Miranda’s glowing eyes bobbed as she nodded. Tango knelt down and reached slowly into the magickal glow. It was warm on her skin, just like real sunlight. She pulled herself forward. When her head entered the light, she realized that it smelled just like sunlight, too. Sweet, green and muzzy. Her mind felt heavy. The light was putting her to sleep, making her fight to keep her eyes open. She forced her hand to reach out and grab Riley’s shoulder. She shook it hard. “Riley?”
He didn’t stir.
“Riley!” she said again, this time yelling as loudly as she dared. She slapped him.
The pooka groaned sharply. His eyelids twitched. Tango slapped him a second time. This time, his head jerked and his eyes opened. His gaze was vague, like that of anyone who has been woken suddenly from a deep sleep. He tried to focus on her, but couldn’t. His eyes drifted closed again.
It was enough. Tango grabbed a handful of his shirt and began pulling him back toward the shadows. She felt Miranda dragging at her ankles. Taking a more secure grip on Riley’s shoulders, she let the vampire do the work. Reentering the darkness was like plunging into ice water. She was alert again instantly, though Riley remained asleep. Who knew how long he had been under Solomon’s enchantment? Tango started to shake him again, trying to wake him up. Miranda grabbed her wrists.
“Later?” she suggested.
Tango nodded. Taking a deep breath, she drew Glamour into her muscles and stood with Riley’s lanky form cradled in her arms. Miranda went up the stairs first. She paused before opening the pantry door. “Now what?”
“Back door. Around the side of the house to the street. I have a car.”
The vampire nodded and opened the door. The sounds of the Bandog drifted back from the parlor and foyer. Miranda crossed the floor silently, Tango a little less so. Miranda eased open the back door — and then they were slipping into the night and around the house.
Where they encountered a problem. Bandog were standing around on the verandah of the house as guests leaving any party might do on a pleasant summer night. If the two women tried to cross the front lawn, they were sure to be seen. Tango pointed across the broad side yard of Solomon’s property toward thick bushes and trees. “What’s that?”
“A ravine. But there’s a fence,” Miranda whispered back. “I know a better way. Follow me.” She started off. A cloak of shadows covered her, making her almost invisible in the night, probably entirely invisible to those who stood by the light of the door.
Tango didn’t follow. Miranda looked back at her. Tango regarded the vampire suspiciously. Was she sure that Miranda wasn’t just going to betray her again? She didn’t have much choice if she wanted to get out of here. She paced swiftly after the vampire, stepping into the concealing darkness of her shadows. Miranda looked away without saying anything.
They hugged the edges of the yard, staying close to the deep natural shadows of the ravine. Tango held her breath, half-certain that they were going to be noticed at any minute. But there were no shouts of alarm. They stepped out of the yard and around the corner onto the sidewalk. There were no Bandog on the street, and they were hidden from Solomon’s house. Tango let out her breath.
Miranda collapsed.
“Shit!” Tango spat. She squatted down as best as she could, balancing Riley carefully. “Miranda?”
“Too much,” the vampire wheezed. “Shadows take blood to control. I need to rest. Need more blood.” Tango chewed her lip, glancing up the sidewalk toward Solomon’s house and down toward Tanner’s car. Bandog might appear from the direction of the house any time. The car was about half a block away. She looked at Miranda. “Are you going to try and attack me again?”
Miranda managed to shake her head. “No. Not that hungry. But I need... I need blood soon.”
“Tomorrow, maybe? Could you make it to tomorrow? We’re going to a hiding place and Tolly said to stay there until he comes tomorrow.”
Miranda didn’t respond.
Cursing quietly, Tango jogged as quickly as she could down the block to Tanner’s car. She propped Riley up against the car as she dug in Tanner’s pockets for the key. She found it and shoved Riley into the backseat. Then she went back for Miranda. The vampire might have been a gangly puppet for all of the strength in her limbs. Her right hand still felt rough and flaky where it had been burned. The skin of her strong face was likewise rough with scabs from the wounds that had marred it. Only her hair seemed anything like it had been the last time Tango had seen Miranda healthy — thick, heavy and luxurious. The mustiness of Solomon’s basement clung to her. Tango sat her carefully in the passenger seat of the car. It was hard to get her body to stay upright long enough to get the door closed. Finally Tango just left the door open, went around to the driver’s side of the car, climbed in, and reached across the vampire’s still form to pull the door shut. Miranda’s head fell forward onto the back of Tango’s neck as she did so.
