Aztec Treasure

Alpha Chase Nygaard’s POV

Two Harbors, Minnesota

As soon as we taxied to a stop at the Two Harbors Airport, the cars drove up to where the stairs would come down. The Sheriff sent two vehicles to collect the Secret Service agents; two were coming with me to Arrowhead, while the Supervisory Agent was headed to Duluth to prepare for Air Force One in a few hours. We’d all been on the phone for most of the flight, and tensions were high. Julio Salazar was on the loose, the First Husband was very likely to die in our Clinic, and the President would be here in a few hours to be with him. I wasn’t worried about our Pack; we were solid defensively, and those not fighting were well protected with our safe room. I felt sorry for the Secret Service.

As soon as the stairs lowered, I let the agents head out first. The Supervisory Agent rode shotgun in a patrol cruiser, taking off with lights flashing before I got down the stairs. The other two got in a Sheriff’s SUV. Behind them were three vans from Oxbow Lake, each with an Omega driving. I walked over to the lead van. “Hey Patty,” I said to the driver. Patricia was a former Arrowhead member who found her mate in the Oxbow Lake Pack shortly after our Pack moved here.

“Welcome home, Alpha Chase,” she said. “I’m to take you and your people to Arrowhead. The two other vans are taking our warriors and trackers home.”

“Sounds good. We’ve got a few minutes until the next plane arrives.” The Air Force transport jet was right behind us and was landing now. Since I took three Secret Service agents on my flight, the second had three Oxbow Lake warriors onboard.

“You don’t want to head there now?”

“I’d rather have the people. If your Alpha doesn’t mind, I’d prefer to let the Sheriff lead us to the Arrowhead entrance, and then you can all head back together. I can’t split up our people with Julio out there somewhere.”

She linked Alpha Michael, who agreed with the plan and welcomed his people back home. I made a quick call to Beta Vic while I could still hear and told him we’d be there in about fifteen minutes. “We’ll be ready,” he said. “It’s good to have you back, Alpha.”

“Tired of dealing with the FBI?” I’m sure he’d been having a LOT of fun dealing with everyone who wanted access and control of our land.

“You can’t imagine. Alpha Rori has it easy because she can pull the old ‘I’m pregnant, and I’m a wolf’ excuse.”

“Keep everyone safe, and I’ll be there shortly.” I hung up as the Air Force jet taxied in and stopped nearby. A few minutes later, we were loaded up and heading out. Since we came straight from the Leesburg Airport, nobody had luggage, only their weapons. Our Sheriff’s SUV led the way with lights flashing, so we made it to the entrance in record time.

I linked our security guys, and they opened the vehicle barriers just before our caravan turned in. The press was everywhere, and I could see two helicopters circling over the lake. We drove straight to the Pack House.

With no immediate threat, Vic had relaxed the lockdown rules so people could eat and move around. No one was allowed out of the Pack House basement unless they were in the dining room upstairs; no pool, no offices, and no tunnel doors open. It did allow people to use the gym, get sleep in the bunk room downstairs, and go upstairs to an open kitchen to eat. I’d asked about Claire Bennington, our injured FBI agent who had a room downstairs. Frank Donovan and some others had wheeled her hospital bed into the safe room when the alert went out; she was sleeping there now. We could get everyone back in the safe room and lock the door in less than a minute.

I told everyone to go inside and eat since we’d had nothing since lunchtime. I asked for a plate to be brought to the Clinic as I headed over there with the other Secret Service agents. Heading back to the treatment room, I walked past the FBI guards and inside. Possum was preparing an ice bath while Doc Olson was monitoring his vitals. Over in the corner, two local physicians and a Secret Service agent were watching and taking notes. “How is our patient doing?”

“I’m burning up, and everything hurts,” Andrew complained. “Where is my wife?”

“Giving the Secret Service hell as she makes them get her out here with no notice,” I told him. “The Supervisory Agent I brought along is wound so tight that if he chewed on a pencil, he’d crap a diamond.”

That got a laugh. I checked the First Husband’s vital signs; pulse 106, blood pressure 140/92, and temperature of a hundred and two. Doc handed me his chart. “I’ve got three units in, and I’ve taken three. When the first unit went in, his vitals improved slightly, and his fever came down a degree. It only lasted for fifteen minutes, though. The werewolf blood doesn’t seem to be stopping the effect of the bite.”

“The bath is ready, Doctors.”

We moved Andrew into the portable tub we brought in. He almost screamed when he sank into the cold water, but we had to keep his fever down as long as possible. Once it spiked to over a hundred and five, he’d no longer be lucid, and he was closer to death. While he was settling in, I’d been linking with Vic and Rori. “How are we progressing on finding a mate for him?”

“Flights started landing an hour ago,” Rori replied. “We’ve got a scent bag at Two Harbors, and so far, we are 0 for 18. We’ll have a scent bag at the Intercontinental Hotel at the Minneapolis Airport in an hour, in time for flights heading there. We’re getting a good response, even from European Packs that know they likely won’t make it in time.”

“Good. I know we are grasping at straws, but we have to try.” I waved to the doctors, leaving Possum to watch over him for a few minutes as we left the room and entered the one across the hall. “The chart isn’t showing any improvement. Is the werewolf blood doing anything?”

