Storm's Heart

by Thea Harrison

  “Don’t worry about me. I’ll get my stuff in a bit,” he told her. Soon as he got her settled, he would have Tucker bring his duffle back from the motel room.

  She raised her voice. “Scott?”

  Scott? Tiago looked up fast, eyes narrowed. The hotel manager’s face had gone from sober worry to pure adoration. “Yes, your highness?”

  “Thank you so much for everything. I don’t know what I would d-do without your help.” It was clear she was gritting her teeth to keep them from chattering too much, as shivers continued to rack her body.

  “It’s my privilege, your highness, whatever I can do. This has been a terrible ordeal. We’ve all been so worried about you.”

  Tiago turned to face forward toward the elevator doors, his expression turning wry. Of course. Niniane had already met the manager and staff, and had already worked her particular brand of magic on them. It seemed she made conquests wherever she went, except, apparently, with anyone intent on murdering her.

  “Please thank all the hotel staff for me as well. As s-soon as I’m well enough, I want to thank everybody personally.”

  “I’ll be sure to do so,” promised the manager with a fervent smile.

  Tiago sighed as he thought of Niniane coming within proximity of so many strangers. Yeah, he’d be sure to talk her out of that one.

  The elevator stopped and the doors opened. Tiago gave the corridors a good hard look before stepping out. Then he and the manager moved at a rapid pace until Tiago stopped at a suite in the middle of a hall with a clear view of each end of the corridor. He nodded to the manager. The two security agents jogged through the stairway exit as Hughes opened the door with a key card.

  “Are you two undercover cops?” Tiago asked. They looked at each other, at Hughes and finally at Niniane, who rested with such trust in Tiago’s arms. The older one of the pair nodded. Tiago told the pair, “Guard the door. Knock when the doctor arrives.”

  They both nodded. Hughes held the door for Tiago as he strode down the short hall to the living room. He booted the coffee table aside and eased his precious package onto the sofa. He knelt on one knee and got his first look at Niniane in good light for a while. Her pale skin was sallow. Those normally lustrous overlarge Fae eyes were dull and circled with dark purple shadows. Her lips were shaking.

  His jaw clenched. He knew her injury was not life-threatening. He was long familiar with the horrific casualties of war. For him her knife wound wouldn’t even warrant an email back to New York. He knew she was going to be all right. None of that helped alleviate how he felt as he stared at her helpless suffering.

  He snapped out an order. “Blanket.”

  Even as he reached out, Hughes was thrusting something soft, heavy and warm into his hand. He shook out the blanket and tucked it with care around Niniane. He rested one hand on her quaking shoulder as he studied her with a frown. He said, “Why are your chills worse all of a sudden?”

  “Your body heat was h-helping,” she gritted.

  He paused, then with infinite care he picked her up again, sat on the sofa and settled her on his lap with the blanket tucked around her. She lay against him, head on his shoulder, a limp weight except for the shivering that clawed through her slender body. He placed the Glock on the sofa arm as Hughes approached from the kitchen with a chilled bottle of water.

  “Here,” said the manager, offering it to Tiago. “It’s still sealed.”

  Tiago nodded in approval, propped the bottle against his leg and twisted the cap off while he cuddled Niniane in his other arm. He took a sip of the water, rolled it over his tongue, and decided it was safe enough to drink. He offered the bottle to Niniane.

  She stared up at him. “Don’t you ever do that again,” she said. What her thready voice lacked in strength, she made up for in anger. “Don’t risk yourself by tasting for poison. It’s hard enough to live with you putting yourself on the line doing bodyguard detail for me.”

  He cocked an eyebrow at her and tilted the bottle so that she was forced to drink or let the water dribble down her chin. She gargled and swallowed. He said, “That’s not your call to make, your snippiness.”

  “Tiago,” she said. She sounded like her patience was severely tried. “Who is going to be Queen? Me, not you. You are not in charge here. You can’t be. Get over it or go home.”

  “Like that’s going to happen,” he told her, tilting the water bottle at her again. She was forced to drink more while storm clouds gathered in those amazing eyes. “You asked for my help, and you got it. Deal with it and shut up.”

