Darkyn - Private Demon Part 31

Thierry had the reflexes of a swordsman with seven hundred years' experience. He knew that if Bradford could be distracted for even a fraction of a second, he could disarm him.

Jema looked up at Thierry, squeezing his hand and moving her head slightly. He tensed, and when he returned the nod, she vanished.

"Jem, please don't do that. Please." Bradford put a hand out to grab what he couldn't see.

Thierry's dagger knocked the gun from Bradford's hand. Michael was there, hauling the doctor back from the table, while Alex came around the other side to rip open Jema's gown and examine the sword wound.

Jema reappeared and smiled at Thierry. "Worked."

"Miss Shaw is my patient," Bradford said, holding his bleeding hand.

"No," Alex said to Thierry as he started around the table. "I need him alive so I can find out what he's done to her."

She bent over Jema. "Open your mouth for me, Jem." She looked inside, swore, and straightened. "You removed them, you sick b.a.s.t.a.r.d?" she shouted at Daniel.

"I had to," Bradford said, looking sulky now. "She couldn't use them. She couldn't know she had them. I drugged her and extracted them as soon as the recesses formed. They keep growing back anyway. I've taken them out seven times since she was born."

"Taken out what?" Thierry demanded.

"Her fangs," Alex said. "He extracted them and he sutured the abscesses shut." She glared up at him. "Have you two been swapping large amounts of body fluid?"

It took a moment for him to understand what she was asking. "Yes."

"That might be what accelerated things. Or saved her. I don't know, and Christ, I hate it when I don't know." She turned to Jema, who had fallen unconscious. "Jema." She shook her slightly and checked her pulse. "Nonexistent.

Thierry, I hate to spring a sygkenis on you, but Jema is making the change, and she's doing it right now."

"How can this be?" Cyprien asked, astounded.

"My guess? She was infected with Kyn blood when she was a child. Why she didn't die is anybody's guess." Alex stared at Bradford. "He's been using the drugs and hormones to suppress the change, and the plasma to keep her alive."

"You can't take over my case," Bradford told her, indignant now. "I have a history with this patient."

"Alexandra, what about the sword wound?" Thierry said. "Will it stop her from making the change?"

"Take a look." She gestured toward Jema's abdomen.

Thierry parted the torn material of the gown. An angry-looking red scar marred Jema's flesh. "She healed." He smiled, touching the closed wound. "My sygkenis. G.o.d, can it be true? I am not mad?"

"You're not mad," Alex said. "I am."

Bradford drove a syringe into Cyprien's arm and twisted free, diving to grab the gun from the floor.

"You can't have her," he babbled. "I won't let you." He lifted the gun and pointed it at Jema's face. His hand was shaking badly. "Jem? Get up. We're going home now."

Thierry seized an IV pole and threw it. The metal rod pierced Bradford's chest and drove him into the wall. The gun went off, the bullet lodging into the wall behind Jema's head. Bradford hung skewered, dead.

"There goes thirty years of experience treating vampirism." Alex sounded more resigned than angry. She went over to Cyprien, who was extracting the syringe from his arm. "You okay?"

"I should have held him tighter." Michael looked at Bradford. "He was insane, wasn't he?"

"We can hope," Alex said. "I will stay with her while she makes the change." Thierry picked Jema up in his arms. "I need a room where we will not be disturbed."

"You'd better take her back to Shaw House," Alex suggested. "We're going to need all the beds here for the wounded."

John disappeared while Alex had been treating the injured. She called the shelter where he had been working, but the temporary manager there claimed her brother had packed his belongings and left.

"I work over at the state shelter, but he insisted I come here and take over for Dougall Hurley until he gets back,"

the man complained. "You have any idea where Hurley is?"

Hurley's body had been transported to the city and left in a place where it would be found. Alexandra had hated that, but understood the need to avoid exposing the Kyn. "No, sorry, I don't. Did my brother say where he was going?"

"He said something about getting out of the city," the man told her. "That's all."

Once Alexandra had finished patching up the last Kyn, she went to see Jaus, and found him sitting on the seawall.

He had covered his arm stump with a white jacket, and from a distance she could easily imagine it as a swan's wing.

"Hey." She pushed aside her annoyance with her brother. "Some party. I was wondering, why didn't the police ever show up? All that gunfire should have scared the neighbors."

"The house is soundproofed. No one heard anything." He looked up. "Tell Thierry I am here. I will not fight him."

