Department 57: Rubies of Fire (11 page)

That turned their attention back to him. Andreas deliberately relaxed, leaning his head against the soft pillows on the back of the sofa.

“Who are you?”

He bared his teeth in the smallest of smiles, careful to keep his fangs hidden. “Someone.”

“Leave him alone, boys.”

Damn, he hadn’t felt her come in or heard the
snick
of her door. He wished Roz had chosen to stay in her room, perhaps call for help. “Roz, stay out of this. I’ll handle it.”

“The hell you will.” He felt her presence behind him before he felt her touch on his shoulder. Light, just to tell him, not to restrain him.

“What do you want?”

“Tell us about him.” The short-haired one jerked his head at Don. “And him.” Andreas received the same treatment.

One concentrated on him while the other concentrated on Don. Careful to retain his focus, so Don would catch nothing, Andreas responded.

He opened his mind and sent a pure, concentrated needle of pain into the Talent’s brain, closing down so fast afterward the other had no chance of discovering who had done it.

When the long-haired Talent closed his eyes and shouted in pain, Roz increased her grip on his shoulder. “What did you do?”

Andreas glanced at Don, whose eyes went wide in query. Roz sighed. “It’s all right. He’s mortal, but he knows. Otherwise he wouldn’t be marrying Nancy, would he?”

Andreas let out a single breath of relief. “I sent out a quick probe.”

Don chuckled. “What it is to have gifts like that.”

Immediately he felt a responding query in his mind, and he allowed it, but not too deeply. The Talent was searching for an identity. And he got a sigil from them, unmasked. Ah, well that explained a lot. Vampires.

Andreas bared his teeth and let his fangs extend this time, then withdrew them so he could speak. “That answer your question?” Don’s suppressed exclamation was the only sound in the room for a bare moment. Nancy put her hand over his and squeezed gently.

The other narrowed his eyes. “No. You have no sigil?”

“No.” He didn’t see why this intruder deserved any more than that. The man had the manners of a pig, and Andreas didn’t need to enter Roz’s mind to feel her distress. Her hand tensed on his shoulder told him. He seethed with anger to think that anyone should upset her, and wanted to tear the intruders limb from limb. “Your turn. Who are you?”

“We’re here to look after Roz.” The long-haired one glanced at the other woman. “And Nancy too. You don’t think we’d send them into danger on their own, do you?”

“You don’t seem to be making a good job of it.” Gently, Andreas dislodged Roz’s hand and got to his feet. “You plan to flash into her presence when she gets into peril? During the day? Come on, who are you? What are you doing here?” He took a step toward them and saw them tense, then retain their stance. He’d intimidated them, very slightly. Good.

The short-haired one farthest away from him spoke. “Marshall and George Gardiner, vampires of the Gardiner family. Protectors. We’ve come to take our women home.” His mouth turned up in a slight sneer. “Your turn,” he said, deliberately echoing Andreas’s words.

“Andreas Constant, vampire. I have no family.” He ignored Don’s start of surprise that rocked the cushions under them.

The long-haired one, Marshall, shook his head. “That’s not possible.”

“Yes, it is. Here I am, waiting for you to talk to me.” He spread his hands in a taunting gesture. “What makes you think you can march in here and take over? Are you tracking Roz during the day? What do you expect to do about anything then?”

The vampire blushed, his high cheekbones reddening.

Andreas watched, savoring the moment. The flush was gone almost as soon as it arrived. Marshall could call it righteous anger or anything else he wanted, but Andreas knew better. That was a blush.

He allowed a corner of his mouth to quirk and caught Marshall’s gaze, a flash of understanding passing between them. Before he could respond, Andreas turned to George, the one with short hair and blue eyes blazing with anger. “I’m not only a vampire. I’m a field operative for Department 57. I can shoot straight, engage in hand-to-hand combat, fly most small aircraft, and set a bomb to hit a target precisely and cleanly. I can hide in plain sight. I can survive on very little—even less than the Company thinks—if I have access to fresh blood. I can protect Roz day or night if she needs it, but she’s shown precious little need of any skills I can offer her.” He firmly suppressed the thought of her sweat-sheened body lying beneath his. That skill was mutual and could wait until a better time. Despite his concentration on the task at hand, he felt her presence in him, warming him with approval. He hadn’t said that to please her, but he was glad he had.

