Of Shadow Born (7 page)

“Really? Most people seem to think it’s one hell of a prize, at least until they get it.”

“That’s because people are afraid of death.”

“And you’re not?”

Stella shrugged. “Maybe . . . I’m a Wiccan, though. We look at death as part of a greater cycle, not as an end. It’s a doorway to whatever’s next. Besides, I can’t imagine living forever, watching everything else die and change . . .” She trailed off, realizing that she really, really needed to change the subject, given what Miranda had just been through. “But . . . at least the clothes are cool.”

Miranda raised an eyebrow, not fooled by her lame attempt at steering the conversation away from death, but said only, “Take the next left turn.”

They were heading deeper into the hills, and the road wound around like a snake, guiding them farther and farther from the city. Stella began to feel a creeping sense of unreality pricking her spine.
Out in the middle of nowhere in a car with a vampire . . . you are fucking brilliant, Stell.

She would never have seen the odd little unmarked turnoff that Miranda pointed out to her. It was so dark and the trees so dense it felt like they were in another world . . .

. . . until the trees opened out onto a wide valley cupped in the hands of the hills, and Stella caught sight of the magnificent house . . . no, mansion . . . no, that didn’t even cover it . . . at the end of the long, circular drive.

“Holy shit,” Stella breathed. She heard Miranda chuckle.

It was hard to really get an idea of what the place looked like. There were no lights anywhere, and the only real sense she got of its size was based on the enormity of the blackness where it blocked out the half moon’s light. It was gigantic, though, and she could see the edges of several other buildings behind it, all of them dark, like haunted houses, a ghost town.

They pulled up to the massive double doors at the front entrance. Stella grabbed her bag and Pywacket, who complained loudly from inside the carrier until she shushed him.

It was so quiet, and so dark. There was sound everywhere, crickets and night birds, but no traffic noise, no hum of the ever-wakeful city around them. The sky overhead seemed to go on forever.

Miranda walked up the steps and off to one side of the doors; she obviously could see just fine, though Stella had to pick out each step carefully to avoid stumbling and dropping the cat. Once she was closer to the building, Stella saw that the doors were actually made of steel, and it looked like all the windows were blocked off with metal, too.

Miranda reached out and pressed one of the bricks, which turned out to be a façade; it flipped up out of the way, revealing a touch screen of some kind.

The Queen pressed her hand flat against the screen for several seconds before there was a faint beep.

A small camera lens shot forward from the wall until it was close to Miranda’s face, and Stella saw a blue line of light travel over her eyes. Another beep, followed by a female computer voice requesting verbal authorization.

“Star-two,” Miranda said.

“Identity accepted. Access granted.”

There was a deep clanging sound, and a moment later the steel doors slid back like something from
Star Trek
, revealing a pair of equally enormous carved wood doors behind them. Seconds later the windows began to follow suit, making surprisingly little noise other than the soft
flap-flap-flap
of the metal shutters retracting.

Above Stella’s head, two electric torches blazed to life, banishing the eerie darkness.

Miranda took a deep breath. “Welcome to the Haven of the South,” she said. “Follow me.”

As they crossed the threshold, the interior lights began to click on, and Stella finally got to see exactly what she was dealing with here: The doors opened into a grand vestibule with a staircase that rivaled any Hollywood plantation set. The room was cavernous, their steps echoing as they crossed the marble floor. Even Pywacket didn’t seem to know how to react; the cat was quieter than he’d ever been in his life.

They took a long hallway and several turns. Stella was good and lost before a minute had passed, but Miranda’s stride was purposeful, her expression fixed on her goal.

She led Stella to another steel door and held her wrist up to the scanner on the wall beside it; the weird bracelet thing she wore was some kind of key, and the light on the scanner changed from red to green, allowing her access.

“You can leave your things here for now,” Miranda told her.

Stella saw why: The door led directly to a staircase, and there wasn’t much room to spare. Getting her bag and Py down there would have been awkward to say the least. At the bottom of the stairs was yet another door.

