If Angels Burn (Darkyn #1) 5

"You are until Heather comes back. Get it."

Cyprien shadowed Alex, and eyed the vial of blue salts she took from her case. "What is that?"

"Nickel sulfate hexahydrate. It's used to plate nickel, dye and print fabrics, and to blacken zinc and brass. Nickel happens to be copper's next-door neighbor on the periodic table of elements."

"So?"

"So it's toxic." She unwrapped a sterilized Pyrex beaker and shook a few blue crystals into it, then a small amount of the saline liquid that Éliane brought to her. She swirled the beaker until the liquid turned light blue. "To humans, anyway."

Michael frowned. "You cannot inject that into him. You don't know what it will do."

"I know exactly what it does. It's Darkyn Valium." Alex lifted the beaker to the light to examine the contents. "I've been using it to treat my insomnia."

"You tested this substance on yourself?" He was appalled.

"Why not?" She filled a dart-shaped cartridge with the liquid and removed a gun from her case, into which she loaded the cartridge. "I've had a lot of time on my hands lately." She went back to the grid. "Open it up."

The gun troubled Michael almost as much as the concoction she had made. "Why must you shoot him with that?"

"Because I can't throw darts worth a damn." She gave him an ironic look. "I don't think he's going to hold out his arm and let me stick him, do you?"

Michael knelt down and pressed some switch in the floor, and the copper mesh slid back. Thierry saw his face and screeched like a furious animal.

Alexandra stood at the edge, aimed, and fired. The dart hit Thierry square in the chest, and five seconds later, he dropped to the floor of the cell, unconscious.

"We've got about an hour before it wears off," she said. "Can you get him out for me?"

Michael jumped down into the cell and released the chain locks. Cradling Thierry in his arms, he jumped back out.

"I hate to admit it, but the vrykola-kick-ass super strength definitely comes in handy with uncooperative patients," Alexandra said. "Blondie, get Heather back down here; I need her now. Cyprien, put him over there on the table and take those damn manacles off him. We should have Phillipe and some of your muscle boys come down here on standby, in case he wakes up early."

"I will see to it." Éliane departed.

Michael carried his friend to the table and carefully laid him down while Alexandra switched on the overhead light. In his straggles, Thierry had torn most of his clothing off, leaving only the ragged shreds of his trousers to cover his body. These Alexandra carefully cut away.

"Why does he smell like my mom's gardenia bush instead of a trash heap?" she asked.

"Our blood carries our scent." Michael wasn't ready to explain rapture and thrall to her just yet, not until he was certain of her loyalties.

"Mom used to put one gardenia flower in the bathroom and it would smell nice for a week. Maybe we could bottle some of his…" She pulled the material away and stepped back, speechless.

Michael had not seen exactly what they had done to him before this moment. From the waist up, Thierry Durand was completely normal—a little thinner than usual, but still well muscled—and free of injury. The scar tissue started just above the groin area and extended to what were either the soles of his feet or the misshapen stumps of his legs.

Alexandra reached out and carefully adjusted one of Thierry's legs. "Animals."

Michael could see the blackened, jagged ends of his friend's leg bones extruding in various places where the flesh had healed around them. His feet had been crushed, his genitals badly burned. Given the severity of his wounds, how he had been able to move at all was a terrifying miracle.

"I'll get pictures of the compound fractures first." Alex gently rolled him over, and Michael saw what they'd done to his back. She looked up at him. "How?"

He knew only too well how the Brethren had inflicted the deep tears in the muscles of Thierry's back. "They hung him from hooks and left him to dangle."

"I'll need to do a spine series, then, too." She straightened and pressed a hand over her eyes for a moment. "I want to know who did this to him, and why."

"They are very evil men who wish to destroy our kind." Michael thought of her brother, the priest. "We will talk about it later. For now, please help Thierry and his family."

She gave him a long, thoughtful look. "All right, I'll get to work. Move that portable X-ray over here."

Chapter Fifteen

"How did they get to Tacassi?" Cardinal Stoss demanded. Orsini shrugged. "The same way they get to everyone, through the family. Tacassi's uncle is Brethren, but his maternal grandmother was French." He looked over at Gelina, who sat with her customary sulky expression. "Thank heavens someone noticed Tacassi entering the room."

