Nailed.
"I don't want you to overstep your bounds, or piss off your husband," Alex said carefully. "But yeah, I need some help. John has already been through torture once, when the Brethren had him in Rome. That, combined with the fact that his sister now has fangs and drinks blood, has probably traumatized him for life. He's not part of this war, Elizabeth. If you have an ounce of decency…"
Ghostly images rose behind Alex's eyes.
"… you'll see that…"
Sweet girl. Claws sinking into pale flesh. So sweet.
Alex pressed a hand to her temple. "Is your husband hanging around here somewhere?"
"I cannot say. You must be thirsty after all this talk." Elizabeth set aside her needlework and clapped her hands.
Like magic, one of the wall panels opened into the room, and two Kyn males appeared. Both wore old-fashioned gold-and-white garments that reminded Alex of some Merchant Ivory films she'd seen. Between them they held a human male dressed in a dark suit and a full-face black mask. Although Alex couldn't see his face, the human's dark eyes had the same empty, unfocused cast to them as those of the other zombies in the castle.
"You've got your own secret passage?" Alex asked Elizabeth.
"It amuses my husband to move about undetected. He has had them built on nearly every floor." She rose and shook out her skirts. "I find them convenient for discreet deliveries."
The human male seemed weirdly familiar to Alex, but he wasn't the one she'd seen in the white robe during the killing vision she'd had in the hall. "What's with the mask?"
"Another amusement. Would you care to feed first?" Elizabeth asked, as if offering Alex a cup of tea.
"I'm not thirsty, thanks."
Elizabeth dismissed the Kyn males and went to the human. The scent of lilies almost choked Alex, but the zombie-eyed man didn't move from his spot. Richard's wife embraced him, pulling his head down to hers.
"The faithful have such hot blood." Elizabeth sank her fangs into his neck and pushed her hand into the front of his trousers.
Alex saw awareness flicker through the dark eyes. "Hey. He knows what you're doing."
Richard's wife lifted her mouth from her victim. "I want him to feel it." She struck a second time.
The man made a sound, and pain and disgust clouded his eyes.
Oh, no. Alex grabbed the laces at the back of Elizabeth's gown and used them to jerk her away. "Get off him."
"Of course." Richard's wife took a white handkerchief from her sleeve and daintily patted her lips. "It has been some time since you've fed directly from a human, has it not?"
"I don't feed from humans." Alex checked the four puncture wounds, none of which had penetrated any major vessel, and then carefully removed the mask. "Johnny?" She tore away the strip of yellow silk gagging her brother. "John, it's all right."
Her brother stared over her head and said nothing.
Alex turned on Elizabeth. "What did you do to him?"
"It is Stefan's talent, not mine. The dear boy cannot do anything but obey me, but he will feel every sensation." Elizabeth smiled, showing bloody teeth. "We will share him."
"Thanks," Alex said, "but I don't eat family members, and you've had enough."
"We are your family now, Alexandra. Two Kyn feeding at once prevents thrall. We can still enjoy him in other ways." She reached out and ran a finger down between Alex's breasts. "Don't you want to see me riding his cock while you bespell him?"
"Cheat on Richard with someone else." Alex grabbed her wrist and bent it until the joints cracked. "You're not touching my brother again."
"I give the order, and your brother will die." Elizabeth peered at her. "You're not afraid."
"Of you? Sorry, no." She caught another flash of the killing vision. "So this is your thing. Who was the kid in the white robe, Liz? Who were the people you butchered in front of him?"
Elizabeth's gory smile faltered. "You cannot read my thoughts."
"Oddly enough, it's my talent. Reading the minds of killers." Alex turned to John, and saw the alarm in his eyes. "You're going to get my brother out of here."
"I certainly shall not."
Alex knew the Kyn had to feed, and preferred to take blood straight from the source, but this was too perverted for words. "If you don't, I'll go to Richard and tell him everything."
"Be my guest." Elizabeth dropped her soiled handkerchief on the floor. "I've done this hundreds of times, and Richard has never cared. He's even had me torture some of his Brethren prisoners. You see, Doctor, the fear and pain they feel as I feed comes from my talent."
Alex drove her fist into Elizabeth's belly, knocking her back against one of the amber panels. She went after her to punch her again, but this time someone caught her from behind.
