"d.a.m.n right," the kid said, stepping forward and reaching for the wallet.

Right about that time, the door to the restroom swung open wide and Tessa marched out, her brows narrowed, her face twisted in a scowl. And furthermore, you a.s.shole- She skittered to an uncertain halt when she saw Rene, then shrank back, her eyes flying wide when the kid whirled to her in surprise, pointing the muzzle of the pistol directly at her face.

"Don"t move!" he screamed, and she dropped the bottle of Diet c.o.ke she"d been carrying. She"d opened it in the bathroom, and it spilled in a sudden, frothy puddle around her feet.

"Rene!" she hiccuped, looking to him in bright, desperate fright.

"You don"t move, either!" the kid screamed, whipping the gun back to momentarily aim at Rene. "Both of you just stand the f.u.c.k still!" "Take it easy, kid," Rene said, keeping his voice calm and quiet, locking eyes with the boy. "We don"t want any trouble. There"s more than five thousand dollars in my wallet. It"s yours. Take it-the car, too."

The kid cut a glance at Tessa, letting his eyes crawl along her body, his gaze lingering at her bosom. Rene didn"t need to read his mind to know what he was thinking. "Maybe I just found something else I want, too," he said, the tip of his tongue darting out to swipe across his lips. He shoved the gun toward Tessa and she flinched, hunching her shoulders and crying out softly. "Move, b.i.t.c.h.

You"re coming with me."

Rene saw the world suddenly become cast in brilliant, nearly blinding glare as his pupils opened fully, filling his corneas. He felt the sudden rush of blood to his gums and his canine teeth extended, the bloodl.u.s.t coming over him almost instantaneously. "No," he said, reaching out, clapping his right hand against the kid"s arm. "She"s not."

The kid swung the pistol back around. Rene clapped his left hand over the front of the muzzle, meaning to shove it aside, but when the younger man saw his face, his eyes and teeth, he uttered a breathless shriek: "What the f.u.c.k-!" and pulled the trigger.

The sound of the gunshot was like thunder trapped in the narrow confines between the snack machines and the bathrooms. Tessa"s scream overlapped the booming report, and pain ripped through Rene"s hand, spearing up his arm and slamming into him like a head-on collision with a locomotive.

He doubled over, gasping on the smoke, blinking at the shocking agony. When he looked up, his eyes smarting with tears, he saw the kid dancing clumsily back, the gun dangling limply in his hand, his mouth agape.

"Oh!" he whimpered. "Oh...oh, s.h.i.t...!"

"Why...why did you...have to go and do that?" Rene seethed from between clenched teeth as he staggered upright. He cradled his wounded hand against his belly and felt blood coursing down his arm, spattering heavily on the sidewalk between his feet. "You...

you stupid son of a b.i.t.c.h...now I"m going to have to kill you."

The kid had a half second to flounder backward, his eyes wide as he raised the pistol again, and then he shrieked as Rene leapt at him, knocking him off his feet and sending the gun flying from his fingers.

Rene heard Tessa crying out his name, her voice choked with tears, as he stumbled back against the snack machines. His face and the front of his shirt were now soaked with blood and not all of it his own. The kid lay sprawled against the gra.s.s, his throat ripped open, his eyes wide open and unblinking, his mouth wide and frozen in a scream.

"Rene!" Tessa cried, her hands fluttering against him. He blinked at her and was absurdly touched to see she was crying, her cheeks streaked with a steady torrent of tears. "Rene, oh...oh, G.o.d...he shot you!"

"Je suis bien," he murmured. "I"m all right, pischouette."

A glance down at his hand told the truth, however. The .45-caliber round had punched clear through, in his palm-side and out the other, leaving behind a shredded mess of b.l.o.o.d.y, exposed meat.

"Oh, my G.o.d!" Tessa gasped in horror. "Oh...oh, my G.o.d, Rene! Your hand...!"

