Blood and Fire (McClouds & Friends #8)(115)

At least progress had been made, even if she couldn’t take credit for it. She’d cling to that. And trust Bruno. It was good practice.

It was getting dark by her third pass through the house. She stopped in the living room, puzzled, when she heard the sound. A voice, raised to a shout. Muffled, just barely audible. A woman’s voice. Tam.

Lily ran through room after room, flinging open any door she saw that was closed. “Tam? Tam! Where are you?”

“The bathroom off Val’s study.” Tam’s faint voice filtered through the walls to her right.

Lily blundered in that direction until she found a paneled, book-lined room. She flung open an interior door. Tam lay on the floor on her side, huddled around her swollen belly. Hugging it, as if someone wanted to take it from her. She looked up. Her lips were bluish.

“Call Val, quick,” she said. “I’m spotting. Or actually, this is just plain old bleeding, I think, not spotting. Forgot to bring my cell in here with me. Such a goddamn f*cking idiot. I’m afraid to get up. Hurry.”

“Oh, God.” Lily gasped. “Can I . . . should I—”

“Just . . . call . . . Val!” Tam’s voice was soft, but Lily leaped to action, raced through the house, howling for Val. She ran into him outside the house gym. “Tam’s bleeding,” she gasped out. “Study bathroom. Hospital. Quick.”

“O cazzo.” Val spun around. “Aaro!” he bellowed.

Aaro poked his head around the curve in the corridor. “Yeah?”

“We are all going to the hospital, for the baby,” Val said. “Now!”

“Ah . . . can’t I just stay with them here, while you and Tam—”

“No!” Val was backing down the corridor at a half run. “I cannot leave Lily and Rachel and Zia with one man only to guard! There is no one around here, for miles, and you would be trapped if they came at you with a full crew, like at the cabin! You would be f*cked!”

Aaro raced after, with Lily on his heels. “The two of us together would be f*cked, too,” Aaro pointed out over the pounding of their feet.

“Only one-half as f*cked. I do not have time to explain thedefense systems. You!” Val stabbed a finger at Aaro. “Get Zia from the kitchen! And you!” He rounded on Lily. “Wake Rachel from her nap. Run!”

The tension in Val’s voice propelled them like bullets from a gun.

Rachel was not psyched to be woken from her nap, but Lily flung the child’s squirming body over her shoulder. Even with panic to help her, it was a good thing the kid was so small. She snagged Rachel’s sneakers and sprinted through the house, yanking the child’s coat off the hook outside the garage door. Val was strapping a white-lipped Tam into the back of a black eightseater van. Alex was at the wheel, engine growling. Zia Rosa sat in the front passenger seat, clutching her purse, staring back at Tam, lips moving as she babbled a litany of prayers.

Lily leaped in, tossing Rachel onto the seat. The vehicle surged forward before she slid the door shut. She got the whimpering Rachel strapped into her booster seat. The conversation came into focus.

“. . . is too small for a hospital,” Val was saying. “We will have to go to the hospital at Rosaline Creek. Take the Moss Ridge Highway north at Junction Thirteen. Twelve more miles north. Go fast.”

Aaro obliged. Gravity slammed Lily back into her seat as the van’s powerful motor roared. She strapped herself in.

Tam’s eyes were closed. Her lovely face had that stiff, immobile look, like marble. As if she were bracing herself for something.

“Is she . . .” Lily stopped, swallowed. She didn’t even have the nerve to finish framing the question.

Val would not meet her eyes. He stared at Tam, clutching her hand, his other hand resting on her belly. “We will see,” he said.

“Mamma?” Rachel twisted around, too. “Are you sick?”

Tam managed a smile for her daughter. “I’m fine, baby.”

Rachel studied her mother. Those big dark eyes were old beyond her years, much like Sveti’s. “Is Irina fine?”

Tam flinched. “We’ll see, honey. Can’t talk now. Be still, OK?”

Rachel wrapped her arms around her knees and began to cry.

The van careened at ninety-five miles an hour down the winding two-lane blacktop, squealing around the hairpin turns, swerving around the odd oncoming logging truck. Lily’s eyes stung.

She wrapped an arm around Rachel’s thin, trembling shoulders. Rachel grabbed her and hung on tightly.





25


“Drive faster! We have to get there before they do!”

“I know that, damn it!” Hobart cursed as the car fishtailed on the r





ain-slicked asphalt. “Calm down! This will be tricky, but it’s our chance to show him what we can really do! To prove ourselves!”

But Melanie was too involved in her self-indulgent funk to respond to his pep talk. She clutched the headphones attached to the laptop to her ears, connecting her to the audio coming through Rosa Ranieri’s phone.

“You know what happens if we f*ck up, right?” she quavered.

“Melanie, this is not useful right now—”

“King will Level Ten us. And we will dig our own graves and slash our own f*cking throats.” Her voice was shrill. “Because he hates us, now.” Her voice dissolved. “He just h-h-hates usn>