Quickening, Volume 2

by Amy Lane

  Especially as the twins seemed to get bigger with every damned heartbeat.

  Arturo looked at me with an arched eyebrow. “Orange would look hideous on her,” he said, as though making sure that was the point.

  I smiled, feeling catty but not caring. “Oh, yes it would.”

  He shook his head. “That’s beneath you,” he said quietly. I sighed and wriggled out from between Green’s and Bracken’s sleeping bodies. Nicky was up against the wall on Bracken’s other side, and I looked at him fondly. Ours. Completely. So be it.

  When I got to the end of the bed, I made sure I was sideways, because just sitting up wasn’t easy when your middle got bigger, and I propped myself up on my elbow so I could do it….

  And when I was done, I glared at Arturo, because it suddenly felt like his fault. “Still beneath me?” I bitched, but he didn’t smile.

  “Have you seen those statues?” he asked, smiling in recollection. “The carved stone statues of fecund women quickening, growing round?”

  Yup. I’d seen them. Big hips, big belly, big boobs—motherhood glorified, I guess. I pushed myself up and grunted, just grateful that, this once, I didn’t feel it necessary to give myself a little jet boost with the rapidly increasing gas reserves my pregnant body produced. (So far, I’d been lucky and managed to keep my gas to myself until I got to the bathroom. Once there, though, no holds barred. I’d started locking even Bracken out but hadn’t told him why. Tough. Cookies.)

  “Are you saying you’d worship me?” I asked, feeling bitter. Oh, wouldn’t it be awesome to be worthy?

  “No, little Goddess. Those statues were carved by the women themselves. That’s why the bodies are so distorted. They were time markers for the women during their gestation. They would look down at their bodies and see their breasts and bellies grow larger, and they’d know something magical was happening. Those stone dolls are a mark of celebration for new life.”

  I looked at him distrustfully, then looked down at my body. I was about halfway through, and my belly had begun to pooch out enough for me to see it through my T-shirt under my irritatingly heavy breasts. Everybody—and I mean everybody—had weighed in on my weight, including Green. He had held my hand and sort of “scanned” me with his eyes closed, monitoring my heart, my blood pressure, the way I was processing sugar and protein—everything. The consensus was that this was a perfectly normal pregnancy of above-normal-sized twins. My belly was large, but there weren’t extra fat or water deposits where they shouldn’t be.

  But my belly was large.

  “You saw me,” I said, too tired from the night before—hell, from the past five months—to dodge the issue. “When Adrian first brought me home. All baby fat and thick thighs.”

  “I thought you were beautiful then,” Arturo said, lowering his book. He smiled slightly, his silver-capped teeth glinting and his usually dynamic, terrifying copper-lightning eyes soft and kind.

  “Well, look at me now,” I said glumly, making my way to the bathroom.

  “I wish Adrian could visit,” Arturo said out of nowhere, making me stop halfway to the door. I looked at him searchingly. Nobody spoke of this. Once I’d realized he couldn’t come, I didn’t think anybody wanted to think about it—how much we missed him, how much it hurt that we couldn’t talk, that there wasn’t really a possibility of it, at least not until the babies were born.

  “Yeah,” I whispered, taking another step.

  “Adrian could make you see,” Arturo said. “Of your four lovers, he was the one who could make you see.”

  I turned toward him, realizing that he was looking at me with a terrible wistfulness. Almost the same expression my mother used to use when she wanted me to wear a dress or put on makeup or please, for the love of God, just be nice to a boy so I could go out on a date.

  “See what?” I asked. I knew what he would say, because he loved me. Uncle Arturo, my friend, Green’s bestie. But I needed to hear it.

  “You’re beautiful, Corinne Carol-Anne. And not because you’re my queen, or my brothers’ beloved. Not because you’re a warrior or even my friend. You’re just beautiful.”

  I started to laugh and cry at the same time and tried to wipe my face off with the back of my hand. I gave it up and used the inside of the neck of my shirt.

  “Love you, Uncle Arturo,” I said, my voice clotted with everything. “I’ll be out in a sec.”

