Hearts on Fire: Romance Multi-Author Box Set Anthology

by Violet Vaughn

  I didn’t know the clinic well enough to know what was available as a weapon. But I did know where to find one. I sprinted for the Land Rover hoping Nicky and Melea and the kudu all had sense enough to get out of there.

  I thumbed the safety off the .38 as I ran back. Melea was refusing to shut the door. Nicky was in the exam room loading the tranq gun, and the kudu was backed up against the far wall, her eyes wild, at last recognizing the danger.

  I yanked Melea out of the way. Maybe if she’d given the snake room to retreat, it wouldn’t be heading for her kudu calf now.

  A kudu calf that looked ready to bolt.

  For a moment I had no idea which would be faster—calf, snake or bullet. I fired just as Nicky slid in behind me, tranq gun up and aimed.

  The mamba struck just as the bullet hit. It jerked through the air, flailing at the terrified calf who bolted past it. Nicky threw down the unfired air gun as Melea caught the calf.

  “Don’t touch the snake!” Nicky shouted over Barney’s howls that had re-doubled at the sound of the gunfire.

  I kept the mamba covered, watching it to be sure it was dead while Nicky went inch by inch over Zuri to be sure no fang had struck her when she went bolting by.

  The mamba’s tail twitched. Probably some post-death muscle thing, but I shot it again to be sure.

  Nicky shoved Melea and Zuri out of the kennel area, then opened the bush baby’s cage while I went to Barney’s run, unlatched the gate and grabbed his muzzle to shut him up. All while praising him for alerting us with that big mouth of his in the first place. When I finally let go of his nose, he looked confused but happy, his strong tail wagging his whole body from his neck back. He gave an experimental woof, and ducked his head when I glared at him. His tail slowed till I grinned his way, then it was off again, but at least this time he stayed quiet. And, for a few minutes at least, he and I each had a new best friend.

  Nicky left the bush baby’s cage for the cabinet by the wall where she pulled out a pair of disposable gloves, and returned to the cage while donning them.

  I only understood why when she emerged with the limp bit of fluff in her hands that was now full of mamba venom.

  “Can you help me?” she asked.

  “Of course.” I gave Barney a wink, which sent his tail into another round of frenzy, then slipped out of his run.

  “There’re trash bags in the lower left cabinet. Get two and double-bag them, please.”

  When I did, she laid the dead bush baby in them and then curled the mamba on top. “We’ll bury them deep somewhere far from here.” She grabbed more trash bags, pulled out all the bedding from the bush baby’s cage, then Melea and I donned gloves and we all scrubbed the walls around the corner where the mamba died as well as the path it had traveled from the cage and, of course, the cage itself.

  And when it was all scrubbed down, we scrubbed it again.

  We were scrubbing still when I saw it happen. Nicky’s eyes dried, she set her teeth together, and lifted her chin. It may not have looked like it from the outside, but inside, I knew, Nicky had just locked up her heart behind a cold and impenetrable shield.

  31

  Nicky

  I can’t save them all.

  I had made peace with that mantra. Really, I had. But losing animals for whom death wasn’t a compassionate choice still sucked. Jasiri’s calf. The bush baby. The four elands Peter and his cohort had tracked and killed. Hell, I even felt remorse for the mamba who’d just been going out for a bite to eat.

  Losing so many on top of the animals I couldn’t save made me question my competency. Why I thought the ratios might change or things feel differently here in Africa rather than back in private practice in Illinois I couldn’t say. Idealism? Hope?

  Maybe if the successes felt more like something I controlled and less like luck, the failures wouldn’t eat at me so much.

  Maybe if a part of me didn’t hold Peter to blame for some of those failures. That I wasn’t being fair to him regarding the elands caught up in the failed stings I knew perfectly well. Especially when I saw what measures he’d gone through for the little zebra and how quickly he’d reacted to save Melea’s kudu.

