Cassie made a sound of despair, the nurses echoed it, and Jack couldn't stand it. He jerked his elbows back, breaking Ben's grip. It wasn't hard to do. Jack caught Hugh on the shoulder and muttered a Gaelic prayer for good fortune before he pushed into the room.
Cass, you all right?
She answered hastily,
Oh Jack, it's so bad. I don't know what I can do, they waited so long to get help.
Tell me what you need.
A miracle.
Fresh out.
A modern hospital.
Sorry.
She swore, was occupied for a few minutes, then shouted,
Damn it, can't you get Kyros?
Working on it.
Jack tried to tune out the sounds in the room, the chorus of stricken thoughts laced with words like
perforation, hemorrhage, fracture, obstruction.
Now that Neva hardly made a sound, the word was
shock.
He had never been grateful to be blinded before. The activity in the room slowed to a resigned halt, it seemed only Cassie thought there was any hope.
Jack bowed his head as he heard Hugh's muffled sobbing into the mattress.
Cassie shouted for Tom and sent him racing off on an errand. She called Hugh's name until she got his attention. The third time he finally understood what she asked, “What's your blood type?”
Silence. He had no idea. Jack hated to tell her, but the MacGunns didn't see the inside of a hospital. They trained their own in nursing, and it had been adequate, or not, for a few dozen generations. She wouldn't understand the way his clan accepted death. It wasn't a philosophy in style with modern technology. Other people prolonged their lives unnaturally, had no faith in the afterlife. He believed, yet the thought of himself in Hugh's place, weeping his heart out in farewell didn't sit well. He already knew he didn't have the strength for it.
Jack could make out Cassie's silhouette as she bent over the foot of the bed. His vision was slowly returning.
Jack, I need your help.
Anything.
Once Tom comes back with needles and tubing, I'm going to improvise a blood transfusion. You're O-neg, so you're it. Tom is probably a compatible donor, but I can't risk it.
Sure.
He made his way carefully to the bed, knelt, and rested his arm palm-up on the mattress. He remembered Cassie saying once his blood was âvampire crack.' She'd typed a sample just for kicks when she was in med school. Not only was he the universally compatible type O-negative, but she said he had âfunky stuff' in his blood, supercharged with nutrients, antibodies, and blah, blah, blah. He'd said, “Well, duh,” and she'd been upset he didn't share her zeal. Now, he was glad.
“Neva? Neva!” Cassie patted her cheeks, her voice betraying anxiety. “Neva, honey. Stay with me. You hang on, okay?”
No response, and her breath was deathly shallow, her pulse even weaker.
Hugh metered his breath and stroked his wife's hair, doing far better than Jack would in his place.
Tom stumbled through the door, his arms full of equipment. Kyros and Ben came after him, with Ben yelling as he realized what was going on. Tom subdued him, and Jack silently approved. He heard Tom swear in a voice not yet as low as it would be in a year or two, “Take another step, say another word, and I will take you down, uncle.”
“Kyros, if I can control the hemorrhaging, can you do a caesarean? The baby is lodged against the pelvic bone â ” and then she and Kyros dove into medical terminology that sounded like a foreign language. They spoke in low, harried voices, their lightning-fast fingers fiddling with the equipment.
There was some confusion with the supplies. Tom had brought one thing but missed another, brought the wrong type of whatever. Cassie threw down a plastic package and cursed, “Bloody hell! Do you people not even own a pair of latex gloves?”
Kyros calmed her, and with more rushing around, they got to work. Jack held still, sorry his bulk was in the way. Finally a cold cotton pad whisked over his arm followed by Cassie's not-so-gentle prick with the needle on the inside of his elbow. She took his other hand and ordered,
Hold it in, at this angle. Don't let the force of your pulse blow the needle out. These people already want to burn me at the stake.
Cassie left him and bent over Neva.
You spray this room with blood, and Hugh will lose it.
Not the time for practical jokes, got it.
Jack could finally see in grayscale, and color slowly leached back into his vision. He wished it hadn't, because now he couldn't look anywhere and avoid blood-soaked linen. It looked like a battlefield hospital in here.
