There were not enough redheads in Austin to make him forget her.
There were not enough redheads in Houston, either, or New Orleans, or Oklahoma City. There weren’t enough in all of Georgia.
In early October he essentially went on tour, visiting the major cities of his territory, greeting new Elite, upgrading various systems, and making his presence known. Most other Primes didn’t bother with that kind of hands-on involvement, but he had learned from the best as well as the worst. Pretending there was only one city in the South allowed gangs to build up strength in other places, and Auren had barely kept up with the onslaught even at his peak.
It was the same everywhere. Arrive, meet, confer; hunt, fuck, leave.
There was no relish in any of it.
On the other hand, being home was no better.
He had closed and locked the door of the mistress suite and not set foot inside it since; he’d done the same to the music room. He’d entered the latter long enough to turn out a light Miranda had left on, and her presence was still palpable, her scent lingering in the air strongly enough to drive him to the bottom of a bottle of Jack. The next night he’d gone into the city and torn into the first auburn-haired woman he could find, drinking her so deeply he nearly killed her.
He wanted to call. He didn’t call.
Forget her. Forget her and move on.
Forgetting was one thing vampires simply couldn’t do. They had extraordinary memories that made their life spans seem interminable; he supposed it was an apt punishment for cheating death.
After the man who attacked Miranda—Elite 70, who had been working for him for three years and had an impeccable service record—was disposed of, his blood-drained corpse dumped in the Shadow District to wait for the sun, the attacks in Austin came to an abrupt halt.
David didn’t trust the tenuous peace. Perhaps being thwarted in their attempt on the human had made them wary, or perhaps they were planning something even bigger. Either way, he concentrated on the citywide sensor network he was creating and kept the doubled patrols active until further notice. He wasn’t about to get sloppy like Arrabicci and Auren had.
There had been absolutely no evidence of perfidy in Elite 70’s quarters. He shared his room with Elite 25, who was as shocked as the rest of them were. David had tracked 70’s movements back six months over the com network and found nothing untoward. Elite 70 hadn’t ever separated from his unit, had never wandered off alone to meet anyone. His com signal had never wavered.
There had been a thorough search and interrogations throughout the Haven, but David still had no idea if 70 had kept in contact with his masters, much less what he had revealed about operations at the Haven. Elite 70 was of low rank compared to Helen and didn’t have access to much sensitive information, but he might have been there as a pair of extra hands for her. Unless they found another traitor in their midst to question, it was too late to find out why 70 had been at the Haven.
David hated being played. That was exactly what these people were doing: making him suspect his allies, baiting him, making him expose his underbelly to their tiny poisoned spears.
He stopped his work long enough to make his journey around the territory, but as soon as he was back in Austin, he threw himself into the sensor network again. More than once Faith had to remind him to feed and sleep.
As a plan, creating the network was doable. As a distraction, it was woefully inadequate.
Every place, every corner of the Haven reminded him of her. Even in town, lying between the thighs of another nameless human woman waiting for her to finish coming while her blood sang through his veins, he thought of Miranda—her lips, the one time he’d tasted them . . . her hair, wound around his fingers . . . her bright laugh, so rare, that brought life into what now felt like a tomb instead of a home.
One night he made the mistake of sitting on the couch and leaning back into a pillow, releasing a wave of her scent. He had buried his face in it for half an hour, then thrown it in the fireplace.
At this rate he should buy stock in Jack Daniels.
He was in his workroom a few nights later, painstakingly wiring a sensor into its weatherproof housing, when his phone rang. His first inclination was to ignore it, but he glanced over to see who it was and decided he had better not.
“Yes?”
The voice wasn’t British, and it wasn’t cheerful like Jonathan’s; it had, in fact, the faint lilt of an Irish accent and was gentle, if grave. But he could feel the same power and energy echoing from it even hundreds of miles away. “David, have I told you lately that you’re an idiot?”
He put down his screwdriver and sat back. “Nice to hear from you, too, Sire. How are things in the Golden State?”
“I have two lectures prepared for you: one on the perils of ignoring your destiny and the other on gluttony, specifically related to drinking your weight in Jim Beam every night.”
“I’m not drinking.”
He could practically hear Deven roll his eyes. “I’m intimately acquainted with your vices, David.”
“It’s Jack, not Jim.”
“Fine. Which lecture do you want first? I have a conference call with Western Europe and North Africa in fifteen minutes, so I’d like to move this along.”
David rubbed his forehead, where a headache was forming—he’d been having a lot of them lately. “Deven, your own Consort told me to send her away or she’d be killed. What else was I supposed to do?”
“Jonathan reacts to these things emotionally. I’m sure if he’d realized you were in love with her, he would have thought differently. Besides, you know as well as I do that the future is malleable. Did you try letting her touch the second Signet?”
“Why would I do that? She’s human!”
“Return to earlier point in conversation regarding you as idiot.”
“You think I should have brought her across,” David said. “After everything she’s been through, and knowing the life she would face, I can’t believe you of all people would say that.”
“What I’m saying,” Deven told him firmly, “is that I know how you love, how we all love. It’s not just going to go away. The longer you fight it, the more misery you bring down on both of you. Trust me, dear one. What if the vision comes true, and she does die? Every moment you didn’t spend at her side will haunt you forever. We all know how long forever really is.”
David leaned his head in his free hand. “How about the second lecture?”
He could hear Deven rolling his eyes over the phone. “If you’re going to become a drunk, at least spring for the good whiskey. Jack Daniels? Honestly. Have I taught you nothing?”
“Anything else?”
“Yes, one more thing, or rather, an addendum to the first. Consider it the official diplomatic recommendation of your oldest ally.’
“Let’s have it.”
“Quit fucking around and go see her.”
When David hung up, he heard someone clear her throat in the doorway and saw Faith waiting to speak to him, the very picture of professional courtesy.
He shook his head in exasperation. “Thank you, Faith. Now I have both of them to contend with. Better yet, they’re giving me conflicting advice when I don’t want any at all.”
Faith shrugged. “I thought you might listen to him.”
He glared at her. “Do you think this is easy for me? Don’t you think I want more than anything to go see her?”
“Then why don’t you?”
“It would make everything so much harder in the long run to drag this out instead of having a clean break. She has a chance to live her life now and be happy. I’m not going to show up and keep reminding her of what happened here.”
“But what if . . . and this is just a thought, obviously . . . what if she feels the same way about you?”
He lowered his eyes and went back to the wires and tiny screws. “Then I pity her.”
Faith made an exasperated noise and stood there for a minute, but he ignored her. Finally she said, “The night’s reports are on your server. I’m off.”
“Fine.”
Alone again, David tried to keep working, but he broke the same wire three times before he gave up. He picked up his phone and scrolled through the contact list: twenty-six Primes, several Queens, one Consort, the White House, the governors of all eight of the territory’s states, Downing Street, the Department of Defense . . . and the mobile number for a human female, Miranda Grey.
He stared at the entry for a long time. All he had to do was hit a button and he’d hear her voice.
Cursing under his breath, he shoved the phone into his pocket and pushed himself back from the table, snatching his coat from the back of the chair and heading to the suite to find the good whiskey.
“I’m in for the morning, Samuel,” he told the door guard. “See to it I’m not disturbed.”
“As you will it, Sire.”