Romani Armada (Beloved Bloody Time)

by Tracy Cooper-Posey

  “More than you think,” he said. His voice was a low tenor. Surprisingly pleasant and with a trace of an accent. “Enough to know your friend was not about to shake my hand and that you would sooner bury that knife in my chest than wish me well. You wonder why I do not turn my back in a room like this?” His lips thinned.

  Marley glanced down at the breadknife under her left hand. She had been toying with the handle absently but until he mentioned the idea of burying the blade in his chest, she had not consciously realized the impulse in the back of her mind. She snatched her hand away from the knife, feeling her cheeks burn. It was anger, pure anger, for what he had done to Gawain. That was all. How else could she be driven to such a primitive, uncivilized desire like burying a knife in his chest?

  “You invade our home and threaten us, and expect warm fuzzy feelings of welcome and open arms?” she threw back at him. Offense was the best defense.

  “From you?” He looked her up and down. “No.”

  The man called Romanov moved around from behind him. “Rhydder, enough.”

  Rider. Even the name was strange.

  Romanov stepped between them and over to the table, where he hefted a briefcase onto one of the battered chairs, and opened it. “Marley...may I call you that?”

  She nodded.

  Romanov smiled. “It’s not like I can call you Dr. Alexander any more, is it?”

  A chill rippled down the length of her spine. “Excuse me?” Her lips felt thick.

  Romanov was laying manila folders on the empty spaces on the table. “I won’t pull out all the paperwork. I’m sure you’re more than familiar with the details. This is just to demonstrate that I’ve done my homework, too.” He began to put more folders on the pile. “An undistinguished high school in Montana, to pre-med at UCLA. You did your medical training at Harvard. Very distinguished. You completed both your internship and residency in Los Angeles, where you specialized in genetic therapies, specifically focusing on the renewing of gene telomeres.” Romanov put another folder on the pile, a thick one. “The renewing of life,” he concluded, looking at her. “It was an ambitious therapy you were developing, an alternative to the gene rejuvenation that humans undergo.”

  Humans. The use of the word was further confirmation that these men were vampires.

  Marley could feel her breath shortening. She focused on the other critical word Romanov had used: Were.

  Romanov’s brows came together and suddenly, her breathing eased and her panic fled. It was like she had been given an intravenous dose of anti-depressant. Instant relief.

  She glared at Romanov. She didn’t know what it was he was doing, but somehow, he was doing it to her. “Don’t do that!” she snapped.

  Romanov’s eyes widened just a little and he glanced at Rhydder.

  Gotcha, Marley thought. He had been doing something to her. Then the thought occurred to her with an almost audible click that whatever he had been doing, it was mental. She had been standing in the same room for five minutes with a man who had been displaying genuine psychic abilities and all she been able to do was get pissed at him.

  He wasn’t a psi-filer. He was too old. Vampires with psychic talents? The thought was a sobering one. The world was already jumpy enough about what psi-filers could do when they put their minds to it.

  She stared at Romanov. He had read Sonya’s mind. That’s how he had known about the thirty-four dollars and the two days extension on the rent she had asked for. No wonder he walked around with a body guard. His ability clearly got him in trouble a lot.

  Romanov tapped the folders gently, drawing Marley’s attention back to them. “May I continue?”

  She wrapped her arms around her middle and nodded. What did a psychic vampire want with her, a failed doctor?

  His hand dropped onto the top folder and spread out. “You were developing a therapy to extend life by renewing gene telomeres, a much more direct and effective therapy than the long process of gene renewal that regeneration required ten years ago,” he repeated. “Then things got...messy.”

  “My therapy work was stolen,” Marley said flatly.

  “That’s what your civil suit claims, yes,” Romanov said smoothly.

  “Claims!” Marley choked on the word.

  “The suit was dismissed.”

  “Dropped,” Marley ground out. “As mutually agreed upon terms were reached.”

