John Keller had lost weight and grown a beard in the months since Michael had last seen him in Chicago. His skin was also much darker. If not for the regular photos of him sent weekly to Michael, he might not have recognized him at all.
Although Alex was unaware of it, Michael had kept her brother under surveillance since he had left Chicago. He knew exactly how John Keller had made his way across the country, and that he had had no contact with the Brethren. He had not expected to see him in Florida, but doubtless a report was waiting for Michael back in New Orleans detailing how John had come to be here.
Alex's brother recognized him from three feet away and closed the distance between them. "Cyprien. What are you doing in Florida? Is Alexandra…" He looked around. "Is my sister with you?"
"She was abducted by the Kyn who arranged all this." Michael doubted Lucan had recruited Keller; John avoided the Darkyn as much as he dodged the Brethren. "Why are you here?"
"The Brethren," he said simply. "They know about this place. Something is going to happen tonight. Something bad. I'm here to play mediator, I guess."
Michael clamped down on his irritation. He didn't have time for the Brethren to interfere in this; it was Kyn business. "This could easily become a full-scale melee," he told John, who had been witness to one such battle in New Orleans. "You cannot negotiate peace between us. If you are intelligent, you'll seek safety."
"My sister is involved, and a friend of mine killed himself because of this." John thrust his hands in his pockets. "I'm not going anywhere."
Burke escorted Alisa up to the penthouse suite. She had dressed exactly as Lucan had instructed her, in her black patent-leather dominatrix costume, and carried a coiled black whip and various instruments of torture.
"I've missed you," she said, hurrying up to him. "Do we have time for a quickie before the show? Who am I going to flog?"
"Sit down and be quiet," Lucan told her.
Surprised, Alisa did just that.
"I can dress you in your armor in a minute or less," Burke said. "Please, if you do not wear it… at least take this much advantage, master."
His tresora thought he was going to lose. They all did. Lucan didn't know whether to be annoyed or depressed.
"Thank you for your concern, Herbert, but armor will only weigh me down." He finished buttoning his full-sleeved white shirt and pulled his boots up over the calves of his dark, fitted trousers. "You have served me well, and I have written a letter to your family commending your service. You should be placed with another Kyn lord within the year." He smiled at the other man's dumbfounded expression. "I would suggest somewhere away from the various allergens that torment you here in Florida."
Burke's stammered response was lost, drowned out by the sounds of heavy footsteps, a woman shouting, and chains rattling.
"Put me down," Lucan heard Alex yell as Rafael carried her into the suite. "I mean it. The minute I can see you again, bright boy, I'm going to sink fangs in you."
Alisa perked up. "Who's that?" The moment Rafael came into view, she squealed and covered her eyes. "I can't see."
"Join the club," Alex snarled. "Lucan? I know you're here; I can smell you. Your insidious plot is safe; I'm not going to run away wrapped up in chains. So tell the lightbulb to turn off the high beams, will you?"
"Rafael," Lucan said.
"Forgive me, my lord"—he set Alex down with a grunt—"but she is very strong, and very determined." He wiped drying blood from his nose. "She did not wish to wear the gown you provided for her."
"You got that right." Alex's dazzled eyes cleared and she looked down in disgust at the cloud of white silk floating around her. "I've been able to dress myself since I was two." She looked at Lucan. "Aren't you pretty tonight." Her gaze shifted to Alisa. "Ick."
Alisa returned the sneer with interest. "Let me whip her, Lucan. I won't charge extra."
"I liked the cop better." Alex looked around the suite. "Is Michael here? You haven't started this circus act yet, have you?"
"The seigneur was just seen entering the club." Lucan had watched him by remote monitor, gauging Cyprien's emotional state. With a final bit of prodding, his old enemy would descend into a blood rage.
"I'll talk to him for you," Alex said quickly. "I know he'll listen to me, and we can settle this thing without chopping off heads and arms and stuff."
Lucan gazed down at her. She was so young, so determined. "It's too late for that, Alexandra. Events have been set into motion now that must be resolved." He took her arm. "Rafael, alert the men downstairs. Come, Alisa. It's time to start the show."
Lucan had Burke take Alisa down the stairwell, while he and Alex rode alone in the elevator. The band playing onstage was so loud that the mirrored tiles above the musicians' heads vibrated in time with the music.
