"That building with the nightclub just changed hands." Her partner nodded toward the sheet in her hand. "Check out the name of the new property management company."

Sam focused on the sheet, and found the paragraph about the sale of the property. "I'll be damned. Lucan Enterprises."

"Yeah." Harry grinned. "So, are we going dancing tonight, honey, or what?"

Chapter 4.

John Keller had felt the air change as soon as the bus passed Orlando. What had been cold and dry in Georgia suddenly softened and warmed, easing the tightness in his chest. By the time the Greyhound pulled into the Hollywood station, he was tired, hungry, and hopeful.

Tired and hungry were nothing new, but the hope was something he hadn't felt in a long time.

The driver, a lean black man with distrusting eyes, took John's one suitcase from the cargo bay and set it down in front of him.

"You got a place to go, my man?"

John nodded and reached for the case.

"I just wanted to say how I appreciate you looking after the old lady," the driver said, nodding toward the frail, elderly woman being escorted from the station by the middle-aged daughter who had come to meet the bus.

Helping the lady in and out of her seat and escorting her to the tiny restroom on the bus had been simple courtesy, nothing more, but the other passengers had stared at John as though he had lost his mind.

"It wasn't a big thing. Have a safe trip back," John told the driver, and then paused as the man held out a business card. "What's this?"

"My brother's got a roofing business in north Broward. Steady work for a man who ain't afraid of heights." The driver gestured toward the northwest. "You need a job or something, call him, tell him Maurice said you're okay."

John took the card and shook the driver's hand. "Thank you."

"Like you said, no big thing." Maurice grinned, flashing gold caps. "You take care now, my man."

John walked into the station and stopped at one of the vending machines to get a can of soda. He studied the card and wondered if he might have to make the call to Maurice's brother. The bus ticket to Florida had left him with seventeen dollars in his wallet. If Mercer didn't show up, it was enough to buy a couple of meals, make some long-distance phone calls, or rent a cheap room for the night. After that he would hit bottom: broke, homeless, and unemployed.

It didn't frighten him. Hitting bottom had been a regular occurrence in John Keller's life since leaving Chicago.

Working his way to Florida had been harder than John had expected, but the economy was on a downslide, and no one wanted to hire a grim, quiet ex-priest with no practical job skills. He had been forced to spend a month in Kentucky working labor-pool jobs and living in a homeless shelter simply to save up for a bus ticket here.

John took a long drink from the ice-cold can of Pepsi and felt too many eyes watching him. He didn't blame the passengers waiting for their buses or relatives to arrive. It was getting dark, and night brought out the caution in people. He'd lost more weight, so much that now his worn, thriftstore-bought clothes hung on him, and he badly needed a haircut and a beard trim. He probably looked like a bum. If Mercer showed up, he might not even recognize him. He was a ghost of his former self.

At least I'm not a vampire.

His sister, Alexandra, had become one. It was ironic, in the sense that John had worked for years to keep his sister out of his life, using his vocation as the wall between them. John had once thought he and Alex might someday reconcile their difficult relationship, once he had overcome his shame over his past mistakes, and she stopped pretending she was an atheist, in order to hurt him.

Before John could begin the healing process, he had been lured from his sister and his calling as a parish priest to become an initiate of Les Freres de la Lumiere, the Brethren of the Light. He had gone to Rome for his training, where the former Catholic priests had brainwashed, brutalized, and virtually tortured him. Not, as John had been told, to transform him into a warrior of God. No, John had been taken simply to be made into bait for his sister, for by then Alexandra had already sacrificed her humanity to play physician for her immortal vampire lover and his kind.

Now that his little sister had become something beyond his understanding, something that made a mockery of everything he had believed in, John didn't know what to do. Most of his beliefs and all of his faith had died over the last year. Still, John could not have a relationship with a creature that fed off the blood of the living-even if she had been his sister.

We are on opposite sides of this thing. We can never be brother and sister again.

John had left the priesthood, because as repulsive as the parasitic needs of the Darkyn were, the horrendous practices the Brethren used to hunt, torture, and kill them were just as horrific. He did not know what Alex and the Darkyn intended to do, but the Brethren's mission was clear. They would do whatever was necessary to win the centuries-long struggle to wipe out the Darkyn. John knew they were not above using anyone-street thugs, runaway children, or even other Darkyn-to hunt down, torture, and kill the vampires.

