It was a beautiful, clear morning in April when Lizzie died. The smoke had to have been seen for miles.
It was the last morning he ever saw, and he had only a glimpse of it through the bars of his cell. He was lucky; he didn’t have to see her beautiful young face obscured by a column of smoke, or her rosy skin blackening. He didn’t have to watch her scream . . . but he heard her. He heard all three of the convicted shrieking as the flames licked their bare, broken feet. He heard the crowd cheering, heard the drone of the reverend’s voice.
One by one, the screams had become less and less human . . . then they had faded. David learned, years later, that in all likelihood the victims had died from smoke inhalation, so they had been blessedly oblivious to the stench of their own flesh barbecuing. Perhaps their feet had blistered, skin charring and cracking, but the poisoned air would have starved them of oxygen, and the agony may not have been as excruciating as he imagined.
Or perhaps this time the smoke hadn’t been enough—the wind may have been wrong, the wood so dry that flames raced up the pyre. Perhaps Elizabeth had died cursing his name, or begging God for release. Had her last thoughts been of him? Of their boy, already spirited away in the night, out of the pernicious influence of his demonic parents?
He remembered Lizzie as he had known her, laughing, eyes sparkling, hair coming loose from its bun. She’d been such a free spirit that she’d married later than her sisters. The men of the village thought she was difficult. Fiery, they’d said. She’d died, then, the way she had lived.
Richard Cooke, who had taken the last shift as jailer before David was to follow Elizabeth’s steps up to the pyre, whispered to him through the bars that though the other two condemned had sobbed and begged for their lives, she had spat on the reverend in contempt and held her head high as they lashed her to the stake. That was his Lizzie.
Hanging had been a more common fate for witches back then, but the Witchfinder who came to their village—who was paid per conviction—had favored a more barbaric method that would remind the witnesses of the inferno that awaited them in hell should they stray from the path of righteousness.
Twenty-first-century Austin was both far more monstrous and infinitely kinder in comparison.
David stood in the warm night wind, staring down at his city from the roof of one of its tallest buildings, watching traffic move along the streets below. From here, there was the illusion of order; things moved in straight lines, according to signals. Horns blared, and the wind carried to him snatches of music from the bars and clubs that lined Sixth Street, all of them filled to capacity on a Saturday night in late summer.
Kinder, yes . . . and yet the same ignorant hatred that had ended Lizzie’s life had dogged his steps all the way to the twenty-first century. Either humankind had learned depressingly little in the last few centuries, or he was singularly cursed.
Somewhere out there was the gang he intended to find and eliminate. They were, he was sure, planning their next assault as he stood there.
For months the California Blackthorn had been phantoms. They appeared, killed, and dissolved before they could be identified. The Elite had been unable to track them until luck finally fell their way: One of the members dropped a matchbook at the crime scene. That matchbook led to a vampire bar, which led to David exercising his interrogation skills, which led to the rest of the syndicate. Blood had flowed on the streets of Sacramento until the night was silent again.
There had been nineteen human deaths and four vampires so far this time . . . five, if he counted Helen. The only good thing to come of it was that now the com network was so secure God himself would need a password to log on.
Again he thought of Lizzie’s face. He thought of her often, but rarely in any depth. It had been over three centuries, and he had loved since then. Hundreds of people had tumbled in and out of his bed, and though he’d given his heart rarely, it had happened. He had known Lizzie for less than a decade total. Why had she returned to haunt his dreams now?
More important . . . how had Miranda seen her?
He’d shielded others before, and this had never happened. The only explanation he could think of was that Miranda was a good three times more powerful than anyone he had ever trained before. Psychically she was already as strong as half his Elite. It was also possible that she had some mostly untapped power as a medium, just as it was possible she could see and hear parts of him that no one else he had ever trained could . . . possible, and extremely unnerving.
His phone rang.
He reached for it absently, stepping back out of the wind. “Yes?”
“Let me guess,” came a familiar, deep voice with a cheerful British accent. “You’re standing on top of a building in a long black coat, brooding.”
