Twilight Fall

“The sins of the flesh are not merely visited upon the meek, Mrs. Murphy.” August suppressed a smile as he took the paper and unfolded it. The media was having its usual field day with the sex scandal. “We will pray for him.”

“I'm praying for his wife,” the older woman said, her careworn face wrinkling with distaste. “God help her, but who knows what sort of diseases he's inflicted on the poor thing.”

Senator Litton hadn't slept with his wife since impregnating her with their only son twenty-five years ago. Hightower didn't bother to pass that bit of intimate information along to his housekeeper. Nor did he need to read the articles printed under the headlines to know that the boy prostitute the senator had been fellating just before his arrest had been transferred from police custody to a halfway house for runaways run by the archdiocese. He had, after all, personally arranged the transfer.

Now that the annoyingly liberal atheist senator had been permanently labeled a political leper, and would be forced to resign his seat before the end of the month, the order could move forward with plans for his replacement. Three strident, impeccable conservative candidates who actually did have sex regularly with their equally dull and unattractive spouses were presently under consideration. Once backed by other prominent political figures under the control of the order, the worthiest and greediest of the trio would doubtless move gracefully into the U.S. Senate.

All as it should be.

Hightower happily munched his way through three cream puffs and a napoleon by the time he finished the news section, and had just began delicately devouring a fruit tart when he took out the Lifestyles section. Seeing the photo on the front page, that of a girl working in a beautiful garden, made him smile. Until he saw the tattoo on her shoulder and began to choke. Bits of kiwi and strawberry spattered his desk blotter and the paper until he cleared his throat and was able to take a breath and a closer look.

The image showed only the young woman kneeling with her back to the camera. A jacket had been tied around her waist, and the sleeveless shirt she wore had a T-back, which showed off her smooth shoulders. She could have been anyone, Hightower thought, and then took the magnifying glass from his desk drawer and held it above the image.

The photo was grainy, but not enough to blur the tattoo of a red swan.

“It can't be.”

August sal paralyzed until Cabreri came into his office without knocking, a copy of the Lifestyles section crumpled in his fist.

“Your Grace, have you seen…” He looked at the paper Hightower held. “Then you know.”

“That the red swan still lives? No. Carlo. I did not know. No one knew.” Hightower flung the paper aside and jerked the napkin out of his collar. “Certainly not Rome.”

As members of Les Frères de la Lumière, both Hightower and his assistant were obliged to pose as members of the Catholic Church. In the Dark Ages, their secret order had been created and charged with protecting the Church and humanity from a group of cursed priests turned into demonic vampires who called themselves the Darkyn. Their work required them to play certain roles within the Church's infrastructure in order to carry out their mission.

Now this girl, a girl everyone had sworn had died during a catastrophe that she herself had caused, could expose one of their most closely guarded secrets.

“I read the reports ten years ago,” Cabreri said. “They indicated that she was killed during the storm with the other children. They would not have done so unless they had seen her body.”

“Of course they said she was dead,” Hightower snapped. “They were covering up their own incompetence in handling that disaster. They would not dare tell Rome that the red swan had escaped into the general population.”

“But they must have known… an elemental…” Cabreri looked ill. “Your Grace, the risk to the innocent is too great. We must inform Rome immediately.”

Hightower braced his hands against his desk and rose, his heavy body trembling with the effort. His assistant's loyalty to the order, something August had used over the years to control him, would prove the greatest impediment. “D'Orio has been looking for any excuse to remove us from our positions. We will take care of the girl first, and then we will decide how much Rome is to know about the business.” He snatched up the paper and read the caption. “This photograph was taken at a nursing home outside the city. You will go there immediately and begin surveillance.”

“Assuming she has not already run.” Cabreri's Adam's apple bobbed. “I cannot take her alone.”

“You are not to touch her. Only locate and follow her.” He glared at his assistant. “You will report to me on the hour.”

Hightower's phone rang, and Cabreri flinched. The light on it indicated it was his private line, the number only members of the order knew.

The archbishop picked up the receiver slowly. “This is Hightower.”

“Have you read the paper today. August?” Cardinal D'Orio's voice grated over the line.

