Chapter 37
Offering
Cam
Screaming.
The instant it began, Cam leapt forward to pick her up, his only thought to break the connection and stop the vision. “Allie. I’m here. You’re safe.” It continued, and he kept murmuring to her. “Baby, please stop. You’re here with me, with us.”
Finally, the screaming cut off only to morph into sobbing, panic and terror still radiating from Allie in waves. After a full minute of weeping, Allie went catatonic, lids half open, nothing in the vacant brown eyes he loved.
His heart froze in fear, and everything after that went hazy.
He knew he was begging Allie to come back while Odette pried Allie’s fingers open to stop the blood flowing from her palms, courtesy of her short, blunt fingernails.
After that, he could remember only carrying her in his arms, Mal and Key shouting at him to let them put her on a gurney, Odette simply guiding him where they needed to go.
He took her all the way to the hospital, his body so numb that he almost felt like he was floating.
He sat in a chair and watched Allie’s pale, still face while nurses tended to her, hooking up an IV of fluids and putting in a catheter.
At one point, he realized someone was sitting in a chair beside him, holding his hand tightly.
Frankie. There were tears on her cheeks, her glasses fogged up.
She said something to him, but he didn’t hear it.
His eyes went right back to Allie’s face.
Someone had closed her eyelids. Was that good or bad? Did it matter?
Odette knelt in front of him.
He understood two words for certain.
Allie. Coma.
Then Frankie left and Gray was there. Gray urged him to open his mouth. Cam obeyed because Gray was asking, and Gray’s eyes were so haunted and sad. He wanted Cam to rest.
Okay, Gray, I’ll try. He couldn’t say the words. Instead, he opened his mouth and let Gray put medicine on his tongue. He drank water when it was put to his lips.
He finally slept in the chair.
When he woke, he found a blanket wrapped around him.
But Allie was still unconscious.
I’m not leaving you. I’m not leaving you anywhere.
Odette put a cup of broth in his hands. He drank it, then he must have slept again.
When next he woke, he realized he had to go to the bathroom.
The pain from his bladder had cut through the fog of his numbed brain. He was alone in the room with Allie, who still slept. The monitors showed that her heartbeat was strong, her breath even.
It was dark outside.
Cam sat up and winced. Every part of him hurt, especially when he tried to stand. “I’ll be right back, Allie-cat,” he whispered—why whisper? Didn’t he want her to wake up?
He shuffled to the tiny bathroom that adjoined the room and relieved himself, washed his hands, then came back to stand beside Allie’s bed. He took her limp, cool hand in his. “I know you’re still in there, angel. I’m here. Come back to me when you can.”
“She’s doing pretty well, according to your mami,” said Key from behind him. “She’s healthy. It’s a coma, yes, but she’s a fighter, honey. I wish... I wish I could help. I tried, but...”
He turned, swallowed. “We’ve done everything we can.”
They looked at each other for a long moment, then Cam was in her arms, weeping against her shoulder. She held him and crooned to him like she had when he was young, an abused boy who couldn’t trust her love even though he desperately wanted it.
They stood like that for a long time.
“She’ll come back,” Key said before kissing his head twice hard. “To us. To you.”
Allie
It is time to wake, child.
Allie heard Morrigan—or she thought she did.
In the silence that followed Morrigan’s words, she became aware of noises all around her, dimly at first, then louder. Insistent beeping. Rhythmic whooshing.
What is all that? I’m tired.
The beeping and whooshing continued.
Hospital?
She tried to open her eyes, but it was a struggle. Her lids drooped, heavy, unwilling to cooperate.
Finally, though, she could see, though the images were fuzzy at first. She could tell she was in a hospital room, a small one. Something huddled beside her bed, or someone? Her vision blurred. She lifted her hand to rub her eyes, but the cords and tubes connected to it hampered her movement.
Then a warm hand wrapped around hers. “It is about goddamn time you woke up,”
the hoarse, beloved voice rasped from beside her.
Her heart constricted, making the beeping speed up. “Cam?”
“Yeah, angel. I’m here.”
His face swam into focus, leaning in above hers. A patchy beard bristled from his cheeks and chin and feathered his upper lip. Beneath his blue-gray eyes bloomed dark bags of exhaustion and worry. He looked worn thin, desolate.
But then he smiled, his eyes bright with unshed tears.
He was definitely the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen in her life.
