Chains of Fire (6 page)

She swiveled gracefully to face him.
Why are you interrupting my conversation with Ambassador Moreau?
But no, she couldn’t say that, nor could she allow her irritation to show. “Yes?”

“I have a message from Mr. Samuel Faa. He requests your presence at once.”

“He’s going to have to wait.” She smiled, teeth clenched. She had been angling for that check from the ambassador for fifteen minutes, and she was not about to give up now.

The waiter offered her a slip of paper, folded in two and torn from a cheap tablet. “If you had any objections, Mr. Faa said to give you this.”

She opened it. Roughly sketched on the paper was an empty cradle.

Damn Samuel. He knew how to get her attention.

A child was in danger.

She folded the paper and turned back to the ambassador. “I am so sorry. This requires my immediate attention.”

The ambassador bowed and once again kissed the back of Isabelle’s hand. “I am desolated. Apparently, we are not allowed a whole conversation tonight.”

“No.” She kissed his cheek. “Another time.” Catching her gown in her fingertips, she moved toward the door without appearing to hurry, smiling and nodding at the guests, but never slowing.

She jumped when Samuel stepped out from behind a potted plant dressed in his heavy coat . . . with an amber wool scarf wrapped around his head and tied like a turban. Over the turban, he wore a dark knit cap.

She didn’t laugh. Not quite. “That’s quite a fashion statement.”

“I’m a fashion maven.” He stuffed gloves on her hands.

Samuel had never gotten over his impression that she was still a pampered little girl in need of help.

“The scarf is quite attractive on you.” She fought back a smirk. “The color complements your eyes.”

“It stopped the blood from leaking out of my ears, too.”

She looked. Saw the crimson stains. Realized he had a bruise forming on his jaw.

He’d been fighting again. He’d been trying to get himself killed again.

She had to physically restrain herself from reaching out to him, touching him, healing him. He was Chosen; unless he desperately needed help, he would heal quickly on his own. In repressive tones, she asked, “What did you do now?”

“I got the information we need.” He held out an ankle-length mink coat for her to slip into.

“That’s not mine.”

“Close enough.” He shook the coat. “Come on; we haven’t got time to waste, and it’s windy and frigid out there. Like someone else I know.”

“I’m not frigid”—she slid into the heavy fur—“for the right man.”

“I know.” Samuel held out a knit cap. “Because I am the right man.”

She wasn’t getting into that argument with him again. “I am
not
wearing that hat. It’ll ruin my hair.”

“Put it in your pocket. We’ll see what you say when you step outside. Now—let’s go.” Taking her arm, he hurried her toward the rear of the château.

As they walked, she rearranged her fingers in the gloves.
“Where
are we going?”

“About a mile north as the crow flies, about five miles by road. The Others commandeered the De Luca château.”

She led him through the darkened, vacant living rooms on their way out. “It’s empty.”

“They’ve grabbed a boy. He’s hurt.”

She expected the news, but her heart sank.

As they reached the back door, Samuel opened it and rushed through.

He was right. When she stepped outside, the icy air took her breath away. But she didn’t put on the knit cap.

He led her to an idling four-wheel drive. He opened the door for her, and glanced down as she climbed inside. “Shit. I forgot about your stupid shoes. I should have grabbed you some boots.”

“From the same shop where you got the fur?” she asked tartly, and tucked her strappy sandals under the seat.

He shoved the trailing hem of her gown inside. “Yes.” He slammed the door and hurried around the car, climbed in, and had the car in motion before she’d even buckled her seat belt.

The sky was clear, the moon was bright, and the headlights skimmed over the mountainous terrain, twisting like ice dancers performing a tango. Snow blanketed the icy road, driven by the wind to pile against the trunks of the evergreens and on the banks the plows had piled on the sides of the pavement.

Samuel drove like a maniac over the snow-covered road, but she didn’t care. She trusted his driving, and she felt his urgency. His tight face, his intent gaze, his taut body—he was ready to fight any way he had to, with his mind and with his fists.

“Tell me everything,” she said.

He did, including the part where he probed the other guy’s mind, forced him to tell him the child’s location. She didn’t say a word of reproach. She saw the blood that stained the scarf on his head. She knew very well it had to be done that way to save the child.

But he said, “What!” in that voice that snapped at her composure.

“Nothing, Samuel. You did exactly right.”

“All right then.” He slowed, turned off the headlights, drove using the moonlight.

“If it’s bright enough to drive, they’re going to see us coming whether we have the headlights on or not,” she said.

