“A PICC?” he asked, his voice a dry croak that hurt his throat. Usually, a peripherally inserted central catheter was only used for patients with long-term care, as compared to a temporary IV line.
“Here. Take a sip.” Karl handed him a bottled water with a straw in it, like he was an invalid or something.
His eyes went wide, even as he took several sips of the icy fluid. “Heavenly,” he whispered in appreciation as he sank back further into the pillow.
“Not quite, good buddy,” Karl said. “Heaven, I mean.”
Sigurd studied the bags hanging from the pole. A saline solution for dehydration and probably antibiotics, he recognized. But there was also a bag containing blood.
“I bled out?” He didn’t recall a wound that would have bled so profusely, but then he’d passed out right after the last blow.
“No, but you’ve needed good vangel blood to dilute the toxins from the Lucie’s blade. Your brothers have been donating a pint a day.”
“My brothers?” As in plural? “Here?” He was so confused. Yes, Vikar would be here at the castle, but . . .
“Yep. All six of them are here. Sitting vigil. They’re down in the chapel as we speak, praying for you.”
Sigurd tried to laugh at the image, but it came out as a cough. “I have been that bad off?”
“Oh yeah. Here’s the funny thing, if you can find humor in any of this. Guess what saved you? Your angel bump. The Lucie’s knife hit that hard bone, harder than any of us realized they are, and skittered off to the right. All you got was a superficial slice on your upper arm. Mike says that if you ever get your wings now, you’ll probably fly lopsided.”
Ha, ha, ha. That is just great. Archangel humor. “How long . . . ?” He waved his hand weakly over the bed, words coming hard for him.
“You’ve been dead to the world for four days now. It was touch and go there a few times, my friend.”
“Four days?” his raspy voice exclaimed in alarm. “The island? The mission?” And something else equally important nagged at his mind, but he couldn’t quite grab the thought.
“You’re not to worry. The island operation was a success. Almost all the Lucies were taken down. The only ones who escaped were on the yacht.”
“Jasper?”
“Got away.”
Sigurd said a vile expletive that vangels were forbidden to use and sank back into the blessed blankness. Karl was wrong. The operation had not been a success. Sigurd had failed to take out the master demon, which had been his primary mission. Mike was going to be so pissed with him.
The next day, when he awakened, he recalled what had been niggling at his mind. He jackknifed to a sitting position and said, “Marisa?” Even though his head pounded like a bloody drum and his upper arm felt like a molten knife was in it, being twisted to and fro, he managed to stay upright until he got his bearings. “Marisa,” he said again. “I need to see—”
“Lie back down, Sig.” It was his brother Vikar now. He was standing next to the bed. “Marisa made it off the island, just fine.”
Out in the hallway, he heard a child’s voice say, “I wanna see Unka Sig.” It was Gunnar, Vikar and Alex’s adopted son.
“Not now, Gun,” Alex said. “Maybe later. Now come away from there.”
“Doan wanna.”
“Gunnar, do as your mother says,” Vikar yelled, even though the door was closed.
The yell reverberated through Sigurd’s head like an echoing bell, and he winced.
There was silence for a moment as Gunnar tried to decide if his father meant business or not.
“I mean it, boy. I can still paddle your little butt.”
As if he ever would!
“I’m gonna read Goldilocks ta Unka Sig. That’ll make him feel better. It’s his favor,” said another child’s voice. Gunnar’s twin, Gunnora. He suspected her face was pressed up against the keyhole, trying to look in.
“Nora! You can’t read Goldilocks,” Gunnar protested. “You can’t do the bear growls like I can. Grow-ell!”
“Can, too! Grrrrr!”
Alex interjected, “Why don’t we go down to the kitchen and see if Lizzie will let you make peach tarts for when Uncle Sig wakes up.”
The thought of food made Sigurd’s stomach roil, even the fruit sweets he usually devoured.
