Bond of Fire

by Diane Whiteside

  Maybe they’d be lucky and this would remain a quiet day. Maybe…

  “Incoming! Get down, sir!” Emilio shouted.

  “Ambush!” shouted Caleb Jones, Rafael’s driver. Gunfire, explosions, and—damn, a landslide?—filled the watch center from the loudspeakers. The engine of Rafael’s big armored Mercedes snarled, clearly fighting for speed.

  Jean-Marie’s stomach plummeted toward his boots. If anything happened to the man who’d saved his life and given him a family…

  Not while he was alive.

  “RPG, sir, firing from the hilltop,” Emilio, Rafael’s bodyguard reported. Bullets pinged all too obviously against the windows. “Shit, they’ve got two shooters in their chopper, too.”

  Jean-Marie slammed the watch center door behind him and raced for the helipad. Combat’s familiar calm slid through him, easing him back into well-known patterns.

  Rafael, we’re starting one of our helicopters now. ETA five minutes, he reported.

  Maldito sea, no. There’s still too much light for you to be outside.

  He barely stopped himself from laughing at his creador’s overprotective protest. Of course, he was coming to help. But he framed his counter in logic, hoping to keep the argument short.

  I’ve been a vampiro for almost two centuries, enough to walk in twilight. You need another vampiro to fight beside you.

  Mierda, Rafael cursed but said nothing else.

  That had gone easier than he expected, probably because Rafael was too busy out there—damn Madame Celeste’s treacherous hide! If the only way to stop her from pulling her foul tricks was to kill her, by God, he’d be glad to pull the trigger.

  He burst out of the underground complex and into the open. Gardens surrounded him, as was typical for one of Rafael’s homes. More importantly, the sun brushed him lightly—warmly.

  He hesitated instinctively—but his skin didn’t tighten, didn’t start to smoke…He was still alive two, three, four steps later. Dammit, he could walk in twilight now.

  But he didn’t have time to celebrate.

  His stride lengthened into a run, and men jumped out of his way.

  He accepted an MP5 from the armorer waiting at the helipad, yanked the chopper door shut behind him, and nodded to the pilot. Good; he’d be flying with one of Ethan’s best compañero pilots, who could surely catch any devil Madame Celeste sent.

  The other shooter was an excellent compañero sniper, thank God, with combat experience dating back to Vietnam. Nobody was a fine shot from a moving helicopter, especially when aiming at another one, which would undoubtedly be dancing across the sky while it tried to take potshots at a speeding car. But Jean-Marie’s vampiro reflexes should help, as would the sniper’s intensive training.

  God willing, Jean-Marie’s intuition would kick in with some help, too.

  They’d succeed; they had to.

  The chopper hurled itself into the sky almost before Jean-Marie strapped in. The bird was one of the mesnaderos’ larger helicopters, one frequently used by SWAT teams. It was fast, maneuverable, and the envy of the few local cops who’d seen it.

  As soon as they were in the air, Jean-Marie pulled on the goggles and headset the crew chief gave him. The flight and weapons harnesses went on remarkably easily, a tribute more to their elegant modern designs than his experience. Like Gray Wolf, he was only checked out as a shooter in helicopters once a year, just often enough to accompany Rafael on his more startling excursions.

  Success! Now he could open the door, assured he could fire at Madame Celeste’s assassins without falling from the sky.

  He shoved the door back and braced himself with one hand against the opposite side, the wind whipping at his hair and trying to tear at the edges of his goggles. The bird bounced and jolted sideways in the unpredictable mountain air, making him grunt.

  Ah, there was the enemy—an old police chopper, now used for crop dusting by a neighbor. It hung over a strip of narrow, unpaved, mountain road like a furious hornet, stabbing at everything in sight. Dust clouds boiled up in its wake.

  But what about Rafael? Were they too late?

  He cursed under his breath and looked harder at the road, fighting for glimpses snatched between mountainsides.

  Aha!

  Rafael’s black Mercedes bobbed and weaved through the cloud of dust below, sometimes almost hanging a wheel over the edge, sometimes scraping its paint against the mountain—and always moving faster than even Jean-Marie would have driven.

