When they were alone, Richard refilled his glass and Michael's with bloodwine. Performing the task of a servant was beneath him, but it was something he had not been able to do physically in more than two hundred years. The reversal of his changeling condition often bedeviled him—it seemed it would take forever, some nights—but such small things as being able to hold the neck of a wine bottle or the stem of a goblet gave him a great deal of secret pleasure.
"You appear much improved, my lord," Cyprien said as he took the glass Richard had filled. "When Alexandra sees the progress you have made, she will be pleased."
"We had a brief interlude in the hall yesterday, your sygkenis and I. Pleased is not the term I would use to describe her reception of me." Richard drank a little from his glass. After two lifetimes of being forced to live on almost nothing but cat's blood, the blend still tasted odd to him. "You were rather quick to condemn defending ourselves against these Brethren attacks."
"I would welcome a proposal for an intelligent defense, my lord," Cyprien said. "As I will, as soon as I hear one."
Richard had long regarded Michael Cyprien as the son he would never have. He knew that he indulged the other man's temper and independence too often. Sometimes, as today, the fleece of Michael's diplomacy did not always conceal the wolf beneath it.
"You should remember the purpose of this gathering is to come to a unified decision," he chided. "Six for and one against does not make a consensus. But perhaps you have lived too long in a democracy."
Cyprien put down his glass. "I cannot agree to blindly endorse the opinions of the majority. However inconvenient my opinions are, they should be at least regarded as equal in value to those of the others."
Richard sat down. "I forget how little time you actually spent in my courts. Politics are not about what is fair or just or even logical. They are the tools of those who wish to acquire influence, power, and control. Someday you will be made high lord after me. How will you rule over all the Kyn if you are obsessed with making things equal and honest and forthright?"
"I have no desire for your throne, my lord," Cyprien said stiffly. "I am content with my rule, such as it is."
Richard was amused. "That saucy wench has done more than stolen your heart. She has swept away all of your grand ambitions as well. Whatever you may say, I intend to formally name you as my heir. I cannot do that if you have turned against all of my other seigneurs."
Cyprien inclined his head. "Then I think you must choose another successor, my lord."
"You have ruled over your lords paramount in America with skill and imagination. You have not hesitated to take up the sword and lead your warriors to battle when peaceful measures have failed. You did it in New Orleans against Stoss, and again in South Florida when Farel went mad and Lucan attempted to carry out my orders and assassinate me." Richard stretched his mouth in an approximation of a human smile. "You have the spine for it, Michael."
Someone chuckled. "But not the belly."
Richard turned to see that two Kyn had entered the room. One, a green-eyed hunter dressed in leathers and carrying a motorcycle helmet, smiled at them. His companion, a fresh-faced girl with a head full of silvery white curls, eyed them with more reserve.
"Gabriel, Nicola." Michael went to them, embracing his old childhood friend before turning and bowing to his sygkenis. "Braxtyn told us to expect you in a few days."
"We had to get our cargo out of Spain," Nick said, turning to meet Richard's gaze. "You're looking better, Vampire King."
"Thank you, my dear." Since Richard's wife had butchered Nicola Jefferson's parents as well as changed the young human to Darkyn, he did not object to her informal address. "How many were you able to recover?"
"Fourteen," Gabriel said. "One died during the crossing. Another three may not survive the night."
"They're all in pretty bad shape." Nick tucked her hands in her black leather jacket. "They were burned out in France, but couldn't make it any farther than the north of Spain. They weren't there three days before the brothers caught up with them and did it again."
"The Brethren tracked them to the stronghold in Cadiz where they were taking refuge," Gabriel explained.
"How did they find them so quickly?" Cyprien asked.
"I think they're using Kyn trackers," Nick said before Gabriel could answer. She glanced at him. "Baby, I know you want us all to be one big, happy, loyal family, but it's the only explanation. How else could they find them that fast?"
Gabriel sighed. "As much as I dislike it, I must agree with Nicola. These hunters are now moving as quickly as we do. They go from one stronghold to another without deviation."
That the Brethren could hunt as swiftly as his two best trackers disturbed Richard deeply. He knew the order imprisoned and tortured Kyn; he and Gabriel had personally suffered that horrendous ordeal. They had also used torture and blackmail to pervert a few Kyn into voluntarily collaborating with them, and even killing for them, as they had Thierry Durand's wife, Angelica.
