Page 56 of Blood Stone

Chapter Twelve

Winter woke to find Nial’s hand on her shoulder. It was quite dark in the trailer, but thanks to the enhanced vision she had inherited from Sebastian, she could see Patrick Sauvage standing behind Nial. Outside the trailer, the site was quiet and still. Everyone had found beds already. It must be quite late.

“What’s wrong? What’s happened?” she asked Nial.

“It’s Garrett. I need your help.” He stood and reached for her robe hanging over the back of the trailer door. “We’ll wait for you outside.”

He shepherded Sauvage back out the door and shut it.

Winter got out of the bed and reached for her jeans, ignoring the robe Nial had laid over the end of the bed. She looked down the other end of the tiny trailer, through the door that accessed the one other room. Sebastian was sitting up in bed, wide awake. “Want me to come with you?” he asked.

“Yes,” she told him. “Nial might need your help, too.”

Nial had clearly dropped the body-guard/baby-sitter role temporarily, or he would not have asked her to help. The way he had asked, the hour of his asking, meant he needed her healing talents, not Annette the executive assistant.

But it was the big unknown why –whya vampire might need her unique skills – that troubled her.

* * * * *

Garrett’s trailer was, of course, the most luxurious one on the lot. It was the most exorbitant, house-like trailer Winter had ever seen. It was as if the 1950’s style of conspicuous consumption had returned with a vengeance.

Winter had never ventured further inside the trailer than the “front” room, but the décor and comfort in that one room was impressive enough to leave her awed and make her feel slightly claustrophobic when she returned to her cramped quarters.

She followed Nial into the trailer with barely a glance at the darkened room, her heart racing, wondering what was about to greet her.

Garrett lay on the butter-coloured leather sofa. He was very pale and very still. He looked unconscious, which simply wasn’t possible. One arm hung to the floor, his knuckles scraping across the carpet carelessly.

Nial leaned down and grabbed the end of the coffee table. “Sebastian.”

Sebastian grabbed the other and they moved the iron and oak table away from the sofa, closer to the other cherry-wood panelled wall, where an antique desk sat.

“Do you think I can turn on some lights?” Patrick Sauvage asked, his voice hushed. “You may not need them to see, but I do.”

“Sure,” Sebastian said. “But shut any blinds and curtains and the door, first.”

“Shouldn’t he go back to his trailer and get some sleep?” Winter asked, settling down next to Garrett’s still form. She was uncomfortable about doing this in front of him, especially after Nial and Sebastian had just spent hours hammering security into her after Finka Zupan had tried to blackmail her.

“No,” Nial said flatly. “He stays with me.”

Sebastian turned on a lamp standing on the desk and grimaced. “Nial takes his babysitting seriously.”

“With reason,” Nial said flatly. He looked at Winter. “There’s no way around this, Winter. Pat is close to being one of us and getting closer every day.”

“Your call,” she replied and turned to Garrett. She picked up his hand and pushed inside him. Almost immediately, she had her answer. “Oh, for heaven’s sake.” She shook her head. “He’s been drinking. It’s fired up his digestive system — his whole human endocrine system. His humanidis fighting his vampire ego and neither of them is winning.” She looked at Sebastian. “What happened tonight after I left? What made him think diving into a bottle was a good idea?”

Sebastian pushed his hand through his hair. “You saw it all. You tell me. Just as Adrian wrenched himself loose from me and started heading outside after Kate, Garrett busted through the doors, looking like he’d done ten rounds with Lucifer and lost ‘em all. You could practically see the internal bleeding. That made Adrian happy. Then Kate walked in and he went over to her and Garrett stalked away trailing storm clouds.” Sebastian shrugged. “I figured he was pretending to turn in for the night, so I had a couple more beers and did the same thing myself. For real.”

Nial touched her shoulder. “He’s shut down, like I was?”

She bit her lip, looking down at Garrett’s face. “Yes. But he’s taken so much more booze on board that a few sips of coffee like you did.”

“Just try,” Nial told her. “I suspect you can work it the same way.” He stepped around her and went into the inner rooms.

Patrick Sauvage took Nial’s place at the end of the sofa, staring down at Garrett with fascination. “Booze did this to him?”

“I need to concentrate,” Winter told him. “Excuse me.”

She slipped inside Garrett’s body and read the confusion, the locked stillness of two competing systems in death grip with each other. One was trying to awaken, the other trying to repress it and neither of them was winning. As a result, everything had come to a grinding halt.