Grave Omen (Raina Kirkland Book 3)

by Diana Graves

  “How do you feel?” he asked and with a large hand he brushed my hair out of my face. It was a soft hand, capable of so much violence, and I moved my face against it lovingly, thankful for his warmth, even if it had first belonged to his blood donor for the night.

  I gave the room a quick glance and took a deep breath of relief. I was in the Bastion’s clinic, lying on a hospital bed. On the outside Bastion Fatal was a grand palace that looked like a strange mix of Italian and Indian design, with Commencement Bay as an elegant backdrop. But the inside was very simple, very plain. Much of it was cold black and white marble. The lower levels that were underground were simply white, white painted walls and tile. I missed the Bastion’s old loveliness, its old world charm: tapestries and magnificently carved wood paneling on the walls. It was Adia’s design, back when the Bastion was Mort Villa. It was her taste exactly. For some reason Alistair felt it needed to be changed. I had thought that the remodel was crazy-Alistair’s way of trying to wipe out the memory of his sister among those still loyal to her. I hoped that it would be cancelled once Alistair regained his sanity, but it wasn’t. My assumptions were wrong. The remodel was Alistair’s way of making Bastion Fatal his own, his vampire collective and his home. It made sense. I couldn’t begrudge him that, but I missed the way it was.

  “I don’t know. I feel like someone took a jack-hammer to my pelvic bone and a sledge hammer to my chest.”

  “Sounds like you’re healing the bullet wound well and fast,” said a familiar voice.

  I searched for and found Gabriel sitting at his computer. He was the Bastion’s doctor, the only doctor I trusted. However, the only reason I trusted him at all was that I trusted Alistair and Gabriel was a legion vampire sworn to Alistair. He wouldn’t tell anybody my secrets because he couldn’t. Alistair forbade it and legions were slaves the moment they accepted a master. I didn’t know what sort of vampire I would become when I turned completely, but I prayed that I wouldn’t be legion. I kept my fingers crossed for champion vampire, like Seth. Of the three kinds of vampires in the world legions were the slaves, masters were in charge and champions were neither. They were free, free to choose what orders to follow or ignore and free to come and go as they pleased. If they showed any loyalty at all it was because they wanted to.

  I sat up a little, leaning back on my elbows and even that small movement hurt. “Bullet?” I asked. Little by little, I was recalling what had happened that night. I’d gone into Bailey’s mind and when I came out I was in server pain and then some ass-hole guard missed Mato, and shot me in the chest. I looked down at my chest and sure enough it was bandaged tightly.

  Gabriel smoothed back his already neatly combed bleach blond hair and wheeled his chair my way. “Yes, you were shot, remember?”

  “I do now,” I said, and then stuck my tongue out and crossed my eyes because I was being a dumb shit. “Brain fart.”

  “Luckily the bullet went through you, so there was no need to do much to the wound other than cleaning it, and then bandaging it once the hole healed enough to be certain the skin wouldn’t heal over the bandages.”

  “Yuck!”

  “It doesn’t happen often, but it can when someone heals at the rate you do, almost vampire fast.”

  I was nodding my head, but then my eyes shot open and I looked at Gabriel. “The bullet went through me? But, Melvern was on the other side!”

  Alistair put his hands up to calm me. “He’s fine, he’s fine,” he said. “He healed almost immediately. His body pushed the bullet out and by the time he and Mato arrived with you all he needed was a shower.” I sighed with relief. Everyone was fine then. Great.

  “Are they still here?” I asked.

  “Yes, do you want me to fetch them for you?”

  “No, I was just curious.” Alistair gave me a raised brow.

  “Raina,” said Gabriel to get my attention. “We have to tell you something and you may find it difficult to take in.” His face was dead serious as he scooted his chair closer to the bed and clasped his hands in his lap. Alistair looked down at the bed as Gabriel said, “The pain Master Melvern mentioned alarmed me. I did a pelvic exam and what I found was shocking, but I confirmed it with blood tests and an ultra sound. I believe what you were experiencing was stress induced labor.”

