Cristos cleared his throat, and Roz blushed. Staring at the man who’d spent the last two nights with her wasn’t the best way to start a new job. Fuck.
She looked away hurriedly, ignoring Andreas’s low chuckle.
The door opened to admit a couple, but unlike Roz and Andreas, their body language gave no indication of any personal entanglements. The girl was much too young, Roz would guess about sixteen or so, and the man she knew.
Fabrice Germain, the virgin Sorcerer.
In the nightclub, she hadn’t been close enough to see his eyes properly. Now she was. When he lifted his head, still smiling, and met her gaze, the sheer power in the startling blue irises knocked her back on her heels. This man was a human with awesome powers. He would live a mortal lifespan, but it was hard to believe that power that strong would last longer than seventy years without burning out the body that held it. Control must be incredibly difficult.
“Yes, it is.” The voice whispered into the depths of her mind, and she knew she couldn’t hold any barriers against this man. She’d find it pointless to try.
So she smiled, as if accustomed to being in the presence of such legendary creatures, and turned her attention to the girl.
Who wasn’t paying her any attention at all. The girl’s smile broadened, and she launched herself forward into Andreas’s waiting arms. Suppressing her pang of jealousy with difficulty, Roz watched the encounter.
Clearly Andreas saw this girl as a sister or a daughter, even. And Andreas must be young, if Cristos found him at fourteen. A younger lover tickled her fancy. Not for the first time, either.
Andreas patted the girl’s back, chuckling, and eased her away so he could look down into her face. “How have you been, Ellie?”
“Peachy,” she answered. Dressed in jeans and a T-shirt with Sexy grrl emblazoned on the front, she looked like any healthy teenager Roz could have passed in the street. Except she wouldn’t be here if that were the case. Pretty, with a slim figure verging on skinny, short, dark hair, and brown eyes, Ellie seemed bursting with life and happiness.
Andreas drew her away and glanced at Roz, an edge of anxiety in his expression. It warmed her, that slight worry, as though her opinion really mattered to him. “This is Ellie,” he said, rather unnecessarily. “She’s under my care for the time being. The same thing happened to her that happened to me.”
A world of understanding passed between them, all in one sentence. Ellie was a vampire, then, and one with no sigil. To be certain, Roz looked in the place where she’d expect to find the sigil in a vampire’s brain. Nothing, just a blank wall. Not even a scar.
“Laurie found her on the streets. That’s Laurie Friedland. A European soccer star.” Ah yes, she recalled now from the pictures Knox had shown them. The last footballer she’d taken any notice of was Stanley Matthews, a lifetime ago. Oh yes, and the gorgeous David Beckham. Dredging her memory, she remembered another good-looking blond man whose posters had been all over the newsstands recently. His name, Laurie Friedland. Yes, that was it. She had heard of him after all. “He’s a Talent?”
“Yes, he is.”
So Ellie was another vampire orphan. Before she’d met Andreas, she hadn’t known they existed. Now she’d met two. “Ellie Smith,” Andreas said, stepping back. “Meet Roz Templeton.”
“Vampire,” Roz added, naming her Talent for the newcomers. “Pleased to meet you, Ellie.”
Ellie regarded her frankly, studying her with interest, so Roz noticed when the shadow fell over her eyes. Precisely at the moment when Andreas moved closer and touched Roz’s hand, murmuring, “You okay?”
“Fine,” she managed, maintaining her smile.
Ellie’s smile didn’t waver, but her gaze sharpened. “Hey, you coming to Jenna’s exhibition tonight?”
When Andreas raised his brow, she flung her hands in the air in a gesture of exasperation. “You know, my friend Jenna! We work at the same gallery.”
Andreas frowned. “You work? What about school?”
“Part-time, you idiot!” Ellie didn’t seem to have the respect for Andreas she should have for a father figure. Perhaps she saw him more as an elder brother. “It’s Jenna’s first exhibition tonight. The gallery finally took a chance on her. Oh, you have to come, please!”
“Of course I will.” He glanced down at Roz. “Do you want to come?”
