Chapter Twenty-Seven
The silence that gripped the trailer as they stared at the pile of tumbled coasters was eloquent.
Garrett could hear Nial’s heart thudding, too.
“Kate really did dig the stone up when she was in Turkey last year?” Nial asked.
“I thought she did, but it’s not anywhere here in the studio,” Roman replied. “I’ve been over every inch. She doesn’t have anywhere else secure enough to keep it.”
“That’s what you do at night, then,” Garrett mused. “How do you explain that one away to her?”
Roman scowled.
“So she doesn’t have it,” Nial concluded.
“But if Khurshid is here, then Menes believes Kate has it,” Roman replied.
“Cyneric probably factored you being next to her as the convincing argument for that, you realize?” Nial pointed out.
Roman’s scowl deepened. He got to his feet. “Dawn in about thirty minutes. I’m heading back to the trailer before she stirs.”
Nial stood, too. “I’m curious. All your wives. Did any of them know what you were?”
Roman looked amused, but the expression didn’t reach his eyes. “Humans don’t know how to keep secrets.”
“So,” Nial continued thoughtfully, “Garrett is the only one to ever know you. Truly know you. And you sent him away.”
Garrett got to his feet. His heart was back to squeezing and throbbing again. It had been another one of those nights.
Roman’s scowl was back. “There have been humans in your life, Nial. Are you telling me they knew you for what you were? And they stayed, anyway?”
“They knew, they stayed and they loved me, anyway.”
Garrett cocked his head. “Point of fact, Nial, didn’t Winter know you for what you were and hate your guts, before she met you? And now you’re married.”
Nial smiled. And it wasn’t just a polite smile. Garrett saw his gaze focus inwards. It might have been turning in on memories, or the thought of Winter, or the sensations/memory/idea of his love for her. But Garrett could literally see the difference in Nial as he thought of her and what they shared. “Yes, now we’re married,” he agreed.
Roman’s scowl had gone as he watched the change in Nial as he thought of his wife.
Garrett tried one last time, knowing he was probably appealing to a stone wall. “Roman, you’re playing Russian roulette by not telling Kate you’re of the blood. You know that, don’t you?”
Roman pulled his gaze away from Nial to glance at him. “I’ll think about it.”
“You may not have—”
“After everything you’ve just heard, Calum, you’re going to break my bones about not changing on a dime?” Roman’s eyes were haunted. “Just…give me time.”
Garrett relented. “Time is not mine to give. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. There’s no exit door this round. And the clock is ticking.”
* * * * *
“We’re here, sir.”
Garrett looked up from his paperwork and around the neighbourhood they were in, curious. So this was where Kate lived. “Which one?” he asked Jerry.
“The Spanish looking one on the right.”
Garrett packed away the papers and locked them up. He stowed the briefcase under the seat. He had fallen behind on his Boston affairs and briefly, guilt stirred. But only for a moment. “Why don’t you call it a night, Jerry?” he suggested. “Take the car back and tuck it up. I’ll catch a cab back.”
Jerry’s gaze caught his in the mirror. “Right, sir.”
Garrett let himself smile at Jerry. It was obvious that both of them were thinking he wouldn’t need the cab. “Have a good evening.”
“You, too, sir.”
Garrett got out and pressed the wrought iron gate intercom panel for attention. “Kate?”
It took a few seconds for a response to come back. “Come in, Garrett.” The gate opened a few inches and he stepped through. The grounds beyond were small but beautifully maintained, just like the house. It looked old, like it had been here for decades. Maybe since the first big Hollywood Hills settlement in the thirties.
Kate was waiting at the front door when he rounded the curved path and climbed the tiled steps to the porch. She was wearing jeans as usual, but tonight she wore some sort of long sleeved top that was made of the same sort of material as tee-shirts, but much finer and delicate and seemed to cling to everything. It had a sheen to it that said it was expensive. It fit better and made much more of her figure and the apricot colour made her blonde hair glow.
She smiled at Garrett. “I thought you’d be here about now. How did the downtown meeting go?”
“I was bored out of my brain,” Garrett confessed honestly. “How was filming today?”
“Rocky. You weren’t there.” She said it with a perfectly straight face, then beckoned him into the house, leaving Garrett standing flat footed on the doorstep, scrambling to pull his brain out of shock.
