Miranda lifted her head. There was fire in her eyes.
With one last breath, the onslaught of emotion exploded into nothingness, and it felt like the air in the room had been scoured bare, as if a storm had swept through and lightning had struck.
Faith broke the silence. She whooped and punched the air, diving to Miranda’s side and hugging her with the kind of outward affection he’d never seen her display toward anyone.
“I’m . . . going . . . to fucking . . . kill you,” Miranda panted. “Both of you.”
“You did it!” Faith exclaimed. “I knew you could!”
“I did it,” Miranda said to herself, staring down at her hands on the tile. “I really did it.”
“You’re still doing it,” Faith pointed out. “You’re still shielded.”
Miranda’s laughter was bright and joyful, and it tore him inside even as it brought an upwelling of joy to his own heart. She looked up at him expectantly, her green eyes sparkling, sunlit.
Without speaking, he crossed the floor and knelt in front of her, opening his arms; she threw herself into them, still laughing. He held her as tightly as he dared and kissed the top of her head, inhaling the scent of her humanity, shampoo, and the unmistakable whisper of warmth and spice he knew was hers and hers alone.
“What did I tell you?” he said into her hair. “Extraordinary.”
When he looked up at Faith, she was giving him that mischievous little grin he’d come to recognize, and he pulled one hand away from Miranda’s waist to give his Second the finger.
“I think we should celebrate,” Faith said. “Break out the good Scotch and let’s get fucked up.”
“I have a better idea,” David replied.
It started with margaritas but devolved quickly into tequila shots.
“So how old were you?” Miranda asked, plucking a slice of lime from her mouth and tossing it in the bowl on the coffee table.
“Nineteen,” Faith replied fuzzily around her margarita glass. “Already a decrepit old spinster.”
“God, can you imagine getting married at nineteen?” Miranda asked. “When I was nineteen, I didn’t even know how to do my own laundry.” She added, for David’s benefit, “You know, laundry? Washing your own clothes? There are people who do that.”
He rolled his eyes. “I know how to do laundry. I watched my wife do it dozens of times.”
Miranda snorted and poured herself another shot. The room was spinning quite happily around her, and she intended for it to keep doing so as long as possible. “How did you turn into a vampire?” she asked Faith. “I mean, how does it work?”
“Well, there’s blood involved.”
“No shit, Sherlock.”
Faith waved her hands vaguely, and if there had been anything left in her glass, it probably would have sloshed over the edge. “It’s not like in the movies. It’s a process. The main thing is you have to die with vampire blood in your veins. Right, Sire?”
“Right.” David didn’t seem to be as far gone as she and Faith were. He was remarkably relaxed for him but managed to stay sober enough to mix drinks without getting the proportions horribly awry.
“You exchange blood,” Faith went on. “Sometimes we do that for sexy reasons. It, ah . . . what am I trying to say?”
“Gets you off really hard,” David concluded for her. “And it creates a psychic connection. But in a few days, if you just let it go, it fades and everything is back to normal. There are basically two ways to get it to stick. Either your sire drinks you to death the first time, then feeds you her own blood, and you die and wake changed in about a day; or you swap once, then you start drinking human blood to strengthen you, then die some other way to complete the transformation.”
“The second way sounds like it sucks.”
David made a face at the pun, unintentional though it was. “It takes longer and hurts a lot more. The best way is the first way. You sleep through most of it. That’s usually how it’s done—about three quarters of the time the human dies permanently in the second method.”
“Yeah? How did you do it?”
Faith said, “First.” David said, “Second.”
“But you survived,” Miranda noted unnecessarily.
David nodded. “Only because I wanted vengeance. I forced myself through the change by killing the men who sentenced Lizzie to death. They were my first blood—they tasted like moldy sacramental wine.”
She could see him starting to brood; she refused to let him slide into melancholy tonight. “How did you two meet?” she asked, pointing from the Prime to Faith and back again.
Faith chuckled. “I kicked his ass in the Elite trials. I would have ended up Arrabicci’s lieutenant if the old bastard hadn’t been such a sexist pig.”
“He was not a sexist pig,” David insisted. “He was a racist pig. You’re lucky he didn’t fire you during World War II.”
“He wouldn’t have, with Deven vouching for me. If Dev had told him pigeons fucked monkeys, he’d have looked outside for little hairy birds.”
