Everything about that statement spoke to Daniel’s character, but something else as well. Was it possible that the Ancestrals, which all three men of these men were, enthralled those vampires around them? Although sheer intimidation could make vampires and humans alike behave in ways they might otherwise not. This was a cross-cultural condition: Faced with the prospect of torture and/or death, most will succumb to the required behavior.
Of course she left her supposition open to further study, observation, and analysis. She resisted drawing absolute conclusions, life being an absurdly dynamic process, always changing. Even her presence here in the vampire world had given new meaning to the concept of change being the only constant.
But the larger question remained. “So where did Daniel and his sons go? What were they doing when they were gone? Were there rumors?”
A fair-haired Russian slave, more emaciated than most of the slaves, responded. “More than once I heard he was building something in one of the largest caverns in this world, but I do not know where it would be or what it was.”
Others confirmed the rumor.
She mentally reviewed all that she knew about the horrors of the Dark Cave system, leading her to pose a question for which she expected no particular answer. “Were any humans ever given special treatment, so they didn’t have to work as sex slaves?”
To her surprise, the response was an overwhelming affirmative accompanied by a shocking bit of information: Most of the women were put through a series of tests, and the brightest were actually administered standard IQ tests. As she continued asking her questions, she became increasingly alarmed since the consensus seemed to be that at least five and maybe as much as ten percent of the arrivals of the past year were sent elsewhere, presumably not to work in the clubs.
“And the rumors about where they went?”
The Russian responded once more. “To the same system, the one with the enormous cavern.”
CHAPTER 14
“So what happened when you set off the explosion?” Marius sat at a distance from Shayna. Rumy sat beside him on one of dozens of benches scattered throughout the park.
Rumy shook his head. “I’d hoped Daniel would buy it, but no such luck. I think he read the light in my eye before I shifted to altered flight and the room blew.”
“What did he want?”
“He wanted you. I don’t know what bug crawled up his ass, but he seems determined to get you and not necessarily to kill you. I didn’t see this with either Adrien or Lucian. I think he wanted to get all three of you to join forces with him, but he honestly didn’t give a rat’s ass if Lucian died out there on the lake. No, he seems to want you for something.”
“Well, he can go fuck himself.”
Rumy chuckled. “Tell me how you really feel.” He smoothed down his tight curls. He kept his hair cropped and oiled. “The thing is, Marius, there was something different about his security detail.”
“How so?”
“They wore something new that looked like real uniforms. It just seemed odd.”
“In what way?”
He shifted toward Marius. “For one thing, there was a line of weird-looking marks above a silver emblem. The emblem was a hawk. I’d never seen anything like it before. Have you? When confronting Daniel? It had, I don’t know, a professional look, a branded look.”
Marius shook his head. “No, I can’t recall ever seeing anything like that. I know he kept his men in black, but hell, that’s what we all wear to remain invisible when we fly through any city at night. Black is standard and sensible. But, no, I’ve never seen a hawk emblem before.”
“What do you think it means?”
Marius crossed his arms over his chest. “Haven’t got a clue.” His gaze was fixed on Shayna. He purposefully kept her in sight and right now he felt a new emotion from her: She’d changed from anthropologically curious to pretty anxious. Something the women had said was distressing her.
“So what the hell happened in the Dark Cave system? I heard some of the refugees say they thought Shayna was committing suicide when she threw herself off some kind of catwalk.”
Marius told him about her ploy and how well it had worked.
Rumy’s eyes went wide. “And this woman isn’t trained military?”
Marius had to laugh. “No, not even a little.”
“She sure has guts.”
Marius nodded. “That she has.”
Rumy elbowed Marius. “You’re into her.”
“Shut your trap.”
Rumy laughed. “I could hardly blame you. She’s gorgeous. Quirky, but beautiful. And those breasts, a vampire could—”
He got no farther, because Marius moved like lightning and now had hold of Rumy’s throat. “Don’t ever go there again.”
Rumy’s eyes widened and he nodded slowly. He coughed and sputtered when Marius released him. “Sorry. My mistake. Won’t happen again. But you’re not into her, right?”
“Cute.”
“Just sayin’.”
Marius resumed his seat, settling his gaze back on Shayna. He felt uneasy for reasons he couldn’t explain and rubbed the back of his neck. Something was bugging him. Maybe it was Shayna’s distress or what Rumy had told him about the new uniforms that Daniel’s men were wearing.
Or maybe that Rumy had it exactly right: He was so into Shayna.
* * *
An hour later Shayna sat next to Marius in a quiet part of the Catskill system, in a private room within the complex. She sipped iced tea and kept rubbing her forehead. Rumy sat opposite her, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees and his hands clasped together.
She’d been trying to express her concern over Daniel’s activities, but felt her data was too vague to make a strong enough impression on the men. “All I’m saying is that I think Daniel’s been up to something for the past year. I think that’s why he’s been absent so much from the Dark Cave system.”
Marius sat next to her, but shook his head. “The women can’t know that for sure, that he was rarely there. It seems completely out of character for him. The man loves to spend a good portion of his time hurting his slaves.”
