by Cindy Dees
Shock dropped her jaw. “Are you finally going to make an honest woman out of Vanessa?” Swear to God, that was a blush climbing his neck and spreading across his cheeks.
“If she’ll have me,” he replied.
Karen laughed. “Oh, she’ll have you, all right. Go propose, you big lout.”
Jack pivoted and all but ran from the room. In the process, he nearly knocked over Anders, who was on his way in.
“Hey, beautiful,” he said quietly. “How are you feeling?”
“Quiet,” she answered solemnly. And then she added, “For now.” The doctors had told her they had no way of knowing how long it would take or if this drug would ever work its way out of her system. They also had no way of predicting when her next psychotic episode, or seizure or heart attack would strike. For now, they planned to keep her hooked up to all these machines and monitor her.
He looked at all the machines surrounding her and grimaced. She knew the feeling.
“What was Jack so hot and bothered about?”
“He’s on his way to propose to Vanessa.”
Anders grinned. “They’re a good pair. But they shouldn’t be out in the field together. I thought Jack was gonna kill those guys with his bare hands after he almost lost her.”
Karen sighed. “No, that’s my job. I’m the homicidal maniac in the outfit.”
“No, you’re not. It’s just the drug and you know it. Oslo’s had people going crazy and attacking and killing each other all over the place. You’re far from the only one affected by this stuff. Nobody blames you for anything you’ve done.”
“Maybe I blame me.”
He perched on the stool Jack had lately vacated. “I believe that rage is what saved you. Saved your teammates. It gave you the strength to overcome your body against all odds, to stand up and take that gunman out before he killed us all. We all owe you—and your rage and your physical strength and your mental fortitude—our lives.”
When he put it like that, it didn’t sound half-bad. She replied slowly, “Maybe you’re right.”
He grinned. “Maybe I am at that. Here’s something else I’m right about. You and I were made for one another. It’s fate that we were brought together like this.”
She smiled back at him. “Hey. You’re on a roll. Who am I to argue with you?”
Someone cleared her throat in the doorway. Karen glanced over Anders’ shoulder to see Aleesha standing beside someone very short while a couple of nurses and a doctor or two hovered in the background.
Aleesha asked, “Mind if we interrupt you two lovebirds?”
For once, being called that didn’t drive Karen crazy. She rolled her eyes at Anders. “Come in, Mamba. How’re you feeling?”
“Me danced a leetle limbo ’round doz bullets and dey only tickled me ribs.”
Karen grinned. It was still too painful to laugh much. She ached from head to foot in spite of the painkillers they were pumping into her.
Aleesha gestured to the diminutive person standing partly behind her. “You have a guest, Python. She’s been sitting on the floor outside your door almost since you got here. She says it’s time to come in now.”
Karen peered around her teammate—and broke into a wide smile. “Naliki! What in the world are you doing here?” She’d been sitting outside the door all day? Karen was humbled by the thought—and amused at how the hospital staff must’ve reacted to that.
The elderly women threw an arch glare at the medical staff clustered in the doorway. “See? I told you she’d want to see me. And it’s bad luck to deny the goddess.”
Karen glanced over at Anders. “Yeah. You remember that.”
He chuckled as the noaide stepped up to the bed, eyeing all the high-tech medical equipment askance. “Bah. All these fancy toys are not necessary.”
Aleesha looked amused and the medical staff scowled. Aleesha explained, “Naliki claims to have a cure for what ails you, girlfriend. She’s already tried it on the kids in the village and it seems to be working. There’s this salt the Samis distill from the ocean. They mix it with what appears to be a local clay of some kind and have been feeding it to the kids who ingested tainted drugs like you did.”
Naliki interrupted. “There are healing herbs in it, too. That boy whose heart stopped? He’s fine. Drove me to the airport to fly down here. No more episodes.”
Karen stared. What the woman had just said was incredible on several levels. First, the kid was okay? And second, Naliki got on an airplane? “You came down here in a plane?” Karen repeated, astonished. “Have you ever been on one before?”
Naliki drew herself up to her entire five-foot height. “It was my first flight. But these are extraordinary times. Freya tells me to speak for my people, and so I shall. Here I am in Norway’s capital to do just that.”
