“So, the miracle drug is all set to cure me?”
“Yes. Everything looks copasetic.” She hugged him and slipped the vial into his pocket. “I’m very hopeful.” Returning to the counter, she shuffled around medical supplies.
Zane walked to the window, bent to brush mud off his boot, and stashed the vial inside the potted plant.
The lab door flew open and several people charged in—Pete, Erica, and a man in a lab coat. Pete had his gun drawn.
Kate let out a startled cry. “Dr. Adams? What the hell?”
“You don’t think we saw what you did?” he replied.
“What do you think I did?” Kate asked. “I’m setting up for tomorrow.”
“Your behavior has been suspicious since the vampire arrived. Not much escapes us, Kate.”
Erica said, “Disabling bugs in your apartment that you shouldn’t even have known about. Getting drunk. Spending the day with suspicious characters.”
Kate burst out laughing. “Suspicious characters? You mean the artists? They’re a breath of fresh air in this monument to claustrophobia. Getting drunk? What else is there to do around here to blow off steam? Occasionally, family has the need for private conversations.”
“Family?” Dr. Adams asked.
“Zane is family. We share common concerns about Glory. We have a right to privacy.”
“No one has a right to privacy anymore. That’s the way the new world is ordered.”
“Well, Sieg Heil Big Brother,” Kate said.
“Sarcasm doesn’t become you, Kate.” Dr. Adams started to pat her down. Roughly.
“Hey!” Kate said.
Zane moved toward her, but the guard grabbed him from behind and put the gun to his temple.
“Come on, Kate,” Dr. Adams said. “Tell us what’s going on. Why did you open the safe? What are you up to? We don’t want to kill the vampire, but we will. We know of others we can bring in to complete the testing. We’ve been keeping a close eye on patient zero of this cluster, Bo. And, of course, there’s Zane’s family in Texas.”
Erica approached Zane and patted him down. She seemed to find special interest in his crotch.
He grinned. “You gonna linger there, princess?”
“Like that, would you?”
“I think you’d like it way more.”
She gave his family jewels a rough squeeze, but he refused to let her see him flinch.
Dr. Adams strode to the safe, opened it, and snatched up the vial. “This is saline. What did you do with the drug, Kate? Come clean and we’ll let the vampire live to see this through. We know you’ve got a vested interest in him because of Glory.”
Zane struggled, but Pete pulled the hammer back on his Python. “Think you can survive cop killers, Mr. Vampire?”
So he’s using armor piercing bullets, Zane realized. That was good. “Can you?” he asked. Then he yanked the gun down, placed the barrel high on his chest, and fired. The bullet passed through his own body, struck Pete, and the guard fell dead. Zane gasped, but pushed back the pain.
Erica screamed and scrambled to get away.
Dr. Adams grabbed Kate to use her as a shield.
Zane aimed the gun at the doctor’s forehead and fired. The shot bulls-eyed and the doctor dropped to the floor.
Erica ran from the room screaming for help.
Zane grabbed Kate’s hand and pulled her toward the window. “Get out and run as fast as you can. I’ll cover you. And lose that wrist communicator so they can’t track you.”
She opened the window and climbed out just as three armed guards charged into the room. Zane’s mind was clear and his nerves steady. He grabbed a large fire extinguisher mounted on the wall just inside the window, threw it toward the guards, and shot it midair. When the canister exploded in a cloud of gas, it provided enough cover for him to leap out the window. However, he knew he had to stop them or he and Kate would never escape the complex. Outside the window was a tank of Halon gas like the one Tessa had used as a stepstool the night before. Zane yanked it off its brackets, threw it through the window, aimed, and fired. It exploded with a cloud of gas that would incapacitate anyone in that room for at least a half-hour.
Zane took off at a run.
† † †
By the time Zane rendezvoused with Kate, Junkman, and Sage at the designated site, he knew something was terribly wrong. His body wasn’t healing itself properly. There weren’t any major arteries where he had placed the gun, and he shouldn’t be bleeding so badly.
