by Eileen Wilks
She hadn’t made it.
Some memories were better than that one, yet not restful. He thought of a time he and Cullen had gone for a hunt, just the two of them, below the border, and had gotten into a bit of trouble. That memory made him smile, but pricked his heart. He thought of the time—much more recent—when Cullen had literally gone to hell for him. To hell and back . . .
He also remembered a time or two when Cullen, still a lone wolf, had damn near spun out of control—yet hadn’t. He’d endured so much for so long, and now . . . now he had everything he’d ever wanted. A clan. A son on the way. A woman who loved him wholly . . . and wasn’t that odd? Rule hadn’t known Cullen wanted that. He didn’t think Cullen had, either.
Rule glanced at the messy blond head of his friend’s love, currently pillowed on his thigh.
The chairs made Cynna’s back ache, so about thirty minutes ago they’d moved to the floor. This had garnered them a few odd looks from the room’s other occupants, a small Pakistani family. Pregnancy exhausted the body; stress made it worse. Rule had encouraged her drowsiness with a back rub, and eventually she’d dozed off.
Problem was, with her asleep, he no longer had the distraction of focusing on someone else’s needs. He was alone with his thoughts and memories.
He’d seen Cynna’s head on his pillow a few times, many years ago. But it wasn’t those moments he remembered now. It was the first time he saw Cynna, standing straight and strong and pissed when a man she’d been involved with at the time insulted her publicly.
Rule had taken pleasure in making it clear that a real man appreciated a strong woman. Later, he’d taken even more pleasure in tossing the man and two of his friends up against the side of a building when they decided to teach Cynna a lesson for “talking back.”
He’d been attracted from the first, of course. She had a beautiful body, and she smelled good. But more, he’d just plain liked her. He still did. How strange that two of the people he cared for most had found each other.
Had married each other.
Rule’s muscles tightened. His hands clenched. Cynna stirred without quite waking. He swallowed and forced ease on a body that wanted to move—or to hit something. Someone.
Cullen’s surgery had gone on so long. Too long.
Most lupi never went into surgery, which was problematic for them. Set a bone, sure. Cut into them with a knife? Not such a good idea. Anesthesia didn’t work on lupi—and a conscious but badly wounded lupus might try to kill someone who cut him open.
Nokolai, however, had Nettie—shaman, doctor, healer. The combination of her healing Gift with her shamanic training let her put a lupus patient in sleep so they could be operated on. She’d done so to Rule twice—once after a spectacular motorcycle crash when he was young and foolish. Once when a demon gutted him during his sojourn in hell.
Neither of his surgeries had lasted much more than an hour.
Rule checked his watch. Four hours and twenty-one minutes. He and Cynna had been waiting almost four and a half bloody hours. What was taking so long?
Nettie’s a fighter, he reminded himself. She hasn’t given up.
Why did people think of medicine as a gentle profession, anyway? Doctors were vicious, bloody warriors, and their bat tleground was the patient’s body. They brought terrible weapons onto that field. They cut people open and poisoned them.
Not that they called their drugs poisons, but what else were they? Mild poisons usually, poisons administered in small enough doses that the body could endure their assault while they killed bacteria or cancer cells or rendered the patient comatose so the surgeon could cut him open.
Drugs didn’t work on lupi, but something had worked on Cullen, hadn’t it? Whoever stabbed Cullen had known enough to find one of the few poisons that affected a lupus. Wolfsbane? Gado?
Whoever stabbed Cullen . . .
Deliberately, he turned his mind away from that thought. He couldn’t afford to speculate, not if he was to stay in control throughout this bloody, bedamned, interminable wait.
Cynna made a small sound and jolted. Her eyes popped open.
He touched her shoulder. “Bad dreams?”
“Uh-huh.” She sat up. “I keep seeing him fall. He just went down, you know? No warning. I wish I had your trick of knowing. You and Lily always know that the other one’s okay.”
No, they didn’t—but they knew the other one wasn’t dead. That’s what she meant, and right now Rule would define okay as “not dead,” too. He studied Cynna’s face. She talked strong—she was strong—but she had a bruised look around the eyes that worried him. He kneaded her shoulder lightly. “Maybe you should eat.”
