“You don’t even know which one I’m talking about.”
Deonne shook her head. “I don’t have to. I’ve seen how both of them look at you.” Her smile faded. “It’s easy to recognize love, when you’ve experienced it for yourself.”
* * * * *
Deonne spent a few more minutes calming Mariana down by giving her some highly practical advice, then left her at the fountain and hurried back through the villa to their suite. It had grown late while she lingered in the gardens.
Aden was already home and she kissed him hard. After her conversation with Mariana, she was appreciative all over again that she had both Adán and Justin in her life.
Justin arrived minutes after her, Gema in his arms. The evening routine they had developed around Gema’s needs took all Deonne’s attention for the next few hours, as Gema was fed and bathed and dressed and chuckled over and caressed and hugged and kissed. When Gema was finally asleep, her thumb firmly in her mouth, Deonne took Adán and Justin to bed and tried to explain with her hands and her mouth just how much they meant to her.
The moon was high overhead, streaming through the open window across the bed, making the sheets glow and Justin’s flesh gleam, when Adán stirred and rolled onto his side to look at them both, his head on his hand. “I’ve come to a decision,” he said. “But you should both speak your minds before I act on it.”
Justin sat up and crossed his legs. “If we do speak our minds, does that mean we can change yours, or are you handing us a fait accompli?” With the moon shining over his shoulder, his face was in the dark. Deonne picked up his hand and looked at Adán.
“I would not be so inconsiderate,” Adán protested. “Of course you can change my mind. But I do hope that you will not.”
Deonne sat up, putting her back against the padded board and her arms around her knees. This was something important. She could tell by his tone.
Justin stayed silent, too, which was unusual. When he was nervous, he talked, but now he was squeezing her hand with absentminded pressure, waiting for Adán to drop whatever bomb he had saved until this quiet time in their day.
Adán reached out and ran his fingertips over Deonne’s toes, making it look casual. Everything about him, from his indolent pose, to his off-handed caress, was supposed to look like this was a minor thing, which meant it was quite the opposite.
“I have thought about this a lot,” he said. “Especially since Gabriel appeared today and spoke his spell.”
Deonne shivered. That had only been today—such a lot had happened since then. Gabriel had ordered all Janes to go to sleep. Gema’s middle name was Jane—Gema Jane Louisa, in honor of all their mothers—and it was only because it was her middle name and because she was too small to understand what was being said to her that she had escaped the fate of every other Jane in the world.
It had brought Gabriel far too close to Deonne’s life. It made him real in a way all the other PR disasters she had been dealing with over the last year or so had failed to do.
“You want to join Rhydder’s army,” Justin said. “You want to fight Gabriel.”
Cold dread whooshed through her. Deonne sat up. “No!” she cried. “You can’t!”
Adán sat up, too. “I must,” he said simply. “I can see the way that this war with the madman is going. Vampires will have to fight—for us and for humans, who cannot fight—not against him and his psi. The army Rhydder is building in the catacombs is exactly for that purpose—to fight a battle no one wants to have. That is why I must join them.”
Deonne could barely breathe. Fear was choking her. “But…you might…die.” She could only whisper the word.
Adán nodded. “It is possible,” he agreed. “But that is why Justin must stay here with you. If anything happens to me, then he will remain.”
She couldn’t cry. This was too overwhelming. The single tear that pooled in the corner of her eye hurt like crazy. Everything hurt. Her throat, that felt like someone was squeezing it. Her chest, that felt like an anvil was sitting on it. “You can’t,” she repeated helplessly. “The trip back to Australia last month…it worked. I’m pregnant.”
There was a tiny little silence. Adán just looked at her.
“We know,” Justin said softly, his hand stroking hers. “We knew almost immediately. Your body temperature, your blood, your pheromones….” He shrugged.
Adán turned her chin so that she was looked at him. “That is why I must do this, love of my life. That is why I must fight. To save us all.”
