"Neither am I. Stay here." She walked Edith to her door, and searched for the keys in her purse. She had to feel for them, because the porch light was off, and thick dark clouds were starting to block the moonlight. "Edith, you have got to stay out of cemeteries from now on."

"Yes, ma'am."

The obedience of her response made Alex peer into her eyes. "Don't let people call you Death. It's a moronic name.

And stop wearing these clothes. They're ugly."

Edith nodded and reached down. She had her black vinyl pants unb.u.t.toned and unzipped before Alex could grab her hands.

"Jesus, don't undress out here."

Edith instantly stopped stripping.

Will she do whatever I tell her to? Alex looked down both sides of the street, and then tested her theory. "Edith, I want you to flap your arms and cluck like a chicken."

Her arms began to flap. "Bock-bock-begock, bock-bocka-"

Blind rage flooded inside Alex, but she managed to tell Edith, "Stop flapping and clucking. Go inside and get some sleep." The wind picked up and sifted through her hair. "Have a nice dream."

"Yes, I will. Of him." The young woman's gaze drifted toward the street. "He's such a man."

"A real tower of testosterone." Alex unlocked the door and pushed her inside. The wind was picking up and the temperature was dropping. "I want you to see your doctor this week. Get a referral for a therapist. And go to church."

Once Edith was floating toward her bedroom, Alex turned the push lock, threw Edith's keys inside, and slammed the door. The chill in the air made her swear; she'd forgotten to get her jacket back.

Cyprien stood waiting for her at the end of the little walk that led up to the duplex. "Now we will go and find you a willing-"

Alex punched him in the face. Her knuckles caught him squarely on the chin. She felt her skin split, watched him stagger backward. Overhead, lightning flashed.

He was stunned, holding his jaw. "Why do you hit me?"

It was. .h.i.t him again, or walk away. She got only as far as the end of the block when the rain came down, and when he grabbed her and whirled her around.

"Why?" He caught her fist this time before it reached his face, and held it.

She drew her foot back, nearly slipped on the wet sidewalk. It was raining so hard she almost had to yell to be heard. "Want to walk like a drunken sailor for the rest of eternity?"

"Why did you hit me?" His eyes moved down, and his expression changed as he saw what was dripping from her knuckles. "Why are you still bleeding?"

"Nibble on my neck and rub my back," she snarled, "and maybe it'll stop."

Cyprien dragged her over to stand under a streetlight and examined the wound. "You're not healing." His head snapped up. "Mon Dieu, you haven't changed yet."

She rifted her chin an inch. "I won't, either."

He wrapped the handkerchief he had used on Edith's neck around her bleeding knuckles. "You did something to prevent it, didn't you? You and your science."

Alex eyed the clumsy, rain-soaked bandage. "I don't own medical science, actually. I think Johns Hopkins might. Of course I did something. I'm a doctor. Something is what I do, d.a.m.n it. This is not a curse; it's a disease. Disease can be cured."

He went still. "The injections."

The rain abruptly dwindled to a thin drizzle. Moonlight backlit the thinning clouds, turning the sky from a murky dark gray to a deep, wet purple.

So he'd figured it out. Alex could bluff, or she could get him on her side. "As long as I don't ingest blood, I don't think I'll change anymore. My symptoms have stayed in remission." She didn't like the look he was giving her now, and shuffled back a step. "If I'm going to cure this thing, I can't let it progress. I have to keep it static."

He wasn't listening anymore. "You've never fed before." He jerked her to him. "You've never fed at all."

"I'm not drinking blood. I told you that. Ever." She struggled in the vise of his hands. "Don't you like your kneecaps?"

He didn't. He had a fist in her wet hair now. "You must feed, Alexandra. You are Kyn; you can never be human again. You feed or you die."

"Everybody dies, Mike. Well, maybe not you guys, but everyone else on the planet." She winced. "Quit pulling my hair."

"I gave you your precious freedom," he shouted, grabbing the front of her shirt and lifting her off her feet. "I let you 'handle it' and this is what you do to yourself?"

Alex twisted, and the thin wet cotton of her shirt tore apart at the side and shoulder seams. She dropped to her feet, leaving the front of the shirt in Cyprien's fist. The back peeled off her shoulders and fell away. All that was left covering her was her bra, which was thin satin and practically transparent, courtesy of the rain.

"Brilliant." She crossed her arms over her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. "Can we go now?"

"No." He threw the torn material away. "You are my sygkenis."

