Department 57: Bloody Crystal

by Lynne Connolly

  She had to unlock the doors, which was unusual, although Dave had given her a key. Kai, about to fade away, as much as a six-feet-four man ever could fade away, halted. “What is it?”

  She shrugged. “Dave usually sees me and comes to the door. He’s probably in the cellar or something. Maybe one of the pumps needs a new barrel.” She hated the cellar. So cold.

  “I’ll come in with you.”

  She didn’t argue. It was daytime, and while that meant she was mortal, it didn’t mean the same thing for Kai, who had informed her that he was an anthro, not a shape-shifter. Apparently that meant only part of his form underwent a change. So fucking what? she thought, but she didn’t say it. She still wanted to see him in his merman form. She’d bet his tail was enormous.

  Having got the main lock undone, she entered the building. It felt dark and cold. The other staff would be arriving soon; it was only a fluke that she’d arrived first. That, and she’d wanted to sound Dave out about taking time off without anyone else there to wreck her pitch. Dave didn’t like giving anyone time off, but if she got in first, she had a better chance.

  “Strange.” Her voice sounded hollow in the darkness. She went behind the long bar and snapped on the lights, all of them, going down the bank of switches methodically. She didn’t bother with the atmospheric, evening lights. She wanted full illumination.

  A flash of red on the buff tiles attracted her attention. A pool of red, glimmering in the lights.

  Kai cursed and pushed past her. “Stay back.”

  But she took a few steps, enough to show her that Dave wasn’t going to give her any time off work anymore. Dave lay in a pool of blood, his head, battered and bloodstained, turned toward them. He’d been beaten up, then killed. She didn’t know how, but she couldn’t see any gaping holes that might, in her limited experience, show bullet wounds.

  Kai took charge. “We do this the right way,” he said. “But we also call in our own.” He used his mobile phone to alert Esti. Then he used the bar’s phone to call the police. Esti would contact Grady, and for the rest, Kai would stay with her. “I’m your cousin,” he told her. “You’re coming to London to attend my wedding, which is why you wanted time off. That sound okay to you?”

  She nodded. “Okay.” An easy story, easy to remember. She even remembered the female part of Kai’s relationship. Zoe. So if they wanted to know more, she could tell them that. “Better make it long-lost cousins because people around here are used to me saying I don’t have any living relatives.”

  “Good thinking.” Kai put a hand on her shoulder. “We’ll make an agent of you yet.”

  Fuck, she hoped not.

  By the time the numbness in her soul had evaporated, the police had arrived. Kai had let in the staff, four of them, and sat them down, told them to wait. After all, if it had been a robbery gone wrong, they could be involved.

  Although the police here were more used to dealing with domestics, car crime, and Saturday night drunks, they had other people they could call on. When the detective inspector saw Dave, he all but rubbed his hands together, barely hiding his glee. “What have we here?”

  “What do you think?” Cerys swallowed and grabbed a handful of tissues. She’d cry for Dave. He was the brother she’d never had, the great bear of a man who had a small wife and two kids tucked away in the suburbs. He led an exemplary life, had never hit on her or any of the other women who worked for him. And she’d miss him. A gap in her life, a place no one else could ever fill. “It’s my boss.” She wanted to hit the bastard, but she’d probably better not.

  “Were you anything else to him?”

  “No.”

  Kai took a hand in the conversation. “Do you need Cerys here? She’s rather upset, and I want to take her home.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Her cousin. I came with her today.”

  The detective’s eyes narrowed. “Why?”

  “What a charmer.” “To take her to London. I’m getting married in a week, and I wanted her to attend, so I came up to give her a lift.”

  The detective’s lip curled in a sneer. “You can’t leave until I say so. Did you find him?”

  “Yes, I did.” She choked then and swiped her eyes with a tissue. “I saw him yesterday, and it was work as usual. I arrived for my shift today and found him here.”

  “Humph.”

  Someone else, another policeman, this one in a uniform with a fair bit of gleaming silver, leaned across the bar. “Inspector, I think we can let the young lady go home. It’s obvious this news has upset her.” He turned his attention to Cerys. She didn’t trust him either but for different reasons. She’d dared to touch his mind and found him smooth, his brain working hard, but a surface gloss on it. He was already spinning this incident. After all, he didn’t want Llandudno labeled as a violent place. She also detected other recent acts in his mind.

