John went to the railing. "How long has the abbey been here?"

"We celebrate our thirty-ninth groundbreaking anniversary in November." Mercer took out his cigar case. "I don't suppose you've taken up the filthy habit since leaving the church?""No, but go ahead."

"This is the only place I can have one without worrying about Brother Ignatius sniffing me." Mercer used a pocketknife to trim the end before lighting the cigar and puffing on it until the end glowed crimson. "This land was supposed to be a great investment for the archdiocese of Miami. They bought up a couple hundred acres here in North Broward dirt cheap shortly before the Gold Coast and Miami were built out. Resold them twenty years later for millions."

John nodded. "Why didn't they sell this property?"

"I've only been here a few months, so I'm not really sure." Mercer shrugged. "We're right on top of the Everglades, so everything to the west is protected by the National Parks and can't be developed. Brush fires set by the Indians on their land have always been a pain in the arse, too. Whatever the reason, the church hung on to this parcel too long, and the developers passed them by. That's when they sent Bromwell, the abbot before me, down here to build the abbey."

John looked out at the zero-lot-lined communities that encircled the abbey's property. "And none of this was here. It must have seemed like the end of the world."

"Bromwell must have thought so." He pulled in a mouthful of smoke and released it in a series of small rings. "He insisted on naming this place after Father Luis Cancer de Barbastro, a priest sent to establish a mission in Tampa who was slaughtered by Indians in 1549. You Americans have barbaric taste in monuments."

"I suppose we do." John looked over the railing at the ground. "Maybe Bromwell meant it as a tribute."

"You can't jump off, old chap; it's not high enough," Mercer said, watching John's face for a reaction. "You'll only break your legs, your spine, or your neck."

His friend didn't twitch a muscle. "I wasn't thinking of jumping."

"Well, if you're going to push me off something, at least tell what the bloody hell happened to you in Chicago." Mercer waited, but John remained silent. "You know, according to some of the older brothers here, Bromwell was a joyless stickler for the rules. He ran this place like a dictator, and made sure every brother who came here suffered right alongside him."

John crossed his arms and leaned back against one of the roof supports. "And?"

"Bromwell hated people, but not even he could stop the march of progress. Housing developers invaded this place twenty years ago." Mercer nodded toward one of the crowded satellite communities. "Everyone with money stayed in the east, so this became a magnet for lower-income families, transients, and the like. Bromwell tried fencing off the abbey's land and built that bleeding monstrosity of a wall around the monastic buildings"-he nodded toward the seven-foot-high brick enclosure beyond the chapel-"but he couldn't keep the brothers cut off from the outside world any longer."

Mercer told John how property values had plummeted even further after the Mariel Boatlift of 1980, leaving the brothers in an ever-deepening melting pot of multiracial Cuban, Haitian, and Jamaican poor.

"I know from the paperwork Bromwell left behind that he had repeatedly contacted the head of his order to request reassignment. It never came." He looked out at the night sky. "Evidently he hated the immigrants and the fact that the other brothers wanted to become involved in the community, and started embezzling money from the abbey's funds. About a month before I was sent down, one of the younger brothers accidentally discovered it and confronted Bromwell." He nodded toward the chapel. "They found him hanging from a roof beam just before vespers."

"Is that why they offered it to you? Because of his suicide?"

"You know how superstitious the Benedictines are," Mercer said. "It tainted Barbastro for them, so they turned it over to the Franciscans. I was happy to take up the reins, as it were.""So what are you going to do here, Mercer?" John was asking.

"The work," he said simply. "The brothers have become involved in dozens of community projects. They've raised the funds to help build and staff a low-cost day-care facility to help welfare mothers go back to work, as well as hiring a teacher for a halfway house for pregnant teenagers to enable them to finish out their schooling. They're also getting involved in programs at the local Catholic church to help keep young children from being lured into using drugs and joining gangs."

"What I meant was, what are you going to do out here, Mercer?" John asked. "Of all the places I imagined that you'd end up, this isn't even close. This is more like..."

"Mars?" Mercer laughed. "Maybe it is, my friend, but I'll tell you a secret: I don't mind playing the part of a Martian." He saw the doubt in John's eyes, but couldn't blame him for it. The last time they had spent any time together, he'd still been in one of his bleak moods. The Mercer Lane whom John had known had been a tired man. "To tell you the God's truth, I needed a place like this. With all that has happened to me since I joined the priesthood, I needed something good and simple, like this place."

