Lynn Viehl - Darkyn 1 - If Angels Burn (v1.1) (40 page)

A monk rushed at one of the emerging men, and was promptly pulled down under the carpeting. A scream that dwindled quickly to a gurgle drifted out of the hole.

The sound sent the monks backing away from the men in the white tunics.

Stoss shouted something in Latin at them and pounded his chest. Then in English, he said, “They are darkness. We are the light. Bring them to judgment, Brothers, or you will surely face your own.” He pointed to Alexandra. “And bring me her head.”

The men in the white tunics formed a wall around the altar, and one of them stepped out and gestured with his sword. “Leave or die.”

Stoss’s threat seemed to be worse, for the monks collectively surged toward the men in the white tunics.

“Cyprien.” Alex saw him running toward the men who protected them, and tossed him the sword. “I love you. Watch your neck.”

Michael stared at her for a moment before nodding and jumping over the rail to join the battle.

Alex flinched as Cyprien and the men in white held off the attacking monks. Swords flashed in silvery arcs that soon turned red with blood. Both sides fought viciously, but it was the men in the white tunics who wielded their blades as if they were simply an extension of their bodies. They also fought silently, and no wound seemed to slow them down.

Darkyn
, Alex realized as monks began to scream and fall in piles in front of the altar.
That’s why they’re not dying. This is the jardin. Michael’s jardin
.

John was muttering something as he rose up from the ground and stared at the battle.

“What is it?” She grabbed him. “What?”

“Templars. They’re Templars.” He made a jerky gesture toward the white tunics. “Why are they fighting the monks?”

“Maybe because the head monk said to kill us all?” Alex suggested.

John stared at her. “What are you doing here? Why are you involved in this? Are you in league with these demons?”

“Yeah, I am. Deal with it.” She turned back to watch the fighting.

The battle was short and brutal and ugly, and soon there were no monks except Stoss left for the Templars to cut down. They gathered in formation behind Cyprien, and seemed to be waiting.

A short figure in a black hooded cloak limped into the church and made his way down the center aisle. The cloaked figure was also masked, Alex saw when he came closer.

Cardinal Stoss, who was surrounded by three Templars, held his sword ready. “The coward finally arrives. I may die, but I will take you with me.”

“Viktor, my oldest and dearest friend,” the cloaked man said in a cultured English accent. “It’s been too long. How are your family members? The ones I haven’t killed?”

Stoss ran forward, the copper sword in his hand raised over his head, directly at the cloaked, masked man. The man stood his ground and let the cardinal get close, and then he took off his mask.

The cardinal’s sword fell from his hand, and he stared, as mesmerized as Alex was.

“Let’s take off all the counterfeit faces, shall we?” The cloaked man calmly made a single stroke with his sword, and sent Stoss’s head tumbling down the church aisle.

Cyprien picked up Alex and carried her out through the back of the church. Behind them she heard the clatter of swords and the sound of bodies being dragged.

“How much blood did he take?” he asked, gently touching the wound on her throat.

“About as much as you did on our first date.” Alex was growing cold and numb, just as she had in the dream. “I’m sorry, Michael. Who was that guy with the extremely necessary mask?”

“Our king, I’m afraid. Alexandra.” He bent down and pressed his mouth to hers. “He has come for you. He thinks your blood holds the key to creating new Darkyn.”

Alex remembered the cloaked man’s face. “Okay. It’s better if I die now.”

Torment shone from his eyes. “No, but it is better than what he has planned. He needs you to turn others.”

“Only if I’m still part human, right?” She reached up and curled a hand around his neck. “Would you be willing to donate to the cause one more time?”

“What have you done to her?”

Michael looked up from Alexandra’s sleeping face. His
tresora
and the high lord of the Darkyn stood over them. “I’ve finished it.” He brushed a hand over her hair.

“You gave her more of your blood.”

He nodded. “If I hadn’t, she would be dead. Thierry nearly drained her.”

Tremayne was silent for a long time. “Well done, Seigneur.” He strode off.

