"I'm the G.o.dd.a.m.n doctor; I'll decide what condition you're in." She pulled up the edge of the taped dressing. "That b.i.t.c.h.

Another centimeter over and she'd have punctured your carotid." She eyed the captain. "Do I have to belt you, too?"

"You lied to me," Korvel said with matching chilly courtesy. "You broke out of your chamber and intruded on Lady Elizabeth's privacy."

"Oh, yeah?" Alex's expression darkened. "Lady Elizabeth was feeding on my brother. In front of me. I'm not thinking privacy's a big priority in her life."

The captain's brows lowered. "I will not trust you out of my sight again."

"Like you did before. Did you irrigate these wounds with antiseptic?" When Korvel nodded, she taped the dressing back into place and spoke to John. "I didn't know it was you under the mask at first."

"That guard over there"-John nodded at Stefan, who was finally getting to his feet-"he did something that made me unable to move."

"Stefan's talent is to paralyze humans," Korvel said.

Alexandra took out a penlight and checked his eyes. "When did the headache start?"

"I don't know. That woman-Elizabeth-hypnotized me to make me frightened, I think. It gave me some kind of vertigo, too. I was afraid that I'd throw up with the gag on." John squinted. "The light's not helping, Alex."

"Nauseated, photosensitive, and generally disoriented. Headache bad?" When he nodded, she glared at Korvel before adding, "I wouldn't have let her do that to you."

"You live on blood, don't you?" he couldn't help asking. "If it comes from me or another human, what difference does it make?"

"She didn't need your blood. She was doing it to mess with my head. I don't bite people, either." She pressed her hand to his cheek for a moment. "You're still my brother, John. Jesus."

"Doctor, you must leave here now," Korvel demanded, "before the high lord discovers your presence."

Alexandra gave John an expected hug, and murmured, "They've got you on candid camera, bro." When she straightened, she nodded toward the mirror across from his bed.

"Wait." John rose and took his sister's hand. "Have they been treating you well?"

"Not counting the threats and scaring me, yeah, they have." She stared up at him. "The castle isn't so bad. It's just like the mansion in my favorite Nancy Drew book."

The Hidden Staircase. John remembered the novel because Alex had demanded he read it to her over and over. In the story, the girl detective investigated a mansion haunted not by ghosts, but by a fugitive using secret pa.s.sageways to try to scare off the elderly owner. Alex had spent months tapping the Kellers' walls in hopes of finding a secret pa.s.sage. "Is it.""We will go now." Korvel took her by the arm and escorted her out, locking the door behind him.

Orson Leary watched the scarred-face man, Phillipe, as he drove the van from the pub into the city. Now that he was back in Ireland, he felt happier than ever. His savior had destroyed all the old fears, and now he could attend to the women properly.

He felt impatient with his escort, however. The man plodded along as if he and Orson had all the time in the world. "Do we go to see the high lord? His castle is in the country."

"We will collect the humans first," Phillipe said. "Where do you take them?"

"A special place," Leary said, feeling more cheerful. Once he collected his quota, they would go to the demon king, and he would be able to complete the work. "Turn left there."

Leary directed Phillipe to Meath Street, and from there to a darkened laneway where cars cruised slowly.

All along the street, cl.u.s.ters of two and three young men moved from the shadows of the shops and business to make quick exchanges with the drivers of the cars. Other thin and hungry-looking youths wove their way down the walks, going from cl.u.s.ter to cl.u.s.ter. As people came together on the street, they spoke briefly and traded small twists of cellophane and tinfoil for rolls of money.

Leary had once despised coming here-frightened of the disease and despair, always fearing he would be caught in the act-but no more. These weaklings, for whom he had sometimes felt pity, were nothing to him now. He didn't fear infection or contamination. He feared nothing. This last time, and then I will be free of them as well as her.

A shriek drew Leary's gaze to a thickset man who backhanded a young girl away from him. She tumbled into the street, where she got up on her knees and promptly vomited all over herself. The sight gladdened him, for if he was taken in this battle, surely others would carry on his good works.

Phillipe parked the van on a side street. "What is this place?"

"Needle Paradise," he said, watching the girl collapse on top of her own puke. "It's where they sell most of the heroin and crack in the city."

"You are to collect humans, not drugs."

"I always come here to make up my quota," Leary told him. "No one cares what happens to the addicts. They're easily persuaded."

Phillipe shut off the engine. "Make this quick, Father."