He sank back down into his chair. “I have, Your Eminence. In fact, I was just preparing to call you—”

“Thou shall not bear false witness. You do remember that from your days in the seminary, don't you?” The cardinal inhaled sharply. “Tell me how it is that the red swan, whom our California brothers reported burying ten years ago with several hundred of our best researchers, is still alive and working in your city.”

“All I can think. Your Eminence, is that those who were in charge of cleaning up the disaster falsified their reports to Cardinal Stoss,” Hightower said, sinking back down into his chair. “The girl survived, obviously. Since we were not aware that she had, she has been able to live off the grid, so to speak.”

“Obviously. So to speak. You sound like Miss Carolina, you idiot,” the cardinal said pleasantly. “Do you have her current location?”

“We know where she was working at the time the photo was taken, Your Eminence, but there is no guarantee she is still there. This level of exposure would likely cause her to flee. Then there is the more immediate problem of the danger she presents.” He eyed Cabreri. “I wonder if I might request one of your trackers to help us with the situation.”

“That is the other problem I am dealing with today, August,” D'Orio said. “Kyan has left China. He gave no explanation to his cell chief and has avoided using the usual travel routes. He also removed his tracer and withdrew ten thousand dollars from our banks in New York last night. I wager he'll be in Chicago by this evening.”

Hightower schooled his expression. “May we be of assistance in this matter?”

“Even you aren't that stupid, August,” D'Orio said. “Get to the girl before Kyan does, capture her alive, and transport her to Rome directly.”

A thousand possibilities rushed through his mind. “Is that wise, Your Eminence? Given the girl's, ah, nature, I think it would be more prudent to terminate her.”

“I don't care what you think,” the cardinal said. “You'll do exactly as you're told. Because if you fail me this time, I'll transfer you to a church so far into the Congo that the only tongues you'll be pressing communion wafers on will belong to mountain gorillas.”

After he ended the call, Hightower consulted with Cabreri.

“The cardinal wants her alive and brought to Rome, so we must move quickly,” he said. “Call our people at the bus and train stations, as well as the airport.”

“You believe she will try to leave the city?” Before Hightower answered, Cabreri added, “Your Grace, perhaps it is best that we do not pursue her at this time. We could instead intercept Kyan and prevent him from finding her.”

Cabreri often had moments of brilliance, even when he was as wrongheaded as he was now.

“I will do whatever is necessary to protect the city,” he told his assistant. “Go now.”

Hightower waited until his assistant departed before he placed two more calls.

Michael Cyprien found the woman he loved busy at work in her lab. “Are you making something for me, chérie?”

Dr. Alexandra Keller adjusted the flame on the Bunsen burner and eyed the bubbling, dark contents of the beaker she had placed over it. “If you're in the mood for a hot vampire-blood toddy, I am.”

Michael took a moment to appreciate the sight of his sygkenis. She had gathered her long, thick chestnut hair into a loose ponytail, from which a few corkscrew curls had escaped. A stained white lab coat covered the dark green silk dress she wore, and the emerald-and-diamond earrings he had given her the night before sparkled in her ears.

“I think I will pass.” Michael inspected the impressive array of laboratory equipment she had assembled and was working over. “This looks very complicated.”

She drew a sample from the boiling beaker with an eye-dropper and placed a drop on a glass slide, and then added a drop of clear liquid to it. “It is.”

In her human life, Alexandra Keller had been a reconstructive surgeon devoted to restoring the ruined faces of accident victims and abused children. Along with the talent of an Old World sculptor and the determination of a zealot, Alexandra had the gift of speed—no other doctor in the world had been as fast as she with a scalpel.

Michael had inadvertently taken much of that away from her when he had brought her against her will to New Orleans to restore his face, which had been obliterated during his imprisonment and brutal torture by the Brethren. After some resistance, Alex had operated on him. Michael had never intended to infect her with his blood, which should have poisoned her. Instead, Alexandra had become the first human in five hundred years to survive the change to Darkyn.

Outraged by both the deliberate and inadvertent interference in her life, Alex had despised him, eluded him, and fought him with all the righteous fury of an innocent wronged. Then, to make matters much worse, she and Michael had fallen in love with each other.

Cyprien had lived many centuries as a Darkyn lord, and had resigned himself to never finding a life companion. Now that he had this brilliant, beautiful, driven woman as his sygkenis, he wondered how he had survived for so long without her.