Blackthorne, Fiona - Moonstruck [Blue Moon 1] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) (26 page)

Chapter 24

Everything was dark and peaceful. There was a great stillness and silence all around her. Ava felt herself to be deep in the darkness, and yet, something seemed to pull her upward, like the invisible tug of a coming sunrise on the night.

The darkness lightened to shades of beige and gray, and finally, she recognized the orange of daylight playing on her eyelids.

“Ava?”

Robert! That was Robert’s voice! She’d know it anywhere. She’d know it from her grave. The last bit of darkness fell away, and she opened her eyes to see her handsome, brave Robert sitting on the edge of her bed, smiling down at her, relief lighting up his golden eyes.

“Luphplth,” Ava said, trying to speak, but finding her lips were heavy and numb. She frowned and tried again. “Blohbluth.”

“That’s the narcotic wearing off.” She recognized Dr. Nasir’s voice and saw him come over to her bedside. A stethoscope hung around his neck, and he wore one of the most hideous argyle sweaters she had ever seen. She wanted to smile, but she was too tired. It was easier to stay still.

“Robulth,” she tried again, and Robert leaned over and kissed her lips tenderly.

“I’m here, love,” he said. He patted his side, wincing slightly. “I’ll be fine in a day or so. Werewolves heal quickly.”

“Wha huppnth?”

“I was attacked by
Them
,” Robert said briefly, his expression closing and becoming stern and forbidding. “That’s all you need to know.”

No, she wanted to know more, but it was too hard to speak. Besides, something itched under her nose, but her arms and hands felt too heavy to lift, even to scratch the itch.

“That’s the cannula with your oxygen,” Dr. Nasir said, touching the tip of her nose as she twitched and wrinkled it, instinctively trying to dislodge the plastic tubing she now felt. “You inhaled a lot of gas and smoke, and you need oxygen. I took some blood and sent it for testing. We’ll do a CBC, BMP, and an arterial blood gas just to make sure there’s not more damage.
Inshallah
, all you will need is oxygen and maybe an inhaler for a week or two.”

“You’re gonna be okay, baby!” Sean bounded over to her and jumped on the bed, bending over to kiss her drug-numbed lips.

“Get up, Mr. Obvious.” Declan chuckled, hoisting Sean off the bed and more gently taking his place. “The last thing our Ava needs is a puppy dog bouncing all over her.”

“Go fetch something,” Sean retorted, grinning.

“I heard that was your specialty, tummy rub boy.”

“Who told you about that?”

“Nobody. I guessed. And, I was right. Did she give you a cookie, too?”

“At least I got an ear rub out of it. You’re just a grumpy old dog who can’t learn new tricks.”

“I got plenty of tricks in my bag.”

Ava managed to get her lips to twitch toward a smile, and she looked up to see Robert laughing. Her body felt pleasantly heavy and warm, and she let her eyes drift closed again, deliciously surrendering herself to sleep.

* * * *

“Oh, sorry, Ava,” said a soft, musical voice as Ava was lifted out of sleep by a cool touch on her arm.

She looked up to see Zara Nasir smiling down at her, a blood pressure cuff in her hands.

“I just want to take your vitals, okay?” Zara said, patting Ava’s cheek lightly.

“Yup,” Ava replied, pleasantly surprised to find her lips working again. Awareness began to burn slowly through the fog of sleep, and questions began to roll in, jumbling together and clamoring for answers.

“What happened?” Ava asked as Zara wrapped the blood pressure cuff around her arm.

Zara held up her finger for Ava to be quiet as she took the reading, and Ava looked around, recognizing her room in the Molineaux mansion. A moment later, Zara unwrapped the cuff from her arm and began to take her pulse.

“Well, which part of ‘what happened’ do you want to know first?” she asked, looking down at her watch, pausing between words as she counted. When she was done, she stuck a thermometer under Ava’s tongue and wrote something on a scrap of paper.

“Everything,” Ava mumbled around the thermometer.

“I heard her voice! She’s awake? Ava, are you all right?” Sean’s voice carried through the thick panels of the door, and a moment later, Sean, Declan, and Robert all rushed in, surrounding her.

Ava smiled at the amazing feeling of being so cared for. The brothers touched her hands and her face, kissing her fingertips and forehead and smoothing back her hair.

“I’m fine,” she said. “At least, I think I am.”

“It seems that you are, surprisingly enough.” She looked up to see Dr. Nasir walk in and look at the note Zara handed him. He smiled fondly at his wife and nodded. “Your vitals are nice and steady. The blood work came back clean. I’ve prescribed you an albuterol inhaler to be used in conjunction with a mild cortico-steroid inhaler for about two weeks. I want to make sure we get ahead of any lasting inflammation of your bronchial tubes.”

He paused and looked at her wonderingly, then added, “The true miracle is that you were not burned. Not even a mild skin irritation from the heat.”

“I wonder if that has anything to do with the circle we found her in?” Declan said, stroking her hair with his rough fingers, the touch soothing her and almost putting her back to sleep.

“Salt,” Ava managed to articulate tiredly.

“What do you mean, ‘salt,’ sweetheart?”

“Salt circle. Protection.”

“Salt—sodium chloride—is combustible, though,” Robert said, rubbing her leg gently. “If anything, it should have caused a flare-up.”

