Margot was sharper. “Uh, Eve?”
“Hmmmm?” Sweat had broken out on my forehead. I could feel the cool breeze tickle the droplets that gathered there. I focused on it. It felt nice.
“This terror you’re feeling,” Margot asked, from what felt like very far away. “Is it coming in clenching, clawing waves, every three or so minutes apart?”
I looked up at her. I had no words.
Margot frowned deeply. “Eve,” she said. “You’re in labor.”
Chapter Sixteen
“No.” My mouth dropped open. “I can’t be. I’ve still got two weeks to go!” I straightened up as I noticed the pain had gone for now. The realization hit me that I had, indeed, been doubled up and wincing in agony every four minutes or so since the battle began.
Margot had her watch to her nose. “I’m counting. If the next one comes within three minutes, we’ve got to get you out of here, Eve.”
“We can’t! I can’t leave here, Margot!”
“We’ll have to. You can’t give birth up here. It’s not sterile.”
I actually laughed out loud at her stubborn, set face. My chuckle bordered on hysteria. “Met?” I said, desperately. “Help me out here!”
“I didn’t see this coming,” he admitted, his bushy white eyebrows drooping. “Sorry, Strawberry. Although...” He rummaged in his picnic basket next to him. “I did bring a thermos of hot water for tea, and a beach towel in case it was sunny, and you wanted to sunbathe. So I guess we do have hot water and towels.”
Margot actually growled at him, and he wisely shut up. She brushed a hand through her spiky hair in a gesture of frustration. “We might have some time. A woman’s first pregnancy usually has a very long pre-labor and active labor of about ninety minutes,” she muttered to herself. “So let’s go through two contraction cycles and see how we go. If you’re headed into active labor, we have to get you somewhere safe so you can have this baby.”
“Margot! There is no safe place! This is the safe place!”
“You can’t give birth in a camp chair, and this floor here is steel slats,” she replied fiercely. “You can’t lie down. I’ve got a bag here with some essentials, but I need some more equipment in case things go wrong. Forceps, for one.”
There was no point reminding her that we were all going to die when this baby came out.
I looked over at Met, who shrugged. “They’re all distracted down there, Strawberry. I think we can sneak past if we have to. “
I took a slow, controlled breath in. “Okay,” I said, steadying myself. “I can do this.”
“You can,” Margot fixed me with a steely gaze. “You watched all those birthing videos I sent you. You did the self-hypno course, too, right?”
I nodded dumbly. Of course, I hadn’t watched any videos. I hadn’t wanted the saggy-titted Fate bitches thinking that I was getting any ideas about actually giving birth.
The odds of me getting to this point were slim to none. There was almost no chance, considering I had a whole host of supernatural creatures baying for my blood. We’d been outnumbered to the point where I had given up all hope several times. But the light kept creeping back in.
Never in my wildest dreams did I think I’d get to go into labor, so I didn’t plan for it. In my head, if I got my hopes up about having this baby, then they’d be crushed, just as I was most likely to be.
However, while I ignored every single bit of information about childbirth and labor, Alex had soaked it all in. He was taking his role as active and participating dad very seriously. He’d watched so many birthing videos and read a ton of books. Alex could probably could have qualified as a midwife himself at this point. I had figured that in the very unlikely event that I did manage to survive for long enough to give birth, then I’d just get him to talk me through it.
I was booked into the best birthing suite in Cairns hospital, with the best obstetrician in the state. Margot had been optimistic too.
“You’ll be fine,” Margot told me, brushing off the shock of finding out I was in labor. “We’ve got some time.”
Just then, another contraction hit. I groaned, and bent double, trying to breathe in as deep as I could. Next to me, I could hear Margot beeping her watch. “Nice, slow breaths, that’s it, peanut,” she said in a confident, soothing tone. “Nice…. Slow… breaths…”
I braced myself with my hands on my knees, still in my squat position. “How long?” I asked, grunting the question out.
“Three minutes.”
I groaned.
“It’s okay. We’ll time the next one, and see what to do from there.”
