She hadn't left the cellar door open. How had they gotten down—
Father Claudio was right there, his walking stick raised high, and then he clubbed her across the head with it. Nick couldn't avoid the blow, and in the explosion of pain that followed felt her scalp split and the heat of her own blood. She went down like a sack of stones.
The last things she heard and saw before the night took her were chains falling on the floor, and two bare, dirty, beautiful feet walking across the stone.
The last time Alexandra had walked into a private laboratory as expensively outfitted as the one Richard had installed in his dungeon, she had ended up operating on Michael Cyprien. Later, she had also been served up by Éliane as Michael's his first postop meal.
Being reminded of what had taken her human life from her and changed her into a blood-dependent mutant made her want to do something slightly more intelligent this time around. Like set fire to the place.
But if she were going to get back home, she had to at least go through the motions.
"I'll need a bigger autoclave," Alex said as she walked down the row of new equipment. "Another clot timer for multiple specimens, and a coagulyzer."
Michael Cyprien. She needed Michael. Now.
She paused for a moment to cover her agitation by tapping some keys on an efficient-looking PC before moving on to the microscope. "Nice computer. Scope's okay for now, but we may have to upgrade to something more powerful."
Michael was powerful. Michael was what she needed.
Alex stopped and glared at a cheap import model of something she really needed. "Who picked out this centrifuge?"
"I did," Éliane said, "It resembled the one you requested while you were in New Orleans."
"That was a great piece of equipment, top of the line. This? This is a piece of junk." She went over and opened up the supply cabinet to inspect the instruments, beakers, and vials inside. "I'm not seeing any syringes, scissors, pipettes, or biopsy needles here."
Or Michael.
The scent of cherry tobacco stung the air. "My tresora does not yet trust you with sharp objects." Richard's distinctive footsteps came up behind her. "Nor do I."
"How am I supposed to take blood and tissue samples from you? With my teeth? Don't answer that." Alex closed the cabinet and moved on to the portable X-ray machine, culture racks, and what she thought might be a genetic analyzer of some sort. "This is going to take longer than I thought."
"Why?"
"I'm an American, used to working on American equipment. This stuff is all European. I'll need more operating manuals, especially on the electronics." She pointed to the analyzer console. "I'm not even sure how to turn that on." She also couldn't stop thinking about Cyprien, or the way her dermis seemed to want to divorce her muscle tissue.
Get it together, Alexandra.
"All you need will be provided for you." Richard turned and hobbled toward the door.
Nice work, Alex. Who knows how long it will take for him to get all the manuals? Why the hell do you care how everything works? Not like you're going to use it. You're never going to get out of here.
Alex agreed with her common sense, but there was more to it than helping the monster who had kidnapped her. Richard's changeling blood might reveal something she hadn't yet found in studying other Kyn. Something that might cure the condition and allow her to take back her life.
Fuck life. You need Michael.
"Hold your horses, high lord." She walked over to the exam table. "I can still do a physical."
Richard turned toward her, removing his mask as he did. Out of the corner of her eye, Alex saw Éliane quickly look away, as if the sight of the high lord's distorted features repelled her.
The high lord's face was, Alex had to admit, pretty revolting. Black and silver hair stubble darkened the skin around his bulging eyes, lipless mouth, and over his flattened nose.
As bone structures went, his was a nightmare. His forehead was gone, as were his chin and the lower half of his cheekbones. She probed and discovered that the bone hadn't been removed or crushed; it simply wasn't there anymore. Spiky bunches of white hair sprouted from his eyebrows, which had become a single, three-inch-wide strip of hair rolling across the grossly pronounced brow ridge shading his eyes.
The features would have been bad enough on their own, but hearing Richard's human voice coming out of that mouth, and seeing the intelligence in those alien eyes, gave the impression of a man trapped inside the body of a beast—as if Richard had been swallowed alive.
Alex definitely preferred him when he was the man behind the mask. But after years of repairing some of the worst facial injuries human beings could endure, she'd acquired a lot of tolerance for the unnatural and repulsive, even as extreme as Richard's case was.
"Take off all your clothes and get on the table." She reached for a pair of gloves. When the high lord didn't move, she glanced at him. "What, you can't undress yourself? Want me to ring for your valet?"
