Chris found the key and released her from the cuffs. "Your poor arm, it's all bruised up." She saw the water, food, and bucket Lucan had left for Sam. "Nice burglar. Do you know he broke, like, everything in your apartment?"

"It was a lousy date." Sam rubbed her wrist as she got out of bed, stretching her cramped limbs. She was sore and mad and needed a shower, but otherwise all right.

"Want some coffee? Aspirin?"

The thought of drinking or eating anything made Sam's stomach turn. "I'm okay. Make it for yourself if you want some." She stared at Chris's all-black outfit, and an idea began to jell. "What time is it?"

"About five thirty, I think."

"Got any plans for tonight?"

"Besides sleeping? Nope."

Sam gestured toward her clothes. "Can you make me look like that? Like a goth?"

Chris frowned. "The bondage and bad date weren't exciting enough?"

"I have to go undercover at that nightclub, Infusion, and I need you to help me dress the part. Look in my closet and see' what might work," Sam said as she headed for the bathroom. "I'm going to take a shower."

When she came out ten minutes later, Chris had thrown most of her suits onto her bed.

"Boring." The younger girl added a brown suit to the pile, and then examined the other black suit she was holding. "Ugly and boring." She glanced at Sam. "Does your great-grandmother, like, buy all your clothes?"

"I'm an orphan."

"You dress like one." She tossed the black suit on top of the brown one. "Let's go over to my place. I've got some stuff that might fit you."

There was a knock at the door, and Sam jumped a little. Burke isn't coming until it's over, she reminded herself. She looked at Chris and pointed to the pile of suits. "Hang those back up."

"You're sure I can't burn them?" Chris grumbled.

Sam had her weapon in hand when she checked the peephole, but tucked it into the pocket of her robe before she unlocked the dead bolts.

Adam Suarez seemed almost as surprised to see her. "Detective Brown. You're… home."

She was on vacation. Where else would she be? "What can I do for you, Lieutenant?"

"I came by to check on you." He looked over her shoulder, and then back at her face. "Are you staying in tonight?"

A wave of images came over her, but she resisted the memories. Now was not the time to freak out in front of Suarez, and she wasn't even sure of what she'd seen in her head. What had he asked her? Something about staying in. "No."

"You should, Samantha."

"We're not partners yet, Adam. Wait until we are before you start trying to run my life." She started to close the door, but his hand stopped her. "Was there something else you wanted?"

"If you're going down to the nightclub, you'll need some backup. I'm off duty." He checked his watch. "I'll come back in an hour and pick you up."

"I'll drive myself, thanks." She couldn't see his eyes through the sunglasses he wore, and his expression gave away nothing. She couldn't confirm what she suspected until she saw him without the glasses, either. "What do you know about Infusion?"

"Only what I've read from your case files. There's supposed to be a big concert there tonight. I'll meet you outside at seven." He turned and left.

Sam slowly closed the door. "Okay."

"Was that the bad date?" Chris asked as she came out of the bedroom.

"No, that was my new partner, checking on me."

"Nice someone cares besides me." Chris linked her arm with Sam's. "Come on, Officer. Time to walk on the dark side of the moon."

John returned to the abbey from the hospital and gathered the brothers in the chapel. Ignatius protested for a moment, telling him that he had no authority over them, until John looked at him. The friar abruptly quieted and marched into the sanctuary after the other friars.

He stood for a moment outside the chapel and looked out at the abbey grounds. Bromwell and Mercer had tried so hard to keep the outside world at bay, but it would not be denied. The needs of the people of the world could not be held back by fences and brick walls. And, whether John liked it or not, the Darkyn were a part of this world.

John walked inside. He didn't take the abbot's place at the altar, but stood at the back of the little church. "Father Lane committed suicide," he told them without preamble. "Before he died, he said something about a nightclub and Bastille Day. What did he have planned for it?"

"The abbot was delusional, Brother Patrick," Ignatius said at once. "I'm very sorry, but you must know that he had started drinking again. You know how irrational alcoholics can be—"

"I know about the Darkyn, Ignatius," John told him. "They took my sister. She's one of them now." He ignored the pale faces and the muttered prayers. "I also know what the Brethren do to the vampires they capture. They brought me to Rome on the pretense of having me join the order and drugged and tortured me."

