Negotiations

Negotiations


Ken shook his head at the waiter, thanking the man with a polite smile. At his elbow, Dr. Nambu accepted a glass of champagne before continuing his discussion with the dignitaries clustered around them.

Negotiations would start tomorrow, but tonight Ken, Joe, and Jun were expected to meet and mingle, ostensibly so they could advise the ISO. In actuality, Nambu wanted them to learn more about ISO politics, and provide security while they were at it.

The truth was, Ken was bored stupid by the solicitous speeches and endless declamations. And so was Joe. During the interminable palaver these people called a welcoming address, he’d seen Jun kick Joe to wake him up, and he’d wished he’d had the foresight to sit next to her.

Now he glanced across the room at Joe, who was sipping the mixed drink he’d gotten from the open bar. Even though they’d been able to drink legally for over a year, Joe was still gleeful about every glass he got without an argument. We’ve been fighting Galactor for half our lives, he told Ken, but we weren’t allowed to drink because we were “too young”. Who the hell makes these laws?

Joe was talking to a pretty blond woman in a dark green dress. She was laughing, and she touched his arm lightly, teasingly. Joe’s teeth flashed, and he bent his head to speak more intimately to her. Probably a secretary or an aide; she didn’t carry herself like one of the actual dignitaries, and besides, she was too young.

In spite of his wandering thoughts, Ken nodded politely each time Nambu introduced someone new, filing each person’s name neatly into the back of his head and ignoring everything else that was said. Maybe Joe’s idea wasn’t such a bad one. Ken was pretty damn sure he and the blonde weren’t discussing politics.

On the other hand, Nambu hadn’t brought them here to flirt.

As if he felt Ken’s glare, Joe glanced over. He arched his brows. I know, the look said. I’m aware. I’m working. But we’re supposed to fit in.

And Joe did fit in. He actually cleaned up pretty well, for as much as he’d bitched about it. When he’d pulled up and gotten out of his car, Ken hadn’t been able to resist telling him he that he looked like a penguin. Joe hadn’t even blinked; he’d just retorted that Ken looked pretty stupid, too. Jun had only smiled, her cheeks glowing a bit as she looked back and forth between them.

Now she stood on Nambu’s other side, her green eyes moving around the small circle as each person spoke, looking for all the world like she was actually interested in the discussion. She looked lovely in her floor-length pearl-colored gown, almost delicate, though of course she could kick the ass of damn near everyone in the room if she chose to do so.

“Aleksandra Demakova,” Nambu said, raising his voice slightly over the others in the circle. “We were just wondering if you were going to make it.”

The woman stepped into the circle, a glass of champagne already in hand, and Ken stopped breathing. Nearly his height in her heels, she was at least ten years younger than any of the other diplomats, and probably not much older than he. Her long velvet dress, the cloth such a dark red it was nearly black, clung to her slender curves and flared around her ankles. Her dark hair, touched with hints of auburn, was swept up, revealing a long, slender, elegant neck.

Nambu was making introductions, repeating the names of the other diplomats, presenting Jun as a technology specialist, and then Ken as a tactician. Ken was still staring at Demakova. Her skin was the flawless, nearly translucent white of alabaster, and her hand as she shook his was warm and firm.

Ken felt like he was falling, and it felt good.

“You seem young to be a diplomat,” Jun said, and he remembered where he was.

He dropped Aleksandra Demakova’s hand and hoped he hadn’t held it too long. He glanced at Jun, feeling a little dazed. Jun looked annoyed.

Demakova smiled warmly. “I’m fortunate to have been awarded the position, despite my age.” She gestured a bit at Jun. “You must be very accomplished yourself to be here tonight.”

Jun blinked, and then faint color rose to her cheeks.

“When a young person shows as much promise as she has, we recruit her,” Nambu interjected smoothly. “We certainly want her working for us.”

Demakova’s gaze slid back to Ken. “The same must be true for you, Mr. Washio.”

Someone tapped a microphone, sending a series of dull thuds through the sound system, reminding Ken of helicopter rotors. Everyone else turned to look at the stage, but Ken held Demakova’s gaze, and she held his.

Joe had talked more than once about having chemistry with women, but it had never occurred to Ken that chemistry might be more than a quixotic delusion, that it could hit you as hard as a well-placed punch.

“If everyone would please take their seats, we’re going to begin serving dinner,” the man on the stage said. “Thanks.”

Demakova extended her hand to Ken again. “It was a pleasure to meet you,” she said.

“Yes,” was all he could manage.

Demakova turned then to Jun and Nambu, and Ken went to find his seat.

Joe reached the table at the same time. “This is killing me,” he muttered under his breath. “I’ve started hoping Galactor will pull something, just so we have an excuse to get out of here.”

Ten minutes ago, Ken would have agreed with him. He looked over his shoulder, but Demakova had gone to her own table, and Jun was heading their way.

“At least we’re not expected to sit in on the actual negotiations,” Ken replied.

“I wish we were.” Jun rested her hand on the back of a chair and laid her purse on the table.

“You’re actually enjoying this, aren’t you?” Joe said.

She lifted one bare shoulder in a shrug. “It’s fascinating. These are some of the smartest people in the world. When else are we going to meet people from all over, important people who run enormous corporations and entire countries?”

Ken thought that they met people like this all the time, usually when Katse had taken them captive or kidnapped their children or destroyed their administrative buildings. But Jun was right; they never got to talk with them, only save them. These people were leaders for a reason, and there was probably a lot he could learn from them.

Other people were arriving at the table, smiling and introducing themselves and sitting in the chairs, so Jun retrieved her purse. “I’ll see you after the dinner.”

As one of the hosts, Nambu was seated at a table up close to the stage. His “advisors” had been strategically assigned seats throughout the room. Jun greeted the people at her table, where she’d set her little engraved placard earlier. Ken fingered his, in his pocket, and wondered if he should have done the same. Joe had probably written his cell number on his and handed it to the secretary.

He glanced at Joe. “Aren’t you supposed to be somewhere else?”

Joe grinned. “I traded with someone. I hate this stuff. I don’t want to sit with a bunch of old politicians.” He pulled out the chair beside Ken’s.

Ken knew he should reprimand him -- they’d been arranged around the room for a reason -- but in truth, he was glad for an ally. Several times throughout the evening he’d thought the monotonous, affected formality might actually kill him. Or maybe he’d just been hoping it would, so he could quit suffering.

He listened to the clink of silverware and the murmur of voices as everyone started on their salads, still thinking about Aleksandra Demakova. Who had Nambu said she represented? He pulled out his mental file and thumbed through it. The Walachia Medical Alliance. Hmm. Ken retrieved another mental file, one he’d created during the briefings Nambu had subjected them to prior to the diplomats’ arrival.

The WMA had started out as a collective that drew on various medical research facilities, eventually uniting them under a single corporate head. Now they functioned much like the ISO, in a neutral federal district in southeast Europe.

In the years since the WMA had formed, it had become the single most important driving force in medicine. Its researchers had developed the current treatment for HIV/AIDS, which was sending the illness into remission and allowing formerly terminal patients to live much longer lives. The Alliance was still searching for a true cure, but in the meantime it had developed revolutionary approaches to sickle cell anemia and hemophilia, and several innovative cancer treatments were currently in the human testing stage.

Ken turned in his chair, scanning the room, and found Demakova five tables away. He was struck again by her beauty, by her sculpted, regal features, by her sophisticated bearing. She was, by coincidence, seated at the same table as the blond woman to whom Joe had been talking. The woman with whom Ken suspected Joe had traded seats. He felt strangely relieved that Joe was sitting beside him, instead of over there, chatting up the WMA diplomat.

