UP UNTIL ALEXANDER PHONED just after four that afternoon, Sydney was having one of those days where everything was breaking right. She had put away three cases, one of them a gnarly brute that had defied the efforts of two senior detectives before she had taken it off their hands. The budget for the department balanced, even though the bottom line just sucked, and her captain, Leonard Baker, had actually smiled at her.
Sydney had floated through the day, saying just the right things, making exactly the impression she wanted to make. No one was extraordinarily pissed at her. And for the first time in weeks, she had brought Bud, her trainer, down to the mat and held him there for three vital seconds. Even Bud had grudgingly nodded his approval.
It had been the perfect day, until Alex had called. When she recognized his cultured voice, Sydney sighed and swiveled her chair away from her computer to face the window. It was an oddly dismal day out there. March was always blustery and windy, but the clouds overhead were taking the light out of the day. “Dr. Karim, you’re late.”
“I’m back to Dr. Karim, am I?” Alex asked. “You must not be having a very good day, Lieutenant.” Despite the fact that he had been phoning her regularly for nearly a year, he still refused to call her anything other than Lieutenant even though he had insisted she call him Alex, or Alexander. Sydney didn’t know if his formal ways annoyed her or not. Mostly, she found it quaint in an odd, foreign sort of way. That fit in perfectly with everything else she had learned about him, which wasn’t much at all.
“It has been a perfectly wonderful day,” Sydney said truthfully. She hesitated. “I just don’t think you should call anymore.”
“It took you a year to come to that conclusion?” Alex asked, and she could hear the amusement in his voice. Unlike some of her colleagues, Alex never treated her like an idiot. That was why he was teasing her now in his cool, gentle way.
“Even after a year, I still don’t know what to make of you.” Which was true, too. It was almost impossible to put him into any sort of category. “But I got the papers today. Brody’s trial date has been set.”
“I heard. Early August. Brody’s right to a speedy trial does seem to have been overlooked.”
“It’s the clogged court system, Alex. There are too few courts, too many trials and not enough people to process it all. Brody isn’t the only one who is waiting. He should be thankful he could afford the bail, otherwise he’d been sitting in a cell waiting.” She took a breath, deliberately halting the flow of words pushing at her lips. “I’ve said this before,” she pointed out. “And it is why you should stop calling me. We’re going to be on opposite sides of the courtroom when the judge bangs his gavel.”
“Do you feel your professionalism is in danger, Lieutenant?” Damn if he didn’t sound amused again.
“Of course not,” she shot back, “but—”
“I haven’t been called as a witness,” he continued. “I’m on the sidelines, merely a curious spectator. I do not believe I represent a conflict of interest in any way at all. So I will continue to call you, as it is one of the small pleasures in my life.”
“Are you never going to get sick of me saying no, every time you ask?”
“I live in hope, Lieutenant.”
“You shouldn’t.”
“You have explained that before. You do not date. It interferes with your career. Nevertheless, I like talking to you, even by phone. And one day you might say yes and surprise us both.”
“I seriously doubt that.”
“Are there, perhaps, more reasons than those you’ve told me that explain why you continue to say no?”
Sydney carefully inhaled, controlling her reaction. Alex wasn’t an idiot either. That had been a very astute guess. “None that you need to know,” she said, making her voice sound light. Unconcerned.
“Ah…one day you will learn that you can trust me,” he said softly. “But for now, may I ask you to dinner, Lieutenant?”
“Thank you, Dr. Karim, but I must decline.”
“That is your privilege, Lieutenant. So tell me why your day has been so wonderful.”
He moved on from her rejection so smoothly that she was barely aware that he was doing it. She found herself telling him about her day. The small successes that came in incremental slowness because she was a woman in a man’s world. She barely had to explain any of it, because Alex already knew who all the key people were in the department, and the issues she had dealing with them. After a year of pleasant conversations, he had learned more about her life and her career than she had realized.
He laughed in the right places and complimented her on her little achievements and when she hung up the phone twenty minutes later, she actually felt happier than before the call, even though she had been dreading the next time he phoned her ever since she had been advised of the court date.
She turned back to face her computer, examining her feelings carefully. Was she…did she really feel relief because he would continue to call? How strange.
