“You can’t,” Brenden objected.
“Why not?” Demyan asked reasonably.
“Because,” Brenden shook his head, “you just can’t. I can’t tell you a single moment in that security center when there wasn’t a dozen people around. You’d never find a strong enough marker and even if you could, it wouldn’t be empty.”
“I’m not suggesting we jump right to the security center,” Demyan said evenly.
“You’d be breaking a dozen statutes and codes,” Ryan warned. He lifted a hand. “I’m not saying ‘don’t’, but keep it sub-rosa.”
Brenden was scowling. “I tell you, it can’t be done. I’d remember—” He stopped suddenly, as if a switch had been flicked off.
Demyan stood up. “You remember something,” he said softly.
Brenden held up an imperious hand for silence, frowning hard.
Ryan could see Pritti shifting restlessly on her section of the bench, making Justin move out of the way. When Ryan’s gaze fell on her, she froze like a rabbit under a search light. Her eyes widened.
“What is it, Pritti?”
Pritti shook her head.
Demyan stood up, walked around the table and over to the girl. He picked up her hand and drew her back to the other side. Fahmido moved along the bench to make room and Demyan sat Pritti next to him at the end. One of his hands rested on her shoulder. Despite Demyan’s reassuring hand, Pritti was vibrating with nervousness. Almost fear. Then she glanced up at Ryan and he realized with a start that she was afraid of him.
Surprise rippled through him.
Brenden thumped the table. “Got it...goddam! I have it now, Demyan.” He reached for one of the boards laid along the table and turned it on. He wrote quickly. “This is the time marker,” he said and handed the board to Demyan. “You can jump back to the arrival chamber at that time. I know it was clear then.”
“Why do you know? Nayara demanded sharply. “I’m not sending Demyan back unless you convince me, first.”
“Because he’s already done it,” Brenden said simply. “I remember it. I came into Security right after the opening of the New Olympic Games last month. It’s a marker, because, well, the bloody Greeks were hosting, weren’t they?”
Ryan hid his smile. Despite thousands of years, Brenden had managed to keep many of the prejudices he’d learned as a Spartan and human. Even Ryan remembered the day, for Brenden had been in the foulest mood over the imagined slight to a Sparta that no longer existed except in Brenden’s memory.
“I found Demyan taking photos of the itinerary board and when I asked him what he was doing, he gave me some bullshit answer about administrative record keeping.”
“I’ll have to remember that,” Demyan murmured. He looked at Nayara. “Any objections?”
Nayara shook her head. “Don’t get caught.”
Demyan grinned. “I didn’t, did I?”
Pritti leaned in to Demyan’s shoulder and spoke into his ear. He listened and shook his head. “No, you must tell them,” he said.
“Tell us what?” Ryan demanded.
Pritti turned to look at him, her eyes enormous. She bit her lip. “You must know. I went back, too. To the station.”
Nayara glanced at Ryan and he could almost hear her thoughts. Tread cautiously! He studied Pritti. “When did you go back to?”
She drew random patterns across the table with her finger. “To when they came.”
“Gabriel’s people?” Ryan asked. Everyone had gone very quiet around them.
She nodded, her big eyes very wide and locked on his face.
“Why, Pritti?”
“To take more off the station.” Her voice was almost a whisper, as if she was admitting to the most heinous crime.
“But you took Ryan off the station,” Nayara said, sounding surprised.
“He was the third,” Pritti said.
Ryan pushed aside the fresh surprise slithering through him from the revelation that little Pritti had been the one to bring him safely off the station before it had been destroyed. He kept underestimating the power of her abilities. They all did.
“Pritti brought Stephano to me, too,” Fahmido said, from the other table.
Ryan considered Pritti once more. “You mention this for a reason, Pritti,” he said as gently as he could manage.
She nodded.
“Why?”
“I watched Gabriel use his weapon.”
Nayara leaned on the table. “You know what the weapon is, don’t you?”
Again, Pritti nodded slowly, as if she feared the consequences of her confession.