Demakova glanced up, as if she sensed his interest, and smiled at him warmly, intimately. He found himself smiling in return.

“Who is that?” Joe murmured in his ear.

Ken turned back around in his chair. “Her name is Aleksandra Demakova, and she’s the diplomat sent by the WMA.”

“You sure?” Joe was still watching her. “She’s really young to be a diplomat.”

“We’re young to be here, too. Stop staring at her.”

Joe’s brows arched, and a smile played across his lips. “Hard not to. She’s really hot.”

Ken kicked him under the table. “The guy on the stage is going to speak. Pay attention.”

#


An hour of mind-numbingly boring speeches later, the guests were invited to mingle again, and the band started a waltz. Joe slapped Ken on the back on his way past, and crossed the room to Jun’s table.

He bent over her and extended his hand, and Jun smiled up at him. She really was beautiful, Ken thought, though he rarely noticed. She rose, allowing Joe to tuck her hand into the crook of his arm. They walked together toward the dance floor, stopping often as Jun spoke to the various diplomats.

Ken considered walking over to the dance floor to watch his friends or maybe even dance with Jun, just to make a good show of things. Then he considered the ocean of distance between him and the floor, and all the diplomats milling through it, about as appealing as alligators in a swimming hole. How many more people would he have to speak to if he walked over there? How many more bland lies would he have to tell? When Nambu had said he wanted them here, but quietly, not in birdstyle, it had seemed like a good idea. Now Ken wished he had pressed to be a glorified security guard, standing quietly on the balcony or near the doors.

“Mr. Washio, isn’t it?”

He started a bit. It was unusual for anyone to be able to sneak up on him, but he was tired, and he had been distracted by his thoughts. Demakova stood beside him, a glass of red wine cradled in her hand.

“Yes,” he said finally. “Ms. Demakova, right?” He was impressed with himself, acting like he didn’t know exactly what her name was.

“Aleksandra.”

But before he could return the courtesy, she leaned closer. The smooth, milky perfection of her skin was real, rather than a cosmetic illusion. He saw no freckles, moles, or scars, other than the tiny line that bisected her upper lip, and that was nearly invisible beneath her lipstick. She wore no perfume that he could detect, but her skin and hair bore a faint, appealing scent that he assumed was her own.

“You have the bearing of one who is older than his appearance might suggest,” she said.

He opened his mouth, closed it, and then managed, “How so?”

She gazed at him for a beat before straightening, and he realized that his response had been as unexpected as her question had been to him.

His eyes narrowed. A code phrase of some kind, and he had not returned the expected response.

“I meant no offense,” she said. “Just that you carry yourself well. But I suppose that is not so unusual, considering the maturity we must have to do the jobs we do.”

He nodded, still turning her initial phrase over in his head.

“Tell me again what you do, exactly?” Small talk, now; he’d blown whatever chance he might have had to play her confidant, her contact. “You work with the Gatchaman team?”

He froze, then realized that she was asking whether his work was related to the Gatchaman team, not if he was on the team. Back to his bland lies. “Yes. I help assess risk when they’re out on missions.”

He expected her to press him; any good Galactor agent would, with a young intelligence agent on her hands.

“I suppose I should say that sounds interesting,” she responded instead, “but to be honest, I bet it’s pretty boring most of the time. But I guess they probably keep you busy. I know Galactor’s been hitting us hard lately. We really need the ISO’s support.”

Ken thought for a moment. He and the others had been spending an inordinate amount of time fighting Galactor away from the WMA’s lands and facilities, both in Europe and domestically. “Why do you think you’ve become such a target?” He hoped he sounded conversational.

She shrugged. “Terrorism is about destroying hope. Our work provides a lot of people with hope.” Her eyes were a rich whiskey-warm color, nearly golden.

“Would you like to dance?” he blurted. The urge to clap his hand over his mouth immediately afterward was nearly overwhelming. Where the hell had that come from?

She smiled, the first really genuine smile he’d seen all night. “I would, thank you.”

They made their way across the long room to the dance floor. Ken considered tripping over his own feet, faking an injury, anything to get out of what his big mouth had gotten him into. But he accidentally touched her hand, tucked against his elbow, and she hooked her fingers through his. He glanced over and felt a fresh jolt of attraction.

Whatever else she might be, he wanted her. Maybe he could stand one dance.

* * *

Ken was standing outside on the balcony, leaning against the balustrade, when the evening finally ended. He turned his head slightly to listen to the short reminder that the summit began at 7:30 the following morning with a brunch, and that the actual negotiations would begin at 8 and run as late as they needed to.

Aleksandra Demakova appeared, framed in the golden glow of the hall. She walked out to him and leaned her elbows on the balustrade beside him. “Will you be at the actual summit tomorrow?”

He shook his head. “I was just part of tonight’s festivities.” That wasn’t entirely true -- he would be there, but as Gatchaman, not as Ken Washio.

She glanced at him, her mouth curving at his faint sarcasm. “Will I see you again?”

Her question threw him a bit. There were plenty of people here who had more power, influence, access than the part he was playing had. Why would she care to see him again -- unless she really was interested in him? The idea wedged in his chest and ached a little. It didn’t happen often, but once in a while he mourned the normal life he might have had if the world had been a different place.

“Ken?” she said softly.

“No, you won’t see me again.”

She laid a hand on his arm. “What if I want to see you again?”

He gazed at her hand. Why couldn’t he see her again? She didn’t know who he was.

He pulled away from her. Because he was attracted to her. Very attracted to her. And if she was a Galactor spy…well, Joe had made that mistake enough times. Ken had no intention of doing the same thing. And if, somehow, she wasn’t a Galactor spy…then she could only get killed.

“I don’t think that would be a good idea,” he said finally.

“I’m not asking you for forever,” she said. “Just for tonight.”

Her words whispered over his skin like a caress. Why not tonight? He wasn’t a virgin, and he wasn’t a saint, in spite of what the tabloids printed. And he did want her. He lifted a hand to touch her cheek, as soft and smooth as it looked, and she turned her face into his palm and pressed her lips there.

But she was also a diplomat, here to negotiate with the ISO and the other assembled nations and corporations for resources to fight Galactor. She was not someone to be treated dishonorably. And even if she had been, he didn’t want to treat her that way.

“I’m sorry,” he said again.

“You are more than you seem to be, aren’t you?” she said.

He answered as honestly as he could. “Aren’t we all?”

She drew a deep breath, glancing back toward the dissolving party, as if remembering herself. “You’re right.” She took a step back, so his hand fell away from her face. “You’re right.” She smiled. “Thank you.” She unwrapped the narrow ribbon of strap she’d coiled around her purse and draped it across her shoulder. “It was really nice to meet you.”

He nodded, and she turned away.

But the madness that had possessed him half the night carried him after her. “Aleksandra,” he said.

She turned back, and he didn’t know what to say to keep her a little longer. After a moment she leaned up on her toes, her hands falling gently on his forearms, and kissed him, and need crackled between them like electricity. She tasted like red wine and strawberries, and her arms wrapped around his neck, drawing him up against that soft velvet dress and her even softer curves. He touched the naked skin of her back, something he had been careful not to do when they were dancing, letting his fingers slide under the edges of the fabric falling from her shoulders. Everything about her was smooth, white, flawless, beautiful, perfect.

He ended the kiss, drawing back to gaze at her. “I wish things were different,” he said, meaning it.

“So do I,” she whispered, and he wondered what secrets lay between them that he would never know.