* * * * *
Alex let out a deep breath as he put his phone away. It wasn’t quite a sigh, but it was close enough that he almost laughed at his own foolishness. He looked out through the window across the gray grimness of Los Angeles visible on the horizon. The rain was keeping the smog down today and he could see everything in depressing detail.
He realized that the same grimness was gripping his thoughts and deliberately straightened up, turned and walked out of the elegant, barely-used dining room, across the tiled foyer and back into the cavernous library where Veris, Brody and Taylor spent nearly all their spare time.
Shelves rose through two floors, with a wide balcony running around the edge of the second floor to give access to the stacks there. The books and precious knickknacks on the shelves never failed to make Alex’s soul sigh. Brody and Veris had been collecting books for centuries, and Taylor was equally interested in delving into human knowledge. She was the historical expert, which was ironic because Veris and Brody had lived through it. But Taylor roamed across the eras and regions, while their knowledge focused on their serial experiences only.
Taylor had arrived since Alex had stepped out to make his call to Sydney, and she had brought company. She looked up from the child in her arms as Alex entered, and smiled. “Alex, come and say hello. The twins just woke up.”
Alex hurried over to her side and looked down at the dark-haired baby with genuine delight. “Aran?” he asked.
“He’s here,” Veris said, lifting the baby he held. In his big arms, the child looked tiny.
“Hello, Alannah,” Alex murmured, caressing the soft head of the girl in Taylor’s arms. Alannah blinked up at him sleepily, her mouth curved into a perfect cupid bow. The twins were just about to have their first birthday, and they were chubby, happy children.
Alex felt a tugging on his sweater and looked down. Marit raised her arms up toward him and he scooped her up and hugged her. “And hello, Marit,” he told her and kissed her cheek.
She kissed him back, a soft, moist kiss on the lips. Her gray eyes were a combination of her father’s blue eyes and Taylor’s deep brown ones, but they had Taylor’s shaping and beauty. They were wide and serious. “Uncle Alex, did you talk to your lady? Did she say yes?”
Alex blinked, absorbing the idea that Marit knew all about his campaign to win over Sydney Stevens. He frequently underestimated just how smart Marit was. Her solemn expression and big eyes hid a child that understood far too much of the world, which was sad, for she did not experience the innocent fun she might have otherwise enjoyed.
“Yes, I spoke to my lady, missy Marit.” He gave her a little shake. “I think you’ve grown since I saw you just last week. You’re taller.”
“She’s outgrown all her clothes in the last month,” Brody said, from the depths of the comfortable Craftsman chair he was sprawled in. “It’s next to impossible to keep up.”
“Doesn’t Mia buy all her clothes?” Alex asked.
“Athair likes to take me shopping,” Marit said. “He likes to spoil me.”
“Does he?” Alex asked. “Spoil you, I mean.”
Marit considered for a moment, then shook her head. “Athair and Far both make me work. Very hard work. If they really wanted to spoil me, they wouldn’t make me work so hard. Because I’m only little.” Her eyes grew wider and crystalline.
Veris laughed as he carefully gave Aran over to Brody. “You by-passed ‘little’ four years ago. Alex isn’t fooled by the big eyes, Marit. Peddle your wares to someone who doesn’t know you as well.”
Marit grinned and hugged Alex, her arms straining to squeeze his neck. “Uncle Alex likes little kids,” she said defensively.
“You’re not little anymore,” Taylor pointed out. “You’re nearly six years old.”
“Try sixty, in a six-year-old’s body,” Alex murmured. Then he put Marit back on her feet and looked at her. “Don’t grow up too fast, dear one. You’ll miss all the fun.”
She considered him carefully. “Then being a grown-up isn’t fun for you?”
Alex straightened up with a snap, surprised into it. He glanced at the other three adults in the room. Taylor was fussing over Alannah, her gaze on the baby. Brody was grinning at him, and Veris studied him with a raised brow. They weren’t going to help him out on this one. Alex cleared his throat. “Sometimes, no, life isn’t fun,” he told Marit.
She frowned, processing that dire fact.
“But the fun times make up for the bad ones,” he added hastily.
“Okay,” Marit said slowly, in a way that told him she was going to make up her own mind about that. He hadn’t fooled her at all.
