Spartan Resistance (31 page)

Brenden braced himself, his heart leaping, but it was hard to know what to brace
for
. He’d rather be facing down a million pissed-off Persians right now, than the intangible and unfightable danger Gabriel represented.

“John, Jane, are you listening?” Gabriel asked, his tone sickly sweet. His smile was almost a grimace. “John and Jane, I want you to go to sleep.”

The screen went blank. Then, after a second or two, the studio anchor came back on, looking flustered and unprepared.

Stelios turned the screen off. “Are there any human Johns or Janes in the agency?” he asked urgently.

Nayara held up her hand. She was staring into mid-air, which told Brenden she was using her implant to communicate with someone, or a computer. Then she blinked and refocused on the room. “Kieran is throwing out as wide a shield as he can, but he can only cover the inner suburbs of Rome and there’s not likely to be a lot of Johns and Janes here, anyway.” She moved out from behind her desk. “We’d better move to the command center. Deonne will meet us there.”

* * * * *

After an hour of people shouting at each other in the over-crowded command center, Mariana reached the point where she’d had enough of the claustrophobic hysteria. It was clear from the monitors that every John and Jane in the world had fallen asleep as commanded and nothing was going to wake them until Gabriel decided it was time.

Mariana couldn’t help with that. Nor could she help with the communications and PR disaster that the agency leaders were facing. Vampires were utterly immune to Gabriel’s command and humans were even faster to notice, this time. In addition, they were noticing vampires who were passing as John or Jane and who hadn’t fallen asleep on command. Gabriel was outing them because of their immunity.

“A side bonus,” Rob had said dourly. “Or so Gabriel will reckon it.”

Mariana had nothing to offer anyone, so she moved around the edges of the room and headed back through the big doors to the admin office that the command center was next to. No one was in there, but she kept going anyway. There was a cavedium just on the other side of the admin block that would be empty right now because everyone was in the command center. There was an ancient apple tree in the middle of the courtyard, spreading its wide boughs and casting a fragrant shade over the yard, for the apples were nearly ripe and some early fruit had already dropped.

It was mid-afternoon and it was a blazingly hot and dry day. The air was still and the silence in the yard broken only by the buzz of bees and other insects taking advantage of the apples.

She ducked under the branches that hung low, burdened with fruit. Underneath and farther in toward the big, gnarled trunk, constant pruning had developed a canopy of green shade that lifted high enough from the ground that she could stand and walk without danger of hitting her head on anything. The air was cooler, a heavenly relief from the heat of the day.

“Mariana!”

It was Brenden’s voice and it sounded like it wasn’t the first time he had called out.

She whirled to face him as he ducked under the edge of the tree and stayed bent until he was inside the canopy enough to stand up and face her. “Didn’t you hear me calling?” he demanded.

“Clearly not.” She said it as calmly as she could, but her heart had jumped and now it was leaping about in her chest, making her feel a little sick from its frantic pumping. “But I know why you’re here and I can save you some time. Nayara needed to know about Laszlo. Billy, I mean. Both of them. Especially Billy.”

“Why especially Billy? He’s the innocent one in all this. It’s Laszlo who has the agenda.”

“You’ve really separated them in your mind, haven’t you? It’s like they’re two different people to you.”

“They
are
. Laszlo is working from motives we don’t understand.”

“But they’re
the same man
!” Mariana shot back. “It’s just Billy, but weeks, months—who knows?—
years
from now!”

“You think I don’t know that?”

“If you do, then why are you
fucking him
?” she shouted.

Brenden’s mouth opened, but no sound emerged. Even his eyes widened.

“Oh,
please
, spare me,” she said dryly. “You did that entire performance back in New Orleans just so I would know.”

Brenden was breathing heavily. She could see his chest rising under the soft, clinging fabric of his shirt. “It wasn’t a performance.” He sounded dazed, like his thoughts were miles away.

“I don’t care what it was,” Mariana shot back. “It doesn’t negate the fact that you jumped back here from New Orleans to screw up my relationship with Laszlo, so you could go back there and fuck him yourself. Then you made sure I knew. I don’t know what that makes you but you’re not the ethical man I thought you were.”