“We’re taking them back with us. It’s getting too dangerous for us to risk our women.”

Andreas didn’t need George and Marshall’s anger to know how that particular statement made them feel. “And what century do you think you’re living in?”

George sucked his cheeks in as though he was about to spit, but then swallowed. At least civilization had taught him that much. “This one. You know as well as we do that vampire women are precious. The future of the race depends on them.”

“Vampires can mate with mortal women.”

“But not always make vampires. Most of the children of that kind of union are mortals like their mothers.”

Andreas shrugged. “They’re usually Talented in some way. If the survival of a race depends on the subjugation of half of them, is it worth preserving?” He gave them a look of pure contempt. “By demanding that Nancy and Roz disappear inside your strongholds, you’re denying them the right to make up their own minds. If they want it, fine.” If families meant that kind of attitude, he was better off without one.

Roz lifted her head and confronted her cousins. “You’re living in the past, boys. Give it up, go home, and tell them what we decided.”

George breathed heavily through his nose and shook his head. “We can’t. We’re under orders to bring you back for your own good.”

“Who ordered you?”

Andreas suspected she knew. Only a few people had the authority to compel vampires like these.

“Your fathers.”

Roz made an exasperated sound between her teeth, but it was Nancy who spoke. “I’m marrying Don, so I won’t be breeding with any vampires anytime soon. My mother’s okay with it; my dad agreed reluctantly; so what’s your problem?”

Marshall shot Don a sharp glance. Don smiled back, seemingly not at all put out by the presence of these powerful beings. But then he’d lived with one for a while. “He’ll have to be approved.”

“I’ve had permission from my folks to tell him what I am. That’s all the approval I need. If there’s anything else my father wants, he’ll have to ask nicely for it.”

Good for her!
Andreas wanted to applaud but only allowed himself a smile. “Looks as if they made their choices, boys. Just get back to the family and let them know.”

“Can’t do that.” Marshall’s voice turned sharper, and all Andreas’s senses went on alert. “We’re taking them back, and that’s all there is to it.”

Grimly, Andreas realized George had circled around him. The vampires neatly bracketed him. If that was all it took to take him down, he’d have been dead meat a long time ago.

Without warning, he lashed backward with one foot, taking Marshall smartly in the chest and slamming down his mental screens. As he’d expected, George darted forward, hoping to attack him while he was off-balance.

He circled his leg, regaining his equilibrium and using his left arm to swing out. The mental attack came from two places at once. These two must be a couple of hundred years old at least, fully mature vampires, and they had full, highly trained control of their faculties.

Pain lashed at him from George, lying on the floor, and from Marshall, taking him from a different angle at the front of his brain.

He nearly lost it until a single, searing needle swept into his mind, splitting the contact between him and Marshall, enabling him to strike back and deflect the attack of blinding agony George had hoped to incapacitate him with. Roaring in fury, he bared his teeth and stretched his hands, allowing the claws to shoot out from their sheaths under his fingernails.

The answering hiss of twenty unsheathed claws met his attack, but here he could confidently fight on. Two to one was nothing, even against strong males, for a man of his training.

Or so Andreas told himself. “You won’t take them,” he growled, the words almost inaudible against his strong fangs and the fury bubbling up inside. They understood.

One blow wasn’t enough, and when George sprang up from the floor, they attacked him without hesitation. The click of the catch on Don’s pistol sounded through all the roaring rage, though, and the explosion sent the world into ringing, echoing cacophony.

Marshall fell to the floor, eyes wide with pain. Don had hit his mark, and the bullet had gone straight through his leg. Blood pooled on the expensive cream carpet.

“Oh, great, look what you’ve done!” Nancy’s angry cry split incongruously through the testosterone-fueled shouts and fury.

“Darling, we’ll make it right.”

“Only if we get the whole room recarpeted. That bastard’s paying for it. Bleeding all over my floor!”

Andreas could hardly credit what he was hearing, but that was nothing compared to Don’s gawping mouth and dazed eyes. “Nancy, sweetheart, I shot him.”