He was way too angry. Then again, so was she. "You keep throwing that word at me and I don't know what the h.e.l.l it means."

"It means you are my creation, my woman, and you do as I say."

Alex smelled roses and rain. "You not only live in the clouds; you've furnished them. Let's drop it, shall we?" She'd go back to the car and sit in it until he calmed down. When she could move again.

"Do you know how much you can forget?" He moved around her, behind her. "Memories are like the petals of a flower. I pluck one and"-he tucked her hair back and whispered against her ear-"you forget the name of the girl in the cemetery."

Warmth seeped from her ear through her head. It didn't burn, but crept over and smoothed the jagged ends of her temper.

"No, I don't. Her name was..." She frowned. The name, that silly, old-fashioned name, what was it?

Cyprien's hand came around her throat. "I pluck another," he said, nipping at her earlobe, "and you forget her, and what I did to her."

Petals. The petals of invisible roses were brushing all over her skin. The warmth became a soft heat, spreading down her neck, flooding and filling her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Alex hissed in a breath when she felt something going at her nipples, something touching them from the inside, pushing them out, making them lift and pucker. Was Cyprien doing that?

She tried to turn around, but he held her in place while he moved her hair and licked the rain from the back of her neck. Then she understood the heat. He'd taken her memories, just as he'd said he would. "That's enough."

"So many important memories, Alexandra. You carry them like burdens, because a doctor can never forget them.

The patients. The surgeries. The long years at the hospitals, the medical schools." He turned her around. "I can make them all vanish. I can make you forget you were ever a doctor, ever anything but mine."

The warmth receded an inch, and Alex remembered Edith and what had happened in the cemetery. She also remembered Heather's dreamy, empty eyes.

"Why do you need a mindless doll, Michael?" She was so angry she could have castrated him. With her teeth.

"Can't you get it on with an unwilling donor?"

"You are my sygkenis." he told her, the old arrogance back in full force. "Flesh to my flesh, blood to my blood. You will live forever, at my side, doing my bidding."

"You've got the voice, but you need to work on the wording and that dark, brooding look," she told him. "Watch Frank Langella sometime. He nailed it in his Dracula movie."

Cyprien kissed her.

Alex couldn't say she was shocked for the first ten seconds. She had goaded him, and had braced herself for the subsequent backlash. She wanted him angry, as angry as she was, so he could burn from the inside out, too. An irate kiss was a lot better than forgetting medical school.

Eleven seconds in, things changed. They were still kissing, lips welded, his tongue deep inside her mouth, the tips of his fangs somehow tucked inside her bottom lip. But the ground was gone, and so was her bra. The only thing she was wearing on her b.r.e.a.s.t.s was his hands.

He shifted his mouth, skimming it over her face and muttering things in a tangle of French and English. "J'ai besoin de vous... I want you... J'ai honte de ce que j'ai fait a vous, mais j'ai voulu que vous resta.s.siez avec moi... I am so alone, Alexandra... Qu'est-ce que vous voulez?..." His mouth fastened over hers again.

Maybe it was the combination of the French and the kissing that demolished Alex; maybe it was hearing the loneliness part. She felt just as bad, just as empty. She quit fighting and gave in.

A low, throaty sound was humming between their mouths. Alex was pretty sure she was making it. She wanted her memories to stay right where they were. But what he was doing to her mouth, the way he was stroking her tongue with his, even the faint trace taste of blood-Edith's blood-was making her forget everything.

Everything but Michael, and what he was doing to her.

Cold, wet steel pressed into her back. Her legs were spread wide, and her full weight rested on her crotch, which was perched on his. Was he grinding his hips into the notch between her legs, or was she rubbing herself over him?

She couldn't tell. She didn't care.

Whispers of rain, roses, and lavender swirled around them. Desire surrounded them like unseen silk cords.

Cyprien's fangs dragged over her bottom lip when Alex found enough strength to wrench her head back. "Put me down."

His eyes glittered, aquamarines with two thin, vertical black flaws. "I want you."

"We can't do it." How would she get away from him? He was stronger, faster, and he could make her instantly forget that she had even wanted to get away. Then there was that rapture thing. That had nearly killed her the last time.

"Not here."

"Here." He caught her chin, bent his head, and licked the drops of blood away. "Anywhere."

Alex turned her head to get her bearings. He had her pressed up against the side of the car. They were out in the street, in full view of Edith's neighbors, and she was naked from the waist up. He was watching the front of her trousers, down which he'd wedged his hand. Fabric was tearing again. She wanted to do that to him: put her hand down his pants, feel that hard, thick spike of a c.o.c.k he'd been rubbing against her. This wasn't a bad situation; it was hopeless.

