"I would respect your privacy, but there is no one else to whom I can turn." He guided her over to the recessed doorway of a clothing store, where gla.s.sed-in display fronts of the latest in plus-size women's wear framed a four-foot square of privacy. "Some of our kind were captured and tortured, as I was. We have tried to help them, but we need you to-"

"Our kind? We?" She wanted to grab the gun from her case and shoot him, but she hadn't loaded it. Stupid. She settled for grabbing a lapel and tugging gently on it. It parted from the rest of his suit like tissue paper. I really don't know my own strength. "You might want to rephrase that." She dropped the torn lapel. "Fast."

"You cannot deny what you have become, Alexandra." His expression changed. "You are cursed to be Darkyn. You are my sygkenis."

"Oh, for G.o.d's sake." She laughed, a deep, hearty belly laugh that seemed to shock him. "What are you, reading bad horror novels? I haven't taken any oath, and there is no curse. You don't own me. You infected me, you contagious jacka.s.s."

Cyprien's eyes narrowed. "You are not still human."

"Come and find out." Alex eyed Phillipe, who with the other thug had stepped into the small s.p.a.ce. "What the h.e.l.l is your problem?"

His scar turned pink and he rattled off something in quick, liquid French.

She turned to Cyprien. "In English?" "He says you should not disobey or insult your master."

Good old Phillipe. Always calm, always hovering, always concerned with not insulting the master. Was this how Cyprien expected her to behave?

"Right. Take a walk, Phil." The threat of violence broke Alex's already shaky self-control, and two hollow, pointed teeth punched through the bilateral abscesses at the front of her upper palate. She flashed her fangs for them. "I'm hungry, and you and your friend are starting to resemble a double cheeseburger."

When Phillipe advanced, Cyprien shook his head slightly, halting the seneschal in his tracks. Phillipe and the other guard retreated, turning their backs and forming a wall between them and the street.

"You have made the change." Cyprien sounded perplexed this time. "Yet you resist me."

"I told myself I wouldn't go back to New Orleans unless I was going to kill you." Alex took a long look at Cyprien's face. It was symmetrical, nearly flawless, and handsomer than she remembered. Absolutely her best work, careerwise. Too bad the medical journals would never publish an article on the hazards of operating on a bloodsucker.

He noticed the inspection. "What is it?"

"Any complications since the surgery?" she asked casually. "Pain, stiffness, scarring?"

"No." He bunked. "I am surprised you ask."

"You're the last patient I'll ever have." She had missed surgery-missed it like a limb that had been amputated-but she wouldn't take the chance of nicking herself with an instrument and infecting someone with the s.h.i.t he'd dumped in her blood. "I'd like to know I went out a winner."

"Discover for yourself." He took her hands and brought them to his face.

Alex couldn't resist palpating the tissues to feel the bone beneath. "Nice. Solid. Any problems?"

"Some numbness in the bones, at first." His breath warmed her palms as he spoke. "It went away."

"Good." She touched a spot on the side of his face. "This hinge right here, this was a disaster. Thought I'd never..."

She was touching him. Chatting with him. Feeling proud of herself for the work she'd done, for the perfection of the results. When the only reason Michael Cyprien had a new face was because she'd been kidnapped and forced to make it for him.

Remember how he paid the tab, Alex.

She dropped her hands and stepped back, suddenly more tired than she had felt since this whole nightmare began.

"Alexandra, I never meant to curse... to infect you. You must believe that."

"Yeah." He had done what he'd had to do, and what he'd done to her had probably been, as he'd said, an accident.

Which made it all the more pathetic. "Look, can't you just go away, leave me alone? I don't want to do this."

Cyprien took her hands in his again, but this time he simply held them. "I will not compel you to come to New Orleans, but I can offer you something in return. If you will help me, I will find the men who attacked your burn patient in Chicago."

Alex had kept tabs on Luisa Lopez through Sophia's attorney. He last reported her condition was improving, and her new doctor was arranging corneal transplants. The police intended to show her mug shots as soon as her vision was restored, but Luisa's mental state was such that they weren't sure she could make an ID or would be coherent enough to testify in court.

"I can find them myself." Guilt swamped Alex-she hadn't tried all that hard-but she could make that her next focal project. And how had Cyprien found out about Luisa? Why would he bother?

"Your resources are limited; mine are not." Cyprien tugged her closer. "Come to La Fontaine, and I will deliver these men into your hands."

He had her. He had her and he knew it, the son of a b.i.t.c.h. Alex jerked out of his grip. "What do you want this time?"

"Come with me." He gestured toward the street. "I will tell you everything."

Half a world away, in the bowels of La Lucemaria, novitiate John Keller emerged from the cubiculum where he had been sealed in for eight hours without food or light. His watch and personal possessions had been confiscated his first day of training, and he could no longer tell if it was dawn, noon, or midnight.

