Bond of Fire

by Diane Whiteside

  Ethan’s elbow jolted Jean-Marie back into the present, and he edged toward the door with the others.

  “Gentlemen, another minute of your time for introductions.” Rafael lifted his cheek from the lady’s hair.

  They stopped and returned to attention, allowing Jean-Marie to discreetly assess her. Beneath the filth, she was a beauty with classic features and brilliant blue eyes.

  “Doctora O’Malley, may I present to you my adelantado mayor and heir, Gray Wolf? You’ve already met his partner, Caleb Jones.”

  Gray Wolf bowed, and she nodded politely. Gray Wolf’s smile was a fraction warmer than usual with a woman, possibly because she was a wildlife veterinarian. His weakness was, as ever, the places and beings of the earth.

  “My eldest hijo and heraldo, Jean-Marie St. Just.”

  Jean-Marie fell back on the first weapon he’d learned—charm. He bowed, smiling as he would have to his father’s favorite mistress. “Enchanté, mademoiselle.”

  Her eyebrows went up, and she said nothing, simply favored him with a quick jerk of her head. Good God, had she seen through his approach so easily?

  “My alferez mayor, Ethan Templeton.”

  “Good evening, Dr. O’Malley.”

  A very polite greeting from Ethan—and a verbal one at that? What the hell had she done to earn so much respect?

  It brought her on the alert, too. She frowned briefly before shaking his hand with all the enthusiasm one would handle an unknown gun.

  Rafael’s eyes danced but he said nothing.

  Jean-Marie studied Ethan, wondering what the hell had been going on. She must have done more than help the Perez family.

  “And Luis Alvarez, my siniscal.”

  Jean-Marie turned back just in time to see Rafael’s amante and Luis smiling at each other as if they were members of the same family. What had he missed?

  Luis turned to Rafael. “I myself will go to San Leandro on the Fourth.”

  Rafael stiffened.

  Luis shrugged, his eyes alight while he tweaked Rafael’s dictatorial side yet again. “I am the best one to check the preparations, since it must be done in daylight, as you know, patrón.”

  “Very well,” Rafael finally yielded. “The children cannot be risked at the picnic.”

  Luis bowed and turned to go.

  “But I swear to you, Luis, as soon as this is over, you will receive El Abrazo, no matter what excuse you offer next.”

  Luis spun, his mouth hanging open in shock at his own bluff being called in return.

  Jean-Marie hid his own satisfied grin. Only God knew why Luis had dodged becoming a vampiro for so long. It was more than time for Rafael to force an end to it.

  Rafael shook his head and hugged Doctora O’Malley closer. “Querida,” he murmured, stroking her cheek. “Will they live?”

  “Every one of them will be fine, even the little baby, especially since you gave the hospital a hyperbaric chamber.” She kissed her fingertips and touched them to his lips.

  Rafael’s face softened, allowing Jean-Marie to understand her appeal even more. A lady who was a passionate fighter for the defenseless ones, plus being totally unafraid of a vampiro mayor. A very rare and seductive combination, indeed.

  “It was carbon monoxide poisoning,” she added. “The space heater in the bedroom had been sabotaged.”

  “It will be a pleasure to destroy those devils,” Ethan growled.

  Rafael lifted his head, not quite glaring at them. “You have your orders, gentlemen. Buenas nochas.”

  The Texans left quietly, closing the door behind them. They said nothing until they were in Luis’s soundproofed office, far away from the main house.

  Ethan propped his hip on the desk. “You owe me ten bucks, Caleb, for not believing he was obsessed with her.”

  “I’d have wagered a hundred times that amount against a display like that.” Caleb pulled out his wallet. “Did any of you get a good whiff of her scent? Horse and sick dogs?”

  “She earned it while healing others,” Jean-Marie pointed out.

  “Do you think that’s the key to their relationship?” Luis asked, his gaze probing Jean-Marie’s expression.

  “No. And before any of you ask—no, I haven’t seen him like that with anyone else before. Not in three centuries.”

  And I don’t know why.

