Chapter Eighteen
Winter shelved the man’s shocking statement, pushing it aside. She was more concerned – pissed – about the way he was holding Nial’s arm, and the fact that Nial was simply standing there, taking it.
It was unnerving.
“I think, before anyone says anything or does anything more, you need to let go of my husband’s arm,” she said stiffly. “And release whatever hold you have on him.”
The man tilted his head to look at her. “You…married this creature?”
“Not that it’s any business of yours, but I married two of them.” Now was not the time to go into Sebastian’s half-human, half-vampire status, and her role in his hybrid species claim.
“At the same time,” Garrett added, grinning.
Winter hid her smile. Garrett had always given off a slight disapproving attitude about their marriage. Now he was bold-faced supporting it.
“Why would you deign to marry such subservient creatures?” the man asked.
Garrett snorted.
Winter thought up and discarded a dozen different answers, before finally giving up on a direct response. Instead, she returned to her original demand. “Let Nial go,” she insisted.
The man looked up at Nial’s placid face. “He has served his purpose,” he said and released his arm.
Nial’s legs folded and he fell forward on his hands and knees, breathing harshly. He reached up to his throat and cleared it a few times. “Filius meretricis! I didn’t see that coming.” His voice was scratchy and thin.
The trailer door opened again and Sebastian bounded in. “I forgot—” he began, and stopped, taking in the scene: Nial sprawled on the floor at the brown man’s feet, Garrett and Winter bailed up in front of him.
“Son of a fucking…” Sebastian breathed, his face tightening with anger. The sea green eyes narrowed and his jaw clenched.
“Bastian, no!” Winter called quickly.
It was too late. She knew it was too late even as she called. Sebastian wasn’t listening. He had seen Nial in trouble, her threatened and his Irish had been roused. He was reacting now, not thinking.
He leapt at the medium-sized man, his arms out, ready to grapple and maim. Sebastian had almost as much strength as vampires, still, and he had learned all the soft-shoe self-defence skills from Winter during their years of breaking into some of the most inaccessible locations in the world.
He barely made contact with the smaller man. The man in the striped shirt thrust out his hand and gripped Sebastian’s wrist, then stepped aside. Sebastian seemed to cooperate with him by dashing right past him. Garrett barely managed to get out of the way, then Sebastian hurled himself at the teak shelving unit. He hit with an impact that made the trailer shudder. The armoured glass in the shelving doors starred with cracks and the wood splintered.
Sebastian slid to the floor in a crumpled heap.
The man in the striped shirt leaned over him and pressed his fingers against his forehead.
Sebastian cried out, as blood appeared in grizzly blooms on his tee-shirt and jeans.
Winter lunged for the man’s arm and snatched it away from Sebastian’s forehead. “No!”
He just looked at her.
“This is my other husband,” she explained. “He was protecting me and Nial.”
The man looked down at Sebastian. “I see. Then by marrying them, you were acquiring bodyguards. They do have some use. I apologize.” He leaned down and touched Sebastian’s forehead again.
Sebastian groaned. “Fuck me,” he muttered. “That hurts.”
“The composition of this one is odd,” the man commented, standing up. “I have never touched one like him before.” He looked at Winter. “He will live now.”
She glanced at Garrett, standing behind the man. Garrett lifted a hand helplessly and she understood his dilemma. They were at this man’s mercy, but he considered her his equal. They had to play along for now.
Nial was easing himself onto the sofa, moving stiffly. Sebastian was slowly trying to sit up. Garrett hooked him under an arm, and helped him prop himself up.
Winter turned to face the man squarely. “This is ridiculous. I can’t go around calling you ‘you’ all the time. You must have a name. What is it?”
The man raised a single brow. “I have many names.”
“What do your friends call you, then?”
“Friends?”
“You do have friends, don’t you?”
He thought about that for a while. “No. Our kind doesn’t make friends. Not the way humans count friends. You must have noticed that by now.”
Winter caught her breath and looked at Nial. It was true that up until she had met Sebastian and formed a working partnership with him, her life had been empty of friends. She’d known casual acquaintances all over the globe, but no one had ever grown close enough to guess her secret…until Sebastian and Nial had come along.
