In Love by Christmas: A Paranormal Romance (18 page)

“You’re still going to put her there?”

“Oh, yes. Leroy, you are a newcomer to our lives. You don’t know what Cass is capable of. I’m not going to let a few months of good behavior fool me into thinking she’s healed.”

Leroy kept his mouth shut. He knew he could heal her, but he’d have to ride rough-shod over her father to get to her. Carl had said that Cass was burning for him too. In a while, she’d bust loose from the hospital and come after him. That wasn’t a good idea. In the hospital, she was safe. Hannah’s soldiers would watch out for her. He needed to trust the Great One and all of
Its
soldiers to make this work out right.

“What do you want to do for a couple of months, Leroy? I think you should plan on coming home for Christmas, but you’ve got some time to kill. My meeting will be over on October 20th. You’ve got two months to fill. Do you want more language school?”

Leroy raised his hand in defense. “Please, no.”

Will smiled. “What do you want to do?”

Leroy leaned forward and whispered. “What’s a
debutante ball
? I got invited to one.”

“Which one?”

“The Queen Charlotte’s Ball in London. It’s next weekend, October 25th.”

“Boy, you scored a big one.” Will shook his head ruefully, smiling enigmatically. “I can remember escorting the debs. Those were the days. Who are you escorting?”

“Lord Martingale’s daughter, Lady Clarissa. I met him golfing. She’s Lord Ballentyne’s niece, too. He asked me to escort her, and I said I would.” Leroy felt embarrassed to be going to such an event. He had no idea why Lady Arabella had wanted him to help her cousin “come out.” He was also embarrassed for another reason.

“Will, what’s a debutante ball?” Leroy leaned forward, whispering furtively.

Will rocked back in his chair and chuckled. “A debutante ball is part of an elaborate, upper class, puberty ritual. It’s when a young woman makes her début in society—when her parents chuck her out into their rarified world, signaling that she’s ripe for marriage.

“It’s as archaic as horses and buggies, yet ‘coming out’ endures. Everyone knows if a family can afford to ‘bring out’ their daughter in style—the whole spectacle costs a bundle—she’s got the chops to make her worth marrying. Financial chops, anyway.”

A look Leroy hadn’t seen on Will before crept onto his face. A smirk. A bad boy grin.

“I’ve been to so many debutante balls. I was the most desirable escort in the world for years. Even now I get asked once in a while.” The grin blossomed. “Some of the mothers wanted me to escort
them
. I did, and their daughters too. You’d be surprised at how attractive being the richest man on the planet makes you.”

Will’s grin effervesced. “God, those were the days. I did ‘em all. Lined ‘em up and fucked my way down the line.” He leaned toward Leroy as though imparting a secret. “When they see
you
, there’s going to be a stampede. You are
prime
beefcake, Leroy. Top of the line dick. It’s time for you to cash in on what you’ve got.” Leroy’s nostrils flared and he pulled away from his host, eyes growing wider with Will’s every word.

“Son, if you want to sample a few of those rich little tarts, go ahead. It won’t bother me at all. You and Cass can get together when the time comes, and you’ll have some delicious memories.”

Leroy pushed his chair away from the table and jumped up.

“It’s
not
OK with
me
,
”
he said to his prospective father-in-law. Leroy could feel his cheeks redden and his heart pound. He’d heard about how Will was with women, but never like this. If what Will said was true, and Leroy knew it was, he was disgusting.

Will registered his loathing. “Sit down, Leroy. I don’t know why I say things like that. People, the
men
at Numenon, and everywhere, thought I was the coolest thing in the world when I was running around. But I don’t think it’s cool now and I don’t do it any more either.

“I did fuck all those pop-tarts all those years. I’m not proud of myself.” He looked down, putting his hands in his lap to hide their shaking. “I haven’t been like that for years. I met a friend of Elizabeth Bright Eagle’s, a healer, and she didn’t allow ‘acting out.’ Long story. She dumped me.

“But that’s how I ended up at the Meeting and met your grandfather. And fell in love with Elizabeth.” He made a little huffing noise. “I’m lucky with money, but not with love.” Will’s face seemed carved from granite. Lines spelling sadness dropped from his nose to the corners of his mouth.

Leroy looked up as Hannah Hehrman
stormed
into the room. She wore a black sequined jacket that dropped below her hips, a short black skirt and high heels. She still walked like a commando. Leroy saw the bulge of her pistol at her waist.

“What are you doing here, Will? Are you out of your mind?”
She leaned over the table and skewered Will with her eyes. Her voice was low. Hearing it was like being hit with bullets from a silenced weapon.
“Do you know who’s here? Diego Donatore.”

“Enzo’s brother? Donatore Industrial isn’t supposed to be at the conference.”

“It is now. One of the South Americans ‘got sick’ and your friends drafted Donatore to come. He’ll fight every word you have to say tomorrow, if he doesn’t kill you on the way back to the apartment.

