by Olivia Gates
“All set?” She nodded and revealed the syringes stuffed into the waistband of her pants. His eyes rose from the sight of her naked midriff, tempestuous, locked with hers for an endless moment, everything exchanged and said. It could be the last glance. Probably was. “Gulnar, whatever happens, it’s been an honor.” He took her hand, raised it to his lips, caressed each finger with a lingering kiss. “You make me proud to be human.”
She couldn’t hold back. She surged into him, encircled his body with both arms, ignoring the pain in her left one, the stiffness. Let the militants think it was gratitude for having chosen her for salvation. Or maybe as a bribe, a promise of favors to be bestowed if he chose her to save. Let them think whatever they wanted. They probably thought the worst by now. And it could only help their plan.
He pressed her head hard to his chest, over his booming heart. Steady, powerful. It was all there. His spirit, his virility, his humanity. She knew them all, down to the last detail. It had been three hours, and for ever, since she’d first laid eyes on him. She’d known what he was with that first look, against all damning evidence. It felt so good, made her so smug, knowing she’d been right about him.
Their embrace lasted for priceless seconds more, then they separated and he gestured towards the quarreling militants. “Shall you do the honors?”
Without another look, she preceded him to the militants. He picked up his bag and fell into step with her. She stopped a few feet away from the militant pair, and explained Dante’s wishes.
They called three of their underlings, the three Dante had predicted. They came lumbering over, sullen and sweaty, but it was clear they didn’t even consider contesting their order.
They shuffled after Gulnar and Dante towards Anyan. Dante’s gaze remained fixed ahead. They were getting what they needed, the militants’ total disregard.
Their three helpers stood around considering Anyan’s huge body and how to haul him from the floor without breaking their backs. Gulnar told them not to expect any help from him, warned them against causing him further damage, stressing their immediate and overall leaders’ orders.
They fidgeted and gestured to Dante that they need a fourth for a safe lift. He pointed at his heavy bag. Giving up, they bent to the grinning Anyan. It took them half a dozen false starts to at last get a hold on him, their guns slung on their backs and their legs quivering beneath them under his unwieldy, flaccid weight.
The next second, every hair on Gulnar’s body stood on end.
She’d been expecting it. But she couldn’t have expected anything like this. The hostages’ voices rose. But it wasn’t singing, it was prayer. A requiem of defiance. Their voices rose, swelled, in impossible harmony, in soul-wrenching unison. The lyrics became holy, the melody magical. It was daunting, what they, with just their voices could do.
The Badovnan militants froze, spooked. Gulnar didn’t wait for their paralysis to dissolve. Neither did Dante. They stabbed their targets with the tranquilizer. The militants’ enraged cries were swallowed in the crashing waves of their hostages’ passive aggression.
Dante barely caught Anyan before he crashed to the floor, dropped from limp arms. Then he and Gulnar snatched the rifles from the collapsing men. Dante managed to hold the biggest man up, hissed for her to stay behind him. It was all going according to plan.
Then it all went wrong.
One of the militants turned around, and he turned already firing.
No!
His gun spewed thunder and yellow bursts. Bright red exploded from the man in front of Dante, splattering her face, her left arm. He had just shot his colleague! There’d been no hesitation. No hesitation! And he kept firing. More crimson showered on her.
Dante!
Hearing the gunshots, the crowd hushed for a second then exploded on a sustained crescendo of desperation. Their effect was mind-bending. Their captors went berserk.
Then the rescue attempt started, the security forces blasting in. She saw Dante still standing, still holding up his murdered shield, firing back, saw the militant shake and convulse in a macabre dance, his body spewing blood.
“Dante! Get down!”
He couldn’t hear her. Or wouldn’t. Bent on protecting those flat on the floor, helpless. The security forces finished off the three militants at the door, turned on all the others who’d come rushing from their posts on the upper floors and roof.
Then an explosion brought half the ceiling hurtling down in boulder-sized chunks. The singing had stopped, a cacophony of panic and agony rising instead.
“Dante!”
