Authors: Lynn Viehl
Since coming back to work after her second day off, however, Rowan’s behavior toward him had changed. Now he felt her watching him constantly, not to observe his cooking but to study him. Her easy, friendly manner had been replaced by a silent, edgy tension that seemed to hum in the air between them whenever she drew close. She had also begun to avoid even the slightest physical contact with him.
Dansant waited patiently for her to come to him with whatever was causing her discomfort, but after a week passed with no change in her demeanor he realized she had no intention of confiding in him. Perhaps it was the atmosphere of the kitchen, or the presence of the other men, but whatever the cause he decided he would have to be the one to broach the subject.
The only time they were alone was when he called her into his office to pay her for the week, so when she came in he asked her to close the door and sit down.
“What’s up, boss?” she asked as she perched on the edge of the chair.
He had debated for days whether to bring her under his influence again to compel the truth from her, but after recalling the explosive moments they’d shared in the storeroom he had decided against it.
“Tomorrow is your night off,” he said. “Have you made any plans?”
“I’ve got to do some shopping, but that’s all.” She frowned. “Do you need me to work?”
“No, that is not why I asked.” He produced a pair of tickets a grateful patron had given him after he had hosted her thirtieth anniversary dinner. “I am going to the opera tomorrow night, and I need an escort. I was wondering if you would accompany me.”
She stared at him. “You want
me
to go to the opera with you?”
He smiled. “I would very much enjoy that, yes.”
“I’m, uh, flattered, but I can’t.” She rose to her feet. “Thanks for asking, though.”
“You said you had no plans,” he reminded her.
“That’s right.” She stuffed her wages in her pocket. “I don’t have opera clothes, either.”
“I see.” He had forgotten about the limitations of her wardrobe. “If you had them, would you go with me?”
“I don’t think so.” She looked bewildered. “I’m not what you’d call the opera type, and why are you asking me? Shouldn’t you take your, ah, current love interest?”
“I am sorry to say there is no one interested in my love at present.” He tried to look humble. “If you do not go with me, I must give these tickets to someone else.”
“I’m sure Lonzo and his wife would love to go the opera,” Rowan assured him. “He’s always singing that song from the Boeing opera.”
“La Bohème.”
“Yeah, that one.” She started for the door, but stopped when he said her name and turned around. “We can’t go on dates, Dansant. Me being an employee and all, it would get messy.”
He got up and came around the desk. “Do you want me to fire you?”
That startled a laugh out of her. “No.”
“It will not be messy.” He took her hands in his. “It will be you and me at the opera, and you will enjoy it, I promise.” Her fingers were so tense they felt like twigs. “Please, say you will come with me. I will see to the clothes you need—”
“Oh, no,” Rowan said. “You can’t buy me clothes to go to the opera, not on top of everything else.”
He was tired of her refusing him, especially such a small thing as a gown and a pair of shoes, but to snap at her would only stiffen her resolve. “I can leave the price tags attached and return them the next day, if you like.”
She grinned up at him. “You liar. You’d never do that.”
“Lonzo’s wife does,” he told her. “She even has a trick to keep from getting antiperspirant marks on the inside of the sleeves.”
She thought for a moment. “All right, here’s the deal: I’ll go with you, but I buy the opera outfit.”
“It is customary to wear an evening gown,” he warned her.
“Oh, I can do a gown, don’t worry.” She sighed. “Just don’t change your mind between now and tomorrow night, or you
will
be paying for the opera clothes.”
They agreed to meet at the front of the restaurant, and the next night Dansant arrived in a taxi to wait for her to appear. Normally he wore his tux to the opera, but in deference to her budget he instead opted to wear one of his more conservative suits.
“Your girl going to be much longer, Mr. Dansant?” the cabbie asked, eyeing in the rearview mirror the line of cars behind them waiting for the valet spot where he had parked.
“She should be out momentarily.” Dansant watched the front doors, and just as he began to worry that Rowan would not appear, a woman in a black gown walked out.
The dress was a beautiful column of brushed velvet with wide, V-shaped panels of sheer lace placed strategically at her throat, shoulders, and waist. As she stepped across the walk, he saw she wore black velvet platform shoes with black silk flowers blooming above her toes. Her hands and arms were covered by elbow- length black satin gloves. A pillbox hat and half veil covered dark, sultry eyes, while a full red mouth smiled at him as she approached the cab.
It was Rowan, her curls brushed back and tucked behind her ears, making her look as if she’d just stepped out of a film from the forties.
“Hi,” she said as she climbed in. “You haven’t been waiting long, have you?”
Dansant breathed in her scent as he took her gloved hand in his. “Not at all. You look . . . incredible.”
“It’s rented,” she whispered. “All of it. Even the shoes. Don’t scuff me or I have to pay a damage fee.”