  “Labor, what does that mean?” I asked.

  “Raina, you’re pregnant,” he said.

  Alistair looked up at me intently, as though he would burrow a hole straight through my face. I ignored him as best I could because I was in a sort of mental limbo in that moment. I was unsure what to think or do or how to feel.

  Sitting opposite Alistair, Gabriel placed his hand on my lower abdomen. “Raina, did you know you’re pregnant?”

  “I’ve been running, drinking coffee—I had a couple of glasses of wine last week,” I said, but so much more was running through my mind as I stared down at my stomach, seeing the small roundness and slight lump in a whole new light. I thought my weight gain was one part diet change, three parts stress. I was eating a lot more sugary treats of late, and hunting down murdering ass-hats…which was probably why I was sneaking more sweets, emotional eating.

  “For someone who is as physically fit as you, running while pregnant is perfectly safe for the baby. And unless you drank to excess, I wouldn’t worry too much about the caffeine and alcohol you’ve consumed in the past months.”

  “How many weeks along am I?” I asked.

  Gabriel cleared his throat. “Thirty-five.”

  “Thirty-five! That sounds like a long time, Gabriel,” I said. I was thinking I was somewhere around four or eight weeks, twelve at the most.

  “It’s eight months, Raina. You’ve been pregnant for eight months,” said Alistair. I just gave him a dumb face because I still didn’t know what to say or do.

  “Raina, look at me,” said Gabriel. I turned my head slowly and gave him the same dumb look I was giving Alistair. “The ultra sound showed that you have uterine retroversion, a tilted uterus. That’s why your stomach has just a slight roundness.”

  I just nodded my head. I heard his words but I didn’t really understand him. I was still stuck on the whole, eight months pregnant thing…

  “Is Damon the father?” asked Alistair. That got my attention. Maybe it was because I was having such bad-girl thoughts of Mato lately, but I took his question as an insult and I shot him a look of contempt; thin lips, narrow eyes, tight jaw. “Of course he is,” he said quickly. “He’s the only man you’ve been with since…” he stopped there rather than say more. “It’s just that, well, Barguests and humanoids don’t mix well. At least, Gabriel and I can’t find any known instance of a successful offspring.”

  “Successful, what does that mean? Like, miscarriages?”

  Both men looked down. It was Alistair who looked back up at me and answered my question. I knew it was going to be bad news when he put on his stern yet caring face. “Yes and also stillborn. And those that have been brought to term and delivered haven’t lived very long. So far, the fetus is in fine condition as best as we can tell.”

  With my hands over my face, I let it all sink in. Tonight’s stress brought on labor pains, all the tests show that I’m with child, but it may not live… “What does that mean; its fine as best as you can tell?”

  Both men were silent for a time. Gabriel’s hand was still cold on my belly and a part of me hoped that he felt a kick. Another part of me wasn’t sure I even wanted to be pregnant. It would make things so much more complicated…but then again, I loved Thomas more than anyone in the world. He brought me so much joy. The thought of two children in my home was a happy one. I smiled and then frowned.

  “The ultra sound was of poor quality because of the position of the womb. I was able to find the fetus. It has a very strong heartbeat, but it wasn’t moving. Other than that, it seems healthy. Only time will tell us for sure. But there’s still a lot of hope. There have only been a handful of known cases of living vampires, and they’ve al
l been male. You’re the first pregnant living vampire on record,” said Gabriel.

  “This pregnancy is off record, Gabriel,” said Alistair.

  “Of course, I’m just saying that because of this new variable there is room for hope. Hope that the vampirism has given this child a fighting chance where all others to date had none.”

  ♦

  My stomach was turning as I sat in the hospital bed alone, waiting for Damon to come and get me because my car was still in Seattle. Not that I was in the proper mental state for driving even if it wasn’t fifty or more miles away. Alistair offered to give me a ride home and Mato offered to fly me, but I didn’t want to be around either man for some reason. Both of them were giving me strange looks that I didn’t understand. I probably didn’t want to understand. Alistair was looking at me as though I’d grown a second head and Mato was looking at me as if I’d just kicked his puppy. I just wanted to be held and told that it was all going to be okay by the one person in my life who was always there for me, Damon.