  A channel clicked to life in his headphones. Caleb was humming one of his beloved old songs, Rafael was singing the lyrics, while bullets provided percussion. Jean-Marie rolled his eyes at this evidence of his creador’s delight in a good fight.

  “Bogey at twelve o’clock low,” announced his pilot, a student of old war movies. “Heading for those power lines.”

  Jean-Marie braced himself as well as he could and cocked his MP5, its readiness echoed with a matching click from his companion’s submachine gun. Die, you bastards, die.

  They dived at the vicious enemy, their own guns blazing. Jean-Marie aimed for the sniper in the doorway, the one closest to Rafael’s sedan. Again and again, he fired, timing his shots by his intuition’s tap on his shoulder, grimly following his skittering opponent across the sky as best as he could. Short, savage bursts poured from the weapon on the other side of his chopper.

  Caught by surprise, the smaller chopper dived to escape. But its blades caught a power line, snapping the metal like twigs. Sparks flew, lighting the sky like fireworks.

  The blades’ remains kept beating, once, twice, but they couldn’t keep the bird in the air. It hung in the sky for what seemed an endless moment. The nose dropped, and it dived into the hill below the road, exploding in a fireball.

  Jean-Marie’s rage fell away—only to be replaced by an agonizing sense of loss.

  He had just proven that he could walk in twilight a few years before anyone had thought possible. But Madame Celeste was still more than capable—indeed, probably eager!—to attack Don Rafael at any time.

  If Hélène had been here, she’d have torched those murdering devils in an instant—and he’d have celebrated her success.

  Agonizing loss wrenched him yet again, no less painful for the years he’d endured it.

  The wind tossed his hair, as if mocking his grief.

  He snarled and slammed the door shut on it.

  EASTERN SIBERIA

  Hélène focused her night-vision goggles, making them drag in every bit of starlight those samples of the latest technology could find. Despite it being high summer and close to the North Pole, where the days were long and nighttime meant the sun circling near the horizon, the valley below was a cavernous black gash.

  Deep enough to hide the secrets of an old Soviet bioweapon manufacturing plant from spy satellites for decades. Ordinary bombs wouldn’t work against anyplace hidden within this gash in the earth’s crust, even if their bearers had made it past the bristling batteries circling the valley. Generations of American and British spymasters had sent their best teams, military and covert, against it. But its brutal terrain and layers of defenses had destroyed its attackers, letting it survive, only to be shut down after the Berlin Wall fell.

  A year ago, loose tongues in Moscow attached to hungry men and women had chattered about one of the current government’s favorites starting it up again. In a few months, he’d be selling bubonic plague to anyone willing to deposit a fortune in a Swiss bank account.

  The only way to utterly destroy such a plant was fire—utterly eradicating every trace from every room and piece of equipment. No chemical cleanser could be as thorough, while bombs would only scattered the pieces across an innocent landscape. Equally important, no Western politician wanted to see anyone in the current Russian government growing rich from this valley’s harvest of death. Whitehall had decided to send Hélène’s small team in, rather than commandos with thermite grenades.

  She was so far away on this rocky slo
pe, none of the old defenses watched her, if Whitehall’s penny-pinching intelligence had gotten it right for once. No prosaico should be observing this mountain, since only a vampiro firestarter could attack the place from here. It was too far for a shoulder-launched missile.

  Which didn’t stop the skin on the nape of her neck from standing up every few minutes. They’d had a strangely quiet journey here.

  At least when she was doing this work, she didn’t have time to think about missing Jean-Marie…

  “Got it,” she murmured, finally focusing on one of the ugliest metallic jumbles she’d ever seen. They were lying on a boulder field at the edge of an immense forest. If there were a knife-edged rock that hadn’t found her ribs, she didn’t know about it. Or one that didn’t long to break somebody’s ankle.

  “Can you see the storage lockers?” Duncan Ross asked. A great bear of a Scotsman and her number two, he was condemned to wear the same brutally uncomfortable body armor she wore. It kept sunlight, mosquitoes, and flies out but ensured that every drop of sweat stayed in. As a vampiro, he’d have been far happier shifting into something with teeth—and a thick fur coat to keep the biting pests out.