“Tell us,” Ryan urged her.
Pritti bit her lip once more. Demyan stroked her shoulder encouragingly.
Then she eased herself from the bench and walked the length of the table. It was a slow, measured step and Ryan realized that it had been a while since he had seen her bounce or twirl, or even give one of her little coos, as she had always done before.
Well, they were all more sober and serious since Gabriel had ripped their world apart.
Pritti stopped facing Ryan. “Put up your hand,” she told him.
Ryan held up his hand.
“As if you are telling me to stop,” she added and he adjusted the position of his hand so that his palm was flat and facing her.
She closed her eyes for a moment and her breathing increased. Ryan could feel the tension building in her and it made his own heart pick up speed, which wasn’t something that should happen when he was in his own time—not this easily, or this often.
Pritti’s shoulders braced, then she lifted her hand and pointed the index finger like a gun. She cocked her thumb, then bent it sharply like it was tugging on a trigger.
Something slapped into Ryan’s palm and knocked his whole arm sideways, wrenching at his shoulder. A hot rush of something swooshed through him and he clutched at the table with his good hand, as nausea gripped him. He was panting, now.
Nayara was suddenly next to him. “Ryan? Pritti, what did you do?”
He could feel Pritti next to him, too, a blinding white shape in his mind. “I can fix this,” she murmured.
Her tiny hands were on his face, lifting it, making him look at her. He struggled to meet her gaze.
Then her white hot shape encompassed his mind, covering it, containing the chaos, smothering the feelings, like a soft blanket of snow. Muffled peace descended, until finally, he found he could loosen his grip on the table. The nausea faded.
“Better, yes?” Pritti whispered, her eyes still focused on him.
“What did you do?” The words emerged as a croak.
Brenden made a sound that was half snort, half growl. “Shoving things around with your mind ain’t anything out of the ordinary.”
Ryan shook his head. “It wasn’t telekinesis. This was something more.” He looked at Pritti. “Tell me what you did.”
“I did what Gabriel did. I watched him. Later, I went back and dipped into his mind when he fired his weapon at you. He sent....” She frowned. “He sent himself. The essence of himself. All the power, the rage, the hatred. All of it. Focused on you.”
A profound silence greeted her words. Ryan knew that none of them doubted her. The depth of the silence was proof of that.
“But Pritti,” Nayara said gently, “Gabriel was aiming at Tinker. I was watching him.”
Pritti shook her head. “He knew one of you would protect the human. He was very, very happy it was Ryan. It made him send even more of himself.”
“Do you mean he…shot a more powerful burst of the whatever?” Brenden clarified.
Pritti pressed her lips together, as she glanced around the table. “He sent all of himself. He sent everything.”
There was a little tick of silence as they all absorbed this news.
“That would explain why only Ryan has suffered after effects,” Fahmido said, her tone cool and steady. “Rob, Christian and Tally were all targeted with the same weapon but all of them have returned t
o perfectly normal vampire physiology and health now.”
The silence this time was longer.
“Jesus wept,” Brenden said at last. “You mean, Gabriel himself is the weapon? The rifle we took off him was...what?”
“A pointing device,” Ryan replied.
Pritti pointed her hand at Brenden, the fingertip aimed at him. “Bang,” she said softly.
“A psychic blast of some sort. Is that what is was, Pritti? Focused and channeled power?” Nayara asked.
“Power...and more. All of him. All the hatred, all the emotion. All of it.”
Brenden rubbed the back of his neck. “Makes sense, when you think of the old muskets we used to use. The musket itself was the aiming device. Same with Gabriel’s gun. The powder propelling the lead shot—that would be Gabriel’s telekinetic power. The shot itself....” He looked at Pritti. “Emotions, you say?”
“Yes.”
Brenden pursed his lips, considering. “Hurling emotions at people.” He shrugged. “I don’t know much about physiology. Didn’t, even when I was human. But it makes a strange kind of sense. Emotions affect people physically.”