Alex scrubbed at the back of his neck and tried again. “It’s….” He stopped again. He really hadn’t been about to say the clichéd “complicated,” had he? But that had been the word on the verge of tumbling out. He sighed. Marit was waiting for an answer with extraordinary patience for a six year old. “It’s difficult for me to explain it to you when I don’t know how much you’ll understand,” he finished.
“Try, anyway,” Veris said softly. “We’re not the only ones who have noticed your mood lately.”
“And your beard.” Marit scrubbed at her own cheeks with her hands. “It’s prickly,” she added.
Alex looked around the room at everyone, unease making him shift on his feet. Everyone had noticed? Including Marit?
“You stopped practicing medicine well over a year ago, just after we dealt with Tira in Las Vegas,” Taylor said.
Tira was nominally their queen, but she had no love for Brody and Veris, and coveted Taylor for her time-jumping abilities. She had not caused trouble since the Council had told her to behave herself, but Alex knew Tira had not been defeated. Not yet.
“Even after Las Vegas you said you had things to think about,” Taylor added.
Alex nodded. Yes, it had been around then he had started questioning everything.
“It’s not unusual to want to step off the world and just breathe for a while,” Brody said. “Both of us have had to meditate our way through the doldrums a few times. What is odd is that I think this is the first time you’ve ever hit this point.”
Alex crossed his arms and laughed at himself for the wildly obvious defensive stance. “If I have been somewhat hermit-like, then I’ve been that way for a while. Now you ask why?”
“We know why,” Veris said. “The details are yours alone, but the questions are the same. Marit is the one who asked and she’s still waiting for an answer. Why do you think life isn’t fun?”
“Do you find life fun?” Alex shot back.
Veris smiled. It was the rare smile that warmed everyone who saw it. It was his very private smile. Small, but filled with…something. Love, Alex presumed, for Veris’ gaze flickered across to Taylor, then over to where Brody was lounging. “I find life infinitely interesting and far richer than I ever thought possible,” Veris answered frankly.
“Even though everything you do, you’ve done a hundred…a thousand times before?” Alex pressed.
Veris shook his head. “I’ve never done this.” He spread his hand a little, to take in the room and everyone in it.
“You’ve never been in love before?” Taylor asked, her tone curious.
“There was Brody, before you,” Veris said.
Brody laughed as he sat Aran up on his knee. “I’m in a category all my own. Damn, I must have impressed him after all.”
Aran patted at the top of Brody’s knee with clumsy hands. Brody’s hands around his body looked huge.
Veris grinned. Then he sobered. “I’ve never been in love like this,” he said flatly. “I’ve never lived life quite like this before. I’ve lived more centuries than you, Alex, but I’ve never lived one century like the next.” Then he smiled again. This time it was his shit-stirring expression. “And Marit is still waiting for your answer.”
Alex looked down at the young girl standing patiently at his side. She looked up at him and raised her brow in exactly the same way Brody did. It made Alex smile. “I don’t think I can answer you, Marit. I’m still looking for answers myself. It’s a barren time for me.”
She picked up his hand, her young fingers curling around his. “I’m sorry,” she said softly. “That must suck.”
“It does, indeed,” Alex told her gravely.
* * * * *
By the time eight o’clock chimed on the big grandfather clock in the front hall, everyone had left except for one or two stragglers. Chris and Eloise were great-grandchildren and barely knew him, so Rafe didn’t feel slighted by them finishing off the bottle of champagne in the library, talking quietly. They were cousins, but lived on different sides of the country, so the fact that they had made the effort to be here for his birthday was good enough for him.
That left him and Charlie sitting at the big table. Charlie liked his port, even though it played hell with his gout, so Rafe always made sure there was at least a couple of bottles of the hundred-year-old Madeira in the house, when he was expecting him.
Charlie had nearly finished the bottle that had been opened before dinner. He poured himself a half-glass and looked around the room, taking in the empty table. “Wimps,” he declared. “This new generation is far too health conscious. Makes me uncomfortable.”
“You should embrace the discomfort,” Rafe told him. “It forces you to keep up.”
Charlie cocked his brow at him. The brow was silver. His blue eyes underneath the shaggy brows were milky with age and the flesh about them deeply wrinkled. Happy lines, not grumpy ones, at least. “You’re the only one in this family who has to worry about staying current. It’s my privilege to grow old and set in my ways, curse the younger generations and die a bitter old man.” He lifted his glass toward Rafe. “And I can drink myself into my grave, too. Cheers.”
