by Karen Ranney
Pranic, Pregnant, And Petrified
Karen Ranney
Karen Ranney LLC
Contents
Copyright
1. Bouncy Marcie Here
2. Lists, Lists, Nothing But Lists
3. They're Not Dead; They're Just Un-Alive
4. They're Not All Kitchen Staff
5. Eager Beaver Marcie
6. I Didn't Need Anyone To Tell Me He Was Dying
7. Physician, Heal Thy Bedside Manner
8. Zingers, Zingers Everywhere
9. What's One More Aberration?
10. I Vant To Transfuse Your Blood
11. Let The Tests Begin
12. Mea Culpa Times 100
13. I Was A Wampire Or A Vatch
14. Vagabond Vampire, Disconnected Dirugu
15. The Man Still Had A Marvelous Butt
16. He's An English Fairy
17. Can You See Me Now?
18. I Am Goddess Hear Me Roar
19. Marcie Montgomery, Resident Goofus
20. You're Not A Zombie, Are You?
21. Up On The Roof
22. You're A What?
23. For This I Should Give Thanks?
24. We Were Flying Blind Here
25. Not A Combination To Warm The Cockles Of My Heart
26. Smite, Smote, Smitten
27. I Had Been Pushed To The Edge
28. I Was Wind, Fire, Earth, Water, Spirit And Life
29. The Witches, The Goddess And The Dog Go Vampire Hunting
30. Holy Crap, You're A Werewolf!
31. I'm Mad At You...Really
32. I Have A Secret, And One I Have To Tell You
Epilogue
Also by Karen Ranney
About the Author
Copyright © 2015 by Karen Ranney
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Chapter One
Bouncy Marcie Here
“What do you mean can fangs show up on an ultrasound? Is this a joke?”
The woman on the phone did not sound happy.
“How did you get this number? This is a private line for fledging vampires. Who are you?”
I was left speechless by the nurse’s rage.
“If you call here again I’ll report this number to the authorities!”
Phones didn’t make a resounding click anymore, but I could almost hear it as she hung up on me.
I thought it was a perfectly good question, plus it would make the situation so much easier. If the baby I was carrying was the child of a vampire, surely he’d have fangs. Wouldn’t they show up on an ultrasound?
Since I didn't have anybody else to ask, I’d dug out the orientation materials I was given when I woke up in the VRC - the Vampire Resuscitation Center - and called the Nurse Helpline.
Some help she was.
In my human days - and I still cringe when talking about myself as human in the past tense - I was sitting in the ophthalmologist’s office one afternoon. An older woman sitting beside me suddenly asked if I was married.
“No, I’m not.”
I was expecting a speech on the sanctity of marriage, my age and the fact I was probably always going to be single, and other lectures. Instead, she only nodded.
“Do you have any children?”
I shook my head.
“Fantastic!” She grabbed my arm and squeezed. “You young people are planning your lives a lot better than we did.”
Like hell.
Before I moved in with Bill, a relationship that only lasted for a few years and ended like a balloon with a slow leak, I’d already had a few relationships. I didn’t hold a grudge when it was over. I didn’t cling to something I knew wasn’t going to work. I put the guy mentally on an ice floe. It wasn’t always his fault we didn’t mesh. Sometimes, you can like someone but hate them in a relationship. It’s oil and water. Once out of the relationship, you’re surprised by how nice he is. I’m sure that would apply to Bill, but I haven’t seen him since I moved out of the house we shared. If two people are assiduously trying to avoid each other, it’s easy to do in a city the size of San Antonio.
For someone who hasn’t had all that many relationships, I’ve been on a roll lately. I’d been “with” Dan, a hunky, handsome former Ranger, and Maddock, a master vampire, the scourge of the earth, the most loathsome creature to be found in the universe. The former was most definitely consensual. The latter wasn’t.
Frankly, I was out of my depth. My former life as a commercial insurance adjuster had not prepared me for turning into a vampire, learning I was a special kind of vampire called a Pranic vampire, further discovering I was a special, special kind of Pranic vampire which meant that I was on the level of a goddess.
Oh, and I’m pregnant.
Ergo, the call to the Fledging Vampires Nurse Help Line.
Twenty four hours had passed since I learned I was pregnant. I’d gone from being fecund to gravid in the blink of an eye.
Twice in the last two hours Dan had knocked on my door. The first message he’d left on my phone had been an angry one, but that had been yesterday evening. The subsequent messages had been a little more mellow, segueing to worried. I think someone in the kitchen told him I was okay since I’d ordered food. I hadn’t offed myself or anything. I hadn't disappeared in a puff of vampire smoke. Since I could walk in the sun, I doubted that was going to be a problem. Since I was semi-immortal, how would I off myself, if I ever got to that point?
What would make me get to that point?
Carrying a child certainly wasn't it.
When I was human - there was that cringe again - I felt human. I acted human. I didn’t suck blood and when my fangs did come down, I ended up with an ache in my jaw and a headache for two days. Anyway, BF - before fangdom - I’d wanted, very much, to have a child. Now I wasn’t going to do anything to jeopardize this pregnancy.
