Shadowflame Part 22

His lieutenant in Louisiana, Elite 249, who simply called herself Laveau, had already dealt with quite a bit of grumbling over it. Vampires in New Orleans liked their city just as it was, mystery and mayhem intact. They were David's most opinionated const.i.tuents.

As Miranda had said, they could suck it up and deal.

He put away his tools, turning around on the ledge to face outward, reflecting that it would be extraordinarily embarra.s.sing to fall off and break his neck on the street in front of half the vampires of Austin, although chances were he could . . .

Out of nowhere, he heard a whistle, then felt something thud lightly into his arm.

David looked down to see a small wooden projectile sticking out of his coat; the pain registered a second later.

He pressed himself back against the wall and swept the block with his senses, staring in the direction the hit had come from-east. He bent his will in that direction, seeking any sign of whoever had shot at him . . .

It all happened in a matter of seconds. The pain from the little stake, which was no bigger around than a chopstick, became searing, and he felt something hot snaking out from the dart into his bloodstream, dispersing through veins and capillaries in the s.p.a.ce of perhaps two heartbeats. By the time he even understood what was happening, his senses had gone totally haywire and dizziness swept over him.

Poison.

He grabbed the projectile and yanked it out; sure enough, it was a steel dart with a wooden head, and it smelled strongly of chemicals and now, blood. The wound it left was already closing. Poison couldn't kill a vampire; the only reasons to use poison were either to cause pain during torture or to tranquilize the victim and transport him or her somewhere else . . .

. . . perhaps after cutting off the victim's left hand . . .

David dug his fingers into the bricks so hard his nails split, but he could feel himself swimming sideways; there was nothing he could do. He couldn't even get a thought organized in his mind, let alone coordinate his limbs to stay balanced. He fought hard to remember where he was, why it was so cold . . .

Suddenly a voice cut through the fog. "Emergency rescue team to Block SD-Three, building Nineteen-A-authorization Star-two. Code Alpha One. I repeat: Code Alpha One."

He had time to register the fear in Miranda's voice, just before the poison worked its way to his brain, and he felt blood vessels inside his head exploding.

It was excruciating even through the fog. He groaned and put his hands on his head, trying to block the light from his eyes, but the pain was coming from inside, and it got worse and worse . . . this must be a stroke, blood clots in the brain, they'd heal in minutes as long as . . .

"Sire! Holy s.h.i.+t!"

The voice was a hundred miles away, which translated to about thirty feet below him.

"Can anyone get up there?"

Probably not . . . but I can certainly get down there.

David didn't even consciously choose to roll over; his body just did it, almost thras.h.i.+ng, his whole being too focused on the pain in his skull to care about staying aloft.

The freezing wind rushed past him, and he waited to hit the pavement and hopefully break his head open to release the demons tormenting him, but instead four strong arms caught him and lowered him gently to the ground.

"Sire! Can you hear me?"

He grunted an affirmative, though Faith's voice was fading in and out. His face felt wet; he patted his skin with a shaking hand and looked blearily at his fingers. Blood. He was bleeding from his mouth, nose, and eyes.

Everything was burning . . . cracking . . . his insides were scorched. He could feel his strength sapping as his vampiric powers burned themselves to a crisp trying to stay ahead of the damage. More than anything, he wanted unconsciousness . . . oh, G.o.d, oblivion . . . anything to make it stop . . .

"Get that thing to Novotny-don't touch it with your bare hands! Help me get him into the car. I've got Mo on standby over at the Hausmann. Okay, one, two, three . . . lift . . ."

David felt them picking him up off the ground and carrying him over to the street; before his senses completely shut down he heard the car door slamming and Miranda's anxious voice asking from his wrist, "Are you all right, baby? Come on, talk to me. David!"

Twelve.

Miranda could tell that Kat wasn't very happy to be back at the Hausmann. The blonde hovered in the rear of the crowd as the Elite, Faith, and Miranda bore David's unresponsive body into the clinic, where Mo and the entire staff were waiting to care for their Prime.

