As she climbed over him to lie down on his other side, Gabriel tried to fathom what she had said. She seemed a ma.s.s of contradictions, with the confidence of a seasoned, experienced woman, the audacity of a rebellious adolescent, and the playfulness of a girl just coming into her womanhood. She did have a rather simplistic way of expressing herself, but he suspected it was due more to a lack of formal education than any defect of mind.

Unless...

Gabriel remembered tracing her features but not feeling any age lines or wrinkles, and a sudden, cold dread filled him. "How old are you, Nicola?"

She curled up against him. "I don't celebrate birthdays anymore. No family, so no one brings me any cake or presents."

The remark sounded offhand, but he heard the loneliness beneath it. "If you did, how old would you be?"

"Twenty-six, although I still get carded everywhere I go." The gruff voice again, this time tinged with resentment.

He relaxed. "Good."

"No, it's a pain. So, how about this thing with you?"

He had not celebrated a birthday since rising to walk the night. "I am much older than twenty-six."

"I mean, how did this thing between you vampires and the holy freaks get started?" Her hair brushed his chest just before her cheek touched his shoulder. "Long story?"

He imagined condensing seven hundred years of their secret war into a comprehensive anecdote. "I think, yes, it is."

"You don't have to tell me now." She yawned. "We've got plenty of time."

Putting his arm around her and tucking her closer against his side felt only natural. "What else can I give you for helping me?"

"Some s.e.x would be nice." She lifted her head. "Not now, but you know. After we sleep, before we get to Toulouse." Her voice became uncertain. "It wasn't just from being locked up for so long, was it? You do like me, don't you?"Like her? He was half in love with her already.

Gabriel dared to lift a hand and bring her head back to its resting place. He had no right to claim her, not as young and trusting as she was. Nor would he reject her request.

"I like you very much." Her hair bubbled through his fingers, effervescent silk. "You must tell me if I ask more of you than you wish to give."

"Let's see: I've given you freedom, blood, and a quick but pretty good o.r.g.a.s.m. It didn't kill me." She snuggled close to him. "Go to sleep, Gabriel. We'll figure it out on the way to your place."

Chapter 11.

With Richard now holding John hostage, Alex had no choice but to abandon her plans to escape Dundellan. She spent a day a.n.a.lyzing Richard's blood and tissue samples while she tried to think of how to convince the high lord to return her brother to the States. The rats in her brain didn't want to run through that maze, however.

All she could think of was her lover, and where he was, and why the h.e.l.l he hadn't come to get her.

The separation anxiety had gotten bad. Twice she was tempted to ram her head into an expensive piece of equipment to stop herself from thinking about Michael, wishing she could see Michael, and other symptoms of what she was beginning to see as total Michael Cyprien withdrawal.

When they got back together, she and Michael were going to have a very long talk about what it meant to be a sygkenis. He was going to tell her everything about it this time, because she wasn't going cold turkey like this again.

Other distractions helped. Korvel had posted two guards outside the lab, but the captain came and personally checked on her several times during the day. It was near twilight when he made an unusual request.

"Lady Elizabeth wishes to know what progress you are making," the seneschal said as he studied the beaker of fluid she was measuring into tubes. "What are you doing?"

"Mixing up some plastic explosive so I can blow this place to Mars." She gave him a guileless look. "Got any fuse cord you can spare?"

"Be serious, Doctor."

"You know what I'm doing, Captain." Alex queued the first profile pages from the a.n.a.lyzer to print. "Tissue biopsies, standard blood tests, and a little genetic look-see. Right now I'm breaking down your lord and master's blood into separate components.

Who's this Lady Elizabeth?"

"She is my lord's wife."

"He's married!" Alex instantly thought of eliane. Poor Blondie, in love with a two-timing monster. "Since when?"

"I believe the banns were posted in twelve thirty-four." He hovered behind her, looking down at the neat pile of reports feeding out from the printer. "You can make copies of those?"

"Sure." She tapped a few keys to produce a second set. "Although if you're going to give them to Lady Liz, you'd better call in a consultant. I doubt she'll be able to decipher them."

"My lady has some knowledge of the master's condition," Korvel said, "and is keen to follow what progress you make."

"a.s.suming I make any. What I found today only tells me that your master should be dead." She printed out duplicate reports and stacked them in a file. "Where is this chick? I'd like to meet someone who's put up with being married to the b.a.s.t.a.r.d and his bulls.h.i.t for seven hundred plus years. She's got to have some very unique coping skills."

"Lady Elizabeth resides in the west wing." Korvel held out his hand. "I shall take them to her."

"Seriously, it really would help if I could speak with her myself." Alex felt the loose twist of hair at the back of her head slipping but kept her poker face on. "Richard claims to have been suffering from regular blackouts ever since he became a changeling.

