Part 8 (1/2)

”Mother f.u.c.k!”

Miranda had known David for a little over a year, and she had never heard him curse quite so much.

Faith slapped his hand. ”Lie still,” she said. ”Do you want this out or not?”

Elite 12, who was known to his peers simply as Mo, was the official medic for the entire Haven; for the most part a vampire's healing abilities made short work of any injuries, but if something was embedded in a limb, something was torn off, or the victim was weakened to the point that his or her abilities were compromised, Mo took care of things, even sewing on a few fingers now and then until a warrior's natural defenses kicked back in. Infection and the presence of foreign substances slowed the process down, too, so in cases of serious wounds, antiseptics and hygiene were as important to vampires as they were to humans. It was even possible to poison a vampire given the right ingredients, though it couldn't kill one, and Mo had been called upon more than once to administer antidotes to painful and debilitating toxins.

Mo leaned over the Prime, who was laid out on his worktable with a shard of metal buried in his left eye.

”You know, Sire,” Mo said, his cheerful Iranian accent unusually stern, ”I have said many times that you must wear eye protection when you play with sharp things.”

”Yes, and I've said many times you can stuff it where Allah don't s.h.i.+ne,” David said irritably. ”Son of a b.i.t.c.h! What are you using, a f.u.c.king jackhammer?”

Miranda snorted.

Mo was unperturbed. ”Sire, if you do not stay still, I may do more damage to your eye or perhaps the nerves around it. It would be rather painful and I think perhaps your Queen would kill us both.”

She had sprinted into the workroom to find David on the floor bleeding from several small wounds where Hart's mystery earpiece had shattered and flown everywhere. Nothing else in the room appeared to be damaged, although David had urgently commanded her to hit the override on the fire alarm so that the smoke-scant though it was-wouldn't trip the system.

Mo had already removed shrapnel from David's face, neck, and left arm, all of which had closed and healed as soon as the bits were taken out. If they had been wood splinters, it would have taken twice as long, if not longer. Apparently a t.i.tanium-aluminum alloy was no big deal unless it was stuck in your cornea.

Miranda couldn't watch. She'd nearly been sick when she saw his blood; the thought of seeing a scalpel in her husband's eye made her queasy. She had already sent up a dozen thank-yous to whatever G.o.d watched over vampires who were too pigheaded to wear safety gla.s.ses.

It amused her that, even three and a half centuries old and so far removed from human notions of masculinity, David was as much a drama queen about pain as every man she'd ever met.

”Stop being a baby,” Faith admonished the Prime. ”You're lucky that thing didn't blow your head off.”

David grunted but lay still, letting Mo hold his eyelid open so he could dig in and retrieve the shard. Even Faith looked a little nauseated at the sight and pointedly turned her gaze up toward the ceiling.

”It wasn't meant to kill anyone,” David muttered, trying not to move his jaw too much and disturb Mo's arm. ”From what little I saw it was basically just a nanotransmitter.”

”Could you make something like it?” Faith asked.

The Prime made a noise that might have been a sardonic laugh, but it ended up being a pained growl as Mo pulled his hand back, revealing a centimeter-long arrowhead of silver metal held in his tweezers. Unfortunately Miranda looked just in time to see a scarlet tear of blood oozing from the corner of David's eye. She turned away, groaning, nauseated, determined not to be sick a second time in twenty-four hours.

”All right, Sire, go ahead,” Mo told him.

David clamped his eyes shut and in a few seconds opened them again, blinked, and sat up. ”Good work, Mo. Thank you.”

The medic shrugged. ”All in a day's-and I do mean day, Sire, it's ten in the morning-work.”

David looked chagrined as he wiped the blood away. ”Sorry to get you out of bed. You're dismissed.”

Mo smiled, gathered his supplies, and left. ”Let me know if you notice any other stray poking things poking you.”

David blinked a few more times, focusing his gaze on Miranda, and smiled at her. ”I'm fine,” he insisted. ”It wasn't a disaster.”

She glared at him, unwilling to concede the point. ”It could have been. Hart could have easily made that thing as a bomb and conveniently let you have it knowing you couldn't resist taking it apart.”

”It wasn't a bomb,” he said, which wasn't in the least bit rea.s.suring. ”It was a pressure-sensitive trigger designed to destroy the tech if someone got it open. It wasn't intended to do any real harm to the person unless they happened to be staring right into it at the time. Hart is a technophobe-and as much of a psychopath as he is, I honestly believe him that this came from somewhere else. And in answer to your question”-he turned to Faith-”of course I could make something like it. What little data I got suggested it's not nearly as complex as the coms. It was a lovely little thing, though. Beautifully crafted. I wish I could have studied it more.”

”You're hopeless,” Miranda said. ”I'm going back to bed.”

She pushed herself out of the chair and left the workroom, pausing to let the guards know everything was all right and commend them on their quick response. They looked as frightened as she had been. It still surprised her how loyal they were to him-and now, her-and how invested they were in the Pair's welfare. It was unsettling to know that her fate governed the lives of so many people . . . Faith had said so to her a dozen times, but it had yet to fully sink in.

