Darkyn - If Angels Burn Part 6

"I've always had an excellent proximity sense." He reached out and tapped the end of her nose with one finger.

"And your voice is very easy to follow."

The touch was casual, even friendly. But Alex didn't want to be friendly with Cyprien. She wanted to be in Chicago.

"My mom always said she could hear me a block away." She surrept.i.tiously rubbed her nose and then studied the films again. "I'll need to see any other X-rays of your head taken prior to the accident."

"There are none."

It wasn't her lucky night. "Okay, then I'll need to see a photograph of what you looked like before this."

"I've never been photographed."

"Not for a pa.s.sport or a driver's license or... you're kidding, right?" When he shook his head, she released a frustrated breath. "You're not. Of course. Great. How am I supposed to restore your face if I don't know what it used to look like?"

He turned in the direction of their silent chaperone. "Phillipe, obtenez la peinture de la bibliotheque et apportez-l'au docteur."

Phillipe disappeared, and then returned a few minutes later carrying a huge painting of a knight in a white mantle and armor.

The face of the man in the painting was handsome, if a little cruel-looking around the mouth and eyes. Maybe he was upset about all the crushed, bleeding bodies around the feet of his horse.

"Nice picture," Alex told Cyprien, "but that's not going to help much." "Will it not?" He seemed surprised. "Before the accident, I looked exactly like the man in the portrait."

"You looked like this bada.s.s white knight on the black horse stomping over a bunch of dead people?" she asked, to be sure. After all, Phillipe could have picked the wrong painting. "He looks like he's waiting for three other guys to show up in the bloodred moonlight."

"Perhaps he was." The hole of his mouth bent up on the ends. "In his time, however, he was considered to be a rather handsome, dashing fellow."

"If you like guys who wear tin cans to work, I guess." The painting was actually quite detailed; she moved closer to it and studied the face. "I can't give you back the mustache and beard unless I can uncover some hair follicles, and you'll need to dye the rest of your hair to lose the Cruella De Vil effect. I can manage the features, though, if I can figure out how to keep you from healing around my scalpel."

"I have also had all the instruments coated with copper. It... delays the healing." He gestured toward the cabinet.

"Is there anything else you require?"

She didn't even hesitate. "Three surgical interns, four nurses, an anesthesiologist, a sterile environment, a blood bank, an ICU, two weeks to prepare and test the graft materials, and my head examined. You know. Just the little things."

"I will serve as your nurse," eliane said. "The alloplastic grafts are already prepared."

Le b.i.t.c.h was seriously beginning to get on Alex's nerves. "I prefer to harvest my own grafts, thanks. Just what do you think you know about craniofacial reconstructive surgery, Blondie?"

"I know enough to hand you the correct instruments." She turned to Cyprien. "Shall I set up the trays now, maitre?"

Cyprien nodded. "Dr. Keller, if you would prepare, please."

"Now?" Alex gaped at both of them. "I haven't even had time to check your blood work."

"That is not necessary. You have everything you need, and the skill to do the work." Cyprien went back to the table. "We will do the rest."

"Hold on a G.o.dd.a.m.ned minute," she demanded. "What if you die under the knife? What happens to me?"

"Whatever you do to me on that table, I will survive." There was a click behind her, and she turned to see Phillipe holding a large, ugly gun pointed at her head. Cyprien shrugged out of his robe. "I cannot say the same for you if you do not begin preparations now."

Alex didn't argue with guns in her face, but she did make one final protest to eliane as they scrubbed. "I can't keep him anesthetized and do the cutting."

"That will not be a problem." She tugged on Alex's gloves for her like a pro. "Mr. Cyprien does not require anesthesia."

Alex ripped the gloves off and threw them to the floor. "That does it. I'm outta here."

"Vous l'aiderez," Phillipe said, making a jabbing motion with his gun toward the operating table, where Cyprien lay waiting.

A flower smell-honeysuckle?-seemed to wrap around Alex. Does everybody in this place take a bath in perfume? "I can't operate on a conscious patient," she told them through gritted teeth. "He won't be able to stand the pain. He'll fight me."

The big French goon simply c.o.c.ked his gun.

So this was staring death in the eyes. "I'm a doctor, not a butcher." Alex folded her arms. "I won't do it. Go ahead and shoot me."

"He will not move," eliane said, pulling out Alex's hands and putting fresh gloves on her. "He will enter a trance state, and remain in it until you are finished." She held out a mask. "You must trust us, Dr. Keller. We know what we are doing."

Phillipe gave Alex a nice little shove toward the table.

She went along with it, figuring on getting a scalpel and slashing her way out of there. Yet when she checked Cyprien, he appeared to be unconscious: heart rate and BP low, his breathing regular and steady. There were some doctors who advocated using hypnotism to put patients under for minor procedures, like wisdom teeth extractions.

But she was going to reconstruct a man's head.

The blonde unwrapped the instrument tray. "Shall we begin?"

Sweat ran down the back of Alex's gown, and her hands were shaking so hard she couldn't have held a suction tube. Despite Cyprien's trance state, despite all of his a.s.sistant's rea.s.surances, she knew it was wrong, and her body was rebelling.

