Behind each bar, glasses began to shatter and bottles to crack.

"Samantha, Alexandra," Lucan said as he stood and faced Faryl. "He has no mind left. Step away from him."

Lightbulbs all around them began bursting like popcorn.

"I know what I'm doing." Alex actually moved closer, holding out her hands. "Please, Faryl. Let me help you."

A gun went off twice, and Faryl shrieked, leaping across the stage, grabbing Alex, and diving from the stage. Cyprien and the other Kyn gave chase.

Sam didn't understand what had happened until she looked down and saw the wet spot spreading over her right side.

"What?" She touched it, and her hand came away red with her own blood. She'd been shot... but no one had a gun but her.

A pale, perspiring Wesley Dwyer stepped out from behind the cross, still holding his weapon pointed at Sam. "That thing won't die," he said in an unsteady voice, "but you will. Just like Harry did when I cut his throat. This time you will."

Sam's legs gave out and she dropped to the stage, but Rafael was there, and his arms kept her from falling over. Then Lucan stepped between them and Dwyer, and took off his other glove.

"It takes a brave man to shoot a defenseless woman," Lucan said.

All around the club, full bottles of liquor began exploding like bombs, spraying anyone near them with their contents.

Dwyer's hand shook as he pointed the gun at Lucan. "You stay back. I'll shoot you."

Lucan bared his fangs. "Be my guest."

Every lightbulb that remained intact in the club exploded simultaneously. Dwyer shrieked and pulled the trigger as Lucan reached out to him, and fired again when Lucan's bare hand touched his chest. Then the gun fell from his fingers and he began to shake all over, convulsing, choking, blood pouring from his nose and ears and mouth, bones cracking, limbs flopping helplessly as he crumpled to the stage.

Wesley Dwyer was almost dead when his body exploded.

"Rafael." Sam closed her eyes, the cold pain in her side spreading over her. "Make sure Chris is all right." She coughed, and felt something liquid in her lungs.

The seneschal looked up. "My lord, come quickly."

Sam saw Lucan's face over her, and watched his lips move, but the pain was dragging her away from this world, and she knew she couldn't stay with him any longer. Then she felt his hand on her face, and arms lifting her, and let him carry her off into the night.

Michael chased Faryl out of the club and into the alley, where they had prepared for a more civilized fight. Alex managed to wrestle free of his grip, but the changeling threw her against a wall, knocking the breath out of her.

"Faryl." Michael held his sword ready, circling around as he matched the changeling's sinuous movements. "Your brother is here. Your family is suffering. Do you wish to return to your life as Kyn?"

The changeling went still, his enormous eyes blinking as he tried to focus on Michael. Out of his throat came a single, distorted word. "No."

Michael nodded. "Then allow me to end your suffering as Lucan would. Quickly and cleanly."

Faryl released a long, low sound, and then dropped to his knees in front of Michael.

Alex staggered to her feet. "Michael, don't kill him. I think I know how to cure him."

"There is no cure for what we are." He brought down the sword, severing Faryl's head cleanly from his body with a single stroke. He looked at his sygkenis's horrified face. "That is what he hated. Being Kyn."

Gard came forward and dropped down by his brother's distorted body. He looked up at Michael helplessly. "Thank you, seigneur."

Alex shook her head slowly. "We can't keep doing this. Killing them isn't the answer." She trudged back into the club.

Michael sheathed his sword and saw Byrne and Jayr approaching. "It is over."

"Congratulations on winning, my lord," Byrne said.

Michael's eyes went to the pathetic figure of Gard Paviere. "No one prevailed here tonight," he assured the suzerain before he went in after Alex.

The Kyn were already removing the physical traces of what had happened in the club. The bits and pieces of the body of the human male who had shot Detective Brown were gone. Because of the manner in which he died, Michael knew Lucan's men would destroy the remains rather than allow them to be recovered.

Thierry was standing guard over Richard, who told Cyprien, "Your sygkenis went upstairs after Lucan and the human female who was shot."

"What will you do to Lucan for his betrayal?" Michael had to ask."He did not betray me." Richard drew his cloak on. "I commanded him to assassinate me when it became apparent that I was losing the battle with my affliction." He paused. "He seems to believe that I have."

Michael knew the high lord was struggling with his change. The knowledge that he had wantonly killed his own servants was also disturbing. "Have you?"

"Not yet. Not for some time yet, I think. Shall we go and see how Lucan's little human fares?" Richard gestured to the elevator.