“I think I might be a rare exception,” she told him. “I have two friends. Friends, lovers and husbands. And they have introduced me to more friends, who know me for what I am.”
He looked down at where Sebastian sat propped against the wrecked bookcase. “These creatures?”
“These men, yes,” Winter replied.
The man drew himself upright with an odd sort of dignity. “They have done well to protect you and nurture you while you have been ignorant of your heritage. But you have so much more to learn, to come into your full strength. You are Curandero. You will discover how much stronger than your friends you really are. Their company would lose its flavour when you reach full maturity.”
Winter gave him her politest smile. “That’s quite impossible.”
He smiled politely back. “Your innocence is refreshing. We have not had one as young as you for a very long time. You may call me Vicent.”
“Vicent, you had a reason for ramming your way in here?” Winter prompted.
“To reach you, of course. You have been indiscreet. You failed to leave behind no memory of your presence in those who have met you. It is how we found you.” He looked around at Nial, Garrett and Sebastian. “Now, I begin to understand why you made this error. But we can still make amends.” His smile was slightly warmer. “You are young. There is time yet for you to learn how it must be.”
Horror touched her. “You mean…you wipe any memory of yourself from everyone you meet?”
Vicent frowned. “Did I not just say that?”
“Not up front and frank-like,” Sebastian said, his hand against his belly. “Winter was repeating it so she could make it sound as bad as it really is, instead of prettying up the way you did.”
Vicent didn’t move his gaze away from Winter. “It is a necessity,” he said simply. “They will not feel a thing. You know this.”
Fresh terror spilt through her. “Wait, wait…you mean, you intend to do this to them now?”
“He wants to take you with him,” Garrett interpreted. “And wipe our memories so you never existed for us, because according to him, that’s the way it’s supposed to be.” His tone was withering.
And not one of them was physically capable of standing up to the man. He could throw them all across the room with a hand toss, cut them open with a touch…and wipe their memories as they lay recovering.
He could probably make Winter do anything he wanted, too. The Curandero might have trained to defeat weaker opponents.
“I’m not going with you,” Winter told him. It was the only defense she had – flat denial.
Vicent frowned. “I’ve never had a youngling refuse to come with me before. This is…unusual.”
“Does threatening to destroy the minds of the friends of your younglings always work, then?” Winter asked.
“They don’t have friends,” Nial said. “You heard him, Winter. The Curandero are loners. You’re the exception.”
“Yes, that must be the explanation,” Vicent said, almost to himself. His gaze focused upon Winter once more. “You have no human friends. You befriended these creatures only. The ones that hide from humans, too.”
“Too?” Nial said, sitting forward. He hissed in pain, then got to his feet. “A minute ago, you said something about wiping memories being the way it had to be, Vicent. Explain that.”
Vicent was focused upon Winter’s face, and didn’t move. It was as if he hadn’t heard Nial at all.
“Answer him, Vicent,” Winter demanded.
Vicent stirred and looked at Nial. “It is necessary for our survival.” He returned his gaze to Winter’s face.
Nial began to smile. “Winter, order this little pipsqueak to sit down and listen to what I have to tell him. He’s about to hear a long story about the history of vampires, and then he’s going to get a proposition that’ll make his brows raise and stay raised until he gets back to wherever he comes from and can talk it over with the rest of his Curandero buddies. They want survival? They’re about to get it in spades, only it doesn’t look anything like what it has for the last millennium or two.”
Winter could feel her own smile forming. “Vicent? Have a seat. I want you to talk to Nial.”
* * * * *
Kate drifted from sleep to wakefulness, coaxed by the gentlest of caresses on her face and lips and neck. The bedside lamp was on, and turned down low.
“There you are,” Adrian murmured. “It’s six p.m. Breakfast is on your desk.”
Her head was on his shoulder, her arm around his waist, and her leg curled over his thigh. She was clinging to him. “God, look at me. I’m a leech.”
“I don’t mind at all.” She could hear amusement in his voice, rumbling in his chest beneath her ear. His fingers traced her jaw. “You were talking in your sleep again.”
There was a nuance in his tone that put her on alert. “Did you pick up any good gossip?” she asked, making it sound casual.
