Savage Hearts

40

Like a tide, the darkness slowly recedes.

Dappled light filters through my closed eyelids. I smell him somewhere close by, that heady scent of a dense nighttime woods. My pulse surges. A steady mechanical beeping accelerates to match it. I must be hooked up to a monitor.

“Live, little bird,” Mal says, close to my ear, his voice low and urgent. “Fly back to me.”

I drag my eyelids open long enough to glimpse him there, hovering over me like the angel of death, beautiful and otherworldly, his pale eyes burning bright.

I understand that he believes I’m going to die.

He takes my cold hand and squeezes it. Hard. He commands gruffly, “Live.”

The tide of darkness rolls in to claim me once again.

I’m lifted in strong arms. The pain is excruciating, but I can’t cry out. I have no power over any part of my body, including my vocal cords. I’m limp, my limbs dangling lifelessly like a doll’s. I don’t have enough energy to even open my eyes.

I’m also cold. Freezing cold.

I’ve been entombed inside an iceberg.

Then there’s movement. Disorienting movement. I can’t tell what direction is up or down. The arms that were carrying me have disappeared. I’m stretched out on a comfortable surface.

I must have been placed flat but can’t remember it. I also still can’t open my eyes.

Something soft and heavy covers my body. A low hum of noise soothes my screaming nerves. A rocking motion lulls me into a trance. I’m cradled in warmth and security, and though the pain in my body is intense, I feel strangely calm. Calm and detached from myself, as if I’m floating weightlessly in the air several feet away, observing.

Maybe I’m dead already.

I thought the afterlife would be less painful than this.

The rocking slows, then stops. I inhale a breath that smells like snow.

“Good evening, sir. May I see your passport, please?”

The voice is male, friendly, and unfamiliar.

After a pause, the friendly man speaks again. “How long do you plan to stay in Canada, sir?”

“A few days.”

“Are you here for business or pleasure?”

“Pleasure. I’ve always wanted to see Niagara Falls from the other side.”

“Do you have anything to declare?”

“No.”

There’s another pause, then the friendly man wishes Mal a safe journey.

The humming noise starts up again. The rocking motion lulls me back into a trance.

I tumble back into darkness.

When I open my eyes one minute or one hundred years later, I’m lying on my back in a strange bed.

The room is cool, bright, and quiet, a comfortable blur. Without my glasses, I can’t see the details of my surroundings, but it doesn’t feel like a hospital. Doesn’t smell like one, either.

The air smells distinctly of campfire and pine needles. Of dense rain clouds and wet undergrowth. Of thick green moss climbing ancient tree trunks shrouded in fog at the tops.

Of the kind of wild outdoors where no people are.

It reminds me of a camping trip near Muir Woods my family took together when I was a kid. Gathering kindling for the fire, cold nights spent tucked into cozy sleeping bags, the sky overhead a glittering blanket of stars. Sloane and I whispering and giggling late into the night in our tent after our parents had fallen asleep in theirs.

It’s one of the last good memories I have of the two of us before our mother died.

I lie still for a moment, just breathing. Trying to stitch my ragged patchwork memory back together. Only bits and pieces of things surface, brief moments of awareness between long stretches of black. Even the things I can recall are blurry and full of static.

I have no idea much time has passed.

“Hello? Is anyone here?”

My voice is a frog’s croak. My mouth tastes like ashes.

Heavy footsteps draw closer, stopping beside me. I know it’s him even before he speaks. I’d know his step and his scent anywhere. That dark presence, as powerful as gravity.

“You’re awake.”

Surprise softens the naturally rough timbre of his voice. Surprise and something else.

Relief?

Disappointment, more likely.

I moisten my lips, swallow, cough. When my stomach muscles contract, it feels like someone rammed a white-hot poker straight through my gut. I cry out in agony.

He murmurs something in Russian, soothing nonsensical words, then supports my head with one hand and presses a glass to my lips.

Water. Ice cold and clear. It’s the most delicious thing I’ve ever tasted.

I drink deeply until there’s nothing left. He takes the glass away and runs his thumb along my bottom lip, catching a dribble.

I whisper, “Where am I? What happened? Is Kieran okay?”

The mattress dips with his weight. He leans over me, setting his hand beside my pillow, bringing his face into focus. He gazes down into my eyes and answers my questions as succinctly as I asked them.

“You’re at my home. You were shot by your bodyguard. The blond one. I don’t know if the other one’s alive. I’ll find out if you want me to.”

“Yes, please.”

He nods. We stare at each other in silence. Somewhere outside, a crow caws three times.

It seems like a bad omen, like the flock of geese murdered by the plane as we descended into Boston.

“I…I don’t remember being shot.”

He nods again, but doesn’t respond to that.

“Will I be okay?”

“You lost a kidney. And your spleen. And a lot of blood.”

“Is that a yes or a no?”

“It’s a maybe. How do you feel?”

I think about it, searching for the perfect word to describe the sensation of extreme weakness, overwhelming exhaustion, and throbbing, bone-deep pain.

“Shitty.”

He gazes at me in unsmiling, laser-focused silence, then says suddenly, “Soup?”

I blink in confusion, not knowing if I heard him correctly because my brain is cottage cheese. “Excuse me?”