Daughter Of The Blood Part 2

And then there was Pat. When Jean-Marc had barreled into Izzy's life, she had only just built up the nerve to ask Pat over for dinner. Pat had been interested in her for months, but he had given her all the time she needed to respond to his patient, easygoing flirtation. It was the lack of pressure she savored most; he was a little older than she was, more seasoned, less inclined to see each opportunity that came his way as the last one he would ever have. He respected her boundaries. He never challenged her need to go slow.

Before she left New York, fleeing for her life, she had slept with Pat. In some ways, it had been too soon in their relations.h.i.+p for s.e.x. But Jean-Marc himself had explained that for magic users like themselves-known in their world as the Gifted-s.e.x magic was the strongest type of spell they could employ. He had gone so far as to suggest that she go to bed with Pat, to protect him from harm.

Death was all around them, people she cared about going down; Izzy had done it...and making love with Pat had rocked her to her foundations. Never in her life had she experienced such transforming pleasure, felt such joy and completion. She had seduced Pat to protect him, but her Texas cowboy had claimed her as surely as if he had roped and branded her. Pat was in her heart now.

And yet, when she gazed at the unconscious man on the operating table, she knew that if Jean-Marc woke up, she would have to face a decision. Pat was Ungifted-not a magic user-and he was back in New York, watched over by Captain Clancy herself, who knew the score. Izzy had no idea what was going to happen to her old life-could she go back? If so, when? Would Pat wait? When he found out who and what she was, would he want to?

Or did her heart's destiny end in the path that led to Jean-Marc? He was her mentor, her guardian. She thought she felt his heart beating inside her own chest. Closing her eyes, she smelled the roses and oranges that signaled his working a spell of protection and comfort around her. She half-suspected that if he did die-and she could hardly bear to even think of it-their link would survive the grave.

Jean-Marc, she sent out to him, I still need you here. You can't go. You can't die.

She felt a tiny flutter against her mind. She gasped and shut her eyes, waiting for words, for thoughts, for heartbeats.

It came: Isabelle.

Her throat closed up with emotion as she replied, N'as pas de peur. Je suis ici. Don't be afraid. I am here.

She waited hungrily for more, listening to the shorthand of the surgical team, watching as they combined traditional medicine with strange magical incantations, powders and objects-crystals, a ritual knife called an athame and candles. Unmoving, the fully veiled Femmes Blanches held his hands through it all.

Then the surgeon sighed heavily, and the women bowed their heads.

"Oh, my G.o.d, what's happening?" Izzy asked, half rising from her chair.

The doctor looked at her over his shoulder. "Please, madame, stay where you are. We're doing the best we can."

Retaining her seat, she pursed her lips and fists together. The best had not saved her mother. Marianne had flatlined, and nothing they had tried had restored her brain activity. She remained technically alive, but only technically.

Izzy kept vigil, willing a better outcome for Jean-Marc.

Michel de Bouvard, Izzy's liaison to the House of the Flames, poked his head in, saw Izzy and entered. He was still wearing his tux from the dinner. Coming up beside her, he crossed his arms over his chest and watched the medical team for a few moments before he asked, "How's he doing?"

She wiped fresh tears from her cheeks. She'd been crying without knowing it. As steadily as she could, she replied, "He's still alive."

Michel wore a poker face as he took that in. Then he looked-really looked-at her and said, "How are you doing?"

"I'm okay. Let's debrief," she said tersely.

He held up his fingers as if to enumerate the facts of their situation. "Le Fils got away."

"Right."

"Andre is still missing."

Aside from Jean-Marc, the werewolf was her strongest ally in this strange new world of pa.s.sion and deceit. "Could he have survived that jump off the verandah?" she asked hopefully.

c.o.c.king his head, he raised a brow. "A leap off the third story? I don't know. Maybe. He gave you his gris-gris, so he didn't have that protection with him when he jumped. I a.s.sume Jean-Marc made talismans for him, so they would help. And werewolves are uncommonly strong and quick to heal," he added. "Like us."

She filed that away, wondering if "us" meant all Gifted individuals or just Bouvards. She wanted Jean-Marc to be quick to heal. She wanted him healed now.

"What about Alain?" That was Jean-Marc's cousin. He had been MIA since before Izzy's private jet had landed. Jean-Marc had been terribly worried, sending two security details to search for him.

"Still missing." His voice was flat, as if he was attempting to sound neutral. She knew Michel detested Jean-Marc; she had to a.s.sume he had no love for Alain de Devereaux as well. Was Michel involved in his disappearance?

"What are you doing to locate him?" she asked.

