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“Jean-Marc. Enchanté. ” He glanced around her, impatient to find Rowan. “Have you seen a tall dark-haired woman in a black velvet and lace dress?”
“Skinny as a rail, cute little hat?” The woman pointed to one of the exit doors. “She went out through there pretty fast. ” As he nodded and made to go around her, she put a hand on his arm. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to keep you, but are you related to anyone in France? Maybe a family named Cyprien?”
“Non, madam. I have no family. I was un enfant trouvé. ” He kissed the back of her hand. “If you will excuse me now, I must find my friend. ” He strode toward the back entrance.
Dr. Alexandra Keller watched the man stride out of the Met with mixed emotions. She had the feeling she had just made a terrible mistake, and not by trying to kiss a complete stranger.
Whoever he was, Jean- Marc moved quickly, and disappeared from sight a moment later, almost as fast as a Darkyn would. But despite his eerie resemblance to her lover, he didn’t move like Michael Cyprien, and now that she thought about it his eyes had been a much lighter blue.
Michael Cyprien came to stand beside her. “Chérie. Is something the matter?”
Automatically she reached for his hand as she shook her head. “That was very weird. ” She glanced at him and felt a little embarrassed now. “I just grabbed a strange man and tried to kiss him. ”
“Oh?” His voice chilled a few degrees. “For any particular reason?”
“I thought he was you. ” She turned to him. “Michael, he looked just like you. Same height, same features, same blue eyes . . . same everything. ”
“It is said that we all have a twin somewhere in the world. ” He encircled her with his arm. “Come. Phillipe is waiting for us. ”
On the drive back to their suite at the Hilton, Alexandra brooded in silence about the odd encounter at the Met. She was able to picture Jean-Marc’s face clearly, and there was something about it that nagged at her. She was so lost in her thoughts that Michael had to repeat her name three times before she gave him her attention.
“Sorry, what?”
“I asked if you enjoyed the performance. ”
“It pissed me off,” she admitted. “Pinkerton was a jerk. The acoustics were amazing. That fat chick in the fuchsia dress sitting in front of us smelled like bacon. I think she had some in her purse. Michael, are you sure you’re the only Cyprien left?”
“The last member of my human family died childless in the eighteenth century. ” He stroked her cheek. “I am not upset that you tried to kiss another man. I would be only if you had succeeded. ”
“What if you or someone in your family had a kid you didn’t know about?” she persisted. “That was pretty common back in the day, right?” She made a rolling gesture. “You meet a pretty milkmaid, have a tumble in the straw, you go your way, she pops out a blue-eyed kid nine months later, and everyone thinks it’s her husband’s or whatever. ”
“Alexandra, I was a warrior-priest,” he reminded her. “We did not make a habit of tumbling milkmaids. We were too busy slaying Saracens. ”
“But not everyone in your family worked for God back then. ” She searched his face. “I don’t know what it is, but I swear, that man is somehow related to you. ”
“Why? Because we have the same color hair, the same physique? As much as I wish to think that I am unique among men, chérie, I fear I am not. I would think that there are many humans in the world with whom I share a resemblance. ”
“You don’t understand. The guy was just too perfect. Like a replica. He didn’t just look like you. He was you. ” She sat up straight. “Oh, shit. Phillipe,” she called out to Cyprien’s seneschal. “Turn the car around and go back to Lincoln Center. ”
Phillipe glanced in the rearview mirror, and when Cyprien nodded moved into a turn lane.
“It is unlikely that he will still be there, chérie,” Michael told her.
“Maybe we’ll get lucky. ” She gripped the edge of the seat as she looked out through the windshield at the traffic blocking their way. “Come on, come on. ”
It took some time, but eventually they arrived back at the Met. As soon as Phillipe parked at the curb, Alexandra jumped out of the car and hurried toward the arched windows at the front of the opera house. There were some stragglers still coming out from the performance, but none of them proved to be Jean-Marc or his lady in black.
Cyprien caught up with her just as she began cursing under her breath. “Alex, what is it?”
She pressed her fingers to her mouth as she scanned the faces around her one last time. “It was his face, Michael. ”
“Yes, as you indicated, we seem to share the same one—”
“No, you don’t. ” She turned to him and looked at his face, the face she had reconstructed out of a horrific mass of ruined flesh and bone after Michael Cyprien had been beaten and tortured. “I gave you that face, and while it’s very close to the one you were born with, it isn’t the same. ”
“What are you saying?”