#

Fifteen minutes later, after his head had cleared, he realized that it was his job to know. His job to protect the summit, the ISO, the whole fucking world from Galactor. If she was an agent or a mole, he had to know what she was up to.

He followed her chauffeured car through the darkened streets, moving as invisibly as any shadow at night. The driver stopped not at either of the hotels that had been reserved and placed under constant security detail for the summit, but at one of WMA’s local research facilities.

The chauffeur went around the back of the car and retrieved Aleksandra’s bags before opening her door. She nodded to him and preceded him through the doors, which responded to a swipe card she carried. Ken slipped through behind them.

They walked through the silent corridors, carpeted in a tasteful, tawny sand color. Gilded sconces adorned the walls and provided light. Aleksandra did not speak, and the chauffeur trailed a few paces behind her.

They passed through two more swipe-card activated doors and stepped into an elevator. Ken waited until he heard the car began to move before prying apart the doors and dropping silently onto the top of the car. Going down was always easier than going up; he’d just gotten lucky.

He counted the bells that announced each floor; when they reached the fourth sublevel, the elevator stopped and its passengers exited into a corridor cut short by the kind of heavy steel door he associated with bank vaults and priceless museum treasures. There Aleksandra paused to place her hand upon a backlit blue panel. The system responded by greeting her in a language Ken didn’t speak, and revealing a second backlit panel. This one completed a retinal scan, and then the door sighed, the internal locking mechanism audibly shifted, and the door hissed open.

Ken slipped out of the elevator shaft and reached for the door before it could close. Just as he touched it, he felt the telltale hum of his comm against his skin. He glanced down, and it was flashing at him. He mouthed a curse, glancing one final time at the door before turning back.

#


“You called me back here so we could review the plan for tomorrow?”

“You usually like making sure everything is in place, Ken,” Ryu said.

Ken sighed. Usually. Usually he didn’t have to sit through hours of painfully boring political bombast. Usually he wasn’t expected to deal with fifty different security forces, all demanding their diplomat be covered by Gatchaman himself. Usually he wasn’t crazy attracted to strange women. Usually.


* * *


Each of the conference rooms was secured before Ken, Joe, Jun, Jinpei, and Ryu took their places outside the doors. Boring, but not as boring as actually being in the meetings would have been. Ken spent most of the morning down the hall from Jun, and if they kept their voices low, they could talk while they waited.

The afternoon was much the same, though he was close to Jinpei part of the time (and Jinpei was actually extremely entertaining, except when he talked about his fish) and Joe the rest.

Like a number of the other diplomats, Aleksandra Demakova didn’t come in until evening. The meetings were going on practically around the clock so the alliances could be formed as quickly as possible. Ken thought--even hoped--he might catch a glimpse of her. She couldn’t possibly be as enticing as he remembered, he thought, but he didn’t see her.

It was after nine when a sound made him stiffen. He glanced down the hall at Jun, whose post was near his again. “You hear that?”

The question was virtually hypothetical. He could see from the look on her face that she had.

He had just lifted his bracelet to his mouth when Joe’s opened the line from his end. “Room 12,” he said tersely.

“On my way.” For the sake of the others, Ken added, “Stay where you are. Could be a diversion.” Jun nodded as he passed her.

A number of the diplomats were bunched in the door of Conference Room 12, and more people were spilling out of the rooms to either side.

Ken frowned as he drew close. “Out of the door,” he said sharply, raising his voice to be heard over the din. He pointed to the room to the right of 12. “Go in there and wait. Someone will be in to talk with you.”

No one argued with him, though they moved more slowly than he would have liked. They might be diplomats, but they were as obscenely fascinated by whatever had happened in that room as any group of bystanders.

Still, they parted around him, giving him enough room that even the tips of his wings didn’t brush against them.

Splashes of vermilion on the eggshell-white walls, gaping black bullet holes. The thick metallic stench of blood, and Joe bent over one of the three bodies.

Several of the diplomats hovered above him, and by glancing at their engraved nametags, Ken was able to identify them as representatives of Canada, Mali, and Cyprus.

Aleksandra, the fourth diplomat still on her feet, had plastered herself to the wall well away from the blood, as if it were a live bomb instead of a little--okay, a lot--of gore.

Joe was occupied with the man on the floor, and it took Ken a moment to identify him, twisted as his face was with pain. The diplomat from Andorra. He was still alive, in spite of having been gut-shot. Ken glanced across the body at Joe, who was pressing hard into unseen wounds. Joe shook his head. The man wasn’t going to make it.

Ken noted the other two bodies; one was the diplomat from Slovakia; the other was from the Zhinsk Foundation.

“Help is on the way,” Ken said to Andorra.

A gun lay in Zhinsk’s limp hand, and there was a bloody hole in the temple Ken could see.

Andorra’s breathing was thready, almost strangled. And then he stopped breathing altogether.

A group of medics burst through the door, but within a minute they had pronounced him dead. Joe stood, leaving the man’s intestines to bulge from the wounds.

Ken sent the medics away, and Aleksandra and the Canadian diplomat started to go with them. Ken told them to stay.

Aleksandra began to cry. She was scrupulously avoiding looking at the blood, staring everywhere but at the bodies. Her skin had grown even whiter than it had been last night, but her pupils were dilated, her breath coming too fast.

Joe touched her arm, and she jerked away, sliding unsteadily away from him, her back to the wall. “Please don’t touch me,” she gasped. “I need to get out of here. Please.”

Joe glanced at Ken, then returned to her. “We need you to talk with us about what happened.”

“I. Have. Blood. On my. Clothes,” she said. She sounded like she was going to start hyperventilating. “Please. I have to get out of here.”

“We can use one of the other conference rooms,” Ken said.

He and Joe ushered the four diplomats out of the room and into the empty conference room to the left of 12. Ken noticed that Nambu and President Anderson and several other people were in the conference room to which he had directed everyone else. Jun had joined them; Nambu had probably called her in to help calm everyone.

The diplomats took seats at the conference table, all of them looking shaken, but only Aleksandra seemed possessed by that sick, almost feverish agitation. She covered her face with her hands.

“What happened?” Joe said.

“The Zhinsk guy just stood up and started shooting people,” said the Mali diplomat. “No warning.”

“How were the talks going?”

Canada shook her head. “Great. Everyone seemed pleased. We were getting ready to finish up. And he just stood up and started…killing people.”

“Then he shot himself?” Ken said.

“When I opened the door,” Joe said. “No hesitation.”

Ken glanced again at Aleksandra. The sexy, composed woman he’d met the night before could have been someone else; this woman appalled him. “Ms. Demakova?” he said, perhaps a little sharply. “Is there something we can do to assist you?”

“I’m sorry.” She kept her face covered. “I have… I have PTSD. Post-traumatic stress disorder. I have a therapist but I… This triggered…memories…”

Joe looked concerned, but Ken felt more irritated than anything.

“Gatchaman,” Nambu said from the door.

Ken turned, and Joe looked up.

“Let’s give them a chance to recover themselves, change their clothes if they want to. Then we can discuss what happened.”

Ken narrowed his eyes at Nambu, but this was not the average situation. These were Very Important People, and Nambu understood the delicacies of politics better than Ken ever wanted to. He nodded once.

The four diplomats climbed arduously to their feet. Ken reminded himself that the situation was difficult for these people. They did not deal with blood and death and the horrors of war--at least not this directly--every day.

“Joe,” he said, low, so Joe would not follow the others out.

Joe moved around the table and leaned back against it, his arms folded comfortably, waiting.