Miranda turned to Kat breathlessly. "You don't have to stay," she said. "Harlan will take you home."

"Yeah," Kat said, her eyes wide with remembered fear. "I think that's a good idea."

Miranda ushered her back outside, told Harlan to take her wherever she wanted to go, and paused long enough to hug Kat. "Thank you for being here."

"Thanks for the night out. And tell the Count thanks for not getting shot until the movie was over."

Miranda waved at her quickly as the car pulled away, then ran back up the steps into the clinic, her heart lurching clumsily in her rib cage.

". . . poison," she heard Faith say as she burst back into the clinic. "The dart had something on it. If he hadn't called me for a ride, we wouldn't have been there to catch him, and whoever fired the shot could have dragged him off the street without anyone seeing."

Mo didn't normally work at the Hausmann, but this week as luck would have it he had been asked to come train a new mortal intern on vampire medicine and the needs and rights of the fed-on human. That intern was also standing back, looking bewildered and unsure of himself as the doctors moved the Prime onto an exam table and set about stripping off his coat and s.h.i.+rt to see the wound.

"All right," Mo said, taking control of the situation, "I need a pint of O negative infused with ant.i.toxin serum. I'll start a line-Nurse, if you would get the monitors hooked up, please, and reset them to vampiric levels."

They looked relieved at having someone tell them what to do. Most of the staff were human. They had never had to deal with an injured Prime; probably none of them had ever even seen their employer in real life. Normally the direst situation Mo had to deal with was a severed thumb, but obviously he was well versed in his craft.

"I can heal him," Miranda said, her voice cracking. "Let me do it."

Mo saw the state she was in and came over to speak to her. "My Lady," he said calmly, "right now if you tried, you would drain yourself for nothing. This is not an injury that requires a bone set or a laceration healed. The only way to deal with poison is to force it through his system faster, and your mutual healing ability cannot do that. Just as with a stake, the invading body must be removed before healing can begin. We use the ant.i.toxin kit for that, but ant.i.toxin is a misnomer; it is more of a toxin accelerator. It changes the toxin's half-life so that it metabolizes much more quickly. Once it is out of his system, then you come in and heal the damage the ant.i.toxins will cause."

"Like chemotherapy," she supplied lamely. "Kill the cancer and hope nothing else dies with it."

"Essentially. Now, you must prepare yourself, my Lady . . . some of the substances in the kit may make things worse for a short while. It will not kill him, of course, but it will hurt. It might be best if you left the room for this."

Miranda shook her head and struggled to her feet. "No," she said stubbornly. "I want to be here. I can't leave him alone."

Mo knew better than to contradict a Queen, so he went back to his work. David's vital signs were erratic; a vampire's pulse and blood pressure were low compared to a human's, but his had dropped almost to nothing. The only thing that rea.s.sured her that he wasn't dying was that she could still feel him, his warm presence in her mind where it belonged, and though it was weakened it showed no sign of letting go.

But he was in pain. His brain was bleeding . . . if they didn't get the poison out of his body soon, the damage might take weeks to heal, and the brain was such a delicate organ, what if . . . she imagined him losing some part of his vast intellect, even temporarily, and helpless tears flooded her eyes. Aside from the horror of it, it would leave the South vulnerable if anyone found out the Prime was mentally compromised.

She half stumbled to the bedside and pulled up a chair, sinking into it and reaching for the hand that they hadn't run the IV into. On the other side, Jackie, one of the nurses, was setting up the bag of blood mixed with a half-dozen specially treated virulent substances, both natural and human created. Mo informed Miranda matter-of-factly that it included tetrodotoxin, botulinum, and dioxin, which were all known to affect vampires strongly. Botulinum was the most agonizing; it pa.s.sed through fairly quickly but caused such excruciating pain that the victim often snapped his spine spasming before he could metabolize it. The other toxins weren't as painful but would take about an hour total to break down.

