They had no idea what Deven was planning. He and Jonathan had both dropped so thoroughly off the grid, even their own Second claimed not to know where they were. Whether the Pair was trying to help or had set the whole thing up, there was no way to know. In fact the only person who didn’t seem to think Deven had fucked them all over was Miranda.
It was a mystery of the Queen’s personality that she held fast to her opinion of the Prime of the West no matter what kind of crap he pulled. Was it her empathic gift telling her the truth about him, or did she refuse to believe David would cheat on her with someone unworthy of his affections? Probably not the second, given that Miranda had been willing to forgive their trespasses when neither could
forgive himself. Faith wouldn’t have been so forgiving … but then, she wasn’t a Queen, wasn’t bound to David for eternity … at least, not the same way.
Faith rested her forehead in her palm. She wasn’t drunk enough yet for these thoughts.
“What can I get you?” the bartender asked nearby.
“Bootlegger Brown Ale for me and another Guinness for the lady.”
Faith automatically started to turn the offer down, but the words died on her lips as she recognized the voice … and the accent.
Her head snapped up in time to see Jeremy Hayes sit down on the stool beside hers.
She gaped at him. The bartender whisked her glass away and replaced it with a fresh one and gave Jeremy a bottle. Jeremy handed the bartender a folded bill, then turned to Faith, smiling slightly at the expression on her face.
“What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?” Jeremy asked, then frowned. “No, let me try again: Heaven must be missing an angel … wait, do angels travel armed? I don’t remember my Bible very well.”
She recovered enough to ask, “What the hell are you doing here?”
“Having a beer with a beautiful woman, last I checked.”
“How long have you been back in town?”
Jeremy smiled again. “You’re assuming I left.”
“Have you left Hart’s service or are you here on his behalf?”
He took a swallow of his beer and pondered the label for a moment. “It’s funny: I find I quite like Texas beers, but I don’t care much for Australian.” He tilted the neck of his bottle toward her glass. “Always hated Guinness—it’s like drinking moldy bread.”
“What are you doing here?” This time she put a note of command in the words. He didn’t seem to notice.
“There was a time when I favored more upscale, snooty bars than this … like your Anodyne, I believe. Nowadays … I’d much rather be around people who make an
honest living. You might be surprised—most of Hart’s Elite are a lot like yours. Not politically … they’re all as pigheaded as he is up in the North … but when you get them out of uniform, they’re just regular people who do a job, then want a beer.”
Faith had no idea what game he was playing. If she went just by his tone and posture, he seemed tired, resigned. But he wasn’t just here for a drink. She knew better.
“I’ll ask you one more time, and then I’ll get testy,” she said.
“No need for either.” He set the bottle down and faced her directly. “I shouldn’t be here at all, but I felt that, given our recent history, I owed you at least this much.”
“A beer?”
“A warning.” He reached up and touched her neck, fingers light; she didn’t let herself react. “And an apology. Whatever happens … I’m sorry to bring all of this to your door. I wish things could have been different.”
Faith held his gaze. “What are you going to do, Jeremy?”
He sighed. “I never wanted to hurt anyone. For what it’s worth … I would have liked to sit across the table from your Prime and call him an ally.”
“Jeremy—”
“Leave town, Faith. If you value your life, leave Austin.” Jeremy slid off the stool, smiling as he shook his head. “I know you won’t, of course … but I had to at least try.”
Again, their eyes met. “Loyalty,” she said.
He nodded. “Unto death.”
Then he vanished into thin air.
Faith stared at the place he’d been standing for a long minute before she pulled back her sleeve and said quietly into her com, “Star-one … Sire, we have a serious problem.”
Before the Prime could even reply, alarms began to erupt from her phone and her com:
“This is Elite Twenty-six reporting an Alpha Seven near the intersection of …”
“Patrol Team Three is under fire! I repeat, we are under fire!”
“ … reported at Nepenthe. Team Eight and APD are en route …”
“ … requesting immediate backup! This is not a drill!”
