That had been another mistake, and he had known it as soon as the scent that induced thrall and rapture began rolling off his skin. No one knew what mysterious bodily process produced the Darkyn's individual, intoxicating scents, but once his body took control, there was little that he or his victim could do to resist it. She had been his before he had risen from the operating table to take her.

Yet by the time Michael realized what was happening, it was too late. She called him, he looked upon her, and the deadly dance had begun.

He had never fought thrall, but he had never realized it brought hungers so exquisitely painful that they all but tore him to pieces.

Feeding on her. The tear of flesh, the gush of blood. Even as he made it happen, he knew it would kill her. Then he was filling himself with her, leading her down into the blood dreams, where the dance would slow and finally end. Once there, however, guilt and outrage—he had not attacked her voluntarily; he knew that—made the dreams unbearable.

Michael refused to let her die.

Alexandra dwindled, leaving him alone in the dreams. Michael had not lain enthralled since he had first risen as Darkyn, so it took him some time to fight his way out. There was also the fear of what he would find when he awoke.

She saved me. Did I kill her for it?

Michael closed his newly restored eyes as he recalled what he had done to her. Despite his orders, Alexandra had been left alone with him. When Phillipe had wrenched them apart, clarity returned, enough to drive Michael mad. He recalled pouring his blood over the gaping wound in her neck, then ripping into his arm and forcing his blood down her throat.

Why had he done that? Darkyn blood poisoned every human being exposed to it. He had told her that.

I am killing you, Alexandra.

Could you love me a little first?

It struck him like a fist. She had asked for love, and he had given her death. And then a new, stronger wave of bloodlust had come over him again, and he had struck a second time.

Vivez pour moi, he had shouted at her when Phillipe had pulled him away. Over and over.

Live for me.

In the delusions of thrall, Michael had somehow convinced himself that he could save her with his own blood. That she, unlike all the others, would survive.

Alexandra saved me, and I killed her.

When at last Michael emerged from the blood dreams into the waking world, he opened his eyes for the second time since returning from Rome.

Eyelids. I have eyelids again. He used his restored vision to tear the curtains from his bed before climbing out of it. "Phillipe?"

"Here, Master." His seneschal held out his robe.

He pulled on his trousers and stalked past him. Colors and shapes whirled around him. "Where is she?" He could still hear her choking, the soft, distressed sound of it hissing in his ears. "Upstairs? How badly did I hurt her?" Perhaps it was not as terrible as he remembered. Thrall played tricks on the mind, turning the real into the surreal.

"She is gone, Master." Phillipe followed him up the stairs. "I sent your tresora away, as well."

Michael halted and turned around. "Why?"

"She fears what you will do to her." He explained what had happened, how Éliane had sent him from the room after the surgery, and then locked Alexandra in alone with Michael. "Had I known what she planned, I would have stopped you, or killed her."

Michael dropped into the nearest chair and held his head in his hands. Rage pounded behind his eyes, eyes that Alexandra Keller had reopened with her bright heart as much as her skilled hands. "Is it as I remember? Did I take her?"

"Yes." Phillipe rubbed his temple. "When I came back, you were deep in thrall, and the doctor was…" He shook his head.

Alexandra. Now that he could actually see her face, it would remain only in his memories. Guilt became a raptor, tearing at him with hot, angry claws. "What did you do with the body?"

"She is not dead." Phillipe took a step back. "Not yet."

Michael came out of the delicately carved chair so violently that the scrolled armrest snapped off. "What did you say?"

"She lives." His seneschal produced a fax.

The report, faxed from Chicago by the head of the jardin who had first brought Dr. Alexandra Keller to his attention was succinct but complete. The doctor had been found by the authorities—found alive—in a restroom at O'Hare Airport. She had been transported to a local hospital, where she was admitted to intensive care. Her condition was still listed as serious.

Michael read it three times, but shock made him unable to calculate the time lapse. "This came in today?" His seneschal nodded. "How long have I been in thrall?"

"The operation left you weak, and we thought it necessary—"

"How long?" Michael shouted.

Phillipe ducked his head. "Five days, Master."

Five days. Almost the same amount of time in which God made the world.

The report crumpled in his fist, and fell in a loose ball to bounce on the floor. "She was dead when she left the dreams. She was not breathing."

