He stepped over the rubbish and damp, growing things that accumulated in the dark alley and unlocked the door in the wall there. The door had a keypad for a lock, which was simple and effective. It meant that he or Ryan or anyone else who came to New Orleans frequently didn’t have to remember to bring a key with them.
There was a narrow wooden stair right inside the door, hugging the external wall and climbing to the second floor. He climbed quickly up to the open balcony with its iron filigree and green-painted woodwork. There were four small studios on this level. Brenden was pretty sure that Ryan owned all of them and probably the bar on the first floor, too. It was possible he owned the entire building. Brenden moved past the first studio door, because that was Ryan’s own. It was possible Ryan was in there right now, but he could be from a different subjective time.
Even though Brenden had sometimes spotted Ryan in the bar and around New Orleans, they ignored each other unless they had jumped together because of the subjective time variations. One of them came from the other’s past and if they spoke, they might accidentally reveal details of the other’s future. Better to avoid the problem by ignoring each other.
He tapped on the door to the third studio. It opened almost at once and Billy frowned. “But you just left. I haven’t even figured out how to work the plumbing yet.”
“You don’t remember?” Brenden asked, moving into the room and shutting the door.
“There are aspects of being human that I don’t recall at all,” Billy said with a grin. “I’d forgotten all about sweating and the humidity here is abysmal.”
Brenden went over to the air conditioner and turned it on. “That should make it better.” Even his own skin was prickling with the moist heat that seemed to rise from the ground itself. He fanned his shirt. “Hungry yet?”
“No. Should I be?”
“It can take a while for hunger to hit. It’s like your human systems have to remember how to do it. And sometimes not. I’ve had jumps where I was starving the moment I arrived. If you’re not hungry, don’t push it. You’ll know when you are.”
“You’re back quickly—it’s been barely fifteen minutes. Has something happened?”
Brenden shook his head. “More than eight hours have passed for me. I crammed the jump close to when I left you here. I didn’t want to leave you alone back here for long. It’s just a way to keep you out of the media lenses back home, not a tourist jaunt.”
“Then…?” Billy didn’t finish the sentence, but instead raised a blond brow in query. He was wearing some of the twenty-first century clothing Brenden had stashed here for moments when he leapt back without preparation. The clothes were too big for Billy, but not ridiculously so and the length of the jeans was almost correct. Billy was taller than Brenden had realized.
His shoulders were wide enough so that the sleeves didn’t flop down his arms and his neck rose out of the wide collar. The flesh looked tanned. It gave him an air of strength and endurance that didn’t come across the screens when the media were reporting on his latest indiscretion or personal life disaster.
Brenden stirred. “The bar downstairs does a great jambalaya and it’s about dinner time here. I’ll eat before I head back. It’s too early for music, so we can talk.”
“I’ll join you,” Billy said. “I’m not hungry, but I’m dying to try eating something.”
Brenden reached for the antistatic fastener on his pants. “I’ll have to change, though. These are just a bit too anachronistic.” He stripped down quickly and pulled the other set of clothes out of the linen press and dressed hurriedly. He could already taste the jambalaya and his mouth was watering.
When he turned away from the press, sliding the zipper closed, he found that Billy was watching him.
Billy cleared his throat and gave an odd smile. “Maybe I should have stepped out, but I suddenly didn’t want to.”
Brenden buckled the belt, concentrating on it. His heart, which was already beating at normal human rate, gave an extra hard thud. That was the problem with time jumping. Becoming human meant you were suddenly vulnerable to all the biological reactions to emotions. Adrenaline surges. Excitement felt all the way down to the fingertips, instead of the simple intellectual realization that you were highly anticipating something. Physical reactions to stimulus.
When he had his reaction under control, Brenden looked up. “You’ll get used to the full volume sensations after a belt or two of whiskey. C’mon. I’m starving already.”
* * * * *
Bourbon Street, New Orleans, 2003 A.D.
