“…Rory Rafferty was a ball buster way back when, anyway,” came the soft remark.
She hesitated. If she went into the kitchen, they would know she had heard them. She didn’t care much what anyone thought of her. She had learned to not care, long ago. If she cared about someone’s good or bad opinion, then she would change her behavior or herself to please them. That came perilously close to giving up her freedom and independence and that was not to be tolerated. It was better to have people misunderstand her or even hate her, than give them any control over her.
Yet, if she went into the kitchen, which would tell them she had heard, they might feel guilty, or react badly. It was easier if she just waited for them to finish.
“You knew her back then?”
“By reputation. Some German duke was making a fool of himself over her, while she dangled him and an English lord…or so I heard it.”
“Hasn’t changed her ways, has she? She’s still dangling ‘em at the end of her string. Have you ever seen two men work so fucking hard? She doesn’t even notice them.”
Rory drew in a breath, as her heart stirred by itself. She should go back to the lab. Make up some lie about changing her mind about taking a break. Wait until daylight, when the presence of humans would halt the guards’ gossip.
“You know, I think she’s making them work like that so they can’t have time to themselves.”
“They’re together?”
“For about two days. She put a stop to that right fucking quick, though, didn’t she? Now, if one’s asleep, the other is working. She couldn’t stand it, knowing they were together.”
A hand on Rory’s arm made her jump and she stifled her shriek of surprise. She had been so immersed in the conversation she had failed to notice Sasha standing behind her.
He put his hand on her other shoulder and pushed her out of the way with firm insistence, as he looked up at the kitchen doorway. The light from the kitchen fell on his face. He was furious. His eyes were glittering with anger, the brows pushed together. His jaw was tight and his mouth held in a hard line.
“Sasha, no,” she whispered quickly. “Leave it alone. People say things about me all the time. It’s not import—”
He pressed the tip of his finger to her lips, silencing her. He didn’t have to press hard. Just his touch alone, as shocking as it was, was enough to silence her. Then he shook his head. “It’s important to me,” he said very quietly. “And to Dante.”
He climbed the three steps and went into the kitchen, as Rory heard the terrible pronouncements roll on.
“…working like slaves while she doesn’t lift a finger and not a breath of a complaint from either one of them. Talk about pussy-whipped ass—fuck, where did you come from?”
Rory couldn’t stay out of it now. She bounced up into the kitchen, moving at more than human speed. She was in time to see the two guards, Efraim and Kimball, stepping backward as Sasha walked straight up to them. Just for a moment, fear flickered in Efraim’s eyes. He was a vampire, but he was a coward at heart. She had heard of him before, too.
Sasha didn’t stop. He didn’t hesitate, even though either one of them could have torn his limbs from his body if they really wanted to. He grabbed Efraim by the neck and smashed him down onto the table on his back, with a powerful overarm movement. He pinned him down, while Kimball hesitated.
Kimball glanced up and saw Rory standing there and while he didn’t quite lose all his color, for he had none to lose in the first place, he did look shocked and a little ill.
“Stay right there,” Rory told him. “Or I’ll rip your throat out.”
He licked his lips, looking to where Efraim was lying on the table, trying to babble and tug at Sasha’s hand where he had him pinned down.
“Don’t think I won’t do it, if you so much as twitch in his direction,” Rory added.
Kimball swallowed. He stayed where he was.
Sasha reached into his trouser pocket and brought out a flat silver oblong. Rory recognized it from descriptions she had heard. It was a butterfly knife. Sasha gave it a flip with the one hand and it twirled in his palm with a hissing ‘schnick’ sound as the blades moved through the air. The knife unfolded and the handles came together. Three inches of split blade gleamed in the low light.
Sasha held it up so Efraim would have a clear view of the blade. He brought it down very slowly, until the point of the blade was hovering only an inch away from the curved surface of Efraim’s eye. Efraim stared at it, mesmerized.
