Department 57: Bloody Crystal (16 page)

“Thank the Department,” he said. “They paid for it. That card will go back tonight. Though I have one of my own, and it would be my pleasure to buy you something myself. We can’t do it today, or we could be traced. That is, if someone didn’t see us, someone who can see past fuzzing.”

“You fuzzed?” She hadn’t realized. Was she so used to it that she couldn’t tell?

“I shielded you,” Fabrice said simply. It had to take a lot of power to do that without her detecting it.

Shit, this man was lethally powerful. And untouchable. What a combination.

Chapter Twelve

Back at the hotel, she didn’t have time to gloat over her purchases. Truly she loved the new wardrobe, but she needed the ordinary clothes too, and the personal shopper had ignored her pleas for flat shoes and ordinary T-shirts. And Fabrice hadn’t been completely absorbed in his tablet while she’d been busy. He’d found her some jewelry, simple chains and a string of pearls she was terrified were the real thing. Her cheap chain-store watch just didn’t go with these things. But she’d had it for years, and she liked it.

“Work this afternoon,” Fabrice informed her. “We can’t put it off any longer.”

After she’d changed into jeans and a T-shirt from the chain store and a long silk cardigan from the expensive wardrobe, both in the harebell blue she loved, she returned to the living room of the suite where Fabrice, also in casual wear, waited for her. He looked as devastating in jeans as he did in formal suits, but all she could think of was to wonder what Rhodri looked like dressed more formally. In a tux. Oh yeah, she’d love him in a tux.

“Let’s make a start,” he said.

“Don’t you want to go to the Department?”

He shook his head. “No need. We use isolation rooms for the in-depth stuff, but I won’t discover anything if I try that. I’m going to help you, provide support. That’s all. Only you can trace him. And where he is, so is Wilkinson.”

“It’s Wilkinson you really want, isn’t it?”

“It’s Wilkinson the Department wants. But you love Rhodri. I don’t want to see that die.” He said it so straightforwardly she nearly missed it. Conversationally. The least she could do was accept it.

“Yes, I love him. I want to concentrate on finding Rhodri. If he’s not with Wilkinson, I don’t give a fuck.”

What followed was the hardest work she could ever remember, but at the end of it, she knew far more about psi and, in particular, telepathy and how it worked. Fabrice was as good as his word—he supported her, helped her. No more. But when Fabrice left her to rest, she had no energy to seek her bed. She closed her eyes, leaning against the back of the sofa she’d sat in all afternoon. When she opened them again, Will Grady had arrived.

He gave her a polite nod. “You did well. None of my people could do any better.” She saw the excitement in his eyes, banked behind the depths but there. It was in the way he held his body, tension radiating from him. “We have him. I’m sure of it.” He glanced at Fabrice, who was making coffee. “So Manchester it is,” he said.

“Yep. It wasn’t too hard. They must have let Rhodri get a glance of it. Cerys picked it up from her link with Tryfanwy, and we identified it from photos.” He glanced at the laptop on the other sofa. “There’s no guarantee they stopped there. Manchester has a big airport. They could have flown anywhere from there. And we don’t know what Wilkinson looks like now.”

“It fits,” Grady growled. “He likes the UK, prefers to stay here. And he likes to hide in big cities. I can feel it. I know he’s there, somewhere.”

“Well, it’s your country,” Fabrice said. His tone made Cerys stare at him, wondering what the real meaning behind the innocuous words were. “They must have taken a long route, because Rhodri was completely confused by the time they got there. They drugged him too, at least during the day when he couldn’t shake it off. They’ll have him fastened down now.” He broke off suddenly.

“What?” Cerys asked

Grady didn’t have the same chivalric instincts that Fabrice possessed. Either that or he preferred the truth. “He’s a vampire. What do you think they have to do to secure him?” He glanced at Fabrice, who handed him a steaming mug of coffee, his fine lips tight with disapproval.

She could imagine several ways. She shuddered. “There’s no drug that can restrain a vampire in possession of his powers.”

“No, there isn’t.”

“Is it just money he wants?”