It wasn"t as bad as his knee had been, or his gut, for that matter, back in Vietnam, but his hand sure hurt like all h.e.l.l. He couldn"t catch his breath for the pain, and remained doubled at the waist, leaning heavily against the c.o.ke machine.

"It"s all right," he managed, because she was frightened and panicked, clutching at him, her eyes wide and frantic. "Tessa, listen to me. I"ve been shot before. This...this is no big deal. Ce n"est rien. I"m all right."

He hooked the front of his shirt with his uninjured hand and gave a mighty yank, jerking b.u.t.tons loose and splitting it open. He shrugged his way out of the sleeves, then gritted his teeth and wrapped it around his hand. "Help me move him," he said with a nod toward the kid. "Grab a foot, pischouette. We need to hide him before somebody comes."

They each grabbed one of the kid"s ankles and together, hauled him unceremoniously back to his car, a gray, beat up Toyota Corolla. "Check his pockets," Rene told Tessa, out of breath with pain and exertion. "See if you can find his car keys."

She did, and he popped the trunk. "We"ll put him in here," he said.

"What about the blood?" Tessa looked uncertainly behind them, at the smeared, gory trail they"d left behind them in the gra.s.s and on the sidewalk.

Rene shook his head. "Nothing we can do about it," he said. "But at least this will buy us some time. Come on. Help me with him."

When they were finished, Rene limped back to the snack machines, retrieving his fallen key ring and wallet. "Check my trunk, would you, pischouette?" he asked, tossing her the key. "Get me a shirt out of my bag, sie tu plais. And I think I have a first-aid kit in there somewhere. Would you bring it here? Oh-and there"s an unopened fifth of Bloodhorse. I"ll need that, too."

Tessa nodded, scurrying toward the Audi. Rene picked up the kid"s revolver, shoving it into the waistband of his jeans at the small of his back. He limped into the men"s room and stood at the sink, unwrapping his hand and then dousing it under a steady stream of cold water.

G.o.dd.a.m.n, that hurts. It wasn"t the worst he"d ever felt, but it was a far G.o.dd.a.m.n cry from the best. He closed his eyes, clenching his teeth and steeling himself against the pain. Grabbing a paper towel from a nearby dispenser, he set about cleaning the blood off himself, mopping at his face and chest. When he walked back outside, he found Tessa waiting for him with shirt, Bloodhorse and first-aid kit all cradled between her arms.

"What are you doing?" she asked, watching as he poured bourbon on his wound and sucked in a sharp, hissing breath.

"I don"t know where that bullet"s been," he replied, managing a wink and a crooked smile. "And alcohol kills anything."

Following his instructions, she helped him wrap his hand, pressing thick pads on either point of penetration and then binding them in place with gauze. "He was trying to rob us," she whispered when they had finished. She looked up at him, her large, dark eyes swimming with new tears.

"Yes, pischouette." He nodded, easing his way into the clean shirt she"d brought to him.

"He hurt you." Now her bottom lip quivered and her tears spilled, leaving glistening trails against her pale skin. "He...he was going to hurt me...and my baby."

Rene reached for her with his good hand, brushing the cuff of his knuckles against her cheek. "No one"s going to hurt you or that baby. Not while I"m here." Her narrow frame began to shudder, and he drew her against his shoulder. "It"s all right," he breathed, closing his eyes. "Hush, now, pischouette. It"s all right."

Chapter Six.

"She wasn"t a hooker," Rene murmured from the pa.s.senger seat.

"What?" Tessa sat rigidly behind the wheel of the Audi, clutching it so tightly her knuckles had blanched. She hated to drive because she"d never had the opportunity to learn how to do it well. She"d made the long trip from Kentucky to follow Brandon, but she"d been motivated by desperate fear for his safety, and it had felt like she"d held her breath the entire time. Whenever a semi truck had gone barreling past her on the interstates, she"d nearly hyperventilated. Other cars and trucks had flown past her, some blaring on their horns because she"d grow nervous and wouldn"t drive fast enough.

