Adron choked on a sob as he thought of her lying helpless. It was her worst fear.
Why had she done it?
For him. . . .
Oh, God, he couldn’t breathe for the agony in his heart. He wanted to scream out at the injustice. Wanted to rail against everyone and everything.
He leveled a fierce stare on Theo. “Will she come out of it?”
“Honestly, no. There’s too much damage. She’s only alive right now because of the machines.” Theo gave him a hard stare. “My professional opinion is that we should turn everything off and let nature take its course.”
Adron fell back against the wall as his heart shattered into a thousand pieces. He felt the tears in his eyes, felt the bitter, swelling misery that overwhelmed him.
He couldn’t let her go.
But then, he couldn’t let her live when he knew she wouldn’t want to.
And all he felt was a pain so deep, so profound, that it made a mockery of the one he’d learned to live with.
He grabbed Theo by the shirt. “Don’t you dare let her die. You hear me?”
Theo looked aghast. “Her mind is already gone.”
“Only half of it, right?”
“Well, yes.”
“Then there’s a chance.” And half a chance was better than none. “You keep her heart beating until I get back.”
“I’ll do my best.”
And so would he.
Releasing Theo, Adron ran from the hospital with a strength and agility he hadn’t known in years. Livia had one chance for survival, and no matter what, he was going to give it to her.
“WHAT are you doing here?” Livia’s father demanded as Adron forced his way into the throne room where he was overseeing his advisors.
Oblivious to the roomful of men who gaped at him, Adron approached his father-in-law. “I have to see Livia’s mother.”
“It is forbidden.”
“The hell it is. Livia’s dying and her mother is the only one who can save her.”
Her father’s face stoic, he seemed completely immune to the news. “If she dies, so be it. She has disgraced us with her disobedience. I told you and her that she was forever severed from us.”
“I need to see her mother.”
“Guards!” he called. “Remove him.”
Adron knocked the guards back, until they called for reinforcements. Seriously outnumbered, he fought as best he could, but eventually they seized him.
“You can’t let her die,” Adron said as he struggled against their hold.
“Had you wanted her to live, you should never have shamed her.”
“Damn you!”
Against his will, Adron was pulled back from the throne, but as he fought against the guards, he saw a teenaged servant girl watching him with concern and pity on her face.
Adron met her frightened gaze. “Tell her mother, Livia needs her. Please.”
“Krista!” Livia’s father snapped. “Get out of here.”
The girl scampered off, and the guards threw him out of the palace.
Adron struck the closed door with his fast. He bellowed in rage. “So help me, if she dies, I’ll see all of you in your graves!”
But no one heard him. Defeated, he turned and headed back to spend as much time with Livia as he could before death stole her completely away from him.
ADRON paused in the doorway of the hospital room as he listened to the familiar monitors beep and hiss. Only this time, they weren’t connected to him.
He knew from his own experience that she could hear them. Knew what it felt like to lie there unable to communicate. Alone. Afraid.
He wanted to scream.
His throat tight, he crossed the room and sat on the bed beside her.
“Hey, sweet,” he whispered, taking her cold hand into his. He cupped her face with his other hand and leaned over her to brush his lips against her cool cheek.
“Please open your eyes, Livia,” he whispered as tears blinded him. “Open your eyes and see what you did. I’m actually sitting here without grimacing. There’s no pain at all. But you know that, don’t you?”
He traced the outline of her jaw. And then he did something he hadn’t done in a long, long time. He prayed.
He prayed and he yearned to feel her sweet arms wrapped around him. To hear the precious sound of her voice saying his name.
Hours went by as Adron stayed with her, talking more than he had ever talked before.
Sitting by her side, he held her hand to his heart and willed her to wake up. “I don’t know why you stayed with me, Livia. God knows, I wasn’t worth it. But I don’t want you to leave me alone anymore. I need you. Please open your eyes and look at me. Please.”
“She can hear you.”
Adron tensed at the voice behind him.
Assuming it was a nurse, he didn’t bother to look. “I know.”
“Are you going to unplug her?”
He choked at the thought. And for the first time, he understood exactly how Jayce had felt when he’d pulled him from the Dumpster.
God, he’d been such a fool to hate his brother for loving him.
“I can’t let her go,” he said between clenched teeth. “Not while there’s a chance.”
“It’s what she wants.”
“I know.” He knew it in a way no one else ever could. He’d been there.
The nurse came forward and placed a gentle hand on his shoulder. “She wants me to tell you that she is with you. And that you were well worth it.”
Frowning, he turned around to see a small woman wearing a cloak that completely shielded her identity from him. “Who are you?”
She lowered the cowl. Her features angelic, he knew her in an instant. She was Livia’s mother.
And he saw the silvery green eyes of a race that was more myth than reality. “You’re Trisani?”
She nodded.
Adron gaped with the knowledge. The Trisani were legendary for their psychic abilities. So legendary that they had been hunted almost to extinction. Those who survived were very careful to stay hidden away from large populations where they might become enslaved or killed by those who wanted or feared their powers.