Jack heard Kyros explaining to Hugh what was about to happen, warning him to keep cool so they could concentrate. Tom stood guard at the door, feet spread and arms crossed over his chest. The boy had grown up tonight. His jaw locked tight, Jack recognized it as an effort not to burst into tears.
Tom, you're doing fine, lad. It'll be over soon.
Tom startled at the intrusion then nodded at Jack. He relaxed a bit.
Kyros and Cassie called back and forth to each other, a scene full of serious terminology and quiet arguments right out of an emergency room T.V. drama. Jack concentrated on keeping the needle in his arm. He had one job, he'd better not screw it up. But Cassie wasn't kidding, each throb of his pulse worked to eject the needle.
Neva roused, moaning and thrashing her head.
Cassie gasped in frustration. “Hugh, hold her still!”
There was a lot of shouting in frantic voices, the sound like nails on a chalkboard to his mind. Jack laid his head on the mattress. He couldn't take much more of this. Fast forward eight months â¦
A gurgle, then the shrill treble cry of a baby. Shouts of joy went up in the room.
“A fine strong lad!”
“Well done, Hugh!”
That one seemed odd.
“Gum bi a' bheatha a' frasadh ort, a naoinein bhig, an fhallaineachd, an ionracas, an sonas mar thiodhlacan.”
A Gaelic blessing on the baby from Ben.
As far as his family was concerned: success. But Jack kept his head down; he had no business spreading fear and cowardice. He could feel Neva's weak connection, heard every time her heart stuttered. Her thoughts grew fainter as the fight drained from her.
Once the baby was born, the rest of the surgery finished quickly. Kyros and Cassie had been silent too long. Jack hadn't even noticed Lyssa there. When had she come in? She was a decent healer too, so between the three of them couldn't they work a little magic? The men lifted Neva into another bed, Jack followed, taking care with the makeshift I.V.
Jack, you doing okay?
Fine.
Feeling light-headed or â
Cassie, just do your thing.
Jack drifted in a trance, loathing the slow ticking of the seconds. People moved around the room in a blur. Their words sounded underwater. He hardly noticed when he slipped into the cool relief of blackness.
⢠⢠â¢
“Would you quit staring at me? I'm not going to drop dead. What's wrong with you?”
“I can't hate you now, Sassenach. That's what's wrong with me.”
Cassie arched a brow and stared at Ben like he was yesterday's fish. It would be a long four hours if it went like this. Cassie took a shift monitoring Neva's recovery and Kyros needed Jack on patrol, so he sicced Ben on her. As if Cassie needed a guard, berserker or not. Really, if the enemy tried something, she'd fry him. No damsel in distress here.
Grandda sat in the window seat, rocking the baby and cooing in a soothing gravelly voice, ignoring the antics of his grandchildren.
“Honestly, Ben, I couldn't care less whether you loathe or adore me.” She leaned closer for dramatic effect. “I've been a bitch all my life, and I kinda like it that way.”
She lifted Neva's wrist to take her pulse and paused the thirty seconds it took to get an accurate reading. Normal-ish. Loads better than yesterday. Jack's blood had saved her, as much as the emergency caesarean. It had kept her heart going when she teetered on the verge of multi-organ system failure. Otherwise, Neva would be dead, no doubt about it.
“What sticks in my craw is the way you treat Jack. Pretty lousy, Ben.”
“I have the right.”
“You like to toss around that blood-feud vibe. Why don't you just tell me what Jack did that was so awful?”
“It's not your business.”
“True, but we have four hours. Let's play âDirty Laundry.' I ask you a question and you have to answer truthfully, then I answer one from you.”
Ben leaned back and looked her over with hooded eyes, a sexually-charged assessment. As if that could bother her â she'd been getting the hungry once-over from men since she was fourteen. She let him look, wearing an expression of boredom. She knew all Ben's tricks: intimidation, establishing dominance, blah, blah, blah. She was a first-class brat. None of it worked on her.
