill swallowed hard, terror gripping him in a cold fist.

“Tell all your friends,” the vampire said in a quiet, calm voice that everyone in the bar could still hear. “This territory is still protected by a Signet. The law stands as before. Put one fang out of line and I will gut you, take your head, and sow your corpse with salt.”

Bill was panting. “Who . . . who the hell are you?”

An icy smile. “Just a temp.” He lowered the sword, casting his gaze around the bar. No one was looking, but everyone was listening. “Spread the word,” he said.

Then he tossed a folded bill onto the bar, nodded to the bartender, and walked out into the darkness.

* * *

There’s a vampire on my couch.

“Lark, seriously, this is the fifth message I’ve left you. I’ve been trying to reach you since last night—I need you to come over, okay? I’ll explain when you get here.”

The living room was as dark as she could get it, with blankets hung over the one window, but Stella had a candle burning on her altar and its light flickered in the jewel-toned hair of the unconscious woman who hadn’t so much as twitched in nearly thirty hours. Once in a while Stella could see her chest rise and fall, but it was the only sign Miranda Grey was even alive. Her skin was ashen, and the aura of power that had surrounded her when they’d met seemed to have evaporated into the night as Stella half led, half carried her to the car and across Austin to Stella’s apartment.

Even the light in her Signet was dull. It still shone, but through a glass darkly. Stella would have called it a coma if Miranda were human. Did vampires have comas?

There’s a vampire on my couch. This is not my life.

She wanted desperately to call her father. He might have some idea what the hell was going on . . . but her intuition told her to wait, and it was intuition that had led her to the building downtown just before the front of it blew out and turned the whole world into hell. She somehow didn’t think the human police would know anything more about the whole thing than she did.

Miranda hadn’t spoken or even acknowledged Stella’s presence once they were in the car. She just fell against the window and passed out.

Stella stood in the doorway between the living room and the tiny kitchen, chewing on her fingernail, wondering what she was supposed to do now.

She’d done the best she could to make Miranda comfortable, whatever that meant in this situation—she’d pulled her boots off, unbuckled the sword from her waist and laid it on the coffee table, wiped the soot off her face and swabbed at the wounds all over her torso . . . but by then the gashes were already healing, leaving only angry pink scabs in their wake. Stella had debated with herself on whether to do anything else, but the sight of all those bloody holes in Miranda’s shirt was too creepy, so she wrestled the singer out of her clothes and into a set of Stella’s pajamas. They were about three sizes too big but would have to do for now. She doubted Miranda would care at this point.

Long about noon, there was a knock.

Stella jumped about a mile and squeaked. Warily, she checked the peephole, then let out a massive sigh of relief. She darted over to the couch and yanked a throw blanket down over Miranda’s exposed skin, just in case—the front door opened into a short hallway, but she had no idea how much sunlight was too much.

Lark was just about to pound on the door again when Stella opened it.

“Jesus Fancy Dancing Christ, Stell! What is all this?” Lark, who looked more worried than Stella had ever seen her, held up her phone and the list of missed calls and texts.

“Where the hell have you been?” Stella demanded, hauling her inside and locking the door again.

“Hung over, of course,” Lark replied. “I had my phone off. What’s the big emergency?”

Stella ushered her into the living room and gestured helplessly at the couch.

Lark gave her a dubious look. “Um . . . you know how I always said I’d help you bury a body? That was a metaphor, sweetie.”

Stella sighed again. “No . . . look.”

She lifted the blanket.

Lark’s mouth dropped open. “Is that . . . ?”

“Yeah.”

“What the . . . ?”

“I have no idea.”

“How did . . . ?”

Stella pointed at her altar, where the tarot cards were still spread as she’d left them. “I was doing a reading, and I had a vision. I followed it downtown to this building that was on fire, and found her in the street.”

Lark, eyes still huge, sank down in the rickety armchair they’d scavenged from behind a furniture store. “There’s a famous person on your couch.”

Stella nodded.

“And . . . she’s wearing your Hello Kitty pajamas.”

