Chapter 3
The twenty-first century had not been kind to the Catholic Church. Numbers were down and scandals were up; a worldwide shortage of ordained priests had grown from severe to desperate. Atheists and prochoice groups hounded the Church, pouncing on any opportunity to smear its good name.
Even in countries where Catholicism had controlled the population more stringently than the petty dictatorships that rose and fell from power with monotonous regularity, the newer generations had lost touch with the faith. Young Catholics went through the motions only on holy days, primarily to please cantankerous, elderly relatives.
No one feared the wrath of God anymore. Allah and the crazed jihads formed in his name had become the big bogeymen of this century.
In Chicago, cost-cutting measures taken by the archdiocese had required nearly half of the city's churches to curtail their expenses. Some were even shut down, their parishioners sent to attend Mass elsewhere. The archbishop of Chicago had suffered the indignity of being packed up and transferred to St. Luke's, one of the humblest parishes in the city.
It was a punishment handed down from Rome, from a cardinal who had as little to do with the Catholic Church as August Hightower did.
"I found the paper. Your Grace," Mrs. Clare Murphy said as she brought in his afternoon tea tray, the latest edition of the Chicago City News tucked under her plump arm. "Why that Shaughnessy boy has to throw it in the hedges every morning, I'll never know." She set down the tray and removed the newspaper from the plastic bag. "Looks as if that Senator Litton's got hisself all over the front page again."
"The sins of the flesh are not merely visited upon the meek, Mrs. Murphy." August suppressed a smile as he took the paper and unfolded it. The media was having its usual field day with the sex scandal. "We will pray for him."
"I'm praying for his wife," the older woman said, her careworn face wrinkling with distaste. "God help her, but who knows what sort of diseases he's inflicted on the poor thing."
Senator Litton hadn't slept with his wife since impregnating her with their only son twenty-five years ago. Hightower didn't bother to pass that bit of intimate information along to his housekeeper. Nor did he need to read the articles printed under the headlines to know that the boy prostitute the senator had been fellating just before his arrest had been transferred from police custody to a halfway house for runaways run by the archdiocese. He had, after all, personally arranged the transfer.
Now that the annoyingly liberal atheist senator had been permanently labeled a political leper, and would be forced to resign his seat before the end of the month, the order could move forward with plans for his replacement. Three strident, impeccable conservative candidates who actually did have sex regularly with their equally dull and unattractive spouses were presently under consideration. Once backed by other prominent political figures under the control of the order, the worthiest and greediest of the trio would doubtless move gracefully into the U.S. Senate.
All as it should be.
Hightower happily munched his way through three cream puffs and a napoleon by the time he finished the news section, and had just began delicately devouring a fruit tart when he took out the Lifestyles section. Seeing the photo on the front page, that of a girl working in a beautiful garden, made him smile. Until he saw the tattoo on her shoulder and began to choke. Bits of kiwi and strawberry spattered his desk blotter and the paper until he cleared his throat and was able to take a breath and a closer look.
The image showed only the young woman kneeling with her back to the camera. A jacket had been tied around her waist, and the sleeveless shirt she wore had a T-back, which showed off her smooth shoulders. She could have been anyone, Hightower thought, and then took the magnifying glass from his desk drawer and held it above the image.
The photo was grainy, but not enough to blur the tattoo of a red swan.
"It can't be."
August sal paralyzed until Cabreri came into his office without knocking, a copy of the Lifestyles section crumpled in his fist.
"Your Grace, have you seen…" He looked at the paper Hightower held. "Then you know."
"That the red swan still lives? No. Carlo. I did not know. No one knew." Hightower flung the paper aside and jerked the napkin out of his collar. "Certainly not Rome."
As members of Les Frères de la Lumière, both Hightower and his assistant were obliged to pose as members of the Catholic Church. In the Dark Ages, their secret order had been created and charged with protecting the Church and humanity from a group of cursed priests turned into demonic vampires who called themselves the Darkyn. Their work required them to play certain roles within the Church's infrastructure in order to carry out their mission.
Now this girl, a girl everyone had sworn had died during a catastrophe that she herself had caused, could expose one of their most closely guarded secrets.
"I read the reports ten years ago," Cabreri said. "They indicated that she was killed during the storm with the other children. They would not have done so unless they had seen her body."
"Of course they said she was dead," Hightower snapped. "They were covering up their own incompetence in handling that disaster. They would not dare tell Rome that the red swan had escaped into the general population."
"But they must have known… an elemental…" Cabreri looked ill. "Your Grace, the risk to the innocent is too great. We must inform Rome immediately."
