The Reluctant Goddess (The Montgomery Chronicles Book 2)

by Karen Ranney

  One of these days, I’d have to practice, maybe transmitting a message to Dan’s kitchen to send up cheesecake or something. Right now, however, I was just concentrating on making it through this appointment without crying.

  Big bad vampire, that’s me.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Come hell or high fang

  Dan and I sat in a sea of pregnant women. Pregnancy had made my libido sit up and wag its tail, if you get my drift. I wanted to pounce on Bill every hour of the day. The only problem was that my being pregnant had done something to Bill’s libido, too, and it wasn’t pretty. The idea of having sex with me grossed him out.

  I bit back my smile and didn’t say a word as female eyes scanned Dan. He was probably being mentally undressed and was featured as a leading man in more than a few fantasies.

  When my name was called, I left him where he was, grabbed my envelope and purse and walked into the examination room.

  The nurse, a woman I’d never met, gave me information about where to undress and what to leave on. I nodded, more than familiar with the drill. After the first visit to the Ob/Gyn does any woman forget?

  Oh, yes, I’m sorry. I didn’t remember. You want me to put my feet where? And slide down to where? And relax? Lord love a duck, did you put that thing in the freezer?

  You’ve never been truly naked until you’ve been attired in a paper napkin, giving your medical history to a stranger. Dr. Stallings incurred my forever love by using fabric gowns instead of those paper ones. And her examination table was just a normal table with stirrups on the end.

  I’d gone to another doctor when Dr. Stallings was on maternity leave. He’d had a large sign on the reception window that stated:

  I do not carry malpractice insurance. If you feel uncomfortable about going to a doctor who doesn’t carry malpractice insurance, I urge you to seek out one who does. Be prepared to pay more for your appointments, however.

  I couldn't help but wonder, being in the insurance business, why he had stopped paying for malpractice insurance. Granted, it was ruinously expensive, but had he been involved in a lawsuit and lost? If he had, what was the lawsuit about?

  My job had taught me to listen to my little voice. If something struck me as wrong, it probably was, but I pushed back my misgivings and went into his exam room.

  I changed into the paper gown and sat on the end of a very odd looking chair. It was black vinyl and wide, with weird arms. When the doctor entered the room, he smiled gleefully at me and pressed a button on a remote control.

  Up until this time, he and I had not exchanged one word. I was sitting there stark naked with only a thin covering of tissue when the chair started rumbling. All of a sudden, I was tilted to my back, as a ledge came out from beneath my hips all the way down to my feet and then slowly divided so my legs spread apart like a sacrificial maiden.

  Only then did the idiot doctor say something to me. "I see you're one of Dr. Stalling's patients,” he said, addressing my vagina.

  Needless to say, I didn’t return.

  Now I changed into the gown in record time. I had practice at this. When the door opened, I smiled at the nurse who walked in.

  Dr. Stalling’s staff resembled most of the people in the United States today: they had real figures. Carol was plump and rounded and had fought a weight problem ever since Madison High School, where she’d been in two of my classes. I always thought of her as a popular girl with beautiful blond hair and a smile that never stopped.

  “You haven’t been here for a while,” she said, closing the door behind her.

  “No need.”

  She tucked my file under her arm.

  “Let’s take your vitals,” she said, rolling the blood pressure machine up to me.

  “Let’s not.” I held up my hand, palm toward her.

  “Why not?”

  “I’d prefer to talk to Dr. Stallings about that.”

  She didn’t say anything in response, but twin lines appeared above her nose as she folded her arms and stared at me.

  “I’m sorry, but it’s kind of personal.”

  Carol had been among the first to know I’d miscarried the first time. She held me when I cried. I could almost hear her thoughts, but I didn’t back down.

  The fewer people who knew what I was, the better, and that included Carol.

  I’d never seen her angry, but she was definitely miffed now. She slapped my file down on the counter and left the room, closing the door a little harder than necessary.

  Thirty minutes later, and I could swear I was bumped down a few notches in priority, Dr. Stallings entered the room. She was forty two, had a perfect figure, and ran marathons when she wasn't raising her three children, being a wife to her orthopedist husband, and donating her time to one of the free clinics on the south side.

  The woman was as close to a saint as anyone I've ever met, but she wasn't one of those sanctimonious types who made it easy to hate her. I genuinely liked Dr. Stallings and I’d been going to her ever since I graduated from college.

  I'd seen her through her three pregnancies and she’d treated me for my two miscarriages, my problem with birth control pills, and my troublesome weight gain. At least I didn't have to worry about the weight gain now.

  When she entered the room, she didn’t waste any time.

  “Carol says something’s wrong. What is it, Marcie?’

  “I’m a vampire,” I said.

  She glanced toward the blinds. Sunlight seeped into the room despite them being closed. Did she think I was lying about that? What kind of nutcase claims to be a vampire when she’s not?

  “I’m a special vampire. Go ahead, take my pulse. Or my blood pressure.”

  She did exactly that, frowning when she felt the ten beats a minute. I was agitated, which is why it was that high.