  She pushed her chin up and turned her mouth away from the bottle, and he let her. She huffed, “Your bedside manner is sociopathic.”

  “Trying to care about that,” he said. He cocked his head and widened his eyes. “Huh. I guess I’m not managing it.”

  Sarcastic son of a bitch. “Thanks for everything you’ve done tonight. I really appreciate it. I’ve changed my mind about you staying. You’re fired.”

  “I came to Chicago whether you wanted me to or not, so I’m not caring about that so much either,” he told her. He held the bottle up, and she flinched, slapping a protective hand over her mouth. “Come on, your recalcitrance, finish the bottle. On top of your wound being infected, you drank far too much vodka. You need the hydration.”

  “Which I don’t get,” she muttered. Since she was thirsty anyway, she reached for the water bottle, and he let her take it. “As much alcohol as I ingested, my whole body should be a sterile environment.”

  “Life isn’t logical.”

  Between his body warmth and the blanket her chills had eased, and she was looking sulky and mutinous. The bottom lip of that luscious little X-rated mouth was sticking out. The clench in his gut started to ease until he felt almost cheerful.

  He could see Hughes’s expression out of the corner of his eye. The manager’s usual dignified expression had given way to openmouthed fascination. Tiago scowled at him. Then he heard a sound. He had eased Niniane onto the sofa, grabbed the Glock and was striding down the hall before either Niniane or Hughes could react.

  Someone knocked at the door as he approached.

  “What,” he said without opening it.

  “The hotel physician is here.”

  He stood to the side and leaned over to peer through the peephole. The hotel security/undercover cops were standing back from the door, in sight of the peephole. Between them stood a slight, intelligent-looking male who carried a bag. Even through the door Tiago could pick up a whisper of magic about the man. The doctor was a witch.

  Hughes had come to the door as well. Tiago pointed to the door. “Verify this guy,” he said.

  The manager took a look through the peephole. “That’s Dr. Weylan, the one I called. The hotel has had him on retainer for several years now.”

  Tiago opened the door, gestured the doctor in and shut and locked the door behind him. Then he pinned the doctor to the wall with one hand around his throat and introduced him to the Glock.

  “Here are the rules,” he said. “No second chances. I’ve been on battlefields for far longer than you’ve been alive. I have performed triage and I am very familiar with medical procedures, including magical ones. You do not want me to misunderstand anything you do. You do a single thing that seems off to me in the slightest way, and you’re dead. And I won’t lose a single moment’s sleep over that decision. Got it?”

  Paling, the doctor nodded. Hughes stared at Tiago, and from the living room Niniane exclaimed, “Tiago!”

  He raised his voice as he snapped, “Let’s revisit, your argumentativeness. There’ve been two assassination attempts in less than thirty-six hours. You won’t let me take you back to New York, so it’s shotgun justice until we have a safe base of operations established.” He said more quietly to the doctor, “You got that?”

  “Actually, I do,” said the smaller man. Tiago eased his hold on the human male’s throat. Steady, sharp eyes met his. The doctor gave him a tight smile. “Yo
u’ve made your point. Let me do what I came to do and treat my patient now.”

  Tiago took a deep breath and stepped back. He had lived a long life by trusting his gut. His gut told him that Hughes was for real, and that through the years the human doctor would have proven himself to the five-star hotel and its customers many times over.

  Tiago’s gut also knew that anybody could be gotten to, through bribery or coercion, through family or lovers held hostage or through religious or political beliefs. That was why he followed so closely behind the doctor as the human entered the living room, knelt beside the sofa and introduced himself to Niniane as he opened his bag.

  Like Tiago had said to Niniane, life wasn’t logical. It was often filled with uncertainties. At that moment he knew just one thing for sure.

  That little manipulative sex kitten was not going to die tonight.

  The fate of anybody else remained an open question.

  Niniane huddled under the blanket and looked at her surroundings with a dull gaze. The hotel living room seemed unobjectionable enough. There were chairs, the sofa, tables, a flat-screen television, all the obligatory elements, but her exhausted mind seemed unable to absorb any details.

