Page 122 of Blood Stone

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.”

“When you made Sebastian,” Garrett answered.

Nial glanced at him and smiled. “Of course, you would have that figured.”

Roman sat back in the sofa again. He almost threw himself back, as if he was frustrated, or made angry by the answer, but didn’t dare show it. “Is that why you defied the edicts and kept Sebastian with you all those years?”

Nial’s smile didn’t fade. “I didn’tkeepSebastian with me. He stayed because he wanted to. He still does. But in the way you mean, he kept me alive, yes.”

“And now you’ve added a human to the mix,” Roman shot back. “Variety, Nial?”

“What, are you deliberately baiting him? Just because he called you here tonight?” Garrett asked, uneasy. “When did you learn to be such an asshole?”

Nial shook his head. “I answered the first direct question, Garrett. I can’t get offended over the next direct question. And Roman isn’t baiting, although he wants you to think he is.”

Roman’s gaze fell away from Nial’s face. He pushed both hands through his hair. “Fuck,” he muttered, looking anywhere but at Nial and Garrett.

Garrett caught Nial’s glance at him and his raised brow. There was humour there, and understanding. Then he looked at Roman once more. “You forgot who you were verbally sparring with even while you were discussing how old I was. So now I’ve paid you back for trying to slap me around. It’s my turn. Tell me what you know about Khurshid. I don’t know her personally. Just her names.”

Roman nodded. “She’s one of the oldest surviving ones, except for Menes, but he has his passion for the Stone to sustain him. Khurshid was born in Tabriz – that’s in modern Iran — about two hundred years before Christ was born. She is powerful. I’ve heard stories about telekinesis, levitation, more. And she knows everyone. All the unspoken ones. All the older vampires – like you, Nial. She could reach out and touch every vampire, given enough time.”

“And the drinking?” Garrett asked, for that one still astonished him.

Roman laughed. “I think she was a tosspot in her human life and never did want to give up the booze. Well, she found a way. It’s part magician’s razzamatazz and part sheer cussedness – mind over matter. She had a by-pass pouch surgically inserted into her stomach.”

Nial snorted in disgust and disbelief. “There’s a perfect example of denial, if ever I saw one. And you ask why I never became one of them, Roman? I have too much self-respect.”

“And the physiological reaction? Digestive juices, the human response?” Garrett asked. The conversation was reminding him sharply of his own brush with alcohol and the pain that had followed.