Blood Stone

by Tracy Cooper-Posey

  He reached up and drew her head down to kiss her. “Now go and eat dinner.”

  “Yes, Micheil.”

  He grinned. “I really do like that. Especially with the subservient ‘yes’ tacked on the front of it.”

  She snorted and turned to leave. “Last time I’m saying it,” she warned him as she shut the trailer door behind her.

  * * * * *

  The tap on the door didn’t wake Patrick, who was asleep in the bedroom. Nial moved soundlessly across the well-appointed trailer and opened the door a few inches. A light shone briefly in his face.

  “Sir, there’s someone in reception demanding to speak to you.” The voice was young. He recognized it as one of the night watchmen that guarded the hangar after midnight.

  “Patrick? At this time of night?”

  “Not Mr. Sauvage, sir. You.”

  Nial pushed the trailer door open, stepped out and shut it gently, making no noise. The man was holding the torch down by his side to avoid blinding either of them. It lit the yellow band on his uniform trousers and the shining boots.

  “How did they ask for me, exactly?” Nial pressed, cautiously.

  The man held out a sheet of paper. “With this.”

  Nial looked at it. The guard held the torch up to light it, although Nial could see it perfectly well anyway. It was a computer printout of a news site’s report on the Billy Donnelly thing. There was a very clear shot of him, Sebastian and Patrick marching Billy off to the van in which they’d driven him into San Francisco, to the nearest lock-up where they’d convinced a sheriff, who had recognized Patrick, to process and hold Williams until Garrett’s lawyer arrived to get the real charges laid.

  Nial’s head in the photo was circled in black marker.

  “Who’s doing the asking?” Nial said, looking at the guard.

  “Big guy,” the man said. “But I think he’s asking on someone else’s behalf.”

  “Why?”

  The guard hesitated. “No car keys,” he said. “And he’s not the limousine type.”

  “Not at this time of night, anyway.” Nial agreed with the assessment. “Okay, I’ll be there in a minute. You go keep him company. Tell him I’m coming.”

  The guard nodded and hurried away.

  Nial pulled out his cellphone and thumbed out the same text message to two different numbers and sent it.

  Sebastian’s answer was almost immediate.

  On my way.

  Garrett’s took a few seconds longer.

  Feeding. Sorry.

  Blood hunger couldn’t be ignored. Nial might need him, but he had to feed. Sebastian would be enough. At least he wasn’t going into this unknown factor alone.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Garrett locked the back door and checked it was secure, then carefully hung the key back on the nail driven into the frame. It may have been meant to allow employees access to the sunroof, but it had the nice secondary benefit of giving him access to the streets and alleys so he could hunt and feed without advertising that he was leaving the building.

  He checked for observers, but it was after midnight and the few cast and crew that were living temporarily in the hangar seemed to be sober, sensible types that turned in early and got plenty of sleep. No wild Hollywood parties while principle photography was in session. It created bags under the eyes.

  He moved carefully anyway, as he made his way back to the trailer, keeping close to walls and objects and out of the sightlines of the security cameras, which he had made a point of spotting and memorising the first night he had roamed the hangar.

  So when Roman’s arm snaked out of the dark and wrapped around his neck, and the point of a blade pressed under his ear, Garrett was annoyed. He hadn’t made allowances for someone as sneaky as him and he should have.

  He kept still. “Are you still pissed at me about…oh, I don’t know. The list is long and distinguished now. Or have I added another transgression to the tally that you forgot to inform me about?”

  Roman’s grip around his throat tightened. “Back up,” he ordered.

  “Okay, we’ll play it your way.” Garrett backed up a few steps and Roman turned him, backing him further into a short blind alley – more a pocket – made by three twenty-foot piles of scenery flats. It was dark in there.

  Roman pushed him face-first up against the side of the flats. Then he jammed the knife into the frame of one of the flat, at Garrett’s eye level. “Recognize it?” Roman asked.

