Please don't start having chest pains, Mother, Jema thought as she followed them. I have to stay long enough to apologize to Mr. Jaus and find Thierry.
* * *
Thierry found Jaus's personal guard impressive, but not impassable. He used the trees to cross over the high security walls and jumped down to the roof, where he entered the house through an open window. He looked around the guest room, where several costume boxes had been left on the bed. Jaus always had been a fanatic about being well prepared for any calamity. It was too bad he didn't know Jema belonged to Thierry.
Tonight he would.
After sorting through the boxes, Thierry found a demonic lord costume large enough for him to wear, with a matching mask. He was here for Jema, not to be caught by Jaus's hunters, so he changed into the garish garments before he went downstairs to join the party.
Thierry picked up Jema's scent in the front room, and followed it into the ballroom. There he saw a couple dressed in dark blue waltzing in the center of the room.
It was Jaus, and he had Jema in his arms. He was dancing with her. Laughing with her. Thierry saw the way the Austrian was staring down the front of her gown as well, and giving off l'attrait so intense the room could have been packed from floor to ceiling with camellias. When Jaus touched Jema's throat with his hand, a slow, incredulous anger began to burn inside Thierry.
Jaus hadn't invited her to a Kyn masque out of neighborly kindness. Jaus wanted her. He intended to seduce her. He wanted to use her for sex. He was using his talent on her right this moment.
Use Jema. Take Jema. While she still had Thierry's seed in her body. Not if he breathes through his neck.
Thierry's dagger was in his hand as he stepped out onto the dance floor. So many of the guests were armed that no one paid him any notice. He wove through the whirling couples, intent on his target, and was only a few yards from Jema when two men stepped in front of him. One wore the costume of a mime, the other a priest's robes.
"Mr. Durand," the priest said as Thierry pushed him aside, "you must come with us."
Thierry swung around and looked down into the priest's smiling mask. The reminder of the Brethren brought something feral back to life inside him. "Why?" He brought the dagger up under the man's chin. "You think to take me again?" He leaned closer, enjoying the fear in the dark eyes staring up at him. "You should not have crawled out of your cell, priest."
"I am not Brethren. I'm John Keller, Alexandra's brother." When Thierry would have moved away, he seized his arm. "Mr. Durand, listen to me. Everyone here, including Miss Shaw, is in danger."
"Miss Shaw will not be in another minute," Thierry said. He glanced over at the man dressed as a mime, who lifted the white mask that covered his face. That was when Thierry got the second jolt of the night and nearly let his dagger fall from his hand. "Jamys? Mon Dieu, what is this? How are you here?"
His son, who was supposed to be a thousand miles away in New Orleans, reached across him and gripped the priest's arm.
"Please come with us right now, and I'll explain everything," the priest said. "Your son says that we don't have much time."
"My son cannot speak," Thierry snarled. "Your kind did that to him."
"He can speak through me," John Keller said, swallowing. "I can hear his voice inside my head. I'll tell you everything he says."
Thierry glanced at his son, who nodded. "You have been busy, boy." He looked at the dancing couple in blue, and reluctantly sheathed his dagger. "We do this quickly."
He followed Jamys and the human out of the ballroom and down a hall to a room where Jaus's collection of battle swords was displayed.
The priest closed the door and locked it. "Mr. Durand, members of a street gang were hired to infiltrate this party and assassinate Michael Cyprien and my sister, Alexandra. Your son rescued me from them. We came here to warn Cyprien, but it appears that they're already here, hiding among the guests."
"Now I remember you." Thierry went to the human and tore off his saintly mask. "You were the priest I almost killed in New Orleans." He turned to his son. "Why are you with him? Why did you not stay with Marcel and Liliette, where you would be safe?"
Jamys also removed his mask and came over to grip John's forearm with his hand.
"Your son came to Chicago to find you," Keller told him. "He was afraid for you. He knew Cyprien had issued orders that you were to be captured. He feared that one of the Kyn might kill you."
Thierry reached out to touch his son's face, but Jamys flinched away. That small rejection hurt him more than any wound he had ever received. "I have controlled this thing inside me. I will not harm you, boy."Sweat began running down John Keller's face. "He's not afraid of you. He's ashamed."
"What?"
