by Tim O'Rourke
Vampires of Maze
(Beautiful Immortals Series Two)
Part Six
BY
Tim O’Rourke
First Edition Published by Ravenwoodgreys
Copyright 2016 by Tim O’Rourke
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organisations is entirely coincidental.
This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Story Editor
Lynda O’Rourke
Book cover designed by:
Tom O’Rourke
Copyedited by:
Carolyn M. Pinard
For Richard
More books by Tim O’Rourke
Kiera Hudson Series One
Vampire Shift (Kiera Hudson Series 1) Book 1
Vampire Wake (Kiera Hudson Series 1) Book 2
Vampire Hunt (Kiera Hudson Series 1) Book 3
Vampire Breed (Kiera Hudson Series 1) Book 4
Wolf House (Kiera Hudson Series 1) Book 5
Vampire Hollows (Kiera Hudson Series 1) Book 6
Kiera Hudson Series Two
Dead Flesh (Kiera Hudson Series 2) Book 1
Dead Night (Kiera Hudson Series 2) Book 2
Dead Angels (Kiera Hudson Series 2) Book 3
Dead Statues (Kiera Hudson Series 2) Book 4
Dead Seth (Kiera Hudson Series 2) Book 5
Dead Wolf (Kiera Hudson Series 2) Book 6
Dead Water (Kiera Hudson Series 2) Book 7
Dead Push (Kiera Hudson Series 2) Book 8
Dead Lost (Kiera Hudson Series 2) Book 9
Dead End (Kiera Hudson Series 2) Book 10
Kiera Hudson Series Three
The Creeping Men (Kiera Hudson Series Three) Book 1
The Lethal Infected (Kiera Hudson Series Three) Book 2
The Adoring Artist (Kiera Hudson Series Three) Book 3
The Secret Identity (Kiera Hudson Series Three) Book 4
The White Wolf (Kiera Hudson Series Three) Book 5
The Origins of Cara (Kiera Hudson Series Three) Book 6
The Kiera Hudson Prequels
The Kiera Hudson Prequels (Book One)
The Kiera Hudson Prequels (Book Two)
Kiera Hudson & Sammy Carter
Vampire Twin (Pushed Trilogy) Book 1
Vampire Chronicle (Pushed Trilogy) Book 2
The Alternate World of Kiera Hudson
Wolf Shift
Werewolves of Shade
Werewolves of Shade (Part One)
Werewolves of Shade (Part Two)
Werewolves of Shade (Part Three)
Werewolves of Shade (Part Four)
Werewolves of Shade (Part Five)
Werewolves of Shade (Part Six)
Vampires of Maze
Vampires of Maze (Part One)
Vampires of Maze (Part Two)
Vampires of Maze (Part Three)
Vampires of Maze (Part Four)
Vampires of Maze (Part Five)
Vampires of Maze (Part Six)
Moon Trilogy
Moonlight (Moon Trilogy) Book 1
Moonbeam (Moon Trilogy) Book 2
Moonshine (Moon Trilogy) Book 3
The Jack Seth Novellas
Hollow Pit (Book One)
Black Hill Farm (Books 1 & 2)
Black Hill Farm (Book 1)
Black Hill Farm: Andy’s Diary (Book 2)
Sidney Hart Novels
Witch (A Sidney Hart Novel) Book 1
Yellow (A Sidney Hart Novel) Book 2
The Doorways Saga
Doorways (Doorways Saga Book 1)
The League of Doorways (Doorways Saga Book 2)
The Queen of Doorways (Doorways Saga Book 3)
The Tessa Dark Trilogy
Stilts (Book 1)
Zip (Book 2)
The Mechanic
The Mechanic
The Dark Side of Nightfall Trilogy
The Dark Side of Nightfall (Book One)
The Dark Side of Nightfall (Book Two)
The Dark Side of Nightfall (Book Three)
Samantha Carter Series
Vampire Seeker (Book One)
Vampire Flappers (Book Two)
Vampire Watchmen (Book Three)
Unscathed
Written by Tim O’Rourke & C.J. Pinard
You can contact Tim O’Rourke at
www.timorourkeauthor.com or by email at [email protected]
Vampires of Maze
(Part Six)
This story is set in a where and when not too dissimilar to our own…
Chapter One
Pregnant! How could I be pregnant? But I knew very well how such a thing could have happened. I’d mixed with Trent. My stomach shifted again as if my intestines were being strangled into knots. Lying on my bed, I watched with fright and dismay as the flesh covering my stomach began to ripple and contort. Pulling my knees up, I gritted my teeth against the pain that was now cutting through my abdomen like a hot blade.