  “Uh-huh. Looks just like the plans.” Thank God. If the bastards had done any remodeling, she’d have had a harder time finding the targets, given all the trees and rocks near the plant. “Found the research labs, too, plus the manufacturing plant.”

  He didn’t quite heave a sigh of relief. “Just let me know when you’re ready to start, will you?”

  “Right.” Lots of mosquitoes but nothing larger was stirring—a nasty sign. She’d have been happier if small critters were wandering around, proving no two-legged predators were patrolling other than themselves.

  She counted the distant sentries through her glasses as they patrolled, clearly identifiable as brilliant splotches of heat.

  One of her bodyguards sat down beside her in wolf form, his tongue lolling out as he tasted the air. She glanced over, and he nodded, giving the all-clear.

  The other five members of her team began to give their assurances.

  “Ready,” she said softly.

  She reached out to the most distant, the most buried, of the storage lockers and stirred its molecules into frenzied motion. Faster and faster, hotter and hotter, until metal caught fire and burned like a welder’s torch. Damn near as hot as the surface of the sun—thermite grenade hot, like the result of a commando raid.

  A second locker and a third, all of them, destroying forever stockpiles of bubonic plague, which had taken decades to accumulate.

  “Alarms have sounded,” Duncan reported. “Sentries are evacuating the inner core and manning the outer perimeter.”

  Just as they’d planned back in London. The scientists would probably get away, taking whatever knowledge they held in their heads. Even so, it would be a long time, if ever, before the greedy fools rebuilt that plant.

  She grinned and turned her attention to the great vats and piping in the manufacturing plant. A bigger target required a broader brush, a heavier push of concentration until an entire building glowed red, burst into flames, and crumpled into a magma flow of blazing metal which poured over a ravine’s boulders.

  Even from here they could hear the sirens. Somebody had started firing old antiaircraft guns at the sky.

  “Hélène, they’re sending helicopters out,” Duncan hissed. “They’ve zeroed in on this mountain as the only location left unprotected.”

  Shit, they knew about vampiros. It was definitely time to leave. But the labs were on the hillside above the plant and the storage lockers. Did she have the right to risk everyone’s life? Hell, how many of her missions didn’t rate the words highly dangerous, if not suicidal?

  “Prepare to evacuate,” she said calmly and moved her glasses one last time. Dammit, the labs were slightly hidden in the smoke. Could she pull it off? If she took out their foundations, dropping them into the manufacturing plant’s quagmire below…

  Ping! Ping! Bullets whizzed past her head. The damned helicopter was making life very difficult.

  Duncan cursed.

  “Move out,” she snapped. One more lab to go…

  Bullets filled the air. Somebody was shooting back at the chopper.

  The lab’s wooden struts caught fire, and it began to tumble.

  Somebody yelped, the immediately recognizable sound of hard training compensating for a bad wound.

  Duncan yanked Hélène unceremoniously onto her feet and raced for the forest, ignoring the rocks that slipped and turned under his feet. Her bodyguard ran beside them, flowing over the treacherous terrain with four-footed grace, obviously holding back his speed. If only they’d let her learn how to shift, she could have done the same. Duncan would have matched her, and they’d be in the woods in no time—without risking her men.

  It would be a damned long way back to the extraction point, especially with one man already wounded.

  Bullets filled the air around them, singing against the stones and spitting up dust.

  She ran faster, praying nobody died on this mission. Wishing Whitehall would let her learn to shapeshift into something useful, instead of treating her like a fragile idiot good for only one task.

  Missing yet again, the only man who’d ever treated her as an equal everywhere and anywhere.

  THIRTEEN

  AUSTIN COMMANDERY, MID-JUNE

  The Austin Commandery was Don Rafael’s original Texas ranch, built after he had enough fighting men to force a settlement deep within what was then hostile Indian country. It still maintained its status as a garrison and a fortress, emphasized by its sturdy buildings and stout limestone walls. Only a few miles from Compostela Ranch and close to Austin, it was now occupied by Ethan’s mesnaderos and their supporters.