  Maybe the part that blamed him had seen him distancing himself and wanted me to not be hurt again by some man pulling out of my life too soon because he wasn’t ready to be in it. Commitment interruptus.

  But to believe that, I would have to believe that I wanted Peter to be something more than an employee with benefits. And why would I want that? No matter how amazing those benefits felt?

  Truth be told, I didn’t know what it was precisely I wanted from Peter, or who I expected him to be. Mostly because I didn’t know who I was in this relationship or where it was going. It had started out as no more than benefits, but had stealthily morphed into something else, like the gradual change of a chameleon from one color to the next. What that ‘something else’ might be, I was still trying to figure out.

  In every relationship before—well, okay, the two I’d been serious about—I’d been burned. Why was I so career-oriented? Why didn’t I want kids immediately? Why did I ask so many questions, take charge of so many situations? Why was I me and not the woman they wanted me to be? Why couldn’t I relent, give up my own self-respect in a union of selves?

  I’d come to believe giving up my heart meant giving up myself. Then Peter had come, without demands, ready to please the me I already was. And that was an unexpected complication I was still trying to wrap my head—and heart—around.

  I took that employee—minus the benefits—out to lunch on the lake, packing one of Kapuki’s picnics along with us. No agenda but to experience the magic of the unmatched beauty and harmony of the sanctuary’s herds. To let the sight be a balm to two souls in desperate need of a little balming.

  We had just put the emptied containers back into the cooler and had settled in for a few minutes of undisturbed animal watching when my phone chirped. I glanced at the display. “Rasheda,” I told Peter before taking the call. She and I exchanged pleasantries while I squirmed around in my Western culture for a good five minutes waiting for her to get to the reason for the call.

  “Have you heard of the Yatima Pembe Haven?” she asked at last.

  “No.” Which wasn’t unusual given the ungodly number of smaller reserves and preserves and sanctuaries and refuges and private parks and whatever else they were being called these days that had sprung up in Southern Africa in the past 40 years. Unless you were Rasheda, it was impossible to be familiar with them all.

  “Pembe,” Peter whispered. “I know that word—ivory.”

  “They’re one of the groups that raises orphaned elephants. They have eight calves right now, but their newest isn’t responding well.”

  “It’s sick?”

  “They have a University of Pretoria-trained vet that cares for the calves, and he apparently cannot find anything physically wrong. But he and they would like a second opinion.”

  “You mean a Western opinion?” I was the non-traditional specialist called in as a last resort when all the traditional options had been exhausted. I would be the conscience-clearer, so when the calf didn’t make it, everyone could point to me and say they tried everything—even Western medicine from the new vet in town.

  “They are very experienced and dedicated. It is an honor to be consulted when they can find no other answer for the calf’s decline.”

  “Or is that they want to send the calf off to die somewhere else? To preserve a record that they save 100% of the animals under their care?”

  “Nicolai.” I heard the admonishment in Rasheda’s tone, saw the surprise on Peter’s face at my words. “You sound too young to be so cynical.”

  Maybe. But I was still neither ashamed nor sorry for my words. “Am I wrong?”

  “Cure the calf and it’s yours for free. They can’t do anything more for it. In their care, it will certainly die. In yours—”

  “It will die as well. I have no experience wi
th elephants other than with Jasiri—and you know what direction that’s heading. What can I possibly offer?”

  “Perhaps nothing. Perhaps a unique insight. Are you willing to so quickly dismiss the chance to save a baby ellie’s life?”

  Damn the woman.

  “And Nicky, you’ll need to keep the baby and Jasiri separate. Especially if Jasiri is still guarding the remains of her own calf. It’s not of her herd, and she’ll see the new one as competition, and she will likely kill it.”

  “You know I’m going to hate you forever for this, right?” I muttered.

  “If all hate led to yes, then I’m happy to be the most hated person on the planet. They can have the calf to you in about four hours.”

  “Will whoever’s bringing it need to stay the night?”

