by Jade Kerrion
He closed his eyes and opened his heart and mind, his empathic powers coiling around the trusting boy he held in his hands.
The bruises around the boy’s eyes were from tumors growing in the bones around his eyes, his stumble from bone lesions in his hips and legs that caused pain and limping. The elevated levels of catecholamines in Joey’s blood confirmed Danyael’s diagnosis: high-risk, Stage 4 neuroblastoma. Joey’s likelihood of survival, with treatment, was no more than 5 percent.
Danyael opened his eyes and looked up at the woman who was talking to Zara. He could not hear the conversation, but he suspected that it focused on Joey. He glanced down at the boy and smiled faintly. “I think we’re both at the beach for the same reason—one last holiday before the end. Well, I’m sorry to ruin your end-of-life vacation with bad news, but I think you’ll be headed to kindergarten in the fall.”
Healing the child was not difficult. Knowing that it was the last time he would ever extend his mutant powers to offer life instead of death was bittersweet. With a quiet sigh, he released Joey and watched as Joey and Laura scrambled off to build another sandcastle. “Have fun, kids.” The world spun around him. He closed his eyes and clenched his stomach against the nausea as he lay back down on the beach towel. With luck, Zara would never find out what he had done.
Later that night, after an untouched dinner, he curled in bed. His face pressed against the pillow, and he tugged the comforter up to his neck. Its heavy down warmed his trembling body. The bed shifted with Zara’s weight as she slid next to him and wrapped her arm around his waist.
She spoke softly. “Is the little boy going to be all right?”
He smiled in the darkness. How had he imagined he could ever keep the truth from her? Zara knew him better than almost anyone else, and more miraculous still, she seemed okay with it, accepting him, flaws and all. He released his breath in a sound that married a chuckle with a sigh. “Yes, he’s fine.”
“Good.” She breathed a kiss against his cheek. “I’m proud of you.”
Her words were a balm against his soul, reassurance that he had not wasted his life. She curled against him, offering desperately needed warmth, and more important, solace.
The next morning, two weeks after they had arrived at the beach, Zara found him hunched over the kitchen sink. The metallic smell of blood filled his nostrils, and dark crimson clots stained the white ceramic sink. Her body shifted with a silent sigh. She leaned against him, her presence anchoring him in a world that he was fast losing his grip of. Together, silently, they stared at the blood he had coughed up.
“Should we head back?” Zara asked, her quiet voice already shimmering with the ache of impending loss.
Danyael nodded. His eyes remained dry, but the coldness at his core clawed through him. He was out of time.
~*~
Danyael, Zara, and Laura left the beach house the following day, and their first stop, back in D.C., was the Mutant Affairs Council in Alexandria.
Alex Saunders met them at the entrance, his broad face somber. “How was your time away?”
Danyael managed a smile. “Too short.”
Alex nodded. “I’m sorry to hear that.” From the look on his face, Danyael could have believed that Alex meant it too.
Alex led Danyael, Zara, and Laura up to the second floor of the headquarters building and toward one of the infirmary rooms, a windowless cell where Danyael would die, his empathic powers contained in a tightly enclosed space until they faded away. Alex flung open a door and stepped aside, ushering Danyael in before him.
Danyael would have preferred to end his life in more pleasant surroundings, but he supposed that within a week, certainly no more, he would hardly be in a position to care. He stepped into the room, stopped short, and then laughed, the startled sound edged with tears.
He swallowed hard against the lump in his throat as he limped forward. His fingers traced the flat screen, framed by curtains and programmed to mimic the view from the window. A cherry-hued sleigh bed replaced the steel framed standard-issue hospital bed, and a well-worn desk and chair substituted for the overstuffed sofa bed. With the exception of the unavoidable monitoring equipment at the head of the bed, the impersonal hospital suite had been transformed with care to a near perfect replica of his bedroom at Lucien’s McLean home, right down to the dog-eared paperbacks on the window seat.
