Wait (Beloved Bloody Time) (9 page)

“It’s everything to do with it.” He rested his hand on her knee, but it was for emphasis, not to arouse. “Tally, I’ve joined the Chronometric Conservation Agency.”

She stared at him, trying to encompass his simple yet profound statement. “The time travelers?” she asked.

“That’s the commercial arm of the Agency. The travel bureau.”

“The people who created the time wave, who caused Constantine’s Curse?” She pushed up onto her feet again.

“They didn’t create either of them,” Lee replied evenly. “But they did correct them.”

“By travelling through time,” she clarified.

Lee got to his feet, too. “You should join us, Tally.”

She laughed. “Why on earth would I do that? I’d be declaring to the world I was a vampire.”

He threw out his hand. “So what? The Censure years are in the past. We have rights now. Political power.”

“Humans hate us,” Tally said flatly.

“Not all humans. It’s changing. Slowly.”

She studied him. “You’ve…time travelled?” she asked. “Hell, it sounds totally surreal saying it aloud like that.”

“I’ve time travelled,” he said flatly.

She drew in a breath, containing her shock. “Where?” Her voice was high and tight.

He grinned. “Georgia, during the war. Spain and England, late Victorian. France, World War I.”

Tally frowned. “Those are times…they’re all times and places where you were originally.”

“That’s how it works,” he said. “You remember a time and place, and you jump there, once you know how to jump. That’s what the psi-filer does. They teach you to jump. Then you can jump anywhere or any when you remember in detail.”

Tally turned to take in her living room, which Lee had asked her to clear of furniture in the middle. “That’s why you noticed the changes,” she said. “You were taking note of them, so you arrived here properly.”

“Here and now,” he added. “I know this room from years ago. If I had jumped to what I remembered, I would have jumped back to the past…and probably smack into that side table, if it was where it used to be.”

“You need room, then?”

“Clear space…look, Tally, there’s a lot of technical detail, and there’s all the perks of going back in time—”

“There’s perks?”

“Beyond just visiting the old times? Yes. But that’s not why I’m asking you to join.”

She bit her lip. “Why, then?” she asked, and held her breath.

“Do you remember, in Greece, during the Censure? Of course you remember. You can’t forget. Recall what you said about belonging. That we’re looking for a home that will accept us for what we are.”

“I remember,” she said flatly.

“I’ve found it, Tally.”

“The Agency?” She laughed. “A bunch of other vampires?”

“Yes, a group of vampires. The Revelation and Censure changed things in a way I didn’t anticipate. I don’t think any of us thought of it. But now we’re outed, now humans know about us, we’re free to congregate. To keep company with other vampires. The old prohibition is gone.”

“I had humans in mind when I spoke about acceptance,” she said. “I don’t see too many of them embracing vampires as brethren. My neighbors still don’t talk to me willingly and I’ve been here over a hundred years. I’m long past being a stranger here.”

“But it’s
changing
, Tally. Bit by bit it’s changing. The president of the Agency, Ryan Deashumhain, he’s working his ass off to make those changes happen.”

“How?” she asked curiously.

“He’s the one who rammed vampire rights through the Worlds Assembly. Well, he did the lobbying. He’s making vampires respectable and palatable for humans. And it’s working.” He grinned. “Slowly. But that’s all beside the point anyway. The vampires who have joined the agency…you’d like them, Tally. They’re all simpatico people. You don’t have to explain yourself. You don’t have to change. You get to be yourself and accepted anyway.”

Tally wrapped her arms around herself. She wasn’t cold. But doubt was raging through her. “Just…come out and reveal myself?”

Lee stepped up close to her. “I know it’s a lot to think about,” he said, his voice low. “It’s a big change, I know that. You’ll have to change the way you see and do a lot of things. But please say you’ll think about it?”

His gaze had captured hers. She tried to think past the impulse to kiss him. Lee had maintained his physical distance for over a century, and she still wasn’t entirely sure why. To kiss him would be to step over the invisible barrier he had erected.

She blinked. “I’ll think about it,” she told him. …
when I really can think again
, she added mentally.

He lifted his hand and for a moment she thought he was going to hold her face, and her breath caught in a little hitch of surprise and anticipation.

But he did something else instead. His thumb slid gently across her lips.

Her heart squeezed.

“I have to go.” His voice was even lower. Softer.

She wanted to protest. But she didn’t have that right anymore, if she ever had it. “Very well,” she said, instead.

He stepped back, into the middle of the room. “I’ve got a client who wants to see where Sherlock Holmes lived,” he added. “We’ve told him that Holmes never existed outside fiction, but he’s got his mind set on seeing 221B Baker Street and gaslights, and horses and carriages.” He shrugged. “It’s his money – a lot of it – so I’m to tour him around late Victorian London and buy him an ale or two at an inn. It should be fun.” Then his smile faded. “I hope I see you soon, Tally.”

