Romani Armada (Beloved Bloody Time)

by Tracy Cooper-Posey

  “Everyone has something in their history they’re not proud of,” Deonne told him.

  “My entire history was bad. It started out shitty and I turned it into a disaster.”

  “It couldn’t have been that bad,” she said. “You’re a good man, underneath the shield.”

  “You don’t know that,” he said softly. “I’ve never let you in. Not that way. I said it was dark in here.”

  “I don’t think you can use your human life as a measuring stick. Nearly every vampire I know comes from the worst of beginnings. It’s not a coincidence.”

  He sighed. “How much Australian history do you know?”

  “Very little,” she confessed.

  “I suppose that is why you’ve never asked me about my last name.”

  “Kelly?” She frowned, stringing together the very little Justin had ever shared about his personal history, and what she knew of Australian history. “I don’t even know when you were born,” she told him. “How could I pull anything significant from your name?”

  “There’s only one famous Kelly in Australian history,” he said gently. “He was infamous, not famous.”

  She tried to turn to look at him as she put it together, but Justin had her wrapped up tightly against his chest, giving her no room to move. “Ned Kelly?” she asked.

  “He was my father.” He sighed again. “I think.”

  “You think?”

  “My mother always said he was and she gave me his name. I remember him, once, in my mother’s cabin. I would have been very young. Two or three years old. He was a big, dark Irishman with a temper to match. He was loud. I remember his voice most of all. But that is all I remember of him. The voice, the dark figure standing by the stove, smoking a pipe. And my mother, scurrying to make him a meal from the little we had.”

  “Your mother was…not his wife?”

  “I’m a bastard in fact as well as by deed,” Justin replied. “My father, if he was my father, never came back to Beechwood after that. When I was older my mother explained that he had been captured and hanged. It was the only time she ever spoke of him and that was how I learned who the dark man sitting by the stove had been, years before.”

  “You hated him?”

  “I didn’t know him at all. He was an abstract. An image in my mind. There had been no relationship between us at all. I spent more time being angry over the life my mother was forced to live. It was tough doogs for an unwed mother in those days and my last name didn’t endear her or me to anyone in the town. When I got older, I did something about it.”

  He fell silent.

  “What?” Deonne asked, keeping her gaze ahead, on the sunlight starting to creep through the window. “What did you do?”

  “Terrible things,” Justin whispered. “Things that made me think that Ned Kelly really was my father and that I was as bad as he had been.”

  Her heart was hurting again. “You…killed people?”

  His answer was a long time coming. “If they got in the way,” he said, his voice low and controlled, tight with some hidden emotion that she couldn’t begin to guess at because she couldn’t see his face.

  Then his head dropped to her shoulder and he rested his forehead against her. “All I can remember is the anger I carried with me, every day. It consumed everything. I thought of nothing but reparations for what the world had done to my mother.”

  “Your mother was still alive?”

  He was silent for a long while. Then he spoke, his tone low and even, telling her Justin was forcing this out one word at a time. “I held up a bank coach, up by Albury. I had two friends help me and one of them was from Glenrowan – his family had let us live in a stockman’s hut on their farm for a while when I was smaller. James was in it for the lark, but he got himself shot in the gut and was lying in the mud screaming, blood pouring into the gravel…” Justin’s arms had turned to iron around her and she could feel his heart echoing against her back. It was costing him real energy and effort to speak of this.

  “What happened?” she breathed.

  “I shot him,” Justin said. He gave a small choking sound. “Like a horse with a broken leg. We could hear the approach of horses around the bend and one of the drivers started yelling…it was a police escort that had stayed a quarter-mile behind just for this reason. Eddie, the other one who I had roped into it…he shot the guard. And I…I shot James.” He let out a ragged breath that she could feel gusting against the back of her shoulder. “Then we galloped all the way back to Glenrowan with the police breathing down our backs, trying to shake them lose. I went straight to my mother’s cottage and she took one look at me and demanded I tell her everything. I had no choice, I needed her help. I was never good at lying to her. So I told her.”

  Deonne heard him swallow.

  “What happened?” she coaxed as softly as she could.

  “My mother lied to the police when they got there. She told them I had been in her house the whole day and stuck to it even when the police found my horse still sweaty and steaming, and mud from my boots tracking up to the front door. They held me down while they beat her, but she still swore I had been with her.”

  Deonne drew in an unsteady breath. “She loved you.”

  Justin groaned. “I didn’t understand that until she killed herself that night. She used my pistol to do it.”

  Chapter Ten

  Stockholm, Sweden, 2264 A.D.: Kieren caught himself nearly drifting off to sleep and stood up, shaking it off. Peter, the young Warden who had just been assigned to his unit, was snoring softly in the corner, his head back, and his arms hanging loosely.

  The building’s regular security man was curled up on the recliner chair in the other corner, deeply asleep. Either sleeping on the job was a regular routine for him, or else the presence of two Wardens was reassuring to the point where he could relax and sleep deeply.

  Kieren shook Peter awake. “Do a round of the perimeter,” he told him. “You need to walk yourself back to alertness.”