  When Gabriel and Alistair opened the door to leave me with my thoughts, Melvern tried to strong arm his way into the room. He probably had some questions for me, questions about what he’d seen in my mind, about what I was and where Nick was. I was too weak to guard against his telepathy. Perhaps that was something I could ask my mom to teach me. She usually guarded my version of telepathy pretty well.

  At my word Alistair refused to let Melvern into the room. I so didn’t feel like being interrogated, and I was under doctor’s orders to stay away from anything that would stress me out, lest I go into labor again. I was thankful for the excuse in that moment, but his orders also meant that I was off the case. I wanted to call Fillips and explain everything to her; what I saw, the incident at the hospital and why I could no longer help her, but Gabriel said I shouldn’t. He wanted me to have nothing further to do with the case in the slightest and Alistair took his side on that matter. So, I had to give Mato all the information I was able to gather from Bailey’s mind and he would have to pass it on for me. I felt horrible for abandoning the case, but given the circumstances, I was sure she would understand.

  A soft knock at the door brought my head up, “Yes?”

  Damon came through the door and a smile spread across my face, but my smile turned into a frown and then tears streamed down my cheeks. He hadn’t done or said anything. It was only his mere presence that allowed me to let down my wall of calm and be just as hurt and scared as I felt. Without saying a word, he came to me and wrapped his arms around me. I didn’t know what he’d been told. I just held onto him and wept and he let me cry as long as I needed to. We didn’t go home after I calmed down. I wanted to be somewhere more private when I told him we were with child, and at the moment my home wasn’t the most private of places.

  Instead, he walked me down to his old apartment at Bastion Fatal, just one floor below the clinic floor. In the dark warmth of his bed, with our bodies intertwined, I told him everything. His hand went to my stomach, searching for a kick maybe. I nuzzled my head against his smooth chest and let him pet me until I fell asleep.

  DREAMING OF HIM

  HIS FACE WAS pale and large in the dark of my childhood bedroom. He had long blond hair and dark eyes that were mostly hidden by his overhanging brow. I felt a rush of indescribable fear just looking at him, and all he was doing was smiling with closed thin lips. I licked my lips and they tasted salty, salty with my tears and sweat. I tried to wipe my face, but my arms were locked behind my back. I looked down and what I saw sent my head back with a scream.

  I was naked, kneeling in a pool of my own blood on my bed. I couldn’t have been older than thirteen or fourteen years old; narrow waist, smaller breasts, only slightly shorter than I knew myself to be. I could feel the burns along my arms and stomach, but it was the large nails sticking out of my breasts that had brought me to the point of mind numbing terror.

  I could hear myself crying, begging for my mommy between the screams. He laughed at me, clapped his hands and laughed. I saw his fangs. He was a vampire! I felt I knew him, but I couldn’t place his face.

  He moved faster than I could follow and suddenly there were deep lacerations running down the length of my thighs; long bloody ribbons of raw meat were exposed. I cried out between clenched teeth and he laughed still.

  He reached out to me and with a strong tug that nearly sent me off the bed and to the carpet he pulled a nail from my body and licked it. His eyes rolled back in his head with delight. I felt my body going limp moments before I fell over onto my side. I heard the loud clash of heavy metal chains hitting against each other and then the room went dark.

  DEMONS COME AT NIGHT

  MY EYES OPENED in the dark. I was warm and in bed with Damon. My head was still resting atop his chest; his hand was still firm against my stomach, as if he’d fallen asleep while petting me. It was quiet, but I knew there was someone in the room besides us, and because I was awake and not Damon, even though we had similar hearing, I could guess who it was that was hiding in the dark.

  “Raphael?” I whispered.

  At first there was no answer and I closed my eyes, but then the demon spoke. “How did you know it was me? Do I need a shower?” Raphael asked. I didn’t answer him. He was still hidden in the darkness of the room, but when he opened the bedroom door, I could see his silhouette as he stepped into the hall. “Follow me.”