Karen frowned. She didn’t remember telling Naliki that exactly, but if that’s how the woman wanted to interpret it, okay.
Aleesha commented, “This remedy of hers is a paste you eat. Foul-smelling stuff.”
Karen winced. She’d had some of Aleesha’s home remedies from Jamaica before, and they were hideous. For Aleesha to think this stuff was foul, it must be truly lethal.
Aleesha continued. “The docs here don’t want you to try it until they’ve run tests on it.”
Karen looked up at her. “What do you think?”
“I think the medicine is sound. Salts tend to bind to heavy metals. Your body either sweats out the salt and its attached metal, or the salt and its piggybacking metal are washed into your intestines, where something like the clay would readily absorb it and carry it out of your system. It’s a crude form of chelation, in fact.”
“What’s chelation for us non-doctors?” Karen asked.
“In non-doctor language, it’s cleaning out heavy metals from your system. We use certain chemicals to bind metal molecules into chelate rings, which are then flushed out of the body, taking the metal with them—”
Karen held up a hand. “Enough. You’ve lost me.” She looked back and forth between Naliki and Aleesha. “So, Naliki says this stuff has cured the boys back in Lakvik, and you say it might just work. I say let’s try it. It can’t be worse than lying here hooked up to all these machines waiting to have another attack.”
A grumble rose up from the doctors. Aleesha rolled her eyes at Karen, who grinned back.
Karen glanced over at Anders. “What do you think?”
“I think you should try it. I’ve always believed Sami knowledge of the land has been overlooked. If that stuff fixes you and reverses the effects of that drug, all of Norway will owe the Samis one. I’ll go with Naliki myself to plead the case of the Sami people to the king and the prime minister.”
Aleesha piped up. “I think I can safely say that people at the highest levels of the American government will also want to show their gratitude to the Samis, regardless of whether or not this remedy works.”
Naliki gifted them both with a smile. “With the Golden One’s help, we shall change the course of history for my people.”
Karen retorted, “Yeah, well, let’s get the Golden One healthy first. I can’t do much saving if I’m stuck here.” She had to give the shaman credit. Naliki wasted no time getting down to business. She reached into a leather pouch hanging from her belt, pulled out a recycled tin can whose label declared its original contents to have been pink salmon and passed it over to Karen. “Eat a large spoon of this every two hours until it’s all gone.”
A nurse bustled forward. “How much, exactly, is a large spoon? In milliliters?”
Aleesha traded amused looks with the elderly Sami woman. “Oh, go on. Live dangerously, nurse. Just plop some goop on a spoon and slop it into the patient’s mouth. Medicine isn’t always an exact science.”
While they waited for a soup spoon to be fetched, Karen reflected that life wasn’t always an exact science. When she’d gotten comfortable in her own skin—for the first time in her life—she couldn’t pinpoint. Exactly when she’d
made peace in her heart with Jack, she couldn’t tell. And exactly when she’d had fallen in love with Anders, she had no earthly idea.
But there it was. She looked back and forth between Anders, the Olympic athlete and trained commando, and Naliki, the tiny, wrinkled shaman. Between the two of them, they’d already healed her soul. Now all they had to do was get her body to do the same.
Karen took the spoon Aleesha passed her. She scooped up a big glob of the gray paste and shoved it in her mouth. It was the consistency of peanut butter and tasted like dirt. Salty dirt.
Grimacing, she choked, “Water.”
Laughing, Anders passed her a glass, which she gulped down.
She glared up at him. “Sheesh. The things I do for love.”
Anders froze. Stared down at her. And then threw his head back and laughed.
Her laughter floated up to mingle with his, and she didn’t feel even a hint of the raging dragon within. She was going to be just fine. They both were.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-5308-1
THE MEDUSA PROPHECY
Copyright © 2007 by Cynthia Dees
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†The Medusa Project
†The Medusa Project
†The Medusa Project
†The Medusa Project
*Charlie Squad
*Charlie Squad
*Charlie Squad
*Charlie Squad
*Charlie Squad
