If Angels Burn (Darkyn #1) 5

"What have you done to my sister?" Keller demanded, in a far more hostile tone than Tremayne had.

"She was dying," Michael said mildly. "I gave her my blood, and it killed her. When she rises in two days, she will be safe."

"You mean, she'll be a vampire."

"Darkyn," Phillipe murmured.

John glanced back at the church. "And the Templars? Where did they come from, and why were they fighting against their own Brethren?"

"The men you saw in the church were mine. Members of my jardin." Michael would have laughed if it were not for the horror in the young priest's eyes. "Except for three traitors, the Brethren were never Templars, Father Keller. We were."

John was shaking his head. "No. No, not you."

Michael looked at his seneschal. "Long ago, when we were human, we were priests like you. Warriors of God, pledged to fight the infidel and protect the Holy Land. We brought something back with us from the last war we fought. A curse or a disease, whatever you wish to call it, but it made us into what we are now. It is why they outlawed us, Father Keller. Why they tortured us, and burned us. Why they still hunt us."

John was backing away, still shaking his head. "You can't be. You can't." He stumbled back into the church.

Phillipe crouched down beside them. "Alexandra will live, won't she?"

The blood tie made it possible for only a Darkyn master to detect the minute signs of life in a sygkenis's body as it made the final change. The signs in Alexandra's were small, but they were there.

"Yes." Michael gathered her up and held her safely in his arms. "Let us go home now, old friend."

Everything had been a lie. Everything.

John Keller stood before the altar in the church, looking around through dull eyes. The Templars who had fought and saved them had vanished. Blood spatters covered the floor, the curtains, and the pews, but the bodies of the Brethren had been removed. He imagined in the morning the blood would be gone, too.

"Thy kingdom come," he muttered. "Thy will be done."

He looked up at the pained face of the Son of God, hanging from the nails the Romans had pounded into him. For the first time in his entire life, he understood how that pain felt.

"I always believed," he said to the figure of Jesus. "Always."

John walked out of the church. He stood by the street, unsure of his direction. There was the rental car to take back. The hotel to check out of. The plane to catch back to Chicago.

The calling he had abandoned, to officially abandon.

He reached up and ripped the collar from his shirt, and flung it to the ground. "No more of this. No more." He walked past the rental car and into the night.

Thierry Durand watched John Keller walk down the street. He waited until Cyprien and Phillipe left with Alex, and then jumped down from the roof.

He had intended to kill John Keller when he came out of the church. Only seeing him tear away the priest's collar stayed Thierry's hand.

He bent and picked up the stiff, discarded white band. Perhaps he would follow the fallen priest and see where he led him. And then there was the very interesting file of information he had stolen from Cyprien's house. All about four men who had raped and disfigured and burned a young mother. Thierry would very much like to meet that quartet.

Thy kingdom come, thy will be done.

The collar crackled as it slowly crumpled in his fist.

THE END