“Much of the food we eat is based upon bark,” Koca said with quiet dignity. “That will sound strange to you, but we find the idea of mashed grass that you use for huge amounts of what you call food just as strange.”
Rory blinked.
“Wheat,” Koca added.
Nial gave a short laugh. “I don’t think anyone thinks of wheat as grass, anymore. It had been interbred and manipulated into something unrecognizable.”
“So, too, have we developed the food we once called—” He made a sound with his mouth that Rory realized was the Elah version of “bark”.
Nial waved his hand toward the kitchen door. “There are humans in the kitchen with more flare for cooking than Rory and I, as we no longer eat. Let’s find someone who can put a meal together for you.”
“Nial, I would speak to you, afterward,” Rory said quickly.
He nodded and walked Koca into the kitchen. He returned barely sixty seconds later and stood in front of her.
Rory got to her feet. She had been working all morning on her computer, manipulating models. Only now, with Koca and the Elah actively helping humans, those models would have to be adjusted all over again. That was the nature of game theory. Every time a move was made, the board changed and had to be reconsidered all over again.
She wanted to be on her feet to speak to Nial, this time. She wasn’t anywhere near his height and still couldn’t look him in the eye, even wearing heels, but she wouldn’t feel as inferior, standing up. “Dante told me about your plans to create more Pyrrhus.”
“It was his idea that you help us,” Nial said, his voice even. “Can you?”
“If my guess about the development of the compound is close, then it is basic chemistry. The most critical factor will be the handling of dangerous elements and good lab discipline covers most of that. That isn’t my objection, Nial.”
“Are you about to repeat everything everyone else has already said about the dangers of Pyrrhus? Mass destruction and extinction level events?”
“I would not be stupid enough to presume you have not considered those possibilities yourself.”
“Thank you.”
“It is strategic to have a stockpile of Pyrrhus, as long as it is sensibly stored and used only at the most desperate ends of need. Only, I am a theoretical physicist, Nial. Even my specialty is cerebral,” She glanced at the laptop, where her game theory models were revolving on the screen. “I haven’t been inside a chem lab since my college days. Those days are much farther in the past than my doctorate says. You would be better off insisting Marcus lead such a project. I would be willing to assist, but not to lead.”
Nial shook his head. “He won’t consider it. I understand why he will not. I won’t ask him again.”
Rory frowned. “That doesn’t make any sense. Neither does Marcus’ attitude. The Summanus are responsible for Cyneric’s death. Why does he deny humans a weapon against them?”
“Marcus feels that holding out and refusing to make the Pyrrhus is in some way marking Rick’s death. It gives it meaning. If he makes the Pyrrhus, he will feel as if he is betraying Rick’s memory.”
“That makes even less sense,” Rory declared.
“To you and me, perhaps. To Marcus it is a life buoy. It makes perfect sense to him.”
Irritation stirred in her chest. “Humans and their contortions over love drive me crazy. Even you, Nial, have distorted your life, bogged yourself down with humans and the messy effluence their affairs put you through. How can you stand it?”
“How can you not?”
Rory shook her head. “Rhetoric.”
“Truth.” Nial crossed his arms. “We’ve known each other a long time, Rory. I’ve seen you fall in love with kings and emperors, princes and thieves. You turn their lives upside down. You’ve destabilized kingdoms. Men have fought each other over you and in all that time, as deeply as you became entangled in messy human affairs, you’ve always walked away with your heart intact and your independence supreme. You have held yourself above them all.”
Rory didn’t like that judgement. It didn’t sound nice, put that way. “I have loved humans,” she said stiffly.
“No, you haven’t,” Nial shot back. “Not really. Not in a human way. If you had, you would not have been able to untangle yourself as easily as you do. Love—real love—is involuntary. It does mess up your life and it should. After that, it’s a matter of compromise, something you do not understand.”