"Enough." Éliane, with a tranquilizer gun in one hand. "I apologize for the intrusion, my lady. Guard. The mistress is done with the human."
Stefan came in and led John out of the room.
When Alex tried to wrench free, Éliane pressed the muzzle of the gun into her side. "I will see to it that the doctor does not disturb you again."
"Saved by my husband's whore." Elizabeth pushed away from the amber panel and fussed with her skirts.
"You'd better keep your teeth out of my brother," Alex warned. "Or I'll make it my purpose in life to ruin that pretty face of yours."
"Will you." Elizabeth's hand shot out and she caught Alex's face in a bruising grip. She leaned in, almost kissing her mouth before she added in a whisper, "The one thing you had better not do, Doctor, is cure my husband. If you do, I will kill your brother, and make you watch."
The dark shifted around Nick, becoming less empty as the shadows swelled. Whatever was happening, she wasn't meant to witness it. Aside from her own body she couldn't see or hear a blessed thing.
Dreaming.
Her other senses told her that grass, cool and crackling, flattened under her steps, and gardenia and roses bloomed nearby. Her skin lit up with nerves, absorbing textures from all the unseen things she brushed against: the slick gloss of leaves, the bumpy roughness of bark, the silken glide of petals.
Being Helen Keller in the nightlands seemed about as smart as playing Marco Polo with razor blades, so Nick stopped walking. "I'm not moving again until someone turns on the lights."
Someone did.
Nick saw that she was standing on the edge of a small alpine meadow, a pool of grass framed by endless acres of pine and ringed by towering mountains. Millions of dandelions studded the clearing's green carpet and filled the air with the wish fluff of their seeds.
Despite the peace and serenity around her, she felt something coming, and braced herself.
Nothing touched her but cool breeze and floating dandelion seed. She was about to sit down in the grass and wait for what had better show up, and soon, when the Green Man stepped into sight, twenty feet away from her on the other side of the meadow. He wore Father Claudio's bloodstained trousers, and his blind eyes glittered with metallic green light.
Nick watched him. He seemed to return the inspection. "Gabriel?"
Gabriel is lost.
He began walking toward her, and with every step the dandelions within two feet of him began to droop and wither. The air within the dream grew frosty.
"I found you, remember?" Nick could see her breath puffing out as she spoke. "We got away from them."
Gabriel will never be free. Gabriel died in that cellar.
The words, not the cold, made her shiver. "Who are you, then?"
He halted just out of reach. The remnant of what he was. A shred of soul. I belong to the many now.
"The many what?"
They are all around you, wherever you go. The Green Man moved then, too sudden and speedy for Nick to avoid, and knocked her flat on her back. He lay full-length on top of her. Yet you never see them.
"You're the one who's blind." She wanted to go back to the forest, where he had done nicer things to her. Why couldn't she have a nightmare about having sex with Gabriel while he subjected her to the horrors of continuous orgasms?
I see everything. He pinned her wrists to the grass, his hands slipping a little on her wet flesh.
Suddenly they were both completely, comprehensively soaked: their clothes, their skin, even their hair—his dripped beads of sweat or water all around her face. It came from what appeared to be a stream running across the sky and pouring over the entire meadow simultaneously.
"You're hurting me," she told him, resisting a terrible urge to dig her fingernails into his wrists. Instead she blinked the water out of her eyes, trying not to fight. Even like this, she didn't want to hurt him. He needed love—her love—and here she could give him what she couldn't in the waking world.
I do not wish that. He looked around, puzzled now, as if he wasn't sure where they were. Where are the mourning hens?
Now he was worried about depressed chickens. "I don't know."
The rain stopped, and the air around them turned frigid. The glittery green glow of his irises expanded, making his pupils shrink to mere slits. The rain on his skin turned in tiny scrolls of frost, elongated bindi bejeweling the solid-emerald flesh. His body felt too big, too hard on top of hers, but Nick refused to struggle.
Do you not want me now? he murmured, watching her face.
The cold didn't seem to affect Nick; she felt as if on fire, so hot that her own skin and clothes went from saturated to flash-dried.
"Everyone always wants the coolest guy around, don't they?" She watched a veil of ice crystals form over his hair while wisps of steam rose from around her own head. "I guess that would be you."
He bent his head, making tiny chips of ice like confetti pelt her. Open your mouth.
"What f—"
