Byzantine Heartbreak (3 page)

“They’ll give you the perfect opening and wait for you to make the next move. To commit yourself by showing interest.” Ryan shook his head. “Gutsy. They’re obviously very good at this. They have to know you and I would talk about it and that I would figure this out. They have to know I would warn you and if they know you at all, they know your standard reaction would likely be to take their head off, symbolically, if not literally. But they’re still making a move anyway.”

Nayara’s frown deepened. “I can’t take his head off,” she said simply. “He knows that.”

“
He?
So it’s a man I have to castrate.”

“You can’t touch him either,” Nayara replied quickly.

“Why not?” Ryan had a sudden thought. “Hell, it’s not Cáel Stelios, is it?”

Nayara rolled her eyes. “Are you joking? He’s more likely to hit me up for our best ouzo than a date. Besides, his style isn’t at all subtle. Do you remember his attempt to get my comm number the first time he met me?”

Ryan grinned. “Wounded bulls have more finesse. My mistake. I know he’s attracted to you...but most men with a pulse are.”

Nayara gave him a soft smile. Then she pulled the mantle closer around her shoulders. “So the best way to deal with this other man, you think, is simply to ignore the opening when he offers it?”

“Only if that is what you want to do,” Ryan replied. He fought to keep his tone non-judgemental.

Nayara considered the matter, her head tilted to one side just a little. Ryan didn’t let the slightly innocent posture fool him. She was a world-class analyst. Just because he was better at political strategy didn’t mean she was a lousy judge of people. She had to be good. She ran this station and an entire Agency of miscreants and rugged individualists, who had spent centuries, if not millennia, going their own way. Despite that, the Agency ran like a well-oiled pocket watch.

Nayara touched Ryan’s shoulder. Her touch was light. Comradely. Nevertheless, he could feel the impact right down to his toes. He caught his breath, then drew in another lungful of air, hiding his reaction.

“Thank you for helping me,” she said softly.

She wasn’t going to tell him what her decision was, he realized.

Who was this jerk that was screwing with her peace of mind? He’d rip him a new throat. His incisors descended at the thought and Ryan had to calm himself to make them retract. He nodded at Nayara. “No problems,” he lied.

She floated across the floor toward her office door, the one that interconnected with his own. At least, she seemed to float. The elegant floor-length tunic hid the motion of her feet and she was naturally graceful, so she seemed to glide right across the floor.

Ryan sighed and this time he let himself breathe it out, along with all his frustration and anger, trying to let it all go.

 
Who was the bastard?

He watched Nayara’s door shut behind her as he had so many times before, then turned on his heel and strode toward his private quarters to change. New Orleans and the bottle of 100-proof whiskey with his name on it was suddenly the place he longed to be. No one would miss him for the five minutes he would be gone from here. And he could spend three weeks there, if he needed to, drinking the nameless asshole out of his system and from his imagination.

Irish malt had never let him down before, when he desperately needed to forget.

Then he could get on with his day.

Finally.

Chapter Three

The day had started bad and it swiftly got worse.

Nayara’s days generally extended for fifteen or twenty hours, or sometimes she simply kept working as the days blended one into the other. She had a genuine advantage over humans with their need for food, sleep and relaxation every few hours or so. The only real clock she had to take notice of was the need to feed and these days, that demand raised itself with diminishing regularity because she had learned how to make her feedings more efficient and her body had adapted to the fuel source, too.

If her symbiot did not call for blood, she could theoretically keep working forever and not feel fatigue or lose concentration. So while her human counterparts slept, she could catch up or by-pass them altogether. When the humans awoke and returned to their offices, she could present completed work while they were just getting started.

It took all that time and all those advantages to keep the station running. In the last fifty years or so, the demands upon the Agency had increased astronomically, as vampires and the work they did were accepted into society and the old prejudices died away.

Nayara had always worked alone, without need for assistants and flunkies, but lately she had begun to wonder if an executive assistant might not be a useful thing to have.

The only problem with that was finding a vampire who didn’t want to travel. Vampires were drawn to the Agency by the one overwhelming perk: time travel. To become a member of the agency and
not
travel... Such a vampire might be impossible to find.

After changing out of her Roman patrician clothing and returning it to the wardrobe department, Nayara had headed back to her office, already dealing with a dozen different messages and communications via her personal implant. On the way through the station she was stopped half-a-dozen times by people asking questions that only she could answer and dealt with them on the spot. By the time she walked in the door to her office, her to-do list had extended by another four items.

She walked straight over to the window, to look out at Earth’s darkside. The Atlantic was on display. A black blanket of nothing.

With an impatient mental shove, she turned off her personal communications. The incessant buzz was too much for right now. Just for a moment, she wanted to think.

Her public door chimed.

Nayara ignored it.

