"I didn't know that. They just... felt different. Like things that needed to be guarded. I only wanted the Madonna. If I don't find her, my parents will never be at peace." She sagged against him, exhausted, drained of everything but sorrow.

Gabriel lifted her into his arms. "You have more courage and honor in your heart than any woman I have known. I will help you find the Madonna; I promise."

Nick looked up at him. "What about you and the Kyn?"

"Croft told me many things," he said, "I must go to Ireland and speak with the high lord. I must settle matters regarding my sister."

"I was thinking of moving to Scotland for the winter," Nick said. "Maybe we could go see this lord guy on the way, tell him about all the stuff I have here. I really don't want it. What do you think?"

"Tomorrow." Gabriel turned and carried her back to the house.

Chapter 18.

"The doctor injected you with this new serum she has created," Korvel told Richard. "It has counteracted what the feline blood did. I am told that Lady Elizabeth made the switch."

"I will deal with my wife later." Richard noticed the weapons missing from his collection. "You must go and find Orson Leary.

Quickly."

Korvel hesitated. "I do not wish to leave you to face Cyprien alone."

"If he can get in, I will remind him that I have what he wants. Michael will not jeopardize her safety to take personal revenge."

Richard gestured impatiently. "Go. I will collect our hostages."

Richard did not find Alexandra in the lab, but nearly ran into her as their paths collided at the entrance to the dungeons. She was carrying an unconscious eliane over her shoulder. Richard saw the dagger left in his tresora's back-his dagger-and his claws extended.

"Who did this?"

"Some crazy-looking man." Alex carried her burden downstairs to the lab.

Richard received a second shock when he saw Phillipe waiting at the lab entrance.

"Has someone killed all of my guards?" he asked no one in particular.

"I don't have time for one of your tantrums, Richard. Shut up or get out." Alex kicked open the door to the lab. "I'll need help with eliane, Phillipe."

"Do you mean to leave me?" Richard asked.

"I mean to stop this woman from bleeding to death." Alex put the unconscious Frenchwoman on the exam table, facedown, and used a scalpel to cut through the back of her jacket and blouse. "He missed the spinal cord. Thank you, Jesus, thank you.

Phillipe, get me a suture kit out of the supply cabinet."

"What does it look like?" the seneschal asked as he walked over to the supply cabinet.

"A plastic package that says 'suture kit' on the front." One slim hand reached up to train the overhead light on the dagger hilt protruding from eliane's left upper back. "Blondie, you are so freaking lucky, I can't believe this." She grabbed some gauze pads and piled them around the wound before jerking out the dagger. Crimson blood spilled out from under the gauze. "Hurry up, Phil."

As Richard watched the emergency surgery, Alex began to talk. "Your wife is the crazy one around here. She switched feline blood for the human blood I needed. It was as if she knew it would make you lose control."

"I regret what happened," he told her. "I cannot remember it."

"Like you can't remember killing half your servants, and all the zombies the other day." Alex put on a face mask and gloves and began to work on eliane's back. "It's awfully convenient how your blackouts coincide with killings that you can't remember committing, don't you think?"

"What are you trying to say, Doctor?"

"I think your wife killed them and made it look as if you did it. The blackouts she could have controlled by making sure you got some Kyn tranquilizer mixed in with pure feline blood right before they happened." She discarded a bloodied instrument. "She might even be using her talent on humans that you've already bespelled. Korvel told me she always sees every human before they are presented to you. Stefan is her favorite guard, too."

"How would that affect the humans?"

"One talent is enough for any human. Being subjected to the pressure of two or more, on the other hand, might just be enough to turn them catatonic."

Richard brooded over what she had said until Alex finished dressing the newly sutured wound and pulled down her mask.

"That's it. She's out of danger."

Korvel came down to the lab to report that Leary was nowhere to be found, and Richard ordered him to send guards out of the castle bearing the white flag to invite Michael inside."Before you negotiate things with my love," Alex said, coming over with a syringe, "take another hit of the serum."

Richard studied the needle, the contents of which looked like blood but might be anything. "Do you not trust me to control myself?"

"No, I don't," she said, uncapping the needle. "Sleeve up. Now."