She screamed his name. Wailed it. He didn’t answer her. She couldn’t see him any more. What if the security forces mistook him for a militant? What if he hadn’t ducked out of the way of the debris in time? What if—what if…?
She scampered on hands and knees, frantic, crazed. And saw him. Dante! Standing and uninjured. Relief was brutal, enervating. Then it all went wrong again. The woman militant.
She’d circled behind them, was firing at him. No. No, she won’t. Gulnar would shoot her first. And she did. Saw her stagger, red stains blossoming on her chest. Then she fell.
Dante turned to her, letting go of his bloodied shield. She erupted to her feet, flew towards him. He gestured with the gun, adamant, ordering her to stay there, stay down. Then his other hand went to his chest, came away drenched in blood. His eyes returned to hers again, stunned, questioning. His lips moved on her name. “Gulnar?”
Then he collapsed to the floor.
CHAPTER FIVE
“DON’T you dare die or I’ll kill you myself!”
Gulnar. And she sounded incensed. Raw.
Dante opened his eyes and a scalding liquid splashed in his right one, forcing them closed again. But he’d already seen her incredible face hanging inches over his, ravaged, swollen. It was her tear that had fallen in his eye.
He tried to move, to reach out for her, protect her, soothe her. He couldn’t. Searing lances in his chest pinned him to the floor. What was wrong with him?
Concentrate. Bring it back. Yes, there it was. The plan. The gamble. Gulnar right there beside him, unbelievable under duress, playing it all out with him. The Azernians joining in, overpowering in their desperation. Voices that could bring hell to its knees.
More memories rushed in. Stabbing their captors with the tranquilizer. One of the militants spoiling it all, killing his colleague without a thought. The man dying in his arms, his life seeping away with his consciousness, sensing the man’s confusion, his anger, his terror.
The rest came crushing down. Firing the semi-automatic. The vicious intention to kill. Succeeding, killing one of the terrorists. So easily, over so quickly, the life spent saving others erased. The burst of savagery followed by unbearable nausea and horror. Then the security forces’ unstoppable tide. The rest of the militants falling. Then the explosion and the building coming apart in monstrous chunks, crushing people. The screams. The screams!
But through it all, Gulnar’s screams. It was those he remembered. Those that still shuddered through him. Her voice, rending on his name, bleeding black terror, tearing at him with the need to protect her—with foreboding.
Then an invisible lightning bolt tore clear through him, a blinding, viscous pain following, bursting, draining away whatever power he had left.
The woman had shot him in the back. It was over. At last.
But before he acknowledged the end, he turned to Gulnar, needing one last look, one last question. Was it really over? He’d never see her again?
And he let go. Died.
But if he had died, why was he a jumble of soreness and nausea and general misery? Was this what death felt like? It wouldn’t be fair for death to feel so awful, so…corporeal. Shouldn’t there be peace, reprieve—cessation? Of all physical sensations at least? Could this be the afterlife? When it felt too much like mortality? And what was Gulnar doing there? In his deathscape? Was he not yet dead? Was he still dying?
Oh,
for God’s sake, couldn’t he just hurry up about it? What was he lingering for?
But he knew what for. Gulnar. She was all the reason he needed. To see her again. To at least say goodbye.
“You’re not dying, do you hear me?”
And here was another reason. He didn’t dare die, if it would anger her that much.
“Dante! Open your eyes, Dante! Now, damn you!”
Her yell tore through his quivering brain. Brought a smile bubbling from his depths. His lips couldn’t comply. They were stiff and dry. Paralyzed. So were his vocal cords. But he had to try.
It sure hurt, producing sound through the sandpaper filling his larynx, sucking in air with the spears lodged all through his right side. Not to mention that air was screeching down his lungs from a suffocating vice clamped over his nose and mouth. Death by oxygen mask. Now, that would be novel.
“Promise me…you won’t…rain tears in them again…first.” His words came out rasped, smothered. He almost didn’t understand them himself. “And…would you mind…letting me breathe…on my own?”