Miranda knew better than to think she could really sleep until David joined her and she could run her hands over his body to convince herself he was really okay. But she also knew his fastidious nature and knew he would clean up the workroom before coming to bed. There was no point in even trying to rest until then.

She picked up her guitar from where she'd left it earlier, leaning next to her chair by the fireplace. Then she sat down cross-legged on the sofa with her guitar and picked at it mindlessly for a few minutes, letting whatever needed to be played arise.

Esther had been in, kind soul, and added another log to the fire at some point; the woman was a born nurturer and no doubt had been at a loss as to how to help David after the accident, so she did what she could do: She made the room comfortable. She'd straightened up the room, built up the fire, and hung a bundle of some kind of herb from the mantel, probably one of her Mexican folk charms. Esther knew all kinds of arcane things for protection from the Evil Eye, to bring money, to lure in a lover . . . she had trained with a curandera when she was human and would have been one herself if she hadn't been brought across. Miranda loved everything about her, especially the way she still called Miranda reinita, ”little Queen.”

The Queen closed her eyes and started humming, then let music and voice both evolve into an actual song, one she'd covered onstage a dozen times.

Like you're trying to fight gravity on a planet that insists that love is like falling and falling is like this . . .

When she finished the song, she looked up at the Prime, who was watching and listening while he leaned against the bedpost, smiling softly as if nothing in the world existed but her. He had taken off his s.h.i.+rt, and the firelight bathed his bare skin in flickering gold.

Was it stranger that the Elite cared so much about him or that she did?

”Come to bed, beloved,” he said.

She set her guitar aside and rose, holding his gaze until she was close enough to fold herself gratefully into his embrace.

Faith went into the city with David, Miranda, and her bodyguards Thursday night, but they split up as soon as they reached Austin. Miranda, Jake, and Lali disembarked and headed toward the Bat Cave studio, where Miranda would have her first recording session; Faith and David stayed in the car, bound for a high-rise in the heart of downtown Austin, with everyone set to rendezvous in front of the Bat Cave at three A.M.

David was understandably tense. Word had gone out about the drama with Hart, and now he was waiting to see how the other Signets reacted. He antic.i.p.ated that twelve total would side with him without any argument, and seven with Hart; that left six wild cards who could be swayed either way. Some would be easy enough, like Tanaka, who always maintained his neutrality but considered David one of his oldest friends and, given the evidence presented by Cora, would throw in his lot with David. He required only good reasons and good evidence before making a move, which was understandable, given that he was the parliamentary leader of the Council and was expected to stay as fair as possible.

In the end, however, Hart would make the next move. If he never spoke of the incident again and never returned to Texas, there might not be a fight. If a.s.sa.s.sins started showing up in Austin, it would be obvious to whom they belonged. If Hart was smart, and Faith doubted he was, he would let the matter drop and keep his distance from now on.

But Hart had been bested by a woman, and that would rankle him to the point of madness. He hated women pathologically, with religious fervor that rivaled the Blackthorn gang's hatred of gays. It was Miranda's act of defiance that would drive any plans he had for revenge. His b.l.o.o.d.y message left on the corpse of an innocent woman had made the point quite succinctly.

David was quiet on the drive. He brooded far less now that Miranda had come into his life, but he was still p.r.o.ne to long periods of stewing, and Faith could guess at least a dozen of the subjects that might be on his mind tonight.

”Is it Hart, the Council, the attack on the Queen, her sudden bout of telekinesis, what to do with your new houseguest, your Queen's security tonight, the Red Shadow's involvement with Hart, its involvement with Sophie, or the exploding hearing aid that's got you all knotted up?” she asked.

David leaned back in his seat and groaned. ”It wasn't any of those things until you brought them up. Thank you, Second.”

”Then what were you mulling over?”

”Signet history. Why we threw away our own past. How much there is out there to learn and what it could do for us. Imagine if there are powers we don't even know we can access-things even more miraculous than Misting. Pairs can combine their power and boost one or the other's abilities, but I've never heard of a case where one took on the other's abilities and used them without any training or prior talent. What if we can all do that?”

Faith smiled. ”Then Jonathan could borrow Deven's fighting ability and Deven wouldn't constantly b.i.t.c.h about what a horrible warrior he Paired with.”

”There has to be a way to find out more. Archives somewhere. Journals. Something. I can't believe that n.o.body in our entire history has agreed with me on this. We can't all have been that stupid.”

Harlan pulled up to the front entrance of the building, and Faith and David got out; the Prime leaned in to tell Harlan something, probably a reminder of their rendezvous plans, then straightened, adjusting his coat. It was another cold night; since the hard freeze the night of Hart's arrival, the weather had been insanely frigid with the constant threat of ice on bridges.

They took the concrete steps up to the gla.s.s front of the building, where a security guard met them and asked for ID.

David smiled and opened the neck of his coat, revealing the Signet.