“We’ve known each other sixty years, and you still think I can’t deal with whatever machinations you have going on in defense of our friends? Am I supposed to be like the other Queens and not dirty my hands in the unsavory dealings of the menfolk? Should I be at the doily party instead of at your side?”
“No.”
“Then why can’t you open up to me, Deven? Why does it always have to be you alone against the world? Why won’t you let me help you while I can?”
Deven frowned. “What do you mean, while you can?”
“I mean … if this all comes to a head, we need to have plans in place for the worst-case scenario, and that means you let me in. Now. Do you not think I’m strong enough?”
“Of course I do,” Deven said, looking surprised at the suggestion. “Jonathan, I trust you, and you have my full faith; I just …”
Jonathan waited but didn’t back down, and finally Deven said, “You already have too many burdens, my love. Even in the name of those we care for, I can’t stand to lay anything else on your shoulders. I see what you go through, just knowing what you know, and …” His wide eyes had darkened, a trait Jonathan had never seen in other vampires—all their eyes went silver when they were on the hunt, but Deven’s actually became a noticeably darker purple when he was emotional … which was rare.
Whatever quirk of genetics had landed Deven healing power had also made him just a little … otherworldly, at times, like a strange wild thing wandered out of the mists of some ancient forgotten realm. With his being medieval Irish, Jonathan had joked once that Deven might be some kind of Faery changeling … and that was one of the few times Deven had ever gotten genuinely upset with him. Jonathan had never brought up the idea again.
Deven came closer to him, putting both hands on his chest, one over his heart. “I’ve already killed too much,” Deven said softly. “I can’t stand to hurt you, too.”
Jonathan couldn’t help it—it was so unusual to see that much emotion in the Prime, he had no choice but to respond, and kissed Deven hard on the mouth, taking his breath away. They melted into each other with a sigh. It was a beautiful thing, to be Paired, to feel that balance and solace just at a touch. Deven called it holy; Jonathan was inclined to agree.
“I have to go,” Deven said after a few minutes, drawing back reluctantly. “David’s going to present his evidence to the Council and move for a censure—and we know if they throw Hart out he won’t go quietly.”
“They can’t excommunicate him from the Council, can they?”
“Technically no. A Prime is a Prime, no matter how fucked up. But they can have him suspended—or he gets tossed out this time, and next time his vote is null and void on every motion.”
“That’s barely a slap on the wrist for having a Queen shot.”
“It’s symbolic. It means no matter what he tries to get done next meeting, no one will side with him; he’s essentially blackballed for as long as Tanaka judges he deserves it. And since all his friends are cowardly sheep, they’ll leave him twisting in the wind if he wants to pull another stunt like last night’s.”
“Has anyone ever been thrown off for good?”
“Not for good, but for a good while. Why do you think Demetriou never shows? He got a fifty-year suspension for his involvement in Horak’s death. He could have come back this decade, but his pride won’t let him … and at heart he’s too chickenshit to risk facing Janousek.”
Jonathan had to laugh at that. “Demetriou’s afraid of Jacob? Why on earth? He’s like our own personal Jesus.”
Deven grinned, but sobered quickly. “Jesus got angry, too, you know.”
Suddenly, something very strange happened: It felt like the building shook, just for a second, and there was a muffled
boom
.
A heartbeat later, alarms began blaring all throughout the Elite training complex. Jonathan cast his senses around, heard footsteps rushing toward one end of the orderly rows of buildings, and he and Deven were out of the training room and headed down the hall with the guards seconds later.
Jonathan smelled the smoke before he saw it. They
came around a corner and ran into a huge crowd of Elite from several territories who had no doubt been holding grudge matches or showing off after the tournament; everyone was surrounding a hallway that led to a plain steel door, into a cinder-block outbuilding.
“Interrogation room A,” Deven informed Jonathan, charging through the crowd to where Faith was holding everyone back from the scene. “What’s going on?”
The Second looked utterly thunderstruck, but she was still issuing orders to get the area contained and cordoned off. “I don’t know,” she said.
“Was someone trying to blow the door and let the prisoner escape?” Jonathan asked.
