Aces Abroad

"Madame Brigitte."

It passed among the beggars like a whispered invocation, until even those who had crowded around the other vehicles in the motorcade were craning their necks to get a glimpse of her. She pressed back against the jeep, the concentrated stares of the beggars, mixed fear and awe and wonder, frightening her. The tableau held for another moment until the driver spoke a harsh phrase and gestured with his stick. The crowd dispersed at once, but not, however, without some of the beggars shooting Chrysalis final glances of mingled awe and dread.

Chrysalis turned to the driver. He was a tall, thin black in a cheap, ill-fitting blue serge suit and an open-necked shirt. He looked back at her sullenly, but Chrysalis couldn't really read his expression because of the dark sunglasses he wore.

"Do you speak English?" she asked him.

"Oui. A little." Chrysalis could hear the harsh edge of fear in his voice, and she wondered what put it there. "Why did you strike them?"

He shrugged. "These beggars are peasants.. Scum from the country, come to Port-au-Prince to beg on the generousness of people as yourself. I tell them to go."

"Speak loudly and carry a big stick," Wilde said sardonically from his seat in the back of the jeep.

Chrysalis glared at him. "You were a big help."

He yawned. "I make it 'a habit never to brawl in the streets. It's so vulgar."

Chrysalis snorted, turned back to the driver. "Who," she asked, "is 'Madame Brigitte'?"

The driver shrugged in a particularly Gallic ma

"Baron Samedi?"

"A most powerful loa. He is the lord and guardian of the cemetary. The keeper of the crossroads."

"What's a loa?"

He frowned, shrugged almost angrily. "A loa is a spirit, a part of God, very powerful and divine."

"And I resemble this Madame Brigitte?"

He said nothing, but continued to stare at her from behind his dark glasses, and despite the afternoon's tropical heat Chrysalis felt a shiver run down her spine. She felt naked, despite the voluminous cloak she wore. It wasn't a bodily nakedness. She was, in fact, accustomed to going half-naked in public as a private obscene gesture to the world, making sure that everyone saw what she had to see every time she looked in a mirror. It was a spiritual nakedness that she felt, as if everyone who was staring at her was trying to discover who she was, was trying to divine the precious secrets that were the only masks that she had. She felt a desperate need to get away from all the staring eyes, but she wouldn't let herself run from them. It took all her nerve, all the cool she could muster, but she managed to walk into the hotel lobby with precise, measured steps.

Inside it was cool and dark. Chrysalis leaned against a high-backed chair that looked as if it'd been made sometime in the last century and dusted sometime in the last decade. She took a deep, calming breath and let it out slowly.

"What was that all about?"

She looked over her shoulder to see Peregrine regarding her with concern. The winged woman had been in one of the limos at the head of the parade, but she'd obviously seen the byplay that had centered around Chrysalis's jeep. Peregrine's beautiful, satin-feathered wings only added a touch of the exotic to her lithe, ta

But she couldn't explain something to Peregrine that she only half-understood herself. She shrugged. "Nothing." She looked around the lobby that was rapidly filling with tour perso

"So could I," a masculine voice a

Both women turned to look at the man who'd spoken. He was six feet tall, give or take, and strongly built. He wore a suit of white, tropical-weight linen that was immaculately clean and sharply creased. There was something odd about his face. His features didn't quite match. His chin was too long, his nose too broad. His eyes were misaligned and too bright. Chrysalis knew him only by reputation. He was a justice Department ace, part of the security contingent Washington had assigned to Tachyon's tour. His name was Billy Ray. Some wit at JD with a classical education had tagged him with the nickname Carnifex. He liked it. He was an authentic badass.

"What do you mean?" Chrysalis asked.

Ray looked around the lobby, his lips quirking. "Let's find the bar and talk things over. Privately."

Chrysalis glanced at Peregrine, and the winged woman read the appeal in her eyes.

"Mind if I tag along?" she asked.

"Hey, not at all." Ray frankly admired her lithe, ta

The hotel lounge was doing desultory afternoon business. They found an empty table surrounded by other empty tables and gave their orders to a red-uniformed waiter who couldn't decide whom to stare at, Peregrine or Chrysalis. They sat in silence until he'd returned with the drinks, and Chrysalis drank down the thimbleful of amaretto that he'd brought.

"The travel brochures all said that Haiti's supposed to be a bloody tropical paradise," she said in a tone that indicated she felt the brochures all lied.

"I'll take you to paradise, babe," Ray said.

Chrysalis liked it when men paid attention to her, sometimes too much. Sometimes, she realized, she conducted her affairs for all the wrong reasons. Even Bre

Ray's foot moved under the table, touching hers, drawing her back from thoughts of the past, of what was over. She smiled a lazy smile at him, gleaming teeth set in a gleaming skull. There was something about Ray that was unsettling. He talked too loud, he smiled too much, and some part of him, his hands or his feet or his mouth, was always in motion. He had a reputation for violence. Not that she had anything against violence as long as it wasn't directed at her. For goodness's sake, even she'd lost track of all the men Yeoman had sent to their reward since, his arrival in the city. But, paradoxically, Bre

"I doubt that you'd have the skill to transport me to the dreariest shithole in the poorest part of Jokertown, dear boy, let alone paradise."

Peregrine squelched a twitchy smile and looked away. Chrysalis felt Billy's foot move away as he fixed her with a hard, dangerous stare. He was about to say something vicious when Dr. Tachyon interrupted by flopping into the empty chair next to Peregrine. Ray shot Chrysalis a look that told her the remark wouldn't be forgotten.