Yearnings: A Paranormal Romance Box Set (73 page)

You might as well slit both carotid arteries. It was as sure a death.

“
I can do it.”

“
The skill required—”

Sal felt resolve strengthen her words. “I do it for a living, Tyr.” He tried to interrupt, but she overrode him. “I’ve done dozens of cardiac sticks.” Granted, it was to pump adrenaline into the heart, but still, she’d done it and never hit a major vessel.

He sighed long and hard before he spoke. “Of that I have no doubt, but to distill the essence. To tamper with the very—”

She had an idea about that as well, but the thought was still percolating in her subconscious. Right now, she just needed to get the HeartsBlood.

“
What choice do we have?” She asked.

Tyr had no answer.

Sal fished the first-aid kit out of her pocket and pulled out a syringe.

Despite an effort that flushed his cheeks, Tyr backed away from the needle. Instead of fighting, she brought her lips to his ear as he had done so many times to her.

Using the softest of whispers, Sal asked, “We are bound, are we not?”

* * * * *

CHAPTER 99

Sal backed away just enough so that they could look into each other’s eyes. His gaze flickered over her features. His answer came in the form of tilting his head to one side. She lowered hers to the other. In nearly slow motion, they closed the gap between their lips.

At first their touch was tentative, neither sure the other had truly committed, but once their warmth mingled, there was nothing hesitant about the kiss. With more strength than he should have had, Tyr’s hand pulled her even closer. Her lips parted as his tongue found hers.

There was nothing else in the world. Not the roar of the fire just above, or the constant dripping of water from the moss-lined ceiling. There was just the kiss. Their shared breath. Their shared desire.

What should have been a magical eternity drew Sal sharply into the reality of the moment. For as warm as his mouth was, she could feel his thready pulse beneath her fingers. He was dying.

Never pulling their lips from one another, Sal counted the intercostal spaces with her left hand as she readied the syringe with her right. She could feel his heart beating just beneath the surface, trying to fight on while his body shut down.

How she wished that she had an ultrasound machine. Hell, she’d be content with a sterile swab, but she didn’t have time for any of that.

Weakening, Tyr’s hand fell from her head.

She kissed his lips one last time. “This is going to hurt.”

As Sal plunged the needle across his chest and into his heart, Tyr gasped, his eyelids fluttering open, his lips bled of their color.

Sal could feel the beat of his heart reverberating through the needle. She couldn’t hold it firmly or she’d cut the muscle. Slowly, she drew the bright red blood from his ventricle. Once the syringe was filled to capacity, she whipped the needle out.

Another pained gasp.

Putting pressure against the small hole she had created, Sal whispered, “It’s going to be okay. The pain will pass. Just breathe …”

Finally, Tyr’s chest stopped heaving. Unfortunately, once his breaths started again, they were shallow. She was losing him.

“
You have my HeartsBlood, witch,” Tyr slurred. “But what will you do with it?”

That was a very good question.

* * * * *

CHAPTER 100

Tyr’s eyelids flagged as he laid his head against the damp concrete floor. The syringe with his still-warm HeartsBlood lay in Sal’s hand. If she had gambled incorrectly, she had just sapped him of the last of his energy. But she wasn’t wrong. Not this time. A theory had been brewing in the back of her mind. Her conscious mind had been asking many questions, and her subconscious had been trying to respond, but she’d been too busy starting fires of intent to listen. The full answer still hadn’t surfaced, but Sal knew enough to make some conjecture.

How could she, and apparently the Crusader, pick up edicts so quickly, when clearly in Tyr’s time, it took years to manipulate essence that skillfully?

This question dovetailed right into why the beast had come to this time. Why this year? This week?

The answer to all of the queries centered on Lionel’s experiment. Clearly, the beast focused on the technical basis of intent and essence. Sal and the Crusader both had advanced scientific training. Once they became aware of the principles of the inner workings of electrons and plasma, they could hone their intent. Understanding the molecular basis for edicts gave them far finer control over their intent.

At least that’s what Sal counted on. Gambled Tyr’s life on. Focusing on the HeartsBlood in the syringe, she thought of the red cells carrying oxygen. She thought of the white cells ready to fight infections. She thought of the chemotactic factors that would be released to call even more healing cells to the area. She thought of those things and even more as she pulled back Tyr’s coat to expose the charred leg.

Sal steadied her hand. She would not waste another drop. Pushing on the plunger, she allowed a full bead of blood to form at the tip of the needle. Skillfully, she laid that drop upon the edge of the wound. But Sal didn’t stop there. As she carefully spread the fluid out, maximizing the area it could heal, Sal spoke to the wound.

“
Histamine.”

Where the HeartsBlood touched the edge between pale flesh and black burn, the skin flashed a bright pink. The tissue along the wound swelled.

Healing started with inflammation. And pain.

Tyr’s hand reached down, weakly trying to dig into the itch. The sensation must have felt like a thousand bee stings, but she couldn’t stop.

Once the edge was a robust magenta, Sal used another drop.

“
Cytokines,” she whispered. Slowly at first, then more rapidly, the tissue receded to a healthy pink. Sal was witness to a day’s or week’s worth of healing playing out in front of her. The cleanup hormones of the body were preparing the leg for revascularization.

“
Fibrocytes,” she called. Tiny veins sprang from the tissue and pushed into the charcoal substance that had once been flesh. The charred surface throbbed.

Sal spread out another drop, “Collagen.”