She stepped to Livia’s side and removed the IV from her arm. Then slowly, piece by piece, she took the monitors off.
“It’s time to wake up, little flower,” she whispered. She placed a gentle hand on Livia’s brow.
Stunned, Adron watched as Livia’s eyes fluttered open. “Mama?” she breathed.
Her mother smiled, then kissed her on the forehead. She passed a hand over Livia’s body.
Adron felt weak in relief as joy spread through him. Livia was alive!
Her mother took his hand and Livia’s and held them joined in hers. Adron’s heart pounded at the warmth of a touch he’d thought was lost to him forever.
Livia looked from him to her mother. “You had Krista send me to the Golden Crona, didn’t you?”
Her mother nodded. “You two were destined for each other.” She looked at Adron. “And to answer your unspoken question, yes, it’s permanent. Livia healed you, but . . .” She turned a sharp glare at her daughter. “You are not to call on your powers anymore. Your human half isn’t strong enough for them.”
“I know, but I couldn’t let him die.”
Her mother nodded. “Now, I have to return before I’m missed.” She paused in the doorway and turned back. “By the way, it’s a boy.”
Adron frowned. “What’s a boy?”
“The baby she carries. Congratulations, Commander. In nine more months, you’ll be a father.”
Epilogue
One year later
LIVIA paused in the doorway as she watched Adron giving their infant son his three A.M. feeding. Propped against pillows, Adron sat on the bed, wearing nothing except a sheet draped modestly over his lap as he held the bottle and stared adoringly at Caillen.
He laid his cheek against the top of the baby’s bald head and held him close. “I�
��ve got you, little bit,” he whispered. “Yes, I do.”
She laughed.
Adron looked up and smiled. “I didn’t know you were back.”
“I can tell.” She moved to sit next to them. Then she leaned against Adron’s raised leg to stare at the beautiful baby on his unscarred chest.
Caillen cooed at her as he wrapped his tiny hand around her finger.
Adron brushed a loving hand through Livia’s soft, mussed hair. Thanks to her, he’d come a long way from the bitter alcoholic she’d found tossing down drinks in the back of the Golden Crona.
She’d found a broken, bleeding man and she had made him whole again. Not just in body, but in his heart.
She had reunited him with his family and with his soul.
Over the last year, he’d watched her grow ripe with his baby and had held her hand as she struggled to bring Caillen into the world.
Life turned on the hairpin of a second. He’d always known that, but on one rainy, cold night in the backroom of a filthy dive, his life had taken a sharp turn into heaven.
Livia looked up from their son. “What are you thinking about?”
He traced the outline of her lips with his fingertip. “I’m thinking how glad I am that I traded myself for that woman. How glad I am that my brother couldn’t kill me. But most of all, I’m thinking just how damn grateful I am that you saw something in me worth saving.”
He leaned forward and kissed her gently on the lips. “Thank you for my son, Livia, and for my life. I love you. I always will.”
Daydream Believer
MAGGIE SHAYNE
Chapter One
MEGAN sat up in bed, a cold sweat coating her skin, her trembling hands already clutching the telephone. Sure, it was upside down, but that was sort of beyond the point. Obviously, her subconscious thought this was it. The big one. Time to do some good. Her eyes were drawn to the television on the far side of the room. She’d fallen asleep with the set still on, and at the moment, it was showing a photo of the missing woman, Sarah Dresden, smiling at the camera, obviously unaware what the future held for her. Underneath the photo was a telephone number: the Pinedale Police Department’s “Tipline.”
Bringing the receiver closer, she dialed the number. She had never phoned the police department after one of her episodes before. Never. God knew her visions had never inspired much action up to now. Certainly nothing police-worthy.
“PPD Tipline, can you help us?”
Quaint, she thought. “I, um . . . I need to speak with the chief, please.”
“May I ask who’s calling?”
She didn’t want to answer that. “It’s about the missing woman,” she said instead. “I know where she is.”
“Hold on.” The voice betrayed no emotion, but there had been a brief hesitation before the reply.
A second later, a male voice came on the line. “Chief Skinner speaking.”
“Good,” she said. “Look, I’ve never done anything like this before. But . . . I think I know where your missing woman is. Sarah Dresden.”
“Uh-huh. And how did you come by your information, Miss . . .?”
She swallowed hard, gathered up her courage. “I get . . . visions.”
She heard his sigh, and realized she’d better talk fast before he hung up on her and filed her call away with all the other cranks he must receive. “Never anything this important. Actually, I’ve always wished . . . but it doesn’t matter. My visions are always on the money. I swear.”
“Look, lady, I don’t have time for—”
“Sarah is twenty-five, a pretty brunette, a runner—”
“And all of that information has been covered by the local news, ma’am.”
“She had a butterfly tattoo on the back of her neck, and was wearing red sneakers with white laces.”
He paused for a moment. Then said, “I don’t know if that’s right or not. I’d have to check the reports.”
“Check. I’ll hold.”
“All right.” She heard papers shuffling. “Why don’t you tell me where you think she is while I look?”
