Spartan Resistance (40 page)

Everyone ranged behind them was completely still and silent. No one shuffled. No one even cleared their throat. Nayara had ordered everyone except essential staff out of the observation area, but there was still a small crowd watching Marley do her work.

At the twenty-three minute mark, Marley straightened up from her lean over the operating table and looked at the atomic clock on the wall.

Brenden made a breathless, choking sound and sat heavily on the bench, his head bowed.

“Go back in time,” Billy said. He could barely form the words, for his throat was aching. “Go back and stop her before it starts. Put her in an arrival chamber—they’re soundproof!”

“We can’t change the past,” Brenden said slowly.

“She’s dead!” Billy cried. “Why not for her? Brenden, for god’s sake, you love her, too!”

“The past is what we have sworn to preserve,” Ryan said quietly. He was leaning heavily on his cane. “This is part of it. We cannot go back and save her, because we didn’t.” His expression was wretched.

Nayara gripped Brenden’s shoulder.

Billy shook his head. “There has to be another way. Turn her! It’s not too late for that.”

“Does Mariana want to be turned?” Nayara asked gently. “Did she leave a will? Has she spoken to you about it? We can’t turn anyone without their express request.”

Billy pressed his fingers to his eyes, helplessness making him dizzy. Then he remembered and shoved his hand into his jeans pocket. “How express do you need?” he demanded and held the photo out. “That was taken in the future. Somewhere in the future—we don’t know when, but it doesn’t matter. Mariana hasn’t changed. Not at all. She looks the same in this photo as she did yesterday.
She’s alive in this photo
.”

Nayara glanced at Ryan.

Brenden lifted his head, hope dawning in his eyes. “There’s only one way she could look exactly the same. She’s a vampire in that photo.”

Ryan gripped the cane, his knuckles turning white. He studied the photo. “We have to make that future come to pass,” he said. “Willfully going against what we know must happen would be as irresponsible as deliberately changing history.”

Brenden got to his feet.

“Nayara will turn her,” Ryan said sharply. “You cannot and neither should Billy.”

“Why not?” Billy demanded.

“Because you love her,” Nayara said gently. “When she goes through her first blood fever, will you have the strength to do whatever you must to stop her from feeding from a human? Will you have the courage to watch her agony? For that is the role of the maker and I would not put you through that, not with Mariana.”

Brenden sat down again. Heavily. “Just hurry,” he whispered.

Scottish Highlands, 2035 A.D.

They hired a babysitter for Jack—an agency member with strong psi-talents, who couldn’t be got around by a two-year-old with budding skills of his own. Once he was settled and playing happily, the three of them jumped back to Scotland of the twenty-first century, to a year free of wars and petty conflicts. The highland air was crisp and refreshing after the belting heat of Rome in August.

For several hours they hiked through the glens, not following any particular trail, or heading in any specific direction. As the day was heading toward sunset, Tally found a flat rock high on one side of the valley they were in and sat down. It was warm from the sunshine.

“Why don’t you tell me what’s on your minds?” she asked the two of them.

Rob rested his boot on a smaller rock at her feet and his hand on his knee. The kilt rode up in a most enticing way, but Tally ignored it and looked at him, waiting.

Lee gave a heavy sigh. “There’s no way to break this easy,” he told Rob.

Rob was studying her, his eyes narrowed. “But ye already know, don’t ye?” he asked her.

Tally blinked as her eyes filled with tears. She had forgotten how much tears could hurt. “You’re going to war.”

“The agency is already at war—” Lee began.

“
Vampires
are at war,” Rob corrected. “The agency is just a handy focal point for laddies like Gabriel to take a swing at, but it’s vampires that stand to lose everything they’ve clawed from the world. We’ll be fighting for our right to exist, Tally. If Lee and I don’t join that fight, we deserve everything we’ll get if we lose.”

Tally swallowed. “Three thousand years of written history and women are still minding the home front while the men go off to war.”

Lee grinned, his eyes dancing. “We thought about sending you off instead of me, as you’re the meanest in-fighter we know. But I can’t do what you can do, so you get to stay home for this one.”

