Blood Stone

by Tracy Cooper-Posey

  “But that isn’t why madam Khurshid finds you such a useful companion, is it?” Garrett added.

  Cyneric smiled. “She has learned to value true intelligence.”

  “And true arrogance,” Sebastian muttered.

  “The ability to think – to truly think – always includes the ability to properly self-analyse. It looks like arrogance to those who don’t appreciate clear thinking.” Cyneric didn’t seem offended.

  Winter put her cup back in her saucer with an audible clatter. “You despise those of lesser intelligence?” she asked him. Her eyes were narrowed with anger, but she spoke with civil politeness.

  “I’m kind to those of lesser intelligence when I recognize they are truly struggling to do their best,” Cyneric amended. “What offends me is someone wasting their natural abilities. Unfortunately, that particular disease is rampant in both humans and the blood so I am often offended.”

  Garrett wanted to be pissed at the man for his superiority, but he had spoken with no particular emphasis. The dry tone had been missing completely. He had been stating a simple truth in his view. Garrett had a hard time arguing with it. The depth to which human and vampire stupidity ran sometimes staggered him. Worst, it recycled, over and over. No one learned, no one handed the lessons down, the same stupid shit continued over and over, week after decade after century.

  Garrett would shake his head over it, sigh, and get back to work.

  Cyneric chose to get offended by it.

  Weren’t they simply choosing two different reactions to the same problem?

  “You get pissed by it,” Garrett said. “But do you do anything about it, or do you just go around clenching tighter and tighter by the decade?”

  Cyneric’s eyes narrowed.

  “Enough sparring,” Khurshid declared. “Cyneric, tell them what you told me.”

  Cyneric stepped around to the front of the chair he had been hovering behind. He wore an expensive suit. Garrett had been buying business suits for decades and he eyeballed this one’s price tag in the two thousand pounds Sterling range. Definitely English and probably at the extreme end of conservative – Brooks Brothers or Saville Row. But it was a very modern cut, all the same. Slim and fitting, which made the most of Cyneric’s physique, which was good.

  The suit was dark, and so was his silk shirt, which was open at the neck.

  He unbuttoned the jacket as he sat down. “You say you spent a year leaving rumours around the world. Breadcrumbs that would bring members of the League and the Pro Libertatis to this movie shoot, for you to pry out into the open. Correct?”

  Nial nodded.

  “And those rumours were that the director of the movie, Kathrine Lindenstream, may have uncovered the mythical Blood Stone when she did her six week research dig in southern Turkey last year.”

  Garrett held himself very still. But he couldn’t stop from looking at Nial.

  “You didn’t know this, Garrett?” Khurshid demanded.

  Damn. “No,” Garrett admitted. “My part of the plan was to spend the year establishing a relationship with Kate, so we would all have a way to get onto the set when filming started. If we were all there in one concentrated place, away from any cities, Nial theorized that would be where everyone would come to find us. And they did. We kept my role completely separate from Nial’s side of things so there could be no trace of wrong-doing or conspiracy, no jarring notes to alert Kate. It was to be as authentic as possible.” He shrugged. “It worked.”

  “Indeed,” Cyneric said, the withering note back in his voice. “The best lies are the ones that hew close to the truth.”

  Garrett kept his teeth together.

  Sebastian swore, pushing his hand through his short dirty-blonde hair. “The stone isn’t a myth?”

  “No,” Cyneric said flatly. “Just as Nathaniel has always suspected.”

  Nial’s face was expressionless, but as everyone looked at him, he grimaced. “One hears things, from time to time. We’ve all heard of the Blood Stone. We’ve all heard it’s supposed to hold the key to who we are, why we’re here, where we came from. Some of the stories say it’s the key to “curing” us – making us human again. There are all sorts of stories about the powers it holds. Those stories came from somewhere. Just like Robin Hood and King Arthur came from the real thing.”

  Khurshid laughed. It was a low, merry sound. “Humans would be so disappointed if they met the men they idolize so much in their movies and television. Arthur was a tyrant and Robin was a scavenging thief…and he had the pox, besides.” She sighed. “But they were real enough.” She reached for a martini glass sitting on a table beside her chair and picked it up. It was nearly empty. With a practised motion, she polished off the rest of the martini.

