Romani Armada (59 page)

Nayara shifted her head to look at him. “He’s a week overdue. I had to send Deonne back to her hideout when he didn’t turn up. Both of them looked like they wanted to kill me when I insisted.”

“This is a professional agency,” Ryan groused. “Yet we seem to spend more time worrying about peoples’ feelings and love lives. I’m not Justin’s mother. Adán will turn up…or not. They knew the risks when they decided to do this.”

Cáel lifted a finger. “Actually, you both are mother and father surrogates to everyone who is a member of the agency.”

“They’re vampires, for Christ’s sake,” Ryan protested. “They’ve all been around for centuries, most of them, and they did that without us. Why are we anything but their employers?”

Nayara dropped her chin to look at Cáel. “Because of the war?” she asked.

“The war is part of it,” Cáel agreed. “Human resistance to accepting vampires fully is another big part of it. By forming the agency, Ryan, you’ve built a place where vampires and anyone who is a little bit different, or is rejected by humans can find a home, work, and a reason to exist. No one is scorned, here, once they become members. Everyone takes their oddities in stride and treats them as equals. They’ve even embraced me and my plain, ordinary humanness. Can you think of a better definition for family?”

Nayara looked up at Ryan. “He has you there.”

Ryan pursed his lips. “I suppose.”

“Kieren found acceptance here,” Cáel added. “Even Pritti, may she rest in peace.”

The contemplative silence fell once more. Then Ryan spoke again. “Gabriel will come back at us even harder, this time.”

It seemed like a shift in subject, but Cáel knew Ryan had been thinking about Pritti’s heroic efforts to defeat Gabriel and find Jack.

“We beat him at his own game,” Ryan continued. “We beat him using psi talents. He’s not going to like that at all.”

“He’ll sulk, like the child he is,” Cáel said and picked up another succulent piece of fig and bent the skin backwards to expose the flesh.

Nayara sighed. “Pritti told me something before she died.”

Cáel looked up at her. “About Gabriel?”

“I guess she showed me, more than told me. She passed a mental image to me. Something that she had seen in Gabriel’s mind, so the image is distorted by human perception limitations and because it’s third-hand. I’ve been puzzling over it since she gave it to me, and I still can’t make sense of it.”

“What did you see?” Ryan asked.

Nayara lifted her chin so she could look at him directly. “I want to try something. I want to try and give the image to Cáel.”

Ryan glanced at him. “Not me?” he asked Nia lightly.

Nayara bit her lip. “I’ve tried talking to you before, but it only works when you’re not vampire. With Cáel…it does work.”

Ryan straightened his back, stretching. “Have you got some psi genes you failed to disclose,
mo leannán
?” he asked Cáel.

Cáel shook his head and bit into the fig flesh. “I’m plain old human. Maybe that’s why Nia can reach me. She can’t hear me if I try to talk to her. She can only pick up what I’m saying if she scans me.”

Ryan studied him for a moment, then grimaced. “I’ve been sleeping way too fucking long. I’m missing half our lives.”

Cáel caught his shoulder in his hand. “It’s easing off now. You’re improving.”

Ryan plucked at the cover on the bed. “Yeah,” he said heavily. Then, “So try it, Nia. Give him the image. Then he can tell me. Cáel is better at describing things, anyway.”

Nayara rolled her eyes. Then she shifted her head and got more comfortable.

Cáel held himself still and tried to push all thought away and empty his mind, to make himself as receptive as possible. He didn’t know how to make this work. It was something Nia could do
to
him and he’d never looked into it or discussed it with her. This was the first time either of them had spoken of it aloud. It was fitting that Ryan be part of that discussion.

Then he realized that his mind was drifting along on random thought trains, and tried to focus on black nothingness.

He thought, instead, of a large room – larger than this one by at least two times. He was sitting in the middle of the room, in a comfortable automated chair, while all around him, covering the floor like a fleshy, bumpy carpet, they lay comatose. Each and every one of them was connected. Connected to each other, connected to him. He could feel the rush, the heat of their combined—

Cáel sat up with a jerk. “Jesus wept. That was
your
thought, not mine. I mean, it was his thought. Gabriel’s.”

