Shadowflame Part 18

"Fire away," Kat said, trying to sound hearty but mostly coming off as a bit pathetic. "Have a seat."

Faith declined, preferring to stand by the bed with her arms crossed, looking incredibly f.u.c.king scary. "What can you tell me about her appearance?"

Kat closed her eyes and swallowed, trying to concentrate. "She was blond," she said. "Short hair . . . really short, kind of severe. I didn't really focus on her eye color because it was dark and I was being stabbed and all."

"Understandable," Faith said. "Just give me whatever you can remember."

"She was wearing black like all of you. Her teeth were . . . out. I mean, they were all fangy and pointed. She was skinny . . . I don't know how tall, but she seemed about average height."

"Did she speak to you?"

Kat shook her head. "She just grunted. No, wait . . ." Kat thought hard, trying to fight her way through the fog around the memories. "There was one thing . . . something startled her, and she jumped up and ran. She made this noise like something hit her, and she said . . . I heard her say something, like the way you'd say 'Holy s.h.i.+t!' or 'G.o.dd.a.m.n it.' "

"But it wasn't in English," Faith surmised. "What language was it?"

"I have no idea. It sounded like a cross between German and something out of Tolkien."

Something flickered in Faith's expression, but it was gone as quickly as it came. "One more thing, Kat . . . was she wearing any sort of technological gadget, like a Bluetooth earpiece or one of these?" Faith lifted her arm to show the metal band on her wrist.

"No. Not that I saw."

Faith nodded. "Thank you."

She started to leave, but Kat called her back with, "What happens now?"

Faith turned to her. "Meaning?"

"Well, obviously having one guard on me wasn't enough."

A raised eyebrow. "I was given to understand that you had refused additional guards."

"Something about having my hand chopped off made me rethink that."

Faith nodded. "I suppose it would. There's a room for you at the Haven, where you'll be under twenty-four-hour watch and safer than any other place on the planet. Your man would be welcome to join you. I would guess, however, that you don't want to give up your job and life for the duration of the investigation, in which case you go home, but we a.s.sign you a full Elite detail of bodyguards and digital surveillance. It's up to you, but either way you need to be watched much more closely until the situation has been dealt with."

Kat pa.s.sed her hands over her face. The tube from her IV hit her lightly on the nose. "Can I think about it?"

"Of course. The staff wants to keep you until morning; you can notify us of your decision then. There are two guards outside your room."

"Thank you."

Faith bowed, then departed.

They sat without speaking for a minute, Kat fiddling with her IV, Drew pointedly not talking about the baby. Kat found that she was exhausted just from the two short exchanges, and though the last thing she wanted was to spend the night in a hospital bed, she got why they wanted her there. She felt like her entire body had been beaten with a bat.

She'd nearly died. Her hand had been cut off and then reattached . . . with magic. She'd been jumped in the dark and stabbed in the abdomen. Whoever had stabbed her might try again . . . and it was all because her best friend was a vampire.

She was pregnant. She hurt . . . G.o.d, she hurt . . .

And she couldn't even have any real painkillers. Somehow she didn't think Tylenol would do much good after all this . . . What she really wanted was a bottle of vodka and a plane ticket to anywhere else in the world but here.

Drew didn't ask why she was weeping again. He just held her and let her cry herself to sleep.

The spell went unbroken through long, soul-shaking kisses; through clothes and sheets thrown aside with reckless antic.i.p.ation; through teeth piercing skin, nails clawing shoulders, the soft cry of joining together and the raggedly drawn breaths that rose and fell; through the worldshattering peak and subsequent tumble down, down . . .

. . . until, shaking and bruised, David lowered himself onto the mattress, and his heart battered its way through his rib cage, screaming the question into his mind: My G.o.d, what have we done?

Neither Prime could speak. For a long time the only sound was panting as David tried to slow his breath and still the cyclone of his thoughts, most of which were a single word: No.

He looked up, meeting eyes that were as dazed as his own. He knew that whatever shame and shock he was feeling, for once Deven felt it just as strongly, if not more so, because he would never, ever have expected David to do . . . this. Deven's hands were still twisted in the pillows, holding on, perhaps, to the last precious seconds before reality drowned them both.

David tore his eyes away and sat up, feeling the air in the room cold on his bare, sweaty skin. He wasn't sure what was worse: lying there entwined with his transgressions or pulling himself away.

Strong, warm hands touched his shoulders, and he felt Dev lean against him and kiss the back of his neck. "It's all right," Deven whispered.

