by Lynn Viehl
The next minute was one he had lived over and over for the last ten years.
“Master, please,” Pájaro shrieked. “She attacked me. I swear to you that is what happened.”
“I don’t care how it was.” The old man sounded impassive, as if they were discussing a simple training technique. “You were defeated by my daughter. This was your final trial.”
The girl was his daughter?
In that moment Pájaro knew he had lost everything that mattered to him, and desperation drove him to seize the old man’s ankle. “Then kill me. Kill me now, before the others awake.”
“I would not wipe my ass on you.” The old man had kicked him off before walking away.
Pájaro got out and walked to the warehouse’s back entrance, where he paused and listened before going inside. Only a handful of the men he had hired in Paris stood in various positions with their backs against plastic-wrapped pallets of boxes labeled in Italian as restaurant supplies. Pájaro noted that half eyed him while the others kept watch on the front entrance.
“He is here,” one of the men called out.
Antoine came out of the office carrying a reinforced case, and placed it on the top of a crate before regarding Pájaro. “We were worried about you, Helada. We thought you might have run into trouble leaving the château.” He opened the case. “As you see, the raid did not go so well for us.”
“You knew the risks.” He eyed the empty case. “Where is the scroll?”
“I have it.” Antoine swiped the back of his hand over his sweaty brow before he tugged open his vest and removed a bundle of cloth tucked inside. Instead of transferring it to the case, he weighed it in his hand. “It is heavier than it looks, but gold always is.”
“Put it in the case,” Pájaro told him.
“First, we talk.” Antoine cleared his throat. “You said there would be only a few old servants at the château. So who was the Englishman?”
Pájaro saw how it would be, but kept his expression bland. “I don’t know. I never saw an Englishman.”
“The big son of a bitch was hard to miss. He took out half the crew by himself.” Antoine nearly dropped the cloth bundle, and tossed it in the case before wiping his hands on the sides of his pants. “I never saw anyone move like that. Except you.”
The old man had no hair and was neither big nor English. That left only a few possibilities. “Did he move too quickly for you to shoot him?”
“Nothing stopped him, which is why we left, and why we still live.” Antoine coughed into his fist before pointing a finger at Pájaro. “You hired him to kill us so you wouldn’t have to share the gold. Didn’t you?”
“There is blood on your hand,” Pájaro said mildly. “And your mouth.”
Antoine’s damp face went white as he wiped his fingers over his lips and looked at the smear of blood. “What is this? What’s wrong with me?” Before Pájaro could reply, he took out a gun, which rattled in his shaking hand. “You poisoned me.”
“No, mon ami,” a feminine voice said, and an elegant brunette in a low-cut red dress appeared. “The scroll has killed you.”
The presence of the Italian woman drew all of the men’s eyes, and Pájaro darted forward, slipping behind Antoine and seizing his trembling hand, directing the shot he squeezed off at the closest man. He neatly removed the gun and rapidly fired, killing each man in succession.
Burned gunpowder turned the air acrid as Pájaro shoved Antoine away from him, at the same time sweeping his legs out from under him so that he fell to the floor. Antoine tried to scramble back, but another fit of uncontrollable coughing overcame him, and he curled over, covering his mouth and throwing an arm over his face.
Pájaro drew his blade as he looked down at the dying man. “You took your time, madame.”
“I chose my moment.” Leora sauntered over, frowning as she inspected the now-babbling Antoine’s ashen features. “This one looks like death.”
Pájaro liked the Italian, who was as cold and practical as a Frenchwoman. He didn’t know how she had discovered that the old man had left the scroll unguarded at the château, but he knew exactly why she had come to him with the information, and given him the resources he needed to retrieve it. She thought he was entirely disposable. “If you wish to observe his decline, I can let him live a little longer.”
“That isn’t necessary.” She walked around Antoine, stooping to study his bloodstained hands. “How long was he in possession of it?”
