SEALs of Summer 2: A Military Romance Superbundle

by S. M. Butler

  Deolina shifted her weight. “Maybe I foresaw the Guardian coming here, maybe I didn’t. I can’t say ’cuz Grann told me not to.”

  Ysabeau pressed her forehead, feeling a migraine coming on. “What does Grann have to do with this?”

  “I’m not sayin’ more on accounta that old woman’s gonna whip my ass.”

  “I swear. You two are going to be the death of me.”

  “Ysabeau!” Deolina spread two fingers and spit between them, muttering a take-back-curse. “Why welcome more badness into your home? Don’t you have enough of it already?” She cocked her head toward the living room.

  “Saints save me,” Ysabeau mumbled and walked to the couch to check on her sleeping patient. A frown crossed his face, bunching up his forehead. Perspiration beaded on his upper lip. She used a cool cloth to wipe the sweat away. “What did he do to deserve this?”

  Deolina followed. “Don’t get too close, girl. I’m warnin’ you.”

  Ysabeau suddenly remembered how naked he was under her blanket. A muscular, golden and healthy male—all things considered. It had been a long, long time since she’d been this close to a man who wasn’t dying. And this one was beautiful. She touched his jaw, enjoying the prickle of his short beard under her fingers. He was physically fit, with strong arms and legs, defined abs. She leaned even closer and breathed in his manly musk. When was the last time she’d done that? She’d noticed a few peculiar scars on his arms and back as if he’d been in a fight or two before. One raised circular scar in his shoulder looked suspiciously like a bullet wound.

  Carefully, she lifted the dog tags he wore on a chain around his neck. An American soldier? That didn’t fit with what she knew of the Guardians. She frowned. Who was he really?

  As if reading her mind, Deolina huffed, “Watch yourself, girl. Evil is always good-lookin’. You know, like a Fudgecicle, all sweet and yummy on the outside, makin’ you want to lick and gobble it up. Makin’ you forget it’s nothin’ but ice and bad-for-you stuff that eventually stops your heart cold. It’s not too late to dump the man in the bay.”

  She spun around to face Deo. “Your vision was about him, wasn’t it? Something terrible happens?”

  “Nu-uh. If I tell, Gran’ll slice me up like a mango. No way. I’m not sayin’ nothin’.”

  “Come on, you’re the most powerful Vodun of Petro. You’re afraid of little Gran?”

  “Heck, yeah. That woman has always scared me, even when we were kids. Besides, I’m mostly retired. Up until last night I’d been restin’ my mojo—”

  “Last night? You and Grann performed a Voodoo ceremony together? That hasn’t happened since…” Her heart sank. “What’s going on?”

  Deolina blinked. “Ah, crap on a cracker. I done gave away the goose.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Talk, Deo. What did you foresee?”

  “I’ve been seein’ some not too nice t’ings coming our way. Straight for us. You know the future is not sunk in stone, it’s liquid like the rolling sea. T’ings can change. But if I tell you too much, you’ll get involved, and Grann and I do not want that. No, Ysabeau, that we do not want.”

  “You had Tico beat up this man so I wouldn’t get involved?”

  Deolina’s dark eyes raked over the Guardian’s body. “Didn’t work out near as well as I’d envisioned it.”

  Ysabeau sat on the edge of her burl wood coffee table. Suddenly she understood, or thought she did. “The trial results. Did the Guardians send this guy here to fire me? Is that what you saw, another research scientist working at the clinic?”

  Deolina shook her head sadly. “Worse.”

  “He’s not going to close the clinic is he?”

  Deolina’s frown deepened. “Now Ysabeau, I can’t say more on accounta my ass is too pretty to get whipped and old Grann will be all too happy to do the whipping.”

  “He is going to close me down!”

  Deolina’s lips were sealed so tightly they’d turned white.

  Slapping her hands on her knees, Ysabeau rose. “I can’t believe it! Here I was feeling sorry for him. How dare he? Who does he think he is?”

  Deolina’s lips popped open with a smack. “The devil?”

  Yanking a pillow off the wicker rocking chair, she pounded it with her fist while she paced. “I’ve worked too hard for too long. I can’t let him do this. He needs to give me more time. He has to!”

