"I am assigned to follow him." She sat down facing the bishop, flashing her panties at him before crossing her legs. "Keller will find where the maledicti have his sister. He will attempt to save her, as you have no doubt instructed him to. Once I know where she is, she is mine."

Hightower turned faintly purple. "I made it clear to Rome that I didn't want either of them killed."

Gelina sighed as she took out her mobile phone, dialed the number of Stoss's private line, and handed the phone to the bishop. "Speak to Rome, then, Your Grace."

"Cardinal, forgive me, but this woman you sent says she will—" Hightower stopped speaking and listened for several minutes. The high color in his cheeks gradually faded.

Gelina had no idea what Stoss was saying to Hightower, but imagined it was something unpleasant in the extreme. The only time she had ever challenged the cardinal's authority—only very mildly, and simply to see how he would react, of course—Stoss had put her back in the chamber where she had serviced the Brethren. He'd let her sit there alone for two hours before he released her. Then Stoss had told her that if he was ever forced to put her back in that cell, she would spend the rest of her life there, and she would never have ten minutes to be alone.

"Yes," Hightower said at last. "I understand. No, there will be no impediment here. We will be in contact. Good-bye." He switched off the phone and handed it back to Gelina.

"As you see, Your Grace, our orders are very clear. The doctor dies." Gelina rucked her stiletto into the valley between her breasts. "But I will make sure that I personally return her brother to you."

She did not lie to the bishop. She would take Keller to Arizona and play with him for several weeks. Then she would send the bishop his beloved young priest by parcel service, one carefully, lovingly wrapped piece at a time.

Chapter Seventeen

"Are we done walking now?"

"No." Michael guided Alexandra around a group of Japanese tourists snapping photos of the wrought iron fence enclosing a famous cemetery. When one of them aimed a lens in their direction, he turned his face away. "You wanted to know about the curse, and what it is to be Darkyn, and I have much to tell you that cannot be said in a bar."

"I don't believe in curses. We could go to a restaurant."

Few visited the cemetery at night; he turned and led her in past one of the open gates. "What would we order?"

"A butcher's shop, then." She looked around. "Do you take all your dates to such nice places?"

"It is quiet." He stopped and gestured for her to sit on a visitors' bench under a drooping willow. "I told you that Thierry's family and mine lived in the fourteenth century."

"I'm having a hard time with that part." She gestured toward the stones engraved with the names of the dead. "Human life is finite. Seventy-five to a hundred years. You're saying you've lived seven times that. Even with your ability to heal, what about disease? Accidents? Things you couldn't heal from? You had to have run into those, and with no doctors to fix you…" She shook her head.

"In my natal time, there were all of those things, as well as wars, and famine, and terrible plagues. When Thierry, Gabriel, and I last came home from war, there was terrible sickness in our town. The same pestilence that killed so many in the time of our grandfathers."

"The Black Death."

He nodded and sat down beside her. "When it came, it took everyone: kings, dukes, barons, priests, villeins, thieves. We had to give up our swords and dig graves."

Her hand crept over his. "Did you get sick, too?"

"I did." He remembered that distant, horrific day when he had come home from the funeral for Thierry and Gabriel, weeping and sweating and wishing he were dead. His page had already died, so a spit boy had been dispatched from the scullery to help him remove his coat and tunic. The boy had run away shrieking. "After I buried my friends, I was struck down with the same malady. I remember three days of fever and sickness, and then I died."

"You think you died."

"I know I did. I clawed my way out of the mass grave in which I had been buried." He stared at the boxy gray marble tomb across from them. Angels had been carved into the heavy slab sealing the entrance. "The villeins, the priest, our families—what was left of them—were waiting for me. Fortunately Gabriel and Thierry had already risen."

"Mike, they made a mistake," she said, and squeezed his hand. "You were probably in a deep coma, and they didn't know, and they buried you alive."

"We thought that, because it did sometimes happen in our time, but the people waiting for me were not happy. Thierry came and held them off with his swords, but the people carried torches, as well, and chased us into the forest. Thierry's cousin became separated from the others, and we disarmed him and tried to talk to him. He called us 'dark kyn' and said that we were sent to feed on the living. That we had to burned."

"They were a superstitious bunch."

