Darkyn - If Angels Burn Part 20

Cyprien shadowed Alex, and eyed the vial of blue salts she took from her case. "What is that?"

"Nickel sulfate hexahydrate. It's used to plate nickel, dye and print fabrics, and to blacken zinc and bra.s.s. Nickel happens to be copper's next-door neighbor on the periodic table of elements."

"So?"

"So it's toxic." She unwrapped a sterilized Pyrex beaker and shook a few blue crystals into it, then a small amount of the saline liquid that eliane brought to her. She swirled the beaker until the liquid turned light blue. "To humans, anyway."

Michael frowned. "You cannot inject that into him. You don't know what it will do."

"I know exactly what it does. It's Darkyn Valium." Alex lifted the beaker to the light to examine the contents. "I've been using it to treat my insomnia."

"You tested this substance on yourself?" He was appalled.

"Why not?" She filled a dart-shaped cartridge with the liquid and removed a gun from her case, into which she loaded the cartridge. "I've had a lot of time on my hands lately." She went back to the grid. "Open it up."

The gun troubled Michael almost as much as the concoction she had made. "Why must you shoot him with that?"

"Because I can't throw darts worth a d.a.m.n." She gave him an ironic look. "I don't think he's going to hold out his arm and let me stick him, do you?"

Michael knelt down and pressed some switch in the floor, and the copper mesh slid back. Thierry saw his face and screeched like a furious animal.

Alexandra stood at the edge, aimed, and fired. The dart hit Thierry square in the chest, and five seconds later, he dropped to the floor of the cell, unconscious.

"We've got about an hour before it wears off," she said. "Can you get him out for me?"

Michael jumped down into the cell and released the chain locks. Cradling Thierry in his arms, he jumped back out.

"I hate to admit it, but the vrykola-kick-a.s.s super strength definitely comes in handy with uncooperative patients,"

Alexandra said. "Blondie, get Heather back down here; I need her now. Cyprien, put him over there on the table and take those d.a.m.n manacles off him. We should have Phillipe and some of your muscle boys come down here on standby, in case he wakes up early."

"I will see to it." eliane departed.

Michael carried his friend to the table and carefully laid him down while Alexandra switched on the overhead light.

In his struggles, Thierry had torn most of his clothing off, leaving only the ragged shreds of his trousers to cover his body. These Alexandra carefully cut away.

"Why does he smell like my mom's gardenia bush instead of a trash heap?" she asked.

"Our blood carries our scent." Michael wasn't ready to explain rapture and thrall to her just yet, not until he was certain of her loyalties.

"Mom used to put one gardenia flower in the bathroom and it would smell nice for a week. Maybe we could bottle some of his..." She pulled the material away and stepped back, speechless.

Michael had not seen exactly what they had done to him before this moment. From the waist up, Thierry Durand was completely normal-a little thinner than usual, but still well muscled-and free of injury. The scar tissue started just above the groin area and extended to what were either the soles of his feet or the misshapen stumps of his legs.

Alexandra reached out and carefully adjusted one of Thierry's legs. "Animals."

Michael could see the blackened, jagged ends of his friend's leg bones extruding in various places where the flesh had healed around them. His feet had been crushed, his genitals badly burned. Given the severity of his wounds, how he had been able to move at all was a terrifying miracle.

"I'll get pictures of the compound fractures first." Alex gently rolled him over, and Michael saw what they'd done to his back. She looked up at him. "How?"

He knew only too well how the Brethren had inflicted the deep tears in the muscles of Thierry's back. "They hung him from hooks and left him to dangle."

"I'll need to do a spine series, then, too." She straightened and pressed a hand over her eyes for a moment. "I want to know who did this to him, and why."

"They are very evil men who wish to destroy our kind." Michael thought of her brother, the priest. "We will talk about it later. For now, please help Thierry and his family."

She gave him a long, thoughtful look. "All right, I'll get to work. Move that portable X-ray over here."

Chapter Fifteen.

How did they get to Taca.s.si?" Cardinal Stoss demanded. Orsini shrugged. "The same way they get to everyone, through the family. Taca.s.si's uncle is Brethren, but his maternal grandmother was French." He looked over at Gelina, who sat with her customary sulky expression. "Thank heavens someone noticed Taca.s.si entering the room."

"I never trusted him," Gelina said. "He asked too many questions."

"He was sent to get close to me!" Stoss said sharply. "I should have been his target."