He found her ingenuity charming. “Is it a costume?”
She nodded. “There’s a place down by the Met that rents out theatrical clothes for parties and auditions and things. Everyone will think I’ve gone retro.”
The taxi dropped them off at Lincoln Center, where Dansant offered Rowan his arm before they walked inside. He enjoyed the wide-eyed attention she gave everything, from the enormous, exquisite chandeliers to the extravagantly dressed men and women who had come to attend the performance.
“I forgot to ask you what opera we’re seeing,” she said a little breathlessly as he guided her through the crowd.
“Madame Butterfly,”
he said. “Are you familiar with it?”
“No.” She glanced at the cover of her program. “It’s Japanese?”
“The story is set in Japan,” he said, “and the main character, Cio-Cio San, is a Japanese woman who falls in love with an American. The opera is performed in Italian.”
“Why?”
“It’s traditional,” he explained. “Puccini, the composer who wrote it, was Italian.”
“Okay.” She squared her shoulders. “Bring on the butterflies.”
Dansant suppressed a chuckle as he escorted her to their seats, and showed her the Met titles screen, where an English translation of the opera would be displayed in sync with the performance. The massive gold curtain covering the stage rose a few minutes later, and the first act began.
Having seen Puccini’s heart-render more times than he could count, Dansant waited until the lights dimmed before he turned his attention to Rowan. She watched the performance with full absorption, glancing now and then at the Met titles screen for a translation before returning her attention to the stage. During the intermission she asked him a dozen questions, which he found as delightful as her reactions to his explanations.
“So Pinkerton just goes off and leaves Butterfly with the baby?” Rowan frowned. “How could he do that when he knew she was pregnant?”
“He doesn’t know yet,” Dansant said.
“I don’t believe this.” She folded her arms. “She’s gorgeous, and in love with him, and she just gave up everything to be with him, and he leaves? Just like that? He’s a moron.”
Her anger amused him. “It is a tragedy, Rowan, not a romance novel.”
“Great.” She sighed. “I’m going to cry at the end, aren’t I?”
He took her hand in his. “I will be here to comfort you.”
She gave him a narrow, sideways look, but by then the lights were dimming and the performance continued.
Dansant sensed the change in her toward the very end of the opera, when the soprano playing Cio-Cio San made her fateful decision and took up her father’s sword. Rowan’s entire body went rigid as the soprano crossed the stage, carrying the sword toward her young son.
“Is she going to kill him?” she whispered furiously.
Dansant leaned close to make a joke, and then saw her eyes. “No,
ma mûre
. The boy survives.”
As soon as the opera drew to its unhappy conclusion, Rowan pulled her hand from his and got up.
“I have to get out of here.” She didn’t wait for his reply, but darted into the aisle and hurried off toward the lobby.
Dansant followed, but with the rest of the audience rising to go soon lost sight of her. He made his way impatiently through the throng to the lobby, where he looked at every woman in black, but didn’t see Rowan.
“Michael?”
Dansant turned to find his arms filled with a chestnut-haired, petite beauty dressed in a stunning sapphire gown. She had her arms around his neck and her smiling, lovely mouth an inch from his before she froze.
The soft scent of lavender filled his head, making him smile down at her wide, burnished brown eyes. “I regret to say that I am not your Michael, madam.” He put his hands on her forearms and felt the softness of her thin, pale caramel skin. “But I think he is a fortunate man.”
“Oh, my God.” She blinked twice before she laughed. “I don’t believe it.” She looked all over his face. “You could be his twin brother.” Her gaze went to his brow. “Except for the hair.” As if realizing for the first time what she was doing, she eased away and stepped back. “I’m so sorry, I really thought . . . what’s your name?”
“Jean-Marc.
Enchanté
.” He glanced around her, impatient to find Rowan. “Have you seen a tall dark-haired woman in a black velvet and lace dress?”
“Skinny as a rail, cute little hat?” The woman pointed to one of the exit doors. “She went out through there pretty fast.” As he nodded and made to go around her, she put a hand on his arm. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to keep you, but are you related to anyone in France? Maybe a family named Cyprien?”
“
Non
, madam. I have no family. I was
un enfant trouvé.
” He kissed the back of her hand. “If you will excuse me now, I must find my friend.” He strode toward the back entrance.
Michael Cyprien came to stand beside her. “
Chérie.
Is something the matter?”
Automatically she reached for his hand as she shook her head. “That was very weird.” She glanced at him and felt a little embarrassed now. “I just grabbed a strange man and tried to kiss him.”
“Oh?” His voice chilled a few degrees. “For any particular reason?”
“I thought he was you.” She turned to him. “Michael, he looked just like you. Same height, same features, same blue eyes . . . same everything.”