  My blood pressure was the same. If I were still human, they’d be calling for paddles right about now.

  “How did this happen?”

  “It wasn’t something I chose, Dr. Stallings.”

  She wasn’t breathing right. She would take a breath, then hold it and expel it on a gasp. I think she was literally breathless with my news.

  I hadn’t decided whether or not to tell her the whole story, but I liked Dr. Stallings. She’d helped me during some terrible times in my life. She’d been relentlessly positive and reassuring.

  So I started from the beginning, including what happened at Maddock’s house with the exception of the bit about the rabies virus. When I was almost finished, she pulled up the stool and sat beside me, her eyes never leaving my face. When I was done, she shook her head.

  “Your father was a vampire?” she asked.

  I nodded.

  “You realize, of course, how very special you are.”

  “Like a special little snowflake?” I asked. “If it’s all the same, I’d prefer to be a little more normal.”

  She folded her arms, stared at the blinds, then back at me.

  “You don’t have the appearance of a vampire. Only your pulse and your blood pressure gives you away. How often do you ingest blood? Do you have stomach pains? Do you experience any moments of translucence on your skin? Do you ever feel faint during daylight?”

  “I don’t ingest blood,” I said.

  Her eyes widened as she stood, uncurled her stethoscope and approached me.

  “What do you eat?”

  “Anything and everything,” I said. “I don’t seem to be gaining weight, however.” And now for the kicker. “I’ve had my period.”

  She sat down again.

  “I want a hysterectomy,” I said.

  I didn’t want my child to be an experiment. I would not tolerate her being a feeding station. Before Fangdom, I’d been determined that, if I had a child, there would never be a doubt in his mind that he was loved. She would never doubt her mother's affection. He would be given a foundation of love so strong and so deep that he could go out into the world secure in the knowledge that someone adored hi
m.

  Now that wasn’t possible and the heavy gray feeling inside was simply my emotional acknowledgement of that fact.

  “I don’t think I can do the surgery on you, Marcie,” she said. “Being a vampire means it’s too dangerous. Even if I could find a facility that would allow it. Your blood is considered toxic.”

  I hadn’t heard that before.

  “You can’t become a vampire just by handling vampire blood,” I said.

  She nodded. “You may know that. I may know that. But there is still some fear in the medical community. It’s like the early days of AIDS. Vampires haven’t been known to medical science all that long, Marcie. Give us a little time to adjust.”

  My problem was that I didn’t have time.

  “Besides, we normally don’t do operations on vampires because you have a very low blood volume. You could die during surgery. A vampire’s recuperative powers haven’t made many surgeries necessary.”

  How many other vampires had a working uterus?

  “I can’t become pregnant,” I said.

  She recommended two types of birth control, one that would be implanted immediately and the second I would use only when the mood struck.

  “Can I have both?”

  She smiled. “I don’t think you need both,” she said.

  “I want both.”

  “Are you planning on being sexually active?”

  “I don’t know. All I know is I can’t get pregnant.”

  She looked as if she’d like to say something else, but she concentrated on her notes for a minute or two. Finally, she put the file down and put on her usual doctor face, this time without the shock on it.

  “Ordinarily, I would implant the IUD today, but because of your physiology, Marcie, I need to do a few more tests. I want to make sure I wouldn’t be harming you by doing so. Do you object to my taking blood?”

  “No. Does that mean I can have the hysterectomy?”

  “I’ll make the decision after I do some tests. I’ll make an appointment with you once they’re in. But for now, we’ll go ahead and measure you for a diaphragm and show you how to insert it.”

  In the meantime I was going to buy some condoms. After what happened in the gun range, I’d better use protection.

  Before she left the room to allow me to get dressed, I stopped her.

  “Nobody else can know, Dr. Stallings. Not the nurses, not the billing clerk. Nobody.”

  She nodded, wrapped her arms around my file and looked at me for a long moment. Did she realize that I might have inadvertently put her in danger? I hoped I hadn’t, but I didn’t underestimate Niccolo Maddock.

  I wasn’t that much a fool.

  I watched an instructional video, was given my size of diaphragm and case, and drained of three vials of blood. I didn’t make one single vampire joke. I pulled my sleeve down over my Daffy Duck Band-Aid and made my way to the reception area. When I wrote the enormous check to pay my astounding bill, the billing clerk didn't look like she knew what to do with it. She stared at it, then me, then back at the check.

  I left her to her confusion and joined Dan in the reception area.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  He really should've waited in the car, but maybe he entertained all the pregnant women sitting there.

  The humming in the back of my neck warned me. I turned and faced the crowded waiting room, wondering which one of the very pregnant women I saw was the witch.

  Would it always be this way? Would I always have to watch my back? I had a feeling I would.

  The third woman from the left in the far row of chairs. She was dressed in a pale yellow top and black trousers, looking like a bumblebee with her round stomach. She didn’t look in my direction, didn’t confront me overtly.

  Look at me.

  She glanced up, her bright blue eyes narrowed. The humming increased, but the pain was manageable.

  Evidently, I could only be dropped if more than one witch was concentrating on the spell. I didn’t feel the least like fainting, not like I had at Nonnie’s house.

