Page 182 of Blood Stone

She sighed and nodded. “I just wanted to make my movie. They came to me after we got back from location shooting and laid out this incredible story about vampires being real and then topped it by telling me I was sleeping with one. And it was all to do with the goddamn stone I brought back from Turkey. They knew about it and they had been monitoring all these people in the government to see who took an interest in it.”

Roman and Micheil became still with the wariness she knew was their vampire natures on high alert. She studied them. “What?” she demanded.

“The ones in the government. They know about the Pro Libertatis,” Roman said, speaking to Micheil.

“They were trying to draw them out with the stone, too,” Micheil finished.

They both looked at her. “This stone,” Roman asked. “You still have it?”

“You’re sitting on it.”

Roman put his hand flat on the sheet, almost reverently. “It’s been here all along?”

She nodded. “I’m not an archaeologist, but I could tell by the ancient script on it that it was something incredibly ancient. I had it crated by an expert I bribed into silence, and because I didn’t know what it was and I didn’t have time to have it identified by experts, I put it where I could keep an eye on it.” She climbed off the bed and tugged at the edge of the mattress. “Up,” she commanded.

They stood up and lifted the mattress from the bed and propped it against the wall. There was a thin liner beneath that Kate tossed aside. Under that lay the base of the bed that the mattress rested upon. It was in two pieces and one had a small thumb hole in it.

“Christos, it’s not even locked!” Roman breathed, sounding distressed.

“Wouldyouthink to even look here?” Micheil asked. “Well, of course you wouldn’t. You didn’t.”

Kate hooked her finger in the thumb hole, lifted the sheet up an inch and dragged it over the top of the other and out of the way. Micheil and Roman leaned over and helped her with the cumbersome wood, for it did not have any runners or guides.

It finally dropped over the other base plate and they stood back and looked at the cavity beneath the bed.

It was empty.

“It’s gone!” Kate cried.

The bottom of the rectangular space was lined with the same carpet as the rest of the room, but just a bit more pristine and showroom perfect. Pale creamy white sand and tiny pebbles lay scattered all over the carpet, showing that something had rested there once.

“It’s been taken,” Micheil said.

“Menes Heru,” Roman said bitterly. “The Deadly Moon has the Blood Stone. The gods help us all.”

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