Molten agony spread through him, thanks to the copper-tipped stakes upon which he lay impaled. It had taken every ounce of his strength to work himself free of all but one of the deadly spikes. The loss of blood kept his wounds from closing, and as he looked up at the smoke-fogged sky, Byrne suspected his immortal life was rapidly coming to an end.

Then she had appeared, a mop of dark, tangled hair around a pale, frightened face, peering down at him.

Byrne had already accepted his fate, but he didn't want to meet it by himself. Dinnae leave me alone here, lass.

She had circled the pit, climbing over the crumbling earthen side and then sliding down to land on top of him, a ragged bundle dressed in nun's black. Her hands went to the bloodied stake that had rammed through his chest, her fingers slipping as she tried to grasp it.

He had covered her fingers with his hand, his voice gone, his certainty that the copper had skewered his heart unshakable. He had only wanted her to hold his cold, heavy hand in hers.

With a muttered prayer she instead wrapped her skirt around the stake and jerked it out of his body. The pain had shifted and changed, and the stink of death became a field of blossoming heather...

Jayr.

Byrne pressed his hand over the phantom pain in his chest, leaned his head back against the door, and closed his eyes.

Chapter 5.

"I've been to Disney World," Alex told Michael as Phillipe navigated his way out of the city. "Cinderella's castle was cute, but I can't see actually living in it. Not after the age of twelve."

Michael looked amused. "It is fortunate, then, that my family estates were burned to the ground and the property seized by the Brethren."

"I'm not complaining. Just the air-conditioning bill alone for a castle would put us in the vampire poorhouse." Her mobile rang, and she checked the illuminated screen. "Area code seven-oh-eight, but it's not Val." She eyed him. "You screw around lately with anyone from Chicago?"

He trailed his fingers down the length of her arm. "Besides you?"

"Wiseass." She switched the phone to speaker and answered the call. "Alex Keller."

There was a pause before a man said, "Alexandra, it's John."

"Hey, big brother. You're on speaker, and Michael's here." She gave Cyprien a warning look. "You were also supposed to call me a week ago. Where are you?"

"I'm sorry, I forgot. I'm staying with-" The signal broke up, garbling what he said for a few seconds. "... coming to New Orleans."

"You're breaking up, Johnny. We're in Florida right now," she said. "Change the tickets I sent you and fly into Orlando. You can come back home with us when we're done here."

"I told you, I can't," he said, his voice clearer now. "I'm leaving in the morning."

"What?" She stared at the phone. "Where? Why?"

"I can't-" The line went staticky again. Just as Alex was going to hang up and dial back, John's voice came through. "...

worry, Alex, I'll be all right."

"John, I didn't get any of that. Hang on; let me call you back."

"... won't be here. Cyprien, look after her." A click sounded as John ended the call.

Alex pressed her fingers against the hammering pain under her left eyebrow. "I can't believe this." She handed the phone to Michael. "Call Val. Tell him to track down my brother and stop him from doing whatever idiot thing he's got planned."

"Do you know exactly where John is?" When she shook her head, he sighed. "Perhaps he does not wish to be found."

"Too bad." She took the phone from him and dialed the number John had called from. A strange voice answered. "Hello? I need to speak to John Keller."

"Don't know any Keller," the man told her.

"He's a big guy with a dark beard," she said. "Looks like Jesus with an attitude problem."

"Lady, this is a pay phone in front of a convenience store," the man told her, "and there ain't no pissed-off Jesus here."

"Sorry." Alex ended the call and thumped her head back against the seat. "Damn him. Why does he keep doing this to me?"

"He said he was leaving tomorrow, and he does not own a car." Michael thought for a moment. "Valentin can check to see if John changed his plane tickets. He can also have the airports and train stations watched."

She shook her head. "John doesn't have a lot of money. He'll probably cash in the airline tickets and take a bus."

"Then I will have Franz check the bus depots as well," Michael assured her, and kissed the side of her head. "Try not to worry."

"John's pulled another disappearing act while I'm going to be locked up for a month in-hooray-another castle," she snapped.

"What's there to worry about?"

"The Realm is not a prison," Michael told her. "Nor is it anything like Dundellan. You will like it; I promise."

Alex was sick of castles, her brother, and the Darkyn, but she'd agreed to come along with Cyprien for this Scotsman's big party. She'd have to make the best of it. She leaned forward. "Hey, Phil, you ever been to this place?"