"No, it's not," David said back, barely able to summon words. "It's so very not all right."

"I mean . . . this isn't your fault. I accept the blame."

Tempting as the idea was, David couldn't let it happen. "No. I started it. I could have stopped at any moment, but . . ."

"You didn't, and neither did I." He ran his hands down over David's biceps, and for a moment, just a moment, David let himself forget what existed outside the room and almost relaxed into the embrace. They had shattered the world beyond the door, but if it would just stay closed a few more minutes . . .

It was Deven who broke the silence, sounding achingly young and sad when he asked softly, "How are we going to tell them?"

"Her," came a voice.

Both their heads snapped up at once.

Jonathan had entered the room without making a sound and shut the door behind him; he was standing just inside the threshold, watching them.

They were both frozen in place, unable to pull away from each other, as if it would have made a difference in what the Consort knew. But Jonathan didn't look shocked or angry; his expression was one of resignation.

"You knew this would happen," Deven said.

Jonathan smiled with an uncharacteristic edge of bitterness. "Of course I did."

"You didn't try to stop us."

The Consort tipped his head to one side, making a noise something like a laugh. "Who can stop the earth from quaking?"

"We could have," David said, carefully moving away from Deven and pulling the sheet up around himself, acutely ashamed, like Adam in the Garden. "No one forced us to do this-not fate, not anything. Either one of us could have said no."

Now Jonathan looked amused; he often did when David tried to argue with his a.s.sertions of destiny. "You're not helping your case any here."

"I'm not trying to." David couldn't look at Deven, and he couldn't meet Jonathan's eyes, but he spoke as certainly as he could, given the aftershocks in his mind. "I'm not asking for a pardon . . . if you're going to be angry at someone, let it be me. Don't take it out on Deven."

"I'm not angry."

"How can you not be?"

"I told you, I already knew. I knew before we even came here. There was a ghost between you that had to be exorcised." He fixed his Prime with a steady glare. "And you haven't violated the terms of our relations.h.i.+p by any means. What's fair is fair. I'm not really the one you need to worry about."

Deven didn't say anything. For the first time since the night they had met, Deven looked utterly lost . . . and David understood that when it came down to it, Deven would do whatever Jonathan asked, would abandon David again, would sever all ties with the South if Jonathan wanted him to . . . because in the end, David wasn't the one he was bound to. They could love each other until the stars burned out, but they weren't, and had never been, mated in soul. They would never live together, nor die together.

David closed his eyes against the denial that rose up rebellious in his heart, but it was the truth. This had been a stolen moment. He couldn't have Deven . . . not ever. He'd wanted closure, and in a way he had it . . . but there was no resolving this, not really.

And now things were so much worse.

"Well now," Jonathan said. "I smell like a barnyard, so I'm going to have a shower. Close the door behind you, please, David, on your way out-oh, and Deven, if it wouldn't be too much of a bother, change the f.u.c.king sheets before I come back."

The last sentence was hissed, with so much anger in it that both Primes were taken aback, but Jonathan didn't say anything else until he had reached the bathroom door.

He looked over at David. His voice was perfectly even again, perfectly factual. "Incidentally, you're not going to have to tell Miranda either. You haven't had time to learn this, but when you have a bond like ours, you can feel when your husband has an o.r.g.a.s.m . . . no matter who it's with."

The Consort closed and locked the bathroom door.

"Oh, G.o.d . . ." David put his head in his hands. "Miranda. How am I going to face her?"

Deven almost said something sarcastic-David knew the look on his face-but at the last second the spark drained out of him and he said only, "Honestly."

"She'll never forgive me. Three months and I broke faith with her . . . there's nothing I can say to make this right."

Again, Deven sounded drained . . . no, defeated. All of his arrogance and self-possession were gone. "You made a mistake, David. She will forgive you."

David looked at him. "A mistake?"

He sighed. "Yes. A beautiful, terrible mistake that can never happen again. Now we'll go home to the West, and you'll go back to your Queen, and we'll all do the best we can to act as though it never happened. And we'll maintain good relations in Council, and talk on the phone when we need to, but we'll probably never be alone together again."

"Deven-"

"Go, David. Please. Just go."

There was nothing else David could say. He gathered his discarded clothes and put them on with numb hands, aware of Deven's eyes on him.

He left the room without looking back, afraid that if he did he would fall apart. He avoided the faces of the guards as well; they belonged to California, not him, so what they thought didn't matter, but once down the hall, approaching the nearest Elite post, he found that he couldn't make himself walk past them . . . and so, risking exhaustion to save face, he Misted, holding the image of his suite tightly in his mind and pulling it toward him, pa.s.sing through s.p.a.ce at a thought.