“We passed the drive to the château half a mile back.” He pulled over to the side of the road. “Give me thirty minutes.” He pointed at the clock in the dash. “That’ll make it twelve fifteen. Then drive in, headlights off, and I’ll bring the kid out.”

“Why don’t we go in together?”

“Right.” He laid on the sarcasm. “You’re going to be very helpful to me in your Parda spike-heeled strappy sandals.”

“It’s called Prada. And these are Jimmy Choo. What if you get done early?”

“I’ll call you.” He handed her his cell.

She weighed it in her hand. “What if you don’t come out?”

“Call the cops. And”—he handed her a small, loaded revolver—“use this if you have to.”

She clicked off the safety. “Believe me. I will.”

He looked back at her.

“Be careful.”

He nodded, got out, and headed back up the road.

Isabelle climbed over the console into the driver’s seat. She adjusted the mirrors, eased the car around to face the right direction, removed the voluminous mink and placed it in the back for the child. She examined his phone; it was a smartphone with lots of apps. . . . She played two games of Boggle. And checked the time.

Only fifteen minutes had passed. It was midnight. She knew from experience the next fifteen minutes would drag, second by second, while she worried about Samuel. And about the child.

This
was the trouble with being a physical empath. When she touched someone who was hurt, she took on his or her injury. If the injured person had a gunshot wound, she developed a gunshot wound, drawing the pain and the shattered skin, muscle, and bone into herself. Using her gift, she healed her patient—and exhausted herself.

So when she reversed the process and tried to hurt that person, she felt the injury like a shock to her system. The anguish echoed back and forth, amplified by her cruel intentions, and she had to fight her own ability to heal.

Consequently, she wasn’t worth spit in a brawl.

Samuel said she had been given the directive from the Powers That Be that she should not exchange blows. The other Chosen agreed.

Even Isabelle agreed.

But she didn’t have to like being left behind during a fight.

Ten minutes left.

She drove the car to the edge of the château’s driveway.

Five minutes.

Samuel’s phone rang.

She snatched it up.

“Come on. Come in. Door’s open.” His voice was gruff.

She tossed down the phone and, with meticulous care, drove up the steep, winding driveway.

Why had Samuel sounded so worried? The child wasn’t dead already, was he? On those rare occasions when the Chosen Ones failed, when they lost a child to the Others, or found an infant abandoned and still, she cried. They all cried.

A light burned in a black limo parked by the door.

She whipped the four-wheeler around to face outward, ready for escape. She cut the motor, donned the fur, and slid the pistol into the capacious pocket, then stepped gingerly through the snow and ice toward the door. As Samuel promised, it was unlocked. She opened it little by little.

Deep in the dim interior, she heard Samuel’s rumble, the low, warm, comforting voice he used only when he dealt with old ladies and small children, and certainly never to her. She followed the light to a main-floor bedroom.

There, in the corridor, a tall man with a big belly lay dead, shot through the heart.

Samuel had been busy.

Without concern, Isabelle stepped over the body.

Whoever he was, if he had been holding a child hostage, he deserved death and more.

Where his soul was going, she hoped he got exactly what he deserved.

Inside the bedroom, she found Samuel, coat and hat flung off, easing a thin, tense seven-year-old back on the pillows.

She would have sworn that she hadn’t made a sound, but in French that sounded almost native, Samuel said, “Mathis, here’s Isabelle. She’s the lady I told you would come and take away the pain.”

The child mewled like a hurt kitten.

Isabelle hurried to the bed and smiled down at the boy. He was so thin his bones poked at his chalky skin. He coughed, his body racked by agony, and flecks of blood gathered at the corners of his mouth.

Her gaze flicked to the wheelchair in the corner. It listed to one side; a wheel had been broken. But it bore the imprint of the child’s body. The child suffered from some cruel wasting disease; she could hope to cure only the immediate damage.

Samuel carefully covered the child with the blankets.

Mathis’s arm rested on the covers, his hand at an awkward angle to the upper arm; the kidnappers had twisted until they broke the radius and the ulna, those bones between the wrist and the elbow.

Her eyes filled with tears, for him and for her.

He suffered horribly now: from his arm, and from his internal injuries.

She would suffer horribly as she took the injuries into herself to heal him. That was the price she paid for her gift.

Samuel knew it, and he hated it. Hated it even as he understood it was necessary. He pulled a chair up to the bed, helped her out of her coat. He scowled heavily, but he continued his lighthearted French conversation. “Guess what. That man in the corridor? I didn’t shoot him.”