He stepped inside and shut the door, then hurried after her into a casual living room that made him pause. It was full of comfort and Kate’s personality – trinkets from her research trips to far-flung places around the globe, framed posters of her movies. The furniture, he suspected, came from her movies, too.
Kate was standing at the opposite end, where a sideboard was set up as a mini bar. She was sipping at a long glass of something. He could smell the alcohol from where he stood. It wasn’t a strong drink.
“Would you like something?” she asked.
He shook his head. “They put on a big lunch. If I have a drink on top of that, I’ll be asleep in an hour. It’s been a long day. But thanks.”
“Uh-huh.”
There was a sound of light steps coming down stairs. “Kate, I heard—” Roman walked into the room, turning his head to locate her.
He spotted Garrett and halted next to him. “What’s he doing here?” His features tightened up with anger.
“I invited him,” Kate said. “I’m glad you’re here, though. It saves me from calling you.”
“Why would you invite him here?” Roman demanded. “Jesus, Kate. The set is bad enough. If the press–”
“Adrian, just shut up for a moment,” she told him.
Roman shut his mouth. He glanced at Garrett, his glare full of fury and a promise for future retribution.
Kate put the drink down and moved to where Roman stood, his hands curled up very close to fists. She looked up at him and for one electrifying moment, Garrett thought she was going to kiss him. She was standing very close to him. Her slender hand pushed into Roman’s pocket.
“What–” Roman began.
“Thanks,” she overrode him. Then she did kiss him. Garrett watched, his breath stilling as she lifted herself up, stretching to press her lips to Roman’s.
Garrett’s body tightened. There was no chance to look away or even consider that what he was doing was voyeuristic. Kate kissed Roman and Garrett was abruptly involved, a participating member of the kiss.
He swallowed, trying to shut down his responses, but his mind was supplying damning sense-memories – the recalled sensation of kissing both of them. He knew what Garrett was experiencing right now…and Kate. His body swirled with competing tides of need that yanked his mind into a rip tide of confusion. All in the space of the three seconds it took for Kate to sway up against Roman and press her lips against his.
While he was unscrambling his brain—again—Kate turned to him. “Hi,” she said, with a sweet little smile. She placed her hand on his chest, inside his jacket.
He felt, more than saw, Roman’s thunderous expression.
Kate’s other hand came up in an underhand swing, hard and fast, and slammed into his stomach. Then he felt the pain and the cold steel…inside him.
The shock to his vampire physiology was similar to what it would be to a human’s. There was a delay before the healing could compensate such a massive trauma. Then there was the psychological shock, too.
And Kate was staring at him, deep into his eyes, watching his every reaction. He had seen her concentrating like that before. When her lead actors were in close up shots, she would sit hunched over the monitor screen, scrutinizing every millimetre of film passing through the gates for nuance, meaning, expression.
“Jesus christ!” Roman breathed. “Kate, what have you done?”
“Shh!” she said. “You’re my witness.” She pulled the knife out. It made an ugly, gasping sound. Garrett felt the blade withdraw, but he didn’t look down, because she was still watching him.
“Witness? To murder? Kate, what the fuck?” Garrett felt Roman grab him and it was then he realized that he was weakening, the healing unable to compensate fast enough.
“He won’t die,” she said softly. Flatly. “Watch.” She was scrabbling at his shirt. Yanking at it. Garrett heard buttons tear and pop as she pulled his shirt open, baring his stomach.
He sank to his knees. Roman was lowering him, rather than letting him fall.
Kate was still watching him. Monitoring.
“You know,” he whispered.
“Yes,” she whispered back.
He closed his eyes as the mix of horror and pain washed through him and let himself sink down until he was sitting on the carpet. Cold shivers rippled down his spine.
“Let me see,” Kate demanded.
“You like freak shows that much?” Garrett asked.
“I want to really know.”
“You know,” Garrett assured her. “Do you demand to see the cock of every Jew you meet so you understand their essential Jewishness?”
She had her arms crossed tight around her middle, her hands fisted hard. “You’re the first…one I’ve met. The first real one.”
Garrett kept his gaze on Kate’s face. It was a struggle not to look away, toward Roman.