Michael looked up at Éliane. “You have been the one feeding Richard information.”

She nodded. “Before I became your
tresora
, I was his.” She looked after the limping, retreating figure. “I remain his.”

“You saved our lives by doing so. Thank you.”

She gave him one of her cool smiles. “Good-bye, Michael.” She followed Tremayne’s path around the church.

Alex remained limp in Michael’s arms. Phillipe came, along with John Keller, who looked battered and furious.

“The men have taken the Durands back to the house,” Phillipe told him. “Thierry is gone again.”

Michael thought of what Thierry had discovered tonight. If torture had not driven him completely mad, then Angelica had likely finished the job. “Let him go.”

“What have you done to my sister?” Keller demanded, in a far more hostile tone than Tremayne had.

“She was dying,” Michael said mildly. “I gave her my blood, and it killed her. When she rises in two days, she will be safe.”

“You mean, she’ll be a vampire.”

“Darkyn,” Phillipe murmured.

John glanced back at the church. “And the Templars? Where did they come from, and why were they fighting against their own Brethren?”

“The men you saw in the church were mine. Members of my
jardin
.” Michael would have laughed if it were not for the horror in the young priest’s eyes. “Except for three traitors, the Brethren were never Templars, Father Keller. We were.”

John was shaking his head. “No. No, not you.”

Michael looked at his seneschal. “Long ago, when we were human, we were priests like you. Warriors of God, pledged to fight the infidel and protect the Holy Land. We brought something back with us from the last war we fought. A curse or a disease, whatever you wish to call it, but it made us into what we are now. It is why they outlawed us, Father Keller. Why they tortured us, and burned us. Why they still hunt us.”

John was backing away, still shaking his head. “You can’t be. You can’t.” He stumbled back into the church.

Phillipe crouched down beside them. “Alexandra will live, won’t she?”

The blood tie made it possible for only a Darkyn master to detect the minute signs of life in a
sygkenis
’s body as it made the final change. The signs in Alexandra’s were small, but they were there.

“Yes.” Michael gathered her up and held her safely in his arms. “Let us go home now, old friend.”

Everything had been a lie. Everything.

John Keller stood before the altar in the church, looking around through dull eyes. The Templars who had fought and saved them had vanished. Blood spatters covered the floor, the curtains, and the pews, but the bodies of the Brethren had been removed. He imagined in the morning the blood would be gone, too.

“Thy kingdom come,” he muttered. “Thy will be done.”

He looked up at the pained face of the Son of God, hanging from the nails the Romans had pounded into him. For the first time in his entire life, he understood how that pain felt.

“I always believed,” he said to the figure of Jesus. “Always.”

John walked out of the church. He stood by the street, unsure of his direction. There was the rental car to take back. The hotel to check out of. The plane to catch back to Chicago.

The calling he had abandoned, to officially abandon.

He reached up and ripped the collar from his shirt, and flung it to the ground. “No more of this. No more.” He walked past the rental car and into the night.

Thierry Durand watched John Keller walk down the street. He waited until Cyprien and Phillipe left with Alex, and then jumped down from the roof.

He had intended to kill John Keller when he came out of the church. Only seeing him tear away the priest’s collar stayed Thierry’s hand.

He bent and picked up the stiff, discarded white band. Perhaps he would follow the fallen priest and see where he led him. And then there was the very interesting file of information he had stolen from Cyprien’s house. All about four men who had raped and disfigured and burned a young mother. Thierry would very much like to meet that quartet.

Thy kingdom come, thy will be done
.

The collar crackled as it slowly crumpled in his fist.

Read on for a spine-tingling glimpse of

Private Demon

A Novel of the Darkyn

By

Lynn Viehl

Thierry jumped down from the roof and landed on the small oval balcony outside Jema Shaw’s bedroom. The French doors here had none of the security devices attached to them, as they did on the first and second floors. Only a brass hook and eye lock stood between her and the rest of the world.

He became angry.
Does no one in this place care for her safety
? He took out his dagger and inserted the blade in the seam of the frame, and then hesitated.
If she is awake, she will see the window open. She will cry out
.

