Blood Ascendant (Blood Stone Book 5)

by Tracy Cooper-Posey

  Rory would have to subsume her need to maintain control until their own units were formed. She and Dante could then hunt as they used to. It just required patience.

  It had been a tense and long night, all the same.

  By the time she was dressed and went downstairs to find her laptop, to check messages and news, she was relaxed and balanced once more. Dante might still be up, too. If he intended to follow the household schedule for those who hunted and must also sleep, then he should be heading for bed within the hour, to get four hours sleep before rising for a late lunch, then heading back to bed for another four or five hours. A late supper, then then hunters would all head out around eight or nine pm.

  The schedule was slightly different from the one the human hunters had been using in San Francisco. There, they would head for bed just after an early lunch and sleep until around seven, then get up to hunt.

  The routine was split here to accommodate those humans in the household who did not hunt, with their daylight schedules, including the children arriving home from school.

  Rory still found it interesting the way human society was adapting and shifting rapidly in response to the Summanus threat. Changes that would have been unthinkable two years ago were commonplace, now, including humans being divided into those who hunted and those who lived in daylight, all-year-round schools and colleges and the open wearing of bladed weapons. Street crime had dropped, despite the weapons being carried so freely. The nighttime that had hid so many petty crimes was no longer safe.

  Sports games were all held during daylight hours, as were concerts and most other public events. The streets of any city fell almost completely quiet once the sun had set. City councils were spending billions on building subterranean tunnels to connect public buildings to underground carparks, to give pedestrians safer passage.

  Internet usage was on the rise, to compensate for the lack of movement after sunset. Social networks had exploded. It was no longer optional to be online. It was a survival mechanism.

  These were factors that Rory took note of every day. All the little yet interesting factoids, the changes, the human responses to the war, all were part of her on-going analysis.

  As she settled down on the ottoman with her laptop on her knees, Rory remembered the one time she had tried to lay out for Dante the shape and pattern of the war as she had deconstructed it. She had not gone into detail. Just the twenty-thousand foot overview had unnerved him enough to make her stop. Dante couldn’t consider the war without equating it to his personal survival. It was an incredibly human response. So Rory had deliberately failed to give him the hundreds of little facts and patterns that added up to the big, ugly viewpoint. There was no need to worry him more than she had.

  Sometime during the day, when the humans were sleeping, she must get Nial to one side and break it down for him. She had a feeling that Nial would be able to handle the truth with more equanimity than anyone else. He would see the facts as information. Useful data, that he could manipulate to bring about an end result that he wanted.

  Game theory was just theory, after all.

  Rory pulled up her email and wasn’t surprised to see a handful from Ben Lyon. There was one from Detective Plank, too. She opened that first.

  The investigation had not been formally closed, yet. She was also still a person of interest in the matter, although it was unlikely she would need to be interviewed again.

  Grimly pleased, Rory sent him an acknowledgement.

  She saw movement in the very edge of her range of vision and didn’t look up from the screen. There were no genuine threats in this house and she was busy. She finished the email and sent it, then looked up.

  Sasha Mikhailov was watching her. His arms were crossed.

  Rory clamped down on the annoyance that tried to rise. There were no threats in the house, but there were irritants. “You want to speak to me?”

  The corner of his mouth lifted. “Please don’t waste your charm on me.”

  She could feel her brows pulling together. “I wasn’t.”

  He shook his head, turning away. She wasn’t certain, yet she thought that perhaps his eyes had rolled as he looked away. A human dismissing her as trivial was unusual. There had been many men—hundreds of them—who had considered her merely material for conquest. She had changed all their minds, sometimes with force. It was rare to find a man who did not seem to care that she was a woman.

  She stared as Sasha bent and pulled the other heavy ottoman closer to where she was sitting, in between the two groups of chairs and sofas. She had chosen this ottoman precisely because it was between the two islands of seating. It would discourage company. Now Sasha was making himself comfortable.

  With a sigh, she put the laptop down on the floor at her feet. He was, after all, merely human. She could spare a moment to deal with him then send him on his way.

  As Sasha sat on the thick cushion, she noticed he was wearing trousers that might be raw silk. They had a dull sheen that indicated they were made of some sort of expensive fabric that may or may not be manmade, although it was certainly luxurious to the touch. The shirt was a soft material that had some drape to it instead of the stiff cotton and polyester common in male garments.

  Rory reassessed him. Yesterday, he had been wearing travel-rumpled clothes and was unshaved. This morning, he was neat and clean and showing preference for luxury that was unexpected in a man who spied for his country.

  Although he was the first intelligence officer she had met…that she knew of.

  “I’ll get to the point, as I was interrupting you,” he said. His eyes were steady. Rory liked the color. It was a very pure blue, made bluer by the thick black brows over them. His eyelashes were black and thick, too. It was a soft touch in a face made of plains and angles. So far she had only seen him scowl, or hold his face in a neutral, disguising mask. That was what he was doing now, too. “Dante won’t consider telling you, because he feels you won’t care. I think differently.”

