Dark Hope (37 page)

I still couldn’t open my eyes, so I tried to feel my way around to make out where I was. When I shifted, though, it felt as if rough sandpaper was scraping the skin off my bones, and I let out an involuntary moan.

“She’s breaking through the morphine,” I heard someone say.

“Then increase her drip. I don’t want her to feel anything,” Michael said tersely.

“There’s only so much we can give her.”

“As soon as you can, then.”

“Michael?” I managed to croak.

I felt a rustle at my side, sensed him bending low near my face. “I’m right here, Hope.”

“It hurts.”

He didn’t bother to answer me. Instead he spoke angrily to whoever was with him. “She’s in pain. Do the drip now!”

There was a rush and a clatter. Then, I felt a rush of cool relief spreading through my body. The excruciating pain gave way to numbness as I drifted back into sleep, but not before wondering what on earth had happened to me.

It seemed like a long time had passed before I sensed that I was floating. The cool water of a lake lapped at my limbs, cradled and cushioned me as I drifted along. I sailed silently along, the sun giving way to the moon and stars above me, the soft lapping of the water steering me as if by magic, never stopping, taking me further away from the pain. I didn’t want it to stop. I wanted to lose myself in the water, hide in the safety of its depths, but from somewhere on the shore I could hear the whispers, whispers that called me back and demanded my attention.

“All due respect, but she would be much better off in a hospital.” I heard a deep sigh and a rustle of papers. “She would have better supervision, and if something went wrong—”

“We can’t bring her to a hospital, Pete, and you know it,” a second unfamiliar voice cut in. “This is below the radar. No records. No reports.”

“But she’s just a kid.”

“The casino has been very good to you, Pete.” The man’s voice was rising, his anger barely contained. “But if you want to back out of our agreement, I can get the boss on the phone—”

“No!” Pete sounded nervous as he yelped the word. “No,” he repeated in a whisper. “I’m still in. I guess I just never expected
to see something like this. I mean, my God. What kind of animal does this to someone?”

“He didn’t do it. Remember, he said it was an accident.”

“Yeah, right,” Pete said bitterly. “Some accident. He can’t even tell us how it happened. There’s no sign of anything—no fire, no chemicals. Who takes the time to clean things up when they are dealing with an ‘accident’?”

What were they talking about? Where was I? I tried to open my eyes, but they were too heavy.

“You’ll see worse before you’re done. Trust me. For now, just focus on the job.” There was a brief pause before he continued. When he spoke again, he seemed to be facing away from me, his voice louder as if to project out into a vast space. “Mr. Carmichael, we’ll keep a nurse on duty at all times. Plan on a shift change in a few hours. You don’t need to worry about any of them; they are all on the same little arrangement as Pete here.”

I heard zippers, the sounds of things being put away. Pete began speaking in a carefully neutral tone. “It looks a lot worse than it is. Her burns are first- and second-degree burns. They’ll be painful for a while—oddly enough, second-degree burns are notorious for the pain, and way worse than third-degree burns—but the morphine will help her through the worst of it. When the pain seems to have subsided, you can switch her to this megadose of ibuprofen. Keep her wrapped in these wet sheets until the new nurse comes. She’ll be ready for some exposure to air then. No need to bandage her unless those blisters start to break open. If they do, keep her covered with this ointment. Infection is the biggest thing you need to worry about. Barring that, she should be ready to be up and about within twenty-four hours. It won’t be pretty, and she’ll still be in pain, but she should be mobile.”

There was a slight pause, filled by the sound of a big zipper
closing something shut. Pete continued. “But then, you don’t need to worry about any of that. The nurses will know what to do.”

“How long will it take for her to heal?” a voice I recognized pressed the doctor.

“She’s lucky. The burns are intermittent across her torso and arms, and not too deep. She could be forming a new layer of skin in a few days. From there, it could take anywhere from two to five weeks longer for her to completely heal, barring any complications. It will take much longer than that, of course, for her skin to look the way it used to. If it ever does.”

“Dad?” I whimpered, finally realizing to whom the familiar voice belonged. How did he get here? In the fog of medication, the idea that I was hearing Michael, posing as my father, never occurred to me. Instead, when I heard my father’s voice I instinctively wanted him to protect me, just like he had when I was a little girl. I tried to reach out but my arms were weighted down, seemingly tethered to something.