“This Deven guy sounds like an interesting piece of work,” Miranda observed, downing her shot of tequila and stuffing another lime wedge in her mouth.
“Definitely,” affirmed the Prime. “You’ll have to meet him someday. His Consort, too. They’re the kind of people you want to have on your side.”
Suddenly, Miranda’s mind brought itself back to clarity long enough to realize that in all likelihood she never would meet Deven. She could shield now. She wasn’t perfect, but in a matter of days she’d be able to leave the Haven and return to Austin.
Back to Austin . . . back to the world. Her time at the Haven was almost over.
“You okay?” Faith asked. “You look like you’re choking.”
Miranda blinked back the burning in her eyes and said, “No, I’m fine. I think I’ve had one too many, is all. Everything’s fine.”
Even as she said the words, and smiled heartily to back them up, something inside her was crying.
A few nights later, under a sky that was heavy and threatening with more rain, Miranda walked outside in the garden, alone.
Terrence had gotten used to the paths she took, so he maintained a greater distance and kept an eye on her from farther away than he had the first week he’d been on guard duty. She was grateful for the consideration. Being followed, even by someone who wanted her safe, made her uneasy, especially now that there was no external shield around her that would warn the Prime if she was in trouble.
He had taken it down the night before, just as an experiment, and she had left the training room completely under her own power for the first time. So far things were going well, though she hadn’t dealt with more than two people at a time. She was anxious at the idea of going outside, but she still had her com, and if anything went wrong, Terrence would be at her side in seconds.
September was doing its best to cling to summer as long as it could. The days had been scorching—according to the weather report—and the nights were humid and thick. Everyone was looking forward to the approaching front and its resulting storms to give some relief from the heat. It was the first tumultuous moment of autumn, and Miranda, like anyone who had lived in Texas for years, knew it would be another month before things genuinely cooled off.
She had been at the Haven for a month now, though it felt like years. Her little room had come to bear the stamp of her personality and habits, and she was a familiar sight to the Elite as she took the halls to and from the garden, library, and music room.
She felt a pang of loss at the thought of leaving the B?sendorfer. She had only been playing it for a week, but it felt like a part of her . . . like so many things here. Somehow the Haven had crept into her brick by brick, and the Stephen King-esque strangeness of life here had become normal. Austin, with its thousands of humans and daytime schedule, seemed alien in comparison.
Faith had intimated more than once that she should stay. Even David had hinted, without really meaning to, that he didn’t want her to leave, but he had also said flat out that she was at risk here, and that the best thing for her safety was to return to the anonymity of the city.
Miranda wasn’t totally sure she believed that. Surely the safest place for her, if vampires wanted to kill her, was with the Prime? But he was adamant, so much so that she had to wonder if there was something he wasn’t telling her.
As if summoned by her thoughts, David emerged from the Haven, pausing at the head of the path to look for her. She waved.
He crossed the garden to her, stepping adroitly between plants and around a fountain, and joined her with a smile of greeting.
“I’m going into town tonight, but I wanted to see how you were,” he said.
“Not bad. How does it look?”
He scanned her quickly. She felt the light touch of his energy again, and when it was gone, she missed it terribly. She’d gotten so used to the embrace of his power, her security blanket, that living without it was much harder than she had expected.
“Good,” he answered. “You need to bolster your right side a little, but overall the flow is pretty consistent.”
Miranda took a moment to feel around where he’d indicated and breathe more energy into the shield; she never would have believed it, but he was right when he said it got easier. He’d been so proud of her. She was proud of herself.
“Any news?” she asked.
He made an indefinite move with his head. “Nothing concrete. We’ve had the warehouse under surveillance for days with no results. They move their meeting spots around, never the same place more than twice.”
“What about the mystery Blackthorn woman?”
“She doesn’t fit the descriptions of any of the clan’s women, and there weren’t many. The Blackthorn didn’t let their female members ascend very high in the ranks. There are two unaccounted for after the California wars, but without more evidence we can’t be sure which one she is, or if she is at all.”
“But the attacks have stopped—do you think they’re planning something?”
“They must be. I’ve stepped up patrols all over the territory, not just in Austin, but anywhere there’s been a related murder.”
She saw the frustrated look on his face, and said, “You hate that they’ve got the next move.”