“Which Sasha knows as well as you do,” Marcus finished. He grimaced. “You’ve got a real dilemma there, don’t you?”
“You have no idea,” Dante assured him, thinking of the argument he’d had with Sasha only last night. Everything Sasha had said was still thrumming in his chest. It was what had driven him to seek out Marcus and talk to him.
Yet all that had done was underline Sasha’s worth and twist Dante’s growing fear another notch or two. “I don’t know what to do,” Dante said heavily.
“Not that I want to get in the middle of you three,” Marcus said, “but it seems to me that this is one of those times when all you can do is let everything play out.”
“Suck it up, in other words,” Dante said dryly.
“Wait and watch,” Marcus said gently. “Things change around here. All the time. I’m sure you’ve noticed. Change is the only constant. If you wait and watch, when the answer arrives, you’ll be ready.”
Dante grimaced.
“I know. Easier said than done,” Marcus agreed. “I’d be putting my fist through a wall if I was in your place.”
“Is that what happened with you and Rick and Ilaria?” Dante asked curiously and somewhat cautiously. Marcus and Ilaria looked almost normal these days, yet there was a remote air about both of them that told everyone to leave them alone, especially about Rick.
Marcus’ jaw flexed. “Exact opposite,” he said finally. “We both wanted her, we both wanted each other. We thought she was dead, though.”
Dante flinched.
Marcus leaned forward. “Death is change, too,” he said softly. “Enjoy what you have while you’ve got it, Dante. These days, nothing is guaranteed, not even vampire lives.”
* * * * *
Sasha sat on the bottom of the stairs, because there were no chairs or seats left in the big room. They were all taken. He looked around the crowded room. It look as though every humanoid individual on the property, including Koca and Patrick’s private security force, plus all the children living under Patrick’s roof, were assembled. Azarel was sitting on the piano stool, which had been brought from around the piano to sit closer to where everyone else was sitting.
The hunter coordinator they called Lucas Ford was also there, with a small group of humans who were most likely part of the units he coordinated.
Dante came over to where Sasha was sitting. He lowered himself down onto the step beside him and put his hand on Sasha’s thigh and squeezed. “Hey.”
Sasha nodded. “Zdravstvuyte.”
“Do you have any idea what this is about?”
“Not for sure. We might be about to find out why Rory has been so quiet the last day or two.”
“I could stand knowing that.”
“Me, too.”
“Here we go,” Dante added as Nial got to his feet.
Nial moved around in front of the baby grand, which gave everyone a clear view of him. “In a house that runs on pillow talk, rumors are endemic. So I’m going to break direct orders and tell you what I told the cross coordination committee on Tuesday. Actually, I’m not the one who is going to tell you. Rory?”
He went back to his seat.
Dante glanced at Sasha. They both watched Rory get to her feet. She was wearing a dress that was dark purple velvet that made her eyes pop. Sasha wondered what the velvet would feel like with her body beneath it.
Rory stood where Nial had been standing. She had no notes, although with a vampire’s enhanced memory, she wouldn’t need them.
“Two weeks ago, Nial asked me to develop a theoretical future projection of the current war, using as many valid criteria as possible. In other words, a best guess at the outcome of the war given our current situation. I’ve done many similar projects in the past, although never for something on the scale of a global war against a non-human aggressor.” She paused.
“Wow, I think I’m in love,” Dante said. “I just love geek speak. Don’t you?”
“I like smart women,” Sasha said quietly, keeping his eyes on Rory. There was something she was building up to. Something that wasn’t good news. She had all the body language of someone braced for the impact.
“Normally, a project like this uses a lot of regression analysis and other game theory tools to build a model and project it forward. I was doing that, until I had a discussion with Koca. I was trying to learn about the Elah population, how fast they generate and therefore, how many Elah there would be in the future. As they are now a formal ally, this was a natural step to take. Koca was very helpful. He put me in touch with senior Elah who could give me much more information about Elah numbers and population growth and also numbers for all their enemies, which they had studied closely in the years before they were entombed in the Blood Stone.” She paused, looking around the room. For a moment, her gaze settled on Sasha and Dante.