He seemed to wince.

“Why do you hate me so much?” Mariana demanded.

“I don’t hate you.”

She rolled her eyes. “Dislike. Distrust. Think I’m stupid. Merely human. Pick your metaphor, I don’t care which. You distain everything I am and everything I believe in.”

“You’re wrong.”

“If I am, it’s because you made
sure
I was. That makes you a hypocrite to boot, but I already knew that.” She moved passed him, but his hand shot out and grabbed her wrist.

She looked up at him. “Let me go.” He could break her arm just by squeezing and if he didn’t let go, she would never free herself. Not with his strength. But she didn’t care about any of that. He was going to let her go or by Hades’ demons she’d
make
him. Somehow.

Brenden’s eyes were black and unreadable. “Not until you listen to me,” he growled.

Mariana laughed. “I’m standing here
because
I listened to you. I got my heart kicked around because I listened to you. I won’t listen to you now. It hurts too much.”

She tried to wrench her arm out of his grip, hoping that if she struggled enough he’d pity her and let her go, but he just pulled her arm up high over her head, stilling her resistance by almost dangling her from her wrist.

“What do you mean, it hurts?” His voice was hushed.

She was so tired of double-meanings and sub-text and not understanding. She was tired of guarding her tongue. And her heart. So she lifted herself up on her toes, rising up until she could reach his lips and kissed him. It was the sum expression of everything she couldn’t say, that needed to be said but shouldn’t be spoken of because
someone
would get hurt…and she would, too.

She fully expected Brenden would shove her away and stalk off, his temper roused beyond boiling point. It was what he
should
have done.

But barely had her lips touched his when his free arm wrapped around her waist and pulled her up against him, lifting her higher so that she could kiss him properly.

Except that Brenden was kissing her.

Her heart did another funny wobble as she realized he was bending over her, his mouth pressed hard against hers. His big hand was in her hair, cupping her head, holding it steady, as he kissed her with more passion that she had ever suspected was in him. His tongue thrust into her mouth, tasting her, stroking her lips and tongue.

He’s kissing me. Brenden is kissing
me
…
 

The thought was barely coherent, but her pleasure spiked in response and she sighed into his mouth and surrendered completely to the kiss, to whatever he wanted. He could take her right here and now. She wouldn’t stop him. She wouldn’t think about the consequences. Nothing was important compared to the joy of having Brenden kiss her, when he so clearly
wanted
to kiss her.

Nothing would make sense after this. Nothing made sense
now
. Except for the kiss. It felt right. It felt more than right, it felt like this was what she was supposed to be doing.

His lips were firm against hers and he tasted exactly the way she had always imagined he would.

Then he tore his mouth from hers, as if he was pulling himself away with the greatest reluctance and looked down at her.

Her feet were barely touching the ground. Brenden held her so tightly against him that she needed no other support. His fingers moved restless in her hair as he studied her, his gaze roaming over her face.

Her heart was almost hurting, so hard was it beating. She wanted to hold her breath, in case simple breathing broke the spell. But she couldn’t stay silent. If she didn’t speak now, she would be as much of a hypocrite as she had accused Brenden of being.

“Laszlo,” she said softly.

Brenden’s eyes shut briefly. “Billy,” he said and sighed. He let her down, lowering her to the ground gently. “
Gods
!” he cursed roughly and pushed a hand through his hair. He couldn’t meet her eyes.

“Go back to him,” Mariana told him.

“And what about you?”

“It was just a kiss,” she said, trying to sound as convincing as possible. “Go back and kiss Billy and that’s all this will be. Just me kissing you instead of hitting you as I should have.”

His jaw tightened. His eyes were back to being unreadable. “And what are you going to do? Kiss Laszlo?”

“I’m going to do whatever I think is the right thing to do.” She gave him a small smile. “Laszlo should be the first to know what that is, not you.”

He cleared his throat. “You’re right,” he said, not looking at her.

