Sea Fever

by Virginia Kantra

  “Too late.” The devil smiled compassionately. “You’ve already lost your little whelp.”

  Rage and sorrow swamped Regina, flooded her brain red as blood. “Not my baby, you bitch,” she said and launched herself at the demon.

  Her charge carried them both to the floor with a bone-jarring thud. Regina grabbed the demon’s wrist with both hands, uncaring of the teeth that snapped at her face, that gnawed at her arm. Gasping, sobbing, she crawled over the demon’s body to grind her tattooed wrist against the hand that gripped the syringe.

  The demon shrieked. The stench of burning flesh rose from her smoking wrist. Her hand released, and the needle skittered under the sink.

  They rolled over the floor, kicking and biting, scratching and gouging. The devil woman drove a knee into Regina’s groin. She doubled up, seeing red. Seeing stars. Seeing death.

  The demon heaved and scrabbled over the floor toward the needle. Regina jumped on her back and grabbed her hair with both hands.

  “Not my baby,” she screamed and slammed the devil bitch’s head into the fixed leg of the exam table. Over and over and over again, until her arms had no strength, until the body under hers jerked and was still.

  With a sob, Regina collapsed, slumping over Donna’s back, her hands sticky with Donna’s blood. So much blood. Trembling violently, she dragged herself off the doctor’s body and curled into a ball a few feet away, her arms crossed protectively over her cramping stomach.

  “Regina?”

  Dylan’s voice, she thought dreamily. Dylan’s quick, sure footsteps coming down the hall. He’d come. She knew he would.

  She managed to unglue her eyelids in time to see the door open and his feet enter the room. “My God, Regina!”

  She tried to raise herself off the floor and on to one elbow. Struggled to summon a smile.

  But when he dropped to his knees beside her, cradling her body in his arms as if she were something infinitely fragile and precious, she could only turn her face into his chest and cry.

  20

  “I HATE HOSPITALS,” CALEB SAID.

  Sitting in the waiting room at Special Care, Dylan lifted his head from his hands, roused by his brother’s voice. He’d never felt so scared in his life. So anguished. Helpless. Human. So aware that a life could end and snuff out the light of his world.

  When he’d walked into that clinic and seen Regina, small and still, bleeding on the floor . . .

  Caleb eased into the chair beside him and stretched out his injured leg with a grunt. “How’s she doing?”

  Dylan scrubbed his face with his hand, dredging words from the blackness inside him, bits of information he held like talismans against the dark. “Stable. Her blood pressure’s good.”

  “Have you seen her yet?”

  “No.”

  The memory of her ashen face, her pale lips, burned in his brain like a ghost. A brave and beautiful ghost.

  Regina had been rushed from the helo pad to the Emergency Room, whisked from the Emergency Room to Special Care. The last time he’d seen her, she’d been strapped into a stretcher, hooked to two different IVs. Just before she was loaded onto the LifeFlight with Donna Tomah, her gaze had found Dylan standing outside the ring of professionals laboring over her. She’d tried to smile, raising two fingers in an islander’s wave.

  And shattered his heart.

  He rubbed the heel of his palm over his chest. “Her mother and Nick are with her now.”

  “They let the boy in?”

  “He needed to see her. And she needed to see him. Anyway, it’s just for five minutes.”

  Regina was allowed visitors for five minutes, once an hour. Dylan could see her in an hour.

  Hold her for five minutes.

  Tell her . . . What could he possibly say to her that would make up for all she had been through? He would have done anything to help her, suffered anything to save her. But he’d come too late.

  “The baby?” Caleb asked quietly.

  Dylan took a deep breath. “We don’t know. Antonia said they were going to do an ultrasound, take some blood.”

  More blood. He closed his eyes, but he could not shut out the memory of her bone-white face, the blood-streaked floor.

  “I’m sorry,” Caleb said. “I know the prophecy—”

  Dylan opened his eyes to glare at his brother. “I don’t give a fuck about the prophecy. She shouldn’t have to lose this baby.”

  Not after she’d fought so hard, so valiantly to keep it.

  While he did nothing. Could do nothing.

  Caleb watched him carefully. “Does she know yet that you love her?”

  The question struck like a harpoon. Straight through the chest. Dylan’s mouth dropped open. He managed to shut it. Opened it to snarl, “You think I should have said something while she was bleeding on the floor? Or maybe in front of the paramedics while they were shoving tubes in her veins?”

  Caleb rubbed his jaw. “Seems to me you had opportunities before tonight.”

  He did. Of course he did.

  Dylan thought of Regina braced on the deck of his boat, her chin lifted bravely and her heart in her eyes. “I’m not going to hide or lie about how I feel because you might be threatened by it.”

  What the hell had he been scared of? Why the hell hadn’t he said something then?

