Nottingham drew back, licking the smear of blood from his bottom lip as he watched his seneschal swive the girl. "She is noisy." He had to speak over the torrent of praise and encouragement spilling from the female's lips.
"I can cut out her tongue, my lord," Skald said, not missing a beat as he cupped her br**sts and squeezed until she whined and quivered. "But that will perhaps make her less amusing."
"Not yet." Nottingham opened the front of his trousers and pulled her head down, stuffing her mouth with his penis. Lydia moaned and sucked awkwardly at him, and that made everything better. "I want you to befriend the lord's seneschal. Find out everything you can about this Realm from him."
Skald playfully slapped the housewife's bare flank. "As you command, my lord."
When Alexandra awoke, Michael thought, she would insist on inspecting the Realm's infirmary. Jayr kept it clean and amply stocked, and Michael had no doubt it served its purpose well. His sygkenis's standards, however, were very high, and she would delight in pointing out every flaw. It occurred to him that he might well keep Alexandra occupied during the tournament by asking her to improve things. Knowing his lover, she would turn the infirmary into a diminutive hospital, and teach Jayr and the men how to repair every sort of human or Kyn injury.
If Alexandra still cared about such things. She had not, he realized, shown any interest in being a doctor since their return from Ireland.
"Master, I think we must leave tonight and take the lady home," Phillipe said. He had arrived at the infirmary shortly after Jayr had left to attend to her master, and now stood brooding at the bedside. The seneschal looked as frustrated and worried as Michael felt. "This is not a good place for her now, when she is…" He made a helpless gesture.
"I know her talent can be disturbing to witness." Michael busied himself by changing the bag attached to his lover's IV. "But I cannot lock her away like a mad wife, mon ami. She has done nothing to deserve this."
"It is not the lady, but the one who stirred her talent who is the danger." His seneschal adjusted a fold of the sheet. "I spoke with some of the men of the jardin. All of the tresora and humans who serve here have been sent away."
Michael sat down and held Alexandra's cool hand between his. "Whoever made her ill with their thoughts is Kyn."
His seneschal nodded. "There is no one else."
As the American seigneur, Michael had many serious responsibilities. He had put off all of them in order to care for Alexandra, but Brethren activity in the United States was on the rise, and his suzerain were becoming restless. Then there were the newcomers from Europe, who would trade oaths of loyalty for new territories and grants of formal rule. No one would question Michael for leaving the tournament almost as soon as he had arrived, but it would not enhance his reputation as a leader.
Now it seemed that a Kyn had decided to kill. The tournament provided the perfect opportunity for murder; the weapons and battles they fought were quite real. Occasionally accidents happened. The murderer could cut off a victim's head and blame it on a poorly timed thrust. He owed it to every Kyn attending to discover who intended to inflict such harm—and to stop him before he did.
"Each time Alexandra needs me, I am made to choose between her and the Kyn," he said. "I would give my life for her, and yet somehow the Kyn always manage to come first. I cannot fathom why she stays with me."
"Love," Phillipe said simply.
"That is the worst of it." Michael rubbed his thumb across her slim, fragile-looking fingers. "This love between us is like nothing I know. I fear it will destroy her."
"Or save you both," Phillipe said. "At least, I think that is what Alexandra would say."
"Stop talking about me in French when I'm unconscious," Alexandra murmured, her eyes still closed. "It's rude. Plus I can't understand it. If you have to bitch, do it in English."
Phillipe shared a smile of relief with Michael as he switched to English. "As you will, my lady."
"That's another thing, Phil." She opened one eye. "The 'my lady' thing has gotten beyond annoying. If you don't drop it, I will grab something pointed and copper and stab you where it hurts vampires."
"Very well, Alexandra. I will go presently and look at our chambers." Phillipe touched her shoulder briefly before he bowed and left the room.
Michael waited until Alexandra yawned before he permitted the relief to spread through him. "How do you feel, chérie?"
"I don't know. Warm. Weird. A bit like I've been having nonstop sex with you." She stretched her arms over her head in a slow, luxurious movement. "You wouldn't do anything carnal and mind-blowing to me without waking me up first, right?"