"Jema's not dead." She gave him a minute to absorb the shock, and then told him what she knew about Jema, Bradford, and her change into Kyn. "Valentin, when you found her in your garden, all those years ago, did you cut yourself when you picked her up out of the broken gla.s.s?"

"Yes. I took a sliver out of her hand, and it lodged in my palm." He stared at his hand. "It was nothing. We heal at once."

"I have a very shaky theory," Alex said, sitting on the wall beside him. "Let's say some of your blood got on Jema's hands. She sucked her thumb, and ingested it. For whatever reason, it didn't kill her. It cured her diabetes, and then it began to slowly change her into Kyn. Bradford was able to arrest the progress of the change with his hormones and sedatives. As her digestive system deteriorated, she'd have pa.s.sed blood; I showed it in my urine, but he could have made that look like a kidney infection. He added the plasma, probably to keep her from starving to death."

"What are you saying?" Jaus looked as if he had become part of the stone seawall.

"It's the only explanation that makes sense. Jema's diabetes disappeared when she was a year old. You were the only Kyn she came in contact with at that specific time in her life." She looked out at the black water of Lake Michigan.

"Bradford found out, and began experimenting on her. All he had to do was make everyone think she still had the disease. For a doctor, it wouldn't be difficult." She exhaled. "I just wish I knew why your blood didn't kill her when she was a baby, and why Michael's didn't kill me when he attacked me. There has to be a connection between Jema and me."

"Where is she now?"

"Thierry took her over to Shaw House. He's going to stay with her until she finishes the change." This was the part Alex didn't want to handle, but felt she should try. "Val, I'm sorry-"

"Yes. So am I." Valentin rose, awkward and slow. "She loves him, Alexandra. She belongs with him."

"I do get the feeling they've been an item for a while." She gestured toward his missing arm. "You like the folded- sleeve look?"

"It doesn't matter." He walked past her.

"The reason I ask is that I think I can reattach it." That stopped him in his tracks. She smiled as he turned around to stare at her. "Kyn spontaneous healing plus my dazzling reconstructive surgical skills. I've got your arm on ice up at the house. No guarantees, but want to give it a try?"

"When we were dancing, I asked her opinion of me," Jaus told her. "You were right. She thinks exactly as you said." "Maybe she was just being polite-"

"Not this time." He looked up at the stars. "She was still human enough for it to affect her. You see, it is my talent.

When I touch humans, they cannot lie to me."

"Really." She thought about it. "That must more than occasionally suck."

"It is why I have never touched her." He smiled briefly. "I think a part of me knew what the truth would be. That to Jema, all that I am, all that I will ever be, is a nice man who grows beautiful flowers."

"You are more than that, Val, and if I weren't in love with Cyprien, you'd be too d.a.m.n busy to have a broken heart." She held out her arm. "Life goes on, pal. Or, in our case, on and on and on and on and on."

He took her hand.

"How many dead?" he asked her as they walked up to the lists, which Alex was using as a temporary hospital for the wounded Kyn.

"Fifteen, counting the gunmen. Twenty-three wounded but recovering quickly. I should be able to clear everyone out of here by tomorrow." She smiled at him. "Do your people carry major medical insurance, or am I going to have to bill the h.e.l.l out of the jardin?"

Cyprien met them as they entered the lists. "I know you must do this surgery soon, but Valentin has to decide what to do with the ringleader. He is the only survivor."

Val and Alex followed Cyprien through the hospital to one of the storage rooms. There the man dressed as the Grim Reaper was being held by two of Jaus's guards. Cyprien reached down and removed the Reaper's mask, revealing Falco's face.

Alex rubbed her brow. "Terrific. The guy who was driving us around town."

"I have nothing to say to you," Falco told her. He turned to face Jaus and spoke in rapid German.

"He seems to have a lot to say to Val," Alex told Cyprien in a conversational tone.

"My seneschal confesses to making private pacts with the Brethren," Jaus said. "In English, Falco. The seigneur will hear this."

"The seigneur." The big man sneered at Michael. "He is nothing but Richard's pretty boy. Yes, I went to the brothers and bargained with them. They had targets they wished eliminated. I went to the streets, found the stupid human boys, and trained them to kill. Every job we did bought more protection for the jardin."

"Montague? Was he part of this?" Cyprien asked.