Wordlessly, Stella picked up the remains of Miranda’s shirt from the table and held it up so Lark could see the dozen holes in it. “She was shot,” Stella said. “With a bunch of arrows.”

“Arrows.” Lark lowered her eyes from the shirt to Miranda, then seemed to notice what was on the coffee table. “And the sword . . . ?”

“Hers.”

Stella and Lark stared at each other for a moment. Stella took a deep breath. “Remember that night we went to the fetish club and you blacked out? Well . . . you didn’t black out. We were attacked. By vampires. Miranda wiped our memories, or she tried to, but it didn’t work on me because of my gift. I bet if you concentrated hard enough on that night, it would come back to you, too. I don’t think they’re used to messing around with Witches’ memories.”

There was no immediate reply, so Stella went on hurriedly. “I was right—she’s a vampire. She’s a really important vampire, it turns out, and so’s her husband. There’s a whole freaking society of them out there. And I don’t know what went down last night, but someone tried to kill her, and I brought her here. She hasn’t woken up. She hasn’t even moved. I didn’t know what to do, so I called you.”

Lark just stared at her for a minute.

“Okay,” she finally said, very carefully, as if speaking to a psychotic who might go off at any second. “Are you sure she’s a vampire?”

Rolling her eyes, Stella bent over Miranda and gently took hold of her face; she pried the singer’s mouth open slightly, exposing her upper teeth, and poked at a canine.

Lark sucked in an astonished breath as the tooth slid downward, then back. “Okay. I believe you. Okay. What do we do?”

“I don’t know. I just . . . I have this feeling she’s in danger and we have to keep her safe.”

“Why in hell would you want to protect a vampire? She could kill us!”

“It’s not like that,” Stella insisted. “She’s one of the good guys. I think. They rescued us from the ones that attacked us and took us to some kind of clinic. I heard her husband talking to my dad—they’ve got some kind of law enforcement that keeps other vampires from hurting people.”

“Your
dad
knows?”

“He knows about them. He doesn’t know I remember what happened.”

“Then we should call your dad, Stella! Whatever this is, it’s way past our pay grade!”

“Not yet. After she wakes up, maybe. But not yet. Please, Lark . . . you’ve got to trust me on this.”

Lark looked like she wanted to be anywhere but in that chair at that exact moment, but she just shook her head. “Then what? Does she need . . . blood? Like, people blood? Would that wake her up?”

Stella bit her lip, then said, “I think it might. That’s one reason I wanted you here. I was kind of scared to give her any without someone else with me, in case . . .”

“In case she tries to suck you dry. Because she’s a good guy.”

“Basically.”

Again, Lark shook her head in disbelief. “You are certifiably nuts. What am I supposed to do? Got any wooden stakes?”

“No—look. I’m going to cut my finger and see if she’ll drink it. If she starts trying to hurt me, you grab that blanket and pull it off the window. I don’t know much about them, but I know they can’t do sunlight.”

Lark got up from the chair and went to the window, obviously not convinced Stella’s plan was anything approaching a good one. Stella took the sword from the coffee table and slid it out of its sheath.

“Holy crap,” Stella murmured, examining the blade. It was beautiful, sort of Japanese looking but shorter than the ones in movies, and had carving along half its length. “I think this is Gaelic. I wonder what it means . . .”

“It means we’re both total morons,” Lark grumbled. “Would you get on with it, please?”

Stella assumed quite rightly that the blade would be sharp; she barely touched it to her finger and berry-bright blood welled up along a cut. The edge was so keen it almost didn’t hurt.

Holding her finger up so it wouldn’t drip, Stella opened Miranda’s mouth again and touched the cut finger to her tongue.

“You washed your hands, right?” Lark asked.

Stella ignored her, watching Miranda’s face for some response as several drops of blood oozed out of the cut. For several minutes there was nothing; then, she thought she saw Miranda’s lower lip tremble the tiniest bit—

It happened so fast Stella couldn’t react. Miranda’s eyes flew open, her irises gone silver and almost glowing in the candlelit darkness; her lips drew back in a hiss, her canines growing long and flashing—

She struck like a cobra. Stella cried out at the pain of teeth in her throat, and she tried feebly to fight the vampire off.