"Many times, my lady. Lord Byrne lives as we did during our human lives." The seneschal smiled at her in the rearview mirror.

"It should be very learning... schooling... good for your brain."

Phillipe had been taking a correspondence course to improve his English, Alex had learned when she had returned from Ireland.

Sometimes she suspected that it was making his English worse."I already know that the way you guys lived back then caused leprosy, tuberculosis, the Black Death, and a whole list of other delightful epidemics. I should go check into a nice, clean Marriott." Or take a flight up to Chicago and track down her brother herself.

"The Realm is clean and comforting, my lady," the seneschal assured her.

She drummed her fingers against the armrest. "That's another thing: What's with this 'my lady' stuff all of a sudden? 'Alex' isn't good enough anymore?"

"I am practicing proper manners with my English," Phillipe said. "It is not correct for a seneschal such as me-such as I-to call you by your..." He stopped and asked Cyprien something in French.

"First name," Michael replied.

Phillipe nodded. "Just so."

"Go back to speaking lousy English. I liked it better." She saw the outlines of a building on the other side of a river and nudged Michael. "That it?"

The car came to a halt in front of a private drive barred by a massive wrought-iron gate. Phillipe left the engine running and got out of the car to speak with the guard at the gate, who was dressed in leather and chain mail, and held a nasty-looking spear.

Alex watched as the seneschal and the guard bowed to each other and clasped hands to each other's forearms. "See? I knew there was a secret handshake."

The glitter of the moonlight on water drew her gaze to what she had thought was a river at first. Then she saw the somewhat irregular shape of it.

Her chin dropped. "Is that moat? The guy has a working moat?"

"I believe it was once a seasonal lake. Byrne diverts some of the overflow from the St. Johns River to fill it," Michael told her.

"There is another, larger lake on the south side of his land. Both help prevent flooding during the rainy season, and the moat provides a more familiar form of defense for the castle."

She couldn't believe she was seeing a castle with a moat in the United States of America. "He couldn't just invest in a decent security system and a couple of Dobermans?"

After speaking with the guard for several minutes, Phillipe got back into the car.

"All is well, master," he told Cyprien. "The Kyn from France and Italy arrive soon." He started the engine as the guard pulled open the gates and walked to what looked like a small podium covered with switches and lights.

Alex couldn't see anything beyond the drive but the twenty-foot-wide moat, which had no bridge across it. "We don't have to jump that, do we?"

Michael gave her an inscrutable smile. "Watch and see."

Alex heard water rushing, and as Phillipe drove down toward the moat she saw the surface of the circular channel churning.

Two wide, vertical pilings rose from the moat, revolving and changing shape as they seemed to fold over. Horizontal platforms flattened out and overlapped each other, the edge of the drive, and the edge of the gate road into the castle. Water streamed over the sides in a flood that dwindled to small streams.

"I'll be damned," she said, opening the window so she could stick her head out and look down. "Underwater bridges.""Submersible bastions," Michael corrected.

"Very nice," Alex said, pulling her head back inside, "but wouldn't it be easier to build the place on dry land?"

"Probably, but water has many advantages over land," Michael said. "Byrne and I share common ancestors, and they regarded lakes and rivers as sacred places. Often they would hurl into the water the gold and treasures they had taken in battle, as offerings to the gods to ensure their next victory."

That made about as much sense as the moat approach to domestic security. "Your ancestors were dumb."

Phillipe drove over the linked bridges toward four towers joined together around the massive gateway entrance. The towers surrounding the gateway soared up at least five stories into the night, illuminating it with dozens of torches blazing in enormous iron sconces. Beneath each torch stood a large man dressed in leather and chain mail and armed with a spear, a sword, and a black shield. Each stood motionless at his post, not looking out over the horizon but watching the progress of the car as they passed over the second drawbridge.

"This would make a great credit-card commercial," Alex muttered. "Or a fortress of darkness."

Phillipe braked just before the gated passage through the four towers that led into the compound. Gears slowly cranked, and the heavy wood-and-metal grate in front of them began to rise. A short distance behind it another, heavier gate also lifted.

"Just what is this guy preparing for?" she asked Michael. "A nuclear attack?"

"A castle was a military and community stronghold in our time," he replied. "We had to be prepared for anything."