“No,” came David’s voice, as he Misted right at Deven’s elbow. “The smoke is coming from inside the room. Wait here.”
Sword drawn, the Prime nodded to Faith, who already had her own weapon out; with everyone watching, the two slipped into the antechamber, where the interior door to the interrogation room was hanging partly off its hinges.
Jonathan tried to keep Deven from getting any closer, but it was as always a useless enterprise; Deven was in the doorway in a flash, and after a pause, Jonathan heard him curse loudly in Gaelic.
Faith was the first one out, and Jonathan saw immediately that her boots were covered in blood.
She looked up at him. She sounded like she was about to be sick. “Monroe.”
“Where is he?”
Faith made a helpless gesture. “All over the place.”
“What do you mean, it’s
gone
?”
The line had appeared between David’s eyebrows again, and his eyes were silver.
Deven sighed deeply and poured himself another bourbon.
Even before David hung up with Detective Maguire,
Deven knew what he was going to say; while he should have been annoyed at the complete and utter derailing of a very intricate and costly plan, the most he could drum up was resignation.
“The gun disappeared from Ballistics,” David said, sinking into his chair. “The gun, the data, the report … it’s all gone. There’s no record of the gun ever being entered into the system, though several techs swear they had eyes and hands on it before it vanished. Maguire’s having the entire department torn apart, but … it’s gone.”
“And 8.3 Claret was blown to vamp-jam all over the walls of the interrogation room,” Deven added with a slow, amazed shake of his head. “You have no evidence whatsoever that Hart had Miranda shot, except my word that Monroe was working for me, and that would reveal my involvement with the Red Shadow.”
“How in hell did Hart get anyone into that room to leave a bomb? And how did he get into APD’s labs to steal the gun
and
hack their computer system?”
“I agree it makes no sense, David. Claret was undercover in Hart’s Haven for years, and he never gave me any indication that Hart had this level of finesse. His businesses—the drugs, the human trafficking—he runs them like a street thug, with hired brute enforcers. The degree of organization this suggests is
not
like Hart.”
“So either he’s wised up a lot in three years and somehow kept it from Claret—which would mean he knew the Claret his people killed wasn’t the real thing—”
“Or there’s someone else involved in this,” Deven concluded. “Someone Hart hired or who is on his side and working on his behalf.”
“It has to be Hayes,” David said. “He’s the only player here we don’t know enough about. Do you have a file on him?”
“Not much of one. He’s been Hart’s Second for eight years, originally from Australia … and in all that time he hasn’t shown the kind of initiative an operation like this would take. He’s loyal, as far as anyone knows, but there’s
nothing remarkable about him aside from brooding good looks.”
“We need to know more. Can you do some digging?”
“Of course. I can access Claret’s files; he kept them on a remote server. He would have had a way into Hart’s personnel data, as well—I can give you that and you can do a bit of techno-sleuthing. All Claret ever told me was that no one had ever heard of Jeremy Hayes before he joined the Elite; but that’s not so unusual. Vampire Elite are not exactly a sharing-and-caring breed.”
“I’ve got Elite poring over every inch of that room for the explosives,” David said, putting his head in his hands. “If we can find the blast seed, I can learn more about when and where the bomb was set. That won’t link us to Hart, but it will tell us more about who we’re dealing with here. It’s possible that Hart brought Hayes on board to take his Elite in a new direction.”
“A direction remarkably like yours,” Deven noted. “Technology, intelligence operatives … the old bastard might finally be learning.”
David ran his hands back through his hair and looked up at Deven. “I can’t accuse him of anything at Council tonight. I have to let this go.”
“Yes.”
“How can I do that, Deven? How can I just let him walk out of here unscathed after what he did to Miranda? After I walked in and hit him like that, if I just let it go, I look like a fool.”
“Why did you hit him, anyway?” Deven asked. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you just flat-out lose it like that in front of other people. That’s not the cool-headed David Solomon I know.”
“Apparently my cool head falls right the fuck off when someone hurts my Queen.”
Deven smiled. “That’s as it should be. I don’t care how logical you are, darling, when it comes to your Queen, logic doesn’t ever apply, no matter how much you want it to.
