“I do.”
“I advise that you find a way to test her powers before she meets the larger party.”
“How?”
“I know that Maximillian of Vegas has one of Belle’s line as his pomme de sang candidate. He would be thrilled if you asked to see one of his candidates early. He will see it as a point of favor.”
“We would have to see at least one candidate from each of the masters, then, in private.”
“But if it goes wrong?” I said. “Aren’t we running the risk that whoever we ‘experiment’ on may be metaphysically bound to me forever?”
Samuel nodded. “Yes.” He looked at me like What’s wrong with that?
“It wouldn’t be fair. I can’t experiment on them, run the risk of binding them to me, if they don’t know what the risks are.”
“But they have come hoping to be your new pomme de sang,” Samuel said. “They have come hoping to bind themselves to you.”
“Jason has been Jean-Claude’s pomme de sang for years, but if he decided to go back to college, or change jobs, or fell in love, and didn’t want to keep being a pomme de sang, he could do that. We’d miss him, and I think he’d miss Jean-Claude, but he has choices. He isn’t trapped into being Jean-Claude’s pomme forever.” I moved away from Jean-Claude and faced Samuel. “What you’re suggesting takes away their options. It’s like making them a slave without asking first if that’s what they want.”
Samuel smiled at me. “Freedom and fairness are very important to you, aren’t they?”
I nodded, and frowned. “They’re important to everybody.”
He laughed. “Oh, no, Anita, you would be amazed at the number of people who try to give away their freedom at every opportunity. They much prefer that someone else make their decisions. As for fairness, you said it earlier, life isn’t fair.”
“No, life isn’t fair, but I try to be.”
He nodded, and stood, clapping his hands together. “She is a rare find, Jean-Claude.”
“Thank you,” he said, as if the compliment were all for him, and none for me.
“To make these experiments with their knowledge, Anita,” Samuel said, “needs Jean-Claude to admit to the other masters that you, all of you, have no idea what the extent of your powers are. You would have to admit weakness, and confusion, when what you must have this weekend is strength, surety, and unassailable power.”
“No one’s power is unassailable,” I said.
He gave a small bow. “Touché, but my point is still valid. To expose that much of your uncertainty to some of the masters would be nearly suicidal.” He came to stand in front of me. “Think upon this, Anita: if you are with child, then it is no longer just your life you risk. Is your sense of fair play worth the risk of letting the other Masters of the City see your weaknesses? For what will they think, if you admit to this being a new power? Might they think that they should destroy you before you enslave us all?”
Jean-Claude moved to my side. Micah came to my other side. I just stared at Samuel.
“I mean you no harm, Anita, but I am not as insecure as some. The insecure ones will be your danger.”
“If we can’t tell the truth, what do you propose?” I asked.
“You couldn’t simply lie?” he asked.
“I’m not very good at it,” I said.
He smiled and looked at Jean-Claude. “How have you managed with her and the Ulfric? They are both most unwieldy.”
“You have no idea,” Jean-Claude said.
Samuel laughed again, then his face stilled, as if the laughter had been a trick of the eye. “Tell the masters that you wish to see how powerful their candidates are, and whether they can withstand your full powers. Tell them that if their candidates are too weak, they may be enslaved as any servant, for Jean-Claude is so powerful that that has happened with some lesser vampires of the Church of Eternal Life.”
“That actually did happen with some of the church members,” I said.
He smiled again, but it never reached his eyes. “So I had heard.”
I glanced at Jean-Claude. “Did you tell him?”
“No.”
“You have spies in your lands, Anita. You are too great a power not to have spies from all the masters that agreed to come here. None of us would have come to your lands without some intelligence of our own finding. None of us trust any of us that much.”
“Great,” I said.
“But it sets up the situation perfectly, Anita. You can tell the truth, that you wish to see if the candidates are strong enough to withstand your powers, for a true pomme de sang, as you so accurately stated, is not so closely bound to you metaphysically. To eat only from those who are already bound to you is like eating your own arm. It may fill your stomach, but it takes more energy from you then it gives to you.”