  Garrett turned his head to look at the six inch single-sided blade. It was serrated and gleamed dully in the low light. The handle was black and there was a jewel buried in the hilt – put there to give the knife better balance for throwing. Garrett knew that because it was his knife. It was a sgian-dubh, the knife all Scotsmen owned.

  “I thought I had lost it.”

  “In a way, you did. You left it behind, in Greece. When you left me.” Roman’s body pushed up against Garrett. Hard, driving him against the flats, pushing the air out of him.

  Garrett shoved back, pressing on the flats for leverage. “You told me to go. Remember pressing that musket against my chest and threatening to cut out my heart and watch me bleed out if I didn’t get the fuck out of your sight?”

  Roman’s hands reached for his belt buckle, sliding it undone. Pressing his hips back so his ass was pressing against him. Garrett clamped his jaw against the flare of arousal. “You don’t get to pretend that never happened,” he ground out.

  “You ran like a frightened rabbit.” Roman pushed his jeans down to his ankles in one sweep.

  Garrett closed his eyes, giving up the fight. He was primed, his body aching. His cock and balls were congested, swollen. It’d ever been this way. His jeans were removed and his legs spread and that made his cock pulse with the possibilities.

  “You ran,” Roman breathed in his ear. “Didn’t it occur to you I needed you most just then?”

  “Even I can only fight you so much,” Garrett whispered back. “A man will fight forever on nothing but daydreams and hope, if you give him a glimpse of a possibility. You never did.”

  Roman slipped his hand between Garrett’s cheeks, teasing and exploring. The sensation was achingly familiar. Garrett gripped the frames, unwilling to groan aloud and demonstrate just how easily Roman was affecting him.

  Roman’s other hand took the place of the first, and this one was slick with lubricant. Garrett’s pulse skyrocket. His hips pushed back, opening him up, easing access. It was old habit, instinctive and without intention on his part.

  Roman eased his fingers inside him. “The heat of you.” He let out a breath. “Jesus, you’ve just fed.”

  Garrett didn’t answer. Roman, who was still drawn to humans, had always liked it when Garrett had freshly fed, for he was human hot then. Roman made a sound in his throat. It might have been a groan, choked off. His fingers withdrew and were replaced by the tip of his cock.

  Garrett stood still and let Roman take him. He wanted it. His body ached for it.

  Roman slid into him with so little resistance it might have been yesterday they had done this, with no two hundred year hiatus between.

  The only sounds between them now were their breath. Both of them were breathing hard, with little hitches and catches as their excitement rose.

  Roman’s hand curled around Garrett’s cock and began to stroke in time to his thrusts and Garrett threw his head back in an agonized pleasure. This would end him, end both of them, too quickly.

  And abruptly, he wasn’t willing to end this.

  But his climax was rushing at him. It had been far too long. The delicious friction, the feeling of fullness, the internal pressure and Roman’s hands on him…it was too much.

  He came with a hard rush and it felt like it was pulling from his toes. He could feel his pleasure triggering Roman’s climax, the choked sound he made as he came and the little uncontrolled, helpless thrusts as he poured his essence into him.

  Garrett folded his arm against
a flat and rested his head on his arm, feeling his heart slow and his body quieten. Roman stayed inside him, his body touching Garrett’s back, just lightly enough to let him know he was there, as if his cock wasn’t enough.

  “I missed you,” Roman said, his voice so low, it was nearly bodiless.

  Garrett’s heart squeezed.

  “It was my fault,” Roman added. “I’m sorry.”

  He pulled away. Garrett spun to face him, not willing to let him slip away this time. Roman was sliding his jeans back on, half-turned away.

  “So what is this, then?” Garrett asked. “Are you trying to play catch-up, Roman?”

  Roman grinned. “Two hundred years of some of the best sex I can recall?” He grinned. “I should be so lucky.”

  “Then what?”

  “You started this,” Roman reminded him. “You tell me.” He stood looking at Garrett, waiting for an answer, genuinely interested.

  Garrett picked up his jeans from where Roman had tossed them and shoved his legs into them one at a time, giving himself time to think. “I don’t know,” he admitted truthfully.