"We're scouring the battlefield for residue," he said. "And I sent out an additional search party. We've got one in the swamp and two in the city-one in the Garden District and one in the French Quarter."

"Residue," she said.

"Emanations," he explained. "We may be able to read them for clues."

She still didn't fully understand, but she said, "Maybe I could help."

"Madame, please leave these things to us. You need to meet with Gelineau, Broussard and Jackson." They were the de Bouvards' Ungifted allies: the mayor of New Orleans, the superintendent of police, and the governor of the state of Louisiana. "You should include Sange as well." She was the elegant vampire with whom the House of the Flames had forged an alliance.

He took a breath and reached into his left pants pocket. "And you should put this on."

He opened his hand, revealing the gold signet ring that was the symbol of authority for the House of the Flames. According to Jean-Marc, it was nearly seven hundred years old.

"Where did you get that?" she demanded, flus.h.i.+ng with anger. Jean-Marc had been wearing it the last time she had seen it.

"I took it when they stripped him for surgery," he replied guilelessly. "A reasonable precaution, given its value."

Did she dare accept it from his hand? According to both Jean-Marc and Michel, innumerable factions sought to place their own woman-or man-on the throne. Jean-Marc spoke of a.s.sa.s.sination attempts on his own life, and the regent before him might have been murdered. For all Izzy knew, putting on that ring might be signing her own death warrant.

Where would it leave Jean-Marc? If she wore the ring, did that signify the end of his term of service? So many Bouvards hated him for ruling in her mother's name. He was a Devereaux, an outsider, and though the Grand Covenate, the supreme governing body of the Gifted world, had arranged for his service as regent, the Bouvards had resented his presence from the start.

I don't know what I'm doing, Izzy thought. She shut her eyes tightly and prayed to St. Joan, the patronesse of the House of the Flames, known to the Bouvards by her French name, Jehanne.

Jehanne, aidez-moi. Je vous en prie. Jehanne, help me. I pet.i.tion you.

She heard no answer, felt no guiding intuition. She didn't hear the voice that often counseled and directed her, which had sounded so clear and real in her dream.

"You must take it," Michel insisted, extending his hand palm up. "I can't wear it."

With trembling fingers, Izzy closed her fist around it. It was much heavier than she had antic.i.p.ated. She turned over her hand and opened her fingers, tracing the dime-shaped circle etched with flames surrounding a B for Bouvard. Then she clutched it in her fist again as she unclasped the gold crucifix that had belonged to Anna Maria DeMarco-the woman she had always believed to be her mother-in preparation for sliding the ring onto the chain.

Michel stopped her with a shake of his head. He said, "We have an agreement with Sange that no one wears crucifixes in the mansion. If you put the ring on that chain, she will be highly insulted. We can't afford to alienate her."

The rose quartz necklace Sauvage had made for her also hung from Izzy's neck. She pointedly reclasped her crucifix-continuing to wear it-and unfastened the string of pale pink quartz. Then she slipped the ring onto the beaded necklace and reconnected the clasp.

A sudden burst of warmth pressed against the satin of her gown. She looked down to see a white nimbus of magical energy emanating from the ring.

Michel de Bouvard sank on one knee, lowering his head as he whispered, "Ma guardienne."

"I'm not the guardienne yet," Izzy protested, as the light faded.

"You're the closest thing we have," he replied. His voice was softer, more deferential.

"Now we should go to the private meeting room upstairs," he continued, rising. "I'll let the governor and the others know you're ready to meet with them. Jean-Marc and Alain both have a.s.sistants, of course. You should talk to them, as well. They're very upset."

"No." She crossed her arms and stood rooted to the spot. "Tell everyone to come down here," she said. "I'm not leaving my mother and the regent alone." Marianne lay in her bed of state in the chamber beyond the OR.

Michel blinked, obviously taken aback.

"Devereaux and your mother are not alone."

"Without me, they may as well be," she retorted.

"Madame, these are healers," he reminded her as he opened wide his arm, taking in the other people in the OR. "They honor the code of ethics of healers everywhere-First Do No harm."

Harm was open to interpretation. One of those healers might decide that allowing Jean-Marc to live would harm the House of the Flames. Or that snuffing out Marianne's life once and for all might help it.

Izzy clasped the ring dangling from the necklace, its warmth seeping into her bones. She narrowed her eyes a fraction and said, "They'll come down here or there will be no meeting."

She caught his answering grimace and handily ignored it. Back in New York, in the Two-Seven's prop cage, she had blown off the wheedling and bl.u.s.tering of career police officers and detectives who wanted her to bend the rules in order to make their lives easier. No amount of pressure had ever succeeded in getting Izzy to violate procedure.