  “Probably not. But a supper for the road would be a hospitable gesture.”

  “Asante.” Thank you. “I’m still trying to learn the customs.”

  Rasheda laughed. “Keep saying yes and you’ll be fine.”

  She really didn’t want to hear what I muttered then. Peter, though, had trouble swallowing his snicker.

  “Nicolai?” Rasheda said.

  “Yes?”

  “It’s a boy.”

  * * *

  I put Steve and Melea on alert as Peter and I drove back to the clinic. The calf would come with a bottle and a couple of gallons of formula according to the Haven’s director when I contacted him after Rasheda texted me the number, so the only immediate need was to double-check the fencing around the third corral at the barn and lay in some extra hay bedding in the third stall. If the calf was doing as poorly as Rasheda indicated, we wouldn’t need to be thinking about toys and distractions for him for a while longer.

  If ever.

  For now, all he’d need would be the basics to keep him alive. Which came down to remarkably few things, as I thought about it.

  Melea, of course, was ecstatic. She was already spending more time with the zebra filly than I liked and now with a baby elephant soon to be in the same area, my bet was that she’d be sleeping in Zuri’s stall again. And if Barney behaved himself around the ellie, he’d be in there with her.

  Which would be good for the hound, I had to admit. With the bush baby gone and the lab results confirmed on the honey badger, who I mercifully sent to sleep mid-afternoon, only the cheetah cub was left to keep Barney company. And in the late afternoon, the cheetah’s ride came to pick him up and take him the last leg to his new mother.

  One day, I thought as I was crating up the cub who was purring against my hand, I should re-focus the clinic’s priorities so we were taking in the happy, healthy, well-adjusted youngsters to raise instead of being a way-station only for them or a last resort for the less-fortunate. The smiling young man who took the crate from me after chucking the cub under its chin through the bars certainly didn’t look conflicted about the cheetah’s future.

  About an hour after we said our good-byes to the cheetah and Kapuki wrapped up a sandwich and some sides for the driver and they were off, the trailer with the baby bull ellie arrived. It was a simple 5th-wheel trailer meant to cart two horses that looked like it had seen a lot of use. Inside, curled on a thick mattress of hay with blankets hung along the bottom rails of the trailer to cushion the steel bars was a gray-pink baby. My baby, although that part hadn’t quite sunk in yet. What had sunk in was that he needed help. What was sinking in after my first glimpse of him was just how tiny and young he was. Nine days, the director had told me. I had assumed he’d be as large as the calves in the videos I’d seen of orphan babies walking and playing with their keepers. But this baby was barely twice as big as Barney and looked even smaller, dwarfed as he was in the trailer.

  On even closer inspection, the baby was emaciated, the ridges of his little ribs starkly visible under the dry, loose skin hanging over them. He needed fluids, badly. The concern, of course, was that too much fluid pumped in under his skin might interfere with his instinct to suckle. The result of not giving him fluids, though, meant he was wasting, which of itself would eventually shut off the desire to nurse. A catch-22 that could be impossible to resolve.

  On the phone, talking with Rasheda, the impossible could be minimized, be made to sound possible. Standing in front of the impossible made it harder to see anything more than what actually was.

  The baby bull was dying.

  32

  Nicky

  My first instinct had been right. The baby had been sent here to die.

  “Can he still suckle?” I asked the driver, and Melea had to translate.

  “He works his mouth still, yes. He’s just not interested,” she translated back.

  We slipped a heavy quilt under the little bull, and Steve and Peter transferred him from the trailer into his stall.

  Peter, who had been unusually quiet up till now, asked, “What happened to his mother?”

  “Majangili.” We knew the word even without the inflection of vile anger the driver gave it. Poachers.

  The look in Peter’s eyes matched the driver’s tone. Peter nodded his grim thanks, I handed the driver the supper Kapuki had prepared, and the driver turned for a final look at the little elephant he was about to leave behind.

