Romani Armada (25 page)

There would be more of those types of vampires around here in the twenty-first century, before public exposure and political correctness forced them into more modern ways of thinking.

Deonne became aware, abruptly, of the thinness of the silk gown she was wearing and her nakedness beneath. She fought the impulse to pull the neck of the gown in closer around her throat. That would tell Daniel far too much about her state of mind.

He lifted a hand. “I’m not here to claim you,” he said, his voice flat. “I happen to think it is a barbaric philosophy and besides…” He smiled, his expression softening. “Even if I did believe you were
zayd
, I would find it most difficult to treat you as one, as beautiful and fiery as you are.”

Deonne shifted uneasily on her feet. “You really shouldn’t say such things,” she warned him.

“I should not compliment you?”

“Why did you come here?” Deonne demanded, deliberately shifting the conversation away from the line he was taking it.

Daniel laughed. He knew what she was doing, then. But he seemed to relent and let her have her way, for he leaned back against the door once more, his arms crossed.

For the first time, Deonne noticed that his shoulders were wide under the conservative shirt. Crossing his arms seemed to emphasize their width, by stretching the shirt over his dimensions.

She dropped her gaze to the floor.

“Why were you so relieved when I told you my name?” he asked.

Deonne jerked her head up to look at him, shocked. Of course, as a vampire, he would have detected every physiological change in her body. Her relief, which the average human would not have noticed, would have been as obvious as printing to him.

Once more, she kept her body and gestures and expression neutral as she tried to find a way to answer him.

“You’re very good at that,” he told her.

“At what?”

“Hiding minutiae that might give a vampire answers you don’t want to share. You’re very…enclosed.”

Deonne had never before considered that the skills of her profession would make her intriguing to vampires. Was that why Justin had been drawn to her? She would have to remember to ask him.

“Of course, you didn’t know I was vampire before, so you weren’t shielding as well as you might,” Daniel added. “I found it very curious that you would be relieved. I confess I cannot fathom why this might be so. That is what drove me here. That, and your lover’s absence. I am concerned, Dianne.”

Deonne forced herself to remain quite still, even though her heart jumped a little at the mention of her false name. She still wasn’t used to being Dianne Flynn, as she was in this time.

“You jumped,” Daniel said, his voice very low. “And when you gave me that name earlier tonight, you hesitated. Vampires use different identities all the time, not humans. Yet you are using one. Dianne is not your real name and you are not practiced at absorbing a new personality as we are.” He had lifted himself away from the door once more and his hands were by his sides. “You are masquerading as someone else, here in isolated and calm western China where western people retreat. It would be a perfect place to hide, if I had not come along.”

Deonne drew in a breath, trying to keep it slow and steady. She was shaking. How easily he had seen through her! How pathetic was she, that the first person to take anything more than superficial interest in her saw the truth immediately?

He took a step forward. Not a big step. But he was shifting on his feet as some emotion was building in him. He was drawing close to the truth that had bought him here.

“You lied about your name,” he told her. “You are hiding the facts about your vampire lover. My name seems to please you because of what it is not. These are intriguing facts. I want to know more.”

Sweet lady Jane!
Deonne realized she was chewing at her lip. She had let her attention lapse.

And Daniel was watching her, observing every little slip.

She lifted her chin and squared her shoulders. “There is no more. Not for you.”

He inched a little closer. His eyes seemed to grow larger. “I will not stay away. Not while your lover leaves you exposed thus.”

“I don’t need protection,” she shot back. “And I think it is time for you to leave.”

He smiled broadly. “I will let you get your beauty sleep.” He opened the door and looked over his shoulder. “But I
will
be back, my fascinating one.”

Chapter Nineteen

Liping Village, East Yunnan Province, China, 2054 A.D.:
Deonne had barely started in on the monstrously long list of tasks she needed to do when she got her first drop-in. She knew it wouldn’t be the last. She would have dozens of visitors during the day, each with a complaint or a request. So she looked up with a pleasant smile as the door opened, determined to be positive about the interruption.

