Fury of Fire

by Coreene Callahan

  He must reach the female first. Before the enemy tore her apart and stole the precious life she carried.

  Chapter Two

  Myst Munroe was so tired her left leg could have fallen off and she wouldn’t have noticed. All right, so maybe not a leg, but really, the fourteen-hour days were getting ridiculous. Clichéd in a nasty sort of way. Long hours were part of the job, what she’d signed on for when she’d become a nurse practitioner. But the neat little letters after her name at the bottom of her business card read “DNP,” not “slave.”

  Though, come to think of it, she might have to check. The last batch of black and white cards had only arrived yesterday.

  In a small cardboard box: no embossing, no fancy lettering, nothing exciting.

  Just like her life.

  Not that she was complaining. She got to help people every day, and there wasn’t much more fulfilling than that. But some mornings she wished for something beyond 5 a.m. wake-up calls. Like cuddling and kisses and the warm male body required for both.

  Myst popped the latch on her hatchback, wondering what she’d been drinking when she scheduled house calls two straight days in a row. Something strong, with high alcohol content…doubles, maybe, with colorful little umbrellas in them. Yeah, definitely plural, as in many over the course of a very few hours.

  One of those fruity concoctions would taste good right about now. She settled for coffee instead, taking a sip from her oversized travel mug. A nutty favor spiked with cream coasted down her throat as she stared into her trunk. The dome light cast a yellowy glow over boxes filled with medical supplies. She frowned at them, trying to get her brain to work.

  What did she need again?

  She rubbed the grit from her eyes. “Oh, yeah, extra gloves.”

  Taking another sip of her café au lait, she rattled off the rest of the list in her head. Her medical bag needed restocking in a bad way. Two days on the road, visiting patients had taken its toll on the duffle’s tidy interior. Myst set her mug down on the only available patch of trunk floor uncluttered by the jumbled assortment of what constituted her office when she wasn’t working out of Seattle Medical Center. Flipping cardboard box tops, she grabbed what she needed, tucking supplies into compartmentalized sections and nifty pockets, pausing now and then to nurse her addiction…caffeine.

  Some might not have enjoyed living out of their trunks. Myst didn’t mind. No matter how exhausting, she enjoyed her home visits, liked driving the rural routes.

  Washington State was more than scenic. It was beautiful, with its mountains, Douglas fir forests, and panoramic ocean views. She loved the coast best, though: the rugged cliffs and sandy beaches and fresh salty smell. Something about it called to her, made her yearn for something more. Maybe it was the wildness, the unpredictability and unbridled strength of nature’s force…and the possibilities inherent in it.

  Then again, maybe it wasn’t any of those things. Maybe the restlessness her hippie mother had always accused her of was finally catching up.

  Heaving the duffle, Myst slammed the hatchback closed. She didn’t want to think about her mom. The pain of losing her was still too much. She missed the long bohemian skirts, bead-strung doorways, and tarot card readings. The smell of jasmine incense, homemade cookies, and…

  God, she needed to get moving.

  Night had arrived, bringing with it the kind of darkness never seen in the city. The skyscape was absolute, nothing to disturb the wispy clouds as they swirled beneath a blanket of pinpoint stars. The lights from Sal’s highway restaurant, fluorescents flickering in protest behind the S, barely touched the gloom.

  With a shiver, she tossed the bag onto the passenger seat. Just as she slammed her door closed, her cell phone rang, Mariah Carey’s “Touch My Body” rolling with the beat of her heart. Myst sighed. If only.

  She glanced at the caller ID, flipped the phone open and said, “I think my brain is hemorrhaging.”

  “That bad, huh?” Her best friend’s laugh came over the line. “Headed home?”

  “One more stop.”

  “Jeez, Myst, it’s almost nine o’clock. Can you say workaholic?”

  “Right…and where are you calling from?”

  “Okay, busted,” Tania said, an eye roll in her voice. “Big contract, you know. Gotta get the specs in.”

