Department 57: Rubies of Fire (7 page)

She didn’t think he’d caught her mental acceptance of the
L
word, because he seemed completely absorbed by her body. As she stared at him, his eyes half-lidded with passion, she let herself sink into the purely physical sensation of making love—of screwing him, fucking him, boinking—

“Boinking?” His eyes filled with amusement. “Call it what you want. I’m calling it making love.”

“That’s your prerogative.”

“Let’s see what you call it when I do—this.”

He drove hard into her, reaching in, pushing, urging her toward a climax she only dimly perceived. Relentlessly he invaded her again, then jerked out and thrust back, quickening his pace, varying the length and depth of his strokes until the warmth spread throughout her body. Sharp electric thrills filled her until she wasn’t sure if she felt his reaction or hers, driving her hard toward a climax that sent her mindlessly soaring into unknown skies.

Chapter Five

The legend in Langley was that the CIA didn’t want a crackpot setup like Department 57 anywhere near its headquarters. Add to that the fact that many of the associates and consultants were foreign nationals, and the Company preferred to pretend the Department didn’t exist. The distance left both parties happy, so Department 57 remained in Manhattan.

But the situation had changed. Someone somewhere in Langley was taking an interest in the Department. Violence against Talents had escalated. The Department was on alert.

Consequently, Roz not only had to produce her CIA credentials to get in, but subject herself to a mind scan. “You’ll have a scan done later today for a retinal ID,” the guard told her as she passed through the narrow channel leading to the entrance. “Then you can go through that way.” With a jerk of his head, he indicated another channel through which several ordinary-looking people were passing. If it weren’t for the tingle in her nerve endings, Roz wouldn’t have given them a second glance.

Once through the sliding glass doors, she approached the information desk. A woman sat behind a switchboard, a PC at her elbow, the screen showing a personalized screensaver of Jon Bon Jovi in his prime. Roz allowed herself a moment to enjoy the eye candy, but she didn’t have long. She passed the letter of introduction to the woman, who made a call. “Someone will be down for you directly. Please take a seat.”

This place seemed so normal, Roz found it hard to believe that here, more Talents gathered than almost anywhere else in the world. The employees who passed her while she sat on the leather sofa looked like regular office workers, perhaps a tad better dressed than the average. Apart from that, they were the same as all the other workers who thronged the streets of New York at this time of the morning. Except for that tingle when they passed her. She closed her mind to all but superficial contact.

“Ms. Templeton?”

Roz blinked. A woman, average height, average build, wearing a pair of fashionably styled spectacles and a smart blue skirt suit, smiled at her. Roz didn’t think she’d ever seen anyone with such perfectly striped hair before. Red and navy blue, to be precise. “Y-yes,” she stammered, scrambling to her feet, only just remembering to take her briefcase with her. Then she had to shift it to her left hand when the woman wanted to shake hands.

When she probed the other woman’s mind, she found this was a mortal. “I’m Diane Mortimer, Cristos’s PA. He’s waiting for you. Would you like to come this way?”

Diane led Roz through a large office divided into cubicles in the center. The hum of light chatter filled the air, and the feeling of the place was good, harmonious. Roz knew the kind of hard work that went into making an office like that, a sympathetic atmosphere without the stress of overworked personnel. Doors ranged along the side opposite the large windows, and at the end of the long room were more doors. The tingling increased as she approached the center door of a set of three, and Diane opened it to let them both through.

An ordinary boardroom met her gaze, a long table down the center, chairs arranged around it, bottled water and glasses in the middle. And a familiar scent coming fresh to her nostrils, a sense of coming home.

She knew why before she saw him. Andreas, waiting by the door, dressed in silk and wool—dark red shirt and black pants, immaculately cut—looking confident, privileged, and happy. None of the assets that showed when he worked at the DIB. Only then did she realize the extent of his acting skills. This Andreas appeared perfectly comfortable in his skin, powerful and assured. She had no doubt this was the real man. He smiled and held out his hand, and when she placed her own in it, led her forward. “This is Roz Templeton, Cristos.”

“You’re involved with her.” The voice sounded crisp and dispassionate. It belonged to a middle-aged man of around six feet in height, with clear gray-blue eyes, dressed in a breathtakingly beautiful suit of charcoal gray. Everything about him appeared understated, from the well-cut, short silver hair to his polished black shoes. “You weren’t expected to do that.”

