by Lynn Viehl
“Come on.” Rowan linked arms with her. “We’ll go keep the boys company.” She looked back over her shoulder. “If you feel the urge to change, I left some clothes for you upstairs.”
Jean-Marc chuckled and blew her a kiss.
The women left the kitchen and went around the corner to the private room reserved for the chef’s table, a weekly event that Manhattan’s most devoted foodies would do anything to attend. Tonight only two men sat at the long glass table, and both were completely engrossed in a laptop showing a football game.
“Who’s winning?” Rowan asked.
“Green Bay,” Drew said absently. “Rodgers is merciless tonight.”
“For now. The Patriots will have no difficulty coming from behind,” Samuel assured him before he smiled up at Charlotte. “They’re late.”
She sat down beside him and helped herself to one of Rowan’s delicious amuse bouches. “Second thoughts, maybe?”
“Payback,” Drew said. “We made them wait first. For months.” The sound of the front doorbell made him straighten. “At least they don’t hold a grudge.” He switched off the laptop and stowed it under his chair before he shrugged into his jacket.
“I’ll show them in.” Rowan sauntered out.
Samuel took Charlotte’s hand in his. “Genaro is dead, Kirchner is in prison, and Delaporte has destroyed everything that might expose us.”
She smiled a little. “You mean, stop worrying about something as simple and easy as meeting the vampires whose DNA was used to change us into superhumans.”
“We were created to hunt them down and kill them,” Samuel said softly. “I think we can hold our own.”
They both looked up as Rowan returned with three strangers. One, a broad, scarred-faced man with light eyes and an impassive expression, surveyed the room before stepping to one side. Behind him a petite, chestnut-haired woman stood beside a man who could have been Jean-Marc Dansant’s twin brother.
Samuel rose to his feet. “Welcome, Mr. Cyprien, Dr. Keller, Mr. Navarre.”
“Monsieur.” Cyprien inclined his head, and then studied Charlotte and Drew for a moment. “We are happy that you finally agreed to this meeting.”
“It’s Alexandra,” the woman said to Samuel. “And we’re not that happy. You wouldn’t even tell us your names.”
“I believe you already knew some of them.” Samuel gestured toward the empty chairs at the other end of the table. “Please join us.”
“We assume you can’t eat food,” Rowan said as she brought a bottle of wine to the table. “Can you handle a little overpriced merlot?”
“Thank you, no.” Cyprien took the seat directly opposite Samuel’s, but lifted his hands from the table an instant after touching it. “This is made of copper.”
“Yes, it is.” Drew took a penny from his pocket and flipped it into the air, where it hung suspended as it stretched out and became a miniature dagger. “So are most of the fixtures in this room. Which, by the way, I will not hesitate to use to skewer your immortal asses”—the little dagger flew across the room and buried itself in the wall behind Cyprien’s head—“should you try to help yourselves to some takeout.”
Alexandra burst out laughing. “God, you guys are smart.”
“We are not interested in feeding on any of you, monsieur.” Cyprien held up his palms in a gesture of surrender. “We wished only to meet our progeny.”
Charlotte scowled. “We are not your children.”
“Technically, no, you’re not,” Alexandra agreed. “We can’t have kids.”
Everyone looked over as Jean-Marc entered the room. “Ah, you have arrived. I must go soon, but I thought … I would …” He trailed off as he stared at Cyprien’s face. “Mon Dieu.”
“Guess whose DNA you got,” Rowan drawled.
Cyprien rose and slowly extended his hand. After a moment, Jean-Marc took it in his own and began speaking to him in their native language.
“Does he fuss at you for leaving your clothes on the floor?” Alexandra asked Rowan, who nodded. “Some things are genetic.” To Cyprien she said, “Quit talking in French. It’s rude to the English speakers, which is everyone else but Phillipe.”
Both men glanced at her and apologized at the same time before uttering identical chuckles.
“This is incredible.” Cyprien regarded his twin. “Are there others among you who are … like the two of us?”