Ryan kept his expression neutral, but felt a lurch of unhappy recognition. Was this what was happening to him? Fallout from the weapon Gabriel had used on him?
Fahmido stood up to look at Ryan. “That would fit with what I observed while you were unconscious, Ryan. Your symptoms were typical for overwhelming emotional reactions. It didn’t occur to me before, because vampires don’t typically suffer physical reactions with their emotional responses.”
Rob held up a hand. “Wait. Are you saying that because Ryan is vampire, the weapon was...blunted, somehow?”
Fahmido nodded. “Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying.”
Rob shook his head. “It knocked him out for over a week. What would it do to a human?”
There was an uncomfortable silence. Ryan mentally sighed. None of them were willing to consider the truth staring at them.
Except Brenden. The big man spread his hands on the table. “It’d kill them,” he said, his voice low.
The silence felt even deeper.
Fahmido, who was still standing, pushed her hands into her deep pockets. It was an uneasy gesture. “Massive, overwhelming emotion delivered in one burst like that would probably cause the body to shut down.” Her tone was one of unhappy agreement. “Human physiology is too weak, too vulnerable to stresses of this kind.”
“So if Ryan hadn’t shielded Tinker,” Nayara said, “Gabriel would have killed him?”
“Most likely,” Fahmido returned.
Brenden shrugged. “There hasn’t been a weapon invented that wasn’t intended to be fatal. Gabriel’s just found a new one, that’s all.”
Ryan shook his head. “This is something else entirely,” he said, standing up. “This is a killing device that can’t be taken away from them. Or used on them, either. If Gabriel doesn’t have the rifle—the pointing device—he could use his finger just like Pritti did. For all we know, once he gets used to using it, he may not even need to point.”
“That leaves us with a small army that can kill with its mind,” Brenden concluded grimly. “Humans will love that news.” He glanced at Ryan. “You can tell them.”
Chapter Five
Stockholm, Sweden, 2264 A.D.: The meeting was into its second hour when one of the massive doors pushed open, causing the flames in the sconces on the walls to dance and send shadows across the room, alerting them.
Justin looked up as Tally shoved the door open another few inches, letting Deonne step through.
He let his gaze flicker over Deonne’s long length, reacquainting himself with the details. It had been nearly two weeks since he had last seen her and until this moment it hadn’t seemed like such a long time, but now that she was here in the room where he could look upon her, it abruptly felt like months had past. She actually seemed different.
In typical Deonne manner, she had gone out of her way to dress in some current fashion trend that no other woman on earth could wear, but that she made look sexy and stunning at the same time. It clung to every curve, a bronze colored suit that the low fire light in the room enhanced marvelously. She was wearing some sort of gold or copper jewelry that made her blonde hair glow.
It wasn’t just her hair that was glowing. She seemed to glimmer from head to foot as she glided up to the table in that long-legged manner that defied analysis no matter how long he studied the sway of her hips and the swing of her legs.
Deonne halted next to Ryan. “My apologies, Ryan, for my late arrival and Tally’s, too. I needed some 24th century essentials that simply couldn’t wait until after the meeting. I hope I didn’t hold up any vital discussions?”
Tally slid onto the bench between Christian and Rob as the table rearranged itself to make room for her arrival. Rob and Christian both kissed her soundly and without embarrassment.
Ryan tilted his head to consider Deonne. “We did shuffle things until you arrived. You are a vital member of this meeting, Deonne. We are dependent upon your expertise. Pulling you back from China wasn’t a whim.”
Justin had been working for the agency for nearly a century and he’d got to know Ryan fairly well in that time, despite not being a traveler. He knew Ryan was annoyed and hiding it, but Deonne wouldn’t know that.
“I know you had me brought here solely for my expertise,” Deonne replied smoothly. “It is the reason I went out of my way to prepare properly, which I couldn’t do back in China. Perhaps next time you bring me forward, you might give me a little more time to organize instead of having me arrive upon the hour of the meeting. Then you will be getting me at my best, instead of having me working off the cuff, so to speak.”