  “If they hadn’t known each other for only a few weeks, I’d say they were cónyuges,” Gray Wolf put in quietly. “Why else would a vampiro mayor relax so completely with her?”

  “Impossible!” Ethan snapped.

  “But it would explain so much, like why he can’t bear to be separated from her,” Luis mused. “No vampiro can tolerate more than a few days apart from their cónyuge.”

  “Which would give us two teams of cónyuges for duelists, during this war,” Ethan commented.

  Jean-Marie met his friends’ eyes, determination thrumming his veins. “And a far better chance to stop Madame Celeste and her bastards, before they kill any more of those poor women.”

  Hélène d’Agelet strolled into the private club in Mayfair just after sunset, very pleased with her new Christian Dior outfit. Its crisp jauntiness, from the ridiculous hat to the miniscule purse and the high-heeled shoes, had proven to be exactly what she needed to take her mind off yet another rainy English day. After two centuries of living on this island (except for trips overseas on Whitehall’s behalf), she’d once expected to grow accustomed to the weather. But that had never come to pass.

  She’d originally diverted herself from pining for Jean-Marie by trying to outspend her salary on clothes. She hadn’t succeeded. In fact, she’d become so irritated at the stodgy Britons for continuing to fund her extravagance that she’d learned to make a great deal of money. She still enjoyed fashion more than anything else in Great Britain, except their men. And none of those had kept her attention for more than a few months.

  Thank God her team members were doing so well, now that she’d terrified the Secret Service into giving them a generous amount of leave. The bureaucrats had promised not to call her back until her people were ready and had even given her a passport, with a roundtrip ticket anywhere in the world. Amazing.

  In the main clubroom, a centuries-old hymn to carved wood, old books, and leather chairs, a dozen vampiros were gathered around a table, talking excitedly and peering over something with what looked like a magnifying glass, or perhaps a jeweler’s loupe.

  “Good evening, gentlemen,” she said sweetly.

  Their leader rose to face her, his expression unreadable.

  “Madame d’Agelet.” Lord Simon, the current West End patrón, bowed profoundly and gracefully, as befitted a duke’s son and former colonel. He glanced back at his men, raising a supercilious brow.

  They rushed to stand up, looking more like abashed schoolboys than deadly mesnaderos. Chairs pushed back rapidly. One fell over. Vampiros tried to pretend they’d been behaving like adults, not schoolchildren caught by their teacher.

  A glass crashed to the floor. A tall decanter swayed wildly, its golden contents tumbling like an earthquake’s barometer.

  Lord Simon lifted her hand and kissed it. “Hélène.”

  The white scar slashing his cheek, courtesy of a Prussian general in the dying days of World War I, puckered when he smiled at her. She’d heard the Prussian hadn’t lived long enough after the meeting to count his scars.

  “Mon cher Simon.” She smiled back at him, letting her genuine affection show.

  “You look remarkably beautiful tonight. Christian Dior, I would hazard a guess?”

  Senses trained by centuries in the deadliest profession came fully alert. Why the devil had Lord Simon, who had no fashion sense, tried to butter her up by mentioning her couturier?

  She nodded confirmation, tossing her head so the silly hat’s finer points could be seen.

  “Please, join us for a cognac. Delamain Très Venerable, s’il tu veux?”

  A polite invitation, and she’d bet a
million pounds he was hoping she wouldn’t accept it.

  One of the men—a fit-looking fellow, probably one of Lord Simon’s SAS recruits—tried to slide the paper off the table and into a leather portfolio.

  Hélène promptly lit the ornamental candelabrum at his elbow. He froze, obviously aware that she could have torched him as easily—or the entire house.

  “Sounds good,” she answered. She enjoyed using Americanisms, just to remind the British she wasn’t one of theirs. “Can I have the loupe, too?” She held out her hand and smiled sweetly at Lord Simon.

  His eyes narrowed slightly before he gave a resigned shrug and nodded at his underling. He was eighty years old, the oldest of London’s current set of patrones, while most of his men were the typical ten—to thirty-year-old vampiros. He had a good, tough set of mesnaderos that no other patrón sought a fight with, even if none of his men could stand up to her.