He didn't mind adding a small white lie. "That's why I came here. It doesn't get any simpler than this."

"If you wanted simple, you could have gone over to a third-world mission," his friend suggested.

"Like you did?" Mercer shook his head. "I'd have been bitten by a mosquito stepping off the plane and died of some horrid foreign disease. I couldn't have brought the Word to the ignorant savages anyway. My calling-my mission-requires me to dwell among the civilized unwise."

John's mouth flattened. "I wish I'd been that realistic before I went to South America."

"Well, now you're a ruddy private citizen, able to drop the beads and get on with your life. I don't envy you the prospect of dating. Women today are far more demanding than Mum ever was." He saw John flinch. "Is that what it was that drove you out? A woman?"

"I can't talk about it, and please don't ask me." John Keller, who never pleaded or showed weakness, sounded as if he were begging now. "Please."

"I'll remind you of something a very wise and exhausted young priest once told me: If you don't get it out, it will eat you up inside." Pleased to hit John with his own advice, Mercer turned and saw the gleam of a bald head. "Here." He thrust the cigar in John's hand. "Cover for me."

Brother Ignatius emerged from the stairwell and gave John and Mercer a stringent, sour look. "We do not permit smoking on the grounds of the abbey, Brother Patrick."

"Sorry." John ground out the cigar on the sole of his shoe. "I didn't know."

"Now you do." The older friar eyed Mercer. "Father Lane, it is after midnight. Shall I show Brother Patrick to his room?"

"Yes, thank you, Ignatius." Mercer slapped John's shoulder. "Get some rest. I'll see you at breakfast in the morning."

Mercer stood looking out at the abbey's grounds until John and Ignatius disappeared from sight, and then went from the cloister to the abbot's house, where there was always paperwork waiting for him to review and sign.

He was nearly finished with the day's correspondence when his guestmaster appeared in the open doorway.

"Brother Patrick refused a dinner tray and has gone to bed," Brother Ignatius said. "I have put him in the south hall of the hospitium."

"Call him John," Mercer said as he signed off on a purchase order for cleaning supplies. "He's not one of us.""Yes, Father, I gathered that. May I have a word?" At Mercer's nod, he came into the office and closed the door behind him. "I know it is not my place to criticize your decisions, but is it entirely wise to bring one of the flock under our roof?"

Brother Ignatius prided himself on keeping close watch on the conduct of everyone at the abbey, and reporting any violations of the rules back to the abbot. He had never before questioned any of Mercer's decisions, but Barbastro had never before opened its gates to anyone outside the order.

"The sheep are safest when in the fold," Mercer responded dryly. He appreciated his guestmaster's vigilance, but sometimes Ignatius could be as annoying as a tattling five-year-old. "John is struggling with life and faith. God does not wish us to turn our backs on a brother in crisis, even after he has left the church."

"But still..." Ignatius clasped his hands together and twisted them as he sought the right words. "We were commanded to remain aloof. I am sorry to be the one to say this, Father, but you flirt with violating the oath."

"Rest assured that if I have, I will be removed from my position and another will take my place." Mercer saw a light blinking on his phone and punched the button that connected him with the abbey's switchboard operator. "Yes, Brother Jacob?"

"A call for you, Father." Jacob's voice sounded strained. "It is on the secured line."

"Lord have pity on us." Ignatius gasped.

Mercer hadn't suffered cold sweats since he'd left Europe, but there was no denying the chilly sensation that inched down his spine. "Thank you, Brother Jacob." He glanced up at the guestmaster. "If you will excuse me, Brother?"

The older friar pressed his hands together, bowed over them, and fled.

Mercer took a moment to regain some composure. He had not yet received a call on the secured line. At times he had even allowed himself to forget about it, as much as he was able. Still, there was no need for hysteria. The call was likely some matter to do with the order's new administration; many things had changed since the pope had died. Likely this was nothing more than some sort of official notification that could not be entrusted to a fax like all the others.

Mercer's hand still shook a little as he picked up the phone. "Abbot Lane."

"Wasn't that a song by the Beatles?" a man with a New York-accented voice asked. Before Mercer could reply, he added, "You take your time answering your calls, Brother."

He couldn't place the voice at all. "Who is this?"

"I keep the Light of the World shining," the man snapped. "Don't tell me your fax machine is broken."

"I... I live for the Light," Mercer said, giving the traditional response. "Cardinal D'Orio, what an honor it is to speak with you."