Billy decided he liked Jambalaya and that he liked eating very much indeed. The fullness of the belly was something he had forgotten, along with the pleasure of finishing a good meal.
The whiskey wasn’t as good as schnapps, but it had the same warming and mellowing effects. He avoided drinking too many shots. After six centuries sober and with a human physiology that he still was exploring and remembering, he didn’t think getting drunk was such a good idea.
Brenden was comfortable with his human body. He ate and drank with enthusiasm, his large frame able to absorb everything he consumed. It seemed he had been speaking truthfully when he said he was starving. He had an enormous appetite. To begin with, he ate silently, concentrating on the meal.
Billy sat on the opposite side of the small table, tasting his way through every delightful mouthful. But the novelty of eating wore off quickly and while Brenden maintained the silence, he found his mind turning back to those few minutes in the apartment upstairs when Brenden had changed in front of him.
It had been a long time since a man’s body had roused him. He had watched Brenden strip, at first not even curious about the display of flesh. But then he had noticed his muscles, the strong tendons working under the flesh. Brenden was a big man—not just in height, although Billy was only a little shorter than him—but in breadth. It wasn’t an illusion stolen from clothing choice. His shoulders really were that big, his back that wide. The muscles in his thighs and buttocks had bunched as he stepped into the old fashioned pants, then flexed as he straightened. His biceps had balled into hard mounds as he fastened the buttons on the shirt…and that was when Billy realized that he was reacting to him.
He hadn’t had time to cover up, for Brenden had turned and frozen for one instant, as he recognized Billy’s reaction.
You’ll get used to it. Brenden’s response had been pragmatic and had helped Billy stay cool and let the reaction dissipate.
But now his hunger had been addressed and the whiskey was warming his gut, he was back to studying Brenden again, as he thought it through.
Brenden looked up and caught his gaze and went back to eating.
“It’s an interesting perspective you get when you’re passing as human in a time when vampires are common knowledge,” Billy said, playing with the half-full shot glass. “Humans know very little about vampires. Most of what they do know is wildly inaccurate fairy stories. Get a few humans together and sooner or later, the conversation will turn to vampire lore.” He smiled. “It’s the speculations that I find the most interesting.”
“Like what?” Brenden asked. He scooped up the last mouthfuls of spicy sausage and ate it with relish.
“Sexual practices, mostly. My business manager did a day trip back to the time of the Spanish invasion of South America. One night after a few drinks, he confessed that his traveler had seduced him and he’d had the best sex in his life. His traveler told him that when she was back in time, sex was incredible—far more intense than anything she experienced as a vampire in her own time.”
Billy watched Brenden, gauging his reaction.
Brenden shrugged. “It’s not against the rules for a traveler to have sex, although sex with their client can cause complications.”
“Then it’s true, that sex is more intense back in the past?”
Brenden’s gaze flickered around the room behind Billy, sizing up potential eavesdroppers.
“I’ve been m
onitoring since we came in,” Billy told him. “There’s the man setting up the sound equipment in the corner, the barman over on the other side and the waitress is standing at the end of the bar while he makes drinks. There’s a couple in the far corner with their heads together, too busy with each other to give a damn about anyone else. No one is listening.”
Brenden’s brow lifted. “Prussian Army training was thorough, I see.”
“Twentieth century black ops training and you’re changing the subject.” Billy gave him a congenial grin. “I’m trying to figure out if what I felt upstairs was just this human body coming on-line or something else.”
“Does it matter?” Brenden asked, for the first time sounding genuinely interested. He pushed his empty bowl to one side, drained the shot glass in front of him, caught the barman’s gaze and lifted a single finger, then sat back.
“It probably doesn’t matter to you because you’ve been dealing with this sort of stuff for nearly two hundred years. It’s new for me.”
“I meant, does it matter what you feel? You’re three seconds beyond the end of a marriage breakup and you’re already in bed with Mariana.”
