The Valkyrie's Guardian (24 page)

Kyros raised his brows. “What was it like?”

“I lost control. It felt like one of Jack's rages, except for the lightning. It was intoxicating. It made me very, ah, violent.”

Kyros nodded. “Supposedly berserkers and valkyries descend from the Norse line of Odin. Some interesting story there, generations back.”

Jack had said something similar. It was still news to her that valkyries even existed.

“She was magnificent, Kyros,” Jack boasted. “Her affinity is with static electricity, drawn from the ground. It doesn't feel quite like your electromagnetic power. She pulled a storm down from the sky, and the lightning bolt weapon isn't a myth. She fried Krav.” Jack glanced sideways at Lyssa and apologized, “Not to be gross or anything, but he kind of melted.”

Lyssa shrugged. She'd vaporized Merodach with a homemade anti-matter bomb a few years past and confessed she'd laughed like an evil sorceress. Cassie understood the feeling, because in the throes of her own power yesterday, Cassie was wicked and pissed off and still lacked a twinge of regret for enjoying it. Maybe it wasn't healthy or PC, but there it was.

“Welcome to the superhero club,” Lyssa teased, grinning.

“I guess that leaves us with two matters.” Kyros narrowed his eyes and stared Jack down. “We have an appointment with the chaplain. And although I like the idea of your punishment, I should see what I can do for your knee.”

“Excuse me, but you look a lot like my future wife.”

—Jack MacGunn, King of the Bad Pick-Up Line

Astounding, modern technology. For a small fortune, Jack's traditional regalia had been overnighted from Inverness to California. Cassie thought she was savvy for scaring up a dress off the rack and a wedding band large enough to fit Jack on such short notice. SEAL Team Three showed up, occupying every spare inch of space in the office. Kyros and Jack barked a unison
No!
when someone suggested they move the wedding outside. A security nightmare, when they didn't have tabs on Boris yet.

Oh yes, Jack looked
smokin' hot
in a kilt. Black plaid striped in red and gold, with a matching banner that pinned over her shoulder, symbolic of her joining his clan. His team forgave him for not wearing Navy dress whites when they saw the ceremonial sabers crossed over his back in a battle scabbard engraved with wolf-dragon monsters and runes. How he'd gotten them through customs, she could only wonder.

Memphis stood up for Jack, and Cassie heard him mumble, “Not to be an ass or anything, Doolittle, but
I told you so.
”

Not to be outdone, Pops, a dashing all-American hero in his uniform, stage-whispered to Cassie, “Hey Thundercat. Baby
.
It's not too late to bust out of here. I'll let you do to me what y'all did at the clinic.
Rowr!
”

Great. So everyone knew.

Jack threatened him with bodily harm, the men chuckled, and minutes later she was Mrs. MacGunn, again. It surprised her that the ceremony felt redundant. The hand-fasting was real to Jack, so it was for her too. Kyros, posing as her brother, managed to give her away without looking too grim. He didn't shoot daggers at Jack but wasn't jovial enough to put to rest the suspicion that this was a shotgun wedding. Kyros sort of looked like he wished he had a shotgun.

Cassie expected Jack to use the Celtic knot in the ceremony. He comprehensively redeemed himself of all past wrongdoing when he drew a diamond from his pocket. A simple solitaire, but two carats, and
nice.
She hated thinking about it at such a moment, but she couldn't banish the worry that Jack didn't have the money to buy a two-carat investment-quality diamond, and she already knew he would never take money from Kyros.

Apparently Jack didn't expect her to wear both rings. For an awkward moment he waited, asking her silently,
Where should I put it, lass?

Left hand ring finger, of course.

He waited again, giving her time to remove the traditional band to make room for the diamond. She didn't.

Ah, Jack? Everyone is waiting.

It sparkled with white fire, next to his great-grandmother's Celtic knot. His narrowed eyes glinted radiant green, and she preempted the chaplain by throwing her arms around Jack's neck and kissing him dizzy. She was overcome by the strong, tender emotion floating in waves from his mind, but she also meant to give him time to get himself under control. He shouldn't go around flashing civilians with his spooky Green Lantern eyes.

