Personal shield? I want one of those.
Now that it was too late, I remembered what I’d been trying to think of—more ISIS scumbags were here, in the house, and a van-load outside.
FIVE
“Heroes bleed; it’s what they do,
casting courage into play.
Some must pay for all the rest
who hide in darkness, turned away.”
—Heroes
Elektra Blue
I heard the squeal of tires, a racing engine receding.
Scratch that last threat.
Virgil lowered his weapon, staring.
Earlier he’d shoved the desk aside in reaching me. This gave me a clear view of the hall. I saw what held his attention. Dottie was there. Unseen hands had her by the throat, lifting her off her feet. Her face was red and her eyes bulged. She flailed with her empty gun, which did no good. The choking sounds she made were ugly and satisfying at the same time. Did that make me a bad person to feel that way?
Virgil said, “Neat trick, Cassie, but a living prisoner will be more useful than a dead one.”
I closed my eyes, letting my head sink to the floor. Don’t look at me. This is Michiko’s work and she’s one pissed off ghost. Too bad you can’t see her. I softly growled at Virgil. And stop calling me Cassie, dammit.
Whatever Virgil had done to help me was wearing off. Darkness crowded in again, wrapping my senses in black-velvet folds.
* * *
Consciousness returned in broken fragments of pain. Eventually the puzzle pieces formed a whole. I lay curled on a gurney being guided into an emergency room. A white-coated doctor shined a light in my eyes, snapping out orders to scurrying nurses. Words went past me with meaning, but not a whole lot of importance.
“One lung’s collapsed … massive blood loss…”
“We need an operating room STAT!”
“But it’s a freakin’ fox!”
Light flashed off a federal ID. Virgil was there, wrapped in a blanket. His voice smashed out, hard as a fist, “Do everything possible for her, bearing in mind that I have both a gun and a license to kill.”
“We’ll do what we can, but you’ll have to wait outside here.”
Next thing I knew, someone was fitting a makeshift mask over my foxy face as I lay blinded by operating lights. Under the fur, the demon mark on my arm itched and then burned. A caustic strength poured into me. I sniffed day-old road-kill sautéed in sulfur with a bit of moldy sock thrown in. The odor cut straight through the hospital’s antiseptic scent. Wocky? Was he using the demon mark to feed me strength? I hadn’t known he could do that. Did it mean he could draw strength from me as well?
A valve on a tank turned. Its hissing whisper brought sleepiness.
Figure it out … later…
In my next slice of awareness, it dawned on me that I was in human form, not fox. When had I shed fang, fur, and bushy tails? I hoped it hadn’t been in the middle of my operation. That was too dangerous to think about. I stretched out in a hospital bed in a gloomy room. The sheets were uber-fresh. Big, fluffy pillows supported me. The inevitable TV was mounted on the wall, turned off at the moment. The next bed over was empty and crisply made.
Near me, a shadow moved with liquid grace.
Shaun.
His mouse-brown hair came alive with platinum highlights as he peered down, intensity hardening his handsome face, his blue-gray eyes reminding me of storm clouds. He wore a cinnamon-colored suit with an open-throated dress shirt of dusky tangerine. Somehow, he never looked quite complete without his katana in hand.
“Grace, I’m here.”
My mouth felt cottony. His name came out as a thin, rough whisper, “Shaun...”
Inside my head, Taliesina slowly opened golden eyes. Lured from her dark retreat in my inner shadows, she advanced fitfully, uncertain, tails whipping with a gentle eagerness. There was no pressure from her to shift forms, nor did she try to take control of my human form to kiss him as she had that other time. She only stared out of my eyes at him, her hunger feeding mine, fanning a raw blaze of desire.
Mine, she said.
Ours, I corrected her.
She grinned at me. Ours.
“Grace?” Shaun said. “Why are your eyes glowing a soft, buttery yellow?”
“A Kitsune … thing.”
I loved the concern in his voice. That was better than having him bitch me out for bleeding on his carpet. Of course, he could always do that later.
