“I’ll check my work schedule, but I can probably go.”

“Fun! And who knows, you might meet one of his friends that you take a liking to.”

That was doubtful, but she smiled anyway. “So, all Axel’s friends, huh?”

“Lots of international people. Mostly from Europe, I think.”

Brigid took another bite of her lunch. “Sounds fun. Like I said, I’ll check my calendar.”

Emily paused with a smile on her face. “It’s so good to see you again, Brig.”

Despite their pasts, Brigid had to agree. It was nice to sit and talk to someone who was just a friend. No vampire politics. No intrigue. Just a regular old human who liked her. “It’s good to see you, too.”

Chapter Nine

Wicklow Mountains

September 2009

Ioan grabbed another reference book from his bookcase and tugged at his hair. Carwyn looked up from the book he’d been reading.

“What are you so frustrated about?”

“I can’t…” Ioan muttered. “There’s something about all this business that’s bothering me.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” He went back to reading his book. “Stop slamming books around.”

His son crossed his arms and turned in his chair. “This drugs business in Dublin.”

“Well, the whole of it should be bothering you.” Carwyn’s mind flashed to Brigid’s face. “Brigid still working with Murphy on it?”

“Yes, and she asked me a question that’s been plaguing me for days now.”

Carwyn frowned. “What was it?”

Ioan took a deep breath and leaned back in his chair. “She asked me if there were any drugs that could be intoxicating to immortals.”

“Ridiculous question.” He closed his book. On the surface, it was a ridiculous question. Why was it plaguing Ioan? “Alcohol and drugs do nothing to us. We could shoot ourselves with a lethal dose of heroin, and it wouldn’t even make us light-headed. Liquor?” He snorted. “Nothing. Trust me, I’ve tried.”

Ioan was staring into the fire with a preoccupied look on his face.

“It’s not possible,” Carwyn said again.

“But what if it could be?” Ioan’s eyes lit with a familiar curiosity that managed to spark Carwyn’s interest. “A drug. Or… a poison of some kind?”

Was it possible? The brightest immortal minds had never truly understood what animated them. Could there be some way to tamper with their health? With their minds?

No, it couldn’t be. Carwyn leaned toward Ioan, trying to catch his eye. “In over a thousand years, the only thing I’ve ever known that is able to harm us is light and losing our heads. Even if we’re starving, our bodies shut down and go into a kind of hibernation. Our amnis protects our mind, and as soon as we are fed—”

“Do you remember when we found the old one?”

Carwyn leaned back. “How could I forget?”

“How old do you think he really was?”

“No idea.” It had been five hundred years before, in a cave in Cornwall. Carwyn had no idea how old the vampire had been, or even what element he had belonged to. The emaciated figure had been buried in rocks and so thin he’d looked like a mummy. Only the slight hum of amnis had alerted Carwyn and Ioan to his presence. When they poured blood in his mouth, the vampire sprung to life, only to immediately gnash his teeth at their throats. They tried to reason with the vampire. Tried to give him more blood from the deer they had killed, but he was past understanding anything but the bloodlust. In the end, Carwyn twisted his stick-thin neck and ended the creature’s misery.

“Have you ever—?”

“Seen one that far gone?” Carwyn shuddered. “No. But we have no idea if he was rational before he was buried, either. Some of the ancients were savages.”

“But the idea of a drug…”

He frowned. “I understand why the idea is intriguing, but I still don’t think it’s possible. Why did Brigid even ask? Did Murphy—?”

“No, if Murphy had the question, he’d ask me himself. No, this is something she’s picking up. Something that she’s curious about for some reason.”

Damn, distracting woman. Carwyn tried opening his book, but closed it almost immediately. “It’s ridiculous.”

“Everything we understand of our kind says it is not possible.” Still, Ioan was biting his lip as he did when he was thinking.

“Agreed.”

Then why wouldn’t the idea leave Carwyn alone? “I suppose…”

Ioan leaned forward, the scientist in him leaping on the speculation in Carwyn’s voice. “What if there were some way to affect our blood, Father? It would have to be our blood, wouldn’t it? That’s how we sire our children. That’s how we bond ourselves to our mates. Our immortality is fed by blood and our power is contained in it. If there were a way to affect our blood—”

“With what? I’ve been alive for a thousand years, Ioan. I’ve seen immortals drink every kind of blood you can imagine. Before human beings were so numerous, our kind were forced to drink from any animal we could find if we were hungry. You know this. Humanity, at one point, was a delicacy. Mammal blood. Reptile blood. Even bloods we consider beneath us now can sustain us, if we must. There is no blood that sickens us, or—or intoxicates us—”