Winter shook her head. “Not exactly. I didn’t really heal Sebastian, because I didn’t know what I was doing. As it turned out, I switched off his vampirism. I just didn’t get rid of it altogether.” Her gaze turned inward. “It was very strange. I couldn’t take the darkness out of him, except to…well, take it into me.”
Then her gaze focused back on Blythe. “That’s why my eyes changed to match Sebastian’s. So while he isn’t completely human, neither am I, anymore. Every month or so, I have to consume his blood.”
Blythe crossed her arms. “What did he get out of it?”
Winter grinned. “He has to inhale my pheromones, every few months.”
“That’s a good way to make sure he never leaves.”
“I’d rather he stays because he wants to and so far, he does.” Winter glanced up at the nearly empty bag again. “Close enough,” she said softly and removed the IV needle with practiced ease. She carefully hung it over the bag hook and stood up, rolling down the sleeve of her silky tee shirt. “How can I help, Blythe?”
Blythe swallowed. “Did…has Patrick said anything to you?”
Winter was staring at her with a peculiar intensity, as if her gaze was looking inside her. “Here. Come and sit down,” she said. She moved over to the wrought iron table and chairs tucked into another corner made by the greenery.
Blythe followed her over and sat on the chair opposite her. The table was small and Winter reached out her hand. “Let me touch you.”
Blythe bit her lip. How much would Winter see? Then she forced herself to put her hand into Winter’s, with a compulsive jerk.
Winter’s gaze became unfocused.
Blythe waited. She couldn’t feel anything. It wasn’t like a normal doctor, poking and pummeling, his hands smelling of antiseptic solution.
Winter refocused her gaze, let Blythe’s hand go and sat back. “PTSD,” she said softly.
Blythe flinched. “Patrick told you.”
“He hasn’t spoken to me about you at all. Did he guess? You’ve been hiding it, haven’t you? The stress symptoms you’ve got are advanced and could only have built up over time.”
Blythe swallowed. “Yes. To all of it. He said…Patrick said if I didn’t get help, he’d force me to it. Dominic told me about you, about what you can do. I thought…” and she trailed off, realizing that what she had been about to say might sound insulting.
“You thought I was an easier option than doctors with their pills and shrinks with their invasive questions?” Winter smiled.
“It sounds horrible, out loud like that. Except that traditional medicine…they’ll just give me pills to ‘calm me down’. They’re not interested in actually digging deeper and getting at the guts of it, so I might not have to take the pills anymore. Shrinks are even worse. They don’t want a cure, either. They’re happy with ‘progress’.” She grimaced. “I want it to stop. I want to be able to do my job, even my new job, without wanting to kick in walls afterward. I need to be normal, for my kids.”
Winter listened to all of it without reacting. When Blythe paused for breath, Winter said; “You mean hunting the Others is your new job, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Isn’t that actually your old job?”
“The Others aren’t the same as terrorists. Terrorists want the world to run their way. The Summanus just want to eat us.”
“You’re still hunting down the enemy. That’s not helping your condition.”
Blythe smiled. “The Others are directly threatening my kids. There’s a world of difference.”
“And that’s probably what made the PTSD flare up again,” Winter finished. “I can help relieve the physical symptoms, although you do know that your mind is causing them, don’t you?”
Blythe drew in a breath and let it out. “So I’ve been told.”
“I can’t manipulate thoughts, Blythe,” Winter said softly. “Only you can control your own mind. If I heal your body, that will give you a shot at dealing with the issues you haven’t faced yet, with some physical strength to cope with the fall out.”
Blythe swallowed. “Can you read minds, too?” she asked. “You made Dominic a mind reader.”
Winter shook her head and held out her hand once more. This time, Blythe felt no reluctance. She put her hand in Winter’s without hesitation.
“I don’t read minds, I read bodies and I’m very good at it. Physical symptoms are like newsprint. They tell your story better than you can, because they don’t lie and beat around the bush. Now shush for a moment. Let me concentrate.”
Her remarkable green eyes closed.
This time, Blythe could feel it. Her body relaxed all by itself. It was like meditating, which she had tried once or twice, or climbing into a cool pool of water and letting herself float. Everything inside her seemed to loosen, including pockets of tension in her back and around her jaw that she hadn’t been aware of.
She blinked as her vision seemed to refocus and everything around her grew greener and brighter.
Winter opened her eyes and let Blythe’s hand go. “How do you feel?”
“Wonderful.” Even her skin felt younger and fresher. She remembered feeling this way from her twenties, when she had first been training as a soldier. It had been a disciplined fitness that produced boundless energy, that let her go all day, getting things done.
Blythe breathed in a deep lungful of air that tasted wonderful.
“All I’ve done is reset your body back to normal,” Winter said. She smiled. “I’ve given you a pill that doesn’t mask the symptoms but removes them instead. It’s not a cure. If you don’t work on letting go of the trauma itself, you’ll be back to where you were in a few days or weeks. That part is up to you.”
