Chapter Twenty-Four
Nial stood waiting on the inside of the closed and barred door to the reception area when Sebastian got there.
“You’re you,” Nial said mildly, looking at his hair. He had left the wig off.
“It’s late. No one is up except us. You called me and Garrett, so this is our business, not movie business. Everyone in the hangar is very nearly family anyway.” Sebastian shrugged. “And as you keep saying, in a while, it’s really not going to matter, anyway.”
“But for now, it does.”
“Not tonight. Even the watchmen don’t know who we are. Back off, Nial. I thought it through.”
“Very well, then,” Nial agreed. “In that case.” He drew Sebastian closer and kissed him. It wasn’t a light peck, either.
Sebastian gripped the shoulder of Nial’s shirt for balance. “Gach na naoimh...” he murmured.
“Ego desiderari vobis, dilectus meus.” Nial sighed. “More than I anticipated,” he added. “Being the watchdog means I am as guarded as the one I’m guarding.”
“That makes three of us,” Sebastian replied. “Winter was at Garrett’s beck and call and now she is always with her people.”
Nial cupped his cheek. “Be happy for her, Bastian.”
“I am. But she’s learning how to be like them. Vicent tossed us around the room like we were chopsticks, that first day.”
“Your point?”
Sebastian shifted on his feet. “I don’t like it.”
Nial grinned. “You don’t like not being the most powerful species on the planet anymore. Get used to it, Sebastian.” He reached for the bar on the door. “Ready?”
“I suppose.”
Nial slid the bar aside and opened the door. Sebastian stepped through and Nial locked it behind them.
The reception area was lit with minimal lighting – enough for the watchmen to find their way about. The guard who had come to find Nial and bring him to the front sat on the low secretary’s desk in the front corner of the area. The desk was never used, but it was nicely placed for the guard, now, to keep an eye on the only other occupant in the reception area.
The man was nearly as tall as Nial, but slightly leaner. He stood with arms relaxed at his sides. He showed no signs of impatience even though he had been waiting at least twenty minutes.
In casual L.A. where jeans and tee-shirts were the norm everywhere but on the red carpet, he looked out of place. He wore formal trousers and a lightweight dark-coloured coat that Sebastian immediately spotted as English tailoring. It made him think of stodgy old clubs, executive dining rooms, banks that probably looked the same today as they did fifty years ago, and an old boys network of influential businessmen and peers that ran most of Britain.
He shuddered at the memories it raised.
The man looked from Nial to Sebastian, then back to Nial with a pair of very black eyes, but his expression didn’t change. He had the clear, pale skin of an Englishman, high defined cheekbones and a narrow black beard and moustache that framed the edge of his face and mouth.
Nial looked at the guard. “I know this man. You can leave us. I can vouch for him and I won’t take him beyond this room.”
The guard nodded. “Okay. I’ll be just beyond the door, then.” He got to his feet and left, shutting the door behind him.
“Given the Latin and Irish I heard you both speak just before you came through the door,” the man said, “I can safely assume that you are Nathaniel and Sebastian, but you are moving under assumed names in this...” he glanced around the room with a flicker of his eyes. “Edifice.” He spoke with a rich, deep baritone, his words delivered in the crisp cadences of an educated Englishman. The movement of his head brought some of the long locks of his shining black hair sliding over his shoulder, to rest against his chest. He ignored them and stared at Nial.
“Cyneric,” Nial said. Sebastian couldn’t figure out if he was speaking the name as a curse or in fear.
“We’ve no time for sentimental greetings, Nathanial.” Cyneric turned and walked toward the glassed-in front door. “You’ve made my employer wait quite long enough with your petty attempt at one-up-manship. Come along.”
Nial turned and followed, pulling out his cellphone and thumbing a text message one handed as he moved, the phone down by his thigh.
Sebastian barely managed to avoid jumping as his own phoned vibrated. He fished it out unobtrusively and scanned the screen.
Rick dangerous. Caution!
A cold finger ran up Sebastian’s spine, from his tailbone to the base of his skull. As it rippled upwards, all the hairs along his back tried to stand upright.
A year ago, Sebastian would have rated Nial as the most dangerous being in the world, or close to it. Three days ago, Nial had been tossed about Garrett’s trailer by a Curandero and he had laughed that off.
Now he was warning Sebastian to be careful around this Cyneric character. Warning him.
Who the hell was this guy?
* * * * *
A black stretch limousine sat still, silent and with its lights off, parked against the curb in the tow-away zone in front of the hangar’s freight entrance.
Cyneric opened the back door and waved Nial and Sebastian inside. He smiled, showing even, white teeth and absolutely no humour.