“You’re a vampire, so you’ll recover from just about any wound I could inflict on you. Only, there’s a thing I learned about vampires, oh, a couple of years ago. It happened because there was a tiny accident in one of the basement interrogation rooms in the old Kremlin. We discovered this very interesting thing about vampires. It’s been extremely useful to us, so all the senior officers of the GRU were taught the method.” He waggled the knife so the point wavered from one corner of Efraim’s eye to the other. “Did you know that if a rigid, sharp object is thrust deeply enough into a vampire’s brain, their human physiology is rebooted?”
Rory held her breath. The conversation was gruesome, but she could no more walk away and ignore it now than she could fly.
Sasha nodded. “It is quite true,” he said, his accent suddenly thicker, as if he was concentrating on something else instead of pronouncing words clearly. “Of course, it’s only the autonomic systems that twitch into life, just for a brief moment or two. That’s usually more than enough time. You know what a human’s autonomic systems do when a sharp, rigid object is thrust into their brainpan?”
Efraim was breathing hard. He tried to shake his head, then thought better of it.
Sasha grinned and it was a horrible expression. Just for a moment, in the low light, with his eyes glittering the way they were, he looked quite mad. “It’s very cool,” he crooned. “First they piss themselves. Then they defecate. It’s more of an expulsion of the bowels, but still, out is out. Males also ejaculate.” Sasha grinned. “All that pleasure could be yours, if you don’t listen to me very carefully now.”
“Fuck,” Kimball breathed. He sounded stressed. He hadn’t moved a muscle, per Rory’s orders.
Sasha hadn’t finished yet. He waved the point of the knife a little bit. “You might be thinking right now, well, that’s fine for humans, only vampires haven’t got anything left in their system to evacuate, so all that would happen to you would be a shiv in your brain that you’d have to gouge out later. You would be wrong.” He tapped the knife against Efraim’s cheek and Efraim flinched. “Vampires don’t have any digestive remains, it’s true. Except the pressure on your liver and kidneys is so immense and so sudden, after centuries of lying dormant, that they can’t cope. They go into stressed overload. So what you do pee is blood. Not pinkish urine, my friend. Actual blood. You will eject blood from your rectum, when your liver fails and the body tries to compensate. The pain, I’m told, is off the charts and for a vampire that hasn’t felt any real pain in a few centuries or so…well, that’s why we were all taught how to do it properly, you see. Because it’s so useful.” He waved the knife again, this time back over the eye. “In through the eye and about twelve pounds of pressure. I’m just a weak human of course. Do you think I could exert twelve pounds of downward pressure on this blade? Do you think I should try?”
Efraim moved his head from side to side, a miniscule movement.
Sasha smiled at him. “Good. Lay still then, while I finish up here. I don’t know you very well. You don’t know me very well, either, yet you feel free to make assumptions about me and that’s your prerogative. People talk. They speculate. It’s a free country, I’m told. So I am not going to concern myself about what you said about me. I’m not going to tell Dante what you said about him, either, because then you’ll just have to go through this tiresome discussion all over again.”
Rory pressed her lips together, hiding her smile. The idea of a pair of humans “explaining�
� anything to vampires was mildly laughable. Except that was exactly what Sasha was doing, right now. He was puny in comparison to even the weakest vampires and Efraim was certainly one of the those. Yet Sasha had the upper hand. He’d gained it as soon as he walked into the kitchen.
How had he done that?
He wasn’t finished with Efraim yet. “There’s just one more thing,” he said. His smile disappeared. The amusement in his eyes evaporated. His stare was cold and hard, with the warmth gone. “Rory is a lady above all else. She’s done nothing to you and therefore deserves your respect, even when she’s not around to hear it. If I hear either of you mouthing off about her again, if you even roll your eyes in her direction, then I will come at you again and next time, I will use twelve pounds of pressure. I will shove this knife into your head and wriggle it around and make you dance like a fish on a hook. For as long as I have the blade in there, you will live in a blaze of agony so intense, you’ll wish you’d never been born. Got it?”