  Garrett stared, astonished.

  She licked her bottom lip, relishing the last of the sparkling liquid and put the glass back down.

  “Blood means there’s an open vein somewhere,” Winter murmured.

  “Smoke means fire, yes,” Nial agreed. “All the stories, as tall as they were, meant that somewhere back in time, there must have been a real Blood Stone. I thought the odds that it was still around were slim.”

  “So did we,” Cyneric agreed. “Until you stirred things up.”

  “Wait,” Garrett said, holding up his hand. “No one has gone looking for the Blood Stone in all this time? No one has discovered it? In the thousands of years since the Blood Stone was…what? Created? Cast? Whatever. And then lost—”

  “Deliberately,” Khurshid said.

  They all looked at her.

  She folded her hands delicately in her lap. “The Blood Stone, when it was made, was thought to be far too powerful to be left lying around for anyone to find and use. Or worse, destroy. So the old ones, in their wisdom, made three copies of the Blood Stone. Each copy was identical to the real one in all ways, except that the inscriptions were not quite exact. The wording of the invocations was incorrect, here and there. And of course, the power that was bound up in the real stone was missing in the copies.”

  “The four stones were spread across the known world, and hidden,” Cyneric continued. “Of course, the known world then was a tiny portion of the world as we know it now. Spreading them across the world means all four stones were somewhere in what we know as southern Turkey.”

  “The cradle of civilization,” Nial murmured.

  “Then the fakes have been found,” Garrett insisted.

  “Two, we believe,” Cyneric said.

  “You believe?” Garrett repeated.

  “The fake stones have their own invocations,” Khurshid explained. “Destroy them or try to use their power…and pay the price.”

  “What price?” Winter asked.

  “No one has survived to tell a single soul, living or undead,” Cyneric replied.

  “And now you think it’s real because Nial does?” Winter asked.

  “They’ve always thought it’s real,” Nial said, his tone distant, as if his thoughts were running a million miles an hour and racing far ahead. “But now they think someone is close to it.”

  Garrett leaned forward. “Who?”

  “No one we’ve seen so far,” Nial said, in the same remote voice. “Someone they know.” His focus zeroed in on Khurshid. “An unspoken one. One who has been searching for it for a long time. They’ve suddenly begun to move again. Move toward us.”

  She smiled. “Very good.”

  “Yes, he is rather good, isn’t he?” Cyneric murmured, sounding reluctantly impressed.

  “That’s what brought you here,” Garrett said.

  “That, plus Nial and Sebastian having their features sprayed across national newspapers, which was alarming enough.”

  “So who is this dude zeroing in on us, then?” Sebastian demanded.

  Cyneric glanced at Khurshid. It was telling that he hesitated over his answer this one time when he had not paused once since Garrett had walked in the room.

  Khurshid pursed her lips. �
��He goes by many names. As do we all. You will come to know him best as The Deadly Moon.”

  * * * * *

  Winter was fast asleep, her head on Sebastian’s shoulder, as the taxi drove them through mostly deserted streets, heading back for the studio.

  “What do you know about the Blood Stone, Garrett?” Nial asked, breaking the quiet.

  Garrett turned his gaze from the window to look at Nial. “Less than you, I imagine. You deliberately kept me out of that side of it. I was caught flat-footed in there tonight. Thanks, by the way.”

  Nial raised his brow. “Getting self-righteous about it won’t distract me. You know exactly what I’m talking about. The first time Cyneric mentioned the Blood Stone, your heart jumped.”

  Garrett squashed his instinctive response: You heard it? There was no way Nial could possibly have heard his heart beat from across the room. No vampire had hearing that phenomenal, not in a crowded room with people talking, moving and a dozen other different distractions and noises crowding out something as delicate as a heart beating. Nial was fishing, looking for a confirmation that Garret would give if he asked that natural question.

  Instead, Garrett took a calming breath. “No, it didn’t.”

  Nial smiled. “I don’t know if it did or it didn’t, but it jumped just then, Garrett. And I heard you breathe in to calm it. You’re lying.”

  Garrett shrugged. “So?”