  “What does your boss do again?” she asked, knowing her friend’s job was as heavy as hers was. A landscape architect, Tania was working her way up from the bottom of the totem pole, putting in long hours, hoping to impress the suits and ties to land that elusive promotion.

  “This is my baby. I’m on point.”

  “Good luck with that. Woolsey is going to stick his nose in for sure.”

  “Got him handled,” Tania paused, her worry echoing all the way from Seattle. “You’re going to try again, aren’t you?”

  Myst bit her bottom lip, wondering how much to tell her friend. She appreciated the concern—she really did—but Tania was a worrywart. She’d stay up all night, agonizing over the fact that Myst’s late-night mission might land her in trouble.

  Silence swelled on the line.

  Tania sighed. The sound was like the ocean tide, sucking at Myst’s will to resist. “You shouldn’t be out there alone.”

  “I can’t let it go, T. She’s missed three appointments. Something’s wrong.”

  “What if he comes back?”

  “All the more reason to go…Caroline can’t hold her own against that guy.” Just thinking about it made her mad. The abusive jerk. Okay, so he’d never actually hit her patient, but she’d heard him talk to her—belittle her—and it wasn’t pretty.

  “You’ve got the local cops on speed dial, right?”

  “The paramedics, too.”

  “Crap, I hate it when you do this,” her friend said, anxiety making her tone short.

  Myst didn’t answer. What could she say? That she would turn around and come home? That Tania’s worry was more important than a patient in trouble?

  “God, I’m sorry. You know I’m a worrier and—”

  “A pain in the butt,” Myst said, tone teasing to lighten the mood.

  “Right back at ya, hotshot.” Tania huffed, the beginnings of laughter coming through the line. “Okay, look, call me when you get out of there. And take care of you.”

  “I will…promise.” Myst hit the end button and threw her car into gear.

  As she drove out of Sal’s lot, headlights shining on the blacktop, her mind stayed on Caroline Van Owen. Eighteen and pregnant. Man, the girl didn’t stand a chance. Not with a less-than-average education and an unsupportive partner. Myst saw so many like that. It broke her heart every time.

  Her colleagues would say it was none of her business, that she should do her job and stay out of the personal stuff. But no matter how hard she tried, she took it personally when one of her own got hurt. Stupid, maybe, but her clients were more than just patients. They were people she cared about. She’d sat in their kitchens, shared coffee over croissants, listened and talked and advised about more than just their medical concerns.

  The hospital liked to think she provided a service. And she did, for the most part. But what had started out as a way to keep foot traffic in the facility down and the administration’s bottom line trimmer had become so much more.

  Way more than she ever expected.

  She pulled into the Van Owens’ driveway. More road than entrance, the long lane twisted through huge red cedars and white pines. Tufts of grass grew in the middle, snaking between the rutted tire tracks. As her headlights swung around the last bend, she leaned over the steering wheel and peered ahead. She breathed a sigh of relief even as apprehension knotted her stomach.

  Someone was home. The kitchen light was on.

  The question now? Was it the jerk? Or Caroline?

  Myst hoped it was the latter. She needed to see the girl for herself. To make sure everything was okay and get her back on track. Eight months along and dancing with gestati
onal diabetes, Caroline couldn’t afford to fool around. She’d missed her recent blood tests, and her last one hadn’t come out clean.

  The anomaly with her blood platelets wasn’t one Myst had seen before. The lab was working on it, but so far, the techies didn’t have a clue.

  Parking next to an old tractor with flat tires, she tossed her keys into the cup holder and, grabbing her bag, headed for the front porch. The old Cape Cod looked strange sitting in the middle of a West Coast forest: faded yellow paint peeling, eaves sagging, sad-looking couch on display beneath the glow of lights on either side of the scarred cedar door.

  Duffle bag bumping against the side of her leg, she climbed the crooked porch steps and knocked on the cedar panel. She waited a minute, ears tuned and listening hard.

  Nothing. No squeak of wood floors. Not a glimmer of movement from inside.

  Myst rapped harder, the contact making her knuckles ache as she peered through one of the narrow windows flanking the door. Unobstructed by curtains, the view gave her a straight shot down the corridor into the kitchen. On the floor, flowing out from behind the island, a dark pool spilled over light tile.

