If Angels Burn

Alex decided not to tell Cyprien any of this. Her ability to read the minds of a pedophile and a raving lunatic might qualify as a Darkyn talent, but she wasn't handing him another reason to try and use her.



And wouldn't it be great to be a walking murder detector. Alex had seen that sci-fi movie with Tom Cruise, where he had arrested people before they killed. No, she definitely didn't need to advertise this little gift.



It took fifty minutes to complete some quick prelims, after which Alex gave Thierry a second injection and left Heather to watch over him.



"If he starts to come around," Alex told the nurse, "have the men put him back in the cell."



Cyprien hadn't made another appearance, so she collected her films and went upstairs to find him sitting and brooding in the fancy green-and-pink drawing room.



He looked up when she came in. "How is he?"



"Well and truly fucked." And had been left to heal without any sign of treatment. "Tell me something. Why don't you have any vampire doctors?"



"None of the Darkyn were originally doctors. When we rose, barbers who thought bleeding and the drinking of cow urine cured disease and illness treated the sick and injured."



Thank God she'd been born in the twentieth century. "And in the, what, seven hundred years since then, not one of you thought about going to medical school?"



The question seemed to stun him. "Aside from the problems being vrykolakes among humans presents, you forget that we are cursed, Alexandra. There are no seminars on how to appease God and win back your soul."



"Oh, bullshit. Come here and look at this." She went to the doors that led out to the garden, and propped Thierry's X-rays against the glass panes. "Twenty-seven major fractures in his legs and most of them are compound." She pointed out the worst breaks. "The broken ends are healed over and the marrow is intact. See any sign of a curse?"



"Does this mean his legs can be saved?"



"If there are no complications. I'm not sure about his feet. They've been pulverized." She put up another film. "If he were human, I'd have no choice but to amputate. Thank Somebody Up There for that curse, Cyprien."



Hope filled his expression. "Thierry heals as I do."



"Before you throw a party, I'm not sure what I can do for him. It isn't just healing. He'll need extensive bone repair, tissue grafts to fill in the holes in his back, and major dermal/muscle restoration from the hips down. I don't know if I can harvest enough bone grafts to rebuild his feet." Unable to look at it any longer, she tore down the last X-ray. "Where are the people who did this to him?"



"They are deceased."



Alex didn't feel a twinge of remorse, hearing that. Anyone who could inflict this kind of agony on anything alive deserved to die. "Who are they?"



"An order of former Catholic priests. They call themselves the Brethren."



She stared at him. "Priests."



He nodded. "Former Catholic priests."



"Cyprien, I didn't mention this, but my brother is—"



"A Catholic priest. We know."



"Yeah, and while he's a complete jerk, he doesn't go around hanging people from meat hooks. It's not what priests do, even when they quit being priests."



"It is what the Brethren do."



She could debate this with him or she could leave him to his curse wallowing and anti-Catholic fantasies. "The surgery will take time; I don't know how long. Days, maybe weeks. As for his mental state, the pain he suffered can only be classified as beyond imagination. Add watching his wife die to that…" She shook her head.



"Then we must let him go, Michael," a low, unfamiliar feminine voice said.



Alex turned to see Éliane standing just inside the room, with a woman who looked like her mother. The latter had silver blond hair swept up in a complicated do, and wore an ultrafeminine lavender suit. One of her arms was in a sling someone had fashioned from a matching pastel silk scarf.



She looked like a Monet painting, Alex thought, feeling immediately grubby.



"Liliette. You should not be up." Cyprien went to her and guided her to one of the velvet-covered sofas, then sat beside her. "Alexandra, this is Mme. Liliette Durand, Thierry's aunt. Liliette, this is Dr. Alexandra Keller."



"I'm sorry. I didn't know you were listening, or I would have phrased what I said better." She went over and shook the uninjured hand the older woman held out. Liliette's fingers trembled under hers, and the scent of freesias teased Alex's nose. "Let me have a look at that arm."



"Later." She made an imperious, "shoo-shoo" gesture. "Thierry's mind is gone, Michael. Losing Angelica was enough; I cannot bear to see him suffer anymore. You must release him from his pain."



Everyone was focused on Mme. Durand, so Alex was pretty sure she was the only one who saw Cyprien flinch.



"Perhaps that is the most compassionate thing we can do for your poor nephew," Éliane said, and gave Alex a pitying smile. "Seeing as the doctor cannot help him."



