Chapter 18
Valentin held his woman in his arms, their bodies still joined. He couldn't remember taking her, but the scent of sex told him that he had.
"Valentin." She nuzzled his throat, and then stopped. "What am I doing?" She started to laugh helplessly.
"What Kyn do when they discover their life companion." He stroked her back, pressing her hips a little closer so he could settle himself in deeper. Her body surrounded him in a tight, wet clasp like an endless kiss. "We will be doing this quite often until we have completed our bond."
"I have fangs. I drank your blood. And you drank mine. You are vampires, just as they told us." She sucked at her top lip. "You made me into a vampire."
"We are vrykolakas, not vampires," he said slowly. "My kind were once human a very long time ago, and then we changed. We believed it was a curse, but now we think it may have been a sickness. Perhaps we will never know."
He told her how the Darkyn needed blood to survive, but how they had learned not to kill the humans upon whom they depended for their nourishment. He also warned her about the individual talents each Kyn developed to help lure humans and protect themselves.
Hearing that, she seemed to withdraw a little. "What sort of talent do you have?"
She was his sygkenis; he couldn't go on deceiving her. "My own is truth. It is impossible for humans to lie to me when I touch them."
Her black eyes took on a shrewd gleam. "You've been using that on me, haven't you?"
"A few times." He fingered a strand of her hair. "Liling, I never meant to infect you with this curse, but now that it has happened again, there is a bond between us. It will change both of us."
"Again?" She frowned. "You did this before?"
"I changed another human." He braced himself, but the usual waves of sorrow and loss did not come over him.
"Jema."
"Yes. Jema. I didn't know I had until she was with Thierry." He traced the outline of her lips. "You do not wish to be with anyone else, I hope."
"I don't." She kissed his fingers. "What about you?"
"After I lost Jema. I never intended to get involved with another human woman. I never dreamed it would happen again like this." He looked into her eyes. "I will do whatever I can to make you happy, Liling. I hope you will come to trust me."
"If we are going to try to be together, there are some things you should know about me." She drew back. "The truth, if I haven't told you already."
"I will not compel you against your will again," he said. "You can tell me when you are ready for me to know."
She untangled herself from his arms and separated their bodies, sliding away from him to sit on the edge of the bed. Staring at the rain sheeting the window, she began to speak.
"I lied to you when I told you I wasn't an American," she said. "I am. I was born somewhere in California. My mother died in childbirth, and my twin and I were turned over to the church. We thought the men who raised us were Catholic priests, but they only pretended to be. They have many names—the Light, the order, Les Frères de la Lumière. They call themselves the Brethren."
"Do you know they are the mortal enemy of the Darkyn?" he asked.
"You are the ones they call the maledicti," she said. "They taught us about you. They claimed you were cursed by God for leading unclean lives, transformed into demons, and sent back to earth from hell so that you could torment the faithful." She sighed. "I did not believe you really existed. Now you tell me that I am becoming one of you. They told us so many lies, I hardly know what to think."
He hoped he could convince her that they were not the monsters the Brethren thought they were. "Why did they teach you about us?"
She glanced at him. "They raised us in special places away from the outside world. They called them orphanages, but they were more like prisons. In those places, they did things to us." Her voice faltered. "Things that changed us."
"How?"
"I don't know. I was only a child, and they never talked to me about it. They injected us with drugs. They used machines. They put things in the food. Sometimes it made me very sick. Once I nearly died." She hunched her shoulders. "I didn't have it so bad. Some of the others, they died. And they did worse things to my twin."
Valentin controlled a surge of outrage. "How long did they have you?"
"Sixteen years. I was fourteen when they told me what they expected me to do for them. They were going to make me pregnant over and over, and force me to give my babies to them. My sons would be trained to fight the demons, and my daughters would have more babies for them. They were already doing it to some of the older girls in my unit." She shuddered. "They never made a sound, even when the priests came to take the babies."
He put his arm around her. "Did they do this to you?"
"They tried, but I wouldn't become pregnant." She sounded ashamed.
"You were raped." Every Brethren responsible was going to die a messy death beneath his blade.
"No, that wasn't the way they did it." Liling wrapped her arms around her middle. "They gave me an injection with a needle. Every month they made me go to the breeding room. It was so cold in there. They made me sit in a chair that went backward, and put the syringe up inside me. I had to stay there for hours after they did it… but I never got pregnant. My belly stayed empty."
