The memory leapt into her mind, clear and fresh as if it had just happened. A sense/vision of Ryan’s hard body pressed against hers, holding her against a cold wall. Shielding her, while dark shadows moved amongst the inky black of a darker night. The vampire patrols that had been a part of the early Censure years had created more fear amongst humankind than vampires ever had…and more misery and true death for vampires, too. “They caught me by surprise,” she had whispered to Ryan, by way of apology.
“Beidh mé i gcónaí anseo ar do shon, mo Nia álainn,” he had murmured, turning her face into his chest to hide its paleness from the patrolling censure enforcers.
Nayara hadn’t understood his whispered words then, but she had memorized them. It had only taken a year to learn Irish and what a vampire learns they never forgot.
“I will always be here for you, my lovely Nia.”
But Ryan never again used Salathiel’s name for her…until now.
Nayara held out her hand. “Ryan…don’t go.”
He hesitated. She could see him pause. His gaze roamed over her face, as if he were trying to unearth something hidden to him. Then it fell to her throat and away. “Ezra needs help,” Ryan said shortly. “I’ll be back when he’s safe.” He turned and walked away, heading for the wardrobe compartment.
* * * * *
Sitting high enough to be occasionally hidden by clouds and tucked deep inside a fold of the Scottish highlands, the half-built remains had the virtue of being one of the most remote in Scotland. The stone construction had begun life as a monastery, but the building had never been completed. The good brothers had abandoned it in favour of a site in northern England, where the politics were more stable.
It was here that Rob’s woman and unborn babe were brought and it was here that Rob was truly acquainted with the facts of Natália’s life.
It began with the building. There was an extended cellar system in place and some solid rooms above it. In the most distant and hardest to reach cellar, Christian had planted a device that wrote figures in light, marking time. The concept of tracking actual minutes and hours was novel enough to Rob, let alone the device that marked it.
“There is a lot you are going to have to simply accept,” Christian had told him in his clear and proper Scots. “Natália doesn’t have time for us to be coy or discreet. Besides, the things you will experience in the next few months would take more than your lifetime to explain, anyway.”
The novelty of the atomic clock, as Christian had named it, swiftly fled as people began appearing out of that cellar. More and more of them, carrying equipment that Rob could not begin to name…until he spotted a hammer amongst the more bizarre tools.
In two days the modern construction crew had built a solid roof over the half-built rooms above the cellars. It had the virtue of looking authentic to Rob’s eyes, but was utterly waterproof. “And likely to outlast the stone it’s protecting,” Christian said, translating the words of the head of the building crew, as the man had assessed his work with evident satisfaction.
The work crew had wended their way into a different cellar after that and not returned. In their place came more of Natália’s people. These ones she knew and welcomed as friends in her strange tongue, her face lighting with happiness.
That had given Rob pause. He’d barely spared thought for Natália’s people even when he’d thought them to be folk of his own time. Natália was simply there. His.
But these men and women all greeted her in genuine friendship.
“These people are my family, Rob,” she told him. “They are not kin the way you measure it, but we have lived and worked together for many years. They would have happily paid your ransom, if they had known about it.”
Natália’s people began to furnish the rooms and cellars with luxuries beyond Rob’s wildest imagination. The rooms were cleaned to the point of sterility and turned into soft, well-lit, warm cocoons completely sheltered from the weather outside.
“This is how you live, in your time?” Rob asked, looking at the long table that was being prepared for a meal. There was enough food to feed a family of four for nearly a month.
“Not exactly,” Natália said and hesitated.
“What is it?”
Natália glanced at Christian, who had paused from his activities in the kitchen area to study them both. He had heard the question, too. Rob’s heart began to race, for there was pity in Christian’s glance.
“What is it ye keep from me?” he demanded of Natália.
She laid her warm, small hand on his cheek. “Rob, my love, I hold very little back from you and what I do is for very good reasons. But there is so much to tell you. So very much to tell and so little time, that I must pick and choose amongst a thousand facts. I…don’t know where to start.”
