Chapter 29
It was the tingling of his guardian angel alarms followed by shrieking that catapulted Jasper from the bed, banging his head against the roof of the trailer in his haste. What the hell?
Dazed, it took him a moment to realize he was alone… no sign of Savannah! His heart ceased beating before reigniting at the speed of a space shuttle launch.
Shouts from outside grew in intensity along with a low rumble that sent ice through his veins.
Stampede!
“Shit!” he muttered under his breath while his eyes searched frantically for his clothes. The tiny porcelain figurine holding up the beaded lampshade by the bed shattered, whether from his clumsiness or the quaking of the trailer, he didn’t know.
“Savannah, dammit!” If she were out there—and there was every indication she was because she most certainly was not here—in the middle of rampaging steers and no telling what other madness, then she was in danger. Even in her current pregnant state, she wouldn’t stand aside and let the other cowboys handle things. She’d be right there in the mix of it all!
Yanking on his jeans and sliding his feet into his worn boots, not bothering with a shirt, Jasper nearly tore the door off its hinges in his haste. What he found on the outside sparked a fear so deep it froze his spine.
He choked on the dust-filled air hanging over everything so densely that he couldn’t see a damn thing. There was a faint burnt orange light permeating the fog, indicating the sun had begun to make an appearance but couldn’t break through the haze. Moos, neighs, and the shouts of frightened men and women were deafening. He screamed, “Savannah!” over and over, but couldn’t hear his own voice over the melee.
Jasper hopped down to the ground right into a swarm of frenzied horses. He quickly threw up an energetic bubble of protection, but it was barely enough to keep him upright as the animals raced past. “Savannah!” Dammit! The woman had no business endangering herself… and his child… in this mess.
Determined, he waded through the throng of animals. The horses ran past, leaving him unscathed. But his luck ran out with the onslaught of steers that came next. Pain erupted down his right leg from his hip where one horn scraped it. Not crippling by any means, but he didn’t want to have to explain how he healed so quickly if it’d been an outright goring of his gut. Guardian angels healed fast and to kill one was damn difficult, but not impossible. He’d need to be extra careful.
Standing still like a large oak tree in a spring breeze against the storm of cattle, Jasper forced his mind to calm so he could seek out Savannah with his angelic senses. For a fleeting moment, everything stopped like a movie put on pause. An innate light pierced the seemingly impregnable cloud of dirt and dust to weave through the terrorized, stampeding animals to the far side of the rodeo parade grounds where the animals were supposed to be stabled. He didn’t waste a moment before plunging into the thick of things and sprinted past and around the steers, taking care to avoid any contact with their sharp horns again. Once clear of the herd, everything resumed action in haste.
Cody hollered for someone to bring around the trucks and for someone else to grab the tranquilizer darts from Doc’s trailer—the resident veterinarian that they had hired after the last stampeding incident. They’d lost over a dozen head of cattle and had to put down two mares with broken legs and internal bleeding last time. Savannah had been possessed by Manea then, and he didn’t doubt that was the reason for the ruckus now.
His eyelashes did their best to block out the dirt and whatever else the animals had kicked up in the air that smelled as foul as the trailer-load of cow shit he’d shoveled. He tasted the pungency on his tongue, fighting the reflex to gag.
All thoughts evaporated, all went quiet except the roar of his beating heart in his ears, when he spotted Savannah. She stood in front of the steer pen, perfectly still with her arms opened wide. The few remaining steers swerved around her to bellow into the fog. Her eyes had lost all color except for an opaque whiteness that radiated outward like a lighthouse beacon.
“Fuck!”
Jasper grasped her forearms, screaming her name. Even nose-to-nose, she didn’t so much as blink away the dust. Her feet were planted in the ground, unmovable despite his best efforts to shake her from her trance. Lowering his upper body, he made to sling her over his back to force her to safety only to be met with a sizzling pain as if he’d been tasered at double the maximum voltage. He fell back onto his ass; the hooves of the last steer grazed his forehead. With blood gushing down his face and into his eyes, he skipped up to a standing position.
“Savannah! Stop this now!” He screamed in her face. “Please, sweetheart! You gotta fight Manea. Come back to me!” Tears mingled with the blood streaming down his cheeks. “I love you!”
She didn’t blink, but the wind that had been swirling behind and around her slowed until it died out.
“Savannah!”
The shouts of the cowboys frantically trying to corral the wayward animals seemed far away despite the action going on all around them.
What if he couldn’t wake Savannah up? What if Manea had taken such firm control of her body that the woman he loved was lost… faded into the corrupt, ugly power of the goddess co-habiting with her?
No.
Jasper never doubted he’d fight for Savannah and his child until his last dying breath and then probably beyond that, too. Manea may have succeeded in murdering his human-self, but as a resurrected guardian angel, he refused to back down or die again.
He grabbed Savannah’s hand. Another bolt of electricity shot through his hand, up his arm, to his heart. It hurt like hell. “Think of our child, Savi. You’re strong, much stronger than that bitch trying to manipulate your body. You, and only you, can defeat her. Savannah, please…”
Still, he held on until the pain subsided to a soft buzzing. Agonizingly slowly, the white clouding her eyes swirled until a glimmer of color peeked through.
