Blood Revealed (22 page)

Dominic stopped playing, the chord breaking unevenly, the sour notes making him winced.

“Don’t stop!” Patrick said quickly from the armchair he had pulled over to the side of the piano. “I was enjoying it.”

Dominic sighed. “I play badly. I haven’t touched a piano in years. Concert level players practice for hours a day.
Hours
.” He shook his head. “Besides, you listen to it all wrong.”

Patrick’s face sagged. “Wrong?”

Dominic stood. “You only hear half the notes. Not even the important ones, the quiet ones. And you don’t hear the silences.”

Patrick pushed himself to his feet. “Are you saying I don’t appreciate music?”

“You like music just fine,” Dominic said tiredly. “You just don’t hear it all. No one does.”

“Except you?”

“Even I don’t. I hear more than you and I hear different music from what you hear.”

“You’re not making sense.” Patrick’s anger was growing. Whenever his creativity was challenged like this, he got defensive.

“Pachelbel,” Dominic said flatly. “Everyone knows the tune.” He bent down and pounded out the first few bars of
Canon
. “What you hear when you listen to it is different from what I heard when I used to listen to it. That’s why people like what they like.
And
you don’t hear all the notes.”

“So I’m only fit to listen to simple tunes?” Patrick asked. His voice was dangerously quiet.

“I’m saying that your gift is for reading people and knowing what lies beneath. And it
is
a gift. Music is just a bonus for you, but for me, it was everything.”

“It still can be.”

“
No, it can’t!”
Dominic cried. His eyes widened as he heard his shout echo in Patrick’s mind. His chest was suddenly heaving.

He swallowed.

Patrick drew closer, moving slowly, as though he might startle Dominic into another radical reaction if he moved too fast. “There has to be a way. You’ve got this much back.”

Dominic closed his eyes. “Don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

His eyes were stinging. He blinked to clear them. “You think if you can make my music come back, then you’ll be saved, too. It doesn’t work like that. No one gets to go back.”

Patrick held his face still. The pain radiated from him both mentally and from the way he was standing.

A throat cleared from the back door, making them both turn, startled.

Blythe stood there. She wasn’t wearing the hunting uniform she had been wearing this morning, when they had ventured into the culvert with gas masks and flame throwers.

Nial, Sebastian, Patrick and even Winter had been with them, all wearing masks and carrying weapons of one sort or another. There were not as many Summarette bodies lying around the culvert as there had been where humans congregated. In those areas, the bodies were as thick as hail, piled up against the sides of buildings and littering the sidewalks. The clean-up would take days, if not weeks.

“There might be adults guarding them,” Blythe had pointed out as they approached the man-sized culvert. It was bone dry, for L.A. had been short on rain this summer.

“Probably not,” Winter had replied. “The babies would be left to fend for themselves. Only mammals raise their young.”

“And birds,” Sebastian added.

However, the culvert had been empty, except for a mountain of calcified shards on the ground.

“Shells,” Winter decided, kicking them with her boot. Her voice was muffled behind the mask. “They must find their own nest once they’ve hatched. More competition for safe places.”

Nial straightened up from his examination of the shells. “Then we’ll have to find those places and deal with them there,” he said.

Blythe had an encyclopedic memory of all the dark and enclosed places in the neighborhood and a fast search of all of them proved fruitless.

“It makes sense that the babies would find far more secure places to hide,” Winter said. “They’re much smaller and what they ate last night would tide them over for days.”

Blythe swallowed. Her friend Peter had been one of the victims. Dominic squeezed her fingers in sympathy.

“They could burrow deep. Perhaps they even hibernate in some way, until they’re bigger.”

“So after the swarming,” Patrick said, “they become individuals?”

“They were all individuals to start,” Winter said. “No hive mind. They just all wanted the same thing, so they swarmed to find it.”

That was when Nial had called a halt for the day and they had made the long trek back to Patrick’s house. On the way, they saw hundreds of human work crews out cleaning up the bodies, along with human hunting parties with their knives and swords and the glowing safety vests that marked their new profession, digging into any likely or unlikely holes, looking for more.

