The Seer's Lover (The Seven Archangels Series) (34 page)

“Well, seer, if you won’t help me, then I’m not very inclined to help you, either. Let’s see how Calise is doing without her first born son, shall we?” Shane dug Lucas’s cell phone out of his bag. “Ok, I need some of your saliva.” Shane grabbed Lucas’s mouth and forced it open by pushing on his adam’s apple. Lucas involuntarily choked and Shane wet two of his fingers with Lucas’s spit. Shane sucked his two fingers and cleared his throat. “How do I sound?” He cleared his throat again. “How do I sound?” he asked in Lucas’s voice. “Now, you need to be quiet, seer.” Shane punched him in the throat which doubled Lucas over coughing and gagging.

Shane dialed. “Hey, babe, it’s me. How are you doing? What? Nara? Calm down and listen…just listen! It’s not safe for me to come anywhere near you and the baby right now. Maybe not ever…” He lowered his voice. “But I’ve talked to Carmen about your ex-boyfriend Shane. Carmen trusts him; he’s been helping her for months. If he contacts you, I want you to trust him, too. Can you do that for me? Stop crying, babe, everything will be fine. Shane might be the only one who can really protect you and get the baby back. No…No I’ve no idea when I might return. I need to protect
my
family’s artifacts at all costs. I know you love me. Yeah, good-bye.”

Lucas was shattered. Didn’t Cali know that he would never talk to her like that? That he would never give his blessing to trust Shane?

Shane dropped the cell phone and smashed it with his heel. He waved the three demons closer. “Are you going to tell me where the artifacts are so Calise and I have a chance to defeat Nara?”

Lucas shook his head.

Shane shrugged. “I figured. You don’t love her half as much as I do. You three, do what you want with him, then dispose of the body. Got it?” Shane glanced over his shoulder at Lucas on his way out. “My family awaits.”

****

“Lucas! Lucas!” Calise stared at the phone in horror.
This
was his reaction to their baby being abducted? Trust Shane!

What’s going on?

The door opened as she was trying to get out of bed. Dean rushed in. “Whoa, whoa there, sis. Calm down. I saw your baby and everything is fine. I told the nurses to give you something to calm you down.”

“You saw Michael? Bring him here, right now! I need to see him.” She didn’t believe him. “Are you sure it was him? He has a birthmark between his eyebrows.”

“I don’t remember that. I’ll go get him. The nurse is outside.”

Dean left and returned a moment later holding a small bundle that he handed to her.

Maybe it’s all a bad dream…

She uncovered the infant and began to hyperventilate. “This isn’t my baby.”

Her door swung open, and a demon nurse with a hypodermic needle materialized at the bedside in the blink of an eye. She tapped Dean’s temple, and he crumpled to the ground. Calise scrambled to get out the other side of the bed with the imposter baby but got stabbed in the hip with the needle. Instant warmth tingled from the site, and she stumbled toward the chair in front of her, setting the baby down before her knees gave out. She couldn’t fight the drug any longer, and her eyelids grew heavy. Before she passed out on the floor, the last thing she saw was the nurse’s white orthopedic shoes.

The next time she awoke, she was back in bed. Bodies, including Dean’s littered the floor. So much for her guardians. Someone new stood in the doorway.

Shane.

“Help me,” she begged, tears fogging her vision. “I have to get out of here. Nara…stole my baby. Demon…nurses. Please help me. Lucas said I can trust you.” Even groggy, she ripped off the tape that held her IV in place.

Shane moved so fast to her bedside, that for a fraction of a second, he, like the nurse before him, was a blur. “Of course you can trust me. Are you sure it was Nara? What did she say?”

“She said Liza will enjoy torturing my baby, and if I came near you again, she’d kill Lucas, too.” She pulled the needle out and put pressure on it to stop the bleeding.

“Liza, huh? Then I know where Nara took your baby. If I help you, you have to do something for me in return.”

“
Anything,
” she blurted, on the brink of hysterics.

“No more Lucas. No more Wisconsin. You have to stay with me, and I’ll love you and take care of you both. You have to promise me.”