* * * * *
It was the dead of the night when Rob arrived in the command center, dressed in jeans and a shirt that looked too tight across the chest and was probably Christian’s. He’d dressed in a hurry, Kieran judged.
Rob saw him at the back of the room and relief wrote itself on the vampire’s face.
Curiouser and curiouser. Kieran nodded at him as he walked the length of the room, alongside the display table.
Rob nodded back and leaned over the table, his elbows on the edge, like he was tired, which was impossible. “We’ve got a wee problem,” he said.
“So I gather.”
Rob lifted a brow. “Did ye tap in here, then?” He pressed his finger to his temple.
“Not without your permission. Not unless I had to.”
“Then clearly, I look as stressed as I am. So be it.” Rob shrugged. “It is true that Pritti lives on inside your head, teaching you things?”
Kieran stopped himself from smiling at this gossip-stretched rendition of the truth. Rob wasn’t in the mood for humor. “She didn’t teach me,” he said. “She gave me all her skills, so I just automatically knew. All that skill, all that knowledge, though, means that sometimes it feels like she’s talking to me.”
“Fair enough.” Rob stood up, gripping the edge of the table. “Do ye figure ye could teach someone else, though?”
“Jack…” Kieran breathed as he realized where Rob was taking this. “He’s displaying psi talent.”
Rob sighed. “I didn’t see him pull his bear over to him, but I don’t doubt Tally and Lee. And a while ago—”
That would be a few seconds before Rob came running here, Kieran realized.
“—I swear, I heard my lad’s sweet voice in my head.”
Jack had been held by the psi for nearly a year. It was possible that with his parents’ vampire genes—which gave them a latent ability with psi-skills—and the time he had spent with various psi care-takers during his year of being kidnapped, that Jack had developed more than merely latent skill.
“He’s very young,” Kieran pointed out. “Perhaps even too young to be taught anything.”
Rob stared down at the table top. “Without it, though, how long before he starts throwing things because his food is too hot, or too cold? How long before he makes us bring him his bear, or pulls us from whatever we’re doing because he wants attention right now, not in five minutes?” He looked at Kieran. “When he gets older, it won’t be just stuffed animals and food on time. It will be toys and attention he wants. What if he resists schooling? Discipline? How the hell can ye reason with a child who can swat ye down like a fly if he doesn’t like ye’re answer?”
Kieran nodded. Rob was a smart man. He’d leapt ahead to the very real problems they would have to face, if Jack was as strong a psychic as it sounded like. Teleportation of inanimate objects, that lacked the forcefield that most live bodies radiated, was a rare skill. Pritti had been able to do it only sometimes, when she was fresh and strong. Kieran had done it once, under high stress.
“Perhaps your Jack and I should get to know each other a little better,” Kieran said. “It’s best the boy learns to trust me before I explain the facts of life to him.”
Rob blew out his breath. “Thank ye. But what do we do with him in the meantime?”
“What you’ve been doing all along. Reward him for good behavior. Withhold approval when he does something wrong. For now, anything psi should be discouraged. If you r
einforce now that it’s not something he should do, it will make it easier later to help him control it. He’ll have his parents’ conditioning to help him understand.”
Rob stood up straighter. Relief was taking away the weight that had bowed his shoulders when he came in. “And why aren’t ye in bed asleep, anyway?” he asked.
Kieran thought of the black shapes and portents that always visited when he slept. “I was waiting for you to come and find me,” he told Rob.
Rob looked startled. Then he laughed. “Ye nearly had me,” he said and waggled his finger. “Very funny.”
Kieran wished it was.
He stayed working in the command center for another hour after Rob had left. He had the place to himself. Brenden had left some time ago. Even though vampires didn’t sleep, most of them tended to keep to human cycles of rest, work and activity, because it made it easier to navigate the human systems they had to work with.
Kieran was familiar enough with the network that controlled security to know that no one really needed to be here. The powerful algorithms that ran the monitoring and control networks would ensure that if anything even slightly suspicious occurred in any of the myriad areas that the agency monitored, alerts would rouse most of the agency members and bring them running.
