Atlantis Redeemed (14 page)

He swept his gaze from the shiny dark waves of her hair down to her smooth shoulders, lingered awhile on the delicious curves of her breasts, barely covered by the red silk of her gown, and then moved on to her womanly hips and long, long legs, until he reached the pointed toes of her silly shoes. “If we have to make a rapid exit, those shoes will be less than useful.”

“Shoes can come off. Now, mingle. We need to mingle,” she said firmly, gently pulling her hand away. “I’ll stay in view, but I need to go be Tracy Baum. A reporter would not hang out in one place with her boyfriend, no matter how good he looks in his tux.”

The term amused him. “I am more than two thousand years old, and in all that time, I have never been called anyone’s boyfriend.”

She flashed a brilliant smile at him. “Stick with me, kid. You’ll have a new experience every day.”

As she strode forward, somehow not even wobbling on those ridiculously high-heeled shoes, he felt a completely unfamiliar emotion sing through his veins. It felt like nothing he’d ever known, even before Poseidon’s curse, and it took him a full minute to realize what it was.

Happiness. By all the gods, it was
happiness
.

In the midst of a roomful of evil-intentioned scientists and surrounded by vampires who would cheerfully drain him if they knew who he really was, his emotions had stupidly, foolishly decided to settle on utter bliss.

He suddenly realized his face felt strange, as though the skin were oddly stretched. He touched his cheek, only to discover that he was smiling. Again. He’d smiled more since he’d met Tiernan than he had in the past two millennia of his existence.

She thought he looked good in his tux.

He stood there, grinning like a fool, until a hand touched his shoulder. He whirled around, hands automatically reaching for the daggers he’d left in the room. It was difficult to conceal daggers in a tuxedo, but he felt naked and exposed without them.

The little man from the television stood there, now clad in a tuxedo, self-importance oozing from every pore. “Mr. Brennan? I’m Dr. Litton. So delighted to finally meet you in person.”

Brennan shook the man’s hand. “Dr. Litton. Sorry we were late to your party. We wanted a little time to ourselves, of course you understand.”

His eyes sought out Tiernan, needing to reassure himself she was still in view. Litton followed his gaze.

“Ah, yes, the reporter. Ms. Baum. I hadn’t realized she was with you.”

“She is most definitely with me, although I fail to see why that is any of your concern,” Brennan said, a knife-edge of menace in his voice.

“Oh, no, no reason.” Litton backed up a few steps, holding his hands out in front of him. “I have to give a little speech now, but I’ll talk to you soon. I’m very much looking forward to showing you our lab tomorrow.”

“I look forward to seeing it. I will be very interested to see what plans you have in mind for my ten million dollars.”

Litton’s gaze darted back and forth nervously. “Ah, yes. We’ll be sure to show you plenty.”

Brennan watched the doctor scurry away, and then turned to find Tiernan, his attention drawn to exactly where she stood, as if she were a homing beacon to his soul. She glowed like a gem in her red dress among the throng of black evening wear. One of the men in her group said something and Tiernan threw back her head and laughed. Brennan watched her and was stunned all over again by the power of the longing that overwhelmed him.

To make her his.

For a night, for a year, for eternity.

His.

He started toward her, but stopped when a hideous screeching noise sounded, and then Litton’s voice, magnified by the electronic speakers, jangled throughout the room. “Is this thing on?”

Everyone laughed and turned toward the podium, and Tiernan made her way through the crowd toward Brennan. An odd pressure lifted from his chest, and he realized he had been holding his breath, as if he needed her presence even to draw air. She finally arrived, and he pulled her against his side, needing to feel her next to him.

“I just don’t like the looks of that man. I know it’s stupid, but I’ve learned to trust my instincts,” she murmured near Brennan’s ear, an action that made the fit of his pants considerably tighter.

Focus. He must focus. On the mission, not on the curves of her body. She was talking about Litton.