“We don’t know,” Samuel said. “But it’s safe to assume there will be some Kyndred who were altered to be body doubles.” As Cyprien met his gaze, he added, “So they could assume your identities after you were killed.”
Cyprien sat back down. “We have no quarrel with you, monsieur. I wish you to understand that. We chose to intervene on your behalf in Mexico to protect you.”
“He’s telling the truth,” Charlotte murmured to Samuel.
“So you must be a mind reader. I have a similar problem, just with killers.” Alexandra’s expression turned wry. “And yes, we do have excellent hearing. If you don’t want us to hear what you whisper, you need to be about a block away.”
“What we want, Doctor, are some answers,” Charlotte said. “Why are you protecting us? Why offer to meet us? What do you really want?”
“Well, primarily we’d like to establish diplomatic relations so you don’t end up being used by our enemies as weapons against us.” Alexandra ignored the sharp sound Cyprien made. “Trust me; I have the inside track on this. I was one of you before I grew fangs.”
“You were Kyndred.” Rowan looked skeptical.
“If you don’t believe me, I’ll give you before and after blood samples.” Alexandra tapped the inside of her forearm. “For the ‘after,’ you’ll need the master of small change here to coat a syringe with copper. Nothing else penetrates our immortal asses.”
“I think any exchanges of blood should be avoided for right now,” Samuel said. “We accept that you have wanted only to protect us, but you murdered Jonah Genaro. We can’t condone or support that kind of violence.”
“Oh, so we should have just let him go on kidnapping you, and dissecting you, and using your DNA to make monsters?” Alexandra asked sweetly. She blinked as Drew slid a thick file across the table at her. “What’s this? A petition?”
“Evidence,” Drew said flatly. “Some of us have spent years compiling it. We had put together almost enough to shut down GenHance and put Genaro in prison for the rest of his life.”
Cyprien picked up the file and skimmed through it. “So you believe you do not need our protection.”
“I am saying that we never asked for it,” Samuel said softly.
Cyprien closed the folder. “Genaro’s death does not guarantee a safe future for the Kyndred or the Darkyn. For that, monsieur, we must work together.”
“Like a team?” Drew asked.
Phillipe muttered something, and Alexandra grinned. “No, pal. Like a family.” Her eyes strayed to Jean-Marc, who was shaking and groping for a chair. “Is he okay?”
Rowan swore under her breath as she went to him and helped him to sit. “He will be in a second.” She knelt beside him, holding his hands as he hunched over.
Alexandra’s eyes widened as Jean-Marc’s body began to grow larger and his long black hair receded into his skull, and she knocked over her chair getting to her feet. She reached the chef at the same moment Charlotte did.
“It’s okay,” Charlotte told her. “He doesn’t take long to change.”
“To change into what?”
“My other boyfriend,” Rowan said, sighing as the transformation ended, and a big blond man lifted his head. “Say hi, honey.”
“Hi, honey.” The big man pulled her close and gave her a lingering kiss before he looked around the room. “They the vampires?” he asked, his deep voice just as startling as his appearance.
“That’s us.” Alexandra sat back on her heels. “So he can cook and shape-shift. I’ll be damned.”
“We have a great deal to learn fr
om one another,” Cyprien said. “Perhaps that is the best place for us to begin.” He rose and walked over to Samuel, and held out his hand. “In hope that our people may someday become friends, monsieur.”
Samuel looked at Charlotte, who nodded, as did Rowan and Drew, before he took Cyprien’s hand. “You can call me Paracelsus.”
Turn the page for an excerpt from
Nightborn
Lords of the Darkyn
Coming from Signet Select in March 2012
Korvel knew the brief battles in which he had engaged had not harmed him greatly, but the poisonous effect of the copper lodged in his flesh had rendered him weak and listless. In another time he would have fought his way back to life and his place in it, but his current apathy made it a difficult thing to desire. Why leave the dull gray void in which he lay suspended, only to return to a world that no longer held any interest for him?
