Enemies(23)

“Oh?” I asked, feeling a nasty little desire to prove him wrong. “How about the fact that you’re sleeping with Kat?” There was a surge of anger behind my eyes from Gavrikov at the mere mention of that, and Bjorn and Wolfe instantly settled down to watch the fireworks.

“Hardly a secret,” Janus said with a shrug. “Not exactly controversial, either. As old as I am, do keep in mind she is over a hundred now herself. It is not as though she were actually eighteen—though I suppose it appears unseemly, given my age. Still,” he said darkly, “behavior much, much worse than that would not even be frowned upon by Omega, which I suppose lends credence to any argument you might care to mount about the type of people we are.”

I stared at him, watching with undisguised curiosity. “You freely admit it?”

“Certainly,” he said with a shrug. “I am not forbidden to, and I have already told you I associate with monsters in the course of my duties. It is not as though this is some news to you.”

“No,” I said quietly. “Just surprised you admit it, is all.”

“There is very little I would not do to save our people—and the humans—from whatever is coming at the hands of Century,” Janus said. “That means working with people of power who are very long-lived and who have allowed immortality to sweep away much of their decency. Where they might have started out as good people, in their centuries of life, they have accumulated power and traded away a great deal of that decency in exchange.” He shrugged again. “This is simply the way it is with the powerful and long-lived. You give a person absolute power, and few can withstand the corrupting influence it presents.” He cracked his neck by turning it to each side, and I cringed. “If you need any further proof of that, merely think about how you felt about killing only a month ago—and imagine the moral drift that could occur over the course of lifetimes, even to a person who had a strong center once upon a time.”

“We’re not all monsters,” I said in barely a whisper.

“No,” Janus agreed, “but given enough time and exposure to power—of the world-ruling variety—we all have to capacity to do at least one terrible thing. The difference with a monster is that it never even occurs to them that it is a terrible thing.”

He kept quiet after that, steering us down the streets in silence. I watched the buildings pass one after another until we reached a neighborhood just on the cusp of downtown. The massive skyscrapers were just above the horizon and I wondered which we would be going to when Janus turned, taking us down an old alleyway lined in red brick. I watched the lines of mortar between them streak by as we went, until we came out in another alley, turning right. We went for about a hundred feet before he turned into what looked like a loading dock. He pulled the car through a garage door that opened when he touched a button mounted on his visor, and we entered a parking lot with about thirty vehicles dispersed around it. I realized it must have been under the building, and the loading dock was there to cover the fact that it was a clandestine entrance.

We pulled into a parking space and when the car stopped, I got out. The smell of oil and metal was heavy, along with the pervasive feeling that this place had been here for a long time, decades at least. Janus gave me a reassuring smile and started toward a heavy steel door at the far side of the lot. I followed, my quiet footsteps lost in the sound of his shoes clicking against the pavement. He thumbed a button on his key fob and I heard a lock click behind the painted steel door, which he held it open for me, like a gentleman.

I stepped inside a short hallway, and there was a security guard behind a plastic window to my right. I stared at him and he continued to read the paper his face was buried behind. “Sir,” he said with a thick British accent as Janus went by, not looking up from the newspaper.

“Shane,” Janus said in acknowledgment, looking at the man. “How is the family?”

“All well, sir,” Shane said, looking up and giving Janus a smile with his nod. “Thank you.” His accent was so thick it took my brain a moment to realize what he’d said.

“This way, my dear,” Janus said, holding out his arm to indicate heavy elevator doors at the end of the passage. When we arrived, the elevator dinged as though it had been summoned just for us. When the doors opened, there was a thin black woman waiting inside. I knew who she was before she said anything, from a memory I had seen. Even if I hadn’t already been familiar with her, I would have realized she was graceful just by the way she was standing. She wore a tan skirt, white blouse and a jacket that matched the skirt. Her necklace was a series of beads with a claw hanging down at the center of it, and her smile could only be described as catlike. It was directed at me, and I tried to decide if she was attempting to be disconcerting.