Darkyn - Private Demon Part 10

"No, this is Miss Shaw's night off." The young man gave him a tentative smile. "Can I call someone else to help you, sir?"

What an accommodating lad. Thierry shuddered to think of allowing him to guard his family and treasures, and then was overwhelmed by another realization. My family is lost to me. Jamys, Liliette, Marcel. All lost. "It isn't necessary."

Thierry was in no mood to admire six thousand years of sculptures, pots, and relics, but he had to admit the collection was as impressive as the museum that housed it. Only a man who appreciated the world's best cla.s.sical art forms could have aspired to such a feat. Only a man with a great fortune could have made it happen. Shaw had indeed left behind a remarkable legacy for his daughter.

But will she live long enough to enjoy it? Thierry wondered. He knew almost nothing about diabetes, but had gleaned enough from television campaigns and newspapers to know that it was a scourge without a cure.

Ill, and I fed on her.

He noted the three security guards posted at various positions throughout the museum, and the cameras that tracked back and forth, sweeping the areas around the exhibits. Jema Shaw's office was not marked on the paper, but there was a notation about a lab, storage, and offices on the bas.e.m.e.nt level that were not open to the public. An employee elevator was located near the lavatories, however, where there was only one security camera. When the lens turned away from him, he slipped around the corner and took the elevator to the bas.e.m.e.nt.

The museum's lower level contrasted sharply with its upper exhibit rooms. Here everything smelled of dust, paper, and soil. The air was so dry Thierry could imagine himself back in Palestine, crossing an arid plane. No cameras here, either, something he thought rather stupid. There were as many treasures here as above, if not more. Why were they not better guarded?

He wandered through two rooms until he found a tiny office with Jema Shaw's name marked on the door. Inside he found a cramped, horrible s.p.a.ce with a faint, unpleasant chemical odor and an exquisite little desk facing a wall.

Americans. They should be physically restrained from decorating a place of business. What sort of office was this? Why had she been given such a dismal corner? There was hardly enough room in this place for a cat. He could barely pick up her scent here. His gaze was drawn to the painting over the desk. It did not fit the room any more than the desk did, but the more he stared at it, the more it captivated him.

Or would have, if a security guard had not stepped into the room. "Excuse me, sir, but what are you doing in here?"

Thierry turned and sized the man up. He was older, heavier, and unarmed. Healthy enough, although he smelled of fear. "Forgive me," he said, deliberately a.s.suming a bucolic look and deepening his accent. "I was looking for the lavatory, yes?"

The scent of gardenias permeated the air.

"It's not here, buddy." The guard breathed in deeply, and his expression became confused. "That's nice. I mean, you'll have to come with me."

"Of course, mon ami." Thierry smiled, not moving. "But you are looking tired. You should rest for a moment before we go upstairs."

"I should." The guard almost did, and then rubbed a hand over his face. "I'd better..." He tugged a radio from his pocket and stared at it and then Thierry. "I'd better..."

"Sit down," Thierry suggested.

"Yeah." The guard wandered to the chair at the desk and sat down. "Why am I so tired?"

"It is a difficult thing, is it not?" Thierry rested a hand on the man's thinning hair. "Working this late when you should be sleeping."

The guard nodded heavily, his eyes half-closed. He tried to yawn, but couldn't. "Hate my shift. Always makes me..." His head sagged forward.

Thierry picked up the man's arm and unb.u.t.toned the cuff of his shirt. His pulse was slow but strong. He waited a short time, willing his own need to ebb, before he used his fangs on the man's wrist, and then only to take a small amount of blood.

Drinking blood directly from the source was always dangerous. The Kyn had discovered that it was better to separate the blood from the human and then drink it at a distance, to prevent any chance of inducing thrall and rapture. He had no time to do so, however, and nothing in which to put the blood.

Thierry found a box of plasters in Jema's desk and used two to cover the punctures he had left in the guard's arm.

He also found a box of sugar-free lemon drops, a bookmark made of lace, and beneath a heavy text on geology, a small stack of novels. Some were cla.s.sic literature; others were modern novels. All were stories of love.

Are you a romantic, little cat? He found the fact that she hid the candy and the books in her desk rather endearing. He had even read one of the books-Pride and Prejudice-although he had thought many of the heroine's problems would have been solved if someone had simply strangled her mother.