He caught her hand in his and held it. “Then start with this. Tell me why this is not how you live at home.”
Her eyes glistened with tears. “This is my home. For now.”
“Tell me,” he insisted.
Christian spoke quickly in their native tongue. But Rob had been listening carefully for many days now and caught a few words he knew. They were enough to alarm him.
“Why should I be afraid of Natália?” he demanded.
Again, the two of them glanced at each other.
Christian put down the knife he had been using to chop the strange food he called vegetables, yet were unlike any such vegetables Rob had ever seen. “I didn’t say you would be afraid. I said you had no reason to be afraid of us, because you have never heard of vampires and don’t know their history.”
“You are…vampires?”
“Not here,” Natália said swiftly, reassuringly. “Here in this time, we are very human.”
He laid his hand on her belly, which even now was beginning to round out. “You can be naught else,” he said roughly.
Abruptly, the tears in her eyes swelled and rolled down her cheeks. “So much to explain,” she whispered.
The words were hard to say, but Rob forced himself to them. “Ye are scaring me, Tally.”
She brushed her tears away and took a breath. “Damn, but I seem to weep at the drop of a hat.”
“The babe does that,” Rob said with calm authority, even though his heart was pounding. “Please, Tally. Explain to me why I bargained with my cousin for a release from his army and brought you to this place where no other man will ever venture? Why should ‘vampire’ fill me with fear?”
She took a deep breath. “I will tell you.” And she did.
Christian continued to prepare the meal he was making. He did not seem to find the chore a demeaning one unfit for a man. He seemed more adept at handling food than Tally, whom Rob thought would have had more practice.
As Tally told her tale, Christian occasionally interjected with comments and observations, or to supply facts as Tally needed them, as she painted for Rob a most incredible fairy tale…only this one was true. Rob knew it was true because he had seen, more than once now, Christian’s ability to move through space. He knew, too, that Christian and Tally could talk to each other with their minds, although they found it tiring to do so.
If those things were true, then the fairy tale about vampires must surely be true.
Just as the facts about their future home had to be true. Rob had seen people come and go from nowhere in the cellars and the degree of comfort and luxury in these rooms spoke of science and knowledge far, far beyond anything known in his world.
It had to be true, then. Vampires, these creatures that mankind would come to know and dread, really existed. Christian and Tally were both vampires.
“It is because we are vampire that we can travel through time” Tally explained. “We have such long memories, you see. And it is because our memories are so perfect, that we can remember a time in our past well enough to jump back to it. Humans have imperfect memories.”
“And such short ones,” Christian added.
“How long a memory do ye
have?” Rob asked. “How old are ye?”
Tally pressed her lips together. Then she sighed. “Using the calendar you know, Rob, I was born in 1695, in a country called Romania, far to the east of here.”
Rob looked at Christian.
“1859,” Christian said. “The country where I was born doesn’t exist right now.”
Rob drew in a breath and wasn’t surprised to find he was trembling. “That doesn’t tell me how old ye are.”
“I’m as old as you are,” Christian said. “I was made when I was twenty-eight. I figure you’re about that age, too.”
“I’m older than ye, but not by much,” Rob said. “And only if we’re counting human years. Ye’ve lived more years than that, though, haven’t ye?”
“If you want to call it living,” Christian replied, putting down the knife.
“Lee,” Tally said softly. “Not now.”
Rob looked at the both of them, puzzling it out. “Then there’s a downside to living forever. I suspected it would come at a price.”
“Oh yes, there’s a price,” Christian agreed, his voice low and harsh.
Tally stood up. “Enough,” she said sharply. “Lee, finish the meal. Rob, I’d like to take a walk.”
Rob stood, too. “No,” he flatly. “Tell me the rest. Tell me what it is that is worrying you, Tally. What is it about your nature that sends you into a panic every time you think about it?”