It hurt, more than it should. Nial was a very old friend. He was one of the few she trusted absolutely and this felt as if he was cutting her legs out from under her. “It is far easier for you, Nial,” she said, trying to keep her tone civilized. “Women must compromise all the time, far more than men, especially in relationships. We have given way throughout history. We give up our names. For a long time, we had no choice about who we married, how many children we had to bear. A woman who dared take a lover, either inside or outside her marriage, was pilloried and shamed and often executed. A man could take any woman he wanted with little consequence. We were not permitted to work, except in a home maintained for the man’s comfort. When women were finally allowed to work, when the world could not turn if they did not contribute, we were relegated to feminine roles and told we were incapable of higher functions, victims of our hormones and vapors.”
Nial was smiling. “I have passed through as much history as you. You think I am not aware of this?”
“You have not been forced to live it,” Rory shot back.
“So you have spent a century proving all of history wrong, with your career that sits atop the highest peaks of intellectualism and science, while you take as many lovers as time permits and live with shields at maximum to protect your independence.”
Rory stared at him. Was that what she was doing? Paying history back? “I’ve earned my rights,” she said stiffly. “You’ve never had to.”
“You forget who you are speaking to,” Nial said coldly. “Slaves have no rights.”
She nodded. “You are correct. I forgot. My apologies.”
Nial dropped his arms, relaxing. “All I’m saying is, Rory, you should let love in, at least once. Love properly, wholeheartedly and let it mess up your life. Then you’ll be able to remember.”
“Remember what?”
“How to be fully human.”
“I remember perfectly well.”
“No, I don’t think you do,” Nial replied softly. “Time changes things. Even the way we get to love has changed.”
She shook her head. The idea was repulsive. “Love makes women pathetic.”
Nial came closer. He was smiling again. “Love makes men just as weak. That’s part of its charm. We’re all in it together.” He patted her shoulder and turned back to the kitchen, leaving her standing with her gut churning and her heart beating all by itself.
She wasn’t silly enough to give up her freedom for the emotion humans seemed to find such a comfort.
Love is involuntary.
Rory shook her head. He was wrong. That was all. He was simply wrong.
* * * * *
Roman spent ten seconds to look away from Marcus and Ilaria to glance over his shoulder and check their position. The moon was a flat disk in the cloudless sky and looked yellow, as if the heat of the day that had just passed had pulled all the stuffing out of it, too.
Even the night was still and airless.
Garrett caught his glance around and nodded. It was all clear on his side, then.
Roman relaxed just a bit and moved forward. They were clearing out the lower hills tonight as there had been reports of sightings much too close to home for comfort.
“It’s been a while since we did a full scale clearing,” Patrick declared before they had headed out. “Everyone is to spread out, up and down this line on the map, from Santa Monica to Ventura. We’ll head north a step at a time, no more than ten feet between each of us and see what we stir up.”
It was staggering to think
there was enough regular hunters for Patrick to call on to create a line so many miles long, although units from all over the city were being called upon to help. Next week, another section of the city perimeter would be scoured and so on until the borders around the city were clear…for a while, anyway. Hunger always drove the Summanus back.
As the briefing broke up, Nial came up to Roman and said quietly, “Marcus and Ilaria are insisting they hunt tonight and I don’t have the heart to say no. Would you object to taking them with you and Garrett? I have Koca to watch and Sebastian will be assessing Dante.”
Roman didn’t bother asking why Patrick and Dominic couldn’t babysit. The two of them were the point pair. Without Dominic’s tuned senses, they would have no early warning system. Blythe would be shepherding the new human recruits in her unit. There were new recruits every week.
“Sure, we’ll watch them,” he told Nial. “Maybe some black on their blades will help.”
He’d warned Garrett, who had nodded without comment and the two of them had juggled Marcus and Ilaria, making sure they were always bracketed, while also trying to look over their shoulders and ahead into the dense summer-thick scrub, every sense alert.