“Yes, but not without provocation. You two can just get out of here! We’re doing all right on our own. We don’t need big strong vampires to tell us what to do.” Nancy strode forward and poked George in the chest. “So go.”

“Sorry, babe. Can’t do it.” George glanced at Marshall, who still lay groaning on the floor. “I’ve got this one. Get up, grab the other one, and we’ll be on our way.”

Several things happened at once. Marshall surged to his feet, albeit wincing and favoring one leg, the one not spurting blood. He grabbed the edge of his shirt, ripping a strip from the fine material to make himself a tourniquet. Don watched, openmouthed.

Andreas was too busy to take much notice of events. He leaped at Roz, grabbed her, and concentrated.

He flashed out.

Chapter Eight

Roz felt the air eddy. Colors swirled around her, disorienting her senses before they settled once more. “What did you do?” she demanded, pulling away. She glanced around. “Oh. Where are we?”

He watched her, wariness darkening his eyes. “At my house in New York State. I’ll take us back anytime you like, but I thought we could both do with time off.”

“Time off, huh?”

His voice rose a little. Roz guessed he worried what her reaction might be. “I sensed others arriving at the apartment. Backup. We would have lost, and they would have taken you back.”

Her jaw firmed. “I felt that too. I was prepared to go back, at least until I’d explained to them.”
Fucking Gardiners!
“They were okay until they thought we might be in real danger. Then it’s, ‘Oops, save the women, the breeding factories!’”

“What were they thinking?” He lifted a hand, and soft lights came up. “What century do they think they’re in?”

“Some of them think they’re still in the Victorian era.” She watched him. “Impressive telekinesis. All the bangs and flashes. Clever touch.”

He opened his hand to reveal a small device and laughed softly, the sound rippling through her body as though he’d touched her. “Modern electronics, not telekinesis. The twenty-first century.”

Her answering smile drove the last of the wariness from his eyes. “Good thinking, Batman.” She shook her head in exasperation. “They want to protect us, even from ourselves. That’s why Nancy and I escaped to New York. What they don’t see, they can’t criticize us for. As soon as Nancy and I hooked up when I came back to the States, we found we had something in common. The need to get away from the babying.”

His vicious interjection surprised her with its violence. Without thinking, she stepped forward and laid her hand on his arm. “No, they don’t mean anything by it. They want to look after us, the way they think is right.”

“And what about you? Don’t your rights amount to anything?” His mouth compressed to a straight line. “I’ve never been exactly a supporter of women’s lib before, but that was ridiculous. I felt like reminding them that women are people too.”

“So you just took me from there without asking?”

He grinned. “You wanted me to ask you first? How about I take you right back? Just say the word, and we’re there.”

She examined his face. He was perfectly sincere. It was like listening to a being from another world, compared to the attitude of her family. But they weren’t natural chauvinists. Some of them felt driven to it. “We haven’t many females left.” She reached up her hand to touch his face, compelled by an impulse she barely recognized, she’d felt it last so long ago. Tenderness, some might call it. “For some reason, Gardiners are mainly males. Our women are even less fertile than most. The doctors are doing their best, but it’s like a plague. So they’ve taken to coddling us, rescuing us, taking care of us.”

“You still have the right to live your own life.”

“Maybe.” She stroked his cheek with her thumb and watched his eyelids droop when he responded to the caress. “But you have to see their point of view.”

“Why?” He turned his head and captured her thumb in his mouth, as though he had to taste her, before releasing it to speak again. “I owe them nothing. Neither do you, Roz. You can’t help what you are any more than I can.” He gave a rueful chuckle and adjusted the fit of his pants. “I don’t seem to have any control around you. We always end up like this—pounding away at each other like rabbits and then falling asleep. I want more. I want to know you and to know why you were so scared tonight. That’s not like you. Talk to me.”

She swallowed. Why did he have to be so damned perceptive? Then she realized something that might help to distract him. Apart from the sex, which she had every intention of getting to before long. “Why aren’t you collapsed on the floor in exhaustion?”

He stared at her. Then his face relaxed. “Oh, right, the flashing.”