“I don’t understand,” she said with clenched teeth. “How is this happening? Is this what I think it is? Because I call unfairrrr!” she yelped. “I haven’t had sex in two years!”
Nina’s face was grim, frightening Tessa, but when she looked up, the vampire’s eyes were full of determination. “I don’t know. Don’t think about the how, for fuck’s sake. Think about getting through this. Just keep looking at me, kiddo.”
The urge to rise and squat came over her like lightning in a flash of crazy colors and desperate need. She pushed from Wanda’s embrace, rocketing upward, shoving Nina out of the way in order to get into a position she instinctively knew would bring relief.
She dragged the blankets from the bed with her, letting the edges of them wrap around her hand, and then she began twisting them to form a circle.
“What the fuck are you doing, kiddo?” Nina’s eyes were wide, her eyebrows arched in question.
A nest. She was making a nest. Where that answer had come from was a mystery, but she knew it as surely as she knew something enormous was about to happen. “I’m making a nest!” she cried. “I don’t know why. I just know I have to!”
Tessa didn’t bother to question how she knew this. She didn’t care. She only knew that whatever this was, it was going to rip her in half if she didn’t get it out.
Squatting down over the blankets, she fought another scream—another terrified, earsplitting scream—while she gripped the edge of the bed and Nina braced her by holding her other hand.
Wanda pressed a cool cloth to her head, wiping away the sweat blurring her vision and whispering soothing words in her ear.
The urge to push became all she was, every fiber of her being, every beat of her heart.
So she pushed—pushed so hard she was sure her brain was going to pop out the top of her head.
With a roar she couldn’t contain, Tessa bellowed a warrior cry, feeling something dislodge from her body, pull away. Something smooth and maybe round?
She couldn’t tell, but she was grateful for Wanda’s arms encircling her when she fell backward from the force of the object leaving her body.
Whatever it was fell to the floor with a thunk. Like a bowling ball dropping to the floor on a slick alley.
And then there was silence.
A deafening silence.
Nina spoke first, her gravelly voice barely a whisper. “Holy fuckers.”
Wanda’s chest pressed into Tessa’s back when she inhaled a rasp of air after peering over Tessa’s shoulder. “Oh, dear.”
“What?” Tessa asked, weak and sore, her limbs feeling like butter.
“Well,” Nina said, her voice once more rock-steady. “Tell me how you want this information delivered. Hot and fast, or slow and easy.”
“Nina! Give poor Tessa a break. She’s exhausted. Don’t play games at a time like this.”
Nina scoffed. “I just wanna know if she wants me to pussyfoot around or hit her hard.”
Tessa took gulps of air before she said, “How would you like it, Nina?”
“Well, if it was me, I guess I’d just want to know. But this is you. And you’re all fragile like an eggshell.” She paused, cackling a laugh. “Hah! I crack myself up.”
Tessa shook her head, struggling to sit up, but her stomach muscles felt like Jell-O. “I don’t get the joke.” Her frustration and exhaustion warred with each other until she decided whatever was going on down on the floor was something she needed to know about. “Just tell me. It’s not like I can’t take bad news. I mean, my store burned down, I set my closet on fire, met not one but two demons, and I have wings. What else is there? So just tell me what flew out of my body like a torpedo, taking most of my insides with it.”
“Nina.” Wanda used her behave-yourself tone. “Be gentle.”
“Tsk-tsk, Wanda. Would I be rough with my new homeslice? Not in a muthafluffin’ million. Okay, so listen up, kiddo, you’re in for a shock. A big one. Gird your loins.”
“I just did that, and they spewed all over my bedroom anyway. I have no gird or maybe even loins left.”
Wanda propped her up so she had a clear view of Nina, who had something in her hands.
Something smooth, gold, and shiny flashed in the late-afternoon sun. Something approximately the size of an oversized Easter egg used for displays in store windows.
Nina held it up with a tentative smile. “Now, be strong, grasshopper. It’s important you be strong.”
Wanda whimpered from behind her, but she managed to fend off another gasp. She patted Tessa on the back. “Deep breaths, sweetie. Deep and long.”
Oh, fuck breathing.