  Her heart jumped like a jackrabbit.

  From this distance, she couldn’t be sure, but…

  “Goddamn it.” Myst dropped her bag and yanked her phone out of her jacket pocket. She dialed nine-one-one and banged on the door with the heel of her hand. “Caroline!”

  No answer.

  She twisted the door handle. Locked.

  “Shit.”

  Scanning the porch, she looked for something heavy. She needed to get in there. Maybe the dark stain was spaghetti sauce. Maybe she was losing her ever-loving mind. But she didn’t think so. She’d had a bad feeling all day…one of the those ride-your-ass-and-won’t-let-you-go kind of things.

  A spade-shaped shovel caught her eye. Running past the ratty couch, she grabbed hold of the wooden shaft, jerking the tool away from its lean against the wall. The phone still ringing in her ear, she returned to the front door. Turning her face away, she wound up with one arm and set metal to glass. The window exploded inward, shooting shards into the entryway.

  Not wasting a second, she reached through the opening and flipped the deadbolt. An instant later, she was through the door with her bag, sprinting down the hallway and into the kitchen.

  “Nine-one-one. What’s your emergency?”

  “Oh, God.”

  “Ma’am?”

  Myst stood frozen, phone to her ear, paralyzing shock pumping through her veins. Caroline lay sprawled on the floor between the island and the sink in a pool of her own blood. The horror of it registered, sent her spinning back to another scene. One in which her mother lay instead.

  “Ma’am? Ma’am?” The voice broke through, firm tone commanding her attention. “Talk to me. Tell me what’s going on.”

  Her medical training kicked in. “Myst Munroe, DNP out of Seattle. Send an ambulance. I’ve got a pregnant woman down. Eight months along. She’s…God, there’s so much blood.”

  She snapped on her gloves and, shoes sliding, waded into the bloodbath. Needing both hands free, she hit speakerphone and tossed the phone onto a clean patch of tile.

  “Where are you?”

  Checking the girl’s vitals, she rattled off the address. “Get here. Get here fast. She’s nonresponsive.”

  “Myst, stay on the line with me. I’m connecting to dispatch.”

  It wasn’t going to be fast enough. The EMTs wouldn’t reach them in time. Caroline was bleeding from the inside out. And an internal bleed was nothing she could stop, not without an operating room and a damned good surgeon.

  Myst dragged her bag over. She must find a way to—

  Caroline grabbed hold of her wrist. Her dark eyelashes flickered against her pale cheeks.

  “Caroline, honey. Stay with me.” Two fingertips pressed to the girl’s carotid, Myst checked her pupils for dilation and counted off the seconds. “Stay with me. Come on, darling. Help is on the way.”

  Her lips moved. No sound came out. She tried again and whispered, “Save him.”

  “Who, honey?”

  “My baby,” she breathed, more wheeze than words. “Save…my baby.”

  “I will. I promise. The ambulance is coming. We’ll get you to the hospital.”

  A lie. Point-blank and terrible.

  Myst felt it like a knife to the chest. Neither one of them was going to make it out of the situation unscathed. She swallowed the tears working their way up the back of her throat. God, if only she’d insisted Caroline see her. If only she’d come sooner. She could’ve skipped supper, could’ve driven faster, could’ve—

  “Myst?” The nine-one-one responder came back on the line. “An ambulance is rolling to you. ETA thirty minutes.”

  Caroline’s pulse fluttered as her breath slowed to a rattle inside her chest.

  “That’s too long.”

  “Hang in there. Help’s coming.”

  Static interrupting her words, the woman kept talking. Myst stopped listening, grim reality hitting her hard as Caroline flatlined. She started CPR, blowing air into the girl’s lungs between palm presses to her chest. But it was no use. The girl she’d tried so hard to help was gone.

  Save my baby.

  The whispered words rolled through her head. An urgent plea from a dying mother.

