Atlantis Redeemed Page 10

  “I don’t like it,” Jones said, his voice a tangle of dark and nasty things.

  Humans had been rumored to have gone mad just from the sound of Jones’s voice. Litton was unaffected, but for more bowing and scraping, thus strengthening Devon’s assumption that the man was already insane.

  “Why would we possibly waste time and effort with a human? We are near to our final goal of permanent enthrallment of the sheep and the shifters alike,” Jones continued, “thanks to this one and his colleagues. We have no need to perform like trained monkeys.”

  “I-I’m not a fan of the way you call humans ‘sheep,’” Litton dared to say, his voice shaking with either outrage or terror.

  “Of course you aren’t,” Devon said, suddenly tired of the entire game. But he had chosen this path long ago, and one of the disadvantages of his choice was the necessity of working with fools. “Are we ready?”

  “We’re ready to go forward with the next stage of human trials,” Litton protested. “We need more money for that. Lots more money. And Mr. Brennan has ten million dollars earmarked for us. He just wanted to be sure he was getting his money’s worth.”

  “A wise businessman,” Devon drawled. “Smarter than your average human, then.”

  Another of the eldest vampires spoke up. This one controlled much of the Pacific Northwest, now that Barabbas was gone. He styled himself Mr. Smith, either in homage to, or mockery of, Mr. Jones. “Why not just kill him and take his money? I have no taste for the job of humoring humans, and this century brings far too much of it.”

  “We brought that on ourselves, when we came out and let the sheep know we existed. Far better to have stayed in the shadows, as we have for thousands of years,” Jones snarled, his fangs down and glistening with spittle.

  Devon looked around the room, at each of them in turn, but skated his gaze past the far corner. Other than Smith and Jones, none of the vampires was willing to speak up and commit themselves to one plan of action or the other.

  “We’re ready to go forward,” Litton repeated. “Can we bring him to the lab tonight?”

  Before Devon could reply, a knock sounded at the door, which then opened to show Litton’s nervous assistant. “Excuse me, Dr. Litton? Um, sorry to bother you, sir, but we have a little problem.”

  “I told you not to interrupt me,” Litton snapped, gesturing frantically for the man to leave.

  Devon thought not. “Come in, please, Mr.—?”

  “Wesley, sir. Er, Your Lordship, um, sir,” the man babbled, sweat dotting his forehead and the sour smell of fear reeking from his every pore. “It’s Wesley.”

  “Well, Mr. Wesley, what do you have to tell us?”

  The man’s face contorted as he tried to keep all of the vampires and his employer in sight at the same time. “Uh, well, it’s about Mr. Brennan.”

  “What about Brennan?” Litton said, his voice shrill. “He’s here, you told me he was here. Did you give him his welcome packet?”

  “Yes, of course, but he wasn’t there.” Wesley twisted his hands together, his gaze darting nervously around the conference table. “I mean, he was in a room, but it wasn’t his room.”

  Litton rolled his eyes. “Then you take him to his room. What’s so urgent about that?”

  “We did, I mean, the front desk got him to his room, but it’s more who he was with than where he was, if you know what I mean.”

  Devon sighed. Wesley’s nervous grin was beginning to make him want to rip the man’s throat out. Not that he was particularly hungry or that Wesley was particularly appealing. It might make the babbling stop, though, and there was great merit in that.

  “Who, Wesley?” he said, to forestall any further images of dealing immediate death. “What companion has you so addled?”

  “The reporter, sir,” Wesley said. “Mr. Brennan was with that reporter, Tracy Baum, and she seemed awfully cozy with him, if you know what I mean.”

  The rodent-faced man beamed around the room, a leering let’s-be-men grin that failed to find its audience among the impatient vampires, who either ignored him or looked at him as one might a particularly aromatic pile of garbage.

  “This could be a problem,” Jones said. “Why is our reclusive billionaire having dealings with a reporter? Are you sure your research on this man was accurate, Devon?”