She was shocked. How could he ask this of her? Yet, she knew. She always knew he would find a way to force himself back into her life. But to leave Lucas, her family, and everything she knew behind? She could still feel the weight of Michael when she held him in her arms. Something inside her snapped. Being a mother became easy and the path crystal clear. You would do anything,
anything
, for your child, even if it meant sacrificing everything you hold dear.

Lucas will find me, or I will find a way to get away from Shane. My precious angel baby is the most important thing to me right now. If this is the only way…

“Yes,” her promise sounded hollow even to her own ears.

“One sec, babe.” He blurred out of the room and reappeared outside with an empty wheelchair, two blankets, a small backpack, a hat in the seat, and balloons tied to the back.

He lifted her out of bed, stepping over her lifeless angelic guardians.

Dean moved.
He isn’t dead.

She winced still fresh from the pain of giving birth. He kissed her hair and murmured, “You’ll never have to worry again. I’m here now.” He wrapped her in one blanket and the small backpack in another, like a swaddled child. He placed the hat on her head, and she belatedly realized that he was dressed as a hospital worker in scrubs.

They left the unit, littered with unconscious employees. The ward’s entrance was locked, and people were banging on the door. She heard her mother and Ellen screaming her name. Shane headed for a service elevator. “I can take you to them, but they can’t help you. I’m the only one who knows where your baby is.”

Shane spoke the truth. Ellen and her mother had no idea of Nara’s whereabouts. She needed Shane right now. Her head swam with images of what Nara would do to Michael and a wave of nausea rolled over her. “I want to be with you; I trust you.”

“Good girl,” he said, hitting the button on the elevator. The human staff began to stir from their various positions around the nurses’ station. In the basement of the hospital, Shane wheeled her outside and helped her into a waiting chauffeured car which drove them straight to Mitchell airport. They drove in via a back entrance by the private hangers and parked in a garage by the runway.

A private jet? Where is Shane getting the money for this luxury?

Of course: Nara.

Something nagged at her about Lucas’s phone call; she knew better than to trust Shane even though desperation had made her promise the unthinkable to the transitor.

He had new clothes for her to change into on the airplane. When she got out of the bathroom dressed, he patted the seat next to him. If he could help her get Michael back, then she would let him down easy. Again. Either way, a miserable situation.

She gingerly lowered herself down on the white leather upholstery of the wraparound sofa of the jet. He had a warmed blanket ready to cover her. He shifted her legs over his lap after he adjusted his arousal.

Hold in the vomit…

He rubbed her leg under the blanket and ran a finger up her inner thigh, repulsing her.

She winced and edged backwards. “Shane, I just had a baby.”

“I know. I’m sorry. There will be plenty of time for us to be together again—soon.” He reminded her of a cobra desperate to hypnotize its prey.

Time to play along. She was terrified that if he suspected she didn’t want him back, he wouldn’t take her to Nara. Reaching under the blanket, she removed the offending hand, instead holding and kissing it. “Looks like we found our way back to each other. You can be my hero again.”

He settled back in his seat relishing her attention. “I always knew, too. We are soul mates.”

Do transitors even have a soul?

The captain came on overhead. “We are cleared for takeoff to Moscow via Madrid, sir. Is there anything else I can do for you right now?”

Russia? Nara took my baby to Russia?

“No, Captain. We are good. Have the flight attendant bring us something to eat,” Shane replied.

A demon in a tight navy blue uniform with cleavage galore rolled out a cart. Her smile showcased her jagged teeth. She peeled and deveined fresh steaming shrimp in front of them with the claw of her right pointer finger. “Champagne?”

“Of course, two glasses, please.” Shane looked like a puppy trying to impress its owner.

She knew better than to refuse him.

The cork popped under the stewardess’ practiced hand and the bubbles fizzed in the glasses she set down on the cart.

He dipped a shrimp in sauce and fed it to her before handing her a glass of champagne. “I always knew you’d come back to me. Let’s toast. To us: now and forever.”

“To us.” She nodded and donned a phony smile. They clinked glasses. Demons flew the plane; demons drove his car; it was all Nara’s money.

What will happen when she finds out he betrayed her—for me?

And how will Lucas find me? I’m walking into the lion’s den.

