Divine Madness (5 page)

She looked at his hands. Calloused and dexterous, but covered in tiny nicks. She was betting that in a tight spot he would use the blade effectively. There were benefits to using a knife in certain situations—like a lack of ballistic evidence. They were quiet, too, in the hands of an expert. This insight didn’t make her any happier.

“I’m Miguel Stuart—Doctor Miguel Stuart. Mum was a local girl,” he explained, also doing his best to look harmless and charming. His eyes never dipped to her breasts, though she had left one too many buttons open. She returned the favor, though his bare chest was impressive.

“But Dad wasn’t?” she asked.

“No, he was a geologist from Scotland, and we weren’t around here much when I was young. I spent more than a few years with him on the other side of the ocean. It gave me an accent.”

One that clearly came and went as needed or wanted.

“Cross-pollination produces some unusual things,” she suggested, and then regretted it when his eyebrow rose. That had been a slip. A real ditz wouldn’t know a word like pollination, let alone that it could be crossed. She had to be more careful!

She came to her feet swiftly, but not too swiftly. She had learned long ago to hide how quick her altered reflexes were.

“I’m Seraphina Sandoval—of Spain and California. Mostly California.” She didn’t offer her hand. Touching might be dangerous.

“The pleasure is mine,” he said formally.

She dimpled. “Probably, but we’ll have to see.”

He gave another slow blink. The flirtation was back
on. She could feel his sexual energy reach for her through the air.

“What do you call him the rest of the time?” Miguel asked, looking down at the cat, who bathed nonchalantly. He seemed intrigued by the animal’s complete unconcern with his presence. Usually predators were uneasy around one another. Put two dominant males together and they would fight.

“Oh…Soul-sucking Bastard,” she said untruthfully, but earned another surprised laugh. She liked keeping this man off balance in this dance of flirtation.

“Perhaps that is what he is doing when he sits on your pillow at night,” Miguel suggested.

Ninon shuddered. The idea of Corazon as an incubus was unappealing. He’d be entirely too good at the job.

“And why is Doctor Miguel Stuart out here?” she asked after a moment, taking a chance on the question because an innocent person would be curious, especially if she were attracted.

“I’m a researcher for the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration.”

It was her turn to blink. That sounded entirely too respectable an occupation for Miguel Stuart of the ready shotgun and obsidian knife. Also, his hair was far too long for NASA—unless they’d taken up with drug dealers to finance their shuttle program. His words sounded like a lie, or at least only a half-truth.

Still, she couldn’t condemn him for being hesitant about explaining himself completely. She herself had a biographical detail or two that she never mentioned.

“I’m collecting stromatolites,” he continued easily. “Algae gets caught in layers of silt and then compressed into rock. These rocks were around two billion years before the dinosaurs. It’s about as close as we can come to knowing what a planet’s early formation is like.”

She nodded, doing her best to look both interested and
yet not quite bright enough to understand and therefore be any threat to his research—if research was truly what he was doing here. She didn’t think it was. She had seen a science show about stromatolites and these stones looked nothing like them.

“I didn’t know anyone was working down here,” she said. “The place looks deserted.”

“There’s no team this time. I’m here unofficially,” Miguel said. “I still have family in the region and I come back periodically to…renew old ties. It’s a sort of busman’s holiday.”

This, she believed. He had old ties like she had old ties, and from his expression he didn’t relish them either.

The wind kicked up suddenly. It had teeth, and was inconsiderate enough to bite at her bare skin. Usually the cold didn’t bother her, but she was getting weaker and every day grew more vulnerable. A raven flew overhead, jeering loudly as it passed. Corazon looked up consideringly, though the creature could easily be half again his size, and he had to be full from lunch.

“Damn birds,” Miguel muttered. “I hate them. In Scotland they are sometimes seen as harbingers of bad luck or even death.”

Ninon laughed and scooped up her cat, holding him in front of her, enjoying the warmth of his muscled body. Ditzes didn’t know about harbingers, and it was high time she left. She nodded.

“We should go before Corazon decides to do something really rash. I don’t think he is aware that he isn’t a puma.”

Miguel nodded. “Perhaps he was in another life. Are you staying nearby?” He asked casually.

Hide or take the ride? Ninon had only a second to make a decision. “I’m at the Hotel Ybarra.”

Miguel nodded again. “I know it. They have a fairly nice bar—if not a nice manager. Perhaps I will see you some evening.”

“I’d like that,” she said, and almost meant it. She
backed away carefully, letting him think that she was reluctant to break eye contact. Really, she just didn’t want to risk him seeing her gun before she was back in the shield of agave and cactus along the road.