“It is said that we all have a twin somewhere in the world.” He encircled her with his arm. “Come. Phillipe is waiting for us.”
On the drive back to their suite at the Hilton, Alexandra brooded in silence about the odd encounter at the Met. She was able to picture Jean-Marc’s face clearly, and there was something about it that nagged at her. She was so lost in her thoughts that Michael had to repeat her name three times before she gave him her attention.
“Sorry, what?”
“I asked if you enjoyed the performance.”
“It pissed me off,” she admitted. “Pinkerton was a jerk. The acoustics were amazing. That fat chick in the fuchsia dress sitting in front of us smelled like bacon. I think she had some in her purse. Michael, are you sure you’re the only Cyprien left?”
“The last member of my human family died childless in the eighteenth century.” He stroked her cheek. “I am not upset that you tried to kiss another man. I would be only if you had succeeded.”
“What if you or someone in your family had a kid you didn’t know about?” she persisted. “That was pretty common back in the day, right?” She made a rolling gesture. “You meet a pretty milkmaid, have a tumble in the straw, you go your way, she pops out a blue-eyed kid nine months later, and everyone thinks it’s her husband’s or whatever.”
“Alexandra, I was a warrior-priest,” he reminded her. “We did not make a habit of tumbling milkmaids. We were too busy slaying Saracens.”
“But not everyone in your family worked for God back then.” She searched his face. “I don’t know what it is, but I swear, that man is somehow related to you.”
“Why? Because we have the same color hair, the same physique? As much as I wish to think that I am unique among men,
chérie,
I fear I am not. I would think that there are many humans in the world with whom I share a resemblance.”
“You don’t understand. The guy was just too perfect. Like a replica. He didn’t just look like you. He
was
you.” She sat up straight. “Oh, shit. Phillipe,” she called out to Cyprien’s seneschal. “Turn the car around and go back to Lincoln Center.”
Phillipe glanced in the rearview mirror, and when Cyprien nodded moved into a turn lane.
“It is unlikely that he will still be there,
chérie,
” Michael told her.
“Maybe we’ll get lucky.” She gripped the edge of the seat as she looked out through the windshield at the traffic blocking their way. “Come on, come on.”
It took some time, but eventually they arrived back at the Met. As soon as Phillipe parked at the curb, Alexandra jumped out of the car and hurried toward the arched windows at the front of the opera house. There were some stragglers still coming out from the performance, but none of them proved to be Jean-Marc or his lady in black.
Cyprien caught up with her just as she began cursing under her breath. “Alex, what is it?”
She pressed her fingers to her mouth as she scanned the faces around her one last time. “It was his face, Michael.”
“Yes, as you indicated, we seem to share the same one—”
“No, you don’t.” She turned to him and looked at his face, the face she had reconstructed out of a horrific mass of ruined flesh and bone after Michael Cyprien had been beaten and tortured. “I gave you that face, and while it’s very close to the one you were born with, it isn’t the same.”
“What are you saying?”
“Do you remember that painting that you had Phillipe bring to me in New Orleans? The portrait of you on the horse on the battlefield, all the dead bodies everywhere?” When he nodded, she said, “That guy Jean- Marc isn’t your twin. He’s a twin of the guy in the painting. He looks exactly as you did before the Brethren fucked up your face.”
Michael shrugged. “So he was my twin before I was tortured. What difference does it make?”
“He had a little mole riding his jaw here.” She touched the corresponding spot on the side of his face. “Exactly where it was in the painting. You don’t have it anymore because when I was rebuilding your jaw I had to put a skin graft there.”
“I see.” Michael grew thoughtful. “An interesting coincidence.”
“I don’t believe in coincidences,” she told him. “When you were captured in Rome, you said that the Brethren beat on you for days before Phillipe got to you.” When he nodded, she asked, “Did they do anything else? Did they bring in a doctor? Did he operate on you?”
“No. They only interrogated me; they . . .”
He trailed off and rubbed his hand across his face. “There was a day when a new man came to my cell. I could barely see him but his scent was different. He asked questions like the others, but not about the Darkyn or where they could be found. He wanted to know about my talent.”
“Did you tell him anything?”
“No,
chérie
. As with the other interrogators, I told him nothing.” He encircled her waist with his arm. “It is growing cold. We should return to the hotel.”
“You’re sure the man didn’t operate on you.”
He thought for a moment. “I was conscious the entire time he was with me. He did not touch me once. He gave up rather sooner than the others had, although I thought he meant to have me taken to the interrogation room. He asked the guard where it was. But then he left and I never saw or smelled him again. Forgive me, but that is all I remember.”
“It’s okay. I don’t mean to remind you of that shit.” She made a face. “Let’s go back to the hotel and I’ll make up for it.”