  “You’re plannin’ on keepin’ the American locked up here until your serum works? Gran’s not going to like this.”

  Ysabeau didn’t either. Not one bit. But what could she do? Eighty lives as well as her own future rested with the man sleeping on her couch. “Don’t you see? I’m this close.” She pinched the air between with her index finger and thumb.

  “We could make it so the devil never wakes up. Tico’d be safe, and you’d have more time.”

  “Don’t you dare! Promise me, Deo.”

  “I’m not sayin’ we kill the man. Unless…” She shrugged. “…you change your mind.”

  She shook her finger. “I know exactly what you’re saying. How’s he going to give me more money if he’s a zombie?”

  “Oh. Right.” Deolina swiped at the sweat dripping into her cleavage.

  “I need that funding. The last increment the Guardians gave me will last another month. Barely.”

  “That’s bad.”

  “But once I get the serum to work, all sorts of drug companies will want this medicine. The clinic will have more than enough money then.” Hope bloomed, faintly. “No one’s going to stop me, Deo. No matter what.”

  “That’s good. I’ve got faith in you, girl. You never needed a man to save the world.”

  That’s where Deolina was wrong. I do need a man. She stood over the sleeping Guardian. “I’ll convince him. Somehow.”

  Chapter Three

  ‡

  January, 5, 2010. Seven Days…

  Luke fought as hard as he could. Something held his head. Heavy tentacles wrapped around his ribcage, so heavy he could barely breathe. The weird visions wouldn’t stop. Faces of strangers. Arguing voices. The smell of fear and something sickly sweet, like blood. His screams joined the jumble in his head.

  A cool cloth wiped his brow. “Shh, it will be alright.”

  He couldn’t see the image that went with the sweet voice. His eyes were swollen shut.

  “This will help with the pain,” the woman said.

  Something bit him on the ass. The protest he yelled in his head came out as a garbled groan. Warmth flooded his system, spreading out from the bite on his hip, coating the pain, easing his mind.

  Gently, the woman lifted his head and poured a sweet liquid into his mouth that smelled like mango juice. Luke drank it down greedily, wanting desperately to see the woman’s face.

  “It will be okay, you’ll see.” Her voice was a lullaby. “I’ll take care of you. And you will save me.”

  When his head was lowered again, soft, cool fingers gently rubbed his hot skin. They traced his cheeks and linger seductively on his bottom lip.

  It had become a sweet dream. He chased it deeper into sleep.

  *

  Ysabeau opened her front door. “Thanks, for coming, Deolina,” she spoke softly. “I’ve got to go the clinic for a few hours and don’t dare leave him alone. The fever’s gone, however, the nightmares are getting worse. He talks in his sleep.”

  “Guilty men always do.” Deolina scowled.

  Glancing over her shoulder toward the living room where the Guardian slept on her couch, she said, “The test results will be better today, and he won’t have anything to be guilty of.”

  “That’s right. Keep the faith.” Deolina patted her shoulder. “But I’m tellin’ you, stay away from him. You don’t want this trouble.”

  She grabbed her purse and keys. “As soon as I prove to him that the trial is working, he’ll go home.”

  “That’s what you think,” Deolina mumbled.

  Ysabeau was already out the door. �
�What?”

  “Nothin’. Not one stinkin’ thing.”

  “Okay…” She headed toward her car. “Call me if he wakes. Otherwise, I’ll be back in two hours. Tops.”

  As she closed the door she thought she heard Deolina say, “Run, child! Don’t look back.”

  She shook her head as she started the car. Sometimes it was a little unnerving having a black magic priestess for a godmother.

  *

  The phone rang and Deolina hustled to answer it before the sleepin’ man woke. She did not want to deal with no Guardian once he opened those puffed-up eyes.

  “If you’re callin’ for Ysabeau, she’s over at the clinic,” she whispered into the phone.

  “Deo? Why aren’t you answering phones at the clinic?” Grann asked.

  Deolina winced and let her eyes wander over to the lump in the other room. “The regular receptionist’s measles are gone. I don’t work there anymore.”

