Byzantine Heartbreak (Beloved Bloody Time)

by Tracy Cooper-Posey

  Cáel stepped around Ryan and moved to the still ajar door and waited.

  Ryan ruffled his fingers through his hair. His chest gleamed in the overhead lights, the muscles moving beneath the skin like a well-oiled machine. “We’ll talk,” he said simply.

  She nodded.

  Ryan rested his hand on Cáel’s shoulder as he passed by.

  Cáel crossed his arms and leaned against the doorframe. “Are you going to be alright?” he asked.

  “Nothing kills vampires, don’t you know that by now?”

  “Decapitation, a stake through the heart, exsanguination, overexposure to the sun, stasis poisoning.” Cáel rattled them off like he had memorized them.

  She grimaced. “Okay, some things do.”

  “None of the above killed Salathiel, though, did they?” Cáel asked softly.

  Her aching chest tightened. She looked at him. “I don’t know why I feel tired, but I do. Do you mind holding off crowing over me until tomorrow, Cáel?”

  “Is that what you think I’m doing?” He came toward her.

  “Isn’t it?”

  “You’re so far away from right you’re not even in the same universe.” He stopped in front of her again. He crouched down so he was at the same level as her. “Remember the night you made me sleep?”

  She tried to smile. “I know I said I’m tired, Cáel. But vampires don’t sleep.”

  “They used to. You should read your own history books, Nia. Vampires used to be nocturnal and they used to sleep during the day. Although I’m sure the sleeping they did wasn’t the same as humans do, as you don’t have a metabolism.”

  “You can’t make me sleep, either, Cáel.”

  “Not the way you did it to me. I’m human and can’t learn psi tricks, but I can learn human ones and one of those is hypnosis.”

  “Hyp...” She smiled. “That died out two centuries ago, Cáel. It’s a parlour trick.”

  He was gazing into her eyes and it was uncanny the way his seemed to be getting larger. They were all dark, all black, with the incredibly long lashes which should have looked feminine, but didn’t at all. It just made his gaze all the more intense.

  “No, it’s not a trick at all,” he told her. “It’s a legitimate technique. I’m going to put you to sleep for six hours and when you wake, you’ll be relaxed, refreshed and your symbiot will be fully recovered.”

  Nayara rolled over to get more comfortable. “It won’t work,” she told him and pulled the covers around her more fully.

  Then she realized she was lying down. She sat up. “Lights.”

  The lights came up. She was in her bed. Naked.

  “Time?” she called out.

  The computer gave her the time.

  “Damn,” she whispered. It was six hours to the minute since Cáel had said he would send her to sleep.

  And she felt glorious.

  * * * * *

  “Salathiel was always a charming man,” Ryan said as he poured Cáel’s coffee. He smiled grimly and sat down. “He always had an eye for the most attractive person in the room and they would naturally gravitate toward him like metal shavings to a magnet.”

  “That explains why he was drawn to you and Nayara, then,” Cáel said, picking up the coffee.

  Ryan’s smile warmed for a moment. “Even when we had him in the institution, he was still his charming, grandiose self. The psi-filer was female and, well, she was a psi. A liaison was inevitable.” Ryan shrugged. “We don’t know exactly what happened in there, but we can figure out most of it. They would have bonded almost instantly. Sooner or later, Salathiel would have fed on her and it would have let him learn her talents. The psi was a jumper, so Salathiel could now jump from location to location. He jumped his way out of the institute, taking her with him.”

  Ryan paused, glancing out the window toward Earth. “We don’t know how he figured out the time jumping. It had to have been pure accident. But once he tripped over how to do it, Salathiel, who had spent centuries brooding over the past he could never get back, knew he had the tool he had been looking for all that time to change things back to the way he thought he had always wanted it.”

  Ryan’s office door chimed and he let it open. Dionne Rinaldi stepped through, hesitantly. “I’m really sorry to bother you,” she said diffidently. She was wearing deep purple today, something that glowed and made her eyes look even bluer. “Nayara isn’t in her office.”

  Ryan stood up. “How late is she?”