I noticed a needle taped to my arm. A tube connected it to a bottle suspended on a steel stand. Something clear slowly dripped into my veins. ‘Whuzzat?” I slurred.
“Don’t try to talk,” he said. “We’re all here, looking out for you. Just concentrate on getting better.”
Comforted, I drifted at the edge of sleep, losing track of time, vaguely aware of people coming and going, poking and prodding, making comments I didn’t bother deciphering.
Sometime later the mental haze thinned enough for me to notice that the IV drip was gone. A woman sat in a chair near my bed. Her hand covered mine. My bed’s side-rail was down and her head lay on the bed, face turned toward me. Long, golden hair hung past her shoulders. Cassie. There were dark circles under closed, puffy eyes. She’d been crying, here at my bed a long while I suspected. I was touched, and annoyed.
How am I supposed to resent you as a rival for Shaun when you’re so nice to me?
I managed a cough. It hurt like hell. I groaned, closing my eyes.
Cassie stirred.
Dealing with this was more than I was up for just yet, so I made an inarticulate sound in place of conversation and let myself drop off again.
The next time I surfaced I felt much improved, except for a raging hunger. My stomach growled at me. Daylight brightened the window curtains. Hours had passed. And Cassie was still there, playing mom; the mom I hadn’t known of until last month. I pulled my hand out from under hers, trying to work up enough spit to say something. My lips felt cracked and dry as I moistened them with my tongue. I managed a vague, inarticulate sound, trying to get her attention because she so needed to go home and get some real rest.
Cassie snapped awake, talking before her eyes pried themselves open, “Hush, love. You’re safe. Everything’s all right. Momma’s here.”
“Mohhhm,” incredibly thirsty, I croaked the word.
“That’s right,” she said. “Momma’s here.”
Taliesina churred in my mind, a happy sound of inquiry. Mommy!
“I’m not going to let anyone hurt you ever again,” Cassie promised.
I tried to squeeze out another word or two, but couldn’t. I flopped my head and stared at the nightstand. A pitcher and cup rested there. I wanted a drink. Bad.
“Oh!” Cassie reached over and filled a cup, bringing it to my face. “Ice chips. They want you to start on these and not go straight to liquids just yet.” She dropped some of the ice in my mouth.
I sucked the cold hardness, savoring the relief.
“It would have been better, if you had to be hurt, to have been in human form. You could have healed yourself by turning into a fox. Still can, if you’ve the strength.”
Now she tells me how it works.
Virgil entered the room, only to be impaled on Cassie’s words. “You’d better not have a job for me. I’m not going anywhere until Grace is ready to leave this place.”
“Necessity never waits on convenience.” Virgil approached the bed. He shifted his gaze to me but kept the conversation going with Cassie. “But this is your job. Apparently there are a number of ex-ISIS members that have been kicked loose from the system for one reason or another. Grace will need protection while I get things sorted out.”
“Well, as long you’re here, tell me what these nuts wanted at Shaun’s,” she said.
Virgil touched the bed’s siderailing, standing opposite of Cassie. He said, “Grace is tired. She needs rest to heal. We can take this discussion out into the hall.” He switched his at
tention to me. “I’m glad you made it, Grace. I was worried…”
Long repressed snarkiness stirred within me. “Yeah, for Cassie. You kept calling me by her name.”
“It’s not like I had both of you there in your fox forms for comparison,” he said. “Hey, I brought you a gift.” He held up a tawny, stuffed bunny with an equally stuffed orange carrot. He put the creature on the bed next to me, and grinned. “In case you get hungry later, my little fox.”
“What do you mean by ‘my’?” Cassie demanded.
“Grace works for me now, part time anyway.”
“What? When did hell freeze over? No way am I allowing that.” Her voice went low, threatening, as her narrowed eyes blazed. “That operation against the Miko was a one-time thing.”
“Grace is a minor,” Virgil said. “The Human Potential Institute has custody of her, and we have a contract with them for her services.”