She shook her head, her face pale. “Not now. Please, Rob.”
“You won’t put him off now, Tally,” Christian said, his voice back to its soft-spoken norm. “He’s suspicious. And he’s dogged.”
Rob turned to Christian. “So ye tell me what Tally will not.”
Christian put the knife down again. “Tally’s baby. Your baby. It must go back with us once it is born. But it will have Tally’s vampire blood…her symbiot…in its veins.”
Rob frowned at the odd words and strange concepts and Christian held up his hand. “You must learn a thousand years of biology as you go, Rob.”
Rob nodded. “This—symbiot—is what makes you vampire?”
“Yes. When we come back in time, it goes into stasis. It goes to sleep. And we become human again.” Christian held out his hand where a small nick showed red. “We bleed and can be killed, just like a human. Tally can get pregnant, just like a human. Human babies, when they are born, carry their mother’s blood for the first few weeks, before they start to create their own.”
“And Tally is vampire,” Rob murmured. “With the symbiot.” Fear touched him. “What will happen to the babe when you return?”
Christian took a deep breath. “We don’t know,” he said flatly. “This has never happened to one of us before. We just don’t know.”
Rob turned to Tally. She was weeping, her face wet with tears.
“It’ll be alright, love,” he lied and took her into his arms.
Over Tally’s head, he caught Christian’s gaze. The man’s expression was wretched and Rob remembered that Christian and Tally had a history of their own, one that was informal, but complicated. How did Christian feel about Tally being in another man’s arms and pregnant—a gift that no vampire could ever give her?
* * * * *
Paris in 1781 was a grimy, perilous place to be. Ryan and Ophelia had been there a week before they caught scent of Ezra and his companion, Cáel Lawrence Stelios.
Dressed as merchant-class citizens, they had hovered around the entrance to the Palais du Louvre, changing clothes and their appearance as much as possible, but Ophelia always carried a reticule that was bright neon pink, with the stylized flag of the Worlds Assembly clearly marked on the front of it.
On the Sunday morning, when the poor lined the street to watch the Royal Family travel to church, hoping for a livre or two to be scattered from the carriages, they were approached by a hunched over, dirty man that smelled worse than most.
“Do you have a coin to spare, Monsieur?” he asked, in heavily accented French. “I have not eaten in a week.”
Ryan wrinkled his nose. “Or slept in a bed, either, I’m guessing,” he said quietly in English. “Stable, was it? Or pig sty?”
The man took a deep, shuddering breath. “Who are you?” he whispered, also in English. “Why does your lady carry such a purse?”
Ophelia displayed the purse so he could better see the symbol. “You like this decoration?” she asked.
“I know it,” he sighed.
“Cáel Stelios?” Ryan asked.
The man’s face rippled, as deep relief showed. For a moment Ryan thought he might cry. His eyes shone with unshed tears as he cleared his throat. “Thank god,” he said hoarsely. “I thought I was marooned in this terrible place.” There was nothing of the overbearing, rich and influential man left in him. Two weeks alone here, as a stranger with an English accent, would have provided him many life lessons he could not avoid by throwing money at them.
“Where is Ezra, your traveller?” Ophelia asked him.
“I can take you to him. But then you take me home, right?”
“First, let us see Ezra and we’ll strategize from there,” Ryan told him.
* * * * *
The pig sty was off to the side, but enough of the stench seeped through the rough wooden walls to make the first few minutes in the tiny, dark lumber room almost unbearable. Finally, Ryan’s senses adjusted to the onslaught and he could see into the back of the room. “Ezra?” he asked.
A low, agony-filled moan was his answer.
He moved forward.
“Watch, there’s a stool there,” Stelios called.
“I can see it,” Ryan assured him, concentrating on the bundled of rags at the back of the room, lying upon a pile of hay. Stelios had clearly done what he could for him.