“The Elah population growth numbers for the Summanus turned this project from an analysis exercise into a simple numbers extrapolation.” She gave a tight smile. “Well, simple, in comparison,” she added, which caused a little twitter of laughter to wash over the room.
Here it comes, Sasha thought.
“The Summanus grow from fresh hatchlings to full functioning adults within a single calendar year,” she said. “They are lethal within six months.”
“Six months!” Dante breathed. “No wonder there never seems to be an end to them!”
“Shh,” Sasha said. Rory hadn’t reached the worst of it yet. Her shoulders were still tight and square.
“Given the current numbers of Summanus, which we estimated based on sightings and reports over the last two years, combined with their rate of breeding, I have estimated that the Summanus are too great in number. It doesn’t matter what we do now, we could not kill them all. As they do not consider themselves to be at war, the idea of surrender and peace is not a concept they understand, so that is not an avenue we can pursue, either.”
Silence. Everyone was staring at her now. There was not a single side conversation happening anywhere in the room.
Marcus cleared his throat. “Are you saying we can’t win?”
Rory’s face was like ivory and just as still. “There was no way to know it at the time, but we should have wiped out the hatchling nests before they hatched, last year.”
“We did it this year,” someone said.
Rory nodded. “Even if we do it every year from now on, it still would not be enough. The one year when the full hatchling compliment was allowed to mature put the Summanus numbers above the point of no return. No matter what we do to them, they will survive. Eventually, their superior numbers will diminish ours until humans, vampires and our allies, including the Elah, reach our own point of no return and we wither to nothing.”
Not only was everyone silent, it seemed that no one moved as they stared at Rory, taking it in. Absorbing the truth.
Sasha gripped the newel post, his fingers digging in. He didn’t for a moment wonder if Rory might have made a mistake. He respected her abilities. He had lived with her silence since she had learned this terrible fact.
Yet to be given such a grim prediction, when all seemed right in the world, was hard to take. It was like a perfectly healthy man with no symptoms, not even a hang nail, being told he was going to die soon from an untreatable cancer. It was hard to accept.
It was easier to face defeat when the enemy was pounding on the door, with no ammunition, serious wounds and with no escape hatch. Then, it was obvious the end was near. There was no time to try to negotiate a way out of it, to live with false hope for a while, before understanding it was truly over.
Dante sighed. “Well…fuck.”
Blythe stood up. “Can we appeal to the Serene Ones? They could stop them.”
“Azarel,” Nial said shortly.
Azarel got to his feet. “I am not the Serene Ones, not in this guise. I was one, though, so I know what the answer would be if you were to ask them to intervene.”
Again, the breathless
silence.
Azarel shook his head. “It is hubris that led to the unlocking of the Blood Stone. Put another way, you brought this upon yourselves. It is not up to the Serene Ones to save you now. This is what they will think. It is what they will tell you if you ask.”
Dante propelled himself to his feet. “And what do you say?”
Azarel blinked. He was a slender man and his limpid brown eyes made him seem weak. Sasha suspected that was an illusion. If he was not in human form, he would be an omnipotent immortal. Human flesh stripped those powers away, just not the habits of thought they would develop.
Yet Azarel did not make a pronouncement or condemn them as he predicted the others would. Instead, he said quietly, with an uncertain note in his voice: “I don’t know.”
Something like a sigh passed across the room. Sasha wasn’t sure if that meant everyone approved or disapproved of what he had said. Or perhaps they were as surprised as he was.
Azarel sat down on his piano stool.
Sasha tugged on Dante’s hand, pulling him down next to him once more.
Rory was still standing. Nial got to his feet and it seemed to Sasha that he was moving slowly, as if he was exhausted. Perhaps he was. Not physically, of course, yet this had been a long, hard war for Nial. He had been fighting it years before humans had even become aware of the war in their midst.
