Department 57: Rubies of Fire (26 page)

“You can take the cuffs off her, darling,” she heard Nancy say, as though at a great distance or over a bad telephone line. Sparks crackled through her head as she brought every psi sense she had into play, but nothing was enough. If Nancy hadn’t known her as well as she did, Roz might have had a chance, but Nancy knew every pressure point, every weakness she had. Even Andreas.

She kept her last self-determined thought for him.
“Don’t be sorry. Avenge me and move on. I love you, Andreas Constant.”
She had no sigil for him, so she used his CIA number, sending the last thought out into the night.

She could do no more. He might pick up the thought she sent into the ether; he might not. She had done all she could. As she sank into the control of someone else, her every thought dictated by Nancy, she couldn’t help but feel thankful for the two men who had meant the most to her and were so different. John and Andreas.

* * * *

“I heard her!” Andreas paused in the act of taking the hands of George and Marshall for yet another flash to another place.

“I felt something,” George said, cocking his head to one side. “It’s from somewhere near here, but I don’t know if it was Roz. It could be another vampire.”

“No.” Andreas brought up a mental picture. “See that? It’s my CIA agent number.”

Marshall growled low in his throat. “You have no family, no sigil, so she couldn’t use that.”

“Tell me about it.”

They dropped hands and took a closer look around. This was a small community in Virginia, a respectable place, family sedans and SUVs in front of comfortable houses, not too far apart, not too close together. “I wouldn’t have thought they’d bring her somewhere like this.”

George stared around him, head high, as though he were a pointer dog trying to sniff out prey. “Perhaps they had no choice. They know we can trace almost anywhere they’ve been if we arrive quick. Just not track them, the fuckers. This was a hunch, something I felt while we were on the way someplace else.”

“You’ve been here before?” Marshall asked sharply.

“Once, a while back. I had a woman here.”

“Where?” Both Andreas and Marshall snarled the question.

George’s attention sharpened, and he held up one hand, closing his eyes. “One fourteen Bedford Avenue,” he murmured, as though he looked far, far back in time. “It didn’t last long; Joan’s husband was missing, presumed dead, in the Gulf War, but he came back. I bought them a house, I felt so guilty, and she’d been good company for a time. While I was screwing her, her husband was choking on sand.” He shook his head, clearly disgusted with himself.

“Which way?”

They’d felt nothing else after that first, sharp pang of recognition.

George led the way, striding quickly toward a small street. “Joan knew about the affair, but so did several others. I didn’t think, didn’t connect.” He paused, glanced back. “Joan’s husband was military. They never stayed in one place very long, but I told them to keep the house, rent it out until they were ready to move back. Her husband’s a general now. Probably never comes here from one end of the year to the other. They can afford something a bit fancier these days.” His long stride quickened, but the other two had no difficulty keeping up with him.

He stopped before a pleasant-looking house, well kept but with none of the personal touches that showed signs of a family in residence. Neatly barbered lawn, a garden swing, a clean, white paint finish with a blue front door. “This is the place.”

“Do we go in like gunfighters at noon or take a quiet look first?” Marshall asked.

George gave him an exasperated stare. “Take a quiet look, stupid. You want to wake the whole neighborhood?”

Marshall shrugged. “I don’t care. Whichever is the fastest way.”

Andreas took control. “This is my field. I’ll pick the locks. That burglar alarm isn’t on. Either that or the light has died.” He clicked his tongue between his teeth. “It would have slowed us down just that little bit. Stupid, but I’m glad of it. C’mon, let’s go. I’ll open the door and lead the way. Marshall, you scan for mortals. George, scan for vamps and Talents.” Mortals and Talents operated in different ways. It would be more efficient to do it separately.

Marshall pushed his long hair behind his ears. “What are you going to do?”

Andreas snicked off the safety catch on his GLOCK. “Take care of business.” He flashed a mirthless grin. “It’s what I do best.”

He was good with a lock, even if he did say so himself. Shoving the roll of slender instruments back in his pocket, he stepped back to let George and Marshall in the house before stepping noiselessly through the dark hallway to the stairs. The delay helped his night vision, and he could see perfectly. Doors to the right and left, stairs ahead. Marshall held up one finger. So did George. Two presences, one human, one vampire. Andreas’s heart sank. There should be three. Two vamps, one human.