“ … at least three dead humans, in full view of a crowd at the Riviera nightclub …”
Faith hit the ground running.
“Fan out!” David ordered. “Thirty-eight, Nineteen, Twelve—I want you blocking off the back exit and side windows. Anyone you catch fleeing the scene, you bring them to me. Forty-four, get those hostages secure and report back.”
He barely paid attention to the affirmative responses on his com; he was otherwise occupied. The front of the building, which had not long ago been a Mexican restaurant, shuddered as the doors ripped off their hinges and crashed in opposite directions.
Three vampires emerged from the gaping hole, blades drawn, murder in their eyes. They didn’t even blink when they realized whom they were fighting … but then, he didn’t give them much time to blink.
David took the first one’s head on one swing, the second’s on the follow-through, then spun and rammed his sword through the third vampire’s midsection, eliciting a scream of pain. The vampire went down, and David kicked him onto his back and stood on his neck.
“Who are you working for?” he demanded.
Gurgling, the vampire tried to push him off balance. David made an impatient noise, drew the wooden stake from his coat, and killed him.
He heard something whistling toward his left ear and snatched the crossbow bolt out of the air, snapping it in half with a growl. “Forty-four, the hostages?”
Elite 44 responded,
“Secured, Sire. All alive.”
“Good. Hold your position. Faith, where are you?”
“On my way, Sire. The fire at Nepenthe is under control—three casualties, one fatality, no mortals present.”
There was another voice, this one male:
“This is Elite Seventy-two reporting an Alpha Six as well as an Alpha Seven at Corsican and Tenth. We’ve got two vampires cornered and are requesting backup.”
Faith said,
“Team Fourteen, reroute to Corsican and Tenth.”
“Acknowledged.”
David retrieved his stake and sheathed it as he entered the building, where he met Elite 44 and the others he’d ordered to breach the place. “Report.”
“Four assailants,” Elite 44 told him. “We took them all out.”
“Get the hostages to the Hausmann for assessment and then report to Faith.”
“Yes, Sire!” they all said in unison, and dispersed.
David spared a moment to call Miranda. “How’s the network holding up?” he asked.
Her voice was tight with tension.
“Fine. I’m watching the entire spectacle at a nice, safe, useless distance.”
“Good,” he replied. “I don’t want you anywhere near the city tonight. As many humans as we’ve had to rescue, you’d be recognized in a heartbeat. The Hausmann is already at capacity.”
“I recalled every off-duty Elite in the city,”
Miranda said with a sigh.
“We’ve tripled patrol teams, and I have the entire District on lockdown. Every club and bar is closed and being searched, and every vampire is being questioned. Do we have any idea where all these bastards are coming from?”
“All I know is they’re in league with Hayes. No one seems to know his endgame—they were all hired in small groups over the past week to cause chaos, but they’re not organized in any significant way. There are similar situations in a few other cities, though nothing like we have here. The idea seems to be to spread us thin and wear us out.”
“Well, it’s working,”
Miranda observed.
“We’ve lost two Elite and have four more injured. As good as we are, we’re not equipped for this kind of mass insanity.”
“Don’t worry, beloved. They have to stop at dawn, and
that gives us time to plan. Right now we’re catching them as fast as they—”
“Sire, we’ve got another Alpha Six in progress about two blocks from your location. What are your orders?”
“Send me the coordinates, Faith,” David answered. “Miranda, I’ve got to go.”
“Be safe,”
she said.
“Please come home in one piece.”
David hung up in time for the location of the attack to come up on his phone and, without giving himself time to think about how exhausted he already was, Misted directly there.
As he emerged from the darkness, sword drawn and blood on his mind, he saw that the situation was already under control; a group of vampires clad in Elite uniforms had surrounded two others, who had been in the process of feeding out in the open on a pair of young women who looked like they were on their way home from clubbing.
The Prime paused. The Elite on the scene were all unfamiliar. In fact, they were wearing—
“My Lord Prime,” one of the warriors said, bowing. “We have this one under control.”
