Unfortunately the man was right-handed. Rogett gritted his teeth and his right hand kept swinging that hand cannon in Daniel’s direction, and he knew this was going to hurt. He prayed for God to save Larry and the XH to save him and surged to his feet to rush his enemy.

But it was neither God nor XH, it was his own angel that saved him. Elise was closer and wasn’t carrying a load of gear. She bounced up and stepped in front of the gunman and Daniel saw the explosion as the first round blasted through her shoulder upward, a spray of red that covered him in a fine mist. The bullet, slowed, thumped off his Kevlar helmet, staggering him.

Elise screamed as the bullet passed through, but stayed up. Karl fired the second and last round just as Elise got her hands on his weapon. It tore through her right upper arm, to plow into the wall somewhere off to their rear. Impossibly, she hung on to the big black automatic with a death-grip, preventing him from firing with her fingers jammed through the trigger guard, for just long enough.

Daniel thought, What an amazing woman. If I wasn’t in love before, I sure am now.

Karl struck her weakly, once, with his wounded left arm, Daniel’s knife still sticking out of it like some bizarre fashion accessory.

Then Daniel had him.

Without thought or planning his right hand had dropped to the pistol grip of the M4 hanging on its retractable sling and he lined it up between the man’s eyes. He didn’t fire, though, as he would have a few days ago, before his conscience started acting up, before the XH. Instead, he punched the weapon forward, driving the tip of the barrel into the big man’s forehead with a meaty thud.

Daniel had to hit the man twice more before he finally slumped and let go of his gun, wheezing on the floor. Daniel kicked it aside. Desert Eagle, like he’d thought. He pulled his blade out of the gunman’s flesh, wiped it on his pants leg, and slid it back into its sheath.

Elise slumped to the floor. Just then Zeke came through the same secret door. He took in the scene and pulled out his zip cuffs again.

“Double them,” Daniel said, turning back to Larry. “He’s one tough son of a bitch.” He was worried about Elise but the triage medic in his head made him work on the wounded man first. Compartmentalize and stitch. Besides, she had the XH and had survived worse.

The irony was that the “worse” was something he himself had inflicted.

Zeke dragged the hog-tied hostile out of their way. With the corner of his eye Daniel saw Elise sitting on the floor bleeding, propped against another lab counter, both arms hanging flaccid. “Zeke, can you look at her?”

Zeke pushed his M4 back on h sling and knelt down to tend to Elise. She opened her eyes and smiled. “I’ll be all right. The Plague will heal me.” She lifted a shaky hand. “See? Getting better already.”

Skull appeared in the lab doorway, having come to join the fight. He looked disappointed, until Zeke yelled, “You and Spooky clear the rest of the building.” Zeke needn’t have shouted, since they were all still on the tactical link, but sometimes men do things in the heat of battle that don’t entirely make sense.

“You guys all right?” Vinny broke in on the radio. He had been pretty restrained until now. Of course they had emphasized the importance of no chatter, but he finally couldn’t help himself.

“Larry’s hit, but I think I got him.”

But Daniel had lied. Larry was bleeding out fast. The delay dealing with the last hostile had cost him and he was racing to save the big man’s life.

He made sure Larry’s airway was clear, got plugs into the chest wounds front and back, and wrapped him tight and quick, putting him on the wounded side again to keep him from drowning in his own fluids. Then he slapped pressure bandages on the rest of Larry’s wounds, of a type with the infused clotting agent. A large-bore IV of saline was next, into a vein. Daniel looked around for something to hang it on, and found Elise there.

She grabbed the bag with her left hand and held it high. Her wounds had closed fast, much faster than he had expected. She smiled reassuringly, encouraging.

Daniel’s own remembered need for food, food to heal his wounds, cramped his gut, almost doubling him over. He grabbed his rucksack, opened one of the pockets to pull out a handful of protein bars. Ripping the wrapper off with bloody hands he held it out toward Elise’s face.

Their eyes met, understanding passing between them.

She grabbed the bar with her free hand and stuffed it in her mouth, chewing furiously. She moaned with pleasure, a sound that reached Daniel somewhere below the belt.

A part of him marveled at the human male’s ability to think about sex he hadn’t even had with someone he didn’t really know, even in the middle of a death struggle. Maybe because of the death struggle. Daniel dropped the rest of the bars on the floor within reach, then went back to treating Larry.

He had got out another I.V. and was prepping whole blood when Elise asked, her mouth full, “You got dextrose?”

He nodded.

“That’s what he needs, more than blood.”

That made no sense to his training, but something about her look convinced him she knew what was she was talking about. So he prepped dextrose instead and slid it into Larry’s femoral vein, the biggest available vessel in the body and the way to get it in him fastest. It drained rapidly through the short tube as Daniel held it up.

Elise fed Daniel a chunk of protein bar. He gobbled it from her fingers. It was unbelievably sensual, like that first taste of water in the parched desert. She fed him another, felt his mouth on her hand, wanted his mouth on hers...

“More,” he gasped, working between bites. She fed him.

“Give him more dextrose,” she said, gesturing at the I.V.

“That would be too much. It could make him hyperglycemic. He could go into shock.”

“No,” she disagreed. “The Eden Plague is taking hold of him already. Look, his wounds are closing. He just needs to be fed. Give him more, now.” Her tone brooked no argument.

His mind’s eye flashed back to the bizarre lip-lock she had given Larry. That confirmed it. She had passed the XH, the…the Eden Plague she called it. Just like a bite, only a bit gentler. He was right, this stuff would put him out of a job. He didn’t have time to care about that right now, switching out the empty I.V. for a full bag. “This is the last one of dextrose. Just whole blood and saline left.”

“Wait,” she said. She stuffed one more piece of protein bar into Daniel’s mouth, then hung the saline drip on a drawer handle next to her. Standing up, she ran to the other side of the big laboratory, rummaging in a glass-fronted medical refrigerator. Larry looked like he was stabilized, breathing easier and not bleeding much.

She came back with four one-liter I.V. bags of something nonstandard, a pale pink liquid Daniel didn’t recognize. It had “NS” handwritten on it in marker. “It’s a nutrient solution they use for the primates, when they do tests. It’s better than dextrose. It’s IV food in a bag. Only for Eden Plague carriers.”

He waited for the last of the dextrose to drain, then switched the bags. The pink stuff started down the tube, and they knelt there, watching Larry. After a moment Daniel felt her staring at him. He looked up into her shining blue eyes, confident for the moment that the Eden Plague was doing its work. Thank you, he mouthed to her silently.

She blushed.

“Larry’s gonna make it,” he said over the link, his voice hoarse. “Anyone else need medical attention?”

“Neg.”

“Negative.”

“No.”

“Excellent.” Because he wanted to keep staring into those azure orbs, to lose himself there. He wanted to do it forever.

-13-