David smiled into the darkness. “Not at all, my Lord,” he replied. “As it happens I’m at a topless bar with my face between a brunette’s thighs.”
“Liar,” was the laughing reply. “Your voice isn’t muffled.”
“To what do I owe this honor?” David asked.
Jonathan Burke, Consort of the Prime of the Western United States, had spent most of his immortal life as a bodyguard for royals, and in his spare time he was rumored to bite trees in half with his teeth. A tall, broad blond whose nose had been broken a few times, he looked far more like a linebacker than like a vampire. He was a good ten inches taller than his Prime, his polar opposite in more ways than one; Deven was quiet and serious and had fooled many people into thinking he was fragile.
David imagined Jonathan sitting with his feet propped up on his desk at the Haven outside Sacramento, drinking a beer with his free hand.
“I e-mailed you the files you asked for,” Jonathan said. “I don’t know how much help they’ll be. Your intel is probably vastly superior to ours.”
“Thank you. I want to look over them regardless to see if there’s anything I missed.”
“You’re looking for a matchbook,” Jonathan surmised. “I hope you find one. I hate to think any of those cockroaches slipped through our fingers, but it’s possible.”
“That’s not why you called,” David pointed out.
“No, not really.” The Consort seemed to be looking for words, which was a bit unusual for him, but David waited until he said, “I saw something.”
Shit. Consorts were almost all gifted with precognition, and Jonathan’s gift was very strong. He’d foreseen Arrabicci’s death, but he was on the other side of the world when it happened and didn’t even know what he was seeing. He’d foreseen David taking the Signet—in fact, that vision had been what convinced David that the waiting was over and it was time to take Auren down.
“What did you see?”
“It was vague,” was the reply, amended with, “but it felt urgent. I don’t even know if it will make any sense to you. I wasn’t going to call, but Dev said I had better, and you know he’s always right.”
“Go on.”
“There was a woman,” said the Consort. “I couldn’t see her very clearly, but I could hear music.”
David’s hand clenched the phone so tightly he was amazed it didn’t break. “And?”
“Black water. Cold. It felt like drowning—well, I think it did. I’ve never actually drowned, but still, if I could . . . anyway, I also saw a Signet Seal, not one I knew. I think it may have been Auren’s, which makes sense given the situation. The stone drawn in the center was red like yours. It was painted on something, and it was burning.”
The Prime nodded to nobody. “What else?”
“The woman . . . she was sad. She made me think of honey and rain.”
“What happened to her?”
“She died, David. That much was certain. I saw her blood on your hands. My advice is, if you meet this woman, get her away from you as fast as you can.”
David was dimly aware that he’d stopped breathing. “Is that all?” he managed.
“No. There’s one other thing.” Jonathan delivered the rest hurriedly, as if he were trying to exorcise the knowledge from his mind by saying the words aloud. “At the end, I saw you, turning the pages of an old book. Between two pages you found a drawing of a woman, so old it was falling apart. I didn’t recognize her, but she felt . . . wrong. Then you turned the page again, and there was a note someone had written you, still folded.”
“Did you see what book it was?”
“No. It may not even have been a real book—you know how these things are. Sometimes they’re literal, sometimes they’re metaphoric, sometimes they’re rubbish. I wish I knew more.”
“Thank you,” David said, “I think.”
“Don’t thank me,” Jonathan told him, and he could hear the weight of too much knowledge in the Consort’s voice. “Never thank me for seeing things, Lord Prime. I don’t want this, I never have.”
“I know.” David smiled into the phone despite the way his heart was lumbering around in his chest. “But just think of what you’d be missing if you didn’t have it.”
“There is always that.” Jonathan’s voice perked up a little. “Speaking of which, I must go. My presence has been humbly requested in the bedroom.”
David rolled his eyes, chuckling. “Humbly requested, my ass. Give the Prime my best before you give him yours.”
“As you will it, my Lord. Good hunting.”
“Good hunting.”