Forcing himself to attend to the matter at hand, Thierry turned to the guard and placed a hand on his neck. With such contact, he could rouse the man's sleeping mind long enough to hear and accept a suggestion. "You hurt your arm on nails sticking out from a packing crate. Seeing the blood made you feel dizzy. You put on the plasters before you sat down. There was no one in Miss Shaw's office."

Hurt my arm, the guard's mind responded. No one in Shaw's office.

After glancing at the painting again, Thierry left the sleeping man and hurried upstairs. A guard waiting by the lobby desk began to say something, until Thierry was only a few steps away. Then he and the lobby clerk seemed to become instantly, completely bewildered.

"Good night," Thierry said, and was out of the doors before their expressions cleared.

The snow was falling more rapidly now, and the night had turned bitterly cold. Thierry returned to the lakefront, where he concealed the car and walked through the snow-covered lawn at the back of the Nelsons' property to the wall that stood between it and Jema Shaw's home. He jumped the wall easily enough, but locating her in the enormous house was going to require some effort. She had a security system, although this one was not nearly as sophisticated as the Nelsons'. There were also French doors all around the house, and they were the easiest to open from outside.

Thierry had no idea why they were called French doors. His native countrymen weren't stupid enough to put them in their homes. He climbed up one corner of the house, using the deep depressions between the decorative rock cas.e.m.e.nts as hand- and footholds. The roof was peaked, but not sharply, and the eaves extended out far enough to allow him to hang over and look into the second-story windows.

He had looked into three before he saw a patch of snow beyond the roof glitter with light. Quickly he drew back until he saw the source-a window with a balcony at the back of the house. He leaned over to look down, in time to see Jema Shaw closing the curtains inside. A few seconds later, the light in the room went out.

There she is. He waited five minutes, and then ten, hoping that was enough time for her to drift off. He did not want to waste this opportunity.

Thierry jumped down from the roof and landed on the small, rounded balcony outside Jema Shaw's bedroom. The French doors here had none of the security devices attached to them, as on the first and second floors. Only a bra.s.s hook-and-eye lock stood between her and the rest of the world.

Rather than feel grateful, he became angry. Does no one in this place care for her safety? He took out his dagger and inserted the blade in the seam of the frame, and then hesitated. If she is awake, she will see the window open. She will cry out.

He could not jump from here to the ground without risking broken bones. Alex, Cyprien's doctor, was far away in New Orleans. There would be no one to heal his wounds this time. Only hunters probably looking to take his head, or the monsters who would put him back on their racks...

Cyprien might call off the hunt, but there would always be Brethren waiting.

Fear's many long teeth bit into him. Never again. He tightened his hand around the hilt of his dagger. As long as Thierry had the blade, he was safe.

The lace curtains had been drawn and the lights switched off, but that did not guarantee that Jema Shaw was sleeping. He listened for movement from within but heard nothing. Silently he pressed one hand against a frost- whitened pane of gla.s.s, closing his eyes to block out the snow falling around him.

Where are you, little cat? He had not used his talent to search for a human unknown to him since New Orleans. There he had been so deep in the madness that he could not remember reaching into the minds of the priests. Jema was not like the other humans he approached; her illness made it vital that he not hurt her. Are you sleeping? Do you dream now?

When Thierry's talent first touched a human mind, he saw color in his own. A glimmer of silver appeared inside his head when he found her, deep in slumber but not yet dreaming.

There. For the rest of it, he would need to touch her.

The blade slid easily into the seam. Thierry lifted the lock's hook up from its eye catch, and then eased the door open an inch. Now he could hear the whisper of her breathing, the slow beat of her heart. He shrugged out of his borrowed coat, leaving it and the snow covering it out on the balcony, and slipped inside.

Unlike the rest of the mansion, this room had none of the trappings of wealth. Jema had been given but a few cast- off pieces of furniture, their paint scratched, their wood scarred and stained with age. Two squat oil lamps, the sort he had not seen in a century or more, sat as dark and cold as the room. He could smell that she had burned a few candles, pitifully scented to imitate the fragrance of real flowers. No wood in the fireplace; no comforting blaze to warm her.

Even the lace of the curtains appeared yellowed and old.

The shabbiness of the room angered him. This is how they treat the great Dr. Shaw's daughter? Like a poor relation, banished to a garret?

Thierry walked over to the bed. It was too small, and all that covered the sleeping girl was a sheet and a faded, patched blanket. She huddled beneath them, motionless but for the slight rise and fall of her chest. One hand lay open- palmed next to her cheek, the other tucked with a fold of the blanket under her chin.