It was weary work, for Marcus was human and stumbled in the dark, while Ilaria moved like an automaton and may as well have been human, too. Roman remembered Ilaria as a petite woman with expressive eyes and an interesting taste in clothes. All traces of the vivacious energy that she’d once had were gone. Her eyes were dead and she didn’t speak. Her clothes were utilitarian—jeans, a plain teeshirt and sneakers. Her hair lay flat, as if she might have run a comb through it and that was all. She didn’t move unless she had to and would stand with her gaze on her toes if someone did not give her a direction.
So Roman did his best to watch them both and scan the land ahead.
The Summani broke out of cover twenty feet ahead of them, on the steep upslope and far to the left, on Garrett’s side. Why it tried to move at all was a mystery. It would have been better off staying in among the thick bushes there and letting them pass by. Perhaps Marcus’ stumbling and heavy breathing unnerved it enough to want to get the hell out of there.
Because it was so high up the slope, it was over the top of Garrett. Garrett should have stepped back and let Ilaria or Marcus, who both had guns, or even Roman, who had the rifle slung over his shoulder as a fall back weapon, take the damn thing out.
Instead, the stupid fucking highlander threw himself forward and up the slope. He didn’t even draw his broadsword. Instead, he reached up with his hands.
What was he going to do? Throttle the thing?
It took Roman a second of frozen astonishment before he realized that was exactly what Garrett was going to do. As Roman fumbled for the rifle, trying to bring it around and aim at the Summani, a gun fired, the muzzle flash searing an imprint on his retinas and momentarily blinding him.
The Summani squealed in pain. The bullet had struck home. Roman suspected it was Ilaria who had fired. She was the faster of the two. He blinked furiously, trying to regain his night vision.
The colors washed out, the brightness faded. Roman could make out Garrett’s tall figure. The Summani looked like it was on top of Garrett because it had let itself fall down the slope. They were struggling, Garrett with his hands around its neck and the creature with its long fingers trying to get a grip on Garrett’s shoulders.
Roman felt ill. He had seen Summanus get a grip on one shoulder, curl their fingers around a human’s head and rip it right from the shoulder. Vampires would be just as vulnerable.
He staggered forward, trying to negotiate the slope sideways, while both Marcus and Ilaria climbed up and over to where the two were locked together. The Summani locked its arm and slashed sideways with its elbow, tearing into Garrett’s stomach. There was a soft sound of tearing cloth and Garrett gave a heavy, pain-filled gasp, yet he didn’t let go.
Marcus got to them before Roman. He didn’t try to separate them using purely human strength. Instead, showing more presence of mind that Roman suspected him capable of, he climbed up the slope, until he was higher than the Summani, put his boot behind the thin truck of a eucalyptus tree, wrapped his arms around the middle of the thing and hauled, using the tree for leverage and the power in his legs and his body weight to supplement the strength in his arms.
Ilaria climbed up until she stood level with its head, then calmly emptied her gun into the side of its head.
The creature let go of Garrett, its strength gone. It staggered back, then fell back against the slope. Marcus and Ilaria turned on the thing, almost leaping on it.
Roman grabbed Garrett, finally close enough to reach him. He yanked him back before he toppled down the slope to the road, which lay seventy feet away and far below them. Trying to stop him from rolling down the slope made Roman fall backward, too. Garrett landed on top of him, groaned and lay still.
Roman pushed him to one side and bent over him. “What the hell did you think you were doing? You should have let us take care of the fucker!”
Garrett was panting, his hand to his stomach. He grimaced in pain, then cracked one eye open to look at him. “It’s not enough I have to take your money? You’re going to fight my battles for me, too?”
Roman sat in the dirt, the strength in his legs suddenly gone. He felt winded.
Above them, Ilaria and Marcus were taking care of the Summani in ways that Roman didn’t want to see. The sound was bad enough.
Garrett groaned again.
“Jesus, Mikey,” Roman whispered. “You moronic idiot! That’s why you haven’t touched me or Kate in three days? You’re that tied up about the stupid fucking money?”