  As I crawled out of bed I recalled the last time he visited me in the middle of the night. He told me he was going to make us even and then he told me Adia wasn’t dead anymore. I played with the idea of calling bull shit on him, because I hadn’t found any trace of her, but then my hand found my stomach. He’d touched me there that night, just over my now slightly swollen womb. Adia was alive, alive again. I felt my brow crease in wonder as an idea came to me, as maybe a realization came to me and I grasped my stomach more firmly. Adia?

  I walked into Damon’s living room and found Raphael sitting comfortably on the couch. He was just as handsome as when I last saw him, but I guess if you can pick your looks, you wouldn’t choose to look ugly or plain, right? He was tall, well dressed and fair haired with a perfectly symmetrical face of very complimenting features—lazy blue eyes, pink lips, rosy cheeks. He looked up at me with his almost tired looking eyes as I turned on the light.

  I licked my lips and sat down beside him. I was wearing an oversized shirt like last we met, but this time I was also wearing a pair of Damon’s baggy pajama bottoms. “Is the baby Adia?” I asked him plainly, maybe boldly.

  He inclined his head. “You’re welcome, by the way. It was not easy.”

  “You put her soul in me?” I asked.

  “Mm, at the very moment of conception,” he began. “I knew she couldn’t last forever. Especially with your doey eyes following her every move. Surviving the way she did, as long as she did, feeding off of everything and everyone she could get her cold clammy hands on—well, I’ll tell you, it’s not for the faint of heart. No, the moment you entered her life it was over for her. Her days were numbered. I made my plans a while back, but the hard part was waiting.”

  “Waiting?”

  “Yes, I had to wait for you to bed some poor soul, didn’t I?” He wagged his finger at me with a wily smile. “For a moment there you had me worried; banging that old fang. No future there, at least not in the way of baby making. And then you picked Damon! A barguest of all creatures. You know he’s more animal than man, right? Genetically speaking, you two aren’t even compatible. If you were a mere humanoid, there would be no way. Lucky for you, you’re half god.”

  My brows were pinched in thought, because I wasn’t sure if I should be offended or thankful. It felt like a back handed something, but I just wasn’t sure how to respond.

  “Thanks, but is that why you’re here?” I asked.

  “What?”

  “Are you here to tell me what you’ve told me? Is this conversation the reason you woke me?”

  He smiled. “No,
not at all. But, be glad I woke you. I saw what you were dreaming about. Yikes! That was intense, and I live in Hell.”

  I brought my feet up off the floor and tucked them under me, feeling all sorts of violated and embarrassed. “You saw?”

  He leaned back and sighed. “You know, the more I learn about your family, the more I feel for Nil.” He shook his head, but didn’t expand further on that thought. Instead he got back to the topic. “No, I came here as a courtesy. I wanted to let you know that I’m taking Thomas somewhere safe.”

  I jumped from my seat, and almost fell over myself trying to get to my feet. “You’re what?! Why, what, why?!” His eyes were still lazy as he looked up at me. I was going to throw a shit fit! I was going to flip a table! I was becoming hysterical. “You can’t take my son! You can’t, please don’t.”

  “Which is it: I can’t or please don’t?” he asked calmly.

  I plopped back down on the couch. “I know you are capable of it. You’re a demon, Raphael, but please don’t,” I begged him, because that was all I could do. I was a demigod, but I didn’t really know what that meant. I knew what he being a demon meant. It meant that he could do shit I couldn’t begin to understand. It meant that I was at his mercy.

  He put his hand on my leg and his touch was electric, otherworldly. “Raina, my dear Raina. I’m taking Thomas for his safety. If you find some way to weather this storm, however unlikely that is, I will bring him back to you. You are his mother after all.”

  “What does that mean, weather this storm? What storm? Are you talking about the baby? Why would you make me pregnant if that meant I couldn’t have Thomas? I’m not on the case anymore, so no worries there!” I would have continued babbling on and on because I didn’t know what else to do but talk, but he put a long finger to my lips to stop me. I gave him defeated eyes.