Incarnatio (11 page)

Jamys took his hand from
the hilt of his blade and walked slowly to her, stopping a foot away to drop
to his knees.

“Do you come to beg for
mercy?” she asked, coming to stand over him. “Or do you wish me to give you
back that noisy mortal I took from you? I have not finished playing with her
yet. In fact, I have tried to get into her for almost a day now, and still,
she resists me. I think I will designate her to serve as my chief form. This
female” –she gestured at herself— “is too enamored of men.”

Out of the corner of his
eye he saw Chris being dragged toward the dance floor, but kept his head
down and put his hand over his mouth in a plaintive gesture.

“Yes, I forgot, you are a
mute. Have I ever told you how attractive I find that in a man?” Luce
snapped her fingers. “Bring her to him.”

The mortals holding Chris
forced her across the floor and down on her knees beside him. As soon as
they released her, Jamys took hold of her hand. She turned her head to stare
at him, and then looked up at Luce.

“Lord Durand wishes to
give you his oath,” Chris said, her voice quivering over each word. She
swallowed and shook her head. “He say that he will serve you faithfully.” To
Jamys she said, “How can you be such a traitor? You know what she is – what
she does to humans – what she wants to do to me.”

“What I shall do.” Luce
giggled. “I must say, I find this offer quite intriguing, seeing as Lord
Durand came here to kill me.”

Jamys tightened his grip
on Chris’s hand.

“Lord Durand knows you
have the power of incarnatio, and cannot be slain through your servants,”
Chris replied. Tears streaked down her face. “But mortals can only protect
you so much. You have no Kyn servant to watch your back and keep you safe
from the likes of Lord Lucan. Lord Durand offers to serve as your
seneschal.”

“I do not believe it.”
Luce clamped her hand over Chris’s face, holding her mouth open, and
releasing a small tendril of red mist from her own lips. The girl moaned as
the mist entered her mouth, and then just as abruptly withdrew. “You speak
the truth.” Luce frowned at Jamys. “You would give me your oath and your
life.”

Jamys nodded.

Luce snapped out her arm.
“Give me a sword.” When one was placed in her hand, she brought it over
Jamys’s head as if she meant to decapitate him. Then, with a flash of
copper, she touched the blade to one of his shoulders and then the other.

“Speak the oath,” she
said.

Through Chris Jamys gave
her his oath of service, pledging to serve her for the remainder of his
life. Chris fell to the floor by the time she finished, panting with the
strain of serving as his conduit. She only looked at Jamys when he wrapped
his hand around her ankle and gave her his final command.

Luce held out her hand
and helped Jamys to his feet. “I have never had a seneschal,” she whispered
in delight. “We will have so much fun together.”

Glass splintered, and
Jamys looked over Luce’s shoulder to see webs of cracks spreading out over
the ballroom’s windows.

“Your first task is at
hand, seneschal,” Luce told him. “It seems Lord Lucan has escaped my
children at his club, and comes here to murder me. You will kill him.”

Jamys took position in
front of Luce and scanned the room. The mortals parted, and the suzerain
appeared. He was not armed, but he had removed his gloves, and there was
death in his glittering silver eyes.

“Get out of my way, boy,”
Lucan said as he strode onto the floor, heading for Luce.

Now was the only moment
he had left, Jamys knew, and he cast down the sword Luce had given to him,
turning to cradle her face between his hands.

The three words he
uttered were barely whispers, but she heard them. “Send her out.”

Luce shrieked, tearing
away from him and falling back over the trunk. The red cloud erupted from
her like boiling steam, rising to hang above them in the air.

All around Jamys, the
possessed mortals began making ugly, angry sounds as they crowded in on him.
He ignored their anger as he went to the next human nearest to him, put his
hands on the boy’s shoulders, and repeated the command. Someone clawed at
Jamys’s back, but the boy coughed, forcing the red mist out of his lungs.
Jamys moved to the next mortal, and the next, and each time he commanded
them with his talent, their bodies purged the red mist.

By this time the other
mortals were stumbling over each other trying to get at him. He shrugged
them off, but he knew it would take too long to touch each human before the
Kyn possessing them stirred them into a killing rage.

“Jamys, I got it.” Chris
dragged in the fire hose he had sent her to retrieve, and turned it on,
spraying the ones he hadn’t touched with water.

Jamys knelt in the
puddle, drew on every ounce of strength he had left, and placed his hands in
the water. The hunter inside him knew how everything was connected by water,
and the Kyn in him hoped that with the right focus it could be used as
another conduit. He imagined his talent like electricity, and sent it
crackling through the water as he shouted his final command in a clear, loud
voice. “Send her out.”

Every human in the room
collapsed, and a thick cloud of red mist rose to join with the immense mass
hovering over them. As the last of it rose, Samantha appeared and swept her
scarred hand through it. She turned to Lucan. “The trunk.”

Lucan strode over and
yanked off the lid, and Jamys staggered over to help him. Inside the small
space was something at first glance that looked like a child. Its wasted
limbs were curled up in a fetal position, and long white hair veiled its
body. The stench of rotting flesh was so thick that Samantha made gagging
sounds. The face, that of an incredibly ancient old woman, wrinkled as the
shriveled lips stretched into an ugly smile. The eyes, red as blood, opened
and stared up at Lucan.

“I thought she was
supposed to be young and beautiful from all the blood baths,” Samantha
muttered, covering her nose.

“She was,” Lucan said.
“Before she was walled away from mortals for three years.” He addressed the
old woman. “You used your own blood to escape your prison. You sent it out
through the windows and the cracks, and put it into mortals so you could
control them.”

“Just as it once kept my
flesh sound and sweet,” her withered voice said. “I rewarded all the mortals
who came to me. I made them my children. They always want something, and
they know only I can give it to them.”

