Blood Knot (35 page)

The blade was cold against her chest. He had it resting in the space where her shirt lay open.

“
I’m not going to ask again,” Salt & Pepper said.

The wall of the shed groaned.

Blue Eyes looked up from his laptop, frowning. Salt & Pepper cursed.

The side of the shed ripped away with a shriek of stressed metal, making the fire dance and light flutter. The men around the fire leapt to their feet, all except Blue Eyes, who put the laptop on the ground and pulled out the memory stick and pocketed it.

Sebastian leapt at Salt & Pepper, his hands free of the rope, one reaching for the knife at Winter’s neck, the other for Salt & Pepper’s throat, bloody murder gleaming in Sebastian’s eyes.

At the same time, Nial dived through the hole in the shed wall, tucked, rolled and came to his feet. He was dressed as she had seen him last—the black trousers and tank top that revealed his pale flesh. He was holding a flat, short sword in his right hand and a long knife in the other.

Winter recognized the sword with a jolt. It was a Roman short sword.

Nial’s eyes blazed as he took in the occupants of the shed in one all-encompassing sweep of his head. He growled, showing his canines.

And then he and Sebastian moved.

It wasn’t a fight. It was a slaughter.

Winter had no doubts about the outcome, so she removed herself from the wreckage, wriggling on her butt closer to the van and well out of the way, as Sebastian and Nial dealt with the seven men in shed, and worked on ridding herself of the ropes about her wrists.

At one point, Blue Eyes tried to climb through the hole in the wall and escape, with blood pouring from his mouth. Nial casually plucked him away from his desperate grip on the iron siding as Blue Eyes blubbered and pleaded, tossed him back toward the fire and stalked over to where he lay with his bloody hand up, begging for mercy.

Winter looked away, trying to find disgust or outrage in her heart for what Sebastian and Nial were doing. She found none. All she could remember was the red scar on Nial’s body, and the blood in Sebastian’s mouth. The chill of the knife blade against her throat.

After a while, the sounds of the fight ceased and she looked up. Salt & Pepper lay closest. He was quite dead.

Nial was standing at the far side of the shed, watching her, the bloody knife and sword lowered on either side of him. He was wary and she knew why. This was the first time she had seen him fighting. Witnessed this side of his nature.

Sebastian was watching her, too. Waiting to see how she reacted.

Winter got to her feet and started to pick her way across the shed. Before she was half-way across, she was running, relief giving wings to her feet.

When she reached Nial, she barely slowed. Buried in the back of her mind was the knowledge that he could handle it. She slammed into him, threw her arms around him, and held onto him with every bit of strength she had left.

She heard the whoosh of his breath expel from his lips as she hit, then the sword and knife drop to the ground. His arms came around her, his hand tangling in her hair.

“
I thought you were dead,” she cried against his neck.

“
Dulcis dilecte mi
…” he told her. “I had to let them think that.”

“
Who?” Sebastian asked.

Nial took a breath. “Everyone,” he declared. “Nathanial had to die tonight. This job—the video, the ramifications—they’re too hot a political potato. I’ve known all along I would never come through unscathed, if I survived at all.” He pushed Winter gently to one side. “We have work to do. Then full explanations, I promise.”

* * * * *

Twenty minutes later, from half a block along the dark, narrow alley that led to the shed, Winter stood in the protective and warm circle of Sebastian’s arms while Nial monitored twenty foot flames leaping from what was left of the shed.

The night air was thick with the smell of dirty water and fog. The river lay somewhere very close at hand. Winter could hear the sound of boats cutting through choppy waves and the lapping of water against wooden piers, riding on the foggy air. Overhead, the steel arches of the Brooklyn Bridge dominated the night sky.

Buried beneath the fallen timber framing and iron siding of the shed was the van with a ruptured gas tank and the bodies of the seven men. The police would hopefully reconstruct the scene as happenstance—the fire set the leaking fuel alight and it exploded. Only later, with autopsies, would the authorities figure that foul play was involved, and that would give them the time they needed.