“It took us a little while to figure that out,” I said.
He gave another small bow. “Your new pomme de sang must be independent, and strong enough to play his part. It is a reasonable request.”
“It is a good plan,” Jean-Claude said.
“And what if they all fall under my, whatever, spell? What if I’m too much necromancer for any of them?”
“Then the ball is canceled,” Samuel said. “You cannot play Cinderella if all the princes will want you.”
“I’m not Cinderella,” I said, “I’m the prince.”
He smiled, but again it didn’t reach his eyes. “Very well, Prince Charming, but the point remains the same. You cannot play Prince Charming if all the princesses want you, because as good as you may be, no one is that good.” He looked at Jean-Claude then. “Not even Jean-Claude.”
That look, and that comment, made me wonder if they really were “friends” the way that Jean-Claude and Augustine had been. They said that they weren’t, but the look meant something.
“We will do as you suggest, Samuel. I know that I can rely on your discretion not to share any of this.”
“You have my word,” he said, then he looked back at me. “I would never endanger you. I want you to try to bring Sampson into his power, Anita. I would not insist it be done first, but I would prefer sooner to later.”
“I know it won’t be tonight,” I said.
He smiled and this time it filled his eyes with soft humor. “No, not tonight. I think your plate is quite full enough without adding Sampson to it.”
He bowed to Jean-Claude. Sampson followed suit. They turned on their heels and left.
Claudia’s voice broke the silence. “Do you want me to go out and get a pregnancy test?”
“We have two of them in the overnight case,” Micah said.
My throat was suddenly so tight I couldn’t breathe.
Nathaniel and Lisandro came through the far hallway. “What did I miss?”
I looked at him, and the look on my face must have been a bad one, because he came to me, and wrapped his arms around me, and I let him.
“She’s missed a month; you don’t have to wait until morning to take the test,” Claudia said.
I wanted to tell her to stop. Stop talking, stop helping, but she was right. I wasn’t just two weeks late like I’d told Ronnie. My period could move around by up to two weeks, later or earlier, depending on my hormone cycle, I guess. If I used the count that most women did, I was nearly four weeks late, not two. Two weeks into the month of November, but four weeks past when I should have bled. Four weeks, yeah, the test should work.
18
A PREGNANCY TEST is just this flat piece of plastic with little windows in it. So small, it fit in my hand with room left over, and my hands aren’t that big. Such a small thing to have so many people so upset. But then, if I was pregnant, the baby would be smaller than the pregnancy test. Tiny bits of plastic, and even tinier bits of cells, and my whole life rested on them. Okay, I wouldn’t die if it was a yes, but it sort of felt like I would.
First, there’s no dignity to it. You have to pee on the little stick. Or pee in a cup, then put the
stick in it. Then you put the cap on, and wait for lines to appear. One line: not pregnant. Two lines: pregnant. It seemed simple enough.
I prayed not to be pregnant. I prayed, and I bargained. I’d be more careful. I’d use condoms and not trust just to the pill. I’d, well, you get the idea. I’m sure I wasn’t the first single woman to sit in a bathroom wishing, hoping, praying, bargaining with God, that if this mess passes me by, I’ll be better. Shit.
I didn’t want to sit in the bathroom for the entire three minutes. But I didn’t want to go outside and face the men either. I compromised; I paced inside the bathroom. It was ten steps from the door to the edge of the tub’s raised marble. Ten steps, back and forth. Marble is cold on bare feet, but I usually didn’t spend this much time walking on it. I was either coming in and out, or sitting in hot water in the tub. I concentrated on anything, everything, but that little piece of plastic where it sat on the side of the sink. I tried not to look at it. If you peek early, it may not be conclusive. I was carrying a man’s watch in my hands. Micah’s watch. He’d taken it off his wrist and handed it to me, because mine was still sitting on the nightstand beside our bed.
