Blood Revealed (14 page)

When Dominic let him go, Patrick nodded. “Yes it was,” he said, in response to the thought he couldn’t read.

Dominic tilted his head and studied him. “You do understand. I knew you would.” His black eyes were grave, yet there was a warmth there that Patrick had never seen before. How had he ever thought that Dominic was a loner?

The thought struck him from nowhere and he opened his mouth and spoke it aloud because Dominic would hear it anyway. “I still don’t know who you are.”

“Yes you do. More than anyone else.”

“Even the most basic of walk-on characters have a back story,” Patrick pointed out. “Actors invent the back story if one isn’t given, but it’s always there. It’s how you know why the character does what they do.”

Dominic seemed to understand that too. “Knowing my back story would not help you. I’m not that person anymore.”

Patrick recalled the harsh tension in Dominic’s shoulders as he had sat at the piano and pressed the keys, unable to hear them. “You are that same person,” he said gently. “You’ve just been denying it.”

“You don’t know that. You don’t know who I was.”

“I know enough. And I know I’m right. Or you would not be in this room right now.”

Dominic considered that, his gaze roaming over Patrick’s face for long minutes. Patrick sensed that he was on the verge of a decision and remained silent, letting him take the time he needed to decide.

Then Dominic sighed. “Noé Antonio Dominic Vincenzo Medina,” he said slowly, pronouncing each name carefully.

Patrick sat up, startled, as he put the first and last name together and recognized it.

Dominic rolled off the bed and headed for the bathroom. He spoke over his shoulder. “You can look up the rest on Google. Then you’ll know everything. And I do not have the strength to tell you myself.”

His new house guests claimed more than four bedrooms. Sebastian’s precious technical equipment arrived by truck and a room had to be found to house it all. Patrick had two of the front rooms cleared out. Before he had bought the house, they had been used by a producer as a home office. Patrick rarely stepped in them.

So the business of vampires relocated and Patrick found his house had become headquarters for vampire affairs.

Oddly, he didn’t mind at all. He had always considered himself a loner and he still liked to be able to go off by himself and think, although he was learning to appreciate the bustle of business. This business was different from Hollywood. It was far more honest and direct, which was a complete novelty for Patrick.

Two days after Dominic unofficially moved into his bedroom, Patrick wandered into Sebastian’s office and looked around. Sebastian had been working night and day and the banks of Internet servers and computer equipment looked like they were functioning now, unlike the snarl of boxes and cords that had arrived in the truck.

Sebastian looked up from his computer keyboard and nodded a greeting, then his attention slid right back to the screen. Patrick settled himself on the chair opposite the desk the computer was sitting on.

“You look like a man on a mission,” Sebastian said.

Patrick debated with himself one last time. The morning after he and Dominic had made love, he had spent twenty instructive minutes with his computer in his office. For two days he had been mulling over what he had learned, trying to decide what he should do with it, if anything.

Now he was in Sebastian’s office, he was reconsidering all over again.

Sebastian cocked a brow at him curiously.

“This would be a lot easier if you just read my mind,” Patrick complained.

Sebastian’s grin was full of mischief. “You’ve had more practice with that than anyone else in the house.”

Patrick didn’t even bother trying to feel guilty or embarrassed. This was a big house, although it wasn’t endlessly big and it was impossible to hide the fact that he and Dominic were together. Dominic made no effort to hide it and Patrick had followed his example with a degree of defiance, daring anyone to speak of it.

This is the first time anyone had even referred to it indirectly, which was fine by him. He was still trying to sort out his own feelings about the man in his bed.

“Does the name Noé Medina mean anything to you?” he asked Sebastian.

Sebastian’s lips pursed as he thought about it, then he shook his head. “Nope. Should it?”

Patrick waved his hand toward the banks of computers. “You listen to classical music. I’ve heard it.”

Sebastian shrugged. “I listen to a lot of stuff. Mostly it’s background noise while I work. There’s some Mozart in there, sure. He’s supposed to be good for creativity because of his mathematical preciseness.” Sebastian looked at him more closely. “You like classical, too?”

