Quickening, Volume 2

by Amy Lane

  “Cory!” Mom protested, and I looked her dead in the eyes.

  “Green’s a trained healer, Mom. He understands the workings of the babies and my body, and I trust him with my life—and the babies’ lives as well.”

  “So, Mr. Green?” Nurse Rogers asked, and I gave her a medium grunt. Could be “Mr.,” could be “Dr.,” could be “don’t fuckin’ bother me.” I’d learned that grunt from Bracken and was getting particularly good at the nuances. She nodded as though I’d said yes and asked, “Can he come with you for your next visit?”

  I looked at her, smiling slightly. “There’s not going to be a next visit,” I said, keeping my voice even. “This isn’t your usual situation.”

  “You’re telling me,” Mom said under her breath, but I silenced her with a glare. Goddess, even Nicky and Renny were staying silent. This seemingly innocuous situation could turn so bad if we gave too much away.

  “But honey,” Nurse Rogers said gently, “you have to have prenatal care.”

  “I do.” I smiled a little. “I have Green.”

  She met my mother’s eyes, and the two of them sent me pitying looks that almost—but not quite—sent me into a homicidal rage. Damn my mother. Damn her. It was my fault for trying to block her out, but dammit, this was why. Always interfering in the wrong kind of way. But I couldn’t shake the way her lower lip had trembled, or her hurt at the independent kind of child I’d been.

  Oh, hell. I hadn’t meant to be a changeling, a foundling, nursed on rainwater and fairies’ milk—but that was who I’d been even before I’d met Adrian and come into my power. Never the child she’d wanted, but the only child she’d had.

  I refused to give blood. Supposedly all of Bracken’s blood from my field transfusion had been absorbed and changed in my bloodstream, but I didn’t know for sure—and the babies would definitely be sending weird shit into the mix, so I wasn’t going to chance it.

  I got on the scale and was tsked at until I told her I was carrying twins.

  “And how do you know that?”

  “Green told me.” I’d given him the magic name of “doula,” so she didn’t ask how he’d know—she probably assumed a Doppler, and I wasn’t going to disabuse her. She had me lie back and pull up my shirt, then placed the Doppler wand against my stomach.

  Two distinct rhythms filled the room, fast as raindrops on tin.

  For a moment, all was wonder.

  “Listen,” I whispered—unnecessarily, of course, because all of us were listening. “Bracken, that’s—”

  “The trippy one,” he said, eyes closed. “The one that goes ba-pop ba-pop ba-ba ba-pop—that is our daughter.”

  Oh.

  “Yeah?” I asked, enchanted.

  “The solid one, do you hear it?”

  “Boom-boompa-boom-boompa-boom,” I said, because I could hear them. Two distinct beats, one fey and dancing, the other as deep and solid as warriors beating spears on stone.

  “That is our son,” he said, then lowered his face to nuzzle against me. I nuzzled him back, my chest swelling, swelling, and suddenly, without warning, filled with a thing that was not fear.

  “They will be so beautiful,” I said with deep conviction. Look at him. Look at Green. My beautiful men, my beautiful sidhe. Oh Goddess, my lovely, amazing lovers—what choice did these children have but to be beautiful like the sun on snow, like the moonlight on water, our children.

  “How far along did you say you were?”

  The nurse’s voice cut into our communion, and for a moment I was irritated. Then I remembered that we had to be careful, and I had to think—middle of August, middle of September, end of October… “Three and a half months,” I said. “Four on the fifteenth.”

  “You know the conception date for sure?”

  I nodded. “Yup. The night the sure-fire birth control failed.”

  She frowned. “So fifteen, sixteen weeks along. Those heartbeats were damned strong for fifteen weeks. Here—you lie back, and I’ll get the ultrasound.”

  “No!” I struggled to sit up, but Bracken, surprisingly, touched my arm.

  “She will not know what she sees,” he said lowly. “But we will.” His smile, on that rugged, grim, warrior’s face—oh, Goddess, it would melt an ice meteor in deep space.

