Darkyn - Night Lost Part 28

"It does not mean he is dead. When Kyn suffer serious injuries, our hearts stop beating for a time." Phillipe lifted Richard into a wide armoire and nestled him in behind the hanging gowns, arranging the long skirts over him so that he wouldn't be seen. "You should stay here."

John shook his head. "I overheard the guards talking in the corridor. Lady Elizabeth had Alexandra and Cyprien thrown into the dungeon."

"She will be busy taking control of the humans," Phillipe said. "That will give us time to do the same with the guards."

"Won't they be loyal to her?"

The seneschal offered a grim smile. "Not after I tell them she has been slowly poisoning their king."

Alexandra hit the stone floor, rolled, and landed in a pile of moldy, rotting straw. Most of the dim light from the torches outside disappeared as the heavy door slammed shut and someone bolted it from the outside.

"Welcome to the dungeon." She spit out a piece of straw and struggled to her feet, rubbing her hip. It didn't feel broken, which only made her more p.i.s.sed off. "I swear, Phil had better bust me out of here soon or I'll..." She stopped as she sniffed the air.

"Do you wish to leave me so soon?"

That was it. She'd finally lost her mind. Or... "Who's there?"

A soft blanket of roses rolled around her, weaving with the bright lavender that answered it. Alex didn't know whether to laugh or cry. She started to do a little of both.

"I imagined this so many times," Michael Cyprien said as he knelt down before her. "Every hour, every minute at times. Never once did I think it would happen in such a place." He took her grimy hand and pressed it to his lips. "I have missed you, my lady."

"Michael." She couldn't get past his name. "Michael."

He started to stand at the same moment her knees gave out. They came together, two souls filling the broken, empty s.p.a.ces forced between them.

"Oh, G.o.d." Alex kissed every inch of his beloved face, drinking in the taste and smell and feel of him until she thought she really would go mad. She began babbling like a lunatic. "I missed you. I love you. Why did you take so long to get here? I missed you."

A face blocked out of the small shaft of light coming from the cell window, and a man laughed.

"Save it for the mistress," the guard shouted. "She likes a good show."Alex stiffened. "An audience. Terrific."

Michael held her close as he gave the door a murderous look before his expression softened. "Elizabeth has taken control of the castle. Richard has vanished, but he may be dead or dying."

Business as usual. "We're up to our ears, then."

He nodded and stroked his hand over her curls. "It is my fault. I might have planned this rescue somewhat better than I did."

"We'll find a way out. We always do." She couldn't get close enough to him. She wanted to rip off the stupid clothes keeping her skin from touching his. "My head's not exactly on straight yet. I know what I'd like to do to you, but not with that guard or Lady Liz watching. Still, I need to..." She didn't know what she needed.

He yanked at the collar of his s.h.i.+rt, baring his throat.

"That?" Even with her fangs fully extended and aching for him, to feed directly from his body seemed as intimate as f.u.c.king him.

Then there was her need. "What if I drink too much?"

"You won't." He cradled the back of her head with his hand and urged her forward. "Take me, Alexandra."

She kissed the smooth skin first, choosing the place where his blood pulsed strongest. Her mouth opened as his fingers entwined with hers. Her fangs slid into him, deep and sure, as if she had taken him like this a thousand times, and then his lifeblood flowed into her, hot and sweet and silky. The world became a river of warm, honeyed rose petals.

Michael's voice reached through the pleasure, adding to it, changing it. "Come back to me, mon amour."

Somehow Alex wrenched her mouth from him, panting, shuddering as she ripped open the front of her s.h.i.+rt. She didn't have to urge him to her; his mouth found the inside of her breast, one of his favorite spots to kiss and nuzzle when they made love. When she felt his teeth, she arched up against his mouth, making him penetrate her as deeply as she had taken him. He sucked at her with a soft, dreamy sigh, and then lifted his head and looked into her wet eyes.

"I love you, Alexandra."

Chapter 19.

