“Quinten?”
He grunted once, but didn’t speak.
“I love you,” I said, knowing that was pretty much the only thing that would stop his sulking.
Like I knew they would, his eyes immediately softened, and he looked down at me. “I love you, too. What’s wrong?”
“You’re doing it again,” I pointed out. “Shutting me out like that. Don’t go all quiet and thoughtful on me; it makes me feel uncomfortable, like you’re thinking about doing something really stupid.”
He sighed. “I’m not gonna do something stupid, Alanna. I’ve already done that by not being more careful with you.”
I rolled my eyes and turned away from him. Violet had the news on, but nobody was really paying attention to it. When the headline on the screen mentioned a murder, I instantly looked at it, and my eyes about popped out of my head. Russell Hewitt, the werewolf Council member that didn’t agree with letting us go, had been butchered in his sleep. His wife was also killed, and apparently the inside of their house looked like a horror movie.
“Oh, my god.” I said, turning up the volume.
The reporter stood in front of what must have been Russell’s home. “Just over an hour ago, the bodies of Russell and Debra Hewitt were found in their bed by a cleaning lady. They had been brutally tortured, mutilated, and finally had their throats ripped out. One of the police officers first to arrive on scene threw up after witnessing the crime scene, and told this reporter that it was the worst bloodbath he’d seen in over six years of police work.
“When asked for any new information, a senior detective told me to get lost, but not before I saw the bodies leave their home on stretchers. No amount of white sheets could hide the blood stains from the mutilated remains. A hand emerged from under the sheets, a woman’s, missing three of her fingers. Whoever committed these atrocious murders is truly a monster.
“For now, the entire community should be on the lookout for anyone suspicious. If you have any information about the murderer, please call the police hotline below.” The number flashed across the bottom of the screen for a moment, and then the reporter’s face returned. “More on this chilling murder, tonight at eleven.”
Quinten turned off the television, and he looked down at me. “What do you think happened to them?”
“Well, nothing but another werewolf or vampire could have killed both Russell and Debra Hewitt, even with the element of surprise. A werewolf is going to be capable of fighting back until they’re at death’s door, and they’ll fight even harder if their mate is in danger of being killed, too. So, it was either a vampire that they were prosecuting, or maybe a jealous werewolf that wanted on the Council. I’m not sure yet.”
“Maybe we should call Ray and see what he thinks.”
“Let’s wait,” I said. “I want to learn more about the baby before we call him again. I don’t want to hear him sound so worried and defeated more than I have to.”
Quinten sighed. “I know how he feels.”
I elbowed him, and he winced. “Quinten, stop it,” I ordered. “I love you, but you really need to quit. It’s not going to do either of us any good to blame this baby for something he couldn’t control. Just because we weren’t smart enough to realize pregnancy was an option is no reason to take it out on him.”
“Stop calling it a him.”
“Quinten, this baby is not an it. He, or possibly she, is going to be our baby. How can you even think of this innocent baby as an it?”
He sighed. “I’m sorry Alanna, but you have to understand something. If it’s a choice between you and this baby, I will choose you every time. And I know this is going to sound horrible, but I don’t think I have the ability to love something that might destroy you in the process of being born.”
“If you’re thinking about how pessimistic Darren was, stop it, right now. Darren’s mother was human, not a werewolf. There’s no telling what’ll happen to us, but I need to know that no matter what, you’ll take care of this baby.”
“Alanna–”
“Quinten, even if I die having this baby, you’ll still have a part of me left. I know it won’t be the same, but you’ll have to work through your pain and take care of this baby. You can’t blame him, or her,” I said, gripping his face to make him look at me. “Promise me, right now.”
He took a deep breath, and his eyes steadily met mine. “I promise.”
Chapter Fourteen
Over the next three days, Quinten and Violet spent most of their time on the internet, searching for any new information on dhampirs. I was more concerned about the murders of Russell and Debra Hewitt. Something felt incredibly wrong about their deaths, but I couldn’t place it.
