The girl stabbed the air with her middle finger. "Piss off."
"I don't mean to bother you," Leary protested with a phony, genial heartiness. "I'm looking for someone to share what I've got."
"I'm waiting for me boyfriend," she said, checking her cheap wristwatch. "He sees you here, he'll rip off your arm and crack your skull with it."
She sounded so real, but then, she always did.
"Getting a bit late." Leary glanced around. "Maybe he's not coming. You have something if he doesn't show up?"
"He wouldn't… Ah, fuck it." She wrapped her arms around her middle. "How much then?"
"No charge but the pleasure of your company." And that soft, flabby throat between his hands.
"You sods all want something," the girl said bitterly. "What is it then? A knobber in the backseat once I'm cranked, is that it? Or you take me back to your crib so your mates can have turns?"
Leary shook his head. "I like to see a bird get off, but I don't have to. You watch my back; I watch yours." He showed her two twists of heroin that he'd taken off the dealer. "A snort's better than a needle; you know that. Dirty needles'll kill you."
"Yeah. Got me friend Jamie just last winter." The sight of the drugs made her eyes shine. "Yeah, yeah, okay. But me first."
She was going through with it to the end. She probably thought to take him once he'd snorted the heroin. The stupid bitch.
"I'm a gentleman," he told her, gesturing toward the MINI. "We'll do it right here."
She took out a set of keys, and then stopped abruptly. "You're like that Percy in Silence of the Lambs, aren't you?" She started to back away. "You're not cutting me up like clothes—"
"Shut up." Leary caught her by the hair in midstep, ramming her face into the side of the MINI, breaking her nose and stunning her. "You think I don't know who you are?" When she sagged, he dragged her around the car and down into the shadows of the alley.
Rats squealed and disappeared into the nearest cranny. Leary hoisted the girl under his arm, clamping her to his side as he looked for anyone sleeping rough in the alley. He needed a dark place where the shadows ran deep, where no one walked and no one looked—
"By doze," she said, spitting blood out and twisting in the circle of his arm. "By doze, hugh broke it."
"Quiet." Leary pulled his elbow in tight and stepped into a narrow space behind a row of rubbish cans. "You talk too much." He dropped her onto the ground, pinning her wrists under his shoes. "You always talked too much." Blood roared in his ears as he checked the front and back of the alley for anyone she might command to stop him. "No one can hear you now."
Leary had to kneel in filth as he straddled her, but it seemed only fitting. The alley sullied his trouser legs as much as her neck contaminated his hands.
"This won't kill you," he told the girl as he cut off her air, and ignored her fingers clawing at his sleeves. Her pretense didn't fool him. "I know it won't. There are too many of you. But you'll not use this body for your evil anymore."
He had almost choked the life out of her when honeysuckle filled the alley, and a hand snatched him up and held him over the coughing, thrashing girl.
"What have you done to her?" Phillipe demanded.
Paralyzed, Leary could only look down at his dangling feet and the one he should have killed. He had not been cautious enough. He had failed. If he had been able to move, he would have torn Phillipe's heart from his chest with his bare hand.
Now was not the time to attack. He had to be more cunning. "I don't know," he blubbered through forced tears. "She wanted money. She threatened to kill me."
Phillipe put him down, although Leary still could not move. The vampire reached for the girl, but she crawled backward, shaking her head and covering her bruised throat with one hand. She didn't seem to be able to speak.
"You cannot attack people like this," Phillipe told him. "Do you understand?"
You must fear me.
You must not fear the Kyn.
Take them.
You will not harm them.
Kill the women.
You cannot attack.
Something tore inside Leary's head. "The master said to take them and I obeyed."
Phillipe grabbed him by the throat, and for a moment Leary thought the young vampire might snap his neck. "We are done here."Leary thought he would go into the dark place where it was safe, and never come back, but then all the voices came together into one. He feared, but he did not have to fear. He took, but he did not have to be taken. He killed, but he was not to be killed.
The one voice kindly explained everything to Leary as his body began walking on its own toward the front of the alley.
There was so much to do, but for tonight his work was done.
A soft blue-and-rose glow lured Gabriel from his rest, filling his eyes with the hazy colors of a sunset sky. He reached for Nicola, but found only soft moss and leaves under his hand.
