Romani Armada (7 page)

There was an uncomfortable silence. Ryan mentally sighed. None of them were willing to consider the truth staring at them.

Except Brenden. The big man spread his hands on the table. “It’d kill them,” he said, his voice low.

The silence felt even deeper.

Fahmido, who was still standing, pushed her hands into her deep pockets. It was an uneasy gesture. “Massive, overwhelming emotion delivered in one burst like that would probably cause the body to shut down.” Her tone was one of unhappy agreement. “Human physiology is too weak, too vulnerable to stresses of this kind.”

“So if Ryan hadn’t shielded Tinker,” Nayara said, “Gabriel would have killed him?”

“Most likely,” Fahmido returned.

Brenden shrugged. “There hasn’t been a weapon invented that wasn’t intended to be fatal. Gabriel’s just found a new one, that’s all.”

Ryan shook his head. “This is something else entirely,” he said, standing up. “This is a killing device that can’t be taken away from them. Or used on them, either. If Gabriel doesn’t have the rifle—the pointing device—he could use his finger just like Pritti did. For all we know, once he gets used to using it, he may not even need to point.”

“That leaves us with a small army that can kill with its mind,” Brenden concluded grimly. “Humans will
love
that news.” He glanced at Ryan. “You can tell them.”

Chapter Five

Stockholm, Sweden, 2264 A.D.:
The meeting was into its second hour when one of the massive doors pushed open, causing the flames in the sconces on the walls to dance and send shadows across the room, alerting them.

Justin looked up as Tally shoved the door open another few inches, letting Deonne step through.

He let his gaze flicker over Deonne’s long length, reacquainting himself with the details. It had been nearly two weeks since he had last seen her and until this moment it hadn’t seemed like such a long time, but now that she was here in the room where he could look upon her, it abruptly felt like months had past. She actually seemed different.

In typical Deonne manner, she had gone out of her way to dress in some current fashion trend that no other woman on earth could wear, but that she made look sexy and stunning at the same time. It clung to every curve, a bronze colored suit that the low fire light in the room enhanced marvelously. She was wearing some sort of gold or copper jewelry that made her blonde hair glow.

It wasn’t just her hair that was glowing. She seemed to glimmer from head to foot as she glided up to the table in that long-legged manner that defied analysis no matter how long he studied the sway of her hips and the swing of her legs.

Deonne halted next to Ryan. “My apologies, Ryan, for my late arrival and Tally’s, too. I needed some 24
^th
century essentials that simply couldn’t wait until after the meeting. I hope I didn’t hold up any vital discussions?”

Tally slid onto the bench between Christian and Rob as the table rearranged itself to make room for her arrival. Rob and Christian both kissed her soundly and without embarrassment.

Ryan tilted his head to consider Deonne. “We did shuffle things until you arrived. You are a vital member of this meeting, Deonne. We are dependent upon your expertise. Pulling you back from China wasn’t a whim.”

Justin had been working for the agency for nearly a century and he’d got to know Ryan fairly well in that time, despite not being a traveler. He knew Ryan was annoyed and hiding it, but Deonne wouldn’t know that.

“I know you had me brought here solely for my expertise,” Deonne replied smoothly. “It is the reason I went out of my way to prepare properly, which I couldn’t do back in China. Perhaps next time you bring me forward, you might give me a little more time to organize instead of having me arrive upon the hour of the meeting. Then you will be getting me at my best, instead of having me working off the cuff, so to speak.”

Justin drew in a slow, surprised breath as Deonne nodded pleasantly at Ryan and walked down the length of the silent table to where Justin sat next to the only remaining space at the table. She slid onto the empty space with grace, swinging her legs around the end of the bench.

Heat registered along the length of Justin’s leg. He deliberately kept his head facing toward the head of the table and his gaze on Ryan, just like everyone else at the table despite the little shock her heat sent through him.

“It’s time to talk about Gabriel’s so-called press conference,” Ryan declared. “Now that Deonne has joined us.”

