by Nara Malone
He tugged harder, fighting away from life rather than toward it. It’s done, he thought. I want to go.
She wouldn’t let him. The thought moved into his consciousness. Marie wouldn’t let him give up. She was the weight.
I’ve got you, she said. Can you feel me here with you?
He looked around. Marie?
Come to me, her voice whispered inside his brain.
The tether tugged back at him, pulled him in like reeling in a fish. He struggled against it. Blood seeped from that crumpled fur rug, the breath, a faint wisp visible in the frigid air. He didn’t want to be that wreckage.
Can’t, he told her. It drained him, trying to push thoughts back through that fading brain. So sorry. So sorry, love. Can’t.
He felt the pull downward and he lost more altitude like a balloon deflating.
I need you. Your babies need you.
The babies. His glow came back and he floated higher. You and Ean, you’ll be fine. It’ll be how you need it to be. Babies need a happy mother.
He floated higher.
No! Her will hit him harder than the bullet and slammed him back into his body.
Pain exploded grenade-like through his nerves. Her words arrowed into his consciousness.
You will not leave me! Ever! Not ever!
Love, there is not enough of me left to be of any use. Please…
He could not penetrate her hardheaded determination.
Later, she told him, later I will show you just how much of you is left to use.
She won. He was literally half-dead and she could make him want her, want to do whatever it took to please her. He was shivering hard, what energy remained being lost to tremors that couldn’t warm him enough to save him.
No strength, love. Can’t move.
The air buzzed, grew warm, light wrapped around him like a blanket. The death light, he thought.
Nothing so angelic as that, she said. Only me.
She was there, a beautiful white tiger standing over him.
Marie? How? Surely it was a death vision, a wish.
This is just a little rabbit trick I’ve been working on.
Her paws buckled under her. Her front ones folded bringing her to her knees, the back ones crouched. She was fighting to stay in control as her babies fought to be born.
You have to help me, Adam. She leaned against him, draping her body over his. His blood seeped onto her fur.
Will try…will try.
He felt a hum, faint, like a bee at first but rising quickly to the level of a high-powered generator, spreading from her body to his. It was like purring but different. Instinctively he matched it, vibrating in harmony with her. It was warm, loving, glorious. The humming pushed back the pain and then, swoosh, he floated in dark more complete than any he’d known.
* * * * *
One minute Ean had Marie snarling and twisting in his arms and the next he was staring at empty air into Maya’s shocked face.
“What did you do?” Maya screamed. “Get her back.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“Adam then?”
“Adam can’t do that. I don’t know if the magus could do that.”
Ean sat on the cold ground, staring, unable to wrap his brain around the reality of the empty space where Marie had been.
“Sweet mother,” Maya swore. She pushed to her feet, scrubbed her hands on the sides of her jeans, then pushed away hair that had fallen in wild tangles in front of her eyes. “What should we do?”
She was looking around as if Marie might turn up behind a straw bale or in a corner.
Ean stood, still dazed. “I guess we should give it a minute, see if she pops back in.”
“Do you think she tried to shift on her own?”
He didn’t know if that were possible. She’d shifted in sex, something he wasn’t going to discuss with Maya, but she’d never found her way back from the shifting plane on her own. He put his hand into the space where she’d been. Like water shifting between solid or liquid or gas, shifting required a massive amount of energy, left a noticeable cold spot in the vicinity of the transitioning shifter.
The area where Marie had been didn’t feel any colder.
“What are you doing?”
“I think she shifted and she’s stuck.”
He was still pondering how he might guide her back when Marie popped back in—naked, shivering, human. Her belly was a mountain and her hair a jungle over her face. Ean reached out, hardly believing his hand connected with real human flesh. She was so hot it burned. She curled onto her side, wrapped her arms round her belly and screamed.
The scream set Ean in motion before his brain had time to process what was happening. The first baby was crowning. Ean cupped his hand to support the small wet head.
“Help her sit, Maya. Get behind her and let her lean back against you.” He guided Marie’s hands to hold her knees wide. Marie leaned in, pushed and sobbed. Their firstborn slipped out of her mother and into her father’s hands.
Her arms waved, her knees drew up to her tummy. She turned her head and drew her first breath. Ean set her carefully on a waiting towel, handling her like she was spun glass and the slightest puff of wind might carry her away. She looked into his eyes, staring, captivating. He dealt with her cord, dried her as best he could and wrapped her against the cold. It was all he had time for.
“She’s beautiful,” he told Marie, “looks like her mother.” Marie stared at him, wild-eyed, uncomprehending. It was the first sign something was wrong, or maybe the second. He put his hand on her knee and cringed at the heat. The explosive fever worried him.
It was after the third baby was delivered that she started to vomit between pushing. By then Maya could also tell something was going terribly wrong. She exchanged a look with Ean and he shook his head. He didn’t want to say anything that might panic Marie.
At the back of his mind, the dread for Adam nagged. He needed to find him, find out what happened. Was he still alive, injured, bleeding to death a few feet away? Ean didn’t dare leave Marie long enough to find out.