Grady made a disgusted sound. “It’s never just money. It’s power, control. Wilkinson wants to control.” Now it was Fabrice’s turn to blow a raspberry. But Grady ignored him. “His trainers didn’t think much of him. He was slow to learn his skill, and his early attempts were laughable. At least they thought so. So he killed them. That was why it took so long to trace him. He’d disguised their deaths, concealed them. But we found him. Fabrice, I want you to examine his dossier.”

“Me too,” she said. “So what is Wilkinson? What’s his talent?”

“He’s a metamorph,” Fabrice told her. At her raised brow, he explained. “I’m not surprised you’ve never heard of them. They’re very rare. It’s a kind of shape-shifter. He has the attributes of one, but he’s a special kind. He can change his appearance. At first we thought he was mortal, but later it became obvious that he was a metamorph. He can’t shift sex, except by conventional disguise methods, but he can change his mortal appearance. He can’t change into any other creature, a dragon or griffin or so on.”

Grady sighed. “We’ll move you to a hotel in Manchester so you can be closer to Rhodri. The signal will be stronger that way. You might even establish a better link. We’ll send Esti as well. She’s fully recovered now. You’ll be guarded night and day, and we’ll find him.”

She wasn’t sure if he meant Rhodri or Wilkinson, but she had no doubt which one she meant. Nothing else mattered now. Even if Rhodri turned his back on her and left once she’d found him, even if he had lied or been married or something like that. But he wouldn’t. She couldn’t have fallen in love with someone like that. Could she?

* * *

So near and yet so far. Llandudno was about an hour, maybe a tad longer, from Manchester. She’d had weekends in the city, but never at this hotel and never in this kind of luxury. Fabrice had gone back to the States, recalled at short notice for another operation, and now she and Esti were posing as wealthy sisters. About the only thing she and Esti had in common was their hair color, but the hotel staff took it in stride. They were paid to. And the bodyguards they brought with them provided interesting eye candy for the maids every morning. That didn’t hurt, either.

She still felt that edge with Esti. They had been there for little more than a day before Esti got to work. Her way hurt more than Fabrice’s. She wanted him back, but he’d left so abruptly she’d hardly had a chance to say good-bye.

“Is there a problem?” she asked Esti now. “Don’t get me wrong, I really appreciate you being here, but Fabrice left so fast—”

Esti gave a bitter smile. “He wanted you. He liked you too much.”

“What?” After what he’d told her, she’d never have guessed it.

“Some of us have to struggle a great deal to maintain our virgin state. Fabrice is very powerful, and he stands to lose too much. Recently I think he’s been more troubled than before.”

“He has?” Now she felt guilty. Shit.

“You are small, essentially feminine, and Fabrice Germain has strongly protective instincts. Did you not notice that?”

“Yes, but brothers feel the same way, don’t they?”

Esti gave a weary smile. “He didn’t feel like a brother toward you.”

“How can you know?”

“I felt it when he first saw you. Just for an instant. Nobody else would have noticed. It is not your fault, Cerys, and it is not your problem. But vampires often have fiery, impulsive natures. They are heroin to a Sorcerer—something he must resist, but he finds difficult to do.”

“How about you? Aren’t you ever attracted to other people? Vampires? Me?”

“You are no threat to me. Although I do not use that part of my nature, I know I am heterosexual. I have never felt attraction toward another woman other than friendship or companionship.”

But she hadn’t precisely answered Cerys’s question. She’d drop it for now, tease her with it later if she got even more bored.

Cerys turned away. “I’m glad I can do something, however little.” She was feeling like a spare part. She knew the operation was continuing, that agents were combing the area, searching for traces of Talents, questioning everyone they met, but she was here, watching TV, reading, eating, drinking. Waiting for the time they might need her again. But try as she might, she couldn’t get a trace of Rhodri. All she knew was that he was alive.

Heroin, was she? Nice, real nice.

Occasionally she’d see someone. Kai was back, and he and Domenici took guard duties. Domenici had brought his wife, a lovely redhead called Nicole. The other agents on the case had brought their partners, all but Kai, who had left his wife and husband to care for each other. So Kai sometimes joined them. The others were staying at different hotels to spread the security load, Kai told her. One hit could bring this fine old hotel down, he said. Cerys thought they were joking or being overcareful until Kai told her of a recent incident in San Francisco, where a whole division of the Department had been wiped out in one afternoon. She remembered the hit, but the media had put it down to terrorists, not the enemy it really was, so she hadn’t realized. She hadn’t even known a Department had been based there.