  “What good would telling her have done? It wouldn’t have kept her safe. I didn’t keep her safe,” Dylan amended bitterly.

  “You rescued her son.”

  “But I didn’t protect her. She’s not safe. None of us are.”

  Caleb frowned thoughtfully. “Because of Donna Tomah?”

  “There was no taint of demon in her.” Or Dylan would not have let the doctor live, let alone get on the same helicopter that transported Regina.

  Caleb sighed. “Just as well. I’m having enough trouble explaining how two more women got the crap beat out of them on my island. Thank God nobody died.”

  Dylan shot him a hard look. “You cannot blame Regina for defending herself.”

  “I don’t. I’m just telling you how the DA is going to see it.”

  “And how will the DA see it?”

  Caleb gave his brother a level look. “I’m investigating the possibility that an unknown intruder got into the clinic.”

  An intruder. Dylan nodded. It was as good a description of demonic possession as any.

  “Of course, that story will only work if Donna doesn’t tell them what really happened,” Caleb continued.

  “She will not remember.”

  “You think her head injuries—”

  “The demon did not leave her willingly or gently. Its presence may have damaged her mind. Or at least her memory.”

  “You sure it left?” Caleb asked.

  Dylan shrugged. “Once her body lost function, it was of no further use to the demon. Anyway, I did not sense any trace of fire spawn.”

  “So it could be anywhere.”

  “Yes.”

  “Shit,” Caleb said wearily. “I’m still looking for a witness to identify the bastards who snatched Nick.”

  “Whoever it was had a boat,” Dylan offered.

  “Which means it may not have been someone from World’s End at all. Hell.”

  “I will do all I can to ward the island,” Dylan said.

  “Then I guess you’re planning on sticking around.”

  “Yes. No.” Dylan caught the gleam in his brother’s eyes and scowled. “I will not make Regina promises that I can’t keep.”

  That she would not believe. Not after the way he’d failed her.

  Caleb scratched his jaw. “Has she asked for promises?”

  Another sore point.

  “No,” Dylan admitted.

  “Then what’s the problem?”

  The problem, Dylan realized, was that he wanted those promises. Wanted to make a life with her. Wanted to make children with her. And now was a piss poor moment to tell her so.

  “The timing sucks,” he sa
id. “There are too many factors . . . Too many dangers . . .”

  “That’s not necessarily reason to wait. When you know what you have to lose may be the best time to be honest about what you feel. About what you want. Any Army chaplain will tell you he performs more marriages in war time.”

  “And these marriages . . . do they last?” Dylan challenged.

  “If you’re asking me for guarantees, I don’t have any,” Caleb said evenly. “But if you’re asking me if love is worth the risk, any risk, I’d have to say yes.”

  Dylan raised one eyebrow. “Is that what you tell Margred?”

  “That’s what we tell each other. You can get through anything if you have love. If you have trust.”

  “If you have hope,” Dylan said.

  Caleb exhaled slowly, looking at his hands. “She wants a baby,” he confessed.

  Dylan regarded his brother with understanding. Caleb— careful, upright Caleb— would not want to put his wife or a child at risk. “You have my sympathy. Margred is used to getting what she wants.”

  “She—”

  The door swung open. Antonia marched out, holding Nick’s hand.

  Dylan lurched to his feet, his heart banging against his ribs. “Regina?”

  Antonia’s straight gaze met his. Her hard mouth relaxed into a smile. “They’re moving her to the maternity wing.”

  “Then . . .” Dylan swallowed, hardly daring to hope.

  “The doctors want to keep her overnight. For observation.” Antonia ran a hand through her uncompromisingly black hair. “God, I need a smoke.”

  * * *

  “We’re all set.” Antonia leaned over the metal railing to press her lips to Regina’s forehead. Regina closed her eyes, comforted by the familiar tang of tobacco in the midst of all the hospital smells, fear, sweat, and antiseptic.

  “Caleb is taking us back on the boat tonight,” Antonia continued. “I’ll talk to you in the morning after you’ve seen the doctor.”

  Nick stirred in the rocking chair, his bottom lip jutting dangerously. “I don’t want to go. I want to stay with you.”

  Regina’s heart cracked. She was tired. So tired and close to tears. Her head felt empty and her heart too full. She made an effort to summon words, to sound reassuring, but before she could tell Nick that he could stay all night if he wanted, Dylan spoke up from the foot of her bed.

  “Your mom needs her rest.” His voice was firm, his jaw roughened by stubble. Underneath his golden tan, his face was pale with fatigue. “And so do you. Now kiss her good night and get out of here.”

  Regina opened her mouth to tell him it was all right. The child was obviously traumatized. He needed coddling. He needed his mother.

  But to her surprise, Nick uncurled from the chair. “Okay, okay.” He slouched over, leaning his slight weight against the mattress. “Night, mom.”

