The girl sat up and rubbed the side of her face. “I was afraid. I thought you might belong to him.”
“To whom? Donatien?”
She straightened. “You do know him.” Her gaze swept the room, pausing only on the windows and the door. Finding her boundaries, Rafael realized, and seeking avenues of escape.
“I did, once.” How had someone so young and unworldly come to know such a creature? “He killed the man and left him in front of the convent.”
“If you know what he can do, then you must help me.” She pushed the covers away and discovered she was handcuffed. “Remove these and call a taxi from me. I can go directly to the airport. There is an open ticket waiting for me there.” She held out her wrists. "Please. He will sleep for the most of the day."
Rafael saw two, barely-healed wounds on her wrists. Was she, like Bridget and the other women, a stigmatic? “You must stay here until we can catch him. You are quite safe with me.”
She laughed, a raw, tight sound. “Then you do not know Donatien at all, Detective.”
“Rafael.” The wildness in her eyes made him forget about keeping his distance, and he went to stand at the side of the bed. Dried lavender perfumed her habit and veil, but beneath it he caught the soft, delicate scent of her skin. He had not yet fed, and felt the ache of hunger and something darker in his fangs. “Tell me your real name.”
“Dani. Daniela Nieves.”
Daniela Nieves, Daniel A. Nieves. It couldn’t be a coincidence. “Either you are named for your father, or you own The Sisters of the Annunciata.”
“I am the owner in name only.” She twisted her wrists. “I don’t like these things. They hurt.” Her expression turned puzzled. “Do you think I’m going to attack you?”
“No. Stop fighting them.” He put his hand over the short chain between her wrists. Being alone with her and having her completely at his mercy brought temptation, so unexpected and ravenous that he nearly tugged her into his arms. But he would not feed on a nun, nor would he seduce one. “I will remove the handcuffs as soon as you tell me how you have become involved with Donatien. The truth,” he added when she began to reply. “Not another pretty story you think I will believe.”
She tucked her chin in and scooted into a sitting position. “You won’t believe it.”
He borrowed one of Samantha’s favorite phrases. “Try me.”
“Before I came to America, I lived in Argentina.” Daniela pulled her knees up and hugged them with her cuffed arms. “Donatien came to our village one night, looking for young and lovely ones. Women and men; he wanted them all. He kept coming back for more.” She glanced at him. “You have seen him with people – you know how he is, how he looks, how he makes them feel?” He nodded. “They went to him like ants to wild honey.”
“He killed these people.”
“I don’t know. They never came back.” Daniela’s head drooped, and she began speaking in Spanish. “Some tried to run away, but he would find them and bring them back. There were screams and laughter in the night. The air always smelled of dead fires. He came and he came until the young and lovely ones were gone, and then he took the others. Until I was the only one left.”
Rafael wondered what Daniela’s native language was. Her Spanish was flawless, but it was the language of the school room, not that of a native speaker. “How were you able to resist him?”
She avoided his gaze now. “I stayed in the jungle at night, in places he didn’t know. Then Sister Marguerite came during the day, while he was sleeping. She found me and took me away to a convent in Rio. She said I would be safe there, and for a long time I was, but then he came again. When the Mother Superior would not let him in, he began taking people from the streets.” Her voice broke. “He hurt them in terrible ways first. Then he killed them and left their bodies outside the convent. Like the man last night.”
Rafael took her hands in his. “But you escaped him again.”
“Sister Marguerite moved me to another place, but he found me again. He climbed over the walls at night and walked about the place, looking for me, calling my name.” She twisted her hands together, so tightly that all of her tendons strained. “When I didn’t go to him, he killed all the nuns and left a message written in their blood on the wall. He said I could never escape him.”
The way she spoke of what happened bothered him as much as her Spanish – again, the stuff of the school room. Daniela’s speech patterns were more like a child’s. “That’s why Sister Marguerite brought you to America.”
“After she made him think that we were both dead, yes. But he is here now, and he knows. I must go away before he kills any more people.” She held out her wrists. “Will you take them off now?”
“In a moment.” Rafael slipped off the veil covering her long hair. It spilled around her face in soft, dark waves. “When did you take your vows?”