Suddenly light blazed into the room, and Stella heard a faint sizzling sound, then a scream of terror and agony. The body holding her down flung itself backward, scrambling into the corner, and Miranda curled up on herself, arms over her head, her screams splitting the air.

“Cover it! Cover it!” Stella yelled.

Lark, ghostly white with fear, did as she was told, casting the room back into darkness.

The air was hazy with smoke and the stench of burning meat . . . skin. Burning skin. Stella fought not to gag, seizing the blanket from the couch and pressing it to her throat.

“Are you okay?” Lark asked in a tremulous voice.

“I’m fine,” Stella said. “She barely got me. Just stay where you are.”

Stella half crawled to the side of the couch, peering around it into the corner between a bookshelf and the seventies-style storage end table where Stella kept the cat box.

Miranda seemed so small, just then, shrinking into the corner, a child in too-big clothes, shaking violently and hiding her face. She made soft noises that sounded eerily like an animal dying slowly in a trap. It looked like the burns had already healed.

“It’s okay,” Stella said softly. “You’re safe.”

No answer. Stella tried again.

“Um . . . I don’t know if you remember me, but . . . I’m Stella Maguire. Detective Maguire’s daughter? I was at that clinic the other night and you sang for me. This is my apartment. I brought you here . . . you were hurt.”

Miranda lowered one arm, barely exposing her eyes, which lit on Stella without recognition. Stella nearly cried out again—there was so much pain in her eyes, such immense grief, it threatened to swallow everything . . . she was falling . . . the world was burning . . .
no, no . . . please . . . make it stop . . .

“Oh, God,” Stella heard Lark whisper, and then she started weeping.

Stella realized what was happening just in time to keep herself from falling over the edge; she shielded as hard as she could, putting up as many mental barriers as she knew how to craft between herself and Miranda. “Lark, shield!” she commanded. “Do it now!”

A moment later Lark stopped crying, her breath coming in shallow gasps. “What the fuck . . .”

“She’s an empath,” Stella said. “I think she’s projecting.”

Waves of sorrow and pain hit Stella, but she held on, reaching out toward Miranda with careful psychic “hands.” Stella wasn’t a pro at dealing with other people’s gifts, but she took a deep breath and switched to her Sight to try to figure out what Miranda needed.

“Holy mother of shit,” Stella managed, followed by a number of other profanities born out of pure amazement.

The last time she’d seen Miranda, the vampire had been in control of herself, strong, healthy. Stella had been under a haze of drugs, but she’d still been able to sense that Miranda had sophisticated, powerful shields to regulate her gift and make herself appear, at least on the surface, more human.

It looked like those shields had been blasted open. Her aura was raw, full of gaping holes like her shirt had been, especially around her heart center; it was as if something had been torn from her . . . no, not something.
Someone.

Stella understood what she was Seeing even before she knew what to call it.

“Oh, Miranda,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

Miranda was still staring at her, not seeming to recognize her or even her own name, and Stella could see why; her energy was a tattered wreck, under barely any control. She was a powerful projector, but her sensing ability was way stronger; right now she was probably feeling the emotions of everyone within a mile radius. Add that to the trauma of what Stella sensed had happened . . .

“I’m going to help you,” Stella told her. “I promise. Just . . . close your eyes and relax, okay? I might be able to help you get your shields back up.”

She turned to Lark. “Come here . . . I need all the power I can get.”

Lark didn’t move. “She just tried to eat you, Stella! Not to mention, you’ve never done anything like this before. She might just drag you down with her.”

Even without Miranda’s empathy affecting her, Stella felt tears start to burn her eyes. “We have to help her. Didn’t you feel it? She’s dying on the inside. She’s lost. It might be too late to save her, but . . . if we can help it not hurt so much, we have to, Lark. She just . . . she has to know she’s not alone.”