He would die at “home.”
Slowly, Danyael shifted his weight on his crutch and turned to face Alex. “Thank you.” Gratitude seized his throat; he could not say more.
Alex inclined his head. “You’re welcome.” He glanced over. “Abd-al is standing by, but you should take as much time as you need.”
To say goodbye.
Alex turned and walked out.
Laura, mercifully oblivious to the heartache washing through the room, climbed up on the chair and proceeded to explore the contents of the desk drawers.
Zara looked at Danyael. “What’s going to happen?”
He waved his hand at the medical equipment. “They’ll hook me up to an IV system to provide fluids, nutrients, and pain medication. Then it’s a matter of waiting it out.”
“But they’ll seal the door. You’ll die alone.”
He winced. Why had he imagined that Zara would have taken more care with her choice of words? She had never minced words before; why start now at the end of his road? “It’s not safe for anyone without strong psychic shields to be around me at the end.” Danyael took her cold hands into his. “It’s going to be all right.”
She huffed out a snort of laughter. “You’re still trying to make other people feel better about the fact that your situation sucks.”
He relaxed into a smile. It eased some of the unending ache deep within. “I had a good run, Zara. The last two weeks…I wouldn’t have traded them for anything.” He tipped up her chin and claimed her lips in a final, lingering kiss. As he pulled away, he whispered, “I love you.”
Her voice trembled. “I know.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Zara glanced up from her computer tablet. From her place on the couch, her gaze flicked across the small but comfortable guest suite on the third floor of the Mutant Affairs Council headquarters. A selection of Laura’s favorite toys pockmarked the carpet. Laura, however, was asleep, sprawled across the king-sized bed.
The suite had been their home for the past week. Everyone, including Xin, had tried to talk her out of watching Danyael’s life slowly fade away, but what else was there for her to do? She could not move on until he was gone.
Zara inhaled deeply, bracing herself for the fresh surge of heartache. She swiped across the screen of the tablet and pulled up the application that linked her into a direct video feed from Danyael’s room. He lay pale and unmoving on the bed—he had slipped into a coma four days prior—but the equipment faithfully reported his accelerated heartbeat. His body was still trying to fight off the cancer.
Each day, each moment, Danyael lost ground, but he fought on.
Her hand poised on the screen, ready to turn off the application, but she froze when the door of Danyael’s room opened and Abd-al rushed in, surrounded by several nurses. Oh, God. She tossed the tablet aside and dashed out of the suite, racing down the stairs to the second floor.
She screeched to a halt next to Alex Saunders. “What’s happening?” she demanded of Alex.
“We’re taking him in for surgery.”
“Surgery?”
“We finally got a genetic match.” Alex released his breath in a shuddering sound. “I hope we’re not too late.”
“But how?” Zara demanded. “Did Lucien come through?”
A familiar voice cut in. “No, I did.”
She turned, her brow furrowing. “Galahad?” She stared into the face that was exactly like Danyael’s. “But you’re not a genetic match for Danyael.”
“Not close enough, but I didn’t need to be. Parts of Danyael’s genetic code exist in other people. It was a matter of l
ocating them and convincing them to help. I’d keep an eye on Jason Rakehell, if I were you. He is unquestionably an empath of sorts. I’ve never met anyone so unscrupulously persuasive.” Galahad shrugged an elegant shoulder and smiled faintly. “Once we had the right people, it came down to the magic of genetic engineering. I don’t think Danyael realized he was saving his own life when he explained the science behind genetics and the workings of the DNA recombinant machine to me.”
Zara’s mouth dropped open. “But why? You hate him.”
“Still do.”
“Why then?” Her gaze burned into him, demanding answers.
Galahad’s dark eyes traced Danyael’s transfer on a wheeled stretcher from his room into the operating theater. The doors slammed shut behind Abd-al Rahman. The light outside the operating theater flicked on.