Who could breathe when they’d just laid a golden egg?
* * *
MICK looked at Tessa from across the kitchen counter and over the top of the incubator Nina had had her zombie, Carl, bring. “I . . .” He clamped his lips shut, shaking his dark head.
Tessa shook her head, too. “Me . . . neither . . .”
Carl stood at the edge of the counter, his lopsided grin embracing them with a warmth Tessa was at a loss for words to explain.
He was a zombie, Nina had said. A vegetarian zombie she’d rescued from a witch doctor. But he was a damn good babysitter. He watched her Charlie all the time. Because nothing said a mother’s love like leaving your infant with a vegetarian zombie, right?
Sometimes, it was all Tessa could do not to run out of her tiny cottage, full of all these paranormal people, and scream at the top of her lungs.
Carl adjusted the heat lamp with stiff, clumsy hands, his crooked face strangely endearing. He thumped Mick on the back and smiled again before going off to join Joe-Joe on the couch, where her dog crawled into his lap and Carl happily watched the snow fall outside her picture window.
“So is everybody ready to talk now, or does the cat still have your tongues?” Marty asked, folding her hands in front of her, her shiny bracelets clacking together.
Tessa began, pointing her finger at the top of Carl’s head. “Zombie . . .”
Nina’s smile was wide and fond. “Yep. That’s my Carl. He’s a good guy. Gets loose sometimes, so you’ll hear a lot of ‘Where’s Carl?’ But he’s the best babysitter ever when it comes to date night for Greg and me. That’s why I brought him here. He’ll look out for whatever the hell’s gonna hatch like he’s lookin’ out for his own damn life.”
“Egg . . .” Mick managed, his face pale, his eyes unfocused and glazed.
“Uh-huh,” Wanda added with a grin. “You, Sir Scales-a-Lot, are a soon-to-be proud daddy. Yay, for impregnating a woman from one hundred paces. We shall call you and your little swimmies manly-man from this day forward.”
Marty stifled a laugh, then straightened before forcing a serious expression. “So, let’s talk about this. If this is in fact a baby dragon, wow, guys. Way to pollinate. Have you thought of a name?”
Tessa’s mouth fell open again. Her jaw just wouldn’t stay hinged. She gripped the edges of the counter. “I had an egg.”
“You and lover boy had an egg. “
Tessa’s eyes flew to Nina’s face, humiliation dropping two red spots of fire on her cheeks. “You don’t know it’s Mick’s. We don’t know anything.”
Nina planted her hands on her hips. “So, if it’s not Gigantor’s, whose is it? How many baby dragon daddies do you know?”
Mick ran his hand over his jaw, his eyes dark and stormy. “We don’t even know if it’s a baby, for Christ’s sake.”
“What the fuck else comes out of a chick’s lady bits? I was in there. You didn’t see what I saw. Fell outta her like a damn bowling ball. So for now, we have to assume it’s a wee baby dragon—until it hatches, and we find out differently. Until then, it’s fetus-dragon. I damn well hope it’s a girl. Hollis and Charlie could use a playmate, right, blondie?” She nudged Marty and winked like this was some joke.
Marty nodded and grinned, her pink frosted lips tilting upward. “Wouldn’t that be incredible? Once upon a time, in
a land not so far away called Vermont, a werewolf, a vampini, and a dragon became BFFs. Oh, the fiery, winged, fanged, hairy playdates they had.”
Nina high-fived Marty with a cackle. “So what were you two doing in there last night that made this? All that talk about how she wasn’t your girlfriend, and now she turns up preggers. Explain that.”
“I can’t explain that!” Mick groused, stopping to take a deep breath. He was looking to keep his temper in check. Tessa knew that look. It was the one he used with her when she was doing something he disapproved of. “Tessa and I have never once . . . Well, you know. I can’t explain this. I can’t explain anything anymore. There are no explanations. All things explainable are totally unexplainable.”
“It’s true,” Tessa finally piped in, pulling her sweater tighter around her. “We’ve never . . .” Nothing in this world made any sense anymore. She hadn’t had sex in two solid years.
“Then this is the Immaculate Conception, Dragon Edition?” Nina queried, her eyebrow raised.
