"Jem should have been my daughter." Daniel shook out the shroud and wound each end around his hands. "You have no idea how precious she is. She was always the reason I stayed. It was never the money you promised me."
"Oh, God." Meryl rolled her eyes. "Spare me the devoted-doctor routine. It stopped being convincing years ago. You'll give her an overdose of insulin tomorrow morning, and it will all be over."
Daniel came up behind her. "There's something I haven't told you, Meryl. Dr. Keller was quite right." Quickly he looped the shroud around her neck and twisted the ends, pulling on them. By her ear, he whispered, "Jema's diabetes went away. She hasn't had it since she was a year old."
While she choked and fought, Daniel kept a firm hold on the shroud and told her everything she didn't know about her daughter. How James Shaw had referred to her in his journal as the Homage of Athos, both for the cave in which she had been born, and because she was the only real treasure he had ever found in his life.
The stink of urine rose as Meryl's bladder emptied.
Daniel continued, releasing a little on the shroud now and then to allow Meryl a breath, only to cut it off before she took another. He described how amazed he had been to discover the strange pathogens in Jema's blood, and how they had not only cured her diabetes, but began changing the toddler. How difficult it had been to find the right combination of drugs to keep her alive, and her bizarre symptoms in remission.
Sometime during Daniel's description of how he had scared off Jema's first lover, just as he had paid off all the others she had become involved with, Meryl died.
Daniel looked down at his employer. Her upper torso sagged, twisted halfway around in her chair, and her tongue hung out of her gaping mouth.
"Don't worry, my dear." He smiled down into her bulging eyes and crimson face before he pressed his lips to the top of her white hair and kissed her good-bye. "I'll take good care of our little girl. The way I always have."
Chapter 20
Alex staggered through the Kyn, unable to make herself understood, now unable to speak, bombarded from all directions.
Gun's loaded in my pocket, safety off—Can't wait to shoot some of these rich fucks—
Raze gonna love this—
Guy in the red mask—pop him first—Cyprien—
Head or heart, head or heart—
There were more thoughts, thoughts in French and German, roaring behind the others, as savage and lethal as the killers who were thinking in English. Images of swords and copper bullets and death imagined.
Too many to block. Too loud and vicious to endure.
"Michael," Alex shrieked, but the guests were all talking, and music was spilling out of the ballroom, and her voice alone could not compete.
Alex almost went down on her knees before she was caught up in strong, familiar hands.
"I know you," Thierry Durand's golden eyes glittered from behind a demon lord's mask. "You gave me back my legs. You made my feet smaller. None of my boots will fit now."
"Thierry." She grabbed onto him. A few dozen yards away she saw Valentin turn his head sharply toward them. "There are about ten guys in this room who are going to start shooting people with copper bullets any second—"
Any second turned out to be the next.
Gunfire broke out, rapid explosions, metal whining as it sped through the air. Bullets sprayed the guests from all angles of the room. Blood sprayed in wide, crimson swaths across the white walls.
"Au secours," Thierry shouted. "Ayuda, Hilfe."
He shouted for help again, this time in English, before he dragged Alex toward the nearest cover, the entry to one of the corridors, shielding her with his larger frame until they got there. He shoved her into the hands of a man with orange dreadlocks streaked with black paint hiding behind the corner.
The smell of burned gunpowder and wilting flowers became choking.
"They're giving the women away?" the man said as he hauled her behind him. "Hey, John, she's a babe. Can I have three more?"
"Shut up, Hurley. She's my sister." John, who was wearing a priest's costume, put his arms around Alex. "Did they shoot you?"
She shook her head, and then pressed her hands over her ears. The killers' thoughts were rising, an evil tide that dragged at her mind as it swelled higher.
"They're going to keep shooting until they find Michael and kill him," she said, panting out the words as the hatred tore at her from the inside. "You have to get him out of here."
Another shot rang out, very close. Hurley stumbled back against Alex, falling to his knees. He looked down at the blood pouring down his presidential don't screw with this bush T-shirt with mild surprise. "Son of a bitch. It is red." He fell over.
Alex focused on Hurley and found doing so blocked some of the killing thoughts. She checked his neck and found no pulse. "He's dead." There were Kyn falling all around them, but unlike Hurley, some of them she might be able to save. "Johnny, give me a hand." She crawled out to pull the nearest body back behind the wall.