“There was a time, before the acting bug bit me, when I seriously considered becoming a concert pianist.”

“Then the piano out there isn’t just for show?”

“It gathers more dust than I would like. In fact, I think my ambition outstripped my talent when it comes to the piano, so I have remained an ardent listener rather than a serious player.”

Sebastian was fast. “Then Noé Medina is one of those that you listen to?”

“Noé Medina was on the fast track to become the world’s best pianist. He was young, yet he still managed to outstrip some of the masters. They were touring him around the world and he was playing all the hotspots. Vienna. London. Russia. There were albums and accolades and awards.”

He had Sebastian’s full attention. “You’re speaking about him in the past tense,” Sebastian pointed out.

Patrick nodded. “Six years ago, while visiting family in Chile, Noé Medina accepted the challenge by friends to dive from the top of the Marianas Cliffs. Those cliffs are forty meters high. Cliff divers jump from them all the time, usually safely. The problem was, Noé Medina had just arrived in Chile after a long haul flight from London and it takes more than twelve hours for the body’s equilibrium to adjust. From that height the average body drives deep into the water. His eardrums burst. He was in hospital for two months recovering from the pressure sickness. He recovered, all except his hearing. Of course, that meant his career was over. There have been deaf composers, but a pianist must be able to hear what they are playing.”

Sebastian remained very still. The silence in the room was total. Then his gaze swiveled toward the door. On the other side of the closed door was the other office room that Dominic used.

Patrick nodded, even though Sebastian had not asked the question.

Sebastian let out a heavy breath. “Why are you telling me? He doesn’t even use the name anymore. Clearly, he doesn’t want anyone to know.”

“He told me.”

“No offense, Patrick. You’re in a privileged position when it comes to Dominic.”

“Now I am a vampire and that divides my loyalties. Nial needs to know who he is, even if his real name is never spoken aloud again. Lines are being drawn these days.” Patrick made himself say the very heart of what had been driving him here in the first place. “I don’t ever want anyone to wonder what Dominic’s motives are, or question why he does what he does for us.”

Sebastian nodded slowly. “You might be right. When there is a quiet moment—if there is a quiet moment—I will let Nial know.”

“Let me know what?” Nial spoke from the doorway behind Patrick, forcing him to turn on his chair to spot him.

Nial was coming into the room and a woman trailed behind him, her head swiveling as she took everything in. She was tall for a woman, perhaps five ten. She was nicely slender, while her arms that emerged from the sleeveless top were rounded with muscle. She was walking in a way that made Patrick think of Roman, although he had no idea why. It was something about the way she carried herself. He had made a study of the way people walked, trying to copy the more interesting forms for his characters, yet whatever it was about the way this woman walked, it was subtle.

She had pitch black hair cut short, except for long bangs that fell over her eyes. Normally Patrick liked women with longer hair because it seemed more feminine. However, this woman made short hair seem just as sexy and feminine as long locks did.

Not that she was classically beautiful the way Hollywood actresses were. For a start, she looked older than the perpetually young women that populated the movie industry. Patrick guessed that her age was close to his forty-plus years. Her face was filled with history. He could tell just by looking at her that she had lived a very full life.

His curiosity quotient kicked into gear. Who was she? Her dark eyes, which were dark brown, unlike Dominic’s pure black, seem to be holding stories inside them.

Nial looked at Sebastian expectantly, waiting for an answer to his question.

Sebastian shook his head. “It’s for later,” he said simply.

Nial nodded. “Blythe, this is Sebastian. You would have seen him at the press conference, too. Sebastian, this is Blythe Murray.”

Sebastian didn’t put his hand out to shake hers. Since the revelation they had all learned to let humans offer their hands first. Blythe Murray didn’t hesitate. She pushed her hand out and Sebastian gripped it and shook, then looked down at their hands in surprise. He looked up at her face once more. “You’re the blogger posting about the Others.”

