Bannockburn Binding (Beloved Bloody Time) (19 page)

Ryan fought a sharp, short battle not to glance at Nayara to check her reaction to this statement. Natália’s situation may have changed that fact for vampires. Nayara would also have figured out the potential impact of her pregnancy on the rest of the world, too. “Your candour is appreciated, as always,” he told Ursella before returning to the more terrible facts. “This clause, the bill that carries it…it will be passed?”

“It’s on its second reading and the clause itself is not the one under dispute,” Stelios said. “If they iron out the wrinkles in the one they are arguing over, it will pass. It could pass in the next session, Ryan. It was a minor argument over technicalities.”

“Why didn’t you bring the clause to light, then?”

“I wasn’t sworn in until the end of the session and by then, the bill had been read. You know how these things work, how they have to work or the whole system will crumble from exceptions and precedences.”

“Then raise your objections at the next session.”

“I can’t.” Stelios put his hands together and threaded the fingers one by one. “You think you’re the only race to pass successfully as human? You think they don’t have their spies in the Assembly? If I raise an objection in-session, it’s as good as handing them a musket. Gabriel will instantly put his agenda into action, whatever that agenda may be. Whatever it is he plans, it involves his personal army.”

“If you don’t object, the bill will pass and the clause will be law.”

“A law that could take over a year to swing into action. A lot of things can happen in a year.”

Ryan took a breath, giving himself time to consider the implications. “That’s a huge gamble.”

“Only if you don’t consider the alternative—a guaranteed guerrilla action by psi.”

“What is it you propose should be done about this? You came to me for a reason.”

“To warn you,” Stelios said. “If this bill passes, I’ll make sure it takes a year for the clause to be acted upon. But you need to watch your people. Gabriel may target vampires.”

“Why?” Nayara asked sharply. “We have nothing to do with this…insanity.”

Ryan rubbed his temples as pain throbbed there sharply. “Gabriel won’t see it that way. He will see only that vampires got the better handout from humans. We got the Agency, the pat on the head, the partnerships. Psi-filers are getting a death sentence.”

The silence that greeted his words was eloquent.

Ursella was the first to break it. She shifted her feet, her business robe sweeping the ground with a soft rustle of fabric.

Stelios grimaced. “Well, you got there faster than I did, vampire. It took a bottle of ouzo before it hit me.”

Ryan gave him a bitter smile. “We have been dealing with these race dynamics for two centuries. Such mental gymnastics come easily to me now.”

“Damned shame, huh?” Stelios grunted. He looked up at Nayara. “I’d rather spend mental sweat trying to figure out how to get your private comm number and a date than out-think the psi, but here we are.”

Nayara’s lips parted and her eyes widened. It was all the shock she showed but it was enough for Ryan to know that Stelios had thrown her completely. Her jaw flexed. “If the psi realize we are trying to stop them, they’ll will most certainly turn on us,” she pointed out. “We’d be fighting that guerrilla war. We’d be your own private army, not your watchdogs. The Agency was not built to fight wars.”

“But the people in it are admirably suited to do so,” Stelios said sharply. “I don’t know how old you are, but I know you’ve been around at least a thousand years. Tell me you’ve not learned how to defend yourself in that time and I’ll laugh in your face.”

“I didn’t build the agency to fight a war,” Ryan said, repeating Nayara’s words deliberately to show he and Nayara were of like minds on this matter.

Ursella got to her feet. “Perhaps not, but a war may well come to you, anyway. If you want to be completely anal about it, Ryan, let me point out that my Bureau has purely oversight duties. Your Agency has all the executive power. You insisted upon it, or so the history books tell me.” She nodded and swept from the room, her chin jutting forward.

Stelios grinned. “She’s pissed at you,” he said unnecessarily.

“You’d best be careful, then, because it’s not just me she’s pissed at,” Ryan shot back.

Stelios stood up. “I have your agreement?” he asked.