“I agree,” he said. “I will be interested to see how your Gift reacts to his speech.”

Litton fussed with his tie and the microphone for a bit, and adjusted the stand down to his height. “Can you hear me now?”

After more desultory laughter from the mostly inebriated crowd, Litton continued. “I know it’s late and we all need to get some rest for a full day of meetings tomorrow, but I wanted to take a moment to welcome you all to the first annual meeting of the International Association of Preternatural Neuroscience.”

A ragged cheer went up from the scientists, who then looked vaguely embarrassed to be caught doing something so common.

“Not a lot of rah rah in neuroscience usually, I’m guessing,” Tiernan whispered, a grin quirking up the edges of her lovely lips. Brennan became distracted by thoughts of tasting her mouth, and he lost the next few sentences. Or minutes. When he returned his attention to the scientist, Litton was concluding his remarks.

“—thrilling breakthroughs in science, for today and for all our tomorrows. Thank you.”

Everyone cheered and clapped, and Litton’s forehead flushed a bright red as he basked in the approval of his peers.

“It’s not lies,” Tiernan said, her brows drawn together. “He believes that whatever he’s up to is going to cause ‘thrilling breakthroughs.’”

“For all our tomorrows?” Brennan asked, his voice dry.

“For all of somebody’s tomorrows. Probably the power-mad vamps he’s working for.” She turned her head, subtly scanning the room. “Speaking of which, I think I’m going to go get one of them to ask me to dance. See what I can find out.”

Brennan heard a low growling noise and realized it was coming from his own throat. “I cannot allow—”

“Allow?” she asked sweetly. “I’m sorry?”

He swallowed the broken glass that had somehow gotten lodged in his throat and tried again. “It will be difficult for me if you do this.”

Compassion softened her face. “I know. The curse. But you have to understand that it’s not really me you want, it’s just the random nature of the curse making you think so.”

“There is nothing random about Poseidon or his curses, I assure you. But I will do my best to carry out my part in this mission.”

Suddenly and completely unexpectedly, she put her hands on his shoulders and stood on her toes to kiss him lightly on the lips.

“I know you will. I will, too. Now I’m going to go dance. Why don’t you go have a drink?”

“I do not drink when—” He followed the direction of her gaze and saw Grace at the bar, pouring drinks. “I believe I will go have a drink, while you dance with a vampire.”

“Get one for me, too, will you? I think I’m going to need it,” she said grimly before pasting onto her face the somewhat vacant smile he thought of as her disguise.

Brennan took another long, calming breath before he headed toward the bar. Grace might have news. Important news. Anything to distract him from the thought of Tiernan dancing with a vampire.

Tiernan sauntered through the crowd, offering a smile here and a flirtatious look there, trying not to hear the conversations between individuals because it was distracting. Too much posturing, deception, and outright lying had stretched her nerves so taut that she felt like she might snap, especially on top of the effort it took to maintain an illusion of lighthearted calm for Brennan’s sake. She felt the weight of his gaze on her even now, and hoped Grace made whatever drink she gave him a double. She didn’t chance a look at him, because he was so gorgeous in that tux that she’d been happy just not to drool on him or fall into his arms like some swooning maiden from one of the various centuries he’d lived through. He was an unbelievably sexy man, and that hint of danger just added to his appeal.

Leashed power in evening clothes.

The conversations filtered through to her as she passed various knots of people standing in twos and threes. It wasn’t like she could put her fingers in her ears, no matter how much she might want to avoid hearing the lies, so she gritted her teeth and smiled through the pain of nerves scraped raw.

So many lies.

“—and then he said my paper was the best he’d read in years, and sure to be published.”

“My wife and I have a very open marriage—”

“Litton is a genius, but he’s a crackpot, if you ask me. I heard—”

Ah. Truth at last. So the good doctor had a reputation even among his peers. Wonder what they’d think of him if they knew he was secretly funded by vampires and working toward the enslavement of humanity?

