"Bite my a.s.s." She looked down both sides of the hallway outside the door, but all she saw was more doors. "Where is he?"

Phillipe gestured with a large, callused hand toward the left, and paced Alex as she stomped off in that direction.

They went down some marble stairs, through a labyrinth of corridors tastefully decorated with more paintings and antique pieces, and ended up in a cavernous formal dining room.

A crystal chandelier the size of a Volkswagen engine hung from the center of a baroque ceiling mural. The medallions carved in the wall plaster had been gilded to look like suns, and the table was a slab of gold-shot white marble resting on six st.u.r.dy bra.s.s columns. Pale pink orchids erupted from the froth of baby's breath and fern that made up the table's centerpiece.

No food on the table, she noticed, and only one place had been set with exquisite eggsh.e.l.l-thin porcelain. Lifestyles of the Rich and Felonious.

"Uh-uh." Alex shook her head as Phillipe pulled out a chair for her. "Go get your boss."

"Sit down, Dr. Keller," a deeper male voice said from behind her. When she whirled, there was no one there. Then she spotted the intercom discreetly set into one of the wall panels. "My a.s.sistant has prepared a delicious meal for you.

Crab-meat crepes, with stuffed artichoke, I believe."

"I'm not hungry." Alex considered picking up a knife until she saw how closely Scarface was watching her. "Can we get on with it? I have patients waiting for me." And cops to call. And charges to press.

"Perhaps it is better that you not eat yet. Phillipe, apportez-la-moi."

Phillipe guided Alex back out of the dining room and down another flight of stairs, this time leading into a bas.e.m.e.nt level.

She saw no hot-water heaters or tool racks in Cyprien's bas.e.m.e.nt; in fact it was nicer than the upper levels. The antiques here were museum quality, the carpets spotless and intricately woven by some skilled Persian hands.

Everything was in very dramatic shades of black and gold and red, bordello colors, but somehow it worked. Medieval paintings of castles and knights adorned the walls, but the colors appeared as fresh as if they'd been painted yesterday.

She noted the draped easel in one corner, smelled the faintest traces of oil and turpentine. A huge old book, bound in dusty brown leather, sat by an armchair. The air-conditioning was so cold it made the air crisp. It was obvious that this was where the man lived, and where he worked.

Maybe he's afraid of being bombed. Alex saw a strange arrangement of crimson velvet curtains hanging from the ceiling around a four-poster bed. Another scent caught her attention, and she scanned the room, trying to identify it and the source.

"I am here, Dr. Keller." A curtain twitched. "You should prepare yourself for this."

Prepare, my a.s.s. Alex had seen people so badly injured and mutilated that they no longer resembled anything even remotely human. Was he really worried that his sagging jowls would shock her?

As she strode toward the bed, she was finally able to identify the odd odor-roses, like the stationery he'd sent her-and the closer she got, the stronger the smell became. As if Cyprien were lying in a bed of roses.

Maybe he was. After the way he'd behaved, s.n.a.t.c.hing her like kidnapping was covered under his insurance as a physician referral, nothing would surprise her.

Phillipe got in front of her-for a big husky guy, he could move like lightning-and kept her from pulling open the curtain.

"Move." She scowled up into his blunt face. "Oh, for-Cyprien, call off le pit bull, would you?"

"Phillipe."

Scarface backed off, but not before he gave her a distinct, warning glance. Alex jerked aside the curtain and looked inside.

There weren't any roses on the bed, only M. Cyprien. And he didn't have sagging jowls.

He didn't have a face, period.

"Sweet Christ Almighty." Alex leaned over him, reaching for the ma.s.s of twisted scar tissue that covered the front of his misshapen skull. It was completely healed, and had covered his forehead, eyes, nose, cheeks, chin. His straight hair was black from crown to nape, but had turned completely white all around his face. His ears were gone, and his mouth was an uneven hole at the bottom. "What the h.e.l.l happened to you?"

"It is difficult to explain."