His dismal thoughts conjured images of the young nun with the angelic face. She had been tormented and nearly raped; she remained alone on the other side. He suspected he hadn’t killed all of the men who had attacked the château, and if they came upon her while he was helpless …
Korvel reached for consciousness, and at once the void dragged at him, becoming a sea of muck through which he waded, one infuriatingly slow step at a time. He was much weaker than he had guessed, dangerously so; if he were to awaken, it would have to be by will alone.
Once more he thought of the green-eyed angel who had tended to his wound. Whatever faith had compelled her to abandon life and serve an uncaring God, she was still an innocent. As such she needed—no, deserved—his assistance. I will go to her, and keep her safe.
He could feel her, close to him now, her presence like a muted caress. Even through the gnashing teeth of fresh pain, she calmed him. His weakness grew as his sense of her faded, and he reached out blindly, capturing her warmth and enfolding it against him. There she remained, unresisting and silent, until his thoughts dwindled and he entered a darker corner of the void to rest and heal.
Sometime later, the setting of the sun roused Korvel to consciousness. He sensed this time that he had more strength to draw on, and crossed the emptiness with only a brief effort. He felt her warmth slipping away, and opened his eyes.
Cracked hand-carved moldings framed a rough plaster ceiling spotted with small water stains and draped in one corner with the dusty remains of some long-dead spider’s trap. The soft amber light illuminating it came from fat beeswax candles set in crystal goblets half-filled with pretty pebbles and shells that had been spaced like treasures across a stone shelf. A muslin pinafore hung from the knob of a bolted door, over which a plain wooden cross had been nailed. A basket with balled wool and knitting needles sat beside a shabby tapestry chair; a chipped blue stoneware jug sat inside a matching basin in an iron stand.
He turned his head to see a small shrine built atop an old secretary: flowers and votive candles in punched-tin holders surrounding a diminutive statue of the Virgin Mary in her blue robes and white headdress. A rosary of gray stone beads and blackened silver lay draped around the base of the statue.
If this were the cloistered cell it appeared to be, then the nun had brought him to her convent. If this were a jail cell, the French police had greatly improved the living conditions within their prisons.
A flutter of fabric drew his attention to the foot of the pallet, where the nun stood with her back toward him. She was in the process of undressing, and while Korvel knew he should look away, he couldn’t stop watching her. She tugged the bloodstained gray habit over her head to reveal the long line of her spine. She tugged at the drawstring of her only undergarment, a pair of loose cotton drawers, before sliding them down her legs.
Now naked, she went to the basin stand, where she poured water from the jug into the bowl and began to wash the blood from her body.
The tightening of his muscles didn’t distract Korvel from watching her, but the knotting in his groin did. His shaft hardened and swelled.
Carnal desire racked him, demanding relief, and it stunned him. It had been so long since he had wanted any mortal female that his arousal seemed utterly alien, as if some unseen predator had burrowed under his skin.
The nun’s body beckoned to him, an oasis of pleasures yet to be had, but he could resist her by thinking of her innocence. She belonged to God, not him. It was when she took down her braids and unraveled them, combing through the long, bright strands with her fingers, that he crumpled the bed linens in his fists. Once free, her hair fell in luminous waves all the way to her hips, glinting like fiery gold in the candlelight.
Korvel had not seen a woman with such hair in centuries, not since mortal females had lived out their entire lives without once cutting a single hair from their heads.
He frowned as he saw that the light had also chased the shadows from her skin and revealed a collection of odd, pale marks all over her. The random positions of the marks and the fact that she was a nun made it highly unlikely that they were tan lines. The marks themselves formed a variety of shapes; on her left hip one narrow stripe curled like a lock of hair, but a few inches above it a broader, straight slash bisected her shoulder blade.
Only when she dried herself and went to kneel before the shrine did she come close enough for him to see the faint ridges of the marks, which made Korvel realize at last what they were.
Scar tissue. Someone had grievously abused the nun, so harshly and often that they had left her scarred from her nape to her knees.