“Get back.” Lucan shoved
Jamys away, and then thrust his hand around the monstrous thing’s scrawny
neck. “This is what they all want, old woman.”

The trunk exploded
outward, disintegrating around the body inside as it blew apart. The cloud
above the room went still, and then came down like blood rain, soaking
everyone and everything.

Chris turned the hose
first on the humans, washing the countess’s blood from their bodies. Then
she held the hose up so that it showered down on her, Jamys, Lucan and
Samantha like rain. The blood slowly thinned until all that remained as a
large pool of watery pink.

Everywhere a piece of the
countess’s body landed, the flesh blackened and fell apart into the water.
Within a few minutes all that remained of her were a few puddles of wet ash.

Jamys went to Chris,
taking the hose from her and closing the valve before pulling her into his
arms. He held her for a long time, just like that, their wet clothes
dripping between them, their arms tight.

When he could manage it,
he held her at arm’s length. “Thank you,” he croaked.

“You’re welcome.” She
grinned up at him. “My lord.”

#

Samantha took Luce
Figueroa to the best private rape treatment center in Miami, where she was
admitted for her physical and spiritual injuries. Carmen and Eduardo
accepted Sam’s explanation that their daughter had been abducted and
drugged, and with a little nudge from
l’attrait
, Eduardo
even forgot that Luce had attacked him and broken his arm.

Luce, however, felt
differently about her experiences. “Don’t make me forget what happened,” she
pleaded when Sam came to see her in her room. “I know what you are, and that
you can, but please, don’t.”

Sam felt perplexed. “Why
would you want to remember?”

“So I don’t ever let it
happen again.”

She couldn’t allow a
mortal to retain memories that might expose the Kyn, but she could offer her
some comfort before she removed them. “You didn’t let this happen to you,
sweetie. You were a victim.” She held the girl as she wept, and then gently
compelled her to forget about the countess and everything that had happened
since she had been abducted. She then spoke to the unit’s psychiatrist, and
made sure that Luce would be treated for sexual addiction as well as her
other injuries.

Lucan called for several
buses to transport the mortals from the Sunset Sails to a private compound
in Miami he had set up to provide temporary sanctuary for the Kyn refugees
fleeing the Brethren in Europe. Rafael travelled with them, and promised to
see to it that each survivor was returned to his country and family, as soon
their memories were wiped clean and they were provided with a plausible
explanation for the length of their disappearance.

The ownership of the
Sunset Sails was quickly transferred from the Hungarian holding company that
had purchased it over the summer to one of Lucan’s private corporations. He
hired a demolition company and scheduled the old hotel to be torn down
within the month. As soon as it was, he planned to have the rubble taken by
cargo ship to be dumped in a deep trench in the Atlantic, and then have his
landscapers go in and burned over and plowed under the property several
times, just to be sure.

Jamys had a great deal of
explaining to do, but the strain of speaking kept his voice at a whisper for
another day. The following evening he was able to sit down with Lucan and
Samantha and explain what he had done.

“I convinced Chris that I
meant what I had her say for me,” he said. “That is why the countess
believed me, because Chris believed me.”

“She’s not that easy to
fool,” Samantha said. “You must be one hell of an actor.”

Jamys thought of his
mother, who had allied herself with the Brethren but lied to her husband and
family to make them believe her still loyal to the Kyn. “’Tis a family
skill, I think. One I hope I will not have to use very often.”

“How did you know the
mortals would obey you and expel the countess?” Lucan wanted to know.

“I already knew that they
could not be compelled by
l’attrait
,” he
admitted. “But while she occupied their bodies, she was not actually part of
the flesh. My talent compels the body as much as the mind, so I gambled that
their bodies would obey me.” He noticed Chris standing beyond the tables.
From her expression he knew she had heard every word. “Would you excuse me?”

His friend folded her
arms as he walked over to her. “You lied to me.”

“If I had told you my
true intentions, she would have discovered them. The ruse was necessary.” He
took her hands in his. “Am I forgiven?”

“You rescued me and
almost four hundred other zombies, plus Lucan and Sam, and you have the
sexiest voice I’ve ever heard from a guy..” She cocked her head. “You’ll be
lucky if I don’t turn into a love-crazed groupie and start stalking you.”

Jamys kissed her
forehead. “I can think of many fates much worse than that.”

“Where is that damned
assassin, and what has he done with my son?” a low, rough voice called out.
Thierry Durand stalked into the club, followed by his exasperated sygkenis,
Jema Shaw, who had to trot to keep up with him.

“Suzerain Lucan,” Jema
said, dropping a fast curtsey. “I apologize in advance for my lord.”

“She apologizes before he
messes up.” Samantha leaned over. “Now might be a good time to learn how to
do that.”

“On your behalf, or my
own?” he countered.

“You.” Thierry stopped in
front of the table and pointed at Lucan. “You are a ruling lord now. What do
you imagine that means?”

Lucan stroked his chin
thoughtfully. “I can have you thrown out of here, or into the dungeon – if I
had a dungeon – or–“

“It means that for once
in your miserable life, you have responsibilities,” Thierry snarled. “I send
my only child here for sanctuary, so that he might rest and make peace with
himself, and what do you do? You nearly have him killed by a mad old Kyn and
her army of revenants.”

Lucan glanced at
Samantha. “I suppose I did.”

“You admit it?” Thierry
roared, pounding the table with his fist. “To my face?”

“But of course.” He rose
to his full height, which put him on the Frenchman’s eye level. “We have so
little in the way of proper entertainment for visiting Kyn. I thought
slaying a monster would do the boy some good. I’ll have you know that he had
a marvelous time and wishes to visit us again next Christmas.”