Nial faced him across the open doorway and motioned Sebastian into the limousine. “After you, Sebastian,” he said quietly.
“Your caution is quite unnecessary,” Cyneric said, his smile growing. “You are under the protection of my employer and have been for two days.”
Since the photo hit the newswires, Sebastian calculated. Two days ago, it would have reached Britain.
He ducked between the pair of them, the skin on his back crawling, and made his way into the limousine. Nial had his back. It was a reassuring thought.
A woman sat on the glowing leather bench seat behind the driver, her knees crossed and her calves angled at a perfect forty-five degrees. She wore conservative shoes, a dress that Sebastian suspected was some sort of silk, definitely designer and possible haute couture, in a dark moss green that matched her eyes.
Her hair was pulled back into a neat French twist. It looked as if it was a chestnut colour.
“You were the other one in the photo,” she said.
“Guilty,” Sebastian agreed.
She pointed to the long seat running under the windows, down the side of the car. “You may sit there.”
There was one other seat near her – a single seat next to the other windows, which left enough room to slide through to the bench where the woman sat. The seat was the only single chair in the car. It faced the woman and reminded Sebastian of the tales of the Round Table and the Perilous Chair and the fate of all who had dared sit in it.
Sebastian settled on the bench opposite the lonely chair.
Nial eased passed him.
“You sit there.” The woman pointed to the chair.
Nial sat and leaned forward, studying her.
Cyneric shut the door of the limousine and sat next to Sebastian. He leaned sideways and tapped the glass separating them from the driver.
There was an almost silent purr as the engine started. The limousine swayed gently as it pulled away from the curb.
The woman glanced at Cyneric.
“They are Nathanial and Sebastian, as you suspected.” He lifted the padded lid of the bar next to him and began mixing a drink, his hands moving with practised ease. “They are lovers, perhaps even married and living in a ménage with a woman called Winter. She is Curandero and has just discovered her heritage. The Curandero are teaching her now. Nathaniel believes the time for disguises will soon be at an end. Coupled with the rumours we gathered of events in New York last year, I would say that Nathanial is planning to announce the existence of vampires to the world at large. That is backed up by the fact that the Curandero did not wipe his memory when they first tracked down his wife and they teach her openly, in front of her husbands. He is sure enough of his mission he has managed to convince them it is feasible.” Cyneric gave a one-sided smile. “Passionate so often provides filler when intelligence is missing.”
Nial brought his fingertips together and rested them against his lips. Sebastian knew the gesture of old. He was hiding his real reactions. Holding them all back behind a mask of artificial calm.
Sebastian took a deep breath and let all his angst drop into a deep black pool and calm wash over him. He had to take his cues from Nial for now. He was completely out of his depth. There was too much information he didn’t have that he needed to be able to make any sort of decision. Nial knew more.
But Nial had been around a lot longer than he.
Nial didn’t even look at Cyneric. It was as if the man hadn’t spoken. The vampire. For Sebastian had him registered now. He had no scent and no blood markers. Sebastian could hear no heartbeat. The man was vampire.
The woman was vampire, too. She was studying Nial with odd intensity. “Do you know who I am?” She had an accent that Sebastian had never heard before. He might have called it mid-European, except it wasn’t. His instincts said it was very old.
“I could guess,” Nial replied.
“Most of the blood calls me Khurshid.”
Nial nodded. “Then my guess was correct. It is an honour, madam.”
“I’m glad you think it so.”
Cyneric handed her a martini glass, complete with an olive and curl of lemon skin. She smiled her thanks at him and wrapped a perfectly manicured hand around the elegant glass. The liquid shifted inside as the limousine rounded a corner. Sebastian watched the glass, fascinated.
“I don’t like to travel,” Khurshid told Nial. “It takes me away from my things. You have made me travel, Nathaniel Aquila Valerius Aurelius.”
Nial sat back. Sebastian saw his chest lift as he breathed deeply. He was on the defensive.
Then Khurshid lifted the glass to her lips and drank half the martini in one long mouthful. She licked her lips and put the glass down on the coaster, on the flat table top next to her. “Perfect as always, thank you,” she told Cyneric. Cyneric nodded and closed the lid of the bar and sat back.
Sebastian found his gaze flickering between the half-empty martini glass and Khurshid. He really had seen her drink it.
Khurshid settled her hands in her lap. The movement disturbed the hem of her dress, inching it higher, which revealed the lace of a slip beneath. Everything about her screamed of an elegance of days gone.
But Sebastian kept looking at the martini. She had powers they didn’t understand and couldn’t estimate.