He reappeared just inside the door . . . where Miranda was waiting for him.

"Is this the part where I storm out and leave you?" she asked very, very calmly.

David was staring at her as if he expected her to do far worse than that; keeping an eye on her, he approached the fireplace and took his chair, each movement deliberate, the way he did when one of the horses got spooked and he didn't want to get kicked in the head.

"Seriously, you need to tell me," she went on. Her voice was so even she might have been discussing the weather. "I've never been cheated on before. I'm not sure what my job is here. Do I yell? Do I cry? Throw things? Kill you? Oh, wait . . . I can't do that."

He still didn't speak. She could feel the guilt, and the shame, radiating off him, poisonous. Worse, she could smell it . . . sweat, and s.e.x, and him.

"I could kill you," she reasoned. "I'd only live for about two minutes, but they'd be a very satisfying two minutes."

Nothing.

"I hope it was worth it," she went on. The pitch of her voice rose just a tiny bit. She couldn't stop it. "It felt like it was pretty fantastic. I was lying in bed feeling almost well enough to get up and go to the music room, not thinking about my best friend who almost died because of me, and wham! Suddenly I was so turned on I couldn't stand it . . . but it wasn't me. Was it good, baby?" Her hands gripped the arms of her chair so hard they were white. "You smell like a good hard f.u.c.k. Is it better with a guy? You never did tell me. Do my b.r.e.a.s.t.s get in the way? I know I'm pretty good, but did you scream louder for him?"

He shrank back further into himself with her every word, staring at her, eyes wide and fearful. She was starting to sound slightly hysterical, but again, she couldn't seem to help it, and besides, she didn't care. She had been waiting for him for more than an hour, feeling vicarious waves of pleasure and pain, her own body responding traitorously even though there were no hands touching her, no tongue against her thigh. She tasted blood in her mouth-not David's, and not hers.

Bile rose in her throat, and she stood up. "Was it worth it? Tell me, David. Was it?"

He couldn't look at her. "No."

"Am I supposed to just sit around barefoot like a good little wife, keep the home fires burning, while you're out sucking off your boyfriend?"

He looked up at her. "It was a mistake," he said. "I didn't mean for it to happen."

"You didn't mean for it to happen? What does that even mean? You lay down on the ground and he tripped and fell on your d.i.c.k?"

"Beloved, please . . ."

The quaint term of endearment had always made her smile, but now it brought a thunderous wave of rage through her body, and she hit him.

He didn't fall back, but his head snapped around, and when he faced her again blood oozed from the corner of his mouth.

Her vision went scarlet. She hit him again.

"Get up, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d!" she all but screamed. "If it's so f.u.c.king easy to hurt me, do it right! Get up!"

He stayed where he was, bleeding, and she punched him again, and again, cursing him, each time her voice rising until she lost her hold on the English language and simply wailed, throwing her betrayal at him the only way she knew how.

She heard gla.s.s shattering; the force of her emotions was seeping into the room and causing things to fall off shelves. She didn't care. All she could do was scream until her voice gave out and she sobbed incoherently, collapsing on the floor, unable to hurt him badly enough, to make him bleed enough, to match the way she was bleeding.

He pushed himself off the chair and came to her, folding her into his arms; at first she tried to fight him off, but he wouldn't let her go, and at last they both wept, clinging to each other like children on a battlefield.

"I'm sorry," he whispered brokenly, over and over again.

"G.o.d, I wish I could hate you," she moaned, striking his shoulder with a halfhearted fist. "Why did you bring me into this life and then do this to me?"

Shaking, he reached up to his throat and pulled the Signet from it, pressing it into her hands. "Here," he said, face wet with tears. "Break it. Break it, Miranda."

She drew a tremulous breath, not comprehending. "Why?"

"Kill one of us and we both die. Break one stone and its wearer dies. It's the only way to sever the bond-otherwise you're trapped here with me forever."

She stared down at the amulet in her hand. "Just like that?"

"It's something everyone knows but no one has ever done. I don't know what would happen to you afterward. You might not survive long, but at least . . . at least you'd be free."

She was still crying, but she shook her head. "No." She lifted the stone and fastened it back around his neck. Her voice was barely a whisper. "You don't get off that easy, baby."

She left one hand on his Signet and moved the other hand to cover her own. "I'm not going to let you run away at the first test," she went on. "I'll stay with you . . . but you have to stay with me."