Garrett blew out a breath. “God, this hurts!” he muttered. He tried to sit up and failed.
Roman pushed him back onto the dirt. “Stay put. We’ll carry you down to the car. Hunting is over for now.” He glanced up the slope. Marcus and Ilaria were standing together, their arms around each other. “And I thought those two were going to be my biggest problem tonight.”
Chapter Nineteen
There was a garden shed on the other side of the pool house that had once contained actual garden equipment and tools. Over a week, during the day while humans slept, everyone else in the house emptied the shed and stripped it down and cleaned it. The twenty foot by twenty foot shed was explosively hot underneath the tin roof, so an air conditioner was installed in one of the windows. The walls were lined in fire-proof steel plating and rubber tiles laid on the floor.
They ordered most of the equipment on-line and it arrived in bits and pieces, from a variety of suppliers, which would not tip off any of them that a chemical lab was being built behind Patrick Sauvage’s house, even though the media still insisted on camping just outside the main gates, more convinced than ever that Patrick’s palatial estate was ground zero for all the news worthy of repeating.
“The problem is, they’re right,” Nial said, looking through the front windows as a supply van edged through the throng of reporters and in through the gates, before the guards shut them smartly behind it. “If they did know what was going on here, they’d think all their Christmases had arrived at once. I’m just glad that Patrick was famous before the war started. It means no one questions the walls and the gates and the guards.”
It took seven days for the lab to be set up to Rory’s specifications, while she worked through the formula for Pyrrhus that Garrett had retrieved from the patent, checking to make sure it was all there. She was using chemical equations she hadn’t had to deal with for over a century. It was exacting work, yet it was satisfying. Unlike theoretical physics, which supplied few concrete answers, a chemical equation was either right or wrong. She had a very simple goal, too. Make Pyrrhus, lots of it.
Rory threw herself into the work, while waiting for the lab to be completed. She also asked for at least two assistants who knew their way around a lab. Human or vampire, she didn’t care.
Nial showed her around t
he completed lab and she plugged in her laptop. While she was pulling up the single paged document with the formula, Dante and Sasha opened the newly installed fireproof door and stepped inside.
Sasha tapped Dante’s shoulder, then pointed to the tray to one side of the door. “Shoe covers,” he said and demonstrated, taking the plastic covers out and putting them over his own leather loafers.
Dante followed suit. He frowned. “I thought they were always paper, to stop tracking contamination in.”
“These are high grade plastic, so if you’re stupid enough to drip anything on your feet, you won’t lose a toe,” Sasha said.
“You’ve been in a lab before?” Rory asked.
“Meet your lab assistants,” Nial said.
Rory straightened up from the laptop with a snap. “No.” She shook her head.
“You said human or vampire, no preference,” Nial pointed out. “Sasha and Dante will forego hunting until this project is done. They’ll work all the hours you can.”
“Qualified assistants, is what I emphasized,” Rory said. “Dante wouldn’t know a beaker from a burette.”
“But I do,” Sasha said.
“You’re a spy.”
“Who once infiltrated a Persian science lab to figure out their fusion technology. I know my way around a mass spectrometer. I’m the only one in the house besides Marcus who does. Dante, at least, is willing to listen and follow directions.”
Rory shook her head again. “This won’t work—”
“Look,” Dante said, “I might not have a clue right now, only you know I’m smart enough to pick it up. Besides, if I understand what you’re doing, then once we’ve got the process down, it’s pretty much a mechanical assembly line, isn’t it?”
He had a point. Rory pressed her lips together. “Very well. With this first batch, until I know I can trust you to do what you should, neither of you gets to scratch your nose without checking with me first. Is that clear?”
“Yes ma’am,” Dante said. It was the same tone he had used when they had first met and he was introduced to the newest owner of the team.
Blood Ascendant (Blood Stone Book 5) Page 19
