Twilight Fall

Page 21

 

  "I can't send or receive a signal," he said. "He must have disabled the radio. "

  She dug her fingers into the armrest as she fought a surge of pain. "Do you have a very good memory?"

  "As it happens. I do. " He thought for a minute, then reached into his trouser pocket, removing a small mobile phone. "My friend Gregor called me on this a short time ago. I might be able to use it to get help. " He flipped it open and dialed a number, listening and then smiling at her before he began speaking in German.

  Liling wondered vaguely what airport would have air traffic controllers who spoke German. She intended to ask Jaus when he finished his call, but he kept talking, and the burning in her side spread up her chest, stabbing into her lungs and heart.

  She was dying. Mrs. Chen was dead. She had to tell him, to warn him.

  "They took us when we were babies," she said as quickly as she could, turning her head from side to side as the fever spread. "They changed us like the others. Separated us. So angry. "

  "Liling?"

  She looked into the cool blue heaven of his eyes. "I knew what they wanted. I wouldn't do it, Valentin. Something happened… the night they tried… to bring us together. " Lightning flashed all around her, and she reached out to him. "If he finds us…"

  He put his cool hand over hers. "What is it, Geliebte?"

  "If he… finds us"—she gasped through heat—"kill me. "

  Phillipe of Navarre had served Michael Cyprien for centuries as his Kyn seneschal, and before that as his villein during their human lives in rural France. He had taken vows as a priest at Michael's side, and fought at his master's right hand during the holy wars.

  No one could question his loyalty, or say that he did not know his duty. Over time, Phillipe had become the standard to which other Kyn lords compared their own men.

  Although Phillipe was devoted to his master, he had not always liked Alexandra Keller. From the beginning he had had a bad feeling about the angry, brilliant petite physician he had abducted for Cyprien. Although she had been reputed to be the fastest reconstructive surgeon in the world, he had argued against bringing her to New Orleans to restore his master's pulverized face. Human females, in his opinion, served their purpose best as food and temporary amusement for Cyprien.

  To allow one to use a scalpel on his master, after the horrific torture he had already endured… Unthinkable.

  Now he could admit that part of his dislike of Alexandra had been jealousy. Phillipe, who had successfully protected his master for seven hundred years, had not been able to save him from the Brethren. The torture Michael had endured during his captivity in Rome had been Phillipe's fault. He had freed Cyprien, but there had been nothing he could do about the terrible wounds his master had suffered while imprisoned.

  Then Alexandra had come, and in a single night had restored his master's face to what it had been before the Brethren had beaten and burned it away. Phillipe could not admire her skills with a knife. He had resented her, a human, for doing what he could not.

  Or perhaps even then he had sensed how important she was to become to his master.

  Time healed all manner of wounds, even the unworthy ones Phillipe had carried in his heart. Alexandra had not usurped the seneschal's place among Cyprien's household, even after she survived making the change from human to Kyn. She had rejected Michael, the Kyn, and even the enormous changes that transition had brought to her life. She had wanted to kill Michael. And while Phillipe worked diligently to prevent that, the anger they both felt had gradually become the foundation of a strange sort of bond between them, and then a friendship. He saw past his own jealousy to the sort of woman Alexandra Keller was, a woman who reminded him of the strong-minded sister he had lost so long ago. By the time Alexandra and his master had settled most of their differences, Phillipe knew he would have killed for her.

  He only hoped the life he might have to take in order to protect her would not be that of her human brother.

  Phillipe said nothing when Alexandra bullied John into accompanying them to the enormous suite Phillipe had arranged at a small, exclusive hotel overlooking the bay. Cyprien had instructed him to watch John Keller closely, but to intervene only if he proved to be dangerous to Alexandra.

  "Finally, I have a reason to order room service. " Alexandra said after they arrived in the suite. "John, go get cleaned up and I'll order some breakfast for you. "

  Phillipe used his own mobile phone to call the hotel manager, and issued a set of instructions before he went into the master's room. He was glad now that he had packed some of the garments Cyprien had purchased for John, as the man looked worse than he smelled. He took them into John's room and placed them on the foot of the bed. He gathered up the pile of crumpled, odorous clothes the human had shed, bagged them, and took them to the service room at the end of the hall to throw them down the garbage chute.