“Oh, Dante!” Seemed she understood him fine. Her trembling hands fumbled the mask off, then she hugged his head, his shoulders, racked him with her sobs.
His face burrowed in her hot, moist neck, his senses in her scent and anxiety and relief. She cared. Not about just another human being, but about him. And it no longer hurt. It was glorious. Could be addictive. He sighed and opened his eyes.
It was dark. And it wasn’t him who had trouble seeing. The sun had long set. This meant it was more than a couple of hours since the crisis. Or was it another day altogether? His gaze panned around and it was only then that sounds registered, too. The frantic din of a huge accident scene.
So it was definitely the same day. He wouldn’t avoid the immediate aftermath of the tragedy. He wasn’t that lucky.
They were out in the open. The Azernian August evening weighed down on them with unforgiving humid heat. The building was in the background, hundreds of people dashing around, military, medical, civilians, and as many ex-hostages staggering zombie-like or strewn on the ground. He was one of the fallen, lying there prostrate, his upper body in Gulnar’s lap. He stared up at her. A jeweled inky sky framed her now scarf-free, exquisite head.
Red. Deepest, richest vermillion. Her hair. It rioted out of an imperfect knot, waves of vital, vivid color. Even in the feeble streetlights, even after days of sweat and filth and abuse, it flamed, glorious, alive. He should have known it would be red. What other color could suit her? Express her?
Her tears splashed on his cheeks, his nose, trickled to his lips. He lapped at the precious drops. So good. Revitalizing. He sighed again. “I assume if I’m not dead, I’ve fainted. Again. This is getting embarrassing.”
She didn’t share his opinion. From the way her eyes blazed and her voice trembled she seemed to think it infuriating. “You idiot. You stupid, crazy fool! What did you think you were doing, when all hell broke loose and everyone was shooting at everything that moved, when everyone was flat on the floor and only you standing there, a seven-foot-tall target? What were you thinking, playing Rambo and all but screaming, ‘Me, me, shoot me!’?”
He huffed a laugh. Huge mistake. It really hurt. “I’m…not seven-feet tall,” he grunted. “That would make me…the Incredible…Hulk!”
“Don’t you dare joke! Ooh, I’d hit you if you weren’t already battered! You promised to get down, not to play any kamikaze tricks!”
“I said I’d do what needed to be done. In the heat of the moment, it seemed the only thing to do.” More details bombarded him. People cowering on the floor, some still singing, until the few bullets had become a hail and their singing had fragmented, turning to cries of terror. There had been nothing to do but try to protect them. The scene around them now again tugged at his gaze. Something bitter spilled inside his chest. “And I’m not even sure I managed to do anything but kill everyone more quickly.”
The touch of her freezing-in-cold-sweat hand jolted through him, warmed him to the core. He turned his face in her palm, his eyes going to her face.
Was that a smile? Yes. It was. Drenched in angry tears of relief and magnificent. “Believe it or not, you insane man, you didn’t. Most of those people are just scared out of their wits, collapsed with dehydration and starvation. Only ten hostages died, and only twenty-three were seriously injured.”
His breath hitched and the lances in his side and chest twisted. “Only?”
“Yes, only! Four hundred and forty-three are fine, will be back on their feet and leading normal lives in a couple of days, and it’s thanks to you. I’d say that’s a much better outcome than two. You were absolutely right. It turned out there were twenty-one more bombs planted and only one was detonated. They caught one of the men with a remote-control detonator before he had a chance to act. Seems the others ran away. The security forces still can’t believe the way you’ve turned this around. They didn’t even dream that when you walked in here, unintelligible and totally out of place, you’d turn out to be the wild card who’d turn that nowin situation around.”
He had to wait until his heart unblocked his throat. “The wild card was you. I couldn’t have done anything at all without you. I would have been dead and I would have gotten everyone killed. You saved my life. You saved those people.”
She shook her head. “Oh, just take your dues. If you hadn’t risked your life in the first place, thrown yourself into death’s jaws, over and over, if you hadn’t decided to either save us or die with us, I would have sat there and died with the others when Molokai decided to off us all for best effect.”