Maybe she can fill in some of the details that he can't remember."

"I shall relay your request to her." He took the file from her. "You have worked through the night and day. It is time for you to feed and rest."

Alex stretched. "Sounds good to me."

Korvel checked her pockets and jacket before he escorted her from the dungeon to her new room. In this one they had removed all of the furnishings except a bed and a table. There were no security cameras, but copper bars had been welded over the two windows, and the door to the adjoining suite had been fitted with a dead bolt. An open bottle of wine and an empty gla.s.s had been placed on the table, and a set of fresh, folded scrubs sat on the end of the bed.

"See you tomorrow," Alex said as the seneschal locked her in the room. She went over and poured herself a gla.s.s of bloodwine, grimacing at the taste as she drank it. Somehow all the blood at Dundellan tasted slightly off. "Nothing like a lousy daycap." She released the clip holding the twist of her hair and the slim screwdriver she had concealed under it, and went over to work on the dead bolt.

It took ten minutes to remove the back plate of the dead bolt and release the lock from the inside of the mechanism.

No one occupied the adjoining bedroom, but it had not been stripped, and Alex took a couple of hairpins and a small diamond brooch from an exquisite porcelain jewelry box sitting on the vanity. Knowing Korvel would check her pockets if he found her wandering around, she tucked them inside her bra before moving to the hall door and opening it a crack.

No guards; the corridor was empty.

Alex had not been given a tour of Dundellan, but she had memorized every part of it she had seen during her earlier attempts to escape, and recognized where she was. It took a short, quick walk down the hall and through another to get to the west wing.

She expected to see guards, but evidently Lady Elizabeth liked her privacy. Now to figure out which of the dozen rooms is hers- Sweet, sweet boy.

The cloying scent of lilies flooded Alex's head, along with the image of a young man in a white satin robe. Scarlet stains spotted the lapels, and more blood seeped from a fresh bite wound on his throat. Fear and horror plainly showed in his eyes, open so wide that Alex could see the whites all around the dark brown irises.

They tried to keep you from me, did they not? When I summoned you.

Alex staggered under the force of the laughing, murderous thoughts, bracing herself with a hand against a wall as more images poured into her mind.An older man with long brown hair appeared beside the boy in the white robe. He knelt, bare chested and sweating, with his hands tied behind his back. A nude woman with short black hair shuffled over and crouched to huddle beside him.

The boy in the white robe didn't twitch a muscle, but tears began dripping down his cheeks.

I will make her bleed for you. Daggerlike nails attached to a dark, monstrous hand whipped across the nude woman's throat, opening the arteries with a violent spray of red.

The boy stood frozen, his eyes riveted on the dying woman, while the bound man lurched forward, his mouth opening on a scream- Alex groped until she found a doork.n.o.b, and stumbled into a room. The scent of lilies closed around her like a cool, perfumed hand.

"Good evening." A woman in a pale lemon gown looked up from the hoop of embroidery in her hands. "You would be Dr.

Keller."

"Alex. Hi." She had to blink a few times before her head cleared, and then the dazzling lights reflecting around the room itself made her a little dizzy. It looked as if the whole place had been lined with gold mirrors. "You Lady Elizabeth?"

"I am." Elizabeth placed her needlework in a basket by her hip. She stood and dipped into an elegant curtsy. "Please come in; join me."

Alex squinted through the glare of the room, most of which seemed to be coming from the twelve-foot mirrored wall panels.

Once her dazzled eyes adjusted, she could see that they actually were solid, yellow-orange mirrors that reflected the light coming from the flame-shaped bulbs in dozens of bra.s.s candelabra sprouting from the walls. More gla.s.sy, polished doodads in every shade of yellow from dark topaz to pale sunshine glittered from pretty little shelves and niches.

The aroma of honey, cognac, lilies, and some sort of oil greeted Alex. The unusual combination seemed to be mostly coming from the gilded walls.

Alex checked out the floor, which had been paved with inlaid rare woods and bits of ivory and more topaz-colored stones to form a very ornate mosaic, before she focused on the other woman. "Where's your husband?"

"I cannot say." Elizabeth smiled like a blond Mona Lisa. "I see you're admiring my chamber. There is nothing like it in the world."

Except the color of urine from a patient in kidney failure. Alex tried to think of something kind to say. "Very, uh, bright and cheerful." If you were into having your retinas fried.

"It is the ???????????????."

"Bless you."

Richard's wife chuckled. "That is the proper name, Doctor. In English it means 'the Amber Room.'"

"This is it?" Even Alex had heard of Czar Peter the Great's eighteenth-century jeweled chamber, which had been stolen by the n.a.z.is and vanished during the Second World War. "The real deal."