“I’m not the only one posting about the Others.” Her voice was gorgeous. There was a husky quality that caught the ear and snagged the attention. It wasn’t the sort of throaty, post-sex voice that actresses spend thousands of dollars cultivating. Hers seemed to be quite natural and she wasn’t trying to enhance it in any way. It was just rich and delightful all on its own.

“You’re not just any blogger,” Sebastian replied. “You’re doing more to help humans defend themselves than vampires have been allowed to do so far.”

And Blythe Murray actually blushed. It wasn’t studied and she wasn’t pretending. She was genuinely embarrassed.

Patrick couldn’t draw his eyes away from her. He saw her gaze flicker toward him just before Nial turned to him and held out his hand. Patrick got to his feet.

“I’m sure Patrick needs no introduction,” Nial said. “Nevertheless, let me introduce Patrick Sauvage to you. Patrick, this is Blythe. I believe Blythe may be of considerable help to us. She seems to know more about the fighting methods of the Others than anyone else, including us.”

Patrick followed Sebastian’s cue and didn’t hold out his hand. With him, though, Blythe hesitated. Then after a second, she lifted her hand and held it out.

Patrick didn’t understand her hesitation. Humans had such mixed and complex reactions to vampires that he often didn’t understand them. So he gave her fingers a gentle squeeze, feeling the heat in them that marked her as human. Her skin was incredibly soft. It was the sort of softness that made one want to stroke it.

Then she leaned into the handshake properly and put some strength into it. There was power there that was unusual for a woman. That was why Sebastian had looked at her hand in surprise.

Patrick put it together then. The way she walked, the muscles in her arms, the power in her grip and the subject of a blog. “You are former military?”

Her dark eyes widened. “You read my blog?”

Patrick shook his head. “I stay away from the Internet. There’s only so much gossip about myself I can absorb before it becomes too much.”

“Then…?” She seemed puzzled.

“The way you walk, on the balls of your toes. You keep your hands free whenever you can. You quartered the room as soon as you came in. And you write about fighting the enemy.” He gave her a smile to ease the moment. “It’s part of my job to notice how people move and behave.”

Her lips thinned. “You must be popular at parties,” she said dryly.

Sebastian laughed, then cut it off quickly.

Patrick suppressed his own smile at her quick wit, because he suspected that she wasn’t being witty at all, not deliberately. Her defenses were up. Why she felt she had to be defensive with him, he had no idea why.

He let it go. If he tried to analyze every single human he ever met and the thick catalogue of weird reactions they had to him, he would never get anything done.

“Is Dominic around, Sebastian?” Nial asked. “Blythe has an idea, a very good one, that Dominic might find very interesting.”

“He’s in the big living room,” Patrick said. That was where he had left him, sitting at the piano bench staring at the closed lid of the piano. Dominic would almost meditate as he communed with the piano without touching it, a few minutes each day. Each time Patrick suppressed the urge to coax Dominic into lifting the lid and pressing the keys. He only had to remember the agony in Dominic’s eyes when he had first played the piano to know he couldn’t inflict that sort of pain again.

Sooner or later, Dominic would lift the lid on his own. He may not know it, but Patrick could see it in every tense line of his body when he sat at the piano. The old Dominic wasn’t lost at all. The old Dominic was fighting to be heard once more and Patrick knew that the old Dominic was winning, an inch at a time.

* * * * *

Why was he torturing himself this way? Why had he ever touched the damned piano?

Dominic dug his fingers into his knees, the only way he could stop himself from lifting them up and resting them on the piano.

Patrick didn’t know that with each passing day, Dominic could track his mind from farther and farther away. It had to be part of the growing intimacy between them. It meant that Patrick was never far away from the center of his attention. Possibly that would make the actor happy, yet it also meant that Patrick could not hide anything from him.

Dominic knew that Patrick was discussing him with Sebastian right now. He even knew why and understood Patrick’s decision. He didn’t really mind, not with the people in this house and especially because Patrick was not doing it openly, so Dominic’s past would not become a topic of conversation. He didn’t know if he could stand that. He didn’t know if he would be able to cope with people sympathizing all over him for the loss of his hearing and his career.