Claimed, page 34
“I love you, too, Daniel.”
In the quiet that followed, the silence was broken only by the subtle beeping of monitors, but the air was warm and peaceful—and not because of the morphine drip he was on. He was just so happy to stare at her—because with every breath she took, and expression she made, and shift of her body… he was re-assuring himself that she was alive.
And holy shit, so was he.
“You saved my life.” He smiled a little. “Susi. Finnish for ‘wolf.’ ”
“Yes. My grandfather.”
He took a deep breath and rode a surge of strength that came from somewhere deep inside of him.
“I work for the government, Lydia. For a shadow agency that protects the genetic composition and integrity of the Homo sapiens species. It was established as the result of experiments being conducted in the seventies and eighties. I came here to stop what—well, what C.P. Phalen is doing. Kind of ironic where I ended up, huh. And yes, I know all about this lab and her clinic.”
He coughed a little, and as her face paled, he swiped his hand through the air. “Don’t worry. This isn’t the first time I’ve been operated on. I’ll come through this—although it looks like I owe that woman with the white hair a big debt.”
“So you’re a government agent?”
“Eastwind was right. Daniel Joseph is not my real name, but I’ve been him for so long, it’s my name now. And I did know what your last name meant—although I thought the latter was just a cute coincidence. “He took a deep breath and tried not to give in to the coughing fit that was just under his surface. “Someday, will you tell me? Your whole story?”
It was a while before she answered. “Yes. Someday I will.”
“I like the sound of that.” As she glanced over again, he smiled. “Someday means we have a future.”
The tears that came to her eyes put a stake in his heart. “What. What’s wrong?”
At the sight of her crying again, he knew that even morphine wasn’t going to help with the ache that flared behind his sternum. He didn’t want her ever to be upset.
And then he guessed what might be wrong.
“Look,” he said, “if you think things aren’t going to work out because of… what I saw… I’ll do whatever it takes. I’ll swear to whatever I need to swear to. You have to believe, your secret is safe with me, and I will always protect you.”
Fuck, and then there were the others in the Federal Bureau of Genetics.
Who were going to be after him for not blowing up C.P. Phalen’s lab.
Who were going to be after Lydia for the same reason.
The implications of the reality they were both in were going through his mind as a look of incredible sadness changed the color of Lydia’s eyes.
A stillness came over him.
“It’s not any of that, is it,” he said in a low voice.
The way she slowly shook her head back and forth chilled him to the bone.
“What did they find,” he asked in a dead tone. “When they opened me up, what did they find?”
* * *
He knew, Lydia thought.
As she sat on the side of Daniel’s hospital bed, and tried not to break down completely, she had a feeling he was not going to be surprised.
Who’d have thought that her being a wolven half-breed was the least shocking thing they’d have to deal with?
“Why don’t I go get the doctor,” she said.
When she went to stand up, he grabbed her arm with a surprisingly strong hold. “No. I want to hear it from you.”
As she hesitated, he whispered, “I’m scared, Lydia.”
Easing back down on the hospital bed, she took both his hands. In a choked voice, she said, “I love you. I want to tell you that again before…”
His lopsided smile was heartbreaking. “Because I’m not going to hear anything after you lay it on me, huh. Well, I’m glad to hear the words.” His eyes traveled around her face. “Do you remember when you once asked me why I stayed? What the word was?”
When she nodded, he squeezed her hand. “It’s love. That’s why I stayed. I think I fell in love with you from the moment I first saw you in person.”
“Me, too.” She let out a soft sob. “I knew when I saw you… nothing was going to be the same again.”
Daniel winked. “Even if I don’t have a sense of humor?”
“I still think you’re blind to your potential in that department.”
“So let’s spend the next fifty years arguing about it, sound good? Great. Let’s book it.”
Lydia’s face fell, and she couldn’t hide it from him. Then again, she wanted to be honest with him. She had to be.
Daniel took a deep breath. “Okay, spit it out. Just let it fly, whatever it is, we’ll figure something out. Although given that I need to quit my job, I’m going to lose my health benefits so…”
As his voice drifted off, she felt a tear slip out of her eye. Brushing it off with impatience, she wanted to be strong. Had to be.
“It’s your lungs, Daniel.”
He put a hand lightly on his chest, on top of the white surgical bindings. “I have pneumonia?”
When she shook her head slowly, he cursed. Looked away. Cursed again.
“Sonofabitch. That fucking cough.”
“It’s in your liver, too, Daniel.”
As he closed his eyes, he went quiet for a moment. And then his lids popped open and he looked at the ceiling and he nodded.
“I started coughing blood maybe six months ago. I powered through it, told myself it wasn’t a big deal because it wasn’t an all-the-time kind of thing. And I’ve been fucking exhausted and nauseous. Losing weight. I just thought it was… well, now I know what it is.”
“I’m so sorry.” She stroked his arm. “I don’t… it’s just what you said. We’ll handle it together, okay? We can handle it together.”
The silence became so loud in the room, it felt like a scream. Or maybe that was the sound in her head, the howling pain at the unfairness of it all supersonic in its volume.