It was working. Somehow, someway his words were penetrating the darkness to reach Savannah’s unconsciousness.
“Come on, baby. Come back to me.” He dared to lean in, pressing his lips to hers.
Suddenly, her knees gave out from under her. She sank to the ground with Jasper’s arms wrapped around her.
“I got you, baby. I got you.” Jasper lifted a prayer of gratitude to the All Mighty.
Her eyelids drifted closed, followed by words spoken so softly they could’ve traveled through several dimensions to reach his ears. “I love you, too.”
***
The sun was fully ablaze at the apex of the sky when Savannah fought to open her eyes against the crusted dirt coating her lashes. A jackhammer seemed to hack away at the base of her skull.
What the hell…
Even thoughts shot more pain through her brain. The roiling in her gut intensified. She was going to puke… if only she could see where to vomit, but her eyes still refused to see anything. Had she thrown back twenty tequila shots last night or something?
No, she wouldn’t have done that. First, she’d learned her lesson about tequila on her eighteenth birthday. She’d tossed her cookies for twenty-four hours afterward. Mama Wedgefield had docked her pay for not showing up in the arena for her rodeo clown performance. One bull rider had suffered severely from her neglect that day; he’d never ride anything again. Second, her last memory had been closing her eyes with Jasper’s arms wrapped around her and the steady beat of his heart against her ear. And third, she couldn’t drink… she was pregnant. Or had all that been an illusion?
Again… What. The. Hell?
A familiar voice, although it seemed as distant as the next state, penetrated the fog of her brain. Focus. She just had to force herself to concentrate through the agony tearing through her head.
And why won’t my eyes open?
“Savi?” A warm breath tickled her face. “Sweetheart?”
His voice was followed by a chorus close by echoing the same sentiment. “Is she okay? Savannah, honey, you okay? Jasper, tell us something!”
“Shush,” he whispered to whoever was around him. “Dim those lights, will you? She’s waking up.”
“Mister Moreau,” an unfamiliar, gruff but kind voice broke through the fog. “May I at least examine my patient now? Please stand aside.”
“All right, Doc. But she ain’t one of your farm animals. She needs a real doctor.”
That earned him a low growl of impatience. “Real doctor… my ass! Move aside!”
Her lips parted to speak, to ask what had happened, but no words squeaked out, just dry breath. A gentle hand clasped her own.
“It’s okay, Miss Savannah. I’m Doc Hardy. I just need to make sure you didn’t suffer any injuries. These knuckleheads are either too busy rounding up what’s left of the bulls or arguing over who’s responsible. But they all agreed they didn’t want the police or an ambulance to be called out. However, I will overrule them if I find so much as a scratch on you. You understand, darling?”
She nodded. A wave of nausea washed over her. She turned to the side just in time before she started dry heaving. Savannah didn’t know if she’d feel better if there had been something in her belly to puke up.
“Ugh,” she sighed when the nausea passed. Trying to sit up was a mistake, though.
“Give me a bucket!” The doc shoved a tin can used to scoop the cattle feed under her face which only caused her to retch more.
She pushed it out of his hand. The clanging noise it made against the ground sent darts of agony through her skull again.
A cool plastic cup was pressed into her hand. “Small sips, missy.”
Her parched throat could’ve been the Arizona desert for all she knew, but her nose couldn’t get past the stench of the plastic. She shook her head… slowly.
“You gotta drink up, missy. Can’t have you and the wee one dehydrated. Could put you into early labor, and that wouldn’t do either of you any good.” The doctor’s voice was calm, reassuring, and reminded her of her adopted dad before his death—the man who had taken her in when Jasper had rescued her; the man who had taught her how to ride horses and how to avoid getting her forehead split in two while shoeing a horse’s hooves. But this man didn’t smell of sweat, dirt, and manure. He had that pungent odor that hit you when walking into a busy vet’s office.
“Please, Savannah, drink up… just a little.” Jasper’s voice broke through to her common sense. Of course, she desperately needed water, as did the baby—the one issue that she and Jasper had yet to discuss.
Well, they had been otherwise occupied.
She pushed up on her elbows and reached out for the cup again, still not seeing anything so her hand bopped around until someone pushed it into her palm and held her arm steady.
Why can’t I see? What’s wrong with my eyelids? Why won’t they open?
Careful not to spill the water, she brought the cup to her lips and missed. The liquid splashed down her chest. At least it was cool against her feverish skin. She tried again, this time succeeding in getting the rim of the cup against her parched lips and the water crashed through the dryness of her mouth to slip down her throat like a cool waterfall. After a couple sips, someone took the cup from her grasp.
“That better?” The doctor didn’t wait for a response as she felt a cold metal against her chest and a warm hand wrapped around her wrist, pressing two fingers into her inner wrist. “Ahem,” was his only response when he dropped her arm.
After a thorough examination that thankfully fell short of him checking her pelvis for dilation, he harrumphed. “Well, she appears perfectly fine. Not so much as a paper cut. Odd though considering.”
“Doc,” Savannah interrupted, “I’m afraid you’re wrong.”
“How so?” His voice dipped low, and Savannah heard Jasper’s quick intake of breath somewhere behind him.
“Well,” she attempted to swallow the bile rising in her esophagus, “I can’t see a thing.”