Twilight Fall

Michael came up behind her and slid his arms around her waist. Bending close to her ear, he murmured, "Are you in the mood for a hot vampire?"

"As you've told me a zillion times, we're not vampires; we're vrykolakas." Alex covered the slide with a small clear square and placed it under her scope. She peered at it and adjusted the magnification. "I'll be damned, if I'm not already."

"I am sure there are sins you have never imagined, mon coeur." He brushed her hair away from the side of her neck to place a kiss there. Smelling her aroused him, but touching her made him go hard. He removed her lab coat and glanced down to see the stiff points of her nipples denting the emerald silk. One of the many advantages of having a sygkenis were the delights of their physical bond, which had enslaved both of them. "I could help you commit them."

She shimmied her hips against him, but in an absent fashion, and made a vague, affirmative sound.

Michael frowned. "What is this that is more interesting to you than me and sin?"

Alex stepped back and gestured toward the scope. "Have a look and tell me what you see."

He gave the instrument a wary glance. "I will not know what it is."

She folded her arms. "Guess."

With a sigh Michael peered into the instrument. "I see tiny black spots floating in red-spotted liquid. None of them are…" He lifted his head, frowned, and looked again. "They are not floating. They are swimming, and… sucking up the red spots. And now they are dark red, and splitting in two. No, four." He turned to her. "What did you put in here?"

"A sample of your blood, after I heated it to five hundred degrees Fahrenheit." She grinned at his reaction. "Now you're wondering why."

"Among other things," he agreed.

"The pathogen infecting your blood cells—they would be the black things that turned dark red, ate the lighter red spots, and started replicating—is not destroyed under conditions of extreme heat. It actually becomes dormant." She reached over and turned off the burner. "When the heat is removed and the pathogen is immersed in human blood"—she poured a small amount of fresh blood into the beaker—"it wakes up, regenerates, eats, releases that really nice euphoriant we all love into the bloodstream, et cetera."

Michael looked into the eyepiece again and watched the blackened liquid turning slowly red. "But fire kills us."

"Not necessarily." She picked up a chart and opened it. "I got curious about the effect of heat after I talked to some of the new guys at the Realm about a jardin in southern France that the Brethren torched last summer."

"You talked to them?" While he and Alexandra had attended the annual tournament held in central Florida at the Realm, a medieval-themed tourist attraction run by the Kyn, he had not noticed her conversing with the refugees. "When? Why?"

"It was while you were busy being the seigneur, and I didn't feel like chatting with Lady Harris about her dumb dog. Don't be jealous." She patted his arm. "Anyway, according to the survivors, whom you very kindly allowed to immigrate to America, some of them came out with extensive third-degree burns. After finding a few willing human blood donors"—she gave him an ironic look—"they all healed."

"I know about the incident," he said. "Burns are not enough. To kill us, our bodies must be completely charred. Then they crumble to ash."

"Sorry, sweetheart, but even in crematoriums, bodies don't crumble to ash. There are always bits of—" Alex's desk phone rang, interrupting her, and she reached around him to push the speaker button. Before anyone spoke, she said, "Yes, Phillipe. I know. I've been playing in the lab too long again. The boss is here, trying to lure me away from my boiling beakers of blood."

"Alexandra?" The voice did not belong to Michael's seneschal, Phillipe.

"John." She went over and snatched up the receiver, cutting off the speaker. "Mind telling me where you've been for the last three weeks, big brother? I've been worried sick." She listened for a moment. "As in Monterey, California? What are you doing there?"

Michael, who suspected John was calling to report what he had found, reached over and pressed the speaker button so he could hear the other half of the conversation. Alex was so agitated she didn't notice.

"… from the brothers I helped relocate," Alexandra's brother was saying. "They gave me only very general directions, so it took more time than I thought. But I found it. I need to speak to Cyprien. Alex. It's important."

"John, I'm here," Michael said before his sygkenis began ranting at her brother again. "What did you find?"

"Everything exactly as they said." John told him. "It's under an abandoned Catholic mission in the hills. They didn't remove anything. They only sealed the entrances and exits."