“You said my name.”
“Damn. Call the cops. I’m busted.” She reached up and gave his jaw a quick kiss and tried to slide from the bed. But his arm tightened its grip around her shoulders, holding her in place.
“It’s the way you said it.”
Kate found her gaze caught by a tiny scar she had never noticed before, just by his left nipple. It was pale and very old and shaped like a bass clef in music—
“Kate.”
She reluctantly lifted her chin to look him in the eye.
His thumb swept along her jaw. “If you were ever to catch me sleeping, I’d be calling your name, too. We’re both in this.”
Relief touched her. “You don’t mind?”
The corner of his mouth lifted. “Because it’s you, I don’t give a flying fuck. Which should scare the shit out of me…and it doesn’t.”
She pushed herself up until she was resting on top of him and kissed him. It was delicious…a slow spiral down into hedonistic depths.
Until he pushed her away from him, his arms holding her up at full length. “Breakfast,” he said firmly.
“I hate you.” She tried to pout.
He grinned and lowered her down to kiss her one more time. “One tiny step at a time, Kate. Or we will end up hating each other. And I don’t want to hate you. I really don’t.”
* * * * *
Garrett shook Winter awake. She sat up, her red hair tumbling around her shoulders, her eyes sleepy and the silk business shirt sliding down and exposing one shoulder.
She didn’t stir him, but he was beginning to understand the passion and love that Nial and Sebastian held for her. She was an alluring woman and she was an intelligent one. For Nial, certainly, that would be a powerful combination.
“You let me sleep?” she said, pulling her clothes into order.
“You needed it,” Garrett told her. “Nial and I have been doing nothing more exciting than educating your Vicent all day, anyway.” He nodded toward the window. “They’re just finishing.”
She glanced at the clock over the desk. “Oh lord, the location bus leaves in ninety minutes. Did Sebastian go back to his computer?”
“Hours ago.”
She pushed at her hair. “I have to change. I can’t be seen like this.” She stood up, scooping up the black wig. “It’s still light outside. Can I borrow your bathroom?”
His cellphone buzzed. “Help yourself,” he told her as he fished it out and checked the text message. “Sebastian is on his way over with something urgent.”
“I’ll see you at the bus.” She moved into the bedroom.
Garrett peered out the window past the wooden blinds. Nial and Vicent were still talking – well, Nial was doing most of the talking, as he had done most of the day — but they were both standing now. So Nial had to be finally running out of steam. Garrett had been surprised by just how comprehensive Nial’s knowledge of vampire history had been. Of course, Nial had been around for a lot longer than he confessed to anyone, so most of his knowledge was first-hand experience. Garret had heard rumours he had been born before the birth of Christ and the fall of Rome. Nial certainly wasn’t telling anyone the truth – except perhaps Winter and Sebastian.
Maybe once vampires came out in the public eye that would change. Would Winter publically declare both her husbands, too?
Life really was going to be different, just as Nial had promised. No more hiding, in so many ways. Today’s long and far-ranging discussion with Vicent had brought it home yet again for Garrett.
No hiding was a type of freedom far more liberating than just shucking off shackles.
That was how Nial had begun with Vicent. “I was enslaved when I was ten, and I remained a slave for twenty-five years.”
And while Garrett had mentally staggered in shock, Nial had calmly compared slavery to the binding ties of perpetually hiding from humans.
Yes…there would be changes. He might not like them all, but he would embrace them, even if it was just to ensure that he got to remember people like Winter for the rest of his life.
Sebastian climbed up into the trailer and jerked his head toward the window. “Nial hasn’t run out of breath yet.”
Garrett grinned. “I was thinking the same thing. If anyone can convince Vicent, it will be him.”
“Or Vicent will throw in the towel because he’s been bored to death.” Sebastian picked up his laptop from the table where he has left it that morning. “I’ve been on the receiving end of Nial’s lectures before.” He rolled his eyes.
“You’re married to him. You should be more supportive.”
“It just means I know him better than most.” Sebastian pushed a flash memory drive into the USB port of the laptop and turned the laptop around so Garrett could see the screen. “You’ll never guess what I found out about Ms. Lindenstream.”