She saw Henry smiling. His voice was lost in the commotion, but it was clear he said, “Fire.”

• • •

Kyros' prognosis on Jack's knee sounded too much like her own: The damage was so extensive he was lucky his body even produced scar tissue to heal it, however inadequate. Neither she nor Kyros was a magician; they couldn't fabricate something out of nothing. It remained to be seen if the destroyed cartilage would grow back. For the first time in his life, Jack didn't know if he would heal to normal function. Cassie couldn't bear to think of what it would mean to him — immortal, a berserker — to live the rest of his life hobbled, unable to do what he did best.

Kyros used phrases like “periodically scrape out damaged tissue” and “risk of sepsis and nerve damage.” Jack ground his jaw so tightly Cassie thought he'd shatter his teeth.

Drastic, like putting down a lame horse?
he said privately to her, and she joked back,
Yeah, but only if a few months of bed rest doesn't do the trick.

He groaned, making it clear he'd rather be shot.

Jack lay on his back across the kitchen counter while Kyros worked on his knee. Both men sweated in concentration, Kyros attempting a delicate operation against the reckless force of Jack's pulse, and Jack trying to bear the pain without screaming like a girl. Cassie always teased him, but in his defense, he truly was several times more sensitive to pain than normal humans. From the hyper activity in his nerves to the concentration of quadruple the normal pain receptors in his brain — proof that the gods have a sense of humor.

Cassie heard Kyros' frustration, his task tantamount to untangling a nest of fine thread in a hurricane; that's what the giant, rowdy waves of Jack's pulse seemed like to a healer. Also distracting was what she mystically referred to as his ‘life force,' the spiritual, intangible presence of his soul. His was noisy, rumbling, ADD times ten, always on the verge of boiling over. That energy source is what made him a berserker, a fascinating entity when it wasn't annoying.

Cassie couldn't take another moment of the sympathetic pain raking her spine and throbbing in her own leg. It clenched her womb and made it contract, which couldn't be good for the baby. The pale, strained expression on Jack's face as he sucked in labored breaths was killing her. He'd already burned though triple doses of morphine, and it wasn't safe to give him more. Without permission she slipped outside. The men wouldn't want her alone unguarded, but she didn't care. She needed to think.

For a few crazy minutes she seriously considered going back to the base in Coronado and lifting some Dilaudid from the clinic. Or if Kyros didn't need Jack awake to test his mobility, she would knock him unconscious. With any luck he'd pass out from the pain anyway.

Cassie wandered to the street corner then paced back toward the building, still feeling cooped up. Since Jack had a lame knee, she had no security guard to take her out jogging, and the buildup of excess energy began to affect her. There was only so much she could do inside the tiny condo. Jack was an extreme example, but most extra-sentients used physical exertion to calm the intensive energy levels in the brain.

Something caught her eye. She paused in front of the walkway to the condo, then recognized the red laser dot. It bounced from the front window of Jack's condo and looped around in goofy patterns like people did when teasing a cat. The dot climbed her leg, detoured in a crude gesture, then settled over her heart. The sniper from the base. Last time Jack had whisked them away out of danger, but now Cassie was ticked off and curious. A bad combination.

She turned and bolted in the direction of the source. Unlikely that the shooter supposed she could calculate his location based on the trajectory of the light beam. As she neared a hedge of mangroves across the street, a surge of electric energy heated the air around her and raised the fine hairs on her arms. This time she purposefully gathered the tension shooting down from the sky and sparking up from the ground. Static, an ingredient of lightning. It was a force she could feel as tangibly as her own limbs and command as naturally.

The anger coursing through her veins burned out of control. If she got her hands on the sniper, she would fry him. As badly as they needed whatever information they could interrogate from him, her valkyrie side would not allow the threat to her family go unpunished. She caught his scent, that same sickly maple-syrup-formaldehyde smell. It drew her right to his nest — nothing. Gone. She followed his trail to the next street, where it disappeared, meaning he had gotten away in a car. She walked home, fuming.

“ — ever touch her.
I was impaired
,” Jack said through clenched teeth.

