by Bryn Donovan
“Who can meet us?” she burst out. “What’s going on?”
He shoved the phone back into his pocket and took a deep breath. “I told the people I work for about the spell, and they think you’re a clear and present danger to everyone around you. Which is true,” he added. “I sent them pictures of the journal pages, and they think the journal may be all they need to figure out your problem.”
Cassie’s temper rose. “You didn’t tell me you were going to do that.”
“Listen, now that we’ve found the journal, they want me to take you to headquarters so that until we find a solution, the threat can be contained.”
Headquarters? She thought of Washington D.C., and then Quantico. “That’s crazy. Who are you people?”
He didn’t answer. She hadn’t really thought that he would. “Contained how? Don’t they know I’d be pissed off at all of them? They bring me in, they’ll have to deal with a herd of bears.” Maybe one didn’t call that a herd. “A horde of bears.”
“The location minimizes the danger of attacks.”
“What location, outer space?” Guantanamo Bay, maybe, or someplace like it. Fear wrung her heart.
“And if they need to, they have much more powerful psychics than me who can neutralize your consciousness while we work on a solution.”
“Neutralize my— What does that mean?”
His forehead wrinkled. “Put you in a suspended state, not exactly a coma—”
“Jesus!” She turned her back on him and stalked back into the kitchen.
“Not for long! It could be a few days or a week.”
Or the rest of her natural life, for all she knew. Maybe she should bolt through the jagged hole that had once been her sliding door and make a run for her truck. But no, she wouldn’t get very far. This was unreal. One minute, she’d been trying to kiss him, and the next, he wanted to haul her off to God knows where and put her in a vegetative state. Maybe an outright execution would’ve been better.
He followed her, talking to her back. “They’re not seeing a lot of options. They can’t let other people get hurt, or even killed.” His hand came to rest on her shoulder. “If there’s a way you could calm down—”
She spun around. “Don’t you fucking tell me to calm down!”
He gave a tight, ironic smile. “Guess that wasn’t the way.” Deliberately, he took a seat at the kitchen table.
She could almost taste her own bitterness. “I’m not going anywhere with you.”
“Cassie, you’re not understanding me.” His gaze locked on hers. “I can take you whether you want to go or not.”
Cold fury rooted her to the earth. “You’re threatening me?’
“I’m begging you.” The vulnerability on his upturned face began to thaw her anger. “I do not want to drag you in.”
“Then don’t.”
“I have orders,” he said. “I have vows.”
“Vows? Is this some kind of cult?”
“I’ve failed them before.” Did he mean his brother? Despite her anger, this tugged at her sympathy. “I’m doing the best I can here.” Cassie picked at one of the scrapes on her wrist. A little bit of the scab came off, leaving a red line but no blood. “I’ve told them you’re not to blame,” he said. “I’ll do everything I can for you.”
She sat down. “What was that you were saying on the phone?” He shook his head, uncomprehending. “Something like, Act us non?”
“Actus non facit reum nisi mens sit rea. It’s a saying. It means, what you’ve done doesn’t make you guilty if you didn’t know you were doing it.”
“That’s a pretty good saying,” she muttered.
He set his hands on his knees, palms up. “Please come with me voluntarily. You don’t want this curse on your head. Your ex-husband is dead, and even though you didn’t like him, I know it’s weighing on you.” He was right. Sometimes she thought of Rick’s family, or how he must have screamed before the jaguar tore out his throat, and she could hardly stand it.
“I don’t even know where we’re going.”
“It’s about nine hours away.” He looked wary. “They’re sending someone else out to drive with us. She’ll be here early in the morning.”
Cassie wrapped her arms around herself. “How can I even trust you?” An answer came to her. “Can I go into your psyche, like you went into mine? So you can’t lie to me?” Her curiosity spiked. What would his look like?
“It doesn’t work that way. You need a certain kind of psychic talent to go into someone else— Ow.” He jerked his hand up in the air.
