Brenden nodded. “Nayara and Ryan need to know about this.” Ryan had returned to his office to use the terminal there, as everyone on active duty had taken up desks in Security. “Demyan, the com links are all overloaded right now. You go and tell them and I’ll start tracing this backward and forward and see what the consequences are.”
“I’m here,” Ryan said quietly, startling everyone. He stood at the edge of the crowd around Demyan’s terminal.
Pritti giggled. “All of you are so hidebound. So proper. I simply told him and he came.”
“Tell me what you have found,” Ryan said quietly. “How great is the change?”
“We’ve found the source,” Brenden said. “Demyan...?”
Demyan explained about the theft of the Romanov family fortune while Ryan studied the monitor and listened.
“I’ve got every documentarian I have working on current affairs, to measure the extent of the change,” Brenden finished. “This theft was only a few centuries ago...it’s possible the wave didn’t have time to pick up enough power.”
“I’ll want data and a statistical summary as soon as you can give them to me,” Ryan told him. He frowned. “There’s something about this. It’s nagging me.”
“We’re assuming it’s psi who did this?” Rob asked.
Brenden crossed his arms. “Of course it is. The only traveller we have that could get back to that time is sitting in front of you.”
“Revolutionary Russia isn’t a popular period,” Demyan said with a shrug. “And it’s already very well documented, so the academics aren’t in a hurry, either.”
“Then...how did they get back there?” Ryan asked. “Where did they get the marker?”
Silence was his answer.
“Humans,” Rob said. “They must have worked their way back, from generation to generation of human memory.” He looked at Ryan as he said it.
“Or perhaps it was one of our markers, after all,” Brenden growled, staring at Pritti. “Demyan has the marker. And there’s at least one person here who isn’t bound by the codex, who is happy enough to mentally beckon the boss when she feels like it.”
Pritti’s eyes widened and she took a step back, away from Brenden. “You’re mean,” she whispered.
Demyan gripped the arm of his chair. None of the others were saying anything. Even Ryan simply stood there, watching Brenden glare at her.
Brenden was a man of strong opinions, but the silence must have confirmed his guess for him and given him complete conviction. He stepped toward Pritti, his expression evolving into one of menace.
Demyan fully expected her to simply teleport away. But she merely backed up another step, her eyes very big. She looked terrified.
Before he realized what he was going to do, Demyan stepped between the two of them, facing Brenden. He looked up at the giant of a man and felt the first touch of intimidation he’d felt in years. “Leave her alone. She’s not the enemy you think she is.”
Brenden blinked, looking utterly astonished. “What god has got into you?” he demanded.
“Brenden, leave it,” Ryan said sharply. “Demyan’s right. Pritti is not your security breach and wishing it so won’t make it such, as much as that would simplify things for you.”
“I wasn’t—”
“I said leave it.” This time there was a whiplash of authority in his voice, enough to make Brenden step back. Demyan mentally bowed to the man. Ryan didn’t feel cowed by the Spartan, despite knowing the man could separate his head from his shoulders with one hand and bring about his demise. Both of them had seen Brenden manhandle another, had witnessed the light of lust in his eyes and the damage he could inflict even without weapons.
Demyan waited until Brenden took another step back, returning approximately to where he had been standing all along.
Rob gasped, rising to his feet from the edge of the desk he had been propping himself upon. “Je suis un idiot!” He shook his head. “The money. That’s where they got the money for the tour of Rome. From the Romanov gold.”
Brenden turned his head to look at Rob , slowly, as if he resented the interruption. But then he began to smile. “You might be right, faux Frenchman.” He swatted Rob on the shoulder, making him stagger a little and turned on his heel. “Adieu. I will track the buggers and crush them beneath my heel!” The door of his office would have slammed shut behind him, if the mechanism had been but a little slower.
Demyan turned to check Pritti. She had gone.
He looked around, knowing she had probably jumped to some remote corner of the station that only she knew of and saw her on the far side of the room, heading for the exit. She seemed to be limping.
“I’ll...I have to go,” he murmured and followed her.
Despite her limp, Pritti was moving fast. She had turned off the main corridor, into the secondary passage that led to the rear of the station. Somewhere back there, she had her own quarters.
Demyan called her name, to get her to wait, but even in this secondary passage, there were a lot of people moving along its length.
Unsure of where the urgency came from, he resorted to one of Pritti’s own tricks. He mentally reached for her. Pritti, wait.
He felt the touch of her mind, an air of surprise and puzzlement and lengthened his stride. And there, just ahead, she was waiting for him.
As he got close, she wiped at her eyes.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
Her smile was dazzling, full of warm emotion. He was bathed in it and he realized it was not just her smile. She was radiating her feelings. Showering him in them. “How could there be anything wrong?” she asked. She gave a little leap, throwing herself at him and he automatically caught her. Her arms wound around his neck, her legs around his waist and she kissed his cheek.
But he could feel her wet cheek against his jaw.
Yet the warmth, the joy, the happiness didn’t end. And it was intoxicating. He began to smile and tightened his arms around her. “You’re worse than the weather. You’ll strip gears, changing moods that quickly.”
