Blood Knot (17 page)

She heard his little hiss. Impatience? Frustration.

“
We were friends once,” he said. “I’m not sure what we are now except that we’re utterly dependent upon each other for our lives. But I’m still…concerned about you. You did save my life twice over in Singapore, Winter. I owe you for that in ways I can’t begin to count. So when Nial, the master manipulator, moves in on you…yeah, I guess I feel I have a right to ask.”

Winter absorbed Sebastian’s words. They sounded sincere enough. She suddenly wished she could touch him and measure
his
honesty. After all, Nial had trained Sebastian in the fine art of confidence scams, hadn’t he?

Nial’s salivary glands shut down and dormant once more, Winter turned her attention to getting his body to re-absorb the amylase and polysaccharides, and soothing the inflammation. Once the inflammation had subsided, she suspected Nial would “wake”.

Winter opened one eye to look at Sebastian. “Nial didn’t have to coax me into his bed, Sebastian. I wanted to be there. I wanted him. I told him an honest seduction would get me into his bed, but all his professional seduction techniques would repel me. So he settled for honesty, and he got me as promised.”

Sebastian pushed his hand through his hair, mussing it again. “How on earth did you arrive at such a profound conversation in the first place?” he said, sounding astonished, pissed-off and amused all at once.

Winter smiled. Sebastian sounded like a big brother, protective and aggrieved.

“
I asked her, Sebastian,” Nial said, sounding very tired. He leaned back in his seat with a sigh and Winter’s hand lost contact with his chest. “You should try it sometime. The straightforward question often gets you surprising answers.” He picked up Winter’s hand and kissed the back of it.

“
You heard all of what we just said,” she told him.

“
Yes. I couldn’t speak a word, but I could hear everything.”

“
Fabulous,” Sebastian said dryly, shoving his hands into his pockets.

Nial smiled. “Hearing is passive for both human and vampire systems. You might remember that if ever there is a next time this happens, Sebastian.”

“
You’re not going to keep tasting food, are you?” Winter said, alarmed.

Nial shook his head. “Once is enough. But there might be future uses in this lesson.”

Winter stood up and stepped into the aisle. “I need a shower. Can you two not tear each other’s throats out for twenty minutes if I leave you alone?”

Nial waved his hand. “I don’t have the energy.”

Sebastian sat in her seat, studying Nial. “You’re going to have to feed soon,” he judged, speaking softly. “That took it out of you.”

Nial nodded.

Winter paused from reaching for her overnight bag. “We’re still five hours from New York. If you feed on anyone here, they’re going to notice.”

“
Use me,” Sebastian said.

And Nial’s gaze flickered to Winter.

Her gut wanted to tighten in alarm, but Winter couldn’t see where the danger lay. She pulled down her overnight bag, making herself moved casually. “That seems sensible,” she said. “As Sebastian is human now, you may as well take advantage of the fact. Either Sebastian or me, and I’m not familiar with how it works yet. I might screw it up and for right now you don’t need that.”

“
It’s not you who might screw it up,” Nial growled. His eyes seemed darker. The irises were smaller. Consumed by the pupils that were dilating.

Sebastian nodded. “And I’m physically stronger,” he added.

Winter shuddered. “I don’t think I want any of that explained. Not now, not with Nial looking like that. Go and feed him, Sebastian. I’m going to take a shower.”

She grabbed her bag and sought one of the hostesses to arrange a shower for herself. The shower was strictly timed. Only five minutes, but she was allowed time to primp and change afterwards and just being able to wash away travel stains and change her clothes was a luxury beyond compare. She lingered, stretching and enjoying the first time she had been alone with her thoughts since Nial had appeared in her work shed four days before.

Only four days…

Or was it five? Because she had crossed the international date line at least twice now she wasn’t sure exactly how many days in her personal time line had passed. The official calendar said four days had passed but somehow she had squeezed an extra day in there by virtue of spending most of that time hanging higher than 20,000 feet over the globe and hopping time zones.

Winter packed up her bag and headed back to the far corner of the section where they were seated, feeling fresh at last and happier than she had for a while. Nial seemed content to keep the peace between everyone, instead of stirring things up, and now even Sebastian had thrown out the first glimmer of an olive branch between him and herself. If she could follow up on that, perhaps they could bridge the yawning gap between them, too.

Winter realized she was feeling happy and optimistic because for the first time in a long time she had hope. It was a good feeling to have.

She stowed her overnight bag in her locker. Nial’s seat, next to her, was empty. The table next to it had been cleared and removed. All signs of the meal had gone.

“
I don’t understand how you could do it, Bastian.”

It was Nial’s voice, whispering along the wall. Winter looked around, frowning. Then she glanced down along the side where her seat hugged the curved wall of the aircraft. There was a faint susurration of air-conditioned, cool air running along the port-holed wall. Air…and sound.

Nial and Sebastian must be sitting in Sebastian’s suite.

Her heart hammering, Winter deliberately sank onto her seat.

“
Do what?” Sebastian said, his voice soft.

“
Fall in love with her,” Nial replied.

“
That? Falling in love with Winter was the easy part. You know, Nial, in so many ways, she’s a lot like you. And then she’s so
not
like you. She’s like me. And then she’s so unique. So surprisingly…warm.”

Winter moaned and buried her face in her hands, but Sebastian’s voice went on relentlessly and she knew she had to hear it all now. She had chosen to listen, after all.

“
It was the being in love with her that killed me. All those endless men. One after another, after another.”

“
You could have left at any time, Bastian.” Nial’s voice was soft, full of sympathy.

Sebastian sighed. “Couldn’t,” he said simply. “I just couldn’t. So I fucked men, women, endless, faceless hoards of them, to try to drive her and the men in her bed from my mind.” Another heavy sigh. “And now you.”