Nial turned and walked back to where Sebastian and Winter stood.

“
The memory stick!” Winter gasped, horrified, as she remembered Blue Eye’s laptop on the floor of the shed.

Nial smiled. “You’ve had it all the time,” he told her, and reached under her jacket. “Remember when I pushed you down the corridor?” He delved into the tiny change pocket at the waistband of her skirt and withdrew from it another memory stick and held it up. “One memory stick looks like another. The one they were busting a gut trying to break the password to access was full of gay porn. This one is the real one.”

Sebastian laughed. “And I was going to take a piece out of you for planting a bug on me. I think I’ll get pissed about that instead. I took a round-house punch in the mouth for pornography.”

“
I saw it,” Nial said. “Sorry about that. But the bug wasn’t on you. Winter has it in her left pocket.”

Winter delved into her left jacket pocket and found the tiny patch adhered to the lining. “Damn,” she said. “I missed that completely.”

“
Don’t feel too badly,” Nial said. “You weren’t expecting it from me, and I took advantage of that.”

In the distance, fire department sirens sounded. Someone had seen the flames and called it in already.

Nial looked over his shoulder. “I’m dead. I need to go. So do you. You know what you need to do?” He started to move backwards.

Sebastian nodded.

“
Take care of Tera,” Nial said.

Winter held out her hand. “Wait! Where are you going?”

Nial stroked her cheekbone with his thumb, then kissed her, briefly but passionately. “Sebastian will explain.” He kissed Sebastian, hard and quickly. “
Go dtí go gcasfar le chéile sinn arís
,” he told them both. Then he turned and moved through the darkness and was gone.

Winter let out a shaky breath. “That was Irish, wasn’t it?” she said, trying to keep her voice steady.

“
He said ‘Until we meet again’.” Sebastian took her hand. “We have a lot of work and a lot of running to do, Winter. I’ll explain, but we need to get a few national borders behind us first.”

She nodded. And it wasn’t until they had reached cruising altitude on the Lufthansa flight to Berlin, five hours later, that Winter allowed herself the luxury of tears.

Somewhere in Europe. Six days later.

WHEN THE SPECIFIC pattern of knocks sounded on the door, Winter relaxed and opened it. Sebastian gave her a smile, handed over a fat pile of newspapers, a mix of European and days-old North American tabloids, kissed her soundly on the lips and threw himself into one of the armchairs sitting under the big picture window that took in a spectacular view of snow-capped mountains.

Winter flipped through the newspapers. “Anything interesting?”

“
We’re no longer the news of the hour. That’s interesting.” He leaned forward and held his fingers against the French press coffee pot, then poured himself a cup. “Coffee always tastes so much better in Europe. It has to be the water or something.”

She sat on the edge of the opposite chair, her knees together. “That just means the authorities have put us on the backburner. Nial’s faction could be turning over every anthill trying to unearth us, and we wouldn’t know.”

Sebastian put the cup down. “Nial would have spent the last six days ensuring every last trail to us was as dead as possible. That’s the reason he separated from us, Winter. He’s been protecting us all along.”

“
How could you possibly know that?” she asked.

Sebastian stood up abruptly, his good cheer fading, and looked out the window, his back to her. “I miss him, too, Winter.”

“
I didn’t mean—”

He turned to look at her. “I know. You’re too full of misery to think beyond it.”

She bit her lip.

“
Why didn’t you ever tell him how you feel?” Sebastian asked gently.

“
I wasn’t sure,” she confessed. “Not at first.” She looked up at him. “It’s fine for you, Sebastian. You’ve loved him for centuries. You seem to know exactly what love is. I don’t. Even with you, it took me weeks to know, to be sure.”

Sebastian sat down again and took her hand. “Do you think that might be because you’re afraid of love, Winter? Afraid to be attached to someone like that? So you fight to avoid recognizing it.”

She gave him a small smile. “I managed okay with you, didn’t I? I even agreed to marry you.”