  Devon leaned back against the wall and folded his arms across his chest. “I am always accurate, Jones. This is why I have achieved all that I have. You would do well to remember that.”

  “Maybe she’s just his girlfriend,” Wesley said, his voice cracking mid-sentence. “You know, just a piece of ass for the—”

  “That will be enough, Wesley,” Devon interrupted. “Unless you want to have drinks with any of my friends?” He waved an arm at the vampires ringing the table and they leaned forward.

  “Or be a drink?” Smith said slyly.

  Wesley almost knocked Litton down in his haste to escape the room, and Devon allowed himself a grim smile.

  “Powerful men can control their women,” he said, knowing he would regret the remark later. She would be sure of that. “If there were any problem at all, Brennan’s previous activities and funding would have been front-page news. He knew full well that his first half million was earmarked for research into enthrallment; that’s why he gave it in the first place. So the woman is either his companion or simply a diversion. Either way, I cannot believe she will be a problem.”

  “I don’t like it,” Smith said.

  “You don’t like anything,” Devon countered. “I will have them followed at all times. If they step so much as a foot out of line, we will capture them and have them killed. This is a no-lose scenario for us. We have an eccentric human billionaire who wants to fund our research in hope that we will give him the gift of eternal life so that he will continue to be part of the ruling class after we take over. Either he will work with us, or we will enthrall him and he will be our puppet.”

  “I plan to kill him, eventually, either way,” Jones said, stabbing one long fingernail into the polished conference table and carving the letter J into the expensive wood. “I have no liking for these upstart humans.”

  Devon noticed Litton starting to back toward the door. “Do you concur, Doctor?”

  “What? Oh, yes. Completely. We need his money. Must get to the party. See you there.” With that, Litton all but ran out of the room after his assistant. When the door closed behind him, Devon sighed.

  “Perhaps we could refrain from the ‘let’s kill the upstart humans’ talk around the doctor who controls the research,” he said, biting off each word.

  “Why do we need Brennan, anyway? We have money,” whined one of the younger vamps who hadn’t spoken yet.

  “Good. You can pay for the damage to that table,” Devon said.

  Jones sneered.

  “More to the point, none of you wanted to risk your own money on these trials,” Devon pointed out. “And why should we, when we have willing sheep with money, standing ready to betray their own kind?”

  “You should be the next Primator,” Smith said. “I have no liking for politics, but you’re a natural at the game. If we’re going to be in it, we should be in it with someone who can manipulate the rules to our advantage. When the Americans changed their constitution to allow for a third house of Congress controlled entirely by our kind, they opened the door for total domination.”

  “They all but laid down and bared their necks,” Jones spat out, his lips peeled back from his teeth. “It’s our duty to accept their sacrifices.”

  “Perhaps, but one does not become leader of the Primus by murdering humans,” Devon said. “The next Primator must be seen as one who can work with them, or he will suffer the same fate as the last two have.”

  “Or she,” came a husky voice from the shadows of the far corner. “Perhaps a woman will become Primator this time.”

  Devon smiled, enjoying the way the champagne silk sheath hugged her curves as she stepped forward
into the light. “Of course, Deirdre. If any woman could do it, it would certainly be you, my darling.”

  She walked around the corner toward him, neither noticing nor acknowledging in any way the lustful and speculative glances from every other vampire in the room. He held out his hand and she took it, her fingers icy cold.

  “Shall we dance, my love?” she asked, tilting her head to the side and staring so deeply into his eyes that he almost shivered from the soulless despair in her own.

  “Absolutely,” he said, bending to kiss her hand. “Gentlemen, we will talk more tomorrow night. Until then.”

  Not bothering to wait for their agreement, he left the room, still holding Deirdre’s hand. The instant the door closed behind them, she snatched it back, and strode rapidly down the hallway.

  “Do you think you convinced them?” she said, a safe distance from vampire ears, compulsively wiping her hand on her dress and probably not even realizing she was doing it.