At least, not until the news two nights after their murders. The moment I saw the headline flashing across the screen, I knew something terrible was going on. They were calling Phillip the next brutal murder in a line of vicious slayings and, even though I wanted to tear my eyes away from the screen, I couldn’t.
Phillip and his wife were butchered in the exact same fashion, and the police still had no idea who was behind it. Someone was killing werewolves and their mates, and torturing them in the process, and I had an idea of who it might be. Is Roger crazy enough to do this? To murder the Council members that govern his own people?
Quinten joined me in bed later that night, and I knew he was upset the moment he closed the door. He didn’t have to say anything, he just wrapped his arms tightly around my waist, and buried his face in my shoulder. His entire body trembled, and I leaned over and kissed his cheek. “It’ll be alright.”
“No, Alanna, it wont,” he said angrily. “My baby is probably going to kill you, I’ll lose my soul mate, and not to mention the fact that someone is killing werewolves. First Russell, now Phillip; who’s going to be next? What if it’s just the other Council members? Or what if this killer goes after Ray or Jax next? They were outspoken during our trial, and they might be seen as enemies to whoever is doing this.”
“Don’t think about that,” I begged. “Ray and Jax are strong, and they can take care of themselves. They’ll stick together, and they’ll be fine until we can get back to them. Right now, we can’t worry about them; we have other things to worry about. Things that’ll actually happen.”
He shuddered. “Yeah, I know. No matter how hard I try, I can’t forget.”
Quinten and I settled in for bed and in the morning, the two of us followed Violet back to Annabelle’s for another appointment. She seemed happier to see us this time, and she quickly ushered us into her back room. “Well, I’ve been doing some research since you left me the other day, and I haven’t come up with much but myths. However, I was hoping that some pretty standard tests might give me a little more insight. At this point, you’ve probably been pregnant for about two weeks, and with your fetus’ increased rate of growth, I believe to a normal woman it would be about two months.”
She patted the examination chair, and I hopped in and got as comfortable as possible. The first thing Annabelle did was take my blood pressure, and she nodded her head in approval. “Good,” she said, grabbing her stethoscope. She then listened to both my heartbeat and my lungs, and apparently I passed, because she smiled. “Well, you seem to be in pretty good health, but I’m sure that’s probably because of your…heritage.”
She turned away and grabbed something from the counter, and when I saw the needle in her hand, I flinched and looked away. Quinten tensed, and he grabbed my hand. “It’ll be alright,” he said quietly.
I nodded, and closed my eyes as Annabelle drew a vial of blood from my arm. Quinten squeezed my free hand, and when she pulled away with the used needle, I felt ok enough to open my eyes and look down at my arm. The needle mark was already gone because of my rapid healing, and I sighed in relief.
Violet left the room while Annabelle performed a few more tests, none of which hurt, but I still winced in discomfort. Some of them were a little uncomfortable, and Quinten never let go of my
hand the entire time. When Annabelle was done, she took some of the gel from our last visit, and smeared it over my stomach.
“Just as I thought, you’re even further along now. You’re about fourteen days pregnant, and your fetus looks to be almost two months old. At this rate, I think I can properly deduce that your baby is going to be born seven weeks from now, after a nine week pregnancy.”
“Do you have any idea why my pregnancy is progressing so fast? I mean, this can’t be healthy for me or the baby, right? A baby needs time to safely grow and mature, and for some reason my baby gets nine weeks instead of nine months. Can you think of any health concerns?”
Annabelle smiled. “I’m glad you’re informed enough to ask questions, but unfortunately I’m not sure how this pregnancy is going to play out. I’ve never seen anything like this; your baby might be ok, and it might be premature. I don’t know about any mental or health problems and it’s unlikely that I’ll be able to identify them before the baby is born. We’ll just have to wait and see.”
“Wait and see?” Quinten asked tightly. “That’s all you’ve got for us?”