“No, he’s not, Kate,” Roman said. He didn’t speak particularly loudly, but he may as well have shouted, for Kate flinched like she had been shot. She turned her head to look at him, where he was now sitting on the very edge of the arm of the sofa, leaning forward, his hands gripped together. The knuckles were strained, Garrett saw. This was costing him a dram or two of courage.
Kate’s face was very pale. “Both of you? Are…?”
“Vampires,” Garrett finished for her. “Don’t be afraid of the word. It’s just a name.”
“Adrian—”
“My name is Roman.” He spoke in the same low, controlled tone. “And Adrian. But those of the blood and who know of the blood call me Roman and have for centuries now.”
Garrett knew he had deliberately said the word ‘centuries.’ It was better to get all the strangeness and weirdness out and up front as soon as possible.
Kate registered the word, flinching yet again.
“My full name is Adrian Romanus Xerus,” he finished. “I was born in Constantinople in fourteen thirty-seven to a family that counted its blood -- and mine -- as nearly one hundred percent pure Roman, from one of the greatest Roman families on the Palatine and I had one of the best, most carefree childhoods a boy could have, until in fourteen fifty-three, Constantinople fell to the Turks.”
Kate’s eyes were large and her face had drained of nearly all colour. “The fifteenth century?” she said. She swivelled to look at Garrett. “And you?”
“Does it matter?” he asked. Her pallor was more of an issue right now. She wasn’t handling this well at all.
“Tell me,” she demanded.
“Fifteen seventy-four. Kincardine, in the Scottish Highlands. Clan Bruce.”
“So everything in your bio is true except the birthdate.” She was breathing hard. “You really drink blood?”
“We ingest it,” Garrett amended. “We don’t drink or eat anything. Not the way humans do. We need blood for nutrients and energy.”
“So you really do have the teeth, like in the movies?” Her voice was tighter. Higher.
“Not like in the movies, but we have them.”
“But you walk around in daylight.”
“There’s a lot the movies don’t have right, Kate,” Garret told her gently. “They’re using fictional creatures passed down through literature and a hundred different authors’ imaginations. While we’re the real thing and have been hiding away in history and overlooked by humans altogether.”
“Because you pretend to be human,” she whispered.
Garrett could see she was trembling.
“It that so you can prey on humans?”
“No,” Roman said flatly. Sharply.
“Oh god…or seduce them?” She slapped her hand over her mouth and rushed from the room.
Garrett looked at Roman’s wretched expression. “Go after her,” he snapped.
“And have her scream hysterically when I get close?”
“You have to risk it. If you don’t go now, she’ll never be able to accept you later. Move your ass, Roman.”
* * * * *
Kate couldn’t remember ever being so comprehensively sick before. Every time she thought she was finished, the idea of long teeth or nails scraping across her vulnerable body would catch at her thoughts, or decomposing bodies, or the hot smell of free-flowing blood and she would have to lean over the toilet and start all over again.
Hands lifted her hair out of the way. A cold, wet towel pressed against the back of her neck. No nails.
Kate rested her head against her arm on the back of the bowl, too exhausted to lift herself up. “That feels too good for me to tell you to go away.”
“Good to know,” Adrian murmured. Roman, she amended.
“Here. To rinse with.”
She lifted her head an inch or two. He was holding out a glass of water. All she could see was his fingers wrapped around the glass. He was standing behind her and under the circumstances, that should have scared the crap out of her, but it didn’t.
She took the glass. “Thanks.” Her voice was very scratchy and raw. She rinsed, spat. Did it a few times more and then flushed. She slowly tried to get herself up off the tiles.
He picked her up. He scooped her like she was a two year old. She clutched at him because the ascent had been that fast and sucked in her breath.
“Just over to the bed,” he assured her. “Then you can relax.”
“You were hiding your real strength all along.”
He gave a small grimace. “‘Hiding’ pretty much defines our lives. Strength, age, experience, names, professions, friendships, the sum total of what we knew before has to be hidden from this present moment.” He put her on the bed.
“Doesn’t that get tiring?” she asked.
He hesitated, his eyes level with hers. “Yes,” he said flatly. Then he sat – not next to her, but on the chair in the corner.
It bothered her, but she couldn’t pin down why. Her heart was hurrying along unhappily. “If I asked you to show me your…teeth, I suppose you would be as coy as Garrett?”