  Roman scowled. “Would your answer be any different if you weren’t fucking Kate every time I turned my back?”

  “I’m not—”

  Roman grabbed his shirt and twisted, dragging Garrett closer and holding him still. “I can smell her on you, Calum. Jesus wept! Tell me you wouldn’t be hedging your bets if you weren’t thinking about her right now!”

  Garrett suddenly wished he had Winter’s ability to calm himself on demand. His heart was running out of control. It had been doing way too much of that lately. He fought for a steady tone as he looked Roman in the eye. “It doesn’t matter what I’m thinking or what I might have answered. It is what it is now. You were a fatalist once. You know this better than I.”

  Roman let him go as suddenly as he had grabbed him. “You can’t straddle the fence forever, highlander. You talk about fate like you know it, but you’ve forgotten that fate will choose for you if you fail to make a decision.”

  “I remember,” Garrett assured him. He straightened his shirt. “But doesn’t the decision really rest with you? I’m just the side-dish in all this.”

  Roman’s face darkened. Then he suddenly grinned. “Ah, we’re fooling ourselves, Calum. You know who is really going to decide in all this?”

  “Kate,” they both said together.

  They looked at each other.

  “Five hundred years,” Roman said. “I never thought I’d see you dangling at the behest of a human and a woman again.”

  “Times are changing.”

  “So are you,” Roman replied.

  Garrett shook his head. “That’s the point you’ve missed in all this.” He tucked his shirt back in with sharp, annoyed thrusts.

  “And now you’re the one that’s pissed.”

  “Because this, whatever the hell this is, was all about you.” Garrett grabbed the back of Roman’s head, moving fast so he wouldn’t have a chance to duck it. He kissed him, hard and deep, and let him go. “I’m not changing, Roman. I’m changing back. I’m returning to what I once was and you don’t like it. That’s why you’ve suddenly realized you miss me — because you are missing me. The old isolated me is gone. You did so much damage it crippled me for two hundred years, but I finally got past it and you can’t stand the idea that I can move on without you.”

  Roman’s fist whistled through the dark in a text-book upper cut that, had it connected with Garrett’s jaw, would have knocked him flat on his back. But Roman’s response to being in a jam had always been violence and Garrett was ready for it. He blocked the fist in his hands, using the advantage of his few inches of extra height to press down on Roman’s hand and keep it down.

  Roman struggled to drive his hand higher, then simply to release it, the tendons in his neck straining, his black eyes locked furiously on Garrett’s. But while Roman had always looked stronger, they had in fact always been evenly matched. Garrett waited out Roman’s struggles, until he gave up.

  “I’m changing, but you haven’t changed an inch,” Garrett told him. He let his fist go, tossing it back against Roman’s chest. “You’re predictable, Roman. You’re still looking out for yourself and screw anyone else who is in the way.”

  “Bastard,” Roman muttered in Greek.

  Garrett strode back to the trailer, his black Celtic temper high and hot, careless of the security cameras or of anything else. He wanted a drink. He wanted a punching bag.

  He halted with his hand on the door of the trailer and spun away. It was too small, too cramped in there. He leaned his back against the cool metal.

  He wanted someone to tell his troubles to, but Nial and Sebastian were busy and everyone else he knew that he could possibly talk to were human or needed sleep like humans.

  He wanted Kate.

  He wanted Roman.

  He was so completely screwed.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Nial stood waiting on the inside of the closed and barred door to the reception area when Sebastian got there.

  “You’re you,” Nial said mildly, looking at his hair. He had left the wig off.

  “It’s late. No one is up except us. You called me and Garrett, so this is our business, not movie business. Everyone in the hangar is very nearly family anyway.” Sebastian shrugged. “And as you keep saying, in a while, it’s really not going to matter, anyway.”

  “But for now, it does.”

  “Not tonight. Even the watchmen don’t know who we are. Back off, Nial. I thought it through.”