  Kai met her partway. “Thank you, sir. We’ll be available for the next day or two, but I’d really like her away from here soon. She has to be fitted for her bridesmaid’s dress, and sad though this is, there’s nothing she can do to help.” Bridesmaid’s dress? Kai was improvising now.

  Before the grumpy inspector could say anything, the other man, obviously someone who outranked him, cut in. “I think that should be possible if we can clear you. We’ll need you to come to the station so we can take your statement and your fingerprints. Have you been here before?”

  Kai nodded. “But only once, to visit Cerys a few days ago. They’ll have cleaned off any prints by now.”

  “Nevertheless I think we should take them too.”

  Somehow Cerys knew they wouldn’t get them. Fingerprints were difficult to fake. “We’ll give them, then get one of the geeks to remove our prints from the electronic database. It’s okay. We do it all the time.”

  Wow. The hidden world of Talents. This new world threw up a host of problems for anyone wanting to conceal their existence.

  It would work out. Everything would work out. Someone had robbed the bar. Except that the tills seemed to be closed. Didn’t mean they weren’t empty. But what kind of thief tidied up after himself?

  She watched as the detective snapped on a pair of latex gloves and tapped the button to open the cash register. She could see it was full, holding the float Dave put in it every day before the staff arrived.

  Not robbery then.

  “Can I take her home?”

  The door to the bar burst open, enough to knock aside the policeman standing there, and what seemed to be a whirlwind burst through. The whirlwind, who turned out to be blonde and fiery, headed straight for Kai. Cerys nearly failed to recognize Esti in the passionate woman, tears streaming down her face, who hurled herself at Kai. He caught her and turned his face toward hers, planting a solid kiss on her lips. “Darling, what’s wrong?”

  “This!” Esti motioned with a shaking hand. “All this, it’s so wrong. But dearest, we have to go. I can’t have this affecting our wedding. I just can’t. It’s so awful!” Her tears renewed, and as they did, Cerys heard her voice in her mind. “We need to leave. Now.” Although she didn’t sound as hysterical as her outer self would appear, Cerys thought she detected a tremor. For Esti to be emotional must take something important, so she didn’t argue.

  “We should go. You know how upset she gets.” Carefully avoiding Esti’s name, she turned to the boss cop, spreading her hands in appeal.

  He jerked a nod. Hysteria could create chaos in a crime scene. “You can go. We’ll be in touch. Be at the station at nine tomorrow.”

  “Of course.”

  Once outside, Esti urged them into a Range Rover parked illegally by the side of the road. A little mental persuasion and the policeman hovering over it disappeared, hurrying into the bar. Officers stood outside, watching them, but nobody made a move as they climbed in and Kai took the wheel. Cerys had the feeling that had she not been pretending to be a hysterical woman, Esti might have insisted on driving.

  As it was, sh
e wasn’t sure the U-turn Kai took to face the car toward the road was entirely legal. Nobody stopped them, but she wasn’t surprised by that now. Instead of taking a right, Kai turned left.

  “Where are you going?”

  “London,” Kai said tersely.

  Cerys leaned forward. “But—”

  “That place reeked of someone we know well.”

  “And there were more Talents there. Some of those cops weren’t all they seemed.”

  “The inspector?”

  “The superintendent. We wouldn’t have made it to the station tomorrow.”

  “They were Talents?”

  “Either that, or in their pay, or even under compulsion. Not all Talents are on our side, darling.” Kai spoke calmly, although he was driving like the devil. She hadn’t realized a Range Rover could be driven so accurately or so fast. But this was a modern, sleek black version. He turned a corner before they left the town and pulled the car to a halt. “Out.”

  They piled out and followed Esti to another car, a dark blue saloon. This time Esti did take the wheel, and as soon as they’d slammed the doors, she drove off. “One change will have to do,” she said. “It was all I could arrange in the circumstances.”