Justin glanced around the table. In a room full of humans, such an announcement would have had the humans shifting uncomfortably as their bodies physically reacted to the memory of anger or upset.

These vampires may be recalling the memories, but there was no physical reaction to go with it, so they all sat motionless in response. The one human who had been here to see Gabriel’s conference, Kieren, had superhuman discipline and sat as motionless as the others.

Deonne had not seen the conference live and she had hinted she hadn’t had time to prepare properly for the meeting. It was possible she hadn’t had time to watch playbacks, either.

Ryan stood. “It’s been five hours since Gabriel’s conference. We need to find a public response to the questions we are already getting about baby Jack. The response has to be one that won’t alarm humans the way Gabriel’s ‘breeding’ angle did. He put the perception of vampires back by a good one hundred years.”

“Try two hundred,” Deonne said.

Ryan raised his brow, looking at her.

“Gabriel deliberately tried to stir the same basic fears and paranoias among humans that drove the Censure period. If you don’t react quickly with a total block, he’ll succeed.”

“I presume you have a response in mind?” Nayara asked.

“You need to do what you’ve been doing all along, only more so. The truth. Humans need to get to know you, warts and all, so they can get comfortable with you and in that way their fears will diminish and the paranoia will evaporate. In this case, managed truth.”

“How do we truthfully admit to hiding baby Jack?” Ryan asked. “We’ll be admitting to Gabriel’s conspiracy theory.”

Deonne slid off the bench and stood up, facing the table. “Why
did
you keep the baby a secret?” she asked, her tone reasonable.

Ryan glanced at Nayara, taking in her placid gaze. There was the smallest of furrows between her brows, which the average human might not detect.

“We hid the facts about Jack from humans for this very reason,” Ryan told Deonne. “We knew humans would find it unsettling.” His gaze moved to where Christian, Rob and Tally sat close together. “And we wanted to give the new family time to settle in together. At first, we weren’t even sure Jack would…survive. His birth was a success despite such astounding odds.”

Tally bit her lip and Christian’s long fingers curled over her shoulder and squeezed gently.

Deonne watched the three parents for a moment or two, then looked at Ryan. “That’s the truth you give humans,” she said, holding her hand out toward the three of them. “That’s one they’ll understand,” she said softly.

Ryan shook his head. “No. I told Rob and Christian I would not subject them to anything like this.”

Justin glanced at them; Rob, Tally and Christian. There was traces of long term pain and hurt in their eyes from the loss of Jack, but right now they looked horrified at the idea of being exposed across the known galaxy, their private lives picked apart the way Deonne was proposing.

They weren’t used to public exposure the way Ryan and Nayara had grown accustomed to it over the last year. After centuries of hiding behind personas and masks, the idea would be mildly terrifying – especially when it came to a subject as personal as their love life…and sex itself.

But Nayara and Ryan had managed to overcome their inhibitions. The book they had written was almost ready to be released and the pre-publicity fuss was starting to build. Nia and Ryan were even more reclusive than these three and were coping.

Justin had dealt with a staggering range of human clients over the decades and because Agency tours were not cheap, most of his clients were high income and privileged. Many of them were public figures, if not flat-out famous. They were more than used to being spread out upon media petri dishes for the public to consume in bite-sized dabs of images and sound bites. They had developed coping mechanisms and built boundaries that channeled media interest into safer areas of their lives and he had taken note of more than a few of their strategies over the years.

“There’s ways of dealing with the media,” Justin said. “You don’t have to hand over everything. Just enough to tell the story and that’s all, but Deonne is right. You three need to be the faces for this.” He looked at Christian directly. “You know this stuff, Christian. Stop thinking like a husband and a father for a moment and put on your media mogul hat.”

Christian straightened his shoulders. “Are you accusing me of not thinking with a clear head?” he asked, his voice cool, distant and dangerously polite.