She’d rather have him to herself, but she couldn’t come between Andreas and this girl. Ellie obviously cared for him a great deal, and she could feel the warmth in Andreas’s mind when he thought of her. No, she wasn’t jealous. Truly she wasn’t. “Sure.”
Ellie left, after bussing Cristos and Andreas and slanting her a considering look. To Roz’s relief, she didn’t subject her to the same boisterous treatment. Then they got down to business. Unlike Bernard Knox, Cristos didn’t lead them into a formal conference room for a meeting, but grabbed a manila file from a mahogany filing cabinet and tossed a picture across his desk. “That’s Candy Irving. She’s in place at the DIB as of today. According to CIA records, she’s a techie, brought in to revise and update the system.” Roz saw a perky blonde girl, her hair cut into a jagged bob, her clothes cutting-edge fashion. “She’s Roz’s replacement at the DIB. Until recently, she worked exclusively for our San Francisco branch. That’s why I brought her here. Candy isn’t on the main computer at Langley.”
“Another consultant,” Andreas said.
Cristos chuckled. “Oh no. Candy’s a full agent, but her security would be compromised if she were put on any mainframe, networked computer.”
Andreas’s hand tightened around Roz’s. “It’s so serious you’re bringing an operative in from black ops?”
“Kind of. Candy also wants to come home.” That was one of the terms used for field agents who had tired of putting their lives on the line every day, or who burned out on the job, but could still be of vital use to the Company. “This is her transition. After this operation, we can bring her in. It will be her bridge. She’s a Talent and very good at what she does. I’ve also brought her in here because she is a computer expert. What she doesn’t know isn’t worth knowing. So she will break into the DIB’s computers, into the most secure level, and Andreas will cover her.”
That meant protecting her. Would he have to pretend to take an interest in Candy? A personal interest? Roz already knew the answer. The office wolf would certainly take an interest in someone as smart as Candy looked to be. And it would help them to stay close. The fact that Andreas and Roz had hooked up would be secondary to a man as sleazy as Andreas had made himself out to be in his cover.
What surprised Roz was the pang of sheer jealousy that shot through her body. When had Andreas turned from being a good, though casual, lover to something more?
Fabrice went to the coffee machine set on a small table near a seating arrangement of low sofas. He raised the carafe, but Roz and Andreas both shook their heads. Fabrice was obviously used to this office.
“There’s one more member of the team,” Cristos said. “You need a shape-shifter to cover you in the daytime.”
As if on cue, the door opened and someone entered. Tall, strongly built, with dark hair that showed glints of red in the bright lights of the boardroom, a man stood in the opening and surveyed the occupants of the room.
“Close the door, Leon,” Cristos said. “This is supposed to be a closed meeting. Find yourself a seat.”
The man shut the door quietly. “Leonide Fiorentini, shape-shifting dragon,” he said softly, the gentle lilt to his voice proclaiming his Italian origin. “I have recently arrived in New York on a visit, and Cristos asked me to join his team.” He gave a devastating grin, slightly lopsided, revealing deep dimples in both cheeks. “It makes my business trip a lot more interesting.” A new presence entered the blended atmosphere of Talents existing in cautious harmony, a powerful, gleaming presence. Leonide Fiorentini was no lightweight. Neither did he lack in self-confidence.
Only Cristos’s sartorial elegance ap
proached Fiorentini’s, which didn’t altogether surprise Roz, since they both looked as if they wore Armani. The cut and elegance of the design was unmistakable to the discerning eye. While Cristos wore a suit in dark charcoal gray, Fiorentini wore a blue a shade lighter than navy, complementing his tanned skin and gleaming dark hair. His eyes seemed to change in color as he passed under the lights, from gold to green and back. A prosaic observer would call them hazel. Roz thought them magical.
Leonide took a seat across the table from Roz and smiled at her, maintaining eye contact. She could do little except either smile back or accept his regard coolly. She chose the latter.
“I apologize for my late arrival,” he purred, his dark velvet voice rippling over her senses. “I was delayed.”
Beside her, Andreas’s body stiffened very slightly. He’d picked up her natural attraction to a handsome man.