  “Of course,” he said calmly.

  I made it to the toilet before I really started my good cry. Made it through business as usual (thank Goddess) and into the shower and still hadn’t finished my emotional catharsis.

  Was still leaning, head against the wall, water beating on my back, when the shower door opened. I was almost afraid to see who it was. Who did I least want to face?

  I looked down at the tiles—Christmas blue today, they were one of the many things that changed at the whim of the sex magic—and saw long, narrow feet with the faintest hint of fairy pink in the nail beds.

  Bracken. He pumped some soap on his hands and lathered my shoulders, down my back, along the curve of my ass.

  “I thought it would be Green,” I said, voice still thick. Green was the one who usually mended my self-esteem, while Bracken often treated me like it had never been broken.

  “Green was on his way.” Bracken lathered my neck under my hair, then moved the showerhead so it would hit that spot. “But Arturo told him that you needed me.”

  Well, I’d known they had powwows over who would deal with me. His hands slid down my spine and around. He palmed the space under my breasts, sliding over my pregnant stomach, the lather making the touch sensuous and slow.

  “Mm….” I closed my eyes and leaned into him. “He give a reason?”

  “Something about how you wouldn’t think it was pity.”

  I let out a little laugh. “Well, that’s the truth.” Bracken would never pity me. He wouldn’t love anyone weak enough to pity.

  Bracken rubbed his lips down the back of my ear, careful not to displace the myriad little gold hoops I wore. I used to have an eyebrow ring and a nose stud too—funny the stuff you let go of when your life changes. But the six zillion earrings, those stayed intact.

  “I love your body,” he whispered, his thumbs moving in lazy circles around my tender nipples.

  “How much did you hear?”

  “Hear?” He pinched my nipple and I gasped, arching my back just enough to thrust my breasts against his hands. “I woke up and you were in the shower. Green and Arturo were talking about Iris, and Arturo said it would be best if I joined you.”

  I let out a semihysterical giggle and turned sideways, the better to lean my head against his chest and give him access to my body. From my throat to my parted thighs, it was all his.

  “Why?” he whispered, running his hand down my pregnant stomach, every touch slow and filled with wonder. “What would I have heard?”

  “Nothing,” I lied. “Pregnancy hormones making me stupid.”

  “Hmm.” He clearly didn’t believe me. He laced his hand with mine and placed them both on the apex of the stomach o’ doom. “I’ve been waiting for this to become prominent,” he said happily. “Did you know that?”

  “Harder to deny when I’m taking out small buildings with my giant abdomen?”

  He laughed, like that image was pleasing. “Well, that is convenient, but it’s not why I was waiting for it.”

  The muscles in my face that had tightened and stressed when I’d been crying relaxed all at once, and I melted into his embrace.

  “Why?” I whispered.

  “Because.” I could hear it over the shower—so much joy in that one word. “Just… because. Because it’s a transition, this body. It’s… it’s a haven and a miracle. I know there are… painful, inconvenient things going on in there.” He let out a half laugh. “You spend a lot of time relieving yourself, for one.”

  “It’s like half my life,” I said in honest exasperation. “How do pregnant women with fiv
e kids get anything done?”

  “They don’t.” Bracken sounded surprised. He grabbed the shampoo and prodded me, so I turned around and let him soap my hair as we talked. “They let the older kids do things, and they let the house go, and they sit down on the toilet when they need to and nap with the younger kids, because that’s what their bodies need to do. Have you not been reading?”

  I leaned back to rinse, and when I’d cleared the water from my mouth, I told the truth. “What do you think I’m doing on the pot?”

  There were copies of his pet pregnancy books in the magazine rack we’d recently placed under the toilet paper.

  “Good,” he purred, sounding appeased. “But that’s not the only painful thing. Your breasts, your thighs, the crampiness in your back, your neck—all of it is exhausting and irritating, and I know it’s easy to hate being pregnant because of it.”

  He started working conditioner through my hair, and I was quiet for a moment while he did that.