She will always be the one thing that gets under your armor, the soft underbelly of your dragon’s scales.”
“So basically she’s a handicap,” David muttered. “That sounds like something you would say.”
Deven leaned forward, locking eyes with David. “No, David. A Consort is a Prime’s greatest strength. Our power is debilitating. Our responsibility is a long walk alone that ends in a violent death. Eternity—real eternity, not some romantic ideal—kills everything eventually.”
“Is that why you and I …” David lowered his gaze, heart catching; neither of them had brought it up like this in a long time. “I still don’t understand why it happened.”
Deven knew what he meant. “A house remains haunted until the ghost inside it is exorcised.”
“Then it’s over with. You really believe that.”
A smile, somewhere between sad and amused. “What you and I had was … is … love, I have no doubt. Even a heart as close to dust as mine is capable of loving more than one person. But we’ll never be a Pair, for the simple reason that your Queen completes a part of you no one else can. Miranda is your human heart, still beating. Your soul, still alive. She is a miracle and a treasure, and in three years she’s already made you twice the Prime you were—which is saying something, because you, my darling, are wonderful.”
They held eyes for a while, and after a moment David reached over and took his hand, sighing. “Thank you.”
Deven lifted his hand and kissed it, then let go. “Let’s get to the meeting, then, and get this over with—then we can start our real work. This isn’t over by a long shot; we’re going to nail that bastard to the wall … but we’ll start with Jeremy Hayes.”
Eight
Musician Hospitalized
after Shooting
Austin, Texas (AP)—Grammy-winning artist Miranda Grey is in good condition at a private hospital after being shot twice in the chest Saturday night during her performance at the Austin Live Music Festival.
“Miss Grey is stable and will make a full recovery,” Dr. Stephen Novotny stated at a press conference Sunday. “Both bullets were successfully removed. Because of Miss Grey’s prior condition we are monitoring her recovery very carefully.”
An investigation is underway into the identity of the shooter. A representative of the Austin Police Department said the focus of the investigation is on a series of letters the singer received from a possible stalker.
Local music producer and chairman of the Austin Live Music Association Grizzly Behr also attended the press conference and said, “The ALMA is cooperating fully with APD to find out how the shooter got past security. Attendees of future festivals can rest assured that it won’t happen again. We’re thankful that Miss Grey is going to be all right, and we’re hoping she’ll be back next year.”
Grey’s representative, Theresa Cuaron, urged fans to either donate blood to the Travis County Blood and Tissue
Center or make monetary donations to the Miranda Grey Porphyria Research Foundation in lieu of sending flowers or gifts.
* * *
No one knew what hospital Miranda Grey was supposed to be in, and no one knew exactly where she lived. As invasive as the media were these days, somehow her management was always a step ahead of reporters, paparazzi, and other stalker types.
She absolutely had a right to a private life … but it did leave her fans in a sort of limbo when it came to showing their support.
Stella didn’t tell anyone where she was going. Lark would probably laugh at her, for one thing, but really, Stella needed to do this by herself, and she wasn’t sure anybody else would understand. She took the evening off from the store and hopped a bus down South First.
There was a steady stream of people in front of the Bat Cave, the studio where Miranda had recorded her album. An impromptu shrine had appeared at the base of the live oak tree outside the studio, sheltered from the rain that had passed through in the wee hours of the morning by the tree’s canopy and the lee of the building. In less than twenty-four hours fans had left an enormous spread of candles, teddy bears, handwritten signs with
Get Well Soon!
and
We Love You!
in permanent marker, and other mementos. Miranda’s official fan club, whose members were known facetiously online as “Bleeders,” had been there, too; the organizers had tacked a poster to the tree where visitors could sign their names. Some of the offerings looked like they’d been made by children, though most of Miranda’s fans were in their early twenties like Stella herself.
Sighing, Stella crouched by the shrine, looking over the items people had left. She knew how dumb it had to seem to outsiders, but really, this was less for Miranda herself and more for the fans. Stella knew that she wasn’t the only
person who had been wandering around lost until she found Miranda’s music. The singer had touched a lot of lives … in ways she would never have guessed.