Efraim swallowed. “Yes,” he breathed.
Sasha lifted the knife away. He patted Efraim’s cheek with his other hand and stood up. “Good boy.” He folded the knife and put it in his pocket and took Rory’s arm. “Let’s sort you out,” he said gently and led her through the kitchen, skirting Kimball, who still hadn’t moved an inch.
Rory let him take her into the big room, which was empty right now, for which she was incredibly grateful. She pulled her arm out of Sasha’s grip and turned to face him. “I didn’t know. I didn’t realize that was what I was doing. If I had, I would have…I don’t know, changed things around. Taken breaks. Something. You’re both so good at just….”
Working with me and my strange ways.
“What didn’t you know?”
Rory took a deep breath, for her heart was still stuttering in her chest, trying to start itself up despite her best efforts to contain it. “That I was keeping you apart,” she said, each word costing her a small pound of flesh, wrapped up in guilt.
Sasha smiled. “You think we wouldn’t have said something if we found it to be such a burden? The work has to be done, Rory. We’re getting it done. All other considerations are selfish and beneath notice.”
“If that is true, then you shouldn’t have done what you did just then.”
“Ah, well, I am a selfish man. He offended me, so I indulged myself.” He shrugged.
It was often Rory found herself confused and unsure about why someone had done or said something. She felt that rare bewilderment now and tried to ignore it. She could self-analyze later. “Thank you for what you did. With Efraim,” she added. “You say you did it for you, but it was kind of you, anyway.”
“It was nothing.” He headed for the stairs, moving fast. Just for a moment, Rory recalled another occasion when she had watched him climb the stairs. His back and his ass had been bare and she had found herself unable to look away from the tight, hard buttocks and the sleek muscles in his back.
He walked up the stairs the same way, now, with his shoulders square, looking ahead. Rory remained where she was, unmoving until her heart was silent once more.
It took a while.
Chapter Twenty-One
The work went on. Rory tried to schedule shifts for Dante and Sasha that would result in a few hours each day when both of them were not required in the lab. It would slow down the rate of production, although it would alleviate her guilt for not realizing what she had been doing to their lives.
Neither of them would accept the new schedule she devised.
“It’s working just fine the way it is now,” Dante said. “Why would you want to change it?” His dark gaze was steady, as he waited for an answer.
Rory couldn’t answer that without telling him what Sasha had done to Efraim. While she thought Dante should know about such an interesting facet of his current lover, she did mind him learning why Sasha had done it.
That was a novelty, the caring. She couldn’t remember the last time she hadn’t been able to detach her feelings and keep them isolated and safe. Life constantly barraged anyone, human or vampire, with remarks, insults, petty betrayals, unintentional hurtful comments, scorn, even hatred—all of them enough to ruffle feelings. Guilt, anxiety, remorse…they were horrible to experience and so she had learned to pack them away and ignore them. Most of the time, she succeeded.
Instead of directing her behavior in ways designed to illicit approval from others, she had built her own moral code and rules. Principal among those was a determination to never intentionally hurt anyone, either physically or emotionally. Perhaps that was why she was writhing with guilt now. She had hurt Dante and Sasha. Unintentionally, it was true. Yet she had inconvenienced them. They really had worked liked slaves and without a breath of complaint.
And now they refused to adjust their schedules.
Rory didn’t tell Dante what Sasha had done, in the end. She had retreated, because she didn’t want him to hear what Efraim had said. She didn’t want Dante to perhaps agree with the vampire guard.
So she swallowed her arguments and returned to the same twenty-four hour routine they had been using all along, with Dante and Sasha taking alternating sleep breaks.
They were not sleeping a full eight hours, either, which wasn’t sustainable over the long term. Rory worried about that, too. Long term sleep deprivation had serious health effects for humans. When she tried to suggest they take longer breaks, they ignored her.