The high lord's blandness about the assassination attempt should have been a warning, but Michael was too concerned about Alexandra to give it much thought.

Michael heard Alex shouting at Lucan as soon as the elevator stopped on the penthouse floor. He followed the voices through the front room and into Lucan's bedroom, but the curious tableau there made him stop in the doorway.

Lucan sat with Detective Brown unconscious in his arms, while his seneschal was holding Alexandra back from the bed.

Someone had started an IV of whole blood for the human female.

"She can have the surgery she needs at the hospital," Alex was yelling at the suzerain, who was pressing a cloth against the gunshot wound in her side. "There's still a chance to save her."

"I have seen enough wounds among humans to know this one is fatal," Lucan said, looking up to see Cyprien and Richard watching them. "This is the only way."

"Giving her blood won't help. She'll just bleed it out." Alex whipped her head around and saw Michael. "Do something."

Michael smelled lavender coming from two directions, as if there were two Alexandras in the room, and finally understood why his old enemy had started the IV. "Lucan isn't giving her human blood."

Alex went still. "You wouldn't." The next moment she went berserk, jerking free of Rafael's hold and launching herself at the bed. Michael caught her before she could rip the line out of Samantha Brown's arm. "You want her dead? My blood is poisonous, you moron."

"Perhaps." Lucan lifted the cloth he had pressed to the wound and studied it. He looked up at the high lord. "Perhaps not."

"I have been studying the medical data you have sent me, Michael," Richard said. "The results seem to indicate that there is a difference between us and these new Kyn women in America. They have some of our gifts, and yet they remain more human than we."

Michael swore under his breath.

"The medical data." Alex whipped her head to stare at Richard. "What medical data?"

"The seigneur has been kind enough to send me copies of all your research, my dear." The high lord made a casual gesture. "It has kept me abreast of your progress."

"Is this true?" Alex demanded of Michael.

"It was necessary, Alexandra." He had to stop this before Richard turned her against him. "If I hadn't your brother would be dead, and Richard would have taken you from me."

"I might have borrowed her," Richard said reasonably, "but I would have given her back. Eventually."

Alex covered her eyes for a minute. "You lied to me. You stole my research. You took my memories. Do you love me or hate me?"

Michael took her hands in his. "Everything I did was to protect you and your brother. Please believe me."

"Yeah," Alex said, gripping his hands hard, "I guess I do. But next time, Michael, ask."

"What would you need, Dr. Keller," the high lord said, "to research how to reverse the changeling process?"

She gave him an uneasy look. "Some time, a lab, a couple of assistants, and some changeling blood and tissue samples. Maybe some test animals."

"Indeed. Is there anything else?" Richard asked politely.

"I don't know, some bone marrow and spinal fluid. The change affects every part of the body." She shrugged. "With the Pavieres' permission, I can harvest what I need from Faryl's remains."

"But it would be better to work on a living changeling subject, would it not?" When she nodded, Richard turned to Michael.

"Sending me copies of the data simply isn't enough anymore, seigneur. I hope you understand." Before Michael could react, the high lord's voice swelled to a level he rarely used, the one with which he could control other Kyn. "You will not speak. You will not interfere." He turned to Lucan, who was rising from the bed. "Neither will you."

Michael could not resist the voice, and stood helpless as the dark lord took Alexandra by the arm and guided her out of the suite. The effect of Richard's voice disappeared a few moments later, but when Michael ran downstairs, Phillipe and Thierry stood paralyzed, and Richard was gone.

He waited with his seneschal until Phillipe emerged from his bespelled state. "The high lord took her with him, master. I could not stop him."

John Keller joined them. "Neither could I. What is he going to do to my sister, Cyprien?"

Michael stared at one of the golden banners hanging from the ceiling of the club. "He'll try to use her to find a cure for himself."

"Your blond friend said he killed half of his own servants." John turned to him, his fists clenched. "Will he do the same to Alexandra if she doesn't find this cure?"

"I don't know," Michael admitted. "I don't know what he's capable of anymore."

John considered that for a long moment. "All right. Where will he take her from here?"

Thierry answered for Michael. "To Ireland. To his kingdom in hell."

"You can't let him have her," John said. "What are we going to do about it?"

"We will go into hell." Michael looked into the dark, fierce eyes of Alex's brother, and saw a determination that matched his own. "And we will take her back."