She opened her mouth to answer, but nothing came.

Lee held up his hand. “Think about it.” Then his smile returned. “Watch this.” He gathered himself and leapt up into the air, like a basketball player leaping for the ring…and disappeared.

Tally let out a sigh. “I miss you,” she breathed into the air.

* * * * *

Chronometric Conservation Agency Satellite – near Earth orbit, 2228 AD – twenty eight years later.

Christian stepped out of the arrival chamber with a small sigh of relief. All the tiredness and aches and pains of being human had gone. It had been a long four week tour around pre-war Europe, but his client had been ecstatically happy, digging up information on his forebears and ancestors that no modern research could have found. He had just dropped the man off at the new London branch of the agency, then jumped home.

Home was still a novelty. The satellite was Ryan’s newest project, and it was a good idea. The view of Earth never failed to awe visitors, and it gave agency members who wanted it a place to call home.

“Lee,” came the call from behind him.

His gut clenched. So did his heart. His chest…his entire body. He whirled, holding his breath and hoping.

She was standing by the floor to ceiling windows that looked out on dark-side Earth, and the glowing cluster of lights that made up the eastern seaboard of the old United States was behind her, making her hair glow.

He forced his chest to unlock so he could speak. “Tally,” he breathed.

She moved toward him, a slow step at a time. “I joined up three weeks ago,” she said. “I did what you said. I thought about it.”

“You thought about it for
thirty years
?”

“Twenty-eight,” she amended. “There was a lot to think about.”

She was close to him now. Very close. Her perfume, that lovely scent that he could never forget, wreathed his senses and made his body throb with remembered joys and possibilities.

“I thought it might take twenty-eight hours. Or twenty eight days,” he said. “Not
years
.”

She gazed up at him, her rich brown eyes warm and enticing. Her lips were the same soft mounds as always, calling to him. Christian curled his hands into fists, down by his sides.

“Did you give up on me?” she asked softly.

“I hoped. The hope was fading.”

“I’m sorry it took me so long.”

Was her mouth closer? Was she reaching up to him? “I liked your idea about acceptance. About belonging,” she said. “But that’s not what got me here.”

“What did?”

“You did, Christian Lee Beauregard Hamilton.” She kissed him.

He groaned as his body responded to the simple kiss, and let himself move. He pulled her even closer, up against him, registering her softness, the pliable length of her pressed against him. It drove his need even higher and she wasn’t pushing him back, or speaking of just one last thing that would come between them. She was here. Now.

Christian pummeled himself into stepping away from her. Tally was breathing hard, with that gleam in her eyes that told him she was aroused and hungry. He picked up her hand. “Come.”

“Very well.” She let him lead her through the station to his private quarters, where he closed and locked the door and at last, took her in his arms. Finally, she was here with him, unfettered and free to stay with him.

With vampires now able to be themselves, nothing could ever come between them again.

Chronometric Conservation Agency Satellite – near Earth orbit, 2233 AD – five years later.

Tally’s gut tightened and her heart beat harder as she saw Lee approaching along the corridor. Worse, he wasn’t alone. The man with him was almost as tall as him, and handsome in a roguish, dark way. It wouldn’t be a client – they were always picked up and dropped off at one of the geographic branches.

Lee slowed down as she approached and she reluctantly slowed, too, until they were standing face to face.

“You’re jumping again?” he asked. The corridor led to a few different areas, most of them utility rooms that vampires had little need for. But the wardrobe department was at the end, and that was the only reason Tally ever used this corridor. Lee, too, it seemed.

“Spain,” she said. “She wants to see real bullfighting and the April Fair.”

Something shifted in Lee’s face. Then his expression grew neutral and his eyes shuttered. “You just came back from a tour, didn’t you?”

“Antebellum Georgia. Why, what do you care?” She glanced at the dark-haired man, who was listening with open interest.

Lee caught her glance. He looked at the man. “Richard, would you mind? I need a moment.”

The man, Richard, looked from her to Lee and back again. Then he shrugged. “Sure,” he said easily. He had an accent, but one word wasn’t enough to distinguish it. He pressed his hand against Lee’s shoulder. It was an intimate gesture of communication.

Tally’s breath seemed to whoosh out of her. Something hot and unpleasant rose up in her stomach. Her chest burned. “Does he get to call you Lee, too?” she asked, struggling to keep her voice down.

Lee’s face tightened. “No,” he said flatly. “That name is yours alone.”

“You’re together,” she accused.

His jaw rippled. “You’ve been gone on almost constant tours, for nearly two years. Every time I’ve come home, you’ve been somewhere else.”

