Chapter 22.

Lucan stepped into the security room, where Rafael was monitoring the hidden cameras that showed the interior of every room in the club as well as the exterior of the building. It was how he had watched Samantha break into the building.

Dawn was only minutes away, so it was unlikely that Michael would attack now. Still, there were any number of humans at the seigneur's command. "Any sign?"

"Nothing yet, my lord." His seneschal turned to face him. "Were you able to persuade Detective Brown to cooperate with us?"

Lucan didn't want to think of what he'd done to Samantha. "I left her handcuffed to her bed. If I die tomorrow night, do send Burke to release her. Who told Detective Brown about Frances?"

Rafael looked mystified. "Who is Frances?"

"It's not important." Another mystery to go unsolved. Lucan's life was rife with them.

"Cyprien will come with every Kyn he can recall," his seneschal warned him. "There is still time to end this."

No, there wasn't. "Be ready, Rafael."

Lucan took the stairwell up to the secured room where Alexandra was being held. A nurse sat dozing in the front room, so he closed the bedroom door behind him. Alex was not sleeping, and someone had thoughtfully replaced her gag.

He removed it. "Have you changed your mind?"

"What did you do to the cop?" she demanded.

"Before or after I raped her?" Even as he despised himself for uttering the ugly words, a perverse part of him enjoyed seeing her cringe away from him. "You should learn to curb your reaction to unpleasant realities, Alex. There are many among our kind."

"Did you tell the nurse to take a unit of blood from me?" When he nodded, she touched the place on her neck where he had bitten her. "Why not go au naturel again? You seemed to enjoy it enough last time."

"I drank a little of your blood to see if I could acquire some of your scent. Unfortunately yours doesn't seem to transfer through feeding, as ours does. I'll have to put a little from the bag on my skin before I face your lover tonight."

"He'll smell me on you. He'll think you..." She swore.

"Why do you think I went to all the trouble of taking you? You are my one advantage against him. Of course he'll smell you on me, and assume that I took you, blood, body, and soul." He pulled the covers she had kicked off up and over her. "You needn't worry, Alex. It's a well-known fact that I've never beaten Michael in a fight. Even wearing your blood on me, I rather doubt my luck will turn."

"Then why do this? He'll kill you. He'll make you suffer first."

"That is a certainty." He smiled down at her. "But a man should be able to choose the day he loses his head, don't you think?"

"You're more messed up than any vampire I've ever met, including Thierry Durand when he was insane, but you're not suicidal,"

she said immediately. "Call Michael; explain whatever this game is. Ask for another truce. He'll give you one."

"This is how these things have been done for centuries, Alex. You can't change the Kyn." He looked down to where she had wrapped her hand around his wrist. "You'd do well to remember that in the years to come."

Her pupils contracted to slits. "You didn't rape me, and I don't think you raped that cop. I saw how you looked at her. You don't even want to kill Michael. It's as if you're trying to..." Her eyes became huge. "Oh, my God."

He removed her hand from his arm. "When it's over, will you go to her and give her a message?"

"Her?" Dazed, Alex stared up at him. "You mean the cop?"

He nodded. "Her name is Samantha. Tell her that I loved Frances, not her. That everything I did to her was because of my love for Frances. She doesn't respond to l'attrait, so you'll have to make her believe it by words alone."

"That's stupid," Alex muttered. "Who is Frances, and why am I telling the cop this bullshit story?"

"Do you know, if you had come to me instead of Michael, I think I would have been just as lost in you. You are such a brilliant, beautiful thing." He rested his gloved hand against her cheek for a moment. "Will you tell her what I said?"

"Still need a why."

"Why." Lucan could say it, this once. "Because I love her, Alex."

Sam spent several hours trying to free herself without success. Despite her best efforts, she discovered what thousands of criminals already knew: that standard police-issue handcuffs were impossible to wedge, pry, or hammer open. Toward dawn she dozed, jerking awake when she heard any sounds from the floor below, but when she called out no one answered her.

She had to get to the nightclub and stop this thing Lucan had planned. How, she didn't know, but Alex Keller might help her. If she believed her, and if Sam could get her out of Lucan's chains, and if she could stop Michael Cyprien from killing Lucan... Sam jerked at the handcuffs again.

Nothing worked. After she'd inflicted a new set of bruises, Sam fell asleep, and didn't wake until late that afternoon, when she heard the door across the hall slam.

"Chris?" She sat up and drank some water to soothe her hoarse, dry throat, and then started shouting the girl's name.

"Sam?" Chris called back from outside her apartment door. "You okay?"

"No," she yelled. "Kick in the door."

"With all these dead bolts? Not hardly."

Sam looked frantically around the room, and then caught sight of her balcony, which was only two feet away from Keri's.

Lucan had shattered the door last night. "Can you climb over from your balcony to mine? Be careful; there's a lot of broken glass out there."

"Okay. Hang on."

A few minutes later glass crunched, and then a disheveled Chris appeared at the sliding door. "Glad I'm not afraid of heights.

Who broke your sliding glass"-she looked at Sam's handcuffed arm-"door?"

Sam sagged with relief. "The spare key's in my top dresser drawer. Get it for me, please."

Chris found the key and released her from the cuffs. "Your poor arm, it's all bruised up." She saw the water, food, and bucket Lucan had left for Sam. "Nice burglar. Do you know he broke, like, everything in your apartment?"

"It was a lousy date." Sam rubbed her wrist as she got out of bed, stretching her cramped limbs. She was sore and mad and needed a shower, but otherwise all right.

"Want some coffee? Aspirin?"

The thought of drinking or eating anything made Sam's stomach turn. "I'm okay. Make it for yourself if you want some." She stared at Chris's all-black outfit, and an idea began to jell. "What time is it?"

