Romani Armada (24 page)

“Your old neighbor moved out just recently, then?” he asked.

“Two days ago, while I was away. The administrators were having difficulties with him so I believe they summarily severed his lease.”

He was silent for a few steps. “He bothered you that much? I’ll be very careful I don’t intrude on your serenity, then. I paid well above market to pick up this lease. Apartments in western China are next to impossible to buy, now.”

Deonne hid her surprise. “I didn’t say it had anything to do with me.”

He smiled quickly and she saw the flash of very white teeth. “You didn’t have to. You went away, possibly to escape your neighbor’s bad habits and the administration booted him as soon as you were safely out of the way. I should ask who you are, but if you have that sort of power you might be offended that I haven’t recognized you immediately. I don’t use the web much. Not for entertainment, at least.”

“I’m nobody,” Deonne assured him. “And you’re quite wrong. I had nothing to do with him being pushed out the door.”

Again, there was a short silence as they walked along the path. It was almost completely dark and the painted stones were the only guide. Apparently, even low-level proximity lights would have been too intrusive.

“But you did want him to leave, didn’t you?” His voice was low, but Deonne thought she could detect amusement in his tone.

Ah, what the hell
, she thought. “I wanted him gone like yesterday’s breakfast,” she confessed, using one of Justin’s pet phrases.

He laughed and it was a pleasant sound. It didn’t sound anything close to a polite chuckle. He lifted his chin and laughed properly. “Then I
know
you had him…what did you say? Booted? You may not have had your hand on the stick that beat him out the door, but I know you orchestrated it.”

Deonne stayed silent. He was right, but she wasn’t going to let him know she had that sort of influence on the administration. She didn’t know who this man was, even though he had passed the excruciating security and background checks the administration used to screen applicants.

“So, a woman of secrets,” he said as her silence lengthened. “Intriguing.”

She turned into the narrow path that led to her building and he followed her smoothly. “Here we are,” she said, keeping her tone polite. She waved toward the left-hand apartment with its green door and brass knocker. “That’s twenty-seven,” she told him.

She had left the light in the front room of her apartment on because she had assumed she would be coming home late. Even though the window was small, the light that flooded the plants and trees that grew in front of the building seemed to be terribly bright after walking in the dark.

At the junction where the narrow path to her front door joined the main one, she turned to face her new neighbor, and got to see what he really looked like, for the light was falling on him.

“Thank you for showing me my new home,” he told her.

He had black hair – sable black, for it shone in the light with almost blue highlights. But it wasn’t smooth or silky. It was thick and wavy, and Deonne suspected that if he were to let his hair grow any longer, it would curl into loose ringlets.

He had olive skin, but it was so pale and clear that it looked like a mild suntan, and he wore a close-trimmed goatee and moustache that was a bit old fashioned even for the late twenty-first century.

His eyes were coal black, matching his hair and he looked at her directly, without glancing away, or with any sign of discomfort. His gaze remained steady on her face.

Deonne gave him another smile. “So…”

He smiled back, showing his even white teeth again. “I don’t know your name. As we are going to be neighbors, I would like a name to think of you by, instead of labelling you ‘the goddess’ in my mind.”

Her laugh was pulled out of her by her surprise. At the same time, uneasiness touched her, making her middle run cold. “Let me save you some mental effort,” she said, trying to keep her tone even and friendly. “I’m with someone.”

“Yet he left you here in this village alone,” the man replied smoothly. He didn’t seem surprised or even frustrated by her announcement. “That’s not the behavior of a man who cares for the woman he is with.”

“No, you don’t understand,” Deonne began, then stopped.
He can’t be here. If he was, the future would be toast.
But she couldn’t say that. There was no contemporary period excuse she could think of, so she used one of her father’s tricks: attack.

“What makes you think it’s a man, anyway?” she demanded.

He gave another easy smile. He wasn’t in the least agitated or tense. “It was an assumption based on wishful thinking. I would prefer that you enjoy the company of men.”