  Helpless before Bracken, before Green. I marveled at the miracle that I’d fought enough to conceive. I was helpless against their smiles.

  Nicky broke my besotted silence. “This isn’t gonna be the… you know, wazoo ultrasound, is it?”

  Bracken looked over his shoulder. “The what?”

  “You know, they’ve got the big mighty ‘wand’ that they push up her wazoo and it takes a picture?”

  I gaped at him, and Bracken’s eyes grew even rounder. “I don’t even want to—”

  “Hey!” Nicky protested. “You’re not the only one who’s been reading instruction manuals. The way our luck works, you and Green are gonna be off saving the world, and I’m gonna be the fuckin’ doula.”

  Renny snarked, “You mean you’re gonna be keeping Cory from wrecking the planet, and I’m gonna catch.”

  “You both suck,” I said with deep feeling, and Katy patted my arm.

  “No worries. I’ve been reading the same books. Those two can have the Sylvester and Tweety show, and me and Jacky can do all the delivering.”

  Oh, bless her. She meant well. “Katy, I love you, but how many people are going to see my wazoo by the time all this is done?”

  Suddenly Nicky and Renny broke up. “Sylvester and Tweety! Oh my God, Katy, that was epic!”

  I let a grin sneak through. “Yeah—I gotta admit, that was pretty good, hon.”

  She patted my arm again and leaned her head against my shoulder, loyal and trusting and good-humored as always. “I’ve been listening to Teague and Jacky. Teague’s got so many teasing names, I can’t think of any more for Jack, but those two? They’re fair game.”

  I laughed, loving them all so very much in that moment. “But seriously. How many people are going to have to see my wazoo?”

  Bracken made an unhappy sound. “From what I understand, the entire fucking world, beloved. Would you like me to trim it up and add ribbons?”

  I stared at him in horror. “You wouldn’t.”

  His grin was pure joy. “You heard them, right?”

  Because that’s what all the laughter and jokes were about.

  “Yeah,” I whispered, and Katy moved when Bracken leaned forward to claim my space.

  “I will add sequins and beads and braids and—”

  “My bush is not that big,” I said, still a little horrified.

  “Then I will have to decorate the room.”

  The room. I gasped softly because the room had sat, unused and un-looked-in. I’d been so afraid to admit they were coming, I’d missed out on some of the excitement of what to do when they got here.

  “We all need to decorate the room,” I said thoughtfully. He cupped my jaw and kissed me, and we were suddenly the only two people on earth.

  The moment was interrupted by a knock at the door followed by a shortish, fiftyish man with thinning gray hair and a drinker’s complexion.

  He smiled winningly at me, then looked confused by the number of people in the room. Of course he was.

  “It’s my entourage,” I said gamely. “All pregnant women have them, right?”

  He didn’t even crack a smile! I automatically didn’t trust him—a real healer would have laughed at my joke.

  “I understand there’s some problems with the heartbeat?” he said, sounding sober.

  “They sound a little farther along than they should be,” Nurse Rogers said. “I was hoping you could supervise the preliminary ultrasound.”

  The doctor—Nieman, by his name tag—turned to look at her. They had one of those raised-eyebrow conversations that people who have worked together for a while have.

  They thought there was something wrong with the babies. I smacked down the impulse to pa
nic just because they were wearing scrubs and smocks. Dammit, I had not spent my first nineteen years distrusting authority, and my last couple of years becoming authority, just to let two humans frighten me now.

  “They’re fine,” I said, keeping eye contact with Bracken. “Nothing to worry about here.”

  “Now, young lady, that’s very fine for you to think, but let’s take a look, shall we?”

  Oh, awesome. “Mom, how do you know this guy?”

  “We worked together for quite some time when he was at Mercy San Juan,” Mom said. “He’s very good.”

  That was code for “he could abuse the nurses and nurse’s aides like a boss.” I remembered her discussions with Dad. Wonderful. For the first time since we’d herded into this increasingly stuffy room, I made eye contact with my mom.

