She shook her head. “I thought you were the one with the plan.”
“I think we should split up,” he said. “I’ll take the roof and deal with the archers. You slip in from the back and find Faith.”
“She’ll be guarded,” Miranda replied. “Even with a battle going on they won’t leave her alone.”
“How many can you take?” he asked.
“As long as I don’t have to fight them all at once? As many as they’ve got,” she said with determination, her hand closing around Shadowflame’s hilt.
“All right. As soon as it looks like most of them are occupied, we’ll go in.”
Miranda watched the phone’s screen as the red dots that represented the Elite moved closer to the building from all sides. The green dots, the non-Haven vampires, began to move quickly, taking position—one of their sentries must have spotted the Elite coming.
“Be careful,” she told David. “We don’t know what else he might have up his sleeve.”
The Prime leaned over and kissed her. “You, too.”
“Faith is going to be pissed at us for coming after her … she’ll say we shouldn’t have risked it.”
David raised an eyebrow. “Do you agree?”
“Not for a second. We can’t leave her there—if she’s a trap for us, they’ll kill her if we don’t show. We can take that many vampires, especially with six Elite teams with us.”
“You do realize he’s got something planned. He must.”
“Whatever it is, we can handle it.” She held his eyes. “It’s Faith, David.”
David smiled, nodded. “Good. I’m glad we agree.”
Miranda heard the first faint sounds of a struggle beginning across the street. The sound of steel meeting steel, a click and whistle of something flying down from the roof …
“It’s starting.”
David squeezed her hand. “Let’s go. Call when you have her.”
Miranda took a deep breath. “Have I mentioned I hate Misting?”
“You can go on foot if you need to.”
“This way is better—they won’t see me coming.” She gave him an anxious grin. “Meet you on the other side, baby.”
Then, she closed her eyes and
pulled
.
Twenty
She could hear, as she regained consciousness, the sounds of other vampires, weapons … orders being issued in low voices … the sounds of an army preparing for battle.
She hurt … God, she hurt … her entire body felt like it was on fire, burning from the inside, and if there had been anything in her stomach, it probably wouldn’t have stayed there … if only she could just go back to sleep …
Her throat was raw and burning, too, as if she’d been screaming. Vision swimming, she tried to make sense of her surroundings, of anything.
An empty room, with a bar at one end. Old restaurant? The smell of fried food had seeped into the woodwork, and its undertone, coupled with the nausea she already felt, made her feel like gagging.
A cup of water was pressed lightly to her lips. She drank all of it greedily, trying to assuage the agonizing itch in her throat, and the cool liquid helped her come back to her senses somewhat.
“Try not to cough,” came an accented voice. “No sudden moves.”
She whimpered weakly as she realized whom the voice belonged to.
Hazel eyes met hers. “I’m sorry, Faith. I wish it could have been anyone but you.”
She had to drag energy into her body by inches to even speak. “What did you do to me?”
Jeremy stepped back away from her, and she could see him a little more clearly. He set down the empty cup on the bar, and a few things registered at once: She was bound upright, she couldn’t move her arms or legs, and there was a chemical kind of smell coming from somewhere nearby her that took a minute to place.
Nail polish remover … acetone … or whatever he had used to kill Monroe.
Her eyes focused on a pair of objects on the bar. One was a glass bottle of clear liquid with a bright yellow hazardous-materials sticker on the side, the other a syringe.
Jeremy sensed she was figuring it out, and said, “There are several containers of gasoline behind you. When the charge goes off, it won’t be enough to bring the building down, but the fire will spread quickly and anyone on the ground floor will be killed.”
He held up a cell phone. “This will tell me if you move. All I have to do is touch the screen, and it sends a signal to the detonator.”
Faith closed her eyes, fighting helpless tears, thinking about the interrogation room at the Haven, its walls covered in the remains of 8.3 Claret. “I’m the detonator.”
“You swallowed the charge while you were unconscious, and then I injected you. There’s enough explosive in your body right now that all it will take is a tiny burst of electricity.”