In the intervening hours I’d barricaded myself in my room, figuratively speaking, and refused to answer the intercom, my phone, or the knocks on the door. The only time I’d escaped from my self-imposed prison was to take Charlie out twice.
Charlie has the bladder of a racehorse.
I begged kibble from the kitchen and they delivered it on a tray in a chrome dish along with my order: four slices of cheesecake, a pot of excellent coffee, and some chicken noodle soup. I was nursing my wounds.
I don't know how many people were employed here at the castle Cluckey’s Fried Chicken built, but I bet it was more than twenty. Every single one of them seemed to have my comfort in mind. I've never seen one of the staff frown or look depressed or angry. Maybe I should ask one of them what their secret was and could I please have some.
I wasn't without company. I had Ophelia to talk to. Unfortunately, she had a tendency to wander in and out of Charlie at will. We would be talking along and all of a sudden I'd look over and Charlie would be fast asleep, his tail twitching spasmodically. I'd asked her once about the separation of powers. She said there were times when the dog was more dominant and times when the human spirit was. Evidently, when Charlie was tired, Opie had no choice but to go along with him.
Charlie was the golden retriever I’ve adopted, in a manner of speaking. He has an owner, a cruel man who will never see Charlie again if I have anything to say about it. Charlie also has a resident ghost. Her name is Ophelia, and she was a vet
vampire my mother ran over, thinking she was me.
The more complicated my life gets, the more boring sounds better and better. Yet I had a feeling the minute I started bitching about my life, something else would happen to mess it up even further.
At the moment, I just wanted to be left alone. Not forever or even for a week. Just a day or two, until I got my bearings. I felt like one of those inflatable toys you got as a child. It had a clown’s face and was weighted at the bottom. You punched it; it fell down but immediately bounced back up.
Bouncy Marcie, that's what I needed to be. Unfortunately, some of the punches had been pretty rough lately.
I had to tell someone about being pregnant, but I didn’t know who. My grandmother was the first person who popped into my mind, followed by a thought I’d had only a few days earlier. Was Nonnie the reason I’d had two miscarriages in the past? After all, I was the product of a vampire and a witch. I shouldn’t have lived. I imagine she didn’t want me to procreate, either.
I hadn’t exactly been polite to her last night, and I was still smarting from the guilt. She might not have been honest with me from the very beginning. She might have lied and given me spells, but I couldn’t forget that she was my grandmother. I’ve been reared to respect my elders. So I would respect her, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to trust her.
I had the feeling when I saw her last night at the round table discussion that my grandmother would willingly sacrifice me if it meant ensuring the safety and health of her coven.
Last night, when I’d gotten the news that I was going to be Marcie the Mommy, I’d bailed out of the witch meeting. Now I couldn’t help but wonder what the consensus had been.
I looked down at Charlie who was eying the plastic bag of dog biscuits with a ravenous gleam in his eye. I trotted over to the table, peeled open the bag and tossed him one. He grabbed it out of the air like a land shark.
“I’m pregnant,” I said.
Charlie coughed as he swallowed. It was such an odd sound that it made me wonder if I was going to have to give him the Heimlich maneuver. I was more equipped to give mouth to mouth, because I’d seen a video on a pet site. You don’t actually put your mouth on the dog’s mouth. You cup your hands around his nose and blow into it.
“What?” Opie asked.
Charlie had evidently been able to swallow on his own.
“What do you mean, you’re pregnant?”
“Enciente, preggers, with a bun in the oven, expecting, in the family way, or with child.”
I had, for a little while, amused myself by trying to remember all the various euphemisms for being pregnant.
“How did that happen?”
“Well,” I said. “First you have a girl egg. Then you have a boy sperm.”
Charlie growled at me. “I know that. I mean, who? How?"
I came and sat on the chaise. Charlie jumped up on the end, staring at me. He really did have a pretty face. He had the intelligent eyes of a golden retriever. Right now, though, they were incredulous, but that was Opie.
“No wonder Maddock wanted you. He evidently knew you could get pregnant.”
That was a teensy bit offensive. He could have wanted me because I was pretty or sexy or exuded a certain je ne sais quois. Oh, who was I kidding? Opie was right.
“So, are you going to tell him?”
Now this part was delicate. I didn’t like looking like the slut du jour, frankly, but I was hoping, praying, wishing, and crossing every appendage with the ability to be crossed, that Maddock wasn’t the father.
“He might not be the baby daddy, if you’ll pardon the expression.”
One of Charlie’s eyebrows arched toward his ear.
“I had an interlude,” I said.
That word was an obvious effort on my part to class up what had happened in the gun range, on the concrete floor, without an ounce of shame in my body.
“An interlude?”
I nodded.
“With whom, or do I have to ask? Dan the Divine.”
“What?”
“Hey, I might be a dog, but I have a woman’s memories.”
That admission made the whole intact male dog/female ghost vet thing even weirder, if that were possible.
