They won't have you. Thierry's hands cut off her air. I won't let them burn you again. He lifted his head and snarled at the robed men coming into the room. Give me a sword for her and I will tell you what you want. Give me a sword!

Alex jerked out of sleep. Her body throbbed; her lips stung; her throat ached. Thierry's last, shouted demand still rang in her ears. She dragged herself off the bed and went into the bath to wash her face. As she splashed the cold tap water over her hot cheeks, she swallowed against her dry throat and felt pain. She straightened and looked at her pale, drawn reflection in the mirror over the sink.

A chain of large, dark bruises lay wrapped around her throat.

John arrived in New Orleans a little after dawn and rented a car at the airport. He had already tried information from Atlanta, but there was no listing in the city of New Orleans for a hotel, motel, or business establishment called La Fontaine.

"It could be a private residence, sir," the operator told him. "But unless you have a street address, I can't help you."

John wasn't even sure Alexandra was in New Orleans. What if she had refused to go? What if she had changed hotels and was still back in Atlanta? He thought of contacting the police, but what would he tell them? That he had gotten his information from a slightly paranoid shopkeeper? Would the cops take him seriously, or would they blow him off, too?

He decided to stay at a hotel at the airport, in case he had to take a flight back to Atlanta in a hurry. When he got to his room, however, the phone rang.

"Hello."

"Father Keller, you're looking for your sister, correct?" a man with an odd accent asked.

Foolishly he looked at the window. He was six stories up; no one was looking inside. "How did you know—"

"I will call you tonight. If you want to save her life, be ready to follow my instructions."

"What are you talking about? Who are you?"

A dial tone was his answer.

Chapter Twenty-One

Thierry Durand dreamed of the woman.

He did not know why she was ever in his mind. It was not for her beauty. She had fooled him at first, but he could see now that she was not as beautiful as his Angel. She was not fat, but she dressed like a fat woman. Her shapeless, ugly gowns were all in the same, insipid blue color. She often wore an abbreviated white veil over the lower half of her face, so all he could see were her brown eyes. She did have lovely eyes.

He did not know her, but knew her eyes. Knew them from another time, another place.

She spoke strange words to him, some of them familiar, some long Latinish words that made little sense. He was almost sure they were incantations. She stood over him with strange, glittering instruments, and used them on his body, much in the way the butchers in Dublin had. She even had a woman apprentice to fetch her things and watch her work. But there was no pain, and no questions asked of him.

What sort of demoness was she?

Thierry couldn't understand why he didn't suffer under her hands. Agony was an old friend now; it had walked the small space with him and patiently listened to his screams for Angel. Perhaps she was waiting, the way they had. They liked to draw it out, let the fear gnaw at him before the actual beatings. Sometimes in Dublin he went a whole day without pain. But they would always come with their crosses and their pipes and their prayers. They would always bind him with the biting wire and go to work, asking him the same things over and over.

Where are the others? How many are left? Where is Tremayne?

Thierry knew he had told them nothing. He had sunk his fangs into his tongue more than once to keep the answers locked inside. The pain had helped at first. It reminded him of what others would endure if he betrayed the Kyn. But the pain never ended. It came to him on the night they broke his legs for the second time, because the first breaks had healed. His bones did not matter, and neither did his limbs. They could cut off his extremities. They could beat him to a pulp. As long as his head and his belly remained intact, he would heal.

They could keep him forever. They could go on doing this to him forever.

The woman came and spoke softly to him again. Here we go, handsome. Then she plied her deadly-looking instruments on his feet, her hands moving like hummingbirds, darting here, lingering there. It was beautiful, in a strange sense, to see her at her work. He could not see precisely what she did, but she moved with such grace and speed. The monks had not been nearly so fast nor refined.

He wanted to kill her for being so adept.

Heather, she said to her apprentice. Give him another dose.

Thierry knew she used sorcery to keep him in the dream. She kept her witch's brew in skinny blue glass tubes that turned clear after she jabbed their skewer ends into his arm. The apprentice did so now, and the foul brew took the spark of strength that had entered his limbs and stole his voice.

Perhaps she used it to demean him. It was the sort of magic aimed at sapping the heart and pride of a man. He had ridden to Jerusalem, had he not? And slain Saracens until their bodies had piled four- and five-deep. Men had feared his wrath, his sword. No one had ever taken him, not in training, not on the battlefield. That was where he should have died. Now he lay naked as a newborn babe under the bright light, and this witch was skinning him alive.