I tried putting the watch in the pocket of the robe, but that made me nervous, as though if I couldn’t see the watch I’d screw the time up. I tried sitting on the edge of the tub staring at the second hand, but that made the time go even slower. Now that I was only minutes away from knowing, I wanted to know. No more guesswork. I needed to know, one way or the other. I needed to know.
What I didn’t know was that Micah had set an alarm on the watch. It beeped at me, and scared me. I gave that little eep scream that only girls seem to do.
Claudia knocked on the door. “Anita, you all right?”
“Sorry, alarm startled me. Sorry.” I was already in the middle of the room, opposite the sink. All I had to do was turn around. I had a death grip on the watch. My heart was beating so hard I was sure that everyone outside the door could hear it. I didn’t want to look. I wanted to know, and I didn’t want to know. I wanted to have someone else look. Micah would do it, or Nathaniel. God, I was being so cowardly, and stupid, as if simply not looking would make it not true. But I had to look, I had to.
I took those last few steps to the sink, and looked down. Two lines, two fucking lines. The world swam, and I had to grab on to the sink edge to keep from sliding to one side. All I could hear was my own blood roaring in my ears. I was not going to faint, damn it. I was not going to faint.
I lowered myself to my knees, still clinging to the cabinet edges. I put my face against my arm, and waited for the dizziness to pass. Fuck.
When I thought I could do it without feeling worse, I raised my head up. The room didn’t swim. Good. But I wasn’t at all sure I trusted myself to walk to the door. I hated it, but apparently my body had decided that it just wasn’t working yet. I could either sit on the floor until I felt less weak-legged, or I could yell for help.
I knew the men were almost as tense about it as I was, so waiting seemed cruel, or maybe it wasn’t cruel. They had a few minutes more of believing the worst hadn’t happened. I hated to treat the miracle of life like a disaster but that’s how it felt.
I finally called, in a voice that almost sounded like mine, “Claudia.”
She tapped the door, and said, “Do you want me in there?”
“Yes,” I said.
She came through, and one look at me on the floor made her close the door behind her. She walked to me, looked down at the test, and said with real feeling, “Well, shit.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Who do you want to tell first?”
I shook my head and leaned back against the cabinets. “No one.”
She gave me a look.
“I can’t call them in one at a time; Richard will get pissed, or someone else will. I have to go out to them.”
She gazed around the room. “They’d all fit in here, barely.”
I tucked my knees up tight and held on. “Jesus, Claudia. Jesus.”
She knelt beside me. Her face was so sympathetic that I had to look away. My eyes were starting to burn, my throat to tighten. “Help me do this before I start to cry.”
“What can I do to help?” she asked.
“Help me stand.”
She took my offered hand and raised me effortlessly to my feet. She kept a hand on my elbow to steady me, as if she knew I needed it. I didn’t argue. We made it to the door that way, then I took my arm back, and opened the door.
I thought I had my face under control, but I must have been wrong, because they all reacted to it. Only Jean-Claude and Asher showed nothing, but their lack of reaction was reaction enough.
Micah and Richard reached me first, at almost the same time. They looked at each other, and Micah bowed out, let the other man touch me first. It was good of him, but I’d have preferred to hug him, since I was almost certain Richard would say something to make me feel worse.
He half-hugged me, so he could hold me, and still see my face. “It’s a yes?”
I nodded, because I didn’t trust my voice. My throat was so tight it hurt, as if I were choking.
He hugged me, and picked me up, and spun me around. When I could move my face back enough to see his, he was beaming at me. Beaming at me. He was happy! Happy about it!
“Don’t you dare be happy about this,” I said.
His smile began to fade around the edges.
Jean-Claude said, “Would you prefer he was unhappy about it?”
Richard put me down, while I looked at the other man. I glanced back up at Richard, who didn’t look happy now at all. What would I have done if he had been angry, or sad, about me being pregnant?
I hung my head, resting the top of my head against Richard’s chest. “I’m sorry, Richard, I’m sorry. I’m glad someone is happy about it.”