When Rene had first told her she would need to get them to New Mexico, she"d nearly choked. "No, let"s just wait," she"d said.

"Let me call Lina and Brandon. They"re somewhere on the highway behind us. They can meet us here and Brandon can-" "Brandon"s hands are broken," Rene had reminded her. "He can"t drive, remember? And we can"t stay here. Someone could come along in the meantime, before them. Nous devons aller." We have to go.

He"d told her to get into the trunk once more before leaving, this time to look for a bottle of prescription pills. When she"d been unable to find one in his bag, he"d run his fingers through his hair in frustration. "I must have given them all to Brandon," he"d muttered.

"All what?" she"d asked.

"My pills," he"d replied. "Pain pills, pischouette. I take them sometimes for my leg."

Which hadn"t made any sense to her, because his leg had been amputated more than a year ago. How could it still hurt him?

"That"s what I get for trying to go clean cold turkey," Rene had remarked more to himself than her, sounding rueful. He wouldn"t admit it, but he was in a tremendous amount of pain. His hand had stopped bleeding, and he held it cradled against his lap in the car as he sat, slumped in the seat, his eyes heavily lidded.

He was fighting unconsciousness, nodding his head as his mind would fade in and out. His pallor was ashen, his breathing shallow, and when he was awake, he seemed dazed and confused. Like right now.

"You told me earlier I could go back to my boozing and playing with myself and prank-calling hookers," he said. "Or something like that. She wasn"t a hooker...the woman I called last night. Elle etait mon epouse... she was my wife."

Tessa blinked at him in surprise.

"You were right," he said. "I don"t know anything about you or your life. And you don"t know about mine, either." He smiled, his eyelids fluttering closed as he leaned his head back. "Maybe it"s time we learned, no? I married Irene in May of 1970. She left me that December, the day after Christmas, in fact."

"I"m sorry," Tessa said. She glanced down at the speedometer and realized she was going 85 miles an hour. With a startled gasp, she jerked her foot back from the accelerator. The Audi had a powerful engine and a very easy gas pedal, Rene had warned her- as she kept inadvertently discovering.

"Not your fault," he replied, still smiling. "It was mine. All mine." He opened one eye and glanced at her. "Bet you find that hard to believe, est-ce vrai?"

He kept lapsing between French and English as he spoke, and Tessa kept racking her brain, trying to recall her French tutelage from years earlier at the great house. For example, he"d just said, is this true?

Her grandmother, Eleanor, had been fluent in French; their ancestors from many long generations ago had come from France during the Middle Ages. The night before, as she"d been studying the Tome-and the unfamiliar French-Latin combination part of it had been written in-Tessa had wondered if it had been transcribed in the dialect of these medieval predecessors.

Rene also kept cracking jokes, trying to make Tessa smile, like right now, as if he felt badly or responsible for her growing concern over him, and wanted to make her feel better.

"Ici," he said, wincing as he leaned forward and popped open the glove compartment. Here. He took something out, a faded, creased photograph. "Take a look."

She didn"t really want to take her eyes off the road, but there was no other traffic in either direction, nothing for miles, so she risked a glance. He held it out and curious, she took the photo from his hand. Forgetting herself for a moment in surprised wonder, she stared at the picture of a very young Rene, no older than she and Brandon, and the smiling, pretty blond beside him.

"That"s our wedding day," Rene said. "My mamere must have kept it for me. It fell out of that book of yours, that Tome, yesterday in Thibodaux." The young woman in the photograph looked so happy. Her cheeks were flushed with joy, her eyes sparkling, her mouth spread in a wide, beaming grin, as if all of her hopes, dreams and desires had come true in that one moment and had been captured on film.

She"s in love, Tessa realized. That"s what it looks like. That"s what it must feel like.

"Joli drole, no?" Rene asked. Funny, isn"t it? "Not at all like your fancy wedding, I"m sure." He settled back in the seat. "Irene lives in San Francisco now. She"s remarried, at least the last I"d heard, and got herself a nice, shiny life." He closed his eyes and murmured, "Better than she would"ve ever had with me."