Miguel Stuart—if that was his real name—might work for the National Aeronautic and Space Administration in some obscure capacity, but she had real doubts that rocks were what had drawn him to Mexico. Nor was he your average man.

He wasn’t like her—not exactly. But he was something that was no longer completely human. Assuming anything that beautiful had ever been human. This was either a very good sign of supernatural activity in the area, or else a very bad one.

Corazon growled and looked up at the sky. Ninon hoped Miguel was wrong about the raven being an omen, but knew he probably wasn’t. After all, Death was never that far away.

It is strange that modesty is the rule for women when what they most value in men is boldness.

—
Ninon de Lenclos

Sometimes he disappears for considerable time, then suddenly reappears and lets it be understood that he has been in another world communicating with the dead. Moreover, he prides himself on being able to tame bees and to make snakes listen to music.

—
J. van Spesteyn on Comte Saint Germain
, Historische Herinneringen

She rode in her carriage by moonlight, the city as peaceful and empty as it ever got near the Place d’Armes. Her driver was black but not a slave. She loved the freedom and spirit of Nouvelle Orleans, but not slavery of the dark people, so her cook and maid and driver were all free. She had even taught her maid to read since the girl had an aptitude, though this was kept secret. Actually, if anyone were to be pitied, it was the Irish who had come to dig the city’s canals and who died by the thousands of yellow fever.

The air was damp, drowsy with heat, and the night was full of smells both pleasant and terrible. Plants blossomed madly, but they decayed too. The city had been wrested from the nearby waters and she sometimes wondered if the water resented it. Certainly it was vigilant, always looking for a way back in. It was a fecund city—perhaps doomed. What wasn’t taken by water was slowly being pulled back into the earth by beautiful but destructive vines.

She also wondered how much longer she could remain there before people began to notice that she wasn’t aging. It wasn’t that she would mind being thought a voodoo priestess, but her fame would spread. And that would attract the two men she never wanted to see again.

Invisible hands seemed to reach out and touch her face. She turned her head aside, knowing it was only phantoms of her mind but still dreading their touch. There had been an attempted seduction and then an attempted rape. From that day forward, though she had left the Continent, a ghost had always been with her, conjured to life by her anger and hate and—yes—fear. Someday she would find a way to exorcise it. Someday.

She had been expecting another down-in-the-heels hotel, but the Ybarra was fairly nice. Not too friendly though, and not fond of cats, she thought, putting down Corazon’s carrier. Of course, the feeling was mutual. The cat didn’t like places that had the nerve to insist that he be kept in a cage.

The clerk was a woman with streaky foundation that looked like it had been applied with a wide-toothed comb and allowed to harden into textured plaster like the wall behind her. She didn’t bother to smile back at Ninon. Perhaps she couldn’t without cracks. Still, Ninon sensed a certain hostility and disapproval caused part of the facial immobility—and it was undeserved because the woman didn’t know her and she had actually buttoned her blouse almost all the way to the neck. Nor was Ninon traveling alone. She had a cat with her. Women bent on licentious behavior didn’t usually bring pets.

Then Ninon saw the woman’s husband and understood the hostility. She hoped she wouldn’t have to break his
fingers because he tried sneaking into her room late some night.

The man came forward from the dark alcove behind the desk, sucking on a cigarette, a man with a big chest and too little brain, one always looking for something easy to fill the void in his mind and heart. He smelled of beer and sweat. The odor leaked from his pores, telling her he was a habitual drunk. Ninon wondered if he suffered from beer impotence yet. If not yet, he would soon. Beer droop went with beer belly.

He swaggered as he walked, moving as if his
cojones
were too big to fit in his pants. A quick glance told her that the problem was strictly psychological. If anything, he seemed more likely to have tiny equipment. Odd, that he wasn’t aware of his shortcomings. But then many men weren’t. It just went to prove the power of the self-delusion.

Ninon smiled again at the clerk, this time recognizing that the heavy makeup was a cover for bruises, and she decided that perhaps she wouldn’t be sorry if she had to break the man’s fingers after all. Men who beat women disgusted her.

Checking in did not take long, and Ninon was pleased to discover that she had an actual shower in her room. Soap and toothpaste were not essential to her survival, but her brain preformed better when her body was comfortable. Corazon, freed from durance vile, joined her in the bathroom, as happy as she to wash the dust off his paws in the sink, though he declined the use of her shampoo or the tub.

Ninon got out of the shower and found herself being scrutinized. There was a small statuette of a feathered serpent god on the window sill, looking fearsome even in its diminutive state. She smiled. The old religions were here still, just obscured by the hardening sediment of four hundred years of enforced Catholicism. This was a good thing, at least for her purposes.