Hopeless. A grinning young face swam into Alex's memory. In a hopeless situation, remember, girls, no man in the world will turn down a b.l.o.w. .j.o.b. Inside the car, keys dangled from the ignition, but Alex knew she'd never get him off her long enough to get inside, lock the door, and start the car. That, and if she left him here like this, he might just go in and finish off Edith.

No, it would have to be the other way.

"Michael." She kissed him, mainly to move his attention north. He was l.u.s.t blind, and she was teetering on the edge. She could have kissed his mouth alone for hours. Doing this was going to kill her. "Michael, I'm cold."

He tore off his shirt and wrapped it around her.

Alex kissed him again, a kiss of grat.i.tude as she worked her arms into the sleeves and did up the b.u.t.tons he hadn't popped off. There weren't enough; she had to tie the ends under her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. By that time he had her plastered against the car again, one of her legs hooked around his hip.

Now, before he shoves you back on the hood.

She put her hands on his shoulders and pushed him, rolling them both around so that he was between her and the car. The unb.u.t.toning and unzipping took a few seconds, during which time his mouth did things to hers that d.a.m.n near killed her. She broke free and went down on her knees, hauling his pants down with her.

No man in the world will turn down a b.l.o.w. .j.o.b.

Thank G.o.d, he wasn't wearing underwear. Alex got his pants down to knee level and looked up. Few c.o.c.ks deserved being immortalized in marble, but his was so long and hard and beautiful that she wanted to summon a sculptor immediately.

Cyprien's hand caressed her hair, urged her face closer. She rubbed her cheek against his thigh, closed her eyes, and prayed she'd be fast enough.

"Alexandra?"

Alex jumped to her feet and ran around Edith's duplex. Her yard wasn't fenced, and neither was the neighbor's in back of hers. She was halfway through the second yard when she heard Cyprien fall and curse.

No man in the world will turn down a b.l.o.w. .j.o.b, Alex thought as she dodged through yards and around houses, putting as much distance between them as she could.

And no man, not even Cyprien, could chase a girl with his pants down.

Chapter Eighteen.

Alex never told me you were a priest," Leann Pollock said to John as she led him into a small, somewhat untidy living room.

"I don't think Alexandra talks about me very much." John was glad. He needed information, and if Leann knew how Alex felt about him, she would probably kick him out of her house.

"She did when we worked together. She mostly talked about how you had to live on the street when you were kids. It was great that you looked after her." She shifted a stack of newspapers from the seat of an armchair to the floor.

"Excuse the mess. I'd like to hire a housecleaning service, but people keep telling me horror stories about the ones they've tried."

Leann Pollock was a pet.i.te redhead with tired eyes. She was still dressed in her office clothes-a somewhat wrinkled light pink suit-and John saw a half-eaten microwave dinner sitting next to stacks of files and papers on her dusty dining room table.

She followed his gaze. "I can't cook, either," she admitted. "What I really need is a wife." She winked. "Too bad I like guys so much."

John would have smiled, but Leann's easy sense of humor reminded him too much of Alex. She was also just as dedicated to her work. On the coffee table, he spotted a book on epidemiology, a graph chart comparing the growth rate of contagions, and an open cardboard box filled with microscope slides. Next to the slides were a pair of used chopsticks and an empty box of Chinese takeout.

Maybe a little too dedicated, he thought, looking from the slides to the food container. "Alexandra told me that you do disease research at the CDC."

"My field is pandemic contagion. I saw a lot of cholera and typhoid when I was overseas, and I got interested in the control factors." She went to sit down and hesitated. "Are you sure I can't get you something to drink, John? I've got mineral water, iced coffee..." She made a vague gesture.

"No, thank you." He waited for her to sit before he added, "Have you heard from Alex?"

"No, not a word." She kicked off her shoes and nudged them under the coffee table with her toes. "You said she was at a medical conference, didn't you?"

Tell a lie, Audra said in John's head, and you make yourself that lie's slave. "She still is. I only thought she might try to call you between lectures."

"Oh, okay. I guess she's been too busy." She reached into a large leather tote bag sitting next to her chair and took out a bulky envelope. "This is everything Alex was looking for. All the CDC's archive stuff on known fourteenth- century plagues, the archaeological forensics, maps, etc."

John accepted it and thanked her. "Just out of curiosity, how were there unknown plagues?"