Rolling onto my side, I swung my legs over the edge of the bed and stood up. My legs felt rubbery as I lurched toward the bedroom door. I felt the sudden urge to vomit again. I staggered along the landing and into the bathroom. Dropping to my knees, I leant over the toilet and dry-heaved. I could feel heat in my eyes as I screwed them up against the pain and the waves of nausea. I cuffed the drool away that swung from my chin and sat panting and out of breath on the floor. The urge to vomit subsided along with the pains. Whatever was growing inside of me had fallen still. Even though it no longer moved, I knew there was something alive inside of me.
With an overwhelming sense of despair consuming me, and using the basin for leverage, I pulled myself to my feet. Tearing off my clothes, I stood naked before the mirror. Turning sideways, I looked at my profile. My breasts looked a little heavier than I’d ever known them to be, and my once-flat stomach was now fully curved into a small bump. The bump was more pronounced than it had been earlier that day and it seemed to be growing at an alarming rate.
I lifted one hand to touch the bump. But before I did, I let my arm fall away. I wasn’t so sure that I wanted to touch the bulbous mound of flesh – I wasn’t so sure that I wanted to feel whatever was growing inside me, moving – kicking and wriggling about. I knew that if I touched it and felt it then this nightmare might become all too real. But as I gathered up my clothes and headed back to my bedroom, I knew that this wasn’t just a nightmare and the situation I now found myself in was very real. Pulling the baggiest T-shirt I could find over my head, I dropped down onto the bed. I pushed the notes I had started to make about the truce to one side. I had to stop referring to whatever was growing inside me as it because whether I liked it or not, there was a child growing inside of me. With that realisation, the same question – how? – kept screaming around the corridors of my mind. The answer to the question I was searching for was, how had a baby begun to grow side of me? I wasn’t so stupid that I didn’t know that mixing couldn’t produce a child, but the only person I’d done any mixing with since arriving in this new world had been Trent and
he was a werewolf and I was a Wicce. My understanding was a child could not be born out of such a union – that it was impossible. Our species were so very different that…
Slowly, I raised my hand to the puncture marks left behind by Calix on my neck. My heart began to flutter and race as if beating against the inside of my ribcage. I remembered how those hairs had grown out of the bite-mark. In my mind’s eye, I could see how the wound had once been infected by Calix. And that was the question I needed to have answered. Had Calix’s bite changed me in some way? Had the infection that had once soured the wound infected me fully – changed me enough so that I was now able to conceive and carry the child of a werewolf? Had Calix’s bite bent my DNA enough out of shape so that it was now possible for me to fall pregnant and give birth to a species that was not my own?
With so many nightmarish thoughts now tormenting my mind, I slid beneath the sheets of my bed, pulling them up over my head. Was the fact that the child was growing inside of me the true reason that my magic had been slow to return? Was the unborn child drawing on my inner strength – magic – so it could survive inside of me? But how would I have started to show so soon? I knew that female Lycanthrope gestated for a mere six weeks before giving birth – but I was not a Lycanthrope – I was not one of them. A female Wicce gestated for 9 months just like a human. But did that matter now that I had been bitten by Calix? On the outside I still looked like a Wicce, but on the inside was I more wolf now than witch?
