Free Shadowflame by Dianne Sylvan

little of the Shadow because there was little to know. They worked for insanely wealthy humans, not vampires; they were mercenaries with no moral code, and they never worked in groups. It was highly unlikely that they were involved in this . . . but still . . . whoever was clearly had advanced tech, and that could pose a problem.
    He lifted his com. “Star-three.”
    “Yes, Sire?”
    “Report to the first-floor study, please.”
    “Two minutes, Sire.”
    Faith joined him, still looking a bit frazzled, and he gestured for her to take Hart’s vacated seat and pour herself a drink.
    “What did you learn?” she asked.
    David held up the device. “We have work to do.”
     
    Miranda was angry that night.
    Kat couldn’t help but think back to the night she’d seen her friend onstage months ago, back when the worst thing Kat could imagine was that Miranda was strung out on drugs, and she had walked offstage and fainted. Kat had had no idea what was really going on—the possibility would never have occurred to her in a thousand years.
    And despite everything she’d seen, Kat still wasn’t totally sure she believed it.
    She’d seen Miranda change . . . seen her teeth . . . seen her bite Drew . . . and she’d felt the change in her friend from some deep place in her gut that knew a predator when it saw one. She’d watched David from across a table, all the tiny alien things about him making a disturbing kind of sense. And yet . . .
    Vampires? Really?
    Kat hung out in the wings as she often did during Miranda’s shows, leaning sideways against some kind of rigging, one hand steadying her and the other resting on her stomach. Funny how having a vampire Queen in her life made all her own problems seem a bit smaller.
    That wasn’t comforting.
    Something had Miranda fired up, though, and not in the same way as she had been that night months ago—then she had been emerging from years of slumber and shaking off her old life to find herself powerful. Tonight she was just plain old pissed off. Kat could see it. She didn’t have to be an empath to read her best friend.
    Kat didn’t bring it up until after the encore, after Miranda had stalked off the stage to her dressing room and changed, after the house lights were out and the applause was no longer making Kat’s ears ring.
    When, finally, they were sitting in the café—at the same table where Kat had squared off with David, it turned out—Kat stirred sugar into her decaf and said, “Okay, spill it.”
    Miranda was no longer fuming but she was still gravely irate, and she lacked her husband’s ability to put on a poker face. “It’s nothing.”
    “Oh, bullshit.”
    Miranda smiled. “Yeah, okay.”
    “Come on, Your Majesty.” Kat took a drink of her coffee and made a face; without caffeine it just wasn’t the same. “This is a no-crap zone, here at this table. I am officially your No-Crap Friend.”
    A sigh. “I told you about all the other Pairs coming to visit, right? The one that’s here now is a complete dick. He has slave girls, Kat—what do I do about that?”
    “Slave girls? For real?”
    “Yes. They’re being kept against their will—at least Faith thinks so. I could offer them asylum, but that could cause a rift between the South and the Northeast, and David says that would come back to haunt us—this bastard has powerful friends. But I can’t just sit back and do nothing, can I?”
    “Wow.” Kat sat back, staring at her friend. “Your life is just fucking weird now, you know that?”
    She grinned. “Yes, I do. And I have this feeling it’s just going to keep getting weirder.”
    “I can guarantee that,” Kat replied, slowly turning her coffee cup in her hand. “Look, Mira, I’ve counseled run-away teens and battered wives. I’ve taught English to Afghani women fleeing the Taliban. But when a vampire Queen comes to me and says some vampire bastard is keeping slaves, I have to be honest: I have no idea what to say.”
    Miranda