They were about to enter the escape tunnel—reconciled to the fact that the underground would destroy the serum—when Megan showed up, vial in hand.
“I grabbed one of the emergency air masks and went in during all the chaos,” she explained. “No one saw me retrieve it.”
Zane studied the three freedom fighters and tipped his hat. “I admire your courage.”
Sage grinned. “We choose to live free or die hard.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
)o( )o( )o(
Kaia and Rory drove straight through to Sedona to see White Bear. Rory was worried about Kaia’s refusal to take any sleep breaks, but she seemed to be running on pure adrenaline. A near miss with a funeral pyre and a close encounter with an uber sexy angel would do that, Rory supposed.
Kaia remained strangely silent for most of the trip, and Rory made no effort to run that stop sign. It had been a mysterious journey for them both.
As they were nearing their destination, Kaia said, “Before we get there, please know that White Bear’s whole commercial tourist operation is just a front. Ignore Vortex in a Can, the Vortex Power Rocks rocks, and the bottled water that declares itself ‘drawn from a well sunk deep in the center of Sedona’s most powerful magical vortex and collected by naked vestal virgins at midnight on Midsummer’s Eve.’”
Rory laughed. “Seriously?”
“He’s on a mission to hide the true mystical nature of the Sedona area beneath New Age hype. But he’s the real deal.”
“Remember that he once appeared to me in his power animal form,” Rory said. “I experienced his magic. I know.”
Rory only had to take one look at his human form to confirm her impression. A hulking Navajo man in his fifties, White Bear oozed magical mastery. When Rory became lost in his arms, she never wanted to find her way out.
“The Earth trembles when you walk on Her,” White Bear whispered in Rory’s ear.
“Is that good?” she asked.
“It’s unheard of. I’m honored to meet a spirit as formidable as yours.”
Rory had no snappy comeback for that—practically a first for her.
The bear relaxed his hug and Rory felt forsaken.
“Let’s shut down the shop for the night and go upstairs to my apartment,” White Bear said. “We have a lot to talk about.”
Leaving the commercial atmosphere of White Bear’s New Age curio shop behind, the three of them ascended into a realm of crackling energy that awakened Rory’s gooseflesh. White Bear settled the girls at his kitchen table and served them a buffet of vegetarian dishes created with the girls’ dietary preferences in mind. Rory found the guacamole tacos, corn and red pepper salad, and pinto bean chili wonderful. She savored every bite. While they all ate, White Bear spoke of soft things. The hard talk came afterward when they moved to the living room and cozied up to the roaring fireplace.
“I felt it when you were taken by the witch hunters, but couldn’t break through their barrier to help,” White Bear said. “How did you escape?”
“Micah,” Kaia said.
White Bear nodded. “He owed you that. The scales are now balanced.”
Rory fought the urge to blurt out Micah’s cryptic comments and Kaia’s extreme emotional reaction to his presence. However, it wasn’t her place and she stepped back.
White Bear looked at Rory. “I have been instructed by my guides to tell you there is an unholy alliance between the scientists working for the shadow government and the dark spiri
ts. The scientists have mastered technology capable of creating visions. Their visions use science to create verbal interaction, even control the environments where visions occur. The dark ones feed the scientists information to use in those manifestations.”
Relief flooded. “So the information the demons give them is false, right?”
White Bear shook his head. “Contrary to popular belief, demons rarely lie. But the same can’t be said for the shadow government. The visions that are happening are a convoluted mess of truth and lies.”
Rory’s head and heart twisted, and once again she wrestled the urge to say things best left unsaid. Instead, she changed the subject. “Who’s my daddy?”
“He’s a healer who works with horses.”
Rory gasped. She plunged her hand into the pocket of her hoodie and rooted through an abundance of magical amulets and butterscotch candies to find Doc Jerry’s business card—the one she had never bothered to look at. Crumpled, but still legible, the name on it was JEREMIAH DILLON, DVM. Dillon. Jeremiah Dillon. “No friggin’ way.”