Lucan lay next to the woman he loved. It had been six days now, and still she lingered, not dead or alive, but caught in some purgatory between the two. He had not left her for a moment since the night of the concert.

Samantha did not move on her own. She never woke.

Cyprien had come to see him before leaving Florida. They had settled many things, and while they would never be friends, the days of being enemies were over."I think Leigh must have been responsible for all of the crimes and deaths the Kyn believed you committed for your own amusement," Cyprien told him.

Lucan had long believed Cyprien guilty of similar crimes against him. "He was a victim of the Brethren."

Michael held out his hand. "So were you."

Each day Lucan washed Samantha and brushed out her hair and rubbed her skin with silky lotions to improve her sluggish circulation. He kept her naked but covered with the softest linens.

He talked to her for hours. He told her about Gwynyth, and his childhood at court, and how it had been to live in such dangerous times. How proud he had been to be selected to join the Templars, and how crushing the grim reality of living as a warrior-priest had been. He told her how he had learned to fight on the sands of ancient deserts, and the horror of the battles waged there. He even told her of the years after he rose as Kyn, when he had sworn his oath of loyalty to Richard, and carried out his orders, and how, gradually, he had come to know that he could not spend his life ending those of others, whatever their crimes had been. Most of all, he told her the truth about what he was, and what he had done.

Samantha never reacted, never showed a sign that she could hear him.

After the last of Alex's blood was gone, Lucan used saline solution to keep her hydrated. He feared giving her any form of human nourishment, but as her weight dwindled, he tried clear juices and broths. She instantly regurgitated everything he fed her. He was too afraid of poisoning her further to try giving her his own blood.

On the seventh day, Lucan left the bed to stand at the third set of windows Burke had installed. Alex's blood had healed the wound in her side, and kept her alive, but that was all it had done, and he did not have the knowledge or means to discover what else was happening to Samantha. For all he knew the blood could be slowly poisoning her from the inside out.

It was time to let her go, to put her back in the hands of her own kind.

Lucan had never wept in his life. Any show of tears before his mother had resulted in an immediate, vicious beating for him, and during his years in the Holy Land the sun, the hatred, and the merciless march of death across the sands had desiccated his emotions. Richard and the Kyn had finished the job, turning him into a killing machine. No, he could no more weep than he could bring life with his touch, but as he went to sit beside the woman he loved, he wished he could.

Lucan took her scarred hand between his, and bent over to kiss her lips and breathe in her scent. He would spend a few more hours with her, and then he would summon Rafael to take her away from him. He closed his eyes as their lips met.

"Mmmmm."

He jerked back at the sound, sure he had imagined it, and saw her eyelashes flutter. "Samantha?" He slid his hands under her shoulders, lifting her up. "Samantha?"

"Shhh." She groped until she could press her fingers against his mouth. She grimaced. "My mouth hurts."

Lucan tipped her face back and opened her mouth. Inside, two newly formed apertures made dark holes in her palate. "Those are dents acerees," he said, almost laughing the words. "You've grown fangs, my love."

"Sucks." She closed her mouth and glared at him. "Do I?"

He nodded. "I gave you some of Alexandra's blood. I didn't know if it would work, but I couldn't let you die. You're making the change from human to Kyn."

She thought about it for a while. "Thanks.""You're welcome."

"I'm not Frances," she said suddenly. "I only look like her. I'll never be her."

He uttered a shaky laugh. "I don't want Frances."

"I'm a cop. I'm not giving it up." She shifted. "You are done being the Darkyn's cop."

"Yes." He thought of Richard and Cyprien. "I think I am."

"Do you love me?" When he nodded, she sighed and closed her eyes, snuggling closer to him. "Hold that thought, and me."

Lucan rested his cheek against the top of her head. "Forever."

Read on for a preview of Lynn Viehl's next novel of the Darkyn Night Lost Coming from Signet Eclipse in April 2007 "I'm not afraid," Nicola muttered under her breath as she followed the smell of evergreen. "There's nothing to be afraid of."

Nick didn't mind lying to herself. The truth never set anything free.

The woodsy scent seemed to be coming from a large tapestry at the far end of the cellar passageway. As soon as Nick trained her flashlight on it, she set down her bag and stepped back to have a proper look. At first it seemed to be only a threadbare frame for the rat and moth holes eaten through it, and then she picked out what the weaving had once depicted: a pale-haired woman standing beside a tree. The lady had wrapped her arm around the trunk; the tree's branches curled down around her as if the tree were trying to return the embrace.