“Obviously not enough,” Kyros contended, just as Cassie walked through the front door. Before they could freak out about her going out alone, she blurted, “The sniper's back.” They both blew a gasket, and at least it distracted them from the fight brewing a moment ago. Finally they let her explain. Lyssa wandered into the room, groggy from her nap. “I felt it too. It woke me up. What?
You
two didn't notice?”

That shut them up. Cassie exchanged smirks with Lyssa.

“Guess it was too much to hope that douchebag joined his buddies making compost under a landslide.” Jack wiped the sweat from his forehead, his complexion still peaked. “This is the first time he's threatened us at home. I was too busy trying to draw him out last week to consider a situation like this.”

“It's not Boris,” Lyssa muttered.

“No, it's someone else. No idea who,” Jack agreed.

Kyros herded everyone into the living room, complaining all the way as he examined the doors and windows. “This rat hole is a death trap, MacGunn. Would it kill you to think of security when you buy a place?”

That rubbed Cassie the wrong way. “He hasn't really had time to redecorate with steel doors and bullet-proof glass — ”

“To emit a foul odor.”

Lyssa pounced on the chance to defuse the situation. “Yes, Henry, it stinks. Do you know the man? Recognize his smell?”

Everyone turned to Henry, who looked thoughtful. “Kept from the knowledge of any but the members of a particular group or class.”

Kyros ruffled the boy's hair. “That's all right, Henry. If you think of something we should know, speak up okay?”

Jack rested his bad leg on the coffee table, making everyone wince at the grinding sound his bones made. “Well, game's over. I let it play out, but I'm not doing that now, not with Cassie … ”

She protested, “But let me try it again tomorrow. I'll go out jogging, so you and Kyros can stake out the sniper's nest. Take him out.”

“No!”
Kyros and Jack roared in unison.

“Why not? Only you can play the bait game, Jack?”

“Yes.”

“Unreasonable, hypocritical tyrant.”

“That's right honey. I'm also dead-set on taking care of my woman.”

“I'll be fine if — ”

“No!” He leaned forward and cupped his ear. “Hear that? It's the sound of your bad idea dying a quick death.”

If they were alone, that definitely would have been prelude to a brawl, injured knee or not. Instead Cassie raised a brow and forced herself to breathe evenly. Once she had the heat wave under control, she asked, “Then what? Let's hear your brilliant idea, which is
so
much quicker and more efficient than mine.”

She locked gazes with Jack. Tick tock, more silence. She cocked her head and furrowed her brows. “Hear that? Sounds like a complete lack of options to me.”

“Scotland.” Kyros rose and paced, making everyone swivel their heads to watch him. “You need to be in a defensible position. You can't stay here, it's not safe. Take Cassie home, Jack. Spread the word on base you're taking leave for a honeymoon.”

Only Cassie noticed the color drain from Jack's face.

“The OpFor is waiting for us to rat out the location of the academy, but they shouldn't suspect you taking your wife home to meet your family. We'll let them see me and Lyssa take Henry away, then we'll sneak him on board with you. I'll charter a flight. As soon as you're safe in Inverness we'll decide what to do next.” Kyros sat, seemingly pleased with his solution.

“That could work, unless someone knows that's a bloody unlikely story since my family
hates my guts.
”

Kyros glanced across the room at Jack, who looked like he might be sick. Kyros' voice softened, “I'm sorry, Jack.”

Sorry, but not backing down. In the end Jack agreed, with all the enthusiasm of a tortoise.

Cassie caught Kyros alone before he left with Lyssa and Henry. She stared him down and said quietly, “I heard your argument with Jack earlier, when I came in. I want to set the record straight: I pretty much seduced Jack, not the other way around. He was a boy scout and I was Delilah. I didn't realize how fogged he was. If not for the anesthesia, he never would have done it. So if you want to be angry at someone, take it out on me.”

Kyros stared back for one long minute. He kept his struggle with emotion private. Finally he conceded, “Cassiopeia, I respect your honesty. Allow me to be candid. I love you, but you're a damned fool. I'm cooperating because I have no choice. On every side lies tragedy — you are my only family, you are one of only two known extra-sentient females. You have
no idea …
” He paused to rub a hand over his face. She knew the gesture kept him from weeping.
“You don't know how
crazy
it makes me to see you so cavalier about throwing your life away.”