She looked up, her eyes tired over the edge of her veil. This is the last one, pal. This one and we're finished.

So she intended to kill him this time. There was a time when Thierry might have wept with joy at the prospect of his demise. But they had taken his son and his Angel from him, and for that, they had to pay.

Alex had never heard a sweeter sound than the clatter of the last clamp on top of the other, soiled instruments in the cleanup tray. She looked across the table at Heather, who was sponging the residual blood from the bottom of Thierry's feet.

"We're done," she said.

Heather pulled down her mask and smiled. "Should I go up and tell Mr. Cyprien?"

"You should go up and take a three-day nap. I've damn near worked you to death." Alex eyed her patient. "Go on, Heather. I'll finish up."

Alex checked Thierry's vitals, which were steady, and his pupils, which responded normally to her scope light. His respiration was a little faster than she liked, but the surgery was finished, so she didn't need to sedate him again. She was actually looking forward to seeing him wake up and finding his legs and feet whole.

Hopefully they'll work when he tries to walk.

She picked up the instrument tray and carried it over to the autoclave for sterilization. Now that it was over, she considered telling Cyprien to get her on the next plane to Chicago. She had the files on the men who attacked Luisa Lopez, and the freedom to go after them. She knew each and every thing the men had done to her patient. She could assure that they enjoyed some of what Luisa had suffered.

Behind her, linens rustled, and she turned to check Thierry. He was still unconscious.

Alex dumped the instruments in an alcohol bath and went to the sink to wash. One of her gloves had split unnoticed and Thierry's blood stained her palm. She stared at the red blotch, almost transfixed by it.

She couldn't go back to Chicago.

She had already killed once. That had been—in the loosest sense of the word—self-defense. She had seriously injured the man in the bar, too, and no matter how she tried, she couldn't feel bad about that. But if she went after Luisa's attackers, it wouldn't be self-defense or a well-deserved beating. It would be hunting them down, torturing them, and executing them.

It would make her exactly like them.

Cyprien wanted her to stay. Being a doctor to the Kyn wasn't her idea of a decent medical career, but he was right: they had no one. She couldn't imagine facing an eternity without hope of living in a whole, functioning body. If she turned her back on them, and these lunatics kept catching and torturing them, then it could happen.

Cyprien, his face gone, blindly wandering through the centuries alone. Alex couldn't think of it without feeling sick.

By the time she finished washing up, she knew what she would do. She'd mail the files Cyprien had given her to the detective in charge of Luisa's case. It wasn't fair; it wasn't even what she wanted to do, but it was justice. As for her talent, she didn't have to let the killers go free. Every city had toll-free numbers to call in crime tips. She could use them to report whatever she learned and remain anonymous.

She felt a lot better when she returned to the table. "I think I just figured out three-quarters of my life," she told Thierry as she absently loosened a too-tight strap around his right upper arm. "Now all I have to do is decide if I stay here or I find somewhere else to hang up my shingle."

Thierry's arm twitched.

"Oh, you're not ready to come waltzing with me yet, big guy." Alex turned to get a syringe, and frowned as the scent of gardenia wafted around her.

Straps ripped; hands grabbed her from behind. Alex caught a glimpse of a furious face before she flew through the air and landed on top of a gurney, which flipped over, dumped her on the floor, and collapsed on top of her. She was struggling to push it aside when she saw the legs and feet she had restored appear in front of her face.

"Thierry, no." She reached up blindly.

"Witch." His dark face disappeared behind a giant fist, and a huge explosion of pain turned all the lights out.

Michael saw a pale hand under the twisted metal remains of a table and a supply cabinet. Rage snarled inside him as he ripped his way through the rubble to get to her.

"Here, Phillipe." He tossed a cabinet aside and found her beneath. She was making a low, keening sound. He knelt beside her and kept his voice gentle. "Alexandra, open your eyes." He brushed a tangle of hair away from her face. "Look at me."

The sound she was making was a name. "Thierry."

Michael lifted her out of the mess and carried her to a space his seneschal had cleared. The entire basement looked as if a hurricane had ripped through it. Carefully he lowered her onto the floor and checked her for injuries. Aside from a large bump on her forehead and a bruise that spilled over her right cheek, there were none.