“Time for a top off,” Pete said, tersely. Someone approached me, blocking whatever light was shining on my face, and fiddled with something. And then I was floating away, the lake pulling me back into her depths as a wave of coolness seeped into my bones.

The next time I woke up was not so peaceful. Searing, burning pain jolted me from sleep. My eyes flew open, but there was something obstructing my vision. I flailed uselessly at my face, unable to feel anything but the agony shooting through me. I hit something hard to my right and let out a howl.

“Let me out of here! Dad!” He was here, somewhere. “Dad, I can’t see!”

Strong hands grabbed me, only making the pain worse. “Calm down, sweetie,” said a woman’s voice. “You won’t do yourself any good moving around like this. You need to rest.” I struggled against
the woman, but her grip on me was strong. “Just lay down and I will help you to see,” she soothed. “It’s just a bandage blocking your eyes, that’s all.”

I could feel hot tears rolling down my face. Each one stung, leaving a tiny trail of pain behind it.

“I want my dad,” I blubbered, finally giving in and sagging against her.

“Shhhh. Poor thing. So confused. Of course you mean your uncle. You just stay right here and I’ll go get Mr. Carmichael for you. But first close your eyes and I’ll take this gauze off.”

She eased me back against some pillows. Everything that touched my skin seemed scratchy. I moved as if to scratch my arm, but a firm hand stopped me. “Don’t touch anything. And don’t move that arm. You’re attached to an IV.”

I sagged back into the pillows. The hazy light suddenly gave way to full bright, and I had to blink.

“There,” the nurse said, rolling up a strip of gauze in her hand. “Better, no?” She smiled at me, her plump cheeks rosy and her eyes kind. “Are you thirsty?”

I hadn’t realized it, but my throat was parched. I nodded, and she handed me a plastic cup from a little table that was pulled up and over the bed in which I was lying. I gulped the cold water down, draining the glass and gasping for air when I was finished.

The nurse glanced at the bedside clock. Four o’clock, it read.

“I’ll go get Mr. Carmichael. He wanted to be informed the instant you woke up. Maybe after that we can see about getting you some more medicine.”

She bustled away. My eyes trailed after her as she closed the door behind her. I looked down, trying to understand why I was in so much pain. My arms and hands were wrapped in bandages. I reached up to my face, trying to touch it with the one finger that
poked through the gauze, only to feel more wrappings. I prodded them and winced. Whatever was going on under the bandages wasn’t good.

I looked to the side, where a long tube led to a hanging IV machine. Beyond it I recognized the distinctive black and white décor of the hotel room.

The hotel room.

I was in Vegas. And then it all came rushing back to me.

I wasn’t here with my dad. I was here with Michael, and something had gone terribly wrong last night.

The quiet click of the door closing snapped me to attention. I closed my eyes.

“Are we alone?” I asked, my voice hoarse.

“Yes.” It was my father’s voice I heard. If I opened my eyes, I would see my father standing there. But he was not the man I needed to see.

“I don’t want you to be in here looking like him. I want to see you. The you from last night.”

“It’s not safe,” he protested. “The nurse—”

“Then lock the door,” I answered. “Please, Michael. I need to see you.”

I heard him turn the deadbolt in the door.

“I’m going to stay over here,” he said quietly from across the room, and I let out my breath, relieved to hear his
real
voice, relieved that he’d transformed himself back.

You know that he doesn’t have a real voice, don’t you
?

I smiled, and then winced at the pain of it, when I heard Henri’s voice in my head. He always disappears for the trouble, but somehow he always makes it back in time to gloat during the aftermath.

“Come closer to me,” I said, trying to ignore the shooting pains in my face as I spoke. “It hurts for me to talk.”

In an instant I felt him at my side.

“How long have I been here?”

“Overnight. Sixteen, maybe eighteen hours now.”

“What happened?” An odd sense of calm had settled over me. The pain had finally forced me into a Zen-like place, and right now nothing seemed to matter but the truth. “Please. I need to know.” I opened my eyes and stared at him blankly, afraid to show any emotion at all.

