Byzantine Heartbreak (4 page)

“But not to take that food by force!” Shun snapped. Spittle flew from the corners of her mouth. She was angry. Scared, too.

“I didn’t force her,” Brenden said quietly, lifting his head. “She knew what I was. She didn’t know anything about it, afterwards, either. I wiped her mind. I didn’t hurt her.”

“How would you know if you hurt her or not? How could
she
know?” Ursella cried. “By wiping her mind, you took away her free will and her ability to know if she was forced or not!”

Ryan stepped around Brenden’s chair so that he stood between Brenden and Ursella. His eyes had narrowed down with anger. “With all due respects, Madam Chairman, you are not Brenden’s judge and jury and I won’t allow you to speak to him or us as if you are. If you have nothing useful to add to the discussion, I suggest you return home.”

Ursella jerked her skirt straight with hard tugs at the side seams. “Very well,” she said stiffly. “I’ll bid you goodnight.” She nodded at Cáel. “Assemblyman.”

“Ursella,” Cáel said, lifting his hand in a lazy wave.

Ursella took a calming breath. “You are quite right, Ryan. I am not a judge or a proper jury. But neither are the neural nets. If you think they will reserve their opinion in favour of a proper trial, you’re delusional. I can’t wait to see you try to shut them down.”

Chapter Four

As soon as the door shut behind Ursella Shun, Ryan rounded on Brendan. “Of all the stupid, idiotic, half-assed hare-brained ideas you’ve ever had, you moronic great giant of a Spartan, did you have to go and use Psi talents on the poor bint of a girl? For Christ’s sake, Brenden!”

Brenden grimaced.

“And to be taped doing it, as well? Where the fuck were your brains, man?” Ryan raged. “Your trainees know more about surveillance risks than you apparently do!”

Brenden simply stared down at his feet.

“Enough, Ryan,” Nayara said, giving her voice a whiplash.

Ryan looked at her.

“Brenden knows all this already. He’s been waiting for this axe to fall for a while. He’s thought it all through and realized it all long before you started yelling.”

Ryan looked down at the top of Brenden’s big head. “Did he do anything about it, then?” he asked dryly.

Brenden looked up. “I’ve been investigating the scene, trying to find who taped me. And why.”

Ryan took a deep breath, then nodded. “Okay, then.”

“And I’ve gone back to artificial blood,” Brenden added. He grimaced.

Cáel cleared his throat. “That’s not going to be enough,” he said. “As much as I hate to agree with the bloody woman, Shun is right. The nets are going to scream for answers. You have to deal with them.”

Ryan’s face instantly darkened and he scowled. “We have a right—“

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, I didn’t say you had to defend yourselves by answering their bloody demands,” Cáel replied sharply. “For a politician, Ryan, you can be quite tunnel-visioned, can’t you?”

Nayara hid her smile. She moved to where Brenden was sitting slumped in his chair. “I suggest you leave, Brenden,” she said quietly. “Ryan and I will talk to you later, when tempers have cooled.”

Brenden glanced up at her. The corner of his mouth lifted. “I hear you,” he said. He slipped out of his chair, moving with agility and grace despite his size. Nayara let the door open for him and closed it behind him.

Ryan glanced at the closing door, then looked back at Cáel. “What did you mean, then?” he asked softly. “How do we answer the nets?”

“I said you have to deal with them, not answer them. You have to do something about public perception of vampires. That clip just put your PR quotient back about fifty years or more. You need to counter that.”

Nayara blinked. “Are you suggesting...what? That we start churning out press releases or something?”

Cáel grinned. “They’d only do you any good if you had an event for the nets to talk about and the only event you’ve given them worth talking about is that.” He pointed to the media clip. “No. First, you have to become news worthy. The public have to get to know and adore you like I do.” He got to his feet. “I’m guessing you haven’t had a chance to replace the ouzo I finished last time around. I’ll take anything else at all at this point. What do you have?”

“Scotch,” Ryan said flatly. He was frowning. Thinking.

Cáel screwed up his nose. “I have standards,” he said. “Do you have coffee, then? I have to keep my metabolism cranked. It’s trying to put me to sleep right now.”

“Coffee will take four hours to have an effect,” Nayara told him. “We have some stay-awakes in the pharmacy. Will that do?”

“Done,” Cáel told her. “Where do I get them?”

“I’ll have them brought here,” Nayara told him and sent a message to Fahmido.

