Of Shadow Born (20 page)

“Anyway, let’s . . .”
She went back to her work, seeking out the Signet bond, and after another moment, she found it.

Deep within the glowing energy of his heart center, reaching up to connect to the third eye as well as the solar plexus, was a black strand of energy—no, not black exactly, more like darkened quicksilver. She touched it lightly and felt it connecting all the way across the country, giving her a sense of a tall, broad man reading a book in front of a fireplace. Stella was amazed she could sense that far, but it wasn’t so much her talent as it was the nature of the bond.

The man—Jonathan, she remembered—felt her presence, but also felt that Deven had allowed her in, and though he was surprised, he didn’t object.

The connection flowed back from him equally, and their two energies merged and blended, radiating love and unity all the way from one end to the other. Stella kept her hands on it for a while, just getting used to what it felt like . . . a true soul-mating, something she doubted most humans ever experienced.

It was strong—its thread was like steel compared to the gossamer threads of the rest of the web—and would be nearly impossible to break. Two people joined this way wouldn’t just love each other—they would complement each other, and that kind of connection went way beyond romance. It was beautiful, heartachingly so, but she could imagine how much pain it could cause if something went wrong.

She followed it in both directions for a while, learning its weight and strength, before she noticed something odd.

It split.

No, that wasn’t right. At first glance it looked like the Pair bond split, but looking closer she saw that there was another thread, a thinner and paler bond that wrapped around the Pair bond and then split off on its own again . . . and this one flowed right back around . . . into David, and even beyond that.

When she saw where it went, she snapped her gaze back to Deven’s.
“Do you see it?”
she asked.

“See what?”

She showed him the second bond. He looked genuinely shocked when he saw it.
“I always knew there was something between us, but . . . this . . . how is this possible?”

“I don’t know. I’m new at this kind of bond. But from what I’m Seeing here there’s more than just ex-boyfriendy stuff going on with you two—you have a secondary link of your own, just not a Signet bond. And if I follow it past David, it looks like all of you have something like it, and it weaves around your Pair bonds and to and from one another—like a half-finished braid. The Pair bonds connect you to your Consort, but this other bond is what connects you to the others, so that explains you all sharing visions and powers.”

“I’m not sure whether that makes me feel better or worse,”
Deven noted.

She shrugged.
“It is what it is. Now, if I follow it over to David . . .”
She led Deven toward the other Prime, without alerting David, just yet, that they were looking at him.
“See, it should connect back into his own bond with Miranda.”

“But there isn’t any bond with Miranda,”
Deven replied.
“It was broken . . . wasn’t it?”

Stella stared, trying to make sense of what she was Seeing, then said aloud, “David . . . would you mind joining us? You, too, Miranda.”

She waited to dig any deeper until the Pair—or not-Pair—had come over to the bed and the four of them were sitting in a circle, knees almost touching. Stella released Deven’s hands and took David’s.

“Okay, let me in as much as you can,” she said. “Deven, could you grab that notebook and pen from next to you? Thanks.”

David might not be able to See what he was doing, but his shields parted as elegantly as a curtain, and she followed the thread of his connection to Deven as it merged back into the thicker, silver-black thread of his Signet bond . . . that should have gone to Miranda.

She could see now what had happened. Right where it should have connected, the bond had been burned off, the ends scorched, blasted away. The edges were sort of cauterized—that had stopped him from energetically bleeding to death, though how it had happened Stella couldn’t say. The heart connection was still there, but it was partially torn off, hanging on by only a bare handful of frayed threads.

Did that mean that they were no longer
meant
to be Paired? But how could someone go from being a soul mate to nothing?

There was something else about David as well—some of the threads of his web looked almost blurry, like they were in the process of dissolving and re-forming elsewhere. He had changed, and changed profoundly . . . and he wasn’t done. The last phase of the transition was waiting for something.

“What do you see?” Miranda asked softly. “Is there any hope?”

