Department 57: Rubies of Fire Read online

  Another chuckle.

  “We notice just fine. We just don’t act on it.”

  Fuck. Fabrice Germain was a Sorcerer. Even worse, if he chose to stay a virgin, that meant he was the most powerful of their kind. Fabrice would make her in a minute.

  They had to know she sat here, listening in. That was why she’d tracked Constant so easily. He’d let her. Their encounter in the elevator didn’t have anything to do with it. He’d picked up her presence back at his apartment and let her in to see what she would do. Let her follow him, let her in on their conversation, so the Sorcerer could latch on to her and perhaps even read her. They wouldn’t let her go. If Germain wanted it, he could kill her with a thought.

  Roz swallowed, concentrating on controlling her rising panic, and slid out of their minds slowly, a fraction at a time. If she could get away without them noticing, she could flash—teleport—back to her apartment. Flashing exhausted her, but she’d be safe at home. Constant hadn’t been to her apartment yet. He wouldn’t dare flash to an unknown place for fear of landing in the middle of a piece of furniture or even a person. Vampires flashed blind, and unless they knew precisely where they were going, it could mean instant death. But no one would be in her room, and she knew it well.

  She could do it. Just a matter of slipping into the bathroom and flashing from there.

  Watching the men carefully, aware that hunter had just turned into prey, Roz moved to the end of the seat and glided out of her place. She kept her attention on the two men, who looked at each other, seemingly unaware of her presence.

  Forcing herself to move slowly, she headed for the bathroom, walking around the small and sparsely populated dance floor to avoid passing the two men.

  The only sense she dared use was empathic, sensing their presence, making sure they didn’t move or watch her as she worked on keeping her pace steady and unhurried.

  A strong, male hand clamped over her shoulder and turned her around, pushing her against the wall.

  Before she could catch her breath, a hard mouth slammed over hers, preventing any cry she might have made for help, and a voice she knew well commanded her mind. “Say anything and I’ll knock you out cold. Come with me. I need to talk to you.”

  He flashed them to an alley. She felt the wind whip around them and sensed they hadn’t gone far. If he’d flashed, then he would be at least momentarily weak. She pulled away only to feel herself dragged back.

  “So tell me what you were doing watching me and my friend so closely?” Andreas Constant demanded.

  She glared at him. “How on earth did you do that?”

  “Do what?”

  “I kept tabs on you while I was walking to the restroom. You and your friend were still sitting at the table. How did you move without me tracking you?”

  “You haven’t met many Sorcerers, have you?”

  Her brows went up. “No.”

  “He kept the illusion for me while I followed you.”

  The sound came into both their minds simultaneously. “Incoming! Prepare for attack!”

  Andreas sprang back and pressed against the wall, gaze darting to either side of them. “I see them. Roz, we have company. Truce.”

  “Truce,” she agreed tensely.

  Dark figures slipped around the corner, three, maybe four. They weren’t friendly shadows.

  Roz dropped into the pose her karate master had taught her. Beside her, Andreas did the same, but she felt an aura of danger emanate from him, terrifying if he’d aimed it at her.

  “You want something?” he asked, his tone deceptively mild.

  “Your wallet, for a start.”

  Immediately Roz felt a piercing pain. Psychic attack, like fingernails down a chalkboard, paralyzed her senses for a brief moment. Long enough for them to attack.

  A swift blow to the side of her head knocked her aside, but she recovered, snapping up her mental defenses as she should have done at the start of the fight. No time to scold herself for her stupidity, but she felt it just the same, embarrassment curling hotly through her body.

  Her slip helped psych her up. Her job didn’t involve regular combat, but vampires were always on guard. One of their attackers held something that glinted in the light, smaller than a knife. She didn’t stop to identify it, just assessed the distance between the hand and her foot. Then there was no distance at all as she kicked out and struck the object away. She didn’t hear it fall, because by then Andreas was roaring in pure fury.