I nodded, unable to speak. It felt like a vicious creature had a hold of my groin from the inside, and was squeezing it between sharp claws. Various degrees of dull thuds, twisting stabs, and a weird, ebbing nausea rolled through me. How had I not noticed this before?
The pain eased off. Frantic to see what was happening in the war below me, I rested my elbows on the railing and tried to pick out my lover amid the seething mass of fighting below me.
I spotted Alex immediately. He had rallied - the knife was out of his side, and it was no longer bleeding. I guessed that he and Nate had taken advantage of the breather provided by Zel and Dale, and healed themselves on the run. He was fighting hand-to-hand with a dark-haired Percuitait with a vicious grimace on his face. There were fewer attackers now, only twelve Percuitait on the field. The human army was still fighting Zel’s rent-a-crowd, but the pace was slowing. Body parts littered the ground, and the remaining fighters were tiring.
I could see that some of them had run away. There were considerably fewer swords around, too, either disappeared when their owners could no longer maintain enough energy to keep them manifested, or destroyed.
Malach was still swinging his sword, though, and he was engaged in deadly combat with Uriel. Golden curls flashing, Uriel spun and parried and jabbed, both archangels looking like they were putting on a display in swordsmanship. Curiously, it didn’t seem like they were making any major attempts to harm each other.
Vane, still slashing at anything that crossed his path, made his way over to Uriel, and screamed at him. “Kill him! He’s a demon now. He’s the enemy!”
Malach growled, deflecting Uriel’s lunge easily, and pushing back on his blade. “Is that what you do now, Uriel? You kill?”
“Thou shalt not kill!” Uriel shouted, a note of frustration in his voice.
“Then why are you here?” Malach bellowed back.
But neither of them stopped. They slashed and jabbed, the clash of flaming steel rang across the field with an ear-splitting chime.
Dale and Zel fought side-by-side, each taking on several of the remaining Percuitait. I watched my best buddy, my beautiful, cuddly and gentle best friend, as he beat down on the rogue angels like an MMA fighter.
Another wave of pain took my breath away, and I moaned, moving back into my squat position. Margot didn’t say anything this time, she just rubbed my back in slow circles. When it was over, I straightened up.
She looked me dead in the eye. “Two minutes. We have to get you out of here.”
“We can’t go anywhere, Margot!” I pointed down at the ragged crowd below. “They’ll kill me!”
But now that I was looking down at them, I could see that something strange was happening. One by one, the bloodthirsty human army seemed to stop, and scream. There appeared to be a lot of pointing and terrified shouting, before they turned around and ran away.
“What are they doing?”
“They’re running away,” Met replied. “They have just cottoned on to the fact that Zel’s army aren’t all human. Took them a while,” he snorted, having a sip of his wine.
“They’re scared of the fae? And the vampires?”
“They didn’t know they existed. Their dogma has been thrown out the window. It takes a lot to shake a man of faith, yet one thing that would, would be having a vampire show up and flash their fangs. It finally got Vane's army
rattled. So they’re running away.”
My mouth hanging open, I watched as the last of Vane’s human army ran off into the jungle, back the way they came. The uninjured members of Zel’s bedraggled group took off after them. I watched some of them pop out of existence, perhaps finding a way of going back to their own dimensions to heal.
“That’s settled then,” Margot said, thrusting her chin in the air. “We have to go down. We’ll get you to the med center in the main building. I should have everything I need there.”
“Margot!” I shrieked. “The Percuitait army is still down there!”
She looked over the railing contemptuously. “There's a lot less of them now. They’re evenly matched, and no one will be able to get past to get to you. If we're sneaky, I reckon we can make it.”
I took a breath and looked down again. Nate, Alex, Zel, Dale, and Nimue were fighting ten furious, desperate Percuitait, while Malach was still engaged in a sword fight with Uriel. It was two to one, but while the Percuitait fought dirty and tried to get any strike in that they could, my friends were working together. As I watched, Zel and Dale caught hold of a rogue angel by each of his arms and pulled tight, and in a fraction of a second, Nimue had wrapped her flaming whip around his neck. I looked away but heard the pop as his head was torn off.
