“Why not?” Winter asked curiously.
“It sours the blood,” Rick said flatly.
Winter drew back, her nose wrinkling. “Adrenaline,” she said. “That’s what would sour it.” She tilted her head. “Why ‘narish’? Where does that come from?”
“It’s a corruption of ‘nourish’,” Sebastian said. He was still standing at the big table. He was holding the completed pistol. He was actually leaning on it, his hand around the grip and the barrel pressed against the MDF. Rick assumed it was loaded. Did he hold it for security?
But Sebastian was displaying his geek skills by giving Winter a full etymology of the word, its origins and more. Rick tuned the sound of his voice out and returned to the delicious puzzle once more.
He would need to search through his indexed files to confirm Sushi’s status as a narish was still current, but if it was then…oh, the possibilities! Of course Sushi would not have indulged in a speedball. One of the roles of a narish was to keep their blood pure and clean of toxins. That was why they were clothed and fed and pampered, to help ensure they were receiving proper nutrition and their health was at its peak.
And Turkey…! Turkey had popped up too often of late for it to be a coincidence. He would have to consider the possibilities it held, when slotted in with Sushi’s death.
Then there was Nial’s and Winter’s shooting last summer, on the movie set. That set the whole puzzle on the table and primed it. The ramifications were endless and they would all have to be explored. The deep up swell of pleasure and excitement caught and lifted him again. His heart began to thud, as it did when a tantalizing mystery presented itself.
He felt the warmth of the metal door handle under his fingers and looked around. He was standing by his car, the keys in his hand, the other hand on the door. He had walked through the house and out to his car purely on automatic.
Rick looked up at the house, the curved terracotta roof tiles looking inviting and homelike. He hadn’t said goodbye. Very well, they’d have to chalk that up as one more black blot on his copybook.
Chapter Two
Sebastian slid the gun onto the table and stalked over to the big round couch. “Christ, that guy gets my goat!”
“We noticed,” Winter replied.
“He just walked out of here, his nose in the air and didn’t say a freaking word!”
“We noticed,” Winter repeated, with a smile.
Sebastian threw himself onto the cushions, trying to swallow his grumpiness. “Walking around with his head in the clouds. Do you realize how many times he goes into that same daze, staring off into middle distance? He’s a fucking machine,” he complained.
Nial shifted across the inches between them, so he was sitting next to him. “On the contrary, he was excited.”
“That’s how he shows excitement?” Sebastian wrinkled his nose. “You’d need the world’s most powerful seismograph to pick up when his expression changes by a micrometer.”
“Really, Nial?” Winter questioned. “What was he excited about?”
“I gave him a clue, something that triggered his memory. He’s gone off to think about it. Rick will come up with a completely off-the-wall guess about what is happening with the League in a day or two. You’ve seen him do it before, although just now was a bit extreme.”
“Usually he just sits there,” Winter agreed, “and he’ll murmur something vague when you speak to him. But he wasn’t hearing you at all, Nial. He just got up and walked out.”
“Like I said,” Sebastian added. He turned his head to look at Nial. “And why on earth would you let the creep in down here? We have all the gear out and in the open, and now he knows the room is here.”
“I guarantee he had already figured out about the basement for himself,” Nial returned.
“I don’t trust him,” Sebastian growled. “He was pretending to be Heru’s familiar and second in charge for how long? Or was he really pretending at all?”
“It’s a risk that we were told we had to take, remember?” Nial replied calmly. “Besides, I trust him.”
Astonishment rippled through Sebastian. “Why would you do that? He’s done absolutely nothing to prove himself.”
Nial smiled and it was that knowing, wise smile of his that always reminded Sebastian of exactly how old he was. “One, my lover: In the last year Rick has not led Heru to us, which he would have if he had really been Heru’s creature.”
“Give him time,” Sebastian growled.
Winter giggled.
“Two,” Nial continued. He picked up Sebastian’s hand. “His diatribe just then about how we’re all doomed confirms yet again that he is helping us for purely selfless reasons that he couldn’t possibly have if he was Heru’s.”
