The Dark Remains - Mark Anthony [84]
“Travis?”
He turned toward the sound of the wine-rich voice behind him, knowing in that moment there was a purity and beauty to forgiveness that outweighed any hurt, any pain, any regret. He stepped forward, lifted his hands to her cheeks, and kissed her deeply, lingeringly, on the lips. At last he stepped back, and he was amused to see that this time it was her smoky green eyes that bore the look of complete astonishment.
“It’s good to see you, Deirdre Falling Hawk,” he said, and he meant it with all his heart.
Slowly, tenderly, a small smile crept across the arched bow of her lips. “What happened to your hair?”
Travis ran a hand over his bald head and laughed.
They found Grace and Hadrian Farr already embroiled in quiet conversation, sitting on a bench beneath a hulking iron sculpture that reminded Travis of the dragon Sfithrisir, stretching vast wings whose outlines blurred with the very air so that they were maddening to gaze upon.
Grace looked up as Travis and Deirdre approached. Her face was hard and bloodless, and Travis stopped in his tracks. He glanced at Deirdre, whose expression was grim, then back to Grace and Farr.
“He’s gone,” Grace said before he could speak.
Perhaps there was enough of her Weirding left in this place for her to Touch and speak to him, or perhaps it was simply the instinct that comes with urgency and closeness. Either way, when Travis spoke the word, a numbness filled him: the coldness of truth.
“Beltan.”
27.
Minutes later they sat in the comfortably upholstered interior of a black limousine as the streets of Denver moved like shades beyond the tinted windows. On the other side of the driver’s partition, a silhouette piloted the vehicle with skilled, anonymous assurance.
Travis sat next to Deirdre, his hand resting on top of hers in what had begun as an unconscious motion only to continue in an active desire to hold on to something real, solid. On the seat opposite sat Grace and Hadrian Farr. The Seeker was as handsome and elegantly disheveled as Travis remembered, the strong line of his jaw shadowed by a day’s worth of stubble, the sleeves of his white shirt rolled up, his chinos rumpled but well tailored. He was twilight next to Grace’s bright afternoon, dark and sensual where she was chiseled and regal. It was hard not to notice that they looked striking together.
Farr and Deirdre explained what they knew. It was precious little. Upon their arrival that morning, they had gone to Denver Memorial to confirm that the hospital was secure.
“And just to see him,” Deirdre said, eyes shining. “To look at someone born on a world other than Earth.”
Despite the tightness in his chest, Travis laughed. “You know, they put their breeches on one leg at a time just like we do.” All the same, he understood her.
However, instead of Beltan, the Seekers had found a crime scene. Travis and Grace listened in silence as the two Seekers described what had happened last night—and what had been kept from the hospital staff until that morning, not long after Travis’s shift had ended.
Just after 7:00 P.M., a resident and a nurse ran to Room CA-423 in answer to a heart-monitor alarm. However, when they entered the room, they did not find what they expected: the coma patient seizing, or perhaps dead. Instead, the patient’s bed had been empty. IV tubes and monitor leads had been torn out. Only as they came around the bed had they seen the other in the room: the real code blue.
“He was a third-year resident at the hospital,” Farr said, flipping through a file folder. “His name was … his name was Dr. Rohan Chandra.”
Grace nodded. “I knew him. Not well, of course.