Bond of Fire

by Diane Whiteside

  Grania shot a sideways glance at him but said nothing, either vocally or mind-to-mind.

  “What about Madame d’Agelet? Do we know where she is?” Rafael asked.

  Jean-Marie’s eyes closed briefly. Grania disengaged herself from Rafael and began to inspect his desk.

  “Madame d’Agelet entered Madame Celeste’s headquarters tonight and hasn’t been seen since,” Texas’s chief spy reported in clipped, emotionless tones.

  “In that case, we’ll have to assume she’ll be at Madame Celeste’s side and plan accordingly,” Rafael ordered and went to the windows for room to think.

  Hélène d’Agelet was both a firestarter—and Jean-Marie’s cónyuge. Should he order her killed as a danger to his men, now she’d gone over to her sister’s side? Or saved, since his eldest hijo adored her? Both options were equally impossible.

  A muscle throbbed in Jean-Marie’s jaw.

  “Do you have any, ah, comments, Jean-Marie?” Rafael asked, testing the waters.

  “Madame d’Agelet is my cónyuge,” his eldest hijo announced harshly. “The conyugal bond disappeared when I told her Madame Celeste, her sister, needed to die.”

  Rafael froze, fierce pain barreling into his gut. Hélène and Celeste were sisters—yet he was prepared to kill Celeste, to protect his family?

  If Rafael ever lost Grania for a similar reason, his life would stop. Had he helped force Jean-Marie into this appalling predicament? If Hélène d’Agelet had been able to stay in Texas, would affairs have ended differently?

  The room was utterly silent. Gray Wolf’s mouth was firmly compressed, his hands tightly linked with Caleb’s. Ethan’s head was held high, his nostrils flared like a stallion ready to fight.

  My sympathies, mi hijo, Rafael said finally, unable to find a way through his whirling thoughts.

  Thank you. Jean-Marie inclined his head, his blue eyes clouded now, almost gray. “If you’ll excuse me, we need to start planning immediately.”

  He bowed and left the room, Ethan and Lars following close on his heels. The others murmured curt farewells and disappeared.

  Grania stretched, her expression pensive. She delicately nudged Rafael’s sword with her fingertip, returning it to perfect alignment with the stone mantelpiece.

  “What are you thinking?” Rafael queried.

  She turned to face him, her eyes contemplative blue pools. “Two days ago, who did Jean-Marie ask to bring into our family?”

  Rafael raised an eyebrow. “I don’t understand what you mean, Grania.”

  “Hélène d’Agelet was in Austin then, correct? Jean-Marie’s cónyuge.”

  “Sí, the firestarter.”

  “Who was willing to swear fealty to you, not her sister.” His patrona’s voice was very gentle.

  Rafael winced. Mierda, but he could use such a weapon right now…“But now she’s in New Orleans with my bitter enemy—her sister.”

  Grania nodded and leaned back against the fireplace. “While you are—”

  “Outnumbered and facing an invasion. Plus, my heraldo doesn’t need to remain in Texas, should he and his cónyuge both survive this war.” He slammed his fist down onto his sturdy desk. “Could I have been more arrogant? What next?”

  “I can understand nightmares, querida. But this is life or death.” She caressed his cheek, her eyes dark with sympathy. “Personally, I’m sure you’ll figure out how to defend Texas. Afterward, you may need to rethink what makes an acceptable vampiro. I’m not sure you can walk away from many more firestarters during a war.”

  She kissed her fingertips and laid them against his mouth.

  He caught her hand and set his lips to her lifeline, shaken to the bone, closing his eyes so he could breathe in her scent like wine.

  Did he have the strength to change what had protected him for so long from his nightmares? What he knew would also save his beloved cónyuge?

  Could he afford not to evolve, if it would help his hijos and compañeros, plus the people he’d sworn to protect and serve?

  He knew only one thing for sure: without Grania, the light of his life, he had no chance whatsoever of finding a path to the future.

  Hélène gagged yet again when she reached the hotel’s miserable lobby at the foot of the stairs. The desk clerk started to look over at her, and she shoved his attention back to the TV where CNN was yapping about the uproar in New Orleans and Texas.

