by Am Hudson
“Shh.” One of the men placed a finger to his lips, leaning closer to the other. “She thinks we haven’t seen her.”
I shook my head slowly, ducking down a little lower. These men were clearly not trained by Falcon. He would be so disappointed.
All seven of them drew their swords and pranced toward me like clowns on a tight rope, one foot over the other, the ring leader holding his hand up as a warning for the others to stay behind him.
Each knight followed the leader naïvely to his imminent agony, one by one entering the moist circle of my battlefield. And as the last stepped over the threshold, I buried my hands deeper in the puddle, the mud embedding itself between skin and nail, tiny bits of grass splashing up and sticking to the backs of my wrists. I didn’t need a thought to charge my hands; I didn’t need to concentrate to draw on my power; I sent a hot, powerful shot of Cerulean Light through the rain-soaked ground and it pulsed beneath the dirt. A flock of birds out as far as the lighthouse burst suddenly from the long grass in a flurry of high calls and flapping wings, and the knights looked up, a moment of ultimate stillness chilling the night, taking what I knew would be their last pain-free breath.
I laughed to myself, swinging around to stand up, watching with an arrogant smile.
The leader let out a sharp and sudden howl as his arms stiffened, and the men behind him thrust theirs out afterward, fingers freezing around their swords as the current flowed through their bodies and stopped their Lilithian hearts. Locked down by agony, they could only watch as I took a step away, followed by another, then another—bringing myself closer to the safety of the forest border. I didn’t even need to look back to know they fell down in steaming piles of agony—to know that the skyline would be once again clear, and any living thing that had dared to walk on that field in the last ten minutes would not be standing now.
And that took care of that, I thought proudly, dusting my hands off. But as my beaming smile and I stepped foot over the forest threshold, a thick and very straight tree branch flew out of nowhere with a sudden whoosh.
My eyes met with the steely gaze of Walter among the pine needles before a blunt pop brought a sudden blackness.
Chapter Ten
The peaceful purr of a pump and an occasional high bleep brought my mind to the hospital—where I woke after my nightmare at the masquerade. But the smell of wiping alcohol and dried herbs took me back for a moment to Arthur’s clinic—with the homely exposed beams and the gurney in the middle of the room—set up beside the ultrasound machine so he could look at my baby. I could almost taste the lemon and lavender seeping into the stone of the bowl he used to mix it, and smell the slight hint of freshly painted walls and polished floorboards. My mind followed the smells and mapped out the room—the long rectangle shape and the small windows that sat high above the bedrooms below. I could see Arthur’s oak desk at one end and the shelves and the counter where he mixed his herbs at the other, but when I heard a voice, I was sure it was Walter’s.
“How far along is she?”
“It’s very hard to see. Her placenta is low-lying and she’s way too far along for this kind of ultrasound.”
“Give me an estimated guess?”
“Maybe thirty weeks.” I heard a few clicks and taps. “The child could survive if it was born by caesarian section now.”
“Born by what?”
“If she was cut from her mother’s womb,” the man said impatiently. “However, with a low-lying placenta, if she attempted to birth vaginally… it would most likely die—if it came out at all.”
“Then a vaginal birth she shall have,” Walter said, and my heart fought against my eyes to bring my mind to the surface. “Cut up the placenta and chain her upright—let nature take its course.”
“Very well.”
“And see that there’s a fresh vampire in here for her to eat after. I promised Lord Eden no harm would come to the girl.”
Lord Eden! The blunt and real shock of the truth yanked my unconscious mind up a few levels, my heart breaking and then knitting back together with fury as I curled my fingers, fighting against a wave of heavy blood. He betrayed us. That’s why he didn’t come. This whole thing was a set-up!
“Hand me those scissors, please,” the man said, and I felt Walter’s arm brush past my face, smelled his sweat and the fading cologne. “After this, you will take me back to the hospital, unharmed?”
“As promised,” Walter confirmed.
I tried to draw my arms in to my sides, but they were turned at the elbow, my wrists locked under the sides of the gurney. “Let me go!” I mumbled.
“Did she say something?” Walter asked.
“She’s waking up,” the other man said. “I’ll put her back under.”
“Wait,” Walter demanded, appearing at the crown of my head.
My eyelids cracked open a slit and I looked upward through the blur at his round, flabby chin.
“I’m so sorry, my Queen.” He patted my hair down. “It pains me to do this, but I must prevent that evil witch ever being born.”
“But she’s not evil,” I pleaded, finding my voice somewhere among the will to fight. “This child is soulless, she—”
“Yes, we were informed,” he said dully, looking at the other man. “But we were also warned by that same person to end its life, because your soul can be inserted and—”
“No. I can give her Jason’s soul. She can have the pure soul—”
“And it can be taken from her, and your soul put in place at any time.” He unglued a bloodied strand of hair from my eyebrow. “I’m sorry, my dear, but she must die.”
“No!” I thrust my elbows into the bed, trying to roll up to sit. “Please. No!”
“It will be over soon,” he soothed kindly. “We’ve given you something to numb the pain, so there’s no use in trying to fight.” He looked down to the end of the bed then. “Why is she able to move her arms? I want her to feel nothing!”