“Laszlo is in bed with Mariana and you do keep circling back to that, don’t you?”
“Must have been real, genuine love that got you to the altar. You’re so broken up about it.”
“I was devastated when I heard Karen laughing about how she had fooled me and how much money she was going to get out of this. She jeered at me when I caught her in bed with her dress designer. I took off for Evergreen two weeks later. Interstellar travel has a way of cleaning up your perspective. You want me to bleed all over the table about it, instead?”
“Not even a twinge of regret?”
“Dozens of them,” Billy admitted. “I think the biggest thing I got out of it was that I was a complete fucking idiot thinking that there was such a thing as perfect love. After all this time, after so many relationships, you think I’d know better.” He let his lip curl up, then tossed back the rest of the shot with a jerk of his wrist.
“Ah…” Brenden growled the word. But he seemed happier. “You’re giving up on love, then?”
“Yeah, I think I am.” Billy sat back, surprised at himself. “Well, there’s a change.” He gave Brenden a small smile. “I think I’ve been fooling myself about it for way too long.” He shifted his shoulders under the oversized shirt. “What is it about love that screws us up so much? You’d think that after walking the earth for so long, we’d have love all nailed down neat and tidy.”
“I wouldn’t know,” Brenden said, his voice still gruff. “I’ve stayed away from it for a long time.” Then he stood up, the wooden chair scraping across the floorboards behind him. “Barman is taking too long. I’ll go get it myself.”
Billy watched him stalk over to the bar, moving silently and gracefully despite his size. Because of his own military training in at least four different armies, Billy could spot the residue of military training in Brenden. He didn’t have the upright posture that was drilled into Prussian soldiers because the Spartans had not cared for parades and spectacle. But Brenden was light on his feet and his reactions were faster than any vampire Billy had ever met. He quartered the room with his gaze when he entered it and even when he was concentrating on what he was doing, he monitored everything around him, keeping tabs. He left his dominant hand free as often as he could.
It helped that Brenden had never left the paramilitary arena. He was still working security and if rumors were right, then the agency members had done their share of fighting in the last two hundred years, in contemporary times and in the past, when things went awry.
Billy had deliberately moved away from all that. He had continued to pass as a human so that he could occupy his time with peaceful endeavors. After four hundred years of war of every variation possible, he had grown tired of it.
But peace hadn’t served him any better, not in the long run.
Brenden put a full shot glass in front of him and sat back down. “On the house,” he said. “The barman knows me and the owner is a friend.”
“You’re back here that often?”
“To the barman, I was here yesterday.”
Billy didn’t pick up the glass.
“Not drinking?” Brenden asked, lifting his own and sipping.
He shook his head. “I’m not used to it now. I told myself I would stop at two.”
Brenden considered him over the top of his glass. “Interesting. There are not many people like you around anymore.”
“Like me?”
“Disciplined enough to do what they say they’re going to do. It’s a lost art, even in today’s military.”
“All that Prussian training, I suppose,” Billy said lightly.
“Probably,” Brenden agreed. “It reminds me of how I grew up. There was never any choice for me. I was going to be a soldier whether I wanted to be or not. Every Spartan was a soldier first and something else after that.”
Billy grinned. “We studied Sparta, in my military school. We used to have formal debates over who would win if you put a Spartan and a Roman legionnaire into the ring.”
Brenden smiled. “I’ve heard that one before. Depends on the weapons, in the end. Romans were tough bastards.”
“Coming from a Spartan, I consider that high praise. King William was particularly keen on the Spartan idea of discipline and that was passed on to the entire army. He did manage to carve out a nice little empire for himself using Spartan principles.”
“We had three principles, not twenty of them.”
“He polished them up a bit.” Billy shrugged. “Same general idea. But we didn’t have a Thermopylae to prove our worth, either.”
Brenden sighed.
“Still a tender subject?”