The Witch wasn’t sure what she expected to find on the other side, but it wasn’t what she got. They walked into a windowless, freezing cold room full of computers—cabinets of servers, monitors, an entire store’s worth of laptops and other equipment meticulously organized on shelves.

Miranda went to a console where a red button was locked inside a shield, just like in a nuclear submarine movie. She held her wrist-thing to it, unlocking the shield, and flipped it up to expose the button.

She shot Stella a grin. “Watch this.”

She hit the button with her palm.

Around them, servers and CPUs leapt to life, whirring and beeping and clicking; Stella felt a faint vibration beginning all around her, the entire building seeming to wake up. A monitor nearby lit up and Stella watched, fascinated, as it showed the system booting up, running through script after script that switched on other monitors, other subsystems.

SOLAR POWER SYSTEM: ONLINE.

EXTERNAL LIGHTING SYSTEM: ONLINE.

COM SYSTEM: ONLINE.

SENSOR GRID: ONLINE.

VEHICLES: ONLINE.

A window popped up asking for a password. Miranda typed in what looked like more than two dozen characters. Finally, another window appeared, saying,
CONFIRM ELITE RECALL?

Miranda said aloud, “Confirm, Star-two, Queen Miranda Grey-Solomon.”

RECALL MESSAGE?

She smiled softly, and when she spoke, her voice was clear and firm and held the barest touch of triumph: “Attention, all Elite and Haven personnel. Recall Code Omega-Nine, Star-two. Report to the Haven immediately. I repeat: Recall Code Omega-Nine, Star-two.”

RECALL SENT.

A flicker caught Stella’s attention: On a monitor showing a citywide grid, red lights had begun to appear in clusters throughout Austin, and after a few minutes they began to converge.

“Now,” Miranda said, still smiling, “Let’s get you settled in.”

* * *

Across Austin, in hidden shelters and safe houses scattered throughout the silent city, a woman’s voice broke into the darkness, and in every corner of the Shadow District, there were cheers.

Four

She couldn’t go in. Not yet.

She stood with her hands on the door, head bowed, for several minutes, but nothing she told herself could give her the will to open it or go inside.

She knew what she would see: everything just as it had been that night. Her guitar would still be on her chair. The book on string theory he had been reading would still be lying on the side table, his place held with a sticky note. The pair of boots she had almost worn, then changed her mind about and tossed on the floor, would still be there. A silver pen engraved with
David L. Solomon, PhD
would still be in the groove in the desk.

There was a gentle voice beside her. “May I get you something,
reinita
?”

Miranda turned to the woman standing there. “Welcome back, Esther. Is everyone all right?”

“Yes, my Lady. The Haven staff was in the safe house—we were the first ones back.” Esther pursed her lips slightly and added, “I would have liked to stay, to watch the house until you came home.”

Miranda smiled. “I appreciate that . . . but it was more important that everyone stayed safe. You never know what might happen.”

Esther seemed to fight with herself for a moment, but then suddenly bundled Miranda into a hug. “Thank God you are home,” she murmured into Miranda’s hair. “I am so sorry about our Lord Prime.”

“Thank you, Esther . . . so am I.”

Miranda squeezed her back, and then Esther moved away, flushed a little at the emotion that had made her breach propriety for a moment. “I will go in and freshen things up,” Esther said. “It will be ready for you when you are ready for it.”

Miranda nodded, but she didn’t speak and didn’t stay to watch Esther go into the suite; she had to walk away.

She could hear the Haven coming back to life—the Elite were arriving in groups, the servants had returned, all systems were humming happily as if nothing had gone wrong. He would have been pleased, she thought, knowing how perfectly all the safeguards and contingencies had worked; everyone had done exactly as they were supposed to, waiting until they got the signal to emerge from hiding. If there had been no word for fourteen days, they were to disband. That way if a new Prime came forward and didn’t try to wipe them out, they could choose whether to pledge themselves to his rule or to leave the territory. If the worst happened, he had wanted everyone to be safe and for the Haven technology to be as difficult as possible for his killer to steal.