She kissed him on the lips and this kiss was a slow, sensual one that aroused his sluggish senses. He responded, her bubbling happiness making him care very little that they stood in the middle of the passage as others carefully navigated around them with murmured apologies.
Abruptly, the passage was not there. The air around them changed and he lifted his lips from hers to look around. It was his room. She had jumped and taken him with her.
“Kiss me again,” she ordered and her voice was husky, a woman’s voice. It sent a ripple through him, stirring his blood.
“Pritti...”
She smiled, a wicked expression that made his heart leap.
And suddenly, he was on his back on the floor and she straddled his hips, leaning over him. She smiled again. “Hello.”
He listened to the telltale flutter of his heart, the rising lust in his veins. “I’m human,” he said. “You took me back into the past.”
“Not so far back,” she assured him. “Just far enough to reward you properly.” She touched the buttons on his shirt and they fell away at her mental command. She spread the shirt and rested her small, warm hands on his chest.
Trust Pritti, who jumped where and when she pleased, to have thought of this highly personal application of time-jumping.
Her eyes were shining as she smiled down at him. “You said something to the others.”
“I didn’t do it for you,” he said quickly.
She lifted her arms and her top slithered off over her head and landed on the floor behind her. The sight of her small, full breasts caught his breath.
His arms were pushed above his head and anchored with invisible, mental ties to the floor. He couldn’t move them. Pritti gave another wicked smile and licked his chin. “You said it anyway.”
“Brenden was being an idiot. Paranoid. Chasing shadows.”
Her lips were soft. Hot. He groaned, unable to move, even as his pants were
stripped from him.
“Open your mind,” Pritti told him. “Feel all of it. Feel me, too.”
He could feel her powerful mental presence hovering over him. As her lips continued their assault, he opened up, letting her in and was instantly washed in a doubling of pleasure as she fed to him her own reactions, feelings, sensations.
He closed his eyes with a groan that was ripped from his soul and let himself drown in her.
* * * * *
“This time wave was nothing like the tsunami that went through, was it?” Cáel asked, pushing the reading board away from him thankfully.
Nayara looked up from her desk. “It was exactly the same,” she told him. “Only the tsunami lasted for two hours, not twenty seconds.”
Cáel felt queasy at the idea. He had been on the verge of dropping to his knees and vomiting with just twenty seconds of it. What would two hours of it had done to him? To the sick and frail? To little children?
“Is that how you knew this one came from a lot closer?”
“Or it wasn’t changing as much,” Nayara added. “Salathiel was a key influencer and he changed time a long way back in the past. The wave built up a lot of changes before it hit here.” She came around the desk. She was wearing another green outfit, one of the velvet ones that always intrigued him. It seemed to wrap around her and simply cling to her hip with no visible means of fastening, making him twitch to tug at the ends of the wrap and see if it unravelled. There were long boots underneath, ones with heels, that he planned to coax her into leaving on, later, if he possibly could.
He had been indulging himself with following her around with his gaze whenever he could get away with it and as a result, his body had been simmering all morning.
Ursella had been impatient and curt with his absentmindness, but Cáel had almost laughed in her face and that had merely irritated her further.
“Why the smile?” Nia asked, settling onto the table in front of him.
“These are such strange days,” he remarked, pulling her onto his lap. “You should probably lock the door.”
“I have already.” Her smile made her eyes sparkle and Cáel’s cock twitch.
He settled his hands around her hips. “So this wave, because it was smaller, meant it was closer and there wasn’t a key influencer involved. Gabriel will love that.”
“Maybe Gabriel is a key influencer, but if he wasn’t personally at the raid of the Romanov fortune, he won’t have influenced the event,” Nayara replied. “But the event was definitely closer. Three hundred and fifty years instead of six hundred odd.”
“It’s not linear at all,” Cáel said. “Not with all the branching possibilities that change can make. It’s pyramidal.”
Nayara nodded. “The further away in time the change takes place, the more powerful the time wave, by a factor we have no desire to discover.”
“Enough mathematics,” Cáel growled and reached for the edge of the wrap of her dress. “Do I just tug on this?”
“I don’t know. Do you?” she replied back, her face expressionless.
Cáel tugged gently, experimentally, afraid that if he pulled too hard, the gorgeous fabric would rip and he would look like a brute. But at his gentle tug the dress seemed to open up like a budding flower and fall down around her arms, leaving her naked from the waist up and surrounded by a pool of rich dark green velvet.
Cáel groaned his appreciation. “You did that deliberately.”
Nia’s smile was warm and wicked. “It’s an antistatic fastener. I turned it to negative as you tugged. I wanted to see the look on your face. It was delicious, by the way.” She curled her arms around his neck. “Especially as you gave me the impression there was nothing left a woman could teach you, Cáel.”
“I did?” he said. “I was a fool.” He slid his hand into her hair. “Does your hair come down the same way?”
She shook her head. “No. It took me an hour to get my hair up and presentable for Shun this morning.”
“You let that woman scare you too much, Nia.”