He could not jump from here to the ground without risking broken bones. Alex, Cyprien’s doctor, was far away in New Orleans. There would be no one to heal his wounds this time.

The lace curtains had been drawn and the lights switched off, but that did not guarantee that Jema Shaw was sleeping. He listened for a movement from within but heard nothing. Silently he pressed one hand against a frost-whitened pane of glass, closing his eyes to block out the snow falling around him.

Where are you, little cat
? He had not used his talent with a human unknown to him since New Orleans. This girl was different—the others had spoken of her illness. He would have to take care not to hurt her.
Are you sleeping
?
Do you dream now
?

When Thierry’s talent first touched a human mind, he saw color in his own. A glimmer of silver appeared inside his head when he found her, deep in slumber but not yet dreaming.

There
. For the rest of it, he would need to touch her.

The blade slid easily into the seam. Thierry lifted the lock’s hook up from its eye catch, and then eased the door open an inch. Now he could hear the whisper of her breathing, the slow beat of her heart. He shrugged out of his cape, leaving it and the snow covering it out on the balcony, and slipped inside.

Unlike the rest of the mansion, this room had none of the trappings of wealth. Jema had been given but a few cast-off pieces of furniture, their paint scratched, their wood scarred and stained with age. Two squat oil lamps, the sort he had not seen in a century or more, sat as dark and cold as the room. He could smell that she had burned a few candles, pitifully scented to imitate the fragrance of real flowers. No wood in the fireplace; no comforting blaze to warm her. Even the lace of the curtains appeared yellowed and old.

The shabbiness of the room enraged him more than the flimsy look.
This is how they treat the great Dr. Shaw’s daughter
?
Like a poor relation, banished to a garret
?

Thierry walked over to the bed. It was cramped and small, and all that covered the sleeping girl was a sheet and a faded, patched blanket. She huddled beneath them, motionless but for the slight rise and fall of her chest. One hand lay open-palmed next to her cheek, the other tucked with a fold of the blanket under her chin.

She even sleeps like a cat
. Tenderness flooded through him as he reached down to draw back the edge of the coverlet. She wore a nightdress of soft material printed with tiny blue flowers. One tug on an ivory ribbon released the collar and bared the slim column of her throat to his gaze.

There, beneath the delicate skin, the pulse of her lifeblood danced.

The sight caused Thierry’s
dents acérées
to emerge, and his hunger swelled. He had not touched a woman in weeks, not since losing control with Cyprien’s
sygkenis
. He no longer trusted himself, so human men had provided his sole nourishment since leaving New Orleans. There was no temptation of thrall with them.

He still longed to feel a woman under his hands. To hear the sounds she made as he took what he needed from her. To give her what little he could in return—

She is ill
.

Thierry forced the thought of pleasure from his mind and pressed the tips of three fingers to the side of her throat. When he closed his eyes, the silvery color of her mind was there, glowing like the moon on water, deepening as she responded to his gentle compulsion and moved across the dark borders into the realm of dreams.

Thierry followed her and waited until her dream took form, for only when it did could he become a part of it. Colors and light flooded his mind, forming and shaping themselves to Jema Shaw’s specifications. It was always disconcerting at first, to be so completely immersed in the dark, connected by thought alone, and then find himself—

In Jema Shaw’s bedroom.

Unlike the dreaming girl, Thierry was still fully conscious and aware of his physical reality, so it was as if he had become his own mirror self. Yet in the dream, he saw Jema’s room quite differently. He saw it through her eyes, and everything that he had dismissed as worn, worthless and insulting to the daughter of the house was actually held in great affection. Jema treasured the old things around her; had in fact collected them carefully over the years. Her prize possession was the ancient blanket under which she slept, something she regarded as priceless as a museum artifact. More so, for it had been cut and sewn and sandwiched together by the hands of her father’s mother, a woman who had died before Jema’s birth.

Not castoffs
, he thought, trying to understand.
Antiques. Heirlooms
.