Chapter Twenty-One
The Agency satellite station. 2263 A.D.
Justin glanced at the discreet number glowing over the door. “This is it,” he told Dionne, who stood behind him in the corridor, clutching a few bare essentials Brenden’s staff had scrounged up for her. He pointed to the side of the door. “It’s keyed to your voice. Just tell it to open.”
“Just say ‘open’?” she asked dryly.
The door slid aside obligingly.
Justin stepped out of the way, letting Dionne go in. She hesitated, looking in.
“It’s not the Sukioma Ritz,” he said. “But it’s better than having Gabriel or his people rooting around in your head.”
She glanced at him and stepped reluctantly inside. One pace and she stopped and turned to face him. “They trust me, don’t they?” she asked.
Justin glanced up and down the corridor. He stepped into the room and let the door close. “They wouldn’t have included you in the meeting if they didn’t. The Wardens cleared you. So did Brenden’s people. Why?”
She put the tiny pile of bathroom supplies down on the narrow cot pushed up against the painted steel wall. “I thought I was at the meeting to...” She shrugged. “Account for myself.”
Justin stared at her, slightly amazed. “But you sat there, helping them plan things. The meeting was four hours long. That whole time, you were waiting for Ryan to land on you?”
Dionne shrugged. “It seemed to me that if tonight was going to be my last opportunity to help, I shouldn’t waste it.”
Justin let himself stare openly at her. “Barmy,” he muttered.
“Excuse me?” she said, her hand going defensively to her hip. “What does that mean?”
“Ya don’t know Australian?” he asked. “Want me to translate? Stupid, kinked, off yer rocker.”
Her jaw flexed. “I know Australian just fine,” she said evenly. “I fail to see how it applies to me.”
Justin leaned against the door and crossed his arms. “Easy. Do you know how many of us, given our druthers, would trade places with you in a heartbeat, if we had one?”
Dionne’s hand was still parked firmly on her hip. Now the other one came up to the other hip. She was wearing one of those grey silk business robes that made the fabric look like it was screaming in agony from being stretched so taut across her torso and hips. Her fingers dug in. “That just makes you the stupid one.”
“Live a few hundred years and try saying that.” He shook his head. “You have no idea what misery and heartache you’ve bargained yourself into, Rinaldi. You should take the money, instead. Buy yourself a regeneration.”
Her green eyes widened.
“That was your back-up plan, wasn’t it?” Justin asked. “If we turned you down on the whole vampire immortality deal?”
She pressed her lips together. “You have no idea who I am and what I want, Kelly.” She turned her back to him. “Please leave.”
He pushed himself off the door and wrapped his arm around her from behind, yanking her backwards so she was held up against his body. She was long, lean and lithe and as she twisted, trying to evade his arm, he could feel every curve and dip of her against him.
His body tightened and thrummed. He cupped her chin and turned her face so he could see it. “I know enough to know one thing you want,” he said. His voice was thick with his sudden raging lust. Her body against his had triggered it.
She gasped and grew still. It was an electric sound. Low, uneven.
Her neck was exposed to him. Justin leaned down and inhaled her scent. Delicious. His want of her leapt tenfold. He ran his tongue from the base of her neck, along the vital line, up to her ear, along the hot flesh.
Dionne shuddered and grew still. Her breath quickened.
Justin reached for the slit in the front of her robe, where her slender knees had been peeking out every time she walked, or sat, or moved, all day and evening. He gripped the edge of the slit and drew it aside.
The silk gave way with a tired ripping sound. The gown split apart up the middle, until the tear reached the neckline. It fell to either side of Dionne’s body.
She gave a tiny exhalation.
Justin stripped the ruined gown from her and tossed it on the bed. He discovered she was naked beneath it, apart from her high shoes. Her nipples were hard pebbles, the breasts high, rounded and full, like her hips.
Dionne reached up and pulled a long silver clip from the careful arrangement of curls of blonde locks on the tops of her head and shook her head. Her hair tumbled down around her shoulders, a mass of waves and curls, to bounce down about her waist.
