Shadowbound by Dianne Sylvan Page B

purely for show,” Miranda replied with a smile. “Our other car worked just fine and was a lot easier to maneuver. The limo doesn’t use that much gas, though—it’s a hybrid like all our vehicles.”
    As they walked, Miranda kept her senses on alert and her hand on Shadowflame. Her eyes moved from shadow to shadow, her new vision allowing her to pierce the darkness and pick out details half a block away if she concentrated. Meanwhile she swept the area with her empathy looking for the usual emotions she’d find in an attacker: hatred, anticipation, fear, bloodlust. This early in the night there were still plenty of humans about . . . and now she had to worry about them, too. Any one of the people they passed could turn out to be Morningstar.
    She was relieved to reach the empty parking lot where Harlan was waiting.
    “Good evening, my Lady, Miss Stella,” he said, bowing and holding the door open. “Where to?”
    “Stella’s apartment,” Miranda replied.
    Almost the second the limo started to pull out onto Sixth, a wave of foreboding hit the Queen. She started to tell Harlan to stop and back up—
    —but before she could speak she caught movement in her peripheral vision, something huge speeding toward the—
    The impact was as loud as it was violent, the sound of crushing metal and tires squealing almost overwhelming Stella’s screams as the limo flew sideways and flipped over, throwing both women around in their seat belts like rag dolls.
    Miranda could feel the cabin shrinking around her, and without thinking, without worrying if she had the strength or the ability, she seized Stella’s arm with one hand, reached through to the driver’s seat with her mind, and flung Harlan as hard as she could through the windshield to throw him clear as she and Stella vanished from the car.
     • • • 
    Déjà vu. Noise blaring everywhere—sirens, shouting voices.
    She opened her eyes and immediately regretted it. “Fuck me running,” she groaned.
    Stella, who was staring into the Queen’s face, let out an anguished breath. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?”
    Miranda shook her head and forced herself to sit up. She was hurt, but not badly—she had a splendid variety of lacerations and contusions, and her ankle felt broken, but it took only a moment to heal as she sat there in the middle of Sixth Street surrounded by the scattered and smoldering debris of the limo.
    The car itself was on its back like some sort of stranded beetle, blocking the entire street. It was bent in a slight V where it had been hit. There were police cars, fire trucks, and an ambulance already on the scene, and she saw a team of paramedics running toward her bearing trauma equipment.
    “I’m okay,” she said. “Take Stella and check her out.”
    Stella tried to protest, but Miranda leaned hard on the paramedics’ minds to make them ignore the Queen and devote their attention to the human. Stella didn’t appear to have a scratch on her, but they needed to rule out internal bleeding.
    Miranda was still mentally numb, but she got to her feet, an anxious thought filling her mind. “Harlan!”
    She headed back toward the wreck, looking for any indication of a body.
    There, about fifty feet away from the car—she saw something moving under a tree.
    She fully expected to find him dying, but amazingly, he was alert and leaning back against the trunk. He looked dreadful—though certainly not as bad as he should have after going through a windshield—but she could tell he was going to be fine.
    “Thank . . . God,” he panted. “Couldn’t see you from here. Called for help—ours and theirs. There are two teams en route and the Prime’s on his way.”
    “Just relax,” Miranda said. She smiled. “Consider yourself off duty for the night.”
    In the distance she heard car doors slamming—a lot of car doors.
    Mere seconds later David was at her side. “Are you all right?” he asked, pulling her into his arms. “I mean, I