Another form of rape, Jaus thought, but he felt a little better to know that she had not been used over and over by the Brethren. "Did they tattoo you with the red swan?"
She touched her shoulder. "That was my designation. They never gave us names. Names would have made us seem more like them." Her mouth hitched. "When I told Mrs. Chen, it made her so angry. She named me Liling."
"You said you have a twin."
"I did. They separated us when we were nine, after we tried to run away," she said. "Seven years later, some of the doctors wanted to bring us back together. We were special, not like the other children. When I was sixteen, they transferred us to the same facility. Only something went wrong. The way they changed us; the things we could do… We could not bear to be near each other. They called it 'the effect.' And that wasn't all."
Valentin looked down to see her fingers digging into the mattress.
"At first people around us became sick," she continued, her voice dropping low. "Some became seriously dehydrated: others got pneumonia. Then machines would break or catch fire. I never did any of it deliberately, Valentin, and I don't think my twin did, either. It just happened. The last time was when my twin came to get me so that we could run away again."
He could feel the pain rolling off her in waves. "Tell me what happened."
"A storm came. The biggest one I'd ever seen. Like a hurricane, only a hundred times more powerful." She hesitated. "I don't remember too much about that night. There was a tornado made of fire and water, and then a terrible explosion. It leveled the building. Everyone there—everyone I knew—died."
"But you survived."
She nodded quickly. "I hid in a small room with no windows. Some things fell on top of me. When the storm passed, I escaped." She looked at him. "I killed all those people, but I swear to you, I didn't mean to."
"The storm killed them, not you." He pulled her onto his lap. "You do not have it in you to harm anyone."
She rested her cheek against his shoulder. "I've been hiding from the Brethren and my twin ever since that night. They're still hunting me. They're using my twin to hunt me. If I don't run away, terrible storms come and people die."
He kissed her. "You cannot blame yourself for changes in the weather, mein Mädchen."
"Oh, but I can," she said softly. "That's what went wrong with us, with what they did to us. What they called 'the effect'. We each have our own power, my twin and I. But when we're near each other, when we're together, we create those storms."
"We have located the crash site, my lord." Jayr, suzeraina of the Realm, reported from her jardin in central Florida. "The plane appears intact, although it is presently at the bottom of Ghost Lake."
"Assemble a rescue team and send them in to retrieve Jaus and any survivors," he told her. "Be prepared to accommodate the needs of the humans."
"As you say, seigneur. I will report back to you as soon as our ground team has retrieved the survivors." Jayr ended the call.
Michael turned and found his arms filled with his sygkenis. "What is this, chérie?"
"A great big thank-you hug." She reached up, pulling his head down to hers, and kissed him passionately. "Plus bonus kiss." She grinned, delighted. "You found him."
"Jayr's contacts in the Civil Air Patrol found the plane," he corrected. "But the news is very good. Jaus cannot drown, so even if he is still on the plane, he is mostly likely alive. Now, how is your brother?"
"Agitated all to hell that he has to stay in bed, but sleeping." She heaved out a frustrated breath. "Wilhelm told me that you were able to locate the orphanage John described."
"Yes. Although it is now used as a private Catholic adoption agency, not an orphanage." He saw the indecision on her face. "It is only forty minutes away. You and I could go there tonight and see if we can find some evidence to give to John about the months you were kept there."
Her eyes softened. "You would do that for me?"
"My love." He lifted her hand to his lips. "I would crawl naked over burning copper for you."
Alex kissed him again.
That evening, Wilhelm drove them out of the city and north to a small town near the lake. Saint Benedict's Catholic Adoption Agency had closed at five p.m., and the small parking lot appeared empty.
He inspected the property. "Wil, stay with Alexandra in the car."
"Excuse me." His sygkenis glared at him. "I did not come here to sit in the damn car while you have all the fun breaking and entering."
Michael sighed. "Wil, stay with car and be prepared to leave quickly."
After checking the location of the building's alarm sensors, Michael carefully rewired the leads and entered the building through the back door. The cool air of the interior smelled of beeswax and lemon, but there were no sounds of occupation.
"It looks like the main office is over here," Alexandra said, pulling him toward a hall behind the front reception area.
Michael helped her search the office, and several others, but they found only current records of placements and adoptions. It wasn't until they checked a closet used to store boxes of records that Alex discovered stacks of very old medical records.