She held the clip out to Justin. “You missed something.” Her voice was a low, highly charged, sultry purr.
Justin growled, his lust leaping to a ravening need. He picked her up and pushed her up against the wall, roughly throwing her legs about his waist. Dionne looked down at him, her breath coming faster, making her breasts rise and fall quickly.
Justin sucked in the tip of her breast, feasting on it. He bit and drew the nipple between his teeth and rubbed the end of it with his tongue, lashing it.
Dionne slapped the wall with the flat of her hand, moaning and gasping, her hips thrusting into him as she reacted to what he was doing. It only encouraged him to do more. He moved to her other breast, treating it the same, making her cry out again.
As he worked, he used one hand to strip himself of his clothing, until Dionne was bucking against his naked body and his cock reared up against her cleft, brushing it with each jerk of her pelvis, until he couldn’t stand the proximity of her pussy anymore, if he was not in it.
He gripped her hips and battered his way inside her, with a heavy exhalation that was almost a grunt.
Dionne thrust her hands into his hair, her fingers curling and gripping tightly. Her eyes were narrowed. “Fuck me, Justin,” she breathed, her voice ragged with her arousal.
Her voice and the used, needy quality of it was a powerful goad. Justin cupped her ass, steadying her. He slid in and out of her, maximizing his thrusts so that she would feel every inch.
Quickly, Dionne began to pant, squirming against the wall and making little desperate sounds that told Justin she was close to climaxing. She clutched at his shoulder, her fingers digging in. “Justin!” she warned him, her voice hoarse.
Justin took off the brakes. He leaned against her and thrust deep and quickly, feeling her body close like a vice around his cock. Dionne’s arms wrapped around him.
It took perhaps five more thrusts and his climax shot through him. Dionne’s climax was far more intense and she filled her lungs to scream. Justin got his hand up to cover her mouth just as her lungs began to vibrate.
He held her against the wall as she shook, staring into her very human green eyes as the pleasure took her. He looked and mourned.
* * * * *
Southwest Western Australia, 1973 A.D.
Cáel used the wood burning stove to brew Turkish coffee, which they both liked and of which Nayara had a small stash stored away in the cabin. He brewed it in a battered percolator on the stove top while she sat in the wooden chair pulled up to the table. He seemed quite at home with the equipment and the stove, which let her relax and tell her story.
“When Salathiel and the psi-filer disappeared from the institution, we reconstructed what had happened by looking at security tapes. Of course, in hindsight, everyone smacked their foreheads. It’s perfectly obvious that you can’t lock up a jumper, but they were just learning this stuff, back then. That was a major lesson for them.
“We turned the globe upside down looking for them and we found her. She was a gibbering mess.” Nayara paused, remembering the woman as they had found her, curled up in the corner of the tenement apartment, talking about doom and the devil. “The psi had glimpsed a future we didn’t know was coming and she was terrified.”
“She knew Salathiel had gone back to mess with the past,” Cáel guessed.
“I think she g
limpsed it in his mind. She was an A-file and back then, they bred only for psychic ability. They went for power with a capital ‘P.’ I think not only did she read his mind, but she may even have had some ability to glimpse the future and she knew the time wave was coming. But along with her psychic abilities, she was socially dysfunctional, barely able to hold a conversation. It took a while for the breeders to figure out an acceptable balance of social skills and talents.”
“The File P’s. Pritti. It took them nearly two hundred years.”
“Yes,” Nayara agreed. “Two hundred years before they declared it a failed experiment and in all that time, their by-products have been breeding indiscriminately, here on Earth and across the nine worlds to where they got shipped as a work-force when nothing useful could be found for them.” Her mouth turned down. “Well, payback is hell.”
Cáel placed an old fashioned teacup in front of her, three-quarters filled with the strong coffee. “Drink,” he encouraged and sat next to her on the stool, the only other seat in the cabin.