Korvel intercepted a human female coming toward Dundellan on a rather noisy motorcycle. She stopped when he held up one hand and shut off the bike.

"You are trespa.s.sing." He walked up to her and nearly stumbled when he picked up the scent of evergreen from her skin.

"Watch your step." She took off the black helmet she was wearing, revealing a very young face and a headful of blond curls.

"You're a vampire, right?"

"No." Korvel reached out to touch her, but she glided out of range.

"No, I don't think so." She glanced at the castle. "I need to talk to the vampire who lives in there. Is that you?" When he said nothing, she sighed. "Okay, can you get me in to see him?"

"There are no such things as vampires." He took another swipe at her, trying to make the skin contact he needed to use his talent. Once he had her panting after him, he'd find out how she had gotten Gabriel Seran's scent all over her.

"Forget it; I'll just go up and knock." She pushed the bike off the road and left it under a tree.

Frustrated by his inability to touch her, Korvel caught up with her and blocked her path. "I won't hurt you, miss." He looked into her eyes and shed more scent, but it seemed to have no effect on her.

"You're very cute, but I don't screw complete strangers. Most of the time." She sidestepped him. "So you can turn off the charm."

"You cannot go inside the castle," he told her.

"Trouble in Camelot?" She heard his men shouting and tilted her head. "Thanks for the heads-up. Now can I go in and talk to the high lord?"

She had to be a tresora. "I am sorry; I do not mean to frighten you." He breathed in the deep, faintly sweet scent clinging to her.

"Who do you serve?"

The girl lifted her chin. "I don't serve anyone, but if it counts, I'm sleeping with Gabriel Seran."

Korvel could hardly think straight. "He truly is alive?"

"He truly is." She smiled. "Do you know him?"

"He was-is-a great friend to my master."

"Gabriel's down in the village, talking to some supermodel vampire." She sounded oddly resigned. "Now can I go in there?

There's something in this place I really need to find."

Nick thought the big blond vampire was about to have a nervous breakdown, he was so agitated. The scent rolling off him made her feel as if she were locked in a French bakery.

"What's your name?" she asked as she looked up over the edge of the ditch and watched for men on horseback.

"Korvel."

"I'm Nick."

The patrol of four huge-looking armed soldiers pa.s.sed, and as soon as they had ridden out of sight, the vampire grabbed her hand. "They'll be back in two minutes. We must hurry."

Nick ran with him across to the side entry, pausing here and there to take refuge behind a tree trunk. Korvel opened the door with an impressive show of one-armed Kyn strength, almost wrenching it off its three bolts as they ducked inside.

The interior of this castle, Nick discovered, was particularly cold. It was also as silent as a church. She imagined the place where they were standing had once been a kitchen.

Korvel lifted a finger to his lips and pointed toward an open pa.s.sage on the other side of the room. "We go through there," he told her in a barely audible whisper, "and down into the dungeons."

"Is that where the king is?""It's where my friends are. We have to free them." He picked up a couple of dark-colored swords from where they had been left on the counter. "Can you use one of these?"

Nick nodded. It was slightly bigger than her stiletto. It worked on the same princ.i.p.al.

The vampire led Nick through the corridor, where they met another vampire, this one with a scar running down his face.

"Who are you?" he asked, sniffing her.

"Nick. You?"

"Phillipe," he answered. "You smell like Gabriel Seran."

"Not now," Korvel said, and gestured for them to move down a set of stone steps.

Nick went first, and stepped into what looked to her like a set from one of Vincent Price's old movies. Flaming torches blazed from sconces on the brick walls, while dull copper chains and various nasty-looking apparatuses hung from huge iron rings and suspension bars.

"New guests?"

Nick froze in midstep. A group of dazed-looking humans seemed to appear out of nowhere, and formed a circle around her, Korvel, and Phillipe. They said nothing, but began hitting and scratching at them and kicking their legs and knees. The thin faces were blank, but the eyes were filled with terror.