Miranda's eyes, blurred with tears, were locked on her husband's ashen face and the blood that had marred its flawless features. "Give me something to clean the blood off," she said quietly, but she knew everyone heard her. Someone pressed a damp cloth into her hand.

At the touch of the fabric, David's eyes fluttered open and she could feel him trying to focus on her.

"It's okay," she said. "I'm here . . . and you're going to be all right."

He couldn't answer. His eyes rolled back, and he was no longer aware of her presence. She kept at her work, concentrating on wiping the blood away so she wouldn't lose her sanity. She tried to project comforting energy, but she was so scared she had started to go numb.

Gentle but strong hands took her shoulders and guided her back into her chair.

"Easy," Faith said. "You've got to ground, Miranda, and reinforce your s.h.i.+elds. You're freaking out the mortals."

Miranda looked up and saw that the human staff members, every one, had huge frightened eyes, and some were shaking from the carryover of her fear.

"They can't do their jobs like that," Faith pointed out. "Pull it back in."

Miranda nodded. She forced herself to let go of David's hand for a minute and breathe deeply, seeking the place of silence and stillness she had fought so hard to create inside herself. With each breath she intensified her s.h.i.+elds until she was so strongly walled off from the others that she could barely feel the air on her skin.

The staff's relief was obvious. They sighed, blinked, and did a little deep breathing of their own-chances were they had no idea where their sudden anxiety had come from.

On the other side of the bed, Mo hooked up the IV and switched it on.

Miranda watched the infused blood traveling through the tube into David's wrist. She could hardly breathe as she waited for it to take effect.

When it did, everyone knew.

The Prime's body stiffened, and he gasped. He squeezed Miranda's hand so hard it nearly broke her fingers. A soft sound of surprise and pain escaped his lips, and sweat broke out all over his body; then, like magic, it seemed to pa.s.s, and he breathed out.

She almost believed for a moment that it had been that easy.

A minute later, he cried out again, and spasms began to rock through him so powerfully she heard something in his body snap.

Wave after wave of seizures. .h.i.t him, and Miranda could feel the pain, even through her s.h.i.+elds: great hands crus.h.i.+ng his skull, needles jabbing, claws ripping out his insides. The light in his Signet was fading in and out, as if it had a short in its wires.

Miranda heard screaming. She didn't understand at first where it was coming from, as no one else seemed to notice it, but then she knew: It was inside his mind, and inside hers.

One of the nurses made a mewling noise, and Miranda's head jerked up in time to see what might be the oddest thing she'd seen so far in her life: Lightweight objects all over the room were floating. A syringe, a pen, several medical tools whose purpose Miranda couldn't divine, and even the intern's necktie were suspended a few inches in midair.

"Oxygen mask, please," Mo said, totally calm. Miranda didn't know if he'd seen this before, but if he was worried it didn't show. He fitted the mask onto David's face and flipped a switch in the wall. David's breathing deepened somewhat and it seemed to calm him a little; a few seconds later there was an a.s.sortment of clattering noises as all the levitating items fell back down.

The screaming in Miranda's head went on and on, silent but deafening, and she clung to his hand, afraid to get any closer. His skin had a sick, yellowish pallor now, and another spasm arched his back. Finally Miranda couldn't take it anymore. She buried her head in her free arm and shut her eyes tight.

She heard Mo saying something about liver damage and jaundice. The nurses were talking, too, reading out numbers to each other and asking the intern for various things. But all Miranda really knew was the screaming, with its answering echo in her heart, and it felt like it went on forever.

Then, finally, something indefinable began to ease. The spasms became less frequent and less hard. His pulse began to even out.

Miranda raised her eyes hesitantly and saw that the color of his skin was returning to something like normal. He was still even paler than a vampire was supposed to be, but the yellow tinge was gone. She could hear him breathing more deeply.