  Damn, how she hated giving blow jobs to total strangers, just to get a little emotion. But at least it was honest lust, unlike that to be found at Bacchus’s Temple, and she’d done her best to show a sailor from Venezuela a good time.

  She stumbled across the threadbare carpet, the single fan wheezing overhead, and staggered into the narrow street outside. The French Quarter’s comparatively fresh air smacked her in the face, laden with wine and a thousand good meals. She smiled faintly and leaned against a locked door, the shallow alcove providing a tiny respite for her recovery.

  An instant later, she lifted her hand and flagged down a passing taxi to take her back to the casino. Five bone-jarring, teeth-rattling minutes later in a small sauna guided by a kind man, she was deposited at the casino’s front door. She tipped him far too much, overwhelming his speech about being cautious in a strange city.

  She had just enough strength to make it upstairs to her room while maintaining a façade of impersonal dignity, despite Celeste’s swarm of mesnaderos and fawning courtiers. There she collapsed into a chair until the world finally stopped whirling. Her head began to clear, and her stomach gradually settled itself into a calmer pattern.

  Her sister had been very friendly today, unlike last night’s edgy blend of friendship and defensiveness. Perhaps she’d simply needed time to get over her surprise at Hélène’s unexpected arrival. At any rate, they were going to Celeste’s country estate tomorrow night to relax. Once they were alone there, she could hopefully persuade Celeste to negotiate an end to the war.

  After that, she could return to Austin and rebuild her life with Jean-Marie, please God.

  They’d parted in such coldness, never speaking to each other after their bitter argument in the roadhouse’s parking lot. Yet when she’d arrived here, she’d found a single, well-wrapped parcel hiding deep in her suitcase, which could only have come from him.

  She’d long since killed all of Celeste’s electronic spies in the room. Surely she had time and leisure now to see what he’d given her—and the strength, thanks to the hope of a coming peace.

  Hélène extracted the package from her suitcase and settled back into her chair to inspect it. A few minutes later found her holding an old, leather-bound journal, approximately two hundred years old by its scent. And probably French.

  She’d hunted books for years about the Vendée and her lost childhood, only to find very few. She’d received some offers from American book dealers, suggesting memoirs by minor Bonapartists, who’d arrived in the New World after Waterloo and represented a variety of French provinces.

  L de B was stamped on this book’s cover in bold letters, with the de Beynac crest in the bottom right corner.

  Air whispered over Hélène’s neck, as if someone else was watching.

  She paused, chilled. Could it be Louise de Castelnaud, née de Beynac? A Louise whose maiden name had been de Beynac and was a refugee from the French Revolution? Hadn’t Celeste’s lover had a younger sister named Louise?

  But why would Jean-Marie give her Louise de Beynac’s journal? Or did it also contain letters, as many such volumes did?

  To my beloved Louise, from your brother Raoul, 21 September 1787

  Hélène’s hand crept to her throat.

  She flipped pages. Louise had kept a detailed diary, embellishing the pages with sketches of her family, flowers, or even places where they’d lived.

  Good God, had Raoul truly been that gallant or that handsome? Louise had obviously adored her older brother, judging by how often she’d drawn him and how she’d saved every letter he’d written. Firs
t from the academy, the army, and finally from the Revolutionary army.

  Those hated, hated Blues.

  Hélène whipped the cover shut. She didn’t need to remember the agony of those last few months, when she and her parents had been on one side, and Raoul de Beynac had been on the other. Or how it had all ended with her parents’ slaughter.

  A single sheet of paper flew out like a bird, slapped into her arm, and fluttered onto the table.

  Cursing silently, Hélène picked up the letter and reluctantly unfolded it. Now she’d have to read it, so she could decide where it fitted into the diary. Centuries of collecting books wouldn’t allow her to let this letter be out of place, when everything else was in such perfect order.

  Words rippled across the page, still completely readable despite the passage of two centuries.

  Outside Sainte Marie des Fleurs, the month Nivôse of the Year II. Ma cher Louise…

  A chill ran down Hélène’s spine. Why was Celeste writing to Louise only days before Papa and Maman had died?