"Jamys wants you to know that he's sorry for what his mother did." The priest panted for a moment. "He should have told you, but he was afraid of her, and thought you wouldn't believe him. He thinks what happened to you is his fault." He looked up at Thierry's son. "I don't think I can take much more of this. I feel as if I'm going to pass out."
With a nod, Jamys took his hand away from Keller's arm. He went to inspect the swords Jaus had displayed on the wall, as if deciding which one to take.
Thierry removed his mask and went to join his son by the wall. Jamys had not changed for hundreds of years—would never change—but if he had grown to full maturity, he would have been his grandfather's twin. Thierry could see some of old Jean-Vayle Durand's fierceness in Jamys's eyes as he watched him.
What could Thierry say to heal the wounds that still bled inside his son? Perhaps it was time to show Jamys that he was not the only Durand still bleeding.
"Your mother brought this evil into our house, but it was always inside her," Thierry said. "I loved her too much to permit myself to see it. I think that is what drove me mad. Not the things they did to my body. My blindness to her, my failure to protect you and our family from her."
Jamys shook his head violently and moved away, going to the next case of swords.
"I understand how you can blame yourself," Thierry said, following him. "It is all that I have done since she died. It is part of what drove me away from you. I believe your mother wished for that. In her hatred she could not understand love. She could only destroy it. Now she is gone, but her evil lingers. Must it be forever between us? Her hatred, turning us away from each other? Have we not suffered enough?"
The boy covered his face with his hands.
Thierry went to him and put a hand on his shoulder. "I should not have left you behind with Michael. I did not think of how it would make you feel, that you would blame yourself, as I did. I could not think, Jamys. The madness consumed me. When I had a lucid moment, I was terrified. I feared that I would harm you, or Marcel, or Liliette, and I would not be able to stop myself." He pulled the trembling boy into his arms and held him close. "I could not take that chance. Forgive me, my son."
They stood together like that for several minutes, holding on to each other.
"Mr. Durand," the priest said, sounding exhausted now, "I don't want to interrupt, but there was something else that your son told me. This assassination attempt is planned for midnight." As Thierry looked over at him, Keller pointed to a large, polished oak-and-brass grandfather clock standing in the corner of the room. "We have only ten minutes left."
Michael Cyprien finished copying the last of the data from Alexandra's medical computer and removed the CD copy from the burner. For the last half hour he had listened to Valentin Jaus pour out his frustrations with Jema Shaw and his anger at himself. He kept his silence until the Austrian finally requested permission to resign from his position and return to his homeland.
"You cannot step down as suzerain." As he slipped the CD into a protective case, he turned toward Jaus. "I need all the men I can trust in this country. You are one of them."
"I contacted Lucan to ask his advice on how to handle Thierry Durand," Jaus said. "He told me the only way to stop him was to kill him."
Cyprien knew his friend was deliberately trying to goad him into losing his temper. "That was probably wise. Lucan did capture him in Dublin." He glanced up from the files he was sorting through. "I would prefer you limit your contact with Lucan. He will use you to get to me."
"That is just another reason to let me go. I cannot do this anymore, Michael." Jaus's shoulders sagged. "I would put an end to it, now, before my humiliation destroys me."
"What shall I tell Tremayne?" he asked, letting some of his own frustration color his voice. "That the man he handpicked to serve as suzerain of Chicago is running away from his responsibilities? Because some human female rejected him?"
Jaus's expression turned remote and arrogant. "Whatever the reason, it is my right."
"Do you know what I am doing? I am making copies of Alexandra's research so I may send them off to Tremayne." Michael removed the duplicates he had made of the blood-profile printouts from the copy machine bin. "Without her knowledge or consent."
"You are braver than I," Jaus said.
"Courage has nothing to do with it. She wants her brother alive, and this is the price I pay for that." Michael tucked the report copies into a document wallet and sealed it. "I love her, but I am stealing from her. I wish it could be another way, but I have responsibilities to more than my love. Tremayne wants this information. As long as I feed it to him, I. will be able to keep her with me, and her brother alive."
"So I must compromise." Jaus rubbed a hand over his face. "Settle for what I can have. Is this your sage advice, seigneur?"
"I would never advise anyone to love a woman whom he may have to kill someday," Michael told him. "As I may Alexandra."
Jaus looked appalled. "You cannot mean that. I have seen your love for her. You would rather suffer yourself than harm her."