Rafe grinned. “It seems to me you’ve done more than your share of adapting and changing. Speaking of which…no offense, Charlie, but I think it’s time for you to move from father to grandfather status.”
Charlie snorted into his glass, then tipped it up and drained it. He put it back on the blinding white tablecloth carefully and turned on his chair so he could rest one elbow on the back of it and the other on the table. It placed him so he was looking directly at Rafe. “Is that your way of telling me I’m getting old?”
“You’re eighty-two next month. I think that qualifies as old by anyone’s standards.”
Charlie pursed his lips together in a silent whistle. “You remembered my birthday.”
“Why wouldn’t I? You’re my son.”
“One of…exactly how many is it now?”
“None, since your sisters grew up,” Rafe said flatly.
“Is that why this big old house is rattling like a skeleton in a casket? There’s no one here but you and the staff. Is your judgeship so thrilling you don’t notice?”
Rafe sat back in his chair and blew out his breath just as Charlie had done. Charlie had always been able to see through any bullshit he tried use as an excuse. He’d noticed, of course, how pared down his life was now. “I’m thinking it’s time I moved on to the next life,” he said softly.
Charlie rolled the little port glass around on its base, denting the tablecloth, as he considered that. “You’re not talking about a vacation or a change of career, are you?”
Rafe shook his head.
Silence.
Then Charlie grimaced. “Well, it had to happen sooner or later, didn’t it? You warned me. More than once.”
Rafe swallowed. This was harder than he thought it would be. It was always difficult and he never remembered, until the next time he had to drag his family and kids through the cesspool that marked the transition to a new life. It was always a wretched time, and in five hundred years he still hadn’t figured out a way to make it easy for them.
So he stayed silent, letting Charlie absorb it and adjust.
Charlie sucked his teeth, with an expression that looked sour. “So…how are you going to do the deed? You’re pretty high profile right now. People’ll notice if you just disappear. And if you try to kill yourself, there’ll be enquiries for years. You’ll invent your own grassy knoll.”
Rafe shook his head. “There’s time, yet,” he said. “Years, even. But the years are running out and I have to start putting plans into place for when they do. I just wanted to…well, warn you, I suppose.”
“Warn?” Charlie repeated, surprised.
“So you’re braced,” Rafe said. “I spent my share of nights waiting for you to come home, or the police to come calling to tell me you’d got into some mischief that had ended badly. Those nights are very long. The call, when you get it, doesn’t go easier for all the worry that came before.”
“You’ve had that call?” Charlie asked sharply.
“Yes,” Rafe said flatly. He didn’t expand on it. Charlie understood very well why he couldn’t talk about former lives. “But here’s the thing, Charlie. If you’d ever had kids, you might understand this better. It’s the sudden absence that bites the hardest. Being unprepared for it…well, it cuts far deeper than knowing in advance. So I’m going to spare you that.”
“You’ve just disappeared?”
“I’ve had to, once or twice. Times weren’t always as civilized as these.”
Charlie scowled. “Nothing civilized about these times, either.”
“They’re civilized enough that I don’t think there should be any reason for you to get a sudden call in the night and have that be the end.” Rafe got to his feet and walked around the table to pick up the bottle of Madeira. “Another?”
Charlie pushed the glass across the linen toward him. “Why the hell not?” he said, his voice rough.
“I love you, too, you grumpy old bastard.” He topped up the glass.
Charlie cleared his throat. Then again. Then he stood up, pulled the bottle out of Rafe’s hand and put it on the table, before hugging him tightly.
Rafe hugged him back, just as hard. Then he kissed his temple. “There’s time yet,” he said, and his voice was just as hoarse as Charlie’s.
Charlie waved him away impatiently, his head averted. He still held the belief that his generation had grown up with that a man who cried wasn’t a man at all. So Rafe let him hide his face and recover.
Charlie sniffed mightily and reached for the full glass. “You can’t…I don’t know – you can’t rig things the way you have been since you got me? Become a brother, then a son, then a grandson, then a distant cousin who rolls into town.” He cleared his throat again. “It’s worked just fine for nearly a hundred years. Why not a hundred more?”
