Siege Perilous

by Nigel Bennett

  He gave it ten, then popped an extra. The edge slowly softened and withdrew for the time being. That had been a bad one. He'd have to wind things up here quick while he could still function.

  So, how to take out fang-boy and his doll of delights . . . hello . . . ?

  Drawn by the headline, he fastened on a short inside piece below the fold about the bizarre accident on 401 that morning, a car going out of control on ice, a freak gust of wind slamming it into—he grinned at the name of the woman driving: Sabra du Lac. It just had to be witchy-girl. Who else could have a moniker like that? Jeez, they didn't even try to get her a decent cover name when she relocated here from the other coast. Must have cost a fortune to forge the paperwork. Where did they take her . . . ?

  He laughed. Oh, man, they were making it just too easy. St. Michael's Hospital was just around the block. Even in his shape he could walk it.

  What the hell, why not? The pills were starting to kick in. He'd have a one-hour window before they knocked him into tomorrow. Plenty of time to suss out the lay of the land, figure a possible ambush. If Dun was there . . . assume he was, since that would explain his overnight bag and hurry to get moving. One thing you could count on was the way he hung on to that little piece of ass. With her being human again he'd probably be freaked out of his mind about her. Off guard.

  Oh, hell-yeah, baby.

  But even with that possibility, Charon would have avoid him, avoid a physical confrontation, but still . . . it couldn't hurt to be prepared to improvise. Just in case an opportunity popped up. Cripes, it was a hospital; the place was set up for taking people apart and putting them together. All he had to do was make sure the pieces were too completely scrambled for reassembly.

  Charon pulled on his heavy overcoat, gloves, and wrapped a thick muffler around his face. The cold hit him harder than it used to, like everything else. After a moment's thought, he found the eye patch and put it on as well. There'd be security cameras all over that place. Might as well give them something memorable to focus on. The same principal worked for people, too. Most tended to remember the patch, not the man wearing it. Damn, he should have thought of using the scam centuries ago.

  * * *

  It was well after 4:00 A.M. One of the night nurses came to check on Sabra. Philip Bourland roused enough to watch, then couldn't sink back to his doze again. He'd been told—with considerable sympathy, for the staff was excellent—his presence wasn't necessary, that they'd call him if Sabra woke, but he'd be damned before he budged just yet.

  If she woke. The way the nurse said it gave him hope that Sabra would come around. Thousands of people came into their care here every year, with such experience they had to get a feel for each patient and know who would make it, who would not, if only on a subconscious level. Had she said if there's a change which was more ambiguous, he might have been more pessimistic.

  He still wouldn't have left, though.

  Philip stood and stretched, stiff and sore from being propped in the chair for much of the night, but didn't care. Aspirin would take care of it easily enough. He wished it was that simple for Sabra.

  As Richard had done before him, Philip went to stand by her bedside. He wanted more than anything to feed some of his own strength into her, keep her going, bring her back. If there was a way of doing it he'd have made it happen. Seeing her so still and helpless against his memory of her normal boundless vitality, it wasn't fair or right. She was a good woman, not deserving of such a turn.

  He wondered if Richard knew just how much he loved her.

  You try not to show it, to spare the other man's feelings.

  Of course he'd known from the first she and Richard were involved with each other and had been for a long time, but Sabra said it wasn't exclusive, that Richard wouldn't mind.

  Philip minded. He had too much respect for Richard to do him an ill turn. "I'm old-fashioned that way," he told her.

  "So am I," she said, smiling. "You've no idea."

  It was the summer he'd adopted Michael, and not long after she'd moved to Toronto. He and the boy were still devastated from the loss of Stephanie, Elena, and Seraphina. Had his own daughter and grandchildren been murdered it couldn't have hurt more. Sabra couldn't take away the pain, but she had a way of making it easier to bear just by being around, and she was over at the house often, looking out for Michael, helping him.

  Helping me as well, Philip admitted, noticing her a lot more than he thought he should.

