“Thanks,” Roman said dryly and lifted her to her feet. “Enough. Time is wasting. The others will be waiting for us.” He hesitated. “I’m not sure having you stay behind me is the best place for you.”
She grinned. “Don’t like having someone on your six?”
He gave what sounded like a growl. “You make too many movies. Let’s go.”
* * * * *
Garrett heard it long before anyone else in the room and just barely managed to school his face to neutral. The sound of a body hitting a floor was quite distinct. It had come from above them. No one else in the room reacted, which meant it had been soft enough that human ears couldn’t hear it.
The three that had been working him over as punishment for ruining the chair and moving himself over to the sofa were talking in the corner of the room, their voices soft enough that he could only hear sibilants and the odd consonants – not enough to string together to form a coherent conversation.
They had arrived toward sunset, after leaving them alone for nearly six hours. Despite the windowless basement room, Garrett was still attuned to sunrise and sunset, and his internal clock was far more accurate than a human’s, so he knew where the sun was in the day sky when they stepped into the room and found him leaning against the sofa and Winter curled up, sleeping naturally, with her body fully restored and her head on the arm. The alarm and panic that had ensued had been almost funny.
It had taken five of their biggest men to lift him, the chair and the chains off the ground and the five of them hadn’t had the coordination necessary to fit the chair back onto the base.
In the end one of them got the bright idea to unlock the chains, unravel them and release him from the chair. While four of them had held him down, two more had fixed the chair and tied Winter into it.
Then they had beaten Garrett.
As beatings went, he’d had worse. Before Scotland had been won, the English had beaten him more than once. The English had been vicious about it and he had not been able to heal the way he could now. Now, the pain was momentary and it was an inconvenience, but that was all.
As soon as he heard the body drop to the floor above, he knew he would take a dozen such beatings, if it meant keeping five, ten or a dozen of them occupied while whoever it was worked their way through to them.
He lifted himself up into a sitting position, which caused a stir of concern, as the two who had been left to watch over him surged to hold him down.
“I don’t think so,” Garrett said. It was too easy. They weren’t expecting it. He grabbed both their heads and smashed them together. They dropped like stones to the floor as he pulled his legs out of the way.
The other three turned, alerted, as Garrett tugged the Berretta 9mm out of the thigh holster. “I’m betting you want to avoid gunfire at all costs,” he said, raising the gun to point at them. “But I don’t and in this room, the only people vulnerable to bullets are you three.” He grinned. “Shouldn’t’ve worn your sidearms into this room, huh?”
They raised their hands.
“Good move,” Garrett agreed. “Release her.” He waved toward Winter.
They didn’t move. So Garrett carefully put a bullet in the shoulder of the one closest to him. “I grew up with a broadsword in my hand,” he told them, “but I got really good with a handgun, too. Hand-eye coordination transfers over nicely.”
As the wounded guard crumpled, clasping his shoulder, the other two hurried over to the chair and untied the leather straps binding Winter.
She moved to the wounded guard and bent over him, touching his forehead. He fell back onto the floor and lay still. “He’ll be out for a few hours,” she told Garrett.
“Handy talent, that.”
“It has its uses.” She stepped over to him and rested her hand on his shoulder.
“What are you doing?”
“Shh…”
“I heal, Winter.”
“Shh…”
He could feel it, whatever it was. He’d not noticed until now the growing uneasiness in him, that presaged the need to feed, but abruptly, it was not there and the absence of it was remarkable. He could take a deep breath, as if he had been afraid to breathe deeply before in case something popped or exploded. Tension that he hadn’t been aware of building inside him had simply vanished.
“How did you know?” he asked.
“I live with a vampire,” she said with a small smile. “And I have to feed once a month myself.” Her smile broadened a little more. “But that’s a secret between you, me and my husbands, okay?” She stepped back. “The effect won’t last long. It’s like taking Tylenol. It just masks the problem. But it will give you a few hours.” She tilted her head toward the door. “I heard a noise outside the room a few seconds ago. Is that what prompted you to act?”
“Yes.” He got to his feet, carefully keeping the gun on the two standing in the corner. “Any second now. The only problem is, I can’t tell who is going to come through the door.”
“Friendlies or enemies?”
“Right.”
Winter nodded toward the guards. “Put them in front of the door. We can stand behind them.”
Garrett glanced at her. “You don’t match your delicate appearance, do you?”
She smiled and the smile held a touch of wickedness. “Married to the two reprobates I’m married to? If I’d had any delicate tendencies at all, I lost them on the honeymoon.”
The soft shuffles were closer now. Garrett held up his finger for silence and motioned the guards forward. They stepped forward stoically, their arms crossed. Garrett got behind them and roughly pushed them until they were a few feet away from the door. It would make them appear more of a threat when the door opened.
Then he crouched down against the wall behind them.
Winter stood against the wall right by the door, where it would swing open and hide her.
Garrett shook his head and waved her over to him.
She frowned.
He waved her over again. She shrugged, moved over and hunched up next to him on the floor, moving silently and quickly.
It was still outside the room and the tension wound up inside him again, but this time it was because he knew the door was about to bust open.