The injection did not kill Richard, but made him feel calmer and more collected than he had in months. He left Korvel to guard the women and returned to his library to prepare to receive Cyprien. Perhaps it meant nothing, but for the first time in nearly a century he felt some hope.

eliane had left several handwritten messages on his desk, which he would have ignored had he not spotted the name. Gabriel Seran, one of the best men Richard had ever known, who had died under Brethren torture and interrogation.

Richard felt the loss of Gabriel most keenly. He had been a superb hunter, an intelligent soldier, and possibly the best tracker among the Kyn. Seran had also been one of the gentlest of the immortal souls in Richard's charge. He had sent Lucan to Dublin specifically to free Gabriel Seran, but by that time the Brethren had killed him. They sent several sickening photographs of Gabriel's severed head and mutilated body.

He picked up the message and read it. The paper drifted out of his distorted hand and rocked through the air until it landed noiselessly beside the desk.

"My lord," Stefan said as he escorted Michael in. His protege stood dressed in full black body armor and carried two sheathed swords. "Seigneur Cyprien."

Richard rose and inclined his head. Michael did not bow in return. "Leave us, Stefan."

As soon as the guard departed, Michael drew both swords and held them crossed in front of him with the blades down. "I challenge you."

"I refuse. I abdicate to you." Richard sat back down.

Michael said nothing for a full minute. "You think to jest with me, my lord?"

"I think to hand my people over to the one man I know who can rule them." The injection Alexandra had given him had begun to make him feel sluggish, and the news about Gabriel-that he lived-drove twin spikes of amazement and dread through his chest. "I am in the end throes of this thing. Your sygkenis, who is a remarkable woman, has done her best. It has not worked, and I believe that I am too far gone to be retrieved. Your last task as my seigneur will be to take my head."

"I did not come here to execute you."

"Now who is jesting?" Richard covered a cough. "You have always been my only choice for my successor. I doubt you will have an easy time of it, but your head was always cooler than mine, even before-"

"I came here for my woman."

"So you shall have her." Another spate of coughing nearly stole his voice. "And the kingship as well."

"I don't want it."

"Neither did I," Richard a.s.sured him in a hoa.r.s.e whisper. "To lead the Kyn, you must serve the Kyn. Remember that."

"What is wrong with you? You have never surrendered. Not even when they dragged you naked through the streets of London." "I received a message from one of Geoffrey's men in London. He called to say that Gabriel Seran is free, that the Brethren are pursuing him, and that Gabriel and his female companion, a young human, left London this morning on a flight to Dublin."

"The man is mistaken. Gabriel is dead. You yourself have the photographs."

"I believe, as Alexandra would put it, someone has been jerking me off for the last two years." He wanted to rub his face, but his talons made that impossible now. "I know this human, Pickard. He is completely reliable. If he says that he saw Gabriel, then he did. I imagine that Gabriel is coming here to find out why we abandoned him."

"We thought he was dead."

"They knew he was special to me. For two years they tortured him." Richard slammed his fist onto the desk, making everything on it jump six inches into the air. "May their souls rot within sight of the gates of heaven."

Something that had nothing to do with his lungs made him double over and shake uncontrollably. He would have said good-bye to his successor, but Richard could no longer move, or speak, or breathe.

Michael sheathed his swords and went to the door. "Guard! The high lord is ill; get help."

He went over to where Richard had fallen and rolled him onto his side. The convulsions slowed to a stop, but he could not rouse the high lord back to consciousness. When heavy footsteps marched in, he looked up impatiently. "Come; he is very ill."

A pet.i.te figure swept in around the guards. Lady Elizabeth, dressed in her favorite shade of peach, looked down at Cyprien and Richard and tapped her cheek with one finger.

"Is he dead yet?"

Cyprien rose. "He will be, if you don't summon help."

"I think not." Elizabeth turned to the guards. "Take this murderer and his leech and confine them to a dungeon cell."

Cyprien came around the desk but didn't draw his swords or fight the guards. "Is this how you repay Richard for keeping you as wife all these years?"