"Ah, you're here for the tour." Behind them, a fair-haired woman in a bright silk gown appeared. "Welcome to our stronghold."

Nick stopped thinking, shoving three zombie-eyed humans out of her way as she brought her sword up and used it to stab the smiling woman in the shoulder. The blond woman didn't scream, but looked very annoyed.

"Ungrateful little girl." She clasped her shoulder and glared at the humans, who converged and pulled the sword from Nick's hand. "I invite you into my home, and this is how you repay my hospitality?"

Nick saw Korvel attack two of the guards, while Phillipe seemed to be trying to touch as many of the zombies as he could. With each touch the human minions stopped clawing and kicking, and turned toward the woman. Nick struggled wildly against the four that had her by the arms now.

"Elizabeth."

The zombies' eyes suddenly cleared, and their voices rose with very normal-sounding terror and panic as they tried to find a way out of the dungeon's center. It was during the confusion that someone grabbed Nick from behind, clamping a hand over her mouth and dragging her out of the room.

When Nicola did not return within the promised hour, Gabriel questioned a few of the villagers coming in from the fields and discovered from their sightings that she had ridden out to Dundellan.

"You don't have to track her on foot." Marcella brought him to the town stable and removed two white mares from their stalls. "I will ride with you."

Gabriel was more concerned about Nicola, especially when they arrived at the castle and saw it sitting open and unguarded.

"Richard must be dead," he said, "for he would never allow his stronghold to be found so vulnerable."They tethered the horses to a tree and without invitation walked through the front entry of Dundellan. Gabriel picked up Nick's scent almost immediately. He followed it to the bas.e.m.e.nt access door. "They are all down there."

Marcella nodded. "I smell them, too."

The first person Gabriel saw as he walked down into Richard Tremayne's dungeons was the high lord himself.

"Gabriel." The man was Richard, and a much more human-looking Richard than Gabriel remembered in the past. "You are alive."

"My lord." He made his bow. "My traveling companion came here. I have come to collect her."

"She has disappeared, as have my wife and a Brethren interrogator." Richard raised his voice over the cries of the newly awakened addicts. "Calm yourselves."

Phillipe handed Marcella a bunch of keys. "The seigneur and his sygkenis are locked in one of these cells."

"I do not need keys," she told him, and placed a hand on the steel locking mechanism on one cell's barred door. Something inside the lock rattled, and Marcella pulled the door open. At the same time, two m.u.f.fled voices called out. "I hear them. Down here." She led Phillipe down the row of cells.

Gabriel heard his name being called frantically but from some distance away. "Nicola?" He projected his talent, summoning every insect in the castle and sharing their knowledge of the place. The beetles led him back upstairs and into the west wing of the castle. The termites led him to the locked door of a secured, sealed chamber. Behind it, he could hear Nick screaming.

Come to me.

Gabriel's command thundered through the halls of Dundellan, drawing every insect within its cold stone walls. He reached farther, out into the fields for the ants and bees and spiders, and into the woods for the crickets and moths and wasps. He brought together the many that were one mind, one house, one soul, and one spirit, and they poured in through every window in the castle, the winged ones carrying those that could not fly, streaming through the castle in a single column, past the cringing humans and Darkyn and into the west wing, becoming a living battering ram against the door that separated Gabriel from Nicola.

The door exploded inward.

Gabriel stepped into the stream of the many, moving with them into the glittering room made of amber. Richard's wife huddled in one corner, her arms over her head. Leary was jerking his arm up and down, up and down over another woman. Gabriel saw the bloodied knife in his hand and with a guttural roar brought the column of the many down on Leary's arm, severing it cleanly from his body at the shoulder.

Nicola dropped to the floor, her body covered in blood.

The priest tottered around, his left hand grasping the empty socket of his right arm, and smiled at Gabriel. "Their name is Legion," he choked out. "And you are many."

The column descended on Leary and dragged him, writhing within their suffocating ma.s.s, out of the room.

Chapter 20.