Deonne dodged that one. Answering it would give him more information than she was willing to share. “Well…goodnight. Enjoy your new home.” She turned to head to her own apartment, but his hand slipped under her elbow and halted her.

Alarmed, she turned to face him. “Hey!”

He let go of her instantly and held up his hands in the classic posture of surrender. “I still don’t know your name,” he said.

Deonne stared at him as a horrifying thought struck her.
Is this Santiago?
A cold wave of fear whooshed through her. “Dianne,” she told him, giving the alias the Agency had provided her. “And you are?”

“Daniel,” he replied. “Daniel James.”

Her relief was so vast, Deonne’s knees actually weakened.

Daniel James was watching her curiously, a tiny furrow between his thick brows.

“I…have to go,” she said awkwardly and turned and hurried into the safety of her apartment, where she could recover in private. It was only once she was inside and saw the bed that the thought struck her with fresh horror.

She had been so busy the last two days, she hadn’t once thought about her loneliness. She hadn’t missed Justin at all.

It felt like betrayal.

Chapter Eighteen

Jerusalem, Israel, 2264 A.D.:
Kieren gave the face in the viewscreen a third close examination and confirmed what he had concluded the first time. He hadn’t met this man before. He frowned. “Who did you say you were?”

“Iason.”

Greek, Kieren tentatively classified. The initial, which Iason pronounced as a ‘j’, was most likely an ‘i’. “I don’t know you.”

“No, you don’t.” The man – and he looked like he was barely a man – gave him a winning smile. “I’m Cáel Stelios’ executive director for political issues. I know you’ve met Assemblyman Stelios.”

“So?” Kieren replied cautiously, but he acknowledged only to himself that deep in the corners of his mind, he had been expecting this contact. “How did you find me?”

“I’m sorry?” Iason looked puzzled.

“I said, how did you figure out where I was? I’ve given no one a forwarding address.”

“I don’t think I can share that with you.”

Kieren thought fast, while maintaining a neutral expression. He hadn’t told a soul where he would be. There was no one to tell. He’d had no service people call because he’d hooked up and plugged himself into the net. No one had knocked on his door….

Kieren rolled his eyes as the answer came to him. “Your boss is good,” he told Iason. “There’s very few people I can think of who would have been able to extract my coordinates from the Wardens. I’m impressed.”

“I’ll pass along your thoughts,” Iason returned. “Although you can share it with the Assemblyman yourself.”

Kieren shook his head. “No.”

Iason spoke as if Kieren hadn’t, looking down at his desk. “He has an opening in his schedule in seventeen hours. That would be six a.m. local time.” He looked up. “That gives you nearly three hours to spare.”

Kieren laughed. “Wait,” he said. “Just to be clear. Not only is he going to insist I have a meeting with him that I don’t want, but he’s also expecting me to go to him?”

Iason looked surprised. “Assemblyman Stelios is a busy man. The Assembly is currently in session–”

“Go to hell,” Kieren said clearly and carefully, so the prick of a senior executive super manager of politics or whatever it was would have no chance of mishearing.

Then he snapped off the screen with a stab of his finger and sat back to look around the one room economy apartment he’d rented for a week. It was as sparsely furnished as his old quarters in San Francisco, but infinitely more worn away, threadbare and depressing.

“Fuck,” he muttered to the empty room.

* * * * *

Liping Village, East Yunnan Province, China, 2054 A.D.:
Deonne prepared and ate an omelet for dinner, using real eggs. Eggs were a twenty-first century treat she would miss when she returned to her time. As she finished the small meal, she grew aware that she was drooping with tiredness. Her limbs felt heavy and uncooperative. It was time for sleep – hopefully, a more restorative sleep than last night’s crash-and-die nap had provided.

She undressed and puttered around the room, tidying up her dishes and clearing away junk, her mind in idle. Her fear and annoyance at her new neighbor had evaporated. She was too tired to care.

The door chimed, using the chime that meant it was a visitor she hadn’t registered and Deonne hesitated. Who would be calling at this hour? But Mariana had thrown her into a whole new world of priorities. It could be something that only she could sign off, or had the authority to arrange and if it was a broken waterline or some other emergency, she would be willfully and recklessly abandoning her duties if she ignored the caller.

