Heart Two Heart (12 page)

Part of me knew that was what my pop was
going to say. I suddenly remembered the conversation on the phone
just before I was captured. He tried to tell me then too and that
was over a month ago. He’d been trying to prepare me for her loss.
I felt tears slip from my eyes and land unchecked against my
shoulders. I’d never gotten a chance to know my eternal heart and
now I never would. I opened my mouth to ask where in Haiti and to
let my pop know that I would come back afterwards when he again put
his hand up in an attempt to silence me. Then, he pulled a hanky
from his pocket and handed it to me before he continued on a voice
that sounded even more gloomy

“I am sorry for your loss Ulric but that’s
not even the worse part. You see um…” He paused and cleared his
throat and again fidgeted his hands in his lap before
continuing.

“Not everything went according to the plan
when we rescued you. There were some complications that were
unforeseen… complications that are going to have a major effect on
the rest of your life.” Pop took a real deep breath before pushing
on with a voice that was laced with sorrow and pain.

“Seraphina agreed to be a decoy. We had
planned on her using pheromones and getting the main bar in a
fight. In her desire to help, she over did the pheromones.” I saw a
tear slip out of my pop’s eye before he continued

“Oh hell, there’s just no easy way to say
this.” Then to my surprise my pop abruptly shot from his chair and
blurted the rest out.

“They hurt her Ulric. They hurt her in ways
that will forever scar her. She’ll never be able to really get over
what they did. Heck your mum and I aren’t sure if she’s ever going
to be okay. The way we found her was bad. Even I’m having
nightmares thinking about what they did to her. Docs haven’t given
us much hope. We had to have her put into a home for her own
safety. She’s with child Ulric and she tried to kill herself
several times already. They think, the only way to save her is if
you’re willing to comingle your essence with hers. Although the
doctors said even that’s no guarantee.”

My animals started growling inside of me with
pure fury at the thought of them using and abusing Seraphina. They
still believed Seraphina belonged to them and was angry that I’d
not been there to protect her. The moment my pop stopped speaking I
knew I would need to try to save Seraphina no matter what it took.
I looked at my pop and said

“Tell me where she is? I’m going to commingle
my essence with hers and try to bring her back to us. She too is my
eternal heart and deserves better than she’s gotten from me. I need
to do everything I can to save her.”

I got the details from my pop and rushed over
to the hospital. I was stopped by a doctor and was hustled into a
private lounge. When I asked questions they said it was important
that the doctor explain several things to me before I went in to
see her. Finally after waiting almost a half hour a doctor came in
and sat opposite of me. I could tell by his scent he was not only
tribe, he too was a skinwalker. He looked at me with sorrow in his
eyes and said

“How much do you know about her
condition?”

I told him what my pop said and he nodded and
made umhm sounds. When I finished he said in what I’d to guess was
his best professional voice

“Well, your fiancé will be okay physically.
Mentally however is a different story. As you may or may not be
aware of, she lost her eye and her left leg, these body parts will
not regenerate even for us skinwalkers. She will also need to live
with the colostomy bag for the rest of her life. The scar damage to
her vaginal canal and colon cannot be repaired. When the time comes
we will take the baby via C-section.

I hate to be the one to tell you this but
normal sexual relations will no longer be possible for your fiancé.
The two of you will need to find creative ways to express your love
for each other. Honestly, I have never seen anyone survive this
kind of attack. Part of me wants’ to say that she was lucky but
another part of me thinks it would have been a kinder softer way
had she not survived. It's my guess that you’ve come here to
commingle your essence with her so that she might fight for her
life I want to urge you to reconsider.

Seraphina will struggle forever with what was
done to her. She may fight to stay with you if you commingle your
essence with her, but, she and her fox will never really be
mentally fine. It would be better if you allow us to keep her
restrained until she is ready to have the baby. Then we can release
her and let nature take its course.”