She even sleeps like a cat. Tenderness flooded through him as he reached down to draw back the edge of the coverlet.

She wore a nightdress of soft material printed with tiny blue flowers. One tug on an ivory ribbon released the collar and bared the slim column of her throat to his gaze.

There, beneath the delicate skin, the pulse of her lifeblood danced.

The sight caused Thierry's dents acerees to emerge, and his hunger swelled. Before he had taken Jema in the alley, he had not touched a woman in weeks, not since losing control with Cyprien's sygkenis. He no longer trusted himself, so human men provided his sole nourishment during his journey to Chicago. There was no temptation of thrall with them. Having tasted Jema brought back what it felt to have a woman under his hands. To hear the sounds she made as he took what he needed from her. To give her what little he could in return- That was charade, darling. Angelica's ghost patted his cheek. All part of the torture.

Thierry would never trust a woman again. But Jema is human, not Darkyn. And she is ill. As long as all we share are dreams...

Thierry pressed the tips of three fingers to the side of her throat. When he closed his eyes, the silvery color of her mind was there, glowing like the moon on water, deepening as she responded to his talent and moved across the dark borders and into the realm of dreams.

Thierry followed her and waited until her dream took form, for only then could he become a part of it. Colors and light flooded his mind, forming and shaping themselves to Jema Shaw's specifications. It was always disconcerting at first, to be so completely immersed in the dark and then find himself- In Jema Shaw's bedroom.

Unlike the dreaming girl, Thierry was still fully conscious and aware of his physical reality, so it was as if he had become his own twin. Yet in the dream, he saw Jema's room quite differently. Everything that he considered worn, worthless, and insulting to the daughter of the house was actually held in great affection. Jema treasured the old things around her; had in fact collected them carefully over the years. Her prize possession was the ancient blanket under which she slept, something she regarded as priceless as a museum artifact. More so, for it had been cut and sewn and sandwiched together by the hands of her father's mother, a woman who had died before Jema's birth.

Not castoffs, he thought, trying to understand what he saw through her eyes. Antiques. Heirlooms.

In the real bedroom, Jema slept on. In the dream realm, she sat up and looked straight at him. "h.e.l.lo. Who are you?"

Questions in dreams had to be answered with caution. The wrong words could cause the sleeper to awaken suddenly. Thierry did not want Jema to fear his presence, or anything about him. If she did, she would never tell him that which he needed to know. Before he moved out of the shadow concealing him, he conjured a hooded cloak out of the dream realm and drew it around him, so that she could not see his face. "I am whoever you wish me to be."

She laughed. "That's convenient."

Thierry sat down on her bed-her two-hundred-year-old Colonial American bed, another much-cherished acquisition-and took her hand in his. "Perhaps I could be someone you trust. Someone for whom you care."

Jema's smile faded. "No. I don't want you to be anyone like that. If you are, you'll leave." The colors and shapes of the room rippled like the surface of a clear pool struck by a heavy stone. "I know I'm not here to be loved, but I'm tired of being alone."

He touched her cheek. Her skin felt hot and damp, the way it might after she wept. "I won't leave you. I want to know everything about you." He might have to risk some questions, in order to coax her into telling him about Miss Lopez and the hall of artifacts.

She drew back and her voice turned cool. "Why?"

Why, indeed? Thierry suddenly realized that he had no business here, not with this lonely, neglected little cat. Her illness was serious, and what few months or years she had left to her should be lived to the fullest. All he could give her was madness and pain. He should slip out of her dream, out of her bedroom, and out of her life. He saw himself doing so, quite clearly. "I need you."

Jema reached up and touched the edge of the hood covering his face, but did not try to push it back. "What are you?

Are you Death?"

Thierry could not speak. Could not deny what he was.

"No, not Death," she murmured. She picked up one of his hands and examined it. His nails had grown long again, thick and pointed, like talons. "You've come from the painting over my desk."

The painting. Thierry remembered it now. The same nightdress, the same silky ribbons had adorned the figure of the sleeping woman. His cloak was not unlike the shadow cast over her bed; the form of a man whose hands were not those of a man...

Now he understood her dream. We have become the painting that she loves. "Yes." "I'm glad." She brought his hand up and pressed her cheek against it. "I've waited so long for you. Will you come back to me again?"

He closed his eyes, almost breaking from the dream before he gave in to temptation. "Yes."

Chapter 9.

You'd be the archbishop's problem priest," a harsh voice said.