She stopped, hands going to her face, unable to breathe through the upwelling of pain in her heart.
Oh, God . . . David . . . this can’t be real. I’m going to wake up . . . and he’ll be there, and he’ll laugh at me for crying, and then we’ll make love and go back to sleep . . . oh, God . . . please . . .

Miranda held down her emotions, forcing them aside again. She couldn’t fall apart. There was too much work to do. Later . . . later. Not now.

Stella was installed in a small room a few doors down from the Signet suite; Miranda had made the girl promise to stay put until Miranda returned with a com and guards for her. She knew better than anyone that even the Haven couldn’t keep out every nightmare, but it was better for her to be here than vulnerable in the city—that, Miranda knew, too. Whatever that vampire had been after, even if it had nothing to do with Stella, Miranda wasn’t going to have another death on her conscience.

She resumed walking, headed for the Great Hall, where the Elite were gathering to await their orders. Had it been only a week since the Council had been here? Since she had been shot? No wonder she was so tired. So much had happened so fast . . . did the Council know what had happened? Was Hart celebrating?

She walked out onto the balcony where the staircase opened onto the Hall . . . where a lifetime ago she had walked into battle with Sophie, and time had come to a halt as she and David stared at each other, his eyes full of shock that she was alive and a kind of love she had never, ever expected to find . . .

Not now.

They were waiting for her. Dozens of faces, expectant, tilted up toward her.

At first she didn’t know what to say. There were no protocols for this. She had no script, no idea where to go from here. None of the scenarios that involved a Haven lockdown ended with only the Queen alive. The very idea was absurd. Pairs died together; that was the balance of the universe, the nature of their bond.

She took a deep breath. “Welcome home,” she said.

Applause. She could feel their joy. They had believed her dead, but in defiance of all logic and history, here she was, returned to them again.

“I wish I knew what to say to you,” she told them. “I wish I could tell you that everything can go back to the way it was. I wish I had inspiring words to rally us all . . . to bring some sense of meaning to all of this. But I don’t. That was always the Prime’s department . . . and Faith’s. They should be here now to lead you . . . but they’re gone. They’re gone . . . and we have to go on. To honor what they lived for, and what they died for, we have to be strong and stand together. I don’t know what god or fate or luck kept me here, but I remain. And I’m going to need your help.”

She could see tears on several faces, and her own threatened to rise up, but she swallowed hard and continued. “For now, we’ll adhere to Contingency Delta Three—modified duty, double patrols—to remind the Shadow World that we’re still here. I’ll be . . . I will take applications for a new Second in Command starting next week. In the meantime, shift leaders report to your lieutenants as usual, and lieutenants report directly to me. Patrol reports on the server as always.” Miranda managed a smile for them and finished with, “I don’t know what the future holds for us . . . but I know we can face it together. Dismissed.”

As one, the entire Elite bowed to her. She nodded back, then said, “Elite Twenty-four and Forty-three—please report for guard duty at the Signet suite. Elite Eighty-one, with me.”

Elite 81, a muscular dark-skinned man named Javier who had served on door guard duty many times, was at her side in moments. “My Lady.”

“I have a human guest in East Wing room seven who needs twenty-four-hour guard. Coordinate with the other door guards to make sure she is never left alone.”

“As you will it, my Lady.”

“Also—grab one of the housekeeping staff and see to it that our guest’s cat has a litter box and they both have food.”

Elite 81 looked a bit bemused at the order but didn’t question it; he set off for Stella’s room without comment.

“My Lady, as your medic, I must insist you go and get some rest,” came another familiar voice.

Miranda smiled. “Hi, Mo.”

His warm eyes were sympathetic, though his tone was stern. “You will not do much good for anyone if you fall over from exhaustion.”

Miranda looked down at herself. She had taken Stella up on her offer of a new shirt, but the black pullover the Witch had lent her was a little baggy and faded; still it was better than a bloodstained shirt full of arrow holes. Stella had washed Miranda’s jeans, bless her, and by some miracle or magic spell the blood had come out of them almost completely. Miranda was clean, but she still must look a fright.