  He puckered up and delivered a smacking kiss on her cheek.

  Regina sniffed so she wouldn’t start bawling. “Night, kiddo. I’ll call you in the morning.”

  She was very aware of Dylan watching her, his hands in his pockets, as her mother collected her purse, her magazines, and Nick.

  They left.

  Dylan stayed at the foot of her bed, his hooded gaze on her face.

  “You’re good with him,” Regina said.

  He looked so handsome standing there, masculine and lean and as out of place in a hospital room as the rocking chair or the cheerful curtains. The deliberately homey touches of the maternity wing did not hide the bank of beeping, glowing machines by her bed. Just as Dylan’s obvious determination to do the right thing couldn’t disguise his discomfort.

  Her heart swelled a little with love and regret.

  “He’ll miss you,” she said softly.

  Dylan shrugged. “I’ll see him tomorrow.”

  “I meant . . . when you leave.”

  He wandered as far as the window, staring through the blinds at the bay and the night as if he longed to be gone. His shoulders were rigid, his profile shadowed. “I’m not leaving. I’m never leaving you again.”

  Her heart gave a wild leap. For one weak moment, she allowed herself to hope. Let herself yearn.

  She took a careful breath. Steady, Regina. Dylan had already given her more than any other man in her life. He had saved her son. He had come for her when she was hurt and bleeding, held her when she desperately needed his embrace.

  Now she could give him something in return. Something he wanted. Needed.

  His freedom.

  “That’s not necessary,” she said gently.

  His shoulders stiffened. He turned around, his eyes black. “What are you talking about?”

  She raised her chin. “I don’t want you to feel you have to stay with me because I might be pregnant. That pill I took two days ago can take several weeks to work. For you to hang around waiting . . . It’s not fair to you. Or . . . or to me, either.”

  His gaze narrowed. “I’m not staying because you’re pregnant.”

  Her heart thudded. But she knew him. She knew herself. She knew, at last, what she wanted and what she was worth. “Dylan, I love you, but I don’t need you to do me any favors. I don’t want you be with me out of obligation or guilt or—”

  “Responsibility?”

  She hurried on as if he hadn’t spoken, afraid if she stopped she’d lose her courage. “It’s not going to be with us like it was with your parents, me trying to keep you here against your will and you resenting me.”

  “I don’t resent you.” He stepped away from the window, took her hands. “I couldn’t resent you. Regina, I love you.”

  “Oh.” Tears stung the back of her eyes, burned the back of her throat. The temptation to take him at his word, to take advantage of his love, was an arrow in her heart. She swallowed. “I love you, too. I love you for who and what you are. I don’t want you to be anything different. I don’t want you to be anything less.”

  He shook his head impatiently. “You don’t get it. I didn’t understand it myself until tonight. With you I can be more. If I leave you, I leave the best part of myself.” He kissed her fingers, held between his hands. He pressed his lips to her hair and made her tremble. “Every bit of courage and commitment, everything I know of love or loving, my heart, my life, my soul, I owe to you.”

  He kissed her forehead, her eyebrow, her cheek. “Don’t make me leave you,” he murmured. “Don’t make me leave. You’ll rip my heart out.”

  She squeezed her eyes shut, bowing her head over their joined hands. Heard his heart beat, wild and strong.

  And let herself believe.

  Epilogue

  THE NIGHT OF FRANK IVEY’S SIXTY-FIFTH birthday party, Regina accepted a bottle of sparkling cider from a grateful Jane Ivey and poured herself a glass.

  Champagne would have been even better, but she was nine weeks pregnant and she wasn’t drinking anything that wasn’t good for the baby.

  The cider bubbled up and over her fingers. Laughing, she snatched back her hand.

  “Careful,” warned a deep masculine voice behind her.

  Her heart beat faster. She turned, her lips already curving in a smile.

  Dylan, tall, dark, and hot, lounged in the shadows of the picnic shelter, an answering smile in his eyes. “Let me.” He caught her wrist and kissed her wet fingers, making her shiver with desire.

  She chuckled and leaned against him. “What are you doing here?”

  “You need help loading the van.”

  “I have help. Your sister’s here.”

  At the other end of the shelter, Lucy scooped chocolate ice cream for the youngest Ivey grandchild. Competent and unobtrusive, she had everything under control.

  Regina surveyed the kids and grandkids running around the blue-checkered tablecloths, the pitchers jammed with daisies, the laughing, relaxed adults, and sighed with satisfaction. “Nice party.”

  “Beautiful,” Dylan agreed.

  She glanced over her shoulder. He wasn’t l
ooking at the picnic. Her heart soared and sailed into the sky like an escaping birthday balloon.

  He held out his hand. “Walk with me.”