In the darkness beneath the sheets, I tried to do the mental maths of how long I could have actually been pregnant for. Trent and I had mixed the night before he’d left Shade to go in search of his people and that had been what… nearly three weeks ago now. So had I gone half term already? Did I only have three weeks left before I gave birth to the child that was now growing inside of me? Would the pregnancy continue for a longer period of time even though I had been bitten by Calix? I was not sure. I could no longer be sure of anything. I had become….what? Some kind of freak? And what did that mean for the child I now carried? What would the child be or become? Would the baby be more werewolf than Wicce, or somewhere in between? This is why mixing had been forbidden between the Wicce and the werewolves because it was feared that if a pregnancy should ever go full term, then an abomination would be born. The biggest problem I had – and it seemed I now had many – was I had no answers to any of the questions that banged against the walls of my mind. There was no other Wicce in this world I knew of that I could go in search of answers from. And even if there were, would they have the answers I was looking for? I only had myself to blame. It was I who had chosen to hide out in a remote village called Shade, taking up the company of werewolves. It was I who had then become pregnant by one of them. I’d promised myself that in this new world, and the second chance I’d been given, that I would not continue to make the mistakes of my past. But as my eyes began to heat with tears, I heard my mother and father whisper beneath the sheets as they reminded me once more of what an utter wretch and disappointment I truly was.
Chapter Two
I woke early, not because of the nightmares that stalked my dreams, but because I knew I couldn’t afford to wallow in self-pity. If it hadn’t been important before that I find a truce between the vampires and werewolves, it had now become a matter of urgency. There was no way I wanted to bring a child, werewolf, Wicce or anything else, into a world that was at war with itself. Any child that I had – planned or otherwise – I only wanted happiness and peace for. I’d arranged to meet the reporter, Sidney Watson, the day after tomorrow at the wall of magic I’d created on the other side of the woods, so time was of the essence. I really couldn’t afford to waste any time being melancholic about the situation I now found myself in. I had to pull up my bootstraps and come up with a plan that I could take with me when I eventually met the vampire leader, Veronica Cabal. She wouldn’t take me seriously nor listen to what I had to say, if I turned up looking like some pathetic waif full of half-baked ideas. I had to be strong in my beliefs and my own self conviction if I had any chance of finding peace in this world – the world that I was soon to bring a child into.
The feelings of sickness that had plagued me over the last couple of days had now gone, and despite my stomach feeling heavy and looking plumper and rounder with each passing day, I tried to focus on the positives and not let myself get sucked down into a spirally well of fear and despair. It wasn’t just myself that I was looking out for now – it wasn’t only the werewolves and vampires that I wanted to find peace for. And if I were to be honest with myself, I’d pretty much spent most of my life being selfish, concerned only with my own happiness and lust for adventure. But the bump that I now tried to hide beneath the biggest sweater I could find was a constant reminder that I really did have to put my old ways behind me and start anew. So once I had showered and dressed, I plucked up the notepad I’d started to make my plan on and went downstairs. While I boiled some fresh water on the stove so that I could make a pot of tea, I placed the notepad and pen down on the kitchen table. Feeling ravenous, I wolfed down two cans of the fruit Calix had brought me. The fruit did little to sedate my hunger, so I took the jar of peanut butter from the cupboard and unscrewed the cap. Making a hook with my finger, I spooned out some of the gooey peanut butter and popped it into my mouth.
There was a knock at the front door and I looked up.
“Hey, Julia, are you coming out to play today?” Calix called out from the other side of the door.
Licking my fingers clean, I snatched up the notepad and hid it in a nearby drawer. I didn’t want Calix to know about the truce, not just yet anyway. I wanted to have a plan all drawn out and squared away in my mind before I confided in Calix.
The knocking came again and I called out, “Okay, okay, I’m coming.”
I headed down the hallway, pulled back the deadlock, and swung open the door.