"These date back quite a ways; there might be something in here." She carried a stack into the main office to drop them on the desk. She turned on the small green-shaded lamp by the telephone and began sorting through the files. "These are pediatric medical records for kids who were adopted the same time John and I were. Standard stuff." She straightened and then peered at one label.
Michael looked over her shoulder. "Did you find yours?"
"No. I found Samantha Brown's." She thumbed her way down the stack, then stopped at another tab. "Nicola Jefferson. What the hell… ?"
"Their names are fairly common." Cyprien said. "It could be a coincidence."
"Names that just happen to be identical to two of the other three human women besides me who have survived the change to Kyn. At the former orphanage where my brother and I stayed." She yanked the files out of the stack. "Coincidence, my ass." She opened the file and began to read.
Suspecting that she would be reading for several minutes, Michael decided to inspect the rest of the building.
The agency appeared to have nothing to hide, except for a few secretaries who had candy and tranquilizers stashed in their desks. Michael was about to return and suggest they take all the medical records with them when he saw a bookcase filled with religious texts. He wouldn't have given it a second glance, except that the titles on the spines were all in French.
He removed some of the books, which were covered in dust and obviously had not been handled in years. As he replaced them, he pushed one too far and it bumped the back of the bookcase with a thump.
To his ears, a very hollow thump.
Michael reached along the back edge of the bookcase until he felt hinges, and then checked the other side. He found a recessed latch and pushed it. The bookcase swung slowly outward, revealing an open doorway and a set of stairs leading down.
He went back to the main office. "Alexandra."
"This has got to be the same Samantha Brown," she murmured. "They transferred her down to a foster care program in South Florida when she was just a baby." She looked up. "What?"
"I have found a hidden door," he told her. "It leads to a basement level."
She came around the desk and followed him out to the bookcase. "Wow. I thought they had these things only in the movies."
"The Brethren have a flair for the dramatic." He reached in and flipped a switch, turning on the stairwell light. "I am going down first."
"Of course you're going down first," she said. "You're the guy."
The stairwell led to a small room with boxes and tables draped in sheets. He lifted one to see a collection of empty glass vials and a tray of needles. Under another were some older microscopes and specimen containers. "Perhaps they performed physicals here, in the basement."
"They were doing other things down here, too." Alex said, her voice strained. She stood in the doorway to an adjoining room.
Michael went over to join her and looked in. The room's walls had been painted gray, and twenty single beds lined each side. The beds were identical to the ones they had seen at the mission in Monterey.
"My brother's not crazy," she said, her voice low and hurt. "He's right. The Brethren kept us down here and did something to us."
"We do not know that you and John were brought to this area," he told her. "We need more facts."
She walked in and inspected the bed frames. "No numbers or letters, but maybe they painted them over."
Michael helped her search the laboratory area, but aside from outdated medical testing equipment they found nothing of consequence. He took her back upstairs, keeping her cold hand in his.
"Don't be upset, chérie."
"I'm not upset," she said tonelessly. "That security guard behind you is, though."
"You want to hold it right there, buddy," a rough voice said.
Michael turned to see a middle-aged human pointing a gun at him. "I am so glad you found us," he said, holding his hands up as he moved toward the guard. "My wife and I thought we would be locked in all night."
"Oh, please." Alexandra stared at the guard, and the hall filled with the scent of lavender. "Put down that weapon, you moron."
The guard lowered his gun.
"This is why the NRA needs to be disbanded." Alex went over and snatched the weapon out of his hand, removing the clip before shoving it in his holster. She looked into his eyes. "You will wait here and do nothing until we're gone. Then you will go home and forget us. Clear?"
"Clear," the guard murmured, smiling at her.
"You'll also resign from this job and get one that gives some meaning to your life." Alex continued. "Like work with underprivileged kids. And you will get rid of all of your guns. Including that one you keep thinking of using to shoot your brother-in-law, Dave."
"Meaning," the guard agreed. "Kids. Guns."
"Come on," she said to Michael, walking down to the office. She handed him the files and unplugged the laptop sitting on the desk, tucking it under her arm.
"There is probably nothing on the computer," he told her.
"Probably," she agreed. "But they're insured, and it's a better model than the one I've got in the lab." She gave him a curiously guarded look. "When we get back, I need to go into the city and see someone about these medical records. Alone."
If Michael had learned anything about his sygkenis, it was when to let her go. "As long as you come back to me."
Alex didn't reply.