“Thank you. I appreciate it,” Blythe said, getting to her feet. “You have no idea how…well, maybe you do, if you can read bodies like newsprint.”
Winter grinned. Then she sobered. “I don’t read minds, Blythe, but may I give you some advice, anyway?”
Considering the difference in how she felt from when she had walked into the room, Blythe was willing to give Winter anything. She felt as if she could bounce off walls now and still keep running. “Shoot,” she said.
“I think you would go a long way toward resolving things if you stop reaching for perfect.”
Blythe stared at her.
“You’re trying to raise your kids and protect them and you think you have to be perfect to do it properly. If you give yourself a break, if you let yourself be human and forgive yourself for flaws and weaknesses, you might find the job easier and that you’re more effective, too.”
Blythe pressed her lips together. “There are creatures out there that want to eat us and two other species that are standing back, waiting to see which way it goes. The Summanus are relentless. There are no rules of engagement. No exchange of cigarettes at Christmas while the cannons fall silent. They think we’re cattle and they have as much empathy for us as we do for the fish in our nets. I can’t afford to make mistakes, Winter. If I do, people end up dead.”
“Not if you have a good team around you,” Winter said lightly. “You’ve forgotten that, I think.”
Blythe paused. That was something that Patrick had tried to say, in a different way. He’d called it reaching out for help. He’d said that asking for help wasn’t a weakness.
“I asked you,” Blythe said. Her voice emerged scratchier than usual. She was winding herself up, ruining all Winter’s good work. So she drew in a slow, controlled breath, letting everything go.
“And I am truly pleased that you did.” Winter got to her feet. Like most women, she was shorter than Blythe. It didn’t seem to bother her. She smiled at Blythe. “Stop by any time,” she said. “I can reset as often as you need it.”
“If I deal with the mental shit in the meantime?” Blythe asked.
Winter shook her head. “No conditions. I think there are too many conditions in your life already.”
Blyth
e pointed over Winter’s shoulder. “I’m going to go back and say goodbye before I head home.”
“Do you know your way around?”
“Well enough. And there are people all over the place during the day, here. I can ask.”
“That’s true. This house is evolving into an office building with each passing day.”
“That sounded bitter.”
Winter laughed. “I used to break into big corporate offices and steal from them. Whenever I was casing those buildings, I used to watch the ant-like scurry of office workers and think ‘thank god that’s not me’. And here I am, the corporate biologist and medic.”
Blythe tried not to react to the glimpse of Winter’s starting past. “You don’t seem like someone who would steal.”
“No, I’m not that person anymore,” Winter agreed.
“What happened?” Blythe asked curiously. Something drastic must have happened to make such a radical change in a person. Change, she had discovered for herself, was one of the most difficult things to pull off. All the discipline in the world wouldn’t do it, nor did white-knuckling her way through it.
Winter’s smile softened and her eyes grew warm. She seemed to almost glow. “I fell in love.”
Blythe shuddered, as fingers seemed to ripple over her spine, playing a bony melody.
Chapter Seventeen
There was a small flat screen TV standing on the kitchen table and the man who had let her in earlier was sitting watching, along with a second one who wore a dark suit that screamed private security.
As Blythe passed through, she glanced at the screen. The vampire they called Roman was being interviewed. The anchor was asking a strident question while Roman listened politely.
“One of the few facts we do know is that vampires failed to warn us about the hatching season. Warning humans is part of your job. That is what you said at the first press conference, isn’t it?”
“Guarding humans is our job,” Roman said easily. “In fact, we did try to warn humans about the hatching season. Cyneric Pæga in London spoke to contacts in the media and the government and suggested that humans be discouraged from using public transport. His warnings were dismissed because he couldn’t explain why an entire country’s transport system should be brought to a grinding halt on his say so. We can only guard humans if you let us.”
Ouch, Blythe thought and slowed her pace until she was halted by the counter. She turned to watch.
“Shouldn’t you have known exactly what was about to happen?” the anchor insisted. “Your combined memories go back to unrecorded history, do they not?”
Blythe could see that Roman was maintaining his cool by sheer discipline. “Vampires did not exist when the Others still roamed the Earth. The Blood Stone was made and then vampires were created to guard humans, who were left with the world for themselves. This is a fact that even vampires have only recently learned. Dealing with the Summanus is a learning curve for everyone, not just humans.”
“And when do the training wheels come off? How long before vampires can actually do their jobs as advertised?”
“How long is a piece of string?” Roman shot back, with some visible asperity.
Hold it together, Blythe mentally encouraged him.
“We won’t know how much there is to learn, until we’ve learned it all,” Roman continued, as the live audience in the studio reacted loudly. “Scientists are daily discovering pockets of new knowledge, new fields and areas of study that no one knew even existed five years ago. The more they learn, the more they realize there is left to learn.”
“We’re talking about one species, not a universe.”
Roman smiled. “Humans are one species,” he pointed out. “And yet, human medicine is still getting things wrong, five thousand years after Imhotep wielded his surgical knife.”