  They’d worked together briefly in Occupied France, against the Nazis, and she still remembered his delight in the more outlandish masquerade costumes. She’d been a firestarter on his team of saboteurs, enjoying his creativity in the use of explosives.

  But he’d known her long enough to be certain that she wouldn’t fly off the handle. So why was he unhappy?

  Simon watched Hélène closely, wondering how she’d react to the photo. Whitehall had been almost more nervous about letting it fall into her hands than keeping it in Britain.

  Not that he expected her expression to reveal anything. She was notoriously self-disciplined, a vital qualification for a firestarter. Most would-be firestarters torched themselves or their surroundings in split seconds of inattention. But not her, not in two centuries. A good friend and a good lay—but not someone who let anybody get too close to her heart.

  It was easier to read her emotions by outward details. When she was happy, she bought books. When she was sad or lonely, she went clothes shopping—especially for nonsensical hats, like the one she was wearing.

  He eyed its ridiculous silhouette, wondering how any woman could tolerate such an object on her head. It was far more outlandish than the ones he’d seen at the last wedding he went to.

  He glanced at the brandy snifter beside her.

  Empty. Damn.

  A small sob broke in her throat, and his gaze shot to her face. Tears? Bloody hell.

  He caught his siniscal’s eye and pointed at her snifter, silently demanding a refill. The new glass appeared within seconds and was given to him.

  Simon set it quietly down beside her, and she gulped it—Hélène gulped it?—without glancing at him.

  Minutes passed before she put the jeweler’s loupe down.

  “Who are the two men?” She tapped the photo, watching Lord Simon.

  “One is Jean-Marie St. Just, the heraldo of Texas, who I’ve met before. I assume the other is Don Rafael Perez, the patrón of Texas.”

  A heraldo—which made her beloved a master spy and a diplomat, the perfect profession for him. He was still with Rodrigo—no, Rafael—who was the patrón of the largest, and probably the richest, esfera in North America. They’d done very well for themselves.

  And why had Monsieur Perez changed his name from Rodrigo to Rafael? A nom de guerre, perhaps? But who cared about him, when she could think about Jean-Marie?

  She sternly told her heart to stop frolicking at the absence of Mademoiselle Perez. It was possible, after all, she was missing from the picture, not their lives. It was better to think about more questions than those implications. “Who is the woman beside them?”

  A muscle ticked in Lord Simon’s jaw. “Madame Celeste, now the patrona of New Orleans. She holds most of the southeastern United States.”

  Hélène gaped at him. La petite was a patrona? Why on earth would she do that? She’d never shown any interest in ruling and, as a spy, she’d always preferred to work through the men she slept with.

  Why was she living in New Orleans? Why hadn’t she sought out her older sister in England after the war, if she’d been trapped in Europe by Napoleon’s forces? Was she afraid of what the British Secret Service would think of her having been gone for so long?

  And what were Lord Simon and his men so worried about? Proof of vampiro immortality could spark a prosaico outcry and lead to a mob, the one thing all vampiros feared. Possessing a picture of a vampiro was therefore very unhealthy. But a photo of two patrones, especially when one of them was a vampiro mayor notoriously thorough about protecting himself? Even one of London’s patrones could fear for his life under those circumstances.

  As for her own reaction, it was entirely possible that Whitehall had warned the local patrones to keep her from learning la petite was alive, lest she ignore her oaths to Britain and visit her sister.

  Her hand tightened on the jeweler’s loupe, as if it were a weapon she could hurl at arrogant bureaucrats.

  Other questions first, though.

  She brought her eyes back to Lord Simon. “How long have they had this?”

  “Two years. I warned them you’d be furious.”

  “Bastards.” She smiled wryly, caught despite herself by an old friend’s understanding. “They should have told me immediately.”

  “They were probably afraid of your reaction.”

  “Or Don Rafael’s.”

  “Agreed. All of these lads have come up against his Santiago Trust before and have the bruises to show for it.”

  A thought flashed through her head.

  “Whitehall doesn’t want me to leave, do they?”

  He shrugged.