His face was inscrutable. His jaw was set in a hard edge.

“What do you remember?” His eyes probed me as if looking into my soul. I let my eyelids flutter shut, trying to block out the memory of his touch, his kiss, and the spine-shattering pain that had come out of nowhere.

“Nothing,” I said, opening my eyes to fix him in a cool stare.

“Nothing,” he echoed with disbelief. Then he sighed and squared his shoulders, raising his head to look out the window. “I—lost control. My spirit turned too bright.”

“I don’t understand,” I said.

He eased himself onto the bed and picked up one of my bandaged hands, holding it like a piece of delicate crystal. He peered at me intently, as if willing me to pay attention. “Remember when I explained to you who I am? That morning in your room back in Dunwoody?”

“Yes, of course,” I answered, puzzled as to why he would bring that up now.

“I told you that angels are different from humans in a few very important ways.”

“Like the pain when you don’t follow God’s will.”

He nodded slowly. “Yes, like that. Do you remember the other way?” He looked away to the window again.

I racked my brain. “No, I don’t. But I don’t see what that has to do with what happened.”

“It’s at the heart of it,” he said, his fist clenching as he turned to face me. His face was twisted into a bitter smile. “Remember, I told you we angels can’t create. It would be more accurate to say that we can’t procreate.”

I looked at him for what seemed like a long time before what he was saying dawned on me. I froze in my bed, my mind unable to hold back the images of last night.

“I don’t need to know about that,” I said emphatically, my words rushing out of me in embarrassment as I pulled my hand away from his, grimacing with the sting of it.

“Oh, but you do,” he said softly. “It’s very important, Hope.”

I squirmed under his gaze. “I don’t want to talk about this.”

“Hope.”

I shook my head again, bringing my hands to my ears like the monkey that could hear no evil, ignoring the pain that stabbed through my body.

“Hope, we have to have this conversation. You can’t pretend that nothing is going on here any more than I can.”

“But nothing
is
going on,” I whispered, screwing my eyes shut.

“Not because I don’t want there to be anything.”

I let his words hang in the silence.

“Hope,” he said again, a note of exasperation creeping into his voice. “Hope, please, look at me.”

When I didn’t say anything, he simply sighed and continued.

“When I take human form, I am truly human. With every human urge, Hope.” I felt his fingers on my chin as he turned up
my face to look into my eyes. “Every one. What I felt last night was very real. It still is.” His fingers grazed my chin, softly, and I shuddered.

I tried to turn my face away, but he held his grip so that I couldn’t look away. I fixed him with the blankest stare I could manage, but he looked so profoundly sad that it took my breath away. I couldn’t pretend I didn’t notice, didn’t care.

“I shouldn’t have acted on my feelings. Had we not been able to stop, I would have destroyed you. Literally.”

My mind refused to accept what he was saying. “But what about the stories of the Nephilim?” I asked.

“Nephilim are childish legends,” he said softly, letting his hand fall away from my face. He absentmindedly fingered the bedspread as he continued speaking. “God ensured that it is impossible. My true nature, Hope—my angel nature—is spirit and fire. The Fire of God. It is uncontrollable. And it grows stronger with emotion. When that emotion is directed at worshipping God, it is a beautiful thing. But if it were directed in love toward a human, in the course of passion—well, it would be too intense. It would consume the other in flame. Last night, when you said just one kiss, I thought that it would be safe enough, that I might be able to escape it or even control it in my human form. But I was wrong.”

I stared at him, unable to speak. The waves of heat that coursed from his fingers through my body convinced me it was true more than did the bandages covering my wounds. Still, I clung to any shred of hope.

“How do you know?” I demanded. “How can you be sure?”

He snorted and gestured about me, letting one finger trace the line of bandages wrapped around my arm. “Just look at you. This is evidence enough.”

“It could have been something else.” My chin raised an inch, defying him to prove me wrong.

A rueful smile flitted across his face. “Even injured, you are stubborn and idealistic, aren’t you?”

Gently, he released my arm and looked at me with wary eyes. “You know the story of Lot’s wife, looking back on Sodom and turning into a pillar of salt?” Michael continued.