Broken Soul: A Jane Yellowrock Novel (17 page)

I frowned, but I’d heard that tone in vamps’ voices before. I was about to be kicked out. Before he could, I said, “Thank you for the box of papers.”

Grégoire didn’t reply. “If you will not feed me, you are dismissed. And tell the next blood-servant to enter.” Grégoire turned his head, but he didn’t let go of the knife he still held. I stood and left the boudoir, leaving the door open for Katie, who looked me over with cool disdain as she entered. Or rather, she looked me over the way she might something icky she found on the bottom of her shoe.

My attempts to see Leo were thwarted by Derek himself, standing in front of Leo’s door. “Per the MOC. You can come back at dusk,” the former marine said. “Not before.” And from the look on his face, Derek was ready and willing to enforce the edict: it wasn’t worth fighting for. So I headed out.

It was two hours after dawn when I finally made it back to my house, and in through the door on the back porch. The front was still sealed off with crime scene tape, and if I’d been
someone not connected to the household of the Blood Master of the City, I’d be in a hotel. I needed to sleep, but my body was too wired, and my mind was too busy making lists of things I needed to do. Eli headed upstairs to repack his gobag and then to crash for an hour or two. Even Uncle Sam’s finest needed to sleep sometime.

I was brewing a pot of tea when my cell rang with a familiar local number and I answered it with the name of my business, just in case it wasn’t who I thought it might be. “Yellowrock Securities.”

“Jodi here.”

I smiled into the cell. “Long time, no see.”

“Yeah, well, if you’d keep people from leaving bombs on your doorstep, you might get some social time.”

“Ouch. Did you catch that?”

“I got dragged into the paperwork, liaison, and media side of things. Thanks in great part to the general knowledge at NOPD that I know you.”

Jodi was the head of the woo-woo department, working to solve new and cold paranormal cases. She had been given the promotion as a way to punish her for knowing the wrong people, supernatural people, but it hadn’t worked out quite the way her superiors expected. Instead of sitting forever in her basement cubicle, Jodi had been thrust into cases with the vamps and the three-initial law enforcement departments. The ATF, the DEA, the FBI, and the longer acronym, PsyLED, to name a few. Jodi was making waves in state and national law enforcement and rubbing elbows with the rich and fangy. She now had media power, enough that her superiors’ intent to ruin her career had backfired. She was fast-tracking up toward a glass ceiling that the family of known witches had never made before, or at least not in Louisiana law enforcement.

“So what did they discover about my bomber?” I asked, hoping she’d share things most victims didn’t have access to.

“He’s had a long-running career. Like well over thirty years. His fingerprints were found through Interpol, on another bomb in Russia.”

“Yeah, about that timeline. I may have an enemy or three in town. Some who were alive four hundred years ago,” I said. “They go by the names of Peregrinus, Batildis, and the Devil. The vamps call them Satan’s Three.”

Jodi cursed softly under her breath.

“My feelings exactly. They have to be really bad to get such cute nicknames among vamps. Do some checking on them, would you? The vamps are children of a vamp named François Le Bâtard. You may have something in your files that I don’t. I’ll show you mine if you’ll show me yours. Ummm. Totally in a platonic way,” I said.

“That rings a bell somewhere. Later.” Jodi disconnected.

I ended the call on my end and took the metal box of ancient papers gifted to me by Grégoire to the kitchen table, and started a good strong black tea. When I had it steeping, I opened the box.

The scent of age wafted up from the papers, to mix with the bouquet of George’s flowers. Pollen and catnip blended with the scents of old inks, old heavy-cloth paper, old flax paper, old vellum, and older papyrus, each in fancy manila folders, probably made of acid-free paper to protect the contents. I lifted out the topmost file and opened it, without touching the pages within. The writing on the loose pages inside was an ancient script with lots of flourishes and sweeps, like most vamp calligraphy, but more spidery and uncertain. I thought it might be Latin. Or an archaic version of one the Romance Languages. Spanish? Italian?

I heard a soft knock at the side door and knew it was Bruiser. Just knew. I set down the file. Swiveled in my seat and stared at the side door, into the shadows there. I walked to the door, my slippered feet silent on the wood floors.

