"He—I—"
"Cardinal Stoss is the grand master of our order. He would have issued the orders to dispose of the woman, as well as the body of the vrykolakas." A hint of scorn entered Hightower's tone now. "I have no doubt, based on your past record, that someone will believe you. They will throw you in jail, and extradite you, and interrogate you, just as they did before in Rio. But this time, John, the church will not defend you. Quite the contrary—they will think you are mad. They do not know about us."
"None of them do?"
"I told you we must keep our secrets from everyone, even the church. Did the cardinal tell you the penalty for betraying the Brethren?"
"Yes."
"Then your choice is simple. You can 'do the right thing' and go through the humiliation all over again, and eventually you will be killed for betraying the order. That would be a tragic waste of a good man, but I cannot protect you or stop them. Or you can forget what you think happened in Rome and do the work God intended you to do."
John stared at him. "I can't." His voice broke. "I'm not worthy."
"None of us are. We can only aspire to be. You wanted to be a warrior of God. We have given you the means with which to be that. You can fight to protect the church we love, the people who depend on us, and God, as you were meant to."
The bishop seized his hand and pressed it painfully between his. "Before you decide, there is something else you must know, about your sister."
"Alexandra?"
Hightower nodded. "She has disappeared again."
"Don't we have to take a bunch of guards with us?" Alex asked as Cyprien opened the door of the Mercedes for her.
"Not everywhere." He seemed amused. "Are you concerned for your safety? I will protect you."
She looked him over. He wore immaculate gray trousers and a white button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbow. He'd used a black leather thong to tie his hair back in a short ponytail. The look was half GQ, half demon lover. "The way you protected yourself when those guys caught you and stuck your head in a blender?"
"That was in Rome, and they beat me in the face with copper pipes."
"Oh, pardon me. Huge difference." She climbed in. "I feel so much safer."
"Put on your seat belt," Cyprien said as he got in behind the wheel.
"What for?" She sat stiffly against the soft leather. "The only way I'll die in an accident is if I'm decapitated."
"If the police stop me and you're not wearing it, I'll be issued a ticket." Cyprien clipped on his own seat belt. "I will have to pay a sizable fine."
Alex looked sideways at him. "You're joking, right?"
He only gave her an enigmatic look and started the engine.
Cyprien drove directly to the French Quarter and had the car valet-parked at a private jazz club. When Alex went to go inside, however, he took her arm and led her away from the entrance. "Let's walk for a little while."
Like they were tourists, or on a date? "Aren't you hungry, or thirsty, or whatever?" She was, and she kicked herself for not having given herself a booster before they left the house.
"We need to talk before we hunt."
"Whoa, right there." She tried to yank her arm free. "I do not hunt."
"We need to talk before I approach someone and convince them to willingly give me a little of their blood, while you observe, and no one dies." He slid his hand down her arm and laced his fingers with hers. "What would you call that, besides a hunt?"
"Gross."
Cyprien sighed. "Alexandra, if you are going to despise and resist everything we are, and everything we do, you will be lonely and unhappy. And very thin."
"I don't bite people, and I don't take blood from them."
He came to a sudden halt outside a strip club and gave her a horrified look. "The blood you inject does not come from animals, does it?"
The club's doorman, a small, wiry black man, stepped forward with a lascivious grin. "Hey, folks, got your naked ladies, right here. Prettiest girls in Orleans Parish. Come on in."
Alex ignored the man. "No. I tried animal blood, but it made me sick."
Cyprien swore fluidly in French. "Never do that again. Never. It can cause irreparable harm." The long, sharp ends of his dents acérées glittered as he spoke. "You use humans. Only humans."
The doorman's grin wavered. "Really fine ladies. Biggest tits this side of the Mississippi." As he gestured to show just how big, his hands shook.
"I'm going to find a synthetic substitute." She scowled up at him. "Quit crushing my hand and flashing your fangs in my face."
"Lap dances twenty dollars," the doorman said desperately, shuffling backward. "Private rooms. Two for thirty."
Cyprien looked ready to forget the no-one-dies part of the hunt. "You will never accept what we are."