  He shrugged. “We’ll find out tomorrow. One way or another, this will go forward.”

  “Litton is a fool.”

  “Yes, but he’s a brilliant fool, and we need him.”

  She paused in the hallway just before stepping into the edge of light spilled from the ballroom doors. “I don’t like fools. They can’t be trusted to behave in a consistent manner.”

  “He’ll behave, or we’ll kill him. Is that consistent enough for you?”

  “Powerful men control their women? Is that really what you believe, vampire?” The ice in her voice was cold enough to freeze the entire world, and yet it only scratched the surface of who she was and what she had endured.

  Devon regretted it, but he could not change the past. If only he had that power, there were so many, many actions of his own and others he would undo. Not only vampires had regrets, however. He’d learned that painful lesson recently.

  “You know it is not what I believe,” he finally answered. “But I have a role to play, as do you.”

  A dead, humorless smile spread over her pale, pale face. “Then we dance.”

  Chapter 10

  Every muscle in Brennan’s body tightened as the first wave of hot, powerful jealousy washed over him. The ballroom was large, but the crowd was pressing in on him, the pounding bass of the music amplifying the pounding in his skull. Hundreds of humans, mostly male, all of them staring at Tiernan, or at least so it appeared to his feverish emotions.

  Staring at her. Lusting after her.

  They needed to die. Painfully. Slow, bloody deaths.

  She tightened her clasp on his hand as if she could sense how near he was to losing all control. “This will only work if you calm down,” she said, loudly enough to be heard over the music.

  “This would work, as you put it, much better if you were ugly or wore a cloak that covered you from head to toe,” he muttered. “I cannot be responsible for my actions if any of these men dare to touch you.”

  “Who else would be responsible?” she said, laughing at him. The sound of her laughter was like a beacon of light to the darkness of his existence, and it offered him a measure of much-needed calm.

  He swept his gaze from the shiny dark waves of her hair down to her smooth shoulders, lingered awhile on the delicious curves of her breasts, barely covered by the red silk of her gown, and then moved on to her womanly hips and long, long legs, until he reached the pointed toes of her silly shoes. “If we have to make a rapid exit, those shoes will be less than useful.”

  “Shoes can come off. Now, mingle. We need to mingle,” she said firmly, gently pulling her hand away. “I’ll stay in view, but I need to go be Tracy Baum. A reporter would not hang out in one place with her boyfriend, no matter how good he looks in his tux.”

  The term amused him. “I am more than two thousand years old, and in all that time, I have never been called anyone’s boyfriend.”

  She flashed a brilliant smile at him. “Stick with me, kid. You’ll have a new experience every day.”

  As she strode forward, somehow not even wobbling on those ridiculously high-heeled shoes, he felt a completely unfamiliar emotion sing through his veins. It felt like nothing he’d ever known, even before Poseidon’s curse, and it took him a full minute to realize what it was.

  Happiness. By all the gods, it was happiness.

  In the midst of a roomful of evil-intentioned scientists and surrounded by vampires who would cheerfully drain him if they knew who he really was, his emotions had stupidly, foolishly decided to settle on utter bliss.

  He suddenly realized his face felt strange, as though the skin were oddly stretched. He touched his cheek, only to discover that he was smiling. Again. He’d smiled more since he’d met Tiernan than he had in the past two millennia of his existence.

  She thought he looked good in his tux.

  He stood there, grinning like a fool, until a hand touched his shoulder. He whirled around, hands automatically reaching for the daggers he’d left in the room. It was difficult to conceal daggers in a tuxedo, but he felt naked and exposed without them.

  The little man from the television stood there, now clad in a tuxedo, self-importance oozing from every pore. “Mr. Brennan? I’m Dr. Litton. So delighted to finally meet you in person.”

  Brennan shook the man’s hand. “Dr. Litton. Sorry we were late to your party. We wanted a little time to ourselves, of course you understand.”