John turned from studying the cork bulletin board in the Haven's entrance hall to see a thin, big-eared man staring at him. The man was wearing a carpenter's jeans and Union Jack flag T-shirt. His orange-dyed hair fell in thick dreadlocks that reached his shoulders. If all that wasn't enough to chisel an impression, white letters on the shirt spelled out b.u.g.g.e.r OFF IRAQ.

"I'm John Keller. I'm here to see Dougall Hurley about the counseling position you have available." John wondered if Union Jack here would be his first client. He had the right clothes, but his face was on the weathered side for a teenager.

The dreadlocks swung forward and back as small blue eyes inspected him. "You'd be a wop, a spic, an Oreo or a Twinkie. Which is it?"

John despised racial slurs about as much as he did white men who affected dreadlocks. "I wouldn't know. I was adopted."

"Oreo'd be my guess. More cream than coffee. I'm Hurley." He didn't offer his hand. "You don't like my hair."

"Your hair is immaterial," John said. "I don't like your language."

"Irish were the white n.i.g.g.e.rs in this country. Still are," Hurley informed him. "I'm just embracing my cultural heritage." "You really looking for a job, Keller, or a place to lie low?"

What, precisely, had Hightower told this man about him? "I'm applying for a job." Which he had no intention of accepting, because he didn't work for racists, so he'd make this fast.

"More mouth on you than what he usually dumps on me." He jerked his head toward the office at the end of the hall. "Come on, then, let's have a go."

Hurley's office was a hodgepodge of scrounged furnishings and file piles. Antiwar posters almost covered the stains and holes in the Sheetrock walls. A b.u.mper sticker plastered to the front of his desk read NAMES CHANGE, SKIN DON'T. An ancient coffeepot sat cooking the mola.s.ses-colored brew inside its carafe to an even murkier black.

"You don't want the coffee," Hurley told him when he caught John looking at it. "Turns your insides African- American."

"I can drink anything," John said mildly, "but I prefer tea."

"Aren't you the b.l.o.o.d.y cuc.u.mber." Hurley sat down in the rickety-looking chair behind his desk. "As it happens, former Father Keller, we don't do tea here."

He nodded. "I'll bring my own." To another job. Any other job but this.

"We also don't harbor fugitives unless they're under eighteen and haven't copped to a major felony. I'm the only broken-down priest on the premises, and most of my time is spent trying to keep the kids from dealing, turning tricks, and making funny-colored babies." Hurley raised his orange brows. "Jump in anytime you'd like to tell me how I should p.i.s.s off."

It was good practice for other job interviews. "I've completed several courses in psychology and child management, and I have practical experience with feeding and counseling the homeless, including their children." It was hard to recite what credentials he had without sounding defensive. "I'll need some direction, but I'm a fast learner. I believe I can handle whatever the job entails. Your racism offends me."

"Good. I'm an equal opportunity bigot. I hate every-f.u.c.king-one." Hurley tucked his hands behind his head and kicked back, making the chair beneath him creak. "Right. Let's say Melissa, little not-quite-white girl, who's built like Beyonce but can't walk and chew gum at the same time, comes to you. She wants to know what she should charge her boss at the diner for a hummer. You'd counsel her to do...?" He spread out one hand.

"I'd suggest other ways she can make extra money." John kept his face bland. "Or, if she had her heart set on it, I'd find out the blue book on Hummers and help her sell the car."

Hurley uttered a single, sharp laugh. "You come with a little sense of humor, former Father Keller. His Graciousness didn't mention that."

His Grace hadn't mentioned a lot of things. Such as how a bigot like Dougall Hurley had ever been ordained.

"Look, former Father Hurley," John said, "I don't want to be here, but I've nowhere else to go. Neither do these kids. Frankly I don't care if you call me John, Keller, or Snickerdoodle, but call a kid a racist name in my presence and then you'll see me p.i.s.sed. Avoid that, find a hairdresser, and we should all get along fine."

"What about your sheet?" Hurley's gaze moved over him. "You've got one. Overseas and sealed, so I can't get a copy, but I know it exists."

He thought of getting up and walking out. But he would not run from his sins, or this man. He was done with that. "I was charged in Rio with solicitation. I did nineteen months."

"Solicitation." Hurley whistled, then pulled out a fax and tossed it onto his cluttered desk, where it curled into a tube. "That sounds so much nicer than 'banging a spic working girl,' doesn't it? While you were in uniform, no less."

"You already knew."