Rafe couldn’t find an answer he wanted to give Charlie, so he went back into the kitchen and through into the wine cellar to get the other bottle of Madeira, instead. The real answer would just puzzle Charlie. How could he explain the emptiness that came from centuries of living to someone who didn’t get to live for even one century? How did he explain to his son that this life didn’t satisfy, that he was still looking for something he’d lost, long, long ago?
Another bottle of Madeira was a weak substitute, but it would have to do.
* * * * *
Alex knew that if Marit saw him now, she would be horrified. Brody, Veris and Taylor would be disappointed. But the knowledge that what he was doing would upset them sat a long way off. It didn’t register as critical, merely as an interesting fact.
He rearranged his legs, with painstaking exactness, so that they were crossed once more. He was sitting on the thick Bokhara rug in his living room. He was naked, for the infinite shifting of his clothes against his skin had become annoying.
He contemplated the sound of the rain that he could hear through the windows. A thought surfaced that he should shut the windows, but it also didn’t register with any urgency and he let it go.
There was a more interesting thought, somewhere ahead of him. He had been trying to wrest the thing to earth, to uncover it, for the last few minutes…or days, he wasn’t quite sure. Each time he thought he had caught a glimpse of it, it slipped away, not quite forming in his mind. But there was such excitement attached to it! A thrilling wave of anticipation would shoot through him every time he drew nearer to the thought.
He had increased the dose this time and he could feel the difference. Every nerve was alive, every thought took an age to complete itself in his mind, giving him time to examine every nuance, to consider possible scenarios that might arise, depending on the choices made. He had never felt so full of life, so ripe with possibilities.
The first time Alex had used himself as a trial guinea pig, he had taken the smallest dose possible. The resulting floating sensation had been interesting merely for the fact that Alex suspected it was the vampire equivalent of being high on any one of the recreational drugs humans used. Of course, he could take a quart of pure heroin through his veins and it would have a null effect. He wouldn’t even blink. It was therefore impossible to judge if the high that humans experienced was the same as he had felt.
But getting high hadn’t been his purpose in designing the serum, so Alex had tried again, with a stronger dose. The second time, the high sensation was distinct and very pleasant. He had noticed his thoughts slowing down even then. That was when he had felt the impending sensation. Something is going to happen! His breath, his heart, his thoughts had held still, waiting for this momentous thing to occur. It was just around the corner, about to happen at any moment.
He knew that when it did, it would be wonderful. The potential of the moment throbbed in him. His flesh was slick with sweat and his heart raced. As a doctor, he knew that his adrenaline had spiked hard, preparing his body for this wonderful thing that was about to happen. He could taste the coppery, bitter dregs in his mouth. Even that sensation was joyful because his adrenal glands had been defunct for ten centuries.
But the thought had eluded him that time, as it had every time he had dosed himself since then. He had gradually increased the dose, reaching for the thought, the idea, the whatever-it-was that lay just ahead in his mind. Every time he would come to himself a few hours later in real time, still ignorant of what his mind was trying to tell him, but with the ingrained certainty that it was very important he uncover the knowledge.
Today, he had doubled the dose from the previous occasion. Even as he had prepared the syringe, Alex debated with himself. It was incredibly stupid, doing his own trials. But then, trying to build an antidote to the vampire sedative he had developed two years ago had become very much a secondary concern.
He’d held up the syringe with the pale gold liquid and studied it while he faced the truth. He didn’t give a damn about the antidote anymore. He wanted to find the knowledge, the thing his mind kept teasing him with. He wanted to know what it was that he had been trying to tell himself he should remember or acknowledge.
In a life that had become grinding routine, this was the freshest and most interesting thing to happen in an age or two. The spike of pleasure, the sense of recognition that the thing he was trying to uncover was a happy thing, a good thing…it was as elusive as a shy lover.
So he sat very still, unaware of his physical body except in the same distant way that other thoughts kept floating into focus, then drifting off again. Yet at the same time, he could feel…everything. Every single fine tuft of the rug, pressing against his flesh. The chill of the damp air bathing his body. The soft flutter of the curtains as the wind lifted them. The sound of rain against the water barrel just under the window. Distant traffic. And farther ahead…
Excitement flared in him. All this time he had been focusing within, convinced the thing he sought was a thought or a memory. But now that he had pulled the focus outward, out toward the world, he could see the world opening up to him. And there! Just ahead. There it was, the thing he sought. He couldn’t see it, but he could feel it, could feel the hot promise it radiated.
