His life was, in every sense of the words, in her hands.
“So how—” he began, then stopped. Suddenly the heat became even more intense, like a sun blooming in his arm, the heat spreading up through his arm, through his chest. He could feel his heart heating up, the strangest sensation he’d ever had.
At the same time, he could feel a nasty chill inside him, ice prickling in his veins, horrible and painful. With a lurch to his heart, he realized that the sensation of cold was the virus. He was turning.
God, he was turning.
Black cold ice eating him up, pushing away the heat. His body was a battlefield, like a cold dead planet approaching the sun.
Pain wrenched through his muscles, and he felt his heart contract from the cold that gripped it. Something freezing cold, like Satan’s hand, was squeezing his heart.
Jon gasped for breath but breathing hurt. His lungs were on fire but encased in ice. He couldn’t move his lungs, he couldn’t breathe, his heart tried to beat its way through his chest as it fought the cold. The cold swam through his system like black smoke, infiltrating every cell, eagerly seeking out the warm places so it could squeeze them in its cold dead embrace.
It wasn’t working. Jon could feel himself start to go under. To his horror, visions of blood and violence started filling his head. The pleasure of biting and tearing and maiming. A deep satisfactory bloodlust in a rising tide, like sexual desire. He fought it, he fought it as hard as he could. Sweat broke out all over his body. It felt like he was sweating blood.
“Sophie.” He could barely get the words out. “The knife. Now.” He clenched his fists, willing them not to move, but he could feel control slipping away, cold and elusive like smoke. Inside his clenched fists it was as if he could feel Sophie’s soft neck, how good it would feel when he had his hands around it, squeezing . . . “Sophie!”
He opened his eyes, the lids as heavy as lead. Fuck. Sophie wasn’t reaching for the knife. Both hands were on his arm and her eyes glowed as if a firebomb had been lit behind them. An eerie light, almost supernatural, the glow so bright he couldn’t look away.
His hands opened, closed. Heat was pouring into him from Sophie, heat and light. Light he could feel under his skin. Now her entire face glowed, as if the sun had just risen inside her. She was trembling with the force of the power inside her. For it was a power, no question about it. Something more powerful than her, some outside force. A force she was transmitting to him.
His entire body was a battleground, ice and fire. Ice wanted him to turn on her, tear her, bite her, feel her blood in his mouth. He could taste it, the blood rich and fine, a need so strong he was shaking with it. But fire—fire was love and life, Sophie beside him for all his days.
The trembling grew, both of them were shaking hard, sweat pouring out of them. Jon’s jaw had locked, he couldn’t speak, could barely breathe. He wanted to kiss her, he wanted to kill her while the fire and ice fought in his blood, bringing the bloody battlefield to his veins and bones.
Sophie tightened her hold on him even more, that glow so bright it blinded him. With a sudden blast, the ice around his heart exploded and heat suffused his body, running through him, filling him like hot honey down to his fingertips. Every inch of him was filled with heat, even the memory of ice gone.
Sophie let go of his arm and he gasped for air. It came. It filled his lungs with sweetness, where before they had been unable to expand. He drew in air like a man cresting a wave, the sensation sweet and full of life.
A swirl of wind, pine needles blowing in his face, shouts.
The hovercar. Haven. Rescue. Nick’s worried face bending over him, shaking him.
Jon could barely feel his body, but he knew he missed Sophie’s touch. “Sophie,” he whispered and Nick frowned and shook his head.
The ice was suddenly back. Not the ice of the infection but the ice of terror. Jon looked down and saw Sophie lying bonelessly on her side, all color and light gone from her face. Motionless. He moved slowly, as if underwater.
“Sophie!” he screamed but nothing came out, just air. He couldn’t move. All his muscles were lax, exhausted from the battle. He toppled over, close to Sophie, one hand on her face. She didn’t move when he touched her, not even a flicker of her eyelids.
Nick had two fingers to her throat. He said something, something absurd. Jon couldn’t hear him, the words were crazy. One word in particular.
Dead.
Jon crawled to cover Sophie’s body with his. She’d given him life, he was going to give it right back.
Nick pulled at his arm, but Jon punched him weakly.
“She’s dead, Jon. I’m so sorry, but Sophie’s dead.” Nick’s voice was low, sad.
No. He shook his head, the movement slow and weary. She wasn’t dead.
She couldn’t be. She’d just given him life.
But she wasn’t moving. She wasn’t moving.
Suddenly, the energy of panic suffused him. She’d somehow exhausted herself healing him, used up all her body’s reserves. Stopped her own heart.
He’d start it again for her. Because he wouldn’t let her die. Couldn’t.
With newfound energy, he rolled Sophie over, not allowing himself to see her head loll listlessly or the utter stillness of her body.
He was suddenly frantic. Every bit of his medic training, which had been extensive, came back to him. This was a wounded comrade who needed his help. This was the woman who’d saved his life, risking her own. This was the woman who held his heart. If she was no longer in the world, then neither was he.
He leaned over her, placing his left hand over her heart, right hand angled over it to strengthen the pressure, and began pumping, pushing her chest muscles, trying to replicate with his hands what her heart had stopped doing.