Today, more than usual, she was feeling the weight of all the years behind her. Not even Ryan knew just how many she bore. She had always hidden her real age from Ryan because she knew him too well. He would be shocked and he would feel intimidated if he knew. After a while he would grow to resent her years and feel that somehow she was superior to him.

It was a vampire thing, to judge by how long a vampire had walked the earth and consider a vampire greater or lesser because of it. Nayara had always considered it a particularly stupid measure of a vampire’s worth. Just because a vampire had managed to avoid the few ways a vampire could die and had the great good luck to have been made before another, didn’t make him or her any better than another vampire.

To judge a vampire by their making date was as lunatic as the humans who used to judge each other by what family or race they had been born into.

Ryan wasn’t aware of his unconscious prejudice, though. He was a very old vampire himself and had lived among vampires who naturally thought in such ways. He had acquired their way of thinking by osmosis and still hadn’t off-loaded the habit.

Nayara had no intention of using herself as the test case to force his change of thinking. Hard feelings would be roused because of it and she had already handed Ryan too many bruises over the last few centuries. She didn’t want to test his seemingly endless capacity to forgive and discover it had limits, after all.

So on this matter, she was on her own. No sharing with Ryan. No unburdening herself as she had nearly done once already.

She knew why she was noticing her age today, of all days. She was unsure of herself.

She rarely felt unsure. She couldn’t remember the last time she wasn’t completely certain and quite comfortable about any decision she had to make, her role in a situation, or the expected outcome.

Life had become very predictable, lately, even with all the crises swirling around them.

But Ryan had made her feel awkward and inexperienced and that was a novel thing. It was the novelty that had her casting back through her memories, trying to remember the last time she had felt quite so gauche. And thus her years of memories had made themselves felt.

Nayara stared at the pitch black hole of the Atlantic and tried to tell herself that feeling awkward, that not knowing everything, was a good thing. It meant she was learning. Growing.

After more than three thousand years, Nia? Do you really believe that? She asked the questions of herself with a wry smile.

The door that connected her office with Ryan’s slid open.

“Nayara, what the hell?” Ryan demanded.

She whirled. “What’s wrong?”

“No one can reach you,” Ryan said, striding toward her.

“I went off-net for a while.” Nayara turned her comm links back on. Instantly, white alerts filled her head with their little chimes. “Oh...” She tried to sort them out, then muted them all and looked at Ryan. “What’s happening?”

“I’ve no idea,” Ryan said. “But Cáel Stelios is on his way here. Justin is bringing him. He wants to talk to both of us immediately. And he’s bringing Ursella Shun, too.”

Nayara checked her time map. “It’s three-thirty three a.m. in Greece and the Worlds Assembly is not in session. Cáel should be asleep. This must be bad news.”

Ryan shoved his hands into his pockets. “I wouldn’t know. I was just told to find you.” He sounded mildly resentful at his messenger status.

“I’m sure they were in a hurry, or they wouldn’t have been so abrupt,” Nayara said soothingly. “I hope it’s simply an urgent matter.”

Ryan grimaced. “Make amends for my bad temper?”

She smiled. “I’ve always said you were the one that should have the red hair, not me.”

He turned his head a little. “They’re here.” Ryan’s hearing was slightly better than hers, so Nayara settled in to wait. It could take a minute or two for the visitors to actually step in the door.

Ryan settled himself against the edge of her desk. He was wearing black today, which she preferred him in. The shirt looked like some sort of soft, almost sheer velvet, that made the most of his clear, pale skin and dark hair. His eyes were a light, honey brown, rather than the true Celtic black, which gave his gaze a clear, mesmerizing quality. The trousers accentuated the length of his legs, for Ryan was over six feet tall. He seemed slender, until the disguising clothes were gone and the true extent of his muscles could be seen, playing beneath the soft flesh.

Nayara realized where her thoughts were leading her and yanked them back to more mundane territory. She grabbed the first trivial idea that crossed her mind. “We don’t have any ouzo. Cáel drank all we have the last time he was here and I haven’t replaced it yet.”

Ryan lifted one brow. “He’ll have to make do with Rob’s scotch, then.”

“You don’t have any whiskey here?”

He shook his head. “I don’t bring it back home.”

The outer door buzzed. Nayara let it open.

Ursella Shun was the first one through the door and she marched in. If a person could be said to have steam trailing from them, it described Shun perfectly. She was a petite woman in her fifties and starting to show her age. Her manicured and bobbed blonde hair was streaked with grey she did not bother to disguise. As a civil servant, Shun would never have access to the sort of money needed for regeneration, and her appearance implied she didn’t care a whit, either.