Sebastian sighed. He couldn’t dispute either point. “You mean, he’s doing this because Kurshid asked him to?”
“Exactly.” Nial pulled on his arm, drawing him closer. “Rick has a soft spot for Kurshid which is not bad for an inhuman machine, wouldn’t you say?”
Sebastian grimaced. “Okay, fine. I’ll give the bastard more time to hang himself with. Happy?”
“Not yet,” Nial replied. “You’re all wound up. That’s not a good mental state to have when you’re about to do what you’re going to do tonight. So we need to loosen you up.” He glanced at Winter. “Come and take his shirt off. I’ll work on the rest.”
Winter slithered around the cushions until she was next to him, a smile on her lips and hunger in her eyes. She swiftly unfastened the buttons on his shirt while Nial moved in front of him and hauled on his knees, so that Sebastian was almost lying on the couch. Winter slipped his shirt off as he slid down the back of the cushions. He swallowed as Nial opened his jeans and tugged them off. His cock was already rising, his balls tightening.
“Winter, you look after his cock,” Nial ordered. He unbuckled his own trousers. “I’ll look after this.”
Winter’s hot, moist lips circled his cock and he felt the feather touch of her tongue and his hips lifted.
Nial spread his knees, his hands sliding along his thighs, and Sebastian let his head fall back with a deep, hearty groan. Yes, he was absolutely uptight. He was going to need all sorts of relaxation before they left.
Lots of it.
* * * * *
The afternoon started rocky and bounced downhill from there.
Marcus had jog-trotted to the building where McLaren and his team had set up their coordination office. Right there he got his first sign that the day wasn’t going to end on a pleasant note. Security for the building held him up, when normally he just had to show his pass and walk through.
“What the hell?” Marcus bitched. “You guys know me.”
The guard’s mouth grew even thinner, which Marcus didn’t think was possible. “New security procedures. This won’t take a minute, then next time you’ll be processed that much faster.”
“Christ, I’m only here every three months or so.” He sighed heavily.
“Are you armed, sir?” the guard asked, his gaze flicking over Marcus from his joggers, on up over his jeans, to the half-zipped windbreaker over the top of his Harley Davidson tee-shirt. His gaze touched on Marcus’ hair, then came back to his face. “Should I repeat the question, sir?”
Marcus hesitated, glancing around. There were too many people standing too close for him to answer frankly. “Look,” he tried. “Lemme call upstairs and get someone to come down and vouch for me. Will that satisfy you?”
It had taken five very long minutes before the rent-a-cop allowed that calling for verification wouldn’t disturb his new procedure, so Marcus was fuming by the time he picked up the guy’s phone and dialed from memory.
It felt like another ice-age lapsed while he waited for someone to answer. The phone rang and rang. Finally, someone fumbled the phone and barked into it; “Frank, we’re kinda busy up here.”
“Is Frank the uniform?” Marcus asked. “Because the sphincter muscle won’t let me through. Wann
a come down here and tell them I’m harmless?”
“Anderson?”
“In the flesh,” Marcus confirmed.
There was a five second pause. Marcus listened to the soft sounds of talking in the background. Keyboards rattling. What the fuck? he wondered.
“Today isn’t a good day, Anderson. Go home.”
“Wait just a fucking minute,” Marcus shot back, before the call was disconnected. “Is that Clarke?”
“Yeah. So?”
Marcus had never liked Clarke and the man knew it, because Marcus had described in his report in blunt words how Clarke had royally fucked up in Tangiers. Now it was on Clarke’s record. In the two years since, Clarke had gone out of his way to screw Marcus over whenever he could get away with it. Now was apparently going to be one of those times.
Marcus squeezed the phone, pressing it against his ear. “You have to vouch for me. I have news that can’t be shared from down here.” He looked around. Frank was standing three yards away, pretending to be busy reading a clipboard, his head conveniently cocked at just the right angle to listen in.