  “Oh. So…did you get rid of the man?”

  “Not exactly,” Deolina said.

  “Meaning?”

  “Yeah, um…” Deolina cringed. Above all else she did not want to make Grann mad. There was not enough black magic on the planet to protect her from an angry Gran. “The American is staying here. At Ysabeau’s house.”

  “What!”

  “A little mix-up. That’s all. Tico and the gang did what I paid ’em for, but things didn’t work out as planned.” She held the phone away from her, expecting the shouting to blow out her eardrum. There was no money in her savings account for one of them fancy hearing aids that let you hear people gossiping in the other room, although she wished she did have the money. It might be good to hear what folks said about you. Easier to know who to put a hex on—

  “Deolina! You swore we could change the future!” Grann yelled.

  Shit on a shingle, Grann was mad. “Oh, we did. In my vision I did not see a bloody devil snoring on the couch I gave Ysabeau for her college graduation present. Nope, that is definitely new.”

  “Holy Saints.”

  “Yeah, we’s in it good.”

  “There’s more?” Grann asked.

  “By ‘more’ do you mean that Ysabeau thinks he’s handsome and wants to keep him for a while? Maybe forever.” Deolina rubbed her scalp, visualizing how bad it was going to hurt when Grann snatched her bald-headed.

  “Start talking, Deolina. What happened?”

  Deolina took a breath. “Well, see, I saw danger comin’, like I told you, only I saw it weeks before I said I did.”

  Grann made a sound that Deolina did not like. Not one bit. It was a rabid-Grann sound.

  “I needed to be sure, see? The vision was so…strange and conflictin’.” Deolina remembered how horrified she’d been when the image first came to her. She foresaw a stranger—a too-good-lookin’ white man—wrappin’ his muscular arms around Ysabeau. That handsome devil looked for all the world as if he’d never let her go. It was one big horrifying nightmare. And the rest? No, she still didn’t want to think about that. Hellfire, it was scary.

  “That’s why you took the job at the clinic.” Grann was saying, “The receptionist didn’t really have measles, did she?”

  “Nah, I sort of, you know, convinced her she needed to let me have her job for a while. To protect Ysabeau. There was no other reason to be in that hellhole. No disrespectin’ Ysabeau, mind you, but there’s nothing but sick people at the clinic.”

  Grann snorted. “You thought it’d be the Holiday Inn?”

  “No, but it’s not easy seein’ the future. You try schedulin’ appointments for next Tuesday when the patient isn’t going to be breathin’ past Friday. But I knew the American would come to her. And he did. So? What’re we gonna do about him?”

  “Await to see.”

  “Eeya, you just gonna be waitin’? You weren’t two feet from the man like I was—his blood-red aura sparkin’ and cracklin’ like a flame in your face.”

  Grann didn’t say a word.

  Oh Lord, she hated when Grann was quiet. A thinking Grann usually meant nothing but trouble for Deolina. “That business card of his burned my hand.”

  “You got his business card? That’s great news. I’ll do a reading with it. My tarot cards have been…conflicting too.”

  “Nu-uh. Naturally I boiled that black-as-sin card in holy water, hyssop, and salt. Then I cut it up into forty pieces and flushed it down the turlet.”

  Grann exhaled loudly into the phone. “Naturally. Nothing more to do now but keep an eye on the American. Watch him like a potoo watches a worm.”

  “Easily done. The worm’s sleepin’ on Ysabeau’s couch,” Deolina said.

  “Whose fault is that?”

  “Don’t be blamin’ me! The fates shifted, that’s all.”

  “Deolina, I’m not happy. Ysabeau is still mending from the last time evil landed on her doorstep. Promise me you won’t spook her. She doesn’t need to know what’s coming. Not if we can stop it.”

  “Me spook her? You’re gonna spill the seeds faster than my neighbor’s tomatoes. That lady doesn’t know when to pick them off the vine.”

  “What are you gibbering about?”

  “As soon as Ysabeau finds out what we’s protectin’ her from she’s gonna run head first into the storm. Like she always does. And you’re about as worthless as tits on a boar when it comes to keepin’ secrets from that girl. You best stay away a while.”