Thierry waded through the press of bodies as the Kyn tried to escape the rain of deadly bullets, his dagger in his left hand, a sword stolen from Jaus's collection in his right. "Jema? Jema."
He came to where the gunmen were standing and firing at the guests. The first man he cut down was shooting wildly, laughing and whipping from right to left as he did. As he turned to find the next, a Kyn wearing a Grim Reaper costume brought a long sword down to split his head.
Metal screeched as Thierry parried the strike and thrust his own sword into the Reaper's robes. The man staggered back and pushed away from him, holding his side. He shouted something filthy in German before he hobbled off.
"Why ain't they screaming?" someone shouted over the gunfire. "Why they so—"
Thierry spotted the man who was shouting, and saw the gun leap out of his hand. It flew across the room to land in a pile of fallen Kyn. The invisible force swept around the room, jerking weapons out of the killers' hands and tossing them out windows, doors, and into the champagne fountain.
Thierry took advantage of the sudden stillness and turned toward that presence that no one could see, but that had left a scent path that smelled of apples. "Jema. To me, now."
The Kyn who were unharmed or not seriously injured turned en masse and formed a quick circle around the disarmed gunmen. They ripped the hyena and jackal masks from their face, and pushed them back into the center of the circle when the gunman tried to break free. As the Kyn smiled, fangs flashed and the room filled with scents of a hundred different flowers. None of these smelled as if they were wilting.
They smelled of flowers burning.
"What are you freaks?" one of the Bones shrieked.
The circle slowly closed in on them.
Thierry could not see anyone in a blue gown in the room. He saw the Grim Reaper, however, trying to edge down one wall toward the door, and began wading through the fallen bodies after him.
"Durand." Valentin Jaus stepped into his path. He raised his battle sword.
"Get out of my way, Jaus." Thierry looked over him to see the Reaper stumble outside. Let him go; Jaus's guards can butcher him. He turned, seeking the faint trace of apples he had picked up before. "Jema. Where are you? Come to me, now."
The Austrian didn't move. "You cannot have her."
"She's already mine." Thierry lifted his sword. "Can't you smell her on me?"
Jaus's face emptied of all emotion. "No." He lunged.
There was no madness left in Thierry, but the rage of seeing Jema in Jaus's arms came back, and he drew on it, crossing swords with the Austrian so viciously that sparks flew from the metal.
There was no time to think or calculate his attack; Jaus was a whirlwind, coming at him with huge, whistling strokes of his sword that, with his disadvantage in size, should have been impossible for him to make.
Jaus had improved greatly, Thierry thought with grudging admiration as he kept the Austrian from decapitating him by a single parry.
The only thing Jaus had forgotten was that he fought the man who had been left behind to hold Castle Pilgrim until the last Templar had escaped. The man who alone had fought his way through a gauntlet of five hundred Saracens to reach freedom. The man who had left five hundred headless, armless, and lifeless bodies in his wake. The man who had spilled enough blood and bowels in his years as a warrior priest to quench even the merciless thirst of the desert sand.
Durand does not dominate on the battlefield, the Kyn would say of him in years to come after the Holy Land was lost. He makes it his charnel house.
"Jaus. Durand." Michael Cyprien stepped into the room, the Grim Reaper in his hands. "Lower your swords. Now."
Cyprien's order was ignored. Jaus was in a cold, killing rage, and Thierry was happy to match it. Their swords clashed, slid, and danced, moving in patterns too swift at times for the blade to be clearly seen. They circled and sidestepped, gradually working their way into the ballroom, until they were battling in the center of the floor.
"Thierry, please, stop this."
Jema's voice, so close to him, proved the one distraction he could not resist. His eyes moved toward her instead of following Jaus's attack, and the bright flash of steel came out of nowhere.
"No!"
So, too, did Jema appear, out of thin air, directly between him and Jaus's sword. There was simply no time or space to prevent what happened next. Jaus's expression changed at the last second from fury to horror as he saw her, but it was too late.
The blade pierced Jema's abdomen and came out the other side.
Thierry bellowed his rage and brought his sword down on Jaus's arm above the elbow, cutting it off. The Austrian staggered back as Thierry caught Jema's waist and pulled the sword out of her body. It fell to rest beside Jaus's severed arm.
He snatched his love up into his arms and carried her out of the ballroom. "Cyprien! Alexandra!"