Cassie’s hands choked the bed’s side-rail beside her. I half expected the steel to bend and break at any second. She said, “Among my people, Grace is considered a child for the first few hundred years, and under my clan sign, not HPI’s.”
First few hundred years? How long am I gonna live?
Virgil used a black-gloved hand, specifically his pointer finger, to stab the air, emphasizing a point. “But you’re not among your people. The laws of the United States apply.”
A rapping at the door stopped a knock-down-drag-out in its tracks. The door opened and Shaun entered, eyes shifting, absorbing the antagonism instantly. His jaw knotted with anger, but his voice emerged as calm and gentle as his eyes. “If you two are going to fight, do it outside. Grace doesn’t need this.”
The hell I don’t! Someone get me popcorn and a drink. No, on second thought, what I need is to be left alone with Shaun so he can soothe me with his bedside manner.
“I’m going,” Virgil said. “I just wanted Grace to know we’ve got guards on her door and in the surrounding rooms. More of my own people are on the way. Until they get here, were relying on local law enforcement. Also, I’ve notified your mother”—his eyes flicked to Cassie a moment—“your other mother, that you’re here. Your school knows, too, so there won’t be a problem about missing classes for a while. The only thing you need to concentrate on is getting better so I can work your tails off.”
At that last comment, Cassie shot him a look ready to kill. He hurried out of the room with her a few steps behind. I think I saw her reaching for her gun.
SIX
“A bed of coals, head stuffed with woes.
Your kisses are fire, wounding my soul.”
—Bed of Coals
Elektra Blue
Shaun came around the bed and sat where the siderail was down. “So, you want to tell me what you were doing in my house when I’m not there, and the bad guys are?”
I rolled my eyes back in my head and forced a cough that actually didn’t need much coaxing. Cough. “Fading fast … don’t think I have the strength…” Cough, cough. “…to take being yelled at.”
“Grace,” he sounded unimpressed with my acting, “you should respect my privacy—I insist on it—but the reason I’m mad is that we almost lost you. Cassie loves you beyond anything reasonable. She’d survive anything else—but your death.”
Speaking of love… “Cassie’s staying with you. Do you and she … are you two…?” I couldn’t finish the question. I couldn’t even look at him while asking this much. I felt my face flushing.
“We’ve been friends a long time. She came into my life soon after I lost my parents—more of a cool big sister than anything else.”
Relief flooded me. I could accept Cassie as my birth mother a whole lot easier than as a rival for Shaun.
“Why do you ask? Want someone to distract her a little? Must be tough, all that intensity and passion trained on you twenty-four seven. If it were my place, I’d say she’s a tad obsessive-compulsive where you’re concerned. Not that that’s a big revelation to you, huh?” Casually, Shaun warmed my hand in his.
A delightful thrill shot through my body. I had a mental vision of Shaun, gloriously naked, in bed of me—and of guards storming in to arrest him for having sex with a very willing minor. I shook off the daydream with a sigh. “So, uh, are guards really necessary? ISIS probably won’t show up here when they know everyone and their dog is watching for them.”
“Virgil’s counting on them being exactly that stupid, especially if I’m around too. He’s using us to draw them out of hiding. I don’t like it, but I see the necessity of ending this by getting to them quickly. And this way, it’s a battlefield of our choosing.”
“What about other patients getting in the line of fire?”
“Not in this wing. It’s been closed for a few weeks now for remodeling.”
I could see I had little choice, so I put on a brave face. “I’m getting combat pay for this right?”
“I’d insist on it. I’ll be taking shifts to make sure you’re all right.”
Wonderful. It made getting shot and blown across a room well worth it. “Sorry to put you to so much trouble,” but not much.
A deep voice cut between Shaun and me. “I can take care of Grace just fine.”
