Belle Chasse

by Suzanne Johnson

  He’d worked hard—and quite illegally, I’d heard—to obtain that spot representing the historical undead, famous humans granted immortality by the magic of human memory. Why would he want to give up the power for which he’d fought so hard?

  “Non.” His eyes grew more animated. “What kind of council is it now, after all? It has proven to be a sporting arena for only the wizards and the elves. The vampires’ allegiance sways like reeds in the wind, and they currently have no representative because of this. Rene tells me his father considers leaving the council, for he sees no strength of character. The fae are fighting among themselves, the were-creatures are but marionettes whose strings are pulled by the wizards, and the other species are too frightened to form alliances.” He shrugged.

  I had to admit his summary was accurate. The peace of the whole prete universe seemed to rest on whether or not the wizards and elves could salvage their centuries-old truce despite Rand’s power plays to control Eugenie and the wizards’ inability to give him what he wanted. Otherwise, we could face a conflict the likes of which the world had never seen, with New Orleans sitting at ground zero. The unwitting human citizens of my hometown could easily become collateral damage.

  “If there is a war, where will your loyalty lie, Jean?” I kept my tone even but as I sipped my wine, I could mentally track its burn all the way down my esophagus and into the pit of my stomach, where it sizzled like liquid hitting a red-hot pan. I might be sick.

  Jean, oblivious to my physical plight, leaned back and grinned. “As it must always be, my loyalty lies with Jean Lafitte.”

  As if that were ever in doubt. “Yes, but if the wizards and elves go to war, who will you support?”

  Jean lit one of his small cigars. Although it had taken some strong-arming on my part, he’d agreed to limit his pipe and cigar smoking to this room in deference to Eugenie’s pregnancy. Rand would have an elf-stroke if he thought his unborn son were being exposed to undead secondhand smoke.

  “Drusilla, have I shared with you the events surrounding the war?”

  I’d thought we were discussing the war. Unless … “Which war?”

  “The battle that took place early in the year 1815, between your Americans and the English tyrants.”

  Jean wasn’t one to stroll down memory lane without a point. “I know both sides tried to recruit you. What does that have to do with the current situation?”

  Jean leaned back and stared at a faded sepia-toned map of the Gulf of Mexico hanging on the wall opposite his chair. “It has much bearing on the matters we now face. Prior to the grand battle, I placed myself in a position to decide who won control of Nouvelle Orleans and, thus, la rivière, the Mississippi.”

  I had read a lot about Jean’s role in the Battle of New Orleans, figuring the more I knew about this complex man the better, but I failed to see the connection with our current situation unless the British planned to sail into Barataria Bay with elves manning their warships and the wizards planned to make a stand in a muddy field in St. Bernard Parish.

  “I’m sorry, but I’m missing the point.”

  Jean shook his head at me, and I thought he might be trying to refrain from an eye roll. I hated a dead guy who was smarter than me.

  “Understanding escapes you, Drusilla. This disappoints me.”

  I hated to tell him, but understanding didn’t escape me; I’d never had it to begin with. “It disappoints me, too, Jean, but you’re going to have to tell me what you mean. Stop dancing around it.”

  “We will dance later if you like, Jolie. I cut quite a fine figure in the ballroom, but I do not see … ah.” I waited for him to finish figuring out my slang. In a few moments, he nodded his head.

  “As preparations were being made to fight this battle, I saw the weaknesses in both sides. In order to reach the city by stealth, the British would have to cross Barataria, which they could not do without my help.

  “The Americans had too few men, too few arms, and very little powder, all of which I possessed in abundance.”

  His meaning sank in as I mentally shuffled through my history lessons. Both the British and Americans had approached Jean Lafitte and his merry band of pirates for help. He’d played both sides, finally twisting the situation brilliantly to ensure the American victory while also benefiting himself and his men.

  Things had gone south for him a few years later, but at the time, he had held the fate of the new world in his battle-scarred hands not a month after a warrant had been issued for his arrest on charges of piracy, a hanging offense.

  Holy crap. He was going to do it again, or at least he wanted to.

  “You think both the elves and wizards will come to you for help?”