  “Twenty minutes.” Dionne said. “I’d wait, but I’ve got another—”

  “That’s fine,” Ryan told her shortly. “Meet your other appointment.” He strode around to the other side of his desk. “Excuse me, Dionne.”

  “Of course,” she said, turning and leaving.

  Cáel stood up. “What is it?” he asked Ryan.

  “Nayara is never late.” He jammed his finger against the desk. “Brenden!”

  “Ryan.” Brenden’s relaxed voice filtered through the room’s speakers with perfect clarity.

  “Nayara’s missing.”

  “She is? But she’s only been gone forty minutes, tops.”

  “Gone? Gone where?”

  “The board she filed said Rome.”

  “Again?” Ryan muttered. “Check the atomic clock in her departure chamber, Brenden. Do it now. I’ll wait.”

  “At once, boss,” Brenden said.

  Ryan drew his hands down his cheeks as he straightened up. “She goes to Rome a lot, it seems,” he said, his voice distant.

  The silence stretched while they waited for Brenden to return with his answer. There was the sound of Brenden’s exhale. Then. “Um...September fifteenth, fourteen forty-seven, boss.”

  Ryan hit the disconnect on the intercom, then clenched his hands to his temples. “Ah, gods. She’s gone back to Constantinople to see Salathiel. That’s what she’s been doing all along.” The despair in his voice was raw and painful to hear.

  Cáel caught at Ryan’s shoulder. “How do we stop her?”

  Ryan drew in a deep breath. “We have to go after her. We have to...” He caught at the edge of the desk, bending over as if he was in pain. “An inch wrong, Cáel and the time wave could wipe us all out.” He looked up at him. “What was she thinking?”

  “She wasn’t,” Cáel told him. “She was simply looking for the comfort of home and acceptance, which she didn’t get last night.”

  Ryan flinched, like he’d been slapped. Then he stood up again. “I’ll get changed and—”

  “You can’t go,” Cáel said sharply. “You’re already in the city at that time marker, too many times. Nia is heading straight for Salathiel and if he sees her and you, how much worse is the time wave going to be?”

  Ryan threw his hands out. “No one else knows the marker!”

  “Rob does,” Cáel replied. “He visited the city just after he was made, before he settled in France. It’s the right time period, too.”

  “Rob?” Ryan seemed to choke on the name. “He’s never done a serious time jump...he doesn’t know the language...he couldn’t—”

  “I’ll go with him,” Cáel added.

  Ryan spluttered wordlessly.

  “I know the language,” Cáel said. “And I look like a local. Rob knows the city layout. Between us, we’ll manage.”

  Ryan rubbed his temples. “And Nia?” he asked, sounding defeated.

  “I’ll talk to her. I have a feeling she’ll listen to me,” Cáel said.

  “And if she doesn’t?” Ryan asked.

  “She’s human back there,” Cáel reminded him. “I’m stronger than her when she’s not in her own timeline. She’ll have forgotten that.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Constantinople, September 1447 A.D.

  There were too many people on the dock, forcing Nayara to keep the buggy further away from the ship than she would have liked, lest she be recognized. She also kept the deep hood of her cloak up, shrouding her head in shadows despite the beautiful
day, the sunshine she could freely enjoy and the unobstructed view she could have of Salathiel if she lowered the hood.

  He was working on the ship, helping with the loading of the cargo and the furling of the sails for the journey ahead. He worked stripped to the waist, for it was a fine day and Salathiel had never let anything like too much sun bother him, even after he had been turned.

  The sight of his big body, climbing the ropes and scaling the ladders, his mane of hair rippling in the tiny breeze and his loud voice calling out orders and shouting greetings and ribald comments to his men, brought tears to Nayara’s eyes. She could cry now and the tears flowed freely, her body fully human.

  The buggy sagged and rocked heavily, forcing her to turn her gaze away from the ship to see what had caused the sensation.

  Rob and Cáel were climbing into the topless buggy.

  Rob. Cáel.