Waiting for him was his novitiate master, Brother Ettore Orsini.

"Ah, Brother Keller." Orsini allowed him a moment for his eyes to adjust to the light of the oil lamps that illuminated the gallery. "Did you have a restful night?"

John glanced back at the cubiculum, which was one of the smaller family tombs of La Lucemaria. The twenty loculi niches in its walls had all been stuffed with corpses on top of bones of other corpses, so he had slept on a mound of rotted linen in the center of the floor. It had felt like curling up on a cold stone postage stamp, but it was not the worst place he had slept in since beginning his training. On one memorable occasion, he had been forced to sleep in one of the stone sarcophagi, on top of a dusty corpse. With the lid on.

Part of his training was the rule of silence; John was not permitted to speak except to recite his daily paternosters, and those he murmured in a whisper. To answer a direct question, he either nodded or shook his head.

John nodded.

Orsini's thin lips stretched into the peculiar grimace that pa.s.sed as a sneer or a smile; John had never been sure which. "Do you wish to stop the training?" He asked John that question before every session.

John couldn't move naturally anymore. Strained muscles, lacerations, and aching bones made pain his constant companion. A ma.s.s of scabs covered the soles of his feet; he was not allowed to wear shoes and some of the stone floors had unexpected sharp edges.

Sometimes he forgot the pain while praying. Orsini required him to recite 148 paternosters each day, with John counting off the number said at the end of each prayer.

"Fourteen paternosters each hour," the novitiate master instructed, "and eighteen for the glory of G.o.d at vespers.

Then thirty when you wake each morning for the living, and thirty before you sleep for the dead."

Hunger gnawed at John as constantly as the pain. The food he was given to eat had been gradually reduced over time; he was now subsisting on a single slice of bread and a small cup of water each day. He knew the day ahead would push him to the limits of his endurance, and he wanted nothing more than to make it stop.

Orsini, ever vigilant for any sign of weakness, stepped closer. His voice took on a soft, understanding tone. "You have come far, Brother Keller, but you are tired, and hurt. No one will castigate you for giving up and choosing the path of the helot." He waited a few moments. "Your answer, Brother?"

John slowly shook his head.

Cardinal Stoss had warned John that if at any time during his training he balked or disobeyed the novitiate master, he would spend the rest of his days within the order as a "helot," one of the monks who had failed training and subsequently served the other Brethren by cooking, laundering, and cleaning for them.

"Bene." The monk turned and walked off, leaving John to hobble stiffly after him.

Had he earned a meal this morning? John never knew when he would be fed. In the beginning the thin porridge and overboiled vegetables they had offered him had disgusted him; now he dreamed about them as he chewed the rough black bread that was his only food. He had survived starvation as a child by stealing; here there was nothing for him to take. The only other nourishment he received was the sip of wine and the host wafer during the ma.s.s he attended every seventh day. Any mention or thought of food made saliva pool in his mouth, and by the third ma.s.s he attended he found himself unconsciously chewing the host.

One does not masticate the body of Christ, unless one is starving.

Orsini led him through the corridors to a room John had not seen before. The smell of the dead no longer registered; the sight of corpses no longer returned as nightmares when John slept. This room, however, was heavily barricaded, with a heavy steel door that was barred at the top, center, and bottom.

Inside the room, John knew, there would be a pair of brawny Italians for him to spar with, or a monk with a whip.

He was permitted to defend himself, and he did, but over the last weeks he had lost more bouts than he had won. If it was not another fight, then there would be some impossible task to be done. John had hunted and killed the rats that lived by the thousands in the catacombs, shifted stone blocks from one side of a tomb to the other, cleaned and rewrapped the bones of martyrs with holy water and fresh linens, and hauled away a hundred pails of standing, stagnant groundwater. He didn't know what was behind this door, but he was exhausted. He should have nodded when the novitiate master had asked him if he'd wanted to quit.

Orsini halted at the door and turned to him. "This is your final trial, Brother Keller."

John could have gone to his knees and wept. The novitiate master had promised him that after the final trial his training would be complete. Instead, he nodded carefully.

"In this room is what all Brethren must face: evil. One of the maledicti who stand between us and salvation. You will believe it is a man. It looks like us and talks like us. You may talk to it, reason with it, or surrender to it." Orsini held out a familiar crucifix, one that all the Brethren wore. The cross and the chain it was suspended from were fashioned out of pure copper. "Or you may banish it and its evil from this earth, never to feed off the living, never to pollute G.o.d's children with its foul intentions. The choice is yours."

John took the crucifix in his hand, and thought about hanging it around his throat. Remembering the bra.s.s knuckles sported by leg breakers back in Chicago, he carefully wound the chain around his fingers.