  “We can call ahead and sort something else if we have problems,” Kai assured her. He was sitting in the back seat now with Cerys.

  “What about my stuff?” All her clothes, the photographs she had of her childhood, her only reminders of her parents.

  “We’ll have it retrieved for you. Once we have you safe. Listen.” He touched her hand, making her look into his face. “Esti and I believe that Geoffrey Wilkinson captured Rhodri. He knew we’d be coming to investigate Rhodri’s disappearance, and he knows us by sight, probably had spies stationed in Llandudno. But you can help us find Rhodri.”

  “And this Wilkinson guy.”

  “As you say. If he realizes you’re the key, he’ll be after us. That’s one of the tests here. If they come after us with everything they have, then they know. Dave’s murder? That was a ploy to draw us out. If we’d lingered, they’d have attacked.”

  “How can you know all this?” Weren’t they kidding her? They’d leaped some chasms of reasoning, surely?

  “Experience, knowing our quarry. That kind of thing. We’re making some suppositions, but I’m sure they’ll be confirmed. More importantly, if we’re wrong, you get a trip to London and some extra training in surviving as a vampire. We’ll make the trip worth your while.” He sketched a grin, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “If we’re right, we get to find Rhodri Tryfanwy, and we stop you becoming collateral damage in Wilkinson’s dirty moneymaking schemes. So what do you say?”

  There was only one thing she could say. “Okay.” She turned her attention back to the road.

  “Two cars behind us,” Esti said. “Definitely following us.” They were on the outskirts of the town now, Esti having taken a few winding turns.

  Kai groaned. “Brace yourself. As someone else said once, it’s going to be a bumpy ride.”

  A force shoved them back against their seats, their arms pinned in place. Next to her, Kai said in strained tones, “I knew we should have left you behind.”

  “Shut up.”

  Again Cerys was made forcibly aware of Esti’s power. She felt the direction, like waves in a storm, heading behind them. They gained direction, flowed, pushed, pulsed.

  A headache broke over her, coming from nowhere, and she moaned, but she couldn’t move.

  Her last thought was, Fuck, the people behind must be dying.

  She heard the response, “If they don’t back off, they will,” before she lost consciousness.

  *

  “I never faint.”

  “Nor do I,” said a voice next to her. “But I did.”

  Kai. Not Rhodri. Otherwise she could have lain there and pretended it had all been a dream and Rhodri had never left Llandudno. They were in his bed in the house, waking up to another bout of lovemaking.

  But no. Reluctantly Cerys opened her eyes.

  She rolled her head on the pillow and found Kai lying next to her. On a not too large double bed. They lay in a Spartan bedroom, the bed, a clothes rail, and a sink all she could see. At least she wasn’t lying in Kai’s arms. That would have been embarrassing. She didn’t know if merpeople practiced fidelity to their husbands and wives. But whatever—she didn’t feel an ounce of the desire for this man that she’d felt for Rhodri. Even though his bare chest was every bit as ripped, although hairless. Wow, pecs to die for, and close-up too. If she hadn’t—She broke off her thoughts.

  He laughed and climbed off the bed. “You really need to control your thoughts better. I just heard all that. And yes, we are true to our husbands and our wives. We both passed out in the car, and they dumped us here, is all.” He strode across the room and grabbed a T-shirt and jeans from one of the two hard chairs set against the green-painted wall. “You’re in London, in the MI6 building. Safe. There’s a shower through there, but since I’m up first, I get to use it first. Rest, baby. We’ll go get coffee when we’re up and dressed.”

  Cerys wasn’t sure she liked being referred to as “baby,” but she certainly felt like one. Exhausted still, although not to the extent she’d been yesterday. Was it yesterday? Could she have slept that long? She stilled, sensing the atmosphere. No, she was vampire. It was still dark.

  She sat up and let the room settle around her. It smelled of soap and nothing. Strange. Was she so used to the odor of damp and sea air that she noted their absence? Sure she did.

  The mention of coffee reminded her that she could really use something. It must be getting close to dawn. She went through the events of the last twenty-four hours or so. By the time Kai reappeared, now dressed in the fresh clothes, she’d put her mind back into reasonable order. And decided that what mattered most was finding Rhodri. Once she had him back, then the rest would fall into place. Or it wouldn’t. But Rhodri mattered more than anything. She wondered about someone else too. “Esti? What happened to her?”