  She spun when an attacker would have grasped her arm, twisting out of his grip and completing the spin with a hard kick. Satisfaction flooded her when she met soft flesh. The man dropped to the ground with a grunt.

  She took the time to read him. Mortal.

  No one else came for her, and when she looked up, she saw why. Andreas whirled in the center of attack by at least three, but behind him, Fabrice Germain had joined the fray, lashing out with hands and feet in a perfect, balanced display. They stood between her and their assailants, fending them off until, in a brief hiatus, Fabrice stood up and focused.

  “Get out of here!”

  She felt the power grow, building high, and knew if she didn’t get Andreas away quickly, they would suffer, even die, with the others. Fabrice Germain had staggering mental powers. He would stun or kill the assailants with one blinding mind attack. At the moment, she didn’t much care which.

  She grabbed Andreas, making the necessary physical contact, and flashed them out just as a massive wave of telepathy hit her.

  Chapter Three

  The first sense to return to him was smell. Light and pleasant without overpowering him, a welcome change after the stuffy, alcohol-laden air of the nightclub and the stench of the alley. His sight cleared to show him Roz. She stared at him, her eyes wary. He was crowding her. He stepped back, watching her. He’d felt the power Fabrice sent out, but only the edge of it. She seemed fine. Her reactions had certainly been good.

  He glanced around, not surprised to find himself in a bedroom. Although the room wasn’t deeply feminine, he saw a few clues, like the brushes and bottles on the vanity, that meant a woman used it. Roz obviously didn’t go in for frills. He took a refreshing breath and turned his attention back to her. “Are you okay?”

  She took a deep breath, much as he had done. “Sure. People attack me in alleys every day.”

  “Did you read them?”

  “Skimmed. Did you?”

  He frowned. He hadn’t liked what he’d had time to read, and he didn’t want to discuss it until he’d found out what Fabrice had extracted. “Yeah. As much as I could. Fabrice will search them more thoroughly before he leaves, if the cops don’t arrive first.”

  “Your friend’s a virgin Sorcerer.”

  He smiled, nice and slow, letting the shady office Lothario back for a final visit. “You’ve got the tiger by the tail here, sweetheart. Well worked out. There aren’t too many virgin Sorcerers around, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised you haven’t met one before. The Department has tabs on most of them.”

  “What?” He watched her assessing, rejecting, and finally accepting. She had no choice. “So Department 57 didn’t throw you out after all?”

  His smiled broadened. “Is that what they’re saying? Good. That’s what we wanted them to think. We had to reduce Diane, Cristos’s PA to victim status, which she doesn’t like a bit.”

  “Why did you meet Germain tonight? Couldn’t you have contacted him telepathically?”

  He grimaced. She was too quick. “He had something to give me, but he made you as soon as you walked in, so you had no chance. Roz, you have to keep your thoughts to yourself better. Some lab somewhere has developed a detector for telepathic communication, based on a sonic wave formation.” He pushed his hand into his jacket pocket, feeling the reassuring cool, smooth barrel of the syringe, the “thing” Fabrice had to give him. In fact a device to be injected subcutaneously that would jam any psi detectors reaching him. “Apart from the new device, you never k
now who’s listening in.”

  She blinked. “We’re usually very careful.”

  “Most Talents can pick something up, especially the ones who have bothered to train. A trace, a wave, a prickle on the nerve endings. The Department trains us to close down completely, to strengthen our shields. It also trains us to pick up traces of psi communication. I don’t like the idea of you running around broadcasting to anyone who can listen.” He stopped, surprised by his own emotions. He really did care about her risking danger, although she could still be the enemy. Not all vampires worked for the good side. Her support in the alley could have been simple self-defense.

  He’d have to take her in to the Department. “You’re Roz Templeton, a vampire of the Gardiner family. I read that in the elevator. So what are you doing in the DIB? Who sent you, and what do you want?” He shot her a curious glance. “We might be able to work together.”

  “You first.”