“My men are outside, as are Donatore’s. But Donatore’s soldiers are not men. You know what they are: scaled monsters with acid venom and claws who can look human when they want. You saw them at the Meeting. You know all about them.

“It’s dark; they can take their reptilian forms. Conveniently, there’s a park across the street where they can hide.” Hannah grabbed Will’s elbow and dragged him out of his seat. “How could you be so foolish?”

Hannah kept spitting her bullets as she dragged Will toward the hotel entrance. “Now all we need to do is get back to our hotel with monsters chasing us. Monsters that can’t be killed.”

22

A Walk by the Park
 

L
e
roy watched Hannah
carefully as she crossed the lobby in front of him. She stalked with her knees bent, covering ground like a tracking cat. She scanned the gigantic hall, head moving from side to side in barely perceptible arcs. Her hands moved repeatedly to the bulge on her waist as though they were out of her control. She wanted to pull her weapon out. Not here. Not in the vast promenade that was the entrance to the Hotel Le Meurice.

The main entrance, a very large rotating door, was exactly in the middle of the foyer. If they left from there, they’d have to walk an additional half block on Rue de Rivoli, the street fronting Le Meurice, exposed to whatever lurked in the park across the boulevard.

The three of them made for the far end of the esplanade. Another entrance was there, but something had changed while Will and Leroy had been eating dinner. A shiny black concert grand piano sat in front of the door. Someone very good was playing it.

The hotel had put chairs out, arranged in rows like a small concert. Every chair was taken. Le Meurice was known for the comforts it provided guests. Cushy chairs and seating areas were arranged from one end of the hall to the other. They were packed with people, especially the groupings closest to the recital. Waiters served drinks and appetizers.

Leroy saw a red dot flash on the wall behind the check-in area. Someone outside was using an automatic scope, sighting on Will’s white hair. His head was a bright target.

“Will, we must run,” Hannah said, turning around to grab his hand.

“Did you see it?”

“Yes.”

“We can’t go out the door at the end,” Leroy said. “If they start shooting, the bullets will come right through the glass. Those people will be killed.”

Hannah sucked in a breath and looked around. “Where can we go?”

“They must have an exit on the side of the building. For employees.” Leroy said, walking toward the end of the check-in desk.

Hannah beat him, dragging Will by the wrist. She barked at the attendant, “We must leave the hotel very fast. Is very important.” Leroy smiled. With her Israeli accent, Hannah murdered French worse than Will did.

Will tried next. “Is there an exit to the street back there?” He pointed at the doorway at the end of the long registration desk. “What’s over there? Can we get out there?”

The clerk’s French was impeccable. Leroy could see that Will understood it, but could not reproduce it. “Guests are not allowed through that door. Only staff.” Will was about to offer a small fortune if the guy let them out. The clerk anticipated that. “Even if you were to give me all the money in the world, I could not let you through that door. See,” he pointed to a camera above the doorframe, aimed in their direction. “Things have been stolen …”

Leroy leaned against the registration desk. He spoke to the clerk in his very good French, grinning with a close approximation of Will’s bad-boy grin. He drawled, “They need to get out of here because her husband just walked into Le Dali. He was with his mistress, of course. But husbands never take this sort of thing well.” Leroy nodded his head to Hannah and Will. Hannah continued to clutch Will’s arm. “Her husband carries a firearm, from his time in the Legion. I would get them out of here so that none of those good people are hurt.”

The clerk’s eyes widened. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I just did. They don’t speak French well enough to explain. Or maybe they don’t want to.”

The whites of the fellow’s eyes flashed. “Come with me.” He raised the wooden counter top and they slipped through. He took them to the door with the camera over it and opened the elaborate lock. “Go there. Follow the hallway. There’s a freight receiving area. The metal door opens to the outside.”

The passageway ended in a bay that must have been used to receive guests’ luggage and packages, as well as small hotel necessities. It was too small to be a general freight access. They lifted the metal roll-up door and found themselves on Rue de Castiglione, the street that ran at ninety degrees to Rue de Rivoli.

“Stay back,” Hannah barked at Will.

He had no intention of lagging. “No. We’re in danger because of me.” He pushed forward, jogging even with her.

Hannah looked up and down the street. “Where are my soldiers? They should be here.”

“We’ll come upon them bye and bye,” Leroy said. “The problem is—which way should we go?” The door had dumped them out halfway down the block from the Rue di Rivoli where the Le Meurice’s front entrance was located. To get back to their apartment, they’d have to go back that half block toward the front of the Le Meurice, and then turn right for another block, exposed to the shooters in the garden.

“Maybe we should go to the end of this block, and then get home around the back,” Leroy offered.

“I don’t know what’s back there. The monsters could be there too,” Hannah said. “Where are my soldiers?”