"Yeah, but two gates? One wasn't enough?"

"In our time, besiegers force storming the castle could be caught and trapped between two portcullises." As Phillipe drove in, he pointed to openings in the walls and ceiling. "The castle's archers would use these murder holes to shoot the trapped men."

"Charming." Alex silently thanked God once more for not having been born in the Middle Ages. "I suppose they poured vats of boiling oil through them, too."

"Not at all," Michael told her. "Cauldrons of oil were heated and dumped from the battlements onto the soldiers trying to ram the gate or scale the walls."

"How humane of you guys." She shuddered.

"It did not always work," he said. "If they were protected under a movable shed, we would take the rotting bodies of dead livestock and-"

"That's okay," Alex told him, putting her hand over his mouth. "I'm not planning to siege a castle anytime soon. Skip all stories that involve maggots."

Michael nipped her palm, making her laugh.

They passed through four more types of barricades before the passage ended in a cobblestone area that Michael called the outer bailey. In front of the castle stood a giant in a hooded dark cloak and a boy in a white shirt and black trousers. Behind them, three rows of warriors with enormous spears stood in formation.

"Oh, look, honey," Alex said sweetly. "Conan and his barbarian army are here." She checked her watch. "How about we head home? If Phil floors it, we could make it back before the Learjet cools off."

Michael laughed. "There is nothing to fear from Byrne and his men. They are merely showing respect.""To you, maybe. Me, he doesn't know." She looked up toward the battlements. "It had better not start raining dead cows."

Phillipe parked the car and opened the back door for them. Michael helped her out, put his arm around her waist, and bent down to murmur, "Relax, cherie. You will like him, I promise."

"Are you kidding?" Alex surveyed the giant. "I'm going to make him my new best friend."

When they walked up to the waiting Kyn, the suzerain pulled back his hood and stepped forward to meet them. Alex tilted her head to get a better look at Byrne, who had to be one of the largest men, human or Kyn, whom she'd ever encountered. The Scotsman stood half a head taller than Cyprien, who was no shrimp, and had at least seventy pounds on Phillipe, who was built like a tank.

The top of her own head, Alex gauged, almost cleared the top of his belt. Almost.

She'd never seen red hair quite the color of Byrne's, or so much of it on a man. It flowed over his shoulders like dark liquid garnet, turning bloodred wherever the torchlight flickered over it. It echoed the bold red in the clan tartan and kilt he wore, which should have made him look ridiculous but only added to the aura of real danger. The crowning touch, his barbaric- looking facial tattoos, made him look like the walking, scowling embodiment of the Dark Ages.

Someone said their names, and Michael urged Alex forward with one hand. Usually he introduced her to other Kyn lords, but maybe this time the meeting was supposed to be less formal.

"Alexandra Keller," she said to the suzerain, holding out her hand and hoping she'd get it back.

"Aedan mac Byrne, my lady," the giant said, swallowing her hand in his and bowing over it. "We are honored."

Alex controlled a flinch, but Byrne's gentle, careful touch twanged through her, a thrashing, spark-shooting wire. Through the soundless roar of light in her head, Alex glimpsed a different version of his face, one that was masked in gore and blood that paled around eyes of hellfire. She blamed her talent-she could read the thoughts of any killer-but soon realized that the suzerain wasn't hiding any secretive, murderous thoughts. He didn't think about killing at all.

Death on a short leash. Alex felt panic balloon inside her chest. He's not a killer. He's a weapon.

"Sorry I didn't get to say hello in Fort Lauderdale before I was kidnapped." He wasn't letting go of her, and, right on cue, she was babbling. "You know how it is when you're hypnotized and being kidnapped by a half-crazed vampire king."

Eyebrows a shade darker than his hair arched. "I cannae say I do."

"Right." She'd better get her act together before she said something to offend him. There, that would work. "Has anyone ever made a list of everything that pisses you off?" she asked. When he frowned, she added, "I'd like a copy. You know. So I can memorize it."

He chuckled, and the menacing grooves of his face became laugh lines. "Whatever you do or say, lass, you're safe with me." He patted her hand before he released it and shifted his gaze to Michael. "Seigneur. Welcome back to the Realm."

"Thank you for having us, my friend." Michael clasped hands with him. "We are looking forward to the tournament."