“You didn’t?” She wasn’t really listening. She was looking into the child’s eyes, nodding and smiling, preparing him for the moment she would touch him.

“Mathis did it.” Samuel helped her into the seat.

That got her attention. The boy was so ill, so hurt . . . yet he had killed his captor? “Really?”

“I’m not sorry, either,” Mathis said defiantly.

“How brave!” She smiled at him. “How smart you are!”

“What a good shot!” Samuel heaped on the praise.

Isabelle remembered the hole in the middle of the man’s chest. “A very good shot.”

“Papa taught me to shoot. He said I should know because we are important people and the scum of the world . . . they would try to destroy us. Because we are wealthy. And important.” Mathis half closed his eyes, breathing hard, fighting for air. Fighting the pain. “These scum . . . thought they could leave me alone with one man because they hurt me. They said I was a cripple.”

“They are stupid, cruel people,” Isabelle answered.

“Yes.” Mathis’s head fell back on the pillow. If possible, he grew even paler, and he said again, “I’m not sorry.”

“Who is your papa?” Samuel asked. “Do you know his name?”

“Papa . . .”
A tear slipped down the boy’s cheek.

“I asked him once before.” Samuel leaned close and spoke in her ear. “He doesn’t seem to remember.”

“He’s in shock,” Isabelle whispered back. For the first time, she touched the little boy. She flinched at the blast of pain from his arm. The tearing misery of broken bones. The bleeding in his lungs. The disease that rested in his genes and ate at his muscles.

She struggled to take control of his anguish. Yet it overwhelmed her senses, swamped her with sensation. She sagged in her chair.

Then Samuel put his hands on her shoulders.

Strength flowed into her. A trickle. A heat. And the memory of a cold day long, long ago when she had helped Samuel . . .

Mathis sighed as he felt the first modicum of relief that flowed into his wasted muscles.

Isabelle took a breath, gained control. The disease that ate at him retreated a little bit, allowing her to place her hand on his chest, to breathe for him as she took his injury and healed it.

“That’s better.” Mathis sighed, and relaxed. “So much better.”

“Yes.” As his pain eased, Isabelle’s pain eased, and she laughed softly. “Look at Samuel. Doesn’t he look handsome with his scarf tied rakishly around his head?”

Samuel struck a pose, hands on hips, head back. “Like a sheik,” he said, and flipped the ends of the scarf over his shoulder.

“Like a sheik who lost his desert.” Isabelle touched Mathis’s shoulder, his upper arm.

“He does look funny,” Mathis acknowledged; then his lip trembled. “But isn’t that blood on the scarf?”

“You should see the other guy.” Samuel took her shoulders in his hands again.

She didn’t want him to help her. But he fed her strength. And she desperately needed that strength.

“Samuel is a very powerful fighter.” She stroked the air above the boy’s lower arm. “He’ll take care of us until we get you home.”

“My mother and father will be so worried.” Mathis’s lip trembled again; then, as Isabelle lightly stroked his skin, knitting the torn muscles, the shattered bones, his face relaxed and he gave a small sigh of relief.

“That is better.
Merci, mademoiselle.”

“Do you remember your parents’ names?” Samuel asked. “I could give them a call and let them know you’re safe.”

“Of course I know their names.” Mathis sounded impatient and superior, as if he’d never had a lapse in memory. “They are the Moreaus of Paris.”

The name fell into the room with the weight and prestige of a thousand years of French aristocracy.

Yet Isabelle covered her dismay with a casual tone. “The French ambassador to the United States? I know him. I saw him earlier tonight.”

“You know my
papa
? Please call him and tell him to come and get me.” The child’s eyes brimmed with tears.

“It would be better if we take you to him.” Isabelle signaled to Samuel. “We don’t want to stay here any longer than we have to, do we?”

“No!” Mathis said.

“Your wheelchair is injured, so Samuel will carry you to the car and we’ll drive as quickly as we can to your home.”

“Yes, please.”

“Then you can sleep in your own bed. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

Mathis yawned.

Isabelle stood and swayed.

Samuel caught her by the waist and steadied her. “I wish you’d take an aspirin or something.”

“For me, medication merely gets in the way.”

“What do you get out of this?” Samuel’s voice was scratchy with irritation.

She indicated the child, relaxed and no longer in pain.

“Yeah, yeah.” Samuel leaned over and gathered him up. “Let’s get out of here.”