Predictably, the man shrieked, then hung shaking against the wall, suspended from invisible bonds, head bowed.
David gave him a moment.
Finally the man panted, “I’m Rico.”
David smiled and replied in Spanish for the prisoner’s benefit. “That wasn’t so hard, now, was it? A pleasure to meet you, Rico. David Solomon, ninth Prime of the Southern United States.”
On the next breath Rico snarled, “Fuck you.”
The Prime sighed, “Language, Rico,” and broke another rib.
“Fuck you!” This time with a scream. “My master would never have done this to his own kind! You’re a fucking traitor and you’re going down!”
“Do you really believe that?” he asked. “How do you think Auren took the Signet in the first place, Rico? By sending fruit baskets? He slashed and burned his way through the entire Court and raped and tortured the Queen herself before murdering her. Their Elite, their servants . . . everyone, dead within a week of the Pair’s death. Auren was no God, no hero. He was just like the rest of us: a killer, heartless and merciless. Now tell me who you’re working for, and I may contradict myself and show you mercy.”
Now Rico began to laugh, the desperate mad laugh of someone with nothing further to lose, who was in enough pain not to care. Then he reared back and spat at the Prime.
David rolled his eyes and stepped easily out of the way, though the motion would have been a blur to anyone else in the room.
“This is my second-favorite coat,” he told Rico calmly. “That’s really why I don’t want to bleed you—that, and I’d hate to make the servants clean it up. Too bad, really. Messy deaths are much more satisfying. I suppose I’ll have to settle for this.”
With that, the Prime made a slow, twisting gesture, and Rico’s bones started breaking with dull popping sounds. He dropped the man to the floor and let him writhe, the screams building, turning into the panicked, agonized wails of a dying animal.
Rico was still alive when his skull caved in, but by then he could no longer scream.
When every bone was crushed, the vampire’s body lying in a crumpled heap, David motioned for Faith to come forward, and she sliced off Rico’s head with one clean swing.
David looked over at Faith, who nodded. Her eyes were hard and fierce. The guard outside looked like he was about to vomit. That was the difference between a soldier and the second in command.
“Have him dropped near where the attack occurred,” the Prime said to the guard as he straightened his coat. “I want his friends to see the consequences of their actions.”
“Yes, Sire,” the guard managed, letting him pass.
Once out in the free air again, David paused, drinking in the night. Out here the smells were of impending rain and night-blooming jasmine, not stale cigarettes and abject terror.
It had all been so easy, once. Back before coming here, he had meted out punishment and torture alike at his Prime’s command without a second thought. He had served under two Primes in California, and the first, Arrabicci, had been as ruthless as Auren. Like many Primes he had cared only about vampires and had no qualms about his people killing humans. David had spent his years in Arrabicci’s Elite hunting down vampire hunters, as well as rival gangs after the Signet.
Then had come Deven, Arrabicci’s Second, who reluctantly took charge after an assassin’s arrow sent all of California’s Shadow World into bloody civil war for months. Deven had not instituted a no-kill law, but he had severely tightened restrictions on human feeding, and his fearsome reputation as a warrior helped him rule over the western states with absolute control. The gangs feared Deven like they feared God, and so there was little need to torture or execute anyone.
“Are you all right?” he heard Faith ask, and half turned to see her looking concerned.
“Peachy,” he snapped before he could stop himself. Faith, however, was used to his moods, and didn’t rise to the tone. She simply waited.
“Something about crushing a man’s skull with my brain always aggravates me,” he muttered, starting to walk again. Faith took up her usual place at his right hand. “And what have we learned? Nothing.”
“Not entirely nothing,” she replied. “We know that there’s some kind of organization behind all of this. We know they’re at least fanatic enough to get a dead Prime’s Seal tattooed on their bodies. Fanatics aren’t usually the smartest of criminals; they’re bound to slip up.”
“Yes, and how many humans will die before we stop them?” Had he been a more emotional creature he might have kicked something; irritation was prickling through his mind like the thorns of a particularly nasty cactus.
“Is this anger because of the insurgents, or is it guilt at killing that fool back there?”
He stopped and shot her an irritable look. “Stop being so goddamned insightful.”
She shrugged. “That’s what you pay me for. In the absence of a Queen, it’s my job to question as much as support. I learned everything I know watching you in California.”
In that, she hit the nail squarely on the head: the absence of a Queen. Primes were powerful, yes, and had many arcane abilities the average vampire did not. He was faster, stronger, and had sharper senses, among other things. He had been born telekinetic, a rare gift even among vampires that was extremely useful when it came to, say, interrogation; his telepathy was decent as long as he had some sort of connection to the subject.
A Queen, however, would have different skills; they were tuned into the heart, and read people as easily as words. A Queen could have opened Rico’s mind and lifted the truth out of him without hurting him at all, and then Rico could have been executed painlessly, instead of slobbering and spasming with his screams still echoing in David’s ears.
He didn’t have a problem with killing, in theory. He’d been a killer for 340 years. Doing away with his own kind, however, had gotten harder and harder since he’d come here. It was starting to feel like infanticide, no matter how richly deserved.
“You know,” Faith said, bringing him back to the moment, “Deven once told me years ago that Primes aren’t meant to be alone. Your power becomes debilitating if it’s not shared.”
“That’s easy for him to say,” David retorted with a shake of his head. “He only ruled alone for six months before Jonathan came along.”
“Lucky him.”
David started to respond, but he felt eyes on him, and lifted his gaze up from the gardens to the main building of the Haven itself.
There, in the second-floor window adjacent to his suite, Miranda stood staring out at the night, or rather, down at him; the firelight from her room caught the loose strands of her jewel-red hair, and in her white T-shirt with her pale skin she looked almost spectral, perhaps even angelic.
When she saw him, she smiled a little, then looked away as if embarrassed. Even at this distance he could see the faint touch of pink to her cheeks.
He might have read more into it, except that as long as he was shielding her he could pick up her outermost thoughts, and he knew she hadn’t meant to stare. Movement below her window had captured her attention as she looked out at the forest.
A second later she glanced down again, probably feeling his eyes on her this time, and he inclined his head toward her in greeting. She gave a small wave and disappeared.
Faith was holding back a grin. “So, how is our guest?”
“I plan to start teaching her to shield tomorrow,” he said, though he hadn’t been planning any such thing until now.
“Is she strong enough already?”
“No way to tell until she tries.”
She kept her tone professional, though he could tell she was trying not to laugh as she said, “You’re in need of a Queen yourself . . . perhaps you’ve developed a taste for madwoman redhead?”
“Don’t be disgusting,” he replied mildly.
“I’m only joking,” Faith said, becoming serious. “Besides, after what she’s been through, I doubt she’ll be interested in that sort of thing any time soon, even with somebody like you skulking around.”
He smiled at the compliment, such as it was. “The best thing we can do for her is get her well enough to go back to her life.”
A drop fell on his arm; the rain was coming back. He could sense it would settle in for the rest of the night after this brief respite from the downpour.
As he started to return to the Haven, he looked up at Miranda’s window again; it was empty.
Yes, she needed to leave as soon as possible . . . for his sake as well as her own.