“Just . . . give me a little bit,” Stella said, daunted by the task ahead of her. She wasn’t sure she wanted to get nearer to those blasted ends, but she had to, if she was going to see a way to help them. “I need to get closer . . . I need to touch you both, if that’s okay.”

Suddenly she felt a line of energy wrap around her wrist; the tendril was gentle and cool and had silver-violet in its aura.

She looked up at Deven.

He smiled.
“An anchor,”
he replied.
“And extra strength should you need it.”

Stella grinned broadly at him.
“Thank you. That’s . . . that’s exactly what I needed.”

Taking a deep breath—and sending up a quick prayer to Persephone to keep her from doing anything that would make the situation worse—Stella settled in to tease apart the ragged edges of the bond, to follow the lines where they led, to try to find a solution.

It was strange, really, that of all the vampires in the world, she’d met one who had these gifts, this bloodline . . . one that stretched back to the making of the world, to people who had taught the first Witches how to harness the power of nature.

Her heart leapt with excitement—she could only imagine the things she might learn from him about her own gifts . . .

“Stay on point, Stella,”
the violet-eyed Prime admonished her gently.

“I’m sorry,”
she said, smiling breathlessly.
“Back to business . . .”

The first question was, why did the end of the Pair bond that should lead to Miranda not seem to recognize her anymore? It was as if the roots wanted to stretch toward her but weren’t sure what they would find there.

“Miranda,” Stella said, “I need to dig around in you a little, is that okay?”

The Queen nodded. “I appreciate your asking.”

“Just give me a tap on the shoulder if I make you uncomfortable.”

“Gotcha.”

Stella settled back into her Sight and reached for Miranda’s web, first learning more about her energetic makeup. She could see the thread that represented Miranda’s empathic gift—Jesus, it must have driven her insane back before she learned to control it. Any psychic gift that strong was a surefire ticket to a closed ward. It was under control now as firmly as it had been when Stella met her in the clinic. Nearby ran several other strands that she guessed were other powers Miranda had as a vampire, varying in strength and texture.

She approached the torn-out bond cautiously. Mentally she compared what she was Seeing to the same connection between Deven and Jonathan, and a picture began to form, one she wasn’t sure she liked.

Finally she sat back to catch her breath. She had to be careful how long she worked with it, or she’d burn out as she nearly had saving Miranda. She had much better control than she’d had that day—in fact, since Miranda had come back and saved
her
, Stella’s control and accuracy had bumped up by a factor of five at least, and this whole thing, which would have scared her shitless a week ago, felt perfectly normal, just a little draining.

They waited patiently but expectantly until she took a deep breath and said, “I think I know what’s going on.”

Miranda gave her an encouraging look, though from her face she already had a bad feeling about what Stella was going to say.

“First of all, you’ve all been finding connections among you that didn’t exist before, and you don’t understand where they came from. Well, I can’t tell you that last part, but what we’re dealing with looks like this.” She grabbed pen and paper and hastily sketched out what she’d seen.

The three Signets stared at it. “It looks like an atom,” Deven observed. “David, what element is that?”

David smiled. “The closest would be oxygen, although the electrons wouldn’t line up quite like that, but rather in concentric shells with two in the first and . . . never mind. You’re right, though—it does look like an atom. A circle with four Pairs placed around it, each Pair bound to itself, and the whole circle bound to all of them.”

“You said that a Pair has to be made up of two vampires—that a human can’t hold a Signet. Right?”

The Queen nodded. “It would be like trying to mate a deer with a horse.”

“Well . . . you started out with two horses. When the bond between you was broken, it was broken on David’s end since his Signet was the one smashed. But when he came back, it should have reconnected, except . . . he didn’t come back . . . quite the same. Now, instead of a deer and a horse, or two horses, you’ve got a horse and a freaking unicorn.”

This time Deven snorted. “David’s a unicorn? That explains so much.”

Neither David nor Miranda seemed to find it as funny. “So . . . what am I, then?” David asked hesitantly.