"You...you should rest," Tessa said, handing the picture back to him. She didn"t want to look at it anymore, the joy in Irene"s face.

It made her feel too lonely inside, envious somehow. "I"ll find a place where we can stop, a town or something, and we"ll call Lina, tell her what"s happened."

He shook his head as he put the picture back in the glove box. "Why, pischouette? There"s nothing she can do except worry."

"But you killed that man."

He nodded. "First time in d.a.m.n near forty years." His eyes had closed again, and his voice had grown quiet, somewhat slurred.

You killed him for me, Tessa thought. Not because of the car or his wallet-because Rene had offered those freely to the man.

Rene hadn"t tried to resist or fight back until the man had turned the gun toward Tessa.

"We"ll see Lina tonight," Rene said. "We can tell her then. I"ve fed twice today...made a glutton of myself. Once that kicks in, I"ll be fine." He didn"t open his eyes but the corner of his mouth hooked slightly, wryly. "That or whatever the h.e.l.l that kid was high on.

Either way, there"s hope for me yet."

Tessa glanced at him as he drifted off into unconsciousness. She didn"t know much about Rene, but she knew that killing humans was something he took neither lightly nor arbitrarily. He"d taught himself how to feed without doing it. And yet he"d killed to protect her. He"d nearly torn the man"s head from his neck with his bare hands.

You might be right, Rene, she thought. There may be hope for you yet.

She wished that she"d been able to face her own wedding day with the same uninhibited joy she"d seen in the photograph of Rene"s young bride, Irene. Instead, Tessa had been filled with trepidation and anxiety, not to mention a fair share of sorrow.

She remembered her first day at the Davenant house, stepping through the front doors and into the main foyer to be greeted by Monica Davenant, Martin"s first and eldest wife.

"I can smell your c.u.n.t." Monica had been statuesque, tall and whip-thin, with pale skin and auburn hair, her features delicate and pristine, her beauty nearly frigid. Her eyes had been icy, piercing and lucent, filled with nothing but disdain for the young woman who"d stood before her. "Or is that Eleanor"s? Augustus"s wh.o.r.es are so alike-you all share the same stink. However does he tell you apart enough to know which to f.u.c.k?"

Tessa had been shocked by the woman"s vulgar language and frightened, as well, but struggled not to show it. She"d been warned about Monica-all of the Davenants, in fact.

"They"ll hate you because you"re a n.o.ble," her mother, Vanessa, had told her once.

"They"ll hate you because you"re Augustus"s granddaughter," Eleanor had warned. She"d tried to smile, but her eyes had glistened with tears as she"d stroked her hand against Tessa"s dark hair. "Allistair Davenant is jealous of your grandfather because of his dominance. It"s a hatred that"s been brewing for more than two hundred years and spilled over to his entire clan. You stay close to Alexandra. She"s your cousin. She"ll look out for you, protect you if she can."

Protect me from what? Tessa had wondered and worried, but she"d soon learned. "Before you do anything in this house-the Davenant house," Monica had told her that gray, gloomy morning as she"d pinned Tessa with her gaze in the Davenant great house foyer. "You"ll go and take a bath, wash that nasty n.o.ble stench off your skin before I gag."

Her eyes had cut to the necklace around Tessa"s neck. It had belonged to Eleanor, a simple gold chain with a solitary but enormous stone pendant-a rare ten-carat green sapphire that Augustus n.o.ble had custom-ordered from Sri Lanka for his favorite wife.

"This is the first gift your grandfather ever gave to me," Eleanor had told Tessa, upon presenting the necklace to Tessa on her sixteenth birthday. Tessa had sputtered in flabbergasted protest, but Eleanor hadn"t listened. When her mother had warned Tessa not to bring it with her to the Davenants, Tessa likewise hadn"t paid heed. Eleanor hadn"t been dead a week at this point. Tessa had still been very much in mourning, the gift even more precious to her because of it.