“Food will work, too,” Ryan said. “It takes longer, but the effect lasts. See if there’s anyone in the kitchen who can throw something together, Nayara. Preferably hot.”

“You have a kitchen?” Cáel said, sounding shocked.

Nayara finished sending the message to the kitchen, as she smiled at Cáel’s reaction. “We often have human visitors and some human employees. We would rather they didn’t expire from lack of food and water.” She sat in the visitor’s chair that Brenden had vacated and waved to the other one, indicating that Cáel should sit, too. The chair adjusted to her size and posture and snuggled around her, letting her relax. “I will take you on a full tour of the station, one day soon. You always seem to be here on urgent business and your schedule is so crowded, it seemed rude to take up three hours of your time on an inspection tour.”

“Three hours?” Cáel repeated.

“It’s a big station,” Ryan replied. “New recruits get lost for the first few weeks, until they learn their way around.”

“Now I know why I get escorted to your office every time. It’s not just a security thing,” Cáel said, sinking down into the chair next to Nayara’s.

“It’s a security thing, too,” Ryan replied. He pushed himself onto the front of Nayara’s desk, sitting on it properly. “There are areas of the station where you could easily get yourself killed if you stumbled into them, once you had got lost. The reactor room isn’t as fully shielded as it would be on a human-filled station, because radiation doesn’t bother us as much as it does humans and less shielding makes the station lighter and more manoeuvrable in space.”

Cáel lifted his brows. “Noted.” he said dryly. “I’ll make sure I learn the routes around the station before I come here next time.”

Nayara sensed he was not joking, that the next time he visited, he would have memorized the exact layout of the station. She connected with her personal computer and found the file that held the updated blueprints for the station and sent them to Cáel’s office in-box. They would be waiting for him when he got back to his desk.

The door buzzed and Nayara let it open. Fahmido stepped in, carrying a tray. The albino woman was the closest thing the Agency had to a medical doctor. She had made a close study of vampire physiology and had several degrees in genetics, biology and human medicine. She was very tall and very slender and liked to stay to herself in her laboratory office, doing her research. Fahmido always made Nayara feel slightly uncomfortable because of her relentless focus and drive.

Fahmido gave Cáel a stiff smile and handed him the tray. “This should keep you awake for another six to ten hours, Assemblyman. But I recommend you let yourself sleep after that. You will start to suffer severe consequences if you do not.”

“Thank you,” Cáel replied, taking the tray. “I’m familiar with the effects. You’re Fahmido, aren’t you?”

Fahmido inclined her head in a short bow as she straightened. “Eat before the meal cools. It will metabolise faster that way.”

She left without glancing at Ryan or Nayara. She had simply been doing her job.

Cáel glanced down at the bowl on the tray and sniffed, then smiled. “Keftethes?” He picked up the spoon with relish. “You didn’t just happen to have these lying around in your kitchen.”

Nayara shrugged. “I asked that something hot be prepared for you. I didn’t specify.”

Ryan grinned. “We have smart people, Cáel. They know how to use initiative. If they couldn’t find something suitable in the kitchen, they either jumped to Athens or back to old Athens and bought the meatballs, or had them made. If they went back in time, they would have had time to stand around for twelve hours and let the meatballs stew properly...it makes no difference how long they wait back there. Then they jump back here and you get a piping hot meal exactly to your taste, thirty seconds after it was requested.”

Cáel was eating fast and neatly. He was obviously ravenous and merely nodded at Ryan’s explanation.

“How long has it been since your last meal, anyway?” Nayara asked curiously. “You’re eating like it’s been a week or more.”

“Umm,” Cáel said, swallowing. He ate another mouthful, thinking. “Eighteen.” Another mouthful. “Twenty-eight hours, if you don’t count the biscuit I stole from my assistant’s plate as I was passing his desk yesterday.” He frowned. “Or was that today?”

Ryan caught Nayara’s gaze. Nayara knew what he was thinking even though she couldn’t read his thoughts. Cáel was driving himself too hard. And on top of that, Cáel had made it a priority to bring the news of this latest trouble to them at the cost of his own sleep. He could have let them find out by themselves.

Cáel picked up the bowl with one hand and scraped the last of the gravy with his spoon and swallowed it. He sighed with satisfaction and put the bowl and spoon down. “That was excellent,” he told them and reached for the two stay-awake capsules and the glass of water Fahmido had put on the side of the tray.

Ryan was faster.