When they reached the house, Dominic knew he should sleep the afternoon through, because tonight he would be out again, knife in hand. Patrick had asked him to play and despite his reluctance, he had sat at the piano and tried.

Tiredness was dogging him as he studied Blythe’s fresh appearance, now. She looked energetic and happier than he had noticed in days. She wore a pair of jeans that made her long legs seem even longer. The red sweater made the most of her dark hair and clung to every curve.

She looked good. Very good.

“I’m sorry to interrupt,” she said, “The man in the kitchen said to come straight through.”

“You came to see me?” Dominic asked.

She hesitated. “Is Winter around?”

Patrick smiled and a warm, happy glow came from him. He was pleased about something. “She’s in the back family area. If you go back through the kitchen, then keep going, you’ll find it.”

Dominic looked from one to the other. They both had the air of shared secrets about them. That made him uneasy but he didn’t know why.

Blythe gave them both a stiff smile. “Well…thanks. I’ll see you later, then?”

She was talking to Patrick.

Patrick nodded. “I’ll be here.”

“Okay.” She didn’t glance at Dominic as she headed back toward the kitchen.

Patrick turned away, too. He headed over to the piano and picked up the sheet music that had mysteriously appeared there a week or so ago. More silent inducement to play.

“I’m tired,” Dominic said abruptly and he realized, truthfully. “I’m going to sleep. Tonight is going to be a bitch.”

Patrick lowered the sheets, studying him. “Is everything okay?” he asked.

His damn sensitivity. Sometimes it seemed as though Patrick could mind-read, too. Dominic shook his head. “I’m just tired,” he lied and gave him the best smile he could manage.

He didn’t know if that sold Patrick or not because he didn’t wait to find out. He went upstairs to the bedroom suites and paused outside Patrick’s. Then, with a decisive turn on his heel, he walked away, back down the passage to the bedroom that was nominally his.

* * * * *

As Patrick had suggested, the back family area was easy to find. There was only one other exit from the kitchen on that side of the house and Blythe climbed down the three steps into a quiet oasis.

The room looked like it had first started life as a pillared courtyard overlooking the big swimming pool. The area had been enclosed with glass walls and roofed in. Outdoor carpet had been added. In California’s summers, the room should have just boiled under all that glass, except that the household air conditioning was holding the temperature as a tolerable level.

The humidity was higher in here because of the glass and Blythe could feel her skin relax.

Everywhere there were potted plants, like an old-fashioned Victorian greenhouse. Plants that could not survive the torrid summers outside were thriving here, including lilies and orchids and lush ferns.

Blythe paused to absorb the riot of colors and textures and enjoy the fresh feel of the air in here. The plants were responsible for that.

“It’s very soothing here, isn’t it?” Winter’s voice came from behind a bank of big tubs of what looked like fishtail ferns with curled edges, only they were huge.

Blythe saw that there was a deck chair there, with the feet extended. Winter’s toes were showing from behind the tubs and Blythe walked around them to see her properly.

Winter gave her a warm smile. Her green eyes always reminded Blythe of Sebastian’s eyes. “I’d get up, but…”

There was an IV needle taped to her elbow, the line leading up to a pole from which hung a bag of blood, nearly empty.

“Are you…?” Blythe began, then wondered if that sort of direct question was rude.

“A vampire?” Winter finished. “No. You know I can heal people, right?”

“That’s why I’m here.”

“I see.” Winter didn’t seem offended or curious. Blythe realized that she probably got a lot of requests for help.

“Is the healing…does healing people mean you need more blood?”

“A long time ago, Sebastian and I were partners in a small business venture. He didn’t tell me he was a vampire and I didn’t tell him I could heal people. So when someone shoved a broken-off broomstick through his heart, I healed him.” She grimaced. “I made him human again.”

She looked up at the bag, then reached up and shook it.

Blythe let that sink in. There was so much she was learning about vampires and the other types of people that had hidden away from humans until now. It was a complex world and there was always another layer to uncover. “And that’s why you need blood?”