“I have no idea. I mean, you’re still a vampire, at least mostly, but . . . the change is still going on. I wish I could tell you what it means, or how it’s happening, but I am so far out of my league I can’t even see my league from here.”

Miranda sighed, defeated. “You can’t help us.”

“Even if I knew exactly what was different about David, I’m not nearly powerful or trained enough to go trying to reattach a bond like this. I don’t think any garden-variety Witch has that kind of juice—not even a High Priestess.”

David gave Deven a piercing look. “I don’t suppose a vampire Priestess might be able to.”

Deven looked away, shaking his head, but Stella went on. “It’s not just the power that’s the problem—it’s ability, too. Sight. Deven can See almost as well as I can because . . . um, because of his healing talent. But even as strong as you two are, neither of you can See energy like I can, so you wouldn’t be able to fix it—you’d be working blind. We need someone who can See
and
who has the strength, and frankly . . . I have no idea where to find that.”

“If we’re the most powerful of our kind, and that’s still not enough, then we’re screwed,” Miranda said. “There aren’t any Signets with Sight like yours, Stella . . . are there, David?”

The Prime thought a moment, then shook his head. “I’ve never heard of one.”

Deven, who had been sitting with his eyes closed, said, “You’re not old enough.”

“What do you mean?” David asked him.

“I mean, the kind of magic we’re dealing with here isn’t just amulets and shields. It’s not like what Ovaska used, or even what Volundr worked with. We’re talking about reshaping someone’s
soul
. No vampire—not even the High Priestess of Elysium—could do that.”

“Then who can?” Miranda asked.

“No one. Not anymore. Once, long ago . . . there used to be people who worked that kind of magic, and their power was enough to cast even the greatest Signet into the shade.”

Stella’s breath caught. Was he going to tell them?

“Who?” David pressed. “And where are they now?”

“Dead. Hunted to extinction by both humans and vampires. By the time I was born, they were almost gone . . . almost.”

Miranda and David both looked baffled. “What the hell are you talking about?” the Queen wanted to know.

Stella saw him struggling, trying to force himself to speak the truth after hundreds of years of hiding, and she realized she couldn’t let him do it, not yet. “Elves,” she finished for him. “He’s talking about Elves.”

Ten

Olivia knew that eventually they would come for her. She had run—again—but this time only as far as her loft. She was halfway through shoving her belongings into a bag when she simply stopped, dropping the bag on the bed, and gave up.

She had nowhere left to go.

She hadn’t done anything wrong this time. But as soon as the Prime carried his unconscious Queen up the steps to the clinic, and the Elite guarding the place clustered around them, she knew they would have questions for her . . . too many questions. They would want to know where she had come from, who she was . . . and David knew. He knew, and others would find out. Any thought she’d had of hanging around to see what happened evaporated as the fear took hold, and she fled.

Perhaps the Prime could protect her. She might have thrown in her lot with them, gone back to work for a Signet, even joined the Elite and become Second . . . she certainly still had the skill. But the thought filled her with the kind of fear that had driven her over the face of the globe, from her old life in Australia to the anonymity of a tattoo studio in Austin.

And now they would find her. Now that David knew where she lived, he could go through old network data to track her and then follow her signal; she had no idea what the extent of his reach was outside Austin, but he had a lot of allies in the Council, and rumor was he had eyes everywhere. One way or another she would be running the rest of her life . . . it was just a question of how long that life would be.

So she just stopped. She put her things away, went out to hunt, then came home and slept; the next night, she went to work, letting the hum of the needle soothe her rattled nerves. She re-inked a piece that was two hundred years old and repaired shoddy workmanship that had barely seen a full presidency. She gave another young, naïve vampire a butterfly tramp stamp.

And she waited.

She watched blood roll down the back of one of her clients while he held the wound open as long as he could, and she wondered if her own blood would flow onto the street, or perhaps the concrete floor of her loft to mix with the paint that had been splattering its surface for months. She hoped whoever came to kill her wouldn’t destroy her paintings. Of course, what difference would it make? There was no one to leave them to.