Daniel James stepped in, looking around and sizing up the place curiously.

Deonne leapt to her feet, jarring her thighs against the desk and shoving it across the tiled floor with a scraping sound that made her wince.

“How did you find me?” she demanded.

“And good morning to you, too,” he replied with a smile. “Your pheromones are quite unique. Delicious, in fact.” He gave a shrug with one shoulder. “I followed your trail.” He looked around the room once more. “You work here?”

“I
am
working. You’re interrupting me.” She sat down again and rubbed her thighs under the desk.

Daniel strode over to the desk and pulled the hard wooden chair out from the wall and sat in front of her. “This compound is not very secure. I walked through and no one challenged me. There are no locks anywhere.”

“This is Liping. No one locks their doors.”

“Against burglars, no, they don’t. But you have a different sort of animal after you.”

“That would be you, then?” she asked sweetly.

His smile was filled with amusement. Even his eyes lit up with good cheer. “Alas, no. Not with your absent lover lurking in every thought you have and breath you take. I would like to go after him, though, and beat sense into him. It offends me that he would leave you vulnerable in this way.”

“You can’t,” she said quickly.

“I know.” He laid his hands flat on the edge of her desk. His fingers were long and slender, even though his hands were large and the wrists strong. Fine fingers, good for delicate work.

Deonne ripped her mind away from the path it was taking and focused it back onto the conversation. “I really do need to work,” she said, touching the pile of documents — actual paper documents — sitting next to her elbow.

“Permit me one question and then I will allow you to go back to work.”

“
Allow
?” she repeated.

He smiled. “My presence is not allowing you to work, no? If I remove myself, I will be allowing you to work.”

Deonne gripped her hands together tightly behind the desk. “Ask, then.”

He spread his fingers across the desk. “I have given much thought to you and your missing lover.”

“I wish you wouldn’t call him that,” Deonne muttered.

Daniel’s smile this time was broad and full of delight. “Then it is a man. I was right.”

Deonne grimaced at how stupid she was for slipping on something so obvious. She had to be more careful with what she was saying. She most definitely had to watch what she said to Daniel. He already knew or was divining far too much about her that was true. To give herself time to recover, she picked up her cup of green tea and sipped it slowly.

Daniel’s smile stayed in place. “I have thought a lot about you and your…what would you prefer I call him?”

“Call him what you want. It makes no difference to me.”

“He has a name. What harm is there in giving it to me?”

Deonne hesitated. Giving him Justin’s name would feel like she was giving in. It was a compromise she wasn’t ready to make. She lied instead. “Edward,” she told Daniel, giving Justin’s middle name. It had been his father’s name, the only thing of his father Justin’s mother had been able to give him. She also knew that Justin had used Edward as his travelling name, the very few times he had jumped back. “Good for all eras, most countries and most occasions,” Justin had explained. “While Justin wasn’t popular until Victorian times.”

Daniel nodded. “Edward. A fine name. Just as Dianne is a fine name.” He laughed again. He seemed to be enjoying himself enormously, even though he clearly knew she was lying.

“You have a question to ask,” she reminded him.

His smile faded. “I have lived for six hundred years and I have travelled to many places and met many people. I like stories, Dianne. I grew up listening to stories told around the fire, stories that came from far and wide. I no longer have a family to sit with around the fire, who will tell stories or listen to them. But I collect stories anyway. It is a remnant of my humanity and I like it.” He gave her a brief smile that didn’t touch his eyes. His gaze was locked on her face. “I heard a story, long ago, about vampires who can pass through time.”

Deonne breathed through her shock and dismay. She gave the same small shrug he had. “A story. So?”

He nodded. “I would have passed it off as entertainment, also. Except once I had heard about these time travelers, I could not
stop
hearing about them. You know how, once your mind has been attuned to notice a thing, you will see that thing everywhere you go?”