"I, too, thought this." His seneschal looked sick. "I had the men take her back to Chicago. I told them to leave her body where it could be found. I thought—for her family's sake. She has a brother, a lover—"

Michael backhanded Phillipe, knocking him into the wall. It was not enough, but he would not allow himself to beat his seneschal unconscious. Instead, he walked through the house and out to his trysting garden. The sun was setting, and the last of its rays delicately gilded hundreds of blooming white roses. He found one of the little wrought iron benches and sat down, staring at nothing as his mind tried to grasp what had happened.

Michael had lived as one of the Darkyn since his human death in the fourteenth century. Human blood was their only nourishment, but over time he and his kind had learned that they did not have to kill. Taking small amounts of blood allowed them to survive, and held off the madness of thrall and the mind-destroying rapture it induced in their victims. It also preserved the lives of the humans upon whom they fed, for one had to drain a body of all its blood to satisfy thrall.

"She should have died five days ago," he told Phillipe, who had followed him out. "I took her. I gave her the rapture and I took her." He could still taste her. "Or was it all an illusion?"

"No, Master."

If his attack had not destroyed her body, then the rapture would erase her mind. He looked at his seneschal, who was wiping the last traces of blood from his nose. "I should not have struck you. Forgive me."

"It is nothing." And it was. Like him, Phillipe healed instantly.

"I don't understand." He regarded his roses, and realized he would be able to paint again. Alexandra had not only restored his vision; she had given him back his hands, his art. "How can she still be alive?"

"I do not know, Master."

A terrible fear rose inside him. If Alexandra survived exposure to Darkyn blood, then she was the first human being in centuries to do so. Whatever had saved her would turn her into a priceless commodity, unless he could lay claim to her first. "Who else knows?"

"Your tresora."

"Say nothing of this to anyone." He rose from the bench. "Bring Éliane back to the mansion at once, and watch her." As he strode into the house, he came to a mirror and stopped to look at himself. His nose was longer, and his jaw more defined, but his face exactly matched that of his portrait. She had given him back everything. "Make travel arrangements for me to fly to Chicago at once."

"Master, you cannot go to Chicago."

"I have no choice. It was my blood. Alexandra is my sygkenis." He turned to glare at his seneschal. "I have to get to her before she makes a full change."

Phillipe frowned. "Why?"

His seneschal had never turned a human into a monster, but Michael had. "Because she is still human enough to kill."

John blinked. Either he was having an auditory hallucination, or His Grace the archbishop of Chicago had just told him that his order had been created to protect the Catholic church against the ancient and ongoing threat of vampires.

I'm hallucinating. "Forgive me, Your Grace, did you say the maledicti are—"

"Vampires," Hightower repeated, his expression patient. "Demonic, eternally damned souls who rise from the dead to feed off the blood of the living. My order has hunted and destroyed them since the fifteenth century."

John said nothing, for there was nothing to say. He had always had great respect for the bishop, who had done so much to strengthen and maintain the faith throughout the city parishes. In a moment of cold panic, he wondered if his mentor was unbalanced, and if he should notify Hightower's superiors of this.

Oh, yes, call Rome and tell them your bishop has gone crazy. After what happened in Rio, they'll believe you, as much as you believe in vampires.

One of Hightower's wispy brown eyebrows arched. "Feeling a bit skeptical, are we?"

"I don't wish to contradict you, sir," he said, choosing his words carefully, "but to my knowledge, vampires are simply a myth. They don't exist outside folktales, lurid novels, and bad films."

"No need to apologize, my son. I thought the exact same thing before I joined the Brethren. Happily, there is proof."

He turned to look at the door. "Father Cabreri, would you join us?" To John, he said, "Carlo is also a member of my order, so he can be trusted."

Hightower's assistant came in carrying an unmarked videotape cassette and handed it to John before he took a seat to the bishop's left.

"Play that and see for yourself," Hightower told him.

He could take the tape and play it, or he could save the bishop any further embarrassment. "Your Grace, I am… flattered, but I'm not… I can't…"

"Stop sputtering and play the wretched thing, Johnny." Hightower settled back into his chair, while Cabreri selected a sandwich from the cart. "Once you've watched it, then we will talk about what you can or cannot do."