"All right," Mo said. "We are on the downhill run. Nurse Jackie, administer a liter of lactated Ringer's solution, please." To Miranda's questioning look, he replied, "To restore the electrolytes. The poison will be out of his system soon, but it's left his body chemistry in a state of chaos. Anything we can do to bring order will help him recover much more quickly and help your energy repair the cellular damage. The less power you use, the more he'll have available."

She nodded. When she spoke she sounded as if she'd been screaming for hours, though she hadn't made a sound aloud. "Can I do it now?"

Mo checked the monitors, then said, "By all means."

Miranda lurched to her feet and put both her hands on David's chest. He was cold . . . much too cold, though his skin was damp with sweat. It barely felt like there was any life left in him. She had never really worked with their Signet-born healing abilities herself; David had used them on her, but she hadn't needed to try them on him. She had thought he was indestructible.

She reached into herself and found the bond between them, then started to push as much power into him as she could-but then she remembered the way Deven had healed Kat, slowly and gently, and tried to do the same, controlling the flow of energy so that it moved into the Prime gradually as a stream instead of a roaring tsunami. She allowed her awareness to sync up more with his, pus.h.i.+ng aside the barriers she'd kept between them for the last three weeks so she could see if it was working.

It was. She could feel damaged organs and tissues regenerating, scarred veins smoothing out, and, most important, the blood that had erupted in his skull being reabsorbed, returning to balance. Mo had been right-doing this before the poison was out would have been futile, because every time she healed him the poison would just undo her efforts until it had run its course. There was no way to know yet how long that would have taken, but she knew it would have been much longer than an hour.

When she felt that a tentative equilibrium had been reached, she withdrew, not wanting to overwhelm his system with too much energy.

To her relief he looked a hundred times better. Mo removed the oxygen mask. "I would say we have succeeded," the medic said, satisfied. "We have blood samples for basic toxicology-the Hausmann has the equipment for a narrow range of tests, so we can run them before the samples die. I already sent a courier with additional samples to Hunter Development; perhaps they can get something from them if they hurry."

"So we don't know what it was," Faith said. She was standing nearby with her arms crossed, her face lined with worry.

"Not yet. Once he is awake I will ask him about his symptoms, and that will tell us much about the culprit."

"I think the odds are pretty good we're dealing with our a.s.sa.s.sin," Faith added. "But I don't really understand why suddenly she'd be using poison."

Miranda was staring at David's drawn, exhausted face. "To hurt me," she said. "She couldn't just kill him without killing me, too, but she could hurt him."

"Going after a Prime is pretty b.a.l.l.sy," Faith observed. "And stupid. She's going to regret it."

Miranda gave a choked half laugh. "Not if we never catch her."

It was midafternoon when David woke, more exhausted than he could remember feeling in a century but otherwise comfortable. The absence of pain was such a stark contrast to the hour before he had pa.s.sed out that he was confused for a minute, feeling out along his body without recognizing the sensations of warmth, softness, and relaxation.

There was something nearby that gave off a lot of heat and was also making a rhythmic sound, like a drum . . . it was comforting, and he lay there listening to it for a long time before he tried opening his eyes.

The first thing he saw was red hair.

"Hey," she said softly.

She looked about as tired as he felt, and he sensed she hadn't slept at all. She was stretched out beside him in the bed, propped up on one elbow, watching him wake.

She was in bed. Their bed. Next to him.

His heart did a cartwheel.

"Hey," he answered back. His voice was like sandpaper in his throat. "How long was I out?"

"It's Tuesday afternoon."

He would have expressed shock, but he could barely move. "So, most of a day. You . . . haven't been here the whole time, have you?"

Miranda shrugged. "Most of it. I did the patrol meetings and stuff at dawn but then I came back here." She reached over and straightened out the comforter. "Can I get you anything?"

"No . . . you're enough."

A smile, tentative but genuine. She left her hand on his chest, right over his heart, and said, "You scared the h.e.l.l out of me."

"I'm sorry."