  “He’s a tool,” I mouthed. She had the grace to look embarrassed, which meant she knew that. Ugh. I should have pitied her, actually—she’d been condescended to by doctors for her entire career. Of course I’d heard her talk about the male nurses and aides, and apparently the entire fucking world had it out for them, so I’m pretty sure she gave as good as she got, but still.

  Must be a shitty way to spend your working hours.

  Dr. Tool wasn’t looking at me, though. No. He was clicking on the ultrasound machine with great authority and managing to ignore the other seven people in the eight-by-ten-foot room. “So, Ms. Kirkpatrick—”

  “Green!” I snapped. “Mom, I’ve been married for more than a year!”

  “Sorry, honey,” she said automatically. “I forgot.”

  “Well, I remember everything,” I told her darkly. Oh, yeah. This was not going to be just brushed off.

  “Yeah,” she sighed. “I know.”

  “So your doula is a relative?” Nurse Rogers said, putting things together slowly.

  “Of sorts. Are you going to have to put the ultrasound wand up my wazoo?” I asked, because I was not interested in playing the Green name game anymore.

  “Uh, no,” Dr. Tool said, looking at me for the first time as though I was a person. An irritating person, but a person nonetheless. He forced some joviality into his bedside manner and elaborated. “No, we don’t need the internal ultrasound for a preliminary checkup. When you come back around week twenty, we’ll do the full workup, but this is just a checkup. Now, I need you to pull your shirt up again and your… uh…”

  “Husband,” Bracken supplied, his entire body turning to granite. He didn’t like this guy either, and I didn’t even need to read his mind to figure that out.

  “…husband can step out of the way—”

  “His name is Bracken,” I said flatly. Yes, I was baiting him.

  “Uh, Bracken. Hi, so nice to meet you. I’m Dr. Nieman.” He smiled and held up his hands, which were already gloved. Bracken looked at him as though he wouldn’t have touched those gloved hands with two inches of hazmat lead between them.

  “Bracken Green,” he said tersely. “Touch her carefully.”

  Nieman smiled nervously. “Of course. I’ll just, here.” He squirted half a gallon of K-Y onto the wand and glopped it onto my stomach.

  “And that was hella fucking cold,” I hissed. Wow. At least Nurse Rogers had made sure the lube that came with the Doppler was warmed before she slid it around like a squid on an ice rink. “And fucking ouch!” God, he was pushing hard.

  “Sorry about that,” he lied. “Okay, so here’s where we’re looking… at.”

  He trailed off, because he couldn’t see.

  I mean he could see, but he couldn’t see.

  Bracken and I could see. Tiny, separate, and crouched as babies were in all the pictures, they presented the perfect outlines of two elvish babies.

  Their ears were pointed, even in the womb. Their torsos were too long, and they had vestigial tails that I knew might or might not disappear with birth. They had hands too big and too long to be human, and while we were watching, one of the little outlines in the alpine snow of the ultrasound picture turned and looked at the source of his or her discomfort.

  The dips and shadows that probably signified eyes and ears and nose exploded across the black screen, the form of the little squidder morphing—becoming even more impossible, deformed even—and terrifyingly so.

  But it didn’t matter.

  We’d caught him or her—for some reason I assumed this one was a he—before the little nipper knew we were watching. We had some solid footage of a perfect little elf baby in his natural habitat.

  Me.

  Both of the figures on the screen started to freak out, blurring in impossible ways now that they knew they were on camera, and Bracken and I chuckled.

  “Nope,” I said, my voice catching. “That’s the last we’ll get out of them today.”

  “It’s not something we do consciously,” Bracken said thoughtfully. “But by the time we’re born—”

  “Shh…,” I said, holding his hand. “No logistics of magic, Bracken. Not today.”

  I’d seen my children today.

  But that didn’t mean this yo-yo could keep shoving at my uterus with the ultrasound wand like a chimp with a stick looking for ants either.

  “You’re done,” I said, not caring if it was rude. “The show’s over, they’re not going to perform for the camera anymore.”