Monica Davenant"s eyes had danced with a wicked sort of glee as she"d reached out to touch the pendant. "This is lovely," she murmured, her voice low, nearly a purr.

"It...it belonged to my grandmother," Tessa said, uncertain of what to say but struggling to be polite.

Monica locked gazes with her. "Yes. I know."

Tessa gasped in startled disbelief as Monica closed her hand quickly about the sapphire and with one swift, sudden jerk, snapped the chain and yanked it from about her neck. She reacted instinctively, not as the new wife-the least among six in Martin"s part of the Davenant family hierarchy-but as she would have had she been standing beneath her own family"s roof. Her hand shot out, her fingers closing fiercely around Monica"s slender wrist. "That"s mine," she"d said, her brows furrowed. "Give it back."

Monica had blinked at her, her lucent blue eyes flying wide in surprise. "You little b.i.t.c.h," she seethed, wrenching her arm loose and stumbling back a step. Tessa caught a blur of motion out of the corner of her gaze, and then Monica slapped her in the face-the first time Tessa had ever been struck in her entire life. It stunned more than it stung, but then Monica grabbed her roughly by the hair and shoved, sending her sprawling to the floor and making her bark her knees painfully against the granite tiles.

"Nothing in this house is yours anymore," Monica snapped, s.n.a.t.c.hing a handful of Tessa"s hair again and twisting hard enough to make Tessa cry out. "Whatever you walked through that door with-kiss it good-bye, you spoiled little b.i.t.c.h. It"s mine now, and so are you. You belong to me."

Later that evening, she"d overheard Monica complaining to Martin: "Don"t you remember how that stupid c.u.n.t would parade around with this dangling from her neck like it was some kind of G.o.dd.a.m.n prize?"

Tessa had been going upstairs to the small room she would be sharing with Alexandra, when she heard voices from the third-floor landing, filtering out from behind a nearby closed door. The word c.u.n.t, again delivered with nearly tangible venom, drew her short.

"I remember," Monica said. Tessa crept to the door and knelt to peek through the keyhole. She could see Martin sitting in a winged-back armchair with Monica behind him-one of the first times Tessa had seen him since he"d come to take her from the great house. Monica leaned over his shoulder, holding something in her hand, something that flashed and glimmered in the glow from the nearby lamp-Eleanor"s green sapphire pendant.

"She wanted all of us to see it," Monica hissed. "All of us to know-Augustus n.o.ble spends money that rightfully belongs to all of us however he d.a.m.n well chooses. It"s bad enough he used to take her with him all over the G.o.dd.a.m.n free world, but then he lavished that s.l.u.t with stuff like this-look at it, Martin!"

Martin seemed bored as he swatted the necklace out of his face, apparently more interested in the half-empty tumbler of bourbon in his hand. "I see it," he growled, tilting his head back. Tessa heard ice cubes clink softly together as he drained the gla.s.s.

"Well, it"s mine now," Monica declared, and Tessa had felt her face flush angrily as she watched the woman draw the chain about her neck, fastening the clasp.Like h.e.l.l it is, you b.i.t.c.h, she"d thought, and in that moment, she"d resolved that somehow, someday she would get the pendant back. It was a promise she"d ultimately been unable to keep; even though Monica had worn the sapphire nearly every day without fail, Tessa had no chance to grab it from her before she"d fled Kentucky. The idea that the necklace-a symbol not only of her grandparents" love, but of Eleanor"s love for Tessa, as well-remained in Monica"s possession killed her.

"Augustus sits at the head of the Brethren Elders, puts his sons in all of the choice positions with the farms and distillery, and what does he leave for the rest of you?" Monica had said to Martin that night four years earlier. "Grunt work and mid-level management.

Why doesn"t he put you out with the Kinsfolk or the laborers shoveling s.h.i.t in the barns? It"s not fair."

"I know it"s not," Martin replied, standing. He crossed the room to refill his gla.s.s. "But there"s nothing I can do about it, Monica.