Andreas shrugged, the silk shirt molding to his shoulder muscles. “I don’t always do what what’s expected. You know that. I wanted to be here to introduce you,” he said, turning to her, his voice softening. “Just after you left this morning I realized it was important to me to be here, so I called the DIB, claiming a dentist appointment.”

Despite her state of nervousness, Roz smiled, warmed by his concern.

“An unnecessary risk.” Cristos’s voice held an edge of admonition. “You know she’s safe here.”

“Yes,” Andreas said, not taking his attention away from her. “But
she
doesn’t know that.”

He must have felt her nervousness that morning, even though she’d tried hard not to project it. An emotion she was used to, this fear of unknown places, but she’d never allowed it to stop her from doing what she wanted to do, what was right for her. She’d emigrated across the Atlantic Ocean alone, begun a new life determinedly independent of her British family, and she was proud of herself for overcoming her natural reticence. Every well-brought-up Victorian miss had some of it, but it was hardly suitable for the twenty-first century.

She smiled, accepting the inevitable. “I’m fine.”

“Since you’re here, have you a little time to spare, Andreas?” Cristos broke in. “I’m briefing the team this morning, and you may as well sit in on it. There’s some new information.”

“Yes, I can do that. I’ll go in to the DIB after lunch.”

She grinned, remembering his excuse. “Some extensive dental work?”

He grinned back and allowed his perfectly shaped, perfectly white teeth to show. His fangs were retracted into their tooth-buds and not available until the nighttime. “Something like that. But Andreas the goldbrick wouldn’t hurry back to the office, would he?”

“A dentist appointment would make him take the morning off,” she agreed.

Cristos cleared his throat, and Roz blushed. Staring at the man who’d spent the last two nights with her wasn’t the best way to start a new job. Fuck.

She looked away hurriedly, ignoring Andreas’s low chuckle.

The door opened to admit a couple, but unlike Roz and Andreas, their body language gave no indication of any personal entanglements. The girl was much too young, Roz would guess about sixteen or so, and the man she knew.

Fabrice Germain, the virgin Sorcerer.

In the nightclub, she hadn’t been close enough to see his eyes properly. Now she was. When he lifted his head, still smiling, and met her gaze, the sheer power in the startling blue irises knocked her back on her heels. This man was a human with awesome powers. He would live a mortal lifespan, but it was hard to believe that power that strong would last longer than seventy years without burning out the body that held it. Control must be incredibly difficult.

“Yes, it is.”
The voice whispered into the depths of her mind, and she knew she couldn’t hold any barriers against this man. She’d find it pointless to try.

So she smiled, as if accustomed to being in the presence of such legendary creatures, and turned her attention to the girl.

Who wasn’t paying her any attention at all. The girl’s smile broadened, and she launched herself forward into Andreas’s waiting arms. Suppressing her pang of jealousy with difficulty, Roz watched the encounter.

Clearly Andreas saw this girl as a sister or a daughter, even. And Andreas must be young, if Cristos found him at fourteen. A younger lover tickled her fancy. Not for the first time, either.

Andreas patted the girl’s back, chuckling, and eased her away so he could look down into her face. “How have you been, Ellie?”

“Peachy,” she answered. Dressed in jeans and a T-shirt with
Sexy grrl
emblazoned on the front, she looked like any healthy teenager Roz could have passed in the street. Except she wouldn’t be here if that were the case. Pretty, with a slim figure verging on skinny, short, dark hair, and brown eyes, Ellie seemed bursting with life and happiness.

Andreas drew her away and glanced at Roz, an edge of anxiety in his expression. It warmed her, that slight worry, as though her opinion really mattered to him. “This is Ellie,” he said, rather unnecessarily. “She’s under my care for the time being. The same thing happened to her that happened to me.”

A world of understanding passed between them, all in one sentence. Ellie was a vampire, then, and one with no sigil. To be certain, Roz looked in the place where she’d expect to find the sigil in a vampire’s brain. Nothing, just a blank wall. Not even a scar.

