Twilight Fall

Now Kyan followed the attendant of the jet across the tarmac and into a hangar where a number of other chartered aircraft were stored. It seemed empty of people, until he smelled the salt of sweat and the breath of someone who had recently drunk grain alcohol. The sweat changed, became tainted with gun oil.

The attendant stopped walking as soon as Kyan did, and looked back. Sweat covered his face. "It's just over here."

Kyan seized the man by the back of the neck. "Liar." He turned him around and glanced down at the gun barrel the attendant pressed against Kyan's belly. "Why kill me?"

"You're a traitor, a thief, and you…" The attendant choked on his own sweat as it began pouring over his nose and mouth. He dragged his sleeve across his face, soaking it, and then pulled the trigger.

His gun didn't fire. Water poured out of the barrel, bringing with it a bullet that fell to the concrete with a splash and a ping.

The attendant swore, and then grabbed at his skull. His hand came away with a fistful of his own hair. "What are you doing? I am Brethren."

"I Brethren too." Kyan stepped back and lifted his hand, which began to glow with an inhuman light. "Who tell you kill me?"

The man's eyes bulged out as the skin of his scalp and face began to tighten over his bones and then split. Red powder, not blood, spilled from his wounds. He tried to speak, but his teeth began crumbling in his mouth.

"Your water tell me." Kyan lifted his other hand, and the sweat and fluids from the attendant's body flew to hang suspended, swirling in the air between his palms.

The attendant's body shrank, his flesh peeling away from his bones as Kyan stripped every molecule of moisture from his body. The man died some time before his remains collapsed into a small pile of dust, and by then the water drawn from his body had formed a small tornado in front of Kyan.

He stepped into the vortex, allowing the water to soak him briefly before he dispersed it with a flick of his hand. The attendant had been a cold-blooded mercenary, a useful man of low rank in the order who had obeyed without question the orders issued to him by his superior, another brother unknown to Kyan.

His teacher would not have flown him to Atlanta merely to have him killed; he could have done that at any time in Chicago. The hit must have been ordered by Rome, by this new cardinal with the fondness for accounting and records. No one had advised him that it would take a great deal more than a lone assassin to kill Kyan.

He found an office with a telephone at the back of the hangar, and called Chicago. "Try kill me here."

"Is the assassin dead?"

"Yes." Kyan felt another presence, but it moved away before he could fathom anything about it. "Lightkeeper send. Angry I leave China."

"I can smooth things over with the cardinal, my son," his teacher assured him. "Bui we have a more pressing problem now."

Kyan looked at the pile of dust that had been a man. "Rome take girl?"

"No," his teacher said. "The plane she is on has disappeared."

Valentin untangled himself from Liling's arms and carefully got out of bed to dress. The girl murmured something and rolled over, her hair sifting over her bare shoulders and back. She never woke.

She would be tired, of course. He had used her long and hard, both for blood and sex.

He had taken advantage of her fear and vulnerability to take his pleasure of her. Yet he would swear that the thought of having sex with her or using her for food had never crossed his mind when he had offered her a seat on the plane. He had wished only to repay her for the kindness she had shown to Luisa. To help her as she had helped so many others. And, to be flatly honest, to help her leave Chicago, and by doing so eliminate the temptation she had brought into his life.

Instead, he had helped himself to her.

This was why he had avoided human females since his duel with Thierry Durand. Without hope of love, he had become a beast. The only satisfaction he wanted was that of the ravager, taking what he wanted and satisfying himself in flesh he had rendered docile and obedient.

As Liling had been for him this night.

He could still taste her blood, warm and sweet in his mouth. He had never feared losing control of himself in blood thrall to a human—he had too much self-discipline to allow it to happen—but if any female could lure him to that madness, it would be Liling Harper.

When she woke, Valentin would compel her to forget the incident. It would be cruel to leave her with the memories of what he had done to her. He had unleashed himself and taken her like a demon, denying her the gentleness and consideration she deserved. His bitterness over losing Jema and the use of his arm had brought him to the level of a mindless animal.

Even as he berated himself, he realized that while he had been with Liling, he had not once thought of Jema or his ruined limb. In fact, he felt changed. The burden of regret and sadness he'd carried no longer crushed him; he fell lighter, even hopeful.