“I want you to stall the woman from the WMA--Demakova, the one who’s so upset--for a couple of minutes. Can you do that?”

“Sure. What gives?”

“I think she might be Galactor. I want to check something out. I’ll call you in a couple of minutes.”

Joe nodded and went after her. Ken headed in the opposite direction. He walked through several sets of security doors, and when he was alone, he changed out of birdstyle, never breaking his stride.

He passed into the main lobby, which was being covered by armed police. None of them knew him; they were just hired help for the summit. In anticipation of the adjournment of tonight’s talks, limos had parked along the brick drive. Though the cars’ plates were almost all Utoland issue, each bore a sticker identifying the country from which its consul hailed.

Ken quickly identified the WMA limo and rapped on the driver’s dark, tinted window. The glass slid down with a quiet buzz, and the driver peered up at him.

“There’s been some excitement inside,” Ken said, making himself sound a little breathless, a little harried. “Some of the diplomats were hurt. I’m supposed to tell their drivers to come inside.”

The man rolled the window back up and agreeably climbed out of the limo, locking it carefully behind him, and followed Ken through the revolving glass doors. Ken flashed his clearance badge at the police, even though they’d just watched him walk out through the doors they guarded.

He led the driver to one of the empty rooms, purposely tripping over him as they walked through the door. The driver glared at him but said nothing. “I’m supposed to tell you that someone will be here to talk to you,” Ken said. “They said it might be a while though, so I’m sorry if you have to wait.”

“Is Ms. Demakova all right?” the man said.

“I don’t know. I don’t know anything, they just told me to get you. I have to go back out now.” He closed the door behind him, changed back into birdstyle, and walked outside, the keys he’d lifted off the driver in his hand. He unlocked the car door, slid into the front seat, and raised the dark barrier to within a couple of inches of the ceiling. He could see into the back with the rearview mirror.

He touched his bracelet. “Ok, Joe.”

Aleksandra appeared within minutes. She moved with purpose, and the concierge opened her door for her. She slid inside.

“Did you get what I asked you to?” she said. She still sounded breathless, but all of the helplessness and delicacy was gone.

Ken opened his mouth to say “yes” and bluff his way through whatever came next.

“Never mind,” she interrupted. “I see you did.”

He watched her take a reinforced silver case off the seat in front of her, listened to her snap back the locks. His heart beat a little faster in anticipation of learning what was inside.

She glanced out the window, or maybe at the window, but it was silvered and tinted, and nobody could see in. She reached into the case and lifted out something soft and red.

Ken’s eyes widened. A bag of blood.

What the hell?

She produced a paring knife from the case and sliced the bag open. He watched, horrified, as she lifted the bag to her mouth and began drinking the blood.

Holy fucking Christ! It was all he could do not to get out of the car and shout the words. He’d seen a lot of blood in his life, but he’d never seen anyone drink it. He thought that later, when he had the time, he might actually be sick.

She returned the now-empty bag to the silver case, sank back into her seat, closed her eyes, and sighed. “Thank you, Robert.” Ken hit the button to retract the barrier, which slid quietly into nonexistence, and turned so he could rest his arm along the back of his seat.

“That doesn’t look like PTSD to me.” He sounded more angry than horrified, and for that he was grateful.

Her eyes flew open and she sat forward. “Where the hell is Robert?”

He cocked a thumb back toward the building they’d just left. “Inside. Told him we needed to talk to him about something.”

“That idiot,” she hissed.

He reached over the seat and tilted the silver case so he could remove the knife she’d replaced, leaving it empty but for the drained bag. “Now why don’t you tell me what’s really going on?”

She eyed him narrowly for a long, long moment. “Do I have another choice?”

“I take you inside, tell everyone what I just saw, and explain that there seem to be vampires working for Galactor.” A beat while he shook his head. “Crazy as that sounds.”

“I am not Galactor.” She had a faint accent now that she was angry.

“Then explain to me what the hell happened in there. The shooting. You acting like you were so upset by it all when you’re obviously fine.”

“I don’t know why he starting shooting people.”

“I think you do.”

She sat quietly for a long time, studying him. He knew she couldn’t really see his face through his visor, but her scrutiny was so pointed that he began to wonder if she could.

“You and the rest of the Gatchaman team have saved us from Galactor before,” she said finally. “So I will tell you. It seems I have little choice.” She leaned forward, bracing her elbows on her knees and folding her hands out before her. “The Vampire Nation needs your protection from Galactor, just as the other groups inside do.”

“What about the Walachia Medical Alliance?”

“The WMA, the Vampire Nation, we’re the same thing.”

“The WMA is a front.”

“No, it is exactly what it seems to be. Medical research. The Vampire Nation has obviously existed far longer than the WMA, but because so many of us have been hunted and murdered over the years, those left are the smartest, the most seasoned. Many have committed their skills to the WMA, though by no means is every scientist and researcher who works with us a vampire.”

“Why does your nation hide behind the WMA?”

“It is not hiding so much as…a façade the public can accept. We have been called monsters. Hunted down while we slept, staked or decapitated or burned. We have been romanticized, caricatured, and even, at certain times in history, decimated. Few of us are true monsters, and those who are…we deal with them. We want what everyone wants. To live peacefully. The WMA makes that possible.”

Ken touched the top of the silver case. “And gives you access to blood.”

She didn’t look away. “Yes. There is no longer talk of ‘victims’ or taking from those who do not wish to give of themselves. We are civilized.”

Ken muttered a curse. Whatever he had expected to learn when he’d set her up, it hadn’t been this. He replayed the previous night. Her flawless beauty. Her grace. The words that had made him believe she was a Galactor agent: You have the bearing of one who is older than his appearance might suggest.

It hadn’t been some kind of Galactor code phrase, he realized. It was a ritualized greeting that allowed vampires to identify one another. He wondered why she had believed him to be what she was, but he couldn’t ask without giving himself away.

“You are far more poised than you were inside,” he said instead. “No tears, no hysteria. No PTSD.”

She made a soft sound that suggested to him she thought the question ridiculous. “I had to get out of there.” She touched her suit, the line of blood that splashed across her arm, nearly black now that it was drying into the dove gray fabric. “The blood, you understand.”

“It made you…” He couldn’t say it.

“Hungry. Frantically, almost uncontrollably hungry.”

He wished she hadn’t said it, either. “Why didn’t you…eat…before you came in?”

“You have to understand, Galactor is determined to force us out into the open. Their goal is to expose us, make us out to be the cartoonish monsters from film. They fear us, but we are far fewer than they. They are destroying or contaminating our blood supplies, hoping we will be forced to feed on humans. That would cause hysteria, superstitious backlash. It would distract from their plans and, they hope, get us destroyed in the process. We have power, and we oppose them. If they can get you to kill us off, or if they can do it by destroying our blood supplies, we are of no further threat to them.”

“You have--had--blood right here.”

“Not before I got here tonight. Robert had to get this for me.”

“So…the shooting in the conference room…that was for your benefit.”

“To try to expose me, yes. I doubt the Zhinsk diplomat knew why he had been given the orders he was, but he followed them. If vampires really changed physically as much as your movies suggest, there would have been no way to hide what I am.”

Now that she had mentioned it, he realized that at no point had she looked less than human. Her skin was unusually pale and pure, and she was strikingly beautiful, but her hands and mouth had been warm on his last night, and other than her hysterical behavior inside, she had displayed no outward response to the blood.

“So you know the truth,” she said. “No one else in there” --she nodded to the building--“does.” An ironic smile. “Well, Robert. But besides him. What will you do with the information?”

He had forgotten Robert. “Is Robert…?”