Elizabeth tilted her head. "Wife? To that?" She laughed. "I will miss your notions of romantic love. Frenchmen were always so much better at it." She snapped her fan. "Take him, and drag that body out to the compost heap."

Stefan came forward and looked over the desk, then next to it, and then under it.

"Well?"

"My lady, he is not here."

"Of course he is, you idiot," Elizabeth said as she came around the desk. "He's right over... Where is he?"

Michael saw that Richard's body had indeed vanished, and began to laugh as the guards march him out of the room.

Gabriel and Nick took a flight to Dublin, but once in the city rented a motorbike to take them the rest of the way to the village of Bardow.

"I should have ridden my bike up here," Nick p.r.o.nounced once she had checked it over. "The rear drive on this one is total c.r.a.p, and the driveshaft and the valves are almost shot. We'll be lucky if we don't end up walking to see the king.""Then we will walk." Gabriel lifted her up and put her on the bike. "We can spend a few nights in the woods."

She grinned. "Oh, so you never want to get there."

Much to Nick's disappointment, the rented bike ran fine and got them to Bardow just before sunset.

"Pretty place," Nick said, admiring the quaint cottages and thatched rooftops. Her gaze was drawn to a priest nailing crosses to the front door of a Catholic church. "Very, ah, religious."

The priest turned and began shouting at people pa.s.sing down the street. "Lock your doors and windows! The beautiful ones are here, the harbingers of evil, the vampires, and they crave your blood!"

"They can have me, son," one farmer called back. "For free. I'll even deliver."

As the priest continued ranting, more villagers stopped to listen. Most laughed, and one man offered to buy the priest a pint. A pair of older women crossed themselves and hurried on their way.

"Our Brethren will come to save us," the priest called out. "But you must be on your guard. Keep your children home and stay out of the pubs. The vampires are hunting you like sheep straying from the fold."

No Irishman gave up his after-work pint at the pub, so the few who had been listening to the old man shook their heads and strolled away.

"Sounds like the holy freaks have been spreading the bad word," Nick muttered.

Gabriel scanned the surrounding homes and shops. "We should perhaps keep out of sight until dark."

Nick eyed the priest, who had taken out another cross and was nailing it in place. "Amen."

As they walked away from the village's main street, a tall, dark woman came out of a doorway and stood in front of them.

Nick smelled flowers and stepped up to her. "Call the priest; I think I found one."

"Qui etes-vous?" She peered. "Gabriel Seran? C'est toi?"

"Marcella Evareaux. Oui, c'est moi." He caught the gorgeous woman as she flung herself at him and embraced her with the joy of a long-lost lover reunited.

An outrageously large spike of jealousy kept Nick nailed to the sidelines, quietly watching. The two chatted in a strange dialect of French she'd never heard before, so she made out only bits and pieces of the conversation. Her resentment built and then ebbed as she saw tears in the female vampire's eyes. She seemed completely rattled yet genuinely delighted to see Gabriel.

"This is my companion, Nicola Jefferson." Gabriel was introducing her to Marcella. "She brought me out of France, and again rescued me in London."

"Mademoiselle." The woman actually curtsied to Nick. "You have done us a great service by saving Gabriel. The Kyn are deeply in your debt." Marcella turned to Gabriel. "You have come at a difficult time. I a.s.sume that Croft told you that Lucan liberated the Durands, and that your sister was killed in America?"

It was time for Nick to get lost.

"I'm going to take a ride around the farms," she told Gabriel. Over both their protests, she added, "I can't follow your French when you talk that fast, and I'd like to get the lay of the land. You and Marcella can catch up while I'm gone." She could also follow this feeling in her gut, which had been growing bigger and stronger ever since they'd come to the village."We can speak in English." Gabriel looked torn. "You will come back?"

Nick nodded; no way was she going through trying to dump him again. But while Gabriel was occupied, she could track whatever was setting off her internal radar. "Try not to get detained, captured, questioned, or crucified while I'm gone."

Phillipe and John dragged Richard's body through the hidden pa.s.sage and into the now-deserted part of the castle where Richard had been keeping John Keller locked up. "You found these pa.s.sages on your own?"

"Alexandra hinted at them." John checked Richard's neck. "I can't feel a pulse."