He blew on his cup and sipped. Then, “Did the psi tell you where Salathiel had gone, or did you guess?”
Nayara sighed. “I guessed. It wasn’t hard. There were only two or three possible times that were critical to changing his past so that it would be ‘better’ in his eyes. Only one of those would have kept him human.”
“Stopping his making.”
Nayara nodded. “We knew he wouldn’t be content with just interfering with than one night. She had an oath to fulfil and just halting that moment might simply divert her temporarily to let her try again. He would stop her permanently.”
“It didn’t bother you that you were contemplating Salathiel committing murder?”
Nayara shook her head. “Salathiel had become someone we didn’t know, Cáel. He had moved far beyond the man we loved. Ryan and I knew without doubt that he would kill his maker. We just had to figure out when. So we judged that going back a week before the collapse of the wall and watching the maker until Salathiel turned up would be the only way to find him back in the past.”
She cleared her throat. Even now, the fear that first jump had created could close it down almost completely. Raw panic.
“We stumbled through that first jump, Ryan and I. Sheer dumb luck.” She licked her lips. “We had a time marker we both remembered vividly because...” She glanced at Cáel. “Well, we had made love, Ryan and I, in a little alley off the main markets. It had been spontaneous and we hadn’t been discovered despite people walking past barely a few feet away.”
Cáel’s eyes met hers and heat flickered deep within them. “I can understand why that memory might stick.”
“We didn’t realize that we were doing the exact right thing. We were focusing in on an emotional memory. Both of us were guessing how to do this, using the ramblings of the psi-filer and the security tapes, piecing it together using guesses and the psi-filer’s talent that she gave us. We tried jumping within contemporary times, practicing. But before we could actually jump back, the time-tsunami came through.”
Cáel reached over and carefully unwrapped her hand from around the teacup. “You might break it,” he said. “Here, I can probably take more than the china can.” He held her hand. “I’ve heard other describe the time wave, when it hit. I’m glad I wasn’t around for it. It sounds like sea sickness and far too many hangovers rolled up together.”
“It was all that,” Nayara agreed. “Even vampires weren’t spared, which was alarming for us. We never get sick. It lasted nearly two hours and I think some of our kind thought we were dying...except that the humans were sick, too. Everyone was, everywhere. Then it was suddenly over and that’s when we began to discover the changes. And the disease.”
Cáel covered her fingers with his other hand. “Constantine’s Curse,” he said, naming it.
Nayara looked at him, horrified. “No one of our kind names it,” she said.
Cáel smiled. “It’s just a name. It’s not an invocation.” He leaned over the corner of the table toward her. “Did you know, Nia, that my entire family were destroyed by Constantine’s Curse? Including the man and woman who would become my parents?”
She flinched. “No,” she said stiffly.
“It went through the Greek islands inside three days. Our DNA was particularly vulnerable to the disease and there was a 98% mortality rate.” He frowned. “I should say, there was a 98% infection rate, because the Curse was incurable and 100% mortal. Once you caught it, your DNA was dissolved within twenty-four hours.”
“I know this,” Nayara said, acutely uncomfortable.
“Yes, I imagine you know it all too well,” Cáel replied. He lifted her hand to his lips. “What you did afterwards restored my family and millions of others. I don’t supposed anyone ever got around to thanking you, did they?”
“I think everyone was too busy being relieved,” Nayara told him, truthfully. “Including Ryan and me.”
Cáel stood up and leaned over the table again. His kiss, this time, lingered. She tasted coffee and his distinct scent. He tasted ambrosial.
“Thank you,” he said softly. Earnestly.
Ridiculously, she felt tears well up in her eyes. His thanks meant that much to her.
* * * * *
The Agency satellite station. 2263 A.D.
Rob tapped Ryan on the shoulder and beckoned with a jerk of his head and Ryan found himself following the solidly-built Scot over to a dark corner of Security. He was amused by Rob’s clothing. Somewhere in the last few hours, Rob had changed into full highland kit—kilt, broadsword and boots. The sleeves of his rough linen shirt were rolled up and his hair was held back with a raw piece of leather.