Lust ebbed, scoured away by shock, shame, and an empathy he had never felt for a mortal of the modern world. As she took down the rosary and began murmuring her prayers, Korvel recalled the years of punishment he had once endured, the dismal human life he had never been able to forget. Small wonder she had turned her back on the world to cloister herself. Perhaps, like him, she had never received a single kindness from her birth family.
As Korvel pushed himself into a sitting position, the nun glanced over her shoulder and then kissed the rosary before replacing it. Instead of scurrying for clothing to cover her nakedness, she came to the pallet, climbing up onto it and pushing him back against the pillows.
Shocked anew, Korvel stared at her. “What are you doing?”
“Attending you.” She pushed her hair over her shoulders and produced a small folding knife, opening it and plying it against her forearm. Her body heat combined with the blood scent and slammed into him, as merciless as it was enticing.
Korvel managed to turn his head away as she brought her arm to his mouth. “No.”
“Take it.” She pressed against his cheek with her free hand, guiding his mouth along her thin skin until his lips parted.
As hot as it was luscious, her blood coursed inside him as if it were molten copper, eating away at his coldness and flaring in every shadowy corner of his soul. He wanted nothing more than to roll her beneath him and take her completely, his teeth piercing her throat, his body pushing into hers, drinking from her and moving inside her until she knew and wanted nothing but him.
He was descending into the thrall of bloodlust, which seemed as bizarre as his sudden desire for this mortal. Never had he been tempted to drain a human upon whom he fed, for he knew the act that would send them both into the nightlands. There she would die, and he would be trapped, senseless and unmoving, for days. Now at last he understood the terrible temptation of that thrall and rapture, and how it destroyed all reasoning, all will.
Korvel wrenched his mouth from her, and for an instant it was as if he tore the heart from his own chest. “Stop.”
A line formed between her brows. “Am I not to your liking?”
Her taste had nearly reduced him to a beast, not that he would frighten her by saying so. “You have given enough to restore me. That is all I can ask of you.” Because his voice sounded so harsh, he caught her hand and brought it to his lips. “I am grateful for your kindness.”
“Kindness.” She seemed bemused, and ran her finge
rtip across the tight line of his mouth, wiping away a trace of her blood. “You have a very strange way of speaking, Englishman.”
“Korvel.” He wanted to hear his name on her lips.
She tilted her head, spilling a cascade of rose-streaked gold over her bare shoulder. “I am obliged to call you ‘my lord,’ or, at the very least, ‘Captain.’ ”
He couldn’t keep his hand from brushing back the fine flax of her tresses, or from curling around her nape. “Call me any damn thing you wish,” he murmured as he brought her face down to his.
New York Times bestselling author
LYNN VIEHL
The Novels of the Kyndred
Shadowlight
With just one touch, Jessa Bellamy can see anyone’s darkest secrets. What she doesn’t know is that a biotech company has discovered her talent and intends to kill her and harvest her priceless DNA. Gaven Matthias is forced to abduct Jessa so he can protect her, but she has a hard time believing the one man whose secrets she can’t read. As a monstrous assassin closes in, Jessa will have to find another way to know if Matthias is her greatest ally—or her deadliest enemy.
Dreamveil
Rowan Dietrich grew up on the streets. Now she’s out to start anew, find a job—and keep her identity as a Kyndred secret, as well as her ability to “dreamveil” herself into the object of others’ desires. But Rowan isn’t using her gift when world-class chef Jean-Marc Dansant is stricken by her beauty and strength. And when dark secrets from her past threaten her new life and love, she realizes she can’t run forever…
Frostfire
As one of the genetically enhanced Kyndred, Lilah’s mind-reading powers make her vulnerable to a mysterious biotech company willing to murder to acquire her superhuman DNA. But her true fear may come from her own Kyndred brethren…
Available wherever books are sold or at penguin.com
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FROM NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR
LYNN VIEHL
The Novels of the Darkyn