"They intend to use it again someday." When Alexandra opened her mouth. Cyprien shook his head. "How many were they keeping down there?"

"I don't know." John sounded frustrated now. "They have security guards patrolling the property around the clock; one of them almost caught me last night. I can't do this by myself."

"We will come to you." Cyprien checked the caller ID display. "Will you be at this number in an hour?"

"I can be."

"I will call you back with our travel arrangements." Cyprien disconnected the call and saw Alexandra's eyes narrow. "I can explain."

"I'm sure you can," she said smoothly. "Start with why my brother, who hates your guts for turning me into a vampire, is talking to you like you're pals."

"You are not a vampire, and John does not hate me." Cyprien corrected her. "In fact, he came to me with information he had received from the former Brethren he helped escape the order while we were in Fort Lauderdale."

"Came to you." She sounded skeptical. "Did he have a little help, l'attrait-wise?"

L'attrait, the pheromonelike scent the Darkyn's bodies naturally produced, had a powerful effect on most humans exposed to it. By using it the Kyn were able to hypnotize and compel humans to do almost anything they wished.

"I did not force him to do this, chérie" Cyprien assured her. "He came to me of his own free will."

"If I find out differently. I'm kicking your ass," she said. "So what did they tell him?"

"The friars involved related how the Brethren acquire new members for the order, and directed him to one of their secret facilities." Cyprien said. "I told him if he could locate it, I would help him expose what they have been doing."

"So, just like that, John goes scampering off to California to look for some religious nutcase training center?" She threw up her hands. "John's already been imprisoned and tortured by the Brethren once. Wasn't that enough? And now he's out there alone, playing private fucking eye? My brother doesn't know how to do this stuff. He was a priest, for God's sake. Why didn't you send anyone with him?"

"He asked if he could go alone, and I said yes." Cyprien could see she didn't like hearing that. "This is very important to John. You know that he is not yet comfortable with accepting our help. He also knew you would be concerned about his safety if you knew he was pursuing this alone. I agreed."

"I love how you guys just decide these things for me. What am I, twelve?" She saw his hand move and stepped out of reach. "Don't even think about it."

"I only thought to spare you the worry," he told her. "You have been through enough."

"I'm not made out of glass," she snapped. "And I don't care where the Brethren train their new morons. John is all the family I have left, and even though most of the time I'd like to kill him, he needs the protection. Not me."

Cyprien took her hands in his. "These facilities are not being used for training new Brethren. They are for breeding them."

"Training, breeding, who cares what they…" She stopped and stared at him. "Wait a minute. You mean breeding as in the livestock sense of the word?"

Cyprien nodded. "We've known for some time that the young women they recruit have children with members of the order. These children are kept secluded and not permitted contact with the outside world until they have been trained accordingly. Male children, of course, become Brethren. There are only male Brethren, so we believe that any female children are used to produce the next generation."

She processed this. "That's disgusting."

"That is how a successful cult keeps its numbers healthy and controls the absolute loyalty of its membership." Cyprien wondered if he should tell her everything he and her brother had discussed. "Your brother told me that some of the young women used by the Brethren in these breeding facilities may not have been born into the order. The priests he helped spoke of runaways and addicts brought in from the streets and made into willing participants."

Alex swore viciously and at length. When she calmed enough to speak coherently again, she demanded. "What happened to the unwilling ones?"

"Those who caused trouble or resisted were killed." He took her hands in his. "That is why I promised your brother I would help. We have contacts in the media. Alexandra. Once we have proof, we can expose what they are doing."

Alex nodded slowly, but her eyes never left his. "You're not telling me everything. Your eyes always turn that pretty turquoise color when you're withholding information. What else?"

Michael knew how much she loved her brother, and had no desire to invoke her wrath by pointing out the obvious: Ever since he'd been tortured by the Brethren, and then learned that his sister had become Kyn, John's emotional state had been deteriorating. "Your brother is torn between his beliefs and his knowledge, and he cannot reconcile them. He is deeply troubled."