  Bile trapped in the back of her throat, heart pumping like a freight train, Myst ransacked her bag. She came away with a fetal heart rate monitor. The handheld unit clicked on with a twist of a button. Wrenching the cotton shirt out of her way, she squirted ultrasound gel onto the skin, set the wand to Caroline’s rounded stomach and searched, rolling right then left.

  A faint thump came through the speaker.

  Her hands shook as she tossed the monitor aside and reached back into her bag. She must have something sharp. Anything that might…

  Goddamn it! She didn’t carry scalpels. Had never needed any.

  Lunging toward the island, she wrenched open the nearest drawer. Nothing but butter knives. She pulled open the next. Black-handled carving blades, some narrow, some thick, stared back at her. Steel clanged against steel as Myst grabbed a fillet knife and turned back to Caroline.

  There was no choice. She could do it. Obstetrics was her specialty. She’d assisted in more C-sections than she could count. It didn’t matter that she could lose her job and go to jail. The baby mattered more than all that.

  “Dear God in heaven, forgive me,” she whispered, losing a piece of her soul as she put blade to flesh and made the incision.

  The smell of fresh blood propelled Bastian up the porch steps and through the open door. Broken glass crunched beneath the soles of his boots as he crossed over the threshold into the small house.

  He was too late.

  The Razorbacks, the rogue band of dragons that hated humankind and their dependence on females, had beaten him to the mother and child. He didn’t care that the infant had been sired by one of them. None of the bastards deserved to be fathers. To leave the female defenseless and alone—without any understanding of what was to come—then take the baby a month early? Christ, it was beyond unthinkable.

  The enormity of his failure hit him like a body shot.

  He should have come sooner. Two days ago when the results of her blood work popped up on Sloan’s system. Tentacles deeply embedded in human databases, his comrade could find anything, from medical records to homicide reports.

  Fuck. It was Bastian’s fault.

  Not her death—that had been inevitable the moment one of his kind impregnated her—but the manner of it. The violence in it. The needless suffering. Had he done his duty, the female would have been comfortable in the end.

  With grim resolve, Bastian followed the scent of death down the narrow corridor. He inhaled deep and listened hard, sifting to find any trace of the enemy’s trail. He would honor the woman and then hunt the rogues down; take the child back before he became polluted by hatred. The
last thing he and his warriors needed was another soldier in the Razorbacks’ ranks.

  He spotted the blood pool on the tile floor from the kitchen doorway and—

  “I’m so sorry…so sorry,” a female said, an agonized hitch in her voice. “Look how beautiful he is, Caro. All ten fingers and toes. Look how beautiful.”

  The sound of an infant’s cry answered her, rising from behind the island.

  Sucking in a quick breath, Bastian stepped around the edge of the gold-flecked countertop. He stopped cold, boots rooted to the floor, gaze riveted to the light-haired female. Pale green hospital scrubs covered in blood, she sat in devastation, a dead body next to her, a small, coat-wrapped bundle in her arms. Medical supplies lay scattered around her, the black bag by her side overflowing with gauze, rubber gloves, and plastic-wrapped packages. But it was the butcher knife that made him ache for her.

  She’d saved the baby, knowing she couldn’t save the mother. Remarkable. She was undeniably remarkable. A female with the heart of a warrior.

  Bastian swallowed past the lump in his throat and ditched his leathers, conjuring an EMT’s uniform. As a nurse, she would respond better to a paramedic, someone of common skill and experience. He didn’t want her to freak out, but time wasn’t on his side. The Razorbacks would track them quickly, and he needed her in the ambulance and rolling before that happened.

  He watched her rock for a moment, head bent over the infant, wondering how best to approach her. Crouching to camouflage his size, he settled on, “Hey.”

  She started at the sound of his voice, nearly coming out of her skin as she tucked the baby in close and swung to face him. Huge blue eyes met his, the deep hue almost the color of violets.

  Bruised. She looked bruised, battered by shock…and something more.

  Even exhausted and beat up by circumstance, she possessed the most powerful energy he’d ever seen. Pure white, it pulsed in her aura, lighting her up from the inside out, nearly knocking him on his ass.