“You need to rest,” Sebastian said doggedly. “Either you do it voluntarily, or I will have to make you.”
Nial didn’t bother protesting that he was a vampire and didn’t need rest. Instead, he shifted mental gears. “You’re wasting my time. Stop this and leave me be.”
Sebastian’s gut clenched. “No.” He braced himself.
Nial gave no warning. No hint that he was about to move. He surged from the chair with a flex of muscles, moving almost faster than Sebastian could track. Sebastian was pushed off his feet, his balance toppling. He slammed up against the back of the door, with Nial’s forearm pressed up against his throat, his hand pinning Sebastian’s shoulder to the wood. Nial peered into his eyes from a few inches away. It was the same expressionless stranger staring at him.
Sebastian’s heart creaked, delayed reaction setting in. He was trembling. This was Nial. It just didn’t seem like him.
Sebastian stirred, shifting under his weight, testing Nial’s balance for weakness. In four hundred years, he had learned a thing or two and this didn’t require finesse or expertise.
He snaked his arms up under Nial’s and wrapped them around his back, gripping his own wrists for added strength. “Winter!” he yelled.
The other door to the office opened instantly.
Nial’s eyes widened in surprise. He reared back, pulling himself away, which was exactly what Sebastian had expected him to do. Sebastian clung to him grimly, his grip just barely holding.
Nial’s movement pulled Sebastian’s bodyweight forward. He would have overbalanced and fallen if Nial had not been there. Instead, he toppled against Nial. As his weight fell forward, Sebastian hooked his foot around Nial’s ankle and yanked.
They went down in a tangle of arms and legs, falling heavily because Nial was on his back and couldn’t break his fall and Sebastian refused to let go. They sprawled on the carpet, just in front of Winter, who hopped back out of the way. Her face was white, her eyes wide.
“Now,” Sebastian told her breathlessly, as Nial struggled and kicked underneath him.
Winter crouched and rested her hand on Nial’s forehead. Nial growled and it was an inhuman sound. The animal was rising, fighting to prevent this happening to him.
Winter closed her eyes, while Sebastian concentrated on the challenging task of keeping Nial contained while she worked.
Nial’s teeth descended. He hissed. There was a feral look in his eyes and Sebastian wondered if Nial even knew who they were at that moment. He was straining to reach Winter, to cast off her hand. It was like trying to hold down a rabid dog.
His heart thudding unhappily, Sebastian held on.
Abruptly, Nial grew still. Something like a sigh escaped from him and his eyes closed.
Sebastian looked down at his peaceful face, not willing to let him go yet. Nial was too old, too canny. He could be faking it.
“Is he…?” Sebastian whispered.
“It’s not sleeping. Not the way I sleep, or even the way you sleep. It’s more like I knocked him cold,” Winter said. She got to her feet. “I temporarily numbed both his human and vampire systems. When he returns to consciousness in a few hours, we’ll see if the rest helped or not.”
Sebastian looked down at Nial once more. “Is it safe to let him go?”
“He isn’t pretending,” Winter assured him.
Sebastian eased his arms out from underneath Nial, then got to his feet, watching him just in case.
Footsteps sounded on the tiles in the passage outside. Garrett hurried in, with Patrick on his heels. They halted just inside the door, looking down at Nial’s still form on the floor.
“Jesus and Mother Mary,” Garrett breathed. “That sound was Nial?”
“It came from him,” Sebastian said, breathing hard. “I don’t think it was Nial making it, though.”
Patrick shook his head. “We can’t leave him there.” He touched Garrett’s shoulder. “We should carry him upstairs.”
“No, the sofa out in the main room,” Winter said shortly. “I want to keep an eye on him.”
The two men lifted Nial up between them. Sebastian’s heart squeezed again as he watched Nial’s head flop uselessly between them. Guilt stirred in Sebastian’s chest.
As Patrick and Garrett carried Nial out of the office, Winter came over to Sebastian and put her arms around his waist and rested her head against his shoulder. She was shaking.