She gave him a wry glance. “Cullen’s always trying to feed me, too. I promise you, it won’t help right now.”
“Hmm.” Humans did benefit from regular meals, if not as dramatically as lupi, but Rule didn’t argue. “I don’t know if it will help you, but I remind myself frequently that we would have already heard if he’d died. The waiting is hard, but bad news would arrive quickly.”
“True. And he’s going to be okay. I know that in my gut. It’s just that my head knows other stuff—like that it shouldn’t take this long. I don’t know a whole lot about healing, but I know it doesn’t take this long, so whatever Nettie’s doing isn’t working right.”
Hard to argue with her when she was right. He did his best. “Her healing may not be working normally against this poison, but he isn’t dead, so it is working.”
“Right.” She gave a firm nod, grimaced, and said, “Give me a hand up, okay? I’m stiff.”
He stood and helped her rise. He wasn’t sure how much she really needed the help—her center of balance was disrupted, but she was extremely fit.
Once on her feet she ran both hands through her hair, glanced at the room’s other occupants, and said quietly, “Guilt always makes the other feelings worse, doesn’t it?”
Startled, he blurted, “You don’t have anything to feel guilty about.”
“Of course I do. I didn’t say the guilt was accurate, just that I feel that way. This wouldn’t have happened if we hadn’t gotten married. My choices led to him being attacked. His choices, too,” she added, “not to mention the bastard with the knife. But that doesn’t eliminate my guilt-o-meter.”
Now he truly didn’t know what to say.
She nodded as if he’d spoken. “Yeah, I hate it, too, but who could attack him at Nokolai Clanhome except clan? And why would they? Cullen makes people mad all the time, but mad enough to stick a knife in him at his baby party . . .” She shook her head. “It’s the marriage thing. It sent someone round the bend.”
“We don’t know that for fact, but if it was someone in Nokolai, my father will find him. He declared the attack an offense against the clan.”
Her brow wrinkled. “He did? Oh, yeah, I sort of heard that, I just wasn’t paying attention at the time. That’s . . . shit, could that mean clan war? I mean, if it wasn’t a Nokolai who did it.”
He’d meant to reassure her. It sure as hell reassured him, since it meant his father hadn’t been involved in the attack, however indirectly. “No. You’re thinking of the clan wars of the 1600s.” Cynna was learning clan history from the Rhej, he knew. “This isn’t the same situation. Ah—put roughly, back then, several of the dominant clans were too even in power, which encouraged excesses. The only clan that is equal in power to Nokolai today is Leidolf.” Several others were strong enough to be a problem if they acted together, but he decided not to go into that possibility.
“Obviously it wasn’t anything Leidolf did officially, because you’re their Rho. But is there any chance someone from that clan acted . . . you know, unsanctioned?”
“If they did . . .” One of the mantles in Rule’s gut stirred, and a chill place opened inside him. His voice dropped. “If someone took that upon himself, Leidolf will deliver a full apology to Nokolai.”
“You’re worrying the Parwanis.”
“The w
hat?”
“Them.” She waved at the other end of the room. The Pakistani family—matriarch, youngish couple, and toddler—were staring at him. The toddler giggled. The others, as Cynna said, did look anxious. “I’m not hungry,” he growled, annoyed. “Do I look hungry?”
“You look pissed. You look like you meant you’d deliver a body, not an apology.”
That was precisely what he meant, but in an effort to do better with the reassuring, he didn’t say so. “In some ways it would be convenient if the attacker were an unsanctioned Leidolf assassin, but I can’t imagine one penetrating Clanhome at such a time. Even if he got past Benedict’s guards and no one recognized his face in that crowd, he would still smell of Leidolf.”
She frowned. “Lily said something about it maybe being an Asian guy. I don’t . . . What is it?”
He’d turned away from her to face the door. Footsteps in the hall . . . soft-soled footsteps like dozens of others that had passed, almost inaudible even to him with so many other noises masking them. He didn’t know why these particular footsteps had brought him to alert, but—
A tall woman in green scrubs paused in the doorway. Smiling.