Leary climbed out of the van and walked out of the alley. A lone skeletal figure standing by the corner darted a look at him.

From the way the young man was shivering, he was in need. Leary gestured with a folded fifty between his fingers. When the junkie stepped into the light to reach for it, Leary saw open sores on his arms and the yellow mark of jaundice on his face. He s.n.a.t.c.hed the bill back just as the dirty fingers s.n.a.t.c.hed at it.

"Wot d'ya want, then?"

"A quick one." Leary swept a hand toward Phillipe and the parked van.

"Both of ya?"

Leary shook his head. "Just me."The junkie hunched his shoulders and trudged down the alley to the back of the van.

Leary opened the doors and gave the young man a nudge. "Inside."

"Wot's tha' smell?"

Honeysuckle sweetness wafted out of the back of the van. "Come, mon ami" Phillipe said, reaching out to touch the addict's neck. "You look in need of a rest."

Leary caught the junkie as he crumpled. "What's wrong with him?" Usually he had to drug or beat the humans he collected.

"I put him to sleep." Phillipe took the young man and put him on the floor of the van. "Bring the rest of them here, to me. I will do the same to them."

The Brethren interrogator found four more young men who were willing to sell themselves, and a lone dealer interested in making a buy, and led them all into the alley to Phillipe, who sent each one into a deep, sound slumber. Leary felt very happy with the arrangement, until he saw her at the end of the block.

"This is enough," Phillipe said. "We will leave this place."

"I've got to take a p.i.s.s," Leary told the vampire. "Then we'll go."

The fair-haired girl stood with her hips against the back of a rusted-out MINI. She looked older than the other addicts, her skin as pale as milk. Grease spots and food stains spattered the front of the polyester uniform she wore, and as Leary drew closer, he smelled oily potatoes and fried fish.

It was a clever disguise, of course. The b.i.t.c.h would not lower herself to serve others.

Leary didn't want to speak to her-she didn't deserve such kind attention-but this was too public a place to do what was needed.

"Evening, miss," he said as he stopped a few feet from the MINI. Pretending to be fooled by her ruse would keep her from suspecting that he'd recognized her. "All by yourself, then?"

The girl stabbed the air with her middle finger. "p.i.s.s off."

"I don't mean to bother you," Leary protested with a phony, genial heartiness. "I'm looking for someone to share what I've got."

"I'm waiting for me boyfriend," she said, checking her cheap wrist.w.a.tch. "He sees you here, he'll rip off your arm and crack your skull with it."

She sounded so real, but then, she always did.

"Getting a bit late." Leary glanced around. "Maybe he's not coming. You have something if he doesn't show up?"

"He wouldn't... Ah, f.u.c.k it." She wrapped her arms around her middle. "How much then?"

"No charge but the pleasure of your company." And that soft, flabby throat between his hands.

"You sods all want something," the girl said bitterly. "What is it then? A k.n.o.bber in the backseat once I'm cranked, is that it? Or you take me back to your crib so your mates can have turns?"

Leary shook his head. "I like to see a bird get off, but I don't have to. You watch my back; I watch yours." He showed her two twists of heroin that he'd taken off the dealer. "A snort's better than a needle; you know that. Dirty needles'll kill you." "Yeah. Got me friend Jamie just last winter." The sight of the drugs made her eyes shine. "Yeah, yeah, okay. But me first."

She was going through with it to the end. She probably thought to take him once he'd snorted the heroin. The stupid b.i.t.c.h.

"I'm a gentleman," he told her, gesturing toward the MINI. "We'll do it right here."

She took out a set of keys, and then stopped abruptly. "You're like that Percy in Silence of the Lambs, aren't you?" She started to back away. "You're not cutting me up like clothes-"

"Shut up." Leary caught her by the hair in midstep, ramming her face into the side of the MINI, breaking her nose and stunning her. "You think I don't know who you are?" When she sagged, he dragged her around the car and down into the shadows of the alley.

Rats squealed and disappeared into the nearest cranny. Leary hoisted the girl under his arm, clamping her to his side as he looked for anyone sleeping rough in the alley. He needed a dark place where the shadows ran deep, where no one walked and no one looked- "By doze," she said, spitting blood out and twisting in the circle of his arm. "By doze, hugh broke it."