  “Especially when a counter-suit was filed by the ...er...aggrieved party in your suit. A Dr. Tony Johannes Wilson.” Romanov cocked his head to one side. “Messy, as I said. The World Board of Medical Licensure and Discipline didn’t like the mess at all, and revoked your license in a twenty minute hearing.” Romanov straightened his head and pursed his lips. “The shortness of the hearing and the severity of the outcome may have had something to do with the fact that Dr. Wilson is a member of the Board.”

  Marley swallowed and took a deep breath. When she had control of her voice, she said, “And now that you have demonstrated that you have done your homework sufficiently?” She was pleased her voice emerged smoothly. Despite Romanov’s little psychic skills, she could feel her pulse racing again.

  Romanov rested his hands on top of the kitchen chair. “I would like you to go back into practice again, Marley. I want you to resurrect your therapy and apply it on a limited basis.”

  “Me?”

  “The therapy you developed is still tied up in patent courts and won’t be made commercially available for at least another three years. I don’t want to wait that long.” Romanov paused. “Neither does the patient.”

  “Patient?”

  “There’s just one.” Romanov smiled. “I did say ‘limited’.”

  “You weren’t kidding.” Marley licked her lips. “I don’t have a license. It’s illegal to practice medicine without one. They don’t just fine you these days, either.”

  “Yes, you would be breaking global law.” Romanov reached into the briefcase and brought out a stack of money. It was a pile of used bills an inch thick, secured with an elastic band. The top bill was a hundred credits. Terran credits, the only currency that still held its value. Romanov put it on the table. Marley stared at it and didn’t realize Romanov was reaching into the briefcase for another wad until it was stacked next to the first.

  Then a third joined it.

  And a forth.

  She pulled her arms even more tightly around her.

  “Stop.” Her voice came out wobbly and full of panic this time. “Just stop.”

  Gawain gave a shaky exhalation behind her.

  Marley couldn’t look away from the money. She felt like crying. Those four stacks would solve...oh, so many problems. The rent, Gawain’s computer and therefore his ability to earn more income.... She could see it all from here. Plus, she would once more be working in medicine. Helping people. Well, helping a person. This rich, weird vampire’s friend she had never seen, who had suddenly decided she or he wanted to tack another few years onto the end of their privileged lifestyle, didn’t qualify for current therapies and didn’t want to wait until the patent was official.

  She reached out to pick up one of the stacks and wasn’t at all surprised to see her hand was shaking. She gripped the stack for a second, just to feel the weight and thickness of it. She rubbed her thumb over it.

  Then she threw it at Romanov and saw his eyes open very wide this time.

  “Get out.” She picked up the other stacks with both hands and threw those. “Get out, both of you. I’m not going to risk jail time for a pair of strangers who come into my home and scare the crap out of me and my friend just because they’re impatient. Fuck off, both of you.”

  Romanov, standing surrounded by the money, lifted a hand, palm out. She could feel a wash of calm spreading over her.

  “Don’t do that!” she yelled at him, reaching for the knife.

  Rhydder took three strides into the room from the corner where he had been hovering. He grabbed Romanov by the shoulders and physically hauled h
im over to the door. “We’re going,” he said shortly.

  “But—” Romanov began.

  “We’re going,” Rhydder repeated and opened the apartment door and pushed Romanov out. He came back to the table and shoved the folders into the briefcase in fast, economical movements, then crouched and jammed the money in on top. He rose again and looked at Marley, as if he were about to say something. Then he simply nodded and left. He shut the door to the apartment gently.

  Just like that, they were gone.

  Gawain almost staggered to the table and sank into a chair. “Oh god, the money, Marley!” He buried his head in his hands.

  She rested her hand on his shoulder. “I couldn’t risk it. I’ve got no idea who those guys are connected to. They were vampires, Gawain. They could be into very bad shit indeed. Tough as it is now, I’d rather not be transported for practicing medicine without a license.”

  He nodded into his hands. “I know,” he said, his voice muffled. “It’s just...the money!”