"I never trusted him," Gelina said. "He asked too many questions."

"He was sent to get close to me" Stoss said sharply. "I should have been his target."

"Since we were unable to question Tacassi, we will never know," Orsini said. "Had Sister Gelina more self-control, I could have pried every bit of information he had about the Darkyn out of him."

"You have enough information." Gelina put a hand to her face. "That pig American was so strong he almost broke my jaw. He was supposed to be weak and sniveling and afraid. All the others were." She seemed more perplexed than angry about it.

"I feel certain that the sedative Tacassi gave Keller kept the hallucinogen from working properly." Stoss smiled at her. "It was very quick thinking on your part, to act as you did. The photos alone will bring a conviction in any country."

She sniffed. "I had little choice."

Orsini had been a witness to what John Keller had done under the influence of the witch's brew of drugs he'd been given. Frankly he had enjoyed seeing the sadistic Gelina flat on her back, for once being forced to take abuse instead of inflicting it. "Keller is strong, isn't he?"

"He did what he could." She flicked her fingers at the faint bruises on either side of her chin. "But in the end he was like all the others, grunting and jerking. Any man can be brought to his knees."

"Not only men." Orsini remembered the muffled sounds she had made, and the dampness in her eyes.

Gelina abandoned her serene facade and began swearing softly and viciously at him in gutter Italian.

"That is quite enough of that, Sister," the cardinal said. "You're to monitor Keller while he's in America, and report back to Hightower. Do as the bishop says. Any questions?"

"No." Gelina didn't look away from Orsini. "But I don't want money this time. When it's over, I want Keller."

"You cannot do him in Chicago." Orsini had helped her clean up the last man she'd taken in payment. It had not been a particularly tiresome task. Gelina hadn't left much to incinerate.

"I have a place," she said. "I'll need a month away. He should last that long."

The cardinal regarded her thoughtfully. "Do not allow this to become personal, Gelina. Keller is a job, like the others. Nothing more."

"Yes, Your Grace."

He made the sign of the cross. "Go in peace."

She smirked before she rose and left the room.

The cardinal nodded to Orsini, who secured the door. "You are wrong to worry about her. She carries a grudge, that is all."

"As you say, Your Grace." Orsini worried more about Gelina's other grudges, and personally gave her only another six months to a year before her myriad depravities swelled out of control and swallowed her whole.

"It is this damn American," the cardinal said mildly. "Why couldn't he just lie back and enjoy it?"

Orsini didn't comment. Last night he had seen the cardinal's face as he had watched Keller with Gelina. Stoss would never admit it, but he was as sadistic as the Brethren's only female interrogator. He had thoroughly enjoyed the odd turn of events.

That John Keller would not allow Gelina to work her usual magic, even under the influence of drugs, also disturbed Orsini. Keller's tribulations with celibacy were well documented. That he would then turn on Gelina was an ominous sign. The American priest's suppressed desires had made him a ticking bomb, but now Orsini worried that the trigger had been snatched out of their control.

"You are being too quiet, Ettore."

He met the cardinal's gaze. "We should kill Keller as soon as we have captured the sister. Don't make the mistake of giving him as a toy to Gelina."

"Are you feeling sorry for him?" Stoss asked, astonished.

"No." He looked at the envelope he had given the cardinal earlier. "For Gelina."

The cardinal opened the envelope on his desk and sorted through the photographs again.

"I still don't know how he accomplished it, when she is… perhaps you are right." He separated a small number and handed them to Orsini. The selected photos plainly showed Father John Keller raping his nurse. "Send these by special courier to Hightower."

Alex had no doubt that Thierry Durand was totally, violently psychotic. From the moment she looked down at him in the cell, his thoughts and emotions had poured into her head. Few of them were even remotely sane.

Angel, Angel, Angel. Don't leave me.

The exposure gave her painfully intimate insight as to Thierry's emotions. They ran in an unending circuit: pain, fear, terror, sorrow, hatred, rage, bloodlust, bitter hope, and then back to pain. Disjointed thoughts and ideas punctuated the loop with specific intent. Everything that had been done to him, he wanted to do. He lusted to be the one who inflicted the beating, rending, breaking, and mutilating.

The only gentle emotion left in him whirled around thoughts of Angel, and even that desperate love was tainted by horror.