“Yes. But he is young, and has much to learn. Obviously.”

“Your youth is an illusion,” he said. The reality of it was a little overwhelming.

“I am much older than my physical appearance suggests.”

“How old?” He could hear Jun in his head, telling him never to ask a woman her age, but the question was already out.

“One hundred and thirty two years. Younger than most, older than some.”

“Why doesn’t anyone here know what you are? Why must it be a secret from everyone?”

She sat back, looking tired now. “You must have some sense of what it is like to have seen more than your supposed contemporaries.” She waved her hand, indicating his appearance. “Some knowledge of what it is like to live a double life.” She rested her arm along the back of her seat and folded her hand in so she could rest her head against it and gaze out the window. “You must have some sense of what it is like to hide what you really are. And all the dangers that go with exposure. When they know your secrets, they know your weaknesses.”

“Like the blood,” he said.

She nodded, still gazing out the window. “Like the blood. And the horror others feel toward us.” She glanced at the silver case, and then met his eyes as unerringly as if she had been able to see them. “You were disgusted.”

“I was…” He couldn’t come up with a diplomatic word.

“You were disgusted. Though I can not see much of your face, I recognize the emotion. It is familiar to me. I am diseased at best, a monster at worst, because blood excites me. And so I lead a double life and pretend to be human like you, but without many of the pleasures of human existence.” She waved a hand. “I am being sentimental.”

“You must have lovers,” he said without thinking, remembering her request, Just for tonight.

She smiled, a genuine smile, a beautiful smile, but one that revealed just a hint of fang. He thought about how much she had smiled the night before, but never as wide as she was smiling now, always carefully hiding the extra length of her canines. “Is Gatchaman propositioning me?”

He blinked. “I--“

She cut him off before he could say more. “I am teasing you.” She was still smiling, but it was the smile he’d seen last night, one that made her look wholly human. “Any worthwhile carnal activities would require you to reveal your identity, and though you know my secret, yours is far more dangerous. Yes, I have had lovers. But the average human lover is easily rolled by my power, and while many of my kind are satisfied with that kind of adoration, I prefer an equal. As for most of my equals--my kind…” She shook her head. “The experience is too intimate to share with someone for whom you do not care.”

She smoothed her skirt and tugged her jacket into place. “I meant to come out here for just a few minutes, because Dr. Nambu and your teammate told me they would need to ask me a few questions. Now that I am able to answer in a reasonable fashion, I suppose I must go back inside.”

“What if you have to go near that room with all the blood?”

“It will be uncomfortable, but I will be all right now.” She pressed her lips together for a moment before speaking again. “You must do what you believe is right, but please consider keeping my secret. I know there will be a lot of questions inside, questions that are meant to help your team and the other guards keep us safe… But I…and my people…we have learned through bitter experience that most do no respond well to what we are. That’s why we’ve worked so hard to hide it. We just want to work with the ISO and the other groups here. There is no hidden agenda as far as that is concerned; I truly am speaking for the WMA--the Vampire Nation--when I come here to ask for help.”

Ken palmed the keys and opened his door, then opened hers as well. He was extremely aware of the dried blood on her sleeve, but she ignored it.

They walked back inside to get Robert and tell the others her version of what had happened.

#


Two nights later, when finally people began to leave the summit meetings at four a.m., Nambu took Ken and the others aside. “Aleksandra Demakova is missing,” he said. “She did not arrive tonight, and we have heard nothing. Attempts to reach the place she was staying have yielded nothing.”

Ken glanced at the dark windows. He felt like he’d been up for days, but it hadn’t quite been 24 hours yet. “When was she supposed to get here?”

“Seven.”

“Is anyone else missing?” Jun said.

“Not tonight. Mahadeva Bahskar Yamunun didn’t show up the night before last, and when we tried to contact him, we learned he’d had a heart attack. He’s all right, but the Pakistani government is sending someone to take his place in the final meetings tomorrow.”

“But you were able to contact Yamunun’s people.”

“Yes. We can’t get anyone at the Utoland WMA headquarters. They keep suites for their dignitaries and researchers, since their people travel among their institutes on a regular basis. Particularly since Galactor’s been targeting them so much lately, Ms. Demakova’s people preferred to have her stay there. But we’re concerned.

“I want you to go check things out, but I also need you here. So I’d like two of you to stay and three of you to go.” He glanced at Ken, reaching for the doorhandle. “You decide who’s where. I need to get back.”

The decision wasn’t tough. Ken knew who would complain the most about being left behind. Jinpei was already jumping from one foot to the other in his eagerness to do something besides guard closed doors. Joe leaned against the wall, as stoic as always, but he’d be pissed if he had to stay.

“Jun and Ryu, you watch things here, and we’ll be back in an hour or so. We’ll call if we need backup.”

Ryu groaned. “Just like always. Stay behind and watch the ship.”

Jun smiled at him. “I’m staying too.”

“Yeah, but I always gotta stay.”

“Quit complaining,” Joe said. “These people will clear out soon and you’ll be able to get some sleep. We gotta be here again at nine a.m., and it’s starting to wear on me.”

Ryu frowned, and so did Jinpei. Jinpei looked like maybe he didn’t want to go after all. “Can onechan go instead?”

Jun shrugged agreeably, and Ken rolled his eyes. “Fine, but let’s go. The sooner we do this, the sooner we get back.”


#


Ken already knew exactly where they were going, since he’d followed Aleksandra there before, but he still listened to the directions one of the ISO datatechs provided. The man added the information that some of the suites were on a sublevel, for added security.

From the sunlight, Ken thought.

“Weird,” Joe said.

The building was lit on the outside exactly the same way it had been before, but that didn’t mean anything. The three of them went in through the side doors and checked the lobby. They found a small smear of blood on the elevator doors, and droplets dried into the busy carpet pattern inside the car, but nothing more.

Ken led Joe and Jun down the corridors he’d followed Aleksandra through before, and they paused only briefly at each one as Jun shorted the security doors.

They rode the elevator down, pausing at each sublevel. The first and second were labs, the third contained offices, and the fourth had a dead body in the hall.

Ken recognized Robert, the limousine driver. Someone had cut off his head and torn out his heart. Jun looked away. Joe looked pissed. All three of them looked at the heavy door.

“All right.” Jun stepped gingerly over the body and produced a screwdriver so thin it could have doubled as a stiletto. She removed the casing covering the security panel and began to reach inside, then shook her head, staring at the wires.

“What’s the problem?” Ken said.

“This is…something different than I’ve ever seen before.”

Joe moved closer to look over her shoulder. “If we load it up with explosives…?”

She shook her head, indicating something inside the box with her screwdriver.

“Oh,” Joe said, as if that explained everything. “And you don’t know how to bypass it?”

“I don’t even know where to start. This thing has more failsafes than anything I’ve ever seen. I’m more likely to force it to lock down completely than I am to get us through this door.” She looked back at Ken. “I saw computer terminals on the second sublevel. If we go back up there, I can try to hack the security system and get us in that way.”

Ken stepped back so she’d have room to come back across the body.

On the second sublevel, Jun sat down at one of the machines and quickly bypassed the password-locked screensaver. She opened a DOS command screen and did things Ken didn’t understand.

“This is interesting,” she said, sitting back to look at one of the screens she’d pulled up.

“What is?”

“This is a log for that security system downstairs. It’s set so only Ms. Demakova can go in and out, and it will seal for a minimum of twelve hours if someone else tries to breach it. And based on the log, the number of times she’s logged in and out--the code is slightly different for when it’s being opened from the inside as opposed to the outside--she’s not in there now. She let herself out shortly before she should have reached the ISO consulate.”