“I’m not saying he didn’t do that. All I’m telling you is that the women knew when he was in residence and when he wasn’t. The guards’ behavior alone would tend to confirm their side of things.”
Rumy glanced at Marius. “She has a point.”
Marius met Rumy’s gaze for a long moment, then shifted to stare at Shayna. “So you think Daniel’s in this unknown cavern of massive proportions, but doing what?”
Shayna shifted, angling her body toward him. She even put her hand on his arm. “What if he’s building infrastructure.” She then related what the women had told her about the IQ tests. “Maybe he’s been using the most intelligent slaves to help him do basic accounting, manage projects, order building supplies, that kind of thing. That way he could definitely keep his whole operation on the down-low.”
Marius stared at her. “He administered tests to the women? Why is this the first I’ve heard of anything like this?”
Shayna shrugged. “Maybe nobody thought to ask the refugees.”
Marius laced his hands behind his head and released an exasperated huff of a sigh. She could feel that his head had started hurting and that a kind of oppression had taken him over. She tried to imagine yet again what his life had been like, what it was to be a vampire in this culture, all the ramifications, and to have fought against Daniel for four centuries.
Everything was still so new to her that even with her trained mind, she couldn’t quite fit the pieces together. Of course she’d only been exposed to the most violent aspects of this world for an extremely short period of time. How could she possibly understand either Marius or his world sufficiently to make a real assessment of what she’d learned tonight?
Rumy leaned back in his seat, folding his arms over his chest. His tongue made an appearance, touching the inside edges of his ever-present fangs. “You k
now, I hate to say this, but I’ve always wondered about Daniel. What a waste of talent to build a massive sex-slavery operation when he could have put his abilities to use on behalf of our world. Hell, he could have founded his own university.”
Shayna couldn’t help herself and started to giggle, which turned quickly into full-out laughter the more she thought about what Rumy had said.
“What’s so funny?”
She slapped at the air a couple of times. “I don’t know. Daniel as the founder of a university? What would the classes entail? Basics of Abduction One-oh-One, How to Create Propaganda for the Complete Sex-Slavery Operation, an Introduction to BDSM, Including Tools of the Trade? Of course those sound more like community college trade classes than university-level. Maybe more like, Ethnography and the Use of Torture as a Form of Sexual Expression.” Maybe her fatigue from having been battling in Marius’s world almost nonstop had begun showing or perhaps her youth, because neither of the vampires cracked a smile.
“Shayna, are you all right?” The sound of the slight lisp that Rumy used in her name—and all because of a vampire version of Viagra—set her off again.
She laughed herself out after a few minutes during which time Marius brought her a cup of what turned out to be fairly weak coffee. He sat down beside her again, occasionally patting her knee.
She sipped the warm brew and suddenly missed Seattle and an espresso that had real weight. She sniffed the air. She could smell the water from either a nearby underground river or a waterfall, both of which were in abundance in this world. Seattle was a very damp environment as well because of the city’s thirty-eight inches of rain each year and the proximity of Puget Sound.
After a few minutes, she regained her composure. She apologized to the men, shoving her hair away from her face with her free hand.
Marius rose to his feet and started to pace. She knew that his level of anxiety had grown. He paused at one point and told her about the new uniforms on Daniel’s security detail with the hawk emblem. “Rumy said that there were strange markings above the silver hawk’s head.”
Shayna stared at him. “A hawk? Didn’t you once tell me that besides courage, in your world it’s also a symbol of domination?”
He nodded.
Shayna took out her phone and crossed to Rumy. “Did they look like this?”
He angled his head a couple different ways to get the best view of the photos. “I think so, something like that.”
She looked up at him, then at Marius. “Do you think Rumy could share that with me the way I share images with you—telepathically, I mean?”
Marius got a funny look on his face, something she couldn’t at first define, until his emotions hit her like a hurricane-force wind. He clearly didn’t want her communicating so intimately with Rumy, or any other man.
The way his possessiveness made her feel in that moment weakened her knees. She knew it was a vampire thing, but it was also very male and sudden images flew through her mind of making love with Marius just a couple of hours ago and of Marius lying on top of her, his front to her back, and still connected.
He sniffed the air and suddenly she was in his arms. He held her tight and rubbed his hand up and down her back, something he often did. You smell wonderful.
And the way you think about me, Marius, this possessive thing took me right back to bed. The suddenness of the memories has my head reeling. And Rumy’s grinning like an idiot.
Marius released his tight hold on her but didn’t completely let go. He glanced at Rumy. “Sorry, just having a moment.”
“Yeah. I can see that. But you’re still not into her, right?”
Marius glared at him, then said, “Can’t let you share with Shayna.”
Rumy’s grin broadened. “Didn’t think you could. Besides, I’m sure Shayna really didn’t understand what she was asking.”
“I’m getting the picture now. It’s a vampire thing having to do with the blood-chains.”
“Exactly,” both men said at once.
Shayna addressed Rumy. “Well, can you put the images into Marius’s head? Then he can share them with me.”