  My message is very urgent. Please tell Raoul Papa will come to Hélène’s manor near Sainte Marie des Fleurs two days from this date. The English will arrive at midnight to take us all away. As Raoul loves me, please beg him to come with his troops.

  Hélène’s jaw dropped. Her head spun, yet the damning words remained.

  Celeste was the one who’d betrayed their parents to the hated Revolutionary army. Whatever her reasons, she’d known Papa would be arrested and executed. La petite was as guilty of patricide as if she’d wielded the musket herself.

  Hélène wrapped her arms around her stomach, shuddering.

  If Celeste had done that, what other evils had she performed? Had she been accidentally captured by the French in Spain—or had she been the double agent who’d betrayed agent after agent for years? If so, no wonder she hadn’t wanted to see England after the war. Whitehall would have happily danced on her grave if she’d given them the chance.

  She should have listened when Jean-Marie warned her Celeste was untrustworthy. Ah, mon amour, will I ever see you again?

  Stabbing agony answered her, reminding her of their shattered conyugal bond.

  She bit her lip and forced herself to think. With luck she could figure out how to contact her beloved before they went to Celeste’s country estate.

  One thing was certain: Life held no meaning without Jean-Marie in it.

  EIGHTEEN

  The trailer was dark, allowing all attention to fall on Rosemeade glowing in the monitors overhead. An overhead view and exterior shots rotated on a gigantic wall panel, showing exactly where everything and everyone was outdoors. Dozens of crystalline blobs of light moved across diagrams and photos on another panel, representing the interior. A circle floated among them, converting them instantly into three-dimensional people walking in life-sized rooms. A cacophony of swamp sounds whispered in the background, occasionally replaced by guttural street language overheard from indoors. The only things missing were the humidity and the mosquitoes.

  It was far, far better than any video game—and they’d needed decades of watching Madame Celeste and her predecessors to create it, plus live imagery from the planes overhead.

  “Looks fun to me,” Ethan commented in Jean-Marie’s headset an hour after dark. “Sitting there like a nice, white wedding cake.”

  “Easy target, once you get inside the grounds,” Lars agreed. The three of them shared a private channel, while the other teams had their own channels, as well. They were using the latest stealth technology, of course, overseen by Emilio Alvarez, Luis’s godson, from where he sat next to Jean-Marie. Emilio’s T-shirt was a cacophonous advertisement for a small jazz festival. He’d probably donned it as a reminder to stay inside where he couldn’t be captured and become an embarrassment to the Navy—no matter how much that frustrated the Naval Academy grad and motivated him to work harder than ever.

  Ethan was circling overhead, high enough that Celeste could neither hear nor see his plane. They’d taken out all of her military lovers this afternoon, eliminating her eyes and ears into local air traffic.

  Lars had worked his way in through the swamp the previous night, casually dismissing his encounter with an alligator. He was now watching the main house from the rose garden side, hidden within the tangle of cypress trees and brackish water. Given his camouflaged gear and greater age than Madame Celeste’s guards, it was highly unlikely they’d spot him until he started shooting. That was when Jean-Marie would have to fetch him out as quickly as possible.

  Like most great houses of its time, Rosemeade had been built of dense wood and designed for natural air conditioning. A great staircase swept up through its center, acting as its heart, and conveyed every breath of air from the cooler cellars to the bedrooms on the top floor. The cupola surmounting the roof vented the house, sucking warm air out.

  On this blisteringly hot night, Madame Celeste’s almost two hundred vampiros had followed the same flow. No prosaicos were here tonight, or compañeros, just her warriors. They’d parked their cars, vans, and buses on the parking lot between the house and rose garden. After accepting drinks in the small library and music room on the first floor, they’d wandered up the great staircase. Now they milled around on the stairs, the balcony overlooking the first floor, or in the ballroom, gossiping with their friends, challenging their enemies, drinking wines they’d never heard of before or swilling old favorites. All, however, stayed very close to the ballroom, awaiting Celeste’s instructions.

