Mind made up, she got dressed and pulled on her jacket. When she looked at herself in the mirror again, she had to smile. Her color had returned, mostly, and she looked awake. There was knowing in her eyes. She looked like a woman with a secret.
Outside, Austin was fairly quiet; there was little traffic, pedestrian or vehicular, and she was glad. As it was, the noise and fuss were a bit too much at first, but she stayed calm and kept breathing. The streetlights hurt her eyes—how did the Elite run around town without sunglasses on?
A fingernail moon hung in the sky, and she could taste the change of seasons in the air: wildflowers blooming, trees leafing out, everything had a scent that registered to her both all at once and individually.
It wasn’t until she was on the bus that things started unraveling. There were only a few other passengers, and she took a seat in the very back a few rows away from a middle-aged woman in a shabby coat. As she passed, she could smell each person strongly; several had pretty intense body odor problems, and the only one who wasn’t repellent was the woman herself, who smelled like old age and rose petals.
Old age had a smell? Miranda concentrated, and sniffed the air again. Sure enough, the woman smelled like a grandmother, and it was familiar enough—slightly musty, a little sweet. The scent had layers that her mind picked out one by one.
The woman was tired and had sore feet, but she was in good health. Miranda stared at her hard, her eyes fixing on the pale wrinkled skin, and on the faint blue tracings of veins in her neck. She listened . . . she could hear the woman’s heart beating . . . air rushing in and out of her lungs . . . the quiet click of her bones against each other as she flexed her arthritic fingers . . . the vein throbbed, and Miranda felt the roof of her mouth start to itch, then burn.
She was hungry. Her stomach growled loudly, startling her, and also startling the object of her obsession, who looked up at her angrily when she realized she was being stared at.
“Sorry,” Miranda muttered. She couldn’t breathe. She yanked the stop cord, and as soon as the bus pulled over she practically bolted down the steps and back into the cool night air.
She grabbed a lamppost and leaned on it heavily, panting.
A man walked by, and her head snapped up at the smell of him. Cancer. In his prostate. He would taste wrong. Gamy.
The couple across the street—the woman was pregnant. Twins. The man was fucking her sister. She could smell sex on him, and the woman he had been inside was related to his wife but not her. She was smiling, talking animatedly about . . . cribs. Their conversation was as loud as it would be two feet away.
Car exhaust. Garbage. Horns honking. A baby crying. Cigarette smoke. Music from a bar three blocks away.
Miranda tried to shield again, but this time it couldn’t help; what she was feeling wasn’t psychic, it was physical. Her hearing and sense of smell had quadrupled at least, and there was no way to block that out except to find someplace silent and safe.
She looked around, trying to get her bearings. She was less than half a mile from home and there was no way in hell she was getting back on a bus. She’d just have to walk, and deal with it.
This was what it was like . . . this was what she had to look forward to. How long would it take her to get used to the overload? Was it just affecting her like this because she was still human and her body and mind were too weak to handle it?
She had to handle it. She wasn’t going to change her mind. It was going to be hard, but she would deal. There was too much at stake to be defeated by these first baby steps.
Steeling herself and straightening her spine, she began the walk home.
“You know,” Deven said, “my Consort is rather put out with you.”
David leaned back in his seat, watching the night landscape out the car window. They would be back at the Haven in ten minutes or less. “Is he, now,” he said into the phone.
The tone of Deven’s voice suggested that Jonathan had been making an issue of his dire predictions for some time now. “He remains convinced that you’re going to get this Miranda killed.”
“That’s exactly what I intend to do,” David replied. “I’m going to bring her across.”
The Prime on the other end of the line sighed resignedly. “I’ll spare you reminders of what a huge responsibility that is, and how badly it went the last time.”
“This is different. She’s sure, and I’m sure. In fact, she won’t take no for an answer. Besides, weren’t you in favor of this last time we spoke?”
“I’m not against the idea by any means—just cautious. It isn’t something to undertake lightly. Not to mention this woman is still fairly young, and you can be as dense as osmium sometimes. Love tends to blind us to practicalities.”
“Was that a scientific reference? Sire, I didn’t know you had it in you.”
“I thought perhaps if I spoke your language you might actually listen once in a while.”
David smiled. “I always listen. Then I do what I want. You know that.”
“It is one of your more infuriating qualities. But I worry about you, David.” There was a surprising earnestness in Deven’s voice—he was almost always serious, but usually with a sharp, dry wit that was notably missing now. “I want your rule to last at least as long as mine—I’ve seen too many friends die, and you . . . I’ve always thought of you as if you were my own.”