"I didn't say that." Alex ignored the lovely urge to reach in the secretary's big mouth to yank out her larynx, and concentrated on Liliette. "Madame, your nephew has been through a terrible ordeal, but I wouldn't write him off just yet. Once he's free of pain, he may become more lucid and rational. Right now, his body is telling him that he's still being tortured. Considering the circumstances, his behavior is quite understandable."



"You can repair his body, but not his mind." A big man in a dark velvet robe hobbled in, followed by a slim teenage boy. The man wore a black eye patch and used a cane; the boy's hands were covered in bandages. Both were dark and had features that strongly resembled Thierry's. The faintest scents of sandalwood and fresh-cut grass surrounded them. "He will never be whole again."



Cyprien went to them. "You don't know that, Marcel. We must try."



"Here, Jamys." Marcel guided the silent boy over to stand beside Liliette. Their slow, hesitant movements made Alex wonder if these two Durands had gotten the hung-by-meat-hook treatment, too.



While Cyprien discussed Thierry's condition with his family, Alex made her own observations. Marcel and Liliette were convinced Thierry would not recover, and that killing him would be merciful. Oddly, Thierry's son said nothing, and seemed to be indifferent to the fact that his family was talking about putting his father down like a rabid animal.



Which is what he is, Alex thought sadly.



"I should perform the other exams now, Cyprien," she said when there was a lull in the conversation. "Is there another room I can set up in?" The second shot she'd given Thierry would keep him quiet for another hour, but the Durands didn't need to see his broken body in restraints.



"Éliane has prepared a treatment room for you on this floor," he said, and offered his hand to Liliette. "Come, madame, let Alexandra see to your arm."



After several weeks of traveling and arranging his new life, Lucan decided to stop in New Orleans. The Durands were there, although Michael Cyprien and his pet human doctor were missing. According to rumor, Alexandra Keller had given her restored but evidently ungrateful patient quite a chase.



"I overheard the master talking with his tresora about the new seigneur," one of Jaus's Kyn had confided to Lucan before he had separated the man's head from his shoulders. "Cyprien has two hundred Kyn searching the country for her."



Lucan personally didn't believe Cyprien wanted to do anything but silence the doctor. If Dr. Alexandra Keller was that valuable to the Kyn, Richard Tremayne would have dragged her off to Dundellan by now.



Lucan entered La Fontaine at night, through the roof. The Kyn who served Cyprien were alert and cautious, but they had not spent five lifetimes slipping in and out of darkened bedrooms. He moved through the house with ridiculous ease, inching through forgotten crawl spaces and sealed-off chutes that riddled the nineteenth-century house like secret tunnels.



He found a ventilation shaft and used it to observe two men stationed on either end of the hallway leading to the basement. Lucan noted the custom-made ammunition, explosive rounds filled with minute copper bearings and clad in pure copper casings.



So you are expecting me, Michael.



He did not challenge anyone—Cyprien was, as rumored, conspicuously absent—but located each of the Durands. After helping himself to the obliging human nurse stationed in the basement, he pondered what to do about Thierry.



I should kill him, Lucan thought, watching the madman pace around the narrow confines of his cell. He had never felt right about letting him live after Dublin. He had brought Thierry out to make a point to Richard—who had missed it altogether—but it was obvious that Michael's friend would never recover from his ordeal. Cyprien wouldn't do the honors; he was too tenderhearted to kill his childhood friend.



Lucan was still looking for something suitable to use to decapitate Thierry when Cyprien's private car drove up outside.



He found a listening post as Michael and Alexandra discussed the Durands, and watched as she injected herself with human blood. Her choice in siblings was a tragedy, but her modern ingenuity filled him with admiration. What a bright child she is. If Richard knew that Cyprien was concealing this half-human, half-Kyn oddity from him, he would have had his favorite rottweiler chew off Michael's pretty new face.



Yet Lucan was in no hurry to turn informant. He thought it might be more amusing to observe what surely would come to be a Kyn civil war from the new private nest he had built for himself in paradise. When immortal heads stopped rolling, he could step forward to serve, or kill his way to the throne.



What fascinated him even more was Cyprien's attempt to dominate Alexandra, and how he employed bribery and seduction when his show of authority failed to sway her.



Michael, old boy, I didn't think you had it in you.



To his disappointment, Alexandra put an abrupt end to the erotic interlude, and he was obliged to follow them down to the basement.