Three shots fired, drilling right through the simple plasterboard wall, a foot away from the doorframe and almost exactly where Winter had been standing. She shivered where she sat next to him, but didn’t say a word.
Then the door was rammed open, the wood around the lock splintering and flying apart as the lock was forced out of the lock plate. The door waivered open until someone on the other side either kicked it or shouldered it aside.
Two bodies streaked through the open door, almost too fast for even Garrett’s enhanced vision to see. They leapt at the two guards, driving them down to the floor, where they came to a halt. Roman and Nial, their hands around each throat, thumbs against the carotids, sending the guards to sleep.
Garrett got slowly to his feet and helped Winter to hers. “The cavalry has arrived,” he observed dryly.
“About time,” she replied tartly. “I’m hungry.”
“About time?” Sebastian demanding, coming into the room. “We’ve fought off Navy bloody SEALs for you, I’ll have you know. That’s not a job just anyone could pull off.”
But Winter was already in his arms before he’d finished protesting, her face against his chest and her arms winding around his neck.
Garrett waited patiently for Roman to finish his work.
“Micheil.” Kate’s soft voice sent a tremor from the base of his skull rippling all the way down to the end of his tail bone.
Garrett turned, feeling like he was moving through treacle.
“You really are here,” he said. “What the hell, Kate…”
“I came to get you back.” Her voice was hoarse and her eyes were tear filled. “We came to get you back.”
Roman stepped around to face them both. He was breathing heavily, the
price a vampire paid for moving at top speed like that. He would have to feed, soon, too. But for now he was looking at Garrett with an expression that seemed half-angry, half…
Garrett abruptly started to shake, deep in his core. “This isn’t a game, Roman. Ye can’t pick up and wander off when ye feel like it over and over. I’m done lettin’ ye think that’s okay. I don’t think Kate would ever let ye do it. She’s got more grit than me.”
Kate smiled. “No I don’t, but my life is a lot shorter, so I can’t screw around with my time like you two. But I don’t think it’s an issue anymore. Roman?” She looked up at him.
Roman was watching him. “Kate told me why she calls you Micheil.”
Garrett frowned. “Never could come right out and say it, could you?”
“What? That I love you?” Roman sighed. “Of course I do. I’ve been a fucking idiot for two hundred years and I’ve been tied up in knots for these last ten weeks, because I’ve fallen in love with Kate just as badly. Between the two you I haven’t known which way to turn. I love you, Calum Micheil Garrett of the mighty Bruce Clan. Always have, always will. It just took me a while to settle to the fact.”
Garrett felt something loosen and relax inside him, similar to the release of tension Winter had created when she had masked his need to feed. “A while to settle to it? Six hundred years? And you call me impatient.” He shook his head.
Roman kissed him and Garrett let himself drown in the kiss. He didn’t give a damn about who might be witnessing it.
The loud gunshot and the blow to his back were simultaneous. He was punched forward by the blow, rammed into Roman’s chest. Large calibre, his over-taxed mind calculated, to deliver such force.
But before he could even straighten himself up, there was another two shots, both quiet retorts muffled by a silencer.
Then silence.
Roman pushed him to his feet and Garrett turned around.
“Sweet Mary Mother of God,” Garrett breathed.
Heavy footsteps sounded outside the door and Sebastian and Nial pushed back into the room. Garrett hadn’t been aware of them leaving. They had slipped out discreetly, giving them privacy.
The guard Winter had put to sleep still lay peacefully in the corner. But the two guards Garrett had overcome and Nial and Roman had choked to unconsciousness now lay dead on the floor. Each had a neat bullet hole in the centre of their foreheads. One of them was holding a stubby little Smith & Wesson revolver. His trouser leg was rucked up, revealing an ankle holster. He had clearly roused enough from the temporary lapse of consciousness to pull his gun and shoot Garrett in the back.
Kate stood where Garrett had been standing, her legs spread. She was lowering her arm. In her hand was a Glock with a silencer attached. She was staring at the guards.
“What the hell?” Sebastian said, looking at her.
“Where did you get the gun?” Nial demanded.
“I took it off the guard we ran into, out the back,” Kate said, her voice remote and dreamy.
“And you just happen to be a crack shot?” Sebastian asked.
“Just lucky, I suppose,” she said, her voice still distant.
“She was an archery champion,” Garrett said. “In high school.”
Nial glanced at him. “We don’t have time. Sebastian, clean the gun off and leave it here. We need to be gone. And we need to finish the last of this business. You take Roman and Garrett. I’ll take Kate and Winter. I’ll meet you there.”
Sebastian lifted Kate’s hand and gently plucked the gun from it.
“Meet us where?” Garrett asked, lost.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
MacDonald answered the door himself and didn’t seem to be surprised to see them. He stepped back, raising a brow as he took in the six of them crowding the hotel corridor. “You’d better come in,” he replied in his proper English accent. He turned his back on them and walked away, back into his hotel room.
Garrett stepped into the room first. “You knew,” he accused, anger building rapidly as more and more facts dropped into place. “You knew I was vampire all along.”
