Chapter Six

11:47 am 24th December

The plane for Salem was boarding. In sixteen minutes it would take off. Shawn felt his brown hand gripped by his new bride, and he smiled. He loved the way she took comfort from him.

Leaning down, he kissed the top of her head with a lifetime's love and gentleness. She looked up at him with the blue eyes that would always drive him crazy with passion lit with fear, but he mistook it for apprehension of what would happen when he returned home.

"She'll love you," he whispered into her ear, breathing hotly onto her neck.

She wiggled away from him, disconcerted. "I wasn't thinking of your mother."

Shawn's next words were cut off as the air stewardess, staring frankly at him with a mixture of admiration for his face and awe at the love he obviously felt for the blonde at his side, took their boarding cards and showed them the way to the small plane.

She smiled. "You're the last passengers on. Have a lovely flight and a very merry Christmas."

He could not resist smiling back, not feeling the tension in his Blue Eyes'. "Thanks, you too."

"Come on, Shawn," she almost sounded petulant, not quite the angelic creature he had married, but he wasn't to know that her dream was preying on her mind. She couldn't bear to lose him now. She loved him too much for that. She felt Fate's cold presence on that plane, and knew that a single day could change their lives forever. She put the thought aside. While Shawn was by her side, what was there to fear? "Let's sit down…" she cooed seductively into his ear. "How do you feel about the Mile High club?"

His smile told her everything she needed to know.

The plane took off with her heart in his chest. Their love would protect them. Her dream meant nothing. Looking out the window, the young woman, girl no longer, felt her spirits rise with the plane and looked forward to the future with trepidation and hope.

Jan had always been one nasty piece of work, but her years in juvenile detention for various crimes had made her crazier than even Laura Horton. Now she was angry and crazy. She had seen the looks her man had been giving that little blonde floozy, and she was not best pleased.

She watched as the little bit of fluff wandered into the bathroom, casting alluring and supposedly seductive looks over her shoulder to Shawn Douglas Brady, sex god of Salem and Jan's obsession. There was no way in hell that she was going to let him get away with that. It was bad enough that she had borne and lost his child, the baby she sometimes rocked in her arms in the middle of the cold, long nights at the institute, she was not going to let him leave her for a girl not even big enough to bear his children.

With a demented look in her eyes, Janice Spears made her way to the front of the plane where Shawn sat.

He was waiting for sufficient time to pass for him to join Blue Eyes in the bathroom, and shower her with the kisses that had been waiting impatiently on his lips since they had left the taxi, and the strain of knowing she was in there, all by herself, was beginning to weigh on his mind.

He was in no mood to entertain random curly haired prosthetic enhanced women therefore as Jan plumped herself down next to him. He almost snapped at her before perceiving who it was, and when he realised it was the woman who had made his life miserable for months during high school, he did snap.

"What the hell do you want, Jan?"

"Is that anyway to speak to your future wife, darling?" she simpered. He nearly smacked her. She had been trying to seduce him by every means possibly for months. To have her force herself on his attention at this moment was beyond aggravating.

"For your information, Jan," he spewed out between gritted teeth, "you are not my future wife. I'm already married."

She gasped. How could he do this to her? In a sudden flash, she realised who the floozy was. She would show him that no one messed with Jan Spears and got away with it.

"But Shawn," she whined, "you're supposed to marry me!"

"No, he's not," Blue Eyes, afraid and tired of waiting in the bathroom stall, had returned to her seat. "And Jan, if you ever come near either of us again, you'll live to regret it."

Shawn had never seen his bride like this, cool and controlled, but with fear in her eyes and bravery on her tongue. He admired her even more than he believed was possible. She was an angel of vengeance with a burning sword of righteousness.

Jan stood up and backed away from the blonde fireball swiftly, moving backwards towards the air stewardess's station. "No, no," she kept repeating to herself, "he's mine, mine I tell you!"

"No, I'm not," Shawn stood up slowly, holding his hands out to calm the crazed woman down. "Jan, you need to take some deep breaths and sit back down. You don't want anything bad to happen, do you?"

The words seemed to trigger some deep repressed memory in her brain. "Bad things happen to bad girls," she started repeating the mantra in a voice that became increasingly shrill. "Bad things happen to bad girls! Bad things happen to bad girls!"

Her voice was a shriek now, and Blue Eyes grabbed onto Shawn for comfort. She didn't understand what was happening. Shawn moved in front of her, his hands still held out in a pacifying gesture.

"Jan, please," he said in a voice that did not betray his inner turmoil, "sit down and we'll sort this all out when we reach Salem, OK?"

Without warning, Jan launched herself forwards at Shawn, knocking him backwards and pushing Blue Eyes to one side.

"No!" She cried, slamming to the ground.

Shawn's new bride stared at the floor in horror. Where her beautiful new husband lay, there was an increasing pool of blood. One of the other male passengers picked the still squealing Jan off Shawn and stared down in horror at the poor boy whose body rested on the ground.

"My god," the words were half a prayer, half a blasphemy.

The wife of the injured soul knelt beside him, taking his head into her lap and stroking the hair from his paled and clammy forehead. "Shawn," she called down to him, horrified by the red stain on his chest, "please, no!"

"Is there a doctor on board?" Yelled the man who still gripped the now weeping Jan by the shoulders. "This man needs a doctor!"

The deadly sharp scissors that Jan had used to inflict the chest wound lay on the floor, dampened by the stream of blood that had not been staunched.

No doctor came forwards.

The other passengers stood and either shrieked or yelled as the blood continued to leak from the man's side. Grabbing a hot facial towel, his new wife held it down hard over his chest, and started praying hard for him not to die.

"Don't leave me now, Shawn," she wept, her tears of sadness mingling with his of pain and forming rivers onto his white shirt.

"Never," and then he passed on.

The love that had been found only hours earlier, consecrated by God and now seemed to be sundered by man and death, faced its greatest challenge yet, but it was strong, and Shawn was, after all, a Brady, a Kiriakis and a Horton. With such blood, though some had leaked onto the floor, he was fated for greater things than death in a plane headed for Salem. All he had to do was grip life with the same degree of faithfulness as he had taken his new bride in.

So it was twenty-four hours from Salem, Shawn Douglas Brady and the newest Mrs Brady felt tears and lifeblood mingle, and prayed that they would live to see their first sunset as husband and wife. Love is indomitable, but death cannot be cheated. It was a poker game between the two of the greatest forces in the Universe, and God only knew who was to win, and who would pay the price of a love that, like gunpowder and fire, as it kissed, consumed.