Department 57: Rubies of Fire

by Lynne Connolly

  Ten minutes later, a GLOCK and a couple of knives reassuringly tucked away about his person, Andreas accompanied a similarly equipped Leon out of the building.

  He felt the need to lash out, to destroy. He’d taken his attention away from the job, allowed himself to relax the fierce concentration he customarily used when on assignment. Never before had anyone or anything made him deviate from what he needed to do, when he needed to do it, but Roz Templeton had broken all that. His feelings for her still overwhelmed him, but he could force himself to ignore them.

  He knew for sure what it was. Something he’d never felt before, not like this, not as all-consuming, all-powerful. Now he’d lost her, and it was his fault for believing a teenager over the woman he loved.

  Grimly he tucked his emotions away with far more effort than usual. Time to concentrate on the operation, on finding Fabrice and finding him safe. Guilt added to the anxiety tearing away at Andreas. If anyone had killed Fabrice, this was the time for vampire justice to take over. His killer would die. He glanced at Leon. “You know what I mean to do if the worst has happened. Don’t get in my way.”

  Leon held up one large hand in a gesture of appeasement. “Give me five minutes to strip her mind, and she’s all yours. Self-defense if she lifts a finger to object.”

  Andreas smiled grimly. The way Leon planned to strip the killer’s mind wasn’t pretty, wouldn’t have the finesse of the Sorcerer. She’d probably beg for death by the end of the procedure. Or he, if Jenna had an accomplice, which seemed likely. Because what were the odds that a friend of a Talent would pick a Talent to obsess on? Just as probable that someone she knew forced her to this, to take him so they could kill him.

  If a killer existed. Better if it didn’t.

  In the underground parking lot, Leon threw off his clothes and weapons, which Andreas stuffed into a backpack and slung over his shoulder. Leonide’s shift from man to dragon was fast, awesome, and impressive, but Andreas didn’t feel in any mood to appreciate it. He threw himself onto the back of the giant, scaled beast and heard Leonide’s voice in his mind. “Hold on. I’m going in fast.”

  Andreas felt the air around them stir as Leon fuzzed the area to prevent mortals seeing their flight, and then winds whipped around his face. He kept low, clinging to Leon’s massive neck, feeling the giant muscles flex as the dragon swept his wings, the powerful motions rippling through his golden body. His scales, gleaming bronze underground, hit the sunlight in dazzling ripples of gold edged with a greenish glimmer, shading into deep crimson nearer his underbelly. Beautiful, had Andreas wanted aesthetics. As it happened, he was only delighted Leon proved such a large, powerful dragon in full control of both his forms. It would get them to their destination quicker and provide muscle, should they need it. Few beings could resist a mature dragon. Few even bothered to try.

  Frustrating not to have control over his own powers, but he would have to wait a few hours for that. He contacted Cristos, made sure they linked firmly and clearly. Leon’s voice sounded soothing in his mind. “We’ll get him back if it’s at all possible. This I swear.” Italians, dragon or human, didn’t take oaths lightly. Leon’s voice hardened. “Nearly there. I’ll find an alley or a backyard, so I might have to drop you a few feet up and then shrink my size to land. Stand by.”

  Andreas braced himself. He leaped the last six feet to the ground into a back alley stinking of garbage and unwashed humanity. Immediately Andreas regained his balance and watched the miracle of a shape-shifter changing back into human form.

  For a brief instant, the world went away, and Andreas remained content to watch the smooth, gliding transformation until Leon stood before him, angrily gesturing for his clothes. With a muffled word of apology, Andreas swung the backpack down and tossed underwear, pants, shirt, socks, and sneakers to the big Italian.

  He dressed quickly, and they headed out for the gallery where Jenna Brice had displayed her work.

  Andreas glanced at his watch: 3:30 p.m. Still a couple of hours to sunset, fuck it.

  He moved forward, feeling the reassuring weight of the GLOCK at his back. If they hurt Fabrice, he’d kill them. Hell, he’d invoke a fucking vampire blood feud if he had no satisfaction from the humans. That wouldn’t stop until every vampire on the earth was dead, and every scientist who’d ever harmed a Talent.