A snake was clamped to it, its fangs sunk into the flesh between his thumb and wrist. It was skinny but at least three feet long, and banded in red, black, and yellow. Cassie screamed as Jonathan jumped to his feet, shaking the thing off. It fell to the floor and wriggled away behind the refrigerator.
She said, “I’ll get the broom!” She could bludgeon it to death.
He stood, looking at his hand. “Let’s go out to my car.” He seemed unnaturally calm, almost robotic.
Jogging a little to keep up with his long strides, she followed him to a black SUV parked a little ways down the block. She grabbed his hand to inspect it and saw little more than a scratch. “It doesn’t look that bad.”
“It’s venomous.” He popped open the back of the car, retrieved a large steel case, and flipped it open. Blue velvet lined the interior, reminding her of her clarinet case in fifth grade. A couple dozen hypodermic needles, the sharp ends encapsulated in plastic, nestled in compartments.
“Whoa,” she said. He pulled out a small booklet held in the elastic of the top part of the case. Then he grunted, gripping the bridge of his nose. “What is it?”
He gasped. “Head hurts. Trouble breathing.”
“Oh my God.” She pressed her hands to her face. “I’m sorry.”
He pushed the book in her direction. “Look up the snake. Yellow and black—”
“Red and yellow and black.” The cover of the manual was in Spanish. She flipped it open and saw it had pictures of scorpions and gila monsters and such. “Here!” She stopped on the picture. “Coral snake.”
“Okay.” He half sat, half fell onto the back of the open SUV. Sweat glazed his chalky face. Oh, God. He looked bad. She skimmed the description of the bite. Neurotoxin—that was an English word. Respiración artificial. Artificial respiration. Muerto. Death.
Fuck.
“Get the antivenin.” His speech slurred so badly that she stared up at him. His mouth hung open. “Swollen tongue,” he said. “Anti—”
“Right, okay.” With shaking hands, she searched through the needles, each in its own wrapping. Someone had affixed labels to them with tiny handwritten words. El escorpión. No. The second needle said the same thing. Araña reclusa parda. That had to be a brown recluse spider. La serpiente de cascabel. Shit, was that it? Why the fuck couldn’t they use English? La serpiente coral.
“Yes!” She got the syringe out of the plastic and grabbed his bitten hand.
He made a move as though to stop her, and his words came out thick between labored breaths. “Have you done this before?”
“No.” She stabbed the needle into the top of his hand. It sank into the flesh between his thumb and finger, an inch from the bite mark. She hoped it was in far enough. Slowly, she injected the full dose of clear liquid into him. She pulled the needle straight out. Still, blood welled up. “Fuck, fuck,” she muttered. She tossed the syringe aside and pulled up the hem of her shirt, pressing the fabric against his hand. “It’s swelling.” One of her thumbs came to rest on the inside of his wrist, and his pulse galloped beneath the skin.
He still fought for breath. “Wrap it up.” He mimed winding a bandage around the hand. Gauze. He had gauze in his backpack. She scrabbled through the bag, found the roll, and began wrapping up his hand. “Tighter,” he said, and she pulled the strip as hard as she could, winding it well past his wrist until she ran out of gauze and then tucking it in at the end. �
�Good. Hospital.”
He and his friends didn’t like hospitals, and he didn’t like her being in such a populated place. If he wanted to go anyway—
Shit. He’s dying. A tear splashed onto her cheek, startling her.
Even in his weakened state, he noticed it. His expression softened. Concern for her, maybe, or surprise at how much she feared for his life. If he doubted the genuineness of her feelings for him, he only deluded himself. Anyway, he shouldn’t be thinking about her right now. He should spend every ounce of energy staying alive.
She helped him into the passenger seat. His legs wobbled beneath him. “Keys,” she said.
“Front pocket.” She thrust her hands into both of his jeans pockets at once, no time to be polite, and found them. After she yanked the driver’s seat forward so she could reach the pedals, she buckled him into the seat and zoomed off.
As she drove, he said, “David Ramirez.”