“He’s good,” Cynna said, bouncing on her toes. She took two quick steps toward Nettie, stopped, and grinned back at Rule. “Didn’t I tell you? I told you he’d be okay. My gut knew it.”
“You did.” He came to her and put an arm around her, right where her waist used to be. “You’re crying.”
She dashed a hand across her face, her grin shining through the dampness. “Of course I’m crying. It makes sense to cry now. Can I go see him? Lily said I need to watch out for him. The perp could try again. I need to . . .”
She wobbled suddenly. Rule tightened his arm. “You need to sit.”
“Weird. I’m not going to . . . I don’t faint.”
“Of course not, but you will sit down now.” Rule half carried her to the nearest chair—which was a couple seats from a young teen, who’d been texting the whole time she’d been here. The girl looked up, amazed. Perhaps she’d just now noticed there were others in the room. He lowered Cynna carefully and knelt in front of her. “Head down.”
“I don’t faint,” she repeated, but didn’t resist when he gently pushed her head as far toward her knees as it would go with her expanded tummy in the way.
Nettie sat in the chair beside Cynna and rubbed her bent back.
“I’m fine,” Cynna informed her feet.
“Of course you are,” Nettie agreed, “but keep your head down a moment or two. It will make the rest of us feel better.”
The barest intake of breath alerted Rule. Lily stood in the doorway with Jason directly behind her. She stared at Cynna, stricken.
TEN
“CULLEN’S okay,” Rule said quickly, rising and going to her. “Cynna turned dizzy from relief, that’s all.”
“Okay.” She nodded firmly. “That’s okay, then.”
He asked very low, “Did you find him?”
She shook her head.
“I didn’t expect you to leave the scene this soon unless you’d identified the attacker.”
“Turns out I know one of the deputies they sent. He’s a good cop. He’ll do the job.”
He understood what she hadn’t said: she’d wanted to be here, with him, in case the news was bad. Rule took her hand and squeezed, then glanced at Jason, lifting his eyebrows in question.
Lily answered the unspoken question. “Cullen will need a nurse. Ah, Rule, who gave you that T-shirt?”
“Modean Webster. She’s a large woman, so she thought it would fit, which. . . . ah,” he said, looking where she was. “I hadn’t noticed that.” The T-shirt read in small letters, “Well-behaved women rarely make history.”
“It needs a postscript,” he said. “Something like, ‘I’m Rule Turner, and I approved this message.’ ”
That made her grin.
“Approved what?” Cynna said. “Oh, never mind. I’m fine, Nettie. Really.” She stood to prove it. “See? No one listens to me, even though I was right. Wasn’t I right, Rule? I said he’d be okay.”
He turned, his smile coming easily now. “You were right. You get unlimited I-told-you-sos.”
“Oh, you’re gonna regret that.” Cynna’s grin spread. She stretched. “I’m glad that’s over. When can I go see him?”
“Soon,” Nettie said, standing. “But—”
Lily spoke. “One of us has to be with him. He needs to be guarded.”
“Shit. Yes.” Cynna frowned. “You said something about that earlier.”
“Cynna.” Nettie stood and took Cynna’s hands. “You can go see him very soon, but I need to tell you something first. The surgery was a success, but Cullen’s recovery may be . . . difficult.”
Worry flashed through Cynna’s eyes. “What do you mean?”
“I called it poison initially. It isn’t. I could have eliminated a poison. I think it’s a spell, but I can’t identify it and wasn’t able to rid him of it. This is difficult to put in words, but I more or less forced the intruding agent, whatever it is, to expend itself until it reached a level his healing can cope with. At this point, though, the intrusion is still there and active.”
Cynna’s throat worked as she swallowed. “But he’s okay. He’s going to be okay.”
“He’s okay now. Long term, of course, we want to find a way to get that intrusion out of him.”
“I need to see him. I need to be there.” She glanced at Lily. “I want to know what you’ve learned, too, but—”
“Later,” Lily told her. “I’ll fill you in later, when I relieve you.”