  A last resort, but one he would invoke if he had to. Now he’d lost Roz, it wouldn’t take much to push him to that. Finding Fabrice dead or tortured would more than do it.

  He felt Leon in his mind, establishing a firm contact, and he appreciated it. By contracting a weaker entity, Leon put himself at risk. They strolled toward the gallery like a couple of tourists, careful to keep their body language unthreatening and relaxed. Outside, the board held a new legend, a new artist, although Jenna Brice still held some real estate with a small painting in the window. Securely held in Leon’s mind, Andreas felt him search for any traces of Jenna or Fabrice. Neither he nor Leon had Jenna’s mental signature, but Andreas knew Fabrice better than anybody, and either the Sorcerer was unconscious or not here.

  Andreas hadn’t realized just how much finding his friend alive meant to him until that moment, facing the probability that Fabrice had died. Yes, Fabrice was his friend, his best friend, but the friendship went deep into him, right into his soul. Andreas’s incipient fury at anyone who dared attack Fabrice was one thing, but the vulnerability exposed by his removal was something else. He wouldn’t be the same person if he lost Fabrice.

  Had he ever worried so much going into a situation? No, of course he hadn’t. It weakened him; he knew that, but he couldn’t do a lot about it. He had to go with it, find a way of channeling his anger and distress without allowing it to weaken him.

  They walked into the gallery. Although Leon had dressed casually, his clothes looked quality, expensive, unlike Andreas’s. He still wore his scratchy work suit. That seemed to dictate their roles.

  Leon became very Italian. Amused despite his anxiety, Andreas watched the big man’s stance change, become looser, more arrogant somehow. When Leon glanced over his shoulder at him, lifting a thick, dark eyebrow, Andreas repressed a smile. The man could have passed for a Renaissance prince or a Venetian doge, his arrogance appeared so perfect, so much a part of him. Exactly right for a small, upmarket art gallery in the swanky part of New York. And right that the dragon should treat Andreas as some kind of inferior being, although Andreas still felt uncomfortable in the position of subordinate. Which he most definitely felt right now.

  A woman came forward, an eager smile wreathing her lips, ignoring Andreas completely. Leon took his time. He didn’t bend over the woman’s hand, but he might as well have for the effect it had on this urban sophisticate. She almost giggled. “May I help you, sir?”

  Leon smiled, a mere crease of his lips. “I think so. My friend here attended an exhibition the other night. He saw some paintings he thought might interest me. The artist was—” He turned to Andreas, his expression perfectly superior.

  Andreas blinked. “Uh, Jenna Brice. Sir.”

  Leon nodded regally. “Just so.” He thickened his accent. “Do you have anything to show me? I should tell you that my taste is very specific. Most specific.” He imbued the last two words with a kind of wickedness Andreas had never associated with them before. The woman seemed to understand. Erotic. Like the lovers from the other night.

  “Ah yes, sir. The exhibition was a great success. We sold nearly all the abstract work and all the figurative ones. We still have a few sculptures left.”

  Andreas would have put money on those shapeless lumps of clay being the last to go.

  “I do not collect sculpture. I do appreciate an artist who can accept a private commission, though. I assume that the best pieces you already have went at the exhibition, so I would appreciate any help you can give me in contacting the artist.”

  The woman frowned, but Andreas felt the increased influence Leon was pressing on her. Friendliness with an edge of sexi
ness. This woman had definitely contributed to the multibillion dollar weight-loss industry. He supposed her clothes were fashionable, but who cared when she had nothing to drape the expensive material over, nothing to make it interesting?

  Shit, Roz had changed his taste in women, and for good. Now he wanted curves and soft, plump flesh to lavish with kisses. He dragged his mind away from her, wondering just when he’d ever let his concentration slip before, during working on assignment.

  “I suppose I could help. Jenna is one of my protégées, just starting out, you understand. I think she is destined for greatness, but I have invested a lot in her.”

  Leon took her hand again and Andreas watched, fascinated, as he absently caressed her first finger. “I understand. I would always consider you as her agent, and agents get… What? Ten percent of any sale?”

  “Fifteen.”

  “Take over here.”