“What did you see?” Ryan asked.

“A room, full of bodies. I think they were alive, but they looked close to death from what I could see. They weren’t moving at all.”

“Gabriel sat in the center of them,” Nayara added. “And everyone is touching at least one other person. I got the impression of some sort of feeding.”

“A battery,” Cáel amended. “He thought of them as his battery.”

Ryan looked from Nia to him. “Power,” he summarized. “He’s using them for power…but for what? What is Gabriel brewing now?”

* * * * *

Waterloo Station, London, United Republic, 2264 A.D.:
Even though Justin held her hand for most of the g-train journey, even though she had been called back from her tiny, obscure life in twentieth century Canada, even though the weather was absolutely perfect, Deonne couldn’t seem to banish the misery in her heart and thoughts.

She knew she was sulking. She knew she was being unfair to everyone at the agency, but Adán’s absence was like a missing tooth that her tongue kept prodding at to explore the shape and size and texture of the hole it had left behind. The fact that two weeks has passed the agreed upon deadline for his return kept blooming in her thoughts whenever she relaxed from concentrating on work.

As the deadline moved further and further into the past, dread began to gather in her heart and mind. What if Adán wasn’t just late? What if he wasn’t returning at all? What if Justin had been right and Adán had met a grim death somewhere in the past?

Returning to her own time and snuggling into Justin’s arms underlined the dismal fact. When she was with Justin, she noticed Adán’s absence even more. She guessed Justin felt the same way, for he was withdrawn and moody.

Kieren, who was acting as her personal security escort while she was in her own time, had finally thrown up his hands, barely six hours after she had arrived back in the twenty-third century. “I’m taking you out. Shopping. Somewhere. Anywhere there are lots of people. I’m sick to death of you looking so sorry for yourself.”

“I’m sorry,” she began. “It’s just—”

Kieren held up his hand. “I know,” he said. “I’ve heard it more than once. Tomorrow, we’re going on a mission to buy clothes. Lots of clothes. Bring Justin. He can share your misery while you spend his money.”

“He’ll love that,” Deonne said dryly, wondering over the change in Kieren. He hadn’t given her a single
ma’am
since she had got back and she had even spotted him smiling once or twice, which had startled her…but she did like his smile. It changed his features enormously and made his grey-blue eyes dance.

Brenden had volunteered to tag along. “I like Britain,” he said.

“He likes Britain’s widows and heiresses,” Justin had amended when he heard about the excursion. “I could withstand buying you a pretty dress or two,” he’d conceded, shifting around from the security terminal he was pouring over, looking for any trace of Adán in the history catalogues.

“I stopped wearing pretty dresses when I graduated from high school. But you can buy me a gown or suit or two…or three.”

“Very well. London it is,” he said. “I wonder if the bounty on my head is still current?”

“After five hundred years?” Deonne marveled. “And this is Britain, not Australia.”

“In my time, Britain considered Australia to be theirs – a colony of the British Empire, although not a very comfortable one. And don’t underestimate the British. They have long memories and ruthless manners.”

“I’ve always found them to be a very pleasant people. I thought they were very polite until I got to Canada.”

Although Kieren had made light of the outing, he still took all the same security precautions that she remembered from Sweden and Brenden was more than happy to cooperate. Keiren’s manner reverted to close to the controlled, contained Warden she remembered, as he juggled potentials and possibilities as they sped through the streets of Rome to the g-train station.

Once aboard the train, in their private and very secure cabin, Kieren relaxed by a fraction of an inch.

“This isn’t going to be a fun shopping trip if you don’t unwind just a bit,” Deonne pointed out.

“I’ll be happier once we’re in Britain, where Gabriel wouldn’t think to look for you.”

The journey to Britain was quick – just over two hours, with a single stop in Paris and Deonne watched the rows and rows of terraced houses that covered most of the British isles zip past her window, while Justin held her hand, and tried very hard not to feel miserable. She could keep up a happy act when there was something to do, but as soon as she came to a halt, or was forced to inactivity like now, her thoughts shifted back to Adán and his absence.