“So something happened en route,” Joe said.

“I don’t think we should waste our time trying to get into that room,” Jun said. She sat back and let her hands fall into her lap. “She’s not in there.”

“We’re not going to get any sleep tonight, are we?” Joe muttered.

“Where do we start?” Jun said at the same time.

“I think we need to go through this building first,” Ken said. “Especially since we found the blood in the elevator. And the body downstairs.”

Unfortunately, the building wasn’t just big, it was tall. Even after Jun used the computer to disengage most of the security doors, there was plenty to do with all those labs and offices to search.

They contacted each other every time one of them found something--like the bags of research blood torn open and poured down sink drains, or the open bag of silver nitrate. More often, one of them found someone. Most of the bodies had been mutilated like Robert’s, and Ken began to suspect they’d find Aleksandra’s remains in the same condition.

But when he did find her, on the top floor of the building, in a rich, soaring office, she was still in one piece. Technically.

The double oak doors swung into the room, and knew instantly that he was in the right place. In spite of, or maybe because of, the cold breeze, it smelled like a meat locker. He stepped inside, his boots crunching over glass, and found half a dozen bodies on the floor, some of them Galactors.

Rich warm mahogany leather chairs, oak-paneled walls, a Cadillac-sized desk and miles of windows. Several of them were broken; that was why the room was so cold. He looked up. The enormous skylights had also been broken out.

Aleksandra sat slumped in the dark in a leather chair with a stainless steel frame, facing the enormous windows and the softening gray harbinger of dawn that was gently blotting out the stars.

As Ken drew closer, he saw that she had been bound to the chair with twined steel cable and barbed wire. The metal had chewed savagely into her bare hands and ankles.

A large white circle had been drawn around the chair with what looked like sea salt. Or silver nitrate. Arcane symbols had been finger-painted in blood inside and outside of the ring, and more blood trailed through the crystals.

The whole thing made him wish he had never seen it.

He crept forward, probing the shadows, unable to see Aleksandra well enough to tell whether she was breathing. Her head had fallen forward, hiding her face.

As soon as he tried to cross the line of salt, hot invisible needles stabbed through him, making him cry out. He jerked back, stumbling into another piece of furniture. Otherwise, he’d have ended up on his ass.

“Aleksandra,” he said when he recovered.

She started a bit, jerking hard against her bindings, and then moaning. The new furrows the barbed wire tore into her skin didn’t bleed.

She slowly lifted her head, and he saw that someone had cut the carotid on the other side of her neck. She was covered in red; she should have bled out within minutes.

She looked around, her eyes unfocused, and he fumbled for the closest unbroken light. Soft yellow lamplight brought all the room’s colors into sharp relief. The inhuman white of her skin, the ochre grain of the hardwood floor, the midnight blue of her slacks and jacket, the red violence splashed all over the floor.

“I need blood,” she croaked.

He looked around. There was blood everywhere. Blood and glass and salt and bodies. He eyed the closest dead Galactor. If she could drink blood out of a bag, he couldn’t see why a Galactor wouldn’t do as well.

“No,” she said. “They contaminate their own blood with silver…so we can’t use them. Downstairs…there’s blood downstairs…in the labs.”

Ken shook his head. “It’s all been dumped out. There’s none left.”

She slumped back into her chair, and he wondered if she had fainted. Could vampires faint?

“I can’t reach you,” he said. “I can’t cross the circle on the floor.”

She moved again, groggily, painfully tilting her head to look at the crystalline substance on the floor. “You can.”

“I tried. I felt…”

“Magic,” she said. “It’s to keep me in. And keep me from calling for help.” She pulled weakly at her bonds, wincing. “You have to break the circle.”

Ken cast about for something he could use to sweep aside some of the salt.

“From inside,” she said. “Break it from outside, it will kill you.”

“Isn’t there some kind of…professional who handles this kind of thing?” It felt like a stupid question, but he’d never dealt with magic before. In fact, he seemed to be dealing with a lot of things he’d never dealt with lately.

“There’s no one,” she said. “Not before the sun rises. If the sun touches me while I am like this, I will die. You can do it. You are what you are because you have power that the circle will respect.”

“And you can’t break it?”

She looked at her bonds. “Silver,” she said. “Won’t kill me, but makes me weak. So weak.” She was silent for a moment, as if she had forgotten what she was saying. Then she rallied. “Step into the circle and put your hand through the salt.” She gazed at him, her tired eyes golden in the lamplight. “Please.”

He gazed at the circle, loathe to encounter the magic it held again. But dawn’s first blush had touched the horizon. He drew a deep breath and plunged forward, so his momentum would carry him into the circle in spite of the pain.

Invisible needles stabbed into every centimeter of skin. He staggered against her chair, jarring her hard enough to make her gasp. He hit the floorboards on both knees and thought he might be sick. The urge to curl into a fetal ball was nearly overwhelming. He had to let go of her chair to crawl forward, and his arms gave beneath him, spilling him onto the floor.

The hurt reminded him of the fiery Phoenix, but a thousand times more intense. He heard his breath, quick shallow gasps, and focused all of his energy into sweeping his arm out, breaking the line of salt.

The pain released him, as though the bubble of power had burst, but his body refused to function, and he swam in and out of consciousness.

“G-1, this is G-2,” came Joe’s voice, and he started awake, looking automatically at the door.

But no, it was his bracelet. “I’m here,” he said, and was impressed that he sounded even remotely normal. His whole body ached.

“I’ve got more corpses on fifteen. Where are you?”

“Eighteen.” He hesitated, and his next words came out before he’d consciously planned them. “I’ll let you know if I find anything.” He broke the connection.

When he finally dragged himself back to his hands and knees, he scattered more of the salt outward, erasing the last vestiges of pain.

Exhausted, drained, relieved, he pushed himself to his feet and reached into his belt for a knife. He used it to cut away as much of the barbed wire as he could, then unwrapped the twisted cords from Aleksandra’s arms and legs. He cringed while he pulled the silver barbs from her skin, but the wounds didn’t bleed, and she lay slumped in the chair, utterly unresponsive.

He realized that she had stopped breathing. He glanced over his shoulder at the sky. Swirls of orange were appearing, edged with lemon.

What the hell did one do to revive a vampire?

The answer was both obvious and insane.

“Ms. Demakova,” he said. He touched her, but she didn’t respond. “Aleksandra!”

Nothing.

He lifted his wrist. Call the others. There was nothing he could do. They had found their diplomat, and she was dead.

But he didn’t open a connection. He just stared at her, thinking crazily about the way she had felt in his arms when she had danced with him, when she had kissed him. He thought about her determination to help her people, and her request that he not tell the others what she was.

Slowly, he reached up and took hold of his helmet. She was unconscious. Probably dead. She wouldn’t know. And then he could tell himself he had done all he could. He hesitated for another moment, and then pulled the helmet over his head and carefully set it aside.

Functioning wholly on instinct, he lifted the knife, laid it against the pulsing vein in his throat. Fucking crazy. He pulled the collar of his birdstyle down, lowered the knife a bit, and nicked himself. He’d done it shaving enough times, and the pain was sharp and bitter and brief. He pressed his fingers against it and leaned closer to Aleksandra.

She didn’t move. He touched his bloody fingers to her lips, and still she didn’t respond. He felt the tension flow out of him, and was seized instead by an inexplicable grief. He leaned a little closer and pressed his lips to her cheek, and her skin was cold, the way a corpse is cold an hour after death.

