Page 118 of Edge of Darkness (Night Prowler 4)
“Not for them,” she sighed into his neck. “For you. Did it for you. And England sounds good. Maybe I’ll even teach you how to drive.”
She felt his chest rise and fall with his deep exhalation. He tightened his arms around her and pressed a kiss to her forehead.
Though her mind was fuzzy, she thought of something and frowned. She lifted her head and focused on Christian’s face. “The three of us? You want Asher to come, too?”
His smile was beautiful. He swallowed hard, and his eyes were bright with unshed tears. “No, angel. Not Asher. Someone else. Someone you’ll love even more.”
He moved his hand from where it had been stroking her arm, and spread his big palm gently on her belly.
Ember blinked at him. This brain swelling might turn out to be a problem after all, because she either wasn’t hearing him right, or her brain was improperly processing what he was saying. She just shook her head in confusion.
“Our little miracle,” he whispered, eyes shining with devotion. “I think he’s even more stubborn than you are; he held on against all odds. He’s a fighter…like his mama.”
Something huge was rushing at Ember. Something so vast, bright, and impossible it didn’t have a name, but it carried with it every hope, dream, and happy ending in the universe, in all of history. She didn’t even dare draw a breath for fear of chasing it away.
Her eyes were wide, wide open, as wide open as they could go.
“No,” she whispered as she stared into Christian’s eyes. “It’s not possible. The accident…the doctors told me—”
“Apparently they were wrong,” he said with laughter in his eyes.
Pressure in her chest, crushing. Suddenly she couldn’t breathe. Her eyes were wet. Her hands began to shake.
“So you’re telling me…what you’re saying is—”
“It’s a boy,” he gently said when she could no longer go on. “The doctors don’t know yet because it’s too early, but I do.” He tapped his nose, smiling.
The beeping Ember had thought was the clock of eternity began to accelerate, chiming wildly in the silence of the room. It was a heartbeat monitor, and Christian sat up and looked at it, suddenly vibrating tension and worry.
“Are you all right? Are you hurting? Tell me what I can do, tell me what you need—”
“You,” Ember sobbed, curling her hand around the front of his shirt and pulling him down beside her. “All I need is you.”
He relaxed beside her, stretched out like a lazing lion, and cupped her face in his hand. She looked up at him through a prism of tears and he said, “Then we’re both set, because nothing will ever separate me from you. Nothing.”
He pressed his lips against hers and murmured, “Come what may.”
In the early morning hours of March 31, three very important phone calls were made, by three very different men. All three calls would change the course of the future.
Each of these men was a leader among his kind. Each was driven, each was ambitious, each was heartless and cold.
And each of them was badly injured.
Two of them sustained serious injuries that would mar them forever. One man lost a leg, a hand, and a good portion of his sanity when he stepped on a land mine. Another was trapped by falling rock when a tunnel beneath a bunker collapsed but was saved from death by a pair of steel support beams that buckled but didn’t break. He suffered shrapnel wounds from the explosion that triggered the collapse and lung damage from smoke inhalation. He would also develop crippling claustrophobia from being trapped in the blackness below ground for hours before rescue personnel finally dug him out.
The third man—who wasn’t really a man at all—was so mangled and mutilated he was unrecognizable, even to the curious fish who swam up to investigate him, floating face down in the sea, just another piece of flotsam on the water.
It would take the first two men many months to heal from their injuries, to move forward with their lives as before, but it took the third man all of a few minutes before he healed and lifted his head, furiously coughing up sea water, physically right as rain.
The first man made his phone call while being transported to the local hospital in the back of an ambulance. Though in shock and suffering from severe blood loss, he still managed to convince the EMT to lend him a cell phone, and he dialed a number he knew by heart. There wasn’t a live person on the end of that call—there never was—but a machine took his message, and it would be replayed later by the one it was intended for, who had the means to set the wheels of pursuit in motion.
His message was simply a license plate number, memorized just moments before he stepped on the mine.
The second man’s call was made to the Vatican, to a private line only a handful of people in the world knew. When the phone was answered, he recited a verse in Latin from the gospel of Peter. “Be watchful; your adversary the devil prowls like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.”
To which a voice on the other end replied, “But we shall devour him first.”
Made from a payphone in the Port Vell marina, the phone call from the third man was collect, as he was nude and had no money. It was as succinct as the other two calls, and consisted of only three words, spoken as the high, shrieking whine of police sirens grew nearer.