“Yippee!” the two young voices said, and clattered away down the hall, hitting each step downward with a loud thud. He felt each thud in his pounding head.
The door opened a crack then and Alex peered in. “Welcome back, Sig. You better be up and about soon or the kids are going to drive us nuts, trying to keep them away.”
“I’ll try,” he said. When she was gone, he turned to Vikar, who’d pulled a straight-back chair up beside the bed. He noticed idly that the blood bag was gone, though the saline line was still in place. “Tell me everything,” he demanded. “From when I got hit.”
“It was mostly a matter of cleanup after you went down. Harek and Karl teletransported you back here to the castle and began immediate medical procedures. The rest of us stayed to handle any remaining Lucies.”
“How many?”
“Forty-seven, including six haakai and eight mungs. As far as I could tell, none of the Lucies on the island escaped.”
“But Jasper did?”
“He did.”
“Then the mission was a failure.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because Mike told me that destroying Jasper was my primary goal.”
“Sig! That is the goal in any of our missions, and none of us has been able to take him down yet. It does not mean we failed.”
“It feels like failure to me.” He shrugged. “Tell me more.”
“You never saw so much slime in one place. It took us an hour to clean up the mess, and even then there was enough left behind to raise questions. The news media was on the story of the island doings like a hog on slop. Not just the FBI arrests for sex trafficking, tax evasion, money laundering, and so on. That in itself was a huge story. But then, there was the disappearance of so many folks who’d attended the conference, or the seeming disappearance. I’m referring to those that had been taken by the Lucies. So far, it’s just speculation because most folks didn’t want their attendance at such a sordid event to be known. Tracking them down would be difficult even under normal circumstances.”
“Did they cancel the remainder of the conference?”
Vikar nodded. “Oh, they tried to resume, as if nothing had happened. But folks were scared. From the top, it was like rats jumping ship. I refer to those investors and filmmakers and Internet entrepreneurs who did not want the media light to shine on them. They were gone by dawn, escaping by yacht or helicopter or seaplane, whatever means available. As for the average attendee, the shame of having participated in that orgiastic party we witnessed had many of them hiding in their rooms the following day. Of course the first boats onto the island were news media, and soon there were more of them than the attendees.”
“Goldman?”
“Arrested. Sex trafficking. Probably out on bail already. His kind always manages to escape punishment.”
“And Marisa? I know you said she managed to leave the island, but did she return home? And what about her daughter? Please don’t tell me she is still involved with Goldman in any way.”
“I do not know, Sig. We’ve been too worried about you and unable to do much except . . . What are you doing?”
He was tearing the gauze bandage off his arm, about to remove the PICC line. “I have to see Marisa. I have to see if there’s anything I can do to help.”
“But Sig, you are not strong enough to leave your bed yet.” Vikar gave him a slight shove, and it was enough to have him flat on his back again, panting for breath against the pain. “Besides, Mike said to tell you to stay put until he can come talk with you.”
“About frickin’ what?”
“I have no idea. Maybe your next assignment. Maybe he’ll be sending you
back to Johns Hopkins. Maybe the Mayo Clinic this time. Maybe he is just concerned about your well-being.”
“Maybe, maybe, maybe. Vikar, I have to know that Marisa is safe. I have to do whatever I can to save her child. I have to!”
“Why is she so important to you, Sig? Could she be your life mate?”
“I don’t know. I truly don’t. I was only with her one time.”
Vikar arched his brows at him.
“Well, one long, memorable night,” he amended. “All I know is that my heart hurts when I think of life without her.”
“Sounds like a life mate to me.”
“But Michael said no more life mates, in fact no more relationships of any kind with humans. I am lost, Vikar. I am lost,” Sigurd said on a groan as the black sleep began to overtake him again.
“You need to focus on yourself now, Sig. Take care to heal your body.”
“The only thing I care about is Marisa, and I fear for her.”
“Maybe you need to trust in a higher power working on your behalf.”
“More maybes! Maybe you need to leave me alone. Misery does not love company.”