Still wet, she stood in front of the spotted mirror over the sink and examined her body. It was outwardly healed from the explosion. The burns were gone. Her only marks were the fine mesh of golden scars that covered her torso like lace. It looked like a clever tattoo, but wasn’t. These powers of recuperation still amazed her. She should have been incapacitated by the fire bomb, her skin burned black and peeling, but even with her powers waning, she had managed to stagger away from her grave with only minor burns on her chest and legs.

Still, that had been a close call. She and Corazon had left on a boat that very night, borrowed clandestinely from a neighbor, a gut-shot cocaine-trafficker who had given up smuggling but kept the yacht for auld lang syne. Or whatever. She felt that he would have approved of her actions had she taken the time to contact him.

The crossing to the main island had been rough, but she couldn’t complain about the price of passage or the slutty clothes she had found lying on one of the bunks. And once there, it was easy to join the other tourists from the cruise ship making a surf-n-turf port of call and get lost among them. She’d made a few calls from a pay phone to friends who had friends who did useful and illegal things for large sums of money, and Seraphina of California was born two days later.

She had debated sending Byron a telegram or e-mail to warn him of what had happened, but was certain that he and his lover Brice had left her home and that they were already on the run. And if they weren’t, her action might actually put them in harm’s way, alerting the authorities or even Saint Germain to the fact that the poet was alive and probably involved somehow in that incident with Dippel at Ruthven Towers. Instead, she had simply crossed into the U.S. at one of the illegal border crossings and headed for Byron’s wife’s last known address, hoping to pick up their trail on the way.

The next morning she’d heard about an “incident”
where some illegals had been gunned down. It was hard not to wonder if the killers had been looking for her.

She’d known that she was too attractive to fool the other illegals in her group that she was traveling to the U.S. to pursue a career in agriculture, but no one had doubted that she would be taken care of in the land of opportunity. She looked the sort of girl who relied upon the kindness—and bedside tips—of strangers. Of course, that image only held together until someone looked into her eyes. If a person were even moderately perceptive, the role of high-priced mistress began to delaminate. A few hours in her company and the whole role came apart. Some women would never be whores. The men had wisely left her alone, and she’d left that group and joined another as soon as she could, both for her own protection and for theirs.

She’d thought about abandoning her plan. Whore wasn’t a role she needed to play often or for long, and it was unlikely that the government would be looking for her among the illegals further north, so this was safest.

So you will be going back to the States when this is done?
the voice in her head had asked.

Of course. As soon as I have help with my problem
.

Ninon ran a hand down her belly. Smooth—not one hint of scar tissue. Amazing. The only evidence of the fire was Corazon’s hair. Not one bit of her own body showed any damage.

She had once asked a former island friend who was a retired sports doctor—retired early for prescribing too many steroids for what were deemed trivial reasons—to check her out on the pretext that she was thinking of running a marathon. The results of the examination had astonished him and made him want to recheck the results. Her maximal heart rate was around four hundred beats per minute—nearly twice that of the cyclist Lance Armstrong. Her muscles refused to build up lactic acid so she almost never fatigued—at least not physically. Mentally she was
vulnerable to exhaustion, especially near the time when her body needed to renew, but there was no way to measure that fatigue unless she gave herself over to a neurologist or headshrinker, and she didn’t want either near her.

Ninon leaned into the mirror, peering down at her legs. She smiled a little at the patch of red-gold pubic hair she had neglected to color. She would take care of it as soon as she found a drug store that carried hair dye. There had been just enough color for her head and the cat; her nether regions had had to remain unaltered. She didn’t anticipate getting naked with anyone in the next few weeks, but she knew the importance of details. Perhaps she should just shave.

Turning, she reached for the bottle of skin tanner and began smoothing it over her body. She had to reapply it almost daily. Corazon wrinkled his nose at the scent of soggy cornflakes and hurried away. He was an hour late for his early midafternoon nap anyway.

Ninon waited for the lotion to dry and then dressed with care. She had found a lovely turquoise and sea-green blue sundress by Alfred Shaheen in an antique store in Texas and been unable to resist. She carefully adjusted the angel wings over the bust. She made a perfect vamp—seductive but the tiniest bit innocent. She hoped Miguel would approve.

She touched her dress a last time, marveling in its texture and construction. She loved the feel of the bark cloth, the color, the exquisite architecture of the dress’s form. She was an outlaw in vintage designer sheep’s clothing, she thought, grinning briefly. But so was Miguel Stuart. And that meant there were no rules of engagement that she felt compelled to honor. Anyway, she liked pretty clothing for its own sake and wore it whenever she could. To have done otherwise would be to buy a racehorse and then cut its hamstrings. Of course, in this backwater town, she’d stand out like a whore at a church social in this dress.