Galahad’s usual vivacity was absent; his expression was reflective. “Hate isn’t a good enough reason to end a man’s life. It was one of many things I learned from Danyael.” His smile was wistful.
“What else did you learn about Danyael?” Zara asked quietly.
“That he’s a good father. I wish he had been mine.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
On December 22, three years to the day since Zara had freed Galahad from Pioneer Labs, Danyael walked out of the Mutant Affairs Council headquarters with a clean bill of health. The bite of the air was brisk, but oh, so welcome. The mild discomfort was itself a celebration of life. The delighted grin on his face probably bordered on idiotic, at least based on the amused glances Zara shot his way, but he didn’t care.
He was alive.
Oh, God, he was alive.
He did not have a job or a place to live, but at that moment, the pesky details scarcely mattered; he would find a way to get by. Danyael crossed the street into the city park across from the council headquarters. The limp was barely perceptible in his long-legged stride. The surgeons had cut out the scar tissue from his left thigh and filled the gaping wound with lab-grown muscle fibers. Artificial cartilage had been injected into his hip and knee to cushion the grinding impact of daily movement.
Everything considered, he had never been healthier.
Zara set Laura down, and the child scampered off to explore the park. The assassin glanced at Danyael. “How is your leg holding up?”
“It’s all right.” If only he could say the same for their relationship. As he regained his strength, the distance between them seemed to grow. Zara was solicitous of his health, but he didn’t need a nurse. He wanted his lover, though with each passing day, he wondered if he had lost her somehow.
He tore his attention off Zara. Instead, he traced Laura’s progress among the snow-dusted trees. Delight shrieked through her, ringing through each cadence of her infectious laughter. She stuck out her tongue to lick snow from a low bush.
Zara only rolled her eyes, apparently acknowledging the futility of correcting her daughter.
Two elderly couples huddled in a gazebo. Their emotions bristled with curiosity and barely restrained anticipation. Danyael chuckled. Unless he missed his guess, they were grandparents, likely anticipating the birth of a grandchild at the nearby Inova Alexandria Hospital. Hospitals could get stuffy and the wait could be long.
Life blossoms at every turn.
Zara’s voice cut into his thoughts. “This can’t go on.”
He looked up, sudden dread clawing at him. “What can’t go on?”
“Us. I don’t want this.”
He gripped the back of a park bench, his knuckles white. She didn’t want this. This what? This love?
She had never told him that she loved him, and he had never broken down the psychic barrier between them, but he hadn’t needed to. Her actions spoke for themselves. She had loved him, and now, she no longer wanted to.
He looked her straight in the eye. “You escalated it, Zara.” I was content loving you from afar; you should have left me there. “What were the past two months? A favor you were doing for a dying man?”
She opened her mouth as if to retort, and then an expression he couldn’t quite decipher passed over her face—speculative, perhaps even cunning. “You made me love you.”
Had they come back around to the same old argument? The lie of love he had created with his empathic powers? He held out his hand and was surprised that it did not tremble. “I can take your love away.”
She tilted her head and studied him through narrowed violet eyes. “Will you have to break down the psychic barrier?”
He nodded. He would break it down, take her love away, and raise the barrier again. And then he would move to the other side of the country, as far away as he could get from her. He had to move on with his life; he could not spend it spinning in orbit around a woman who did not want to love him.
Zara placed her hand in his. Her slender fingers, tipped with perfect manicures, fit in his hand. Their hands—their bodies had always fit well together; their hearts much less so.
Danyael sighed, more motion than sound. His empathic powers crept, tendrils of living vines, along the psychic barrier, coiling up against the impenetrable wall he had erected with his will, and with a sharp jerk, ripped it down.
He flinched. Light blasted through him. He had not fully realized how dark and cold it had been in his mind until he basked in the warmth of Zara’s emotions. It was one thing to know, intellectually, that she had loved him. It was quite another to actually feel it. For an empath who could touch emotions the way other people touched physical objects, intellectual knowledge versus heart knowledge was like the difference between being blind and finally seeing.