Deonne nodded, for she knew exactly what he meant.

His eyes were grave as he considered her. “I don’t think they were stories at all. I think they were rumors and whispers in the wind, of something that everyone, even vampires, knew was forbidden.”

“Forbidden?” Deonne questioned. “Why forbidden?”

Daniel placed his hands back on the desk again, flat for emphasis. “If such vampires exist and if they do move through time, then they are juggling with the very essence of our existence. I have studied physics in my time, among other things. Physicists have a deep and abiding respect for time and its effect on the universe. They know it is a force they cannot and should not interfere with. Yet these vampires who travel through time are doing exactly that.”

Deonne kept her best neutral expression in place, while her heart raced. Did he know, or was he fishing?

He sat back, relaxing, his hands resting on his knees and smiled at her. “I do not wish to trouble you with such fairy tales, but they speak to the heart of my question.” He didn’t move, but his gaze was anchoring hers, holding it captive. “Are you from the future? That is my question.”

Deonne had been braced for the question so she didn’t jump. “The
future
?” she repeated, injecting incredulity into her voice.

Daniel didn’t blink. “There was a man, long ago, who said ‘Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.’ I have spent all night stripping away the impossible. There are no other answers left that address everything that is odd, different and wrong about you.”

Deonne wanted to know what was odd and wrong, but asking would keep this very dangerous conversation going. So instead, she tried to shut it down. “Time travel is just what you said it was. A fairy story. I’m sorry, Daniel, but I really am very busy.” She pushed at the pile of paper next to her once again.

He didn’t move. “Your clothes are wrong,” he said flatly. “I have spent centuries learning how to blend in with humans and not be noticed as a stranger, so I have learned to take a great deal of time and effort over trivialities like clothing and accessories. Humans accept people who look exactly like them. It reassures them.”

Deonne realized she was smoothing down her trousers along her thigh and grasped her hands together to stop the telling reaction. She
had
dressed in twenty-third century clothing this morning. The trousers and shirt were very plain and close enough in cut and details to current fashions. No one had ever commented on her clothing when she had worn them before. Daniel was the first one to notice.

“You’re close enough to current styles, but the fabric is wrong. So are the fastenings, which…” He frowned, his gaze running over her shirt, all he could see from where he was sitting. “...I’ve never seen before,” he finished. “The buttons are false and I don’t recognize what lies beneath them, keeping the shirt closed.”

It was an anti-static fastener, but Deonne kept her teeth together and stared at him, trying to look bored.

“I just couldn’t think of a reason why any vampire would leave you, of all people, alone and unprotected. You would not be with a man so self-concerned he would abandon you. Ergo, any man you choose to keep company with would ensure that you were safe and would not leave your side unless he had no other choice.”

Daniel gave her a brief smile. “Your name has no history anywhere on the net. I searched last night. It is impossible these days to avoid leaving some sort of trace. That confirms your name is not your real identity.”

Deonne shifted on her chair. “You have asked your question. Why are you still here?”

“You didn’t answer it.”

“Yes I did. I said it was a fairy story.” She picked up her pen and pulled the bundle of papers that were on top of the pile over in front of her.

“Your Edward can’t be here because he’s somewhere in the future,” Daniel said.

Deonne sighed. Loudly. She kept her gaze on the paper in front of her, even though she was not focused on it.

“I don’t know why you’re here in this time,” Daniel continued, as if she hadn’t made a sound, “But your Edward remains in the future because for him to be here would be dangerous for you. That is the only reason a man you would be with would stay away.”

“Perhaps I’m with a first class bastard who doesn’t give a damn?” Deonne suggested.

“That does not preclude him being from the future,” Daniel pointed out.

“Naturally, he would not be from the future. That is a physical impossibility.”

“Is it? The stories I heard spoke of vampires able to travel through time with nothing more powerful than their own minds.”