  Rory drew in a breath, as the man’s statement tripped off a dozen different lines of thought, or possibilities, all of them enough to make her heart give a little blip of movement, as if it had been alerted.

  He implied that Dante had spoken to him about matters that were personal. About her. They had been talking about something that she wouldn’t like.

  He continued speaking, giving her no more time to sort it out. All she could do was brace herself.

  “Dante and I ended up together last night. Sooner or later, someone will probably tell you that. There were guards outside the house and a bedroom that hasn’t been used and other indicators and no one in this house is stupid, you least of all.”

  Rory felt as if her lips had gone numb. She made her shoulders move in a casual, dismissive movement. “I can understand why you think this is something about which you must inform me, but really, it is none of my business. Dante is a free adult. He can fuck whoever he wants. He frequently does.”

  She realized she had dropped down to the crudity to jolt him, the way he had jolted her. Only, why was it a shock? Why did she even care? It was quite true that Dante bedded anyone he took a fancy to. His tastes were varied and wide. She often helped him avoid the nastier fallouts by running interference. She had even helped him trip people up so they would fall into his arms. He had done the same thing for her.

  So why did she care, even a little bit, this time?

  Sasha smiled. “Dante told me the same thing. All the lovers and partners. He said it’s how he relaxes. He’s very good at it, too.”

  Rory realized she had clenched her fist in reaction when Sasha’s gaze dropped down to her hands, then back up to her face. She had given herself away, to a man who read body language as part of his job.

  She spoke before considering all the implications. It pushed out of her, almost hurried. “I knew the two of you would end up together.”

  “You did?” For the first time, Sasha seemed surprised. He was hiding it, although she coul
d hear his heart.

  “After all that testosterone the two of you were generating, yesterday?” She shook her head. “It would have ended with you beating each other up or having sex. You’re not bruised, that I can see.”

  “Perhaps Dante is the one with the bruises.” Sasha was almost laughing.

  “Against you?” It came out drier than she had intended. All her usual control and calm had been momentarily upset. She railed at herself to find her centre once more and regain control.

  Sasha really did laugh, this time. Loudly.

  Rory just stared at him, genuinely puzzled. The last thing she had intended to be was amusing.

  “You forget who won, yesterday, out by the pool,” he said.

  “As far as I could tell, no one did.”

  “Put the other way, we both did. It certainly feels that way from where I’m looking.” His smile faded. “You do that a lot.”

  She frowned.

  “Analyze people.”

  “It’s part of my job.”

  “Dante said you were a theoretical physicist, working for NASA.”

  “I am, only NASA hired me because I am a game theory expert, too.”

  “Why would NASA need game theory experts?”

  “Because Russia, Germany, China, Italy, Iran, all the countries with space programs want to go to Mars, too.”

  Sasha’s eyes narrowed, so that only a narrow slit of blue showed. “It’s a game. A race. The twenty-first century space race.”

  She shook her head. “Not exactly. Do you know what game theory is?”

  “You figure out what people…teams…will do next in a game situation?”

  “You’re guessing.”

  “Yes.” He smiled and she could see the amusement in his eyes. He was laughing at himself, not at all embarrassed about his ignorance.

  “In any sphere of interest, where two or more groups are in any way competing, even at the mildest level, game theory predicts what rational opponents would do, in any given situation.”

  “And this is what you and Dante talked about all the time?”

  She blinked. “It helps Dante with his hunting squads. It helps him strategize.”

  “Against the Summanus? Who said they are rational?” His voice had risen slightly. He was offended at the idea.

  “The Summanus behave in ways that indicate they think and behave and respond to stimulus with rational decisions.”

  Sasha’s mouth curled down. “You’re confusing instinct with thought.”

  He was trying to criticize her. Rory just smiled. “I make allowances for that possible error.”

  “You mean, you build into your predictions the chance that you’ve completely misunderstood the Summanus?”

  “The war is not a perfect game, like chess,” she said. “We don’t know all the facts. Although with every passing day our knowledge becomes more complete, more predictive.”

  Sasha leaned forward. “So does theirs.”

  “You don’t like them.”

  “No one does.” He scowled.

  “I mean…you are far more passionate in your dislike than most.”

  “They killed the man my very best friend loved.” Heated fury glowed in his eyes.

  For a moment, Rory could easily imagine Sasha throttling a man with his bare hands, bearing his teeth as he did it. He was supposed to be a cold, calculating spy, with minimal human emotions to trip him up, yet Sasha was more complex than that. He was very good at his job, Sebastian had told her. Now he was showing the fire and passion that Russians were famous for.

  Just for an instant, for a tiny moment, an image flickered through her mind, of Dante and Sasha together. Did Sasha show this sort of heat and emotion in those moments, too? It was easy to imagine the two of them together, when he was like this.

  Rory scrambled to pull her thoughts together, to reorder them. She cleared her throat. “Thank you for telling me about you and Dante,” she said stiffly and reached for her laptop and opened it. “I am sure you will be a nice distraction for him.”

  “You are being deliberately insulting,” Sasha said. “Why?”