He reached for it. So close, so very close….
His door bell was ringing incessantly.
He frowned. The thought he was chasing slipped further from his grasp.
The other idea came into focus again. The door bell was ringing.
Someone was here. The secondary thought, attached to the idea of the door bell ringing, occurred to him with something like a start.
Alex opened his eyes and shivered. He was cold. But before he could marvel over the novelty of feeling cold, the doorbell chimed once more – a long, long series of notes. Someone was laying on the button with force. How long had they been trying to get his attention?
He rolled over onto his hands and knees, moving stiffly. He got to his feet with painful slowness, trying to shake off the drug’s effects.
Have to be normal.
He had been pretending to be a normal human for a long time, but it was so much harder now.
The bell rang again.
He lifted his head. “Coming!” he called as loudly as he could. Then he looked around the room. His robe was hanging off the back of the sofa. He grabbed that. It would be easier than struggling to dress. His clothes lay scattered across the rug.
Then he went to answer the front door. He didn’t know why, but he kept himself between the door and the outside and glared at the man in jeans and a button-through shirt on his doorstep.
“Alexander Karim?” the man said.
Was that his name now? He couldn’t remember. “Last time I checked, I think I was,” Alex said truthfully.
The man grinned. “That’s one I actually haven’t heard before.” He held out a big white envelope. “You’ve been served, Doctor.”
There was still enough adrenaline in Alex’s system that the surprise didn’t register as it might have. Alex took the envelope with fingers that felt thick, staring at it. It felt like his eyes were very wide. He looked up. The process server was already at the end of the drive. There was an old Honda Civic sitting at the end, blocking the drive. Was that to keep him from running away?
Alex shut the door and turned and leaned against it. Getting the envelope open took long minutes as his fingers didn’t want to cooperate. He finally tore off one end of it and reached inside.
Sharp pain!
With a hiss, he pulled his hand out and stared at the tip of his middle finger. Blood oozed from the paper cut. His finger throbbed.
“I can feel it.”
He realized he had spoken aloud to an empty room and looked up to confirm that there wasn’t anyone there. He was quite alone.
Then he noticed the mess. Through the archway he could see that the living room was littered with clothing, books, notepads. None of the shoes were standing in pairs. The cushions that usually made the divan look so pleasantly overstuffed and comfortable were scattered across the floor. His laptop and tablet were on the coffee table, their power leads hanging over the edge and trailing on the floor.
He turned his head, tracking the disorder. He had walked around and over it all, not even noticing, when he had answered the door.
In the opposite direction, the dining room and the big teak table where he did most of his research…. Alex sucked in small, shocked breath. Normally, he maintained strict order in the dining room, for he couldn’t think if it was chaotic. What he saw through the doorway was a massive assault on good order. Someone had taken a snow blower to the room, scattering paper everywhere.
“What’s the date?” Alex asked the air. His voice was croaky.
Then he answered himself. “Look on your phone, imbecile.”
He guessed that the phone would be with his laptop and tablet and he could look on those if he was wrong. There were always his pants pockets, too. He walked across the entrance to the archway, fighting to walk in an even line. He swallowed as he realized that it was taking far more effort than it should to walk straight. The serum still had a grip on him. If he wanted to, he could probably relax and let it take him once more. He had been so close, after all.
He considered the clear spot on the rug, where he had been sitting. All he had to do was sit down once more.
But wasn’t there something he was going to do. He had come in here to…what?
Didn’t matter. He could deal with it later. There was always time, later.
Without realizing he had even made the decision, Alex sank down to the carpet. Thoughts were already evaporating, leaving him with a silvered plain of nothingness. The quarry could always been seen clearly on the plains, the flat, hard and hot reg. They could be seen for miles and miles, unlike the erg, the rolling dunes that hid the enemy’s approach.
The desert. The place of his childhood. It came to him now with almost painful detail. The dryness in his nose and mouth, the fine sifting sand that got into everything, and the oppressive, relentless heat, that was like a live beast, coiling around one tighter and tighter until it was hard to breathe.
Alex looked out across the dry, stony plain, the reg of his childhood, looking for his quarry. It was out there, nearby. He would find it and then he would know.