  She, being perceptive, also turned out to be receptive, but did not resort to any obvious flirting. A look combined with a warm smile here and there were enough to set his heart racing into overdrive. Then one night, while Michael was asleep in his room, she stayed on later than usual, and they got to talking in Philip's office. First it was about schools, private versus public for Michael, then on to other subjects.

  Philip had no memory of the conversation, yet Sabra's eyes and voice held his whole attention. In a "what the hell" moment, he'd opened a bottle of wine. That loosened him up a bit, but not to the point of pressing things even though they'd moved from chairs to the big leather sofa. They were chuckling over some point or other, one of Richard's eccentricities, perhaps, then Sabra was somehow very close. It seemed the most natural thing in the world for her to be kissing him like that. He started to kiss back, then remembered Richard and eased away.

  She's so damned young, she has no idea what she's about on this.

  Which turned out to be completely wrong. She knew exactly what she was doing and what she wanted, but she also eased away to hear him out. Then she shook her head over Philip's diplomatically worded qualms.

  "Richard and I have always been like this. When we want to be together, we are, and when we're apart . . ."

  "How could he not want you all to himself? And you him?"

  "He does. He has. I do and have. Philip, it's all right. He knows."

  "Oh, my God."

  Sabra laughed at his chagrin. "He has no objections whatsoever."

  "How can he not?"

  "Richard and I are each free to go our own way. It's always worked for us."

  He didn't know what to say to that, except for holding a secret relief that they'd not picked him out for some exotic threesome activity. His dignity wouldn't have stood for it. "It's brilliant, but absurd. You're utterly wonderful, but I'm much too old for you."

  There it was, his greatest apprehension and also his last, best line of defense. He'd said it just right: resolutely, but without self-pity or giving offense, just a statement of irrefutable fact, allowing her a graceful exit.

  It should have worked, too.

  Sabra only burst into laughter.

  After a moment, he began to laugh, too. He blamed the wine.

  After another moment she was back in his arms giving and receiving a second kiss. This time when he pulled away it was to allow himself to look at her anew. She was absolutely "breath taking," in the literal two-word sense. He'd not been this stirred up by a woman in years.

  That smile of hers—was "bewitching" also too old-fashioned a term? Whatever, it worked. With surprising, insistent strength, still laughing a little, Sabra pulled him on top of her, and they were thrashing about on the sofa like couple of sex-starved teenagers. Dear God, but the energy of it, where the hell had he been keeping it all these years? She seemed to bring it right out of him, in more ways than one. He'd never been so focused, hardly noticing when they rolled in seeming slow motion from the sofa to the more spacious floor. Kissing and fondling in their heat, exploring and tearing off clothes all at once, how had they managed?

  And then it came down to that most intimate part of the exchange, and for him it was not only about flesh into flesh but soul meeting soul. It's one thing to shed clothes and share bodies, it's quite another to summon the courage to allow your soul to be seen by another. Everything was there in the eyes . . . or not. Adults often had trouble holding a steady gaze with each other, even when they were in love. It could be too
personal an invasion, taken as a challenge or judgmental, all the wrong things, so most never tried for very long.

  When you looked into your partner's eyes and saw . . . what? Each and every time it was different, even with the same partner. As they lived and grew, so changed that soul behind their eyes, revealed, if one dared to trust, dared to be seen.

  Philip dared while looking at Sabra's soul and . . .

  . . . saw himself through her eyes.

  That couldn't have been right, but the longer he looked in wonder as he pushed into her, bringing her nearer to her peak, the more it became a certainty. She looked right back, exultant, wholly centered on him.

  He suddenly knew he was loved, without restraint, without conditions, with all her heart, here and now.

  He couldn't help but return it.

  She called out his name in her crisis, her open gaze still locked on his face as he rode through it with her. She understood what this meant to him. He'd never before had that with any woman. She let him see.

  And in that moment, he experienced her climax as well as his own. Until now he'd never known that half of it. Sabra took him there.