Another contraction ripped through me. “Awwwwghhhh,” I groaned incoherently.
“That was barely two minutes,” Margot said in a worried voice. “Come on, Peanut. We gotta move.”
I nodded. Once the pain had passed, I straightened up. As I rose, Met materialized under one of my armpits, and Margot took the other side. Together, they supported my weight and helped me down the stairs of the lookout platform.
Gingerly, I stepped foot on the bare earth and immediately felt better. Margot was right, I couldn’t have my baby up there, suspended in the sky, with cold steel slats digging into my back.
“Let’s go. Through those trees there,” Met pointed, and led the way. We walked slowly, not speaking, listening to the screams and shouts from the battlefield as we crept past it, cloaked in the shadows of the jungle.
I heard Malach bellowing at Uriel. “So you’ve joined their team, brother? You’re a Percuitait now, one of the smiters? The ones who cast judgment on humans, the ones that strike them down for the pettiest of sins. You’re one of them now?”
Uriel wasn’t replying.
“And you’re here to murder the girl, Uriel?" Malach continued to nettle him. "Her baby would be viable now, able to survive outside the womb. If you kill her, the baby will survive. Unless you kill the baby too. An innocent baby. That’s what you're here to do, isn’t it? Kill an innocent baby?”
I heard an outraged snarl, but Uriel didn’t have a retort for Malach.
We crept further along. I had to stop and take a knee as another contraction ripped through me.
“That was only a minute or so,” Margot whispered, sounding worried. “This is happening too quickly. I should have checked your dilation before we left the lookout.”
“Oh, God,” I screwed my face up, waiting for the pain to ease. “Am I going to give birth here in the forest?”
“It would fit your aesthetic, Eve,” Met said lightly. “Black Chalice, last to give birth, doing it on the earth floor, surrounded by Mother Nature.”
I shot him a glare as they both helped me to my feet. We’d only gone a few more meters through the jungle when another contraction stopped me in my tracks. This one was bad. The overwhelming pain caught me off guard, and I screamed out loud.
Both Margot and Met went rigid beside me. The pressure was intense; the sheer weight bearing down on my pelvic floor felt like it would rip me in two. They both waited until I’d caught my breath before they spoke.
“They all heard that,” Met said simply. He craned his neck and looked through the trees. “The Percuitait know that you’re here.”
"Goddamnit.”
“Alex and Nate both heard. They appear to be freaking out,” Met continued in a conversational tone. “They can’t leave the fight. They’re still outnumbered. If one of them leaves, the rest might fall.”
“We have to keep going,” Margot said, her eyes burning with fierce determination. “We have to get you somewhere safe right now.”
“Agreed,” Met said. Then, he frowned and cocked his head. “Hang on. Something’s here. Incoming.”
“Incoming? What the fuck is coming now?” I was near-total hysteria. The pain, the fear, I was beginning to lose my mind.
“Breathe,” Margot said, rubbing my back, as we kept trudging forward, one step at a time. “Just breathe, honey. We got you.”
It helped. Breathe in, breathe out. One step in front of the other. I couldn’t concentrate on anything else - I couldn’t worry about anything else. I was right in the space between contractions, just over sixty seconds between, and I was going to get as far as I could to safety.
But someone was coming. I could feel the atoms around me change their vibration, and kick up a notch just slightly.
Curiously, I recognized the vibrational change. It reminded me of a former life, of something that happened a long time ago, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. It was something good that happened to me during a very, very bad time. The thing that was coming towards me was a friend. But not one that I recognized.
The feeling grew stronger and stronger, and suddenly there was a flash of light beside us.
“Oh!” Met crowed in delight. “I should have guessed it was you!”
Abruptly, another contraction crushed me from the inside, and I fell to one knee, panting. Margot rubbed my back and glared up at the newcomer. “Who’s this then?” she asked Met rudely.