  “We’ll figure it out,” she told him. But it was just words, meant to reassure Gawain. She really had no idea how they were supposed to do that.

  * * * * *

  Demyan threw off Rhydder’ hand as they clattered down the second floor stairs. He yanked the exploding briefcase out of Rhydder’s arms, his fury off-setting any caution about baiting someone like Rhydder.

  “What the hell were you thinking?” Demyan demanded. “I could have salvaged it. She simply needed to get used to the idea, that was all. A few minutes to consider it, a few soothers over her emotions.... I could have turned it around. Instead you hauled us out of there like a sword out of a gullet.”

  Rhydder was taking two steps for Demyan’s every one and making it look easy. He stopped on the landing and glared up at Demyan. “She was never going to say yes, no matter how you pushed her emotions. You read her wrong. You were pushing her wrong. Laying the money in front of her was the worst thing you could have done.”

  He turned and started down the stairs again.

  Demyan followed him down, trying to zip the briefcase closed over the money before they hit the street and process his surprise at the same time. “Who’s the mind-reader here?” he asked.

  “Yeah, nice trick, that,” Rhydder said dryly. “Thanks for warning me, by the way.”

  “Pritti taught me,” Demyan said. He glanced back up the stairs. “She’s broke, can’t pay her rent, in danger of being evicted and just lost her job. You really think money is the wrong motivator? What makes you the expert? You’re a Malsinne.” He said the last with a sneer in his voice.

  They emerged onto the street and Demyan scrambled to dig out his sunglasses and put them on. Even though the day was a lovely overcast fall day, the sun still drove into the back of his eyes.

  Rhydder strode across the road, pulling out the card for the car. The Corvette was sitting safely on the other side of the road, a small blessing in disguise. That was a complication Demyan would not have wanted to deal with. He could have replaced any number of modern day luxury cars, but a cherry red ‘68 Corvette Stingray replica would have been a pain in the neck to find.

  Demyan slid into the passenger seat. “That was my one chance to convince the woman to work on Pritti, and you took it away from me.”

  Rhydder was leaning against the low-slung window frame as if he was struck by a thought. Then he straightened. “Wait here,” he told Demyan and headed back to the apartment.

  * * * * *

  They scrounged for coffee and calories, the best cure for shock that Marley could think of. She took care of the coffee while Gawain took care of the calories. Of the two of them, he was the better scraps-cook, simply because he had been doing it longer than she had.

  The knock on the door came just as she switched on the gas under the kettle and they both looked at each other. She could even guess Gawain’s thought. What now?

  She opened the door. Rhydder stood with his hands in his pockets, perhaps trying to look non-threatening. He made no attempt to step into the apartment.

  “What?” Marley demanded.

  “Romanov’s patient,” Rhydder said. “He forgot to mention a couple of things.”

  Marley shrugged.

  “Pritti is only twenty-nine,” Rhydder said. “She won’t make it to thirty.”

  Marley took a breath to speak, then let it out. There was nothing she could think of to say to that.

  Rhydder pulled his hand out of his pocket. There was a business card in it. He held it out. “That’s my number. Call if you change your mind.”

  Reluctantly, she took the card. “You said there were two things,” she reminded him as he turned to leave.

  Rhydder looked over his shoulder. In the dim light of the hallway, his eyes were very black indeed. “Today is Pritti’s birthday.” He turned and walked down the hall.

  He didn’t look back.

  Marley slammed the door shut on him and stamped her foot, making Gawain pull his head out of the cold cabinet, puzzled. She crumpled the card in her fist while she gripped her temples with her other hand.

  “Goddammit!” she cried.

  * * * * *

  Rhydder navigated the Corvette out of Gershom and drove out of Hammerside, heading for the landing strip outside the city limits where he could lift the car into semi-ballistic mode. Romanov fumed silently beside him.

  When the phone buzzed on the dash, he smiled and answered it.

  She didn’t bother identifying herself. “I’ll do it, but there’s conditions. I have to protect myself.”