For a second, Tango froze. Slowly, she reached up and tilted Miranda’s head back again.
Ian Tanner’s car started smoothly and pulled away from the curb like a ghost. As she drove back downtown to Tolly’s safehouse, pressing the envelope of the speed limit the whole way, Tango realized something that had been lost on her amid the horror of discovering the Bandog’s plans and the thrill of finding Riley again.
Solomon’s rite of summoning, and the accompanying chaos, would happen in two days. On Highsummer Night. .
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Lizzie uttered not a word;
Would not open lip from lip Lest they should cram a mouthful in
Miranda knew she was awake because she was dreaming.
She had heard chat some vampires dreamed while they were asleep during the day. For her, though, sleep was darkness. A descent into bleak, black nothingness. She was oblivious to the passage of time between dawn and dusk. To be sure, she had occasionally woken during the day, but it was always full waking, her instincts sensing something amiss and bringing her instantly to bloodthirsty alertness. Sometimes, however, in the period of twilight after the sun was below the horizon and before full night had developed, her mind would stir before her body. And Miranda would dream.
This dream went on far longer than normal — or at least so it seemed. There was a peculiar timelessness to it.
She lay in a shadowy bower, on a bed of soft, dark cushions. Someone stroked her hair. Half-glimpsed through the leafy branches above, the moon stood still in a star-laced sky. There was fruit in the branches, a curious, shifting mixture of apples (which she hated), pears (she had found a worm inside one once), and peaches (her favorite fruit). Miranda held a piece of fruit in her hand, a piece big enough to fill her palm, but still as light as if it were half-hollow. Lazily, she raised it to her lips (perhaps several times) and bit into it with strong, white teeth. Blood flowed from the broken skin. The flesh of the fruit was woody, the skin tough and dry. The juice was ecstasy.
Somewhere, a dog howled. Something snuffled around outside the bower. She ate her way deeper into the wretched, delectable fruit. Once the blood touched her lips, the hard flesh that contained it seemed to melt away.
“Miranda.”
She tried to ignore the voice, and continued to lick and suck at the fruit in her hand. The voice was insistent, however. She turned her head. Solomon knelt beside her, naked in the shadows. The moonlight lingered on his smooth skin and strong body, caressing his sculpted face. His tattoos were gone. He held fruit in his arms, cradled against his chest and neck. Miranda took another. As she did, Solomon came with it, his warm, living touch sliding up her bare arm and across her breasts and stomach. She was naked as well, although the shadows were her clothing. She ignored Solomon. The exquisite fruit in her hands was so ripe with blood that the red juice welled up from the deep bruises left by the slight pressure of her fingers. Abruptly, Solomon was between her legs, down on his knees in the position that excited him so much, desperately trying to awaken Miranda’s flesh. But the only pleasure Miranda knew was what came from the fruit... or would have, if she could just eat enough of the fruit. The ultimate fulfillment of pleasure resisted all of her attempts to reach it, though. No matter how hard she sucked at the fruit, no matter how hard she squeezed at the fruit, the complete satisfaction eluded her. It was like striving toward climax, but never quite achieving it.
Spilled blood drenched her face and arms and breasts. Someone was still stroking her hair. Something was still padding around the bower, its flickering shape sometimes visible beyond the drooping branches.
Solomon was hurting her. The fruit he had held tumbled from his arms. With each of his thrusts, more fruit dropped in. a rain of black leaves from the bower above. The sweet blood of the fruit fell on her body, though, so she endured the pain, letting him use her as she grabbed at the fallen fruit.
It was dry. It was sour. It was bitter. It was cloying. It burst into decay against her mouth.
Miranda just grabbed desperately for more.
Hands in the shadows captured her arms.
For a moment, she remembered the horror of the Sabbat’s Creation Rites. Limbs trapped by the heavy darkness of grave soil. Eerie, smooth, hard surfaces that were too warm to be rocks, too regular and dry to be buried wood. Black dirt in her mouth and nose and eyes and ears. She struggled, but the unseen hands held onto her arms. She thrashed wildly, panicking. Solomon clung to her, even his caresses causing her pain now. Her flailing arms drew Blue and Matt out of the shadows. The other vampires lapped at the blood that covered her, drinking it in and growing fat on it.