And he was miserable. Bone-deep, heart-sick miserable. Despite all the odds, despite all the warnings that it could not be, Sigurd suspected that Vikar was right, that he had found his life mate, and lost her, and that hurt more than any Lucie blade.
But he was a Viking, as much as he was vampire or angel, and as such he could not just lie back and do nothing.
He waited in his half-dead state for his brother to leave, and when he did, Sigurd fought the blackness and agony to sit up, then stand. With professional expertise, he removed the cath lines and then the PICC itself. He staggered at first, but then was able to pace the room several times to get his bearings.
Sitting on the dresser was the large conch shell he’d picked up on the island as a gift for Marisa’s child after talking with her on the phone that one day. It must have been in his luggage, which Alex had undoubtedly unpacked.
He should dress, he decided then. He was wearing only a pair of plaid sleep pants that Alex must have found somewhere for him. No matter. He hadn’t the strength to pull on a shirt or bend over to put on a pair of shoes.
In fact, he had to focus hard to teletransport himself out of the room and through the ether to his destination.
Miami, here I come.
When angels pray . . .
Sigurd landed flat on his back on a soft surface, but it was painful nonetheless. Without rising, he gazed around him and realized by the dim light of a princess lamp that he was in one of two narrow beds in a little girl’s bedroom. Pink walls, pink curtains, pink bedspreads, pink, pink, pink.
Rising on the elbow of his uninjured side, he gazed over at the other bed where a little girl in a ruffled nightgown—pink, of course—was staring at him, wide-eyed and wide-awake. She had a cap of short, dark curls on her head, and her nose was different, and she had a rosebud mouth rather than fulsome lips, but still she looked like a little version of Marisa.
To his surprise, she was unafraid of him, a stranger in her bedchamber in the middle of the night. In a whisper, she asked, “Are you an angel?”
“I am.” Sort of.
“Did you come ta take me ta Heaven?”
A vise clamped over his heart at her words. What a brave little soul she was! “No, sweetling, I am not that kind of angel.”
“Oh. You mus’ be my guardian angel then.”
He shook his head, hardly able to speak over the lump in his throat. “Not that kind, either. I’m just an angel friend come to visit you.”
“I don’t have very many friends ’cause I’m sick.”
And he saw then that her condition was not good. She was very thin and her eyes were ringed with deep shadows. “I know a little boy and a little girl who would like to be your friends. They’re my nephew and niece, Gunnar and Gunnora. They’re three years old.”
“I’m five,” she said as if that were so much older, “but I could still be their friend.”
“They would like that.”
“What’s that?”
He glanced down to where she was looking. He’d somehow brought the conch with him. “I promised you a large seashell. Remember?”
She nodded and reached out a hand, weakly, for it.
He stood slowly so as not to alarm the child and laid it on the bed beside her head. “If you are very quiet and hold it up to your ear, you can hear the ocean,” he told her.
“Really?”
He nodded and showed her what to do. Even a conch shell was too heavy for her little hand to hold up without support.
“Wow!” she whispered.
“I’ll put it over here where you can see it.” He placed it on the bedside table next to the dim-bulbed lamp.
He could feel the heat coming off her body before he touched her forehead with his fingertips. She was warm but not alarmingly so. “Don’t mind my touching you, Izzie. I’m a doctor.” He sat on the edge of her bed as he examined her lightly, taking her pulse.
“An angel doctor?” She giggled. “Didja hear about the banana that went to the doctor?”
“No,” he said tentatively.
“It wasn’t peeling well,” she said with more giggles.
Was there anything more precious than a child’s giggles? he thought suddenly. Especially a sick child’s giggles. “Good one!” he told her. “Did you hear about the bear with no teeth? No? He was a gummy bear!” He’d heard Gun telling Nora that joke one day. He couldn’t believe he even remembered the kid joke.
“Silly!” Izzie smiled at him.
