Suarez touched her sleeve, tugging her attention back to him. Eyes of darkness, a face filled with smooth angles and strength in hiding. For a moment she thought she recognized a quieter version of her own shock. Had he, too, read the name that had been beaten into the poor man’s back? Did he know what it meant?

“Were you expecting any visitors tonight, Sister?” His voice reached into her, coaxing. “Relatives, delivery people?”

Aunts, uncles, UPS, madman?

Daniela ignored the haven being offered by the detective’s compelling eyes and voice. He did not know. He could never understand. Dani knew what had to come next. She would not look at the dead man. There was nothing she could do to help that one now. She would keep calm.

She would go as soon as she got rid of them.

“No,” Dani said, before he repeated his question. “No one comes here. No one leaves.”

“You’re saying that the nuns here never leave the property?” Detective Brown seemed skeptical. “What about doctor appointments, jury duty, or vacations?”

They thought they were nuns. It was a logical assumption, as the sanctuary had once been a working convent. Marguerite had never left the church, not in her heart. Dani knew she was being foolish, intriguing them with the truth, but there were no more lies left in her.

The scent of orange blossoms embraced her. “Sister?”

Daniela pressed back against the doors. “We do not leave. I have no information for you. Good evening.” She turned, but her head buzzed and her hands didn’t want to work.

“Just a minute, Sister,” Detective Brown said. “I’ll need to interview the other nuns to see if they have any information as to what happened.”

“That is not possible,” Daniela told the door. What would Marguerite tell them? “I can assure you that no one saw or heard anything.”

“I’ll confirm that personally,” Detective Brown said, “if you don’t mind.”

“No, Detective. No one here will talk to you or anyone else.” She faced them. “It is a violation for any of us to speak to you. We have all taken a vow of silence.”

Two

“She knows something,” Samantha said as she climbed in behind the wheel of their unmarked unit. “We should have called in for a search warrant. Cap could have gotten one for us.”

Captain Ernesto Garcia, Chief of Homicide, played the part of their superior within the Fort Lauderdale Police Department. In reality, he served as Rafael’s tresora, his human servant. That he could issue orders as well as accept them made him an unusual ally.

Rafael had considered obtaining a warrant as well, but the sanctity of the convent had touched him on a level far deeper and older than his current obligations. He had been a Templar priest long before he had joined the police force. His beliefs had changed in the centuries since he had left the church, but his respect for those who devoted their lives to God had not. “Finding a dead man near a convent does not constitute probable cause to search it.”

“I guess. But still, that nun.” Because Samantha’s instincts often proved correct, she had a difficult time letting go of a suspicion. “She saw something, heard something, maybe. I don’t know. Did you see how she was shaking when she ran back inside and bolted the door? With the way we were perfuming the air, she should have talked more openly to us, too.”

Rafael nodded. Meeting Sister Marguerite had also disturbed him on several levels, including a very personal one which he never allowed to interfere with his duty. “Some humans do not respond to l’attrait.” The individual, sweet scent produced by Kyn bodies acted like a drug on humans, rendering them amenable to almost any suggestion. It also caused a certain amount of sexual arousal, which helped to make feeding on humans easier. “Or perhaps I did not shed enough scent.”

“Please. I felt like I was standing in an orange grove. You totally cancelled me out.” Samantha turned a corner and coasted to a stop at a red light. “She looked like she was going to faint when you touched her. It was right after she saw the body for the first time. What was that all about?”

“Shock and horror, I would think.” Lust had made him notice other things about the young sister, things he had no business even contemplating in such a fashion. “She is a nun, and has been sheltered from such things. Her world is made up of purity, prayer and silence.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but it had something to do with you, too.”

Rafael recalled the taut face, and how she had tried to keep it averted so that he would not look at her. The excessive modesty of a bride promised only to Christ. “I am cursed by God. I expect her reaction was a natural one.”

“Cursed my ass,” Samantha said. “You’re a homicide detective.”

He looked at her.

“Okay, you’re a cursed, inhuman homicide detective. Does that mean I am now, too?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “Let’s focus on the murder and worry about God and curses another night.”

Two hours later, in the small, cramped room that served as FLPD’s Homicide Department, Samantha hung up the phone and rested her head against her fist. “God, I hate that man.”