“Of course I bloody well knew,” MacDonald replied, stepping behind a full bar and lifting up a heavy glass full of what looked like whiskey. The room was an elegant lounge room complete with bar and fireplace, for this was one of the most expensive suites in the hotel. MacDonald sipped his drink and smiled at them all as they came to a ragged halt in the middle of the room. “You hired me for my intelligence, but you always underrated it.”
“You resented it that much you had to resort to abduction?” Garrett asked.
“Now who’s being stupid?” MacDonald replied. “For someone who has lived so long, you’re quite wet behind the ears, aren’t you?” He nodded toward everyone else. “Ask your friends. From the look on their faces, I’d say they’re a few steps ahead of you.”
Garrett looked. Nial was staring at MacDonald with an expression that could strip paint from boat hulls in one pass.
“Nial?” Garrett asked.
“He’s with the League for Humanity,” Nial said.
MacDonald looked pleased. “Give the fellow a cigar. Oh, I forgot, you’re not a fellow really, are you?” His false cheer evaporated. “I thought you’d come to realize it, Garrett. You’re an absolute top of the milk genius in some ways, but when it’s to do with people you’re completely out of your league. You just don’t see them at all, do you?” He sipped again. “The League told me and I didn’t believe them. It took me years of watching you to actually believe it, but you kept doggedly proving them right.” MacDonald grimaced. “Thank you for the lesson, Garrett. It has been most educational.”
“And the point of today? Taking me and Winter?” Garrett demanded. He wasn’t surprised when his voice emerged hoarse. MacDonald was handing out a double handful of hard knocks.
“You’ll have to check with my superiors for the answer to that.” MacDonald drank deeply. “I don’t know.”
“I don’t believe you,” Roman ground out.
“He probably doesn’t,” Sebastian said. “The League assholes that grabbed Winter and me a year ago were working under orders from above, too. It fits the pattern.”
“Maybe,” Winter said. “But there’s ways of finding out if he’s telling the truth. He’s only human.” She moved confidently toward MacDonald, reaching for him across the bar.
He grabbed her wrist and yanked her around to his side of the bar, forcing her arm up behind her back. His other hand curled around her throat, holding her against him, like a shield.
He started backing up, away from the bar.
“Where the hell do you think you’re going to run to, that we won’t track you down?” Sebastian asked, sounding amused.
“If I kill her, she won’t be able to wake to heal herself,” MacDonald told them. “So you have to let me go.”
“You won’t hurt her,” Nial told him. “You know if you do you’ve lost whatever protection she gives you and then we’ll kill you anyway.”
MacDonald was still edging toward the far corner of the room, where there was another door. A bedroom, possibly. He would pass within three feet of Kate, who stood silent and subdued, hugging her arms about her body as if she was very cold, or very afraid.
“I’m really getting tired of the League clinging to my heels like an unwelcome cow paddy,” Nial said. “Doesn’t it piss you off, MacDonald, that you’re being used like so much human cannon fodder? You’re unpaid servants at the beck and call of unscrupulous vampires who clothe their agenda in idealism and platitudes. You’ve been had.”
“They believe in the current world order,” MacDonald shot back, dragging Winter a few more steps toward the door. “They believe it shouldn’t be disturbed, which is exactly what you want to do.”
“What, vampires living in secret and silent harmony with humans?” Nial asked, derision rich in his voice. “If they’re so gung ho on human and vampire harmony, how come they haven’t hot footed it to you
r rescue as soon as you knew we’d busted in at the safe house?”
MacDonald stopped his shuffling sidestepped, staring at Nial. He licked his lips. “They had more important…. I didn’t… That’s not the critical……”
Kate moved, then. Her arms unfolded and she flowed into what looked like a balletic spin on one foot, as she turned, her arms out. One knee came up and then shot backwards in a vicious, powerful mule kick. It slammed into the side of MacDonald’s knee.
The crack of bone and snap of tendon was loud in the room. MacDonald howled as he clutched at his thigh, just above the knee, wobbling madly as he tried to keep balance.
“Nial?” Winter asked softly.
“We’re not going to get anything more out of him now,” Nial said, with a sigh.
She rested her hand on the back of MacDonald’s neck and after a few seconds, he toppled sideways, like a bent and crooked tree. The floor reverberated as he landed.
Kate pushed her fingers into her temples. “Oh Jesus, I forgot you could do that! Fuck!”
Winter grinned. “I was holding out, waiting for Nial to get as much information as possible from MacDonald as he could. Never mind.” She threw her arms around Kate. “You saved me when you thought I needed saving.”
Kate closed her eyes. “Now I really feel stupid.”
“I think there are at least two people in the room who think otherwise,” Winter replied.
Garrett pulled Winter gently away. “I can take it from here.”
Winter smiled and stepped back. “Be careful. She bites.”
“I noticed.”
Kate threw herself into his arms. She was shaking.
Roman pressed up against them both, his hand on Garrett’s shoulder and his arm around Kate’s waist. “Come on. I’ll take you home,” he said in a low voice.
For a few seconds Garrett tried to figure out who he was talking to. Then he realized.
He’d been speaking to them both.
* * * * *
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