Winter pressed her fingers to her temples. Her head was about to explode.

“
This is just a temporary aberration with you, Bastian. It always is. She’s mortal. You get into a muck sweat over a girl every century or so and cry about what might have been, but eventually they die and you come back to me. You always do.”

WINTER SURGED FROM her chair and staggered the dozen or so paces that bought her, almost blindly, to Sebastian’s first class suite. She clutched the opening.

Both men were hunched over, heads together. Now they looked up, surprised.

“
You should know,” she said, her whole body shaking, “that there is a weird sound dynamic in here, and I just heard everything you said about me.”

Nial sat back, his chest rising and falling as he drew a deep breath.

Sebastian closed his eyes briefly and stood up. “Winter…”

She shook her head. “Nial’s right. You should have just asked, Sebastian. I would have said yes.” Her voice shook. “All those men in my bed. Know why they were there?”

He pushed a hand through his hair. “Winter…”

“
Because
you weren’t
, and I had to watch you with all those other people, night after night.”

He licked his lips. “Would you have said yes to—” and he stopped.

“
To a vampire, Sebastian?” Nial finished.

Sebastian turned his head away, but not before Winter saw pain fill his eyes.

“
You’re the only one who couldn’t live with being a vampire, Sebastian,” Nial added. “Your humanity comes with quite a price tag, doesn’t it?”

“
Shut up, Nial,” Winter told him.

He shook his head. “My apologies,” he replied. “But there have been many long days and nights spent listening to Sebastian rail at me for giving him immortality. I couldn’t help hitting back for one small moment. I have my weaknesses.”

“
You do,” Winter agreed coolly. “Like never dating humans.”

The tiny furrow between his brows appeared. “I’ve never—”

“
Yes, you did say that, Nial. You told me you don’t date humans when we were in Ireland. You were distracted and worried about Sebastian, so I’m sure it slipped out without thought and it’s therefore a basic truth. But you’ve got a slippery mind, so what you define as human and “dating” is open to interpretation. Me, for instance. I’m mortal. Am I human?”

Sebastian leaned an elbow on the top of the suite divider. “She’s right. And you’re surprisingly exclusive, too. No bed hopping, that I recall.”

Nial’s furrow deepened even further. “And this has what to do with anything?”

Winter crossed her arms. “If you dare to presume something about me so casually, Nial, such that I’m mortal and soon gone and that Sebastian will run back to you after that, then you can damn well sit still while we dissect your life, too. If I can stand it so can you.” She could feel her eyes burning with tears and hated the female weakness for crying right then. Even her voice was wobbling and giving her away.

Nial didn’t move from the chair. “If you presume to eavesdrop, then get it right, Winter. I wasn’t speaking about you.”

“
You might as well have been.”

His hand curled over the arm of the chair and his jaw rippled. “I don’t consider you human. Not exactly.”

“
But I am,” Sebastian pointed out. “And just like Winter, I’m going to shuffle off this mortal coil in sixty or so years if a bus doesn’t get me first. I think that’s something you’ve forgotten, Nial.”

Nial turned his gaze out the window. “Yes,” he said flatly. “It’s something I keep forgetting.”

Sebastian tugged on Winter’s elbow. “Come on, I’ll buy you a drink. Let’s leave him to sulk.”

He pushed her gently down the aisle toward the nose of the plane where the bar was located.

“
I don’t really want a drink,” she protested.

“
Then drink ginger ale,” he told her. “Leave Nial to sort it out for himself,” he advised. “Trust me.” He poured himself a whiskey and after checking with her, a glass of vintage red wine for her. They found a pair of seats by the window that were empty and settled in them.

“
Sláinte
,” Sebastian said and drank.

“
And that means?”

“’
Cheers,’ basically.” He grinned.

She smiled and sipped her wine. Then she gasped. “Oh lord.” She grimaced and looked at him. “That first feeding in New York. It takes on an entirely new meaning now. If you loved me even then…”

Sebastian lowered his glass, his smile fading. “Don’t feel too guilty, Winter. I haven’t been behaving very well through all this, either. Nial has a point. I could have handled it much better if I’d been straight with you.”

“
Like I was with you by telling you about my talent?”

A shadow passed over his face. “You need to be careful, Winter. There are already many vampires who do not think of you as a person. Those who think of humans merely as food they must parade amongst on a daily basis and be careful not to alarm unless they startle the herd. If you can make vampires human again, there will be even more among the undead who will think of you as the answer to their prayers and will not care what you think about the matter. They will make you their slave and use your talent for their own gains.”

“
You sound like every cliché in every bad B-grade movie ever made, Sebastian.” But Winter couldn’t laugh at his expression.

He shook his head. “It’s not a joke, Winter. Nial’s been treading soft around you because he knew I probably filled you full of warnings about him and vampires in general and he didn’t want to send you running. And Nial’s one of the good guys.” He put his glass down. “This is going to sound weird, Winter. You have to watch Nial, but at the same time, you can trust him.”

“
That is weird. How can you trust and not trust someone at the same time? And how can you of all people say that?”

“
Because I know him best,” Sebastian said simply. “I know his intentions now. But I also know the power circles he moves in. They’re scary. I don’t—” He looked away for a moment, then brought his gaze back firmly onto her face. “I don’t want you getting hurt.”

For something to scare Sebastian, it had to be terrible indeed. Winter nodded. “I’ll be careful. But won’t you be in on this job until the bitter end, Sebastian?”

He hesitated. “Yes. I will. But that doesn’t mean I will be joined at the hip with you. You have to watch your back. Promise me?”

“
You’re mortal now,” she pointed out. “I’ll watch my back
and
yours, if you’ll do the same for me. I don’t want to repeat Singapore, Sebastian. I really don’t want to have to put your heart back together again a second time.”