  “I don’t bother with insults when the truth is so much more powerful.”

  Sasha tilted his head, looking at her. “Then say what you really mean.”

  Very well, then. Rory closed the laptop. “I don’t understand why you got together. I mean, why you? You insulted him. You showed him up, out there by the pool. Then you drank him under the table. Dante is the most hopelessly competitive man I know. He can’t stand losing. He should be trying to bust your ass for you, right now. Only, he took you to bed.”

  “That’s because he didn’t lose.”

  She pressed her lips together. “Yet he did. He submitted. It’s a loss, in his eyes.”

  “He gained. More than you understand.”

  Rory spread her fingers on top of the laptop case. She shook her head.

  “You’re working with incomplete information again,” Sasha said quietly. “I am surprised you don’t know this about yourself, not if you have lived as long as the file we have on you says you have.”

  “What don’t I know?” She meant for the question to come out cold and disdainful, yet she sounded more like a lost child.

  Sasha leaned forward. Rory realized with a start of surprise that he was bigger than her. He had always been, except now she noticed it. He was taller and his shoulders were broader. Not as wide as Dante’s of course, although no one had shoulders like Dante. Yet Sasha seemed to be filling her vision, dominating it.

  She could smell his scent. Clean. The hint of soap. Spicy maleness.

  Something shifted inside her.

  “You and Dante both do it,” he said, his voice even lower. “You’re all about discipline and physical and mental excellence. It drives everything you do. It’s a fancy form of control.”

  “You are saying we are control freaks?” She was amused. “You think we do not know this, either of us?”

  “You hide behind it,” Sasha said. He gave a small shrug. “I do not. Feelings do not bother me. Not knowing everything does not make me afraid. That is what Dante gained.”

  He was very close to her. Close enough for her to feel human warmth. She couldn’t help it. Her gaze drifted down to his full lips. The lips that Dante had kissed.

  The images were playing in the back of her mind, driving her speculation. The two of them together. What was it like? She would have supposed, a few moment ago, that Dante would have dominated.

  Now, she was not so sure.

  She realized she wanted to kiss Sasha, to find out for herself. It wasn’t a search for intellectual enlightenment that drove the want.

  Sasha straightened and got to his feet. For a moment, he looked down at her. Then he smiled. It was a knowing expression.

  Rory sat with her hands on the cover of the laptop for long moments after he was gone.

  The gameboard had shifted since she had looked up to see Sasha watching her. She wasn’t sure this was the game she’d thought she had been playing.

  She didn’t like it, either. Not at all.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Garrett walked right into the middle of the argument and would have turned and slunk out quietly, except that it was Nial doing the shouting. Nial, who never lost his cool. He was standing at the far end of the office and the stance looked casual, although his hands were fisted by his sides.

  Garrett paused, stunned to see Nial losing it. What on earth could shake him that way?

  Marcus, Ilaria and Winter were there. Kate was standing next to Winter, almost as if she was supporting her. Dante was leaning back against the wall, his arms crossed, the coolest of everyone in the room. Sebastian, as usual, was sitting behind one of the computers. He didn’t look happy, either.

  Marcus looked as though he wanted to throw up and explode at the same time. He was shaking. “It weakens structures. Destroys whole buildings. Roads. Nothing is invulnerable,” he said, his voice as uneven a
s his breathing. “Not even vampires are immune.”

  “I know that,” Nial said. His voice was low, tight with control. Garrett suspected it would have been as rough as Marcus’ if he hadn’t been exerting so much discipline. “You think I haven’t thought this through? That I would even ask you if the circumstances weren’t what they are?”

  “That stuff killed Rick,” Marcus said.

  “I know that, goddamn it!” Nial shouted.

  The room grew suddenly still and silent.

  On the other side of the wall, someone screamed. It was a young voice. Garrett realized Winter must have put the Elah child in the little front office, the only room in the house that didn’t already have two or three functions.

  Winter stirred. “I’ll see to her,” she said.

  Kate hurried after her, as Winter slipped through the other door.

  Garrett saw for the first time that Azarel was standing at the other end of the room. He had been hidden behind Winter and had not spoken at all.

  Nial sucked in a breath and let it out, regaining control. Marcus had not looked away from him at all. Garrett didn’t think he’d even quivered at Nial’s shocking shout.

  “I know how Rick died,” Nial said more quietly. “Which is exactly why we should make more of it.”

  The Pyrrhus. Garrett understood now. Nial had asked Marcus to make more of it, which proved he had more guts than Garrett had credited him.

  On the other side of the wall, the screaming was continuing. It was taxing, to have to listen to it. Garrett shifted on his feet uneasily.

  Ilaria gripped Marcus’ hand with both of hers. She was shaking, too. Her eyes were enormous. Even in this room filled with high emotions, Garrett could still pick out her heart beat. She was just on the edge of over-exertion and barely holding herself together.

  “We should destroy every last milliliter of the shit,” Marcus said. His voice shook.

  “It could ensure we win against the Summanus,” Nial said.

  “What good is victory when there’s no one left on the planet to appreciate it?”