“A few hours.” Pájaro bent down and sliced open Antoine’s carotid, enjoying the neat way Leora stepped to one side to avoid the arterial spray. “At least we have proof that the curse is intact.”
“I don’t believe in curses.” She removed a small pistol from her purse and walked to each body, firing a single shot into each head. “You did very well. Now I will take the artifact to Paris. We have a lab there where it can be analyzed.”
So she was making her move now. It was sooner than he had expected—he assumed she would first use him to transport the scroll to Paris—but he could accommodate her here just as well.
“Why are you wasting bullets on them?” he asked idly. “They’ll bleed out in a few minutes.”
“Anyone can talk, even if they’re spending the rest of their life on a respirator.” She went to the next man.
Pájaro guessed the last round in her weapon was meant for him. He entertained the thought of allowing her to attack so he could play with her at his leisure, but the new threat to his plans made any extended dalliance unwise. The unstoppable warrior Antoine had described had to be a Darkyn lord sent to protect the scroll in the old man’s absence. Now that Pájaro had possession of it, the Kyn warrior would stop at nothing to find him.
And the council would send the little whore along to help him.
As soon as Leora turned her back on him, he threw the blade in his hand. It struck her between the shoulder blades, lodging between two vertebrae and partially severing her spinal cord. Once she collapsed he went to her, tugging the blade out of her flesh and rolling her over onto her back.
As he knelt between Leora’s thighs, he pushed her skirt out of the way and ripped off her silk panties.
“Why?” she gasped out.
“I do like you, so this is best,” he told her as he unzipped the front of his pants. “I don’t have to tie you down, and you won’t have to feel even a moment of discomfort. Not even after I’m done, when I cut your throat.” As he shoved inside her, he wallowed in the horror in her eyes. “As you said, chérie, survivors can talk, even when they are on a respirator.”
Chapter 7
H
is infrequent contact with mortals had made Korvel forget that they normally slept through the night. He suspected Simone was much more tired than she had claimed, for she hadn’t twitched a muscle in over an hour. Likely the blood she had fed him also contributed to her exhaustion.
He had promised to wake her, however, and he would keep his word. “Sister, it is nearly midnight.” When she did not stir, he reached over and gently shook her shoulder. Her head bobbed with the motion, but her eyes remained closed. “Simone?” As he released her she slowly slid to one side until she slumped against the door.
She was not sleeping. She was unconscious.
He seized her hand. Her flesh felt as cool as his, and when he pressed his fingertips against her pulse point, he could barely detect a heartbeat.
“Fuck me.” Korvel cut off another car as he swerved onto the shoulder, and ignored the shouted obscenities of the driver as he put the Land Rover in park and turned to the nun, pulling her upright and tipping her head back so that the dome light illuminated her face.
“Angel. Look at me. Simone.”
He saw no wound and smelled no blood on her, but when he cradled her face between his palms he felt a swelling just above her ear. He tore off her cap and turned her face to one side, probing the area and tracing the contours of a large contusion. When he parted her hair over the swellin
g, he saw the purplish red color of her bruised scalp.
The injury could not have come from her struggles with the men at the château. Someone had hurt her when they’d stopped at the rest area. He had thought she had taken too long. Now he recalled how slowly, how carefully she had been moving when she returned to the car. He had even asked her whether she had felt sick.
Why didn’t she tell me?
He drew back and began using his hands to check her from the neck down. Korvel stilled as he reached her midriff, and felt a strange arrangement of straps and objects beneath the knit fabric. He didn’t believe what his hands were telling him until he reached beneath the hem of her shirt and felt the sheaths attached to a fitted weapon harness buckled around her waist.
He unfastened the harness, lifting her slightly in order to safely remove it. She wore seven daggers of various sizes, three spaced on either side of her waist and one that had nestled against the small of her back. He also found a coiled wire garrote, a pouch containing drug-filled pressure darts, and several small metal spheres that he guessed to be some type of grenade. He found no marks to indicate that any of the weapons had been used for the purpose they had been crafted, but from the scent traces left on them he could tell that at least three mortals—including Simone—had handled them.
