Part 14 (2/2)

”Remote,” he admitted. ”I'm almost certain the same person or people are behind it . . . and, if what Deven said holds true, it may in fact be connected to the Red Shadow, and possibly even to Hart. But we don't know, Miranda. We have no real evidence to bind it all together yet. And the more Kat and Drew know, the more danger they're in.”

Just then, his phone rang. Miranda stopped, her first worry that it was Kat's panic b.u.t.ton, but David didn't look concerned; he merely said, ”Yes?”

Miranda could hear the murmur of a male voice.

”Chief Brady, it's good to hear from you,” David said. ”To what do I owe this honor?”

She watched his face go from neutral to ever so slightly confused, then angry, then back to neutral again. Her heart sank.

”We'll be right there,” he said, and hung up.

”What is it?” she asked, but David was already speaking into his com.

”Star-three.”

”Yes, Sire?” Faith piped up.

”We have an Alpha Seven at 4109 North Grafton, apartment 28. The Queen and I are en route; send a team.”

”As you will it, Sire.”

Alpha Seven . . . a human murdered by a vampire. She hadn't heard that code since the war . . . but usually APD contacted Faith for suspected Shadow World crime, and for the chief himself to call . . . it had to be serious. ”What's going on?” she demanded.

David met her eyes. ”Denise.”

The sun was well up, the Haven was silent, and Miranda was still sitting in her chair staring into the fire.

David had tried to ease her guilt and coax her into bed, but she refused; she just needed time to sit with what she was feeling. He had nodded, kissed her cheek, and let her be.

Denise MacNeil had been missing for about twenty-four hours; she hadn't shown up at the office, and by midafternoon her secretary was worried. Calls had gone out and Denise's landlady had finally agreed to check on her. The door was locked from the inside. The police had to break it down.

Dried blood was splattered all over the immaculate kitchen counters, soaked into the living room carpet and the sofa. a.s.suming it all came from Denise, it added up to fatal blood loss.

There had been a struggle: lamps knocked over, several things broken. The stereo was still playing, the same three CDs repeating over and over. There was a gla.s.s of wine undisturbed on the side table and a folder of redlined contracts still lying open on the couch.

All that remained of Denise was her left hand.

The police had called David because they knew Denise was Miranda's agent and there might be a connection. So far the police had no leads.

The Haven had one.

The Elite team had taken samples from the scene, and they would be sent to Dr. Novotny for further testing. It was still too soon for the results on Jake, but Miranda hoped fervently there would be something, any clue, no matter how tiny, to link the two to the a.s.sa.s.sin who had called herself Stacey. That woman was the only possible suspect they had.

Miranda sat by the fire until almost nine in the morning, her heart heavy. First Jake, now Denise . . . was Kat next? It looked like she was already staked out as a possible target. Yes, she was under guard, but Miranda had been under Haven guard once, too, and Ariana Blackthorn had killed her in the middle of the city and dumped her body in the lake. Were they going to find Kat's left hand next? And whose after that?

Leaving the hand, Deven had said, was the Red Shadow's way of leaving a message. But if it was the Shadow, for whom were they working? Who could possibly hate Miranda enough to go to this much trouble?

It could be a remnant of the Blackthorn . . . or it could be Hart . . . but the Shadow didn't work for vampires, and they commanded huge sums for their services. Hart could pull it off, but none of the Blackthorn or their cronies had been very wealthy. Then again, what human would want to hurt her this way? She barely knew any other humans before she had come to the Haven; who would be after her now? It made no sense.

Too restless and anxious to sit still anymore, she got up off the chair and left the suite.

She glanced over at the bed to see David deep in slumber, and she smiled in spite of herself. He was sleeping in the same position they tended to end up in, except that his arm was stretched over an empty expanse of blankets when it should have been around her body. For the first couple of weeks she'd had trouble sleeping with anyone so close to her, but she had already come to depend on his presence at her back.

Emergency tunnels connected the main house to the other buildings, so if she really wanted to, she could go work out; she could also go to the library, or pound her stress into the piano or her guitar strings. None of those options sounded appealing, for once, but there was something that did.

There was a study right between their wing and the guest wing, where David and Tanaka had held informal chats; it wasn't her favorite room, being far more masculine in decor than she preferred, but she happened to know it had the most well-stocked liquor cabinet in the Haven as well as a fridge that hopefully still housed some of David's ice cream stash.

She nodded to the hallway guard as she pa.s.sed, then opened the study door.

To her dismay she found she wasn't alone.

”Oh, it's you,” she said.

Prime Deven sat with his feet up on a dark leather chair, one hand around a half-empty bottle of whiskey. He looked about as thrilled to see her as she was to see him.

He said something in what she guessed was Gaelic.

”Come again?”

With a slightly lazy smile, he translated, ”The flame enters and casts all the world 'round her into shade.”

”Are you drunk?”

He shrugged. ”I'm Irish,” he said. ”I've spent most of the last millennium drunk.”

”You have an accent when you're drunk,” she observed.

”I have an accent all the time,” he replied. ”It hides its head in shame when I'm sober.”

Miranda had to smile at that, as well as at the marked contrast in his appearance and demeanor to all their other meetings. He was dressed casually in old jeans and a T-s.h.i.+rt advertising the Vatican gift shop; barefoot, his hair damp from a recent was.h.i.+ng and therefore not glamorously spiked, without any makeup on, he looked . . . almost normal.

She found she was fascinated by the tattoos, though, and tried not to stare as she entered the room, closed the door, and headed over to the cabinet to fetch a bottle of her own, this one of rum. She also grabbed a bottle of c.o.ke and a gla.s.s of ice.

”Are you religious?” she asked as she set her wares on the coffee table and flopped down on the couch opposite his.

Deven rolled his eyes. ”I'm far too old to believe in fairy tales.”

She indicated his arms with the neck of the bottle. ”What are those about, then?”

He laid one hand on his shoulder and absently ran his fingers along the line of the angel's wing. She noticed, looking more closely, that the feathers had been designed to run parallel to a series of long scars in his upper arm; the scars were almost invisible with the angel carved over them.

”It's a giant Catholic yin-yang,” Deven replied, closing his eyes blearily. He seemed so tired; was it a function of being seven hundred years old, or something else? What kept one of the world's oldest vampires awake all morning?

Miranda poured rum halfway up her gla.s.s, then topped it off with a splash of c.o.ke and took a long swallow, making a face at the taste. ”And the scars? Are they from a giant Catholic lion attack?”

He took another hit off the whiskey but didn't seem affected by the bite of the alcohol. She suspected the bottle had been full when he started. ”A whip,” he answered. ”You should see my back.”

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