  She had a weird kind of infection, she decided. Someone had tried to stuff an extra dimension in her head, and it didn’t fit. Too-loud noises came and went. Her vision flickered around the edges.

  Her knife wound hurt. The light was too bright and her eyes hurt. Her skin hurt, breathing hurt—hell, even her hair hurt. She felt like she barely had enough energy to lie on the sofa and live.

  But whenever Tiago was near she seemed to have plenty of energy for arguing with him. It must be God’s way of telling her how wrong he was.

  She opened her eyes as three men entered the room. Hughes showed that he was a man of discretion, as he caught her eye and gestured that he would go to the kitchenette. She nodded in thanks to him. A slender human male knelt on the floor beside her, opened a medical bag and smiled at her. Tiago hovered just behind him, his dark face grim, and his murderous obsidian eyes tracked the human male’s slightest movement.

  She turned her attention back to the man kneeling beside her. His intelligent face was creased with kindness. “I’m Dr. Weylan,” he told her. “It’s quite an honor to meet your highness, but I’m sure we both could have wished it was under better circumstances. I hear you’ve been having a challenging couple of days.”

  “You can say that again,” she said. Exhaustion kept her voice faint. Then she glanced pointedly at Tiago and rolled her eyes at the physician as she added, “And somebody tried to kill me too.”

  The doctor’s eyebrows shot up and he laughed, while over his shoulder Tiago glared daggers at her. “Okay,” Dr. Weylan said. “I’ll explain everything I’m going to do before I do it. The first thing I want to do is to put my hands on you and give you a magical scan. I want to put one hand on your forehead, and the other one close to where you’ve been injured. Have you had one of these scans before?”

  She nodded.

  “Good, then you know it might tingle a bit but it won’t hurt. It’s just going to give me information while you tell me all about what happened to you. All right?”

  “All right,” she said.

  He laid his hand lightly against her forehead, and after asking her, he placed his other hand against her side near the knife wound. The look in his hazel eyes grew intent. “Go on now, tell me what happened,” he encouraged.

  She sighed. “If you saw that stupid viral video, you know pretty well what happened. My cousin said he wanted to take me out to dinner. Then he and my two other attendants attacked me, and I got knifed. I cleaned the wound as best I could, but it’s awfully deep. It must have gotten infected.”

  The doctor nodded. The room fell silent as he concentrated. After a moment, he pulled his hands away and smiled at her. “I’m glad to say you’re quite a lucky lady, your highness. The wound is deep, and if the entry had been at a slightly different angle, your lung would have been punctured.”

  She looked at Tiago. His dark gaze met hers. If anything, he looked deadlier and grimmer than ever, although his hand was quite gentle as he reached out to tug at a lock of her hair.

  The doctor went on, “And you’re right, of course. An infection has set in. It will be simple enough to cleanse once we’ve gotten rid of some cloth fibers that are trapped in the puncture. You’re suffering from shock and blood loss, but otherwise, you’re quite healthy. I would like to set up an IV drip to help replenish your fluid levels—”

  Tiago stirred. “No IVs,” he said. “No injections. Not without having all your medical supplies tested first.”

  The doctor had frozen while Tiago spoke. Weylan continued, without having ever looked away from her gaze, “But barring that, I will strongly urge you to force liquids. Everything you need I can do in the privacy and safety of this suite. I can put a local anesthetic charm near your wound, and I have an extraction spell that will flush the wound and expel the fibers within ten minutes or so. It will feel strange, but it’s much less painful or invasive than physically probing into the wound itself. After that, I can either cleanse the infection with a spell or prescribe a course of antibiotics for you to take.”

  “Which is better?” she asked. No matter how hard she tried to keep her eyes open, they drifted shut.

  “It’s six-of-one, half-a-dozen of the other,” he told her. “The cleansing spell is quick and efficient, but it takes a system by storm. You would feel pretty weak and exhausted for a couple of days afterward. The antibiotics take more time, but they don’t leave one feeling quite so mowed down.”