Michael could still see the terror on the young man's face as he spit curses at them. "Thierry grew angry, and then his eyes changed and he had fangs in his cousin's throat. It was wrong, and I tried to pull him away, until I smelled the blood. There was no thought, only a terrible need. Then I was on the other side, biting into Thierry's cousin and drinking his blood."

Her hand withdrew from his. "The cousin didn't make it back out of the forest, I guess."

"No one did, until Gabriel and Thierry and I learned what we were and how to control ourselves. It took time, Alexandra. We were well-trained warriors, but we were also terribly ignorant about the simplest things. None of us could read or speak anything but our dialect. In our experience, nothing like our rising had ever happened before."

"That's why you assumed it was a curse."

"We tried to kill each other, but we discovered that we wouldn't die. Every wound healed; we couldn't even drown. Of course it had to be a curse. All we could do was wait in terror for Satan to summon us to do his bidding. The Dark One never showed up, however." She was drawing away from him. "You must understand that the church had taught us everything we knew. It condemned us as demons. Our families paid mercenaries to hunt and kill us. Then there were our needs. The need for blood was so strong that it made us monsters."

"Let's skip that part. How did you find the other Darkyn?"

"Thierry, Thierry's wife—Angelica—and her brother Gabriel and I had found each other after we rose. We banded together and hid until we could arrange sanctuary." The old bitterness rose inside him. "When our families realized that they would never catch or kill us, they sent messengers to bargain. The dirty secret of their dark kyn had to be concealed, had to go away, or our presence would be reported. The church would send the Brethren to execute us and our families. Anyone who had dark kyn was considered to be of tainted blood. Indeed, some of them later rose to walk the night with us."

Alexandra looked up at the full moon. "Why do you avoid the daylight? It doesn't burn you into ash like in the movies."

"We are nocturnal by nature." He sensed some movement outside the cemetery gate and allowed his focus to shift. "Sunlight irritates our skin and eyes and makes us languorous. We are slower to heal, and our talents do not work as well. Nor does l'attrait."

"Le what?"

"The attraction—what you call our scent." He lifted her hand toward his face and breathed in the scent from her forearm. "Yours is… il sent comme la lavande."

"Is that French for 'You stink'?"

"It means 'lavender.'"

"Huh." She sniffed at her wrist. "I thought I smelled more like a grape Popsicle."

"L'attrait is not truly noticeable unless you feel strong emotions, use talent, or hunt. Then, my dear doctor, you smell." He dropped her hand. "You do not have a single ounce of poetry in your soul, do you?"

That hurt a little. "Wasn't a big priority in medical school." She sniffed. "You've got roses. Phil smells like honeysuckle, Thierry like gardenia, and Marcel like a mowed lawn. Is it only nice scents, or are there Kyn running around who smell like rotten eggs and dog puke?"

A laugh burst from him. "Only nice."

"You make people forget. What kind of mind tricks can the others do?"

"Talent is a private matter. We may know of another's talent, but we do not discuss it." He saw her belligerent expression. "Very well. You are aware of my talent, and Phillipe's. My friend Gabriel could summon and control huge swarms of insects."

"I'll pass on meeting Gabriel, then. What about marriage and kids?"

"I do not understand."

"Do the Darkyn marry humans? Do they adopt children? You know, have as seminormal a life as possible?"

"We abstained from having relationships with women until a few rose and we discovered we could turn others." Michael was leaving out the reasons for their abstinence, but didn't think Alexandra was ready to hear that part of the story. "Our tresori are human, and some provide pleasure for us, but relationships and children, even adopted ones, are dangerous. I suppose you could say that we avoid them."

"Why? I mean, I understand not wanting to love someone who is going to get old and die on you, but how could anyone stand living forever alone?"

Michael imagined a future without Alexandra in it. The power and control and position for which he had worked so long now seemed cold comfort. "The Brethren are more than willing to torture humans as well as Darkyn. If you loved someone, like a son, or a husband"—he looked into her eyes—"would you wish him to endure what I did? If he was human, he would not survive it."

"I see what you mean." Her eyes went to the gate. "Someone's coming."

Michael watched the young woman finally enter the gate and walk slowly toward them. "She is drawn by l'attrait." He rose and held out a hand. "Come here, chérie."