Jeremy met her eyes, and she saw regret there, and sorrow. “It will be quick,” he said. “You won’t feel anything.”
Faith couldn’t help it; her body hurt so much from the explosive poisoning her veins, and she had failed so utterly, that the tears fell even against her will. “Why?” she whispered. “Please, just tell me why.”
He came to her again, this time dabbing at her eyes with the sleeve of his shirt. “Her name is Amelia,” he said softly.
“Your lover?”
“My daughter,” he replied. “My lover is long
dead … and our child, all I have left in this world, is chained to Hart’s bed. As long as he has her, I am chained to him as well.”
“He ordered you to do all of this … to start a war.”
“Not in the beginning. He wanted to get back at Miranda for helping Cora. Cora was … very important to him, and now she is someone else’s Queen … but more importantly, Hart discovered that Miranda and David are the linchpin of a greater plan that threatens everything he stands for. Now there is far more than simple revenge at stake.”
“You’re using me to lure them here so you can kill them both.”
Jeremy nodded. “But Hart … there’s something he didn’t count on: Lydia.”
“You knew Lydia?”
“Lydia asked Hart to help the Order, but he refused. She needed a Signet, you see, and thought his animosity toward the South would make him want to join her side. But Hart is no fool. He figured out that if the Awakening happened, the entire balance of power in the Council would shift—his enemies would become more powerful than anyone could imagine and the Council as we know it would cease to exist. To stop it from ever coming to pass, he wanted to have the Pair eliminated. When Lydia realized what Hart was planning, she sought me out and offered help. If I performed the Awakening, she would ensure that Amelia was returned to me … and Hart wouldn’t know until it was too late. He would believe he had won.”
“Then why go through with this? Why not ally with the South and all take on Hart together?”
“Not part of the deal,” he said. “Lydia would only offer her help if I went through with Hart’s plan to kill the Pair … modified, of course, to suit her own agenda.”
Faith lowered her eyes, head bowed. “The Stone.”
Jeremy lifted his hand and touched her face. “I never wanted any of this … you don’t deserve it. Neither does your Pair. But we’ve all made our choices, and here we are.”
“When you walk into a Haven, offer yourself to a Prime,
you seal your own fate,” Faith said, remembering his words to her what seemed like a thousand years ago, in her room.
“Things might have been very different … I wish they had been. But some fires, once lit, have to burn until they consume everything … and nothing is left of the world but ash.” He leaned in and kissed her softly on the forehead. “I promise you, Faith, when this is over … what rises from the ashes will be worth the burning.”
Then he closed his eyes and faded from sight.
David watched the fight unfold for a moment before he made his move; he opted not to Mist until he’d reached the building itself so he could keep an eye on his Elite as long as possible.
He knew that if she could see her warriors right now, Faith would be proud; even without her there to lead them, they swarmed the building with perfect timing and coordination, all sides attacking at once, the enemy reacting exactly as David had hoped they would. Most of them headed toward the outside walls of the building, either to take on the first wave of Elite or to fire from above. Arrows rained down all around the Elite, but they didn’t falter, and within two minutes three of the enemy were already dead.
The white dot that signified Miranda appeared just inside the first-floor back door, in a short hallway that led to storage rooms and then to the main restaurant area where Faith was being held. There were still four guards, but four was hardly an overwhelming number for the Queen, who was moving toward them slowly.
She would be fine. He had no doubt of that.
David spun the display on his phone to show him the roof again. There were only four up there now, the archers, one at each corner. If he Misted right behind any one of them he could kill him in seconds, take his crossbow, and take out the others before they knew what hit them.
He took a few deep breaths to prepare himself for another Mist … and frowned.
What the hell … ?
One of the green dots kept flickering, as if its life signs were faltering, but suddenly it vanished from the ground floor and reappeared on the roof … it had to be Hayes, Misting up to the top of the building … but …
No, it couldn’t be. The dot flickered again … and turned white.