How could he let her go?
His gaze refocused on her face. His lips shaped the words that came from his heart. “Marry me.”
“What?” She yanked her hand from his as if burned.
“I can make you happy.” Danyael’s lips twisted into a bitter smile. With his empathic powers, he could keep her beside him forever.
“What about what I want?”
I can make you want to be with me. But he knew better. His breath whispered out of him in a quiet sigh. “I can take the love away, if that’s what you want.” He tried for a smile to lighten the moment, but knew that it wavered on his lips. “But if you fall in love with me again, you’ll have to marry me.”
She said nothing, but her hand moved. She held it out between them and waited.
He did not reach for her.
Her lips moved, the sound scarcely more than a whisper. “Take it.”
Danyael stared at her outstretched hand. Despair whipped through him. How many people could actually say that they held love and happiness in their hand, and then, in the next moment, deliberately destroyed it? In that moment, it was hard not to feel like the bitter, self-pitying fool Zara had once accused him of being.
He drew in a deep breath, locking the moment in his memory, sealing the warmth of her love in his heart. The memories would keep him warm for a while, and after that, he would find a way to move on, preferably with thousands of miles between them.
Nausea churned in the pit of his stomach, and he braced against the fresh wounds he would inflict on himself. “I’m sorry,” Danyael murmured. He was not sure if he was apologizing to her, to himself, or to the both of them.
A half-smile toyed on her lips. “Take my hand, Danyael. Where is my ring?”
His mind emptied.
When thought and emotion returned, both swamped him, a tidal wave of disbelief that dragged him under. He seized her, crushing her to him with a kiss—no, it was not a dream. She was solid, real. And his.
“I swear I’ll make you happy,” he breathed into her ear.
Zara chuckled, the low and seductive sound stirring in his gut. “You know I’m only doing this so that I’ll have official veto power over the suicidal things you do.” She did not need to say that she loved him. He did not just know it; as an alpha empath, he felt it. She nuzzled his cheek, the simple gesture intimate. “We’re perfect for eac
h other.”
Yes, the assassin and the healer. Life did not just twist through unexpected turns; it had a sick sense of humor. Yet, it offered beautiful gifts, stunning gifts.
After a moment, she pulled back and glanced at a man walking toward them. “Your brother’s here. I’ll go hang out with Laura so you can have a private chat with him.” Zara threw Jason a wave of her hand and then strode across the park to catch up with her daughter.
Jason Rakehell wore a wide grin on his face. “Hey, man, you look great.” The brothers embraced, and Jason glanced in Zara’s direction. “I hope I didn’t interrupt anything.”
“We’re engaged.”
“You’re…” Jason’s voice trailed off. His incredulous gaze shuttled between Zara and Danyael. As if she had sensed the attention, Zara threw a glance over her shoulder and winked. “Wow…” Jason huffed his breath out. “That’s fucked up.”
Danyael exploded into laughter. “Yes, it is. It’s great.”
“More power to you, baby brother. Most men would run away screaming at the thought of marrying Zara Itani.”
“She’s perfect for me.”
Jason studied Danyael’s face. He smiled, nodding. “Yes, she is, though I wouldn’t place any bets on her developing a conscience because she’s married to an empath.” His gaze raked over Danyael. “How do you feel?”
“Great. Never better, actually. I’d like some answers, Jason. Everyone’s put me off; they said you’d explain how you managed to find the perfect genetic match for me, short of stealing Luke Winter’s genes.”
Jason shrugged. “Galahad called me after you all arrived back in the U.S. There are no genetic matches for you, Danyael; at least there are no ready-made matches. So Galahad proposed making it instead.”
“Making what?”
“The stem cells you needed for gene therapy.”
“He designed the cells? From what?”
“Samples he culled from donors.” Jason’s sly smile suggested that there was much more to the story. “Galahad’s quite a whiz in the lab.”