"I confess, I have secretly become very fond of ravishing you while you are unconscious," he confessed, bending over to brush his mouth over hers. "And I am not finished. Go back to sleep."
"Over my undead body." She froze and then felt with her hand the IV taped to the inside of her elbow. "Hello, there's a needle in my arm." She propped herself up and looked around the room. "This doesn't look like the Marriott. Where am I?"
Michael was tempted to use his talent to remove her memory of the incident, but Alexandra's question indicated that she had already suffered some form of natural memory loss. He decided for the present to say nothing about it.
"You fainted soon after we greeted Byrne and his men," he told her. "This is the keep's infirmary."
"Fainting and memory loss. Okay." She eyed the slowly draining bag of blood hanging above her on the bed's IV pole. "Is that the first or second unit you've given me?"
"The second."
"That would explain the buzz. You're drowning me in the vampire equivalent of liquid cheesecake." With a quick jerk she pulled the IV needle out of her arm and clipped off the supply tube. "I appreciate the thought, sweetheart, but next time? Use plasma."
Michael closed his eyes for a moment, shoving back his impatience with her denial of what they were, and what they had to do to survive. "You have to feed."
"No, what I have to do is stay alive and keep my pathogenic mutation from progressing faster than I can track and chart it. Just write it on your day planner somewhere: plasma good, whole blood bad." She dropped the side rail, swung her legs over the edge of the bed, and stood carefully on both feet. "Why did I faint during the meet-and-greet?"
"I don't know," Michael said.
"You get this incredibly sexy look on your face whenever you lie to me; did you know that?" She picked up her jacket and shrugged into it. "I remember meeting Conan and his death squad, and talking to the kid… and that's it, until I heard you and Phil arguing about going home." She looked around the room. "The kid. Byrne's seneschal. Jayr, right? She around?"
"It is near dawn, and you are still weak." He caught her in his arms before she could walk away from the bed. "You can speak with Jayr tomorrow night."
"I need to know exactly what happened, and I don't want the edited-by-Michael version." She looked up. "Did my behavior really suck so much that you had to make me forget what I did?"
"I did not remove your memories." He stroked her arms with his hands. "I swear this to you."
"You did it before, when you didn't want me to find out about the changelings." She leaned against him as if she were dizzy. "I'm not mad. I know you only want to protect me from the bad stuff. Just give me back what you took. Now."
"If I wished to break my promise and erase any of your thoughts," he said, "I would use my talent only to make you forget how Richard hurt you."
"Richard? Please." She began to chuckle, and then something made her stop and duck her head. "He knocked me around and clawed up my back; that's all. I've been on worse blind dates. I was out for a little while, and then… someone took care of me." A line appeared between her brows. "That was it."
"You can tell me everything." Michael clamped down on his anger and fear and kept his voice gentle. "Don't be afraid, chérie. I would never blame you for what Richard did."
Alexandra flinched as if he had slapped her. "He didn't do anything else. I told you everything. Jesus Christ, all that blood you gave me is making my brain do somersaults." She pressed her fingers against her temples. "Do we have to stay here? I make a lousy patient."
"Byrne has given us the best rooms in the Realm." Michael picked her up in his arms. "I can take my rest somewhere else, if you wish to be alone."
"No." She encircled his neck with tight arms and buried her face in his hair. "Don't leave me again."
"Alexandra."
"I only want you," she whispered, her breath ragged against his ear. "Only you."
Byrne sat alone in the guard's hall, which had been decorated with trophies of every war in which the men of the jardin had fought, save one. He needed no reminder of the battle of Bannockburn, or what he had done that day.
Still, it came back to him at times like this, when he was alone. Like flesh rot, it twisted inside him, ever ready to eat at his gut and bring him back to the thing he wished most to forget.
The stink of spilled blood and torn bodies had roused the Kyn from the first hour of their rest, preceding the messenger the Brus had sent to summon them back to action. They had been held in reserve, sent out each night to scout and pick off some of Edward's best warriors. Now they were summoned to fight alongside the Brus's troops, for this was to be the last day of the battle. With the aid of his Darkyn, their human prince promised, he would drive the English out of Scotland forever.
"God curses us, the church reviles us, but the Brus calls us brothers," one of Byrne's men called out. "I will follow Robert to hell and back."