  Good God.

  Was "devastating" the word? Close. As close as one could get.

  The French had gotten it so right, the petite mort, because afterward he simply lay like a dead thing, unable to move because his overloaded senses were still trying to catch up with and process what had just happened to them.

  All he could do was continue to look into her eyes and hold her until sleep seized him away.

  They were still close when he woke a bit later. Naked, on his side, the carpeted floor hard, but with her soft, warm little body tucked firmly against his, her back to him.

  She sighed, then giggled.

  "What?" he whispered, his lips right by her ear. Her hair smelled of flowers. Real ones.

  "Just something Richard told me right after he noticed that I liked you."

  Philip wasn't sure he wanted to know, but went with it. "Which was . . . ?

  "He said, 'Please don't break him.' "

  "Oh, really?" Now that was funny.

  "He should have said it to you instead, about me." Another giggle that went all through her, transmitting to him via her flesh where they touched. A lot of that. They were like two spoons, with her delightfully bare ass right against his . . . oh, my, this is very nice. It got better when she responded to his questing caress.

  No need to look into her eyes this time.

  And now her lovely clear eyes were shut, with tubes and wires attached to her fragile flesh, her battered body shielded by a thin sheet and bandaging, and only the beep of a monitor to tell him she still lived.

  When he wept, it was with his hand before his face so she didn't have to see what turmoil and terror for her had done to his soul.

  He brushed his fingers against the one wisp of her hair that had escaped the gauze dressings, then went back to sit and wait and pray.

  Damn. She's so young, a sweet, caring woman not at all deserving of such a cruel turn. Why her? Why . . .

  The regular slow beep of the monitor lulled him. So long as it continued all was well . . .

  Philip let his head droop. The scent of the roses he'd brought floated up to him. That helped. She had to wake and see them. And smile. All really would be well once she opened her eyes and smiled again.

  So powerful was his confidence in that, he actually saw it take place in his mind. Sometime tomorrow she would come awake. She likely wouldn't remember the accident, but she would be back with them. That's all that mattered.

  His waking dream shifted to reality a moment, and he seemed to be just slightly outside himself, seeing his big form slumped in the chair, his long legs stretched toward the wall so as not to trip the staff when they came in. He listened on one level to the routine of the ICU ward going on outside the glassed-in room, taking comfort from its calm. He'd barely noticed the other patients, but they also had people, families waiting on them, hoping, praying for a recovery. The poor young man over there, body alive, but his head turned to pulp when his cycle went out from under him on road ice. No helmet. An older woman on that side, brought in when her heart kept stopping during surgery.

  Then out in the hall was the special guard he'd arranged for and got. A tall man with the rare ability to make himself unobtrusive despite his severe dark suit and multiple concealed weapons.

  Philip had also reluctantly accepted the oddness surrounding Sabra's accident and done what he could toward that end by bringing in the paranormal group to investigate. For whatever else—just in case there was a more corporeal threat afoot—that's why the guard was there.

  Now, if Richard would just open up and say what he knew about it.

  Pressing him would do no good. Whoever he'd worked for and whatever he'd been involved in before taking on the identity of one Richard Dun, security specialist, he must have been damned good at it. It wasn't hard to believe that he'd been involved in some type of black ops training and projects. Maybe when this was all over he'd let slip a little more information. But Philip had a name: Richard d'Orleans. Couldn't be many like that about. Easy to trace with the right contacts, and he had plenty of those here and abroad . . .

  Philip's waking dream was gradually taken over by the sleeping kind, where he had no control over what crossed his mind's eye. Those were not always pleasant. This time he dreamed of something black flowing into the ICU ward, rising up like a walking cloud.

  Only no one else saw it. They went about their business unaware. How could they possibly miss the damn thing?

  It drifted purposely toward him, filling the glassed-in room with itself.

