If Angels Burn

Blindfolded and dying in the dark she feared so much, Leann wept at first. Then she gave Gelina the respect she so richly deserved and listened to every gory detail. She was so quiet that Gelina poked her at the end, to be sure she was still conscious.



"What do you think, eh? I like the part where I make him eat his own testicles best." She had read that in a book about the Inquisition, and had not yet had the time or subject to try it out herself.



"I'm sorry for you," Leann whispered.



Gelina laughed. "For me? I am not the one hemorrhaging all over this lovely beige carpet, Ms. Pollock. I am going to live. I am going to catch your friend and her brother. I hope very much that I will be able to play with both of them."



Leann began to mumble something. Gelina had to lean close to hear it. It was the Twenty-third Psalm, the lovely lyrical song of faith that the monks had made Gelina recite whenever she was whipped.



It enraged her.



"There is no God," she shouted at the dying woman, hitting her over and over. "Only the valleys of shadows and pain and death. Only hell, you stupid bitch, and it is mine. All mine."



Leann had stopped praying. "I know." Blood bubbled up from her split lips. "And I am sorry for you."



Gelina ripped off the blindfold. "Are you sorry now?" She used her long, sharp nails on Leann's face and throat, tearing at her like an animal. When both of her hands were dripping red, she licked the blood from them and spit it in the woman's ruined face. "Now who is sorry? Eh? Who is sorry?"



Leann didn't answer. She only stared at the candle burning next to her head, her eyes wide and grateful, the pupils fixed.



Phillipe found Alex in a tourist bar called Midnight Sax in the Quarter, where she was sitting in a dark corner and drinking a bottle of ale. On stage a large black woman sang a slow, sad song, but Alex wasn't paying any attention to her. She was watching a heavyset man at the table next to her. The man sat alone and was drinking heavily.



Since his master had brought Alexandra back to La Fontaine, Phillipe had tried to do what he could to make her comfortable. As Cyprien's seneschal, it was his duty, and Phillipe still felt partially responsible for her situation.



He also liked Alexandra. She reminded him of his sister, Maere, who had been just as small and dark and terrifying in her fearlessness. Maere had nursed him when the sickness came, catching the sickness from him, and died a few days after he had risen to walk with the Kyn. In secret Phillipe had watched her simple grave for months after her death, but few women were cursed, and Maere stayed in the ground.



Phillipe did not wish to haunt Alexandra's grave.



He walked over and sat down in the empty chair beside her. "How is the ale?" he asked in his careful English.



Alexandra regarded the bottle in her hand. "Corona is beer, Phil. And it's too warm." She looked over at the heavyset man.



Phillipe studied the man, too. He had bruises on his fists and the small, sour features of a bully.



"Cyprien send you to get me?" She didn't wait for him to answer. "He wouldn't chase me himself. No, he'd send a flunky to do it. Does he think he can tell me to go out and grab someone in the middle of the night?" she asked the ale bottle. "If he does, he'll be picking those pretty white teeth of his out of the carpeting."



"The master wishes you return." He waited a minute, but she said nothing. "Alexandra, please?"



"I heard you. Your master can bite my ass."



"If he try, you hit him." He hated her language—even German made more sense—and shook his head. "My joke, not so good. Like my English."



"No, actually, it was pretty decent." She sighed. "Tell me something, Phil. Have you guys really been alive since twelve hundred something?"



"Oui."



"You're really seven hundred years old." She rested her cheek against her fist.



"I do not know exact," he told her. How did he put into English that he had been a simple peasant, and no one bothered to record the year of his birth? That part of his life existed only in the cycle of the seasons he had spent working in the fields. Cyprien was his senior by a handful of years; he could remember him as a young lordling, riding by the cottage where he and his father lived. "A little less than the master."



"You don't get it, Phil. I just fucked a seven-hundred-year-old man."



Phillipe knew that, but only because he had changed Cyprien's bed linens. He should say something to make her feel better about it. "Congratulations?"



Alexandra looked at him and burst out laughing. Her laughter made him smile, but then, many things about her did.



"Come on, Phil." She got up from her seat and held out her hand.



He took it and she pulled him to his feet. "We go back now, oui?"



"No." She dragged him by the arm out to the clear space in front of the stage. "We're going to dance."