  “But I’ll just bet they don’t want Don Rafael to know about this picture either—or that they’ve been hiding it from him for two years.”

  Gasps ran around the room. Someone muttered a soft, vicious curse.

  “Do you plan to ring him up?” A gleam of appreciation for the situation’s irony lit Lord Simon’s eyes.

  “No, I’ll take it to him, since he obviously knew it was being taken,” Hélène announced briskly. “He’s known for his courtesy to women so I can do it in safety, which none of you can. I’ll tell him it came into your hands recently through a rare prints dealer, offered solely because of your interest in pictures of Mardi Gras celebrations.”

  Lord Simon started to chuckle. “Whitehall will hate it, but I don’t see they have any other choice.”

  They smiled at each other in perfect understanding.

  “You might want to keep your eyes open while you’re over there. Don Rafael and Madame Celeste are fighting a rather vicious war, with the lady determined to remove him from this earth.”

  “A war? Why would they do that?” Hélène blinked. La petite’s temper might be fierce, but it had always evaporated quickly.

  “She took over the southeastern quarter of the country through war and assassinations, not alliances.” The old saboteur’s voice conveyed both admiration and warning. “Neutrals aren’t being attacked, but that could obviously change at any moment. Many of the European esferas have forbidden travel into the area.”

  Assassinations? Even so, Celeste would never harm her older sister.

  But it was far, far more important to be reunited with Jean-Marie first. It was a miracle her shoes were still united with the carpet, when her blood was fizzing so much with joy.

  “I’d better be going now, so I can leave for Texas as soon as possible.” She began to briskly tuck the photo into the folio.

  “Would you care for some company on the drive home?” Lord Simon offered graciously. “I’m sure one, or more, of the lads would be glad to give you an excellent time.”

  The lads froze, like Cornish game hens in a butcher’s window.

  She scrutinized them thoughtfully. Lord Simon really did have a fine lot, mostly ex-military, on the whole much stronger and more mature than her usual selection of Oxford college students. They’d all provide an excellent meal. It was even possible one or two could string a sentence together.

  Somebody choked. Several others turned pale,
as they watched her, as if they expected to be barbecued at any moment.

  But she greatly disliked taking the unwilling, even if she needed the meal.

  “Thank you, but I’ve already fed. Perhaps when I return.” She kissed him on the cheek.

  “Au revoir, chérie.”

  She chose to ignore his parting comment, muttered so softly even she could scarcely hear it, “I hope it’s not adieu for you.”

  FOURTEEN

  SOUTH OF NEW ORLEANS, JULY 4

  Gnats and mosquitoes patrolled the hot summer night, hunting for any bit of flesh gleaming with sweat under the clouded moon. An ancient pickup truck chugged down the long road beside the levee, accelerator hard against the floor. Its driver carefully never looked to his left, into a tangled forest of live oaks and Spanish moss.

  He took the turn at the end too fast and spun onto the roadside, tires throwing up a rooster’s tail of dust, as they fought to keep him out of the cotton field. A scream of overexerted brakes and a screech of gears returned the pickup to the highway, moving fast amid the spiky remains of a cotton crop.

  Rising steep and tall at the roadside behind him, a wrought-iron fence bore formal warning signs to trespassers. It didn’t mention its far more brutal electrified brother only a few feet farther back, or the Mississippi River where any fools would be disposed of. Or the extremely high-tech gatehouse inside the woods, whose suspicious sentries would happily shoot first and ask questions later. Alligators prowled the marshland behind that, helping the clouds of mosquitoes and gnats make the long approach into hell on earth for uninvited guests.

  Inside those layers of defenses, the estate crouched like an exotic scorpion, whose opponents are more wary of its poison than its shell.

  Rosemeade Plantation was quiet on this midnight, allowing the rich scents of jasmine and heliotrope to tease the humid air. Camellia and magnolia blossoms dotted the luxuriant gardens like Chinese lanterns. White columns marched like Greek warriors at the edge of the mansion’s two floors. Smaller ones lifted a glass cupola on the roof, almost an offering to Zeus, the god of thunder. All of the chimneys were capped, protecting the house’s tinder-dry wood from sparks.