  Her shock left her utterly speechless. She stared at them, horror and surprise washing through her as she took in their appearance. Despite what must have been a hasty wardrobe consult, they looked contemporary and correct. Cáel looked so much like a native Byzantine lord, in his refined robes, the red cloak furled over his shoulders, that it was a secondary surprise.

  Rob didn’t look completely out of place with his dark hair, but his eyes gave him away. He was dressed as a merchant class businessman, which would fit his facial features.

  Cáel took up the space on the bench next to her, while Rob sat opposite.

  Neither of them looked happy.

  Cáel looked toward the ship. “That’s him, isn’t it?” he said softly. “The big one there, climbing up to the mainsail. That’s Salathiel.”

  Nayara let herself look. Hot tears burned two more fresh tracks down her cheeks. “Yes,” she told him.

  Cáel gazed at him. “So he’s the one.”

  Rob leaned toward her. “Nayara, what were you thinking?”

  Nayara sat up straight. “I’m a professional traveller. I don’t have to answer to you about where I go, or when.”

  Rob shook his head. “With all due respect, Madam CEO, but your visits to Salathiel are threatening the world as we know it, so yes, ye do have to answer to me. If you don’t mind, I want to find out if my son’s future really is at risk.”

  “Cáel, make him leave,” Nayara told the other man.

  Cáel shook his head. “He has as much right to know about it as any of us. Surely you understand that?”

  “I’m not hurting anyone,” Nayara whispered.

  Something rippled across Rob’s face. It was like watching an ancient wisdom peep from below the surface. “Ye think not?” He put his hands on his hips and Nayara, even through the sickness roiling through her, recognized that he’d actually reached down to put his hand on the hilt of a sword that, when he was still living in Scotland, would have been almost permanently strapped to his side. Some old chord had been stirred in the man.

  “Ye think I don’t know about unrequited love?” he asked, in a dangerously soft voice. “’bout livin’ century to century yearning for the sound of ‘er voice? Ye think I don’t ken ‘ow you can grieve for even just a touch, a single caress?”

  Nayara pummelled into silence the need to cry out her recognition of the emotion behind Rob’s simple words. She clamped her jaw shut with iron will.

  Rob took a deep breath. “You’re fucking with my future,” he finished, all accent abruptly gone. “And my son’s. I won’t have it.”

  Nayara recoiled, shocked.

  “Rob,” Cáel said softly. Warningly.

  “Aye,” Rob said, with a sound of disgust. He climbed from the buggy and moved away, to stand next to a stack of barrels. Sentry duty.

  Cáel turned to her.

  “Ryan sent his lapdog, I see.” Nayara poured all her derision and scorn into her tone. “He couldn’t be bothered coming here himself.”

  Rob’s head shifted a fraction. He had heard. Well, screw it. She was done with secrets. Her whole life was about to be pawed over by salivating humans and the rabidly curious. Everyone else could suffer full disclosure right along with her.

  Cáel shook his head. “I told him to stay where he was. It’s too dangerous for both of you to be here. Just you alone is so incredibly risky...”

  “He won’t see,” Nayara told him. “I know he won’t, because he didn’t. He never mentioned it, or I would remember it.”

  “But if he does, you alter time and set up a wave,” Cáel replied. “And we already know Salathiel is a primary time key. Anything changing his time line sets up tsunamis.”

  “You are trying to teach me time conservation, human?” Nayara asked dryly.

  His jaw flexed. “Why not? You seem to have forgotten everything you have learned.”

  “Stelios,” Rob said softly. “Wrap it up, or move it out of here.”

  Nayara clutched at the buggy, turning to search for a glimpse of Salathiel. “No!”

  Cáel wrenched her around to look at him. “Yes, Nayara. And for this very reason. You have to let him go. Look at you!” He lifted her hand up. It was trembling. “Have you eaten or drunk anything since you arrived here?”

  She shook her head. Fresh tears fell.

  Cáel dropped her hand back into her lap. “You’ve spent two hundred years obsessing about a Salathiel that existed for too short a time. You’ve lived with that memory for far too long, Nia. Tell me about the other Salathiel, instead.”