“So he’s the father?”
“I don’t know.”
Both eyebrows arched, making Charlie’s forehead a mass of horizontal wrinkles. He looked like a shar-pei.
“Don’t look at me like that. You can’t tell me you didn’t have any interludes in your life.”
I wasn’t sure if I was talking to the vet or the dog.
“You need to tell him.”
“Which one?” I asked.
Charlie tilted his head, looking confused.
“I know, right? I’d tell Dan, but he might not be the father and I don’t want to tell him right now if he isn’t. And even if he isn’t, I’m not about to tell Maddock. He wants to chain me to a bed somewhere and make me a baby factory.”
Charlie didn’t say a word, only looked at the bag of dog biscuits again.
“I need to find out who the father is,” I said. “Before I tell anyone.”
I got up, got Charlie another dog biscuit and watched as he curled up on the floor beside the chaise. I guess the heart to heart talk with Opie was over. I couldn’t blame her. I’d want to disappear into dogdom, too.
Chapter Two
Lists, Lists, Nothing But Lists
I grabbed the Kindle on the table and scanned my library, annoyed when nothing felt right. None of the free books I'd downloaded or books by my favorite authors interested me. Nothing tripped my trigger.
I didn't want to read about love, unrequited or otherwise. I didn't want to read a mystery. My life was mysterious enough, thank you very much. Nothing in the adventure genre sounded promising, either. I mean, if you're being stalked by a vampire, human rights groups, and your mother, any other adventure kind of pales, don't you think?
I switched off my Kindle with a sound of disgust and turned on the TV, only to have the same problem. There wasn't anything I felt like watching. I could always use the tablet on the table and surf the net, but my recent Google searches had taught me that okay, the Internet doesn't know everything and a lot of what it does know I don't want to learn.
Charlie let out a bark, a sound so hollow and loud that I nearly jumped off the chaise. He stood beside me, the fur along his spine sticking up, his feathery tail show ring straight. His nose was pointed in the direction of the closed curtains.
Oh hell, if Maddock was doing the suction cup thingy again, I was going to have to zap him one more time. How long does it take until the man learned a lesson?
Maybe the rabies virus was having an impact on his brain.
One could only hope.
Charlie let out a long stream of barks, something he’d never before done.
I got off the chaise and dared myself to walk toward the window. If I were like some of the heroines in the books I’ve read, I would be a formidable opponent. I’d stride toward the window and fearlessly jerk back the curtain. My hands would be fisted on my hips. My bosom would be thrust out and my legs would be spread in a Wonder Woman stance.
Instead, I tiptoed to the curtains and peeked out where they met in the middle, hoping I didn't see glowing red eyes and bright white fangs. I didn't put anything past the master vampire. Maybe he could reach in through the glass itself.
I did see lights, but not orange and not belonging to a vampire. A black drone slowly zigzagged in front of the bedroom window. I knew the castle had a lot of technological gadgets, but I would bet the drones were new, thanks to Il Duce.
Dan was not only sexy and handsome, but he was a smart cookie, too.
He was also protective and I was coming to appreciate that trait more and more, especially after learning I had another group out to get me. Not only was a master vampire trying to make me his brood mare, but the witches weren’t all that happy about my existence. Now add the OTHER - Organizatio
n of True Humans for Equal Rights. They had the idea that a great evolution was coming and the Brethren would all merge to create a super being. They didn’t want humans left out of the equation. Ideally, they wanted humans to have all the powers of witches and vampires with none of the drawbacks.
That’s where little ol’ me comes in. Everyone wanted to experiment with me. A vial of blood here, a vial of blood there, and suddenly I’m as dry as a three thousand year old mummy. No pun intended, given my gestational state.
That wasn’t the only group out to get me. The Militia of God, The Council of Human Creationism, and the National Association for the Advancement of Humans didn’t care about my blood. They just wanted to wipe me off the face of the earth. I was distinguished by being among the equal opportunity hated.
“It’s okay,” I told Charlie. “It’s friendly. You don’t have to worry.”
He snuffled a little, but went back to his place beside the chaise.
My phone wasn’t on the table where I could have sworn I left it, but the effort to find it was suddenly beyond me. I wanted to discover what had happened at the witch pow wow, but I really didn’t want to talk to Dan yet. He had a way of looking at me that made me want to bare my soul and tell him everything. I couldn’t tell him everything, not right now.
When I was human, my life was uncomplicated. I knew exactly what I wanted in life.
I wanted to be the first woman VP of the Southwest Region. I wanted to be respected, admired, even be a mentor and model for younger women in my division. I wanted people to whisper about me as I walked down the corridor of headquarters. I wanted to hear people say things like: “There goes Marcie Montgomery, she's such a powerhouse. Did you hear what her percentage of closed claims were last quarter? My God, she blew everybody out of the water.”
I wanted a house. Maybe a pet, a cat who would meow at me when I got home and only be calm once he heard the can opener. Or a dog like Charlie who wasn’t haunted but otherwise exactly the same.