To have met the love of her life, who knew the impossible truth about her and still accepted her… only to lose him before they began? Come on, destiny.
“I need to know more,” he said finally. “I want to know what kind and… everything. Maybe we’ll get a miracle. Or good news or…”
“That’s right.” Lydia nodded and all but crawled onto his chest. “That’s what we’re going to hope for. That’s what I’m going to pray for. And you’re going to do the same.”
She reached up to the nape of her neck. “Here. Take my grandfather’s St. Christopher medal. You’re going to wear it.”
When he struggled to lift his head, she helped him, and the delicate gold chain barely fit around his neck. But as he relaxed back against the pillows, she arranged what her grandfather had given her.
“He would approve of you having it,” she said. “He was the one who guided me to you out in the woods. He appeared before me… and he took me to you to save you.”
“And now we’re here,” Daniel mumbled in a dull voice.
“We just need to pray for good news. And a path forward.”
BACK IN CALDWELL, at the Brotherhood’s mansion, Xhex was chilling on one of the sofas in the billiards room, watching John Matthew, Qhuinn, V, and Butch squabble over who was playing in the first twosome at everybody’s favorite pool table. Even though there were a couple of others, the center one was, like, some kind of good luck talisman or some shit.
She didn’t know. She didn’t play games with balls.
Okay, not those kind of balls.
When John Matthew looked over and wagged his brows, it was clear he and Qhuinn were going to go at it first. No doubt, the winner of the match would play the next person in line, and so on and so on. Until dawn came and Fritz put on a massive Last Meal with enough pieces of cooked meat to feed a den of lions.
Natch.
Meanwhile, all around the house, other people were talking. Laughing. Relaxing.
It was rare that everyone had a night off at the same time, but Wrath had started the tradition a couple of months ago, and it seemed to be sticking. And as this month’s free time happened to hit on a Sunday, Xhex didn’t have to go in to any of the clubs.
So here she was. On the couch. Totally determined not to think about everything she’d been ignoring—
A glass of grapefruit juice appeared in front of her and she looked up at Rehvenge with a jump. Accepting the vitamin C, she said, “How the hell did you get Lassiter to let you use his juicer thing?”
The king of the symphaths sat down beside her with his own ginger ale. “What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.”
“Spoken like a true member of the Colony.”
“Come now, is that any way to say thank you.”
She toasted him. “Thank you.”
Underneath the folds of his full-length mink coat, which he was wearing even though the room was a balmy seventy degrees, Rehv crossed his legs at the knees and made sure the two halves covered his lower body completely—which was kind of a pity. He was wearing a perfectly cut dark gray suit that would have been appreciated by Butch, the other clotheshorse in the room.
“Speaking of symphaths,” Rehv drawled, “do you know what’s really annoying about them?”
Glancing over at him, she met his amethyst eyes. He’d recently had the sides of his Mohawk reshaved by V, and the top had been trimmed as well, the stand-up strip only about two inches high. Lounging back on the leather sofa like he was, he looked like a dangerous animal, even in his at-ease pose.
“You think I’ve forgotten?” She sipped more of the juice, the tart sweetness waking her up. Bonus. “Or is it just because you’re king of all us sociopaths and you—”
“Symphaths see what others hide.” Those glowing eyes went to the pool table and settled on John Matthew, who was leaning over with his cue, about to strike the rack of balls. “We know what others wish no one else did.”
Xhex stiffened. “It’s rude to read my grid.”
“So read mine back and we’ll be even. I’ll honestly tell you what you’ll find in me first, though. Unlike you. If I were to ask you how you are, you’d lie and give me some bullshit about how you’re sleeping fine and perfectly alert and—” Those purple eyes swung back in her direction. “—perfectly. Fucking. Fine.”
Shaking her head, Xhex smiled coldly. “You’re a fucking—”
“No, the asshole is your brother.”
“Yeah, okay, I’m not talking about Blade right now. And I was having a nice night until you came around—”
“Your grid’s collapsing.”
Xhex blinked. Then started to get up. “Well, on that note, I’ll just take this grapefruit juice—”
Rehv clapped a hold on her arm. “I’m not fucking around here, female. Your grid is collapsing. Do you understand what that means.”
When she pulled at her wrist, he let her go. “I’ve had a little trouble sleeping,” she said. “No big deal.”
Try, she hadn’t slept since she went onto Deer Mountain and talked to that… whatever that was.
Wolven.
As the word ricocheted around her mind, she tried to ignore it. Tried to ignore… the obvious concern in Rehv’s normally harsh and unforgiving face—
At that moment, her phone rang and she jumped again, splashing grapefruit juice everywhere.
“You’re going to want to answer that,” Rehv said grimly.
“Why.”
“I was the one who told them to call you.”
“Who is it.”
“Answer. The. Phone.”
If it had been anyone else, anybody else on the planet—except for John Matthew—she would have fucked off the order. But as a strange feeling came over her, she took out the vibrating cell phone—
And answered. The. Phone.
“Hello?” Out of the corner of her eye, she saw John Matthew look up from his third shot, like he was debating whether to come over and see what was wrong.