Doc Olson looked at me gravely. “It’s too early to tell, Alpha. With all the time the bite had to work changes in his system, it might be too late for the blood to work. Or we might need to replace more. I have no idea what the normal reaction for a werecat bite is supposed to be, so I can’t tell you if it’s working or not.”

“Or maybe the werewolf blood is replacing that bite reaction with a werewolf change,” I said. “Our baseline is Frank’s change. He started running a slight fever after twelve hours, but it didn’t spike high for eighteen.”

“That was with no bite,” Doc said. “With Deputy Brighton, the fever started twelve hours after the bite. We don’t know for sure when Andrew got his bite, and we don’t know if a cat bite works differently than ours. Hell, we don’t even know if it is capable of turning a human. All Maria knew was that it was always fatal by the next day. The werejaguars pass down a maternal line. It might be completely different.”

“We keep treating the symptoms and hope for a mate,” I agreed.

“In two more hours, I’ll have five units of type-matched werewolf blood transfused. I can’t do anything more.”

“I know.” Doc went back into the treatment room, and I answered questions from the human doctors for a few more minutes. There weren’t any new treatments to reduce a high fever, and you couldn’t use antibiotics on a werecat bite. It was sad, but the person hauling in bags of ice had as much influence on the outcome as we did.

We managed the fever for the next few hours, keeping it between a hundred and a hundred and three. We still had no luck finding Andrew a mate, but more flights were arriving all the time.

I heard a commotion in the hallway; the Secret Service agents had their firearms out, and I heard Rori call out an alert over the Pack link, calling everyone back to the safe room. “What’s going on?”

“Someone fired two missiles at Air Force One just before landing,” one of the agents said. “I don’t have any other details.”

“I have a television in the lobby,” I said. I walked out to the entrance area, where FBI agents already had the news channel up. “Holy shit,” I said. Cameras covering the landing captured the missiles streaking up to the 747 when it was almost to the airport. An F-16 fighter flew in front of the first and exploded while the second missile blew off one of the engines. “I think we found Julio,” I sent to Vic and Rori.

“Mom is on Air Force One with the President,” Rori reminded me. My gut was churning as I watched the live coverage; a cheer broke out when it landed and came to a safe stop. “Thank you, Goddess,” I thought to myself.

“Vic, if Colletta calls in, find out when she’s arriving here and how,” I told him.

Two hours later, it was clear that the Secret Service wasn’t about to fly or drive the President anywhere with an active threat. Law enforcement was slow to respond to the attack, as most available officers got stationed at the airport and Arrowhead. With the short-notice trip, they couldn’t call in enough people. The National Guard callout was still in progress, and they wouldn’t arrive until the morning. Andrew was worsening; his fever remained above a hundred and two, and we were going through a lot of ice. If we didn’t do something soon, Andrew would not be able to say goodbye.

I called a meeting in the lobby, bringing in the Secret Service, FBI, and the White House situation room. After discussing the situation, I made my recommendation. “Send a LifeFlight helicopter up here to retrieve him and take him to the Air Force Reserve base,” I said. “We’ve done everything we can, and we’re managing symptoms. We can transport him with ice packs to control his temperature, and the base clinic can go from there.”

“What if you find a mate for him,” the White House Physician asked.

“Then we fly her to Duluth,” I said. “I need an answer soon. I don’t know how much time we have before he loses consciousness.”

“Bring him here,” Valerie Grunwald said. “We aren’t moving Valkyrie with an active threat in the area.”

“I’ll make the arrangements,” I said. Thirty minutes later, an air ambulance set down on the Pack House’s beachside, away from the cameras on the road above. We had the First Husband on a gurney, enclosed in a plastic suit filled with ice. Doc Olson and one Secret Service agent got on board after he was loaded, and the helicopter took off moments later.

President Laura Kettering’s POV

148th Fighter Wing Headquarters

The Secret Service wouldn’t let me out in public view, so I had to wait until the helicopter landed. I ran to the gurney as my husband was taken out of the ambulance. “Andrew?” He looked like death warmed over; despite the ice surrounding him, he was feverish and in pain.

“Hi, baby,” he said as he tried to smile. I hurried to keep up with the medical staff as they wheeled him into the clinic. “I’m sorry.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. My husband had done nothing wrong; this was all about me. “I’m the one who should be sorry,” I said. The team moved him into an ice bath they had prepared while staff disconnected the mobile electronics and hooked up the clinic’s monitors. Doc Olson was briefing the staff as I talked with my Andrew.

We had less than an hour before the fevers took away his lucidity, then his consciousness. I held his hand as his body fought to exhaustion, but there was no miracle coming. None of the female werewolves who flew in was his mate, and the werewolf blood didn’t work. His fever kept rising no matter what the doctors did.

I was holding his hand when his heart stopped. The doctors removed him from the bath and tried to revive him, but he was gone. “Time of death, 0503.”

I collapsed onto the floor, crying uncontrollably in Colletta's arms. I had been wrong about our love; it was old and tired, but it was still there. I wept for the man who had stood by my side without complaint long after I had stopped showing love to him.

The truth was that I didn’t deserve him, and that broke me.