Rory didn’t pursue the matter. Sleep had a way of catching up with humans whether they liked it or not. She had seen it happen before and knew that time would win her argument for her. So she waited.
The day did come when both of them were too exhausted to stand, although at first, Rory didn’t realize that was what was happening. She rarely looked at the clock or the calendar anymore. She knew it was nighttime because her innate sense of the sun’s position told her it was below the horizon. There was no light coming in the little window, either.
Dante picked up the tray of petri dishes and staggered a bit, before regaining his balance. The dishes in the tray slid together with solid little clicks and taps. He held still, looking at the tray to see what damage had occurred. “Ooops,” he murmured.
“Tap, tap, tap,” Sasha said absently. He was setting up the second still, which took careful arrangement.
“Knock, knock, knock,” Dante echoed, his tone one of agreement. He put the tray down and leaned on the edge of the bench and flexed his shoulders.
“Knock, knock,” Sasha said.
“Who’s there?” Dante’s tone was distant. It was a purely automatic response.
“Arch.”
Dante looked up, for the first time realizing what was happening. “Arch who?” he asked curiously.
“Bless you.” Sasha didn’t look up from setting up the Bunsen burner.
Dante rolled his eyes.
Rory shook her head and got back to work.
A few minutes later, Dante said softly. “Knock. Knock.”
After a moment, Sasha said, “Who’s there?”
“Bless.”
“Bless who?”
Dante shrugged. “Well, I didn’t sneeze.”
Sasha looked up at the ceiling and clicked his tongue, while Dante chuckled softly to himself. Then Dante shook it off and got back to work, resetting the petri dishes.
“Knock. Knock,” Sasha said softly.
“Who’s there?”
“Opportunity.”
“Opportunity who?”
Sasha glanced over his shoulder. “Don’t be stupid. Opportunity only knocks once.”
Dante bent his head, laughing in big, silent guffaws, while Sasha grinned.
Then Dante straightened up. “Knock. Knock.”
“Who’s there?”
“Wurlitzer.”
“What the fuck is Wurlitzer?” Sasha said.
“Just say it.”
“Wurlitzer who?”
Dante lifted his hand to his mouth, as if he w
as holding a microphone. “Wurlitzer one for the money, two for the show, three to get ready—”
Sasha’s face lit up. “Now go, cat go!” he sang, in a pretty good Elvis impersonation, if Rory ignored the accent.
The two of them sang into invisible mics, their voices lifting. “But don’t you, step on my blue suede shoes. You can do anything, but stay off of my blue suede shoes!!!”
Dante did a perfect Elvis bump and grind and Rory gritted her teeth together to stop from braying with laughter.
Dante and Sasha bent over, holding their sides and bellies, as they laughed. Then they turned back to their benches, their backs to each other.
The silence lasted perhaps two seconds.
“Knock. Knock,” Dante declared.
“Who’s there?”
“Cowsgo.”
“Cowsgo who?”
Dante shook his head. “Nope. Cowsgo moooo!”
They both cracked up. Sasha hung onto the bench, his shoulders shaking. He drew in an enormous breath, then, “Knock, Knock!”
“Who’s there?”
“Interrupting cow.”
Dante shook his head, puzzled. “Interupt—”
Sasha whirled to look at him. “Moooo!” he said loudly.
Dante bent over from the waist, holding himself up with his hands on his knees, as laughter exploded from him. He gripped the edge of the bench and straightened up, shaking with merriment. “Why did the chicken cross the road?”
Sasha’s eyes were shining. “The vodka is better over here?”
“To get to the idiot’s house,” Dante corrected him.
“The idiot had the better vodka?”
Dante gusted out another whoop. “Knock. Knock.” He had to take two breaths to get it out.
“Who’s there?”
“The chicken!” Dante shouted.
Both of them almost collapsed with laugher, panting with it.
Rory watched them, unable to help smiling at the pure silliness of it.
Blood Ascendant (Blood Stone Book 5) Page 21
