In fact, she started to feel proud that it was she who was with Nial, who was by far the most attractive man in the lounge. Winter swapped her attention to the women in the lounge and noticed that they were watching Nial when they could, even though he wasn’t dressed for attention at all. Despite his dark clothing and non-flashy mannerisms, his height and width of his shoulders, his dark hair and brilliant blue eyes were still drawing the focus of feminine gazes all the way across the room.
They were just being more discreet about it than the men ogling Winter.
Obscurely, that made Winter feel much better. The more envious and salacious stares and drools she noticed sent in Nial’s direction, the better she felt.
By the time they boarded the plane, she was floating.
* * * * *
Once airborne, they had nearly eight hours travel time to reach Perth. Their new hostess, Amira, arranged fresh coffee for Winter while Nial busied himself with the computer and keyboard on his side of the suite.
Out of curiosity, Winter pulled up Wikipedia and plugged in the one fact that she could recall that Nial had let slip from his past. Lombards, the raiders from his childhood. He had been living on a farm in the Italian mountains, he’d said. And Sebastian had said that he thought Nial was nearly a thousand years old…
There was an entry for Lombards in the search results, so Winter clicked on it and brought it up.
“The Lombards (Latin Langobardi, whence the alternative names Langobards and Longobards) were a Germanic people originally from Northern Europe who settled in the valley of the Danube and from there invaded Byzantine Italy in 568 under the leadership of Alboin. They established a Lombard Kingdom, later named Kingdom of Italy, which lasted until 774—”
Winter paused to do the mental arithmetic, but the numbers didn’t seem to add up, so she kept re-doing the sums.
“One thousand, four hundred and fifty-one, give or take a year or so,” Nial said.
Winter jumped, startled. The keyboard scraped across the shelf with a plastic squawk. She glanced at him, almost guilty. “I was snooping. Sorry.”
“Why didn’t you just ask?”
“I didn’t think you liked to talk about it. Sebastian didn’t seem to have a clear idea how old you were. He was out by five hundred years.”
“Sebastian doesn’t like to talk about it.” Nial sighed. “He doesn’t like to speak of anything that isn’t purely human. He resents—” He grimaced. “He resented being a vampire so much it was almost pathological, except that it’s impossible for vampires to develop pathological problems.” And he looked away.
“It’s just vampires in general he hates, Nial. Not you in particular,” Winter told him.
“You wouldn’t think so if you heard our last…conversation.” Then Nial shrugged it off. Winter could feel him doing it through the light contact her knee had against his thigh. There was pain there. Resentment. “Ah…he’s human now. He got his wish. Now he can spit on vampires to his heart content.”
But still Nial was rushing to Sebastian’s rescue. For the first time Winter thought to wonder why.
Nial turned to her, breaking her tenuous contact with his thigh. “You are the first person in centuries, human or vampire, to care enough about my origins to go digging for my birth date. So now you have my age.” He lifted a brow. “Does it shock you, Winter?”
He was changing subjects deliberately. Winter decided to let him have his way.
This time.
The conversation meandered after that, with Nial’s hands wandering over her body as much as their public location would allow. Because she was wearing a skirt and open-fronted jacket it meant that Niall could get way with far more than Winter could with his clothing. By the time they had sat through two movies, he had brought her to three climaxes, as she gripped the armrests, her teeth clenched and her knuckles white.
Winter only realized she had dozed again when she woke to find herself in Nial’s arms, her head on his shoulder and another brilliant sunset dazzling her eyes through the porthole.
“I never sleep on planes,” she murmured.
“Because you don’t have someone at your back, usually,” he replied. She could feel his voice against her shoulder and under her head.
I had Sebastian, she wanted to say. Sebastian would easily have been as powerful and ruthless as Nial. But as dangerous? As much of a survivor? Would he have watch her back as Nial promised?
Sebastian and she had been work partners. And as much as she had spent sweaty nights fantasizing about what might have been, it had never been a reality in the end. He had rejected her.
Winter turned her head into Nial’s shoulder to hide from the sunset and to hide her face from Nial, too.
“Perth in forty minutes,” Nial whispered and kissed her neck, over the carotid. He paused, then licked the spot. “Don’t have unprotected sex with a human the next two days, Winter. You’re a degree hotter than you should be. You’re ovulating.”
She thumped his chest. “God, is nothing sacred with you?”
He laughed. “When it comes to humans, blood, and temperature? No, there isn’t.” He traced her neck. “At least I don’t see you as food. That’s something, isn’t it?”
She sobered. “I guess…yes, that would be a challenge for you when you are first made a vampire.”
“It takes a while to see even the people we once knew as we did.” Nial picked up her hand and smoothed the back of it against his cheek. “Most of us move far away from family and friends because of that fact alone. The danger of feeding from one of them and perhaps losing control and killing them is far too high in the early days. Later on, when control is better, family and friends are mostly dead anyway…”
Winter stared at him, horrified. “No wonder Sebastian hated it so,” she whispered.
Nial nodded. “For that fact alone a small part of him has always hated me. I gave him the freedom he so desperately sought, but he didn’t like the price attached to it.”