  Shame burned my cheeks. I had been so concerned about my role in this, I hadn’t thought about the keepers’ feelings. All they did every day was take care of their charges, feed them, bathe them, play with them, interact with them, live with them and be their family. This young man was leaving behind more than just a failure. He was leaving behind a part of him.

  What was I becoming that I had been so oblivious?

  “Melea, tell him we’re going to do everything we can for his little bull. Tell him we’re not going to let the calf die.”

  His smile was grateful and as full of hope as the tears he shed at my promise.

  A promise I would keep, I swore to myself.

  I just wished I knew how the hell I would.

  * * *

  The calf needed to stand to drink. We did everything we could to encourage him to his feet, even holding him up and planting them under him. As soon as we let go, though, he would collapse with the saddest look of defeat on his little ellie face.

  No, not defeat. That was me transferring my own feelings onto him. The little guy was just exhausted, nothing more.

  Steve was first to suggest a sling, and within 20 minutes, he and Peter had rigged rope and quilt from the eave of the barn to hold the little bull securely on his feet at whatever height was most comfortable for him.

  The congratulations over that success, however, were short-lived, for once up, the baby still had no interest in eating. I tried coating the nipple of the bottle made for cow calves with juice, honey and even whiskey. His tail flicked a little when the whiskey touched his tongue; otherwise, nothing tempted him. I then sweetened the formula itself that the driver had left with a measure each of the juice, honey and whiskey. Anything to just initiate the suckling would be enough—nature and instinct should take over from there.

  But nothing prompted the little bull to nurse. He just grew more exhausted by the minute.

  After about an hour we gave up. As a last resort, I passed a feeding tube down his esophagus and tipped the formula directly into his stomach. That he didn’t struggle was alarming. The bit of formula would give him strength and keep him from starving immediately, but it wasn’t even a good solution, much less the right one. If the bull became dependent on tube feedings, that would also lead to losing the desire or even the ability to suckle. It was just delaying the inevitable.

  When we unhooked him from his sling and laid him in the hay, he fell immediately to sleep.

  Peter asked a quiet question of Melea, whose deep frown brightened into a smile when she nodded.

  “Hope,” Peter pronounced, and the little elephant was christened, way too soon for my liking.

  Hope. Where had the others managed to find it?

  * * *

  A
s I’d already guessed, Melea informed me she’d be sleeping in the barn. Even if she hadn’t been as competent an assistant as she was, I would have trusted to her love alone to keep watch on them all. I stayed with the baby until Melea arrived with her tablet and ereader slung in a case over her shoulder, her supper bagged up in one hand, the end of Barney’s leash in the other, and the kudu tagging at their heels.

  I wished I felt as happy as she looked.

  “Call if you need me,” I told her. “I’ll be by the boma.”

  “With Peter?” She grinned at me.

  “Yes, but I doubt we’ll be doing anything you might be interrupting.”

  “Too bad.” She didn’t look like she believed me, though.

  I wasn’t sure I believed it myself.

  * * *

  Why we continued camping with Jasiri wasn’t clear to me any longer. Habit maybe. She no longer seemed to recognize that we were even there. She never moved more than a few feet from her baby’s remains, and she was so despondent as to be practically catatonic.

  Maybe we were there because no one deserved to die alone.

  “I had a hunch, so I did some digging,” Peter told me as we spread our supper. “Something Hodari told me the night we came here. That he’d taken an elephant the week before.”

  My interest piqued.

  “I checked through the WildLot data on my tablet, and compared laded loads to invoices, orders and cash flow. I think a pair of tusks were trafficked out in the last shipment to Dubai with a pair of Nyala that were white marketed. My bet is those tusks belonged to Hope’s mother.”

  “And Hodari killed her?”

  “The evidence stacks up that way.”

  “Didn’t he care there was a baby!”

  Peter’s face was a mask of sympathy. “I wasn’t there. But no, from what I know of him, probably not.”