“When I went back there to look this morning, the entire house had burned except for the circle where we found Ava,” Sean said, beginning to pace in front of the foot of the bed. He turned to face her. “What happened? What caused the explosion? The last thing we heard you say is, ‘Go to hell,’ and then all hell broke loose.”

“Very funny,” Declan muttered.

“I lit a match,” Ava replied. She wanted to say more, to explain what had happened, but speaking required a lot of energy, and it was easier to just lie there and bask in the slight pink fuzziness of the ebbing pain meds and the warm affection of her lovers.

“You fucking lit a match?” Robert exclaimed. “With a gas leak in the house?”

“Ashes to ashes,” Ava said, trying to draw in a deep breath and feeling the tight pull on her lungs as the bronchial inflammation squeezed her airways. “First farmhouse burned down. Then Aristide’s house. Everything had to burn. Ashes, see?”

Her breath came in short, shallow gasps as she spoke, and she gratefully allowed Zara and Dr. Nasir to prop her upright and hold an inhaler to her lips. The rush of albuterol eased her lungs, and she took in the air gratefully.

“What about the dust?” Declan asked, his face grim as he watched her struggle to breathe.

“Grave dust,” Ava replied. “Those compulsions I was having? I think they were from Ezra. I think he was trying to get me to find his grave, and last night, he led me to it. It was under a pine tree, marked with a rock. On the rock, someone or something had scratched, ‘
Exsequor Exequor
,’ which means to follow to the grave.”

“Are you sure it was Ezra’s grave?”

Ava looked up to see Grace Murray enter the room, Father Edlow by her side. She felt a twinge of jealousy at how effortlessly beautiful Grace looked, her soft golden hair gleaming in the light, and at the way all the men in the room shifted to show her respect. In comparison, Ava felt drab and sticky and about as unattractive as she had ever been, lying in a sick bed with sweaty, matted hair and the smell of smoke still clinging faintly to her.

“What makes you think it wasn’t Ezra’s grave?” she challenged, trying to keep the irritation out of her voice, hoping it would pass off as the hoarseness in the throat from the smoke.

“I don’t know,” Grace said, smiling uncertainly. “I just have this feeling that maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it was Eve’s grave, and Ezra led you to it.”

“What about the inscription?”

“It could easily mean that you had to either take Eve to her grave or bring her grave to her. Also, if you look at
dust to dust
, it could mean that only Eve’s grave dust could trap her.”

Ava fell silent, a shiver of uncertainty fluttering across her nerves.

“What about the inscription?” Sean asked. “How do you explain that?”

Grace’s face fell, and she shook her head. “I can’t. If Ezra was dead already, how could he have made that inscription? And, how would he know Latin? He was a farmer and a carpenter, and the people in Blue Moon read the King James Bible in English.” She shuddered. “If it was him, he had to have come back from the dead…in one form or another…to do it. Can you imagine the rage he must have felt? The amount of energy and purpose it must have taken to carve into stone?”

“If that’s true,” Ava said slowly, “it means that Ezra’s grave still hasn’t been found.”

“And, may never be,” Grace added, nodding. “Or, it could be it was his grave. Somehow, I don’t think we’ll ever truly know.”

Ava shivered, and everyone in the room fell silent.

“Well,” Zara said finally, “this has all been quite a party, but Ava needs her sleep. Cookie should be showing up any minute now with some casseroles. Now, shoo, get out.”

“I’m not leaving,” Declan said, kissing the top of Ava’s head and sending a thrill straight to her heart at the firm tone of his voice. “I stay with my Ava.”

“I’m not leaving, either,” Sean added, kissing her hands.

“Don’t look at me, Zara,” Robert said with a grim chuckle. “I’m not leaving, either.”

“Oh, really?” Zara said, the singsong of her accent sounding deceptively sweet to Ava’s ears.

“Really,” Declan affirmed.

A minute later, Zara closed the door on their retreating forms, and Ava’s ears were still ringing with one of the most magnificent harangues she’d ever heard. She knew, though, that nothing would have made them leave if she hadn’t started yawning uncontrollably in the middle of Zara’s diatribe. She wanted her lovers there with her, but on the other hand, she just wanted to sleep without worrying about them sitting by her and being bored.

“When can I get a shower?” she mumbled sleepily as Zara tucked in the covers around her.

“When you wake up,” Zara said. “Now, go to sleep, and dream good dreams.”

It sounded like the best advice she’d heard in a long time.

Chapter 25

“Wow, guys,” Ava said. She sat down at the table and saw the fountain of red roses in the center of it, along with the bottle of chilled champagne. “You didn’t have to do this.”

“Of course we had to,” Sean said. “We wanted to. Making you happy is the most important thing in our lives. It’s what makes
us
happy.”

Ava looked around the quietly decorated restaurant, with its antique wood, Federal-style furniture, and neutral colors. Called “Moonshine,” it was part of the Blue Moon Inn, and apparently the nicest place in town.

Her gaze turned to Robert, Declan, and Sean, who looked to-die-for in suits. Robert wore his dark-gray suit with a deep-burgundy tie, the cut of the jacket emphasizing his broad shoulders. His black hair was brushed back, and he moved easily, completely healed from the demonic attack, though Ava knew there were three cold, white claw-mark scars under that crisp white shirt.

Declan had gone for a more casual look with a navy blue blazer and beautifully pressed tan wool slacks. He didn’t wear a tie, but there was a cream silk pocket handkerchief in the breast pocket of his coat, and he wore stylish brown Italian leather shoes and an expensive wristwatch.