White Bear’s eyes twinkled. “I believe you know one of his ancestors?”
Kaia cocked her head. “What’s he talking about?”
“Good news. Bad news,” Rory said.
White Bear got to his feet. “I’m going to leave you two to share a little girl talk.” He made a hasty retreat.
“What is it?” Kaia asked.
“My daddy is the vet who takes care of the horses at Haven. He’s a civilian Momma didn’t want to draw into our life, so she never told him about me.” Rory pressed flat his business card between sweaty palms. “He’s descended from Zane.”
“What are the odds of that?” Kaia whispered.
“More to the point, how creepy is it that I’m crushing on my great, great, great—a bunch of greats—grandfather?”
Kaia nodded. “Awkward.”
They both sat in silence for a while.
Finally, Kaia said, “Well, you recognize good genes when you sense them.”
Rory rolled her eyes.
“If you go back far enough, scientists say we all come from the same mother,” Kaia added.
“Not helping.”
Kaia nodded. “Okay, I’ll shut up now.”
“Good talk.”
)o( )o( )o(
White Bear offered Kaia and Rory the queen-sized bed in his guest room. Kaia changed into a nightgown and crawled between the covers. Rory slipped into a flannel shorts and shirt set and spent an inordinate amount of time brushing out her long tangle of hair.
“You okay?” Kaia asked.
“Just peachy.” Rory thought about how she’d thrown herself at Zane and accused her own father of feeling her up, then called him a perv. Oh, and she’d got a sudden case of the major hots for the high-class-fallen-then-redeemed-angel Micah. “I’m a raging mass of misdirected girly hormones,” she muttered.
“Being a woman is painful. Going through puberty, losing your virginity, childbirth, and, well, most everything else,” Kaia said.
“Are we sure the Goddess is female? If so, you’d think She’d give women a break.”
“She’s one tough bitch,” Kaia said. “Sometimes it makes you wish there was an alternative. There’s the Father God and the Mother Goddess—and variations on those themes—but ever wonder if there’s something else? Something we’ve missed?”
Her words startled Rory. What else could there be worthy of ultimate devotion?
Kaia sat up and looked at her. “Hey, I just thought of something. This whole lineage of yours means that you’re related to Glory, in a cosmically confusing sort of way. And you’re biologically related to Genesis. All of a sudden you’ve gone from no family to having a really impressive family.”
Rory hadn’t thought about it that way. “If I weren’t so embarrassed, I might find that pretty cool.”
Kaia laughed. “You need to power through the self-consciousness and tell Zane. He’s always wanted family. If the vampire cure doesn’t work, he won’t have Glory and Genesis. But he’ll have you.”
Suddenly, voices rose in the next room. Unexpectedly, one of them was Zane’s. Rory and Kaia looked at each other, threw on robes, and then rushed to greet him.
“I’m sorry to just show up, but we didn’t know where else to go,” Kate was saying. “The man who drove us can be trusted though.”
“Don’t want to bring anything bad down on you,” Zane said and sat at the table.
Rory saw how blood-soaked he was and rushed to his side. “What happened?”
Zane’s face lit up at the sight of her. “Sweetheart. What are you doing here?”
“Having my mind blown.”
“You don’t say?” With that, his eyes rolled back into his head and he slid off the chair.
Despite her best efforts, Rory couldn’t catch him. White Bear pushed her aside, picked Zane up, and carried him to his own bed.
Kate, pale and radiating fear, frantically checked his vitals.
White Bear yanked off Zane’s coat and ripped away his shirt. Then he examined the wound. “A through-and-through. Looks like a bone fragment nicked an artery.” He took a pair of tweezers from a first aid kit, inserted them into the wound, and removed a small piece of bone.
“He’s lost a lot of blood. We need to replenish it so his body can regenerate,” Kate said. “However, I don’t have any experience with this. Do I give him a transfusion or try to make him drink it? If a transfusion, do I have to match blood type? I’d be happy to donate either way, but I don’t have any medical equipment and—”
White Bear placed a hand on Kate’s back. “Settle down.”