  His eyes sought out Tiernan, needing to reassure himself she was still in view. Litton followed his gaze.

  “Ah, yes, the reporter. Ms. Baum. I hadn’t realized she was with you.”

  “She is most definitely with me, although I fail to see why that is any of your concern,” Brennan said, a knife-edge of menace in his voice.

  “Oh, no, no reason.” Litton backed up a few steps, holding his hands out in front of him. “I have to give a little speech now, but I’ll talk to you soon. I’m very much looking forward to showing you our lab tomorrow.”

  “I look forward to seeing it. I will be very interested to see what plans you have in mind for my ten million dollars.”

  Litton’s gaze darted back and forth nervously. “Ah, yes. We’ll be sure to show you plenty.”

  Brennan watched the doctor scurry away, and then turned to find Tiernan, his attention drawn to exactly where she stood, as if she were a homing beacon to his soul. She glowed like a gem in her red dress among the throng of black evening wear. One of the men in her group said something and Tiernan threw back her head and laughed. Brennan watched her and was stunned all over again by the power of the longing that overwhelmed him.

  To make her his.

  For a night, for a year, for eternity.

  His.

  He started toward her, but stopped when a hideous screeching noise sounded, and then Litton’s voice, magnified by the electronic speakers, jangled throughout the room. “Is this thing on?”

  Everyone laughed and turned toward the podium, and Tiernan made her way through the crowd toward Brennan. An odd pressure lifted from his chest, and he realized he had been holding his breath, as if he needed her presence even to draw air. She finally arrived, and he pulled her against his side, needing to feel her next to him.

  “I just don’t like the looks of that man. I know it’s stupid, but I’ve learned to trust my instincts,” she murmured near Brennan’s ear, an action that made the fit of his pants considerably tighter.

  Focus. He must focus. On the mission, not on the curves of her body. She was talking about Litton.

  “I agree,” he said. “I will be interested to see how your Gift reacts to his speech.”

  Litton fussed with his tie and the microphone for a bit, and adjusted the stand down to his height. “Can you hear me now?”

  After more desultory laughter from the mostly inebriated crowd, Litton continued. “I know it’s late and we all need to get some rest for a full day of meetings tomorrow, but I wanted to take a moment to welcome you all to the first annual meeting of the International Associatio
n of Preternatural Neuroscience.”

  A ragged cheer went up from the scientists, who then looked vaguely embarrassed to be caught doing something so common.

  “Not a lot of rah rah in neuroscience usually, I’m guessing,” Tiernan whispered, a grin quirking up the edges of her lovely lips. Brennan became distracted by thoughts of tasting her mouth, and he lost the next few sentences. Or minutes. When he returned his attention to the scientist, Litton was concluding his remarks.

  “—thrilling breakthroughs in science, for today and for all our tomorrows. Thank you.”

  Everyone cheered and clapped, and Litton’s forehead flushed a bright red as he basked in the approval of his peers.

  “It’s not lies,” Tiernan said, her brows drawn together. “He believes that whatever he’s up to is going to cause ‘thrilling breakthroughs.’”

  “For all our tomorrows?” Brennan asked, his voice dry.

  “For all of somebody’s tomorrows. Probably the power-mad vamps he’s working for.” She turned her head, subtly scanning the room. “Speaking of which, I think I’m going to go get one of them to ask me to dance. See what I can find out.”

  Brennan heard a low growling noise and realized it was coming from his own throat. “I cannot allow—”

  “Allow?” she asked sweetly. “I’m sorry?”

  He swallowed the broken glass that had somehow gotten lodged in his throat and tried again. “It will be difficult for me if you do this.”

  Compassion softened her face. “I know. The curse. But you have to understand that it’s not really me you want, it’s just the random nature of the curse making you think so.”

  “There is nothing random about Poseidon or his curses, I assure you. But I will do my best to carry out my part in this mission.”

  Suddenly and completely unexpectedly, she put her hands on his shoulders and stood on her toes to kiss him lightly on the lips.