“Let me fix that.” The unfamiliar man leaned across my small round belly, and my eyes followed his hand to a tube running from my wrist to a pole beside me. He uncapped a syringe with his teeth, then pressed it into the tube, and a shot of heat made my arms weighty. My jaw went numb then and a strange taste layered the back of my throat—somewhere between the burn of bourbon and the watery flavour of saliva.
I kicked my legs against the stirrups, sending a few things flying off the ultrasound machine as the gurney hit it. The liquid hadn’t reached them yet; if I could fight my way off these stirrups before it did, maybe I could run. Maybe I could get to one of my faithful knights before Walter and his men caught me.
“Pin her down,” Walter said, and the man on the machine stood up again, pressing both hands firmly against my hips.
Walter released my shoulders, his hands coming back above my face again with a small clear plastic mask between them, gushing and whirring with a windy sound. “You’ll go to sleep, my Queen,” he said, “and when you wake up, this will all be ov—Ah!” His sentence ended in a long howl as he flew across the room, the other man landing in a heap atop the coat rack behind him, and as the fire of my Cerulean Light burned out in me, the entire room went dark. The machines stopped humming. A gas tank beside me hissed like air leaving a tyre.
I moved my attention to my hands, tugging at the ropes around my wrist, and just as one loosened, Walter appeared above me, a heavy stone bowl in his hands.
“You little bitch!” he growled, and a tight surge of pressure filled up my nose…
***
For too long, the exhaustion in my arms and legs had bothered me, keeping me slightly above the deep restful sleep my body longed for. I tried to push the ache in my side to the back of my mind, but it persisted even in my dreams, making me want to roll over, while the exhaustion made me forget how.
The strangest dream of chocolate pudding still lingered in my waking mind, and I could feel it if I wriggled my toes—the warm, mushy goo sticking between them.
; “David, can you get me a drink of water please?” I said, but as my voice left my dry lips, it sounded weak and frail. And empty—as if I were in a room that absorbed the sound.
I fought against the sand under my eyelids, not realising until now that they were closed, and as the darkness of the world sunk in and drowned out the lake house, my mind fought for clarity.
My head hurt in three places—a thick kind of pain, like my skull was filled with lead or like the build-up of pressure in your ears on a plane. I squinted through the ache, the space resolving under the blur into a shadowy room, laid out like a surgery.
“What the hell?” I whispered to myself.
When I tried to stretch my arms, to bring them to my sides and relieve the tiredness in my armpits, they caught against something metal. Tight metal, wrapped around my wrists and fastened to the plaster wall at my back. My skin felt raw and I could smell dried blood, feel it against my elbows—sticky, like paste.
Around my feet, the chocolate pudding was starting to go cold. I squirmed to get it out from between my toes, but it was too thick, making my feet and my legs itch where it was drying as it dripped down them.
Another glob plopped onto the ground between my feet then. I looked down, focusing in the darkness to make my eyes work, frowning at the large clumps of what looked like brain or meat of some kind—slightly brown-red in colour, with tinges of blue. Definitely not chocolate pudding.
Trying to lift my foot, as I angled my knee outward, a sharp shot rushed through my hip and right up the centre of my body, as if a blade had been rammed up inside me. I cried out, dropping down low into the cuffs that held me up, and as the pain brought a new reality screaming to the surface, the dream state I was in slipped cruelly back and I remembered how I got here. Remembered where here was.
“No,” I cried in a squeezed voice, gasping the word back in as another wave of piercing jabs raced up my middle.
The pain receded quickly, though, leaving me breathless and shaking.
“My baby,” I whimpered, studying the mess around my feet. And any hope I had left for her life died as two large clots oozed from the folds between my legs and sloshed down, stopping at my knee. All my body could do now was cry, the guilt and the panic and the fear and the sadness consuming me whole.
The entire world fell into silence. I could hear nothing but my sobs and the intermittent drip of blood from between my legs. Feel nothing but the raw and cold pain in the base of my hips. Smell nothing but the salt of my tears as they collected on the tip of my nose.
I prayed I would bleed to death. I prayed I would pass out and wake up and this would just be a nightmare. But as I tuned my ears to my surroundings, I could hear the battle still raging out there, while the night led us swiftly toward dawn.
No one was in the room with me. No face to recognise. No voice to reassure me. No one to stop me from freeing my hands.
With every ounce of strength I had, I tugged down from my elbow to my wrist, and the chain clunked as it crumbled the brick behind the plaster, bits of cement falling from the wall. The other one came out with less effort, but without the right one to hold me up, my legs faltered and I fell to my knees. I let out a horrible-sounding cry, holding my legs and arms tight as I slipped forward in the mess of blood beneath me. No one came, though. No one opened the door or came to see if I was okay. No one, I was sure, was even out there.
I bunched up the white cotton gown covering me, and placed both hands gingerly against my stomach, feeling for the shape of my baby. She was still there. I could feel the length of her tiny limbs and, deep down in my pelvis, something larger—maybe her head. The water around her was gone, the protection spell, gone. Hope… gone. But she was still inside me. That had to mean something.