She gripped his hand and said the first thing that came to mind. “Hi.”
One Week Later
On her first day out of the hospital, Allie went for a walk around to the west side of the Plant with Frankie—after she’d convinced Cam that she needed fresh air and some open space more than she needed him hovering around her.
He’d narrowed his eyes, giving her an assessing once-over. “Not feeling dizzy? No wobbly knees or headaches?”
“No and no.” She smiled as brightly as she could. “I’m feeling pretty damned okay, but I need to be outside. I need sun. I need air. And I need you to take a break.”
He reared back, looking offended. “I am not the one who was in a coma for a week, Allison.”
“Well, you are the one who has spent every waking moment watching me like a hawk, Cameron.” She grabbed his ears, tugging his head toward her, then she kissed his cheek and his mouth and lingered there. “Feel that?” she murmured. “I’m good. You can let me out of your sight for a half hour.”
He kissed her back, and she could sense his controlled hunger as he very carefully kept their lower bodies from touching. Even so, when she glanced down, she could see that he wanted her, even if he was restraining himself.
We rather desperately need to have sex. Her stomach tightened at the thought. Tonight.
Cam pulled back, frowning, but only slightly. “Fine,” he said. “A half hour, and then I’m going to come find you.”
She smiled, almost giddy in her triumph. “You always do.” She hugged him then pushed him away. “Go look for Key and see what she’s up to.”
“She’ll be talking to Mal. Again.” He shook his head. “They seem to have patched things up for real this time, and they’ve been making all kinds of plans. I don’t know if that’s a bad thing or a good thing.”
“A good thing,” Allie said.
The information she’d been able to give them from her Big Seek—ironically, not much—had sent Mal and his team off in new directions with their research.
Mal had also, rather humbly, sought Key’s advice on the plans for resettling Newtown, a project that doubtless constituted a major part of their time together.
Key had insisted, with the weight of Liam’s and James’s support, that the live Zs be ripped, since they’d become more of a liability. Mal had reluctantly acquiesced just five days ago, and the mood at the Plant had improved steadily ever since.
“Hey,” Allie said. “Go find Gray and see if he has any more cookies.”
He pursed his lips. “That’s a better idea.” He smiled at her, finally, and bent his forehead to rest it against hers. “Be careful, and don’t push yourself. See you soon, Allie-cat.” Turning, he walked off then called back, “A half hour! Remember!”
She watched him walk away, love and lust swamping her. Yeah, I’m going to have all kinds of sex with him tonight.
“Hey, look at you!” Frankie grinned as she approached then gave her a quick hug. “Walking around like a big kid and everything.”
Allie released Frankie and did a quick spin. “Look, Ma—no hands.”
“Cam actually let you out by yourself?”
“I have a half hour until he comes to get me, so we better make it count.”
They walked slowly out to the knoll where they’d met with Morrigan in her dream.
Allie enjoyed the stroll and the feeling of her body working as it should. A week asleep and another mostly confined to a bed—that shit got old quick.
Along the western barricades, all traces of the Z attack had been cleaned up, the bodies hauled away.
Not even the smell lingered. Allie and Frankie sat in the grass.
The sounds of the Plant at work hummed in the distance, and Allie could hear people moving around in the greenhouses.
The warm weather had begun to settle into the heat of summer.
Allie breathed in and thanked her goddess that she was alive. That she had Cam. That she’d found where she belonged.
Thank you, Morrigan. For everything.
“Have you remembered anything else?” Frankie’s voice was tentative but curious, like she couldn’t help but ask. Allie didn’t blame her.
“It’s in fragments. Blips. No sounds, only flashes of memory.
I was in the Dream again, but you knew that.
” Allie paused. “Just... black. Oily, deep black. A red glow. Those chains coming down from the sky. But the clouds were moving like they were alive.” She looked at Frankie.
“That’s it. Nothing new. But reliving the Dream, dreaming of Morrigan being there. ..”
“The shark and the pilot fish.” Frankie nodded thoughtfully. “I remember thinking... I was really grateful for the pilot fish. Back when I was in it. You know?”
“I do know.” In the days since she’d woken, any time Allie tried to think about the shark, her brain fuzzed out. Any flashes of memory dissolved.
Sometimes she saw blips of the fish. The fish were important, if Morrigan’s appearance in the dream meant anything. Maybe they were even more important than the shark, albeit in a different way. But Allie didn’t know what that meant.