  “But—did you see the abnormalities? Young lady, I don’t think you know the ramifications of those unusual shapes, or the hearts—I think those hearts had six chambers!” I probably would have sympathized with him, but he kept shoving at me with the damned wand the whole time. I grabbed his wrist and threw a little power into my grasp, hauling his hand and that thing slowly but surely away from my stomach.

  “Please stop touching me,” I said evenly. I let go of his wrist, and he put the sensor wand back in its little slot on the ultrasound tray.

  “Look, Ms. Green, I’m not sure if you realize—”

  “I was never here,” I said, keeping eye contact with him. “We didn’t show.” I stopped for a moment and looked at Bracken, who turned to Nurse Rogers and started murmuring to her as well. I know I said I’d do it, but this sitch had gotten epic quick. The minute I saw her eyes glaze over, I turned back to my problem.

  “Do you hear me?”

  Dr. Nieman looked up, and our eyes met. “Yes, but I don’t understand—”

  “You will forget we were here,” I repeated patiently. “You will forget my name. You will forget what you just saw on the ultrasound. You will forget the names and faces of everyone in this room. Do you understand?”

  “I understand what you’re saying,” he said, looking at me and shaking his head. “I just don’t understand why you’re saying it.”

  Oh, for fuck’s sake.

  I stared him in the eyes and thought sleep until his eyelids fluttered and he yawned, slouching down on his little stool. “Wow, just got really tired… but we’ve got to talk about… the abnormalities….”

  I knew how to put power in my voice. It was one of my first tricks, but not one of my favorites. I used all of my will for this, because I sensed it was extremely important.

  “My babies,” I whispered fiercely, “are perfect. Do you understand?”

  “Perfect,” he said through a yawn. “But the hearts….”

  “Perfect!”

  “Talk… need to….”

  “Perfect!” I shouted, and he collapsed with his head on the exam table. He stayed there while I got up, moving awkwardly around him and freely using Bracken’s hands as levers. Nicky and Renny had already gotten up and guided Nurse Rogers to their seat, and my mom was standing in the middle looking confused and terrified.

  Well, I wasn’t happy either.

  I grabbed a wad of tissues, wiped the gel off my stomach, and chucked it in the trash can before stepping around the sleeping doctor. He was still struggling, mumbling “defects” and “viable,” and I felt queasy and angry at once.

  He was sort of fixated on it.

  Somet
imes, Green had told me, certain humans were resistant to magic. I was one, because I had power—but sometimes there were smart people with no imagination, and those people couldn’t be manipulated. Dr. Nieman might be one of them, and he’d stumbled onto something so very important and deadly secret.

  “Nicky?” I asked as we all slid out of the exam room. “Think you can erase our files from the computer?”

  “Yeah,” Nicky said thoughtfully. “Yeah. Can you guys get rid of the receptionist? Whammy her or something?”

  “God, I hate to whammy people.” It was the truth. I’d always called it “mind-fucking,” and it didn’t sit well with me. “I hate to think of how many brain cells I just transmogrified.”

  “I’ll do it,” Bracken said with relish. “I have had enough of this place anyway.”

  Ah, bless Bracken. He never saw a mountain that couldn’t be carved with a straight line and a ruler.

  “Groovy,” I agreed, taking a right down the taupe corridor and then a left. There were nurses at a station, but they barely looked up as we passed. I’d noticed six names on the little placard outside—that must have meant six doctors and probably ten exam rooms and a couple of offices. Good. If nobody was watching us pass, then people must come and go all the time, and Dr. Nieman and Nurse Rogers might not be discovered for a little while.

  Jesus, what a clusterfuck.

  “Cory?” Mom had been in a state of shock as Bracken and I had reacted to the ultrasound and then mind-fucked our health-care practitioners. She was coming out of it now. “Cory, what in the hell did you—”

  “Later, Mom,” I said absently. “Smile and wave, folks, smile and wave.”

  “Ellen!” We had finally emerged at the reception area, and the woman at the desk turned toward my mom with a welcoming smile on her face. “How did it go with your daughter—”

  “She never showed,” Bracken and I said in unison. The woman nodded briefly and then continued.