  She cringed, as her memory delivered a quick series of snapshot images and sounds, sensations and emotions. All of them wretched, miserable ones of Salathiel’s steady decline and fall. She shook her head. “He wasn’t human, Cáel. He wasn’t even vampire, anymore.”

  “Tell me what happened once he figured out how to time jump,” Cáel pressed. “You know this part of it. You were there at least once. That’s where the time wave started and where you jumped back to, to stop it forming.”

  She closed her eyes. “You’re still researching your damn book? Here?”

  “This is just you and me, Nia. No book. No recording. Tell me,” Cáel said softly.

  “You already know.”

  “Dates. Data.” He nodded his head toward the dock and the elongated ship with the high prow, with all the men swarming over it. “But that man over there...like you, I can’t believe he became such a changed man, except that Ryan has told me how it happened. I want to know the ending now. Tell me.”

  Nayara turned her head to look at Salathiel, but Cáel caught her chin in his hand. “No. Just tell me.”

  The need to look was strong. She bit her lip. “He changed,” she whispered. “He became so unlike that man over there.”

  Cáel nodded. His dark eyes were drilling into hers and Nayara remembered with a touch of alarm his ability to hypnotize her. She licked her lips. The buggy was suddenly too small and confining a space. It felt like Cáel was sitting over her.

  He touched her arm. It was a gentle touch. “Go on,” he said. “He changed.”

  Salathiel. Nayara shivered, remembering the monster hiding behind Salathiel’s eyes. “He looked the same, but you could never be sure of how he would react to anything. He seemed to have no conscience. He didn’t care about what his actions did to anyone else. He would start a business, then walk away from it and leave the employees stranded. Invest millions, then pull them and leave companies floundering for no reason. He bought and sold stock on a whim and didn’t care if it earned out or not.”

  “That’s the clinical definition of a psychopath, you realize?” Cáel said softly.

  “Except that vampires don’t change!” Nayara said. “We can’t! How could he become ill like that if his brain couldn’t change?”

  “Apparently, Salathiel managed it,” Cáel replied. “Perhaps his thought processes bypass normal brain functioning. He out-thought himself.”

  Nayara laughed. It sounded shaky. “If anyone could do something like that, it would be Salathiel,” she said. She bit her lip. “When he discovered how
to time-jump, he must have thought he’d been granted his every wish and desire. He got to go back and do life over again—his way.” She looked at Cáel. “We spent years trying to explain to Salathiel why we wouldn’t turn him and he never understood. He thought we were being malicious, keeping eternity away from him. So he found a way to have himself made and then he understood, only too well. So once he figured out the basics of time jumping, he would start thinking about the possibilities. For Salathiel that would have to have included the miseries of his life. And they all started when he was turned.”

  “So he jumped back to when he was turned,” Cáel said.

  She nodded. “The fall of Constantinople. That night is seared in my memory. I know Ryan will never forget it. I guess it was burned in Salathiel’s mind, too. So the marker was built-in and unforgettable. He jumped back and in the chaos, no one noticed there were two Salathiels roaming the city, or that one of them was in clothing not of that time. Just before the wall itself actually fell, he sought out his maker at her home next to the palace and killed her.” Nayara covered her face with her hands. “He had no idea about stasis poisoning, or the time wave he had just created. All he knew was that he had found himself human once more and that he knew what was about to happen in the city, so he could avoid the pitfalls of the future. So he settled down to enjoy the life he thought he deserved. The life he missed so much and had wanted back all along.” She looked at Cáel.

  “Say it,” he murmured.

  She pressed her lips together, the words like ugly sharp lumps hurting her throat. “The life we stole from him,” she whispered. “Oh god, Cáel...” Hot, vicious tears blurred her sight.

  He pulled her up against him, holding her tight. “You got it out,” he told her. “That’s the worst of it, sweet Nia. Now you can let go.”

  And she did. She felt something loosen and tear inside her and she wept, her cheek against Cáel’s neck, while he held her and his hands gently soothed her.

  “Cáel,” Rob warned, a barely audible whisper.

  Cáel looked up from the woman in his arms, toward Rob, who nodded toward the dock.