“
As long as I can figure out how to legally marry you. You gave it a condition, Winter.” He smiled to take the sting out of his words. “You have difficulty loving unconditionally. That’s the part of Nial that scares you. That’s the part you couldn’t tell him, isn’t it? You couldn’t tell him that you love him.”

Winter could feel the ache of tears in her throat and eyes. “Yes,” she whispered. And her tears fell. “Why can I tell you how much I love you, Sebastian, but not Nial?”

Sebastian threaded her fingers through his. “It took you three years to tell me. You’ve just had a bit more practice with me.” He wiped her tears away.

“
I saw the scar on his chest, Sebastian, and I knew then. I knew I loved him as much as you, that I never wanted to have to choose between the two of you. I felt sick with it, Sebastian.” She looked at him miserably. “He loves you, but I’m just his lover, his
dilecta
. A passing human plaything. Here today, gone tomorrow. How soon before he gets bored with me and puts me aside so you two can move on?”

Sebastian jerked, like he’d been jolted with electricity. “
Críost thuas
,” he breathed. He pushed his hand through his hair, staring at her.

After a moment, he lifted her hand up and kissed the palm. Then he flipped her hand over and kissed the back of it. “How many times has Nial done that, Winter?” he asked, staring at her over the back of her hand.

“
Dozens of times,” she said.

“
Like it?”

“
Yes,” she confessed. She could feel herself blushing.

Sebastian spread her hand on his thigh and stroked the back of it gently. “Nial doesn’t have a religion as you and I count them. He was raised a pagan, and he’s pretty much thrown off any ideas of a higher power. But what you learn first you keep the longest.”

He touched the Claddagh ring on her finger with gentle reverence. “These rings, Winter, were used by the poorest of the Irish folk, back in the eighteenth century, as a way of indicating their attachment to one another when there was no such thing as clergy or a church they could afford, or they believed in, come to that. Even as late as then, the Celtic gods still had a grip on the wilder pockets of Ireland.”

“
What are you saying?”

“
By simply putting the ring on the one you loved, the right way around, you were declaring yourself married, Winter.” His green eyes met hers. “The poor Irish followed the custom. And Nial knew of it, because I told him when I gave him the ring. He liked the idea. It appealed to his childhood roots.”

Winter’s heart was racing. “Sebastian…”

He touched the ring. “When I gave him the ring, Winter, I made him promise never to give it away, unless it was to another whose heart had stolen his the way he had taken mine.” He again lifted his gaze to meet hers.

Winter could barely breath. “But…he had only…only known me…”

Sebastian nodded. “Nial has considered you his wife since he slipped the ring on your finger, somewhere over the Pacific, all those days ago. He knew what he was doing. It was no prop. He let you think that, to give you time to get to know him. To learn to not be afraid of him the way I had taught you to be.”

Winter pressed her free hand to her chest, trying to relieve the pressure there. “There was a word he used, when we…when we made love. He only said it once, and then he dismissed it.”

“
Was it
coniunx
, perhaps?” Sebastian asked softly.

She nodded.

Sebastian smiled. “It’s Latin. It means ‘my wife’.”

She closed her eyes. “Oh god, Bastian…and I was afraid of him.”

“
I know.”

“
This is what you were thinking about when you kept trying to tell me to trust him, wasn’t it?” She opened her eyes. “As soon as you noticed the ring on my finger, all your hostility evaporated almost instantly. And it never occurred to me to question why. But that was why, wasn’t it? You knew that Nial wasn’t playing around.”

Sebastian picked up her hand and cupped it in his. “That was one of the toughest moments of my life, Winter. The woman I loved, the man I loved, bonded while my back was turned and madly in love. I could already see you were falling head over heels for Nial, and Nial’s ring on your finger was his open declaration of his feelings for you, although you were unaware of it and he made me swear not to tell you until he thought you were ready to know. But I think Nial was scared to reveal himself as much as you were. It’s been several centuries since he had to declare himself and risk his heart. He’s out of practice.” Sebastian lifted her hand and kissed the palm. “So I’m pulling the plug for both of you.”