“What?”
“In my wallet.”
It took her a moment to put this together. “You have a fake driver’s license?”
He laid his head on the back of the seat. “And insurance.”
From the cup holder, his phone vibrated. She ignored it. It wouldn’t stop. At a red light, she picked it up.
When she pressed the button at the bottom, the screen remained blank. She tossed it back and concentrated on the road. His short breaths rasped in his chest, and his eyes glazed over. At the next red light, she looked both ways and then sped through.
A loud, disembodied male voice made her jump. “Jon, you there?” The same voice as before, after the bear attack.
“Call me later,” Jonathan said, almost unintelligible.
The man snapped, “What?”
Shit. She’d gotten him hurt for a second time, and his group was going to kill her. “Hi,” she said. “He got bit by a coral snake, but I gave him the, um, the shot.”
“Cassandra Rios?”
Her heart sank. “Yeah. I’m so, so sorry. I’m taking him to the hospital.”
“Jon, is all this true?”
“Yes,” Jonathan said.
“Christos.” A few moments of silence. “Jon, call me back when you can.”
Jonathan didn’t look or sound any better by the time they got to the emergency room. Fuck. I didn’t do the injection right. Cassie helped him stagger inside, and the woman behind the counter said, “Take a seat over there, and we’ll call your name.”
“No!” Several people looked up. “He needs a doctor right now! A coral snake bit him, and he’s dying!”
Jonathan gripped her arm hard. “Don’t. Get mad.”
He was right. She took a deep breath and said calmly, “I think he’s dying.”
A man in scrubs came to take him back to a room. He said she could wait in the waiting room. She told him no and followed them.
The nurse guy had Jonathan stretch out on a bed with gray curtains on either side, separating him from other patients. “Sir, if you could lie on your back—”
“On his side,” Cassie interjected. “He has stitches.” The nurse looked startled. The ER doctor, a short woman with silver threads in her dark hair, strode in saying, “Okay, Mr. Ramirez, how are we doing?”
Cassie said, “He can hardly breathe!”
The doctor ordered the nurse to get him into a gown and hook him up to an oxygen tube. Cassie remembered the phrase from the manual: respiración artificial. Out of respect for his privacy, she retreated into the doorway and looked out at the hall.
“Who stitched up his back?” the doctor asked.
“I did,” Cassie said. She glanced back and saw the side of his naked torso and hip as he put on the thin hospital gown. She didn’t mean to gawk. As strong as he was, her spell had humbled and incapacitated him, and it wrenched her heart. “A bear attacked him.”
“And then he was bitten by a coral snake?” Cassie nodded. “Are you sure that’s what it was?”
“We’re biologists. We, um, specialize in snakes.” She didn’t know where that came from, but she couldn’t have the doctor messing up his treatment somehow because she didn’t believe her.
She looked grim. “Then you know we no longer produce an approved antivenin for this.”
Holy smokes. “I gave him one.” What if it hadn’t worked?
The doctor’s head bobbed back in astonishment. “Where did you get that?”
Jonathan said, “Mexico.” He stretched out on his side on the hospital bed.
“Hopefully, one dose will be enough.” The doctor sounded doubtful. “Did he take anything for the pain?”
Cassie shook her head, watching the nurse put an oxygen tube in his nose. “Do you think he needs to?”
“A coral snake bite will make your head feel like it’s going to explode.” She narrowed her eyes. “But you should know that.”
“I’m a little freaked out.” That much was true.
The doctor ordered the nurse to hook up an IV with Demerol and inspected Jonathan’s back. Cassie cringed at the ugly gashes and the puckering, purpled skin. He’d coped with the wounds so stoically that she’d almost forgotten how bad they really were. The doctor said, “I can’t believe you didn’t get medical attention for this.”
“We were out in the middle of nowhere,” she lied.
The doctor pointed out a place where the skin was hot and red, showing signs of infection, and swabbed at it with something that made Jonathan twitch. “I’m going to give you an antibiotic, and we’ll re-stitch this area a little later, once you’re stable,” she told him. “Your heart rate’s slowing down. That’s good.”
