Rain gave him a smug look. "And I didn't even have to use soap."

Pain washed the darkness purple, then red.

Kyan had not felt such sensations in decades, not since his training in the catacombs. Even then, the brothers had been careful not to administer too much pain. Enough to chastise, but not enough to enrage.

Even then, they had feared him.

He opened his eyes to colorless darkness and took stock of his physical condition. He had several painful contusions on his scalp, thanks to Melanie's fury with the tree branch. Two spots of heat burned on the inside of his right arm, confirming that he had been used by the maledicti for blood.

He would survive the head injuries, but the loss of blood was a more serious matter. It had left him weak and unsteady. He needed to replace the lost fluid as quickly as possible, for it was the only thing that would restore his balance and strength.

The smell of resin and wood dust filled his nose. His hands and legs were tightly bound with old, dry rope. The wood against his back had been seasoned, stripped of all moisture. The earth beneath him was bone-dry. As weak as he was, it would take him forever to gather what he needed to revitalize his body, heal his wounds, and escape.

The sound of a bolt sliding made him look up, and the door to the shed opened. The American girl stood in silhouette, looking in at him.

"Release me."

She came in and closed the door behind her. "You really are crazy if you think I'm going to do that."

She was angry with him, of course. "I am not deranged. I am trying to protect you."

"Protect me?" she echoed, incredulous. "You pointed a gun at me. You kidnapped me. You tied me to a tree. Then you stabbed that nice man." In English she added, "You fucking idiot."

Kyan had to make her understand how much danger she was in. "That man is not nice. He is a killer."

"Like you'd know, right?" She came over and tugged on the ropes around his legs and arms. "Don't start celebrating. I just wanted to make sure you can't get loose and hurt anybody."

Kyan tried again. "The man inside the cabin is not human."

She smirked. "Yeah, I thought his chest was pretty godlike myself."

"He is a demon, a real demon," he insisted. "He will take what he wants from you and leave you to die."

"Dude, please," she said. "He, like, untied me from the branch and made me some Gatorade."

Kyan strained at the ropes. "He is deceiving you. That is how they trap their prey."

Now she snorted. "Right, I'm going to believe that coming from you, Mr. Honesty."

"You have to believe me," he said. "He will kill you if you don't execute him first. Find the dagger I used on him. It will be in the cabin somewhere. You must stab him in the heart with it. If you cannot do that, thrust it into the back of his neck. It is the only way you can kill his kind."

Melanie laughed. "Oh, man. I did hit you on the head too hard."

"I am not joking." He had to convince her, and the only way to do that was with the complete truth. "The man inside the cabin is a vampire. He lives on human blood. There are no others here for him to feed on besides you and me. Can't you see? He will have to use us as food, or he will die."

She gave him a strange look. "Really."

"Melanie, please. I know I should not have abducted you and tied you to the tree. That was wrong. But I am trying to save your life now."

"Maybe you're wrong," she said. "Maybe he's not a vampire. Maybe he's a werewolf who's going to, like, rip out our throats and take a bath in our blood." She tilted her head. "If I turned into a werewolf, do you think my fur would be blond?"

"Melanie."

"If you're truly this crazy. I shouldn't be making fun of you, I guess. I am sorry I hit you." Rain rattled on the roof of the shed. "I'm going back inside. Good night."

Before Kyan could say another word, she left, locking the shed door behind her.

Kyan closed his eyes and concentrated. Tiny drops of her saliva hung in the air, his to command. He gathered them together and sent them out through a crack in the shed to join with drops of rain pelting the ground. He created a thin stream of water and funneled it after Melanie as she ran back into the cabin. He sent the stream under the door and dispersed it, surrounding her with a mist too fine for her to see. His water entered her body through the fluid in her eyes.

He couldn't read her, but he could see, hear, and smell what she did. He watched her take a can of soup from the kitchen cabinet. He heard the sound of a moan, and smelled blood. He heard her light footsteps as she walked down the hall. The scent of blood grew stronger as she opened the bedroom door a few inches. He saw with Melanie the girl and the demon on the bed, their bodies locked together in a passionate embrace. He tasted the sex-drenched air, and watched the girl sink her teeth into the demon's throat, his blood spilling into her mouth.

Now that she saw it with her own eyes, Kyan thought, satisfied, she would do as he had told her.

Melanie did not return to the kitchen; nor did she look for his copper dagger. She slowly walked out into the rain and moved away from the cabin, heading toward the pier and Kyan's boat.

* * *

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."