The doctor waited for his statement to
penetrate before he cleared his throat and continued

“Let me take you to her room. You will have
plenty of privacy to do whatever it is you believe us best. No
matter what or who comes out of the room you have the tribe behind
you.”

Even after the doctor told me what to expect
when they opened the door to room Seraphina’s room I was still
shocked when I looked at her. The sight of her damaged body caused
a ripple of pain to shoot through me hard enough to knock me to my
knees. My beautiful Seraphina had shackles on both wrists and her
one undamaged leg. The stump leg had a strap running across it that
I could only hope was for medical reasons. I took in the sight of
her empty eye socket, her cleanly shaved head and felt vomit in the
back of my throat.

I continued to look at her and realised the
eye she had left shone with a kind of insanity. Her lips were
peeled and showed me an almost completely toothless mouth. I could
also see the various tubes and needles hanging out of her arms,
legs and one even coming from an incision in her stomach. The
amount of pain and horror Seraphina must have endured floored me. I
took a deep breath and moved closer to the bed.

She looked up at me and growled. I could see
her body shaking and I know she was desperately trying to shift
into her fox. Her body was swinging from side to side and the bed
was bouncing from the force of her movement. She looked insane and
dangerous. I knew it was nothing more than a defense mechanism. I
leaned down so that my lips were touching her ear and whispered to
her

“I love you Seraphina. I am so sorry this
happened. This is my fault. We should have married in Vegas and
avoided all of this. I will never let anyone or anything harm you
again. You have my word as your eternal heart.”

Then I tore open my wrist and pushed my blood
into her mouth. I could hear her heart beating erratically and her
breathing was ragged and irregular. Once my blood filled her mouth
and she was forced to swallow she immediately began to calm. While
she was distracted I bit down on her shoulder and drank her blood
while leaving my mark. The moment our blood commingled so did our
essence. I could tell Seraphina felt complete and had become still
and almost serene. Our bond slipped easily into place and I knew
immediately that my animals and Seraphina had been right all along.
Seraphina was my eternal heart.

Our emotions flared as we become one. I
pulled away once I finished my mark and looked into her eyes. She
appeared almost coherent for a moment before her eyes clouded over
and closed. I could hear her heart beating steadily and assumed she
had slipped into a deep sleep. I chalked it up to a drain of
emotions from the past few days and from the commingling. I felt
tears slide down my face as I removed the shackles from her wrists
and ankles and prepared to take my eternal heart home.

I could hear Gaho on the phone with my
eternal heart and I wished that I too could say something. I’m not
sure what I would say I guess I would have to start with some kind
of lame apology. It was after all it was one hundred percent my
fault. I couldn’t hear Ulric’s voice through the phone but I could
tell that the conversation wasn’t going as Gaho had hoped. She was
in the process of explaining the different options. I watched as
she walked farther away so that I couldn’t even hear her side of
the conversation. I figured it was probably because she wanted to
tell him the back-up plan.

They think I don’t know, but I’ve known about
the backup plan that they were desperately trying to keep secret
from me almost as long as they’ve been coming here. I’m not sure
how much time had passed since the first time Pau had come back
with Gaho firmly in tow but the two of them continued to come back
day after day. I was able to communicate with Gaho and that made
things so much easier. In some ways despite the fact that I was
stuck in a marble statue the past few days were the best I’d in
many years.

Being with Gaho and Pau reminded me of the
years we spent together as a family after the war. I’d been so
bitter and allowed good times with good family to pass me by
without ever once just appreciating what I did have. I knew that
Pau, Gaho and even Waylon were all working very hard at finding a
solution to my problem. Each and every one of them had their own
set of complications and issues that needed to be worked out. I
knew the details of each and every one and thought that pigs would
fly before any of their plans came to fruition.

The back-up plan was basically setting my
heart free and allowing me to pass from this world to the next. The
plan seemed to scare the bejesus out of Pau and Gaho but to some
extent it seemed the most plausible and least complicated of all
the plans. I knew Gaho and Pau would exhaust every possibility
before agreeing to set me free. They would stop at nothing to chase
down every possibility. They would turn over every rock and shake
every tree before shifting to the back-up.