Chapter 33

Private jet en route to Moscow

The jet refueled in Madrid and landed in Moscow a few hours later. Calise dozed uncomfortably, always waking up to find Shane outlining her face with his fingers and speaking softly to her.

Still tender from the delivery, Calise eased herself into the black sedan waiting for them at the Moscow airport. The human driver conversed some with Shane in Russian while she stared out the window at run-down houses and people warming their hands around garbage cans turned furnaces. Snow fell in one continuous blanket. The hopelessness of the people sank into her very being.

As the drive wore on into the apple-lined trees of the country, she had to ask. “Shane, how did you fall?”

He was in her face, pointing at her. “Never, never ask me that again.” He grabbed her shirt on either side of her neck and lifted her slightly. His lip quivered and curled into a sneer. “That’s between me and my Father and is none of your business.”

The hollow circles of his empty eyes bored into hers, and she realized in that instant, Shane was more than a little mentally unstable. His temper was on a short fuse and whatever had happened to him, whatever he’d seen and done since they’d been apart, he was not all there anymore. That made him dangerous.

He released her and backed off.

They didn’t speak for the rest of the drive.

After traveling about three hours northeast of Moscow, and with daylight waning, Shane told the driver to slow in a forested area outside of the town they’d just passed through. The driver turned off the engine, and Shane retrieved boots, a coat, hat, gloves, and a flashlight from the trunk for Calise. “Go,” he instructed the driver. Then he said to Calise, “Nara may or may not know you’re here, but this is one of her family’s orphanages where they have angel babies. They are tortured here for their entire childhood so they
fall
or commit suicide in their teenage years.”

“What?” Panic, fear, and rage consumed her thoughts
. This is where she brought my baby?
The horrors that a demon, unsupervised in an institution, could inflict on innocent babies, was…unthinkable. She’d seen the psych ward, and that was adults…
Maybe this is what Ellen was talking about with the missing and abducted angel babies?

Calise hurried to get bundled up as the icy cold hit her lungs. Snow seemed to be forever falling here, settling a glaze of white hope on the dank futility of her situation. She needed to get Michael out of here. “What does my sister-in-law Liza have to do with all this?”

“She runs the place, under protest. Liza owed Nara’s father money, and her debt came due. But she’s torn. She may be an ally, depending on what’s happened since I left. Calise, this isn’t going to be easy, but we
will
get our babies away from Nara. I love you. I can be a wonderful father to the kids. I can make you happy, you’ll see. Together we can help Liza, and you’ll save me in turn, just in time.”

How many babies is he talking about? Save him just in time from what?

The iron gates creaked as they stole into the compound under the light of the moon, their boots crunching on the fresh snow. Calise could see the hollow circles of Shane’s eyes every time he turned to check that she was keeping up with him. Her heart pounded out of her chest as she realized she only had the necklace to fight Nara. She desperately hoped that Shane and Liza were on her side.

“We’ll go in the side entrance, get the babies, and get out,” Shane explained.

“You keep saying, ‘babies.’ What do you mean?”

He stopped and slumped against the dirty wall behind him. “Nara and I had a baby. I’m not leaving here without both our children.”

Not good.

“Do you believe in me, Calise? Do you trust me and will you prove it?” Shane was beginning to show signs of fear. His gaze darted back and forth, and he kept wringing his hands together with paranoia. His musty aura surrounded him like moldy leaves tumbling around in a frosty autumn wind.

“Yes, I do trust you.”

He closed his eyes and leaned in. He wanted a kiss.

She closed her eyes and hesitantly reciprocated.
Lucas will understand—I would forgive him anything he did in the name of protecting our child.

The kiss lasted way too long because Shane wanted it to. In college, his lips were like butter, his tongue would send tingling shock waves to her toes, and she’d never wanted him to stop. Now, his breath was acidic and his tongue singed her with pain as it greedily entered her mouth, begging reciprocation.

****

Commercial airline en route to Moscow, Russia

“Tell me everything one more time.” Lucas repeated for the third time. “Slowly.”

Dean’s ramblings made no sense. So far he’d picked out that Calise was missing and so was his son. “Cali said Liza works for a lunatic that tortures babies. Does that make sense?”

Staring out the window, Lucas’s mind only perked up for Cali’s name or Michael’s.