Tyr moaned as his body replaced destroyed flesh with scar tissue.

The black defect in his leg contracted, but didn’t disappear. The damage had gone deep. Fixing the surface wouldn’t heal down to the bone.

She gripped Tyr’s hand. “I’m going to have to inject the HeartsBlood.”

Sal wasn’t even sure if he could understand. He didn’t even squeeze her hand back, but he did flinch as the needle went straight into the center of the burn. Pushing several drops into the tissue surrounding the bone, Sal pulled out the needle. She repeated the maneuver another dozen times. With each stab, Tyr reacted less and less, until his hand fell flaccid from hers.

The HeartsBlood used, Sal abandoned the syringe and felt for his carotid.

She almost thought he didn’t have a pulse, but it was there. Weak and slow.

His color had faded to the color of the gray concrete beneath them. Briefly, she considered pulling more blood from his heart, but the puncture wound on his chest still dribbled.

Her worst fear had come true. Tyr had gone into DIC. The medical term meant disseminated intervascular coaguopathy, but around the hospital its nickname was ‘Death is Close.’ Once the blood stopped clotting, you could bleed anywhere. Heart, lungs, brain.

Sal knew she had utilized the HeartsBlood to its best advantage, but now she needed good old medicine. Steroids.

She was loath to leave his side, but she had to get help. Lionel should have gotten back to the City by now. The cavalry should be on its way.

Looking over her shoulder, she surveyed the long, empty corridor. Pipes ran along the ceiling, leaking from decades worth of old rust. The moisture fed the moss that grew on the brick sections of the wall. Bare concrete, green brick, bare concrete. The passageway looked like a chessboard that stretched on forever.

From her previous tours, Sal knew that this passageway dead-ended not far from here. The 1989 Santa Cruz earthquake had collapsed the tunnel.

That left going back into the firestorm. She looked up to the metal door, now a burnished red, the steel nearly melting.

Her Praxis was too weak to face such fury.

Checking Tyr’s wound again, she found good news and horrible news.

The black had been replaced by pink, but the new tissue was mottled and oozing. It appeared that the HeartsBlood had healed the burn of intent, but left behind a real third-degree burn. An enormous third-degree burn.

If it didn’t get treated, infection would creep into the wound and into Tyr’s blood vessels. If he somehow survived the DIC, he’d be septic within the hour. Not even San Francisco General could help him, then.

Maybe she could dig her way through the collapsed tunnel?

BANG!

The metal door warped. She’d heard the sound before. Back at the museum. The beast sought to break in. And what the beast sought to break, he usually shattered.

Another
BOOM
and the door flew open with a blast of furnace air.

* * * * *

CHAPTER 101

Sal threw herself over Tyr’s form as flames shot into the damp hallway, their fury only slightly subdued by the moisture. Then the conflagration pulled back up the stairs, sparing them.

Had she somehow done it? Then her heart fell.

In the doorway, the beast strode. She had thought, or at least hoped, he’d been injured by the fire, but there he stood, the flames crackling around his dreadlocked mane. He seemed immune to the fire.

Which shouldn’t have surprised her. What else was he but hatred given form?

The beast’s tail swished in victory. Sal couldn’t fight him, let alone battle the fire at the same time. They were going to die.

Wait. She might die, but could she save Tyr? Could she somehow protect him until the authorities arrived?

A roar filled the narrow tunnel. A roar of confidence. A roar of arrogance. But Sal didn’t flinch. Let him roar.

She brought Tyr’s blade to her wrist. In a single, smooth motion, Sal nicked her wrist. As she thought of nothing but the man who lay on the floor and her love for him, blood dribbled from the wound onto the blade. It ignited white.

The beast just guffed. He’d seen that trick before. As Tyr had explained, her fear-blood couldn’t hurt him anymore. But her love blood? Sal wanted to see how he handled that.

Flicking her wrist, she sprayed blood over her. “Protect.”

Not waiting to test the command, Sal charged at the beast. Fire parted before her as the beast nimbly backed away from her slashing knife.

Undeterred, Sal kept up the attack. Sal had no hope of hitting him, but she drove the beast back far enough to close the door behind her.

Sal gulped. Tyr was safe, but now she stood alone, in the center of a firestorm fueled by hatred of the most sordid kind, to face a beast that outweighed her by four hundred pounds. And that didn’t even include his claws and Praxis.

Soon, very soon, either the fire or the beast would test her mettle. And Sal knew they would find it wanting.

With a snarl that sent flames alight, the beast seemed to want the first bite.

* * * * *

CHAPTER 102

Sal desperately slashed, slicing his foot. The beast howled, intensifying the heat around them like a flash point. She could feel the flames pressing up against her protection shield. Tasting the blood. Seeing if it was pure.

The screams took on a maniacal edge. Those tortured so long ago sought revenge. The fire, fed by their hatred, was fixed upon her. They wished her to suffer as they had.

Around them, the prison seemed to be made of wax, the thick cement walls melting as the figures had in the cells. Metal bars dripped red-hot steel, bending as if made of nothing more than plastic.

It might not be the fire or the beast that was her undoing, but Alcatraz falling down upon her head.

The beast’s tail was at it again, only this time not displaying confidence but agitation. She’d hurt him again. He didn’t like that. Then why would he not leave? The fire welcomed him. He could turn and easily flee. His token braid was nearly as empty as Tyr’s bandolier. The one item she could make out was the small chunk of bloodstained statue.

“
You think yourself my equal, witch?” the beast slurred.