With a deep and heartfelt sigh, Deonne threw a gown around her and tied the sash in such a way that the slippery silk couldn’t even think about sliding open and revealing more of her than she intended.

Then she opened the door and stepped back in surprise for Daniel James stood there.

He had removed the coat. The jeans and button-through shirt he wore looked casual and expensive. Deonne totted up the accessories in one quick, practiced sweep. He wore an actual wristwatch that looked like a heavy, top of the line model from one of the few surviving watchmakers still in business. His shoes were real leather, if she guessed right, although she still had trouble distinguishing real leather from the faux leathers being manufactured in this century. It would take a few decades yet for fashion to decide that just looking like leather was passé and to move on to more interesting composite materials for clothing and accessories.

He had an earring in his left ear. It was a solid, small gold circle that made Deonne think of pirates. The earring went with his goatee and wavy, collar-length hair.

“Hi,” he offered.

“Are you aware of the time?” Deonne asked. “I was in bed,” she lied.

“You weren’t. I could hear you moving around in here as I walked around to your door. I didn’t think I would be waking you at this hour. You’re used to extended evenings, aren’t you?”

“Excuse me?” Deonne asked him, baffled.

His eyes were locked on her face. “Can I step in and we shut the door? I’m not interested in sharing our conversation with everyone who passes by.”

“It’s one in the morning. I doubt
anyone is going to be passing by. I picked this unit because it was out of the way.”

“Yes, that would fit,” he said. “Let me in. I promise I won’t move inside more than the two steps I need to be able to shut your door behind me.”

Deonne weighed the matter carefully. Daniel would be stronger than her, but he didn’t know about the pepper cocktail spray she had sitting on her desk, looking like an innocent perfume dispenser. It was barely two feet from her left hand and it wasn’t the only protection she had within reach.

If she didn’t let Daniel in, he was going to stand there until she did. If she let him in, she could give him a hearing and get him out of her place faster than she would if she refused entry and had to argue the point.

She had a feeling that Daniel would be good at arguing his way into what he wanted. So Deonne moved back three or four paces, subtly shifting herself closer to the desk.

“Thank you.” Daniel stepped inside and shut the door behind him. As promised, he kept his back close to the door. “Your eyes are blue,” he observed. “They’re quite lovely.”

“Look, if you came here—”

“I’m a vampire,” he said, lifting his voice over hers.

Deonne stared at him while her brain scrambled to catch up.

He crossed his arms and lifted a brow.

“You…can’t…just blurt it out like that,” Deonne protested. “You have no idea who I am.
What
I am.”

“You know vampires,” he said flatly. “You’re human, but you associate with them. You wear the markings of one. Your lover, I presume.”

Deonne wrapped her arms around her and tried to figure out how to handle this. Vampires were still hiding from humans in this decade. For Daniel to declare himself meant he had to be very sure about her.

“That’s why you told me?” she asked. “Because you could see I had met vampires before?”

“And lived to tell tales around the campfire.” He smiled. “That makes you a little bit special, among humans.”

Not in the twenty-third century, I’m not
, Deonne thought.

“But that isn’t the only reason I told you,” Daniel added. He leaned back against the door, his arms still crossed. It was an indolent pose. “Your lover. He is vampire, yes?”

Deonne lifted her chin. “They might be.”

Daniel rolled his eyes. Then, “He should be here with you.”

“There are good reasons why they are not,” Deonne assured him coolly.

“There
are
no reasons that trump protecting a human you’ve marked,” Daniel growled. He straightened. “Do you have any idea how vulnerable you are, without him standing at your shoulder?”

Deonne kept her face neutral as her mind raced. Someone in the agency, or perhaps it was more than one… She could recall someone speaking about how a close relationship with a vampire marked a human in indelible ways that only other vampires could read. It told all other vampires that she was approachable. There were some vampires who still adhered to older ways and for them, she was not just approachable, but
available
. They would consider her mark to be a flag of welcome for whatever they wanted.