“Who the hell are you?” David asked.
“Elite Thirteen, Western United States,” the warrior said. “At your service.”
David frowned. “You’re Deven’s people.”
“Yes, Sire. We were dispatched from San Diego at sunset by the Consort and ordered to place ourselves under your command.”
David momentarily considered telling the Elite to shove off, but the truth was, they needed the help, and he knew firsthand just how accomplished the Western Elite was. “Very well.” He quickly brought up the network on his phone and set up a temporary loop to Elite 13, which he patched in to Faith. “My Second will be with you in a moment. I don’t suppose … your boss didn’t let you know where he was, did he?”
“No, Sire. The West is currently in our Second’s capable hands, and the situation is normal.”
“Lucky Thomas,” David said. “Thank you for coming.”
Faith arrived a moment later. “You don’t have any reservations about trusting them, given the current situation with Deven?” she asked.
“I’ll worry about that after the city finishes imploding. Get them to work. I want a sit-rep in thirty minutes.”
“As you will it, Sire.”
Faith darted over to the guest Elite and began issuing orders while the team she’d brought saw to the humans who had been attacked as well as the corpses of their attackers.
Whatever Jeremy’s intentions, he was getting a lot of his own kind killed. There had been two Elite lost, yes, but more sobering was the number of dead who were responsible for the violence—fifteen so far. They had about two hours before the sky lightened … how many more lives could be lost in two hours?
David’s eyes narrowed. Now was not the time to care about the body count; now was the time to make it higher … and as soon as Austin was secured, he was going to find Jeremy Hayes and make him pay for each and every death he’d caused.
The Queen understood that the sensor network, which now covered the entire Southern territory, was a thing of breathless technological beauty. She had heard half the Primes at the Council gathering singing its praises and expressing their desire to have something like it for themselves—those same Primes who had found David’s reliance on technology childish were now foaming at the mouth to buy copies of the software. David had no intention of selling it to them, of course; he was working on a second version with about half the features that he would license to other Signets, but the real network, the sprawling labyrinthine creation of David Solomon, PhD, existed in exactly one territory.
Miranda knew it was a stupendous achievement. She just had no idea how the hell it worked.
She sat in David’s chair in the server room with two monitors up at the same time; one showed the city’s sensor grid and all vampire activity therein, and the other basically showed the user manual … what there was of one. David had made copious notes during the network’s creation, but all of the coding and a lot of the details were locked in his head along with all of the passwords to get into the actual programming code. From the manual she could figure out how most of what she was looking at was set up. He had taught her the basic functions and how to interpret the grid, but there was so much going on at once in the dozen or more interlocking programs that made up the whole system, it kept giving her alerts and alarms she had never seen before.
But if this was all she could do right now, by God, she was going to do it right. The Elite were depending on her to keep an eye on the city while they dealt with each individual threat. David couldn’t monitor the network and fight at the same time, and it was clear from the start that they needed all swords on deck.
It was a frustrating role reversal for the Pair. For the past three years Miranda had been the one stalking the streets more often than not. She had earned her reputation quickly in Austin—first because she was so angry at her husband’s infidelity that she didn’t want to be around him, and then because he had devoted his entire attention to expanding the network throughout the South. He was so busy with his servers and gadgets that Miranda became the presence the Shadow District recognized as its Signet.
That had worked fine until now, when she was stuck at home feeling like a fifties housewife and he was off bringing order to the streets.
She knew that what she was doing was important. Someone had to run the servers in a situation like this, to watch for anomalies and help Faith dispatch the Elite teams to where they were needed. It could be done from the field if necessary, but with the Haven’s servers behind her Miranda could work much faster and see a much larger area at a time. David and the Elite were limited to what they could
do with phones and coms. Already tonight Miranda’s keen eye had helped stop a murder before it could happen, based entirely on her gut feeling when she saw a particular group of vampires converging on an area that she knew was populated with families that time of night.