These are demons sent up from hell itself to torment mankind, Archbishop Hightower, John's sponsor and mentor, had told him. They use whatever they can to manipulate us, to turn us against one another.

Alex hadn't done that. To date she had stayed away from John, and the one time they had been alone together since her transformation all she had asked for was a vial of his blood. She claimed she needed it to keep searching for a cure for herself and the Darkyn, whom she believed were victims of an ancient viral mutation.

Hightower had warned John that he was a target of the Darkyn. If these creatures have Alexandra, then the Order is the only thing that can keep you safe now. He had given him incriminating photographs the Darkyn had taken of John when he had been out of his mind on drugs, so much so that he had raped one of the female Darkyn working for the Brethren. They won't rest until you are back in prison.

John hated to admit it, but he missed Hightower as well. He didn't trust the archbishop, and sometimes he despised him, but Hightower had wielded tremendous positive influence over his life. The last time he had seen his mentor, Hightower had paid him the ultimate compliment: You're the closest thing to a son that I'll ever have.

His adopted parents had died while John was in the seminary. Alexandra was as good as dead, and his mentor had betrayed him time and again. That was why John had contacted Mercer. All he really had left in the world were a few friends, like Mercer Lane.

"Father John Keller, please come to the ticket booth," a woman said over the PA system, making him swivel toward the glassed-in booths at the far end of the station. A man in a plain dark suit stood next to the middle window and was scanning the faces of passengers walking in from the bus lot.

John had met Mercer Lane at a Benedictine conference two years ago. Mercer had transferred from his parish in Manchester to America, and had been looking for a post in Florida. His wry, self-deprecating humor had made an otherwise dull event lively, and John had corresponded with him for several months after the conference. Those happy memories made John seriously consider walking out of the station and sparing his friend any involvement in his complicated life.

Then Mercer saw him, and John was caged by the genuine smile that appeared on his face as he hurried over.

"Saints, John, you look like the devil himself with that beard." Mercer embraced him as a brother might and stepped back. He had long, floppy light brown hair and the patrician features of the youngest son of an old, moneyed family, which was exactly what he had been before becoming a priest. "How was the ride?"

"Fine, Merc. I'm glad to see you, too." He picked up his case. "Are you sure this won't be a problem?"

"Not for me; I run the place." Mercer grinned like a boy and took his suitcase. "I'll wager you're starving, and there's a smashing little deli down the street that's open late. You can have a bite and then we'll head back to home base."The deli turned out to be kosher, and John renewed his acquaintance with a proper Reuben sandwich.

"You really went bugger-all? Handed over the collar and the cross for good?" Mercer asked before taking a sip of his mineral water.

"I did." John felt his stomach clench and willed himself not to turn lunch into a confessional booth. "I'd like to keep a low profile while I'm here, if that's possible. I'm using my middle name, Patrick, as my last name. Like I told you over the phone, I've had enough upheaval in my life."

John hadn't informed his friend about the details of what had made him leave the church. As open-minded as Mercer was, even he'd have a hard time swallowing the story of how John and his sister had been victimized and made enemies by the immortal demons known as the Darkyn.

His friend nodded. "We're not a nosy lot at the abbey." He smirked. "The brothers are more interested in seeing how much work they can get out of you while you're with us anyway. Tote that barge; lift that bale-that sort of thing."

The brothers. John's appetite vanished. "You never mentioned your affiliation with the church. What order governs the monastery?" He prayed it was not Les Freres de la Lumiere, the Brethren of the Light, who had used him repeatedly in their battle against the vampires known as Darkyn.

"We're Franciscans," Mercer said. He tugged at the lapel of his jacket. "I wear street clothes when I drive into town, mostly in hopes that I'll be mistaken for Hugh Grant and kidnapped by a deranged supermodel, but on our grounds it's all about the robe and rope."

Franciscan monks were among the poorest and most dedicated of God's servants, and some of John's tension automatically eased. "No worldly goods at all? Somehow I expected a continental like you to end up running a Benedictine order."

Mercer laughed. "Brown is bloody hot enough. I'm not wearing black in the tropics."

After they finished their sandwiches, Mercer bought some bagels, lox, and cream cheese to take back to the monastery.