"You're not going to speak, Brother. You're going to listen." D'Orio uttered a belch. "Pardon me. I know better than to drink Coca-Cola-it always gives me gas-but I love the stuff. Now, we have a report that one of the maledicti has established one of their infernal nests in your territory, Brother."

"I don't see how," Mercer said uneasily. "My predecessor eradicated the last of the demons some twenty years ago, did he not?"

"Your predecessor was a thief and a liar, but that's beside the point." D'Orio drank something. "You have the problem now.

Capture what you can and burn the rest."

Kidnapping and arson, Mercer thought, all in the name of the Almighty. "Your Holiness, there may be some difficulty in carrying out your orders. I am prepared, naturally, but this cell has never been activated.""Consider this your wake-up call, Mercer. I expect a full progress report in two days. Don't lose sight of the light." D'Orio hung up the phone.

Mercer pulled open his desk drawer and looked at the bottle of wine inside. He never drank here at the abbey, preferring to indulge himself away from the poor brothers under his care.

They didn't deserve to be exposed to the ugliness of his work. They'd done good things here, the sort of ordinary things that Mercer had once wished he could do.

They aren't like you, the ghost of his novitiate master in Rome whispered inside his skull. They're demons, and you were created to fight them.

Mercer knew what his mission had cost him. He'd lost his way-and almost his soul-trying to do the work and then forget the unspeakable things involved with what he'd done. But the work had to be done, and he had been chosen by God to do it.

While he was convinced there was no heaven waiting for him after death, surely the majority of what he had done here would outweigh the bad and earn him purgatory.

He ran his fingers over the bottle's hand-printed label, and closed his eyes. "God help me. God help us all."

"More pink," Alexandra said as she looked around the beach house. "Holy Toledo. Is there some state law that says every other thing in Florida has to be pink?"

The men ignored her, but they had been doing that since they'd left New Orleans.

She wandered around the first floor of the light, airy house that had been provided for their use by some unnamed local ally of the Darkyn. To be fair, the house was not entirely pink; the decor included sea colors of blue, turquoise, and green to go along with artful touches of seashells and driftwood that accented the casual furniture. Large glass windows looked out over a long stretch private beach, and beyond that, the gently rolling surf of the Atlantic.

It should have been soothing, but something had been nagging at her since they'd left Louisiana. Alex couldn't quite put her finger on what it was, but it made her feel as if her temper-or something-was ready to snap.

"To think I would have sacrificed a limb to have a time-share like this two years ago." She stopped in the kitchen and checked the contents of the refrigerator, which had been stocked with four full shelves of bagged blood, wine, and the perishable medical supplies she'd sent ahead. At least they wouldn't have to hunt for willing donors while they were here. "What, no keggers?"

"Ale makes you vomit," Phillipe said as he carried her instrument bags into the room. "Do you wish me to place these in the cabinets or the drawers, Alexandra?"

"I'm not planning on operating on the countertop." She frowned. "Maybe we should set up one of the spare bedrooms as a treatment room, the way we did at Val's place in Chicago. Assuming we have a spare bedroom. Have we heard back from Val about them moving Luisa, and is she doing okay?"

"Ms. Lopez is now safely installed in a rehabilitation hospital, where the Kyn may watch over her. Suzerain Jaus says she is well." He stowed the cases in the large walk-in pantry and reemerged. "As for the bedchambers, there are three in addition to the master."

"A little smaller than what we're used to, huh? After rattling around in le mansion, though, it's kind of cozy." She followed him out to the front room, where Michael was still rattling off things in fast French to Gard Paviere. She cleared her throat. "Some people should speak English when the non-French person is in the room."

Philippe smothered a chuckle as he went back out to unload more luggage from the limousine.Alex waited impatiently as Michael finished whatever he was telling Gard. After Paviere clasped Michael's hand between his, he gave her a short bow and left them alone. "You want to repeat all that in the only language I'm fluent in now?" she asked sweetly.

"No." Michael dragged a hand through his hair and looked around him as if seeing the room for the first time. "You do not like something that is pink, you said?"

"That was thirty minutes ago. I'm used to it now. Val has Luisa out of the hospital and into a Kyn rehab place, where she'll be safe." She flopped down on a wicker love seat upholstered with palm-leaf-patterned fabric. "When do we go meet with Dr.

Doom? Do I have to dress up and be nice, the way I did with Val?"