"I've been thinking about the changelings," Alex said unexpectedly on the way down to the club level. "You've been near Faryl when he was human and after he changed. Has his scent changed?"
Lucan shrugged. "What has Faryl's scent to do with anything?"
"It could prove my theory about the changelings," Alex told him. "If they go through this physical change because of their blood choices, it must mean the pathogen is adapting them to its new diet."
"Perhaps." Lucan didn't care about the changelings. After tonight, someone else would have to hunt them down and kill them. "Faryl's scent didn't change. It disappeared. He doesn't smell like anything."
"Anything that would appeal to a human nose," she corrected him. "You said it yourself: You are what you eat. Or you adapt to hunt what you eat. Think about it." She shifted, making the chains around her rattle. "The Kyn are uniformly strong, fast, and very good-looking. You don't age and your wounds heal incredibly fast. You have l'attrait to lure humans to you. That all has to come from the pathogen, because you didn't have those things as humans. The pathogen also needs human blood as nourishment, so it makes sense that it would cause the specific mutations that it does."
"So Kyn change into monsters when they feed on animal blood for what reason?" he asked. "To scare their prey to death?"
"Camouflage, Lucan. The pathogen can't shrink you, but it can make you attractive to what you live on. If it's human beings, it gives you a pretty face, a pretty smell, and other perks. If it's snakes, it makes you a snake that is beautiful to other snakes."
Lucan led her out of the elevator. "I fail to see your point."
"Once a changeling begins feeding on animals, they never go back to using humans again, do they?"
He shook his head. "The blood makes them sick."
She smiled. "I knew it." She frowned as Lucan picked her up and carried her into the backstage area, where Burke and Alisa were waiting. "What are you doing?"
"I'm carrying out my insidious plot." He set her down in front of the cross and began removing the chains around her. "I don't want to do this to you, Alexandra, but it has to look real. It shouldn't take long."
Alex looked from him to the eight-foot-high cross to Alisa, who had uncoiled her whip and was making some practice lashes. "You can't be serious."
Chapter 24
Sam saw Lucan's guards out in force around the entire block surrounding Infusion, but Chris's disguise was so convincing that she might have been invisible.
Dozens of goths waited patiently to get into Infusion. Chris claimed those who followed the lifestyle disdained conformity, but Sam noticed a number of the girls dressed in dark variations on an early Madonna-like theme: sexy tattered clothes, dozens of bracelets and necklaces, pouty makeup, and black-dyed hair spiked in similar styles.
"They're posers," Chris told her, following the direction of her gaze. "They want people to look at them and think they're goth."
Sam looked at her young neighbor. "While you… ?"
Chris grinned. "Don't care what people think. I'm art."
The band had already begun playing by the time they reached the entry, where the bouncer was interested only in collecting the steep cover charge. Sam was about to pay it when Adam Suarez came out of nowhere and told the bouncer to let them through.
"You know that guy?" Chris asked Adam in a loud voice as they walked into the crowded club.
"He's a friend." Adam glanced at Sam and bent over to say to her, "You look different."
Without his sunglasses, so did he. His eyes weren't the usual dark brown most Hispanics possessed, but pitch-black with flecks of yellow so bright he looked as if someone had sprinkled them with glitter. The citrus cologne he wore was a little overpowering, too.
"Thanks." The music was too loud for conversation, so Sam left it at that and started looking for Lucan. She didn't see him or Alex, but there were plenty of other Kyn present. She recognized some of them from Lucan's memories.
"There's nowhere to sit," Chris complained. She brightened when she saw three girls waving frantically at her. "There are some of my friends—do you need me to hang with you guys?"
Sam shook her head. "Just remember what I told you. If it gets bad—"
"I know; get out." Chris winked and started elbowing her way over to her friends.
"Why do you go by Adam?" Sam asked Suarez as they circled the edge of the crowd.
"It's my name."
"No, it's not, Rafael." Over the jumping, gyrating bodies in the crowd, she saw Lucan's men gathering toward the front of the stage.
He stopped and stared at her, genuinely shocked. "How do you know who I am?"
"I didn't until you took off the shades." She had to shout the rest to be heard over the band's screaming finish. "You never wear them around him, seneschal."