"Yes. Just before the initiation of World War Two, my husband persuaded the Russians to allow him to remove it and keep it safe from n.a.z.i looters." She moved to an onyx-and-marble mosaic and caressed its ornate edge. "It took the Prussian artisans six tons of solid amber and ten years to create this room."

"That's terrific." Actually, it was a bit creepy, considering that amber often held bugs trapped in the fossilized tree sap, but Alex could be polite. "When are you planning to give it back?"Elizabeth gave her a pitying look. "My dear, the Russians believe it was destroyed by fire in Konigsberg over sixty years ago."

Alex frowned. "So you stole it."

"Amber that is not given proper attention will crumble into dust," Elizabeth said. "I saved the greatest artwork ever to be created in amber."

That was one way of looking at it. "Didn't I read something about some millionaire industrialist re-creating the room from some old pictures and diagrams of the original?"

"A paltry imitation." Elizabeth's face darkened. "Nothing can compare to the true beauty of my Amber Room."

"I guess not." Alex noticed most of the niches were occupied by amber statues of a very familiar female. "You're Catholic, I take it."

"I was." Richard's wife returned to the velvet settee and picked up her embroidery. "Sit down, Doctor. We have much to discuss."

Alex took a seat in one of the tapestry-covered chairs, which was about as comfortable as sitting on a canvas-covered rock. So much for great art. "I a.s.sume you know that your husband kidnapped me and brought me here against my will."

"Richard is the high lord." She made a small st.i.tch and pulled the thread through the cloth. "He need not ask anyone for anything."

Alex eyed Elizabeth's needlework, which depicted an angel hovering over a young Virgin Mary. "That's a pretty medieval att.i.tude."

"I was born in medieval times," Elizabeth said. "Tell me about the tests you have accomplished thus far."

Alex related in the simplest terms she could what little information she had culled from the tests. "Richard's blood chemistry is highly abnormal, even for the Darkyn."

Golden eyebrows rose. "In what manner abnormal?"

"Red blood cells in humans don't have some of the internal structures found in other types of cells. They're designed that way because they have to perform specialized functions. But Kyn red blood cells are eukaryotic." Alex saw her blank look and added, "They have a nucleus. Human blood cells don't."

"I do not understand why that matters." The other woman lifted a shoulder. "We are not human."

"We were human." Alex gritted her teeth and pushed on. "I found another anomaly while examining Richard's cells. The cell's nucleus contains hereditary material-we get that from our parents-that controls the cell's growth, metabolism, and ability to replicate. Normal humans have twenty-three pairs of chromosomes per cell. For some reason, Kyn have twenty-five. The tests I ran on your husband show that he has another, extra set of paired chromosomes in his blood cells that don't match the original twenty-five. That brings his total up to fifty."

"How delightful."

"Ah, no. Not really." The woman knew absolutely nothing about hematology or cellular biology; that much was obvious. "The extra chromosomes encode more than they should and result in very serious physical and mental defects. If Richard were human, I'd diagnose him with a rare form of polyploidy. But any genetic damage like this causes spontaneous death of the afflicted, usually in utero."

Elizabeth glanced up. "Fortunate, then, that he is Kyn.""You don't understand. Your husband is in the end stage of a mutation that should have killed him, but it hasn't. He's not human or Kyn anymore. I don't know what he is."

She went over the other unusual aspects that testing had turned up, and then finished by stretching the truth. "That's as much as I'm going to learn about Richard's condition, because I'm a surgeon, not a geneticist. He needs to be treated by specialists in the field."

Elizabeth had put down her hoop and sat silently staring at the faux flames in the mirrored fireplace.

She's his wife; of course she's upset.

"I honestly can't do anything to help him," Alex said. It was true; she had no treatment for the extensive genetic damage Richard had suffered. "I don't care what he does to me, but he also kidnapped my brother, who is still human. He's threatened to hurt John if I don't find a cure for his condition."

Elizabeth nodded.

"You're okay with that?"

"I am wife here, not mistress. What I think or want is irrelevant." She took a small pair of silver scissors out of her sewing basket and used them to clip a thread hanging from the edge of her left sleeve. "Is this why you sought me out? To enlist me as your advocate so that I might plead your case?"

Nailed.

"I don't want you to overstep your bounds, or p.i.s.s off your husband," Alex said carefully. "But yeah, I need some help. John has already been through torture once, when the Brethren had him in Rome. That, combined with the fact that his sister now has fangs and drinks blood, has probably traumatized him for life. He's not part of this war, Elizabeth. If you have an ounce of decency..."

Ghostly images rose behind Alex's eyes.