Winter shook her head. “Not exactly. I didn’t really heal Sebastian, because I didn’t know what I was doing. As it turned out, I switched off his vampirism. I just didn’t get rid of it altogether.” Her gaze turned inward. “It was very strange. I couldn’t take the darkness out of him, except to…well, take it into me.”

Then her gaze focused back on Blythe. “That’s why my eyes changed to match Sebastian’s. So while he isn’t completely human, neither am I, anymore. Every month or so, I have to consume his blood.”

Blythe crossed her arms. “What did he get out of it?”

Winter grinned. “He has to inhale my pheromones, every few months.”

“That’s a good way to make sure he never leaves.”

“I’d rather he stays because he wants to and so far, he does.” Winter glanced up at the nearly empty bag again. “Close enough,” she said softly and removed the IV needle with practiced ease. She carefully hung it over the bag hook and stood up, rolling down the sleeve of her silky tee shirt. “How can I help, Blythe?”

Blythe swallowed. “Did…has Patrick said anything to you?”

Winter was staring at her with a peculiar intensity, as if her gaze was looking inside her. “Here. Come and sit down,” she said. She moved over to the wrought iron table and chairs tucked into another corner made by the greenery.

Blythe followed her over and sat on the chair opposite her. The table was small and Winter reached out her hand. “Let me touch you.”

Blythe bit her lip. How much would Winter see? Then she forced herself to put her hand into Winter’s, with a compulsive jerk.

Winter’s gaze became unfocused.

Blythe waited. She couldn’t feel anything. It wasn’t like a normal doctor, poking and pummeling, his hands smelling of antiseptic solution.

Winter refocused her gaze, let Blythe’s hand go and sat back. “PTSD,” she said softly.

Blythe flinched. “Patrick told you.”

“He hasn’t spoken to me about you at all. Did he guess? You’ve been hiding it, haven’t you? The stress symptoms you’ve got are advanced and could only have built up over time.”

Blythe swallowed. “Yes. To all of it. He said…Patrick said if I didn’t get help, he’d force me to it. Dominic told me about you, about what you can do. I thought…” and she trailed off, realizing that what she had been about to say might sound insulting.

“You thought I was an easier option than doctors with their pills and shrinks with their invasive questions?” Winter smiled.

“It sounds horrible, out loud like that. Except that traditional medicine…they’ll just give me pills to ‘calm me down’. They’re not interested in actually digging deeper and getting at the guts of it, so I might not have to take the pills anymore. Shrinks are even worse. They don’t want a cure, either. They’re happy with ‘progress’.” She grimaced. “I want it to stop. I want to be able to do my job, even my new job, without wanting to kick in walls afterward. I need to be normal, for my kids.”

Winter listened to all of it without reacting. When Blythe paused for breath, Winter said; “You mean hunting the Others is your new job, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Isn’t that actually your old job?”

“The Others aren’t the same as terrorists. Terrorists want the world to run their way. The Summanus just want to eat us.”

“You’re still hunting down the enemy. That’s not helping your condition.”

Blythe smiled. “The Others are directly threatening my kids. There’s a world of difference.”

“And that’s probably what made the PTSD flare up again,” Winter finished. “I can help relieve the physical symptoms, although you do know that your mind is causing them, don’t you?”

Blythe drew in a breath and let it out. “So I’ve been told.”

“I can’t manipulate thoughts, Blythe,” Winter said softly. “Only you can control your own mind. If I heal your body, that will give you a shot at dealing with the issues you haven’t faced yet, with some physical strength to cope with the fall out.”

Blythe swallowed. “Can you read minds, too?” she asked. “You made Dominic a mind reader.”

Winter shook her head and held out her hand once more. This time, Blythe felt no reluctance. She put her hand in Winter’s without hesitation.

“I don’t read minds, I read bodies and I’m very good at it. Physical symptoms are like newsprint. They tell your story better than you can, because they don’t lie and beat around the bush. Now shush for a moment. Let me concentrate.”

Her remarkable green eyes closed.

This time, Blythe could feel it. Her body relaxed all by itself. It was like meditating, which she had tried once or twice, or climbing into a cool pool of water and letting herself float. Everything inside her seemed to loosen, including pockets of tension in her back and around her jaw that she hadn’t been aware of.