As he watched, Marshall closed his fist. No humans, and George extended another finger. Two vampires.

Something more than terror clutched Andreas close. Oh no, no, this wasn’t going to happen. Revenge could never satisfy him. He wanted Roz back, and he wanted her alive.

The three exploded into action. George leaped up the stairs, taking them three at a time. If the staircase had been broad enough, the other two would have raced neck and neck with him.

By the time Andreas reached the top of the stairs, George had begun kicking hard against a door at the top. He burst through on the first well-placed kick, and Marshall and Andreas surged in behind him.

Like practiced agents, they spread out, George and Marshall taking either side, Andreas the center. As though they’d worked together before. None needed the lights.

The smell of blood overwhelmed Andreas, but under it all, he got the faint scent of woman.
His
woman. The echoes of another woman’s screech echoed off the walls, but he ignored it and the woman it belonged to. The other two could take care of Nancy.

The two figures on the bed could almost be engaged in sex, but they remained fully dressed. Don lay half on top of Roz, his head buried in her neck. Roz stared straight up from half-focused, heavy-lidded eyes. But ecstasy hadn’t caused that slumberous look. Roz was dying.

He felt the heavy throb in the air, the essence of her fading. Without pausing to consider his actions, he did the only thing he could. He moved slightly to make sure of his aim and shot Don in the side of the head. Blood flooded the bed and the two bodies lying on it. But only one of them remained alive now.

The blast overpowered Nancy’s scream, but he heard the echoes of it reverberate with the sound. “We have to get out of here,” Marshall said, his voice completely emotionless. “We’ll take them together.”

He was right. The sound of gunfire in this area would bring the cops in no time, not to mention any gun-happy neighbors who might imagine they had a chance against the intruders. Of such thoughts are heroes made, mostly dead ones.

Andreas calmly clicked the safety catch back on the GLOCK and tucked it into the back waistband of his slacks before bending down to scoop the interlocked couple into his arms. He forced away any thought of Roz’s soft, scented body. It might weaken him just too much. Marshall took the other side, keeping them together.

Andreas forced a vivid image of Roz’s bedroom in New York into his mind, and opened the vision for the other two, coordinates firmly set.

They flashed.

Chapter Eighteen

When they landed, Andreas nearly staggered under the extra weight of the conjoined figures he and Marshall held. With a jerk of his chin, he indicated the bed, and they made for it, laying Roz and Don down carefully. For Roz’s sake, not for Don’s.

“She compelled Roz to take Don’s blood. All of it,” George said solemnly. He had Nancy in a lock she wouldn’t break, her arms wrenched behind her back.

She glared at them defiantly. “I wanted Don with me. There was no way I was going to let another lover die.” Tears poured down her face unchecked, and she sobbed openly. “Now you’ve killed him. I’ll see you all burn in fucking hell!”

“Shut the fuck up,” said George without heat. “When I want your opinion, I’ll tell you.” His gaze met Andreas’s where he knelt on one side of the bed, Roz’s hand clasped in his while Marshall tried to ease Don off her. “Be careful, Marshall.”

“I’m trying to be,” Marshall said through gritted teeth. “Don’t, Andreas. We need to think about this. Don, or what’s left of him, has locked into a major artery. If we pull him off, Roz will lose what blood she has left in her. It will kill her for sure.”

Andreas abruptly loosed his hold on Don and let the body fall back onto Roz. He felt nauseated. He wanted the body off her. He was on the cleaner side of Don, where his bullet had entered. Marshall had the other side, the exit wound, where little remained of the head, but he seemed unaffected by the sight.

“So what do you suggest?”

Marshall glanced down at the interlocked bodies. “I can offer my neck to her, nick it a little first. If she has any life left in her at all, she’ll take it. That will keep her going, at least.”

“Won’t she be in a blood frenzy? Hold you tight, not let you go?”

Marshall shook his head, his hair glimmering in the dim light from the bedside lamp. “No. The recipient of the Gift gets the blood frenzy, not the donor. She’s down to her last few gills. If we don’t do something soon, she’ll go into shock and die anyway. Watch her closely. If she tries to take too much from me, take my place. Or I’ll draw away after a couple of pints and leave the rest to you.”