“I’d be reluctant,” Adrian – Roman – agreed. “But not for reasons you might think. Baring teeth is a form of aphrodisiac for us. It’s a precursor to biting in sexual pleasure if we’re not about to feed or bite in defense.”
Kate could feel herself blushing. She sought for a change of subject. “You lived in Constantinople,” she said.
“For a long time,” he agreed.
“Were you there when Murad was emperor?” she asked. “My Murad? Murad IV?”
Adrian…Roman…smiled a slow smile that she might have called sexy on any other day than this. “I worked in his palace, Kate. I was one of his counting clerks. I’d learned how to write by then, so I was a valuable commodity and I couldn’t be bought, so Murad trusted me.”
“You knew him.” And just like that, she burst into tired, ragged tears. It was exhaustion, she knew. But all she could think of was the weeks and dreary months of research she had done to dig up authentic details about Murad and here was Adr—Roman, who had lived in the man’s damned palace and could probably tell her what side the man dressed on…or even if they worried about such things then.
The mattress dipped and his arms went around her. “Don’t,” he said softly. “Please don’t, Kate. I feel bad enough about this, already.” He pressed her head against his shoulder and it felt perfectly normal, just like every other time she had rested her head there.
“Y...you feel bad?” she said, and her breath hitched in her chest. “You got to meet Murad. I had to do shitty research instead.”
She felt his shoulder shaking and lifted her head. “You’re laughing at me?”
He shook his head. His face was devoid of mirth, but his eyes were glowing with warmth.
“You are!” she accused.
His mouth turned up at the corners. “Sort of. But more about what you just said. It sounded…strange.”
“About Murad?” She played it back over in her mind. “It does, doesn’t it? Very fractured reality.” She touched his chest. Lightly. Carefully. “You…you’ve never told anyone before, have you?”
He drew in a breath. Let it out. “No.” His voice was low.
“God, the guts that took,” she breathed.
He was staring into her eyes. “I want to kiss you.” His voice had the low timbre that always marked powerful need in him.
She spread her fingers across his chest, feeling the flesh beneath. “What’s stopping you?”
“The fear that you’ll be repelled. That you’ll turn away. This is where my courage really fails me, Kate. I don’t think I could stand it. Not now.”
“Keep still,” she said and reached up to press her mouth against his. His mouth was exactly the same as it had been the dozens of times before when they had kissed. He was no different now.
Then she forgot about comparing differences, because there were none. This was Adrian that she had come to know…and love… a tiny voice whispered in the far off distant recesses of her mind. She gave herself up to the pleasure of simply kissing him.
He groaned and kissed her back, his arms tightening and drawing her closer. It trapped her hand between them, her fingers splayed across his chest. The thin tee-shirt was stretched across the width of it and only became loose further down where his hips narrowed and the flat washboard abs she loved began.
Stomach. Blood.
She tore her mouth away from his. “Garrett!”
“He’s fine,” Roman assured her. “He’s been stuck with bigger things than my switchblade before now.”
“But he doesn’t know I’m okay,” she told him, struggling to pull out of his arms. “The last thing he saw was me staggering away to vomit.” She stood up.
“He’ll be gone, Kate,” Roman told her.
“What?”
“As soon as he healed enough to move freely, he’ll have left.”
She sprinted for the front door, panic rising in her.
Behind her, Roman’s heavier steps followed. “Don’t do this, Kate,” he called as she skidded down the tiled stairs two and three at a time, clutching at the bannister with a grip worthy of The Hulk. “Think about your movie if you can’t think of anything else!”
Normally, such an appeal might have halted her. But her guilt was in the driver’s seat this time.
The front room was empty and silent. No Garrett. She looked out the window for his car and driver. A cab was pulling up beside the curb where Garrett stood waiting.
Her heart leapt high and hard.
Roman spoke right behind. “If not for your movie, then me. Don’t go out there because I’m asking you not to.”
“Why?” she demanded, heading for the front door.
Roman caught up with her again and turned her to face him just as she got a hand on the door handle. “You know why.” His voice was low. Earnest.
Disappointment touched her. “No. I don’t.” She threw the door open and hit the security code for the gate and ran out.
