Éliane's expression went blank. "Who is this Mike?"
"She addresses me, tresora." Cyprien didn't sound offended. "The guards are a minor precaution, Doctor. Thierry and the others escaped, but their tormentors were killed in the process. Their comrades want revenge, and they are still hunting for them."
Alex scowled. "God, is there anyone you people don't piss off?"
He said something in French to Éliane, who walked out of the house.
"We will talk in here, Alexandra." He guided her to an elegant drawing room filled with polished antiques. Everything was pale green and pink, with enough stripes and flowers and fussy things to make a house porn junkie foam at the mouth. "Would you care for some refreshment?"
"No, thanks." Rather than sit, Alex put down her case on the nearest flat surface and opened it to take out her copper-tipped syringes and a bag of the plasma she kept cool with frozen gel packs. "I brought my own."
Take your hands off her. Hatred, swelling like bile. Angel, Angel. Acid tears. I'll kill you.
The thoughts came so strong this time they nearly made Alex stagger.
"Is something wrong?"
Flesh tearing. Kill you all. Bones snapping.
Angel!
"No." If she could read these thoughts, then she should be able to block them, too. Alex immediately imagined her mind inside a high, thick stone wall. To her relief, the thoughts dwindled and went away.
"You are pale and weak."
Ever since Alex had grown fangs, she had fought to control her symptoms and slow what was happening to her body. The basic problem was that she needed blood to live. Because her stomach lining was gone and her digestive system had been radically altered, blood was probably the only thing she could digest now. She resented the dependency, but she was also practical about it. The mutant pathogens in her bloodstream gobbled up normal blood cells like candy, and when there weren't any to be had, they fed on fat and muscle tissue. Without fresh blood, the processes going on inside her would literally eat her body alive.
Experimentation revealed that she could survive comfortably on an injection of 100 cc of plasma administered once per day, and 50 cc of whole blood once a week. It didn't matter what type blood she used, either, as long as it was human.
She had no problem injecting herself in front of Cyprien, who, after closing and securing the door, watched her with fascinated eyes.
"Why do you use needles?"
"Because I don't want to walk around with an IV pole," she muttered as the rejuvenating effects of the injection hit her system. Plasma made her feel the way she had felt after eating a good meal; whole blood was more like gorging on cheesecake. It was some sort of chemical release from the pathogens as they absorbed the fresh new blood. She hated that part; she didn't want it to feel good. She took out her remaining reserves; her ice packs were half melted. "Can I put these in a fridge so they don't spoil? I don't feel like robbing a blood bank today."
Cyprien took them from her, went to the door, and handed them out to someone waiting. "I can provide for you while you are here. It is my obligation as your—"
"Don't say master, or I'll punch you."
He gave her an inscrutable smile. "Your host."
"I can score my own fixes, thanks."
Cyprien went to a fussy little table loaded with canisters and poured himself a glass of very dark wine. From the look and the smell of it, Alex could tell it was mostly blood with a little wine mixed in to preserve and/or dilute it. Interesting that he could drink wine; so far she had been able to hold down only a little water.
"I thought as a doctor, you would have access to all the blood you require."
"What do you expect me to do, run out to the nearest ER and ask if I can lick the floor after the next car accident?" Another part of her new life that she despised—she had to steal the blood she needed from facilities that needed it just as desperately. She watched him sip from his goblet, and wondered for the first time if the murderous thoughts were coming from him. "Who did you kill to get that?"
He made another of his elegant gestures. "I don't kill, Alexandra. I convince humans to donate willingly."
Sure he did. "You make Phil mind-whammy them, and then you do the Dracula thing."
"I do not need Phillipe's assistance." His mouth hitched. "You do use such interesting terms."
"You should have heard what I called you the first time my fangs popped out." The afterglow of transfusing usually made Alex languid, and she wasn't sure how long her mental wall was going to hold, so she got to her feet and paced around the room. "What do you expect me to do for this Thierry guy and the others who were hurt?"
"Restore them, as you did me, if you can." He drained the glass and set it aside. "There is something else I must tell you."
She made a rolling motion with one hand.
"Thierry suffered a great deal of pain during his ordeal. He is…" Cyprien hesitated. "Unbalanced."
