Byzantine Heartbreak (14 page)

Wariness crept through him and Cáel threw it off. He knew the only way he was going to get past Brenden now was to be completely open and honest. Brenden’s suspicions had been raised and he was being a good security officer. And a good friend.

“All the readings,” Cáel admitted. “I read that damned thing enough times that I have parts of it memorized. It was the little hints they let show through the chinks of their armour. Just enough to drive an observant man mad with the need to uncover the rest. So I tried to uncover the rest and was hooked.” He shrugged.

Brenden’s arms dropped. “God almighty, you want them both,” he breathed.

Cáel held out his hands. “And now you have me where you want me, Brenden. My underbelly is utterly exposed.”

“Is that what you think?” Brenden leaned forward and picked up the carryall by the strap. “C’mon, you’re already late. Nayara will yell at me.” He scooped Cáel up almost the same way he had the carryall and jumped forward into his jump, not giving Cáel time to draw breath, let alone respond to his comment.

As a way of changing subjects, it was a show-stopper.

Chapter Thirteen

The Agency satellite station. 2263 A.D.

By the time security were done filleting him, Demyan could feel the growing bone-deep ache that heralded the need to feed and rest. As he wended his way through the maze of back passages to his cramped quarters on the star-side of the station, he admitted to himself that the jump to Rome had depleted his reserves in a way he’d not experienced before.

He would have to be careful to restore his energy completely before he jumped again. Demyan had not had much time for Ezra—like many, he’d found the man’s unending lectures on the woes of vampire-kind tiresome—but Ezra’s death was still a harsh warning to take care of himself. He liked travelling and intended to do it for many years yet.

Pritti was curled up against a structural strut running up the wall opposite the door to his quarters, hugging her knees and rocking herself. When he got closer, she jumped to her feet in one of her balletic movements that usually fascinated him. Her eyes were tear-stained.

“Pritti—” he started, intending to cut her off before she began.

“You said nothing,” she interjected. “Nothing!”

“What did you want me to say? That Brenden isn’t prejudiced about psi in general, just one psi in particular?”

“Why not?” she asked, as he let his door open. “It’s the truth.”

“Everything he said is generally true anyway.”

“But not about me! You could have said that!”

He paused with his hand on the doorsill. “Okay. Fine. I point out that Brenden is merely displaying latent signs of jealousy. They would have nodded wisely and said ‘how do you know that?’ There isn’t a way to answer that question that wouldn’t tell them about...that we’re...whatever it is we are,” he finished, feeling more than a little gauche and stupid.

She curled around him where he stood at the open doorway and looked up at him with her beautiful eyes. “What is so wrong about them knowing about us?” she asked simply.

He’d lived two hundred times longer than Pritti, yet she often made him feel like the child. Like now. He couldn’t maintain contact with her eyes and looked away. “I’m tired, Pritti. I have to rest.”

She stayed silent. He could almost feel her upset. He stepped through the door and let it close. Later. He would speak to her later. The need to feed was becoming a throbbing demand in his skull.

He had taken a single step into the room when she appeared in front of him. She raised her tiny fists and slammed them against his chest, shocking him. “You are ashamed of me!”

“No,” he said instantly. Truthfully.

“You won’t tell them because you would be embarrassed.”

He caught at her wrists and easily held them still. “Pritti, not now. I must...I have to feed and then I must rest.”

“Then when? You have all the time in the world. I don’t.”

“I mean it, Pritti. You think you know vampires because you work with them, but there’s a reason people are afraid of us.”

“I sleep with one, too, but I know him less than I do the others.” Her lips were trembling.

The throbbing was becoming a pounding, a ravening need was coursing through him, reminding him of older times, before vampires had learned to cope with their needs and grew more civilized.

He could smell her flesh, almost feel her blood pulsing beneath it. “Pritti...” he tried to warn her. “Leave. Now.” His fangs were starting to descend.

She stared up at him. Her hands were still caught in his fists, but she spread her fingertips over his chest and gave a small smile. “You won’t hurt me,” she whispered.

“I can’t...I can’t promise that,” he ground out.

“Why wouldn’t you say anything?” she insisted.