  Grann made a sound like someone had punched her in the stomach. “How can I protect her if I can’t go near her? I’m scared. Before this is over, someone will die.”

  Grann didn’t know the half of it. But Deolina was determined to change that outcome, no matter what. “Ah, don’t worry about the American. Ysabeau plans to keep her pretty hands on him for a while and I’ll be the potoo watchin’ my worm.”

  *

  Ysabeau extracted a drop of blood from a patient’s sample and placed it on the first slide. She was terrified to look. What if the changes she’d made to the serum hadn’t changed a thing? The Guardian was here, and she was out of time.

  She swore softly and put the slide under the microscope. The results will be better. They have to be.

  Flipping through the pages and pages of notes she’d made during the serum trial, she wondered again why things weren’t working out as they should. She forced herself to look in the microscope. Biting her lip, she tasted her own blood. This one was bad. Reaching for the Test Findings Report, she put a check mark for the first sample under the column with the heading “no improvement.”

  Fear tortured her heart as she prepared the next slide. And the next. Sweet Mother! Two hours later, her Test Findings Report had forty-nine check marks under “no improvement” and thirty “inconclusives.” She was a colossal failure.

  In her mind’s eye, she could see the bodies of her soon-to-be-dead patients tossed into a burning mass grave while their loved ones watched. They would all blame her—the living and the dead.

  Ysabeau slumped forward and put her head on her arms.

  The vision of her youngest patient popped into her mind. Sweet Talitha. How would she tell Talitha’s parents the serum wasn’t working? Most of Ysabeau’s patients had lived a life, but Talitha was just getting started. What she’d experienced so far was closer to death than life.

  She let out a guttural yell and threw the clipboard against the wall. The board cracked in two and clattered to the floor. Staring at it, she felt like she was the one who had hit the wall, her dreams broken into pieces.

  The phone rang, and she crawled off her stool to answer it.

  “Ysa, your American is waking up. What do you want me to do to him?” Deolina said.

  Swiping her eyes, Ysabeau checked her watch. She’d been gone too long. “I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

  “Girl, you sound kinda funny,” Deolina said. “You okay?”

  She was never going to be okay. “I’ll be home soon.”

  There was one blood sample left to tes
t. Sample number eighty. Hurriedly, she put the drop on the slide and clicked her pen to end this horrible ordeal. She needed time to figure out what to say to her patients. How do you look a friend in the eye and tell them there’s nothing more you can do? How would she tell Talitha’s parents?

  Rubbing her tears away, she rushed to do this final test and get home before Deolina did something unthinkable to the patient on her couch.

  She studied the blood sample and jerked up. Blinking, she looked into the microscope again. She sat back in her chair and stared at the ceiling. Her breath came in short bursts. Slowly, she drew herself forward to look one last time.

  Sample number eighty showed marked improvement. Marked! Patient number eighty might live!

  Ysabeau scrambled out of her chair to pick up the clipboard and read her sample number-to-patient matrix. When she read the name she smiled and cried and laughed all at once.

  Talitha Lione.

  When she came to the clinic two months ago, Talitha was an emaciated little thing with sunken dark eyes. She could have been twelve years old, or seventy-five. Pulling on a string from the hem of her dress three times her size, she’d sat quietly while her parents had relayed her grim medical history. Doctors had pronounced Talitha to be drug-resistant and dying. They’d given her five months to live at best. Ysabeau doubted she’d make it to four months.

  But now that was all going to change.

  Ysabeau smiled and hugged the girl’s medical chart to her chest. Sweet, little Talitha Lione was getting better with the serum.

  Now, she just had to figure out why.

  Deolina met her at her front door. “He’s been moanin’ and thrashin’. You’d better give him some knock-out drugs. And quick!”

  “I’ll give him pain meds after I talk to him and find out exactly why he’s here.”

  “What? You’re gonna talk? To him?” Deolina’s voice pitched.

  “Why shouldn’t I?”

  “No reason. I ain’t spillin’ no tomato seeds.”

  The man moaned, and Ysabeau ran a cloth under the cold water. “I’ll be fine. Go on home. Thanks for helping out.”