  Most of the buildings and their interiors gave clear evidence of the decades they’d been occupied by warriors—longhorn cattle skulls looming from the rafters, the arrowhead collection covering the billiard room’s walls, the racks of shotguns and rifles by every door, and more. The walls were plaster or rough-hewn limestone blocks, and the ceiling’s beams were clearly visible in most rooms, although the physical comforts were always the latest available—at least everywhere except in the meditation and punishment cells.

  Ethan’s private quarters reflected his personal taste: a highly sophisticated, very modern mix of architecture, light, and décor where every detail combined into a hard-edged unity. Conveniences, whether technological or hygienic, were concealed behind panels and curtains. Like the man himself, the rooms gave up their secrets grudgingly, although they would obey direct orders from a privileged few, like those gathered here tonight.

  Only three of the inner council lounged on the leather chairs: Jean-Marie, Ethan, and Caleb, Gray Wolf’s cónyuge.

  Rafael was with Grania O’Malley, his new lover, whom he’d devoted himself to since they’d first met over two weeks ago. Such fidelity was a shocking display of interest—almost weakness—in a patrón, and one that all of his men were working damn hard to conceal from Madame Celeste. Tonight they were tuning personnel assignments so the meeting wasn’t, technically, anything he needed to attend.

  Caleb was Texas’s second-oldest compañero and a brilliant geologist, neither of which would have normally qualified him for attendance. He was here as Gray Wolf’s alternate, since their conyugal bond allowed Gray Wolf to know everything that Caleb saw, felt, or thought. Gray Wolf was in Dallas, picking the brains of dryland farming researchers, one of his favorite passions.

  Jean-Marie flicked a glance at Ethan, gauging his temper. Ethan was keying in the last changes to the watch list, his blond hair blazing under the light until he resembled a Renaissance angel. Not a cherubic one, of course, all chubby cheeks and smiles—but the type who stood with a flaming sword at the gates of hell.

  They’d first met a year before the Civil War when Rafael had dragged in the young horse thief to learn some badly needed manners. They’d grown to be friends i
n the decades since, even with Ethan always giving Jean-Marie the subtle deference due an older brother. The former guerrilla had been stretched by this war, as they’d all been, making him a more brilliant fighter and leader.

  Even so, Jean-Marie wondered what Ethan wasn’t telling anyone. Ethan was seldom talkative, but he didn’t usually hide secrets from Rafael or his elder hermanos. Recently he seemed to be shying away from private conversations. Odd, very odd.

  But not as important as the rapes, suicides, and unexplained deaths plaguing central Texas.

  Jean-Marie’s phone chimed softly, making his jaw clench, and he automatically hit the ignore button. The unique ring—three descending tones—meant another suicide prevention hotline hadn’t been able to prevent a death. A different ring announced when there’d been an unexplained death of a woman. Damn Madame Celeste’s two devils and their penchant for feeding on respectable women’s terror, which left their victims no peace afterward except in the grave!

  “Are we agreed then?” Ethan’s right hand thumped the keyboard a few times, closing his entries. Light rippled across the wall behind him and settled into new blocks of text, displaying the new assignments. The great map of Texas facing it glowed in different colors, reflecting the new day and nighttime strengths in various places.

  “I still don’t like leaving Luis alone. All he’s got to back him are some thirty-year-old compañeros.” Caleb’s forefinger stabbed the symbol for Austin. Red-haired and freckle-faced, casually dressed in jeans and T-shirt, he was usually relaxed and ready to joke but not when it came to filling in for his beloved cónyuge. Then he worked with an intensity and brilliance that could astonish even Ethan.

  “They may be young compañeros but they’ve all got decades of combat under their belts,” Jean-Marie countered, summarizing the earlier argument, and came to his feet, unable to sit still.

  The death count—whether from suicides or Beau and Devol’s murder victims—was now into double digits by his reckoning. If the prosaico media caught wind of it and guessed the cause, they’d panic. There’d be hell to pay afterward for all vampiros, guilty or not.