“I’m sorry you feel you were inconvenienced,” Nial said, his tone polite. “But there was no need for you to stir yourself.”
“If I had not, others would.” She reached for the glass and sipped from it again. A long sip. “Are you professing no notion of what your games are stirring up, Nathanial?”
Nathaniel smiled. “I know exactly what…and who…I’m stirring, madam. That’s the point of these games.”
Cyneric gave a small sound, something like a sigh that was a mix of irritation and illumination. “He’s building himself a chessboard. He doesn’t like a hunting range.”
“Exactly,” Nathanial agreed.
“Explain,” Khurshid demanded.
“Chess is a game of perfect information,” Cyneric said. “The players know all the information there is to know about each other and their pieces. There are no secrets. That renders the game one of almost pure strategy. Nathanial believes that is a game he can win. A hunting range, on the other hand, hides everything including the hunter, more often than not. It’s a game of stealth and sometimes the players are not certain of who is in the game. That is what Nathaniel is trying to learn. Who is in the game.”
Nathaniel raised his brow.
“And how are you doing this?” Khurshid demanded. “Tell me.”
Nathaniel explained his game plan, designed to draw the individual members of the Pro Libertatis and the League for Humanity out into the open where they could identify them. He spoke for five minutes and during that time neither Khurshid nor Cyneric interrupted him once. They listened in absorbed silence.
When he had finished, Khurshid drained her martini glass and put it aside. “You do all this as preamble, before exposing the blood to humans. Did you not think to ask anyone if exposure was what they wanted? Did it not occur to you that the resistance you are experiencing from your brethren is a vote ‘no’?”
Nathaniel leaned forward. “With all due respect, madam Khurshid, the Pro Libertatis have not voted ‘no’. They have voted ‘not yet’. But the timetable I am following is not of my choosing.”
Cyneric snorted. “Let me guess. Humans and their technological ways are going to be the undoing of us all. Let’s put ourselves ahead of the inevitable.”
“Yes,” Nathaniel agreed quietly.
“And there we have the measure of his foolishness,” Cyneric said to Khurshid, his tone withering.
But Nathanial didn’t look at Cyneric. His gaze was locked on Khurshid. “You haven’t asked about the timetable that was forced on me,” he said.
Khurshid dismissed it with a wave of her hand. “We are of the blood. There are ways around human affairs, always.”
“Not this time,” Nial insisted. “The crisis is coming, madam. It’s about three years away, which gives us just over a year to do anything useful.”
Khurshid’s eyes narrowed. She didn’t like that. “What crisis?” she insisted.
Sebastian drew in a breath, anticipating Nial’s cue. Nial looked at him. “Sebastian?”
“The results of a research study completed by a trio of computer analysts at Harvard was published two years ago. It didn’t draw a lot of attention because it was six hundred pages of data analysis and two hundred pages of conclusions. I read it.”
Khurshid glanced at Cyneric.
Cyneric nodded. “The profile said he was a computer hack.”
“The study was based on a simple question. How many organizations collect data on individuals in one week? The analysts took samples around the world, from one hundred and fifty different countries. Simple, as I said, but quite profound, really. The results were startling even for them and they thought they had a fair idea to begin with. One of the more interesting tentative conclusions the study came to was that within ten years, an individual’s complete life would be digitally traceable, from the time they got up in the morning, to the time they went to bed.”
Khurshid grimaced.
“Ten years,” Cyneric clarified.
“Yes, but the authors qualified that estimate,” Sebastian told him. “They said that if technology went through another evolution similar to the Internet, then that time period could be shortened by fifty percent or more.”
“And such an evolution has happened while we were mid-air over the Atlantic?” Cyneric’s tone was withering.
“It’s about to,” Sebastian replied calmly, although his heart was hurrying along. Stress was straining it. “Every device in the world is about to be linked and be able to talk to each other with BlueTooth 4 technology.”
Khurshid blew out her breath impatiently.
“No, I’ve heard of it,” Cyneric said quietly. “I wasn’t aware of its potential.” He studied Sebastian. “It links everything?”
“A whole house can be automated and run by a cellphone. People can run their entire lives with a wristwatch. The degree to which humans will be plugged in and will be able to keep track of digital information will explode,” Sebastian replied.
“We won’t be able to dodge and hide behind redundancies and errors in the system anymore,” Nial concluded. “No one will.”
The silence in the car was total.
Khurshid looked at Cyneric. He pursed his lips. “They may have a point,” he said reluctantly.
Sebastian breathed more easily.
Khurshid pushed her empty glass at Cyneric, while looking at Nial. “Tell me more,” she ordered. “Tell me everything.”