I stayed there on my hands and knees for a moment, one hand touching the helpless little body inside of me. I couldn’t move—for the pain and for the fear—my legs and my arms frozen stiff in the congealed mess of blood, until a tight belt of pain smeared across my lower belly, helping me find my voice. I angled my head upward to make it louder, but at the last second, the reality hit me again and the scream left my lungs in a series of helpless whimpers.
But I needed to be strong. I needed help. I needed to be held. I needed David.
I screamed his name out into the air, not sure he would ever hear me, my voice trailing off to violent, vocalised sobs after. I tried to feel for him—for his energy—but the heavy pains were going deep now, making it hard to focus on anything else.
I rolled my toes over and clenched my teeth, lowering my head and curling my spine as a dull, weighty kind of ache filled my hipbones. It grew sharper as each second passed, moving lower into my pelvis until, as I was about to scream, it subsided.
My lungs sucked in a quick breath and my hand slipped in the blood. I fell to my side, the jolt sending a shockwave of fright through me, bringing on the weighty sensation low in my hips again. I tucked my knees upward, but that made it worse, so I pushed my legs straight again and held my breath, clenching, my whole body getting tighter as the pain did. And this time, as it became too much, it didn’t subside.
I released the breath I was holding and it came out shaky, the soft sobs killing the strength behind it. I knew from seeing my mum give birth to Harry that this was labour—that the baby was coming—but I had no idea how to do this. I tried to think—to go through the birthing videos and pages of information I’d read—but none of it came to my mind.
As another surge started low in my pelvis again, layering over the top of the previous, every inch of flesh, every cell in every drop of my blood wanted to get up—some deep instinctual desire to be on my knees. I pushed on my hands and rolled myself up, parting my legs, letting my knees bear the weight, and as the intensity rose in the tightening belt of steel, I held my breath and squeezed. And it was true—it felt like taking the biggest crap I’d ever done—using all the same muscles. I wanted to laugh for how silly I felt, but it hurt to even think about laughing.
When the pain eased and I could finally breathe again, I flexed my bottom, wondering if I had actually pooped. But I couldn’t tell. It all just hurt down there and my legs were shaking so fiercely I struggled to stay upright, tensing my upper thighs to keep me still in the slippery blood.
I moved the gown aside again and cupped my hand to my belly, whispering a quiet prayer: “If she can just be alive still, God, I’ll give her my soul right now. Just let her live—” I started, but the pain built up again—layer upon layer, getting worse and worse until the muscles in my chest and back squeezed again without my help. I used all my breath to push down hard—harder than I had before, and when I felt a stinging sensation between my legs—sharp and cool like a dozen needles drawing a line from my vagina to my bottom—I knew this was it. I reached down, through the slimy coating, and felt a strange fuzzy layer, drawing my hand away in disgust.
“Oh my God!” I breathed, reaching down again. The head. She was right there. My little baby that I’d spent months getting to know inside me was right there. I could touch her and she could feel me as she never had before. “Please be okay,” I whispered, sniffling up the tears on the edge of my nose. “Please be okay.”
The pain receded again. I waited there, sitting back on my thighs, cold and shaking, one hand against my belly, the other on her head, but nothing happened. In just a few more pushes she would be out, but I needed the pain—I needed the contraction to move her downward.
“Please. Please.” I closed my eyes and prayed. “Please help me.”
My bottom felt it first, my eyes widening and my knees reacting after, pushing me up straight as a twang of sharpness moved up through my core and sunk back down again into my legs. I folded forward, propping one hand on the ground, and clenched my teeth as I pushed. My thighs were so tight they forced my legs wider, sliding too far in the blood, but I brought them back together a little and used my breath to keep pushing, even as the pain ended.
Blood collected in my
nose and around my cheeks, making them full and probably very red, but I kept pushing, kept forcing her out of me. Then, as my strength died and I could push no more, the sharp needle pain made one last incision, the head popping out.
I coughed, crying out the relief, but it lasted only a moment, because as my belly tightened again, my body pushed for me. My throat made a strange kind of groan, the world seeming to slide through my core and fall out from between my legs, like the weight of everything that ever existed was leaving my body. It felt scary, made me breathless, and at the same time, I felt powerful.
At the end of my breath, I knelt back against my thighs and a wet, rushing sensation slipped along my legs, like hundreds of eels through a pipe, leaving behind a tiny, floppy little lump in the pile of blood and clots on the floor.
My whole body trembled then, from my knees to the muscles in my thighs, right up to my hands and elbows. I reached down and laid a hand to the baby’s back; she felt cold—so cold, colder than I ever would have expected. How could she be so cold when she came from such a warm place?
She lay on her side, her face against the bloody ground, her arms and legs as still as a doll. I looked from her little body to my hand; she was only a palm-size bigger than my hand, her arms and legs so skinny and so small I was afraid to touch her.
But fear meant nothing to me as the love kicked in and filled my chest up with a lump so big and so hard I couldn’t swallow.
I scooped her carefully from the mess and held her out in two shaking hands, bringing her slowly up to my chest. The cotton hospital gown absorbed the blood from her skin and from my hands, making her a little less slippery.