Startled, I jerked my hand out from under Shaun’s, as if I’d been caught in a cookie jar. My gaze slid to the door where Fenn was framed. His usually brown eyes had warmed to amber, flecked with gold. The expression on his face was seriously annoyed. The rest of him was mega hot. He wore black denim jeans, boots, tee shirt, and for contrast, an ice-blue windbreaker that couldn’t be that effective now that we were at the tail end of November. Then again, he was half human and half kachina. For all I knew, cold to him might be a full-blown blizzard.
While my heart wanted Shaun, I wasn’t immune to Fenn’s broody, bad-boy charm.
In the shadows of my mind, my inner fox yapped agreement.
Fenn stalked into the room, stopping in front of Shaun. The air shivered as if a subliminal growl had ghosted by. Staring down at Shaun, Fenn vibrated with potential violence. His voice came out with a file’s raspy edge, “You can go check out the rest of the floor. Grace will be alright with me.”
I wasn’t so sure, but said nothing, putting off the moment when Fenn would turn his attention to me.
Shaun stood and breezed past Fenn, heading for the door. “Sure. Grace, holler if you need anything. I won’t be far, and neither will Cassie.”
“’Kay.”
Fenn waited until Shaun was gone, then turned his amber eyes on me. The stern irritation bled from his face, leaving anxious concern. He sighed. “Tell me you’re alright.”
“Getting there.” My voice was harsh and broken. I pointed at the ice chips on the nightstand. “Can you get me those?”
“Oh, sure.”
He moved around the bed and started feeding them to me. With my throat better lubricated, I tried to explain, “I didn’t mean to stand you up. I just got pulled into something.”
“At his house.”
“I was visiting his sister, actually.”
“Ghost girl?”
“Yeah, it’s the anniversary of her death, and she didn’t want to face it alone. I was going to call you and explain when—”
“Your gift for finding trouble kicked in.”
“Yeah. Please don’t be mad at me.”
“I am, but not for missing our breakfast date, though I waited for two hours at that stupid restaurant for you, totally starving since I didn’t want to order before you got there. I’m pissed because the second you saw trouble coming, you should have called me.”
“I can’t carry a cell phone. They get fried by all the crossing over I do.”
“There’s a house phone at Shaun’s place, right?”
My near perfect memory created an image in my head of Shaun’s office, before it got—good grammar disengaging—blowed the hell up. There had been a phone there, but I’d had no chance to use it. I decided to change the subject slightly. “How
about if I make sure to call you next time?”
“Not good enough. Now you owe me breakfast and dinner, and I’m picking the restaurants.”
My turn to sigh. “Fine, but no fish tacos, or bison burgers.”
He stood there, leaning on the siderail that was still up, his back to the hospital windows. He stared like he was engraving my face in his memory, a precaution against the storms of Fate that inevitably found me. He said, “From the moment I saw you, I knew we were tied together, for good and ill.”
I shielded my face with one hand. “I must look like a train wreck.”
He pulled my hand away and lifted my chin. “Considering all you’ve been through, I’m amazed you care.” He smiled. His hand tightened on mine. “Since you’ve started taking that martial arts stuff from Shaun, I’ve developed an interest in the Far East. You know, the Japanese believe that some people are meant for each other, that an unseen red thread ties them together, that they will find each other in time—when the Goddess of Love gets around to lending a helping hand.”
“We’ve only been out a couple times, Fenn, and I’ve hung out with Onyx too.”
“He’s gone back to his shadow world, for now anyway. Let’s not ruin things by talking about him. Or Shaun. Why not give me a shot at your heart, Grace? Do I need Tukka’s blessing?”
“Maybe.” Feeling sleepy, I yawned.
“Oh well, it’s all right if you’re not convinced yet. I’ll believe for the both of us.”
My eyes couldn’t seem to stay open. “You do that.” I yawned again.
He said, “Take a nap. When you wake up, I’ll be back.”
My eyes snapped open. “What happened to hangin’ around and keeping me safe?”
“I’m running back to HPI for a few things.”
Actually, Fenn leaving had a side benefit. Once his jealous self was removed, I could call Shaun back into the room and indulge in a few more fantasies.
Destiny's Child (Kitsune series Book 3) Page 4