Her make-up was always carefully applied, but her lipstick was always worn away from either talking or the worried movements of her lips and never reapplied. She had permanent bruises under her eyes, either from long term sleep deprivation or stress. Perhaps both. She was the chief of the
Historical Defence Bureau
, the Worlds Assembly’s oversight organization that monitored the Chronometric Conservation Agency and she took her duties seriously. She couldn’t stand vampires but thought no one knew her secret.

She walked right up to Ryan, where he sat on Nayara’s desk. “This is a pretty fine mess!” she declared.

His brow lifted again, but that was the only reaction he gave. “Ms. Shun?” he asked politely.

Cáel Stelios hurried in behind Shun.

Nayara had never seen Cáel hurry anywhere. She straightened from her lean against the window, startled.

Cáel was normally impeccably dressed in the latest fashionable business suits. As a member of the Worlds Assembly and one of the richest and most powerful business entrepreneurs in the world, he had cash to spare to dress well. He had the physique to carry clothes, too. He was born into a long and distinguished Greek family line and had expanded the family fortunes several times over. He had also inherited the family’s good looks, olive skin, black hair and eyes, penetrating stare, straight nose and square chin. He was also unusually tall for a Greek, standing just a little shorter than Ryan.

Only his lips gave any hint of the passionate Greek nature. They were full and hid white, even teeth.

Today, he wasn’t wearing a suit. The jacket was missing. The shirt he wore was a casual white cotton shirt, open at the neck to show a hint of tanned olive flesh. The sleeves were rolled up at the wrist, too. The trousers he wore were business trousers, but they were wrinkled, as if he had been sitting in them too long. Clearly, Cáel had been pulled away from home unexpectedly.

He nodded at Ryan, then at her. “Ryan, Nayara. My apologies for bursting in upon your day in this way. I thought it best you get what little warning I could give you, instead of letting you be hit cold.”

Ryan stood up. “Cáel, you’re not making much sense, either.”

“I know. I just learned it’s out and about to hit the neural networks. I can’t stop it anymore.” He pull a media clip from his pants pocket and dropped it onto Nayara’s desk. “You may want to call Brenden in here, too.”

Nayara connected with Brenden’s computer and alerted him, putting the highest priority on it.

Ryan reached over and picked up the clip. “Have you seen this, Ursella?”

Shun pursed her lips. “I’ve seen enough,” she said shortly. “It is a disaster.”

“I’ve called Brenden,” Nayara said. She moved toward the desk. “Let me see it,” she added.

Cáel sighed. “Better wait for Brenden. Once is enough, believe me.”

“I’m here,” Brenden said, his deep, gravelly voice quiet, but clear. He stood in the open public doorway.

Shun gave a little squeak and put her fingers to her mouth, as if to hold in the rest of what she might utter. Her eyes grew very big.

“Hell, did you teleport here?” Cáel growled.

“Yes,” Brenden said. He stepped inside, letting the door close. “There’s an empty office across the way. I jumped there and walked across the passage, as soon as I saw the alert Nayara sent.” His gaze shifted to the media clip in Ryan’s hand and his expression darkened. “Ah, fuck,” he muttered and sat heavily in the visitor’s chair next to him. “Is that what I think it is, Stelios?”

Cáel nodded. “The neural nets have it now. It’ll be out any moment, if it isn’t already.”

Nayara filed away the fact that Brenden and Cáel knew each other better than she was aware of. There was a history there.

She stepped forward. “We have to see the clip, Cáel. We need to know what it is before we can start making decisions.”

Brenden made a sound that was a cross between disgust and a moan. He dropped his curly head into one big hand.

Cáel held up his hand. “Go ahead,” he offered.

Ryan pushed the clip into the appropriate slot on Nayara’s desk and they gathered around the desk as the three-dimensional figures began to act out the scene on the desktop. They watched in silence, all except Shun, who gave a moan as Brenden’s projected figure latched onto the girl and began to feed.

The silence lasted for nearly a minute after the clip ended.

Nayara shook off the impending sense of disaster and started sorting out the details aloud. “It’s not the feeding they will object to. Humans have known about vampires for two hundred years. They’ve come to accept that we need to feed. It’s the fact that he used psi talents to control her and wipe her mind afterwards that is going to scare them.”

“
Scare
?” Shun repeated. “That’s putting it a little low, don’t you think?”

All three men in the room turned their heads to look at the woman in the white suit. Nayara frowned. “I’m merely itemizing at this stage, Madam Shun. I was not judging.”

“Then who
will
judge?” Shun replied coldly. She lifted her hand and pointed at Brenden. “He used talents that rightfully belong to a race that is abhorred by vampires
and
humans. He used those talents to subdue and subjugate a human being. And you are all worrying about
damage control
?”

“We have a right to feed, madam,” Ryan said coolly, but Nayara could see his shoulders were squared. His temper was rising. Shun was challenging vampire rights, a subject near and dear to Ryan’s heart.