Hightower braced his hands against his desk and rose, his heavy body trembling with the effort. His assistant's loyalty to the order, something August had used over the years to control him, would prove the greatest impediment. "D'Orio has been looking for any excuse to remove us from our positions. We will take care of the girl first, and then we will decide how much Rome is to know about the business." He snatched up the paper and read the caption. "This photograph was taken at a nursing home outside the city. You will go there immediately and begin surveillance."
"Assuming she has not already run." Cabreri's Adam's apple bobbed. "I cannot take her alone."
"You are not to touch her. Only locate and follow her." He glared at his assistant. "You will report to me on the hour."
Hightower's phone rang, and Cabreri flinched. The light on it indicated it was his private line, the number only members of the order knew.
The archbishop picked up the receiver slowly. "This is Hightower."
"Have you read the paper today. August?" Cardinal D'Orio's voice grated over the line.
He sank back down into his chair. "I have, Your Eminence. In fact, I was just preparing to call you—"
"Thou shall not bear false witness. You do remember that from your days in the seminary, don't you?" The cardinal inhaled sharply. "Tell me how it is that the red swan, whom our California brothers reported burying ten years ago with several hundred of our best researchers, is still alive and working in your city."
"All I can think. Your Eminence, is that those who were in charge of cleaning up the disaster falsified their reports to Cardinal Stoss," Hightower said, sinking back down into his chair. "The girl survived, obviously. Since we were not aware that she had, she has been able to live off the grid, so to speak."
"Obviously. So to speak. You sound like Miss Carolina, you idiot," the cardinal said pleasantly. "Do you have her current location?"
"We know where she was working at the time the photo was taken, Your Eminence, but there is no guarantee she is still there. This level of exposure would likely cause her to flee. Then there is the more immediate problem of the danger she presents." He eyed Cabreri. "I wonder if I might request one of your trackers to help us with the situation."
"That is the other problem I am dealing with today, August," D'Orio said. "Kyan has left China. He gave no explanation to his cell chief and has avoided using the usual travel routes. He also removed his tracer and withdrew ten thousand dollars from our banks in New York last night. I wager he'll be in Chicago by this evening."
Hightower schooled his expression. "May we be of assistance in this matter?"
"Even you aren't that stupid, August," D'Orio said. "Get to the girl before Kyan does, capture her alive, and transport her to Rome directly."
A thousand possibilities rushed through his mind. "Is that wise, Your Eminence? Given the girl's, ah, nature, I think it would be more prudent to terminate her."
"I don't care what you think," the cardinal said. "You'll do exactly as you're told. Because if you fail me this time, I'll transfer you to a church so far into the Congo that the only tongues you'll be pressing communion wafers on will belong to mountain gorillas."
After he ended the call, Hightower consulted with Cabreri.
"The cardinal wants her alive and brought to Rome, so we must move quickly," he said. "Call our people at the bus and train stations, as well as the airport."
"You believe she will try to leave the city?" Before Hightower answered, Cabreri added, "Your Grace, perhaps it is best that we do not pursue her at this time. We could instead intercept Kyan and prevent him from finding her."
Cabreri often had moments of brilliance, even when he was as wrongheaded as he was now.
"I will do whatever is necessary to protect the city," he told his assistant. "Go now."
Hightower waited until his assistant departed before he placed two more calls.
Michael Cyprien found the woman he loved busy at work in her lab. "Are you making something for me, chérie?"
Dr. Alexandra Keller adjusted the flame on the Bunsen burner and eyed the bubbling, dark contents of the beaker she had placed over it. "If you're in the mood for a hot vampire-blood toddy, I am."
Michael took a moment to appreciate the sight of his sygkenis. She had gathered her long, thick chestnut hair into a loose ponytail, from which a few corkscrew curls had escaped. A stained white lab coat covered the dark green silk dress she wore, and the emerald-and-diamond earrings he had given her the night before sparkled in her ears.
"I think I will pass." Michael inspected the impressive array of laboratory equipment she had assembled and was working over. "This looks very complicated."
She drew a sample from the boiling beaker with an eye-dropper and placed a drop on a glass slide, and then added a drop of clear liquid to it. "It is."
In her human life, Alexandra Keller had been a reconstructive surgeon devoted to restoring the ruined faces of accident victims and abused children. Along with the talent of an Old World sculptor and the determination of a zealot, Alexandra had the gift of speed—no other doctor in the world had been as fast as she with a scalpel.