For a moment, Rumy looked dumbstruck. “Are you saying this is normal stuff between the pair of you, this kind of sharing?”
Marius responded succinctly. “Shayna gets visions.”
“I know that, but then she can put them inside your head?”
Marius nodded.
“You know that’s fucking Ancestral power, right? I mean, the average vampire can’t do that, but an Ancestral can. Marius, have you taken the leap?”
“Not that I know of.”
Rumy wagged a finger between them. “But you don’t have the proximity issue, either.”
Shayna shook her head. “And flight’s a piece of cake now as well.”
“Huh.” Rumy frowned heavily, then added with a clap of his hands, “Well, okay. Marius, let me give it a shot.”
Shayna watched him close his eyes. A few seconds later Marius said, “Got it.”
Turning toward her, Marius smiled. “The image is really clear. Ready?”
“Sure.” And there it was, a picture, clearer than a photo, of Daniel in Rumy’s office, the room that was now destroyed, and smiling in that horrible way of his. He wore a snug shirt with the silver hawk emblem and above it the symbols, six altogether with the first symbol repeated two times.
She blinked and stared at Marius. “I’ll bet the first word is the ancient version of either ‘the’ or ‘one,’ and I’m feeling a need to get back to the Pharaoh system. I have some studying to do. But my guess is that Daniel has a plan and that he’s been working on it a long time. And if he’s made use of your ancient language, then my guess is that I’ll be able to find an English translation somewhere, if I keep hunting through your Internet. And Marius, I’m going with my gut here, but I think he’s been building something big and that despite our destruction of the extinction weapon, he won’t be needing a weapon to bring his ambitions to life.”
“Fuck.” Marius drew close. “Then we’d better get you back to Egypt.”
* * *
While Shayna dove back into her work, Marius paced the adjacent library. With each pass, he caught sight of her. She was on the computer, one that had access to his world’s private Internet. She tapped away, her shoulders tense as she worked, her mind completely focused.
The tablets that she’d been examining were arrayed in precise order on the table at a right angle to her computer, but her own papers and notes lay scattered in front of her. He got her: She needed some chaos so that her mind could remain fluid.
Unfortunately, the more he walked, the more distressed he became. The revelations from the refugee camp had set his mind down a new path, and Shayna had posed the right question: What if Daniel was up to something that didn’t involve either his sex-slavery operation or the extinction weapon?
“Marius, come here.”
The tension in Shayna’s voice put him in motion and he joined her at her work desk.
She glanced up at him. “I found this obscure site after going through about three hundred search pages. One of your French scholars has translated some of the ancient language and I was right about the first word. According to his partial working dictionary and subsequent English translation, the repeated word stands for ‘one’ as in ‘only’ or ‘exclusively.’ Maybe Daniel knew this or has had his own people on the translation himself, but his choices can’t be either accidental or decorative.” She put her finger on the screen. “This is what I have.”
As Marius read Shayna’s translation, his heart thudded in his chest. “‘One Earth, One Race, One Ruler.’” He felt as though every concern he’d ever had about his world coalesced in this moment. “You’re sure? You’re absolutely sure?”
She nodded, a deep frown between her brows. “He’s talking about both our civilizations, isn’t he? The human race and your world.”
“Yes.”
“Marius, there’s something el
se. There was more than one symbol for ‘ruler.’ This one, the one that Rumy saw on Daniel’s uniform, means ‘one who has conquered’ as opposed to an inherited position and I sincerely doubt there was anything like ‘casting votes’ back in the day. And the use of new uniforms with an emblem and a stated purpose emblazoned on the fabric indicates a high level of organization. But can Daniel really hope to achieve total domination without the extinction weapon? I thought once we’d destroyed it, he’d lost his opportunity.”
Marius settled his palms on the soft leather surface. The trouble was, he knew she was right. One hundred percent. His father had never lacked for ambition. “It appears that Daniel thinks he can.”
“What are we going to do?”
He glanced at her, surprised by her use of “we.” He searched her eyes, aware just how much he appreciated her presence in his world, her willingness to help, to spend hours as she had just now searching for answers.
She’d helped him get the extinction weapon and now she’d interpreted the meaning of the symbols on Daniel’s shirt that had translated into a serious warning about his current plans.
“Thank you,” he said.
She glanced at the monitor. “For this? You’re welcome, I guess. I mean, this really was my pleasure.”
“I know.”
And just like that, he knew it was time for her to go home, to go back to Seattle. She didn’t need to be part of what would be happening next in his world. And she definitely deserved better than being caught in a war that had nothing to do with her. She’d called it right early on: The problems in his world belonged to the vampire civilization, no one else.
She rose to her feet almost at the same time. “Marius, no, I don’t want to go.”
He almost laughed. “Did you just read my mind?”
She smiled but looked so sad at the same time that his heart felt crushed. “No, of course not. I felt what you’re feeling and it came as a profound sense of finality. But I don’t feel ready to leave.” Her gaze flitted around. She blinked several times, and he watched tears fill her eyes.