He touched my face, raised it so I had to look at him. “I can’t be unhappy about this, Anita. I can’t. If we made a baby…” He shrugged, and his eyes were full of happiness, worry, so many emotions.
“What do you want us to say, ma petite? If we are not to be happy, then what do you wish?”
I pulled away from Richard. I just couldn’t be happy and his being happy bugged me. “I don’t know, just be what you feel, I guess.”
Micah touched my arm. “I’m sorry you’re unhappy about it.”
I smiled at him, and the fact that I could smile at anything was probably a good sign. “How do you feel about it?”
He smiled. “I love you. How could I not love a little piece of you running around?”
I shook my head. “Don’t you feel cheated? I mean, it can’t be yours.”
He shrugged. “I knew I gave up children of my own when I had the vasectomy.”
“Why did you have yourself fixed?” Richard asked. “You’re not thirty yet, why would you do that to yourself?”
Micah wrapped his arms around me, held me close. “My old alpha, Chimera, liked pregnant shapeshifters. If one of the women came up pregnant by someone else, someone she cared for, Chimera would take her until she lost the baby. He got off on taking her from her lover, from fucking her while she was pregnant with someone else’s child, and from her losing it.”
I held him tight, held him and listened to his heartbeat speed. His voice never showed how awful it had been, but his pulse did. I had heard the story before, but Richard had not; his face showed revulsion, and something else, anger, I think.
I’d never heard a story about Chimera that made me unhappy that I’d killed him. No, that was one death I had absolutely no regrets about.
Nathaniel came up behind me, and wrapped himself against my back, holding me between the two of them. It felt so safe. Even now, even with Micah’s story still horrible and fresh, even with the news about the baby, I still felt safe. That had to be a good sign, didn’t it?
Jean-Claude came to our side. We all raised our heads from the various shoulders we were on, and looked at him.
He touched my face, ever so gently, and smiled. “Whatever happens, ma petite, we will not desert you.”
Asher walked around to the other side so I stood in a box of the four of them.
“I’m not really included, am I?” Richard said, and his voice held more sadness than anger.
Micah said, “You could be if you wanted to be, Richard. No one excludes you, but you.” He held his hand out toward Richard.
Richard stared at that hand, then looked at all the men. “I can’t, Anita. I can’t be part of this.”
“A part of what, mon ami?” Jean-Claude asked.
“All of you together,” Richard said.
Micah let his hand fall. “We’re not asking you to have sex with everyone, Richard. We’re just comforting Anita, and ourselves. You’re a shapeshifter; you understand the need for touch when you’re worried or scared.”
Richard shook his head. “It’s always about sex with him.” He pointed at Jean-Claude. “Don’t let him fool you, Micah. He’s enjoying touching you.” It seemed he’d decided that of the other men, Micah was the one most likely to understand his unease.
Micah slid his arm around Jean-Claude’s waist, pulled him in a little tighter against him and me. It forced Jean-Claude to put more of his arm across Micah’s shoulders, put the line of their bodies against each other from hip to chest. Micah kept his gaze on Richard while he got cozy.
“If he were another shapeshifter, they’d enjoy the touch, too. We’ve all had a shock. We’re all feeling insecure, Richard. We’re all wondering how much our lives must change to accommodate a baby. We’re scared, aren’t you?”
“You’re Nimir-Raj, are you saying you can’t smell when someone’s afraid?” There was derision in his voice.
“I thought you’d get angry if I told you that you smelled of fear.”
Richard’s hands made fists. His face darkening with anger, he fought for control of himself, visibly. It was almost painful to watch him fight his anger, and since his power never once warmed the room, he was controlling so much more than just his anger.
He started walking toward us, jerkily, as if his feet didn’t want to move. He moved like some reluctant robot, until he came to the edge of the knot of men. Then he stopped. He just stood there beside us, as if he didn’t know what to do next.
Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter collection 11-15 Page 165