She’d lived her life in peaceful ignorance of all this hatred. Her parents had told her there were some people who knew about Talents and hated them, others who wanted to exploit them, but she just hadn’t realized how much and how badly.

Now that she knew, she’d always be on her guard, always know these stories and look over her shoulder. No more carefree walks on the beach, no more laughing afternoons with her mortal friends, not without scanning them first to ensure they meant her no harm. Pitiful, sad, but if she wanted to live a happy and full life, she’d have to think about it.

Kai taught her how to fight. She already knew self-defense, but Kai said he wanted her prepared for the daytime, to learn how to use weapons, fight back, hurt people before they could hurt her. That part she enjoyed, working in the hotel’s gym until she was exhausted and she could sleep at night. The guards courteously provided her with the blood she needed.

Every night she went to bed alone, at around two or three, and slept until noon the next day. Sometimes. Most nights she spent awake, wondering, worrying, trying to find Rhodri.

She’d never been so alone.

* * *

A week after their arrival in Manchester, they still had no news. Cerys had moved suites twice—annoying but necessary, according to the bodyguards—and she was tired of unpacking, even the beautiful clothes she’d bought in London and hardly had a chance to wear. She wore them all once, even the evening dress, because she felt she had to. They’d love these in the bar if she ever got back there. The authorities still hadn’t discovered who murdered Dave, but then she didn’t expect them to find out. She was sure whoever had killed him were Talents out to find her. She’d had notice from the inspector that they’d ruled her out of any inquiries, and the statement they’d taken from her at the scene would be adequate. That had to be Will’s doing. The police weren’t usually that sloppy.

She strode around the spacious living room of the new suite. She’d like it if she were here for a function, an event. It would be a treat, but this was driving her demented. She didn’t care how soft the green carpet felt under her feet, didn’t give a shit about the extra-extra-super-wonderful bed, because there was no one here to share it with her. When she wasn’t trying to contact Rhodri with every means at her disposal, she was feeling guiltily bored. Guilty because she didn’t have to work for this or do anything except be here and be protected. Like an expensive parcel.

Deciding to experiment with the clothes, she slipped into her room. Esti was resting. Esti needed a lot of rest, and Cerys suspected she wasn’t as well as she made out. That attack when she’d repulsed the cars following them had done something, and she guessed Esti was working hard to restore her skills. She also guessed Esti wasn’t used to weakness and didn’t cope with it well. But that left Cerys with nobody to talk to and little to do. Not that she felt she could complain.

She went to her room and stripped, taking out some of the sexier stuff. A bra and thong set in blue, soft and silky. It was the right size—the shopper had measured her—but it didn’t feel like it supported her enough. Her breasts felt heavy. But standing side on to view her profile, she gave herself a whistle of appreciation since there was nobody here to do it for her.

That was when she got the call. A flash, undoubtedly Rhodri. She saw him sitting in a car, then leaving it and standing outside—fuck, this hotel! He strode into the building, barely acknowledging the doorman, who saluted smartly. It was him. He was here. She recognized his mental signature, the way he spoke, and his sigil. He sent her a call.
“Which room are you in? Can I come up? I’ll tell you all about it.”

He’d got away. He needed her. She sent a cautious message back.
“Wait there. I’ll come.”

She grabbed some of the clothes on the bed that she’d planned to try on. A pair of navy trousers in soft wool and a light, short-sleeved sweater in angora, beautifully soft to the touch. Just right for a crisp day in late spring. She scrambled into the clothes and grabbed a brush. He loved to touch her hair, but it was far too tangled for him to run his fingers through it. He wasn’t in a hurry. He’d shown no sign of being pursued. He’d escaped from Wilkinson.

Sandals and she was done. Shame the sandals had three-inch heels, but they looked pretty, and she couldn’t locate her sneakers or the ballet flats under the clothes she’d laid out to try on.

Glancing around, she grabbed her room key card. That was all she needed.

Esti still wasn’t about, but someone would be. Leaving the room, she saw Domenici was on duty outside, his dark suit and white shirt making him appear like a normal bodyguard or driver. Just bigger. “Rhodri’s downstairs,” she said, gasping the words out. “He contacted me.”