“What can’t you do?” Tally asked.

“Have babies,” Rob said flatly, rolling up his sleeve.

Her heart jumped. “
Now
? But the war…Jack...this is the
worst
possible time to have another baby!”

“It’s the times we’re in and I can’t think of a better reason to make you pregnant,” Lee said. “There are risks—there’ll always be risks, but if Rob and I are going all in, we can’t argue against you risking everything, too.”

Tally unzipped her parka, laid it on the grass at her feet and got to her feet. “Now,” she said firmly, undoing her jeans.

“My bonnie lass,” Rob said proudly to Lee.

Lee grinned and shoved Rob’s shoulder, pushing him off balance so that he staggered down the hill and swore in Gaelic.

“Out of my way, highlander,” Lee told him. “It’s my turn.”

* * * * *

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

Hacking the doors once made the second time even easier, but that didn’t stop Gawaine from sweating as he eased his way along the corridor toward the room at the end. The corridor was lined with suites and rooms that various agency members used. It had taken a thirty second peep at room assignments in Mariana’s dataset to find which one he wanted.

It was mid-afternoon, when most people were out and about. The chances of anyone catching him wandering the private areas of the villa were small. Security wouldn’t be monitoring closely. They were still reeling, trying to work around Brenden’s absence.

Gawaine palmed the lock and the door clicked open. He pushed his way inside and paused with his back to the door, adjusting to the low light in here. The windows had been polarized to almost complete opacity.

The room was small, with a bed and a desk holding a generic terminal. There were no personal possessions anywhere. But Gawaine had figured out that vampires were secretive by nature. Just because the room looked empty, didn’t mean it was.

He looked in all the obvious places first, before tackling the sneakier locations that required some effort to access. He was aware of passing time. Every minute more increased the risk that he would be caught. While he thought he might be able to talk his way out of trouble with the old man, he didn’t ever want to have to try to explain himself to Rhydder. That dude was scary.

He found the pouch tucked away inside one of the ceiling tiles, which he had left until last. He stepped down off the desk, turning the pouch over and over in his hands. It looked old, with stretched leather drawstrings and a worn patina, stains and scratches. The drawstrings had been knotted and he studied the knot carefully. He would have to reproduce it once he was done.

Then he untied it and emptied the pouch onto the palm of his hand. The thing that dropped out was heavy and flashed with a golden gleam as he moved it around on his hand. There was a pin on the back of it. A brooch? The edges were finely crafted wire and from the color he guessed it was gold.

He flipped the brooch over to look at the front and grew still, staring at it. Excitement flared as he studied the red and white design. Facts fitted together with an almost audible click in his mind.

“You’re fucking kidding me!” he breathed.

* * * * *

Deonne made herself say the words that had been sitting in the forefront of her mind for days. “I think you should both go.”

Adán had been sprawled beside her. Now he sat up, making the pillows tumble everywhere. “Both?”

Justin had been stroking her still-flat stomach, but his hand grew still. “Are you sure?” he asked, not looking at her.

“I don’t want you to go,” she said. “I don’t want to lose you. But I think you must. There’s…there’s going to be fighting and it’s going to get ugly. I would hate myself if I stopped you from helping. Ryan and Nayara are going to need everyone.” She gave them both a tremulous smile. “Gabriel must be stopped. He can’t be allowed to do what he did—to Mariana or to any of the thousands of people he’s hurt so far. He simply must be stopped. I’d go myself, if I had even the first inkling of how to fight.”

“No, you cannot!” Adán protested. “Even Justin cannot—you have never been a soldier!”

“I’ll learn,” Justin said. “Deonne’s right. They’ll need us. They’ll need everyone.” He rested his hand on her belly. “I have every reason to want to fight and every reason to make it back.”

Adán considered him for a long moment. Then slowly, he nodded. “Plus one more reason. If you don’t come back,
I
will kill you.”

* * * * *

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

Kieran pushed the reading board away from him, feeling a great tiredness that seemed to have settled between his shoulder blades and was making his face ache. “Do you think you can handle all the new recruits?” he asked Rhydder and looked up.