“Perhaps you should feed on him. It might make him more willing to cooperate with you.”

“I’d rather lick blood out of a used ashtray.” She sat back. “After giving me a lot of unnecessary grief, Smokestack performed the autopsy on our victim. Cause of death was exsanguination. He found five puncture wounds: two on the wrists, one on the temple, one on the back and one on the left side of the abdomen.”

Rafael recalled a mental image of the victim’s body. “I saw no such wounds.”

“Neither did I,” she said, “but there’s a reason we didn’t, and it’s a creepy one: the killer packed some shit in the wounds and then covered them with stage makeup so they wouldn’t be seen.”

He went still. “What sort of ‘shit?’”

“Flower petals.”

Either kill me or take me as I am, because I'll be damned if I ever change…

He has been poisoned. Richard, still human, newly-crowned, crumpling the letters and tossing them into the fireplace. He will not last the month. You will go to France and see to the arrangements. And this time, Rafael, be sure that he stays in the ground.

That summer in France, with so many bodies rotting where they had fallen. Heavily-laden carriages jolting as their drivers whipped the horses into straining and pulling their occupants and the baggage out of Paris as fast as they could go. The ugly granite walls of the asylum, streaked by black streams from the countless chamber pots emptied from the ward windows. The smell of fresh-burned wood ash on the wind—

He who believeth in me will never die.

Samantha cleared her throat and lowered her voice. “Mind telling me why you look like I just kicked you in the cajones?”

“It’s nothing.” Rafael had watched as the body had been carried out of the asylum, loaded onto a cart and driven to the village cemetery. There he had observed the funeral, and stayed behind to watch the grave for weeks. Nothing had disturbed it. No one had crawled out of it. It is not Donatien. “Our shift ended thirty minutes ago,” he said, rising from his chair. “We must clock out.”

To keep up appearances, Rafael and Samantha drove their own cars to work and home, but they both lived in the penthouse apartments above the very popular night club, Infusion. The club served as a magnet for the local goth crowd, as a business front for the Jardin Noir, and the headquarters of its suzerain, the Darkyn high lord’s former chief assassin, Lucan.

Rafael reached the club first and went immediately to his master’s downstairs office. Lucan, who had an unexpected flair for creating wealth, had taken over managing most of the jardin’s business affairs. During the day, his tresora, Herbert Burke, did the rest. Rafael suspected it was his master’s way of allowing him to continue working beside Samantha for the police, although Lucan would never admit it.

The suzerain sat behind his desk, idly paging through his computerized ledgers, and sipping from a glass of bloodwine. As fair as Rafael was dark, Lucan had the face of a film star and the frame of a stunt man, and used them both without a moment of conscience. Finely-fitted black gloves encased large hands, which when bared could kill any living thing they touched.

“We are paying too much for the kegs of ale,” Lucan said to Rafael without looking up. “I should like to find a new beverage supplier before this one bankrupts me. Why are you late?”

Rafael tried to think of alternate suppliers, but all he could summon was the image of an undisturbed grave. “A human was murdered and left in front of a convent tonight. There are indications that perhaps one of the Kyn were involved.”

Lucan stopped tapping the keyboard and turned his head. “Which Kyn, precisely?”

“I cannot say for certain. The victim had been tortured and drained.” He saw his master’s gray eyes turn to chrome. “The wounds were found to be packed with flower petals, and covered with greasepaint.”

Lucan reacted to this by not reacting at all. “Then Donatien still breathes.”

“No,” Rafael insisted. “Richard sent me to France. I saw him die of copper poisoning. After, I sat watch for a month over his grave. He did not rise again.”

“Donatien was, unlike you, a patient soul, and in fact he did somehow survive his second burial. Richard had me hunt him in nineteen thirty-nine, but he used the Nazis to elude me. When he never resurfaced, Richard decided the war had killed him.” Lucan raised one blond eyebrow. “You still do not believe me. Very well, this victim you found, was he violated?”

Rafael nodded. “Sodomized with an electrical device.”

“The Brethren rarely violate, but when they do, they do not leave such work to be discovered. Donatien enjoyed putting his cruelties on display, and he always signed his work.”

“The lash marks.” Rafael could see the pattern of them now. “They spelled out his name.”