  Peter apologized, blushing furiously, as he picked up his short rifle and shook his head to clear the muzziness.

  “It’s just on sunrise. She’ll be leaving soon and then we can get back to San Francisco and relax,” Kieren told him. “I’ll keep watch here until you get back. The Russian should be here soon to collect her.”

  Peter strode out of the building, looking more alert than Kieren felt. It had been a long night. Kieren did some stretching exercises, making his body move to stir it back to life. On nights like these, the enemy often made their move just as the sun was rising, because that was when everyone’s guard fell, as they figured they had made it through the dark hours safely. Kieren had learned that sunrise was a very bad time to let his attention wander. He had learned it the hard way.

  A car pulled up outside the building and Kieren watched as the Russian, Demyan, pulled himself out of the vehicle and headed for the sidewalk that led to the foyer.

  The rumors said Demyan had been around during the time of the Tsars and was of royal blood himself. Kieren wouldn’t accept that as truth until he heard Demyan confirm it, but it provided guidance on how to deal with him. He was a man dispossessed of title, fortune and homeland. Betrayal would be a touchstone with him and he would be drawn to anything that reminded him of home and hearth and acceptance.

  That would explain why he had formed the odd alliance with the psi woman who worked for the Agency, Pritti. Unlike Demyan’s antecedents, Kieren knew this rumor was actually a fact, for he had seen the pair of them together and had read the hidden intimacy in their body language. Pritti, a mind reader and empath, would understand Demyan completely. Her own uprooted and dispossessed origins would have drawn him to her in the first place.

  Demyan was glancing around the gardens and scanning the building as he strolled casually up the pathway. He was checking the security of the place for himself.

  Kieren headed toward the glass fronted foyer to meet Demyan at the door and let him in.


  He liked vampires and their odd backgrounds and ways of thinking. It had taken him a while to adapt to their long-range point of view, but once he had keyed into what motivated them and what provoked them, it had unlocked the vampire puzzle and Kieren had swiftly collected a mass of information about them. His liking was based on the facts-only judgment the Wardens had instilled in him long ago.

  He liked his job and vampires were endlessly interesting. Life was good.

  * * * * *

  Deonne used force to release herself from Justin’s hold. She turned on the cushion to face him. “You’ve carried that guilt for…how long?”

  “Guilt?” He stood, the movement a quick jerk, like she had surprised him into it.

  “Guilt,” she said firmly. “What year did your mother die?”

  “I killed her,” Justin ground out. “Don’t you understand?”

  “Perfectly,” Deonne replied. “What year?”

  He scowled. “Nineteen oh-one. The year we all became Australians.” He sank back down onto the cushions. “I’m a killer, Deonne.”

  “Every vampire I’ve known has killed. You live long enough, you end up facing that need.”

  “I wasn’t a vampire then,” he pointed out. “I killed as a human.”

  Deonne swallowed. “What happened after your mother died? What happened to you?”

  “Now who is changing subjects?” Justin asked bitterly.

  “I have a point to make. What happened?”

  He looked at his hands, turning them over and studying them like they were the hands of a stranger. “I headed into the bush. I could get lost there. Live off the land. The police sent a posse in to look for me. We’d killed one of their own so they were determined, but I knew the outback better than they did. I could have stayed lost for months.” He paused. “I think I let them catch me. I just didn’t care. Three days after the hold up, they caught up with me. I didn’t know that Eddie had been singing his guts out the whole three days. He told them I had shot the driver and that I had shot James dead cold. He’d said the police bullet James had taken in the gut had actually missed him and that I had shot James out of hand, to keep his share of the money. Eddie made out he was deathly afraid I’d catch up with him and kill him the way I had James, so I could keep the money for myself. By the time the police had run themselves ragged chasing me through the bush—three days of no food and little water—they were beyond angry.” He shrugged. “I guess I got what was coming.”

  “They killed you?” Deonne breathed.

  “Right there in the clearing. I didn’t even get a last smoke. As soon as they saw they had me boxed in, they settled in to even the score. The first bullet was in the stomach. Then, one each while I was lying on the ground, coughing up blood and wishing it would be over. None of the shots were lethal except the last.” Justin let out a gusty sigh. “The captain stood over me. He didn’t even look very angry anymore. He just spat on me then lifted the pistol and fired and that’s all I remember until I roused again, three days later, in a cave five miles away, with my maker sitting next to me. He had seen it all.”

  “He pitied you?”

  Justin’s mouth turned down. “He was curious. He wanted to know what I had done to earn such fury. He had been tracking me for the three days I’d been hiding out in the bush, wondering why the police were so determined to find me. I didn’t tell him. I have never told anyone until today.” He lifted his gaze to hers. “So you have seen behind the shield, Deonne.” His voice was low and very even. “What will you do now you know?”

  Deonne rested her hand on his thigh. “Did you think this would repel me? That it would scare me away? Justin, I’ve known you for months and the man I know isn’t anything like the human you have told me about. That was over four hundred years ago. You have changed – just being turned changed you and you have moved on since then, too. I may not have been able to see inside, but what a man does is as good as a billboard for explaining who he really is. You have never once been cruel or evil. I don’t believe you ever have been. You shot James to ease his pain, didn’t you? You knew the police would not help him or try to make him comfortable in any way. They would make sure he suffered as much as possible in retribution before he died of his wounds, so you took care of it instead.”