"I can disrobe." As he unfastened his cloak, his eyelids dropped, hiding half of his almond-shaped, gold-green eyes with their slitted pupils. "Were you this abrupt and demanding with Cyprien?"
"Much worse. He had to wear earplugs." She circled around him, gesturing for the Frenchwoman. "Can you take down some notes, or will that violate your sacred oath of standing around doing nothing so you can look pressed and pretty?"
"I will assist." Éliane sounded as aloof and uncaring as always, but her hands trembled when she took the chart that Alex handed to her, and her breathing sounded like someone about to have an acute asthma attack.
"Maybe you should send someone else in to help," Alex suggested, and got a nasty look in return. "Screw me. Got it."
Alex took Richard's clothing as he removed it and draped it over the back of a chair. It helped her conceal her own reaction to seeing the high lord's extreme physical mutations.
The changeling condition had distorted his body even more so than his face and skull, curving his spine in three places and reversing the elbow and knee joints. His enlarged hands and feet were no longer recognizably human.
"Are you ready for this?" she asked once he stood naked. After he nodded, she said to Éliane, "All right, Blondie, start writing. Patient is Richard Tremayne, a mutated human male, approximately seven hundred years old. Step over here." She had him climb onto the scale and measured him. "Seventy-two inches tall, one hundred ninety-seven pounds. Is that close to what you were before this happened?"
"Yes."
"No loss of body mass," she said. "All right, hop up on the exam table and lie on your back."
Alex checked Richard's heart rate, temperature, and blood pressure, all of which were far below normal human limits but were slightly elevated for what she knew to be normal Kyn limits. He watched her without blinking.
"Patient presents what appears to be hypertrichosis," she said after having Éliane note the vitals. "With the exception of the palms of the hands and soles of the feet, the entire body is covered with dense black hair. Face has been recently shaved." She took some measurements. "Hair ranges from one-half to eight inches in length on limbs and torso." She glanced down at him. "When did the abnormal hair growth begin?"
Richard looked up at the ceiling. "A long time ago."
"Need a year," Alex said as she picked up a light scope.
"Eighteen forty-nine."
She did the math in her head. "Hypertrichotic condition first manifested one hundred fifty-eight years ago." She moved some of his thick, curly mane to inspect his left ear, which sat high on his elongated skull and had acquired a distinct pointed profile. The human outer whorls and folds had disappeared altogether, and she could not see his eardrum. "What caused the condition?"
"The Brethren."
She remembered what Lucan had told her. You are what you eat. "I need more specifics. What did they do to you?"
"I cannot say." His gaze shifted away from her. "My memory of that time has become unreliable."
She didn't believe him, but it didn't really matter how he lied to her.
"Make a note of the memory loss on the chart, Blondie." Alex looked into his eyes with the scope and noted how the pupils did not react to the intense light. "Have there been any consistent symptoms since the hypertrichosis manifested?"
"I cannot feed on humans. My moods are sometimes uncertain." He closed his eyes. "I lose time."
Alex wondered if she could manage to do a brain scan on Richard before she escaped the castle. "Define Ôlose' for me."
He sighed. "I go to sleep without wishing to. When I awake, it is often two or three hours later, and I am in a different place."
She tried to make sense of what he was telling her. "Do you mean you sleepwalk?"
"It does not always happen during the day," he said. "I never know when such spells will come upon me."
"Patient complains of having blackouts. Tell me if you feel any discomfort or pain." Alex palpated Richard's torso and discovered that the changeling condition had also lengthened and narrowed his rib cage. Unlike some of her former male patients, he did not become erect when she inspected his genitals. "Any changes down here? Other than the hair covering things?"
"I am larger than I was." He sounded slightly smug.
"Good for you." Alex found two rows of odd bumps on either side of his shaft and tapped one. "Are these old or new?"
"New."
"How nice. Note some enlarged or infected follicles on the penis. Any problems having sex?"
Richard's upper lip split open as he bared teeth too long and pointed to be human. "None."
Alex glanced at Éliane, who had stopped writing, and whose face had turned almost as white as her blouse.
Terrific. Aside from the danger to the Frenchwoman, now every time Alex saw her or Richard she'd imagine the two of them going at it. But something was wrong here, very wrong, as evidenced by the bloody spot Éliane had gnawed into her bottom lip.