"We will speak with the survivors," Cyprien said. "If the zealots are using our own kind to hunt us, some of them may have been recognized."
"There's something else you should hear," Nick said. "We grabbed one of the brothers from the cell in Madrid to find out if there were any plans to move on other strongholds in Spain or Portugal. He wasn't able to hold out under the influence like most of them can. He told Gabriel some interesting stuff."
"After I bespelled him, he gave us the locations he knew were targeted for attack, and then he began raving. He spoke of a plot to bring down our leaders," Gabriel said. "When I asked him who they planned to kill, he named you, my lord. You and every one of your seigneurs."
Chris hadn't expected to sleep through the day, or to wake up alone, but when she turned her head she saw twilight through the windows and the other half of the bed empty. Her head told her she hadn't been drugged, but the duvet and the bedsheets were gone, and someone had taken down the curtains and left the windows bare.
He wouldn't leave me here, not if I could just get dressed and …
The missing bedsheets and curtains suggested that he'd not only left her, he'd made sure she couldn't follow him.
Chris got up and went from room to room, just to be sure. Her torn clothes, along with every curtain, towel, sheet, and piece of clothing the signorina owned, had vanished from the apartment.
Still naked, Chris walked back into the bedroom to check the closet. That was when she spotted a folded piece of paper tucked under the base of the bedside lamp. "He wouldn't." She pulled it out and unfolded it.
I'll be back with the manuscript by midnight, love. Save the next dance for me. R.
Chris tore up the note and flung the pieces on the bare mattress.
Robin had done more than leave her naked and alone, she discovered as she went to the phone and found it dead, the connector wires gone. He'd also rearmed the security system—the one to which only he had the codes—and taken the cases he'd brought from the airport with him.
He'd been so confident that she wouldn't get out of the apartment that he'd left the signorina's laptop computer there. She immediately tried to access the Internet, but found he'd removed those connection cords as well.
"You think of everything, don't you, smart guy." Chris pulled up the log-in file and saw that that he hadn't erased the Web pages he'd accessed while using it. "Or maybe you didn't." Chris pulled up directions to a costume shop, directions on traveling by car from Rome to Venice, and a map of the latter city, with a red-starred address that appeared to be a private home. She printed out each page on the signorina's smart little ink-jet.
"Why do you need a costume to go to Venice?" She tossed aside the pages and rested her throbbing head against her palms. "And why would you leave me here in Rome?"
It had to be the phone call he'd taken last night before they'd gotten into their wrestling match. Someone had made arrangements to meet him—maybe in costume, maybe at this house in Venice.
Chris went into the kitchen to splash her hot face with some water. Robin had left on the signorina's graceful bistro table a plate of sliced semolina bread, a slice of softened Brie, and plump red grapes next to a bottle of superb Italian wine and a cut-crystal glass. As a final, rather romantic touch, he'd placed a silver bud vase with a single pink rose in it beside the plate.
Chris stood and stared at the food without seeing it, and then plucked the rose from the bud vase and twirled it between her fingers before she brought it to her nose. "You may think you're slick, Magic Man, but you're not a woman, and you never spent a year at Quantico."
From the log-off annotation on the computer, Robin had a half-hour head start on her, which didn't give her a lot of time. Chris showered first, sluicing off with her hands the excess water from her body before using the signorina's handheld hair dryer on her skin as well as her head. She then marched into the kitchen and grimly enjoyed the light meal he'd left for her.
When she finished eating, she scouted through the apartment again, searching expertly to be sure he had removed all of the clothing before returning to the closet. The signorina's expensive leather purses caught her eye, but none of them were large enough to take apart and make into any sort of garment without a sewing machine, and there was none to be found in this place.
Do you sew, Clarice?
She didn't sew, but she loved fashion design, and had watched every episode of Project Runway for the last four seasons. As a result Chris knew a dozen ways to make clothing out of the unlikeliest materials.
The signorina had been wearing a silk scarf over her hair; Chris was betting that it was a regular habit of hers to protect her 'do whenever she went out in her convertible. Just as Chris's mom had.
Just as some women wouldn't leave home without makeup in their purse, Beth Renshaw had always carried a scarf with her, no matter where she went.