Mercedes Lackey: The Fire Rose

He looks like some character out of an opera, but I cannot think who! Don Giovanni in modem dress, perhaps?

He held two glasses of champagne, and Rose was certain that he had mistaken her box for another.

"I beg your pardon, Miss Hawkins, but may I come in?" he said, disabusing her at once of the idea that this had been a mistake. "I hesitated to disturb you, but I had a perfectly good bottle of champagne and no one to share it with-and then I saw that you were occupying Jason's box, and hoped you might do me the favor of drinking half." He smiled, but it was a smile of confidence, rather than an ingratiating smile, as if he was quite certain of his welcome. "You see, it would be a very great favor. Half a bottle of champagne never hurt anyone, but to drink a whole marks one as quite the dissolute."

He apparently took her stunned silence for assent, and walked in, with an usher with a plated bucket of ice and the open bottle of champagne following behind. Before Rose knew what to say or do, the man had handed her a glass, given the usher a tip, and settled himself into one of the chairs opposite her. All of her old diffidence around a strange or powerful man had reasserted itself.

"I beg your pardon, I never introduced myself," the man said, acting as if he had all the right in the world to be there. "I am Simon Beltaire. I am not precisely a colleague of Jason Cameron's-more of-shall we say-a gentleman of his circle."

She found her tongue. "Oh, really?" she replied. She had hoped to make it sound sarcastic, but the words emerged weak and without intonation. Beltaire's black eyes glittered in a way she found both repellent and fascinating, she found it difficult to look away. How did he know who I was? That can't be exactly common knowledge-

"Jason and I share many, many interests," Beltaire continued, as she automatically sipped at the glass he had put into her hand. "More than you might think."

He managed somehow to draw her into conversation, although she could not imagine how; his probing questions prompted her to reveal more than she had intended to, and his eyes seemed to catch all of the available light as he spoke. She had never felt herself quite so maladroit at conversation before; she learned nothing of him, until their conversation lulled for a moment, and he sat back in his chair.

"I will be frank with you, Miss Hawkins," he said, finally. "Because I can see from what you have told me that Cameron has let you into more of his secrets than I had supposed. Many more. In short, he has trusted you with the reason why he needed your services."

"He has?" she replied inanely. "I can't imagine what you're talking about, sir-"

He waved his free hand in the air, dismissing her prevarication as precisely that. "Do not think you need to dissemble with me, Miss Hawkins. If he can trust you, why, so can I. You are probably wondering how it is I knew that you even existed, much less your name and your vocation, and your relationship to Jason." He leaned forward again and refilled her glass-a glass she did not recall emptying. "It is very simple. It is impossible for one Firemaster to keep many secrets from another."

His words sent an electric shock down her spine, riveting her to her seat. His next words shocked her even further.

"I know everything there is to know about his so-called 'accident' as well, Miss Hawkins. It was no accident that gave Jason Cameron the face-and the nature-of a wolf."

She had not even realized that the opera had started again, and the wild strains of the "Fate" theme served as an eerie punctuation to his words. The glass fell from her suddenly-numb hands to the carpeted floor, where it bounced without breaking, spilling its contents on the red wool beside her feet.

Was it her imagination, or did he smile for a moment at her reaction? Perhaps it was just a trick of the light, for in the next moment he was leaning forward, nothing on his face but concern.

"I know more-a great deal more-about this transformation Magick than he does. I have manuscripts dealing with it that he does not even dream exist. And I know what it can do to the inside of a man as well as the outside." He tapped his temple with one white-gloved hand, significantly.

But her attention was caught by his previous words. Could he be the one the Unicorn referred to? The one who has the manuscript Jason needs?

He went on, his voice low, and yet it somehow carried over the voices of the singers and the music from the orchestra. "Jason Cameron is half beast, Miss Hawkins, but it is the side of him that is the beast that is growing to be the strongest. The longer this goes on, the more the beast will be in the ascendant. His ability to think will fade, and the instinct of the beast will take its place. He will be given to ungovernable rages, and during those rages, he will not know who or what he attacks." He nodded solemnly as she gasped in recognition-and as her memory of Jason's face and eyes flashed before her mind's eye. "That is why the old tales of the werewolf told how the creature would kill the things it loved most when it was a man-because it knew nothing but the urge to kill when the rage was upon it, and it attacked whatever was nearest."

She clasped her hands together tightly, as her throat and chest constricted until it became hard to breathe. Beltaire caught her eyes again in his glittering gaze.

"He sent you away, didn't he?" the man whispered softly.

She shook her head, and found her voice again. "No!" she replied. "No this was a trip we had planned since I arrived-"But her denial sounded weak, even to her own ears, and Beltaire nodded as if she had answered in the affirmative. "He knows. He may not be aware of it, consciously, but he knows. He does not wish innocents to come to any harm, and he has sent you away where he feels you will be safe. I expect, if he has not already, he will send you an offer of severance."

The knowledge of the note back in her luggage burned in her heart like a guilty secret. Beltaire leaned farther forward, and put one of his hands on both her clasped ones.

"I would like to help you, Miss Hawkins," he said. "I sense that you are a brave young woman; I know that you are an accomplished woman, a resourceful woman, and a beautiful woman. I would like very much to help you, but I cannot unless you allow me to."

She found her voice again. "Help me?" she croaked. "How?"

He did not release her hand, and she could not look away from his eyes at all. "In a sense, you would come under my protection," he said. "You would do the same thing for me that you have been doing for Cameron. I could use a fine translator for the many works of Magick I have acquired over the years. My scholarship and knowledge of languages is not as great as his, but my knowledge is broader. If you have any personal interest in Magick, I could further it, easily enough. But I know that you have limited means, and that your position with Cameron is a precarious one. He is not a generous man, and he can be a vindictive one. He might even blame you for his own failures, and turn on you. If that were to happen, in the state that he is in, he might lose all caution and hunt you down like a frightened doe no matter where you happened to be-unless you accepted my protection."

It was so hard to breathe! She gasped, as if she had been running. "And then-what?"

Beltaire shrugged. "Eventually, something will happen. Either he will realize that he cannot reverse his condition and end his suffering by his own hand, or he will more likely revert entirely to the beast, break out of the grounds of his mansion, and go hunting. When that happens, someone will cut him down. It is just a matter of time."

"What do you have to do with this?" she asked, in a thin whisper.

"I? Well, for one thing, I am able to protect a fine scholar." He patted her hand. "I have seen your record; do not protest. If Jason reverts to the beast-it should be the hand of someone who knows him and will give him a quick and easy death that takes him down. I would also make certain it happens before he kills someone."