Page 59 of Blood Stone
“Did I?”
She straightened up. “For at least forty minutes that we know of, yes, you did.” She explained to him the state she had found him in, what the scotch had done to his vampire and human systems and how she had corrected it.
Pat shuddered next to him.
“I don’t remember any of it,” Garrett confessed.
“Which doesn’t match my experience,” Nial replied. “I was aware and able to hear everything.”
“This happened to you?” Garrett turned his head carefully to look at Nial in amazement. “I don’t believe you would ever have a need to get drunk, Nathanial.”
Nial grinned. “I ate a mouthful of food.”
“That, I can believe.”
“Alcohol affects the brain directly. Food doesn’t. It has to be the difference. How much did you drink?” Winter asked him.
He just looked at her.
Sebastian laughed. “Don’t be silly, Winter. He drank the whole bottle.”
Winter rolled her eyes. “Enjoy your headache, Garrett.” She turned and walked away.
“I think she’s pissed at me,” Garrett observed.
“You deserve it,” Sebastian said.
Garrett nodded.
“It reallykillsyou?” Pat insisted, next to him. There was distress in his voice.
“Well, what do you think would have happened to me, if Winter wasn’t around?” Garrett asked reasonably.
“But don’t you people know?” Pat glanced at Nial and Sebastian. “Surely this has happened before. Garrett and you can’t have been the first vampires to want to blot out a memory, or been overwhelmed by the desire to eat a cookie.”
“Probably not,” Nial replied. “But you know we don’t have a written history. We’ve preserved ourselves by never lingering in each other’s company. If one of us has succumbed to this in the past, no one would know about it. The victim would have simply disappeared from our ranks, while the humans around him would have assumed he had slipped into a coma and died from unknown causes.”
“Perhaps they wake up after a while. Like you say, you don’t know,” Pat said.
“There’s no out for you, Patrick,” Sebastian said. “Once you become a vampire, you don’t get to eat…or drink. Even if you want to.”
Pat licked his lips. “God, are you telling me I’ll stillwantto?”
Garrett sighed. The fear in Pat’s voice was painful to listen to. “You’ll have wants and desires, but they’ll be intellectual things. Muted. Left over habits from when you were human. You’ll find them much easier to divert and ignore. The blood hunger, though – the need to feed – is something your vampire physiology supplies and that you will not be able to ignore.”
Pat swallowed. He nodded. “Good. Okay. Alright, then.” He gave a small smile. “Sorry. You had me worried.”
Nial leaned against the edge of the table, stretched out his legs and crossed his arms. “Where did you do the drinking, Garrett?”
Garrett frowned. “Here. I’m not stupid.”
“Then someone took the bottle once you…passed out.”
“I locked the trailer door.”
“Who has the key?”
“Your wife, MacDonald, Sebastian.”
