Page 57 of Blood Stone

She had to find a way to break the deadlock.

Nial had once suffered through this experience. His had been the result of sampling a sliver of food, which had activated his salivary glands. She had resolved his dilemma by fixing the symptoms: removing the amylase proteins and shutting down the glands, which let the human system go back into hibernation once more.

Drinking alcohol produced slightly different symptoms in a human physiology, but if she adjusted those symptoms, the results would be the same. She could put the human system back into hibernation and Garrett’s vampire physiology would “wake” once more.

She hoped. But the theory was sound, so she reached for and found the alcohol in Garrett’s blood and converted it to harmless sugars. After so many years of tweaking molecules, the bio-chemistry came to her barely without thought. This was simple stuff.

Because he had swallowed the alcohol he, too, had irritated his digestive tract, so she neutralized the amylase and stomach acids and shut down the glands.

She felt Nial’s hand on her shoulder. “Need anything?” he asked softly.

“The bat I’m going to take to his head for pulling this stunt,” she said. “Otherwise, elbow room and silence.”

She heard Sebastian’s wheezy laugh, quickly smothered. Then the silence she had requested fell.

She had left the tricky stuff for last. Now she braced herself and carefully eased her way into his brain. Alcohol did nasty things to brainpans. It dried them out, stealing spinal fluid and moisture that the brain sat in most of the time. She converted the alcohol she found there, creeping around with the most delicate touch possible. Then she shut down all signs of human physiology, letting the ghostly vampire activity take over and withdrew. There was nothing she could do about the dehydration. But it was fitting Garrett should at least have a killer headache for this.

She placed his hand back on the sofa and stood up, stretching the small of her back. She found Sauvage was staring at her. “What are you?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she replied curtly, more tempted to tell him it was none of his business. But he was asking out of genuine interest, not simple morbid curiosity.

“He’s not waking,” he replied.

“He’s not asleep,” she told him.

“Did you manage it?” Nial asked her.

“I think so.”

“Then you’d better get out of the way,” he suggested, pushing her gently to one side.

“Why?”

“agh, me fuckin’ christ…” Garrett muttered in a thick brogue. He gripped his head. Then he sat up. “Sweet Mary, mother of god,” he whispered. All coloured drained from his face as he clutched his stomach.

“Here,” Nial said helpfully and thrust a bucket at him.

Garrett fumbled at it, leaned over it and vomited hard. The smell of used Scotch, acrid, hot and peaty, swamped the trailer.

“I’m out of here,” Winter declared, lunging for the door.

“You, too, Patrick,” Nial said, behind her. “Winter, don’t go too far.”

She sighed and stopped outside the trailer, under the awning where a full patio set, with a fold-up swing seat, crouched in the dark. She took full deep breaths of fresh air.

Nial, Sebastian and Patrick stepped down onto the hard-packed dirt and Sebastian shut the door after them.

They gathered around Winter.

“That was a lot of Scotch,” Sebastian observed.

“So where was the bottle?” Nial asked.

“Damn, yes.” Patrick straightened up, shocked. “Unless…he was hiding it. I would have.” He said it apologetically.

“He wouldn’t have had time,” Winter told him. “This reaction is instantaneous.”

The silence was broken only by the desert wind stirring the fringing on the swing seat.