“It might take more than one transfusion. She needs four more pints, at least.”

“She can have it.”

Andreas’s respect for Marshall went up several notches. “You don’t have to do that. I called Cristos as soon as we arrived here. But give her something. I’ll make sure you’re safe, I swear.” Glancing down at Roz, he thought her face had paled even more. “I’m sorry I shot him. She could have had him.”

Marshall shook his head. “That’s not a good idea. Since blood from a dead person is no good to us, it doesn’t matter now.” Nothing mattered now, except they’d arrived in time to give Roz a chance. “Ready?”

Andreas met Marshall’s eyes over the conjoined bodies between them. Without another word, Marshall extended a claw and scratched his neck.

A scratch was all it took. With overwhelming relief, Andreas saw Roz’s fangs extend. She didn’t pull her lower lip back, and the razor-sharp fangs sliced through it. Marshall bent, offering his neck, and Andreas watched Roz’s fangs take possession of his vein.

When vampires withdrew their bite, their fangs and the saliva on them closed the wound naturally, leaving small marks that disappeared more quickly than usual wounds. By morning, the blood donor would be left flawless. But Andreas had killed Don before he’d done that.

Andreas had had no choice. If he’d waited until Don withdrew, Roz would have been dead. In a blood frenzy, the recipient of the Gift sank deep into the artery, not a vein, and remained there until every drop of the donor’s blood had gone. If he withdrew, she’d bleed out and lose what little she had left.He waited for a few moments and heard the gentle sucking sound that meant Roz had latched on and had taken some blood. She would lose a little with the action he was about to take next, and he wanted it replaced. He flicked a look up at George, who nodded, grim-faced, still holding Nancy, who by then had subsided into heartbroken sobs. The door opened. He didn’t need to turn around to know who had just come in.

“Go on,” Cristos said. “Do it. There are enough of you to replenish her. I’ll take Nancy.”

Dimly he heard handcuffs clicking, no doubt silver ones like the ones that had been dangling from the bed in that house in Virginia. “Don’t take her away, Cristos. We might need her as a donor.”

“Count on it.”

“I don’t care anymore!” He heard Nancy’s tearful words with no emotion at all. He doubted he could care about Nancy now if he tried.

“We don’t need your permission, Nancy. After we separate them, it’s your turn.” Andreas knew Cristos well enough to know just how much anger seethed under the calm tones.

He took a deep breath and dragged Don’s body away, swiftly pushing it aside, ignoring the thump when the body hit the floor. Blood pumped from Roz’s neck, the raw wounds gaping. He bent and covered them with his mouth, feeling the fresh blood fill it before his fangs drove down and the saliva came. He would have blocked the wounds with his body, anything, if this didn’t work, but he felt a slowing of the flow. He let the blood trickle out of his mouth. Vampires didn’t take blood into their digestive systems. It went up their fangs to a special organ that only their species possessed. Too much blood in the stomach made a vampire as sick as any other human.

Thank God it was working.

Andreas concentrated on the task at hand as if it were the only thing in the world. It was, for him. He counted slowly, and by the time he reached twenty, the pulse had slowed to nearly nothing. He drew away.

Pinpricks, with a tiny thread of blood. He lifted a corner of the bed sheet and touched it to the wounds, sore rather than life threatening.

When he looked up, Marshall was just pulling away, paler than usual but intact. Andreas bent forward. “She probably lost most of that in this wound. It’s my turn.”

“No.” Cristos moved, and Andreas heard the stumble that meant Cristos was pulling Nancy along with him. Andreas didn’t take his eyes off Roz’s face. She remained unconscious, still pale. Still critical.

“Nancy employed compulsion, so her life is forfeit. Let Roz drain her to the point of death. Just as Andreas tried to do.”

“No!” Nancy’s voice echoed off the walls. “You can’t do that!”

“Yes, I can. You might say it’s my job.” They came into sight when Cristos dragged Nancy around to the other side of the bed, across from Andreas. “Go, Marshall. You provided the first aid, stopped that wound killing Roz. It’s time to administer the cure. Thank you for all you’ve done. Department 57 would be glad of your services if you ever consider helping us out.”