“I’ll take my dues if you take yours.”
“Oh, all right. Let’s agree to split the credit—and the blame.”
So she was blaming herself for those who had died or been injured? For those they had killed?
A wave of tenderness swept him. His left arm was splinted to his side by her body. He tried to move his right one, to touch her, to soothe her, to feel that incredible, living mane for himself.
Wrong move. He doubted any move would be OK right now. His lung was scraping against his ribcage, muscles shredded, nerves exposed. “Tell me something,” he gasped, making the pain even worse. “I am going to live?”
There was no mistaking the green flare in her eyes. He didn’t need to see it to feel her concern, her anger at him for endangering himself, at the far worse fate he could have brought on himself. “You’d better!”
“I fail to see what I can…” He paused, waited out a spasm of searing pain. “Do about it if I don’t. If I’m not mistaken, the woman militant shot me in the back and—”
She cut through his feeble words, reassuring, furious. “And the bullet went clear through you! It didn’t hit the scapula, passed between your ribs, went through your right lung and out of your chest wall between the second and third ribs just beside the sternum. It hasn’t touched any major vessels or structures and your lung has already re-inflated. You did lose blood before I collected some through the chest tube, but at least no more is coming!”
So that was what was lodged between his ribs! A chest tube—to evacuate the blood that must have accumulated around his lung. From the second, higher chest tube he could now feel, he analyzed the foci of agony. He’d bet he had a pneumothorax, too, with air leaking from his punctured lung and becoming trapped in the pleural space. No doubt the pressure of the accumulating blood and air had caused his lung to collapse. But the reason a tension hemo-pneumothorax was often rapidly fatal went beyond the blood loss or the collapsed lung. The rising pressure inside the chest caused displacement of the mediastinal structures and pressed on the other lung and the heart, interfering with, then stopping their functions.
The only way to stop the deterioration was to relieve the building pressure, inserting one chest tube in the chest to drain off the blood, and another high enough to let the accumulating air escape. And that was what she’d done—hadn’t she? “Did you pe
rform the tube thoracotomies?”
Her snort was indignant. “As if I’d let anyone else resuscitate you!”
This couldn’t be good, the way his heart was ricocheting inside his chest. It couldn’t be wise either, the way his deep-freeze was starting to thaw. The way he was starting to crave her caring. “And by the feel of it, you didn’t use local anesthesia before you shoved the tubes in my chest!”
Her touch melted, along with her luscious smile, down his cheek, stroked him down to his soul. “We were fresh out of lidocaine. But I wasn’t too concerned about the pain I would cause you. It was one more thing to stimulate you out of unconsciousness.”
“Cruel woman.” A couple of his fingers wrapped around a lock of hair, tugged. She came, willingly, gave him what would really revive him. Her taste, her breath. Her warmth and eagerness. She did all the work, moving her lips over his face, smoothing away the ordeal from his brow, taking the anger and horror and pain from his lips. He moaned it into her and she absorbed it all, imbued him with her vitality.
He felt his consciousness ebbing again. Felt like falling asleep. Hmm. What better thing than to fall asleep in her arms, with her lips on his face…?
Something wrenched him back, to suffer the pain and hear the weeping and scent the stench. Her loss. She was pulling away, leaving him alone and cold and bereft. His eyes snapped open to escape the nightmare, blurred over her image. Then his ears again rang with her frantic order. “Dante, stay with me!”
He winced, tried to pull her back, to dissolve in her warmth and nearness again. “Have mercy, Gulnar. I just want to sleep…”
She nudged him, gentle, then not-so-gentle, insistent, inescapable. “You’re not going to sleep. You’re going to sit up and drink. You’ve lost half of your blood between donation and injury. You’ll enter irreversible shock if you don’t replace the blood volume you’ve lost.”
“Hook me to a fluid bag, piccola. I’ll just take a little nap—”
“Don’t piccola me! No napping, and we don’t have fluid bags to spare. Every one must be kept for the unconscious injured.”