They started biting her, sucking at her body as she had sucked at the fruit. Matt looked up from her breast and smiled venomously. Blood was a mask on his face, his fangs gleaming through it.
Groaning, Solomon thrust another fruit toward her face. It was the largest and plumpest she had seen yet, bursting with blood. Her head strained to reach it, mouth wide, fangs eager.
The hands stroking her hair paused. The thing outside the bower stopped as well, and she saw what it was. David in his dog-head mask, waiting. The leaves shifted. No, it was a huge mastiff. Shaftiel. Waiting for her.
Matt raised the long, gray, misshapen stake, just as he had before, and held it over her heart. One heavy thrust was all it would take. A drop of blood fell from the fruit in Solomon’s hand, landing on her chin. Miranda felt her tongue go questing helplessly after it.
The soothing touch of the hands left her head. The distant moon looked down through the long branches of the bower. Miranda screamed in horror, in desperation, in need, in utter loneliness. Tears tore down her cheeks. She threw herself frantically toward the moon, reaching for it with one free arm... impaling herself on the stake that Matt held.
Blood pattered like taunting raindrops onto her face from Solomon’s fruit. The raindrops mixed with her red, inhuman tears.
*
* *
“Miranda?”
It was a man’s voice, rough and not at first familiar. Miranda’s eyes snapped open. For a moment — just a moment — she thought she was still dreaming.
The ceiling of the room where she lay was as close as the branches of the bower had been in her dream. It was slanted as well, tilting down toward one wall. She lay against that wall, a thin pile of blankets cushioning her from the bare old boards of the floor. There was one window, set against the far wall and covered with old-fashioned shutters. The blue stain of moonlight fell through the gaps in the shutters. The room was mostly shrouded in shadows. An
attic
? An electric lantern stood on a rickety chair, its shade tilted to shed light away from Miranda. In that pool of light, about as far away from the vampire as they could get, were two men. One lay on an old mattress, asleep or unconscious, while the other, tall and older, twisted around to look at her.
Her first, dream-fevered thought was that Solomon had sent the Bandog for her, that that weasel Tanner had tracked her down. Then her rescue from the basement of Solomon’s mansion came back to her. Tango, her flesh shaped by Tolly’s strange powers. If Miranda hadn’t known the mad vampire so well, she would never have believed the changeling’s hasty explanation.
If her need for rescue last night hadn’t been so desperate, she still might not have believed it.
It was a little difficult to accept that the big man crouched in the shadows was Tango. There were clues, however. The way he... she held herself. The strange shape of the body under the shirt. The silver ring that had gleamed in the darkness of Solomon’s basement.
Something else came back to her as well. If Tango had rescued her from Solomon’s basement, if she did look like Tanner, then that meant that she knew about the Bandog.
Tolly,
Miranda thought.
It must have been
Tolly.
But that didn’t matter. Tango knew.
The bottom dropped out of Miranda’s heart, and she wished Matt’s stake had been there to fill the hole, driving her down again into senseless oblivion. She wanted to run, she wanted to shrink back into the shadows out of shame, but she was too weak to do anything. Tango chose that moment to tip the shade on the little lamp up so that light poured across Miranda’s body. The vampire winced, not from the sudden brightness but from the exposure that the light brought.
“So,” said Tango in Tanner’s rough voice, “you’re awake. Finally.”
“Yes.” She waited, dreading Tango’s next words.
“You look like hell.”
Tango wasn’t going to mention the Bandog, Miranda realized abruptly. In a way, she wished that the changeling would just confront her about the cult. It would be so much easier and so much faster. She felt as though she were trapped in purgatory, ready to fall at the slightest transgression, but with no guarantee of forgiveness if she were without sin. But she could play the denial game, too. If Tango wasn’t going to mention the Bandog, then she certainly wouldn’t. “I need blood. More than...”
She cut herself off. More
than the man last night could have given me alone.
Miranda had vaguely recognized the short man as a Bandog. How much had it cost Tango to lead him to his death? Miranda had drunk his blood, but Tango had killed him, hadn’t she? Mention the short man and she mentioned the Bandog. “More than I’ve had recently.” She managed to prop herself up on one elbow. “Tolly did a good job. You never know what