The thought made her grin again.

On the run for your life, and still you have time to appreciate clothes
. The voice in her head was amused.

Of course
. And Miguel Stuart would be coming to see her tonight. Ninon was dead certain of it. He was not the kind of man who waited politely for what he wanted.

As if to underline this fact, a short note and a bundle of flowers—bird-of-paradise obtained who knew where—were waiting for her on the bedside table when she emerged from the bathroom. She didn’t think the maid had brought them in.

You’ll have to see about securing that door tonight.

Indeed
. Though legend had it that no lock could keep out a vampire, if he’d been invited.

A vampire?

Perhaps.

Ninon frowned as she looked at the tidy, straight script—likely a result of expensive schooling in Britain that even a long stay in America had not broken. It was her experience that some of the most ruthless men had the most controlled handwriting. It was about power and not being careless, ever.

Of course, it was also possible that Miguel Stuart had had his hands beaten with a tawse until the training took. Children learned what they lived. The thought of childhood made her a little sad. But only until she thought about the fact that this supposed offering was Miguel’s way of checking up on her story, and that whatever he had lived as a child, he had less than honorable intentions toward her now. Sentimental compassion was not an emotion that she could afford to indulge.

I do not know if you have cause to fear her. But, my son, if you feel you must kill her then know you do so with my blessing. However, you must act at once, before she discovers your intent and pulls on the strings of your heart with her wily hands. I have long observed her and can say with conviction that hers is not a citadel that will fall to romantic siege. Especially beware her voice, which can enslave, and also her eyes that are like an invading horde sacking one’s brain and demolishing one’s will. For where her voice and gaze fall, there even wise men are made captive, and their hearts and minds are made to burn until they are but ash which her smiling lips may blow away. She is slow to rouse, but where she finally attacks, she gives no quarter.

—
Letter from the Dark Man to his son, Comte Saint Germain

So his father had also attempted a seduction and failed. This was not surprising because she was lovely as well as a vessel of power. But if she could not be had one way, then he would find another. This was dangerous, perhaps even stupid, but faint hearts did not kill fair ladies.

The beautiful magician stepped into the moonlight and raised his right arm on high. In his left hand he held a silver blade.

“I call thee, Evil Spirit, Cruel Spirit, Merciless Spirit: I call thee who sittest in the cemetery and takest away the healing of man and eatest his soul. Go and place a mark on the one called Ninon de Lenclos. Put a knot in her brain, in her eyes, in her mouth, in her tongue, in her windpipe, and put poisoned water in her belly. I call thee and those six knots that you go quickly to her and kill and bring me her soul, because I wish it. Here is payment of my blood. Amen, Amen, Amen.”

The one called Saint Germain smiled as he slashed his wrist and watched his black blood spill onto the frozen ground.

Ninon, now called Ana St. Cyr, boarded the train at Gare du Nord in an uneasy frame of mind. Standing under the metal-vaulted canopy in the cathedral of modern transportation, she had her first small frisson of disquiet. Foolishly, she did not obey the intuitive tug on her skirt that told her to return home. There was no sensible reason for her to abandon her luggage or forestall her visit to London where she had heard Lord Byron was presently staying.

She paused at the top of the steps. There were others on the train, all swaddled in scarves and buried in winter coats, but not so many as normal because the unseasonably
harsh weather and illness had kept them at home. There were also few porters about, and few vendors trying to hawk their wares. An eerie quiet surrounded them.

Ninon walked along the dim corridor, the back of her neck and palms tingling in an increasingly unpleasant manner. She drew near her assigned compartment, feeling steadily more alarmed though she could perceive no peril in the deserted car.

The car shifted as though buffeted by a strong wind. The hair on her nape began to rise and something tickled at the back of her throat, a bit of poisoned air perhaps. Ozone was gathering, a lightning storm.

But that was impossible. Not inside the train station.

Danger. She couldn’t ignore it any more. Something bad was close by. Perhaps a ghost. Perhaps something worse.

Ninon stopped. She took a deep breath, allowing her eyes to focus on the curtained glass of the door across from her. Glass, mirrors, still pools all induced in her a hypnagogic state where she could access other senses. She stared into the glass, looking past her reflection.

Something moved inside. Something man-sized, but not man-shaped. And dark. A vague scent of rot and sulfur floated toward her.

Dippel? Could it be him? Or one of his sick creations? But why? And why here?

The train began to move, pulling her off balance in her tiny heeled slippers. She put a hand to the wall and turned her head slowly in the dark shape’s direction. There! At the end of the corridor, someone waited behind an opened door. Someone very large with black shoes and dark woolen pants.