He growled his frustration. The strong survival instincts of the symbiot were starting to take over. They would make him feed, regardless of what he wanted. He would become a mindless creature of animal drives. Pritti didn’t understand.

“Why?” she insisted. She showed no fear at all.

“Very well, then.” He pushed her up against the wall and pinned her with his body so that she could not jump away from him. “If the psi are organizing, I would guess it is for the same reason Ryan organized vampires—for freedoms and rights you don’t have now. And you’ve told me you stay living on the station because it’s the closest to off-world you can get now they’ve banned psi from leaving Earth.” His breathing had accelerated. And he could hear her blood now, hear the pulse. He shook his head to clear it. “You would stand to gain if you taught the psi how to jump through time, as you’re so practiced at it now.”

She tilted her head, as she studied him. Then she reached up and tugged at the opening of the short kimono-style shirt she was wearing. It pulled open, revealing her shoulder, her creamy white breast and her neck...with the carotid artery that beckoned to him.

“Feed,” she whispered. “Go ahead. You need it.”

He could not stop himself. He lowered his head and pierced the soft, pale flesh and drank her nectar. He heard her gasp of pain, but it was a distant sound. He sank into her sweetness.

“Enough. Enough, Demyan. Now. Stop!” She was hammering on his shoulder. Then her small hands were grasping his head, pulling him away from her.

He heard the ugly sound he made and hated himself. The animal in him knew she had no strength, could not push him away. And he needed more, yet.

Suddenly, she was not there.

He pushed himself away from the empty wall, spinning around to pursue her and was thrown forward as something heavy slammed into him from the left. He slid and landed hard up against the wall by the door. He heard something crack, tried to get up and his arm gave out under him.

He was punched up against the wall again. This time he could make out the object as it hit him—the side table that normally sat next to his bed. It shattered as it struck him, cutting deep into his arm.

He’d forgotten that Pritti’s mind was far stronger than she was.

“Pritti, stop!” he said, holding up his arm. “Enough!”

She stood in the middle of his room, her arms by her side, breathing hard. Blood ran down her neck, onto her chest. The jacket still hung open.

“Do you have it caged?” she demanded.

“What?” He realized that his clavicle was shattered, but already the bone was realigning, knitting together. His arm stung where the gouge was sealing and repairing itself.

“The devil’s spawn in you. Is it controlled?” Pritti demanded.

He took a breath. Another. She did understand, then. “Yes,” he said. “For now.” His fangs retracted. He’d drunk enough to last a little while longer. He slowly got to his knees and she hurried over to help him, which was faintly ridiculous, given her size.

He stilled her efforts simply by wrapping his arms around her and holding her and she let him. He looked over her shoulder and saw the destruction she had caused with her two missiles. Gold glinted, by the bed. His Faberge egg, the one the Tsar of Russia had given him, lay in a hundred pieces across the floor. Regret touched him. The egg was a reminder of his roots. His identity.

“Did you see?” Pritti whispered against his cheek. “While you fed, did you look inside me?”

He pulled her away from him enough to look into her eyes. “Pritti, I don’t look unless I’m asked. You’ve never understood how important it is that we voluntarily impose that restriction. But it is important and I abide by it.”

Her eyes were filling with tears. “I wanted you to see.”

“I will look, then.” He kissed her, the gentlest way he knew of peering into someone’s mind. When he had seen what she was showing him, he lowered himself back down until he was leaning against the cold wall once more. Sadness filled him. Pritti watched him, looking for acceptance.

“I understand,” he told her softly and cupped her cheek. “I see, now, why you stay.” He tried to smile. “And happy birthday, Pritti.”

Today she turned twenty-nine years old. No psi had ever lived beyond thirty-one. Vampires, unlike humans or other psi , would remember her long after she was gone.

* * * * *

Nayara watched Dionne Rinaldi walk into the room and couldn’t help running her gaze over the woman’s attire. Nayara had always eschewed human fashions as frivolous and impractical, but Dionna Rinaldi made sense of high fashion. She made it work in a way that turned heads. The silver-grey shimmering suit she wore skimmed every inch of her figure tightly, right down to her knees. An electric blue shawl wrapped her shoulders and hung to the floor behind her. The blue complimentted her eyes. Her hair had been arranged in curls on the top of her head.