Of course the council would have ordered her to arm herself, Korvel reasoned, but why hadn’t she used the weapons against her attacker?
He bent down and placed the weapon harness under the seat before he completed his inspection of her. When he found no other injury, he bent his head to smell her clothing, and discovered the scent of another mortal’s sweat on the inside of one sleeve. He slid up the sleeve and found another, fresh bruise on her elbow.
Why hadn’t she called for him? How had she eluded her attacker? Why hadn’t she told him when she came back to the car?
Korvel climbed into the driver’s seat and started the engine, pulling out onto the roadway. He pressed the accelerator to the floor as he sped past the few remaining cars and saw a sign, Avignon Sud. He moved over into the exit lane and left the highway.
As he approached the city, Korvel considered turning around and going back to the highway. He didn’t know how badly Simone was hurt, and while he could probably reach Marseilles within an hour, the girl needed medical attention now. At the same time he was reluctant to take her to a hospital, where one or both of them might attract unwanted attention—the scrutiny of the authorities and perhaps even the notice of the Brethren.
The road leading into Avignon branched off around the old walled portion of the city where popes had once come to take refuge. Korvel followed the yellow signs that directed visitors to the appropriate gate and drove slowly until he spotted the front facade of the Hotel Vue.
He parked on the street outside the service entrance and got out, going around to the passenger side. He took out the weapon harness from under Simone’s seat, slinging it over his shoulder before he shrugged into his coat.
Carefully he lifted Simone’s limp body out of the car and carried her to the tradesmen’s entrance. He clasped her against him as he tried the knob, found it locked, and then forced it open, stepping inside into a storage area and loading platform. The sound of a clanging alarm cut off a second after it started, followed by the shrill sound of a woman scolding someone.
“I did lock it,” a man’s petulant voice complained. “You must have unlocked it again.”
A middle-aged woman in a stained apron came through the swinging doors. “Who is there? We are not…” As she saw Korvel she stopped and put a hand to her throat. “Monsieur.”
“Madame, my wife has had an accident.” He walked slowly toward her, holding her gaze with his as his scent flooded the air around her. “You will show us to an empty suite and summon a doctor at once.”
Her pupils expanded under her fluttering eyelashes as she slowly smiled. “A suite, yes. The doctor, at once.”
He followed her into the hotel’s kitchen, where she took down a set of keys from a pegboard next to the door and beckoned for him to follow her. Korvel carried Simone through the hall to the service elevator, where the woman took them up to the top floor.
“This is the Napoleon suite,” the cook said, giggling a little as she went in to turn on the lamps. “Your wife will love the bed. The mattress is all feathers. Would you like to know how it feels to—”
“No.” Korvel carried Simone over to the bed, pausing to pull back the quilted blue coverlet before lowering her onto the rose-colored sheets. “Find a doctor and send him to me,” he ordered as he began to undress her. “Now.”
“Oui, monsieur.” The cook wandered back out.
Korvel knelt beside the bed, holding the nun’s cool hand in his. “Simone, can you hear me? I’ve brought you to a hotel. Help will be here soon.”
She did not respond to his touch or the sound of his voice. He put his hand to her throat, where the beat of her heart pulsed too slow beneath his touch.
She couldn’t die, not here, not like this. Korvel moved his hand to her brow and leaned close. “Angel, why didn’t you cry out for me? You know I would have heard you. I would not have allowed you to be harmed. I would have…” He stopped and drew back.
She had not called out for help at the rest stop, Korvel realized, nor when he had first seen her being attacked by the men at the château. As a nun she would have taken a vow of chastity, yet she had freely offered him sex as well as blood. She carried on her body the scars of grievous abuse, and under her garments enough concealed weapons to kill a dozen men. When she had hobbled to the car, hurt and drugged, she had pretended to be only tired.