"Quiet." Leary pulled his elbow in tight and stepped into a narrow s.p.a.ce behind a row of rubbish cans. "You talk too much." He dropped her onto the ground, pinning her wrists under his shoes. "You always talked too much." Blood roared in his ears as he checked the front and back of the alley for anyone she might command to stop him. "No one can hear you now."

Leary had to kneel in filth as he straddled her, but it seemed only fitting. The alley sullied his trouser legs as much as her neck contaminated his hands.

"This won't kill you," he told the girl as he cut off her air, and ignored her fingers clawing at his sleeves. Her pretense didn't fool him. "I know it won't. There are too many of you. But you'll not use this body for your evil anymore."

He had almost choked the life out of her when honeysuckle filled the alley, and a hand s.n.a.t.c.hed him up and held him over the coughing, thrashing girl.

"What have you done to her?" Phillipe demanded.

Paralyzed, Leary could only look down at his dangling feet and the one he should have killed. He had not been cautious enough.

He had failed. If he had been able to move, he would have torn Phillipe's heart from his chest with his bare hand.

Now was not the time to attack. He had to be more cunning. "I don't know," he blubbered through forced tears. "She wanted money. She threatened to kill me."

Phillipe put him down, although Leary still could not move. The vampire reached for the girl, but she crawled backward, shaking her head and covering her bruised throat with one hand. She didn't seem to be able to speak.

"You cannot attack people like this," Phillipe told him. "Do you understand?"

You must fear me.

You must not fear the Kyn.

Take them.

You will not harm them.

Kill the women.You cannot attack.

Something tore inside Leary's head. "The master said to take them and I obeyed."

Phillipe grabbed him by the throat, and for a moment Leary thought the young vampire might snap his neck. "We are done here."

Leary thought he would go into the dark place where it was safe, and never come back, but then all the voices came together into one. He feared, but he did not have to fear. He took, but he did not have to be taken. He killed, but he was not to be killed.

The one voice kindly explained everything to Leary as his body began walking on its own toward the front of the alley.

There was so much to do, but for tonight his work was done.

A soft blue-and-rose glow lured Gabriel from his rest, filling his eyes with the hazy colors of a sunset sky. He reached for Nicola, but found only soft moss and leaves under his hand.

It wasn't until he automatically blinked and experienced a momentary return of the blackness that he realized that the colors he saw in his mind were not coming through the shared vision of the many, but from his own eyes.

It cannot be. Benait blinded me months ago.

Gabriel stood, turning and seeing the blue-and-rose blur turn to brown and green. He could not make out shapes, but the colors of the forest were there, just as he remembered them. He brought up his hand in front of his face, added the mottled green paleness of his own flesh to his vision.

Unconvinced, he covered his eyes with one hand, shadowing them. The light dimmed, and the blurred colors appeared only through the separations of his fingers. As he stared, the blurring sharpened a single degree.

His ruined eyes were healing.

"Nicola." Aware that the Brethren may have returned to the house, he didn't shout. "Nicola, where are you?"

He had to tell her. He had to see, even in a blur, her face.

The only answer he received was the calls of songbirds.

Gabriel stepped out of the cobwebbed tent and halted just outside, shocked anew. In his dream Nicola had used a stiletto to cut her way out, and he had just stepped through that opening.

He nearly panicked, until he remembered waking near dawn and checking her legs. She had not been injured. She was not hurt, and he was healing. No more would he have to rely on the many to be his eyes. He could be free of them and look upon the world once more, a whole man.

I could go to Ireland and watch the look on the high lord's face when I present myself to him. I can see if Richard knew that I was left to rot in the hands of the Brethren.

Gabriel couldn't summon the cold anger he had felt for so long toward the Kyn. Benait had lied to him; that much was obvious from Dalente's letters. Had Richard believed him dead, he would have had no reason to continue searching for him. He would never know what had happened until he spoke to the high lord himself.

He had to know the extent of Angelica's betrayal, too. If his sister had to be brought to justice, he would be the one to do it.

Restless now, Gabriel turned and breathed in deeply.Making love to Nicola had drenched him with her scent; he could track her in his sleep. He bent down and found her trail leading away from the tent and toward the house.

Why did she go up there?

Using his blurred vision and his memories of the forest allowed him to follow her scent path, but it veered away toward the back of the house rather than the front. Weeds had nearly overgrown the irregular sheets of slate Dalente had placed as a walkway through the garden, but Gabriel remembered the way it curled through the flower beds. Nicola had followed it, too, up to the old well by his tresora's toolshed.