Nial stood for a moment next to Rory. “That’s all, everyone. You’re free to talk about this among yourselves. It just doesn’t move beyond anyone in this room. If you want access to Rory’s data, I’m sure she would be willing to share it, although I would ask her to explain it to you. Ask nicely, though.”
The tiny joke got zero reaction.
Nial simply walked away, moving around the edges of the group, heading for the front office. His head was down. As he passed Sasha and Dante on the stairs, Sasha could see his face more clearly. He looked as though he was beyond exhaustion.
Faint alarm touched Sasha. Nial was the lynchpin. He juggled the many varied forces arrayed against the Summanus, including world’s military. If he was not functioning, for whatever reason….
Then Sasha mentally kicked himself. What was he thinking? The war was already lost. All that remained was to play it out. Nial was free to go sun himself on a tropical island until the Summanus found him there, for all the difference their puny efforts apparently made.
Dante bumped his shoulder against Sasha’s. “I know Rory is brilliant and infallible and perfection on stilettos—”
“You aren’t trying to say she’s wrong, are you?” Sasha asked.
“God, no! And it has nothing to with her taking my balls off with her teeth if she heard me say it. Rory wouldn’t make a mistake like that. She wouldn’t lay it out flat, with no argument, if she had any doubts at all. She would soften it. Leave us something to hope for.”
“You don’t want to believe it, anyway.”
“Nope. And I’m not going to. Not until the fuckers have my head in one hand and my shoulder in the other. Even then I’m going to try head-butting my way out of it. It’s not over until it’s over, Sasha.” Dante looked at him with his dark eyes, unblinking. “Right?”
Sasha got to his feet. Most of the room had cleared already, he noticed. “I looked at Nial’s face just then and was thinking that he was a man without hope and that I refuse to go that way. I won’t just give up.” He held out his hand.
“Where are we going?’ Dante asked as Sasha hauled him to his feet.
“Just in case the world stops turning tomorrow morning, I’m going to grab Rory and take you and her upstairs and make you both scream my name. Then, after a vodka or two, I’m going to do it all over again.”
“That’s a plan,” Dante said approvingly.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Sebastian straightened up from his slouch against the wall, when Winter appeared, moving down the corridor at a fast pace. She shook her head. “I don’t think he even registered I was in the room,” she said.
Sebastian kissed her. “If I can do it, you have to remember it’s nothing you lack that made you fail. He’s just a stubborn bastard.”
Winter sighed. “If you can pull it off, then my relief will be so great, I won’t care that I couldn’t.” She pushed him back in the direction she had come from. “Go on. He won’t even notice that you arrived straight after I left.”
Sebastian looked at her, startled. “That bad, huh?”
He moved down the corridor, steeling himself for what came next. He pushed the office door open, trying to make it look as if he was acting normally, as if he was opening it as he had a thousand times before, only now he couldn’t remember how he did that.
Dominic was sitting behind his usual computer. He looked up when Sebastian entered. His gaze flickered toward Nial and back to Sebastian. Then he got to his feet and stretched, picked up his coffee cup and peered into it with a grimace. He headed for the door, as if he was simply going for fresh coffee and unlike Sebastian, he made it seem perfectly normal. He nodded infinitesimally as he passed Sebastian and closed the door behind him.
That left Sebastian in the office with Nial.
Nial was sitting behind one of the other computers, typing and focusing on the screen. He hadn’t reacted to Sebastian’s arrival at all. Sebastian wondered if he was even aware that Dominic had left.
For a man who had barely touched a computer right up until a couple of years ago, Nial was a very fast learner. He hadn’t taught himself coding, although he was a power user, more than comfortable with programs and applications, hacking them to make them work the way he wanted them to.
Sebastian didn’t wonder what he was doing now. It would be simple email. Nial would be hounding his contacts for more information, for data, for answers no one could give him. The replies would all be versions of “nothing new to report.”