  Solid. The thing was solid. It fell on him, dragging his sleeping form from the chair with iron-hard strength. He crashed hard on his back. It knelt heavily on his chest. He punched and clawed and thought he connected, but the pressure was crushing, crushing, crushing; he couldn't breathe.

  He fought until his air ran out. The thing utterly obliterated him.

  * * *

  Puffing hard with the sweat running free from the exertion, Charon stood away from the big man's body where it lay on the polished floor. For a bare, hopeful moment he thought the pale-haired dude might be Richard Dun, but no such luck. Bagging two in one would have been great, but go with what's handed you and all that. Charon could have fed off the man's energy, but he didn't have enough of the right kind to do any good. It took energy to take in energy. You could be surrounded by food and not have enough strength to lift it to your mouth. That was his situation. I got only enough juice for one shot. Priming for the pump.

  Lancelot could walk in any second, too, better hurry—life was short in more ways than one.

  So always have dessert first.

  Charon flipped up the eye patch and with his fading Sight concentrated hard on the frail, tiny woman on the bed. No contest, even in a coma she was still one hell of a heavy hitter. The protections surrounding her threatened to sear his skin like the sun. It would be much safer to take her out from six feet away with one of the wadcutters in the pistol he'd smuggled in. That's what he'd intended on doing given the chance.

  Except for the stuff inside eating him alive. The way it was growing now, in another day he'd be in a bed just like that with the best modern meds dripping into one arm, keeping his body going, and in the other hand a button leading to a pump so he could dose himself with painkillers, and they never gave you enough of those. Damn, he could have learned a lot from this bunch in his early days when he was still refining his torture technique.

  He reached forward and tasted ever so cautiously of the protective energies. Oh, yeah, that's the real hooch. And just under them was the good kind. What she was using to make herself better. Strong. Healing. Wouldn't want to overdo it, but he desperately needed the time that fix could buy him.

  Charon moved next to the high bed, his open hand hovering over her face. There was no outward reaction from her, but he saw and fel
t the enveloping protections going wild. One freaking powerful hurricane-level wind swept out of the Otherside and tried to haul him away from her. It bit at him like the biggest damn dog ever, roaring around the room, flinging things about as he drained strength from her.

  Oh, yeah, that IS the good stuff!

  The force of the fresh energy slammed into the top of his skull and down to his feet. He swayed and staggered, but kept feeding. This was even better than Snaky's blood, there was more of it, and he didn't have to fight as hard for a drink. Full-bodied, baby, and then some. He felt it rushing through every part of him, meeting the out-of-control cancer cells and blasting them to screaming bits. Yeah, that'll teach 'em, mess with me, huh? Take that, why don'tcha?

  But maybe—as fresh sweat broke out on him—too strong, like switching to bourbon after a lifetime of water. There was such a thing as alcohol poisoning. In the Yucatán he'd had his shields to hide him and time to prepare and maintain control over the flow; the old snake god hadn't been expecting trouble. This babe had all the doors bolted, with psychic razor wire surrounding her like a cocoon. Her energy was working in him, though, making the gains worth the pain-price.

  He bared his teeth at her defenses, braced against the wind, and continued to feed, but people were beginning to notice. Someone in the nurses' station, maybe sensitive to Otherside matters, looked up and saw the stranger in the special room. Never mind that he was in doctor's scrubs, he wasn't supposed to be there.

  Instead of coming to check herself, she made a detour to the doors opening on the hall. Through the whirling Otherside debris, Charon saw her bring in a new player, that security type in the suit who'd been cooling his heels ever so quietly. Feeding time was almost up, dammit.

  The man directed the nurse to one side and approached with caution. Sensible fellow. She got on a phone, probably calling for reinforcements.

  He spotted the big guy on the floor and pulled a gun.

  Charon grinned. This could get interesting.

  "Move away from her," the man said, aiming the weapon, textbook pose. "Hands up and move away."

  Charon raised one hand, palm out, holding the other over the woman. Just a little redirection of the power and a mental nudge—