  “Very well, then,” Nial agreed. “In that case.” He drew Sebastian closer and kissed him. It wasn’t a light peck, either.

  Sebastian gripped the shoulder of Nial’s shirt for balance. “Gach na naoimh...” he murmured.

  “Ego desiderari vobis, dilectus meus.” Nial sighed. “More than I anticipated,” he added. “Being the watchdog means I am as guarded as the one I’m guarding.”

  “That makes three of us,” Sebastian replied. “Winter was at Garrett’s beck and call and now she is always with her people.”

  Nial cupped his cheek. “Be happy for her, Bastian.”

  “I am. But she’s learning how to be like them. Vicent tossed us around the room like we were chopsticks, that first day.”

  “Your point?”

  Sebastian shifted on his feet. “I don’t like it.”

  Nial grinned. “You don’t like not being the most powerful species on the planet anymore. Get used to it, Sebastian.” He reached for the bar on the door. “Ready?”

  “I suppose.”

  Nial slid the bar aside and opened the door. Sebastian stepped through and Nial locked it behind them.

  The reception area was lit with minimal lighting – enough for the watchmen to find their way about. The guard who had come to find Nial and bring him to the front sat on the low secretary’s desk in the front corner of the area. The desk was never used, but it was nicely placed for the guard, now, to keep an eye on the only other occupant in the reception area.

  The man was nearly as tall as Nial, but slightly leaner. He stood with arms relaxed at his sides. He showed no signs of impatience even though he had been waiting at least twenty minutes.

  In casual L.A. where jeans and tee-shirts were the norm everywhere but on the red carpet, he looked out of place. He wore formal trousers and a lightweight dark-coloured coat that Sebastian immediately spotted as English tailoring. It made him think of stodgy old clubs, executive dining rooms, banks that probably looked the same today as they did fifty years ago, and an old boys network of influential businessmen and peers that ran most of Britain.

  He shuddered at the memories it raised.

  The man looked from Nial to Sebastian, then back to Nial with a pair of very black eyes, but his expression didn’t change. He had the clear, pale skin of an Englishman, high defined cheekbones and a narrow black beard and moustache that framed the edge of his face and mouth.


  Nial looked at the guard. “I know this man. You can leave us. I can vouch for him and I won’t take him beyond this room.”

  The guard nodded. “Okay. I’ll be just beyond the door, then.” He got to his feet and left, shutting the door behind him.

  “Given the Latin and Irish I heard you both speak just before you came through the door,” the man said, “I can safely assume that you are Nathaniel and Sebastian, but you are moving under assumed names in this...” he glanced around the room with a flicker of his eyes. “Edifice.” He spoke with a rich, deep baritone, his words delivered in the crisp cadences of an educated Englishman. The movement of his head brought some of the long locks of his shining black hair sliding over his shoulder, to rest against his chest. He ignored them and stared at Nial.

  “Cyneric,” Nial said. Sebastian couldn’t figure out if he was speaking the name as a curse or in fear.

  “We’ve no time for sentimental greetings, Nathanial.” Cyneric turned and walked toward the glassed-in front door. “You’ve made my employer wait quite long enough with your petty attempt at one-up-manship. Come along.”

  Nial turned and followed, pulling out his cellphone and thumbing a text message one handed as he moved, the phone down by his thigh.

  Sebastian barely managed to avoid jumping as his own phoned vibrated. He fished it out unobtrusively and scanned the screen.

  Rick dangerous. Caution!

  A cold finger ran up Sebastian’s spine, from his tailbone to the base of his skull. As it rippled upwards, all the hairs along his back tried to stand upright.

  A year ago, Sebastian would have rated Nial as the most dangerous being in the world, or close to it. Three days ago, Nial had been tossed about Garrett’s trailer by a Curandero and he had laughed that off.

  Now he was warning Sebastian to be careful around this Cyneric character. Warning him.

  Who the hell was this guy?

  * * * * *

  A black stretch limousine sat still, silent and with its lights off, parked against the curb in the tow-away zone in front of the hangar’s freight entrance.