Wanda giggled before straightening and smoothing a hand over her hair to compose herself. “Okay, so we have what we suspect is a baby dragon, incubating—in an incubator like we used to do with baby chicks in Mrs. Margetti’s science class in fifth grade . . .” She began to laugh again, and wrapping her hands around her midsection, she laughed until she wheezed and teardrops fell from one eye.
Finally, she bent at the waist and took in gulps of air before rising to look them squarely in the eye. “I’m sorry. So here’s what we have. An egg. An egg we have no idea about. An egg that could contain a baby dragon. What do we do about it?”
The egg rolled then—or maybe the correct word was stirred, shifting ever so slightly under the incubator’s lamp. But it was like a jolt to Tessa’s system. She grabbed Mick’s forearm. “Did you feel that?”
He made a face, his eyes narrowing. “Feel what?”
Tessa held up a finger to her lips and cocked her head. There it was again, an odd pulse when the egg rolled to the other side of the incubator. “That! Did you feel that?”
Mick’s expression said she was out of her mind. “I didn’t feel anything.”
And then she heard something. A soft mewl—so faint, she wasn’t sure she’d really heard it until it became louder. She was compelled to put her finger in the incubator, drawn by some instinctual force to run her digit over the egg’s shiny gold surface.
The mewling became louder, rising and falling in a sound Tessa knew deep in her soul was the sound of contentment. Her heart raced, her belly fluttered, and her very core reacted as she stroked the egg, feeling the pulse of it beneath her fingertip.
From nowhere, a bolt of understanding hit her, an acute awareness, a sharply sweet pang of love so intense she almost fell over from the force of recognition. Tears streamed down her face, her hands trembling as she ran them over the egg.
Marty put her hands on Tessa’s shoulders, her voice watery. “I understand. If I could only tell you how deeply I understand.”
“I . . .” Tessa tried to speak, but her throat was so tight, so constricted with emotion, she couldn’t even begin to express what was happening to her.
Nina gave her ponytail a tug, squeezing her shoulder. “It’s indescribable. Don’t try to describe it. Just feel it.”
Wanda gathered Nina and Marty in for a hug, sheltering Tessa as they all looked down at the incubator.
Whatever had just happened, she couldn’t define it. She only knew it went as deep as any emotion she’d ever felt. So deep it almost hurt.
This was her baby. Her child. How it had come to be, why it had come to be, ceased to matter. All that mattered was that inside this gleaming egg was her future. She felt it, breathed it, needed it more than she’d ever needed anything else.
She would protect it with everything she had in her.
Kill for it.
Die for it.
“So, we have good news and maybe really good news, depending on how you look at this kind of shit. Which do you want first?” Nina asked, sitting down at the breakfast bar where Tessa sat, staring at her egg, still trying to grasp all of her thoughts. Trying to examine each of these new feelings swarming her from the inside out.
She peered up at Nina, seeing a whole different vampire. One who was smiling and a much lighter version of the vampire she’d met only twenty-four hours ago. “You like kids and animals, don’t you?”
Nina reached in and tickled the egg, eliciting a soft sigh from it as it stirred. “Yep. It’s adults I wish would all fuck off.”
“I’m afraid to ask why.”
“Don’t be afraid. I’ll tell you. Adults come with filters. They mostly never say what they really mean. They allude to it. They dance around it. They bullshit. Kids and animals have no agendas and no censor. I don’t like to dance, and I fucking hate bullshit.”
“Well, here’s something completely unfiltered for you. I have a baby, er, egg . . . whatever. What do I do with a baby, Nina? How did I even get a baby? And even as I question that, I’d eat your face off before I’d let you hurt this baby. I might not win, I might not even make a dent in you, but I’d die trying. How do I explain that?”
Nina grinned, crossing her arms on the counter. “Oh, no doubt you’d die up against me. But you feel this way because all mothers feel that way, kiddo. It’s instinct—raw, primal, chew-your-guts-up instinct.”
“I’ve never even considered having children, and now, by some mysterious, magical event, I have a child, or what will be a child.” That was a lie. She had considered it. She’d considered lots of little Micks and Tessas. She’d just given up hope that it would ever happen.