Rob was obviously feeling uneasy about security, if he had returned to his roots.
Rob propped his hand on his hip, close to the hilt of the broadsword. “There’s something that has bothered me since our conversation in the kitchen a few days ago. I believe it is a possibility that the Agency has overlooked. What if the psi are also ‘mugging’ humans for their memories and not just vampires?”
“That’s not possible.”
“Why not?” Rob countered. “You’re too blinkered by ye own ethics and charters, that prevent anything other than consensual sharing of markers and memories. There’s nothing physical stopping the psi from mugging humans.”
“They wouldn’t bother with human memories. They’re short, distorted by foggy memory and overlaid by interpretation and discoloured by emotions. Of no use to anyone.”
“Then why not simply mug a vampire here? Why the elaborate deception to get Demyan back to Rome?”
“They can’t access our thoughts when the symbiot is active. They had to fake their way back into history with a traveller, before they could access his memories while he was human.”
Rob rolled his eyes. “Well, ye know now, that isn’t true. Not after last night.”
Ryan had to calm himself and think it through. “I believe only Gabriel is powerful enough to reach past the symbiot and read our minds and I think he can only do it when we’re relaxed, unaware and thinking about exactly what he wants to see in our minds. He had to prompt Nayara last night into thought paths he wanted. And he had to lull her into the right frame of mind.” Ryan curled his fingers and uncurled them. “I hope he’s that limited. He went to a lot of trouble to make sure he was in the same room and face to face with her. If he could have simply stolen into our minds at will, he would have done that from ten miles away and not risked exposure or the warning he’s given us.”
Rob frowned. “I still think you’re wrong. I think the psi were time jumping before they mugged Demyan and I think they were stealing human memories to do it. But you’re right—human memories don’t go back far at all. So the psi moved on to bigger stakes.”
“Why would they do that?” Ryan objected. “It doesn’t make any sort of sense at all.”
“Not from your perspective. But I’m the new boy around here, remember? A lot of wh
at you do makes my eyes cross, too.”
Ryan actually laughed. It came out involuntarily. “Well, perhaps—”
A wave of nausea swept through him, making him reach out for the wall. He heard Rob’s gasp and lifted his head to see the man grip his head, squeezing his temples.
“Time wave,” Ryan croaked, as the wave shook and dumped him.
Rob sank to his knees.
Then, just as abruptly as it had arrived, it had gone.
“That wasn’t your usual minor adjustment,” Ryan gasped. He helped Rob back to his feet. “Come on. We have to hit the books, find out what has changed.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Demyan found the source error, for it was in his personal past. He stared at the screen. “I think I have it,” he said to no-one in particular. But swiftly, he was surrounded as others tried to read his screen.
“I don’t know enough about this period,” Rob said at last. “Was the Romanov gold and family jewels stolen during the early days of the Revolution?”
“No, not like this. Not at all, in my memory, although it’s possible the revolutionaries leached off bits and pieces as they took control of the palace and other royal family possessions. But this...this violent raid of the vaults, so many dead...this never happened.”
“Perhaps they were counting on the lack of organization in those early days to cover their tracks,” Brenden suggested.
“Then they screwed themselves over, didn’t they?” Pritti asked with a smile.
Brenden frowned at her.
“She means that the unsolved mystery itself is what kept the story alive and out there for us to find,” Demyan explained. “If they had stolen the gold and been caught, or if the USSR figured out who had taken it, then the mystery would be solved and the compulsion to record it and speculate over it in the history books, wouldn’t have been there and we wouldn’t have found it. They’re victims of their own success.”
“Like the Mary Celeste,” Rob murmured. “That ship was written about for three centuries, until they found out what happened to it. Now it’s just a footnote in history.”
Byzantine Heartbreak (Beloved Bloody Time) Page 22