"Try." She ignored the annoying way Phillipe was hovering beside her and began gently palpating Cyprien's raddled flesh to feel the distorted bone beneath it. His eye sockets weren't empty, and there was no sign of epidermal hemorrhage or edema. No indication of any inflammation or infection, either; his twisted skin felt cool to the touch.

The only thing she could smell was roses.

"I had an unfortunate accident." The hole stretched out, as if Cyprien was trying to smile. "You're not frightened by my appearance."

"I'm not easily spooked." But she was. Her fingers told her he had suffered a very thorough facial smash of all the bones in the front of his skull, but the breaks were all different, as if he had been repeatedly thrown into a metal grate at various angles. And how had he escaped brain trauma? She'd never seen a patient with such injuries who had been allowed to heal like this. Next to him, Luisa Lopez was a supermodel. "Mr. Cyprien, am I the first physician to examine you?"

"No, there was another. He told me he could do nothing for me." The ruin of his face only accentuated the beauty of his voice, a low baritone made silky by his French accent. "That was after he threw up on my bed."

Alex's cast-iron stomach was fine, but she wasn't too sure about how well her ears were working. "Are you saying you've never been treated for these injuries?"

"It was not possible." His hand lifted, long fingers fanning out over, but not touching, the worst of the scar tissue, which had buried his eyes. "As you can see, I am something of a medical challenge."

"To say the least." She performed a more thorough examination, surveying the map of ruin from the top of his cranium to the rather precise line at his throat where the scars abruptly ended. What her hands were telling her, however, couldn't be true. "Who or what did this to your face, sir?"

"I was severely beaten, many times over, and then subjected to... immersion in a corrosive liquid." He moved his hand-the elegant, pale hand of an artist-and brushed some white hair back from his right cheek. "I remained unconscious for some time, and when I awoke, my injuries had healed."

That he wasn't dead was a miracle, but what he was telling her didn't jibe with his condition. Unless he had lain in a coma for months, and he had some unusual bone structure or... "Do you suffer from Paget's disease?"

"No."

Yet Alex could feel intact, solid bone structure under the skin. It had healed into new surfaces, the angles and dimensions of which were the stuff of nightmares.

"Are you sure no one treated you while you were unconscious?" He might have been operated on by an incompetent. Or a psychopath.

"Quite sure. It was only one night."

She took her hands away. "If you're going to lie to me, Mr. Cyprien, I can't help you."

"I spontaneously heal. Call me Michael." "Uh-huh." Alex couldn't help the laugh. "And I can set fires with the power of my thoughts. Want me to start up the fireplace?"

"Phillipe, j'ai besoin d'un couteau."

The couteau turned out to be a long, sharp dagger, the hilt of which Phillipe placed in Cyprien's hand.

"Wait a minute." She stepped between them, trying to grab the knife. "I don't need you cutting yourself up on top of this. I can't imagine what you went through, but there are doctors who can help you." He needed a shrink, badly, but she'd have to get him to a hospital first for a full head series. Could bone shards lodged in his brain be responsible for his crazy behavior?

"I am willing to prove my claims, Doctor." Cyprien slashed the blade across his palm, then turned it to show her the wound. Blood ran sluggishly down to his wrist.

"Brilliant." She grabbed his wrist and applied direct pressure. Then her fingers tensed as the gash's edges began to pull together and close. In less than a minute, the wound disappeared.

She smeared blood on his arm, wiping it from the cut. Which was no longer there. "Nice trick, Mike. How did you do it? Rubber knife? Wired foam padding?" She looked around the bed, checking for special effects gear.

"I am not deceiving you." After a small hesitation, he handed her the dagger.

Alex studied the blade, which felt real enough, but had been coated with bronze or some dark metal. "Okay, it's not rubber. So what did you use? A packet of blood, fake skin? How did you get it to close like that?"

Cyprien extended his arm. "Cut me yourself."