Maybe she had his attention. Maybe he was going to take her seriously now. No one in her life ever had. God, this could be a banner moment for her. If only the information she had to share were more positive. “I had a dream about her last night. She’s not alive, Chief. Her body is in the river, snagged on some rocks underneath the Amstead Road Bridge.”
“Uh-huh.”
She swallowed hard.
“Ma’am?”
“Yes, Chief.”
“It would give you considerably more credibility if you’d give us your name. Not that we can’t find that out anyway with the telephone system we have here, but—”
“Megan Rose,” she said. “I live here in Pinedale, out on Sycamore Street. I own the Celestial Bakery in the village, corner of Silver and Main. And I’d appreciate your discretion about this. I’m not sure how my customers would feel about my calling you like this.”
“I’m not sure that will even be an issue, ma’am.”
“Excuse me?”
“I found the reports on the Dresden woman. She was last seen wearing suede hiking boots, not red sneakers. And there are no unusual markings on her body, no tattoos of any kind. Sorry, ma’am. It was a nice thought, though.”
She felt her jaw drop and her head swirl. What the hell . . .? How could such a vivid dream be so wrong? God, would her so-called gift ever be of any use to anyone? She swallowed hard.
“You have a nice day now, Ms. Rose.”
“Uh—Chief?”
“Yes, ma’am?”
She sighed heavily. “You left your headlights on when you parked your car this morning. You might want to check.”
“I’ll do that.”
Megan hit the cutoff button and set the phone down, then leaned back against her headboard, and wiped the sweat from her brow. Damn, damn, damn. She thought she had finally seen something important. Something more than the useless tidbits her visions provided every day of her life. Something big.
No such luck.
The damn dream had started out as the same one she’d been having since she was twelve years old—the one where she saw the handsome man’s face hovering in the mists and heard a voice telling her she was going to break a curse and save his life. Then it had taken a unique turn, and the image had changed to one of the missing woman, first smiling like in the photo on TV, and then lifeless and pale, her hair tangling around her face just below the surface of the Genesee River.
Megan licked her lips. Probably her subconscious had heard the television news report talking about the missing woman. Probably her mind had woven what she heard into her dream, a bad case of wishful thinking. Not wishing the woman was dead, of course, but wishing she could help find her, and finally be believed.
She thought again of the man, the one she was supposed to save from some kind of curse, and she sighed. “Whoever you are, mister,” she said softly, “my feeling is, you’re doomed.”
SAM Sheridan knocked twice before stepping into the chief’s office. “Morning, Chief.”
“Morning, Sam. How’s your mother?”
“Mom sends her love and a slice of apple pie.” Sam set the Tupperware container on his boss’s desk. The older man had been an intimate family friend a lot longer than he’d been Sam’s boss, and old habits died hard. “She says you’re expected for dinner on my birthday and she won’t take no for an answer.”
The chief smiled, his wrinkles showing more deeply when he did. “You bet your ass I’ll be there. Your old man would come back from beyond and knock me senseless if I missed it.”
Sam nodded, a twinge of sadness twisting his belly, even though it had been twenty-seven years. Ed Skinner turned to move to the window, absently parting the drapes and looking out over the parking lot below.
“Listen, Sam, I wanted to talk to you about this Dresden case. There’s—well, I’ll be damned.”
“Chief?” Frowning, Sam
moved closer to the window.
“I left my headlights on,” the chief said.
Sam smiled. “Old age creeping up on you, that’s all. I’ll flip ’em off on my way out if you want.”
The chief let the drapes fall back into place, turned to face Sam again. “Where you heading?”
“Questioning some witnesses on the Sarah Dresden case. People who might have seen something in the area along the riverbank, where we found the body this morning.”
The chief nodded. “Press hasn’t been notified about the body yet, have they?”
“No, sir. Hell, she’s barely been out of the water an hour.”
“No leaks, that you know of?”
“None.”
The chief pursed his lips. “Sam, I’ve got something else I’d like you check on for me.”
Sam lifted his brows.
“Woman by the name of Megan Rose. Knows a little more about this case than she ought to.”
Sam tipped his head. This was the first thing remotely like a lead they’d had in the series of rape-murders plaguing the small western New York town. “Like what?”
“Like where the body was. I just got off the phone with her.”
Sam felt a little shiver go up his spine. “Did she say how she knew?”
“Yeah. Claims she’s some kind of psychic.”
Sam would have laughed if the topic had been a less serious one. As it was, he just shook his head. He didn’t believe in that sort of garbage, despite the fact that his grandmother claimed a touch of E.S.P. herself. She’d never predicted anything beyond his own impending demise, and he wasn’t about to give that any credibility.
“I’d like to find out how she really knew—and what else she might know,” the chief said.
Sam nodded. “You want me to question her?”
“I’m thinking we might want a more subtle approach; we don’t want to scare her off. Let me do a little checking on her first. Stay available. I’ll let you know how I want you to proceed.”
Sam nodded. “Whatever you say, Chief.”
Man of My Dreams Page 7