  He smiled and finished off his glass of wine. “Come to us for help, Drusilla. Oui, it is possible, if the wizards and elves break truce. An alliance with the vampires would not give either side a decisive victory, and the people of Faery might well be evenly divided between the two princes who are vying for the throne. Whoever Christof supports, Florian will oppose. If Christof and his followers support his good friend Lafitte, well…” He smiled. “Better for us, oui?”

  While he paused to refill his glass, my mind spun with the ramifications. I’d joked to myself a couple of weeks ago that Jean was amassing a motley assortment of allies, only now I realized it was no joke. He’d managed to build what could turn into quite a preternatural army. He’d taken in Jake and Collette, both loups-garou who might be able to enlist the help of other rogue wolves. Because of Jean’s friendship with Rene, the water species would support him, especially if Rene’s father left the council. Jean could still control the historical undead since they didn’t give a crap about preternatural affairs. My former wizard colleague and newbie vampire Adrian Hoffman, living upstairs, was on the run from wizards and vampires and elves; he had nowhere else to go. He had both fangs and magic; he hadn’t been turned long enough for his Blue Congress magic to have failed.

  Last but far from least, Christof, the Faery Prince of Winter, was Jean Lafitte’s trump card. He had potentially half of Faery at his disposal, and God only knew what all faeries could do.

  Thanks to yours truly, Jean now had a Green Congress wizard in his entourage, one who could do elven magic.

  Except this wizard wasn’t enlisting.

  “No.” I set my wineglass on the side table, still mostly full. I needed a clear head. “I’m not willing to fight against the wizards.” They were my people. I’d lost my job as sentinel and my Green Congress license had been suspended pending an investigation, but the wizarding world was the only one I knew. Besides that, elves were devious, arrogant, spoiled, and morally ambiguous. I would not back them.

  “Even now, Jolie, do you insist that your intent aligns with those of the wizards?” Jean moved to sit beside me on the sofa, his muscular frame warm and solid, as was the arm he slipped around my shoulders. “They have sentenced you to what will be a certain death on ridiculous charges, all because you will not betray your friend Eugenie and her child to appease the elves. In particular, your elf, who is using his power on the council to control everyone.”

  Damn it, he was right. If I turned Eugenie over to Rand, who now headed up the Elven Synod and was my elf whether I wanted him or not, he’d promised to keep the truce with the wizards. War could be averted, at least if he kept his word. Which is what Willem Zrakovi and the Elders wanted, at any cost, because they feared they’d lose.

  For me, the cost of leaving Eugenie to whatever fate Rand decided on was too high, however, even if Zrakovi agreed to let me off the hook on the other charges. I wasn’t convinced of that; Zrakovi needed a scapegoat and I made a very good one.

  I hadn’t always been the best of friends to Eugenie. I had been selfish at times, distant at others. I could own that. On this matter, however, I had clarity. She was out of her element among all these pretes, and I’d do everything I could to keep her safe.

  Who must I fight to do that? Not just Rand but my own
people.

  “I can’t support either the elves or the wizards.” I was screwed, in other words, and tears built behind my eyeballs. Tears I would not shed in front of Jean, even if I had to gouge out my eyes to avoid it. I didn’t want his pity; I wanted his advice. “What the hell am I going to do?”

  “You will support yourself, Jolie, alongside your friend Jean and our compatriots. We will do what is best for us all.”

  “But how will we know what that is if—”

  A pair of shots rang out from outside, near the front of the house, followed by shouting. A sudden flood of adrenaline doused my fatigue and political confusion.

  Jean’s posture straightened, and he rose quickly. “That is Dominique, whose men were watching the transport. Something is amiss.”

  Ya think? I ran for my bag and pulled out the staff.

  Jean slipped a triangular-bladed dagger from beneath his tunic, wrenched open the door to the study, and strode out ahead of me. As always where the pirate was concerned, I trailed along, a step behind.

  CHAPTER 4

  I edged around Jean in time to see his older half-brother and fellow pirate captain Dominique You dragging a stumbling, bleeding man into the front hallway from outside and shoving him to the floor. I breathed a sigh of relief that it wasn’t Alex, followed by a chaser of disappointment that it wasn’t Alex, topped by a dollop of concern that our friend Ken Hachette had been shot.