  “So what are you hiding? You know something about the Blood Stone. You were very quiet when we were discussing it. You were holding back -- and that’s fine. I’m not so happy about handing everything we know over to Cyneric on a golden platter just yet. But you get to come clean with me.”

  “I really don’t know anything about the Blood Stone except for all the bullshit everyone has heard. How it’s supposed to cure everything from warts to vampirism. How if it’s ever found and destroyed the proper way, all our Christmases come at once. If you really want to know the seriously sexy stuff about the stone, you need to talk to Roman.”

  “Roman?” Sebastian said, sounding dumbfounded.

  Garrett shrugged. “Some humans spend their lives looking for the real holy Grail. The actual cup. Well, Roman’s grail is the Blood Stone.”

  “And it never occurred to you that is the reason he searched out Kate?” Nial asked.

  “If I’d known you were telling the world she’d found the damn thing, I’d have put it together in a nano second, but you didn’t include me in the rumours. Everything had to be authentic.” The grab rail he was clenching gave a metallic groan of protest, and he let it go. There was a decided bend in the rail and he grimaced. He’d been gripping too tight.

  Nial let the silence stretch. He pulled out his cellphone and checked the time.

  Garrett gave him some kudos. Nial had already picked up the new habit. Garrett was still used to checking his watch for the time, which was the older generation way. He needed to train himself out of the habit.

  “There’s time yet,” Nial decided. He looked at Garrett. “Do you have his phone number?”

  Garrett shook his head.

  “Winter does,” Sebastian volunteered. “As Garrett’s assistant, she got acquainted with Kate’s boyfriend and got his number, so she could head off potential issues if she needed to.”

  Nial paged through his phone. “There it is.” He swyped out a message and put his phone away. “Let’s see how much the Blood Stone will screw up our plans.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Roman was sitting on the bottom step of Garrett’s trailer. He didn’t get up. Instead he looked up at Nial, annoyed. “An imperial summons? When did I get to be your flunky?”

  Garrett grabbed him and slammed him up against the metal wall.

  Sebastian winced. “Shh!” he murmured. He was carrying Winter in his arms. She was still completely asleep and utterly relaxed against his chest. Either her trust in Sebastian was absolute, or she was simply that exhausted.

  Garrett turned to Roman, letting the anger he had been holding at bay since Cyneric had first mentioned the Blood Stone rise to the surface and spill over. “You fucking hypocrite,” he breathed, keeping his voice low for Winter’s sake and for the sake of any sleeping humans who may be within earshot. “All the time Kate was roasting my gonads over glowing embers for my ‘agenda,’ you were snuggling up to her because you thought she had the Blood Stone.”

  Roman’s face shifted almost comically with surprise. “That’s what this is about?” He looked at Nial, then Sebastian. “Who tipped you off?”

  Sebastian rolled his eyes. “I think Cyneric is rubbing off on me. I don’t have patience for stupid right now. I’m tired. Winter is a dead weight. I’m going to bed before someone sees me as not-Terry.”

  He walked off, heading for their shared trailer.

  Garrett let Roman go with a frustrated exhalation. “He’s right. Play the idiot, Roman. It’s your funeral.”

  Roman straightened his shoulders and righted his tee-shirt.

  “Tell us what you know about the Blood Stone,” Nial said. “The real one.”

  “Cyneric the Slayer is here? In L.A.?” Roman asked.

  “What of it?” Garrett replied.

  “You want information about the Stone, you should have started with him,” Roman said. “We all have natural eidetic memories, but he takes it a step further. He’s a natural computer. He pours all the facts into that skull of his. Endlessly, day after day. He’s a collector of data. Every conversation, he sifts for innuendo. Inference. Then he’ll sit, like he’s in a trance. Two hours. Two days. A week. He’ll find the answer he wants out of all the facts and inferences he’s figured out.” Roman’s mouth curled into a sneer. “He’s done more to uncover the real Blood Stone than anyone else put together. He’s a master at putting together the most unlikely pieces of data and coming up with a new clue. It’s why Menes made sure Cyneric was shackled to him, long ago.”

  “Menes?” Garrett repeated.