He shuddered, bracing his hand against the back of the chair to pull away. But she turned in to him, nestling into the crook of his shoulder, into his warmth. He shivered a bit at the feel of her chilled skin against his neck, but leaned in closer, so more of his body was against her, and put his arms around her.

She found the small wound in his neck then, and he felt her teeth. No pain, just the deep penetrating slide of her fangs, and then the pull of her mouth. He gasped, and sensation radiated outward from his neck, making his flesh tingle with warmth in spite of the cold. He’d never let a woman kiss his neck; the idea of a telltale bruise was more than he was willing to put up with. But she snuggled closer to him, feeding on him now, and he wrapped his wings around her, tipping his head back and tangling his hand in her hair to draw her closer. He didn’t know if it was imagining her mouth on other parts of him, or if what she was doing was really so erotic, but he found himself wishing he had slept with her. That she was well enough that he could sleep with her now.

Like right now.

Heat blossomed from her skin, and her mouth grew hot, her breath a warm breeze. He realized he was lightheaded, the way he imagined he’d feel if he were high, and he braced a hand against her shoulder and gently pushed her away.

She released him with only a sigh of protest, warm now in his arms, sleeping. He let her go and straightened, and darkness crackled across his vision, then slowly cleared.

He scattered the circle of salt with his foot, smearing the tacky blood on the floor into the symbols in the process. Warm orange sunlight speared into the room, and Aleksandra whimpered. He tugged his helmet back on and gathered her up, out of the chair.

When he reached the door, Joe was there. “You found her,” he said. He was looking at Ken a little strangely, and Ken wondered how long he had been there.

“Yes,” Ken said.

“Is she alive?”

“Yes.”

Joe tilted her head to the side and scratched lightly. The blood that covered her neck flaked away, revealing a mere scratch. The wound had healed. “She’s covered in blood. But all that blood didn’t come from a scratch.”

Ken moved aside so Joe could see the other bodies, all the blood in the room.

Joe’s eyebrows lifted. “Why didn’t you answer me?”

Ken blinked at him. He was still lightheaded, and he felt a little hazy, a little disconnected.

“I called you,” Joe said. “You didn’t answer.”

“When?”

“Just a few minutes ago. That’s why I came up. Jun’s on her way.”

“One of the Galactors caught me off guard when I bent over Ms. Demakova. I killed him, but I must have lost consciousness…just for a few minutes.”

Joe looked at him funny, but then shrugged. “If you say so.” He looked at Aleksandra again. “Should you be moving her?”

Ken started down the hall toward the elevator. “It’s cold in there. She has a room downstairs. She can rest while they come and clean this up.” He glanced back at the room.

“Clean it up? There’s going to be a hell of an investigation.”

Ken shook his head. “Not unless she wants one. Nothing can happen that will damage the diplomats’ reputations, and this is…” He couldn’t find the words.

“This is a fucking bloodbath,” Joe said.

“Exactly.”

The sublevel door opened for Aleksandra, and while it was awkward to get a retinal scan from an unconscious woman, they managed it. Ken had a moment as the door opened when he realized that all of his lying was going to be exposed when they found her coffin, but there wasn’t one. The room beyond was rich and elegant, the furniture tastefully ornate cherry, the sumptuous four-poster bed draped in sheer canopies. His feet sank into the carpet as he carried her to the bed.

Jun sat down beside her, and she stirred.

“You’re safe now,” Jun said.

Aleksandra nodded.

“How do you feel?”

“Just tired.”

“We can have an investigation conducted to find out who did this to you.”

Aleksandra shook her head. “I know. Galactor. They don’t want us to make the alliances we’re making. But I will come in the evening, and finish what I have begun.”

“I think maybe you should be in a hospital,” Jun said. “The doctors can decide if you should come this evening.”

“No doctors. I’m fine. I’m only tired. And I will be there.” Her gaze shifted to Ken, and he knew her last words were for him. “Thank you for your help.”

He didn’t see her again before the summit ended.


* * *


A week and two Galactor mecha later, Ken was working on his plane, and Joe rested against the hood of his car, his arms folded. They’d run out of things to say to each other, and the sun was sinking.

“Something you need to talk about, Ken?” Joe said finally.

Ken had the feeling he’d been trying to say it all afternoon. He turned to meet Joe’s eyes. “No.”

“You’re not acting like yourself. You seem distracted.”

Ken shrugged. “Everything’s fine.”

“If you decide you have something you have to get off your chest…” He shrugged. “You know.”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

“Sure.”

Another long silence. Ken leaned his forearm against the plane. “You ever wonder what our lives would have been like…if the world had been different?”

Joe gazed at the crimson clouds. “Yeah. Sometimes. Usually there’s a girl involved.” He glanced at Ken. “There a girl involved?”

Ken shook his head. Tossed his wrench back into his toolbox. “Can’t be.”

“You know what Nambu says.”

“’Don’t trust anybody.’”

“And you know how Galactor works. Falling for us is a quick way to get killed.”

“Yeah.”

“It’s all about cheap sex and one-night stands.” For once, Joe’s tone wasn’t cavalier. It was resigned. Into the long silence that followed, he added, “Maybe someday, if we can win this war, things will be different.”

“Maybe,” Ken said.

#


Joe left, and Ken was finally alone with the smells of fuel and oil and metal and the leather of his gloves. He walked first to the hangar and then to his shack and flipped on the outside lights so he’d have illumination to work. He didn’t feel like going inside and facing the echoing emptiness. He climbed back up to the plane with his tools.

Tires crunched up the gravel and sand, and he sighed. Joe had tried to convince him to come out to the Snack J, but he wasn’t in the mood for disco and dancing, even with the promise of alcohol. He wasn’t allowed to get drunk, wasn’t even supposed to get a good buzz. Not when they could get called at any minute.

“I’m not in the mood, Joe,” he called when he heard the door open. “I’ll see you tomorrow, all right?”

But Joe didn’t call back. The car door just slammed. Ken tensed, picking up the wrench he’d set aside earlier. He climbed down, bracing his foot on the strut holding the right landing wheel and then dropping to the ground. He ducked under the propeller, and found Aleksandra standing in the glow cast by the Nissan’s headlamps and his porch light. The car had Utoland plates, which meant it was probably a rental. She was in blue jeans and a ponytail, and she folded her arms when she saw him.

He set the wrench aside. “Can I help you?”

She looked at him, glanced back at the car, and then drew a deep breath. “I knew you were more than just some kid when I met you.”

His heart thudded hard against his ribs, but no, there was no way she could know. Not really. “They recruit us out of college when they think we’re good enough,” he said, reverting to the cover story he’d used during the dinner party that first night. “They pay us pretty well, and the work is cutting edge.”

“That’s not what I meant.” She glanced at his place. “And that doesn’t look like good pay to me.”

He almost laughed. The irony had never really hit him before. He was responsible for saving the world, but he couldn’t pay his tab at the J. Well, technically he could, but he didn’t. He wasn’t exactly rolling in cash.

“You’re a VIP to the ISO,” he said. “I’m just a strategist in training. I could get fired for going out with you, and I like my job.”

She came closer. “You can’t get fired.” She stopped within touching distance, and her words were quiet. “You’re Gatchaman.”

She wasn’t asking, or trying to get him to admit it. He could see in her eyes that she knew. So he didn’t bother trying to deny it.

“You saved me,” she said, just as quietly. “You did something beyond what anyone could reasonably have expected. If you’d just left me there, the first sunlight would have killed me. No one ever would have known that I could have been saved. But you gave me what I needed to live. And you kept my secrets.”