And with the way Mick was reacting to this, it was clear he’d never thought about it. He’d withdrawn to a corner of the kitchen, the way Mick always did when he needed time to process something, his hands jammed into the pockets of his low-slung jeans, his torn shirt falling forward on his shoulders from his wings’ impromptu appearance.
But this time, while he wrapped his big head around the latest events, it hurt. This egg had to be his. There was no one else it could possibly belong to. If that was true, why wasn’t he feeling the way she was? Why didn’t he even crack a smile?
Maybe he didn’t want to be a father—and that was just fine by her. She’d do it alone. But Mick would make the best father on the planet. All the kids in town adored him, and she knew he adored them back. He played Santa Claus for them every year at the firehouse dance.
Was it because they didn’t know what was inside the egg? Was he worried that what might pop out was going to look like it came from a DreamWorks movie instead of a human baby?
The truth of it was, Tessa wanted him to feel the way she did. She wanted him to love this life forming inside an eggshell as much as she did. It hurt that he wasn’t responding at all.
“So, that’s what we have to talk about.”
She looked up at Nina. “Huh?”
“The egg. We gotta talk about the egg.”
Terror struck her heart, so hard, so fast, she trembled. “If you tell me something’s wrong with my egg, er, baby . . . I’ll die, Nina. Right here, right in front of you. Please tell me nothing’s wrong. Please.” It was then she knew she’d beg, lie, steal, whatever it took to protect this amazing thing she’d created without even trying. With or without Mick, she was going to be a parent—to whatever. She didn’t care if it wandered around on two legs, had a forked tongue, and said rawr instead of mama.
This egg was hers.
“There’s nothing wrong, kiddo. But we got some word from some of our contacts about what to do next when you’re a dragon with an egg.”
“Did Puff the Magic Dragon call, and I missed it?” Tessa asked on a giggle, unable to hide her relief. “Sorry. How did you find out about what happens next?”
“Archibald. Wanda’s manservant.”
“Wanda has a manservant?”
“Yeah. A dude who was once a human, became a vampire because of a cra
zy circumstance, then turned back into a human because of another crazy circumstance. He’ll be here in just a second.”
A knock at the door sent all eyes to Wanda, who opened it and gave an elderly gentleman a hug. “Oh, Arch, thank you for coming on such short notice.”
The older man was wrapped in a black wool coat and matching black galoshes, and as he looked at Wanda, his face wrinkled into a wide smile. “I daresay, Miss Wanda, you know that when you call with another paranormal adventure, I can’t resist!”
“Arch!” Nina called out, waving him over to the incubator, where she and Tessa sat as Mick still hovered silently in a corner. She gave him a squeeze, taking his coat and draping it on the back of one of the chairs.
“Miss Nina! As always, a delight. So good to see you. Why haven’t you been to visit with my Charlie? Surely she doesn’t have enough stuffed unicorns from Grandpa Archibald?”
“One more stuffed unicorn and we’re going to have to buy another castle, Arch. Promise to bring her around soon. For now, we have this,” Nina said, pointing to the incubator.
Archibald clapped his hands together, his bright blue eyes crinkling at the corners. “What a wondrous world we live in, yes, Mistress Nina?”
“Damn straight, Arch. So this is Tessa, and her baby daddy, Mick, is the huge dude over there sulking in the corner.”
Mick cleared his throat, coming out of the darkness and putting a hand out to Archibald. “Pleasure,” he said.
Archibald took it, giving it a hearty shake. “Oh, congratulations, Sir Mick! I realize this was a surprise, but aren’t all miracles full of surprises?” he said as Mick retreated back into the dark kitchen. He turned to Tessa, his smile so warm she wanted to wrap herself up in it. “And you must be Miss Tessa. The new mother. Pretty as a picture. Warmest of wishes to you—to you both.”
Tessa wanted to bask in this moment—the one where this adorable man called her a new mother. She didn’t care that this baby was unconventional or maybe even crazy. She was going to be a mother, and hearing the word brought a flood of love to her heart. “Thank you, Archibald. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
The Accidental Dragon Page 11