The man glowed with a bright-white aura, clearly visible and unbelievably beautiful. He was enormous, broad-shouldered, muscular, with legs like tree trunks. As soon as I unscrewed my face from the debilitating pain of the contraction, I studied his face carefully.
He was familiar in every single way, but I knew I’d never seen him before. His long, dark-blonde hair reached down to his elbows, it was thick and tousled, some bits were braided, pinned back and swept off his proud face. He had a thick, bushy beard that was almost as long as his hair, and he stood in the stance of a mighty warrior.
But what caught my attention the most were his icy-blue eyes. They cooly assessed me, they ran over my soul, they looked through my mind, and I knew without a doubt that they’d already done this before.
“Hello again,” the stranger said in a deep, rumbling voice. His face, battle-scarred and undeniably handsome, was inscrutable.
I knew that voice. It was so familiar.
“The Palms,” I gasped, remembering. “I know you. You were at The Palms.”
“Your old motel?” Margot’s brow furrowed. “He was at your old work?”
“When I got attacked,” I managed, groaning at the pain in my groin. “He was there. He helped me.” I straightened up and managed to look him in the eye. “When that scumbag attacked me, you were there, weren't you? I heard your voice.” I grimaced. “I thought it was mine, in my own head. But I recognize your vibration. It was the light I held on to when that asshole salesman attacked me.”
“I took care of him,” the stranger said simply. His deep voice rolled over my skin, easing some of the sting of the contraction. “A rogue demon was encouraging him. I took care of him, too. I’m sorry I didn’t introduce myself, Eve. I was drawn away quickly afterward.” He smiled very slightly. “We are not known for our high concentration levels.”
Met gave him a high-five. “Good to have you here, Leif.”
“Leif?” My mouth dropped open. “You’re Alex’s dad?”
The big Viking nodded, lifting his bearded chin proudly. “I am.”
“He’s not big on words, this guy, Strawberry,” Met grinned. “But he sure comes in handy when you need him. If he shows up.”
“The nature of the Guardians is to go where the energy pulls us,” Leif expla
ined, his thick eyebrows furrowing. “We come and go like the wind.”
“Not big on social niceties,” Met chipped in. “I’m pretty sure the term ‘ghosting’ was coined by someone who was trying to have a decent conversation with one of the Ascended Guardians.”
Alex had filled me in on his dad and the nature of the Ascended Guardians. They were more like the proper guardian angels that I believed in before I knew all this stuff was real. They protected humans, whispered in their ears, and tried to shepherd them from thoughts and actions that might cause them pain. Leif Ironhammer had died, gone to his own personal Hell, but had processed his pain quickly thanks to Nimue nudging him to sin right before death. And when he finally processed a lifetime of accumulated rage and terror, he chose to Ascend, and become a Guardian.
“And you’re here to help? The energy has pulled you here?”
Leif nodded. “I must get you to the right place, for your baby will come very soon. We have mere minutes left.”
“Oh.” I frowned. “I was hoping you were going to go and help your son out there in the battle.”
“That is not my destiny.”
“Oh!” Met crowed suddenly. “Oh, hell yeah!”
“Met….” I was taken aback by his sudden display of enthusiasm. “What’s going on?”
Met pointed a finger towards Leif. “Now that he’s here, my darling, and he can take care of you, that means I’m off duty. You know what that means?” He paused in anticipation, grinning madly.
“What?” Margot said snarkily, “You’re going to the bar for a margarita? Has someone started an ultimate frisbee tournament? The new season of Drag Race is on?”
He rolled his eyes at Margot and put his hand on his hip, gripping an imaginary handle. “No, you harridan.” In a smooth, grand gesture, he pulled his hand up and out, drawing a glistening, silver-white sword from of nothingness. He held it aloft proudly, and it burst into brilliant, golden flames.
“Now I can go and kick some ass.” He waggled his eyebrows like Groucho Marx.
Turning around, he bounded like a rabbit through the jungle and headed straight towards the battle, swinging his flaming sword over his head as he went.
Revelations: The Last War Page 19