He just gazed at her, her eyes such a warm, dark amber; her sculpted beauty absolutely flawless. The chemistry was definitely there, a nearly tangible thing. He found himself looking for it, as if it should glow in the dark.

But, “How did you find me?” was all he said.

She smiled, glancing at his plane. “You come highly recommended. Always get the job done. Nobody would ever look twice at a college-aged kid who delivers mail and packages on the side for some spare change. It’s good cover.”

He said nothing.

“If you aren’t interested, all you have to do is tell me, and I’ll go,” she said, very serious now. “I know it was forward to come here, but I thought it best that I talk to you alone.”

He nodded, glancing at the dust, scuffed around his feet by his and Joe’s footprints. “I didn’t think you’d remember,” he said. “You were unconscious. I didn’t think you’d see my face.”

“I didn’t. But I realized why you seemed to be more when I first met you. You let your power show when you’re Gatchaman; you keep it shielded the rest of the time. But the energy is the same.” She glanced away, licking her lips. “And I could smell your scent on me when I woke, the same way I could when I got home that night after we danced.” Her cheeks pinkened a bit. “I realized what you had done. Why I was so attracted to you. Both versions of you.” She drew another deep breath, shifting, letting her arms fall to her sides. “If nothing else, I needed to thank you for everything. And tell you I will keep your secrets, too.”

He nodded. “Thank you.”

The silence grew awkward. “Well,” she said, pulling her keys from her pocket. “I guess I should go.” She extended her free hand to him. “Thank you again.”

He clasped her palm against his, the same way he had that first night. Her fingers were warm, her grip firm, and he tugged her forward into his arms and kissed her. This time he knew how she’d taste, and she sank into him the same way she had when he’d let her feed on him, fitting against his body like she belonged there. He heard her keys hit the ground a moment before her hands tangled in his hair, but they both ignored the clatter.

The breeze whispered over them, cool with the sun gone, and she moved closer, so her body pressed against his from knees to chest. He knew he should push her away, tell her to go, but he didn’t want to. He was so damned tired of always doing what he was supposed to do.

“Come inside,” he murmured against her mouth.

They left her keys and his scattered tools and went inside, where he fumbled at a lamp but couldn’t seem to make the switch turn and get her shirt off at the same time.

“Never mind the light,” she said.

“Okay.” He tossed her shirt on the floor and pulled her down the hall, kicked off his shoes and then tripped over one of them. She laughed, her shoulder banging against one of the few pictures he had hanging on the plain wooden walls. He shoved it away and dragged her through the door into his bedroom, where he stopped, pulling her hair from the ponytail and letting it spill over his hands and down her back, long and thick and soft like silk.

They collapsed into the swirls of white sheet on the unmade bed, coming together without any of the awkwardness Ken associated with sex with someone new.

And then energy seared through his body, electrifying every nerve, so intense it was nearly painful. He gasped, stiffening, nearly losing himself.

She touched his face, drawing his attention. “Ken?”

“What the hell is that?” he gasped. The lines of what was his pleasure and what was hers had blurred.

She laughed, and the sound bubbled across his skin, loosening his sudden fear, making him want to laugh with her.

“Are you doing that?” he said.

“I forgot, you’ve never joined with someone who has the kind of power you do.” She moved beneath him, arching her back, making little sparks of pleasure burst all along his skin. “It’s good, isn’t it?”

“It’s like…I can feel what you feel, too.” He clung raggedly to the remnants of his control. The feeling, whatever it was, had the potential to be so good that he was afraid he’d damage her if he just let go.

“Relax,” she whispered, as if she knew what he was thinking. “Stop fighting it. You can’t hurt me.”

He surrendered, and it was like taking a deep breath after eons of drowning. The energy he felt under his skin expanded outward, through her, around them, and though he couldn’t see it, he could feel it, like a halo of heat and light. Desire crackled between them, and beneath it lay something else, something deeper, more binding, more intimate.

He hardly knew her, he thought. He couldn’t love her.

He pushed up onto his elbows, accepting now the invisible glitter of power, experiencing it as an earthy, tingling heat, and watched Aleksandra’s face as he carried her with him over the edge of reason.


#


When he woke hours later, it was to the keening of his bracelet. He fumbled for it on the table beside the bed, pressing his thumb against the face to silence it. Then he flopped back against the pillows, covering his eyes with his arm. His body ached with a pleasant exhaustion, and Aleksandra was curled up warm against his side.

“What?” he said into the bracelet. Not exactly protocol, but at the moment, he didn’t care.

“You need to come in,” Nambu said. “Ryu will pick you up.”

“Fine.” He tossed his bracelet back in the direction of the table. It sounded like it fell off and hit the floor instead. He uncovered his face and looked at Aleksandra. She had rested her palm on his chest, and her chin on the back of her hand. Her hair flowed in a rich dark river over her shoulders and down her back.

“Stay,” he said, and then sighed. “Though I don’t know when I’ll be back.”

She shook her head, and he felt the motion more than he saw it. “I can’t stay. Dawn is coming. I have to go home. Back to Walachia. There is work there for me to do.”

He stroked her hair. “I want to see you again.”

She gazed at him, her eyes dark in the faint light coming through the windows. “All I expected was one night. That’s all I asked you for. You don’t owe me any more.”

“I want more.”

A smile broke across her face, and she leaned up to kiss him. “I was kind of hoping you’d say that.”

That electric glow of carnal energy had begun to build again when his bracelet started shrieking. It would be Ryu this time, telling him where they would meet. He sighed, briefly entertaining the fantasy of smashing the damned thing to pieces with the heel of his shoe. He’d have given anything to take her back to bed rather than fight another goddamned mecha. “I wish my life were different,” he moaned.

“Listen,” Aleksandra said. She waited for him to find the bracelet, turn off the signal, and look at her. “The things that make your life so unique, the same things that burden you with responsibility, they’re what make you who you are. They’re the same things that make me want you.”

“I don’t have much to offer you,” he said. “You need to know that.”

She tilted her head a bit, her fingers rubbing gently at his skin. “I’ve had things,” she said. “And I have wealth, if I want it. I have influence among my people, and a job I like, even if it’s dangerous sometimes. What you have to offer is something I’ve never found anywhere else, and believe me, I’ve looked.” She slid reluctantly out of the bed, leaving a cool spot where she had lain against him. “But you have to get up, and so do I.”

He sat up and fastened the bracelet over his wrist, then touched his neck, the healed place where she had taken from him when he’d found her bound to the chair. “You didn’t…take any blood,” he said. “I thought vampires always did. As part of sex.”

She grinned at him, flashing her fangs. “Trying not to scare you away.”

“I don’t think you need to worry about that,” he said wryly.

When he had dressed and turned on the light, she reappeared with a pencil (which, he noticed with embarrassment, he had chewed on at some point) and an empty envelope that had once held the electric bill. She perched on the edge of the bed and wrote out the numbers and letters that would let him reach her; he traded her for a scrap of paper on which he’d written the same.

Then she pointed the end of the pencil at him. “But if you tell anybody how old I am, the deal is off, you hear?”


#


Joe stopped him as they headed down the hall to the briefing room, waiting until Jun, Jinpei, and Ryu had disappeared through the double doors where Nambu waited. “You all right?” he said.

Ken nodded. “Yeah. I’m…better.”

“Sleep,” Joe said. “Often helps.” His hand stole back to his cablegun. “And there are good things about the life we lead.” He smiled, a smile Ken associated with bird missiles and explosions.

Ken found himself smiling back, a real smile, if a private one. Yes, there were good things about what he was and the life he led.

He followed Joe through the double doors.