“Nial.” He would start with the natural approach.
As expected, Nial didn’t look up.
Sebastian leaned over the back of the slim monitor, so that his head was only a foot or so away from Nial’s. He raised his voice. “Nial!”
Nial looked up briefly, then returned his attention to the monitor.
Sebastian’s heart gave a little squeeze. The look in Nial’s eye had been the one he used with strangers. Cool. Reserved.
He moved around the end of the table the computer was sitting on and over to Nial’s side. He rested his hand on Nial’s shoulder. “Hey.”
“I’m busy.”
It was a response of sorts. The two short words were curt to the point of rudeness, though.
Sebastian ignored the tightness building in his chest. Getting upset or angry would be counterproductive. It would also be playing into his hand. Nial was trying to make him stalk off with his temper stirred, because that would leave Nial alone as he wanted to be.
Instead, Sebastian squeezed and shook his shoulder, to pull his attention away from the screen. The screen showed that Nial was writing an email. The headings had scrolled up above the top of the screen, so he couldn’t see who he was sending it to. A snippet of the text caught his attention.
…something. A fact, a triviality, married up to another, that will make a difference…
It provoked Sebastian into speaking. “You’re groping for answers that don’t exist, Nial.”
That got Nial’s attention. He pushed back in the chair and turned it so he was looking up at Sebastian. “Rory’s prognosis is not concrete. Just because the numbers say one thing doesn’t mean it has to happen that way.”
“If you really believe that, then why didn’t you tell everyone the same thing when you gave them Rory’s report, the other day?”
Nial’s gaze flickered away. Back to the screen. “If Rick were here, he’d find the connection, the thing that will make a difference.”
“Only he isn’t and wishing he were isn’t going to help. God, Nial, a year ago you would never have let yourself wallow like this.”
Nial was stari
ng at the screen again, as if his thoughts had returned back to the email and he was busy composing the next sentence.
Sebastian gripped his shoulders and turned him on the chair, so his back was to the monitor. He bent and kissed him, using everything he had to yank Nial’s attention out of the deep, useless channel it was stuck in.
It had been…Lord, how long had it been since they’d had sex? Even kissed? Nial had been holding everything inside him for far too long, trying to contain everything, to control it, including his affection.
When Nial pressed his hands against Sebastian’s chest and shoved him back, it was a genuine shock. Sebastian had been caught up in the kiss, forgetting for a moment why he was kissing him. Instead, he had become a little drunk on the simple pleasure of kissing Nial, even though it had lasted for only a few seconds.
The rejection stung. Then Sebastian remembered why he was here and cast the hurt aside. He straightened up, looking at Nial, who was staring at him with suspicion-filled eyes. “You have to let go, Nial. At least for a while. You need to relax.”
“I need to be left alone,” he replied.
“We’ve let you do that for too long. You’re not a machine. Even vampires have to disengage occasionally. How long is it since you fed?”
“I’m fine,” Nial said shortly.
“Winter says it has been nearly two weeks, which is about four days longer than even you can stretch them, when you’re thinking properly and taking care of yourself. You should be deep into blood lust by now.”
“Well, I’m not.” Nial tried to turn back to the computer. Sebastian got his knee in the way of the arm of the chair, so he couldn’t spin it.
Nial looked down at his knee. “Move it.”
“No.”
Nial’s gaze met his. “I love you, Sebastian, but if you don’t move your leg, I’ll move it for you and I don’t want to do that. You wouldn’t like it.”
Coldness walked invisible fingers up his spine, making Sebastian shudder. He had never tested himself against Nial and never wanted to. He knew too well exactly how strong Nial was. Yet he had to blast open Nial’s defense shield. If it took a physical confrontation to do it, he was the only person who could afford to try. Winter wasn’t strong enough. That was why she was waiting out there and Sebastian was standing here with his heart galloping in fear.
Blood Ascendant (Blood Stone Book 5) Page 27