“You knew you would get it before you came here.”

“It was a gamble. You’re not part of the Assembly executive. You don’t have to do a damn thing I say.”

“But we do share a common future with you and it’s a future we’d like to preserve as much as you.”

Stelios handed the crystal glass back to Nayara. “Good booze, thanks. Keep the bottle for me.” He winked at her and left.

The room was profoundly silent when the door shut behind him.

“We can’t fight a war to stop another race from having what is rightfully theirs, whether they can meet those rights or not. Who are we to judge?” Ryan murmured.

Nayara put the empty glass down on Ryan’s desk. “We can’t judge,” she said flatly. “We must not. But if the psi come after us, then we will have no choice but to defend ourselves. Gabriel will have made the choice for us, in that case.”

Ryan studied her. “You’re proposing we do nothing until Gabriel attacks us?”

Nayara bit her lip. “Yes,” she said at last. “Defence only.”

“That could be a very dangerous stance to take,” Ryan suggested. “Especially if Stelios’ information is inaccurate or underestimated.”

Nayara shrugged. “It’s a risk, but we simply cannot attack without provocation, Ryan. It goes against everything you and I believe in.”

Ryan considered it from every angle he could think of. “Agreed,” he said at last, reluctance dragging at him.

“You don’t like the idea of doing nothing, do you?” Nayara wore a small smile.

“When Stelios made us his first port of call, travelled thousands of miles and arm-twisted Ursella Shun into bringing him here, just to warn us? No, sitting on my hands and waiting for this Gabriel to take a pot shot at me feels like utter stupidity.”

Nayara settled onto the edge of his desk right next to him, so she could look almost eye to eye with him. “We could investigate. See if we could find out more on our own.”

Relief circled through him. “Do it. Do something. I know you have the resources.”

Nayara nodded and stood up. “Done,” she told him and smiled.

He could still smell the light scent she wore even after the door to her office closed behind her.

“That was really stupid,” came a quiet voice from behind him. It had a soft accent that sounded vaguely familiar to Ryan. He spun in his chair, all his muscles taut and ready to lash out.

Shock made him fall back in the chair, a stingless puppet.

He was staring at himself. But the version of himself moving through the door from his private quarters was a worn, ill-used one. The other version of himself stared at the door to Nayara’s office. When he looked back at Ryan, he had tears in his eyes. “You sent her to do the most dangerous work in the world, you fool. Do you not realize how little time you have left?”

“What do you mean? You’re from the future, aren’t you?” The tears meant he had a human physiology, as he could only have when he moved into the past. This was himself, but from the future. “What are you doing here? How could you risk this? You know it is not permitted in the charter—”

“Shut up, you stupid idiot,” his future self snapped. He moved around the bar, poured himself a half-glass of rum and knocked it back in three or four swallows. Then he refilled. Ryan noted the two-day growth and the shadows around his eyes. He had not slept when his human body demanded it.

“Watt is it you’re wearing?” Ryan asked, studying the long, black and shabby coat with a wrinkle of his nose. It looked dusty and as beaten-up as the wearer.

His future self half-fell into the chair that Stelios had recently vacated and looked at him over the glass. “You have to listen hard.” He paused, dug inside his coat and extracted a sawn-off shotgun, which he dumped in the chair beside him. He resettled, then lifted his hip and pulled out a revolver, that landed next to the shotgun. Then he carried on as if the interruption had not taken place. “If I’ve timed this right, then Cáel and Ursella just left. No?”

“That’s right.” Ryan couldn’t pull his gaze away from the man. “What has happened to you? I mean, me?” he amended awkwardly. “What is going to happen?”

“Bad things,” his future self intoned. “Everything Cáel just told you will come to pass, and worse. But I never believed him. Not in my gut.” He dropped his chin, and closed his eyes. “I paid the price,” he whispered. He brought the glass back to his lips and there was a visible tremble in his hands. After a moment, he cleared his throat and looked up again. “Don’t let it happen.” His voice was hoarse.