I placed a hand on the door, not sure I wanted to open it. Not sure why I wouldn’t open it—except fear.
Am not afraid,
Beast thought, rising up in my mind.
Want. Want mate.
I opened the door, letting in the heated morning light, and looked up into Bruiser’s brown eyes, studying him. He studied me back, his expression both calm and captivating, a warm snare of possibility. Beast, and something else, something of myself, moved deep within me, questing.
Want this one,
Beast thought at me.
Strong, good mate.
She sent claws into my mind, just pinpricks, for now, and I held her back.

“What do you want?” I asked Bruiser, curious, not sure I wanted to know what he might say. “What do you really want?”

“You.”

I felt my flush, felt my heart race, out of control. Knew he could sense those things now that he was Onorio.

“Eventually,” he added. “When you’re ready.”

Beast sank her claws deeper, kneading my heart this time, a measured, pricking, painful pad . . . pad . . . pad. She purred deep inside me, peering through my eyes. I could see the golden reflection of her in his.

He didn’t comment on my eyes, on the proof that I wasn’t human. But then, he had been a blood-servant and primo of a master vamp for decades. He hadn’t been truly human for a long while, so proof of my lack of humanity might not bother him at all. I took a breath that hurt as my ribs moved, recently healed flesh tingling, that sharp pain blending with Beast’s claws, pressing in on me. I remembered the feel of the scale of the light-dragon, and the magic that it left prickling on my flesh. “You keep saying that.”

“Yes. I do.” He gave a small smile. Stepped inside the door without my asking him in, and closed the door behind himself. The kitchen was shadowed and still. Intimate. Slowly, Bruiser lifted his right hand and cupped my face, his flesh warmer than human. Fevered. I tilted my head into his palm, not sure. Not sure of anything. So
very
not sure.

Am not afraid,
Beast thought.
Want. Want this one. Want mate.
She pushed back at me, fighting my control. My breath quickened as I/we stared into Bruiser’s eyes.

He tilted my head back, his gaze holding me. Odd, that angle up to see a taller man. Brown eyes with yellow streaks in them, pale amber, brightened by Beast’s glow, heated, like banked fires. He stepped closer. His mouth came down to mine. A bare brush of lips. The heated taste of Onorio, as if he might burn me. His breath a warm wisp. Another graze of lips. Slow. My eyes closed. The tension I hadn’t noted fell away. His lips sealed over mine. And I sighed into his mouth. Liquid warmth, like melting chocolate and heavy cream, swirled and merged deep inside me, spreading through me and out, to slide along my skin, a sweet burning.

Want,
Beast thought.
Want this. This mate.
I breathed in, and Bruiser’s scent was searing and honeyed, like caramelized sugar, scorching in the pan.
Want,
she purred, the sensation like velvet sliding through me, shredding the endings of nerves in my palms and breasts and puddling between my thighs.

But you wanted Rick. And he failed us,
I thought at Beast. The old hurt rose up, and I saw again his face, suffused with desire and magic as he walked away from us and toward Paka.

I no longer wanted Rick. I didn’t. But the pain was still raw.

Mine. Now!
Beast thought. But I was caught between two needs, protection and desire.

Bruiser’s hand soothed my cheek, down along my neck, and cupped my head, tilting my face farther upward. His other arm slipped around me, drawing me close. Moving slowly, as if I might leap away, like a wild animal, caught delicately in his hands. His body like a furnace, like an oaken fire in the midst of winter, melded to mine.

This not Rick. This is mate.
Beast struggled, wanting free. Pain raced along my nerves and through my fingertips as her claws threatened to pierce my flesh.

I raised my hands and placed my palms on his upper arms, feeling the corded muscle hidden beneath the inhumanly warm flesh. I tightened my fingers over his arms, careful of the pain in my fingertips. Not pulling him closer. But not pushing him away either. His lips brushed warmth through me and I closed my eyes, scenting, tasting, feeling, knowing. Heat spread out from the center of me, bright and painful and needing.

Jane
wants
. Jane wants mate. Jane is foolish kit not to take. Stupid,
Beast hissed.