"About five thirty, I think."

"Got any plans for tonight?"

"Besides sleeping? Nope."

Sam gestured toward her clothes. "Can you make me look like that? Like a goth?"

Chris frowned. "The bondage and bad date weren't exciting enough?"

"I have to go undercover at that nightclub, Infusion, and I need you to help me dress the part. Look in my closet and see' what might work," Sam said as she headed for the bathroom. "I'm going to take a shower."

When she came out ten minutes later, Chris had thrown most of her suits onto her bed.

"Boring." The younger girl added a brown suit to the pile, and then examined the other black suit she was holding. "Ugly and boring." She glanced at Sam. "Does your great-grandmother, like, buy all your clothes?"

"I'm an orphan.""You dress like one." She tossed the black suit on top of the brown one. "Let's go over to my place. I've got some stuff that might fit you."

There was a knock at the door, and Sam jumped a little. Burke isn't coming until it's over, she reminded herself. She looked at Chris and pointed to the pile of suits. "Hang those back up."

"You're sure I can't burn them?" Chris grumbled.

Sam had her weapon in hand when she checked the peephole, but tucked it into the pocket of her robe before she unlocked the dead bolts.

Adam Suarez seemed almost as surprised to see her. "Detective Brown. You're... home."

She was on vacation. Where else would she be? "What can I do for you, Lieutenant?"

"I came by to check on you." He looked over her shoulder, and then back at her face. "Are you staying in tonight?"

A wave of images came over her, but she resisted the memories. Now was not the time to freak out in front of Suarez, and she wasn't even sure of what she'd seen in her head. What had he asked her? Something about staying in. "No."

"You should, Samantha."

"We're not partners yet, Adam. Wait until we are before you start trying to run my life." She started to close the door, but his hand stopped her. "Was there something else you wanted?"

"If you're going down to the nightclub, you'll need some backup. I'm off duty." He checked his watch. "I'll come back in an hour and pick you up."

"I'll drive myself, thanks." She couldn't see his eyes through the sunglasses he wore, and his expression gave away nothing. She couldn't confirm what she suspected until she saw him without the glasses, either. "What do you know about Infusion?"

"Only what I've read from your case files. There's supposed to be a big concert there tonight. I'll meet you outside at seven." He turned and left.

Sam slowly closed the door. "Okay."

"Was that the bad date?" Chris asked as she came out of the bedroom.

"No, that was my new partner, checking on me."

"Nice someone cares besides me." Chris linked her arm with Sam's. "Come on, Officer. Time to walk on the dark side of the moon."

John returned to the abbey from the hospital and gathered the brothers in the chapel. Ignatius protested for a moment, telling him that he had no authority over them, until John looked at him. The friar abruptly quieted and marched into the sanctuary after the other friars.

He stood for a moment outside the chapel and looked out at the abbey grounds. Bromwell and Mercer had tried so hard to keep the outside world at bay, but it would not be denied. The needs of the people of the world could not be held back by fences and brick walls. And, whether John liked it or not, the Darkyn were a part of this world.

John walked inside. He didn't take the abbot's place at the altar, but stood at the back of the little church. "Father Lane committed suicide," he told them without preamble. "Before he died, he said something about a nightclub and Bastille Day.

What did he have planned for it?"

"The abbot was delusional, Brother Patrick," Ignatius said at once. "I'm very sorry, but you must know that he had started drinking again. You know how irrational alcoholics can be-"

"I know about the Darkyn, Ignatius," John told him. "They took my sister. She's one of them now." He ignored the pale faces and the muttered prayers. "I also know what the Brethren do to the vampires they capture. They brought me to Rome on the pretense of having me join the order and drugged and tortured me."

No one spoke for a long time, and then Brother Jacob asked, "What are you going to do, Brother Patrick?"

He wasn't running away anymore. "Mercer told me that you all have been living as real priests here. Doing good works, devoting yourself to the faith, and repenting for the wrongs you did in the name of the Brethren. Is that the life you want?" He watched the men nod. "Then it's time you left the order."

"You know nothing," Ignatius said, stepping out of his line, his face contorted with anger. "No one leaves the order. We are born to it, we live it, and we die for it."

How much control did the Brethren still have over these men? After twenty years, John suspected, not much.

"You will have to leave the abbey and change your identities, but there is enough money in the accounts to help you start over,"

he told them.

The old friar thrust his hands in his sleeves. "Steal from the church? Never."

"That money doesn't belong to church, and it didn't come from the church. The Brethren have always funded you," John reminded him. "It's your choice." He turned and walked away.

Ignatius caught up with him outside. "Bravo, Brother Patrick. You've achieved with one speech what my brothers and I could never bring ourselves to do in twenty years. My brothers are even now deciding how to leave Florida and where we should settle."

John thought of the many states through which he had traveled. "The Carolinas are nice, and there are a lot of needy people in the hills."

"North Carolina." Ignatius's tone softened. "I drove through it once, when I was a younger man. It's very green there." He sighed. "I don't suppose you'd like to adopt Brother Nicholas."

"Not even if you paid me. Don't worry; he'll have lots of leaves to blow around in North Carolina. What he and the other men need is a steady hand to lead them to that new life." He gave the guestmaster a sideways look. "Abbot Ignatius has a nice ring to it."

"Abbot William," Ignatius said. "If I am to become a fugitive from the order and change my identity, I am not passing up the chance to be rid of this hideous name of mine." He stopped with John at the front gates. "You are going to the nightclub Father Lane wished us to attack." When John nodded, he frowned. "What do you intend to do?"

"What Mercer should have done," John said. "Find a way to call a truce."

"Mercer?" Ignatius looked. "You mean Father Lane? But his Christian name was Leigh."

Chapter 23.