Stranger and stranger when truth sounded more like the plot to a comic book, but that was life these days. Everybody plotting to take over the damn world; nobody content just to let people live.

People, and their friends, and their friends’ babies.

When the second person in a row gave her a strange look, she realized she was letting too much of what she was thinking show on her face, and she paused to pretend to search for something in her purse to gain a little time to compose herself.

A wave of cold lifted the hair on the back of her neck a moment before a deep voice spoke near her ear. “May I assist you with anything?”

The voice sounded so familiar, but when she looked up into the vampire’s pale face, half-hidden by oversized wraparound shades, she realized she had no way to know why. Unless, of course, she asked him. Sometimes a direct approach was best, as one of her journalism profs had been fond of reminding them.

“Tracy Baum,
Neuroscience Quarterly
. Did we meet earlier tonight?”

A seductive smile played around the edges of his sculpted lips. She was suddenly glad of his glasses, which protected her from falling into thrall from his eyes. His black hair brushed his shoulders, and he was tall and very well built, filling out his black-on-black tux in a way that had quite a few women nearby checking him out. The vamp who’d grabbed her earlier had been tall and strong, too, but that wasn’t enough evidence to convince her that this was he.

“I’m afraid not. I would remember meeting such a lovely woman, Ms. Baum.” He bowed. “But I would be happy to correct that oversight. Will you dance?”

It was just what she’d wanted, a dance with a vampire. But still she hesitated. Something about this vampire made her even more wary than usual.

He held out his hand and his smile turned mocking. “Surely you’re not afraid of me?”

Even recognizing it for the challenge it was, she couldn’t resist. “Of course not. I’d love to dance.”

As he took her hand and led her to the dance floor, she glanced back to be sure Brennan was holding on to his calm, and was instantly sorry she’d done so. He was staring at her, his face hard, and even across the expanse of floor and the crowd that separated them, she could almost feel him straining toward her. If she made it through the dance with this vampire, it would be a miracle.

She offered up a silent prayer for miracles.

“You know my name, but you haven’t told me yours,” she said, smiling up at the distorted reflection of herself in the vampire’s glasses.

He pulled her into his arms for the dance, a slow song that bemoaned love lost and loneliness. “My apologies, Ms. Baum. My name is Devon.”

“Call me Tracy, please,” she said automatically, her mind whirling with possibilities. Curiouser and curiouser. If this were Devon, and he really had been the vamp outside, regardless of what he would or would not admit to . . . well.

This dance suddenly had real possibilities.

 

 

 

 

“So,” Tiernan said, noting for future reference that vampires felt very, very cold, even through formal wear, “nice car.”

Devon laughed. “You like it?”

“What’s not to like? The Gallardo LP560-4 is not exactly your mother’s Buick.” She realized what she’d said and inwardly groaned. “Not that you had a—”

“Mother?”

“Buick. I’m figuring you more for the mother with a carriage, or four slaves that pulled the chariot, perhaps.”

He laughed again, but this time it sounded like he was truly amused, not just being polite. Then he pulled her into a twirl and caught her at exactly the right moment. The vampire was quite a good dancer, she was chagrined to admit.

“Not very many women could recognize that car. Are you a car enthusiast or simply a very good reporter?”

She saw no reason to lie. “Both.”

“I see. Then I must reward you by telling you that, in fact, my mother owned a single mule, but it was for use in farming only. She walked everywhere she needed to go, which was not very far, since she lived her entire life without venturing from the five-mile radius of her farm.” His voice had grown softer as he spoke, making her wish yet again that she could see his eyes. Her truth-telling senses weren’t rattling, but she’d never had very good results with vampires, so that wasn’t really meaningful. “I would ask that you keep that information to yourself, as the power infrastructure of the vampire ruling class prefers to adhere to the polite fiction that we were all born and raised aristocracy, if not royalty.”