Did he think she'd get all female and shriek that she couldn't? She was a surgeon, for Christ's sake.

Phillipe touched her arm. "Ne lui nuisez pas, ou je vous tuerai."

"What?"

"He wishes you to be gentle," Cyprien a.s.sured her.

"Sounded more like a death threat to me. Give me your other arm." When he did, she prodded his skin with her fingertips, selected a spot, and made a quick, shallow slash just above his elbow.

The cut she made closed and disappeared.

Alex poked the newly healed skin, looking for latex, rubber, and a fake blood packet. She found only flesh, tissue, and bone.

"G.o.d." The knife fell from her hand as she backpedaled, but Phillipe's big hands landed on her shoulders. She squirmed away from him before she faced the thing that had kidnapped her. "What are you?"

"I am a victim of brutality, Doctor. Nothing more." Cyprien sat up, and the sheet fell away from his bare chest.

From the neck down, he could have easily graced the cover of any romance novel. From the neck up, he was a poster boy for Clive Barker. "Because of my... ability, I cannot seek conventional treatment. Surgery is almost out of the question."

Almost. "That's why you brought me here. You think I can operate fast enough on you to beat that kind of healing?"

"If you cannot," Cyprien said, "then my face is lost forever."

On the other side of the Atlantic, the stark cliffs of the Irish coast stood stoic sentinel, holding back storm-boiling seas. Rain ignored the cliffs, however, streaming past them and hurtling down not in sheets but in buckets and then vats, flooding the dirt roads until they were winding rivers of free-flowing mud. Crooked javelins of lightning pierced the ugly charcoal clouds, slicing through one billowing, angry ma.s.s to leap out and impale another.

The local farmers huddled under woolen covers in their modest cottages, thankful for their warm beds and the stout locks on their windows and doors. The storm had come up from the south, from Dundellan, and only a fool or a fiend would venture out on such a night.

Lucan had been many things since his b.i.t.c.h of a mother had whelped him into the world, but never a fool.

He steered the van around the curve of the private drive and parked directly in front of Dundellan Castle. Earl Wyatt-Ewan, the original owner, had rewritten his will to leave it and the bulk of his estate to Richard Tremayne, a distant English cousin. Wyatt-Ewan's closer, disappointed relatives questioned the validity of the new will, and as the earl's family were known to be uniformly long-winded and tiny-brained, everyone expected an extended legal tussle.

Yet over the next year, each of the Wyatt-Ewans had, one by one, died in very tragic but completely unrelated accidents. Some said the castle-and the distant English cousin-were cursed because of this.

Tremayne, the essential opportunist, not only encouraged the talk, but had his people generate it.

Lucan knew he was late by several hours, but the trip to Dundellan was difficult even under normal conditions.

Surrounded by three hundred acres of thick woods and mountains on three sides, and the ocean on the fourth, the old Irish castle had successfully ignored the outside world for five centuries. The air over Dundellan was presently a no-fly zone, thanks to annual contributions to the prime minister's fund; its borders were constantly patrolled by Richard's most trusted tresori.

Lucan looked down at the mud and darker fluids caking his favorite boots. His appearance would disgust Lady Elizabeth, but there was no time to freshen up. He had gone from being the Kyn's most dangerous killer to a b.l.o.o.d.y errand boy, and there was nothing he could do about that, either.

A fragment of a child's taunt rang in his ears. I'm the king of the castle, and you're the dirty rascal.

When would Lucan have his Dundellan, his lady-in-waiting?

Three inches of standing water splashed when he climbed out of the truck and went back to check the van's rear doors. As soon as he tugged on the locked handles, something inside the vehicle snarled.

"Still alive, Durand?" He bared his teeth at the answering sound of metal crashing into metal. The body of the van began to shudder and rock. "And kicking."

Back in Dublin, Lucan had removed all the copper implements used on Durand, but left him manacled by the tempered steel chains. It was the only way he had been able to get him into the van. In his current state, Durand was too damaged to break out of them. Other things that the Brethren had done insured that Durand could no longer function or be regarded as what he had been before he had been brought to Dublin.