He didn’t answer. Cassie’s hand flew to her mouth. “Is he all right?”
“Unconscious for now. Just as well.” She said they’d done all they could do for the time being, and she and the nurse left.
Cassie went out to where she’d illegally parked near the entrance and moved the car to a more suitable spot. Then she dug through the metal case full of syringes and found another dose of the coral snake antivenin. It was still wrapped in plastic, and she put it in her purse. As an afterthought, she grabbed his phone.
When she came back to the ER, she couldn’t find him, and eventually someone pointed her to another wing of the building where he’d been transferred. He was still asleep, or unconscious. They hadn’t stuck him in with a roommate, and she was glad of that. The hospital gown revealed most of his bare ass, which was a magnificent sight—something she shouldn’t be noticing when he was hurt. Once she sat down in the chair next to him, she couldn’t really see it.
Although she wished someone would check on him, no one came by. Maybe they were too busy. Strange to think about how people were sick and hurt and dying all the time, night and day, with their friends and family feeling all sad and scared, like she was feeling now.
Not that Jonathan West was exactly a friend. She didn’t know what he was. But, apparently, he tried to save people a lot and often got hurt in the process. He’d suffered so much in the past couple of days, trying to make sure people didn’t get attacked because of her.
On her phone, she looked up images of snakebites and then bear attack wounds. This was a terrible mistake. These things resulted in all kinds of horrible outcomes besides the obvious one, death. Jonathan could have lost his hand. Jesus, with the bear, he could have lost his face. She put the phone back in her purse. She’d never been good at waiting or sitting still. As a kid, her mom had joked sometimes that she would tie Cassie to a chair, although she never had, which was more than Cassie could say for Jonathan.
A reddish-brown spot near the hem of her shirt caught her attention. Jonathan’s blood, from when she’d given him the shot. That wasn’t going to wash out.
The nurse finally came in, writing things on his clipboard and commenting that he seemed to be doing okay. Cassie got up, wandered around, and found a coffee machine. She took the Styrofoam cup full of black coffee back to her chair by Jonathan’s bed. It burned her tongue and tasted
like asphalt. She drank it anyway.
He stirred. “Hey,” she said softly.
His eyes opened and then his brows knitted in confusion. “Where am I?”
“St. Luke’s. A snake bit you, remember?”
He focused on her, or tried to. “Cassandra Rios.”
“Afraid so.”
He nodded and said, as if to himself, “The beautiful and dangerous.”
She felt a stupid grin take over her face. “You’re high on Demerol.”
He looked around himself and then up at the IV bag. “Oh, that’s bad.”
“Why?”
“Letting my guard down.” His head lolled on the pillow.
“How’s your hand?” She got up to inspect it. They had re-wrapped it, a much neater job than she’d done. “It’s not swollen anymore. I was scared I didn’t give you the shot right.”
“You were perfect. You just—jammed it right in there.” He chuckled like this was hilarious. Even though she worried about him, it still amused her to see him a little loopy.
“That snake showed up so fast.”
He nodded. “Lots of snakes and bugs we never see. In the bushes. The woodwork. They warned me.” His brow furrowed. “Can you get my phone?”
“I’ve got it.” She patted her front pocket.
He stiffened and propped himself up on one elbow. “I’m going to be sick.” She snatched the wastebasket and set it next to his bed. After a few moments, he lay back. “False alarm.”
“I’ll get you some water. And crackers. I’ll be back in a minute, okay?”
When she returned, the doctor was talking to him. “I called to my friend who’s a specialist. He said you might have died without the antivenin. Did you get the dose right away?”
“About a minute after the bite,” he said.
Only having the right injection on hand had saved him. If it had been anyone else, they’d be dead now. Her mom or dad, Sam. They would’ve been in terrible pain, unable to breathe, and then they would’ve died. She thought of all the different needles in that steel case. All those different poisonous things.