  He dropped his gaze back to his hands. “How did you guess?”

  “Because you’re not a bad man, Justin.”

  He looked up quickly. “You don’t know the things I’ve done.”

  “It doesn’t matter. You were a man of your times and the circumstances. Now you are a man of the twenty-third century, and those things are behind you. You are not that man anymore. I do know what you are now.”

  He picked up her hand where it rested on his thigh and wrapped both of his around her fingers. “You may live to regret that you didn’t kick me out after this moment. Blood always tells.”

  “No, it doesn’t. I won’t let it,” she replied swiftly. “Besides, if blood really does tell, why are you still in this room after meeting my father and seeing his true colors?”

  He sat very still for a long moment. “Checkmate,” he said at last. He drew her closer and kissed her gently. “Demyan will be here very soon, to jump you back to wherever it is they’re hiding you these days. I have one last question before you go.”

  Deonne wound her arms around his neck. “Just one?”

  “For now.” He tugged and pulled at the knot of hair at the back of her head, until it loosened and her hair dropped around her shoulders. Then he slid his fingers into it. “You know about me, now. Well, some of it. You’ve been learning the innermost secrets of vampires since you signed on for this contract, including everyone else’s ugly pasts. You’re probably one of the few humans in the world that really know us for what we are.” He lifted her chin so she was looking directly at him. “If you know all that, how could you still want to become a vampire?”

  Deonne gave him a small smile. “It’s complicated. But I can tell you this much. The more I learn about vampires and the Agency in particular, the more I want to be one.”

  His hand dropped away from her chin. “You’re already a part of the Agency.”

  “Not properly. Not in their minds. I’m a hired gun and human, too.” She covered his hand, the one still holding hers, with her spare hand. “Leave it, Justin. You aren’t in a place where you can possibly accept this about me. Not yet.”

  “Yet? What makes you think I could ever accept it?”

  “Nothing,” she said flatly. “I just have to hope.”

  The door alarm chimed.

  “That has to be Demyan,” Justin said. “Kieran wouldn’t let anyone else up here.” He let her go and stood up. “I’ll let him in, if you want to gather your things.”

  Deonne got to her feet, already feeling the wrench of departure setting in. “How long until I see you again?” she asked wearily.

  Justin rested his hand against her cheek. “I don’t know. Not in subjective time.” His thumb brushed over her bottom lip. “I think we both need time to figure out a few things, anyway.”

  Unhappiness settled in over the top of her tiredness. Not only was she completely alone in China, but her stay there would be further tainted with worry about what would happen the next time she saw Justin.

  The door chimed again, forcing her to move away from him. “I’ll get my stuff.”

  * * * * *

  Kieren heard the elevator working and moved to the corner of the foyer where he could see both the elevator doors and the front door at the same time. It was a precautionary measure. He was confident that the risk to anyone in the building, including vampires, was minimal.

  He was surprised when three people stepped out of the elevator. Demyan, the lanky Australian, and Deonne.

  Ms. Rinaldi, he corrected himself mentally.

  But as she walked toward the foyer door, between the pair of vampires, Kieren found himself watching the movement of her body and the way her long legs flowed
with each step. There was no awkwardness or lack of grace, despite her height and the length of her legs in proportion to her body. She glided, her form elegant and serene.

  Kieren shut down the train of thought and moved to intercept the three of them. “You didn’t jump from the apartment?” he asked Demyan.

  Demyan gave a small smile. “The lady left some possessions at the branch, yesterday. We’ll have to collect them before she jumps back.”

  Kieren glanced over his shoulder toward the car Demyan had arrived in. It was big enough for the four of them. “I’m coming with you,” he told them. “Until Ms. Rinaldi jumps back, I’m staying by her side.”

  “Really, that’s not necessary,” Deonne replied. “You should go home and get some sleep, Kieren. I have two Agency people with me…what could you do that they could not?”

  Kieren liked her empathy. He’d noted Justin’s reaction to his request to scan the area for him last night, but Deonne’s deft avoidance of the word ‘vampire’ filled in the rest of the story for him. Justin didn’t like being called a vampire. He was sensitive about public perception, at least.

  Kieren gave her a small smile. “I’ve seen what Agency people can do, ma’am, but no offense, they aren’t trained for this. I am. Please do this my way.”

  Demyan gave a much larger smile. “Or he’ll probably pick you up and carry you to the car and stuff you into the half-square foot of space they have the effrontery to call a boot.”

  Deonne gave way with a wide professional smile of her own. “Well, I don’t want to ride in the trunk, so I suppose you had better come with us, Kieren.” She stepped to one side, by half-a-step, giving him room to join them.

  “If you don’t mind, I’m going to go ahead,” Kieren told her. “Please stay here in the foyer—all of you—until I signal it’s clear.”

  Justin was the only one to react and Kieren didn’t count an eye-roll as anything alarming. His way always caused a fuss, but he’d never lost a client.