“I could say the same thing about you.”

“Tell me you haven’t been indulging yourself while you’re back in time.”

Tally stared at him. The heated tightness into her chest turned sour and cold. “Excuse me?”

“Tell me you haven’t been fucking the brains out of humans while you were back in time,” he said flatly.

Tally tried to find an answer,
something
she could say that wasn’t a flat out admission of guilt.

Lee nodded, despite her silence. “You think I don’t know what it’s like, going back? What it’s like to feel human again. To
feel
again? I’m not stupid, Tally. That’s something you’ve always underestimated.” He shook his head. “You’ve always gravitated towards humans. I knew that, but I kept ignoring it. But I finally understand now. Humans give you something that I can’t, that I will never be able to give you. I can’t compete.”

She glanced at the dark haired man once more. He was standing up at the top of the corridor, turned away from them, diligently not listening to them, although if he was vampire, he was probably picking up most of what they said even from this distance.

Then she tore her gaze away from him, and made herself look Lee directly in the eye.

His gaze flickered toward Richard. “I took your advice,” he said, and she was astonished to see there was a small smile lifting one corner of his mouth.

Tally blinked. There had been mountains of advice they had given each other over the years. Advice, suggestions, ideas, brainstorming…. It all flickered through her mind.  Then she remembered. “Seville,” she breathed as something seemed to grab at her throat.

“I assure you, madam, that I am not, nor have I ever been, a bugger.”

“Then you’re missing out on a lot of enjoyment, Mr. Hamilton.”

She could even hear his voice, and his accent, which had been stronger then. “Oh, Lee,” she breathed, looking at him now. Something like sorrow touched her. “We keep messing this up, don’t we?”

A furrow appeared between his brows. “Yes,” he said flatly, his tone harsh.

She nodded toward Richard. “You’d better go. Your friend is waiting.”

He hesitated, and it seemed like he wanted to say more. But instead he kissed her. It was a brief, innocent kiss, bereft of any passion. “Take care, Tally.” He hesitated again.

“What?” she prompted. She was suddenly willing to extend the conversation for as long as he would stay there with her. The last few seconds had shifted the ground beneath them in a way that felt scary.

And permanent.

She wanted him to stay until she recovered some of the good feelings that she’d once held for him. She didn’t want to lose him.

Lee pushed his hand through his hair. “You’ve been doing too many jumps, too close together. They must have warned you about this when you were training.”

“Stasis Poisoning?” They had drummed in the dangers over and over again. “I’m fine. I’m not stressing my symbiot.”

“You look tired,” Lee shot back. “That’s a good sign you’re over-doing it.”

I look tired because you just kicked me in the gut
. But she gritted her teeth together and smiled at him. “I’m fine,” she repeated.

“Just…be careful. Please?”

“I will.”

He gave her a lop-sided smile. From the corner of her eye she saw his hand lift…then drop back down to his side. Had he been about to caress her face? Then he smiled again and walked away.

Tally didn’t wait to watch him catch up with Richard. She turned and strode down the passage, until she could no longer see either of them. Then she halted and leaned against the wall.

After a moment, she let herself slide down to the floor.

She stayed there for a long while.

* * * * *

Chronometric Conservation Agency Satellite – near Earth orbit, 2251 AD – eighteen years later.

As soon as she emerged from the arrival chamber, Christian stepped up beside her, carefully not stepping on the hem of the Victorian tea gown she was wearing. He lifted the board in his hand. “This is your twenty-seventh tour. You had two weeks’ rest before you jumped. Do you know how stupid that is?”

“And hello to you, too,” she replied serenely, her gaze on the way ahead.

“The more often you jump without full recovery in between, the faster the poison hits you, when you’re back there. You’ve been travelling far too long. Tally, will you just stop for a minute?”

She kept walking and Christian had the overwhelming urge to throttle her. “For Christ’s sake, Tally,” he protested, putting out a hand to even slow her pace just a little.

Tally flinched out of the way of his touch, actually stepping sideways and dodging him. The train of her skirt swished to one side in a hiss that sounded angry. But she was staring at him, her expression unreadable. Her eyes were huge. “Don’t touch me,” she said. Her voice trembled.

They were in the observation area by the shuttle doors now, and there were people standing at the windows, admiring the view, and others in the shuttle waiting room. It was way too public a place. He had made a mistake, tackling her as soon as she had got back. But he had been so pissed, he hadn’t thought it through beyond fulfilling his need to either tell her the facts of life, or wallop her like a five year old.

He lifted the board again. “Are you really this stupid? This reckless?”

Her face could have been carved from marble, it was so still and white. “How dare you access my personal logs!”