  Ken, a human NOPD detective who’d recently been clued in about the big bad world surrounding him, had missed all the recent events due to a family emergency that had taken him out of town.

  Why would he be coming to Old Barataria alone via Jean Lafitte’s private transport unless Alex sent him? My adrenaline jump-started my heart to another race, this one fueled by worry. Something bad had happened; it was the only explanation.

  Jean and Dominique exchanged a rapid-fire torrent of French that went way past my abilities to interpret. “He claims to be a friend to her,” Dominique finally spat out, and I could tell by the way he said her, much as one might say flesh-eating maggot, that he referred to me. He’d never liked me; he considered me a bad influence on his baby brother the immortal pirate. As if.

  “He is my friend.” I shot Dominique a nasty look and rushed to help Ken to his feet. “How badly are you hurt?”

  “Just a flesh wound.” Ken studied the singed, bloody sleeve of his black jacket. “Gunpowder tore through my patch.”

  The New Orleans Police Department shields that emblazoned Ken’s upper sleeves identified him as a homicide detective. His shiny crescent-moon-shaped NOPD badge was clipped to his belt, but I had no doubt that, somewhere on his person, he’d tucked another badge identifying him as an investigator for the Division of Domestic Terror. The DDT had been formed a few months ago as a top-secret preternatural crime unit loosely connected to the FBI and headed by Alex. Ken was the only human member among a small cadre of shifters and werewolves.

  “What’s happened?” Now that I knew he wasn’t going to bleed out on Jean’s entry hall floor, my mind conjured horrible visions, most involving Alex hurt or worse.

  I only knew that when I left Alex a few nights ago to flee for my life, his last words were I love you. It didn’t solve any of our problems, which still might prove insurmountable, but we’d both said the L word, and that was a big start.

  “I need to talk to you alone, DJ.” Ken looked around at Dominique and his hand slipped beneath his jacket. He was packing.

  Dominique had the same thought, apparently, since he raised his heavy muzzle-loaded pistol and aimed at Ken’s head. “I will not take a shot of warning this time, monsieur. I did such only out of respect for my brother. Not her.”

  Her raised the elven staff and pointed it at the prickly pirate. “Just try it. Did you know that in modern times Dominique is quite a feminine name for a woman?” Petty, but it made him bristle and shift the gun toward my head instead of Ken’s.

  “Bah, arrêter.” Jean grasped the end of the staff and forced it lower, stepping between me and Dominique’s gun. He was wise enough, however, not to try wresting the staff away from me. “Drusilla’s friends are most welcome in the home of Jean Lafitte unless they prove themselves untrustworthy.” Jean looked at me. “Is this man to be trusted? He is Jacob’s human friend, one of the human constabulary, n’est-ce pas?”

  “Totally trustworthy.” I made the necessary introductions, grasped the wrist of Ken’s uninjured arm, and tugged him toward Jean’s study. “And I want to talk to him alone. He needs his wound tended to.”

  While Jean bustled his grumbling, gun-happy brother back to transport-watch duty, I led Ken into the study, and dug a vial of healing potion from the bag I’d stashed beneath Jean’s desk. Just in case there was more shooting, I rested Charlie on the table within easy reach. “Take off your jacket and shirt and let me clean up your arm, but only after you assure me Alex is okay.”

  “Alex is fine. He sent me.” Ken struggled out of the nylon NOPD jacket, untied his Saints tie, and unbuttoned his conservative white dress shirt. Once out of the detective gear, I thought he’d look less like the conservative, control-freak Marine he was. Wrong. He just looked like a shirtless conservative, control-freak Marine. He’d been in Jake’s unit in Afghanistan when things had gone badly. In the years since, Jake had found comfort in alcohol; Ken, in control and routine.

  “Are you sure Alex is okay?” I paused, water dripping from the napkin I’d wet with water from a decanter next to Jean’s stash of brandy. “Have the Elders gone after him?”