Silly was the last thing a Norseman wanted to be called, or so he’d thought. Until now. He brushed some curls off her face, then used his fingertips to examine her skull.
“Are ya lookin’ for my bad lump? It’s inside my head.”
“I know that, dearling. Let me feel, anyway.” He combed his fingertips through her curls ’til he found the exact spot on her scalp. How he knew the lump was under there, he couldn’t say for sure, but he knew. Massaging softly, he prayed silently, Lord, help this child. She is pure of heart. Too young to die. Take me instead for I am old and black of heart. Please, Lord. Please!
Sigurd was shocked at his own words. He’d always considered himself more vampire than angel, more Viking than anything else. And he rarely prayed, except to mouth the rote words on certain occasions. He hadn’t come here to pray over this child.
Still, there was a peace that came over him as he prayed, and an odd jolt of heat that tingled at the edge of his fingertips, like little electric shocks. When he drew away, he saw that Izzie’s eyes were closed, and she was sleeping evenly. He kissed her on the cheek and rose, feeling suddenly pain-free. He arched and stretched. No pain. Not so surprising, he supposed, since vangels tended to heal themselves quickly. His lengthy illness had been the anomaly because Lucipire toxins had been involved.
Tiptoeing across the room, he looked out a window, then realized he was in an apartment over a garage. He went to a door that was partly open. On the other side was an adjoining bedroom. Marisa’s?
Yes, it was she. Lying on a double bed, wearing naught but a long shirt that proclaimed: “I salsa! Do you?” With arms thrown over her head, she was deep in an exhausted, almost unnatural slumber. He could tell she was exhausted by the dark shadows under her eyes, like her daughter’s. Even in sleep, she seemed to be frowning with worry. It was a wonder she hadn’t heard him in her daughter’s room.
Not wanting to startle her, he slipped into the bed beside her, covering them both with a light blanket. He was going to awaken her, soon, carefully, so she would not scream with alarm, but she was so warm, and smelled so ginger-honeyed, and his body was beginning to recall all it had been through these past five days, that he found himself snuggling close to her, but not touching, and fell asleep himself.
What he did not see, or hear, was the black-haired archangel standing hands on hips over him, tsking. Nor did
he notice the celestial fog that swirled about and settled over him and Marisa, providing a cocoon of peace.
Then the fog and the angel left. And went into the other bedroom.
Chapter 21
Dream lover . . .
Marisa was dreaming, and in her dream she was not surprised to smell oranges and evergreen. A citrusy tart pine scent that belonged to only one person. Sigurd.
Without opening her eyes, she turned into the open arms of the man lying beside her. How had that happened?
It’s a dream. That’s how it happened, fool.
Smiling, she nuzzled her dream lover’s neck and inhaled deeply.
“Marisa,” he said on a sigh, tugging her closer so they both lay on their sides, facing each other. “I have missed you, heartling.”
“I didn’t want to, but I missed you, too . . . sweetheart,” she admitted, and rubbed herself against him.
He moaned and used one hand on her lower back to align their bodies to his satisfaction, and hers. His other arm cradled her head. “I tried to stay away.”
“I’m glad you didn’t.”
“I was afraid you might have gone with Goldman, after all.”
“I was tempted when he called once he was out on bail, but I just couldn’t do it. Izzie’s fate is in God’s hands now.” She laughed when she saw the expression on his face. “I didn’t mean you. It was wrong of me to ask for your help. Izzie is not your responsibility. I just meant that I’ve stopped trying to control everything that happens in my life. I realized that I’m a control freak. I had to let go. What will be will be.”
“Oh, Marisa. I wish—”
“Shh. Let’s not dwell on that now.” Her one hand was caressing his bare chest and shoulders, but halted when it came to a large bandage. “What’s this?”
“I was wounded. I’ve been ill,” he said, and leaned in to kiss her. It was a gentle kiss, but long and long and long. His breath became her breath, her breath became his. They needed each other to live.