Yearnings: A Paranormal Romance Box Set (75 page)

If he were dead, shouldn’t there be bits of him everywhere? Fur, claws, fangs? Instead, there was nothing. In that last moment, he must have used the girl’s heartbroken blood to guide him home.

Sal felt tears of relief sting. He had left this dimension. He was gone.

She was safe. But Tyr might not be. As the helicopter set down, Sal couldn’t have been happier when Paul, in full flight suit, exited.

“
Dr. Calon!” They met in an embrace. “What are you doing here?”

“
We’ve got to get in there!” She pointed to the decimated prison.

The nurse’s brows tugged together until they met. “Look at it. It’s not stable. We’re going to have to wait until—”

“
Tyr … I mean, a performer’s been badly injured in the fire. He’s down in the tunnel.”

“
I’m sorry, but I don’t see how—”

Paul was right. It was crazy to head back into that precarious pile. It was one of those really bad ideas that Maria would have embraced. Sal still had a “protect” edict. Would it be strong enough?

“
I’m going in,” Sal said as she scrambled up the debris toward the breach she’d seen before the beast interrupted her.

To her surprise, the nurse wasn’t far behind her. “Damn, girl. At least tell me what the hell happened.”

“
Once we get him out.”

Clinging to the Hello Kitty choker, Sal squeezed her way through the narrow opening between a concrete block and a fragmented cell door. As if Maria had used force of will to create a passage, they made their way to the tunnel door.

“
Oh, my God,” Paul whispered as they passed through the belly of the wrecked prison. “I don’t see how … Sal, are you sure anyone could have survived?”

Ignoring the nurse, Sal rushed forward. Paul was still thinking as Sal had before, as if the world was not made up of essence and intent. That Praxis could not perform near miracles.

Finally after carefully climbing over a near fence of broken rebar, they came to the door, although you would be hard-pressed to call it a door anymore. The metal was bent and warped, mangled beyond recognition in the fire.

“
Open.” The knob turned easily under her palm. While the door might be metal, that word was no request, but an edict.

Relief flooded her as she found the tunnel intact. Within seconds, she dropped to Tyr’s side. She checked his pulse. Fast and shallow. His color was still way too pale, but Sal couldn’t help but notice his burn was half the size it had been when she left him. The injected HeartsBlood must still be doing its job.

Sal held Tyr’s hand as Paul started the IV. “Bolus a gram of Ancef.”

“
You weren’t kidding. He really got torched,” the nurse commented as he pushed the antibiotics in.

Paul didn’t know the half of it. Her friend couldn’t realize the extent of damage a burn of intent could inflict. Anything he’d seen before in the ER paled in comparison.

She checked Tyr’s pulse again as they loaded him onto the gurney. Maybe not strong yet, but steady, and his chest wall looked like it was actually making an effort to breathe now.

As they carried Tyr up the steps to the guard shack, Paul asked, “What the hell are you doing here?”

“
Long story.”

Unaware of the night’s toll, the nurse chuckled. “Too bad it’s only a short flight back to General.”

Once they loaded Tyr into the helicopter, Paul became too preoccupied with setting up the blood pressure cuff and pulse oximeter to ask any questions.

Lucky for her, because Sal just didn’t think she had it in her to lie anymore. Not while she smoothed the hair back from Tyr’s forehead. After a liter of fluids bloused, his lips lost their grayish tinge and flushed pink. If she didn’t know better, it just looked like he was asleep. Resting.

She should have been delighted. They had both made it. They were both alive, and the beast was no longer a threat. Yet Sal was unable to pat herself on the back.

Would Tyr be so happy when he awoke to know the beast fled? More importantly, how would Tyr feel about being stuck in this time?

Forever?

With her?

* * * * *

CHAPTER 109

By the time the helicopter came to a bumpy landing on the roof of the hospital, Tyr was nearly conscious. Okay, maybe that was a stretch, but he responded to painful stimuli, trying to pull his arm away when Paul put in a second IV catheter.

“
It’s all right, babe. Just stay still,” she soothed.

When Tyr immediately quieted, Paul’s eyebrow shot up, but he didn’t ask where this newfound intimacy came from. “Let’s get your man down to the ER.”

After reassuring every person they met on their way down to the ground floor that she was fine, they finally wheeled Tyr into Trauma One. A flurry of activity swirled as the staff stabilized his condition.

Surprisingly, Sal didn’t feel the urge to help out. Sure, she trusted the resident on duty, Limely, but she trusted the HeartsBlood more.

Even Paul noticed the difference in the burn. “Wow, it doesn’t look nearly as bad as I thought. Must have been the crappy lighting down there.”

Dr. Limely nodded as she draped her stethoscope around her neck. “I’d knock it down to a second degree on his leg and first degrees on his side and arm.”

Which would soon be first degree, and then no degree burns. Sal was sure that they would have a new problem once his skin healed within the hour.

Limely was going to want to publish this case of spontaneously healing burns. Any other time, Sal would be happy to co-author such a paper, but now she’d have to figure out a way—

“
Sal!” Richard called out.

Before she could stop him, her fiancé barreled into the room and pulled her into a hug. “I came as soon as I heard you were on the island.”

Paul raised his eyebrow as Sal put some distance between Richard and herself. “I’m
fine
.”

“
We’ve got to get you—”

“
I said, I’m fine.” Sal said loudly enough and sharply enough that the entire staff paused in their tasks to look up at the tension between the couple. “Let’s take this outside.”

She set a pace quickly enough that Richard had to trot to keep up. Sal stepped out of the automatic doors and into the cool San Francisco evening.

The horror of Alcatraz might be over, but there was one last casualty.