Under the smoldering stare of the woman singing, Phillipe froze. Her song was slow and sensual, the music laced with sex and regret. "I do not do this."



"You do tonight." She studied his face. "You don't know how?" He shook his head. "It's easy. You hold me"—Alexandra pulled his limp arms around her—"and move me around. Come on, you can do it."



Phillipe suspected he would walk unshod over red-hot plowshares for her, so he gathered her close and moved her around the floor.



"Slower. Watch my toes. Yeah, like that." She rested a soft cheek against him. "This is nice."



Since he had no basis of comparison—his life had been many things, but never nice—he took her word for it. But it was pleasant, to hold her, to listen to the song, and to move this way.



"Why have you stayed with him all this time?"



He took a minute to translate the English into French. "No other… place for me. I serve him. Make… oath, yes? To stay. Protect."



"You're just as powerful as he is." She looked up and then down over him. "You're not bad-looking, for the strong, silent tank type. Women love French accents. You could go anywhere, do anything, be anything that you wanted."



Phillipe lost her at type but understood the gist of what she was saying. "I not say right. Cyprien is master, but he… ma seule famille. No one more." Over the top of her head, he watched the heavyset man rise and go to the privy. "Not like you."



"No, not like me. My only family dumped me for God." She sighed and rubbed her forehead against his jacket. "I didn't ask for this, Phil. I love him, but I do not need his shit. I was doing fine without his shit."



He didn't understand why she equated the master's business with fertilizer, but asking would only annoy her. "Love is free, Alexandra, but it brings… duty. Obligation."



"You got that right."



Cautiously he lifted a hand and touched her curls, then eased his fingertips into them and massaged her scalp. A harlot in Bayonne had once shown him how to do it, and claimed nothing relaxed a woman more.



"Not so fine, be alone, no one to love. Marcel, the boy, Thierry… they have need for you." He hesitated for a moment before adding, "Cyprien has need for you. Very large." And with her in his arms, like this, he could certainly understand his master's desire.



"Yeah. Huge. It would look great in white marble." Alex pulled out of his arms. "That's enough dancing for tonight."



Phillipe silently followed her back to the table. She looked at the empty chair where the heavyset man had been sitting, made a disgusted sound, and took a swig from the bottle. A second later she thumped the bottle down. "I've been able to tolerate small amounts of liquid before now. Why is this making me sick?"



"Blood not make you sick."



She glared at him, and then smacked herself in the head. "His semen, of course. How could I be so frigging stupid? It's as bad as his blood. I can't have that. I need to run tests on myself. I need to cure this thing or I'll never be a doctor again."



Cyprien had told Phillipe about how the doctor was using injections to slow the process. Human death was something Alexandra had yet to experience. Would she survive the final change, or like Maere, would she stay in the ground?



"Is so bad," he asked her at last, "be Kyn? Be Kyn docteur?"



She gave him an unreadable look and got to her feet. "Excuse me, I have to go and throw up my beer now."



Phillipe followed Alexandra to the privy marked on the door with a symbol for women. He knew that meant he had to wait outside, or any females inside would start shouting at him. When she came out, he would find enough English to reason with her and convince her to come back to the mansion. If that didn't work, he would do as Cyprien had ordered and compel her.



He hoped the English would work. He did not like using his ability on Alexandra. He would obey his master—there was no question of that—but she deserved… better.



Alexandra came out of the women's privy at the same time the heavyset man came out of the one marked for men. Drink had made the man unsteady, and he collided with Alexandra.



"Git out my way, ya twit." He gave her a hard shove to the side.



Alexandra grabbed a handful of the bully's flannel shirt and used it to push him back into the men's privy.



Phillipe swore ripely and went in after them. He expected to find Alexandra in danger, not pinning the red-faced man between two paper towel dispensers.



"You like knocking women around, don't you?"



The bully raised a knotted fist. "Turn me loose or I'll knock you on your silly ass."



"You'll find"—she took his right forefinger and broke it—"it's a little harder"—she did the same to his left—"to do that when you're in traction."



The man squealed and doubled over, cradling his broken fingers against his belly. "You crazy! What you done to me!"



"Stop, Alexandra." Alarmed now, Phillipe tried to tug her back.