It wasn't until he automatically blinked and experienced a momentary return of the blackness that he realized that the colors he saw in his mind were not coming through the shared vision of the many, but from his own eyes.
It cannot be. Benait blinded me months ago.
Gabriel stood, turning and seeing the blue-and-rose blur turn to brown and green. He could not make out shapes, but the colors of the forest were there, just as he remembered them. He brought up his hand in front of his face, added the mottled green paleness of his own flesh to his vision.
Unconvinced, he covered his eyes with one hand, shadowing them. The light dimmed, and the blurred colors appeared only through the separations of his fingers. As he stared, the blurring sharpened a single degree.
His ruined eyes were healing.
"Nicola." Aware that the Brethren may have returned to the house, he didn't shout. "Nicola, where are you?"
He had to tell her. He had to see, even in a blur, her face.
The only answer he received was the calls of songbirds.
Gabriel stepped out of the cobwebbed tent and halted just outside, shocked anew. In his dream Nicola had used a stiletto to cut her way out, and he had just stepped through that opening.
He nearly panicked, until he remembered waking near dawn and checking her legs. She had not been injured. She was not hurt, and he was healing. No more would he have to rely on the many to be his eyes. He could be free of them and look upon the world once more, a whole man.
I could go to Ireland and watch the look on the high lord's face when I present myself to him. I can see if Richard knew that I was left to rot in the hands of the Brethren.
Gabriel couldn't summon the cold anger he had felt for so long toward the Kyn. Benait had lied to him; that much was obvious from Dalente's letters. Had Richard believed him dead, he would have had no reason to continue searching for him. He would never know what had happened until he spoke to the high lord himself.
He had to know the extent of Angelica's betrayal, too. If his sister had to be brought to justice, he would be the one to do it.
Restless now, Gabriel turned and breathed in deeply.
Making love to Nicola had drenched him with her scent; he could track her in his sleep. He bent down and found her trail leading away from the tent and toward the house.
Why did she go up there?
Using his blurred vision and his memories of the forest allowed him to follow her scent path, but it veered away toward the back of the house rather than the front. Weeds had nearly overgrown the irregular sheets of slate Dalente had placed as a walkway through the garden, but Gabriel remembered the way it curled through the flower beds. Nicola had followed it, too, up to the old well by his tresora's toolshed.
Gabriel smelled blood, and saw a pile of white and red left by the base of the well stones. He reached down and picked up a handful of torn, damp T-shirt fabric. He pressed his face against it to be sure, but he knew from his dream the blood on it was Nicola's.
A dream that had not been a dream at all.
He found her leather jacket left draped on the edge of the well by the bucket pulley. He ran his hands over it, feeling again the bulges in the lining. Yesterday he had not disturbed them, but now he found the folded seams that opened them and slowly went through the contents of each.
Nicola carried several rolls of euros, rail passes or tickets of some sort, and a folded book of traveler's checks, but no coins or wallet. One small, hard plastic case contained a dozen slim, bent metal instruments Gabriel guessed were lock picks. He also found a canister of spray lubricant, a pair of folding binoculars, and a long, flat piece of metal that he had seen on television as something car thieves employed. From the last pocket he pulled a bundle of identification cards, passports, and work visas.
Nowhere did Gabriel find the film, lenses, or any other camera accessories he had expected.
It was not photography or random accident that had brought her to the chateau. Nicola carried too many specific tools for him to believe that anymore. It seemed that she was the human thief that his interrogators in Paris had spoken of—the thief whom the Brethren had been trying to trap by using him as bait.
Why did she deceive me?
Gabriel carefully returned the items he had examined precisely where he had found them, and put the jacket and the bloodied fabric back where Nicola had left them. He turned and silently followed his own path to the spider-silk tent.
What else has she stolen?
Now that he knew this about her, some things made more sense. Why she dyed her hair: to alter her appearance; she likely did it regularly. Why she traveled by motorcycle: to have the means to get away quickly; a motorcycle could weave in and out of traffic and go places off-road where cars could not.
But what did she steal? Did she take relics and antiques from these churches and chapels she had claimed to be photographing?
Why had she kept this from him?
I would not tell a stranger that I was a thief, he admitted to himself. But after yesterday and last night, are we still strangers?