Had this human female somehow exorcised the ghosts of his past, and healed the wounds of yesterday?

She had pleased him enormously. Valentin had known many women, but in all the centuries of bedding females as both human and Kyn, he had never once fell the pleasure Liling had given him. It was as if she had looked into places in his heart no one knew were there, and reached for them. Even when he had offered her the tenderness modern women craved, she had refused it.

She had gone into those places with him freely. Willingly. He would swear to it that she had.

That he still felt that deep and abiding satisfaction from the sex should have disgusted him. His pleasure had been at her expense, and he had made her pay in full. But as rough as he had been with her, he had given her something back. He knew it when she had shattered under his hand, and heard it in the drowsy words she had murmured just before she had fallen asleep against him, as open and trusting as she had come to his bed.

Would she despise him for how they had been together?

He got up from his seat to check on her, and halfway down the aisle he felt the plane lurch. He reached out and grabbed the top of a seat to brace himself, but the turbulence passed as soon as it had started. He ran a hand over his face and tightened his grip on the seat.

His gaze shifted down. He had taken hold and braced himself with his other hand. The hand of his paralyzed arm, which he could not lift more than an inch or two at best.

The plane rocked under his feet, and the world spun away from him as he stared at his arm. "Zum Teufel."

It took a moment for him to work up the courage to relax his grip and straighten the limb. Carefully, almost fearfully, he lifted the useless hand up. His arm bent stiffly at the elbow, his tight muscles stretching with the movement, but he was able to touch the seat again.

His bones seemed to creak as he straightened and lifted it another time. His shoulder, accustomed to the hanging deadweight, made a ticking sound as the joint flexed.

He could use his arm.

He spread his hand, clenching his teeth as the nerves under his skin began to burn and then sent a dull ache up into his forearm. The burning and aching soon disappeared, and the stiffness followed soon after.

The arm was not as it had been—it felt weak and trembled from the strain of movements it had not made for more than two years. But it moved and bent and obeyed his will.

Valentin tore off his jacket with both arms. He put it back on again with both arms. He used his dead arm alone to take it off and put it on a second time.

His paralyzed arm was alive again. Not as strong as his good arm, but a hundred times better than it had been. In his gut he knew that if he worked it, he could bring it back even more. Perhaps not as it had been before the duel, but with enough range of motion to make it impossible to call him a cripple.

He was not a man who believed in miracles or divine intervention. He had spent too many years devoting himself to an indifferent God to believe in such drivel. There had to be a logical explanation. He turned his head and stared at the back compartment. Liling had kissed his arm, and that strange sensation of warmth…

A ringing sound diverted his attention, and with a wry smile he used his now-usable arm to take his mobile phone from his jacket pocket. "Jaus."

"Master, it is Gregor," Sacher said, sounding worried. "Your signal is very poor. Have you landed yet'?"

"No." Being with Liling, he had lost all track of time. "Call me on the in-flight phone."

"I tried, master, but the line is not working. I must tell you that the seigneur and his sygkenis are traveling to from California to Chicago tomorrow night. They need your assistance in a matter concerning the order."

Jans wondered what Michael would make of his miraculous recovery. "Prepare rooms for them. I will fly hack tomorrow night."

"There is another matter I must tell you, master. Your pilot, Captain Speicher, was found murdered today. He was killed in the crew parking lot at O'Hare." Gregor's voice faded out, and then back in. "… know the pilot who replaced him."

Jaus was sorry to hear that: Speicher had been a good man and had served as his personal pilot for the last decade. "Gregor, the connection is very bad. I will call you as soon as we land."

The signal terminated before his tresora could reply.

Valentin decided to see to Liling, and checked his watch for the time. It was after midnight. He frowned. The plane should have landed in Atlanta thirty minutes ago. He pressed the intercom button on his seat console. "When are we arriving at the airport?"

No answer came over the cabin speaker.

Valentin walked up the aisle, through the galley, and opened the door to the cockpit. "Is this intercom not functioning?"

"No, sir. I'm sorry, it's not," the pilot said, glancing back at him. "The storm knocked out some of our equipment. I'll have it seen to as soon as we land."

He didn't recognize the man at all. "Were you assigned to replace Captain Speicher?"

"Yes, sir." The new pilot turned back to the control panel. "He didn't show up for the scheduled flight, so the flight supervisor called me in."