Rhydder was staring at him, the almost colorless eyes the only light thing about him in the dark of the cavern.

Kieran knew he wasn’t thinking about recruits. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Rhydder grimaced. “You mean, share my troubles?”

“You haven’t done much of it, I know, but sharing does help.”

“How would
you
know?”

Kieran smiled. “Twenty years as a Universal Warden. Fraternity is built into the system. There was
always
someone to talk to if I needed it.”

Rhydder got to his feet and stalked over to the observation window that looked down at the cavern proper. “Sharing changes things between people. Look at you. You’re already treating me differently.”

“That’s a bad thing?”

Rhydder didn’t answer.

Kieran got to his feet and gathered up the reading boards. “It doesn’t
change
anything,” he said flatly. “It just clears up a lot of bullshit. Face it, Cade. You’re not the first class asshole you want the world to think you are and now I know that, too.”

Rhydder glanced at him, startled. Then he scowled. “You think anyone
but
an asshole could control those freaks down there?”

“Is that what you think you are? A freak?”

“A freak that has to be stronger, faster and smarter than every single one of them. Or my throat will get slit for me.”

Kieran nodded and picked up the last board. “Your secret is safe with me.”

* * * * *

Jasper National Park, Canadian Rockies, Alberta, Canada, 2265 A.D.

The cabin sat on the very edge of a tree-filled valley, just below the snow line. For hundreds of meters above them, the peaks of the Canadian Rockies soared. For a week, the heads of the mountains had been wreathed in cloud and the snow had crept closer.

But the cold didn’t bother Mariana and the view was worth any inconvenience, because it included Billy and Brenden.

The two of them had fussed over her for days, monitoring her recovery and watching her for a possible return of the blood fever, but Nayara’s tough-love treatment of the first bout had been ruthlessly effective. The same synthetic blood that fed every other vampire completely satisfied her thirst, too.

Instead, she had spent the week exploring her new strength and abilities and enjoying her new-found energy. Most of that she burned off in bed with Billy and Brenden, for her appetite for sex seemed inexhaustible.

But today she was happy to sit in the old-fashioned rocking chair on the verandah and watch mountain goats tackle the slopes of the big peak on the opposite side of the valley. There was much to think about, including the novelty of being able to zero in her focus on the goats until she could see the hairs on their chins.

Brenden came out of the cabin, wearing only his pants and pulling the plaid blanket around his shoulders.

“You could stay warm without that,” Mariana pointed out.

“I could, but then I’d have to feed sooner and I’m already close.” He gave her a small smile as she grimaced. “There’s a lot to learn.”

“I thought there was lots to learn when I first joined the agency, but now I’m learning how
much
there is to learn.”

He picked up her hand and pulled her onto her feet. “Come here.”

“Are you two at it again?” Billy asked, trying to sound pissed. He closed the door and moved out across the verandah toward them. He was fully dressed, including boots. He kissed her, which he did a dozen times a day for no other reason than just to kiss her. Then he pressed himself up behind her, sandwiching her between the two of them.

It was the best place in the world, right there between them.

Mariana rested her head against Brenden’s shoulder. Billy pulled her hair away from her face. “You’ve been brooding,” he said. “Ever since Cáel called.”

She sighed. “I don’t know what to do.”

“So tell us,” Brenden said. “That’s what we’re here for.”

She lifted her chin to look at him. “
That’s
why? I do have it wrong.”

Billy laughed. “The stud, there, makes a point. He’s decrepit, but he does have an ounce or two of wisdom left between his ears. We can help. Tell us what Cáel wanted.”

“There’s been an emergency Assembly session called. They announced it two days ago.”

“So Gabriel got what he wanted.” Brenden sighed. “When is the session scheduled for?”

“September twenty-third.”

“Right on the equinox,” Billy said. “They left it until the very last moment possible.”

“I think that’s the only way left for them to register a protest,” Mariana said. “You know that Cáel is taking over the running of the agency while Ryan is…sick?”