  Her stare intensified, but I just stared back.

  “What is it, Marcie?”

  I didn’t answer, concentrating as I was on playing the don’t blink game with the pregnant witch. When she finally looked away, I turned to Dan.

  “Nothing,” I said brightly.

  One thing about this vampire business, it was making me a really good liar.

  As we walked out to the parking lot, he held my elbow protectively.

  "How did your appointment go?"

  I didn't quite know how to answer that. It was the first time a male had ever asked me about my gynecological appointment. Bill had never wanted to know. He assumed things were either good, in which case he didn’t want to be bothered with the details. Or bad, and he preferred to wait until I came to him for comfort. Bill hadn’t been proactive when it came to affection.

  "I guess it went okay," I said as we got into the car. "No unexpected news."

  I wasn’t about to tell him about the operation.

  He nodded again. "Good. Good."

  We drove for a few minutes in a companionable silence. I liked being around Dan. I always had, from the very moment that Il Duce had assigned him as my bodyguard. He'd saved me more than once and was a five-star host. Plus, he was the best lover I’d ever had. Trust me, that added points to his score. I had the sudden image of an Olympic judge standing with a placard of the number ten.

  I bit back my smile.

  “Where to now?” he asked.

  “Back to the castle.”

  I’d already done two of my three tasks. I still had to read the information Mary had given me, but there was another, even more difficult chore I had to do. As much as I didn’t want to, I had to call Charlie’s owner. But I had a plan to handle that situation and with any luck it would work.

  I would appeal to the man’s greed. If that didn’t work, I’d pull out my vampire compelling skill and make the man surrender his dog to me. My conscience wiggled a little at the idea, but I managed to silence it before we got back to Arthur’s Folly.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  A cock and fang story

  Once back in my room, Charlie at my side, I grabbed the Librarian’s envelope, settled on the chaise, and began to read.

  I’d expected the information to be written in florid language, something more in keeping with dusty scrolls and arcane pronouncements. To my surprise it was in plain English. Not one thee or thou or “Once upon a time” in the sheaf of papers.

  Mankind was divided, even in the time before written history. But tales were told of those who lived on blood or spirit alone, eschewing the day, and those who became beasts, and those who manipulated the earth and all within it.

  Just as Mary said, the Angelus Chronicles stated that there were three separate kinds of hominids: human beings, the Brethren, and witches. From the librarian's notes, human beings outnumbered the other two segments. The Brethren, consisting of vampires, shape shifters (and I assumed that meant werewolves) comprised the second biggest group, leaving witches to trail behind in third place.

  As a smaller group, witches probably felt in danger from the larger segments of society, which would explain their testy nature.

  Shape shifters, however, were a complete mystery to me. So were werewolves. I hadn’t actually met one. But how did I know? I’d missed that part of orientation. I came to the section called: Special Beings. There was only one listing: Dirugu.

  For a moment I thought about stashing all the pages back in the envelope. Did I want to continue? Did I even want to know?

  I sat there for a few moments with the pages resting against my chest, staring at the dark TV on the other side of the room. No, I didn’t want to know. No, I didn’t want to continue.

  I mentally slapped myself up the side of the head and continued reading.

  A Dirugu is postulated to be a special kind of Pranic vampire.

  Okay, that was se
ttled. My vampire ancestors (was there such a thing?) had evidently only required human energy, rather than blood, to survive. To the best of my knowledge I’d never drained anybody’s spiritual or psychic energy. But would I know? Would the effect be immediate? Would I see someone sag right in front of me? Or would someone faint after I left their presence? If I was capable of doing that I had to make sure it was turned off somehow.

  I kept reading.

  A Dirugu can eat food like a normal human. The only difference was I never got the intestinal problems I had occasionally encountered when I ate bread. A Dirugu can walk in the sun. I’d developed that talent after the first month.

  The reading was slow going, not because it was dense or philosophical, but because every once in a while I’d stop, stare off into space, and consider what was written and if it applied to me.

  I knew something else that wasn’t listed and that few people knew about a Dirugu. A female Dirugu, and I was only assuming there were male Dirugus at this point, had a menstrual cycle. Ergo, it was probably possible to become pregnant.

  That made Maddock a definite danger. He had it in his mind that if I gave birth to a child of his, he could subsequently feed on it and develop all of the talents I’d acquired. I couldn’t help the cartoon like vision of a baby transformed into a ham.

  I would die before I’d allow that to happen.

  I stared down at my wrists. Maybe the noble, the honorable thing, would be to slit my wrists and completely die this time. But I was selfish in that regard. I wanted to live. I wanted to fix my life. I wanted to be happy. I wanted not to be conflicted for once. I wanted to come to grips with everything that had happened, understand it, accept it, and go on with my life.

  I pulled myself away from the edge of the fear abyss and made myself keep reading.

  There was a time foretold by the ancients when all creatures would be combined, when mankind would have the strength of beasts and the ability to command the spirit. A Dirugu, the embodiment of vampire, human, and witch, would unite them and will be worshipped as a god.