  He could do that, maintain the reassurance and waves of attraction Leon was sending this woman. He knew what Leon would do, so he took over, mimicking Leon’s style, while they chatted amiably about Jenna’s work. Leon swept the whole building for any trace of other people, then honed in on them, examining their mental processes for any Talented presence.

  Nothing. At least not for the first two floors; then Leon opened his mind. He sensed something here, a presence, very faint.

  “Does Jenna Brice have a studio in this building?” Leon asked, ruthlessly interrupting the woman’s discussion of recent artistic trends. If she had, Ellie hadn’t told them about it, but maybe the girl didn’t know.

  “Why, yes, she does. I lease her a couple of rooms. She likes the light, she says.”

  Leon glanced at Andreas, who was already looking around the gallery. “Which way do we go?”

  “You can’t just—”

  Leon lifted the woman off her feet and moved her so he could go past her to the small door in the corner of the back room. Andreas was ahead of him. “Yes, I can.” With a wicked grin, he strode to the open door.

  Past a couple of utility rooms, narrow stairs led up. Andreas and Leon took them two at a time, racing to the second floor as though every moment counted. Perhaps it did. Andreas heard Leon contacting Cristos, reporting back, and felt Cristos in his head. “I’m standing by. Tell me what you need.”

  “You have a fix on us?”

  The grim voice responded, “Tight as a drum.”

  Before them stood a plain, white-painted door. When they tried it, the handle rattled against several restraints. Bolts and locks usual for the average, careful New Yorker. Gritting his teeth against his relative lack of strength, Andreas stepped back and let Leon handle it. If they found nothing, they’d leave money to pay for the door, but both felt it, the controlled panic inside the room, coming from not one spot but two.

  Leon looked at Andreas. “You go right. I’ll take whatever’s on the left.”

  “Fine. Just get fucking on with it.”

  Andreas pulled out his firearm and snapped off the safety catch. Leon did the same and partially shifted. Andreas saw the scales pop out from between his shirt buttons, the shapes clear beneath the fine material, giving him a natural bulletproof vest. Claws shot out from the end of his fingers, only to be sheathed again as Leon turned back to the door.

  He held up his free hand and counted down silently with his fingers.

  Three, two, one.

  They exploded through the door, Leon just in front, both assuming the stance, legs slightly bent, weapons in front of them, sweeping the area for hostiles.

  What they found shook them both far more than a room full of aggressive terrorists.

  A daybed on Andreas’s side of the room held a lone, naked figure, the sheets twisted under him as though he had tossed and turned in a restless fever. Andreas made for Fabrice, trusting Leon to take care of the figure on the other side of the room, the one screaming like a banshee.

  When the sound abruptly stopped, he glanced up to see Leon’s hand clamped over the woman’s mouth. She wore a robe, and the paintbrush she’d held fell to the floor with a clatter as Leon swiftly frisked her for weapons. His large hand rucked up a little of the robe, and it became obvious to both of them that she was naked underneath.

  Andreas blinked. Fabrice wasn’t tied up or restrained in any way, and he wasn’t unconscious, but sweat beaded his forehead despite the chill of the room, and his half-closed eyes showed no recognition of his friend.

  Fabrice was heavily drugged, and the strong scent that had assailed Andreas’s nostrils from the moment the door had burst open finally became identifiable.

  The room reeked of sex.

  “We need an ambulance for Fabrice. He’s drugged, naked, and he’s had sex.”

  “On its way.” Before Cristos cut the connection, presumably to contact the other agents in the field, Andreas heard several words in a language he couldn’t identify, although it sounded vaguely Slavic.

  Fabrice was—had been—a virgin Sorcerer. He’d always taken particular care not to spill his seed in any way, so he couldn’t even masturbate. Andreas had seen Fabrice fight against the urge to take a woman; his good looks had been a curse to him. He’d made the decision when he reached puberty, and nobody else had the right to take it from him. Andreas couldn’t begin to imagine what that kind of life meant, but he’d respected his friend’s decision and never questioned it. Until Andreas knew otherwise, he’d assume Fabrice had been raped.