He leaned in heavily, working hard. Chest compressions had to be at least 5 cm deep, at 100 compressions a minute, to manually make blood flow through her heart. And he wasn’t going to stop until her heart pumped on its own.
He would stay here forever, with his Sophie, until she came back to him.
He had no notion of time, none. All he knew was that the sweat pouring off him was pooling in the small hollow of her neck. All he knew was that his world was reduced to his two hands over Sophie’s heart, working, working . . .
“Jon.” Nick’s voice was low. His hand landed on Jon’s shoulder. He shrugged it off angrily. He couldn’t miss a beat, not one. Because it might be the pump that jump-started Sophie’s heart, that would bring her back to him.
Nick’s voice was louder. “Jon, she’s gone. I’m sorry, but she’s gone.”
“No!” he screamed. That wasn’t true, she wasn’t gone, she was still with him. Jon’s hands didn’t stop for one second. He was curled over her now, shoulders blocking her from the sun because he didn’t want her blinded when she opened those beautiful eyes. Which she was going to do . . . any second now.
Vaguely, he realized that several people were standing over him, in a circle, watching him. He didn’t give a fuck. Let them watch. Let them watch him forever because that’s how long he’d stay here, letting his hands pump blood through Sophie’s heart until her own heart could do it. It was only fair, because she held his heart in her hands. Her still, cold hands.
He wished there were two of him. One would continue applying CPR, the other would hold her hands, make sure she knew—wherever it was she’d gone—that he was with her. The other Jon would kiss those cold, still lips, bring her back like some prince whose princess had been put under a spell by an evil witch.
He was no prince, but she was his princess. She owned him. She’d saved him and she owned him, forever.
His hands continued, tirelessly, while the people around him were murmuring, voices becoming louder. He heard his name, hers. The crackle of a commo communication. Nick’s voice.
“Jon.” Nick’s hand landed on his shoulder again, and stayed there even though he shrugged angrily. “Elle says to reach inside her hea
rt. She says you know how to do that.”
What? What the fuck?
Was she saying to slice open Sophie’s chest using his knife as a scalpel and try manual massage, as field surgeons somehow did?
No, she meant something else, but he couldn’t figure out what. Reach inside her heart? How could he do that? What the fuck did that mean?
And then—the world slipped sideways, fractured. And his hands reached inside to touch Sophie’s heart. At one level, his hands were still on her chest, over her rib cage, working hard. But at another . . . his hands touched her heart, reached in and touched it because her heart belonged to him and only he could do this.
He reached, with his mind not his hands, and touched.
And Sophie coughed.
God.
Everyone was shocked into silence. Nick kneeled beside him.
Sophie coughed again and drew in a long, choked breath.
Jon’s eyes were dripping water, falling now on Sophie’s chest and he couldn’t wipe his eyes because his hands had to be over her heart, the heart that was now . . .
Beating. On its own.
Nick placed his hands over Jon’s and stilled them. They both watched as Sophie’s head turned and she coughed again and took in air in long gasps. Jon’s hands were trembling under Nick’s.
“Sophie?” His voice was a croak, he could barely shape the word.
And her eyes opened, those glorious eyes, dark blue and loving.
“Jon,” she whispered and reached for his hand.
Epilogue
Haven
Five years later
“And I hereby declare Haven Elementary School # 1 . . . open!” Mac cut the ribbon and everyone applauded.
Mac, who was President Pro Tem of the Republic of California didn’t even try to make this a solemn occasion. He was dirty and sweaty from helping plant fifty maple saplings in a circle around the school and the ribbon was cut with garden shears, still dirty from pruning shrubbery.
Jon emitted a piercing whistle and Sophie rolled her eyes as she plugged her ears. Her husband was a world-class whistler and used his ability often. One of the many, many things about him she’d learned in the past five years.
The essentials, though—they hadn’t changed. He was exactly as she thought he was—loyal and brave and incredibly hard-working. As were the other Ghost Ops members. Their unwavering fortitude allowed Haven, and later the entire state of California—now the Republic of California—to survive.
Nobody had worked harder to get the mass inoculations completed than the men of Haven. Sophie, Catherine, and Elle had worked around the clock to prepare vaccine patches as fast as the four labs that eventually came on line could produce them. But it was the men of Haven who had to move out in armored convoys to get them to the survivors throughout the entire state. It meant sending drones to identify each and every survivor and reaching the survivors with the vaccine and food and water, wherever they were.
The first foci of infection, California, became the first state to declare itself virus-free five months after the initial outbreak.
By that time, however, the rest of the United States was still battling the infection, still trying to get the virus under control, and so California broke itself off and became a sovereign state. It had a small population—2,143,402 at the first census. But a lot of very smart and very hardy people had survived, and they were rebuilding almost faster than the eye could see.
Haven had become its capital, and Mac—very much against his wishes—its first president. Pro Tem, he kept saying, though no one listened.
Catherine kept Sophie and Elle in stitches with Mac’s complaints about being the most powerful man in California. He hated every second not spent shoring up Haven’s defenses, helping oversee establishing a transport system, helping organize rebuilding the physical plant of the Republic of California.