He held her. He knew exactly how she felt.
* * * * *
Even Rory seemed to feel the need to defy her own prediction. Sasha had coaxed her to bed as promised, which Dante thoroughly approved of and had taken full advantage of. It still blew his mind that it was Rory in his arms, moaning her pleasure. It was Rory he slid into, while Sasha made her writhe and groan with his hands and lips. She was actually hot around him, squeezing him, making him drive deeper and harder.
Yet, when he fell back onto the bed afterward, his body tingling and his cock throbbing with the after effects of his powerful climax, it was Sasha who met his gaze. Rory lay between them and Sasha tucked his hand over her waist in an almost possessive movement, while he looked at Dante. There was warmth in his gaze. Quiet happiness.
Sasha would return home. The truth of that hit Dante with the impact of a heavy-weight fullback taking him off his feet. He really would leave, probably sooner rather than later, now that Rory’s projections painted such a dire future for humanity. He would want to return to his masters, to tell them the facts, so his friends and loved ones could prepare, too.
Except he would be leaving loved ones behind.
That was the molten core of the truth and Dante breathed it in, absorbing it.
He loved Sasha. It was different from the way he loved Rory, for he had loved her for a very long time and that love was a settled, permanent, cast iron thing. This, though, the emotion searing his guts right now, was new. Hot. Undeniable.
Dante reached across Rory and curled his fingers around the back of Sasha’s neck. “Hey,” he murmured.
Sasha’s gaze met his again. “Hello.”
He was going home.
Dante just barely kept the truth behind his teeth. The need to speak it aloud, to make it a real thing and give it weight, was almost overwhelming, yet he held it back, unspoken. One day soon, Sasha would go home and every corpuscle in Dante’s body wanted to protest, only he would not complicate Sasha’s life any more than he had already.
So he kissed him, instead.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Blythe coaxed Francesca to stop long enough to sit down and eat lunch with her and Dominic. To get away from the pall that had descended upon the house, Blythe made both of them sit with her at the table next to the pool, even though the temperature was in the sixties and there were leaves all over the pool’s surface and littering the bottom of it, too.
Blythe shivered inside her sweater and ate her hot carbonada soup with relish. “This is really good,” she told Francesca.
Francesca glanced fondly at Dominic. “It was Dominic’s favorite, when he was still living in Chile.”
“Still is,” Dominic said gruffly. He took another spoonful and spoke around it, “No one makes it as you do. Even me and I’ve watched you make it hundreds of times.”
Francesca only looked like a plain woman until she smiled, Blythe realized. She had tightly cork-screwed hair that hung in thick black locks down to her shoulders and her nose was the same as Dominic’s. So were her eyes, yet when she smiled, her eyes opened up and grew warmer, while her smile glowed. It was as if the real Francesca was showing, when she smiled.
Blythe’s gaze dropped to the scars on Francesca’s forearms, faded pale white against her olive skin. Some of them were almost perfect little circles. Francesca had her reasons for hiding her true self away.
Dominic was busy eating, although Blythe was looking right at Francesca when Azarel opened the door of the pool house and stepped out. Francesca’s gaze shifted to him and stayed there. The
light in her eyes grew even more softer. Gentler.
Blythe coughed over her mouthful of soup as the truth hit her. Francesca was in love with Azarel.
Her gaze followed the Serene One as he walked around the pool, heading for the conservatory doors and the main house. Not only did her love seem to shine from her eyes, but there was yearning there, too.
Blythe glanced at Dominic quickly, hoping he was still too busy eating to have noticed.
His spoon was halfway to his mouth. Soup was dripping back into the bowl as the spoon tilted, forgotten. He was sitting at just the right angle to line up the direction of Francesca’s gaze at Azarel as he walked into the conservatory.
Blythe reached for Dominic’s wrist, where his other hand was resting on the table and squeezed warningly. She didn’t have to speak. She just had to get his attention, so he would automatically reach into her mind to hear what she was saying.