  He took a step closer and felt an unaccustomed pang of guilt at the flash of alarm he felt in her before she suppressed it.

  This was part of his job. Not something to feel guilty about. Lives depended on him discovering all he could about the DIB before he had to pull out.

  The double entendre had him thinking about something other than work. His behavior to Roz hadn’t been playacting. He wanted to touch her, felt an unaccustomed streak of protectiveness for her. More than all the other women in the DIB that he’d dated, flirted with, or kissed. That was why he’d left her till last, but being aware of his vulnerability didn’t negate it. He would have to work through it. He’d done worse before. So why did this touch him more than usual?

  Slowly he lifted his lip and let her see the bulges above his eyeteeth, the buds every vampire had, the place the fangs withdrew to when they weren’t in use.

  He watched her eyes widen and heard her gasp. “You’re a vampire?”

  He relaxed his lip and nodded. “All my life.”

  Then he opened his mind, just at the first level. “You should be able to read me now.”

  He closed his eyes when she entered his mind for the first time, feeling her soft, inquiring presence like a shy entrant to a new place. The urge to keep her there, to feel her caressing him inside, invaded him. He knew what she would say before she said it, and telepathy had nothing to do with it. Every vampire he’d ever met said almost the same thing. “Where’s your sigil?”

  The family insignia, the sigil branded on every vampire’s mind at the time he came into maturity. A sign of identification for other Talents to read. The usual pang went through him, the aching loss when anyone mentioned it. “I don’t have one.”

  “The Department removed it?”

  He saw the shock in her eyes. Vampires were still clannish, and some never lost the old ways of family rivalry and blood feuds. Walking around without a family sigil meant you were on your own. No one to protect you, no place to hide.

  “I have no family, Roz.”

  Her eyes rounded, and she turned away from him. She walked slowly to the bed and sat down on the edge, the soft lavender fabric of her comforter curling gently around her like a lover’s welcome. “How is that possible? All vampires have family. We couldn’t survive without it.”

  He stayed where he was, but something inside him mourned that she was now across the room from him and not gifting him with her proximity. “Some of us don’t.”

  “You’re a renegade?”

  He grinned tightly. “Never had a chance.”

  “You were turned out?”

  He shook his head. “Never had a family to be turned out of.”

  She frowned, staring at him. “I don’t understand.”

  “I’m an orphan.”

  He hated the pity he saw in her. He’d do anything to take that away.

  She leaned toward him, her bed linen rustling as she moved. The sound sent a pang of want through his body. He wanted to help her make a good rustle. Not the time now, though it was surely the right place. “We could look. My family could help. It’s one of the most powerful.”

  “No. We tried that. I have no family, and that’s all. Perhaps someone somewhere is mourning a child. Vampire children are rare, so they were sure they could find my family. They never did.” He stepped back and leaned against the wall, folding his arms in front of his chest. “Don’t waste your time, Roz. Enough people have tried and failed.”

  “It doesn’t seem right—that’s all.”

  He shrugged away the trouble that had plagued his teens until he’d learned to move on. The inner yearning for a place of his own, a family of his own, never went away, but he’d spent too many years longing for something he couldn’t have. “Don’t worry about me. I’ve survived on my own.” He pushed away from the wall. “We have other things to sort out. Like what are you doing working at the DIB?”

  “You’re coming from Department 57, right?” Her stare was as determined and as hard as his must be. She’d be fatigued after flashing, but she was hiding it well.

  “Right.”

  “Well, I’m from the Gardiners. The bodies of two vampires turned up in California six years ago. They’d been tortured, tortured clinically. That meant there must be a laboratory in the area, one of those sick places that don’t consider vampires as human, don’t even consider them as sentient. Remember Knox telling you about that explosion on the top floor of a department store in the center of San Francisco? Bernard says it was the Department 57 office. That can’t be a coincidence.”

  She looked at him questioningly, and he gave her a curt nod. “I was there when it happened. It wasn’t good. They didn’t care who they killed to get to us, and as it happens, more humans died than Talents.”