“Do you remember that painting that you had Phillipe bring to me in New Orleans? The portrait of you on the horse on the battlefield, all the dead bodies everywhere?” When he nodded, she said, “That guy Jean- Marc isn’t your twin. He’s a twin of the guy in the painting. He looks exactly as you did before the Brethren fucked up your face. ”
Michael shrugged. “So he was my twin before I was tortured. What difference does it make?”
“He had a little mole riding his jaw here. ” She touched the corresponding spot on the side of his face. “Exactly where it was in the painting. You don’t have it anymore because when I was rebuilding your jaw I had to put a skin graft there. ”
“I see. ” Michael grew thoughtful. “An interesting coincidence. ”
“I don’t believe in coincidences,” she told him. “When you were captured in Rome, you said that the Brethren beat on you for days before Phillipe got to you. ” When he nodded, she asked, “Did they do anything else? Did they bring in a doctor? Did he operate on you?”
“No. They only interrogated me; they . . . ”
He trailed off and rubbed his hand across his face. “There was a day when a new man came to my cell. I could barely see him but his scent was different. He asked questions like the others, but not about the Darkyn or where they could be found. He wanted to know about my talent. ”
“Did you tell him anything?”
“No, chérie. As with the other interrogators, I told him nothing. ” He encircled her waist with his arm. “It is growing cold. We should return to the hotel. ”
“You’re sure the man didn’t operate on you. ”
He thought for a moment. “I was conscious the entire time he was with me. He did not touch me once. He gave up rather sooner than the others had, although I thought he meant to have me taken to the interrogation room. He asked the guard where it was. But then he left and I never saw or smelled him again. Forgive me, but that is all I remember. ”
“It’s okay. I don’t mean to remind you of that shit. ” She made a face. “Let’s go back to the hotel and I’ll make up for it. ”
Alex said no more about the matter until an hour before dawn, when she and Michael were soaking together in the massive tub in their suite. She was wonderfully exhausted after an extended bout of lovemaking, and happy that she’d agreed to come on this trip with her lover. New York City’s operas might suck, but the shopping was fabulous, and she had spent a considerable amount of time acquiring better equipment for her lab. Although she was no longer seeking a cure for the Darkyn’s blood-dependent immortality, she continued cataloging Kyn blood types and the strains of the pathogen that had infected them. One day she might be able to trace the origins of their condition back to the source of the infection, the progenote that had started it all back in the Dark Ages.
It was thinking about her work with the blood samples that made Alex catch her
breath. She turned around, sloshing water over the side of the tub.
“Again, chérie?” Michael looked hopeful.
She kissed his mouth, but before he could take that to the next level, she eased away. “That man who came to see you in Rome, the strange one, did he ask you medical questions?”
“He sounded like you when you are working in the lab. ” He tugged her to him. “Do that again. ”
“Hold on, baby. ” She put her hands on his shoulders. “Why would the Brethren send a doctor to talk to you? They don’t give prisoners medical treatment. And why would a doctor go to an interrogation room? Not to check the equipment, or to take a few practice swings with the copper pipes. ”
“I cannot say. ” His eyes narrowed. “He carried a case with him. I heard glass clinking together when he moved it. ”
She got up out of the tub and reached for their towels. “How much do you want to bet he was there to take DNA samples?”
“But he did not touch me, Alexandra. ”
“He didn’t have to. There would have been bits of you left all over that torture chamber. ” She went out into their suite and grabbed some clothes from the selection Phillipe had hung in the armoire. “We’ve got to find this Jean- Marc guy,” she said over her shoulder as Michael joined her. “All I need is a blood sample from him, and then we’ll know if he’s Kyndred or not. ”
Michael pulled on his trousers. “How do you propose we find him?”
“How many guys named Jean- Marc do you think bought tickets to the opera tonight?”
“Only one, I am sure. Alexandra, forgive me but I do not know how this man could have been made from my DNA. ”
She stopped dressing. “You need me to explain again the entire process of using vampire DNA to turn humans into Kyndred?”
“No, it is not that. ” He came over to her and began buttoning up her blouse. “I was taken in Rome six years ago. It was the only time I had ever been captured by the Brethren. ”