Take Two Read online

  “Wait a minute!” Blakely grabbed the narrow shoulders and turned the man around, forcing a confrontation. “What are you talking about?” He gestured to Sadie’s limp form lying cold and quiet on the exam table. “She’s gonna be fine, go on, say it. I wanna hear you say she’s gonna be fine.”

  “Blake…” He felt a strong hand grip his arm and Holt’s sorrow and certainty flowed through him. “She’s dying, partner,” Holt said.

  “I’m sorry,” the Medi-tech said again, blinking watery brown eyes rapidly. “But I’ve seen many, many daemon attacks. I wish I could help her, but there’s no known cure. Once the victim loses consciousness, well…My best advice it to take her somewhere and make her comfortable. It won’t be long.” He left, shutting the door behind him, leaving them in the room that smelled of alcohol and death.

  “Nonono,” Blakely was shaking his head, vaguely aware of Holt’s arm around his shoulders, trying to comfort. “She can’t die, I won’t let her.”

  “You can’t help it. Nobody can.” Holt’s voice was rough with unshed tears. “Look at me, partner, you think I don’t feel the same way? What happened to her—she was trying to save me. She came at that thing with a pocket knife when it grabbed me. Your little shardi—the one you keep to open wine units, you know? She must have gotten it from your pack before she followed us.”

  For the first time Blakely registered that Sadie was wearing his clothes, an old shirt and a pair of sweatpants he wore on days off. Her slender, pale form swam in the oversized clothing and he suddenly remembered the bundle of new clothes he had gotten from Sheila for her to wear that lay in a glitzy ball of fabric at his feet. He had wanted to surprise her, to make up for not taking her along. She’d never wear them now.

  “Fuck,” he muttered brokenly, pulling away from Holt as the misery ate at his soul. He felt her going, felt her slipping away and knew his partner was right, there was nothing he could do about it.

  “I’m so Goddess-damned sorry, Blake,” Holt muttered hoarsely. “I know how you felt about her. I…I was beginning to feel the same way, I guess.” The familiar sapphire eyes were bright and the blond man’s chiseled features were twisted with the same agony Blakely felt inside himself. For the first time, though, sharing the grief didn’t make it less.

  “You know the worst part?” Blakely turned from his partner to stroke the honey soft hair away from her pale cheeks.

  “The worst part is that I don’t just feel it in here,” he pointed to his chest. “I feel it in here, too,” he pressed a palm to the back of his neck. “I feel her dyin’ like I’d feel you dyin’ partner. Feel like a part of me is goin’ with her.” He cupped the cool, lovely face in his hand, remembering how her cheeks had flushed with desire and fear the first time they pinned her between them. Remembering the heat that had flowed like a cord binding her to him and Holt. She should have been the one. He had been certain she was and despite Holt’s doubt he knew she would come around and accept them for what they were. Would agree to join with them and make them complete. “Just wish there was somethin’ we could do,” he whispered, stroking her cheek. “Oh, Sadie…”

  “Wait a minute, partner.” Holt’s voice had a funny sound to it that made him look up at the sapphire eyes that were narrowed in concentration. There was a tiny tickle in the back of his brain, something like hope.

  “What? What are you thinking?” He grabbed Holt’s shoulders and all but shook the taller man. “Tell me, Holt, what?”

  “It’s a long shot, but…Remember how we healed her hand?”

  Blake’s hopes deflated. “You think I didn’t think of that? That was a little cut on her hand, Holt. This is life or death. Probably death.” His shoulders slumped.

  “But what you said, about feeling her inside, feeling her die. Blake, I do, too. I feel her, too, in here.” Holt pressed the back of his neck the same way the dark detective had a moment before. “I think it’s the start of a bond, Blake. Not a strong one, not yet since we haven’t actually…you know. But it’s there, inside us, waiting to grow. If we can feel her the way we feel each other then maybe we can heal her. Come on…”

  12

  “She’s so cold,” Blakely said worriedly as he laid the precious bundle gently on the king-sized gelafoam bed back in their ship.

  “First thing to do is warm her up,” Holt said with more conviction than he felt. He wasn’t sure if what they were about to try was going to work or not. He only knew they had to try. What he had told Blakely in the Medi-tech’s station was no lie; he was beginning to feel for Sadie, too. No, say what you mean, Holt, he told himself sternly. I’m beginning to love her. But Goddess, how can I help it?

  He kept reliving that horrific moment when Xavier had pushed him into the roiling blackness, feeling the cold-iron bands of the daemon’s tentacles wrap around him and realizing, too late, that he had seriously underestimated its strength. He should have known better; Snuggly had tried to warn him. The daemon had been feeding off of Xavier’s pain and shame and hatred for weeks, growing stronger and stronger from the intoxicating brew of extreme emotion. And Holt had simply walked into the room and put his back to it, ignoring it, as he always had in the past.

  The back room of The Slice had always been a convenient place to conduct private conversations without fear of being overheard because of the daemon’s presence on one side of it. Holt and Blakely had used it before knowing that if you just ignored the malevolent hunger that pervaded the room’s atmosphere and the itch of ravenous red eyes on the back of your neck you’d be fine. Only this time it had been different. It wasn’t until the daemon wrapped him in its ice-cold coils immobilizing his arms before he could go for his blaster that Holt realized he had made a mistake. Probably the last mistake he would ever make.

  He knew that Blakely would feel his danger through the T-link and come for him, but by the time he got to the back room of The Slice it would almost certainly be all over. He’d had time for a last thought, Sorry, partner, and then that double row of razor teeth descended over his throat and knew this was it…

  Then someone had been beside him in the darkness, shouting his name in a clear, high voice. Blake? But it couldn’t be. He knew instinctively through their link that his partner was still only halfway there, fighting the crowds desperately to get to him. Then there was the odd sensation of another presence in the link, faint at first and then growing stronger; there was an indefinably feminine flavor to it…Sadie! He’d realized it about the same time he saw her honey-colored hair whip past his face as she plunged the pitifully inadequate shardi-knife into the daemon’s bulk.

  The daemon had howled, a soul-ripping noise that Holt heard inside his head rather than through his ears, and turned, full of inhuman rage on Sadie. The moment it caught a taste of her fear it dropped him in favor of the sweeter meat. Holt had been surprised and dismayed, but Sadie was scared to death, and terror was a much tastier emotion than shock.

  She was terrified and yet she had come after him into the daemon’s lair armed only with Blakely’s old pocket knife and a determination to save him or die trying. No one else in the whole Solar System—hell, the whole galaxy—would have done that for him. No one but his partner, Blakely, the other half of his soul. And now Holt was wondering if he would have to count his soul in pieces of three instead of halves in the near future. If we can just pull her through this, he told himself grimly.

  “Help me undress her,” he directed Blakely. The dark, curly haired detective nodded shortly and they began stripping the sweatpants and shirt off her slender form. Her skin, Holt thought, was creamy white—too white with the unnatural pallor caused by the daemon’s venom coursing through her system. Somehow they had to neutralize the effects of the daemon’s bite and bring her back.

  “Now what?” Blakely asked, a look of worry still filling his indigo eyes.

  “Now we get undressed too and lay on either side of her,” Holt directed, hoping he was doing the right thing.

  “Holt,” Bl