"I've often regretted not being born a Jew," he explained as they went to his ancient station wagon. "Their food is so much better. I'd trade ham and pork chops for kugel and matzo-ball soup any day."

"You'd have to marry," John pointed out. "Single rabbis are frowned on."

"After all these years of celibacy, I expect I'd need a spot of coaching." His friend shrugged. "Then the bird would want to meet my parents, and Mum would finally die of shock the way she's been threatening to all these years."

In his letters to John, Mercer had confessed to an extended battle with an addiction that had ruined his ability to stay in England.

His parents, wealthy supporters of the Catholic church there, had not been sympathetic. In his last letter, which had caught up with John in Chicago, Mercer had told him he had a new vision of his faith and his role in the church. How that vision had led him to become the abbot of a Franciscan monastery, John wasn't sure. He'd never imagined a lively and intelligent soul like Mercer retreating to the cloister.

It's not as isolated as the North of England, thank the Almighty, and we're involved with the local community on a regular basis. Mercer had written of his new post in South Florida. Feeding the homeless, helping out the elderly, guiding the kids, that sort of thing. I feel like I finally have a place in the world, John.

John, who had never found his place, had tried not to envy his friend.

"You speak Spanish, don't you?" Mercer asked now.

John nodded."Good, because half of our people don't understand anything else."

John wondered if his friend had some agenda to repair the damage that had destroyed his calling. "I'll help however I can, but don't think it will change my mind. I'm done with the church."

"I got that loud and clear over the phone, Johnny," Mercer said. "I've all the friars I can handle anyway. What we could really use is a procurator. Over time we've inherited a dozen lifelong monastics, and you know how hopeless the old guys are at dealing with the outside world. I'm so busy I can't babysit all of them. You'd make a great go-between."

John wasn't going to commit himself yet. Not even for Mercer. "I'm really not sure what I want to do. Let's take it one day at a time."

His friend nodded and chuckled. "That's my motto."

Lucan dried his face with an ivory hand towel and straightened to face the space on the wall where the mirror had been removed. Despite legend and Hollywood propaganda, Darkyn could see their reflections just as well as humans could, although many avoided mirrors. Guilt, perhaps, over the fact that time weathered every human face around them but left theirs untouched, or the old superstition that they would see the devil grinning at them over their shoulder.

We are all variations on Dorian Gray, my friend, Gabriel Seran had told him once. We simply have not yet found our portraits.

Lucan personally didn't particularly like or dislike mirrors; he had them removed only because, thanks to a minor side effect of his talent, they had the unfortunate tendency to shatter around him. If the old superstition about receiving seven years' bad luck for every mirror one broke were true, he would need to live an eternity to work off his.

A knock on the door made Lucan reach for his gloves. "What is it?"

"A call for you, master," Burke said from outside.

He dropped the gloves. "Tell whoever it is that I died during the last Crusade."

Lucan dragged his fingers through his damp hair. The other reason he didn't need mirrors was because his face had not changed in seven centuries. He had been considered handsome in nearly every age he had lived, thanks to whatever titled adulterer had impregnated his mother, Gwynyth, a minor lady-in-waiting at a forgotten court. That randy nobleman had gifted him with strong, defined features and an abundance of fine fair hair that had begun turning silver in his fourteenth year. His mother's eyes had been a limpid cornflower blue, so he assumed his sire had also endowed him with his strangely colorless eyes. Given his lack of color, Lucan occasionally wondered if Gwynyth had spread her legs for an albino.

Ask me about your father again, sweeting, his mother had purred during one of the rare interviews she had granted him while screwing her way into the queen's service, and I'll cut out your tongue.

Gwynyth's people had been little more than gentrified farmers, the descendents of landholders and by-blows left behind by raiding Norsemen. From them Lucan had inherited a broad, heavy-boned frame and a peculiar quickness usually confined to smaller, lighter men. During his eighteenth year he had suddenly gained another four inches in height, growing so quickly that his joints stiffened and ached for months. That final surge of adolescence had given him an impressive length of limb and made him the tallest of his master's squires. His size, agility, and reach had caught the attention of a visiting Templar, who had convinced Lucan that God had endowed him thusly to save Jerusalem from the infidels.