What had made her like this? Her faith? Her duty to the council? Was she somehow torn between the two?
Korvel sat on the floor beside the bed and leaned his head back against the wall. Vengeance and death had been an integral part of his immortal life—he was bound to his duty to protect the high lord and his household. Like most of his kind, he had risen from his grave believing his soul had been cursed by God to walk the night forever. What little faith Korvel had possessed as a mortal gradually faded over time, and his belief in the superstitions of the Kyn vanished along with it. No rational explanation had ever filled that void, not until the high lord had kidnapped Alexandra Keller, who believed the Kyn were infected, not cursed.
The door to the suite opened, and a short, thin man carrying a bulky case stepped in. “I am Dr. Pavel, monsieur. Your wife is ill?”
He got to his feet. “She slipped and fell at a rest stop and struck her head.” He bent over the bed to turn Simone’s face to the side and touched the swelling on her scalp. “Here. She walked back to the car, but then she fell unconscious. I have not been able to wake her.”
The doctor nodded, setting the case on the end of the bed and opening it. “Has she vomited? Have you seen any blood coming from her ears?”
As Korvel answered those and his next questions, the doctor examined Simone, listening to her heartbeat and then using a penlight to check her eyes, her ears, and her mouth. Once he had felt all along her scalp and neck, he performed a quick inspection of the rest of her body, and paused as he reached her right thigh, using his light to inspect a tiny mark there. He then turned and took a small bottle from his case, removing the stopper and holding the sharp-smelling contents under her nose.
Simone’s eyes fluttered, and she made a low sound as she turned her face away.
The doctor replaced the bottle’s stopper. “Your wife does not appear to have a concussion, monsieur. There are some indications she was attacked.” He pointed to her thigh. “She was also drugged.”
Korvel inspected the needle mark. “What was used?”
“Since she was at a rest area, I would think flunitrazepam, or perhaps ketamine. Such drugs are often employed in assaults to make women less resistant.” Pavel glanced at Simone, who was pressing her hand against her temple. “You must keep her here until the effects wear off. By this time tomor
row she should be herself again.”
“What effects?”
“Nothing dangerous.” The doctor looked a little embarrassed. “The drug removes certain inhibitions, especially among women. That is why you should keep her here, alone with you, and see to her needs.”
As soon as the doctor left, Korvel went to Simone and stopped her from trying to sit up. “Stay where you are.”
Her eyes shifted from one side to the other. “Where am I?”
“A hotel in Avignon. When I could not wake you, I brought you here. The doctor has just examined you.” He touched the back of his hand to her cheek. “How do you feel?”
She shifted her arms and legs. “Only my head hurts.”
“Someone struck you,” he told her. “You were also drugged.” When she didn’t respond, he asked, “Do you remember what happened when we stopped?”
“Yes. I was careless.” She closed her eyes. “It won’t happen again.”
Her scent said she was telling the truth. So did the note of self-disgust in her voice. But once again Korvel sensed that she held back more than she said, as if she were using the truth as a means of protection rather than revelation, and not merely to prevent him from knowing who had done this to her.
What did she fear? Surely not him.
“It is only an hour to Marseilles. We should continue on.” She rolled to her side and levered herself up with her hands, but Korvel kept her from trying to stand on her own by scooping her up and holding her against him.
“The doctor said you should rest.” He lowered her to her feet and steadied her with his hands. “Marseilles will wait, sister.”
She squinted up at him. “Why do you call me that? You’re not one of my brothers.”
“I am trying to be respectful.” He followed her away from the bed as she took a short, wavering turn around the room. “How many brothers do you have?”
“I don’t know.”
“Are they stepbrothers?”
“No.” She halted and reached out as if she saw something in the empty air in front of her, and then her hand trembled and dropped to her side. “I would not do it; I would never do it. He had me corrected and taken away and locked in my room. I could not leave until I recovered enough to train again. When I did, they were gone.”