Nayara had anticipated Ryan would try this, after his glance at her. As he reached for Cáel’s wrist, Nayara took the tray out from under Cáel’s hands and put it on the desk next to Ryan. She barely had to step up the speed of her movements beyond human normal. Ryan only had to hold Cáel’s hands out of the way for the few seconds necessary for her to get the tray clear.

“What on earth are you doing?” Cáel demanded, trying to pull his hand out of Ryan’s grip.

“You need sleep,” Ryan said. “Even this crisis can wait for six hours for you to join it again. Nayara and I can deal with it while you sleep.”

Cáel drew in a breath. “You’re giving me an order?” he breathed.

Nayara stepped up between them and looked at Ryan. “You can’t
make
him sleep,” she said, in the Greek of Constantinople, the language they had used when they first met. It was a dead language now, one that they could use as a private language.

“No, but you can,” Ryan replied.

“If either of you try to make me do anything, you’ll regret it,” Cáel replied, in the same language.

Nayara stifled the gasp that tried to emerge from her. She looked at Cáel. “How do you know ancient Greek?”

Cáel shrugged—awkwardly, for Ryan still gripped his wrists. “It’s my family’s private language. Handed down through the generations.” He smiled. “Now try to make me sleep,” he challenged her.

“Cáel, you need it,” Nayara said gently.

“I’ll sleep when I’m dead.”

She exchanged glances with Ryan and caught his infinitesimal nod.
Do it.

Nayara curled her hand around the back of Cáel’s head.

He began to struggle as he realized she was going to make him sleep despite his threats, but Ryan’s grip on his wrists was far stronger than Cáel’s human strength. Ryan shifted his grip. He snaked his arm around Cáel’s back, locking him in place.

“Damn it,” Cáel muttered. “I have things to do. Meetings.”

“You would have been asleep all this time, anyway,” Nayara murmured. “Shh.” She kept his head still and looked into his eyes. They were very black and fringed with thick black lashes. “Look at me, Cáel.”

“No. Shit.” He looked and she caught his gaze and held it. Instantly, she reached for the trace of his mental pattern and found it. She briefly resisted the temptation to look into his mind. Instead, she caressed the mental pattern. Soothed it. “Sleep,” she whispered. And she shut the biorhythm down into a normal sleep pattern.

Cáel slumped, his eyes closing. Ryan held him up easily.

“Your bed?” he asked.

“Yours,” Nayara replied. “It’s of no difference to me, but it might be to Cáel.”

“Right.” Between them, they carried the sleeping man through to Ryan’s office and into his quarters. The big bed was unused, but made up. Nayara pulled back the covers and Ryan laid Cáel down. Together they stripped Cáel of his shoes and socks and shirt.

Nayara pursed her lips together as she stared down at the ripple of Cáel’s abs and pecs and biceps, under the tanned flesh. “Where does he find the time to stay so fit?”

“He’s on his second generation, remember?” Ryan said, pulling a second blanket from the closet. “Staying fit is a requirement at his age.”

She hesitated. “Trousers?” she asked.

“Leave him some dignity,” Ryan said, throwing the blanket over him. “He’s going to be pissed enough as it is.”

“Even though we’re doing him a favour.” She grimaced. “I’ve never really understood that reaction, despite knowing and predicting it over and over.”

“No one likes showing weakness, Nayara. You of all people should understand that. Plus Cáel is human, too. He doesn’t like not being able to keep up with us.”

Nayara frowned as Ryan turned off the light to the room. The only light came from the very dim glow of Earth, through the window. “He admires us?” she asked, puzzled.

“I believe so.”

“How unusual.”

“It’s a nice change, isn’t it?” Ryan opened the door for her. “Let’s go figure out what he meant by upping our PR quotient, shall we? If we get it right, he might not be quite so angry when he wakes.”

* * * * *

Rome, 95 B.C.

Demyan adjusted the toga on his shoulder again and brushed at his shaved chin. It always took a while to get used to the absence of his beard and the short hair at the back of his neck tickled his palm as he ran a hand over it. But, he was supposed to be a Roman patrician. And, when in Rome....

“Why are you smiling?” Jane Alexander asked quickly.

“An old joke,” he assured her. “One that I think of, every time I arrive back in Rome.”

“You come here often?”

“You know that I do, or you would not have asked for me to be your traveller,” Demyan said stiffly. He looked out past the drapes over the side of the litter and tapped the hired man walking ahead of them on the shoulder with his staff. “The Palatine hill is to the left, slave,” he said in Latin. “Do not try to cheat me.”