David stared, unbelieving, as he realized what he was seeing.
But … it couldn’t be. He couldn’t believe it. Even after everything that had happened, it just … it couldn’t be.
A Signet.
All right, girl … get ready.
The first guard was at the end of the hallway, facing away from her. Miranda drew the stake from her belt and moved up behind him, reaching out with her senses to touch his mind.
You’re sad … so sad. Remember that time … that one … how depressed you were? You feel that way now. You can’t even move, you’re so depressed … You can barely even stand … Maybe the world would be better off if …
The vampire sagged sideways against the door frame, his hands over his face, his awareness of the room and his job fading into the gray heaviness of pain. The sadness sapped his energy, took him off his guard.
She clamped her hand over his mouth and slammed the other into his back, the stake biting through skin and muscle and ripping into his heart.
He made a gurgling noise and fell back against her. Miranda moved back, dragging him with her, and let him slide to the ground in the hallway where he wouldn’t be seen.
Carefully, she pulled her stake and moved back to the doorway to get the lay of the land. The back hall where she had materialized led to another corridor of storage rooms, ending in another doorway to the now-defunct kitchen and
from there out into the main room of the first floor. She could smell the grease and smoke from years of cooking and the fermented reek of old beer.
There was another guard at the kitchen entrance, then at least one more between there and the main room. She could hear the rush and shouts of fighting going on distantly, but if her Elite did as they were supposed to, they would keep most of the battle outdoors, drawing the enemy to the front and keeping their attention there.
The corridor was still too narrow for swords, but she touched the guard’s mind and searched for a chink in his emotional armor as she had the first’s. If she just went up and staked him the other guard might hear, and the commotion could alert whoever was holding Faith; they were probably waiting to kill Faith until they were sure the Prime and Queen were caught in whatever trap Hayes had planned.
As she moved closer to him, she noticed that the door to her right was a walk-in freezer with an external lock. She pulled on the handle, and it opened—good.
Miranda reached out to him.
Come to me. Come to me … now.
She ducked into the freezer, which was empty but running. Most likely no one had thought to disconnect it when they got the power turned back on to use the building as their headquarters. They probably weren’t worried about the electric bill.
Footsteps. The guard leaned cautiously into the freezer, no doubt wondering how it had opened itself.
She seized him by the throat and hauled him in with her, flinging him hard against the back wall of the freezer. Before he could make a sound, she had drawn Shadowflame, and his neck opened with a spray of blood, his head falling to the left while his body landed in a heap on the floor.
Miranda closed the freezer quietly behind her. Two down, two to go. She needed to take them out carefully, without alerting anyone else—she had gotten much better at group combat, but the odds were far more in her favor one-on-one. It was too bad she hadn’t quite gotten the hang
of using weaponized empathy on more than one person. She could handle a crowd only through music, and then they all felt the same thing. Now wasn’t really the time to burst into song.
The kitchen wasn’t the ideal setting for a fight, but it was better than the hallway. Her boots weren’t entirely silent on the terra-cotta tiles, but the noise outside was growing louder and louder. A few more minutes and the Elite would break through the lines entirely and pour into the building. She needed to have Faith’s guards dealt with by then.
Before she could reach out toward the third guard, he must have heard or felt her—he turned toward the kitchen, expression turning from surprise to outrage as he started to shout—
Miranda threw her stake, aiming for his throat rather than his chest; it took a lot more force to get through the sternum and rib cage, and she couldn’t risk a miss.
His hands flew up to try to catch or deflect the stake and failed. He gave a strangled cry as blood burst from the wound, but the shock gave her all the advantage she needed, and she crossed the kitchen to him, yanked the stake back, and drove it into his chest.
By some miracle, the noise from the third guard’s death didn’t bring in any others. Miranda flattened herself against the open door and edged toward the main room an inch at a time so she could see in hopefully without being seen.
What she saw made her blood turn to ice with fear.