The g-train’s terminus was the restored and restructured Waterloo Station, just east of the famous Big Eye Memorial on the banks of the Thames, next to the ruins of the Eye itself.

Kieren made them wait until the very full train was almost completely empty of disembarking passengers, while he looked through the windows of the cabin and did quick spot checks of the carriage corridor.

Finally, he nodded soberly. “Let’s go.”

Inside the terminal, he hurried them along, his head turning constantly. When Deonne veered toward the east-side exit, he touched her arm. “This way, ma’am.” He turned to the north, instead.

“But…” Deonne began, then shut up. It would be natural to go through the east exit. That was where everyone would expect them to go. Kieren was doing the unexpected.

The number of people using the north exit was few in comparison to the sea of people flooding out of the east gates. Kieren swept them along at a good clip, up the stairs and out into the weak sunshine. Brenden stepped up alongside Justin and Deonne wondered once more about his reasons for coming along.

They covered only a few yards of sidewalk before Kieren pointed to the building that butted up next to the terminal gate building. “Let’s look in here.”

Deonne glanced up at the imposing building. It had been built as an historical facsimile, but seemed to include all the modern conveniences, including high security. “This is a business block,” she pointed out.

“Indulge me,” Kieren replied, already heading for the building.

As Deonne suspected, they were halted at the door and asked for ID and their reason for entry.

“Kieren, really—” she began.

He just looked at her, then fished a piece of ID out of his inner jacket pocket and flashed it at the guard.

The guard straightened and reached for the gate controls. “Do you need directions, sir?” he asked Kieren.

“Thank you, I know the way.” He waved the three of them through, then caught up with them as they gathered in the two-story tall foyer. “This way,” he said, moving ahead of them toward the elevators.

There was a capsule waiting and Kieren stood back and waved them into it.

“What’s going on?” Justin asked suspiciously. “I’ve been shopping with Deonne more than once and this looks nothing like shopping.”

Kieren smiled. He seemed to have reverted to the new personality as soon as they stepped inside the building. “Do you trust me?” he asked Justin.

“Fuck, I hate that question,” Justin said with a sigh. “Alright, I trust you aren’t up to no bloody good, but that’s as far as I’ll take it.”

“You’re a wise man,” Kieren told him.

“Wise isn’t how I’m feeling right now,” Justin muttered.

The capsule delivered them to the fifteenth floor. Deonne totted up the luxury appointments and decorations, the flooring and window treatments, and guessed they were on the top floor. “What building is this?” she asked. “Who owns it?”

“Not sure,” Kieren replied blandly, turning to the left and heading down the wide, short corridor. At the end was a pair of tall double doors, both of them standing open in welcome. Just inside was a reception area, with a pretty receptionist sitting behind a big, semi-circular desk. He was talking into his headset when Kieren reached the desk.

There was no company name on display anywhere, nothing to tell them where they were, or why they were here.

The receptionist broke off his rapid conversation. He had been speaking Standard English, as far as Deonne could tell, although she wasn’t as fluent in it as she was with French and German, from her childhood in Switzerland. “Mr. St. James is in his office, far left, straight down this corridor,” the receptionist told Kieren in perfect Common. “He’s expecting you.”

“Thank you.” Kieren turned to the left and strode down the corridor the receptionist had indicated. Behind them, the receptionist resumed his conversation.

Deonne squeezed Justin’s arm. “
St. James
?” she said.

Justin shook his head. “It can’t be that simple.”

“Why not?”

“I would have found him in the history files. The name would have screamed at me, had I seen it.”

Deonne tried to squash her hopes. It would be far worse to be disappointed, than to have no hope at all, but as they drew closer to another set of tall double doors, she began to tremble.

Kieren knocked on the doors, then thrust one open without waiting for a response. He stepped back. “Go ahead,” he told them, as Brenden stepped up behind him.

Deonne’s heart leapt, and her trembling worsened. She stepped carefully inside the room. Justin followed her in and the door shut behind them.

They gazed around the office. It was just like any other executive office, with sofas, coffee tables, thick rugs, and windows along two sides. A big desk sat against one of the solid walls, from where the view out of the windows was fully revealed.