When representatives began pouring into Haven to establish a constitutional government, Mac had to be kicked by Catherine—hard—to go into the room with the ‘politicos’.
While he was planting the trees, the rest of California was conducting its very first political election for the presidency. Mac against Sarah Kellerman, a former councilwoman in Sacramento.
Mac campaigned hard for Sarah every chance he got. He extolled her virtues, sang her praises, pushed her forward at every photo op. He all but offered to rub her feet for her.
Jon leaned down and whispered in Sophie’s ear. “He’s nervous.”
“Well, you could have taken his place. It’s not like he didn’t ask you. Often,” Sophie said. It had become a running joke. Mac would have handed the reins of power over to anyone over sixteen who wanted it. Nobody accepted because, though he hated it, he was doing a really good job.
Jon gave an elaborate shudder and woke up Emma, sleeping on his shoulder.
“Daddy?” Their daughter lifted her curly blonde head from her daddy’s shoulder and knuckled her eyes. “What’s wrong?”
Jon got that panicky look whenever their four-year-old daughter was inconvenienced or uncomfortable in any way. “I’m so sorry, sweetheart. Nothing’s wrong. Everything is fine.”
Ice blue eyes regarded ice blue eyes. Emma looked so remarkably like her dad.
Jon kissed her forehead and gently pressed her head back into his shoulder. Like all the kids, Emma had stayed up late last night celebrating the new school and was now paying the price. There were a lot of four- and five-year-olds sleeping against their daddies’ shoulders.
Sorry, Jon mouthed at her and Sophie repressed a smile.
Big tough badass Jon, who melted around Emma.
At the beginning of their marriage, he’d confessed to her that he had no clue how to be a good husband and father. But for someone so absolutely clueless, he was doing a very good job. He loved her and Emma deeply, and he showed it every day. He was as solid a family man as he was a leader of their community. They would never have made it during those first terrifying and difficult months without Jon flying the helo over perilous terrain, flying mission after mission, ferrying vaccines and medicine and food and water.
“Here’s to the new school!” Lora Harris, who taught math, handed each of them a glass of champagne, the first vintage produced from a Haven winery down in the valley.
She clicked glasses with Jon and Sophie and moved off, cheeks glowing. Lora had insisted six months into reconstruction on starting school again. They barely had enough food at that time and were pressed for every single resource available, but she insisted and she was right. That first year there were 147 students of all grades, taught by volunteers, meeting in the mess hall when it was free. They were so eager to learn that each student was more than caught up with their grade level within two months.
Lora then insisted on building a proper school for the kids of Haven and the surrounding communities, and she finally wore everyone down. She was going to be the first principal.
Three universities—at Davis, Berkeley, and Santa Cruz—were going to start lessons in two years, once the campuses were rebuilt.
Sophie took a sip of the champagne. She shouldn’t be drinking alcohol, but it was early on and one sip couldn’t hurt. It was excellent—tart, dry, rich.
Stella Cummings—now Stella Ward—elbowed her in the ribs. “Not more than one glass in your condition, honey,” she whispered. Sophie had no idea how Stella knew, but she was more perceptive than most. Stella leaned against her husband, who could be leaned against forever. Lucius had thrown away the walking sticks three years ago and was their acting head of security. He smiled down at his wife and kissed her gently on the cheek.
Jon clicked glasses with her again. He bent his head down to her so only she could hear his words. “Here’s to us, honey. We made it.”
Sophie smiled up at him. Thanks to Jon and the other Ghost Ops men, they weren’t hunkering in caves, eating squirrel brains, and wearing bearskins. “Yes, we did.” She used her glass to indicate the brand-new school. “It’
s a miracle. Our Emma will attend a real school. And she’ll grow up with schools and hospitals and libraries. She’ll grow up in civilization, strong and proud.”
Jon bent even lower, careful not to wake Emma slumped on his shoulder. He used his nose to shift a lock away from her ear, kissed it, and whispered, “It’s all thanks to you.”
For a second Sophie couldn’t grasp his words. Jon knew that her ear was an erogenous zone. Actually, when he was around, pretty much every part of her body was an erogenous zone. Jon kissing her ear gave her goose bumps, quickened her breathing.
She should have gotten used to this after five years of marriage, but he could still reduce her to a quivering wreck in no time.
She pulled in a breath, shifted, and kissed him. She could taste surprise and champagne. But Jon was good with surprises, he rolled immediately with them. He deepened the kiss and she felt that familiar warmth, shot through with bolts of desire, course through her.
Someone whistled, and, startled, Sophie pulled back, spilling a little champagne down Jon’s back.
“Sorry,” she whispered and he laughed.
“They weren’t whistling at us, love. Look—someone’s got news.”
One of the Haven councillors, Kristin Moore, was running toward them. She was over sixty-five, but she regularly ran marathons and she reached them in a minute.
She stopped right in front of Mac and gave him an ironic salute. “Sir, I bring tidings of the election!”
Mac froze, and if Sophie didn’t know better, she’d have said he looked . . . frightened. But that wasn’t possible. Mac didn’t do fear.
Nick rolled his eyes. “Cut the crap, Kristin. Come on. Put Mac here out of his misery.”