Orsini removed the bars from the door, and opened it. "G.o.d go with you, Brother."

John stepped inside and swept his gaze around the room. He found himself murmuring a paternoster, not out of habit, but out of fear. "Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name..."

It was empty except for a naked man sitting in one corner. The man rose to his feet and said something in a low, strained voice.

Spanish, John thought. He's speaking Spanish, not Italian.

Now that John faced his final adversary, he didn't know if he could go through with what he was charged to do.

The Brethren believed this man to be a vampire, and had gone to great lengths to convince John that such creatures existed.

But this was just a man. A naked man, with dried blood on his body and a beseeching look in his eyes.

"Que quieres usted?" the prisoner repeated.

"Do you speak English?" John asked. It had been so long since he had spoken out loud that the words came out hoa.r.s.e and dry.

"Yes." He looked down. "You are bleeding, amigo."

Walking tore the scabs off; it was why his feet had never healed. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done. John looked down at the blood on the floor, and back up at the prisoner, who was licking his dry lips. "You want my blood?" On earth as it is in heaven.

Incredibly, he nodded. "It is how I live."

Give us this day our daily bread. John gripped the crucifix so hard the edges cut into his skin. "You believe that you're a vampire?"

The prisoner's dark brown eyes turned sad. "These men have not lied to you. I am Darkyn."

And forgive us our trespa.s.ses. "You're as crazy as they are." John took a step toward the door and then hesitated. The odor of the dead had disappeared, and something else filled the air. Something soft and subtle and enticing.

"Don't leave me here alone, amigo," the man said, very tentatively. "We can help each other."

As we forgive those who trespa.s.s against us. John slowly turned back to look at the prisoner. He was moving toward him, his hands out in supplication.

"You are in pain, and I am in pain," the man continued, his voice soothing. "We need not suffer like this. I can heal you, and you can help me escape. There is so much more to the world than this endless praying and self-denial."

And lead us not into temptation. John shook his head and backed up against the door.

"Don't be afraid." The words were beginning to sound slurred, as if the prisoner were drunk. "I can take away your pain, give you what you have denied yourself for so long. I only ask for my freedom in return." He stopped a few inches away and reached out to touch John's cheek. It was a strange gesture, almost paternal. "They have tortured you, as if you were one of us, yes?"

What Orsini had done to him-it had been torture. "Yes." "You are safe with me." His smile revealed strong, white teeth. "Put away the cross. My soul is not in any peril; I do not have one. It has no power over me."

John glanced down. He had raised the cross, holding it between them as if to ward off the man. Like some low-budget horror film. The smell of the perfume grew stronger, but it was a lovely, nonthreatening scent. There was nothing to fear from this poor soul. He was friendly, even charming. Surely he would follow through on his promises, take away his pain. He could not be what Brother Orsini had said. He could not be...

Evil... between us and salvation... surrender to it... banish it from this earth...

But deliver us from evil.

"Come to me, Padre," the prisoner said.

Padre. That was what the girl in Rio had called him. Hei, padre... Hei, padre... Hei, padre...

It cleared John's head, enough to allow him to see the man's eyes. They were not beautiful or sad anymore; they were changing, the pupils contracting to thin slits, demonic slits. The kindness and warmth he had seen before had turned alien and predatory.

Like she had been.

John could not get past deliver us from evil.

The choice is yours.

If he was wrong, no harm would be done. "In the name of the Father," he rasped, and thrust the cross into the man's face.

Flesh burned. A huge gash appeared.

The prisoner screamed and threw himself away from John, his mouth unhinging and opening, turning into a snake's mouth, revealing two long, sharp canines.

John nearly collapsed against the door, but kept his shaking arm extended and the cross raised in front of him.

"You are what they say."

The edges of the diagonal gash John's crucifix had made across the vampire's face slowly began to pull together. "As are you, amigo." He lunged forward, arms reaching.

As Orsini had drilled him to do, over and over, John pressed the tiny depression at the back of the crucifix. A narrow copper stiletto slid out of the base. He turned the blade so that when the vampire grabbed him, the point entered his chest at an angle. An acrid, burning odor filled John's nose as the man stood suspended, skewered by the copper blade rammed through his heart. When John pulled it out, the vampire made a helpless, gurgling sound deep in his chest.

"I send you back to h.e.l.l, demon," John whispered as the monster slid down the front of him. He grabbed the vampire by the hair, and went behind him before dragging the blade across the straining throat. Dark blood gushed out, and he pushed the body face-first into the puddle it made on the floor.

The vampire twitched violently and then went still.

For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory.

John stood holding the dripping blade, a sweet roaring in his head. A soft blue glow filled the room, accompanied by a thousand whisper-soft, sweet voices. It was as if all the angels in heaven had gathered to clamor and call to him, and he lost himself in their song.