  “I don’t hate being pregnant,” I said after that moment, because I thought it was important.

  I actually heard him swallow, and he held the showerhead and massaged my scalp while he rinsed. “No?” Oh, Bracken Brine—so stoic. He wanted me to love this as much as he did.

  I turned in his arms while he put the showerhead back, then pulled his face down for a kiss when he was done. The children were a solid, comforting weight against my cervix, and the mortifying bout of self-pity had been cleansed from my heart by Bracken’s ministrations.

  Our tongues tangled briefly, and I wondered if he could taste the salt from my meltdown. I pulled back and smoothed his dark hair—thick and wet, a mass—from his forehead.

  “No,” I whispered. “I…. It feels amazing sometimes, to have little people inside me.”

  He smiled then—embarrassed, proud, as earnest as any human father.

  “Not parasites or aliens, right? People?”

  I looked away in embarrassment. “Elves,” I told him. Those little squids on the ultrasound had been very, very elf-shaped.

  Oh, that smile—should be bottled as a weapon. Lethal.

  “People.” He nodded and pushed against my stomach gently. We both felt the little pop against his hand.

  I laughed quietly and turned off the water. “So,” I asked, hating to let the moment slip away but aware that the world did not grind to a halt because I was enjoying myself for once. “You and Green were keeping watch on the perimeter last night. Did you see anything?”

  Bracken grunted. “Yeah. She tried to send werewolves to kill the stragglers coming out of the shield last night. We sent the vampires down to pull a Teague with the poor goobers who were just trying to find their damned clothes. It was pathetic. Anyway, a few of us oversaw it to make sure she didn’t succeed. She doesn’t have many wolves left. I don’t know, maybe she wanted the recovering ones to get bit, and they may have a fight on their hands when they go back home, but we can’t do much about that.”

  Yeah. Well, hopefully they could protect themselves, because we were working hard trying to do the same.

  “Think she’s got a site lined up for the solstice?” I asked. This had been one of our worries. If she could build up more followers, it didn’t matter how many we took out.

  “Yes,” Bracken said definitively. “She would have stayed and fought if she didn’t, because we would have had her against the ropes. But the good news is, wherever she has her next ritual, it’s got to be inside, and it’s going to be a much smaller number of recruits this time.”

  “And she’s lost… how many? How many do you think we stole from her last night?”

  Bracken had grabbed two towels and handed me one. We toweled ourselves down as we spoke, and then he wrapped my bath sheet securely around my burgeoning body.

  “Is Arturo still out there?” I asked doubtfully. Everyone liked knowing I was laid and happy, but Arturo was too aware of my bounds of propriety to get off listening to us when we were okay.

  “No,” Bracken said smugly. “I just like wrapping you tight. You’re a big pregnant burrito.”

  I cackled, honestly amused, and turned to him for another kiss. Oh, he tasted so good. “You know what I want to do the day after Christmas?”

  “Please say have lots of sex and stay in bed and eat leftovers.”

  Oh, the decadence. “Sure,” I said, nodding. “All of the above. Read my mind.”

  Again that gleeful, little-boy, half-shy, half-exuberant grin. Literally gave me chest palpitations.

  “Good. Then let’s get our work done so we can look forward to that,” he said, all earnestness. “We were talking last night at dinner—which you missed, so eat when someone brings you something—and we figured she couldn’t have that many wolves left. So far, she’s worked in tiny pockets—the courthouse, the jail—but if she took over the whole thing, there’d be APBs out on elves, and Green and you would be most wanted. It’s deep, but it’s still covert. So the numbers we’ve been seeing and breaking away from her—they’ve been pretty much the same wolves.”

  Teague had said so, and when they’d been people, I had recognized the same ones again and again.

  “You know, if she’s sending werewolves to kill her ex-werewolves, I bet… I’ll bet she can’t re-recruit them. What do you think?”

  Bracken nodded grimly. “So she can’t recruit massive numbers and she can’t get back the ones she’s lost. I think… I mean, we can try to stop her for the solstice, and since none of the werewolves can remember where they’re from, unless we get a flash of insight from God, I don’t see how. I think we’re both just going to have to build our numbers and hope the strong one wins after the solstice.”