Finally, Ben said, “Fair enough. You first. If you're a valkyrie, why did ye let Jack knock you up? You could have defended yourself.”
Oh yes, a fun game. Cassie smiled halfway and lowered her voice, “You assume I needed rescuing. I jumped Jack, Ben. Not the other way around. Chew on that.”
Cassie saw Grandda's shocked expression. “Sorry, Grandda.” He waved her off and snuggled the baby on his neck, closing his eyes in bliss. She hoped he would hold her baby that way.
“Nasty surprise finding out you're up the duff with just one shag, eh?”
Grandda snapped at Ben to mind his tongue.
“That's two questions. My turn.” She paused to word it so he couldn't talk his way out. “What happened that made you hate Jack?”
“He stole my wife, and then he killed her.”
Grandda caught her eye. Ever so slightly, he shook his head.
“That's a serious accusation. Are you certain?”
“That's two questions,” Ben snapped. “Did you know the baby will kill you? Before?”
“Yes, I did. And what proof do you have that Jack committed those crimes?”
“I caught them together. And he brought her bloody corpse back in his arms, covered with blood himself.” Ben cocked his chin at her. “Why do the SEALs pretty well bow down at your feet?”
“They're my friends. I happened to pull my own weight on an operation. I earned the respect.” Cassie asked casually, “Where did you go, when you disappeared earlier this week?”
“Doing my own recon.”
“Find anything?”
“Yes.” His eyes flashed green like Jack's, and he leaned forward. “First tell me if you like it from behind.”
“The harder the better,” she baited, just to prove he couldn't rattle her. “I want your intel.”
Ben whistled. “Sounds like foreplay, the way you say it.”
“Sorry, I'm not into the revenge-shag-thing. What did you find?”
“Enemy camp. Ten, maybe eleven klicks downriver in the cave behind the old Roman ruin, beyond those south hills.”
“See any boats?”
“None. There is a man in charge, Arabic-looking. He swims like a fish. He goes in the water and doesn't come up for minutes on end.”
Cassie scoffed, incredulous. “That's how he's covered his trail. We've been watching for boats, for river ambushes, but it's just one man in the water. That's how he got into the base at Coronado, from the beach.” She rubbed her eyes, feeling eighty years old. “Did you see Magnus or Henry?”
“No, but they could be inside the cave.”
“How many troops?”
“Under three dozen. But professional.”
Cassie tried to appear casual and occupied herself with Neva's bedding so Grandda wouldn't know she switched to her mental voice.
Could you take me there? Don't freak out. Just think your answer in words, and I can hear it.
Bloody hell.
You're getting the hang of it.
Weird. Uh, yeah, I could. But why?
You're going to love this. Turns out Henry overheard this Mr. X say he meant to kidnap me. That's what this is all about. Don't know about you, but I'm finished with letting this bastard threaten my family.
Whoa. So you want to turn yourself in?
Think of it as the ultimate revenge.
Her idea tempted him, mostly because he wanted the threat to the clan removed. She said out loud, “Did you tell the others what you saw?”
“No. It's not like they consult me.”
She said for Grandda's benefit, “I think you should mention it to Kyros. Let him decide what to do about it.”
Don't tell anyone, Ben. And we have to act fast. Tonight.
They agreed on a time and place, then Cassie spent the rest of the time plotting how to get away from Jack. She thought of drugs, blunt-force trauma and bondage. She studied her rings, trying to stuff the guilt under her conscience so she could think. Whatever she did, it would have to be thorough. And Jack would never forgive her.
She was going to be bait.
⢠⢠â¢
“So, Ben tells me you cheated with his wife, then killed her.”
Jack startled so violently he smacked his head on the shower nozzle, the old-fashioned electric heated kind which shocked him as he touched it. He cursed and staggered, swallowing water as he flailed. She laughed, and he saw red. He shut off the water, threw back the curtain, and seriously contemplated violence for a dangerous moment.
“You have no idea what you're talking about. Neither does he.” Jack stormed past her without bothering to take a towel.
“I figured as much. Grandda seemed to agree that's not the whole story.”
“Then you're the only two who think so.”