He stood in the open doorway, grinning and holding aloft a dead rabbit in one hand. “Breakfast?”
“I’ve already eaten, thanks,” I said, heading back into the hallway and then the kitchen.
“But I haven’t,” Calix said, dropping the carcass onto the kitchen table where he began to make light work of skinning the dead rabbit with his claws.
Grimacing, I watched as Calix shredded the flesh from the dead creature’s bones. I noticed that the bandage I’d previously wrapped around his hand had now gone. It was on the tip of my tongue to ask if the wound had healed, but seeing how quickly he was ripping the dead animal to pieces with his hands, I didn’t bother. Once he was done, he placed several of the biggest strips of meat in a pan which he heated on the stove. The rich smell of cooking meat wafted on the air. Almost at once, my stomach lurched. At first I wasn’t sure whether it was the baby moving inside me again or if it was just my stomach rumbling with hunger. Tentatively, I placed the flat of one hand against the mound hidden beneath the baggy sweater I wore and was relieved to discover that the baby growing inside me hadn’t decided to perform its frantic aerobics once more.
“Are you sure you don’t want any of this meat?” Calix asked, fishing the barely cooked strips of flesh from the pan and dropping them onto a plate.
“No thanks, I’ll have a cup of tea instead. Do you want one?” I asked.
Calix nodded his head, too busy devouring the food to answer me. Pulling a chair back from the table, he sat down, the plate of food before him. Turning my back, I began to make the tea.
From over my shoulder I heard Calix belch then say, “Are you putting on weight, Julia? Is that why you’re not eating?”
I headed back across the kitchen, placing the cups of tea down onto the table. Scowling at him, and unconsciously folding my arms over the bump as if to conceal it, I said, “So what you’re trying to say is that only thin women are attractive?”
“Who said anything about being attractive?” Calix said looking suddenly taken aback. “I wasn’t saying that you looked attractive or unattractive. I was just ment
ioning that you look like you’ve put on a bit of weight, that was all.”
“Well, I’d be grateful if you didn’t mention it, thank you very much,” I said, dropping into the nearest chair, concealing the lower half of my body.
Looking across the table at me, Calix swallowed another mouthful of food and said, “If it’s any consolation, I don’t much like skinny girls. I prefer a woman who has a bit of meat on her – something to get hold of – thighs as strong as walnut crackers and tits…”
“Okay, okay, I get the picture,” I said, picking up the cup of tea and taking a sip.
Calix wiped his greasy lips on the back of his hand and said, “All I was trying to say is that it doesn’t bother me if you put on a few pounds. Things could be worse, you could be pregnant.”
Hearing him say that one word made me visibly flinch, something which didn’t go unnoticed by Calix. “What makes you say that?” I asked him.
Calix eyed me. “Say what?”
“That I might be pregnant…”
“I never said you were pregnant,” Calix cut in. “I was just saying…”
“Well, I’m not pregnant,” I lied. “Such a thing would be impossible.” I broke his stare and took another sip of my tea. My nerves suddenly felt very fragile and I could see the cup trembling in my hands as I lifted it to my lips. I felt the sudden urge to blurt everything out to Calix. And why not? I’d already told Calix about my past, so why not tell him about what the future now had in store for me? But would it be fair to tell him that I was pregnant before I told the father? However, Calix might know the answers to some of the questions that still swirled about my mind. He might know whether his bite might have changed me enough so that it would be possible for me to carry a Lycanthrope child. He might know the exact time period that it took for a female wolf to gestate. He might be able to put my mind somewhat at ease.
“Julia, are you okay? You’re trembling,” Calix said.
Swallowing hard, I pushed thoughts of telling Calix about my pregnancy to the back of my mind. Setting down my cup once more, I looked at him and said, “I’m fine. Honest.” Then changing the subject, I added, “So what are you doing here, apart from stuffing your face with food once more?”