  “She disposed of the people following us. We didn’t faint, as such. Instead we were rendered unconscious, as the people behind us were.” He grinned and reached up to gather his hair and smooth it with his hands. “She didn’t pack for us, so we have what’s here.”

  He crossed the room, sat on the bed. “Do you want to sleep some more, or do you want me to take you for something to eat? There’s a canteen downstairs.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Four-ish.” He picked up his phone from the chair where he’d collected the clothes. “Half past four. Don’t worry. The canteen will still be open, and by the time we’ve ordered, dawn will have broken.” He gave her a wink. “This is MI6, after all. We’ll make sure you have a blood donor after sunset tonight too.”

  Twenty minutes later, Cerys had showered, dressed in the clothes she’d found on the other chair, and accompanied Kai down to the MI6 canteen. And as he’d promised, it was open. Although there wasn’t fresh food immediately available, one of the assistants sent them to a table and brought them a pot of tea, coffee for Kai, and within another fifteen minutes, plates of eggs, bacon, and toast. Cerys tucked in as if she hadn’t eaten for a year.

  Kai chuckled. “Esti’s attacks can get you like that.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “This isn’t the first one I’ve suffered. She’s one of the most powerful Sorcerers I’ve ever met, and they’re a scary lot.” He forked up some scrambled eggs.

  “I’m confused by all this. I don’t know what’s going on.”

  He grimaced. “Grady’s coming in. We’ll meet when we’ve finished eating and decide what our next step is. A lot of that depends on you.”

  “How?”

  “You’re going to tell us where Rhodri is.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Cerys hadn’t a clue how she was supposed to do that. She’d tried so hard to locate him—last night after they’d told her and just now while she was sh
owering. She didn’t know where to start. How to do it. She thought of him, remembered them in bed, remembered the things he’d told her, the way he’d taught her how to strengthen her position, how to hide better, live better. She’d begun to hope then that something better would happen, but instead they’d taken him away. Killed him for all she knew.

  No. Not that.

  Kai made sure she’d had enough before they left the canteen, mugs in hand. People were still coming in and getting food and drink. This place had to be open twenty-four hours a day to cater to all the people working nights. Duh, it’s MI6. Which organization said it never slept? She couldn’t remember, but this one would qualify.

  They entered a lift, shiny steel, and it took them down and down. Ground floor? Basement? Whatever, but he needed a card to exit. He shrugged. “We’re on a secure floor now. Don’t leave my side. We’ll get you kitted out with clearance, but for now you’re with me.” The lift opened onto an ordinary-looking corridor, and that led to a conference room.

  Several people waited for them, including Esti. But not Rhodri. Maybe never Rhodri again.

  No.

  A large man stood to greet her. Huge, his body barely fitting the chair he’d chosen, but not fat. Never that. Like a well-built bear, one with muscles rippling beneath the surface of his closely delineated hide. Which, at the moment, was covered with black trousers and a black polo-necked sweater. He enveloped one of her hands in his. “Pleased to meet you, Cerys. Welcome to the Department. I’m Will Grady. Call me Will.”

  She swallowed and looked up at his eyes. Fathomlessly dark and friendly, but she knew better than that now. He didn’t try to enter her mind or hurt her, she still felt off balance, unnerved by all the things that had happened recently.

  “Come and sit down.” He took her to a chair next to where Kai had settled, and helped her into it, his old-fashioned courtesy a touch intimidating, although she was sure he didn’t mean it that way. He moved away to retake his seat and swiftly introduced the other Talents present. Esti and Kai she knew, but to her awed astonishment, she met the shape-shifting dragon called Domenici Serafino; another Sorcerer, this one a Canadian man called Fabrice Germain, as pale and cold as Esti, but since he was over here on business and might be of help, he was invited to attend the meeting; and Bryn Murchison, another merman. Bryn’s build was more obviously muscular than Kai’s athletic form, but Cerys had already decided to take every surprise as it arrived.