“Relieve me? But you’ll be . . . You’ve got to find him. Or her. Whoever did this. You can’t just stand guard.”
“Right now I don’t have anyone else who’s qualified to act as guard. Ah . . .” She glanced at Nettie. “I’ve already contacted the hospital’s administration. Cullen will receive no visitors, and regular hospital personnel will not be allowed in his room, except for you.”
Nettie frowned. “Cullen needs ongoing care. Professional care. That’s why we’re in a hospital rather than at Clanhome.”
“That’s why I brought Jason. He’s not on staff here, but he’s qualified. We’ll need more than one nurse, I suppose, but he can handle it for now.”
A rare spark of temper lingered in Nettie’s eyes. “I suppose that will work temporarily. Jason doesn’t have his RN yet, but he’s an experienced LVN. He can handle both nursing and orderly duties for now.”
“Good. Where’s Cullen? Cynna needs to be with him.”
“He’s in post-op. Visitors aren’t allowed there. Have you made arrangements to change that as well?”
Nettie had spoken sarcastically. Lily answered straightforwardly. “Cynna’s officially part of security, so yes, that’s taken care of. Jason, you know where post-op is?” When he nodded she went on to Cynna. “Take Jason’s and Nettie’s patterns so you can confirm who they are. Mine, too, and Rule’s, if you don’t have them.”
“I’ll take Jason’s, but I don’t need to with the rest. When it’s someone I know well I don’t have to take a pattern.”
“Good. Allow no one in the room with Cullen unless you can confirm who it is. Do you have your weapon?”
Cynna nodded grimly.
“Okay. Go. I’ll join you as soon as possible.”
Cynna and Jason left. Lily turned to Nettie. “I didn’t want Cullen carried in the records under his name, so when you look for your patient, look for Adrian Fisher, a patient who’s been here since Tuesday.”
“You’re thorough.”
“And you’re pissed. I’ve trespassed in your territory.”
After a moment, Nettie sighed. “Never let it be said that lupi are the only territorial critters around. Yes, you have, and I reacted poorly.”
Rule went to Nettie. Up close, she gave off the faint, acrid scent of exhaustion. He dropped a hand on the back of her neck, using his fingers to unknot
some of the tension. “Maybe because you’re exhausted, drained, and scared. Cullen’s not in good shape, is he?”
Nettie leaned her head back, her eyes closing. “Do that for another hour or so. No, he isn’t. He’s been through open heart surgery, and that—that intrusion is still there, still affecting him. Not as strongly as it was, thank the Mother, or he’d be dead, but I have no idea what his prognosis is.”
Lily spoke with quiet urgency. “Could this be like that demon poison that kept Rule’s leg from healing? Is it like that?”
God, he hoped not. Rule kept rubbing Nettie’s neck, but tension overtook his own muscles. His body hadn’t been able to throw that off, and if such a poison was in Cullen’s heart . . .
“I don’t think so.” Nettie frowned, opening her eyes. “I didn’t examine Rule when he was infected with that, so I can’t truly compare the two. That was localized at first, though, wasn’t it? This is, too, but it isn’t completely preventing healing.” She hesitated. “It reminds me of a Vodun curse.”
“How so?”
Nettie lifted a hand vaguely. “The feel of it. A Vodun curse uses something from the victim’s body—nail clippings, hair, or blood—to focus an ill-wishing. This has the same feel. Not identical, but similar. The spell or intrusion has Cullen’s body fighting his healing magic.” She sighed. “I nearly killed him before I figured that out. I kept trying to heal his body, but giving his body energy fed the ill magic, too. I had to switch to feeding his natural magic.”
Rule squeezed Nettie’s nape gently. “You’ve emptied yourself. You need rest.”
“I won’t argue with that. I plan to kick one of the residents out of the bunk they use.”
“Do you want to use my apartment instead? Or a hotel? There’s a Sheraton nearby.”
She shook her head. “I can’t be that far from him. At the moment, Cullen’s magic is winning the fight, but the balance is . . . iffy. “