No one spoke for a long time, and then Brother Jacob asked, "What are you going to do, Brother Patrick?"

He wasn't running away anymore. "Mercer told me that you all have been living as real priests here. Doing good works, devoting yourself to the faith, and repenting for the wrongs you did in the name of the Brethren. Is that the life you want?" He watched the men nod. "Then it's time you left the order."

"You know nothing," Ignatius said, stepping out of his line, his face contorted with anger. "No one leaves the order. We are born to it, we live it, and we die for it."

How much control did the Brethren still have over these men? After twenty years, John suspected, not much.

"You will have to leave the abbey and change your identities, but there is enough money in the accounts to help you start over," he told them.

The old friar thrust his hands in his sleeves. "Steal from the church? Never."

"That money doesn't belong to church, and it didn't come from the church. The Brethren have always funded you," John reminded him. "It's your choice." He turned and walked away.

Ignatius caught up with him outside. "Bravo, Brother Patrick. You've achieved with one speech what my brothers and I could never bring ourselves to do in twenty years. My brothers are even now deciding how to leave Florida and where we should settle."

John thought of the many states through which he had traveled. "The Carolinas are nice, and there are a lot of needy people in the hills."

"North Carolina." Ignatius's tone softened. "I drove through it once, when I was a younger man. It's very green there." He sighed. "I don't suppose you'd like to adopt Brother Nicholas."

"Not even if you paid me. Don't worry; he'll have lots of leaves to blow around in North Carolina. What he and the other men need is a steady hand to lead them to that new life." He gave the guestmaster a sideways look. "Abbot Ignatius has a nice ring to it."

"Abbot William," Ignatius said. "If I am to become a fugitive from the order and change my identity, I am not passing up the chance to be rid of this hideous name of mine." He stopped with John at the front gates. "You are going to the nightclub Father Lane wished us to attack." When John nodded, he frowned. "What do you intend to do?"

"What Mercer should have done," John said. "Find a way to call a truce."

"Mercer?" Ignatius looked. "You mean Father Lane? But his Christian name was Leigh."

Chapter 23

"People think the goth lifestyle is just clothes and hair and silly shit," Chris said as she finished combing the dark rinse through Sam's hair.

Sam's bathroom mirror hadn't survived the night with Lucan, so they were using Ken's. "It's not?"

"The world judges you by your appearance, you know. Right now you look like a cop, so people respect you. Maybe you've earned it; maybe you haven't—but you still get the respect no matter what."

Sam rubbed the scar on her palm. Seeing Lucan's life through his blood had confused her more than anything. "So how do people treat goths?"

"How do you treat them?"

"I don't," Sam admitted. "You're the first one I've met."

Chris nodded. "And that's only because I moved across the hall from you, made coffee for you, and rescued your ass from your mean boyfriend, who I still think you should dump immediately. If you saw me on the street, or in a store, or hanging out downstairs, would you have even said hello? Be honest."

"Probably not." She eyed Chris's head. "The blue hair is a little scary."

"Exactly. I don't look like other girls. I'm way different. An outsider." She took a hair dryer from the bathroom cabinet and plugged it into a wall outlet. "So you treat me like one."

Sam sighed. "That doesn't make sense. Why dress like you do if you don't want people to treat you like an outsider?"

"Well, one, because I like it. Two, because I don't like your phony society with all its uptight rules." Chris switched on the hair dryer and went to work on Sam's damp head.

Sam didn't look in Keri's mirrors—she'd stopped looking after the kid had gotten out makeup that looked like different shades of heavy-duty shoe polish—and rewound the silent movie of Lucan's life that had been playing in her mind since he'd left her.

He'd lived longer than she could fathom, and traveled to places that no longer existed. He'd been a priest, of all things, and had fought in wars all over the Middle East. That was when it had happened—he'd come back from the Crusades with some kind of sickness, and died from it. Sam almost threw up as she relived Lucan's memories of clawing his way out of the mass grave outside London where he'd been buried.