  Roz fell silent. He could guess what she was thinking about, deep down where he wouldn’t go unless she invited him. Or unless she forced him to it. Gardiners had died, and no one had paid for it. Vampires were big on revenge.

  She looked up at him, determination in her narrowed eyes and in the tight line of her mouth. “We couldn’t discover much. Someone covered it all up, but one of the victims used to work at the DIB when it was based in Langley. It was all we had to go on. I’ve worked at the DIB for the past five years along with Nancy. The family contacted us when they needed help.”

  He sighed heavily. Wasted effort and worse. Amateurs made the job harder. And infinitely more dangerous. “If I tell you what happened, you can go tell your family, right?”

  “I guess.” She watched him, eyes quiet. He did her the courtesy of not probing her mind. She would know he was doing it, and it might make her mad. He needed to control this situation, not make it more of a fuckup than it already was.

  “Bernard Knox told you the facts as he saw them. In San Francisco, we were on to the lab and searching for it. The firebomb was a little diversion, something to take our attention away for the time they needed, but it didn’t work.” He paused and sighed. “Not completely. We found the lab and closed it. ‘We’ being Department 57, in case there was any doubt in your mind.” He looked away. The memories of the things he had seen got to him sometimes, mostly at dawn when the sun came up and his vampire powers left him for another day. At that time his kind was at its most vulnerable.

  He heard the rustle of fabric as she stood up, felt her hand gentle on his arm, softly comforting. “It was bad?”

  “The worst.” He pushed the images out of his mind, as he’d done many times before. He couldn’t do his job with those thoughts to weaken him. Anger and sorrow could blur his judgment, something he couldn’t afford. “We discovered a sonic field that senses and inhibits telepathic communication. The lab was for experimentation on Talents. They hadn’t developed the sonic field there. We have to shut that discovery down before the technology spreads, before it becomes well known. We’re sure it’s still in its experimental stage, though God knows how it works. I’m a member of the team with the assignment.” The warmth of her hand seeped through to his flesh, comforting him, reminding him he wasn�
��t alone. “I have a contact, and you know who that is. His psi powers are awesome, much greater than mine, and he could have gone through the DIB much faster than I have, but we couldn’t risk the mass scan. Not with that device in the wild. Cristos brought me in from solitary field activity to work with the teams a year ago.”

  “Cristos.”

  “Yeah. My boss. He’s not going to be pleased when he hears about this wrinkle.”

  “I’m a wrinkle?”

  “And then some.” He turned his head to look at her and caught his breath. She was so close, so lovely, and he wanted her so much. Now he knew they were the same kind, resistance seemed totally useless.

  So he gave up resisting and bent his head to kiss her.

  THE FIRST TOUCH of his lips told Roz this wasn’t going to be like before, no quick softening of her outer defenses so he could steal in and spy on her inner thoughts. He meant this. His mouth played softly on hers with a seductive touch she let herself enjoy.

  He lifted his head without ravaging her, as he had that morning. Roz become aware of a pang of disappointment. She stared up into his face and the wry smile that quirked his lips.

  “You were expecting something rougher, maybe?”

  She nodded, not trying to hide her reaction, and smoothed her hands under his jacket, over the back of his dark shirt, stilling when she noticed something unusual. “It’s silk.”

  “Yeah. I prefer silk and natural fabrics. My skin’s too sensitive for anything else. The artificial fabrics I wear to work irritate me to hell, especially in the daytime.” He grinned. “Not the right image for a rough, tough vampire, eh?”

  “Why do you do it? Wear the suits?”

  He pressed his lips to her forehead. “Do you know how good you taste, Roz? I do it because it’s my job. I’m an agent working undercover. I’m the office tomcat, a lazy worker who never fulfilled his potential. That kind of man wouldn’t wear designer clothes and expensive garments. He’d wear what he could afford.”

  “Wow, you go in deep.”

  “I have to.”