“Well, finally. A breakthrough,” she said crisply. “He acknowledges I’m right.”

Brenden gave a flat, mirthless laugh and walked away. Mariana watched him duck under the edges of the tree and tried to calm her soaring heart and still the aching need in her. She fought the desire to go after him, to explain and spill her heart to him. She would only be doing it because she wanted to stay close to him. To see if she could earn another kiss, now that she knew he wasn’t opposed to kissing her.

What a mess.

She went back to her desk in the admin office. She had a call to make.

The Catacombs, Chronometric Conservation Agency Headquarters, Villa Fontani, Rome, 2265 A.D.

There was an observation deck that had been built into the rock face, twenty meters above the cavern floor where Rhydder’s army trained. Gawaine made himself halt at the deck level, to gaze upon the groups of soldiers training, down below.

This was a natural cave deep beneath the villa, reached by winding, uneven stairs that had been carved out of the rock in a time long forgotten by history. There were man-made, ancient catacombs punching into the walls everywhere along the edge of the cave itself and most of the army Rhydder had recruited lived in the tunnels, down among the Roman dead.

The observation deck was the newest addition to the cavern and there was an office off one end of it with a glass wall for observation. That would be Rhydder’s office, Gawain assumed.

He wasn’t here for Rhydder, though. The tall vampire was down among his men, involved in some sort of training that seemed to involve holding up giant rocks in one hand while fighting with a sword in the other. It didn’t make a lick of sense to Gawaine, but he’d never taken an interest in fighting or the military. Even the role-playing variety held no interest for him.

But the man he
was
interested in was down there on the cavern floor, too. Gawaine could pick him out easily. He was the only one sitting down, his rear parked on one of the really big boulders to one side of the cavern. Llewellyn’s long legs were thrust out for balance, encased in the black fabric they always were, the long coat falling away from his hips and draping over the rock.

He was watching the training with far more interest than Gawaine had, his dark eyes the only part of him moving, as he followed first one soldier, then another, as if he were tallying progress. He didn’t look like a bystander, even though he was actually sitting to one side. He was fully immersed in the training session, deeply interested.

“You’re not thinking of joining up, are you?”

Gawaine whirled to face the newcomer. It was the really big man called Kieran, who had something to do with security, but Gawaine was still working out precisely what he did. Most of the agency people whom he had been able to ask the question had been vague about what Kieran did.

“Aren’t all the soldiers vampires?” Gawaine asked, glancing over his shoulder at the troops below.

“They are.” Kieran crossed his arms. “There is a work-around for that if you want to sign up.”

Gawaine grinned. “Do I look like the type that wants to join up?”

Kieran gave him a small smile back. “What is so interesting about Llewellyn that you’d follow him down here?”

Gawaine reconsidered the blond man. “You’re the mind-reader, aren’t you?”

“There’s more than one person who can read minds in the Agency.”

Gawaine shook his head. “You were a Universal Warden. I’ve never heard of the Wardens kicking anyone out before.”

“I didn’t say I was kicked out.”

“You’re not the type that leaves voluntarily,” Gawaine said flatly.

Kieran almost smiled. “You’re a mind reader of another sort.”

“That’s one of the nicer ways I’ve heard it described.” He looked back over his shoulder once more. Llewellyn hadn’t moved an inch. “If you’re a mind reader, then you probably have got him all figured out, right? Him and Rhydder.”

Kieran dropped his folded arms. “I don’t read everyone I meet. It’s not polite. But you know that.”

Gawaine nodded. “But why do you know that?”

Kieran considered him. “Once, a long time ago, I was like you.”

“Sexy and smart?” Gawaine asked, raising his brow.

“I’m betting you didn’t get that split lip of yours from a bar fight.”

Gawaine touched the healing wound with the tip of his tongue. “I got it from a girl.” And he wondered why he was telling this man such a revealing detail.

Kieran smiled. “You were rude to a girl? That’s wasteful.”

“She kissed me, later.”

Kieran chuckled. “And more, I can tell.”

“Thought you didn’t read minds because it was rude?”