  That was the thing I feared most. At some point, Zrakovi or Rand would realize the easiest way to force me out of hiding, maybe to bring Eugenie with me, would be to hurt or threaten Alex. I’d been trying to think of how to set up a private meeting with Zrakovi and plead my case without getting myself arrested and shipped off to the frozen tundra.

  “Seriously, Alex is fine.” Ken winced as I eased the wet rag down his arm, cleaning off the blood. He was right. It was a surface wound. Dom had been trying to scare him, not kill him.

  “Alex wanted to let you know what was going on and since I haven’t been involved in all this council business, we thought it was safer for me to come. I’m just a human”—the words held a touch of pique—“so no one worries about my comings and goings.”

  “Yeah, safer for you except for the getting-shot-by-a-pirate part.” I opened the jar of healing sweet olive and cloves ground into a magicked lotion and spread it over the wounds.

  Ken watched, openmouthed, as the jagged tears in his skin began to make minute motions to reknit themselves; it would take a while longer in the Beyond but as soon as he went back to New Orleans, he’d heal quickly. He had a beautiful complexion the color of rich caramel and serious brown eyes with a touch of green. The man just needed to lighten up. Then again, we didn’t live in lighthearted days.

  “It will still take a while to heal, but take the rest of this vial of potion with you. It’ll work faster once you get out of the Beyond and you’ll be healed by tomorrow.”

  He looked at me, started to say something, then settled for blinking a couple of times. “Thanks. Nice shorts, by the way.”

  I laughed at his Dawn of the Dead expression. “I keep forgetting you’ve only known for a few weeks that magic existed. And the shorts are Rene’s—long story.” Ken had taken the news about the magical world with his usual calm demeanor, although he’d been shaky around the edges for a day or two.

  Ken pulled his bullet-grazed shirt back on, slipped his shoulder holster into place, carefully rolled up his tie and stuffed it into the pocket of his jacket, and followed me to the settee. We sat side by side, but I turned so I could watch his face. Not that I could read his expressions very well; he was a cop, after all. But my empathy told me he was nervous.

  Nervous with a dose of ironic humor. “Yeah, thanks again to you and Alex for letting me know the bad guys I chased as a detective were amateurs compared to the ones from your world.”


  “Our world,” I said. The lines were growing thin between humans and pretes as the species jockeyed for power. Some, including the fae and vampires, favored coming out to the humans. The wizards and elves agreed on one thing only, which was that alerting humans to our existence would be disastrous.

  Ken seemed reluctant to speak, so I prodded. “Talk to me, Ken. What’s going on that Alex had to send word?” I didn’t tell Ken he was projecting nervous energy like a clear-channel radio station. He’d just freak out more.

  Ken fidgeted on the sofa. “Alex is pretty sure either the Elders or Quince Randolph, or probably both, are having him followed. They think he’ll lead them to you or to Eugenie so he wouldn’t dare come himself.”

  I let out an unladylike snort. “I suspect they know exactly where we are without having to follow Alex.”

  Ken smiled. “Yeah, they figure you’re with Lafitte, but so far they haven’t been willing to come after you because they don’t know who his allies are or how well he’s protected. They know they can’t kill him, but he can kill them.”

  Well, they could kill him, but as an immortal powered by the magic of human memory, he’d just come back angry. Make that more angry. “They don’t have jurisdiction here anyway.”

  “Alex thinks if either wizards or elves can figure out who’s backing Lafitte and can raise enough fighters to take him on without having to use their magic, they’ll stage a raid to try to get you and Eugenie. Mostly Eugenie; she’s in the middle of all this. Once her situation is resolved, Alex thinks you’ll be cleared.” Ken paused.

  Which was all well and fine, but he hadn’t crossed into the Beyond for political chitchat. “Tell me what’s going on.” I tucked my feet underneath me and waited.

  “It’s about…” Ken paused and glanced around at the closed door. “Where is Eugenie?”

  I frowned. Ken and Eugenie had become friends in recent weeks; they’d learned about the world of insane and occasionally homicidal pretes about the same time. “She went to help Rene and the others get stuff out of the transport. Why?”