Alex said no more about the matter until an hour before dawn, when she and Michael were soaking together in the massive tub in their suite. She was wonderfully exhausted after an extended bout of lovemaking, and happy that she’d agreed to come on this trip with her lover. New York City’s operas might suck, but the shopping was fabulous, and she had spent a considerable amount of time acquiring better equipment for her lab. Although she was no longer seeking a cure for the Darkyn’s blood-dependent immortality, she continued cataloging Kyn blood types and the strains of the pathogen that had infected them. One day she might be able to trace the origins of their condition back to the source of the infection, the progenote that had started it all back in the Dark Ages.
It was thinking about her work with the blood samples that made Alex catch her breath. She turned around, sloshing water over the side of the tub.
“Again,
chérie
?” Michael looked hopeful.
She kissed his mouth, but before he could take that to the next level, she eased away. “That man who came to see you in Rome, the strange one, did he ask you medical questions?”
“He sounded like you when you are working in the lab.” He tugged her to him. “Do that again.”
“Hold on, baby.” She put her hands on his shoulders. “Why would the Brethren send a doctor to talk to you? They don’t give prisoners medical treatment. And why would a doctor go to an interrogation room? Not to check the equipment, or to take a few practice swings with the copper pipes.”
“I cannot say.” His eyes narrowed. “He carried a case with him. I heard glass clinking together when he moved it.”
She got up out of the tub and reached for their towels. “How much do you want to bet he was there to take DNA samples?”
“But he did not touch me, Alexandra.”
“He didn’t have to. There would have been bits of you left all over that torture chamber.” She went out into their suite and grabbed some clothes from the selection Phillipe had hung in the armoire. “We’ve got to find this Jean- Marc guy,” she said over her shoulder as Michael joined her. “All I need is a blood sample from him, and then we’ll know if he’s Kyndred or not.”
Michael pulled on his trousers. “How do you propose we find him?”
“How many guys named Jean- Marc do you think bought tickets to the opera tonight?”
“Only one, I am sure. Alexandra, forgive me but I do not know how this man could have been made from my DNA.”
She stopped dressing. “You need me to explain again the entire process of using vampire DNA to turn humans into Kyndred?”
“No, it is not that.” He came over to her and began buttoning up her blouse. “I was taken in Rome six years ago. It was the only time I had ever been captured by the Brethren.”
“And?”
“You and the other humans who were made Kyndred were experimented on when you were children,” he reminded her. “For the man you met tonight to be my . . . progeny, he would have to have been a young child. No more than six years old.”
“Shit.” She threw down her jacket, disgusted with herself. “I hate this. I hate not knowing what they’re doing, what they’ve done. . . .” She rubbed her forehead. “All right, so being Kyndred is off the table—for now,” she added, glaring at him. “We still need to find him and see if he is the descendant of a Cyprien who wasn’t busy slaying Saracens back in the day.”
“But why?”
“That man could be walking around with your human DNA,” she told him. “If I’m ever going to figure out how the pathogen works, I need to look at both sides of the equation. He may still carry in his body the immunities and genetic anomalies that allowed you to survive the initial infection.”
“All right. He did not tell you his last name? Did you notice where he was sitting in the auditorium?” After she answered no to both questions, Michael went to the phone and placed a call to one of his human friends in the city, who called back a short time later.
Michael listened, thanked the caller, and hung up before turning to Alex. “None of the tickets sold for tonight’s performance were purchased by a man with the Christian name Jean-Marc.”
Alex swore as she dropped onto the sofa and covered her face with her hands. After she reined in her temper, she looked over her fingertips at Michael. “Can we run a check on guys named Jean-Marc in the city?”
“Of course we can.” He sat down beside her. “It is not a common name, so it should only take a few months, perhaps a year, to interview each Jean-Marc living in the city. Assuming he resides here. Then we can check the Jean-Marcs living in New Jersey, and Washington, and work our way across the ocean to the Jean-Marcs living in France. I believe that will take more time.”
She chuckled. “If I asked you’d do it, too, wouldn’t you?”
Michael smiled and kissed her forehead. “You have but to say,
mon coeur
.”
“This is where I say ‘no, that’s okay,’ and I’ll let it go.”
“No.” He glanced at the pale light coming through the windows, and drew her to her feet. “This is when you say ‘I love you,’ take off my clothes, and come to bed with me.”
Surrendering to the inevitable and the pleasurable, Alexandra did just that. Just before they drifted off into the curious sleep of the Darkyn, she remembered something the man had said to her.
“Michael, what does
un enfant trouvé
mean?”
“It is a term used for children who are lost or abandoned, and cannot be returned to their family,” he told her.
“Orphans?”
“No, that is not quite the same. An orphan’s parents are dead, but the parents of
un enfant trouvé
are unknown.” He held her close. “I think the word in English is foundling.”