"I'm sorry. This goes against everything I was taught as a doctor. Look at my hands." She showed them to the blonde. "Don't you see? If I try to cut him now, I'll kill him."

Something touched the back of her neck-a big, hard hand-while a weird, tickling sensation spread out on the inside of her skull.

For a moment Alex thought she was standing in a field of tall, ripening grain... wheat?... with the sun beating down on her shoulders. She had something heavy in her hands and on her shoulders. The image went away, but the smell of honeysuckle grew smothering. A man's rough voice spoke in low, rapid French.

"You have the ability," eliane murmured, "to make him whole again. You will do this. Your hands will not shake.

You will help the master."

Alex's eyes widened as she watched her now rock-steady hand stretch out, and her own voice say, "Scalpel."

Fear and doubt simply went away as she began to operate.

Peeling back Cyprien's scar tissue had to be done in sections, but she knew the severed blood vessels would seal off themselves and the flaps would heal out of place. Testing a theory, she created a tiny flap, watched it heal, and then abraded the underside of the flap and the foundation site. Once both sides were raw, she quickly pressed them back together. With his healing, the reattachment was almost instantaneous.

"Oui," Cyprien's a.s.sistant breathed.

"Shut up." With ruthless efficiency Alex sliced off Cyprien's featureless face, pulled it out of the way, and began the work to repair the ma.s.sive damage to his skull.

Distorted bone stretched from his upper cranium down to the mandible, but his eyes were intact and the pupils reacted to light. His irises were an odd color, blue with a brown rim, like turquoise inlaid in antique gold. One part of her mind was screaming that he could see, hear, and definitely feel everything she was doing to him.

Something else kept her in RoboDoc mode.

Alex snapped out orders to eliane for instruments as her hands flew. The bone healed a little slower than his tissue, but still required her to operate at top speed. As she excised and grafted, she began to create new surfaces that meshed and hardened beneath her fingertips. It was more like sculpting marble than operating on bone. She rebuilt each zygomatic arch, each lateral orbital rim, and reinforced the nasion.

Once Alex had extended the length of his cheekbones and got to the upper mandible, she discovered two unusual bilateral abscesses in his upper palate that appeared to be congenital.

"He has two holes in the top of his mouth," she said as she probed them. "Was he born with a cleft palate?" From the wholesale scarring of his face it was impossible to tell if any had been there before. The knight in the painting had had no such defect.

"His dents acerees," eliane said. "You must not close them."

"Right." An invisible string made Alex's head bob, and she moved on to repair the damage to his jaw.

The remnant part of her that had been shrieking to stop finally quieted. Which was good, because his jaw had been shattered and had healed over in five separate places. Collectively, a real b.i.t.c.h to put to rights. Once the bones were finished, she used the abridgment method to reattach Cyprien's face and went to work erasing his facial scars.

Her patient never twitched a muscle.

Hours, days, or weeks later, she put the final tuck in one corner of Cyprien's new mouth, waited for it to heal into place, and then set aside her scalpel.

"Give me some saline on a sponge." When the blonde handed it to Alex, she began wiping the blood and bits of bone from his newly healed skin. When his face was clean, she looked at her a.s.sistant. "Well?" "Magnifique." eliane's thin face was deathly pale, but Phillipe looked ready to keel over. The blonde said something in rapid French to Phillipe, who nodded and trudged upstairs. "Doctor, we must bring him back to us. Call his name."

"Mr. Cyprien-"

"Michael."

"Michael," Alex repeated dutifully.

The eyelids she'd remade for Cyprien blinked, and then opened. The dark lashes springing from the eyelid follicles she'd recovered and reimplanted were a bit thick, but they framed his aquamarine eyes nicely.

"It is over?" He sounded as tired as Alex felt.

"Oui, maitre. La chirurgie etait un succes." eliane touched his face. "Vous etes vous-meme encore."

Cyprien reached up and took her hand away, and then gazed at Alex. "Do I look like the man in the painting?"

She should have been exhausted, grouchy, and ready to deck someone. "You look fine. Normal." Gorgeous. Alex, however, was about to drop, and not from fatigue. The smell of honeysuckle was gone, and she had no idea how long she had been operating. Her stomach had constricted into a tiny knot, so she guessed at least twelve hours.

"Merci, docteur." Cyprien sat up, swung his legs off the table, and gestured for eliane, who hurried over. His repaired facial muscles appeared to be working normally, but he was visibly trembling. "Je dois cha.s.ser."

"You are too weak." eliane clamped her arm around Alex's waist and brought her closer to Cyprien. "Don't you agree, Dr. Keller?"

Dimly Alex wondered if someone had dropped a bottle of perfume nearby. The air was suddenly, suffocatingly thick with roses, as if someone were stuffing them into Alex's mouth and nose.

"He should definitely rest for at least forty-eight hours." That was utter bulls.h.i.t, but she needed to get the h.e.l.l out of here, right now. "Can I go?" She wouldn't press charges.

She'd just find a taxi and forget all of this ever happened. Or she thought she would, until she saw Cyprien's eyes.