“Yes,” she agreed as Cáel kissed her and the word emerged as an exhale. The kiss grew hot and languid almost immediately. It was hard to ignore the throbbing of his body when Nia was naked and pressed against him. Her hands nimbly and swiftly unfastened his shirt and pushed it down his arms so that he was sitting in the chair naked from the waist up, too. He guessed he didn’t look as elegant as Nia, but frankly didn’t care. The touch of her breasts against his chest felt like the brush of twin brands. His heart reared and slammed around in response.
He knew there was something he needed to do, but the concern evaporated as Nia pushed her hand down his stomach, sliding it under his trousers. Her intention was obvious and Cáel’s cock reared up to greet her touch, hampered by his seated position and the folders of his trousers.
Then, abruptly, Nia was gone from his lap like a giant hand had plucked her away. Her lips were torn from his.
She stood next to her desk, holding the dress up against her chest, wearing a defiant expression. She had moved at vampire speed. That was why it had felt like she had been ripped from him.
Cáel looked to where she was staring, already knowing what he would see.
Ryan stood in the open doorway between his office and Nia’s.
The door. That was what Cáel had been trying to remember to do. They had locked the outside door, but not the internal door between Nia’s and Ryan’s offices.
Ryan’s face was stiff and utterly devoid of emotion. Cáel knew he was holding it that way, holding himself apart from any reaction, trying to stay above the pain of any emotions.
Nia lifted her chin. “You might have knocked or something.”
Ryan let out a ragged breath and briefly, raw hurt flashed in his eyes. “When have I ever had to announce myself with you, Nia?”
She remained silent.
“I see,” Ryan said slowly. “I will from now on, then.” He turned back into his office.
Horrified, Cáel stood up. “Ryan.”
Ryan lifted his hand, palm out toward Cáel. The ‘cease’ motion was definite and inarguable. Ryan wouldn’t even look him in the eye.
The door slid shut.
“Stop him!” Cáel told Nia, as she slowly put her dress back on.
“Stop him how?” she asked remotely. “He has done nothing.”
“Gods!” Cáel cried. “You two are the most stubborn...!” He didn’t finish the thought. He strode to the connecting door himself, but the door, which had been keyed to his profile and normally slid open as soon as he neared it, stayed solidly shut.
Ryan had locked them out.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Cairo, Egypt. 2263 A.D.
With thirty million people, Cairo was still the biggest city in Africa. For centuries, the ancient city had struggled to provide enough housing, to entice steady streams of people to relocate off-world with the promise of stake-money. Despite their efforts, the poorest Egyptians were forced to lived in the cemeteries called The City of the Dead, forming a micro-society of their own—one that obeyed few of the laws most civilized people recognized.
Demyan had heard of the City of the Dead, but had never had reason to visit, even when he had been living in the Sinai in his dessert-dweller days, as he’d slowly moved westward across the globe.
Despite the knowledge that no-one could really hurt him, Demyan kept an eye on those following behind him and anyone who took anything more than passing interest in him as he moved through the narrow, dark lanes. He had no intention of being stopped, or even delayed, this night.
He sampled the mental winds and felt Pritti just ahead. She had stopped moving now and he hurried his pace. Just ahead, there was a low shack made of pieces of statuary that propped up cast off metal sheets and plastic draped over the edges. It was meant only to keep the scheduled early evening rain off. There was a small fire flickering beneath it and many dark shadows, some of them moving. One of those shadows would be Pritti.
He moved boldly toward it, not hesitating or creeping along, for that would alert her. When he reached the fragile structure, he ducked beneath the low hanging edges of the roof and stood up. His hair brushed the metal.
Pritti was crouched over something beyond the fire pit, her back to him. She was absorbed in her task and had not noticed him yet.
“Pritti,” he said, calmly enough.
She flinched, scrambled clumsily to her feet and turned to face him. Anger touched her features and not for the first time he noticed the slight tick in one eye that had been occurring more frequently. “Go home,” she told him. “I don’t want you here.”
“I know why you’re here, Pritti,” he said carefully. He touched his temple. “You might not have meant for me to see it, but I did.”
Her enormous eyes widened slightly. “You saw....” She bit her lip. “You saw nothing,” she said bitterly. “You just followed me.”
“Yes, but why would I follow you, if I had not seen where you were going...what you intended to do?”
“I would not have shown you that,” she said with flat denial.
He took a half-step closer, not enough to startle her. “I don’t think you can hide anything from me anymore. In the last few weeks, the connection between us has widened and grown smooth, to the point where we no longer have control over it.”
This clearly startled her. “I didn’t mean for that to happen,” she whispered.
“No more than I did,” he assured her. He took another step. “Let me see him, Pritti. Maybe I can help.”
She shook her head and tears glistened as they flew from her cheeks. “You can’t.”
“Let me see,” he repeated. “Do you think it will be a shock to me, after what I have seen in your mind?”
She took a deep, shuddering breath and turned back to the huddled mass of shadows behind her and crouched down. Demyan knelt beside her and let his eyes adjust to the dark. Gradually he made out the shape of a man lying curled in a loose fetal position, wearing a filthy, ragged dishdasha. Through the worn cloth, he could see the man was not much more than a collection of long bones, with skin stretched from joint to joint.
Byzantine Heartbreak (Beloved Bloody Time) Page 23