Michael had inadvertently taken much of that away from her when he had brought her against her will to New Orleans to restore his face, which had been obliterated during his imprisonment and brutal torture by the Brethren. After some resistance, Alex had operated on him. Michael had never intended to infect her with his blood, which should have poisoned her. Instead, Alexandra had become the first human in five hundred years to survive the change to Darkyn.
Outraged by both the deliberate and inadvertent interference in her life, Alex had despised him, eluded him, and fought him with all the righteous fury of an innocent wronged. Then, to make matters much worse, she and Michael had fallen in love with each other.
Cyprien had lived many centuries as a Darkyn lord, and had resigned himself to never finding a life companion. Now that he had this brilliant, beautiful, driven woman as his sygkenis, he wondered how he had survived for so long without her.
Michael came up behind her and slid his arms around her waist. Bending close to her ear, he murmured, "Are you in the mood for a hot vampire?"
"As you've told me a zillion times, we're not vampires; we're vrykolakas." Alex covered the slide with a small clear square and placed it under her scope. She peered at it and adjusted the magnification. "I'll be damned, if I'm not already."
"I am sure there are sins you have never imagined, mon coeur." He brushed her hair away from the side of her neck to place a kiss there. Smelling her aroused him, but touching her made him go hard. He removed her lab coat and glanced down to see the stiff points of her nipples denting the emerald silk. One of the many advantages of having a sygkenis were the delights of their physical bond, which had enslaved both of them. "I could help you commit them."
She shimmied her hips against him, but in an absent fashion, and made a vague, affirmative sound.
Michael frowned. "What is this that is more interesting to you than me and sin?"
Alex stepped back and gestured toward the scope. "Have a look and tell me what you see."
He gave the instrument a wary glance. "I will not know what it is."
She folded her arms. "Guess."
With a sigh Michael peered into the instrument. "I see tiny black spots floating in red-spotted liquid. None of them are…" He lifted his head, frowned, and looked again. "They are not floating. They are swimming, and… sucking up the red spots. And now they are dark red, and splitting in two. No, four." He turned to her. "What did you put in here?"
"A sample of your blood, after I heated it to five hundred degrees Fahrenheit." She grinned at his reaction. "Now you're wondering why."
"Among other things," he agreed.
"The pathogen infecting your blood cells—they would be the black things that turned dark red, ate the lighter red spots, and started replicating—is not destroyed under conditions of extreme heat. It actually becomes dormant." She reached over and turned off the burner. "When the heat is removed and the pathogen is immersed in human blood"—she poured a small amount of fresh blood into the beaker—"it wakes up, regenerates, eats, releases that really nice euphoriant we all love into the bloodstream, et cetera."
Michael looked into the eyepiece again and watched the blackened liquid turning slowly red. "But fire kills us."
"Not necessarily." She picked up a chart and opened it. "I got curious about the effect of heat after I talked to some of the new guys at the Realm about a jardin in southern France that the Brethren torched last summer."
"You talked to them?" While he and Alexandra had attended the annual tournament held in central Florida at the Realm, a medieval-themed tourist attraction run by the Kyn, he had not noticed her conversing with the refugees. "When? Why?"
"It was while you were busy being the seigneur, and I didn't feel like chatting with Lady Harris about her dumb dog. Don't be jealous." She patted his arm. "Anyway, according to the survivors, whom you very kindly allowed to immigrate to America, some of them came out with extensive third-degree burns. After finding a few willing human blood donors"—she gave him an ironic look—"they all healed."
"I know about the incident," he said. "Burns are not enough. To kill us, our bodies must be completely charred. Then they crumble to ash."
"Sorry, sweetheart, but even in crematoriums, bodies don't crumble to ash. There are always bits of—" Alex's desk phone rang, interrupting her, and she reached around him to push the speaker button. Before anyone spoke, she said, "Yes, Phillipe. I know. I've been playing in the lab too long again. The boss is here, trying to lure me away from my boiling beakers of blood."
"Alexandra?" The voice did not belong to Michael's seneschal, Phillipe.
"John." She went over and snatched up the receiver, cutting off the speaker. "Mind telling me where you've been for the last three weeks, big brother? I've been worried sick." She listened for a moment. "As in Monterey, California? What are you doing there?"
Michael, who suspected John was calling to report what he had found, reached over and pressed the speaker button so he could hear the other half of the conversation. Alex was so agitated she didn't notice.
"… from the brothers I helped relocate," Alexandra's brother was saying. "They gave me only very general directions, so it took more time than I thought. But I found it. I need to speak to Cyprien. Alex. It's important."
"John, I'm here," Michael said before his sygkenis began ranting at her brother again. "What did you find?"