Thou art made to be the strong arm of God, the warrior priest assured him. Come to the temple and pledge thyself to be my brother in arms, and I will train thee myself.Lucan shrugged into a white linen shirt with full sleeves. How pitiful his life would have been if he had not abandoned his mother to her court intrigues. When he had told her he intended to take his vows, she had threatened to send him back to his grandfather's farm to work the fields. There he might have lived thirty or forty years, long enough to spawn the next generation of plowmen and die of some dismal disease or injury common to his birth era.

How much trouble Gwynyth might have saved him, if only she had carried out one of her threats.

A timid knock interrupted his thoughts. "Master Lucan?"

"What now?" he asked through clenched teeth.

"Lord Tremayne says that he is aware that you died after the last Crusade," Burke said, "but he would still like to speak with you. He is on hold for you."

Lucan jerked open the door and glared down at his tresora. "You put the high lord of the Darkyn on hold?"

"He said he didn't mind." Burke erupted into a spate of sneezes.

Lucan snatched the cordless receiver out of his hand, stepped back, and slammed the door in his tresora's face. He switched the phone on and lifted it to his ear. "My apologies for keeping you waiting, seigneur. I vow I will strangle my human servant at the next opportunity."

"Do not deprive yourself of that congested jester on my account, Lucan." Richard Tremayne's silken voice curled inside his head like a contented, purring feline. "When he is not evacuating his orifices, the fellow doubtless has his merits. Do you know, has he tried Sudafed? My humans claim it a miracle drug."

"I shall inquire of him." Burke would have to die for this. "Your generosity is unexpected and deeply appreciated, seigneur."

"That I doubt," Richard said. "How are you finding your first taste of suzerainty?"

"The bureaucracy may drive me to frenzy." Why were they chatting as old friends long parted? Lucan had abandoned Richard without warning or permission. "I have gathered nearly a hundred, not enough for a proper jardin, but I suspect there are others waiting to see what I will make of it."

"Michael is among them."

"I owe Cyprien nothing." Agitated by the mention of the one Kyn he would kill for nothing, Lucan walked out to the wall of security camera monitors in his bedchamber that displayed different views of the entire nightclub. "I believe you are owed a proper explanation for my disobedience."

"It is a little late to be inventing pretty excuses for leaving my service." His voice took on an edge that scraped fine, sharp claws against Lucan's ear. "You served me faithfully for many years. I knew one day you would tire of it." The high lord's tone changed slightly, neutralizing the piercing effect. "My rule may soon come to an end, and I could not have deeded you like a castle or a fortune to my successor."

On the monitor Lucan saw a young woman and older man enter the club together and approach one of his bartenders. The odd couple both wore suits and showed his employee their identification. Bitterness rose in his throat. "You still intend to have Cyprien take the reins."

"My intentions are not your concern," Richard reminded him. "Cyprien, however, is. I have reason to believe that he and his people will be paying you a visit very soon."

Lucan would have replied, but the young woman had turned toward the camera. His fingers fumbled with the monitor controls for a moment until he could zoom in on her features.Frances.

"If Michael does appear on your doorstep," Richard was saying, "you will not kill him."

He sat down on the carpet and stared up at the monitors, following the young woman's progress through the club. "I told him to stay out of Florida."

"Whether you recognize his authority or not, Michael is now your liege lord."

She was the image of Frances. Oh, Lucan could see that she was not an exact match, for she did not possess the same length of hair or languid grace of movement. Frances had dressed like a princess of the realm; this girl's boxy garments and ugly shoes desperately wanted burning.

But her face? The very image of Frances, who had been buried two hundred years ago.

"I wish you to do something for me."

"Anything." Lucan tore his gaze from the monitors and forced himself to attend Richard.

"Michael will bring his sygkenis with him."

Richard referred to Dr. Alexandra Keller, the first human to make the change in many centuries. How Cyprien had managed it, Lucan knew not, but he had seen the woman with his own eyes. He had also lusted after her pretty little body and greatly feared the passion with which she burned.

Not that it mattered now. Not when he had Frances's living twin downstairs, ripe and ready for the taking. "What would you have me do, seigneur?"

"Contact me if you find yourself with unexpected guests. Do not allow Cyprien or his sygkenis to leave Florida until I arrive."