Midnight Blues by Lynn Viehl Read Free Book Online

out of someone anyway.”
    Garcia hissed in a breath. “You can’t. Samantha, there are some things about the Kyn that you’re better off not knowing. Donatien—the Marquis—is one of them.”
    “So they
are
talking about the same person. Thought so.” She enjoyed his wince over the slip. “This Donatien may be Kyn, but he killed Erik Bergen, which makes it my business.”
    “Donatien is not Kyn.” He rubbed a hand over his shaved scalp. “You remember Faryl, the changeling who tried to kill Lucan?”
    “Snake-man, sure,” she said. “I cut off his tail. Made him kind of unforgettable.”
    “Faryl was what happens to a Kyn when they live only on animal blood,” Garcia told her. “There have been Kyn who went the other way, who refused to curtail their hunger. They not only kill humans, they toy with them. Like cats with mice.”
    “So he’s out of control.”
    “That was how he began, and he was among the worst of us. Then something happened.” Garcia seemed to be choosing his words with great care. “It should have killed him, but instead it made him more powerful, more dangerous.”
    She folded her arms. “I’m not leaving until you give me all the facts, Cap.”
    Ernesto rose to his feet and went to the one window he had in his office, which overlooked the department parking lot. “If I do, Lucan will have my head.”
    “I’ll have it if you don’t, and you have to work with me every day,” she reminded him. “Him you can dodge.”
    He nodded and went to his filing cabinet, taking out a folder and handing it to her. “That is what current information we have. It’s not much. Rumors, a few unconfirmed sightings, unsolved murder sprees in the Middle East and Germany.”
    She opened the folder and made an exasperated sound. “It’s written in French, which I don’t speak or read.” She pulled out a sketch of a man so beautiful he made Brad Pitt look like a troll. “
This
is the monster?”
    “That is Donatien Alphonse François,” Garcia told her. “Better known as Le Marquis de Sade.”

----
Five
    « ^ »
    D ani dreamed of the one place in the world where she had never felt afraid: the jungle beyond the compound. On warm, moonlit nights, when the Father’s men had gone into the village to drink and chase women, she had slipped under the fence and into that cool, green darkness.
    The Father had told her that it was impossible for her to remember her mother (
she died birthing you
,
Cristál
, he would always say, hating her with his eyes) but Dani felt her presence in every shadow, heard her whisper in every movement through the leaves. Mama had belonged to the jungle, had been buried by the Father somewhere in it, and so she had become a part of Dani’s rare night wanderings.
    Tonight she felt her mother as if from a distance, but that hint of tender love was all she needed. She raced through the brush, chasing it not in desperation but in a playful, teasing fashion that made her mother’s ghost laugh.
    Until the dark man stepped out into the moonlight, blocking her path.
    Daniela
. He held out his hand, tiny golden lights filling the palm.
Don’t run away from me
.
    She stayed. She had never like men very much—the Father often hurt her, and the guards despised and feared her—but the dark man felt different. He smelled wonderful, too, not at all like the sour odor that clung to everyone at the compound. She went to him, and when she reached for his hand, he tossed up the lights, showering her with their cool, tickling sparkles.
    “Rafael.” She remembered his name from the other place. His name became poetry on her tongue, and she savored it twice more. “Rafael, Rafael. How did you find me?”
    We are sharing a dream
, he told her, clasping her wrists with his hands.
Is this your home
?
    Dani had never thought of the jungle as anything but freedom. It did not belong to her, and the Father would never permit her to live in it. Home was the compound, where everyone feared the