Nayara, sitting at the head of the long table in the hastily assembled boardroom, wasn’t aware that she was adjusting her own clothing until Ryan lifted her hand away from her lapels. He glanced at her and shook his head the tiniest fraction and put her hand back down by her side. His fingertips brushed over the back of her knuckles before he lifted his hand away. His chair, as he was co-head of the agency, also sat at the head of the wide table, next to Nayara.

Nayara glanced around the room of assembled senior agency members to see if anyone had noticed her revealing fidgeting.

Cáel was watching her from his seat off to the side, where he sat in half-shadow. His dark eyes were probably absorbing every detail of her nervousness. He rarely missed such telling minutiae.

Ah well... She could live with Cáel knowing. He had proved more than once that he knew how to hold his tongue.

Justin showed Dionne to the chair placed in the space made by the U-shaped table and took his place at the end of the table itself.

“You asked to speak to us, Ms. Rinaldi,” Nayara told her. “You went to some trouble to arrange this meeting. Please sit and explain yourself.”

Dionne rested a well-manicured hand on the back of the chair and the other hand on her hip. She didn’t sit down. “I understand that despite having all of time at your disposal, you’ve learned the pointlessness of wasting time on trivia. So I will come straight to the point. Your public appearance at the charity ball in Vienna was a fiasco. And from what I hear, you’re attempting another PR event. A book?”

Ryan made a tiny sound. It wouldn’t carry to Dionne, but Nayara caught it.

Where had Dionne heard about the book?

Dionne nodded, despite Nayara maintaining her neutral expression. “A book, then.”

Someone around the table hadn’t kept a poker face. Nayara made a mental note to replay the media clip later and find out who she needed to speak to about boardroom strategy training.

Dionne continued. “Measuring by the Vienna ball, your pool of PR talent isn’t up to the task. They’re not doing you any favours.”

Nayara kept her head immobile, but slid her gaze toward Cáel. How was he taking this disparagement of his work?

Cáel was grinning openly. He was enjoying this.

Startled, Nayara returned her gaze to Dionne. “And your proposal, Ms. Rinaldi?”

“My services,” Dionne said simply. “You people need me. Desperately.”

“And why do we need you?” Ryan asked.

Dionne smiled, showing perfect white teeth. “You’re trying to make humans like you. That’s the plan, isn’t it?”

Nayara sat very still. Had they been that obvious about their intentions?

“Come on, guys!” Dionne railed at them. “I’m good at my job! You think I couldn’t figure it out? You’ve been hiding away on this station for nearly two hundred years, then
poof!
, suddenly you’re throwing money at charities, going to glittering media events and you’re writing a book?” She laughed. “Any wet-behind-the-ears consultant could figure that one out.”

“Then I repeat the question,” Nayara said. “Why do we need you, if the plan is so obvious?”

“It’s an obvious plan and it’s a good idea,” Dionne said. “But you’re going to need PR muscle to punch it through, because things will—
have—
gone wrong. That`s because you’re dealing with vampires interacting with humans. It’s not a simple Melbourne Cup Race Day. You’re going to need the best to shepherd this through. You’re going to need me.”

Nayara let herself smile. “You believe you can...rescue our campaign?”

Dionne crossed her arms, her fingertips nestled between her breasts and her upper arms. “Yes,” she said. “I would be willing to make my fee contingent, if that helps sweeten the deal for you.”

Nayara struggled to keep expression from her face. A contingent fee? The woman was remarkably sure of herself...or else she wanted this job so badly, she was willing to throw down a sweetheart deal in order to close it.

Ryan was sitting back, letting Nayara take the reins on the negotiations. This was her field of expertise.

Nayara considered. There was more to this than Dionne was so far letting on. So, she needed more information. “What fee are you proposing?”

“Six and a half million credits, for the list of criteria we can settle later.”

It wasn’t a sweetheart deal then. The fee was possibly the most expensive consultant fee anyone on the planet had ever paid. It was a once in a lifetime deal. Dionne knew exactly what she was doing, then. She knew this would shift her from famous just in this lifetime to a permanent part of the history books.