"We will arrange a meeting for tomorrow night. You may wear whatever you wish." Michael sat beside her, his expression serious. "You go nowhere near Lucan unless I am with you."

"Not a problem," Alex assured him. She had no desire to be alone with the high lord's former chief butcher. "Does he know we're in town, or is this like a surprise inspection where we show up and shock the bejesus out of him?"

His beautiful mouth flattened. "He knows."

But not because you told him, she guessed. "Okay. Are you going to teach me to hunt other vampires, or whatever it is you do, this time? It took us forever to find Thierry in Chicago."

"You said you do not hunt."

"I don't hunt for necks to bite," she reminded him. "I'm okay with going after a prospective patient, as long as I don't have to treat him like a sippy cup." The mental image of having to feed on a leprous vampire made her wrinkle her nose. "Euuwww. I think I just grossed myself out."

"Alexandra, this will not be as it was in Chicago," he said, and put an arm around her. "Valentin has always been a friend, but more important, he accepts me as his seigneur. Lucan has been trying to kill me almost since we rose to walk the night."

"Boy, you two really don't like each other." The look in his eyes killed the chuckle rising in her throat. "You are kidding about him... really?"

"Lucan and I have fought in tourneys, on battlefields, and anywhere else it was necessary to prove ourselves. In every instance, I prevailed over him and won Richard's favor." He lifted her onto his lap. "He came to despise me for it."

"It's been a couple hundred years since you two hung together, right?" When Michael nodded, she rested her cheek on his shoulder and played with the ends of the silk handkerchief peeking out of the breast pocket of his jacket. "Maybe he's gotten over it. Even Darkyn grow up eventually, right?"

"When the first colonies in America were established, like so many of us Lucan wished to come here to begin his own jardin.

Richard refused to release him from his service and chose to send me instead to New Orleans." He removed the clip holding her curls in a loose knot at the back of her head. "For Lucan, it was the final insult."

"Bitch-slapped down by the boss." Alex winced. "I bet he just loved that."

"Indeed, he did not." Briefly Michael's arms tightened around her. "He slaughtered the human servants I had left behind in France, and burned my estates to the ground."

"No way." She lifted her head to stare at him. "Is that what he was trying to do to Nurse Heather? Is that why he broke into the house in New Orleans?"

"I cannot say. All I know is this: you are my sygkenis, and that makes you a prize target for him," he warned. "If he can lure you or take you away from me, he will. By seduction or any other means."

She couldn't believe it. "All this because he couldn't beat you at swords, and you got the cushy overseas assignment that he wanted?"

"Yes." He spanned her jaw with his hand, using his thumb to trace the curve of her upper lip. "Now do you understand why I wish you to go nowhere near Lucan?"

Suddenly a lot of things that had been going on since they had returned from Chicago made sense to her, and she sat up straight. "This is why you've been playing knights in shining armor with Phil four nights a week. You think he's going to come after you for real."

"In this case, ma belle, I have come to him." He stood, still holding her in his arms. "Richard may have convinced Lucan not to assassinate me, but he may yet use any opportunity he can take to torment me. When he broke into La Fontaine, somehow he must have seen you. Later he made it clear to me that he wanted you." He nudged open the door to the master bedroom and carried her inside.

Alex tried to process all this. "Why didn't you tell me about this before we came here?"

"We had real concerns to deal with, Alexandra. My oldest enemy in the world may wish to seduce you, but that does not mean he will." Michael placed her on the net-draped bed and shrugged out of his jacket. "If by chance he does manage to have a private moment alone with you, simply remember what he did to your nurse. To take his revenge on me, he would not hesitate to do the same-or worse-to you."

"Meanwhile, you're giving him a jardin and treating him like one of the old vampire family." Her head was starting to hurt, so she pushed herself off the bed and began walking the floor. "You're not going to take him out, either, are you?"

"If I kill Lucan, Richard will be seriously displeased." Michael began unbuttoning his shirt, and the scent of fullblown roses filled the room. "He might even decide to kill me. It is ironic; Lucan has always been jealous of the attention and favor Richard has shown me, but he is the one the high lord truly considers his surrogate son."

Alex watched him undress down to his black silk boxers and reach for the lighter, more casual clothes Phillipe had left on the edge of the bed. She breathed in his scent and felt the edginess inside her recede a few inches. "You going somewhere?"

"No, but I must make a few phone calls and do some computer work," he said as he shook the folds out of his khaki trousers.

"If you are tired from the journey, you should sleep."