  Jean-Marie’s intuition was silent at the moment, which wasn’t necessarily a comfort. It could kick like a mule when it had only one thing to say in a bad situation.

  As befitted a getaway driver, he was currently surrounded by very fast machinery. His beloved, highly customized Suzuki Hayabusa Turbo—or Peregrine Falcon—was hidden further back in the trailer, which was hitched to a semi truck cruising down a back road near the plantation. It had a compartment to itself, ready to pop open a concealed door and roar out down a ramp—faster than any other motorcycle, road-legal car, and many planes.

  “Anyone heard from Devol?” Lars asked.

  “No, dammit. We’ve got directional mikes on the house, but we haven’t picked up any traces of him,” Ethan snarled.

  Jean-Marie’s mouth tightened at the news, one of the few strong sensations he’d felt other than agony over his loss of Hélène. Christ, how he spent every spare minute plotting how to win her back when this was over…

  Ethan was taking Devol’s challenge personally, and hopefully, that wouldn’t become a weakness. Texas couldn’t afford cracks in her defenders. God knows his own insides were wound tighter than a coiled rattlesnake, sharp enough to shatter like an overstretched steel cable. His gut knotted at the image.

  He shifted slightly, trying to relax. He needed to, although he wasn’t sure why it was so important to do so before a big raid. Just sit back and listen to the undercurrents.

  “Were you able to get Baby Mine loaded?” he asked, returning them all to the present.

  “Oh yeah, that lady is fully packed and flying. One of the Austin commandery’s compañeros knew exactly how to make her payload, thanks to his days in Vietnam.” Ethan chortled, immediately restored to good humor. “She’s in the air now and heading this way, right on schedule. When she gets here, she’s going to show these guys how to party like they’ve never partied before.”

  “I’ve already started things going, too,” Lars added. “Just a couple of well-placed bullets into the right places to set the groundwork.”

  Which nobody had noticed, of course. Jean-Marie snorted softly, slightly amused by tagging the night’s planned events as a party. At least it would be a brief, explosive one for its participants, stopping them from lingering on this earth.

  The cursor blinked insolently at Hélène, refusing to allow her admittance into Celeste’s PC. Dammit, if she was going to escape, she had to turn off the security system. She’d bet her favorite Cartier d
iamond necklace Sister Dearest controlled it.

  Twenty-four hours under the same roof, and they were still friends, at least overtly. But that sure as hell wouldn’t last.

  Sounds of a party swirled through the house, reminding her she was outnumbered and outgunned by dozens—even hundreds—of vampiros, partying hard in a mansion as flammable as any wood lot. She hadn’t seen its like since she fought the Malaysian rebels during the 1950s. There’d been many similar houses there—big, well-ventilated, built of dense, dry timber, just begging to be turned into a bonfire. And, damn, how they could burn faster than anything she’d ever encountered in a more northern climate…Which was probably why Celeste had capped all the fireplaces on this showpiece.

  But what could the password be for its security program? Celeste was downstairs, going over the final preparations for tonight’s gathering with her hijos. She probably didn’t plan to be gone for very long, so Hélène didn’t have time to run a list of common passwords against the system. She needed to guess Celeste’s password, based on what she knew of her sister, the patrona and murderess.

  Well, didn’t that just rule her out as an expert, since she hadn’t even known Celeste was a killer? She forced back more useless tears and the memory of Jean-Marie’s dear face.

  Think, Hélène, think. She beat her hands together. Who and what did her sister care about? The standard guesses were names like children, pets, husband…

  Perhaps a simple variation on her first lover’s name, like Beynac1?

  The screen chimed in welcome and poured icons onto the screen. An instant’s extra curiosity told her a file download program was one of the most frequently used applications. Really?

  But she needed to open the door for her escape first.

  The old, familiar steadiness dropped over her. Smiling slightly, she tracked down the security application. The same password opened this, and she soon shut down the alarms closest to the house.

  She cocked her head and listened, sniffed, for an audience. Nothing. Should she look at what Celeste had downloaded? She gave in to curiosity. A few mouse clicks later, the screen hiccupped, paused, gushed, and abruptly recreated itself as—an address book?