“
Look, Richard, I’m sorry, but—”

He grabbed her shoulders. “Don’t say anything right now, Sal. I know I’ve been a smothering presence the last few days, and now rushing in like this, I can imagine—”

“
Don’t,” she said as she pulled from his grasp. “Don’t try to ‘process’ your way out of this, Richard.”

“
You have been through unimaginable—”

“
Stop!”

Her fiancé’s lips snapped closed. She wasn’t sure whether she’d issued an edict, or her harsh tone alone had gotten the job done.

Sal softened and took his hand in hers. “We both know things haven’t been good for a long time …” Was she really going to speak the truth to him? It seemed almost cruel. But if Richard didn’t have her love, didn’t he at least deserve her honesty? “Even before the engagement.”

He tried to argue, but she gripped his hand. “You sensed it. It’s why you proposed, Richard.”

“
I think … I know that …” He stammered.

“
Please don’t stop me from saying what needs to be said.” Sal took a huge breath before she admitted something that she’d hidden—even from herself. It took her love blood to fail for her to come to terms with it. “You know I don’t love you the way you love me.”

“
That doesn’t mean I don’t want to be with you. These things take time, and—”

“
No. No, they don’t, Richard. They take an instant.”

Sal pulled the diamond off her finger and placed it in his palm. She didn’t realize how heavy that ring had felt. Even with the ring in his hand, he didn’t seem to comprehend her sincerity. “Give yourself overnight, or—”

“
It’s over. Time won’t change my mind.”

“
But—”

She closed his fingers over the ring. “I know you’ll need closure, and I owe it to you, but not now. Not tonight.”

Not waiting for an answer, she headed into the ER. The sliding doors whooshed shut behind her as she headed to Tyr.

This time, as she crossed through the triage area, Sal realized the magnitude of the injuries that resulted from Alcatraz. All the curtains were filled, and patients were lined up on gurneys along the halls, waiting to be admitted. She knew that most of them hadn’t encountered the beast, but the mob riot to get down to the docks had caused most of the suffering.

A left at the nurses’ station, and her first right brought her back to Trauma One. Exactly where she’d left Tyr, only he wasn’t here.

“
Where’s Tyr?” she asked Paul, who was restocking a shelf.

“
Who?”

“
The patient?” Sal pointed to the blood-smeared sheets and IV antibiotics hanging above the bed. “The burn patient?”

The nurse looked at Limely, who shrugged as well. “We’re getting ready for a car accident on I-80.”

They all seemed to realize that something was wrong, but couldn’t vocalize it.

A classic “forget” edict.

Sal might have been worried, but since Tyr couldn’t get back to his own time, she knew right where he’d gone.

* * * * *

CHAPTER 110

Sal entered her darkened apartment, already aware that Tyr was present. He stood silhouetted in the window, watching the City beneath him. She swallowed hard as he turned, uncertain of her reception.

“
Thanks be to you,” he whispered as he opened his arms, inviting her into his embrace.

She rushed forward, burying herself in his arms. Tyr’s hug was fierce. If it weren’t for him bracing his right side, she’d never have felt even a hint of the injuries that had brought him close to death just an hour ago.

Instead, Tyr lived and made her world perfect.

But then reality reared its unwanted head. He parted their bodies and looked into her eyes. “The beast?”

Sal couldn’t keep eye contact. “He’s badly injured, but I’m pretty sure he made it back to your time.”

“
Forward,” Tyr stated absently, his gaze wandering off.

“
I’m sorry?”

He strode off, pacing in front of the window. “He used the blood to move forward along the time continuum to our home.”

Shaking her head, Sal backed away. “No. The way you dress? And speak? You came from our past.”

“
This is the States of the Americas, is it not?” He paused in his pacing to look at her. She hesitated before she nodded, but he plowed on, “You use Anno Domini for your calendar?”

“
AD, yes. This year is two thousand eleven.”

Tyr gave a curt nod, then began his pacing again. “As mine is thirty one seventeen.”

Sal sat down hard, glad that her couch was overstuffed. Every assumption she had made was based on the fact that Tyr and the beast arose long ago, before scientific process had been established.

“
That doesn’t make any sense. If you are from …” why was it harder to say he was from the future than the past? Was it any more absurd to her ear? “… further down the timeline, why don’t you understand the science of essence and intent?”

His voice was distant, as if he was only devoting a very small portion of his brain to answering her question. The rest seemed occupied with something far more important.

“
The Knowing began near to this decade.”

“
The Knowing?” she asked.

“
Of essence. Intent. The Knowing of blood and its uses.”

Tyr put his hand to the hilt of his knife. If she’d had any fantasy that he would be thrilled at being stuck in this time, and stuck with her, it was dashed as his knuckles tensed and released. Tensed and released with each step. He itched for a battle. Instead, he was left to explain a history that she could barely believe.

“
But the scholars held the Knowing tightly. I doubt it would have spread during your life span …”

She waited for him to continue, but his jaw worked and worked, yet produced no words. “So sometime in the early twenty-first century, what happened?”

Tyr seemed to realize that she was still in the room. “Oh, the beginning of the Age of Descent.”

Sal could imagine that. Look at the popularity of the Secret. Give them Praxis? People, eager for personal power, dabbling in quantum magic. Look how much damage she had caused by sheer accident and under Tyr’s watchful eye. Without him, Sal feared what she might have become.

“
Something stopped us from killing ourselves off,” she prompted.

“
Centuries of the Harrowing followed. Those that spurned the Knowing fought against those tainted. All that you know …” Tyr pointed toward the Golden Gate in the far distance. “That bridge with the many pictures your peddlers sell will be no more. The battle raged across all continents—until the last traces of the blasphemous science were eradicated.”