“Quinten–”
“You’re a doctor, right? Aren’t you supposed to be giving us answers and getting rid of our stress and worries? If you don’t have any new information for us, what the hell was the point of coming down here today? Alanna could be in bed resting right now, preparing to give birth to the monster that’s probably going to kill her!”
“Quinten, stop yelling at her! She’s doing the best she can with something nobody has ever seen before. Cut her some slack, dammit. It’s not like she can just ask around if anyone’s ever had a baby like this before, you know. She’s going in blind and, seeing as she’s one of the only people trying to help us and not kill us right now, I think we should be a little more patient with her.”
Annabelle didn’t look as angry as I would if someone criticized me like that, but she didn’t look happy. “I am trying my best, Quinten. There’s never been a case of this so far, and I’m trying to think of a reason this dhampir would be different than the other ones Violet told me about. What makes Quinten different than the other vampires that have fathered children?”
It hit me so suddenly I forgot how to breathe. When I finally caught my breath, I looked up at everyone. “There’s nothing different about you, Quinten.”
“Alanna–”
“It’s not you; it’s me. I’m not a human woman. I’m a werewolf!”
He looked at me like I was losing my mind. “Alanna, we all know you’re a werewolf.”
I shook my head. “You don’t get it. Quinten, we don’t become werewolves until we’re introduced to a vampire’s venom. This baby is part vampire, but it’s also part werewolf. The venom has already been introduced into the baby’s system!”
Annabelle frowned. “I hadn’t even thought of that. But I’m not sure that it would affect the length of your pregnancy.”
“You said that based on how I was progressing, you thought I would be pregnant for about nine weeks. That’s how long a wolf gestates for. I’m not carrying just a baby, or even just a vampire baby, I’m carrying a wolf baby.”
“Alanna, you can turn into a giant wolf, but that doesn’t make you an animal, and it certainly doesn’t mean you’re gonna give birth to a litter of puppies.”
“I know that,” I said, rolling my eyes. “But right now, this is what fits. This pregnancy is progressing abnormally fast, and nothing else makes any kind of sense. Listen to me, I’m not saying that I’m gonna just randomly turn into a wolf, never change back, dig a burrow, and give birth to a little of pups in a den somewhere. This baby is human, but it’s also part vampire and part werewolf. We can’t forget that.”
“But if what you’re saying is true,” Quinten said, looking at me. “Then shouldn’t our baby never grow older? You stopped aging the day you first shifted, and you’ll never grow older as long as you live. So, after this baby is born, is he or she going to stay a baby forever?
“What kind of control would a child like that have? Would he or she always be starving? Would they attack anything that moved? Would we be taking care of a baby for all of eternity?”
“Well, vampires don’t age either, and Darren is still part vampire. He stopped aging after reaching maturity, so why shouldn’t our baby? Quinten, I know you’re worried, and you have every right to be, but you also need to calm down and relax a little. Everything is gonna be alright, I promise.”
He groaned, and rested his forehead against mine. “Alanna, I love you, but please stop making promises you don’t know if you can keep.”
Annabelle cleared her throat, but neither of us moved. “I can’t really tell you much more right now. I’ll let you know in a few days what the results of your tests are. Until then, I think you should keep resting, and make sure you stay nourished and hydrated.”
“Thanks, Annabelle,” Violet said, helping me from the chair. “Just give us a call when you get those results; we should be home anytime day or night.”
Quinten and I walked out of the doctor’s office, but Violet hung back a few minutes to talk with Annabelle. The two of us hung around the front of the building, just holding hands and not speaking to one another. We just watched the other expecting mothers walk–or in some cases waddle–up to the front door.
Some of them gave us non-discreet glances, and I couldn’t help but notice some of them looked slightly disappointed. I was almost twenty years old, what was so wrong with me having a baby? Women younger than me were having them all the time. Not to mention that our culture glorified being pregnant at sixteen.
I was a grown woman and, even though my life definitely wasn’t stable at the moment, my boyfriend was much more devoted to me than any other man out there was. Nobody else had been through what we had, and they could never understand the bond between us.