  She forced her eyes open again and looked at Tiago. “Maybe the antibiotics,” she said. “So I can get back on my feet faster.”

  “No,” Tiago said. He bent over her and took her hand, lacing her fingers with his. His hand was huge and enveloped hers. “You will have all the time you need to convalesce, and the world will wait for you. I’m here. I’m not going anywhere. You are perfectly safe.”

  She gave him a blank stare. Perfectly safe. She had no idea what that meant.

  She closed her eyes. “Do whatever is best then,” she said in a listless voice.

  There was a pause. The doctor pulled down the blanket, pulled up the loose outer shirt and folded back the camo T-shirt. His touch was gentle and efficient. She could tell the moment the local anesthetic charm was laid on her stomach. She sighed with relief as at least some of the pain eased.

  She kept her eyes closed and listened without interest as the men talked.

  “She’s going to lose more fluids when I use the extraction spell. I don’t like her level of dehydration. What can I do to convince you that the bags of saline solution I have are safe?” the doctor asked Tiago.

  The Wyr warrior said, “Do you have more than one IV needle?”

  “Yes.”

  “Use one on yourself. After five minutes, you can transfer the rest of the bag to her.”

  “Fine, done.” Weylan raised his voice. “Scott?”

  The manager hurried into the room. “Yes?”

  “Would you please get some towels from the bathroom?”

  “Certainly.” After bringing in an armful of towels, the manager disappeared again.

  She flinched as a warm hand came down on her forehead and smoothed back her hair. Tiago’s hands were much larger than the doctor’s, rougher and more calloused. She rested her fingers on his muscle-corded forearm. He thrummed with so much latent Wyr Power he felt like a current of electricity wrapped in a tree trunk.

  She opened her eyes briefly to see that he had knelt by her head. He was bending over her while he watched with a sharp raptor’s gaze as the doctor removed the sodden dressing and wiped the puncture wound clean. The doctor had to work with care as he had attached his right hand to a bag of saline, which he had hung from a picture hook on the wall.

  Tiago continued to stroke his fingers through her hair. It felt so good she might have nuzzl
ed his hand just a little bit. He murmured to her, “You’re no fun when the stuffing’s been knocked out of you, your listlessness.”

  Did that require an answer? She sighed.

  “You’re like a rubber ball with no bounce,” he said. He cradled her cheek in one large palm. “A worm that’s lost its wiggle.”

  A worm? “Oh, please, the hyperbole.” She put a hand to her forehead. “It’s too flowery.”

  Somebody snorted nearby. The doctor said, “It’s been five minutes.”

  Tiago told him, “You can use the IV on her. That bag only.”

  “I understand.”

  The doctor inserted the needle into her left hand, which was closest to the wall, taped it into place and hooked her to the IV. Then he tucked rolled towels along her side and cast the extraction spell. She made a sound and clenched her right fist.

  It was instantly swallowed in Tiago’s larger grip. “You all right, faerie?” he asked, his voice sharp.

  “Yes, I’m fine,” she said. She opened her eyes and gave him an unhappy look. “It just itches deep inside where things aren’t supposed to itch.”

  He frowned and asked the doctor, “Can you numb her any more?”

  The doctor was busy blotting the bright trickle of blood and fluid that had begun to spill from the puncture wound. He shook his head. “Not without resorting to medication. And I’m not injecting myself or anybody else without good reason.” He looked up at her. “This is as bad as it gets. I promise. It’ll be over with in just a few minutes.”

  “All right,” she said in a flat voice. She shifted her legs in an effort to get more comfortable.

  Tiago began to stroke her hair again. She stilled, and everything inside her focused on the warm comfort he offered. He met her gaze and said, “Guess what you get for being such a good girl at the doctor’s?”

  She was still flush with fever, and she hated the itchy-crawly feeling deep in her wound. She didn’t want to smile at him. She didn’t. One corner of her mouth lifted. She asked, “What?”

  He crinkled at her. “How about some pancakes with strawberries and whipped cream?”