His arms tightened, pulling me closer. One hand slid low and cupped me in, toward the center of him. His tongue brushed against my teeth and my breath hitched, feeling-seeing-tasting the thought of Bruiser and me in my bed. Beast swiped claws of desire through me. Heat billowed up from the center of me to throb, low in my belly. Electric pulses thrummed through me, burning with need. And yet I held back, seeing, hearing all those unanswered questions between us. All that depth of the unknown. I didn’t want to take a man to my bed again without honesty between us. Yet, my arm slid up, one hand cupping his head, the other riding low, one thumb on the edge of the waistband of his slacks.

At that thought, Beast paused.
Bruiser would know the I/we of Beast,
she murmured.

As if he sensed both my need and my pliant uncertainty, Bruiser’s lips curled up and he chuckled into my mouth, his laughter a rumble of delight, a vibration that met and merged with Beast’s laughing purr. Settled low in me, throbbing.

Bruiser would take the I/we of Beast as mate. Want this. Like hunting, slow stalk and wait in sun for perfect prey.

Bruiser pulled away, ending the kiss slowly, his lips clinging and withdrawing all at once. I opened my eyes to see his,
watching me. So close. The heat of his kiss made my knees weak. I wanted more. I
wanted
. And he knew it. His eyes shifted to my mouth, his own still holding that half smile.

Beast pulled back.
Mate. Mate the I/we of Beast. Mate all of what we are.

Yes. That,
I thought. I licked my lips and said the first thing that popped into my head. “Do you read Latin?” And then blushed like a schoolgirl.
Idiot. Stupid. I am so
stupid
!

Bruiser laughed, the vibrations rushing up through my chest, pressed against his. “You are a never-ending source of delight,” he said. He kissed my forehead as if I were a favored child, released me, and walked away, taking with him that extraordinary warmth. Leaving me feeling abnormally chilled in the May-warm house.

Not knowing what else to do, not sure what had just happened, I crossed my arms over my chest, thinking,
Holy crap on crackers with cheese
, and followed him into the kitchen.

“I assume you are talking about the papers Grégoire gave to you,” he said, stopping in front of the box in question. “Make me some coffee and I’ll see if I can help.”

It wasn’t what I wanted, not at all, but it also seemed like a fair trade, and perhaps a chance to ask of the former primo what I had asked of Grégoire. I used the semi-new coffee machine to brew Bruiser a perfect cup of golden roast and poured myself a mug of vanilla-flavored tea, with hazelnut creamer and a half teaspoon of sugar, keeping my hands busy so I didn’t have to look at Bruiser as I served him. Keeping my head down, thinking. Feeling his lips on mine again. It had been a chaste kiss. Not much tongue. No grinding body to body. The warmth cached within me flared at the thought and I swallowed a soft gasp. Drank the hot tea to cover my reaction. And burned my tongue, which served me right.

Bruiser sat at the table and took a smaller pasteboard box from inside the metal one. Within it were several pairs of white gloves, and I figured they were intended to keep finger oil off the papers. He put on a pair, though they were tight and the fingers too short for his long, slender hands. Beautiful hands, with well-shaped knuckles and long phalanges. Hands I wanted to touch. I gripped the mug tighter.

Handling the papers carefully, he scanned the pages I had left open. “Italian,” he said, musingly, “like all of the Romance languages, has roots in Latin, but Italian is closest to the ancient
tongue. Its poetic and literary origins became more standardized in the twelfth century, and this was written much later than that. It’s dated the tenth of July, in the year of our Lord, 1593.”

I knew a lot of that, but the professorial tone relaxed me, as it was undoubtedly intended to. I slid his coffee cup closer to him and Bruiser picked it up, sipped, eyes on the paper. “This is a letter, signed Pope Clement VIII.” He raised his brows and looked at me over the lip of the cup. “This should be in the archives of the Vatican. In a museum somewhere. And Grégoire just gave it to you?” Bruiser smiled, shaking his head. “You do have an effect on people, Jane Yellowrock.”

Bruiser started reading aloud, in English, translating from the letter as he went. It wasn’t a smooth and effortless translation, but it was way better than me trying to key the letters and words into an online translation site. I took a chair across from him and watched his mouth as he read, half listening to the minutiae of church politics that had nothing to do with witches. Until he read, “‘As to the workers of the
magickal
, my dear Paulinus, they are a hindrance to the church, and much as the Christ killers . . .’” He glanced up at me. “He’s talking about the Jews. The Roman Church declared them Christ killers so they could take their property under religious law, even though the Romans themselves actually killed him.”