It was a human failing to think that a human overseer made things safer and more reliable.
But he still didn’t want to leave until someone arrived to take over. That turned out to be Martina, one of Brenden’s more senior security people. Kieran briefed her on the few items of interest he had seen on the monitors or that had come across the central desk while he had been there, then left her with the command center.
He was tired. It was very late. Actually, it was very early. The new day was already beginning, far off to the east where the sky was showing the first fade toward dawn, which looked like it was an hour away. But he wouldn’t have slept properly even if he had stayed in bed and tried. At least he had been able to reassure Rob about Jack. It hadn’t been a complete waste of a night.
But as he moved through the sprawling villa complex toward the small room the agency had assigned him, he grew aware of a deep uneasiness building in his chest and head. It was unnamed, unsourced. But it quickly stole more and more of his attention until he halted in the middle of the corridor, ten steps away from his own door, completely immersed in the sensation.
He couldn’t analyze it. It was incoherent. There was no communication in it, no intelligent message. But it was coming from outside of him. Somewhere south of him. No, somewhere down. Beneath his feet. Far beneath.
He looked at the tiles beneath his boots. The only thing far beneath was the catacombs. The residents of those tunnels were dead or undead and all of them were troubled spirits.
But the aching, wordless pleading that was tightening his chest was compulsive. He had to go.
He hurried back to the little room on the south side of the villa where the entrance to the catacombs was. The agency had drilled right through the floor and the earth beneath the villa, to break through to the ancient stairs that led down to the uncharted catacombs beneath. For a hundred feet, new plasteel stairs wound downward, to meet the worn stone steps of the original catacombs. Light and power fed down to the main cavern the same way and a powerful pump drained the water that tended to accumulate, keeping the cavern dry and cool.
He had spent a lot of time down here, assessing Rhydder’s men and consulting with him on new strategies and fight tactics. They had analyzed Gabriel and the little they knew of his army and how they fought, trying to develop fight tactics to counter the natural advantages of psi fighters.
So Kieran was familiar with the caliber of the people Rhydder had recruited and was far more knowledgeable about them than anyone else at the agency except for Cáel Stelios, to whom he reported regularly.
But that didn’t mean Kieran knew them well. As a group, they were tight knit and closed-mouthed, a phenomenon that Kieran recognized from his time as a warden. And while he didn’t pry into minds deliberately, it was sometimes hard to ignore the black thoughts and feelings that seemed to emanate from them like an invisible cloud.
If they were, in fact, all Malsinne then ‘dark cast’ was a good name for them.
By the time Kieran reached the observation deck level, he was hurrying down the uneven steps at a pace that was dangerous, but the compulsion was strong enough that he didn’t know if he could slow down.
As he passed the opening onto the deck, the compulsion shifted, almost yanking him sideways. He stepped onto the deck, looking around. The cavern beneath was empty and the lights turned down so low it was barely possible to make out the boulders that were scattered across the floor. Vampires, of course, wouldn’t need much light at all and there was none in the catacombs where they lived.
He didn’t linger. The direction and source of the compulsion was clear now. He strode over to Rhydder’s office and yanked open the door. “Rhydder?”
Silence. Except for heavy, hurried breathing, coming from the far corner. There was no light in here and Kieran obeyed his instinct to keep it that way. He shuffled around the desk, ramming his thigh into the corner and barely noticing it.
Rhydder was a dark shape among the shadows gathered in the corner of the little room, tucked in between the computer server and the wall. The wall at the back of the office was raw, living rock. Coldness oozed from it, a reminder of how deep they were. Rhydder was sitting with his shoulder against the rock, his knees drawn up tight against his chest.
“Rhydder.” Kieran crouched down in front of him. “Cade.”
Rhydder didn’t speak. But he was making a sound. Kieran realized he was listening to Rhydder’s teeth chatter. He was shaking badly enough to rattle his teeth.