Justin drew in a slow, surprised breath as Deonne nodded pleasantly at Ryan and walked down the length of the silent table to where Justin sat next to the only remaining space at the table. She slid onto the empty space with grace, swinging her legs around the end of the bench.
Heat registered along the length of Justin’s leg. He deliberately kept his head facing toward the head of the table and his gaze on Ryan, just like everyone else at the table despite the little shock her heat sent through him.
“It’s time to talk about Gabriel’s so-called press conference,” Ryan declared. “Now that Deonne has joined us.”
Justin glanced around the table. In a room full of humans, such an announcement would have had the humans shifting uncomfortably as their bodies physically reacted to the memory of anger or upset.
These vampires may be recalling the memories, but there was no physical reaction to go with it, so they all sat motionless in response. The one human who had been here to see Gabriel’s conference, Kieren, had superhuman discipline and sat as motionless as the others.
Deonne had not seen the conference live and she had hinted she hadn’t had time to prepare properly for the meeting. It was possible she hadn’t had time to watch playbacks, either.
Ryan stood. “It’s been five hours since Gabriel’s conference. We need to find a public response to the questions we are already getting about baby Jack. The response has to be one that won’t alarm humans the way Gabriel’s ‘breeding’ angle did. He put the perception of vampires back by a good one hundred years.”
“Try two hundred,” Deonne said.
Ryan raised his brow, looking at her.
“Gabriel deliberately tried to stir the same basic fears and paranoias among humans that drove the Censure period. If you don’t react quickly with a total block, he’ll succeed.”
“I presume you have a response in mind?” Nayara asked.
“You need to do what you’ve been doing all along, only more so. The truth. Humans need to get to know you, warts and all, so they can get comfortable with you and in that way their fears will diminish and the paranoia will evaporate. In this case, managed truth.”
“How do we truthfully admit to hiding baby Jack?” Ryan asked. “We’ll be admitting to Gab
riel’s conspiracy theory.”
Deonne slid off the bench and stood up, facing the table. “Why did you keep the baby a secret?” she asked, her tone reasonable.
Ryan glanced at Nayara, taking in her placid gaze. There was the smallest of furrows between her brows, which the average human might not detect.
“We hid the facts about Jack from humans for this very reason,” Ryan told Deonne. “We knew humans would find it unsettling.” His gaze moved to where Christian, Rob and Tally sat close together. “And we wanted to give the new family time to settle in together. At first, we weren’t even sure Jack would…survive. His birth was a success despite such astounding odds.”
Tally bit her lip and Christian’s long fingers curled over her shoulder and squeezed gently.
Deonne watched the three parents for a moment or two, then looked at Ryan. “That’s the truth you give humans,” she said, holding her hand out toward the three of them. “That’s one they’ll understand,” she said softly.
Ryan shook his head. “No. I told Rob and Christian I would not subject them to anything like this.”
Justin glanced at them; Rob, Tally and Christian. There was traces of long term pain and hurt in their eyes from the loss of Jack, but right now they looked horrified at the idea of being exposed across the known galaxy, their private lives picked apart the way Deonne was proposing.
They weren’t used to public exposure the way Ryan and Nayara had grown accustomed to it over the last year. After centuries of hiding behind personas and masks, the idea would be mildly terrifying – especially when it came to a subject as personal as their love life…and sex itself.
But Nayara and Ryan had managed to overcome their inhibitions. The book they had written was almost ready to be released and the pre-publicity fuss was starting to build. Nia and Ryan were even more reclusive than these three and were coping.
Justin had dealt with a staggering range of human clients over the decades and because Agency tours were not cheap, most of his clients were high income and privileged. Many of them were public figures, if not flat-out famous. They were more than used to being spread out upon media petri dishes for the public to consume in bite-sized dabs of images and sound bites. They had developed coping mechanisms and built boundaries that channeled media interest into safer areas of their lives and he had taken note of more than a few of their strategies over the years.
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