“You’re trying to change the future,” Ryan accused him. “The very thing we swore to protect.”

His future self thrust himself to his feet. “There is no future! Not one worth preserving.” He glanced over his shoulder toward the door to the suite, as if he were monitoring for arrivals. “Your love for her is doomed.”

Shocked clawed at him. Ryan found himself on his feet as well. “What… Why would you say that? What—”

“Don’t ask me what I mean,” his future self said, bending to pick up the firearms. He tucked them away inside his coat. “You can’t lie to me, remember?”

Ryan struggled to find words. “Why do you tell me this?”

His future self smiled, but it was more of a grimace. “Be warned. Brace yourself. It’s coming.” He leaned forward, the start of a time-jump. Then he was gone.

Chapter Fourteen

Rob noted Natália’s absent-minded frown and waited until her gaze had refocused on him.

“That was Nayara,” she told him. “She’s back at the monastery.” She lifted her chin up so the sun bathed her face. It was mid-afternoon, but the day was already growing cooler, the sun low in the sky.

“They really are leaving us alone,” he marvelled, picking up the cloth with the berries wrapped in it. “Here, eat something. You’ve gone all pale.”

“He’s kicking again, down low,” Lee said. “Feel.” He picked up Rob’s hand and placed it against Tally’s swollen belly. He had his back against the big crag of rocks they had reached when they had paused for a meal. Tally was nestled between his thighs, using Lee’s torso as a backrest.

Rob gave Lee a wise look. “His kicking has nothing to do with the fact that you have your hands on his mother’s breasts and she’s close to climaxing from your nuzzling.”

Lee grinned and kissed Tally’s neck, his hand sliding back inside the loosened neck of her kirtle. “No more than your fucking her twice on the way here.”

Rob suppressed a smile at the memory, for Tally was watching him with the limpid, wanton heat in her eyes that told him she was reliving those moments all over again and her body was enjoying the memory.

His own body hardened and throbbed just at the mention of the morning.

He had woken just before first light. It had become one of his favourite times of day, dawn. In between kisses, caresses and sex—lots and lots of sex, Tally and Lee talked. And talked. There was very little they held back from him now. The only thing they would not give him was hard data. Dates. Political facts. But they shared without hesitation the minutiae of their lives. The Agency they worked for. The people they cared for. The strange, wondrous and incredible world they lived in.

Among the things they shared was the evolution of vampires from purely nocturnal creatures to a species that moved in both day and night. But the daylight made vampires sluggish. Direct, strong sunlight still bothered them. At dawn, when once they would have become dormant for the day, vampires still fought off a brief period of low energy.

Even in their human form, Tally and Lee slept their soundest at dawn.

Rob would often wake as the sun rose, to study the two other people in his bed and try to encompass everything that had happened to him since he had captured a wandering English lady last summer.

Sometimes, his throat would close up and his heart would ache with such unspoken emotions, he would have to grip the frame of the bed until the pain had passed.

This morning, though, his emotions and feelings had been much more basic and easier to understand.

Inside the cottage, Lee and Tally had long ago ceased pretending to be of Rob’s time. Lee, the courier of future luxuries, had slowly retrieved enough of their personal wardrobe that they only needed to don clothing of Rob’s era whenever strangers were visiting, or when they moved far enough beyond the outside of the cottage that they risked coming upon locals.

Rob had been treated to a bewildering display of astonishing garments, fabrics, colours and fashions, some of them intriguing, some of them downright seductive.

When Lee brought back a silk dressing gown just for Rob, even Rob discarded his kilt and linen shirt and adopted their clothing.

He remembered the small silence that had greeted him when he had stepped out of the bedroom in the jeans and shirt Lee had brought back for him.

Tally glanced at Lee. “It’s scary how natural he looks in them.”