Heat was radiating from him, like a blast from the open mouth of a furnace. It was as if Rhydder was feverish, but that was impossible. Nevertheless, Kieran raised his hand, intending to test his temperature the ancient way, with a hand to his forehead. It was redundant—the heat pouring off Rhydder was proof enough that something was wrong, but he still wanted to test for himself.
“Do not touch me,” Rhydder growled, his voice low and pain-filled.
“Do you know what is wrong with you?”
Rhydder’s breath heaved, as he fought for the air to speak. Kieran still couldn’t see much of him, even though his eyes were adjusting to the darkness, but he could see the gleam of his flesh. Rhydder’s face was covered in sweat.
“Go away.” Rhydder gasped it out, taking two breaths to do it. “Go far away.”
“Tell me what’s wrong,” Kieran insisted. “Or I’ll find out for myself.” He lifted his hand, as if he would lay it against him, the surest way of a direct and clear contact with someone’s mind.
Rhydder rolled his head back, until it rested against the wall behind him. It seemed to Kieran that he was exhausted. How long had he been suffering like this?
Anxiously, he waited for Rhydder to explain.
“I am Malsinne,” Rhydder said, as if that was an explanation and the revelation of a dire secret.
“So?” Kieran said.
Rhydder laughed. It was a short, harsh expression. “Everything they say about us is true. We’re addicts, at the mercy of blood lust.”
“So is every vampire I’ve ever met,” Kieran said.
“The synthetic blood satisfies all but the Malsinne.” Rhydder drew in a harsh breath and swallowed. “It feeds us but it doesn’t quiet our…hunger, not like it does for the others.”
“This is blood fever?” Kieran asked, appalled. He had heard of blood fever before, but it wasn’t something vampires liked to talk about. Not in blunt, direct terms, anyway.
“I can smell you,” Rhydder growled. “I can smell your blood.”
The alien sound in his voice made the back of Kieran’s neck prickle. “Is that what you need to fix this? My blood?”
Rhydder rammed his head back into the wall, like a man driven by dire
frustration. He did it over and over. “Just go!” he ground out.
Kieran’s body tightened, the muscles braced for movement. His instincts were telling him to run, just like Rhydder was urging him, but cool reason and a growing sense of his new abilities kept him hunkered down in front of Rhydder.
He lifted his hand again and this time Rhydder just hissed. It was an animal sound and his gut tightened. “Shut up,” Kieran told him, his voice hoarse with barely disguised fear.
He gripped Rhydder’s neck, feeling the tight muscles, the trembling. He ran his hand up along his neck, to the corner of his jaw and curled his fingers around the back of his head. The long hair was wet with sweat and curled around his fingers like cold, damp tentacles. He ignored it. He ignored everything, including the weak effort Rhydder was making to dislodge his hand.
He dived into Rhydder’s mind.
Vampire minds were cold, still places. The first time Kieran had scanned one, he had thought the dark place he found himself in was dead, devoid of any sort of life he understood.
But there was life of a sort within vampires, controlled by their symbiot—another type of life. The symbiot held no intelligence, but instead had a ruthless drive for survival that was the source of a vampire’s metabolism. Kieran had learned quickly that to read a vampire he must first negotiate with the symbiot and establish a rapport, a détente that would give him access to the inner world the symbiot protected.
It took concentration, for the symbiot was a truly alien life form and Rhydder’s was stressed by the need for fresh blood. There were crude emotions radiating from it, the first Kieran had ever detected. Fear was the primary emotion. Fear of death, of being strangled by the lack of blood.
Kieran encompassed the alien mind and sent out soothing thoughts and felt the pulsing fear check…and then fade.
Then he was inside, beyond the protective shield the symbiot held up against the world. Rhydder’s mind was there for him to enter. A perfectly normal mind, but heated, the synapses rioting freely as the blood fever ran amok.
Rhydder was trying to control and quieten the urges. He was doing his best to stay on top of them. There was such strength there! This was an old beast he wrestled with, one that had been with him for as long as he could remember. He was tired and sometimes this battle seemed endless….
Spartan Resistance Page 27