“I told you—”
“No, I’m telling you, brainwipe. Come and let me through.”
“Not happening, Anderson.”
Marcus took a breath. He turned his shoulder to muffle at least some of what he said. “I had a sniper take a shot at me, forty minutes ago. If you don’t come down here and smooth Frank over so I can by-pass the screening, then I’m going to find a way to make your life such a misery you’ll wish you’d never gone to fucking Tangiers.”
“I’m already there, you bum.” The line went dead.
“Shit, damn, fuck, piss and alley cats,” Marcus muttered. He considered his options. There was one other avenue, but it was not a casual-use option.
He heard again, in his mind, the high-pitched whizz of the bullet. The back of his neck crawled, the hairs lifting. Two inches to the left and he wouldn’t be standing here.
He pulled his cellphone out and thumbed through the contacts, looking for the number he had never used. Then he hit the dial button and waited.
The phone rang out, and an impersonal, non-identifying default voicemail message started. Marcus disconnected and dialed again. It took two more repetitions before the phone was answered in person.
“Who is this?” McLaren demanded.
“Marcus Anderson. I’m in the lobby. I need a waiver to get past these goons down here. I have news.”
“It had better be world-breaking news, Anderson. Give your phone to Frank.”
Frank was red in the face. He’d heard the goon comment. Serves him right for eavesdropping. Marcus held his phone out toward him. “This is my pass,” he said.
Frank held the phone up to his ear. “Security,” he said. Then he listened for perhaps thirty seconds. His jaw rippled. “Okay,” he finished and handed the phone back. He didn’t look any happier as he opened up the swing door in the barrier. “Go about your business,” he told Marcus.
Marcus gave him a friendly smile as he stepped through. Three minutes later he stepped off the elevator on the sixteenth floor, already taking out his ID and his gun. The receptionist at the end of the foyer was watching him approach. The kid looked like he was fresh out of college, but Marcus knew that was deceptive. He sat behind a normal reception desk with a fictitious company name and logo on the wall behind. There was a door that led further into the office suite, but it was closed and one had to walk right past the receptionist to reach it.
Marcus held up his ID. “McLaren is expecting me,” he added.
The receptionist, who was a fully-fledged member of the agency and quite capable of tackling two or three grown men and subduing them, spun a clipboard around to face Marcus. “Sign in, thanks.”
He signed and handed over his weapon. “Where is he?”
“Everyone is in the control room.” The receptionist pressed the button that unlocked the door, preventing Marcus from following up on that surprising statement. Marcus pushed through the door and let it swing closed behind him. Everyone was in the mosh pit? Why? What warranted such a large scale scramble of personnel?
He skirted empty desks, their computer monitors darkened, and headed down the corridor to the reinforced security door. There was a heavily tinted window in the door, and the pane was reinforced with steel filaments. Marcus knocked on the window. It was easier to see out through the door than catch a glimpse of what was happening inside.
The door unlocked with a heavy thud of steel bolts, then swung open. McLaren stood on the other side. He was in his mid-thirties and was a political player, which explained why he had risen so far so fast. McLaren had done his minimum amount of field time, then moved onto the promotion fast track. He looked like he spent all his time in an office, too. He was overweight by a good thirty pounds and his skin was pale from lack of sun. His eyes had the beginnings of bags beneath them.
Marcus didn’t feel envious, even though he was a couple of years older than McLaren. The political bullshit was not his thing.
McLaren stepped aside so Marcus could enter. “What is the emergency?” he demanded.
Marcus glanced around and confirmed that just about everyone he knew from this branch was here. The absentees would be those on assignment or off shift for one reason or another.
The control room – the mosh pit, as it was known – was small. Add in a ton of computers and big wall-mounted monitors everywhere, computer servers and wiring, and the desks they sat on, and there wasn’t a lot of room left for people. Chairs were at a minimum. Most everyone stood, which was how the room got its name. An event like this one, that demanded full turn out of personnel, meant everyone was jostling shoulders.