  “I would expect nothing less,” Rhydder assured her. He wheeled the car over the edge of the road, making Romanov swear softly, startled.

  “When can we set this up?”

  “Now,” Rhydder said simply.

  “Now?” She seemed surprised.

  “Pritti has no time and you have plenty of it. Why not? Besides, I don’t want to give you time to think about it and recant.”

  “I wouldn’t do that.”

  Rhydder held back the response he wanted to make. Instead, he said, “We’ll be there in five minutes.”

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Bushland, near Beechworth, Victoria, Australia, 1879: Ryan pulled a thick roll of very large notes out of his saddle bag and handed it to Justin. “See you back home,” he said. He glanced at Adán. “I’ll see you again, amigo.”

  “That will be agreeable,” Adán told him.

  “No, wait a moment,” Deonne said quickly. “I’m confused. Justin told you about this place, so you jumped here ahead of us to make sure it was clear. Okay, I get that. But now you’re expecting us to go back to the 23rd century? All of us?”

  Ryan gave her a small smile. “There’s been no time wave in your natural time. There has been no wave at all associated with anything Justin has done in Liping, or here.”

  “Justin said that, too. Perhaps it will come through later?”

  “You were less than two hundred years in the past. The wave should have reached us almost immediately, if you had changed anything of significance. But as far as we can establish, Justin was meant to pull you out of Liping. Both of you. He was meant to bring you here. Time has simply been waiting for the twenty-third century end of the loop to occur so the loop would close up on itself. So, no time wave.”

  “But that means that time knew that two hundred years after Liping, Justin would jump back. Are you saying it can read the future?”

  “Time has no shape,” Justin told her. “It’s only humans who experience time as a line.”

  “Another way to look at time,” Ryan added, “is to realize that all moments, everywhere and everywhen, are all happening at the same moment. Time is what gives them shape. Time is the fourth dimension, the one that makes sure all those moments happen in the order they should.”

  “But you just said all moments happen at the same time!”

  “They do, except that time separates them. Time is the reason there are consequences.”
Ryan gave her another small smile. “It’s a chicken and egg thing, Deonne. If you try to figure out if Justin jumped back to Liping because you were in danger, or if you ran into danger because Justin went back to Liping, you’ll make yourself crazy.”

  “I hadn’t even thought of that!” she said, horrified.

  Adán chuckled. He seemed to have no problems following Ryan’s logic.

  Ryan surprised Deonne by hugging her. He kissed her cheek and looked into her eyes. “I’m proud of you. I will see all of you back home soon.”

  He moved back a few steps, then bent his knees, jumped, and was gone with the same gale-force wind swipe that had characterized Nayara’s jump.

  Adán was staring at the empty place where Ryan had been standing. “It seems so simple, yet…” He shook his head.

  “It really is that simple,” Justin said, tucking his watch back in the little pocket on his waistcoat. “Yet it can be a disaster to the entire universe if you don’t do it right.” He walked over to the horse and unhitched it, then clicked his tongue to coax it into walking forward.

  Deonne watched, fascinated, as the horse followed him as he headed back to them. Of course, Justin would have learned how to handle horses the way she learned how to operate a vehicle. Only he would have been much younger.

  “What is this mysterious thing we are to do here?” she asked, running her fingers over the pins holding her hair up off the back of her neck to check they were secure. She had managed to pin her hair in a neat roll, while Adán held the camera up while it was running in self-image mode. It was a high-tech mirror that worked well enough for her to see what she was doing.

  Justin walked the horse in a tight circle so it was standing next to them and handed the reins to Adán, who patted the horse’s head and stroked its nose with the palm of his hand. He looked just as comfortable with the animal.

  “We’re going to Beechworth,” Justin said.

  “Where you lived? Why?” she asked sharply, as he fitted his hands around her waist and lifted her. He placed her on the saddle and lifted her skirt out of the way. “You’ll have to hook your knee over the horn of the saddle. Sidesaddle…you’ve seen it?”