"Since we were unable to question Taca.s.si, we will never know," Orsini said. "Had Sister Gelina more self-control, I could have pried every bit of information he had about the Darkyn out of him."

"You have enough information." Gelina put a hand to her face. "That pig American was so strong he almost broke my jaw. He was supposed to be weak and sniveling and afraid. All the others were." She seemed more perplexed than angry about it.

"I feel certain that the sedative Taca.s.si gave Keller kept the hallucinogen from working properly." Stoss smiled at her. "It was very quick thinking on your part, to act as you did. The photos alone will bring a conviction in any country."

She sniffed. "I had little choice."

Orsini had been a witness to what John Keller had done under the influence of the witch's brew of drugs he'd been given. Frankly he had enjoyed seeing the s.a.d.i.s.tic Gelina flat on her back, for once being forced to take abuse instead of inflicting it. "Keller is strong, isn't he?"

"He did what he could." She flicked her fingers at the faint bruises on either side of her chin. "But in the end he was like all the others, grunting and jerking. Any man can be brought to his knees."

"Not only men." Orsini remembered the m.u.f.fled sounds she had made, and the dampness in her eyes.

Gelina abandoned her serene facade and began swearing softly and viciously at him in gutter Italian.

"That is quite enough of that, Sister," the cardinal said. "You're to monitor Keller while he's in America, and report back to Hightower. Do as the bishop says. Any questions?"

"No." Gelina didn't look away from Orsini. "But I don't want money this time. When it's over, I want Keller."

"You cannot do him in Chicago." Orsini had helped her clean up the last man she'd taken in payment. It had not been a particularly tiresome task. Gelina hadn't left much to incinerate.

"I have a place," she said. "I'll need a month away. He should last that long."

The cardinal regarded her thoughtfully. "Do not allow this to become personal, Gelina. Keller is a job, like the others. Nothing more."

"Yes, Your Grace."

He made the sign of the cross. "Go in peace."

She smirked before she rose and left the room.

The cardinal nodded to Orsini, who secured the door. "You are wrong to worry about her. She carries a grudge, that is all."

"As you say, Your Grace." Orsini worried more about Gelina's other grudges, and personally gave her only another six months to a year before her myriad depravities swelled out of control and swallowed her whole.

"It is this d.a.m.n American," the cardinal said mildly. "Why couldn't he just lie back and enjoy it?"

Orsini didn't comment. Last night he had seen the cardinal's face as he had watched Keller with Gelina. Stoss would never admit it, but he was as s.a.d.i.s.tic as the Brethren's only female interrogator. He had thoroughly enjoyed the odd turn of events. That John Keller would not allow Gelina to work her usual magic, even under the influence of drugs, also disturbed Orsini. Keller's tribulations with celibacy were well doc.u.mented. That he would then turn on Gelina was an ominous sign. The American priest's suppressed desires had made him a ticking bomb, but now Orsini worried that the trigger had been s.n.a.t.c.hed out of their control.

"You are being too quiet, Ettore."

He met the cardinal's gaze. "We should kill Keller as soon as we have captured the sister. Don't make the mistake of giving him as a toy to Gelina."

"Are you feeling sorry for him?" Stoss asked, astonished.

"No." He looked at the envelope he had given the cardinal earlier. "For Gelina."

The cardinal opened the envelope on his desk and sorted through the photographs again.

"I still don't know how he accomplished it, when she is... perhaps you are right." He separated a small number and handed them to Orsini. The selected photos plainly showed Father John Keller raping his nurse. "Send these by special courier to Hightower."

Alex had no doubt that Thierry Durand was totally, violently psychotic. From the moment she looked down at him in the cell, his thoughts and emotions had poured into her head. Few of them were even remotely sane.

Angel, Angel, Angel. Don't leave me.

The exposure gave her painfully intimate insight as to Thierry's emotions. They ran in an unending circuit: pain, fear, terror, sorrow, hatred, rage, bloodl.u.s.t, bitter hope, and then back to pain. Disjointed thoughts and ideas punctuated the loop with specific intent. Everything that had been done to him, he wanted to do. He l.u.s.ted to be the one who inflicted the beating, rending, breaking, and mutilating.

The only gentle emotion left in him whirled around thoughts of Angel, and even that desperate love was tainted by horror.