"What you are," she flared, aware that her own fangs were showing now. "And why shouldn't I research alternatives? Do you think I want to live on blood for the rest of eternity?" She threw out her arms, inadvertently knocking over a speed limit sign.
The steel post snapped at the base, sending the sign skidding along the street in a shower of sparks.
That did it for the bug-eyed, trembling doorman. He uttered a yelp, turned around, and ran into the strip club. There was a heavy click as he bolted the door from inside.
Alex looked from the door to the sign to Cyprien. "I guess we should scratch him off the willing-donor list."
Gelina sat in the book room adjoining the library at St. Luke's rectory. She had slept on the flight from Rome to Chicago, so she wasn't tired. It was difficult sitting and listening to John Keller whine about raping her, but no more than enduring the actual sex itself. Although she had enjoyed the double life she had led for so long, she had lately been losing interest in her work. The few pitiful wretches Stoss gave her as a reward hardly gave her any amusement, not after the last big job. She had been thinking of going out on her own again to kill at random. It was dangerous, especially now, but it was better than smothering in boredom.
John Keller hadn't been boring.
No one knew that Gelina had been a tool of the church since she had been sent to the convent of the Sisters of Immaculate Mercy. Had her family known that the sisters were not the usual sort, and that the invitation had been a trap?
Gelina had not thought to ask her parents that later, before she killed them.
The nuns knew all about Gelina's dirty little secrets. They had taken her from the convent to La Lucemaria, where she was kept chained like a dog in a little chamber that the good brothers visited frequently.
Weeks followed, day after day spent on her back and her belly, staring up into a sweaty, grunting face or having her nose shoved into the ticking of her cheap mattress. She could still count the number of times she had tried to escape, and how many delicate scars the monks' long, thin whips had left on her back. The men who used her after punishment liked inflicting more pain. They taught her to take pleasure from it, too.
Until the day she broke free from her bonds, took the whip from the monk flogging her, and used it on him. He had screamed like a woman, like Gelina never had.
No one had punished Gelina for killing the monk. In fact, she was praised and invited to be one of their very special helpers. They rewarded her by giving her a prisoner who would not confess to his unholy crimes. Then another, and another. In a short time she was allowed to travel, to go home, to pretend to have a normal life. No one in her family wondered about her little trips to Italy. No one blamed the shy, demure Gelina for the brutal slaying of her parents. And best of all, no one ever hurt her again.
No one but John Keller.
"He went to speak to the police about his sister," Gelina heard Cabreri tell the bishop. "I still think I should stay here and watch him."
How protective the Americans were of their own. Hightower was forgetting who had given him his archbishopric, and who could take it away. She made a mental note to discuss that with Stoss, who always desired such observations. Indeed, the archbishop might find himself hauled in front of the Assembly of the Light to explain precisely why he was so obsessed with Keller and his sister.
Is he their father? Gelina wondered. It was said that Hightower had chased skirts more often than favor when he had served in Rome. Too bad he is so important and fat now.
"The cardinal bids us to wait and let his people do their work," Hightower was telling his assistant. "John will not be alone for a moment."
No, he wouldn't be. There was a brother following him now, and when John went after his sister, Gelina would be his shadow.
She was not worried that John Keller would recognize her. Before leaving Rome, she had completely altered her appearance again. She had sat three rows behind Keller on the plane, in fact, and he hadn't given her a single look, much less a second.
That pleased her. When she was finished with Keller's sister, she had permission to take him to the monastery in Arizona, where she would be accorded space, time, and the freedom to enjoy an extended vacation with John Keller. The case of drugs, implements, and equipment that she had shipped there from Rome would be waiting, as would a soundproof cell and all the time she needed to play.
She did so love to play with them.
"I don't like this." Cabreri, the annoying little weasel, was still moaning about being left out of the operation. "Keller is unstable, Your Grace. One more crisis, and his mind may snap."
It was time to put an end to this, before one of them did something stupid and ruined the operation.
"That is my worry, Father," Gelina told him as she entered the library. She went over to kiss the archbishop's ring, and slyly licked a notch between two of his fingers.
Hightower gave her a speculative look before waving her to one of the chairs.
"What is it you intend to do?" Cabreri demanded.