“Ezra,” Ophelia called, slipping past Ryan to drop down by the bundle and gently turn it over.
The sight that greeted them caught at Ryan’s chest. The Ezra he had known had been tall, energetic and enthusiastic about his work, about history and the rights of vampires. Ezra had been passionate about life—any life—and his constant arguments with his sister had been the stuff of legend at the agency.
He would argue no more. His eyes rolled in his head and his skin was already showing the parched, crackling signs of advanced stasis poisoning. As Ophelia touched his shoulder, there was a dry sound, like cracking ice. She pulled her hand away and looked at Ryan with horror. She knew, then, that Ezra was beyond help.
Stelios crouched down with them. “I thought you people couldn’t get sick,” he said hoarsely. “I thought you lived forever.”
“When did this start to happen?” Ryan asked him.
“About the third day we were here, on the crossing from England. He didn’t seem himself. Whacked out, like he was on scratch acid or something. Then he’d snap back in. I asked him what was wrong and he didn’t believe me when I told him what he’d been doing. The talking to himself, that stuff. He insisted I get my tour, because I’d paid for it…” Stelios hesitated, dropped his chin. “I didn’t think demanding it would do something like this.”
“Most humans misunderstand us,” Ophelia said coolly.
“Then why don’t you tell people about yourselves more?” Stelios snapped back. “You stayed locked up in that goddam station of yours, keeping to yourselves…” He stopped and took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. This isn’t the place for it.” And he glanced at what was left of Ezra again.
Guilt was eating the man alive, Ryan realized. He got to his feet. “We brought things with us, including local money, so we can get you some food. Ophelia has some freeze-dried instant meals in her purse, so you don’t have to wait until I get back.”
“Where are you going?” Stelios cried, alarmed at being left behind.
“To where we hid the backpack. I will be back.”
Ezra began to convulse and as he moved he cried out in a strangled voice. The movement of his disintegrating body would have caused agony that had
quite literally driven him beyond reason.
“Hurry, Ryan,” Ophelia said and he could hear the despair in her voice.
Chapter Eight
Tally tried to relax as the pressure cuff tightened around her arm. Lee’s eyes were on the old fashioned fob watch in his hand, though. His fingers on her pulse were cool and indifferent.
The pressure cuff released.
“Your blood pressure is a little high. Nothing too alarming,” Lee pronounced. “But some exercise might help.”
Rob shifted on his feet. “I can think of some exercise, sure enough.”
Tally caught Lee’s gaze and could feel herself blushing, as Lee’s brow lifted in silent comment. Lee straightened up, pocketing the watch and rolling up the cuff. “Exercise is exercise,” he said, in his soft drawl. “I’m not an ob-gyn, but Tally is in her first trimester, so sex is still perfectly safe.”
Rob scowled. “It is, is it? And when might I enjoy such a pleasure with my wife?”
Lee glanced at Tally. “That’s between you and Tally, I imagine.”
“No, it bloody well isn’t!” Rob exploded. He took three steps forward, so that he was face to face with Lee. Tally realized with a jolt that Rob was almost exactly the same height as Lee. It was just that Rob’s width—his shoulders—made him seem shorter.
Rob was angry now. This anger, she saw, had been building for a while. “Between you and the rest of your fancy doctors and specialists and cooks and o.b. genies and friends and everyone else who appears out of nowhere to pat Tally on the head or rub her belly and assure themselves she’s just fine, I haven’t been able to take my wife in my arms for a bloody week,” Rob growled. “And she’s my wife.”
Lee put the cuff on the table. He didn’t back away. “All these experts are necessary,” he replied evenly. “Nothing like this has ever happened in our history. For Tally’s sake, for the baby’s sake—”
“And what about for my sake?” Rob demanded.
Lee made no answer.
Rob nodded. “I thought so,” he said.
“It’s not meant like that,” Lee said quickly.
Bannockburn Binding (Beloved Bloody Time) Page 8