The wind picked up, and the hairs on the back of my neck instantly stood on end. My entire body tensed, and Quinten looked at me. “Alanna? What’s wrong?”
“I’m not sure,” I said, looking around the mostly empty parking lot. There didn’t seem to be anything out of place. A woman pushed a stroller along the sidewalk, two little kids played in a nearby patch of grass under the watchful eye of their mother, and a couple younger than us was holding hands and kissing on a bench.
There’s something wrong. I can’t place it, but I know. Something is not right here.
Then I saw him.
Eli was standing on the other side of the street. His long, white-blonde hair was pulled back into a ponytail, his icy-blue eyes were staring at me, and I couldn’t help but notice the slight smirk on his lips. There a rosy tint to his cheeks, and I knew that he’d recently fed on some poor victim that was probably lying in a ditch somewhere now.
He was wearing jeans and a leather jacket, and his hands were shoved into his pockets. He leaned against a tree, looking like the picture of a carefree soul with nothing to worry about. I could tell by the way he looked at me that he was thinking about the last time we’d been alone together.
He’d fed on me, more than once, and some part of my blood probably still lingered in his body. Could he use that blood to track me? I’d heard of vampires doing that before, but I knew that the more contact you had with someone and the more blood you took made it easier to track someone over great distances.
Is that what Eli did? Did he use my leftover blood to track me down?
Suddenly, my hands started to shake, and my palms started to sweat. My heart began racing, and Quinten felt my panic immediately. “Alanna? What’s wrong?”
He hadn’t seen Eli yet. When I didn’t answer him, he looked where I was, and he froze. So it wasn’t just my imagination. Eli was actually standing there on the other side of the road, staring at the two of us with a sly grin on his face, and I couldn’t shift to protect myself, Quinten, or our baby.
“Alanna–”
“If I shift, it could hurt the baby,” I whispered, never tak
ing my eyes off of Eli. “Do you think he’ll try anything in public?”
Quinten’s entire body went hard. “Not with me standing right here.”
The smile on Eli’s face got wider, and I knew he could hear the two of us. And if Quinten could hear our baby’s heartbeat days ago, there was no way Eli could miss it now. Ray had taken his mate from him, and Eli had tried to kill me at the Arena in return, but he’d failed. In his mind, his revenge wasn’t complete.
It could be now. If he attacked, I was sure that Quinten and I would both most likely die. Quinten was powerful enough to protect me now from minor threats, but Eli was anything other than minor. He was a huge threat, almost as big as Roger. The only difference between the two of them was that Eli was over eight hundred years old, and Roger was less than half of that. If Eli wanted me dead right now, I was going to die.
“What do we do?” Quinten asked, moving closer to me. “I’m not gonna stand a chance against him in a fight, and you won’t either, at least not in your condition. We’re screwed.”
“Quinten, it’ll be fine.”
“Is that another promise you don’t know if you can keep?” he asked, refusing to take his eyes off of Eli’s still unmoving form. He’d been standing there watching the two of us for damn near five minutes, and he hadn’t moved yet other than to smirk at me. What game was he playing at?
The door to the clinic opened, and the bell above it chimed. Eli’s smile faded, and he looked almost surprised. Without even looking over my shoulder, I knew that Violet had finished talking with Annabelle, and had joined us. She put her hand on my shoulder, and I glanced up at her. “What’s going on?”
I looked back, and Eli was gone. “We just saw an old friend.”
She frowned. “Roger?”
“Worse. Elias.”
“Son of a bitch,” Violet muttered, surprising me. It was always strange to see someone who looked like your grandmother be so…un-grandmotherly. Of course, the first time I’d seen her she’d been in her full-leather suit and that would always be the mental image I had of her, not the elderly woman in her pretty sundresses and hats. “Come on; let’s get the two of you back to the apartment, where it’s safer.”
Arena Wars Trilogy Page 33