"How unbalanced?"
"Aside from his own injuries, Thierry lost his wife during their captivity," Cyprien told her, his voice turning cold. "They made him watch as they tortured her to death. He no longer speaks at all, and he attacks anyone who comes near him."
"This just gets better and better." Alex rubbed a hand over her face. "So I have four patients who were tortured, and whose injuries have healed over, and one of them is a maniac on top of that."
"Four patients in exchange for the four men who attacked Ms. Lopez in Chicago." Cyprien made an elegant gesture. "It is an even exchange, is it not?"
"This doesn't settle anything between us." She wanted that distinction made.
He put aside his glass and walked toward her. Alex stood her ground, but the closer he came, the more she wanted to bolt.
"What is there between us, Dr. Keller?" Something was coming from him, something that made the air separating them hum with unseen power. "You say it is nothing. You claim that you are not my sygkenis. You refuse all that I have offered, all I would give."
"I took your four million," she snapped, dodging around him.
He caught her arm and whirled her back around so smoothly it could have been a dance move. "Which you promptly gave to Ms. Lopez. Stop retreating, Alexandra. You belong with me, here. I won't let you go."
Because staring at his sternum seemed stupid, she looked up. "Last time you did." His eyes were sucking the brains out of her head—his eyes and the fingers he was stroking over her nape. How could rubbing someone's neck be so erotic? "Let go."
"What is mine," he breathed against her cheek, "I take. I keep. I hold."
The words made her shiver. Maybe if she closed her eyes. "I'm not a possession." No, closing her eyes made it worse. Her hair was falling down on her shoulders. His mouth moved over her cheekbone and down to trace the taut line of her jaw. "Do you do stuff like this with Phillipe when he gets cranky?"
Cyprien lifted his head, and touched a thumb to her bottom lip. "Phillipe doesn't get cranky."
"Around me he does." When she said that, he pushed the edge of his thumb into her mouth, and rubbed it lightly against the openings in her palate. It should have felt disgusting. Instead, heat streaked down her throat and into her abdomen and curled tight between her legs.
Slowly he withdrew his thumb. "I want to do that with my tongue," he murmured, dipping his head down again. "Open your mouth again."
He was lisping a little because his fangs had extruded, Alex saw. The soundless hum was back, and it was all over her, crawling up her spine, rushing in her ears, quivering in her bones. She felt a gush of wetness at her crotch, so sudden and heavy that she wasn't sure if she was aroused or had let her bladder go.
Was she turned on, or terrified? Why couldn't she tell?
"Alex." His breath painted her name on her lips. "Let me in, chérie."
Let him in, the way she had before, when he had looked into her eyes and pulled her close and torn her throat out—
"No." She turned her face, planted her hands on his chest, and pushed. She didn't stop pushing until he released her, and then she went for the door.
"You will not leave."
Even when his voice crackled with ice, it pulled at her and promised her things she couldn't imagine.
"You don't own me, and you can't control me." That was going to be her personal mantra while she was here. "The only way you're going to keep me here is to keep your damn hands off me, or chain me down in the basement."
"I have Thierry chained in the basement," Cyprien told her, deadpan. "You must settle for one of the guest rooms."
Alex really didn't know if he was joking or not. She wasn't going to let him use sex—if that was what that had been—to manipulate her. She didn't owe Cyprien or his friends anything.
If she could only forget that horrifying sketch he'd shown her on the plane.
"If I stay, if I help them, I'll also want some answers. About this infection, about whatever you are and what I'm going to be." She turned around. "Agreed?"
Cyprien was on the other side of the room, as if he wanted to get as far away from her as possible. "Agreed."
"Okay." Her hair was a wreck. She found the clip and began gathering the curls he'd pulled free.
Don't leave me, Angel.
For the first time she could sense the direction of the thoughts. They were coming from beneath her feet. "Let me take a look at the maniac first."
For years Richard Tremayne perpetuated the belief among the Kyn that he never left his Irish fortress. Only two of his personal guards knew when he left the grounds, and only because they accompanied him. Over the last year Richard's physical condition had made travel more difficult, as did the increased vigilance of international authorities on the alert for terrorists, but he did not yet have to sacrifice what was the last of his personal pleasures.