  I grunted. “Yeah. She’ll be building up to take us over, and we’ll be finding a way to stop her. I think that’s what it’s going to look like.”

  He brushed my stomach under the bathsheet as we emerged from the bathroom. “Then we’ll have to use our time better,” he said soberly.

  I grinned. “Any time we’re having sex and not worrying about her makes it better!”

  “May it be,” he intoned, deadly serious.

  I got to the bedroom and let him pull out the stretch-waist jeans and soft cotton bra. I wore a sweater—pretty, cabled, warm, and just a bit tatty. For a moment I was tempted to ask Bracken to dress me up in a power suit just to walk down to the basement, but fuck it. Wasn’t going to change who I was. For the first time in forever, I was comfortable in my own stretched skin.

  “HOLY GOD,” Iris said as we walked in. “You’re pregnant.”

  I smirked. I guessed it had been a month or two, really, of living in the same hill but not talking—not even coming close to each other—in the course of our day.

  Quite frankly, once the screaming stopped, we’d had other shit to do.

  “You’re looking well,” I said, meaning it. We’d sent a team to her apartment, and they’d set up an armoire down here in the vampire vault as well as bringing in another bed and giving her some room to decorate. Today she was wearing some nice camel-colored wool slacks and a cream turtleneck. She’d been doing her nails, and the reek of acetone was giving me a headache. I was just as glad she hadn’t been allowed to dye her hair again. She didn’t have too many grays, but what she had stopped about halfway down her head as though her roots were almost down to her chin now.

  As I mentioned her appearance, she tucked her hair behind her ears and smiled shyly. “I appreciate having my stuff here,” she said. “And thank you for giving my friend the chance to stay.” Marshall Weller, her gay friend for all her public appearances, had actually been more than ready to become a werewolf. It was surprising to see someone who needed faith, a change of life, and a chance to be someone new, when he spent so much time of his life giving that faith to somebody else.

  I guess even the human good guys need hope, don’t they.

  “It’s our pleasure,” I said, grabbing Green’s hand just a smidge tighter. “We’re sorry you’re st
uck here with us.”

  Iris shrugged. Two full moons with us—and on both moons she’d changed with the pack, becoming one of the furry, fanged, charging beasts that roamed Green’s hill like his own faerie hunt. She’d been well behaved both times and hadn’t tried to break free of the bonds of the hill, or out of her vampire escort’s bonds.

  “You treat your people very well,” she whispered. “It’s… as places go, it’s not a bad place to end up.”

  “But…?” Green prodded.

  Iris sighed, and a look of vulnerability crossed her face. “It’s just… my dad still lives down south. I don’t think he has any ties to… to your enemy, and I don’t want him involved, but….” She looked away, shaking her head. “Christmas is coming,” she whispered. “I would like very much to call him and say Merry Christmas so he doesn’t worry.”

  Green grunted. Well, on the one hand, Iris might call Nimuetia to see if her ally would come rescue her, and possibly give her information. On the other hand, the odds of Nimuetia using the phone connection to break her neck and destroy her former asset were considerable as well.

  I was the one who voiced this possibility.

  “You know she sent werewolves in thrall to try to kill the werewolves we’d snapped out of it, don’t you?”

  Iris didn’t look surprised, but she did look sad. “I… I’m no use to her anymore,” she said at last. “I can’t even remember her anymore. I just want… I want my dad not to worry. My career… I mean, if I ever go back, everyone else is going to have to be cured in order for me to do my job, so… you know. Right now I’ve got a place to live that’s not too bad, and my best friend visits, and….” She let out a humorless laugh. “You even gave me a lover—one who doesn’t mind no strings attached.”

  “That’s most elves in general,” I said dryly. “If she decides there should be strings, you’re stuck with her for life.” I paused, because she might not have known this. “You do know that, right? Werewolves can play around, or they can mate for life. If you start feeling too attached, you need to let her know.”