  Cyprien met him in the hall on his way back. "You checked his clothes? It has not changed?" When Phillipe shook his head, he glanced at the door to the suite. "She does not realize. "

  The scent humans shed was not like that of the Kyn; even when it was as pungent as John Keller's clothing was, it had no power to do anything except offend the nose. But most Kyn were sensitive to changes in human scent, and used them to gauge their emotional state. Fear soured their scent, and hatred turned it rotten.

  Alexandra's brother had been behaving oddly since returning from Ireland, but one disturbing change had occurred, one that neither Cyprien nor Phillipe could account for.

  John Keller's scent had disappeared.

  "Alexandra does not hunt, and her mind is on other things when she is with her brother. " Phillipe said. "She would not recognize the difference. " He hesitated. "Master, could he be trying to hide it by going unwashed and wearing soiled garments?"

  "How could he know to mask it?" Cyprien rubbed his eyes. "You will not leave him alone with her until I decide what is to be done. "

  "She loves him," Phillipe said as they walked back to the suite. "Perhaps you should tell her now, before action must be taken. "

  Cyprien looked at the waiter rolling an enormous cart toward their rooms. It was stacked with dozens of plates of food. "Not yet, my friend. "

  The long, hot shower helped revive John. As he dried off, he noticed that his overgrown, scraggly beard had begun to thin out against his cheeks. No wonder the drifter in town had thought he was a homeless drunk.

  Hightower would be expecting to see him with a beard. John thought. He took a pair of fingernail scissors from the hotel's large basket of complimentary toiletries and trimmed it close to his face, and then shaved off the remainder.

  He found a new suit and shirt in his size lying in a plastic garment bag on the end of the bed, as well as a pair of boxers and socks and shoes. He didn't have to check the tags to know they were designer tailored garments; Kyn didn't dress in off-the-rack. For a moment he was tempted to put on the clothes he had been wearing—they might be dirty and cheap, but they were his—until he saw that they had vanished.

  Alex was pouring coffee into a delicate porcelain cup when he came out of the bedroom. "You should have been a girl. You take forever in the bathroom. " She looked up and the pot wobbled in her hand. "Holy shit, what happened to the beard?"

  "It was time to get rid of it. " He rubbed his chin. "Feels a little strange. "

  "I hardly recognized you. Jesus, how much weight have you lost?" When he shrugged, she pointed toward the table. "Get over here and grab a fork, pal. "

  "In a minute. Were you able to contact Jaus in Chicago?" he asked as he went to the glass doors leading out to the balcony.

  "Val went down to Atlanta for a couple of days, but his tresora said he'll be back by Friday. " She came over and closed the curtains he had just opened. "If you don't mind, daylight makes my eyes itch. "

  "Sorry, I forgot. " He went over to the dining table, then stopped in h
is tracks. Plates crammed every inch of it with enough food to feed an entire camp of lumberjacks. "Dear God, Alexandra. I can't eat all this. "

  "I didn't know what you wanted, so I ordered one of everything on the menu. " She glared at him. "Don't give me that what-about-the-starving-children-in-China look, either. You're starving. "

  After what had happened with the drifter, the amount of food before him killed what little appetite John had. "You could have simply asked me what I wanted. "

  "True," she said. "Tell you what: I'll have what's left over put in bags and taken to the nearest homeless shelter. Okay?"

  She would, too. Alex may have changed, but she still remembered what it was to be hungry. "Okay. "

  She handed him the coffee. "Eat. "

  Liling slumped in the chair, still muttering in her delirium. Valentin knew blood loss could cause humans to go into shock, but her skin was hot to the touch, and she had said her wound was burning. The other things she had said, disjointed as they were, had sounded equally as ominous.

  He couldn't worry about the man who frightened her so much she would rather die than have him find her. He had to get this plane down before she bled to death.

  His mobile phone rang, and Gregor told him that he was putting Jonas Frank, one of the standby pilots, on the line.

  "Talk quickly. " Jaus told Frank. "I may lose this signal any moment. Tell me where the nearest airport is, and how I am to land this plane. "

  "Sir, if the readings you gave your assistant are correct, you don't have enough fuel to make it to an airport. " Frank said bluntly. "You'll have to make an emergency landing. Let's review the procedures you'll follow to bring the plane down safely. "

  Jaus listened as the pilot told him step-by-step how to use the instruments to make the landing. He repeated them back to Frank's satisfaction.

  "Your signal is starling to fade. Find an open, flat road or a clearing for your approach," the pilot said. "We're sending search and—" The line went dead.