A shape-shifting dragon added firepower to the team. Literally. And he wasn’t defined by the time of day, like vampires. Roz hoped they wouldn’t need his more obvious powers.
Cristos continued. “I want this done quietly, efficiently, and fast. I’ll bring Leon up to speed later.”
Cristos stared at them all, sparing a couple of seconds for each face. When it came to her turn, she felt him probe her mind swiftly, incredible power sweeping in, then out again.
Expending that power would have exhausted her. Cristos didn’t seem fazed in the least. After his swift examination, he faced them, Talents of awesome power, as their acknowledged superior. “There are traitors in Department 57, people. And one of them is in this room.”
Chapter Six
Andreas slammed his mental shutters down in instinctive reaction. The pain it dealt to him hurt him more than he’d imagined, but he couldn’t allow any further incursions until he knew more. Did Cristos lure Roz here so he could get her where he could examine her? It could be. And to teach Andreas a lesson. She had seduced him, after all, and he was well on his way to giving her his heart. After all his training he should have known better, but he’d read no subterfuge in her, no attempts to go deeper than he’d allowed. Which, after all, went almost all the way. What a fucking idiot.
Now the daytime meeting, Leon’s position by the door, and Fabrice’s stance near the sofa arrangement, blocking the bathroom exit, made sense. Had they known, or were they remaining cautious? He stayed between her and the window and waited on events, steeling his heart to any appeal she might make, but willing to listen and to defend her if he considered it necessary.
Bernard Knox knew far too much and suspected more. Not only that, but events last year had made Knox more than uneasy. But Roz hadn’t set foot in this building until today. Cristos fixed Roz with a knowing stare. “The deputy director there, Bernard Knox, has given Roz Templeton covert instructions to report back to him, and only to him. Roz is a spy.”
Although he knew, he still felt an instant of impulse when he heard the words. Worse still, he knew she’d felt it before he’d closed down. He wanted to reach for her, make it better, soothe her, but that would demonstrate disloyalty to everything he stood for, everything he believed in, and it would betray his colleagues. These agents were the best of their kind, and she needed to prove herself equal to them. “How do you know?” he asked his boss.
“Intel. Candy picked up an email when Knox sent it to her private address instead of her company address.”
“Sloppy,” Fabrice remarked.
Andreas turned to Roz. “When did you speak to him last?” he asked, his voice deliberately flat.
“This morning.”
“What did you say?”
She grimaced. “I told him I was coming here this morning for a briefing.”
“What will you tell him when you report back?”
She faced him, ignoring the silent faces turned toward them. The stillness was palpable. “I will tell him that it’s difficult to discover anything. If he wants more, I will ask Cristos to provide me with a few false leads.” Those eyes shadowed with fear, her mouth turned down slightly at the corners, showed him how close to tears she was, but he couldn’t expose himself to discover why. Besides, Fabrice would do that. “Andreas, first above everything is my loyalty to my kind and my family. Talents know this is a place they can feel safe, even if they don’t know precisely what it does. Do you really think I’d compromise that?”
“Brava.” Cristos spoke the words softly, but he didn’t need to shout in the hushed stillness.
“Do you believe me?” She wouldn’t let Andreas look away. If he hesitated now, he’d lose her. He knew that for sure.
“Yes.” Everything he knew about her told him she spoke the truth. That, and everything he knew about himself. He’d read her so deeply that he couldn’t have missed anything. Impossible.
But he had doubts—he knew she saw it, even though he opened his mind to her once more. Too many betrayals, too much harshness had passed before his eyes not to let his cynicism rear up once more. That instinct had saved his life a time or two. And she had to know what he was, what being an agent actually meant.
She let him see what she felt, didn’t hide it. She couldn’t grow closer to a man who didn’t trust her, couldn’t let him see her deepest desires, her greatest fears.
SHE’D STAY, BUT she couldn’t deny that he’d hurt her. Andreas would prove an amusement, she told herself. When this case ended, they would drift apart, like most of her lovers before. She’d found some harder to shed than others, but after John died, Roz didn’t want to feel hurt like that again.