Just as he would be reaching into Francesca’s right now.
Blythe sighed. It was too late to stop this.
Dominic dropped the spoon back into the bowl of soup with a wet plopping sound. Some of the hot soup landed on the back of his hand. He didn’t seem to notice. “Are you crazy?” he demanded of his sister. “You let yourself fall in love with that…that thing?”
Francesca jumped and looked back her brother. Her expression was neutral and closed once more. Her face flushed a deep red. Fire snapped in her eyes. She said something in rapid, slang-filled Spanish, too fast for Blythe to understand, although she caught enough of it to realize that Francesca was quite rightly telling him to go to hell, except the directions she was giving him were anatomically impossible and painful. Only in Spanish could being told to sit on a prickly pear and twist sound so insulting.
Dominic’s face darkened and his hand closed into a fist, making the soup droplet roll off the back of it. “He’s not even human,” he ground out.
“Neither is Patrick.” Francesca was calm.
“Patrick and Blythe would not ever let me down,” Dominic growled. “Azarel hasn’t even figured out what loyalty means. He’s more interested in the starlets Patrick brings home for him.”
Francesca was eerily calm. She nodded. “That is why you will say nothing to him, brother. No macho demands to know his intentions.”
“I have a right to determine if he can take care of you properly,” Dominic growled.
Blythe tried to catch Francesca’s eye, to warn her not to say what she just knew she would say next. It was exactly what Blythe might have said in the same circumstances. Only, Francesca had closed down just as Dominic had. This was bare knuckle in-fighting of a style only siblings could use against each other.
Francesca looked her brother in the eye with a bravado she never used with anyone else. “You lost any such right when you high-tailed out of Santiago, dear brother. You left me with Jose and you knew what was happening.”
Blythe held her teeth together. Instead, she shouted with her mind. Don’t respond! You’ll regret it if you do!
Dominic heard her. His shoulders squared themselves out. He picked up his spoon as if he was going to start eating again.
Then he shook his head and put the spoon back down. “I had no choice about leaving Chile,” he said flatly.
Blythe sighed.
“We all make choices all the time,” Francesca said, her voice just as even.
Dominic shook his head.
Don’t say it! Blythe sent the plea out toward him.
Dominic put both hands flat on the table and she knew he had chosen to ignore her.
“Stay away from Azarel,” he told Francesca.
“Or what?”
“I won’t do anything to him,” Dominic began. “I—”
“You couldn’t if even you wanted to. You really have no idea about him at all, do you?”
Dominic scowled. “He’s human. That means I could cream him into Sunday if I wanted to.”
Blythe propped her elbow on the table and rubbed her temple.
“You couldn’t touch him,” Francesca said, certainty making her voice firm.
“I won’t have reason to, because you won’t go near him.”
Francesca got to her feet, her thighs ramming against the table and making soup slosh onto the glass top. Her Spanish sounded like a torrent of molten anger. She finished by shoving the steel-framed chair back under the table. The feet scraped across the brickwork with a squeal. “Fuck you, Dominic,” Francesca finished.
Dominic’s hands were tightly fisted. For once, he did not respond. He breathed heavily, staring at the soup-stained tabletop.
Francesca nodded, like his silence was answer enough. She turned and headed back into the house.
Blythe leaned back in her chair. “For heaven’s sake, Dominic!
The look he sent her was full of pain. “She is my little sister. I have a responsibility—”
“You do not,” Blythe shot back. “It’s not your job to choose who she gets to spend her life with, or who she falls in love with. It’s not your job to make decisions for her at all! She’s a grown woman, fully capable of making decisions of her own.”
There was a deep furrow between Dominic’s brows. “You don’t understand—”
“If you’re about to tell me I don’t understand how it works in Chile, then don’t bother. We’re not in Chile. You’re not that guy anymore. Francesca just told you that and you didn’t listen. She’s not the woman she was in Chile, either. She’s creating a new life for herself here.”