Then again, neither can I.

The thought of releasing all restraints offered a brief, mordant quant.i.ty of sport. Which way would he go, into the castle or out into the forest? Either way he was bound to become an instant legend. Which would he want to be now, a great fierce beastie of the woods, or the killer of would-be kings?

For that matter, what would happen to Durand if Lucan removed his chains?

Liliette had predicted his fate from the moment he had removed the copper chains from her frail limbs and led her from her cell. I thank you for this, Lucan. Richard will not.

Ever the gentleman-at least in this incarnation-Lucan offered her his silk handkerchief, dampened with clean, cold rainwater. It matters little, my lady.

Ah, but everything had mattered until seven hours ago. Did no longer caring make Lucan a liar to the fair Liliette, or a traitor to his own kind? Or had he truly become an errand boy?

What if I've never been anything else?

He looked up at the tower windows, two lit from within, made golden with candle flame. They promised dry clothes, a soft bed, and a willing partner for the night. And there now, a woman came to look out through the quarter panes of rippled gla.s.s. Not Lady Elizabeth, but a small, thin colleen, her pale face framed by smooth, long brown hair.

Her expression indicated that she dwelled someplace soft and dark and deep and light-years away from Dundellan.

Lucan lifted a hand that, like him, went unnoticed. "What rapture doth the angels bring."

Somewhere in the castle, more of her kind waited. Former addicts, prost.i.tutes, transients, collected and washed and dressed like dolls. Someone gathered them from the streets and brought them to Tremayne. After meeting their host and being subjected to his unique talent, they were uniformly docile and well behaved, if somewhat catatonic, servants.

Richard had been the one to call them the Rapt. "For the rapture I give them, Lucan, is permanent."

They were not treated badly, but cared for and fed until it was their turn to entertain an important guest. When they were used up, they simply vanished. No one complained. The Rapt were convenient, disposable souls, mindless and pliant, whose importance in the household ranked roughly equal to that of an after-dinner mint. Lucan was slightly appalled to find himself envying them.

The castle's ma.s.sive oak doors swung inward with one push. The chilly air inside was damp and redolent of woodsmoke and lemon oil polish. Although electricity was out down in the valley, Dundellan's own generators kept the interior lights burning bright. Richard had allowed the lighting and plumbing to remain intact, but the HVAC equipment was disconnected and fifteen hearths were unblocked and used for great blazing peat fires. The master considered fire an essential ingredient to the household.

Many things that came under this roof had to be burned.

Lucan walked down the foyer, leaving a trail of drippings from his cloak and faint, muddy impressions from his boot soles on the beechnut wood floor. He looked ahead to the drawing room, where invited guests were welcomed, and the stateroom, where they were not. He walked past them and around the corner to the old library. Here the scent of tallow candles intermingled with that of aged leather and dusty rag linen pages. A tiny red ember danced in the shadows behind the old earl's desk. The cherry scent of the tobacco was light but pervasive.

Waiting up for me. He sketched a bow. "The prodigal a.s.sa.s.sin returns, my lord."

Lucan could have-should have-utilized more respect in his greeting. Richard Tremayne was the seigneur of Great Britain, and since the untimely death of Harold, the high lord of the Darkyn. Already Tremayne had won and lost a kingdom; he had no intention of surrendering this one. He had earned it, too, for he had been the one to gather and unite them; he had wisely chosen who would govern the jardins. His will had seen them through war, famine, and the march of progress.

Tremayne was more than their leader. He was the chief architect of the Darkyn's decidedly rocky future.

"I expected you two hours ago." The voice sounded deep and rich; a woman from the Paris jardin once told Lucan that listening to the high lord speak was akin to being licked and caressed in unmentionable places by a velveteen tongue.

It was one of Richard's greatest talents, giving pleasure without resorting to any physical use of his body. His body he reserved for other matters.