Page 178 of Blood Stone

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 your 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.