“I’m still her brother,” Dominic said.
Blythe sighed at his stubbornness. “You were the one who argued the most that Simone should get to choose whether she dated Kiati or not. How is that any different from Francesca getting to choose?”
Dominic hesitated.
“Simone is blood to you, just as much as Francesca is,” Blythe warned him, “so don’t use that argument. You’re the one who helps the girls with their homework. You’re the one they talk to about problems at school. And you insisted I stay out of Simone’s decision.”
Dominic slumped. He blew out his breath. “Fuck,” he muttered, staring at the table.
Blythe patted his hand. “It’s all that,” she told him. “And it’s their lives. They get to mess them up any way they want.”
* * * * *
Ilaria was sitting on the long window seat that curved around the top of the stairs. From that position, she could look out over the landscaped estate and down through the stairwell to the big room below. It was a great tactical post—it covered many angles at once.
Marcus wasn’t surprised to find her there. Ilaria had a tendency to seek out high elevations with good lines of sight.
She was staring out the window at something in the far distance. The sun was hitting the horizon, just visible beneath low clouds.
Marcus sat down next to her and picked up her hand.
“You can’t sleep?” she asked him.
“I slept a bit. Something on my mind woke me up.” That and the shouting outside, which sounded as if it was coming from the pool, which was all the way on the other side of the house. It wasn’t the shouting that had made him get up and find Ilaria, though.
“I could help you sleep,” she offered. “You won’t be any good for hunting tonight if you don’t.”
“I know. I’ll head back in a minute.” He stroked the back of her hand. “I think I finally figured it out.”
Ilaria didn’t ask him what he was talking about. It was the subject that lived in their minds, never properly going away. Instead, she just looked at him.
Marcus sighed. “I don’t know if I fell in love with you or Rick first. It doesn’t really matter, except that I’ve always felt as though Rick was there because you were. Which was perfect, as far as I was concerned. Then he…went.”
Ilaria’s jaw clenched.
“I found out that Rick is much more than just the bonus prize to me. It cut the legs out from under me and I’ve spent w
eeks wondering how I’m supposed to live without him.”
Her eyes were glittering and his heart squeezed. He was hurting her. So he hurried on quickly. “Thing is, Ilaria, if I was to lose you, too, then I wouldn’t want to live. You are the only thing keeping me going. I love you and even though there’s this gaping black hole in my life, you balance that out.”
Ilaria pressed her hand against his cheek. Her flesh was cool, her hand tiny, so different from Rick’s long fingers and strong grip. “I wanted to make them pay. All of them. Anyone. I wanted to hurt them, so that you would stop hurting. I thought if I could do that, then maybe I would stop hurting, too. It didn’t work.”
Marcus shook his head. “Only time makes it go away.” He gripped her hand. “I think, when we’re ready, we should stop thinking of ourselves as a threesome with one missing. We should be a couple, instead.”
Ilaria swallowed. “That’s what you want?”
Marcus blinked. His eyes were aching and his throat was tight. “More than anything, that’s what I want. I just don’t know how.”
“Neither do I.” Her gaze was steady. “I would like to try, though.”
Relief speared him. He wiped at his eyes with the back of his hand quickly. “I’m so glad to hear you say that.”
Ilaria put her arms around his neck and hoisted herself onto his lap. She pressed her face into his neck.
Marcus held her tightly, feeling as if it was for the first time how small she was and how neatly she fit against him, even though in his mind she was always a towering presence, her inner strength making her a giant.
He would move mountains to keep her in his life. He would kill for her. Die for her, just as Rick had died for him. Marcus would make Rick’s death count. He would make it mean something.
Ilaria nuzzled his neck, the touch of her mouth making his nerves twitch. “I should help you sleep,” she murmured.
“No, don’t move,” he begged.
Blood Ascendant (Blood Stone Book 5) Page 28