Here and now she had no set of protocols for what was happening. She couldn't play it by the book, because there was no book. But she could stand up to Michel de Bouvard and make her decisions stick.

"They come to me," she said again.

"We're in a precarious position," he reminded her. "Now that Le Fils has dared to attack us, the Ungifted will consider us too weak to protect them against the supernaturals in this region."

Maybe they are too weak, Izzy thought, then corrected herself: Maybe we are too weak.

"You need to be seen," he continued. "I agreed that we would keep the regent's condition a secret on a need-to-know basis, but you don't have the luxury of seclusion. The people have got to know that you're all right."

"Then bring a contingent down here to meet with me," she reiterated. "Would my mother jump if the governor told her to?"

"I have no idea," he replied harshly. "Your mother's been in a coma for twenty-six years."

"You're out of line," Izzy said.

"I'm not!" he shouted. Heads turned. More quietly he said, "I'm not. We're in an emergency situation. Our chain of command puts me in charge after Jean-Marc. But you're here now, and I'm trying to steer you to the best course of action."

Her lips parted, but she let him continue. He needed to get this off his chest, and she needed to know where he stood.

"Let's not mince words," he said. "I honor your status. I truly do. I'm loyal to you. But you just got here, and you don't know anything, and we're practically at war, and not just with Le Fils. I don't how to explain to you just how tenuous our a.s.sociation with the Ungifted is right now."

"Got it," she said.

"So you need to rea.s.sure them. Or they'll abandon their treaty with us."

"Will they do that today?" she asked him. "Abandon the treaty?"

He s.h.i.+fted his weight as if he didn't want to answer. "Doubtful," he admitted. "But with each hour that pa.s.ses without a meeting, it'll take that much more handholding to rea.s.sure them that we're still in the game."

"I'm more than willing to meet them," she said. "But they have to come down here."

"All right," Michel said. "I'll see what I can do."

As he turned to go, a deep ba.s.s gong thrummed through the air. Izzy felt its vibration in the bones of her bare feet.

Sequestered in her corner, Sauvage threw her arms around Ruthven and cried, "We're being attacked again!"

Michel closed his eyes, opened them again. He said, "Field agents. And the executive staff. I think they've found something."

"I'll go with you to the door," Izzy told him.

She crossed to her chair and picked up her shoes, stepping into them. The clack of her heels provided a counterpoint to the silent tension in the room.

They went out of the OR and into the monitoring room, where the techs watched the readouts of her mother's life-support machines. Then they went out of that room to the main chamber. The room was dominated by her mother's elaborate gilt bed. Izzy gazed tenderly at her as they pa.s.sed. She looked like Izzy-an oval face with freckles across the nose, framed with long, black ringlets. In fact, she looked younger. She had only been twenty when she'd fallen into the coma; Jean-Marc had told Izzy that Gifted aged more slowly than Ungifted. He had a.s.sumed that now that her powers had awakened, her own aging process would decelerate, and maybe even reverse.

They walked down the center aisle of the chamber. The Femmes Blanches sat in two rows on either side, hands joined, holding Marianne's hands.

Michael opened the chamber door.

A man and a woman in black suits and headsets stood on the other side. The male security agent cradled a two-foot-by-two-foot matte gray container with silver fittings against his chest.

Three other people stood in the hallway, well away from the agents. One was a young, dark-haired woman in a sleek business suit adorned with a flames pin identical to the one Michel wore on his lapel. Two men, one in his midtwenties and one middle-aged, also wore suits and pins.

When they saw Izzy, they bowed. She inclined her head.

"Oui?" Michel queried. "Did you find something?"

"Oui," the female agent replied, her eyes bright with excitement. She gestured to the container. "We have some readable fragments of the bokor himself."

"Of Esposito?" Michel asked, his voice rising with excitement.

"Oui," she replied proudly. The man holding the container smiled.

"Wonderful work," Michel said.

Izzy pa.r.s.ed the conversation. "Fragments? Are we talking residue?"

"Oui, madame," Michel affirmed, smiling. "Robert and Louise are two of our best. If they say they're readable, that means we can get some useful information off them."

"Readable," she echoed slowly. "As in psychometry?"

"Yes," he said. "And we'll-"

"Psychometry," she continued, "which I'm apparently good at." Her training with Jean-Marc had proven that.

His knit his brows and pursed his lips. "I appreciate your offer to help, but this is new to you, and this will be difficult and grisly work."

"I want to be there," she insisted.

"You are irreplaceable, and this reading could be dangerous. Esposito was working with very powerful spirits. I'm sure that if Jean-Marc were here-"