  Nial gave a dry laugh. “Menes Heru. It’s ancient Egyptian. He’s the Deadly Moon. Cyneric is working two sides. We’ve been played.”

  Garrett swore. “Son of a bitch. I was starting to like the guy.”

  Nial just looked at him.

  “A bit,” Garrett amended.

  * * * * *

  “If Khurshid is here, too, then something is going on. She doesn’t move off her estate for anything less than a dire emergency,” Roman said, settling back into the deep corner of Garrett’s leather sofa. “Menes coming down his mountain and flying to the States would do it.”

  “Menes would come here only for the Stone?” Garrett asked, pulling up the executive chair from behind the antique desk.

  “That’s about the only thing that would beckon him, yes.”

  “Why would that bring Khurshid?” Garrett asked.

  Roman shrugged. “Fear. She knows what the Stone is capable of.”

  “Why does she know so much?” Garrett insisted. “If Menes is the pro and you’re our resident expert, why does Khurshid go pale and trot off to the Philistine-like United States as soon as Menes sways in our direction?”

  “She’s an unspoken one,” Nial answered. He had settled in the one armchair. “They handed down this information from maker to child, back then. Later, the information was lost as the world expanded and generational lines were broken.”

  Roman was watching Nial with an odd look on his face. “Is that why you never took on the title of unspoken one officially?”

  Garrett switched his gaze to Nial, shoving aside his surprise in order to listen properly.

  Nial’s mouth turned up at the corners. “I’m not that old,” he objected.

  Roman grinned. “Not what I heard. Everyone thinks you’re around the thousand mark, but I once spent a week on Euphrasia’s private island in the Aegean, in 1932.”

  “Ah.” Nial’s smile faded. “She didn’t make it through the war. The Germans took her as a prisoner and used the island as a lookout point.�
��

  It was Roman’s turn to smile. “They paid for disturbing her.”

  “They did? Good.” He nodded, looking pleased. “I’m glad. I didn’t find out until sometime after the war was over.”

  “Who was Euphrasia?” Garrett asked, reigning in his patience.

  “A child of the one who made me,” Nial replied.

  “And she was an unspoken one? How old was she? How old are you?” Garrett held up his hand. “I retract that. My apologies. But you can see why I’m confused.”

  Nial laughed. “Apology accepted. I was born in the year five hundred and fifty-nine in what is now called northern Italy. I’ll save you some mental gymnastics. That was one thousand, four hundred and fifty-three years ago. But I think of myself as…” He shrugged. “In my thirties.”

  Roman was scowling again and Garret recognized the expression as the one he used when he was thinking hard and disagreeing with the stated opinion.

  “Euphrasia didn’t think of herself as thirty,” Garrett guessed.

  Roman just scowled harder.

  “The unspoken ones aren’t some sort of exclusive club to which you get invited by brown-nosing and paying membership dues,” Nial told them. “There isn’t an arbitrary age cut-off that says ‘at this point you become an unspoken one.’ Euphrasia simply didn’t want to be a part of modern life. She hated it. You spent a week on her island, Roman, so you tell me – what did it make you think of?”

  Roman shrugged, still glowering. “Constantinople, like when I was a child. But simpler. Peaceful.”

  “That was her version of ancient Athens,” Nial told him. “A far more comfortable and insulated one. She arranged it so she didn’t have to adapt anymore. She could just go on as she was, unchanging and uninterrupted.”

  “But you didn’t choose that way,” Roman pointed out. “When every other vampire as old or older than you did choose it…or died. As far as I know you’re the oldest of the blood who still actively passes. Why didn’t you retire to coddle your worn psyche like the others?”

  Nial shrugged. “I don’t know. Because I’m stubborn? Because something interesting came along just at the right time? Because I’ve been terribly lucky, all my long, long life. Who does know? I don’t look back, Roman. Well, not that often and I try not to linger on the unpleasantness, of which there’s been far too much. But I can tell you that I did think about chopping myself off from the world more than once. There is definite appeal to not having to go through the tiresome routine of change, over and over. But change is what makes life so damned interesting, too. And I can tell you when I stopped considering the idea altogether, when it became an absolute impossibility for me.”