Justin shivered, but before he could formulate an answer that would stop Christian from reaching for his sword even metaphorically, Ryan slapped his hand on the table top. “He didn’t say it in so many words, but I will, Christian. Justin’s right and so is Deonne. You three can supply a…” He grimaced. “A
human
side to this that humans can relate to. Deonne can coach you on how to keep the media from ripping your private life to shreds.”

Rob put his hands flat on the table. “Ye’re insisting on this, Deasmhumhain?”

Ryan picked up the cane and leaned on it. He blew out a breath. “As head of the agency, I could insist, yes. You’ve all given oaths to serve the agency to the best of your abilities, when you agreed to become travelers. This falls under the heading of serving the Agency. But I’m not going to insist, Rob. It’s your life, not your vocation the media want a piece of. I’ve been through that meat grinder myself. It’s not fun. But it’s not the Purgatory you’re thinking it is right now, either. It can be managed and it will help us, in both the short term and the long run.”

“Then you’re asking, Ryan?” Tally questioned, her voice soft after Rob’s harsh interrogation.

Ryan considered her. He nodded. “Yes, I’m asking. Please.”

Rob and Christian exchanged glances and Christian straightened up. “Very well, then,” he replied. He glanced at Deonne where she hovered at the end of the table near Nayara’s side. “I hope your tactics for keeping them beyond the boundaries we choose are ironclad. I only ran media networks in my day. I sat behind a desk.”

Deonne smiled at him. “You forget, Christian. We’ll be calling this conference. We have the ability to turn off the sound feed and go home whenever we don’t like the questions. Vampires already have a reputation for being closed-mouthed and peculiar, so shutting up and walking away won’t harm that reputation in the slightest. Anything you give them on the warm and human side will be a plus.” She crossed her arms. “You can’t lose on this one.”

“We’ve already lost, remember?” Brenden growled. “That’s why we have to do all this silly theatrics and media pandering.”

Deonne’s smile grew warmer and larger. “Then your score can only go up, can’t it?”

* * * * *

The meeting was creeping toward the three hour mark.

Deonne understood that Justin would not openly acknowledge her in this room full of the most powerful vampires on the planet, but it was straining her patience to sit next to him for so long and
not
be able to touch him or talk to him or let down her professional guard and just relax against him. It had been so long since she had seen him. Weeks, by her subjective time line.

The discussion around the room had moved on to Gabriel’s military and political objectives, which meant Deonne could relax just a little, the heat and focus off her. She slid back onto the bench beside Justin and let her thigh rest against his.

What was it about him that drew her attention so powerfully? He was so utterly not her type of man. She had always considered her preference in men to run toward the sophisticated, polished, urbane man. She liked professional men who wore designer suits and high fashion clothes, who knew the difference between scotch and whiskey and cared. Men who had not just a career, but possibly a business or maybe even a small empire to call their own.

In the last year, Justin Edward Kelly had turned that presumption upside down and inside out.

He wasn’t even human and that right there, if she was keeping score at all, was something that her father would have a fatal coronary infarction over, if she had still been telling him such details…or talking to him at all.

Justin looked anything but sophisticated, despite occasionally wearing designer suits. He wore them well, but he always looked at odds wearing them, like he would be far more at ease in the shirts and stockman trousers he favored. He was a rangy Australian, with broad shoulders, far-seeing grey eyes that in the right light looked silver, and dirty blonde hair that was almost brown, that sometimes Deonne suspected he lopped off with the wide-bladed knife he often kept tucked in the top of his boot.

Despite working and living in Sydney, he seemed to exhale the countryside into any room he was sitting in.

He was a walking portrait of rough, unfinished edges, so why had he even drawn her eye? Deonne was normally repelled by such uncouth men. They spelled trouble. Their attitude toward women were usually undeveloped and as unsophisticated as their palettes.

Except something ancient lurked in the back of Justin’s eyes. She had seen it the first day she had met him and it had been enough for her to not dismiss him out of hand. It may have been a hint of his vampire soul. She was still trying to work that out. But it had caught her attention and made her really look at him.

There were layers to Justin. No man who had lived for the centuries he had could possibly be as simple and uncut as he let himself appear to be.