Nice. Blythe listened to the mixed reaction from the live audience. There was some clapping there. Roman was winning them over. Grace under fire…it had its uses.
The man who had opened the door for her glanced over. “Need something, ma’am?”
“I’m Blythe,” she said, then wondered what had prompted her to make this a personal thing.
Winter’s voice whispered. You’ve forgotten that, I think. And Patrick’s. Asking for help isn’t a weakness.
“Kimball,” the man replied.
“I was wondering where I would find Dominic.”
“In the front offices, most likely. Just keep going through the big living room.”
“Thanks.”
She stepped into the living room with a degree of diffidence. Patrick had been here when she had left to find Winter. She didn’t want to see him. He would want to know about Winter and Blythe wanted time to consider everything Winter had said…and had done to her.
She still felt great. Better than great. She was full of energy, bouncing with it. She needed to move. The idea of diving into a pool and cranking out ten laps was enticing. Lifting weights…she just knew she would break all her personal best records if she tried it.
The living room was empty. Sheet music was scattered over the piano, the only sign that anyone had been in here.
She followed her nose as Kimball had suggested, picking one of the two arches on the other side of the room. There were soft sounds coming from the left one that reminded her of the few offices she had ever been in. Clicking keys and the hum of a printer. And voices.
There was a short passage on the other side of the arch and two doors leading off, one on either side. The keyboard sounds were coming from the left door, so she moved through it.
Her first thought, as she looked around and registered everything, was that this was a hacker’s wet dream. Computers and electronic gadgets were everywhere, including a tall tower of what she thought might be data banks in the corner of the room, lit with red and green led lights. It was the sort of electronic complex that was usually hidden in dark rooms behind service doors, that only highly trained people were allowed to mess with.
Sebastian looked up from the computer he was sitting in front of and Nial straightened up. He had been leaning against the wall when she came in.
She gave them a smile. “I’m looking for Dominic. Do you know where he is?”
Sebastian raised his brows. “Haven’t seen him for a while,” he said. His eyes really were just like Winter’s.
“Have you tried texting him?” Nial asked.
Blythe fished out her cell phone from her back pocket. “I should probably just cut to the chase. Sorry to disturb you.” She turned, as she thumbed out the text message.
“By the way…” Nial said, halting her.
She looked over her shoulder at him.
“I don’t think I’ve thanked you for your help, lately. Of everyone, vampires included, I think you’ve been the most effective at dealing with Summanus. I’m glad you’re here.”
Blythe blinked. “I…er…thanks.”
Nial nodded.
She stumbled out of the room, forcing herself to concentrate on the text message and get it sent, but Nial’s words kept repeating themselves. “…glad you’re here.” It was almost as if he was saying he was glad she was part of the team. Until this moment she hadn’t thought of teams or sides, or squads. It had just been her and a few neighbors and Dominic as the outside asset.
Dominic had brought with him a whole army.
Except that he hadn’t brought them to her. She had been folded into their team.
The crazy thing was, she didn’t even resent it. She, who had always liked having all the control.
Dominic’s response was almost instant. Bedroom. Upstairs, left, end of the passage.
Was that a good idea?
It is, her mind whispered, as wicked thoughts surfaced, bursting through to her consciousness like champagne bubbles. Her new-found energy seemed to surge, making her feel almost twitchy.
She went looking for the stairs.
* * * * *
Dominic was waiting just ou
tside the door to a room at the far end of the passage, saving her from guessing which room at the end he meant.
She walked down the passage, running her gaze over him. He was a very sexy man. She wondered why she hadn’t noticed it until now. He had a strong, square chin and a sharp jawline and those eyes….
Better still, he had shoulders. He wasn’t super tall, like Nial and Patrick. It was possible he was shorter than even Sebastian. But he was taller than her and that was nice. His shoulders were broad, too.
She realized that she had been appreciating his broad frame and the power of his body for weeks now, always under the guise of assessing his combat skills. Her gaze had always lingered and she had a mental picture of him beheading a Summani, the muscles revealed by his sleeveless tee shirt bunching as he worked, sweat making the pale coffee-colored flesh gleam. The leather necklace he wore with the odd little pendant strung on it swung from his neck, bouncing off his chest.
That image had lodge in her mind and stayed there, flickering into view without her noticing, perhaps dozens of times a day. However, she’d had other things on her mind, including the need to find sleep one way or another and hadn’t had the energy to acknowledge the image, or the meaning behind it.
Now she did have the energy.
Dominic was standing with one foot outside the doorway, so she pressed her back against the opposite doorframe and looked at him. “Hi.”
His gaze met hers. Heat leapt between them.
Her heart thudded and something curled over in the pit of her stomach.
“You’re reading my mind,” she said.
“I can’t help it. You’re shouting at me.” His voice was low. Almost rumbling.
“Can I come in?”
“Please.” His gaze wouldn’t let her go.
Blythe tore her gaze away from him and stepped into the room. It was a small bedroom, with a walk-in closet and a second door that she guessed was a bathroom.
The bed was rumpled, as if he had been lying on it.
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