* * * * *
Garrett got the door of the taxi open and was about to fold himself into the back seat when he heard his name called. It wasn’t just any name.
“Micheil!”
He shut the door and turned to face her, relief and happiness battling for first place in his chest. Kate threw herself at him, her whole body weight slamming into him. She wrapped her arms around his neck and clung. “I’m sorry,” she told him. “That was such a shitty way to do it. But I couldn’t get past my own sense of betrayal. I just wanted to hurt you back. I never stopped to think how it must be for you, all the time.”
“It had to come out sooner or later. You just beat us to it.” He lifted her chin, making her look at him. “We were trying to figure out how to tell you, Kate. You have to believe that. But it’s a hard thing to say. One of the hardest things to tell—” He glanced at the taxi driver. “Someone like you,” he amended.
He peered more closely at her face. “You’ve been crying?” He touched under her eyes and felt the dampness.
“It’s nothing.” She smiled at him. “Adr…Roman, all this time knew M…my movie guy. The time I could have saved.” She grimaced.
“But that’s not why you were crying. Really.”
She shook her head. “I feel like an asshole for this. I was angry. I reacted like a hormonal teenager. It was pathetically melodramatic. Micheil, I’m so sorry.”
He brushed her hair out of her face. The words were right there behind his lips. The love. He was afraid to speak in case the truth tumbled from him. Instead he bent his head and kissed her. He poured the words and the feelings into the kiss instead and it was a heady, thought-stealing one.
Kate blinked and pressed her hand against his chest. “I felt your heart…start,” she whispered.
“You did that,” he told her.
“But I normally can feel your heart.” She bit her lip. “More lying? You can control your heart?”
“We can control it under most circumstances. Highly emotional or physically taxing ones will take that control from us. Or we can simply surrender to autonomy. Let our heart beat as it will.”
“Is there a price for autonomous heartbeat?” she asked, her voice still low.
“More frequent feedings.”
Kate shook her head. “So much to learn. To revise. I feel like I have to go over every conversation we’ve ever had and put it back into context.”
“That’s natural.”
She looked at his chest again. “Where is your shirt?” She pulled his jacket aside to look at his chest in the steadily darkening evening light.
“In your kitchen garbage can,” he told her. “I couldn’t walk around wearing it like it was.” He reached into his jacket. “There’s something I didn’t leave behind, though, that I wanted to.” He pulled out the chain and held it out. “Here.”
Kate rested the wooden pendant on her palm and peered at it. “It looks gorgeous. Like filigree, or lace, but it’s all wood. You can see all the way through the heart. It has two sides, like there’s…yes, there’s something inside.” She looked up at him. “Do you know what is in there?”
“Maybe.”
She rolled her eyes. “Where did you get it? It’s beautiful.”
“Before tonight, I would have given you a long story about Tiffany’s or a Sotheby’s auction.” He shrugged.
“You made it?”
“I learned how to make pretty things with lumps of useless wood from sitting around camp fires at night on campaigns and wars and battles too many to itemize. And recently, I got my favourite whittling knife back. Remember a week ago, when some jerk sawed off the back inch of the arm of your chair on the set?”
Kate’s mouth opened. She held up the pendant. “This is it? My chair arm?”
“It was something to do with my hands on the set. Under the circumstances, Kate, you may not want to wear it. At least, not openly. But keep it. I’d like you to have it.”
She closed her hand around it protectively. “It’s mine.”
He grinned. “You’d better go back in. Roman is ready to finish the job on me that you started.” He nodded toward the front door. Roman stood with his back against the front post of the veranda, his arms crossed. Even from the roadside, his glare was recognizable.
Kate slid the pendant carefully into her pocket. “See you on the set, Micheil.”
“Tomorrow,” he agreed and got into the taxi.
Halfway back to the studio, as he was composing a long email to Nial about their disclosure to Kate, Kate’s Twitter reached him.
@DoveAngel. I’d wish you sweet dreams, but you don’t, do you? Just torrid fantasies, huh?
His cock – his entire body – came to the alert and began to pound. There was nothing he could do about it. She was tucked up with Roman for the night. He could help himself, but it was a hollow meaningless venting at the best of times.
Garrett gripped the padded door handle and forced his mind on to any other track at all and struggled to keep it there.
It was going to be a very long night.