“Tally, for heaven’s sake. I was concerned—”

“You don’t get to be concerned! You gave up any right to tell me what to do
twenty years ago!
”

Conversations around them faltered at her shout. Christian pushed a hand through his hair, and gathered his composure. Shouting back wouldn’t calm her. He knew from long experience she would be more likely to escalate it to something physical. A hundred years ago, they would have ended up in bed, and resolved their differences that way.

That wasn’t an option now. So he tried for calm. For soothing. “I know why you keep jumping back. I get it, Tally. I understand. But you’ve got to look at it from a pure time basis. You can’t negotiate with stasis poisoning.  Once it starts, if you don’t get back to your own time, you’re dead. Do you understand just how fast it can set in when you’ve been timing it too long? You won’t get a chance to jump back. It’ll debilitate you that fast.”

She had her head averted and he saw her swallow. After a moment, she looked back at him. The wounded, haunted look was still there in her big eyes, making him feel like a complete shit. He’d put that there.

“I just want you to be safe,” he ended pathetically.

She simply kept looking at him.

He cast about for something else to say that would take that look away from her eyes. “We could travel together,” he suggested. “We both know the same dates and places. We could…”

Tally’s expression of horror halted him. She drew herself upright and squared her shoulders. “No, thank you,” she said flatly.

The horror, the disdain her straight back and shoulders gave off, stung him. “You’ve got to start looking after yourself!”

Tally almost smiled. “Why should I when you’re doing such an excellent job watching my every move?”

Christian lifted his hand in the universal sign of ‘halt’. He wasn’t surprised to see they were trembling. His symbiot couldn’t compensate for the huge waves of feelings and the physical reactions were breaking through the symbiot’s control.

Tally held out her hand and he stared at it blankly, until he realized she wanted the board he held in his other hand.

“Let me see that,” she asked.

He handed it to her and she turned it around in her hands as if she was going to read it. Then she took a dainty step to her left and swung the board hard, up against the plasteel pillar jutting out from the wall.

The board crunched and fractured into thousands of electronic parts that scattered to the floor in soft musical raindrops.

The observation bay fell into total silence.

Tally brushed her hands, picked up her hem and stepped over the mess. She kept on walking, her head up.

After a while, conversation started up again. Christian stirred himself and walked away, too.

In the opposite direction.

* * * * *

Chronometric Conservation Agency Satellite – near Earth orbit, 2262 AD – eleven years later.

“Tally! Wait!”

Tally turned to see who was hailing her, automatically pushing the trailing hem of her kirtle around behind her.

Lee was jogging toward her, weaving in amongst the busy intersection between the private and public sections of the station. She smiled, for she hadn’t run into him for a very long time and she was absurdly pleased to see him. He was wearing black, as usual.

She waited for him to reach her.

“You look like you’re heading out,” he said. “I haven’t seen you around the station for a while. I just wanted to say hello.”

“I’ve been in Athens. Eight weeks R&R.”

“Contemporary Athens?” he asked.

The good feelings seeing him had generated were enough to smother her tiny spurt of irritation. “Yes, contemporary Athens,” she told him. “Will you never give up scolding me about my schedule?”

“Never,” he told her, and smiled back. Then his smile faded. “I...care about you. You know that’s why I do it, don’t you? You do know that.”

She drew in a deep breath. The air seemed suddenly thick and hard to draw in. “I know,” she admitted.

He studied her and the silence grew.

Abruptly, sadness touched her. It was a sorrow for what might have been. “You’ve been a good friend, Lee,” she said softly. The words were hard to speak, and they didn’t say what she really meant.

“Ah, Tally....” he whispered.

She bit her lip. “This isn’t what you had in mind, when you asked me to join the Agency, is it?” It was a question she had wanted to ask him for years.

His jaw rippled. His green eyes seemed to skewer her. Silently, he shook his head. Then he lifted his hand, only to drop it back to his side. He had aborted the movement.

“Lee,” she began, as the impulse struck her. “Do you think...perhaps...we could start again, maybe?”

“Do it all over again?” he asked, puzzled. But there was a light in his eyes that she recognized. It was hope.

“God, no. I mean, we start fresh and try to do it differently. We don’t have to hide beneath human lives now. We can just be ourselves. The world is so different...perhaps we can be.”

Lee pushed his hand through his hair. “How would we start?”

She pressed her lips together, thinking.  Then, “Why don’t we start with a date? A human-style date. You take me out to...well, dinner won’t work. We could crack a bottle of champagne and not drink it. But we meet somewhere neutral and we get to know each other.”

Lee grinned. “You think I don’t know you already?”

She rolled her eyes. “Then we’ll sit down and figure out how to get along, instead. That’s what couples who have known each other a long time do. They compromise on their differences.”