“Hello,” she said with more force. “Well, say something, goddamn it.”
“Is this Alex Hess,” a deep male voice replied.
“Yes.”
“I need to talk to you. About the labs. And yes, the ones you and I both know about.”
Xhex swung her eyes over to Rehv. Her old friend, her fellow symphath, her other king, was staring at her with something she had never seen on his face before.
It was stark terror. For her.
Between one blink and the next, she heard that ghostly entity’s voice in her mind, sure as if it had been inserted there deliberately: That is not your question, child.
“Who the fuck is this,” she demanded.
“You don’t know who I am. But I need to talk to you.”
As a feeling of premonition came over her, she shifted her eyes to John Matthew. He’d flubbed his shot and was standing off to one side, staring at her.
He was the love she would never have dared believe in, the one, pure thing in her life, uncontaminated by both her bad side… and what had been done to her all those years ago.
There is a path before you, my child. It will be long and dangerous, and the resolution of your quest is not clear at this time. But if you do not start… you will never, ever finish.
“I don’t know what you have to do,” Rehv said softly, “but you need to take care of your business. You don’t have a lot of time left.”
“Alex Hess?” the voice over the connection repeated.
“If your grid collapses,” Rehv announced, “psychosis is going to own you and everyone who loves you is going to lose you even as you live and breathe in front of us.”
With a feeling of dread, she stared at John Matthew. And all she thought of was how much she loved him.
“Yeah,” she heard herself say. “I’ll meet you. Just say when and where.”
THREE WEEKS LATER, the night was unseasonably warm, and as Lydia walked out of C.P.’s mansion onto the terrace, she decided she wasn’t going to need her sweater after all.
When Daniel didn’t immediately follow, she glanced back into the professional kitchen.
Through the open sliding-glass door, she saw him over at a counter, laughing and saying something to the cook. Then he was turning to her. Walking to her. Smiling at her.
He was as he had always been, tall and strong and powerful.
It was hard to believe that he was dying. That under his smooth skin and still-heavy muscles there were rogue tumor cells multiplying millions of times over, and developing reliable blood supplies, and spreading far and wide.
It was hard to believe that their time was so short.
Today, at around three twenty-one p.m.—not that she was counting—they’d discovered that, yes, it was confirmed, the lung cancer was in his brain, too.
Before long, his quality of life was going to nose-dive… because he had turned down treatment. After a team of C.P. Phalen’s doctors had looked at all the scans, and then talked with other experts in the nation, and gotten together a semblance of a plan…
He had said no, thank you.
No chemo. No radiation. Nothing but comfort measures.
She didn’t blame him. Six pretty good months without, nine miserable months with. Why ruin the time he had? The time they had—
“Penny for your thoughts?” he said as he stepped out and slid the door shut behind himself. “Or would you rather keep them private?”
“Just remembering what we did upstairs in the Jacuzzi.”
“Ahhh… I like those thoughts.” He took a sip of his Jack and soda—and as he coughed, he covered it up quick, then talked through the tail end of the fit—as if, as long as he ignored it, it didn’t exist. “I like them very much.”
As he wrapped his arm around and pulled her in close, she molded her body to his and welcomed his kiss. In the lee of the setting sun, and in the pleasant cuddle of the warm spring air, she drank in the eternity they grabbed at every moment they were together.
When he eased back, she ran her hands over his face.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
“What for?”
“For bringing the end so damned soon.”
“Oh, my God, like it’s your fault.” She shook her head. “Daniel. It’s not your fault.”
“I just want you to know that the last three weeks have been the best weeks of my life. And whatever time we have ahead of us, it’s more than I could have expected or deserved. You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
“I feel the same.” When his expression grew remote, she frowned. “What is it?”
Taking her hand, he led her over to an arrangement of wrought iron furniture. It went without saying that they sat together on the love seat. She wanted to be close to him as much as possible, and he felt the same.
Daniel swirled his Jack around in the rocks glass. “There’s something I want to do before I go.”
Lydia took a deep breath. “Okay. Let’s do it. Whatever it is—”
“We’re going to find your family, your people.”
She lifted her brow. “I told you, my grandfather’s passed—”
“Not that family.”
“… oh.”
Daniel took her hand and rubbed the center of her palm with his thumb. “I’m not leaving you alone in this world. There are more of you here. Somewhere. And I have a contact that can help us find—”
“Come on, Daniel. This isn’t a Stephen King novel. What do you think—that there’s, like, a lair of the wolven somewhere in the woods?”
“We’re going to find your people, so you’re not alone. After I’m gone.”
Lydia looked up at the backside of C.P. Phalen’s enormous house. And thought of Candy and Sheriff Eastwind, both of whom had been by regularly as soon as they had heard of Daniel’s cancer.
The story of everything at the WSP was an illusion sold to the press and the state law enforcement officials: Rick had killed Peter, and then himself, over a simple embezzlement scheme miraculously untied to anything that had to do with genetic experiments. Past or present. It had been big news for a short while—after which the nation’s twenty-four-hour shock-information cycle had moved on to something else.