“I practically am.”
“Exactly. So bring your love over to the shadows, but be careful, both with her and with your own heart. I helped put you back together once, and I’d prefer not to have to do it again. Are you listening?”
“I am, Sire. And I’ll be careful. Believe me, I want to do this right.”
“Call if you need help.”
“I will.”
David replayed the conversation in his head the rest of the drive home, wondering how seriously he should take it. Jonathan’s vision hadn’t changed, but it also hadn’t recurred; and now that he knew what he and Miranda were facing together, he didn’t find it nearly as alarming. Yes, she would die; and the next night she would awaken. The fire had already happened when the insurgent base burned. He had found Miranda’s note in the book.
He thought back to his brief call to Miranda and felt renewed well-being at the memory of her voice. He would see her in a few days, and he was contemplating telling her that they should aim for the full moon to bring her back to the Haven. That would give her a week to settle her affairs for the time being. He was sure she’d want to be back onstage as soon as possible, but it would be two weeks, minimum, before he was comfortable with her going out into the city, even with bodyguards. Ideally he’d like to keep her close for a month to be sure she was strong enough. This was not something to take chances with.
Most vampires were born on a cruel whim or out of some romantic idiocy involving “eternal love,” which tended not to last past the first decade. Real partnerships most often arose between vampires that were unrelated—that first blush of infatuation between sire and offspring was an ephemeral thing. Older vampires, especially Primes, almost never brought over a human for any reason; their power meant that their progeny had the potential to take Signets themselves, and they were usually loath to sire their own competition.
Harlan pulled the car up to the curb, and the Prime disembarked, looking, for a moment, up at the Haven, his home . . . her home. Even with her gone, the place had been stamped with her presence. Faith and several of the other guards of his wing had reported that, more than once, they’d been sure they saw her out of the corner of an eye.
One of the lieutenants met him at the doors as he entered. “Sire, the Blackthorn girl is asking for you.”
“Thank you, Patrick. I’ll see her now.”
He took the right-hand staircase to the second floor instead of the left and made his way to the hallway of suites where the rare visitor from outside the territory stayed. Primes seldom left their realms, but once in a while a second in command or someone high up in another Court came to pay their respects. He’d had a constant stream of guests the first two or three years. Right now there was no one but Bethany Blackthorn.
Two guards stood outside her door; they bowed and stepped aside to let him enter.
He did the polite thing and knocked. There was no reason to start things off on the wrong foot.
“Come in,” he heard.
He’d put her in one of the small suites—just a bedroom and bath with a sitting area by the fire, much like Miranda’s but nowhere near as comfortable.
She looked small and out of place sitting in one of the chairs, her posture stiff, her dishwater hair hanging board-straight on either side of her face. She might have been beautiful once, but abuse had left her wraithlike, her eyes far too big for her face. Their unwavering azure was the only thing about her that seemed alive.
She sat with the pale spiders of her hands clasped between her knees, as unreactive to his arrival as she had been the night they’d found her, neither cowed by his power nor enraged by his supposed crimes. “Sire,” she said. She sounded so young.
“Bethany,” he replied, taking the other chair. “Are you feeling better tonight?”
“Yes.” She stared down at her hands. “They’re taking good care of me. I don’t deserve it.”
“Why not?”
She frowned and gave a one-shouldered shrug. “I’m a Blackthorn. We’re the enemy. Or you are. My father said you were the devil.”
“I’m sure he did. What do you think?”
“I think he was probably right. But you saved me. And Ariana . . .” She swallowed at the name as if it stuck in her throat. “What do you do when the angel is worse than the devil?”
He folded his hands, elbows on the arms of the chair. “What can you tell me about her plans, Bethany? It’s important that I know so I can stop the remaining members from killing anyone else.”
She looked up at him curiously. “You care about humans,” she said. “My father said that humans were put here on this earth for our use.”
“But we all came from humans,” he pointed out.
“That’s right. We used their bodies and then we use their blood. Once we have what we need, they don’t matter. It’s God’s will that we are superior.”
He nodded. He’d heard this line of “reasoning” before, and as with any form of zealotry, there was no arguing with it. “Even if that’s true, your sister’s people were responsible for the deaths of our kind as well. And if they’re allowed to reorganize, there will be more death. I cannot allow that. What can you tell me?”