“Always will be.” He took a sip of his whiskey. “My father was one of the three hundred.”
“Sorry.”
“Forget it.” Brenden’s mouth curled up at the corners. “It’s all ancient history, anyway.”
Billy laughed and pushed his glass across to Brenden. “Yes, it is. Here, with my compliments.”
The big man lined the glass up carefully next to the first nearly empty one.
“Why did you come back tonight, anyway?” Billy asked curiously.
Brenden shrugged. “I watched Laszlo leave the villa this morning and tracked him back to his hotel. The Aldrovandi Villa Borghese. You’ve got taste.”
“My favourite hotel in Europe,” Billy said. “That makes sense. Laszlo is me. He would feel the same way about the Aldrovandi as I would. Besides, it’s right next to the gallery.” He picked his next words carefully. “That’s not exactly earth-shattering news. Yet you jumped back here to tell me that?”
Brenden finished the first shot and picked up the second. “I wanted to make sure you settled in okay. You’ve never time jumped before, you’ve never gone back to being human and I dumped you here on your own last night with very little preparation. Most of our clients go through a couple of days of orientation before we take them back on a jump….” He halted, looking down at his glass. “Damn it, of course,” he muttered.
“What?”
“Laszlo turned up a week ago. He said he wanted to take a time tour. But we figure he’s already a traveler, so the tour was a ruse.”
“A way to get inside the agency?”
“To meet us, anyway,” Brenden agreed. “He’s still an unknown quantity and most clients are kept at arm’s length….” He trailed off again, studying the brown liquid in his glass. “Shit,” he muttered and drank the shot.
Billy waited.
Brenden cleared his throat. “He’s ingratiated himself. Mariana thinks he walks on water. Even Kieran, our resident mentalist, says he’s a good guy. Rob is all for handing him the keys to the kingdom and I know Nia and Ryan already think of him as one of the family because of the stunt he pulled at the gala last night….”
“What stunt? What gala?” Billy
frowned. “Wait, it’s late August. You’re talking about the Borghese gala? I forgot, out on Evergreen. I’ve been going to that thing every year for eight years now. Of course, Laszlo would have remembered that. Tell me what the stunt was.”
Brenden described the blood-throwing fanatics at the gala and how they had pulled Mariana out of it using Kieran’s peculiar talents and psi-skills, combined. “Laszlo threw himself at the lunatic with the spike,” Brenden finished. “I couldn’t figure out where he’d suddenly developed the courage and physical strength to pull it off, but now I understand.” His gaze flickered toward Billy, then back to the table top. “Everyone at the agency thinks he’s a hero.”
Billy’s heart had been beating steadily since they had arrived in New Orleans. It was one of the most difficult things to adjust to, hearing and feeling his heart running all the time. But now it squeezed hard, making his breath escape in a rush. “Everyone except you,” he finished.
“I might, if I could figure out why he did it,” Brenden replied shortly. He got to his feet. “We’d better get you out of sight. I’m not too worried, not back in this decade, but you might give yourself away without realizing it. You’re better off staying out of circulation as much as possible.”
“And stay out of history’s way?” Billy asked.
“Something like that.” Brenden pulled out an old fashioned wallet and withdrew actual money from it and put it on the table beneath the bill the waitress had brought them.
“Not that I can do anything creative without money, here,” Billy pointed out.
“There’s a stash in the back of the linen press, if you need funds,” Brenden said as they left the bar and headed back upstairs via the public staircase next to the bar entrance. “We use these studios a lot, so everything a stranded traveler might need is tucked away for emergency use.”
“Including clothes,” Billy finished.
“Especially clothes. And shoes. Shoes are a dead giveaway. They change so much from decade to decade and they’re the hardest to reproduce authentically. If you ever think you might be talking to a traveler, check his shoes. If he’s just arrived and hasn’t had a chance to buy contemporary shoes, it’ll stand out like a sore thumb.”
Spartan Resistance Page 20