Pau’s plan focused around getting my body
back and restoring me to my rightful place. He wanted to use the
same Vaettir magic that stole my body in the first place. Making it
happen however seemed like insurmountable odds. Too many things
would need to fall into place. First, they would need to be able to
capture and contain my body. That might sound easy to achieve
however; there is a very clever and also very Vaettir in residence,
which also seems to have the ability to perform big time magic that
should be impossible.

Pau has applied pressure and called in favors
to every one of his known allies. He has them on high alert to find
and capture my body. He initially asked favors from some of his
skinwalker friends as well then changed his mind since the
skinwalkers tended to attack first and ask questions later. Despite
hundreds of strong, smart people searching for her she continued to
keep them all guessing at every turn. Each time someone thought
they had her trapped she would pull a new rabbit from the hat.
Truth be told I almost admired the fucking bitch. She proved to be
more elusive than the infamous unicorns.

Not that her escaping capture is our biggest
problem. Even if they grabbed her today we don’t have the actual
spell. When she bolted with my body she also took her spell with
her. All we have is a vague memory of the spell Pau claims he saw
performed once while he was still in the claws of the Nazi’s. He
honestly believes he could recreate it if given the chance. No one
else however including me has his level of confidence. We are
praying that Amada will have the spell in her possession when we
catch her.

If she does then we have the biggest of all
our problems. How we are going to get her to agree to vacate my
body. The entire spell is predicated on her giving her permission
for the spell. Amada can’t possibly be fooled. Pau’s answer of
course is mind control and or torture. He thinks he is strong
enough to make her do anything he wants. Failing that, he believes
even a small amount of physical pain will make her cave. Waylon and
Gaho aren’t nearly as confident.

They think the Vaettir will be resistant to
his mind control and strong enough to push through any pain we’d be
willing to commit. She’s too smart not to realize the torture would
be limited to things that wouldn’t create permanent damage. She has
my body and will know that I want it back in perfect condition
therefore has the advantage. I disagree and pointed out our best
chance of getting her agreement was if we could offer her a
suitable alternative. Perhaps if we were able to fool another
chupacabra into vacating his or her own body Amada might choose
theirs instead. That however created its’ very own list of issues
that we would need to overcome.

Issue one, who would be willing to trick a
fellow chupacabra out of their body? None of the three people
currently in the crappy burned down warehouse with me. I would, but
only Gaho can see or hear me. Issue two, even if we could find a
chupacabra willing to trick his fellow chupacabra out of a body
which chupacabra would we trick? Issue three, let’s say we all lose
our conscience and manage to steal a suitable body for the Vaettir
what’s to stop us from cutting off its head as soon as we finish
the spell? Nothing and that’s what the darn Vaettir is going to
think. Which brings us back to the insurmountable problem of
getting her agreement?

Bottom line, I agree with Gaho and Waylon
that Pau’s ideas of getting Amada to agree are slated for failure
and no one is even willing to try my idea. Not that I think any of
their plans or even mine will really work. Gaho’s is with Pau right
up to getting Amada to agree. She has her own ideas of how to get
her out of my body. If she can actually find the spell she needs I
think her plan has a little more merit than Pau’s.

Basically, Gaho’s idea picks up once we have
Amada trapped. From there Gaho recommends we utilize a shaman
skinwalker spell that would trap Amada’s consciousness. The major
issue is Waylon can’t get access to the details of the spell.
According to Gaho, before the war, she could recall a female in the
camp that performed the spell. Gaho explained it as something
similar to the genie in the bottle concept. It basically forces a
person’s essence to attach to an inanimate object, then when you
destroy the object the person essence dies with it. In this case,
leaving a perfectly healthy body behind for me to re-inhabit. That
however is where the problem comes in. No one has any idea how to
get me back in there without the Vaettir spell.