Winter sat up, turning in her chair to face Nial properly. “You made Sebastian.”
Nial nodded.
“When? Where?”
“Seventeen seventy-six.” Nial tilted his head to one side. “It’s not my place to tell you this story, Winter. You should ask Sebastian.”
She sat back in her chair. “Of course, Sebastian will happily sit down with me and tell me all about it.”
Nial gave a small laugh. “All the same, it is his story to tell.”
She pushed her bottom lip out.
“No matter how much you pout,” Nial added.
Winter ended up laughing. “Okay. Alright. I give up. If ever Sebastian doesn’t curse and stalk out when I walk in the room, I’ll try asking him for the story instead.” She pushed the keyboard back onto the shelf squarely and said as off-handedly as she could, “You and Sebastian were really together for over two hundred and fifty years, Nial?”
Silence.
She looked at him. Nial was staring straight ahead at the entertainment screen, his face expressionless.
So Winter put her hand on his thigh and took a reading.
Wholesale chaos. She gasped at the maelstrom of feelings. Hate, frustration. Anger. Sadness. Sensual pleasure. Erotic joy. Simple happiness bubbling up underneath. Fury. Contentment. And underlying it all, love, touched by loss.
Winter pulled her hand away, feeling like she was spying again.
Nial’s hand was quicker. He grabbed her wrist and placed her hand over his chest, above his heart. He looked her in the eye. “Yes,” he said simply. “We were together for that long.”
Winter touched the boiling stream of feelings again and fought the need to weep for his loss. For that moment she didn’t question why he searched for Sebastian.
But she did wonder why Nial would bother to dally with a human like her.
Chapter Nine
AT PERTH INTERNATIONAL Airport they transferred to another charter flight that Nial had arranged, this time a small pr
ivate jet that flew them directly to Exmouth Airport. By the time they arrived it was eight at night and the air was dry and warm as they stepped off the small plane.
A medium sized sedan and driver was waiting for them. “It’s been years since I drove on the left side of the road,” Nial explained.
“Me, too,” Winter confessed.
“No time to adapt, this time. So, the driver. Alas, that means no privacy.” He kissed her hard as they headed toward the car. “But I’ll make it up to you,” he promised, his voice low.
Her mons throbbed in anticipation. “You’d better,” she murmured.
He threw their luggage into the trunk and held a sheet of paper out to the driver. “We need this address in Coral Bay. How fast can we get there?”
The driver studied it. “It’s a hundred and fifty clicks to Coral Bay, mate. We’ll get there in just over ‘n hour ‘n a bit if I’m feeling inspired…if you know what I mean.” He winked.
“I can help inspire you, of course,” Nial said blandly.
“Hop in, then. Let’s see what we can do.” The man threw himself behind the wheel.
Barney, the driver (“Call me Barney, mate, everyone around ‘ere does!”), seemed cheerful and totally carefree, but he was a superb driver all the same, exuding the complete confidence of a rally driver behind the wheel. He instructed them to “strap in” and took off with a spray of blue metal chips that promised a hard, short trip to Coral Bay that would be well worth the tip.
It was pitch dark by the time they reached the address, a small holiday cottage that was rented by the season, Barney explained. The cottage was dark and ominously silent.
“You wait out here,” Nial told Barney. “Our friend is the nervous sort and won’t wait to sort out who the non-combatants are.”
Barney lifted a brow. “Right you are mate,” he said easily. “If he turned the lights out when he heard you coming, I don’t want to walk into that house with you anyway.”
“Smart thinking,” Nial advised him and slid out of the car. “Winter?”
She nodded and stepped out onto the tired looking lawn with Nial. She had swapped her boots and tights for bare legs and sandals on the flight to Exmouth and now the evening breeze brushed her skin and she shivered.
“I don’t like this either,” she added as Nial shut the car door.
“That makes three of us,” Nial replied. “Still, if Sebastian is in this house, he’ll know we’re here now, so pussyfooting around is a waste of time.” He picked up her hand and strode toward the door. She had no trouble keeping up with him and realized that although he was taller than her, her legs were almost as long as his.
Nial thudded on the front door. It swayed open as his fist impacted on it.
Winter stepped back half a pace, more terrified by the gaping door than the silence.
“Damn,” Nial muttered.
“What?” she whispered.
“I think…I suspect he has gone. Something has happened. He has been scared away, maybe.” Nial looked grim in the moonlight. He let go of her hand and pushed the door open. She didn’t fail to notice that the movement put her behind him. “This place feels empty.”
She agreed with his gut feeling. “Let’s go through the motions anyway,” she said. “We check from room to room and eliminate every corner.”
He nodded and pushed forward through the door. Just inside he reached to his left. Winter could see surprisingly well in the dark and realized with a start that Sebastian had given her more than his eye color. He had endowed her with enhanced vision.
“Don’t turn the lights on,” she whispered, clutching at Nial’s arm.
“You can see?”
“Well enough, yes.”
“Thanks to Sebastian,” he breathed.
She nodded.
Nial turned and moved through the front room. It seemed to be a lounge and dining room combined and led on to a simple kitchen. The kitchen was clean, but there was evidence of human occupation. A pot stood on the stove, and a bowl on the divider between the kitchen and dining area, ready to receive the cooked food. A bowl of oranges.