"Everything exactly as they said." John told him. "It's under an abandoned Catholic mission in the hills. They didn't remove anything. They only sealed the entrances and exits."
"They intend to use it again someday." When Alexandra opened her mouth. Cyprien shook his head. "How many were they keeping down there?"
"I don't know." John sounded frustrated now. "They have security guards patrolling the property around the clock; one of them almost caught me last night. I can't do this by myself."
"We will come to you." Cyprien checked the caller ID display. "Will you be at this number in an hour?"
"I can be."
"I will call you back with our travel arrangements." Cyprien disconnected the call and saw Alexandra's eyes narrow. "I can explain."
"I'm sure you can," she said smoothly. "Start with why my brother, who hates your guts for turning me into a vampire, is talking to you like you're pals."
"You are not a vampire, and John does not hate me." Cyprien corrected her. "In fact, he came to me with information he had received from the former Brethren he helped escape the order while we were in Fort Lauderdale."
"Came to you." She sounded skeptical. "Did he have a little help, l'attrait-wise?"
L'attrait, the pheromonelike scent the Darkyn's bodies naturally produced, had a powerful effect on most humans exposed to it. By using it the Kyn were able to hypnotize and compel humans to do almost anything they wished.
"I did not force him to do this, chérie" Cyprien assured her. "He came to me of his own free will."
"If I find out differently. I'm kicking your ass," she said. "So what did they tell him?"
"The friars involved related how the Brethren acquire new members for the order, and directed him to one of their secret facilities." Cyprien said. "I told him if he could locate it, I would help him expose what they have been doing."
"So, just like that, John goes scampering off to California to look for some religious nutcase training center?" She threw up her hands. "John's already been imprisoned and tortured by the Brethren once. Wasn't that enough? And now he's out there alone, playing private fucking eye? My brother doesn't know how to do this stuff. He was a priest, for God's sake. Why didn't you send anyone with him?"
"He asked if he could go alone, and I said yes." Cyprien could see she didn't like hearing that. "This is very important to John. You know that he is not yet comfortable with accepting our help. He also knew you would be concerned about his safety if you knew he was pursuing this alone. I agreed."
"I love how you guys just decide these things for me. What am I, twelve?" She saw his hand move and stepped out of reach. "Don't even think about it."
"I only thought to spare you the worry," he told her. "You have been through enough."
"I'm not made out of glass," she snapped. "And I don't care where the Brethren train their new morons. John is all the family I have left, and even though most of the time I'd like to kill him, he needs the protection. Not me."
Cyprien took her hands in his. "These facilities are not being used for training new Brethren. They are for breeding them."
"Training, breeding, who cares what they…" She stopped and stared at him. "Wait a minute. You mean breeding as in the livestock sense of the word?"
Cyprien nodded. "We've known for some time that the young women they recruit have children with members of the order. These children are kept secluded and not permitted contact with the outside world until they have been trained accordingly. Male children, of course, become Brethren. There are only male Brethren, so we believe that any female children are used to produce the next generation."
She processed this. "That's disgusting."
"That is how a successful cult keeps its numbers healthy and controls the absolute loyalty of its membership." Cyprien wondered if he should tell her everything he and her brother had discussed. "Your brother told me that some of the young women used by the Brethren in these breeding facilities may not have been born into the order. The priests he helped spoke of runaways and addicts brought in from the streets and made into willing participants."
Alex swore viciously and at length. When she calmed enough to speak coherently again, she demanded. "What happened to the unwilling ones?"
"Those who caused trouble or resisted were killed." He took her hands in his. "That is why I promised your brother I would help. We have contacts in the media. Alexandra. Once we have proof, we can expose what they are doing."
Alex nodded slowly, but her eyes never left his. "You're not telling me everything. Your eyes always turn that pretty turquoise color when you're withholding information. What else?"
Michael knew how much she loved her brother, and had no desire to invoke her wrath by pointing out the obvious: Ever since he'd been tortured by the Brethren, and then learned that his sister had become Kyn, John's emotional state had been deteriorating. "Your brother is torn between his beliefs and his knowledge, and he cannot reconcile them. He is deeply troubled."
Her mouth twisted. "That's the story of his life."
"You know how sensitive we are to humans. Some of us can tell a human's emotional state by shifts in their natural scent. Since he came back from Ireland, John's has changed." Cyprien looked into her eyes. "I fear he is becoming unstable. Alex."
"I'll pack the Armani suits and the bagged blood." She headed for the door. "You have Phillipe warm up the Learjet."