Page 75 of Blood Stone

“Pretend I don’t.”

“The League for Humanity,” Nial shot back. “Pro Libertatis.”

“His jaw clenched,” Patrick declared, sounding triumphant.

Roman turned his head and glared at him. Patrick simply smiled at him.

“So, you’ve heard of them,” Nial continued. “It just remains to be seen whether you’re working for them, or not. The odds are not in your favour, Roman.”

“I don’t work for anyone but myself.”

“He doesn’t, generally,” Garrett agreed. “But the Libertatis are hard to argue with, Roman. Nial ran into them a year ago and barely escaped. They have ways of ensuring that if they want you to work for them, you will.”

Roman’s scowl was back. “What do you want? A fucking confession? Even if I was working for them, I wouldn’t tell you. If they’re so fucking terrifying wouldn’t it be in my best interests to keep my lips zipped?”

Garrett sighed and looked at Nial. “He’s right. I’m not one for torture and he knows it. Even if you did have the stomach for it, he knows I won’t condone it while I’m in the room. We’re just not the same level of threat as the Libertatis, so even if he’s working for them, he’s better off not admitting it.”

“Great,” Roman said. “So call off your hounds here and let me get back to where I left off. I was being rewarded for heroism and I don’t want to miss out.”

Nial considered Roman for a silent minute. Then he nodded. “We know where we stand, now,” he told Roman.

Roman rolled his eyes and turned toward the door. Then he spun back to face Garrett. “Just one last thing.” He buried his fist into Garrett’s stomach, hard and fast and deep. Garrett, with no time to brace himself, folded over Roman’s arm with a hard exhalation of air and pain.

Roman gripped his hair and pulled his head up, so he was forced to look him in the eyes. “That’s for kissing Kate,” he said. “Don’t do it again.” He dropped his head and left the trailer, not looking back.

Nial hauled on Garrett’s arm, the one that wasn’t held across his abdomen, and pushed him back onto the sofa. “Winter?”

She stepped up to the sofa, but Garrett waved her away. “No, leave me be. I deserved it. And I’m already recovering just fine.” He straightened up as his muscles stopped spasming and the pain eased off.

“I’m going to find out more about this journalist that Sebastian is holding,” Nial said. “Can Patrick stay with you for a while? I don’t think he should be with me for this.”

“I’m going to be part of your world soon enough,” Patrick pointed out calmly.

Nial nodded. “And you’re going to be sitting in front of millions of viewers swearing that vampires are gentle souls, with no more capacity for ruthlessness and violence than humans. I want you to be as honest as the day is long when you say it.”

“By hiding your true nature from me?” Patrick objected as Nial headed for the door.

Nial’s smile was thin as he paused with his hand on the handle. “Where, exactly, do you think our natures derive from, boy? We’re human, first and foremost.” He slipped out through the door and shut it, letting in only a minimal amount of sand and wind.

Patrick sat in the chair that Roman had been sitting in. “He called me ‘boy’.”

“To him, you are,” Garrett said. “Especially when you come out with innocent crap like that.”

“Crap?”

“You’ve led a pretty sheltered life, Patrick. He wasn’t hiding the truth about vampires from you. He was keeping the extremities of humankind from hitting you too hard. You’re already on a steep learning curve.”

“Sheltered,” Patrick repeated. He considered that for a while. “I suppose, given your centuries of actually living through some of the events I’ve made movies about, yeah, I guess I’ve just play-acted a telescoped version of the real thing. You could call that sheltered. I keep thinking about the Chinese curse about living in interesting times. If living your life makes you sound the way you do and look at life the way you do, I don’t mind being sheltered. I have millions of people who adore me and some of them genuinely love me. God knows, I’ve loved more than my share back, including five wives. How much love is in your life, Garrett?”