“Cooking is not something he’s ever had to tackle before now,” Nial murmured.
“He left in the middle of preparing a meal,” Winter pointed out.
“Very much in a hurry,” Nial said grimly. “Something tipped him off. What, and how long ago?”
Winter picked up the empty can at the top of the open trashcan. “Chicken soup. Oranges. Homemade remedies. He was feeling sick, Nial.”
“The rest of the house,” he replied evenly. “Then we speculate.”
There was a single bedroom tucked away at the back of the tiny house, and a even smaller bathroom ran off that. The bathroom included laundry equipment. Both were quite empty.
“Basement?” Winter suggested.
“Australian houses don’t have basements,” Nial returned in a normal voice. He moved back into the bedroom. “I’m turning on a light,” he warned and pressed the small rocker switch.
She blinked at the bright glare and realized that her vision had naturally adjusted to the dark to the point where it seemed quite light. Now, normal light was almost overpowering. She threw up her arm, protecting her eyes, until the light backed off. Finally, she felt it was safe to look around.
Nial was watching her. “Real light will give you some colors in the blue range and some depth perception that your night vision won’t,” he told her. “But your night vision will give you perception of movement far better than real light vision will. If you’re in danger, take out the lights. Humans—” He hesitated. “Normal humans can’t operate in the dark at all.”
Winter nodded. There were points in his brief lecture that could provoke hours of discussion, but now was not the time to open that conversation up. She resisted the need to argue or protest and instead looked around the small bedroom. “He certainly wasn’t living as well as he did in New York. Do we even have the right place?”
The bed was a tangle of sheets and blankets. The sheets were cheap cotton and the cover was a faded yellow chenille, with missing tufts and half the fringing gone.
The door to the small stand-alone wardrobe hung ajar—more evidence of hasty flight. There was a painted wood bureau in the corner, but no other furniture. The floor was linoleum, a dull grey speckle.
Winter opened the wardrobe door further. A shirt lay on the bottom of the unit and she caught her breath, for she recognized it.
“It’s the right place,” she said and picked up the shirt. It was one she had seen Sebastian wear on numerous occasions when they weren’t working a job or role playing for some other reason. A down-time shirt. A favorite for comfort and ease.
She lifted it to her face and sniffed and was instantly immersed in his scent. Memories cascaded through her mind like rifling playing cards.
Waiting for the new partner to arrive for the job she had pulled in Milan. It had been a high stakes job needing two people and she had heard of Sebastian here and there a couple of times, but it had taken a lot of juice to track him down. It had taken surprisingly little talking after that, though, to get him to agree to the job. The talk had all been through representatives, as these things often were. So her first glimpse of the man himself had been at the seven-star Town House Galleria in downtown Milan itself, just before the job. She wore a couture gown to blend in.
Sebastian—she assumed it was Sebastian—wore snug jeans and a well-washed collarless shirt and slid over the arm of the chair next to her, onto the cushions, his arm flung over the other chair arm. “You have to be her,” he said simply, in a rich upper English accent, fixing her with green eyes that seemed limpid.
Then, after the first job, another two-man job appeared and this time it was Sebastian who suggested they grab it for themselves. Winter couldn’t find a reason to say no, especially when he was sitting cross-legged on the barstool, his head on his hand, elbow on the bar, staring at her, his shirt sleeve rolled and pushed back to hi
s elbows to show his forearm and strong wrist. But just this job.
So many after-job times, too. The quiet peace when her inner storm was at bay. Sebastian and movies—so many movies she didn’t know and had to catch up on, according to him. Popcorn, which she secretly hated and didn’t have the heart to tell him.
Winter could feel her eyes burning with the buildup of tears and shoved the shirt at Nial. “This is Sebastian’s,” she told him and walked out into the kitchen where it was nice and dark.
She clutched the counter, fighting hard not to cry. Remembering about the stupid popcorn was just making it worse.
“We need to leave,” Nial said from behind her.
“Good,” she said and straightened up. Her eyes were dry, for which she was grateful. She could turn and face him.
Nial stood at the bedroom door, still holding the shirt. He’d turned off the light. “Ready?”
She nodded and headed for the door. “Where are we going?”
“Back to Perth for now. We’ll figure out the direction on the way there.” He spoke with a touch of remoteness.
Barney was waiting beside the car, his arms crossed, his bright eyes alert and interested as they came down the narrow concrete tiles that made up the front path. “Nothing, eh?” he surmised. “Bugger. Whatcha plan to do now?”
“Back to the airport,” Nial said simply. “Our friend won’t stay in the country. We need to figure out where he would have gone to and follow.”
“Right you are, then.” Barney opened the door for them and climbed behind the wheel. “Figure out what made him skip?” he asked as he started the motor.
Nial frowned. “The police checking on him must have done something to alert him. It’s the only thing I can think of.”
“The police?” Barney sighed. “That’s where you went wrong, mate, lemme tell ya. The police around here are just one person, plus recruits for the busy season. And he’s into his own home brew on a way too regular basis, if you get my drift.”
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