Byzantine Heartbreak

by Tracy Cooper-Posey

  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.”

  “I apologize profusely, master,” the Scythian replied. “I thought you wanted to see the Forum.”

  “I know the Forum,” Demyan growled. “Do I look like a provincial to you?”

  The Scythian murmured to the litter-bearers and the litter swung around to the left, pushing through pedestrians. It headed up the sloped and terraced street.

  “So, do you not think this is wonderful?” Demyan asked his companion, settling back on the cushions.

  “It’s everything I thought it would be,” she breathed, looking out. “More or less. It’s a lot...dirtier than I thought it would be.”

  “Here on the Aventine, it can be,” Demyan agreed. “Wait until we reach the Palatine. You are sure you will not see the Forum?” This omission from her itinerary had surprised him. Everyone wanted to see the Forum.

  “I won’t,” she said with certainty. “I have been to Rome in our time and it was enough. I want to see how people live, not how they congregate.”

  “You can see how they live right here.” Demyan pointed out the window.

  “Not plebs. I want to see patricians.”

  “So you said back at the agency.”

  “You really know your way around the Palatine?” she pressed.

  “I really know my way around,” Demyan assured her for what felt like the fortieth time. “We should be there in about twenty minutes.”

  “That long?” Her brow puckered.

  “Traffic,” Demyan explained, with a wave toward the street. “The Romans invented traffic jams the same time they invented civic government.”

  His small joke usually laid them in the aisles, but Jane Alexander merely fell back on her cushions with a sigh.

  His customer had puzzled him right from the start. Even her explanation for not wanting to see the Forum seemed...weak. She was nervous, energetic and distracted, even at the Agency. At first he’d put it down to the jump itself. All their customers were nervous about the jump and about dealing with vampires. The long list of do’s and don’ts and the training they sometimes had to take often pushed their stress levels higher.

  Demyan usually managed to get them to relax once they’d arrived at their destination. It was what made him one of the more sought-after travellers. But Jane Alexander wasn’t relaxing. Not even the unique sights of a civilization that was the bedrock of modern human society seemed to move her.

  She fidgeted with the beads and baubles on her belt, the straps on her sandals, back to her belt...

  “Why the Palatine?” he said at last.

  She looked at him sharply. “Why not?”

  “The rich and famous locked away behind barricaded iron-clad doors and armed slaves? You will not see anything there except cobbled streets and house slaves.”

  She worried at her bottom lip with small, even teeth. “I’ll take my chances.”

  He tried a different tack. “You know, you paid much money for this tour. A once in a lifetime chance. Do you not want to make sure you see what you’ve paid to see? Tell me what you really want out of this trip and I will see that you get it.”

  She considered him for a moment.

  He smiled reassuringly at her. “You should trust me in this. I have heard it all. Once, I had a client that paid too much money just to sit in the Emperor of Russia’s bath and pleasure himself. There is nothing left in the world that could shock me.”

  “That’s right, you’re the Russian one. The fierce, ancient Khazar.”

  Before Demyan could respond to this surprising statement, she smiled at him, dimples appearing in her smooth cheeks. “My true wish is not nearly as exciting as your Emperor lover.”

  “Tell me.”

  “I want to meet Aurelia Cotta.” And she blushed.

  For a minute, Demyan’s mind free-wheeled, as he tried to encompass this unexpected request. He tried to pull at the short hairs at his chin, until he remembered he had none right now and dropped his hand. “Aurelia Cotta?” he repeated, at last. He still could not place the name.

  Ja
ne’s face brightened and she sat up. “Yes! She was a great matron, one of the most famous and her beauty was renown. She was revered for her goodness and kindness and she wielded great influence during her lifetime. For a Roman woman, that wasn’t half-bad, you know.”

  “That, I can appreciate,” Demyan acknowledged. “But, who is she? I can’t recall the name. Who are her parents?”

  “Rutilia and Lucius Aurelius Cotta. Her father was consul in 119 B.C.”

  “The Aurelii Cottae family, hmmm?” Demyan frowned, pulling it together. His knowledge of the patrician families of Rome around the time of Julius Caesar was detailed, but that was thirty years from now.

  “Her mother Rutilia was a member of the Rutilius family. They were of consular rank.”

  “You have done your homework,” Demyan told her. “You don’t happen to have their address, too?”

  “I thought you might,” she said airily. “Or that you might know someone who could get us invited.”

  “We can’t socialize with influential contemporaries. They warned you about this at the Agency.”

  “I don’t want to be her best chum, Demyan. I just want to meet her. Smile at her. Then you can whisk me into the nearest deserted room and we can jump home.” She smiled winningly at him, her dimples deepening. “Please?” she asked sweetly. “It’s such a simple thing.”

  Demyan took a breath, intending to explain why something this simple was incredibly challenging. But her big eyes were staring at him, her defences down. She had confessed her wants as he’d asked her to. Now he had to deliver.

  If he could.

  “There’s a senior slave I know, who isn’t above bribes. He belongs to the Clodius family. I’ll see what I can do.”

  She threw herself forward, right into his arms and held him tight, while his human instincts switched to high-alert. “Thank you,” she whispered, her lips against his cheek. She smelled of lilac.

  Chapter Five

  Vienna, 2263 A.D.

  “I feel ridiculous,” Brendan complained, tugging at the complicated double bowtie at his neck.

  Cáel slapped his hand away. “You look just fine. Leave it alone.” He looked out the window of the coach. “Five minutes, maybe less, folks.” His gut tightened. “Are you ready for this?”