  The man was out of his mind, and Andreas wanted to kill somebody. Not the whimpering figure Leon had found so easy to restrain, but a real, honest-to-goodness villain. Someone who wanted to take Fabrice’s power, not his body. Someone who hated him, not a person with an unhealthy obsession.

  That a common stalker could subdue one of the most powerful humans in the world today! Andreas found a corner of the sheet and yanked it up to cover Fabrice. It didn’t seem right to see a violated person like this. It wasn’t right. Helplessly, he looked up at Leon, as grim-faced as he, and then he saw something else.

  She had covered the whole studio with studies of Fabrice. Fabrice naked, on this bed, arching his body in the agony of sexual arousal, erect and straining. Fabrice with a woman sleeping in his arms. Fabrice asleep, but not every part of his body relaxed, his erection an arduous need, even in sleep. Andreas destroy them all.

  He’d never know if Leon felt the same fury surging through his veins or the dragon picked up his thought, but he opened his mouth. Andreas saw the change in his mind as he half shifted, enough to evoke the power he needed.

  A tongue of flame shot out of Leon’s mouth like a blowtorch. He swept it quickly around the room, enough to singe the pictures and destroy the images on them, not enough to set them alight, because Cristos would want this place recorded. But not the pictures. Not them. Fabrice would hate that. As far as Andreas was concerned, Leon destroyed the pictures when he flamed up trying to catch the woman. Cristos would understand, and frankly, even if he didn’t, Andreas didn’t give a shit.

  The ambulance crew would want the drugs to analyze.

  As he thought this, he saw a shelf with telltale pill bottles and packets on Leon’s side of the room. Catching his thought, Leon turned and snagged them in one large hand, the other holding Jenna firmly clamped to his body.

  “You can guess what these are,” he said.

  Andreas didn’t want to, but he could, all too easily.

  With a convulsive movement, Fabrice ripped the covers aside and grasped his erection, fumbling awkwardly. Inexperience and desperate need warred in his agonized body. Andreas felt his suffering as though it were his own. Such an intrusion to watch, agony to see. Jesus, he must be so sore. The thing was hard and red all over.

  “Do it for him. If he’s had a combination of this shit, he needs it.” Leon spoke flatly and turned his back, wrenching Jenna around with him. “Would you believe Spanish fly, as well as the modern equivalents? This bitch wasn’t taking any chances.”

  Wanting to help his
friend more than anything else, Andreas gently prized Fabrice’s hand free and took over. This was more medical than sexual. He tried not to think about it, but jerking off another man took concentration. He’d done it to himself of course, but this felt awkward as well as embarrassing. He had to change his grip, the feel of Fabrice’s penis completely different from his own in a way he couldn’t describe. Longer, maybe, not quite as thick. Just different. Fabrice was a blond, his pubic hair thinner than Andreas’s, and a different color. His balls clung tightly to his body, and Andreas’s lifted in sympathy, knowing his only did that at the height of sexual ecstasy, or when chilled to the bone. To feel like that all the time would be sheer torture.

  The thought helped him bring Fabrice to a quick orgasm, pleasurable for neither of them, but necessary to one. Andreas hoped to God the medics would arrive soon and put an end to Fabrice’s misery.

  And to think that one obsessed woman did that to him.

  Chapter Thirteen

  In a privately endowed wing of Mount Sinai Hospital, Fabrice lay in a comfortably furnished room, hooked up to a machine delivering the medication he needed to accelerate the passage of the drugs Jenna Brice had shoved into him. Roz felt completely helpless, completely isolated. The powerful Sorcerer who had read her so gently, shared a joke with her, was gone. Instead, this handsome hulk remained.

  Andreas sat in a chair next to the bed, listening to the doctor discussing the case with Cristos, Leon, Vencel, and the rest of the team. Roz stood by the door. Fabrice slept on, oblivious to them all.

  “I would guess your perpetrator spiked his drink,” the doctor told them. “Got a barbiturate into him with some alcohol, then took him to her studio. Once she had him docile, she could have given him the other stuff. Called it medicine, aspirin or something. That’s why he never called you for help. Normally Sorcerers, being in control of their powers at all times, are less vulnerable to attack, but this person took him by surprise.”