Alex decided not to tell Cyprien any of this. Her ability to read the minds of a pedophile and a raving lunatic might qualify as a Darkyn talent, but she wasn't handing him another reason to try and use her.

And wouldn't it be great to be a walking murder detector. Alex had seen that sci-fi movie with Tom Cruise, where he had arrested people before they killed. No, she definitely didn't need to advertise this little gift.

It took fifty minutes to complete some quick prelims, after which Alex gave Thierry a second injection and left Heather to watch over him.

"If he starts to come around," Alex told the nurse, "have the men put him back in the cell."

Cyprien hadn't made another appearance, so she collected her films and went upstairs to find him sitting and brooding in the fancy green-and-pink drawing room.

He looked up when she came in. "How is he?"

"Well and truly f.u.c.ked." And had been left to heal without any sign of treatment. "Tell me something. Why don't you have any vampire doctors?"

"None of the Darkyn were originally doctors. When we rose, barbers who thought bleeding and the drinking of cow urine cured disease and illness treated the sick and injured."

Thank G.o.d she'd been born in the twentieth century. "And in the, what, seven hundred years since then, not one of you thought about going to medical school?"

The question seemed to stun him. "Aside from the problems being vrykolakes among humans presents, you forget that we are cursed, Alexandra. There are no seminars on how to appease G.o.d and win back your soul."

"Oh, bulls.h.i.t. Come here and look at this." She went to the doors that led out to the garden, and propped Thierry's X-rays against the gla.s.s panes. "Twenty-seven major fractures in his legs and most of them are compound." She pointed out the worst breaks. "The broken ends are healed over and the marrow is intact. See any sign of a curse?"

"Does this mean his legs can be saved?"

"If there are no complications. I'm not sure about his feet. They've been pulverized." She put up another film. "If he were human, I'd have no choice but to amputate. Thank Somebody Up There for that curse, Cyprien." Hope filled his expression. "Thierry heals as I do."

"Before you throw a party, I'm not sure what I can do for him. It isn't just healing. He'll need extensive bone repair, tissue grafts to fill in the holes in his back, and major dermal/muscle restoration from the hips down. I don't know if I can harvest enough bone grafts to rebuild his feet." Unable to look at it any longer, she tore down the last X- ray. "Where are the people who did this to him?"

"They are deceased."

Alex didn't feel a twinge of remorse, hearing that. Anyone who could inflict this kind of agony on anything alive deserved to die. "Who are they?"

"An order of former Catholic priests. They call themselves the Brethren."

She stared at him. "Priests."

He nodded. "Former Catholic priests."

"Cyprien, I didn't mention this, but my brother is-"

"A Catholic priest. We know."

"Yeah, and while he's a complete jerk, he doesn't go around hanging people from meat hooks. It's not what priests do, even when they quit being priests."

"It is what the Brethren do."

She could debate this with him or she could leave him to his curse wallowing and anti-Catholic fantasies. "The surgery will take time; I don't know how long. Days, maybe weeks. As for his mental state, the pain he suffered can only be cla.s.sified as beyond imagination. Add watching his wife die to that..." She shook her head.

"Then we must let him go, Michael," a low, unfamiliar feminine voice said.

Alex turned to see eliane standing just inside the room, with a woman who looked like her mother. The latter had silver blond hair swept up in a complicated do, and wore an ultrafeminine lavender suit. One of her arms was in a sling someone had fashioned from a matching pastel silk scarf.

She looked like a Monet painting, Alex thought, feeling immediately grubby.

"Liliette. You should not be up." Cyprien went to her and guided her to one of the velvet-covered sofas, then sat beside her. "Alexandra, this is Mme. Liliette Durand, Thierry's aunt. Liliette, this is Dr. Alexandra Keller."

"I'm sorry. I didn't know you were listening, or I would have phrased what I said better." She went over and shook the uninjured hand the older woman held out. Liliette's fingers trembled under hers, and the scent of freesias teased Alex's nose. "Let me have a look at that arm."

"Later." She made an imperious, "shoo-shoo" gesture. "Thierry's mind is gone, Michael. Losing Angelica was enough; I cannot bear to see him suffer anymore. You must release him from his pain."

Everyone was focused on Mme. Durand, so Alex was pretty sure she was the only one who saw Cyprien flinch.

"Perhaps that is the most compa.s.sionate thing we can do for your poor nephew," eliane said, and gave Alex a pitying smile. "Seeing as the doctor cannot help him."