“Let’s try the back way, Hannah,” Will offered. “It can’t be as dangerous as walking down Rue de Rivoli.”

They turned right, heading away from the front of the hotel. Less than thirty feet down the street, Hannah pulled her pistol. “What’s that?”

“What?”

“On the ground, on the other side of the street.” They started to follow her. “No! Do not follow me.” She crept across the street, holding her gun in both hands, moving with her stalking cat’s slink.

“Oh, no,” she cried, dropping to her knees over the body of one of her soldiers.

“Don’t touch him,” Leroy shouted. “If a demon killed him, he’ll become a demon. You can become one from his infected blood.”

Anguish bathed Hannah’s face. “We are both from Israel. He was very good. How could this happen?”

“Don’t touch him, Hannah.” Leroy crossed the street and took over. “You take Will back to the hotel. Go that way, the way we know. I’ll handle the demons.”

“What about my warrior?”

“I’ll handle him too. Go!”

Will had heard speech like Leroy’s from Grandfather. Whatever Leroy was doing with his voice was compelling. He had to do what he said, as did Hannah. He put his arm around Hannah and dragged her off. “We need to get home fast.” They left Leroy by himself.

When they rounded the corner to Rue de Rivoli, Will saw a flashing red dot on the stone building on the corner.

“Run,” he cried. There was hardly any noise at all. A Poof! and a chunk of the building’s corner exploded. “Oh!” Will dropped to his knees, grabbing at his shoulder where it met his neck. Blood blossomed, covering his shirt and jacket. “Shit,” he said. “They got me. Oh, shit.” He dropped to the sidewalk, clutching his neck.

Hannah pulled his hands from the wound and examined it. “It’s not a stone fragment. The bullet must have ricocheted. You’re bleeding. We must take you to a hospital.”

Hannah looked back in the direction they had come. Leroy was running up the street toward them. A fire flamed on the sidewalk where the body had been. Hannah wailed, leaning toward her fallen soldier.

“Get Will to the apartment, Hannah,” Leroy bellowed. “I’ll handle everything.”

Leroy walked out to Rue de Rivoli, looking to his right. Hannah and Will were scuttling toward the apartment. He could feel the demons rustling in the garden, and see their red eyes glowing. They were converging on Hannah and Will. He had to do something, fast.

Stepping forward to the edge of the sidewalk, Leroy raised his arms, palms pointed toward the garden in a gesture of peace.

“Hello, good demons! You are very good demons!” He sang in his language, a few words bringing goodwill. “Good demons! Stand where you are and listen to me.” He put the greatest power he could into his voice. “You are so good. All you can do is think good thoughts and do good things.

“You are very sleepy, so sleepy that you must sit down on the ground. You cannot keep your eyes open. You feel very good and happy. Think good thoughts and listen to me.

“You are good. You are kind and loving. You are kind to your husbands and wives and children. You never fight. You came to this life to make the world a better place. Everything you do is to make the world better.

“You hear my words and know they are true. You will never be the way you were. You will never need to show your scales and teeth and claws. You are so good that you’ll only need your human selves. Nothing could make you hate and hurt others. Nothing anyone can do, even the strongest demon, Enzo Donatore, can make you hateful and bad again. You no longer fear him and you no longer obey him.”

He sang a few more words in his language. “Now, you cannot stay awake. You will find places in the garden where no one can see you. You will go to sleep there, sleeping very deeply. You will sleep for a week. No one will be able to awaken you.

“
Diego
Donatore
, you are the best of all. The most loving of all. You are good. No one can make you be anything but good. You are the leader, Diego, of the new demons, the demons of love and goodness. Diego, you will find the most hidden spot in all the garden. You will go there and sleep so deeply that nothing can wake you for
two
weeks. In two weeks, you can arise. You will be kind and good to your soldiers for the rest of your life. You will love them, and they will love you.”

He clapped his hands. “Go now, and sleep. Take your clothes and put them near you so you can put them on when you turn back to your human form. Go! Go to sleep now.”

Leroy heard scuffling in the bushes and saw the bushes moving as the monsters found their sleeping areas. Lots of them rustled. When he was sure they were asleep, Leroy called out again.

“Hannah’s commandos. Come forward to me. I will protect you.”

Four walked out of the Tuileries and crossed the street. Hannah had said she had six soldiers. One was dead. Four were in front of him. That left one wounded or dead.

“Where is the other one?” he asked.

“Monsters bit off his head. He’s dead.”

“Where is he? Point.” They did. “Go to the apartment. Hannah needs help. Go fast.”

Leroy went into the garden and found the dead body. He did exactly what he had done to the first soldier. Pointing the palm of his hand at the corpse, he sent a jolt of white-hot fire to the body, burning it to ash instantly. The man would rise as demon if his remains were not obliterated.

He jogged home. He could feel Will calling him.