There were so many monitors and screens that despite the lack of standard illumination, the room was filled with an opalescent glow from all the back-lighting.
Clark stood in front of a computer monitor and keyboard. He was a chinless man with buck teeth, which helped him look unassuming in a crowd. It also hid that he was a prick. Clark was manning the station. As Marcus’ gaze reached him, he scowled, the expression revealing his big front teeth, then turned back to his screen.
“What’s the panic?” Marcus asked McLaren, then realized he had repeated McLaren’s question to him.
McLaren scowled. “Nothing you as a handler need to know about.”
“The entire fucking office comes to a standstill, to the point where lug-nuts over there gets in on the operation, and I don’t need to know? What am I missing here?”
“Yours is not the only unit coordinated from this office,” McLaren said carefully, after glancing at Clarke. He had to lift his voice over the background chatter coming from both the computers, hands-free phones and conference phones, and everyone else in the room.
Marcus frowned, considering the implications. There were two units that McLaren directed. Marcus’ unit had three asset coordinators, including himself. It was low maintenance – nothing happened with the assets without CIA say-so. Most of their day to day work was arranging for the assets under their control to check in regularly, to keep tabs on them.
The other unit was the one everyone called the fangs unit when they thought no one up the ladder was around to hear. It was an almost invisible operation – everyone liked to pretend it didn’t exist because the objectives of the unit were the stuff of fantasy. The Vampire Monitoring Unit was the official name.
Marcus didn’t joke about it. He didn’t think vampires were a fantasy—not if they had set up a unit to deal with them. The CIA was a consummate intelligence gathering machine. If they thought vampires were real, then Marcus believed them. But he didn’t have to like it.
He nodded toward the screens. “Some vampire stole the key to Fort Knox? Or did he just walk through the walls?”
McLaren rolled his eyes. “Vampires can’t walk through walls.”
“They’re not supposed to be able walk around in daylight, either, but we got that one wrong, didn’t we?�
�� Marcus shot back. He was not a member of the unit – thank Christ! – but he had picked up more than a handful of snippets just standing around in the office, plus a whole lot more from Kate Lindenstream, one of the branch’s assets.
McLaren shook his head as if Marcus was beyond redemption. Then he jerked his chin toward the monitors. “The body of an American called Suresh Harris was found in a Tarlabaşı tenement, his brains blown out by a speedball.”
“I didn’t know vampires could do drugs,” Marcus replied, as the images flashing on the screens began to make sense. Then he corrected himself. “No, wait. He has to be human. Vampires do that crumbling thing when they die.” He looked at McLaren. “Who’s he linked to?”
“Harris was a known associate of a man – a vampire – called Dan Wilson. A close associate.”
“So a friend of a vampire curls up his toes in Turkey. So what? That doesn’t call for this circus.”
McLaren’s face acquired the hard look that told Marcus he’d reached the end of his free information. “I told you this much because you’ve been useful to the unit from time to time, with the data you bring back from that movie star and her friends. But that gets you only this far.”
“She’s a director, not a movie star.”
“It’s Hollywood. Who gives a bent nickel?” McLaren crossed his arms. “Now, what’s this about a shooting?”
Marcus verbally walked him through the mock attempt.
McLaren’s brows came together as Marcus finished up. “That’s what you call an emergency?”
“I didn’t say it was an emergency. You said it had better be one. Well, it’s not. Not exactly. But this is unprecedented. I haven’t been in the field for over two years. There’s no earthly reason for anyone to take a shot at me, especially this dummy shot designed to miss. I think it was a message.”
“It could have been a kid with a bb gun. Fuck, Anderson. For all I know, you could be making the entire thing up just to look like you have a role here.”
Marcus held his teeth together until he knew he could answer civilly. He opened his mouth, but McLaren held up his hand. “No,” he said. “I have higher priorities than this juvenile crap.” He turned his head. “Margo!”
Blood Unleashed (Blood Stone) Page 3