He couldn't look away from her, either. "Non, eliane. She has done enough."

"She will not mind this one last service." A slim hand stroked over Alex's dark curls. "Will you, Doctor?"

Alex couldn't reply; she was too absorbed by the changes in Cyprien's eyes. She could have sworn that while she was operating on him that his eye color had been predominantly light, calm blue. But now those golden brown rims of his irises had expanded and darkened, as if they were trying to swallow up his pupils. Where were his pupils, anyway?

Were they those odd sprinters of black in the center? A delayed reaction to the trauma of the surgery, or maybe something else...

"Good-bye, Doctor." eliane's voice sounded dim, distant. A door opened and closed. A lock engaged. Footsteps faded away.

Alex didn't mind being alone with Cyprien. The b.i.t.c.h, and quite possibly the world, had gone away. She could smell Michael Cyprien's scent now, and it was like his eyes, startling, changing. Like the rose, unfolding thick petals, revealing a heart of secrets. It pulled at Alex like invisible surgical staples being pried out of her chest and pelvis. His eyes seemed to be bottomless shafts of amber gold, stretching straight back through his skull into eternity, like those two strange abscesses she'd seen, endless and enigmatic and swallowing up the light...

His hands were still shaking when he cradled Alex's face between them. "Pardonnez-moi, cherie."

She didn't mind; he was very gentle. His breath crossed the short distance between their mouths, and the odd sweetness of it (candied roses?) made her lips part. He was lisping a little, but maybe it was because he had grown two enormous fangs.

Funny. She frowned as strands of his white hair tickled her cheek. I don't remember giving him those.

Then he turned her face to one side, and used them on her.

John Keller's room in the rectory's living quarters resembled a stark, claustrophobic prison cell. It contained a bed, a night table, and one postage stamp of a window, the gla.s.s panes painted black for privacy. An old wooden cross nailed to the wall above the bed was the only decoration. His order permitted no personal possessions, so the tiny closet contained nothing but John's suits and high-ma.s.s vestments. It had been hard to give up what Alexandra and the Kellers had given him over the years-the street kid inside him craved money, or what could be traded for it-but John had rid himself of everything. He had gone into the seminary pa.s.sionately believing what his mentor had told him: Christ is all you will ever need.

All he had besides Christ were his few clothes and this room, lit by a bare, fifteen-watt bulb screwed into a center ceiling fixture. Enough light to see and move around without banging into furniture. Not enough to see clearly or waste electricity. Not enough to remove the shadows waiting to swallow him.

John didn't mind, except at night. Under his pillow was a small but strong-beamed flashlight, and most nights, he slept with his hand curled around it. He needed it for the worst moments, when he jerked out of sleep, sure he felt a groping hand or the cold press of a blade. He'd hidden his fear from everyone, and only Audra had known how bad it was. She had been the one to understand that he wasn't afraid of the dark, but of what came out of it. She had given him his first flashlight.

You turn it on and look around the room whenever you want, John Patrick. Then you say this prayer: 'Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, bless this bed I sleep upon. Mary, Mother, guiding light, keep me safe throughout the night.'

Toward dawn on the fifth day after his sister had disappeared, John lay dreaming. Not of Alexandra, or the bleak years before the Kellers had taken them in.

In his dream John again walked through the Raul Pompeia, searching for Maria.

Being rea.s.signed from the village to the urban parish hadn't bothered him; he had made little headway with the shy, reclusive natives of the rain forest and hoped to do better in the slums. For a time, he had, especially when he was given charge over the dozen street orphans cared for by the mission. True, they were more eager for food at mealtimes than the Gospel he read. Rome had not been built in a day, and neither was a good Christian soul. He could affirm that from personal experience.

No, everything had been going well-superbly, in fact-until the day eleven-year-old Maria disappeared.

At first, the other children refused to tell John where the little girl had gone. When he wheedled the truth out of them, he was appalled. Maria wasn't an orphan, but the youngest daughter upon whom a large and mainly penniless family depended. For her family, who were now starving, she had chosen to return to her former profession. She would be all right, the orphans a.s.sured him. There were plenty of cruising motorists and tourists who had the thirty centavos it took to buy an hour with a menina do doce.

"Hei, padre."

John turned toward the voice, although it wasn't Maria's. Neither was the face. This lost soul was at least ten years older, not a little girl at all, although she had the same underfed scrawniness and wet-black eyes as John's missing charge. She was chewing gum with a slow, mechanical motion of her narrow jaw. The sweat-stained shirt open to the waist bared a V of bony sternum and the outer contours of slightly deflated b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Her miniskirt was skintight at the hips; a parenthesis of air appeared between her emaciated thighs.

Father.

Recognizing the type, and the intent, John changed direction. The voice called out again on a waft of mint-scented breath. "Falaram-me de voce."

I've heard of you.

John had made no secret that he was looking for Maria, but he didn't know how anyone here would have heard of him. The mission was over three miles away, in a part of the slums where there was less risk of getting one's throat cut.

The inhabitants of the Raul Pompeia did not attend ma.s.s.