In response, Kate visibly relaxed.
“I’m a medicine man in more ways than one. I’ve got both scientific and magical equipment we can use.” White Bear’s eyes scanned Zane’s unconscious body, and then Rory. “His spirit is away from his body, so forcing blood down his throat would be unwise. This child’s blood is compatible for a transfusion. That would be best.”
“I’ll do it,” Rory said.
White Bear gave her a sharp look. “He needs a lot.”
“Sacrifice. That’s what family does for each other.” She hopped up onto the bed next to Zane and held her arm out to them.
From the doorway, Kaia winked at her.
White Bear and Kate worked together to set up a direct transfusion from Rory to Zane. While her life flowed into him, she pondered the mysterious threads Bridget had told her about that wove beautiful tapestries. Those were her final thoughts as sleepiness overtook her.
)o( )o( )o(
Rays of the morning sun passed through an open window and kissed Rory’s face. She awakened to find herself in the crook of Zane’s arm. His eyes were open and watching her.
“I’m told you saved my life,” he said.
“I own you now.”
He smiled his dazzling smile.
“Did you know that Doc Jerry was my daddy?”
His startled expression told her what she wanted to know.
“That makes us blood, so don’t get any naughty ideas about me,” she said.
He winked at her. “Well, that shoots my inappropriate fantasies all to hell.”
Rory knew he never had fantasies about her, but was grateful to him for diffusing the awkwardness of her crush.
“You said you always kept an eye on your descendants. You never knew about him and my momma?”
“Never saw Jerry romancing a woman.”
“I think Momma broke his heart. She never told him about me.”
“You gonna tell him?”
“I haven’t decided. I mean the whole witch thing. The good fight. The world he’d be introduced to. He’s a civilian. It ain’t fair.”
Zane kissed the top of her head. “Living without love is what ain’t fair, sweetheart. Being a witch is way easier to explain than being a vampire. I don’t think he’d bolt and run. If he embraces the life, that’s his choice.”
R
ory thought about how easily Doc Jerry seemed to accept the psychic abilities she and her mother shared. Maybe that would be an opening they could walk through.
Zane helped her sit up, and she fought the dizzy. He placed a glass of orange juice in her hand and urged her to drink.
“You gave me too much blood,” he said.
“I did what needed to be done. You strong enough now to try the vampire cure?”
“We’ll wait until tonight so my wounds heal completely, then Kate and I are going to give it a shot. White Bear’s going to help.”
“Do you want me to stay?”
“No, it’ll be ugly.”
“Could you die?”
“Maybe.”
Rory didn’t want to leave, but knew she had to respect his heart. “Whichever way it goes, Zane, just know I’m real proud to be a part of you.”
)o( )o( )o(
After lunch, Kaia and Rory headed north, to Kaia’s covenstead in Crestone, high in Colorado’s Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Kaia wanted to visit home before heading back to Georgia.
“You never talked to White Bear about your problems,” Rory said.
“Next time, when there aren’t vampires to rescue.”
Rory fought back rare tears. “I don’t want to lose Zane so soon after really finding him.”
“We each have our destiny. It’ll be what it’ll be.”
“I don’t believe in destiny,” Rory said. “I’ve always been in the free will camp. Nothing is fixed. Every choice we make, every time we exert our power, everything changes.”
Kaia sighed. “For some of us, assuming responsibility for our own reality is daunting. Who’s strong enough to always do the right thing?”
Rory didn’t know how to respond. Instead she struggled with her growing anxiety. Finally, she said, “Well, Zane made this decision knowing the risks. He’s strong and brave, and if he goes down, he’ll go down fighting. That’s all any warrior can do.” Suddenly, she experienced an extreme wave of dizziness and groaned.
Kaia looked at her. “You’re still really depleted. So much of a witch’s magical power is carried in the blood, and you gave up a lot of it. We’ve got a long drive ahead of us. Use it to recharge.”
Genesis (The Legend of Glory Book 3) Page 14