So why did she feel so disappointed? Why that deep pang of sadness? She had done that many times before—had an affair, moved on—so what made Andreas Constant so different?
She had no answer. Not when she was gazing into the dark eyes she’d watched last night as he’d come apart in her arms, fragmenting and re-forming in ecstatic joy.
He turned away at the same time she did. They didn’t touch.
“To continue,” Cristos said smoothly, just as though her world hadn’t shifted, and just as if it hadn’t, she looked up at him brightly.
“I’m here to do the best I can to find the people who murdered two members of my family. You should know that.”
He regarded her gravely. “I know it.” He already knew that was her prime objective, overriding everything else. She had no doubt he’d take it into account in his dealings with her. As she would in her dealings with him.
“We are, at least for the present, working on the same side. So we will, if you don’t mind, work as a team.” His cold gaze left her to sweep the other occupants of the room. “All of us. You can make that an order.” He glanced up. “Fabrice has more information for you.”
Fabrice strolled over, a cup of black coffee in one hand. He glanced around, his gaze lingering on Roz and Andreas. “I had to meet Andreas to give him the new interference bug, instead of our usual mental contact. Roz followed us, like a good agent, and we made her almost as soon as she walked in, but later, outside, we were attacked. Seven of them. They weren’t taking any chances. They were carrying powerful drugs, enough to knock out a vampire and kill me, and they had a hypo filled with Cephalox for any shape-shifters. So they weren’t sure what kind of Talents we were, but they came prepared. We took them on, and I—” He shrugged. “They weren’t expecting a virgin Sorcerer. I zapped ’em.” A chuckle rippled around the room. Fabrice smiled self-deprecatingly. “Yeah. I read them afterward, when they were lying on the ground. All mortal, but all under thrall. Some clever person had wiped that part, the identification. Sometimes you can tell with signatures, but not this time.”
Cristos spoke the words in everyone’s minds. “Black ops.”
“Possibly. Their orders were to take us, but I don’t know where, because they didn’t know. They were to take us and stow us in the back of a truck waiting nearby. They didn’t know any more than that. Probably deliberately, since whoever was controlling them knew to expect Talents.”
“They
want what we have, and they aren’t prepared to learn by asking,” the dragon rumbled, voicing what they were all thinking. “So why should our communities continue to operate here? If someone is betraying us, wouldn’t the sensible option be to retreat from human society, as we have done before?”
Cristos showed no emotion on his features, but Roz felt a tightening in the atmosphere. She agreed with the dragon. Maybe this time Talents should withdraw cooperation with governments, go back to the insular ways that had served them well for so long.
Cristos sighed. “It isn’t as easy as it used to be before the age of computers and instant information. How do you open a special wing of a hospital ostensibly devoted to research, but in reality for the special needs of Talents, without government aid to smooth the way? How do you move Talents around the world, give them new identities, fake their deaths? It used to be easy, but it’s highly complex now, and if we tried to do it on our own, we’d be found out. The choices are, as they have always been, to expose ourselves completely, come out of the Talent closet, to withdraw from society and fight our corner on our own, or continue to live secretly alongside mortals.”
“Those always worked up till now,” Fabrice commented. But Fabrice was young. He’d never known life in an age before computers, before the telephone, even. Roz remembered.
Cristos nodded his agreement. “Using the agency’s help to move identities from one life to the next works well, and has for the past thirty years. But we’ve always faced this threat, that government investigators would discover more about us than we wanted them to know. None of the mortals who know about us have betrayed us. The first thing we did was check them out.” Roz wondered how, but also realized she might never know. “I’ve always been against withdrawal. It would engender the kind of hatred and bigotry we have seen for centuries. To reveal ourselves would lead to the same, plus the kind of hero-worship most Talents abhor. We are not better than mortals. We are merely different. And most Talents alive today don’t know how to live any differently. We have decided to continue as we are until it becomes impossible. We have unearthed this threat before it got out of control, and we have this chance to plug the leak.”
Department 57: Rubies of Fire Page 6