“Last year.” She swallowed and looked away again.
Rafael leaned closer. “What was the name of your village?”
“It was – it had no name. It was only the village.”
“This convent where you took your vows, what was it called?” When she groped for an answer, he asked, “The name of the one that burned down? What was it? And the name of your order?”
“They are gone.” She almost stuttered the words. “I can’t remember.”
“You’ve never taken vows.” A fierce and completely unexpected satisfaction filled him. “You’re not a nun.”
“I have, I was… I said—”
“They shave your head when you pledge yourself to Christ,” he said, grabbing a fistful of her hair, dragging it around in front of her eyes. “Now tell me the truth.”
“I don't know,” she shouted, and then hunched her shoulders and tried to curl away from him. “They never told me. I was from the compound. I was not like them. They would not speak to me.” She twisted, yanking her hair from his grasp.
He held onto her arms. “What compound?”
“It was in the jungle, near the village. It was why Donatien came to Argentina. To see it. To touch the Father’s things, and to look through the photos and read his journals. He took pleasure in them, laughed over them as if they were amusing. I watched him through the windows.”
“Look at me, Daniela.” When she wouldn’t, Rafael lifted her chin and used his thumbs to wipe away the incessant tears. “I can help you, but I have to know the truth.”
She went rigid. “Marguerite made me promise. She said if anyone knew, if anyone saw, that they would lock me away and never let me go.”
Rafael was glad the old nun was dead. “I will not. I will not permit anyone to do that to you.”
All the fight went out of her. “It won’t make any difference. He has found me. But I will show you.” Dull-eyed now, she looked across the room. “That fern there, the brown one. Would you bring it to me, please?”
Rafael reluctantly released her, and went over to the hanging plant that, like every other thing he had attempted to grow in the apartment, had died. Brittle brown leaves showered his arms as he took it down and carried it to the bed. “This is a lost cause, I think.”
“No. Not yet.” Slowly, almost painfully, she brought her cuffed hands to the dead thing. “The Father ran so many tests on me, but he could never find out how, or make another like me again. It angered him.” She plunged her hands into the dry, scratchy snarl of leaves.
Rafael felt it first. A warmth that, given the efficiency of his apartment's air conditioning, should not have spread as it did. But within a few seconds it created a pool around the bed, causing beads of sweat to gather in his temples and streak down his back.
Daniela closed her eyes and seemed to shrink in on herself, as if squeezed by the growing heat.
The vibrations came next. Rafael had felt something similar whenever his master lost his temper or used his talent. Lucan often caused any glass in close proximity to shatter whenever that happened. Yet these waves did not have the same, destructive feel to them. They seemed to dance around him, unseen creatures of the air.
“What… “ Rafael glanced down at the fern, which began rustling around the girl's hands. The dead leaves slowly straightened out of their lifeless curls, and their color paled to yellow.
Daniela opened her eyes, which had turned a ghostly blue. “It was almost gone,” she whispered, a note of censure in her soft voice. “I cannot bring them back when they are gone. There has to be a little left.”
Rafael hardly heard her. The fern’s yellow leaves had begun to glow with something that was not light or heat but part of both. The base of each leaf turned a dark green that quickly devoured the yellow as it spread to each tip. Daniela’s eyes closed a second time, and the entire plant shook, its stalks stabbing up into the air and spreading like eager fingers. At last she took her hands from the pot, and sagged back against the pillows.
The heat pressing around them vanished as if it had never been.
Rafael carefully picked up the plant and turned it around in his hands. It was as fresh and full of life as the day he had brought it home. He looked over it at the huddled form in his bed. “How long have you been able to do this?”
“Since I was born.” Her exhausted voice matched the color of her skin. She lifted her hands. “Do you have bandages?”
“Why?”
“There is a price for what I do.” She extended her arms, showing him bloody fingers and palms, swollen wrists and bruised forearms.
With a curse he pulled a small key from his pocket and released the cuffs around her wrists, sitting down and gently examining her wounds. “Does this happen every time?”
She wouldn’t look at him. “Sometimes it is not so bad. Sometimes it is worse.” A bitter curl twisted her mouth. “But now you know.”