Falco spit on the floor in front of Michael's shoes. "He was only to kill the Shaw woman. I used the crossbow that day by the lake. You would be dead if not for your yellow b.i.t.c.h."

Jaus stared down at Falco sadly. "He wanted to a.s.sa.s.sinate you, Michael, so I could succeed you as seigneur. He is an Aryan, Alexandra, so your racial background makes you unacceptable in his eyes."

"Oh, so he's a n.a.z.i," Alex said. "I get it. But I'm not yellow. I think of myself as sort of a light caramel." She leaned over and smiled in Falco's face. "Remember that the next time you insult me, you racist jerk-off."

Cyprien crouched down in front of the seneschal. "Falco, how much did you tell the Brethren about us?"

"Nothing." Falco looked at Jaus. "I swear this to you, master."

"I don't think your word holds much weight with the master anymore," Alex advised him. "I wonder how many other people he has killed over the years?"

Jaus suddenly straightened. "Kurt."

"He got in my way too many times," Falco said, looking righteous. "He came into the city and saw me when I was meeting with the monks. He would have told you. He never could keep his mouth shut."

Val's eyes glittered. "So you killed him."

"He had to die, like the Shaw woman." Falco shook his head. "You spend too much time obsessing over her. She made you weak, but you would have chosen her over everything. After all I did to make you strong, to keep you safe."

"Michael," Jaus said, "lend me your sword. Alexandra, please step back three paces." When Cyprien handed Jaus his sword, he lifted it. "Do you have anything else you wish to tell me, seneschal?" Falco swallowed, his eyes locked on the sword. "I want to fight you. It is the only way to die with honor."

"You gave your honor to the Brethren." Jaus brought down the blade, and with a single stroke decapitated Falco.

Alex watched the severed head fall and the body slump over. "I'm not reattaching that. Just FYI."

Jema wasn't afraid of what was happening to her body. Deep in the comatose sleep of change, she was still aware of Thierry beside her. He stayed there, a constant presence until she opened her eyes three days later.

They were in her bed, covered with her grandmother's old quilt. Thierry was dozing, his big naked body wrapped around hers. Jema stayed where she was, enjoying the novelty of waking up in the arms of the man she loved. Then she thought of what her mother and Daniel Bradford had done to her, and her happiness ebbed.

Thierry's eyes opened. "Jema?"

"Still here." She snuggled up against him. "I guess I made it."

"Stay in bed." He didn't, and after pulling on his pants hurried out of the room. He returned a few minutes later with Alexandra Keller.

While Thierry paced the room, Alex gave Jema a complete physical and explained the changes that had taken place in her body. "You can't eat solid food anymore, and most liquids are out. I'm going to keep you on intravenous blood until your fangs regenerate. I've opened the apertures, so it should take only a week or two."

"I can't believe I'm a vampire," she murmured. "A real vampire. And you think I've been one for how long?"

"I can tell you what I've pieced together from what Bradford said, and what we know about you and your life."

Alex explained her theory about Jaus's blood infecting her and how Bradford had taken advantage of it. "Your mutation is just as strange as mine is. Like your ability to disappear; that's a Darkyn talent, but it should work only on humans. Instead it works on everybody, the way my talent does."

"Did Dr. Bradford do anything else to me?" Alex had already told her Daniel was dead.

"I'm not sure," Alex admitted. "We're going to search his lab, see if we can find any notes."

Thierry insisted on carrying Jema downstairs. "You are still weak, and you need blood," he said, overriding her objections. "I will tell you when you can walk."

She smiled. "You said I'd be too tired to walk." She giggled as he whispered against her ear what he intended to do to her when she was feeling better.

"Am I going to have to make you two get a room?" Alex complained. "Again?"

All they found in Daniel's lab were twenty-nine years of charts, falsified to make it appear as if Jema were being treated for diabetes.

"He must have kept it all in his head," Alex said as she thumbed through the charts. "I'll go through everything, in case he encoded something. You're sure he didn't use a computer?"

"He hated them." Jema went over to Daniel's desk, where there was a framed photo. It was a picture of Jema at her college graduation. Daniel had been so proud of her for obtaining her degree. "Do you think he loved me?"

"I guess. In a sick, psychopath kind of way." Alex shut the filing cabinet drawer. "Sweetie, I need to run more tests on you, but chances are there won't be any lasting effects. Kyn changeover heals everything."

"I'm just sorry I was so rude to you about Luisa," Jema said. "I hope we can be friends."