“Laurie found her on the streets. That’s Laurie Friedland. A European soccer star.” Ah yes, she recalled now from the pictures Knox had shown them. The last footballer she’d taken any notice of was Stanley Matthews, a lifetime ago. Oh yes, and the gorgeous David Beckham. Dredging her memory, she remembered another good-looking blond man whose posters had been all over the newsstands recently. His name, Laurie Friedland. Yes, that was it. She had heard of him after all. “He’s a Talent?”

“Yes, he is.”

So Ellie was another vampire orphan. Before she’d met Andreas, she hadn’t known they existed. Now she’d met two. “Ellie Smith,” Andreas said, stepping back. “Meet Roz Templeton.”

“Vampire,” Roz added, naming her Talent for the newcomers. “Pleased to meet you, Ellie.”

Ellie regarded her frankly, studying her with interest, so Roz noticed when the shadow fell over her eyes. Precisely at the moment when Andreas moved closer and touched Roz’s hand, murmuring, “You okay?”

“Fine,” she managed, maintaining her smile.

Ellie’s smile didn’t waver, but her gaze sharpened. “Hey, you coming to Jenna’s exhibition tonight?”

When Andreas raised his brow, she flung her hands in the air in a gesture of exasperation. “You know, my friend Jenna! We work at the same gallery.”

Andreas frowned. “You work? What about school?”

“Part-time, you idiot!” Ellie didn’t seem to have the respect for Andreas she should have for a father figure. Perhaps she saw him more as an elder brother. “It’s Jenna’s first exhibition tonight. The gallery finally took a chance on her. Oh, you have to come, please!”

“Of course I will.” He glanced down at Roz. “Do you want to come?”

She’d rather have him to herself, but she couldn’t come between Andreas and this girl. Ellie obviously cared for him a great deal, and she could feel the warmth in Andreas’s mind when he thought of her. No, she wasn’t jealous. Truly she wasn’t. “Sure.”

* * * *

Ellie left, after bussing Cristos and Andreas and slanting her a considering look. To Roz’s relief, she didn’t subject her to the same boisterous treatment. Then they got down to business. Unlike Bernard Knox, Cristos didn’t lead them into a formal conference room for a meeting, but grabbed a manila file from a mahogany filing cabinet and tossed a picture across his desk. “That’s Candy Irving. She’s in place at the DIB as of today. According to CIA records, she’s a techie, brought in to revise and update the system.” Roz saw a perky blonde girl, her hair cut into a jagged bob, her clothes cutting-edge fashion. “She’s Roz’s replacement at the DIB. Until recently, she worked exclusively for our San Francisco branch. That’s why I brought her here. Candy isn’t on the main computer at Langley.”

“Another consultant,” Andreas said.

Cristos chuckled. “Oh no. Candy’s a full agent, but her security would be compromised if she were put on any mainframe, networked computer.”

Andreas’s hand tightened around Roz’s. “It’s so serious you’re bringing an operative in from black ops?”

“Kind of. Candy also wants to come home.” That was one of the terms used for field agents who had tired of putting their lives on the line every day, or who burned out on the job, but could still be of vital use to the Company. “This is her transition. After this operation, we can bring her in. It will be her bridge. She’s a Talent and very good at what she does. I’ve also brought her in here because she is a computer expert. What she doesn’t know isn’t worth knowing. So she will break into the DIB’s computers, into the most secure level, and Andreas will cover her.”

That meant protecting her. Would he have to pretend to take an interest in Candy? A personal interest? Roz already knew the answer. The office wolf would certainly take an interest in someone as smart as Candy looked to be. And it would help them to stay close. The fact that Andreas and Roz had hooked up would be secondary to a man as sleazy as Andreas had made himself out to be in his cover.

What surprised Roz was the pang of sheer jealousy that shot through her body. When had Andreas turned from being a good, though casual, lover to something more?

Fabrice went to the coffee machine set on a small table near a seating arrangement of low sofas. He raised the carafe, but Roz and Andreas both shook their heads. Fabrice was obviously used to this office.

“There’s one more member of the team,” Cristos said. “You need a shape-shifter to cover you in the daytime.”

As if on cue, the door opened and someone entered. Tall, strongly built, with dark hair that showed glints of red in the bright lights of the boardroom, a man stood in the opening and surveyed the occupants of the room.