They soldiered on as Adam would have. Marie writhed, burned, retched, delivered. Babies whimpered and squirmed in the blanket nest he tucked them in. Marie’s pulse was so fast Ean wondered that her heart didn’t come apart with the strain. Her respirations came quick and shallow. He thought they might lose her before that sixth child slipped into his hands. He tucked the last baby in and grabbed for his jacket. He was a cold bloody mess. Now, while Maya was doing her best to clean and calm Marie, he wanted to take a quick look for Adam.
The babies squirmed and fussed like kittens in a pile. The blanket Ean had draped over them rose and fell with their wriggling. He needed to get them home, get Marie home, but he wasn’t going home without Adam.
He looked at Maya. She nodded and Ean left them.
Snow started to fall again, sleet and snow. Ice pellets pecked at his face and eyelids. Ean cursed. They weren’t getting any breaks today. He took the path toward the river. He found the lifeless body of a hunter, lying half in the water at the river’s edge. He saw no sign of Adam. Blowing snow covered most footprints but the drifts weren’t deep enough to hide a man’s body, let alone a tiger’s.
“Adam,” Ean shouted.
“Adam,” he screamed again.
He tried calling mentally. Nothing. Only the wind’s ghoulish moan.
“Adam!” he bellowed, emotion breaking his voice. “Please, Adam,” he whispered. He couldn’t stay. He couldn’t hunt for him. He had to look after Marie and the babies. If Adam was alive out there somewhere, Ean doubted he would be for long.
Ean had to put the new lives first. Adam would. Ean heard screaming then, Maya’s voice, faint, shouting his name. He ran for the barn.
Maya held a slippery newborn in her hands, sobbing and trying not to drop her. Ean slammed the barn door shut and dove to her side.
“Tell me what to do Ean,” she sobbed. “Sweet Mother, she’s so ti
ny.” Maya was on her knees. Marie was curled up on her side, too spent to do more than breathe. Ean got another towel, dealt with the cord and the trailing placenta.
“There were supposed to be six,” he told Maya. His hands were shaking. “Just six.”
“You want me to put her back?”
He looked up. She was brushing tears with the backs of her hands. Yet, she teased him, her way of helping him hold it together. He hugged her. He was so grateful she was with him. He put the baby in her arms and got a blanket to wrap around Marie. She struggled, holding her was like hanging on to a hot coal but he was not taking her naked into that storm.
He checked the infants. Their respirations and pulses were strong but they were quieter, not as active. He needed to get them to warmth.
“Start the truck Maya. Turn that heater up full blast.”
He pressed fingers to Marie’s wrist, felt the rapid beat under her burning skin. He had no means to check her blood pressure. Marie was pushing at him.
“Sick…sick,” she panted. He would have been relieved, those were the first words she said. But he understood what she needed and helped her turn again to her side, so she could retch in the mud and straw. He wiped at sweat on his brow with the back of his hand. He didn’t dare risk taking them to a hospital. Some human medicines could kill while others might bring on a spontaneous shift.
If they survived the medical care, they wouldn’t survive the research. There were no laws to protect animals from whatever the doctors would do. Marie might be half-human, but half-human equaled not human in the eyes of the law.
“Ean?” Maya was back. “Tell me this isn’t as bad as it looks.”
“It may be the shift. It could have aggravated her motion sickness.” He knew better. This was serious.
“What about Adam?”
“I couldn’t find him.”
Marie groaned and rolled to her back. “My head is going to explode,” she whimpered.
Maya had tied Marie’s hair back with a strip of gauze. Ean stroked the back of his hand over her cheek, wincing at the heat. “I’m right here, sweetie. I’ll make it better soon. Can you tell me, do you know where Adam is? Did he help you?”
She was turning her head back and forth. “My head. My head. Sick.”
“If he’s not there,” Maya asked, “what was all that screaming?” She gathered two babies in a blanket, covering their faces and tucking them close to her body.
“There is a dead guy down by the river,” Ean told her. “His head was under the water. I didn’t waste time checking on him. But it wasn’t Adam. There wasn’t any sign of Adam. The snow has blown over any tracks.”
“Adam can’t leave me,” Marie gasped. “He’s not ever—” She pushed back up onto her elbows. Her eyes rolled back in her head and she flopped back in the straw, convulsing.
Maya clutched the babies, her eyes round, her voice panicked. “Ean, what’s happening? Is she dying?”
He didn’t have time to answer. He rolled Marie to her side. “Get those babies in the truck, Maya. Hurry.” He leaned close to Marie’s ear, talking softly. “Stay with me now, sweetheart. I’ve got you.” Tears ran down his face. The seizure confirmed his suspicion. Eclampsia.
* * * * *
“We need help, Ean,” Maya lectured in a hushed voice. “This is more than we can fix.”
“There is no help close enough.”
“Is Marie dying?”
Ean didn’t answer. He wrung out a cloth in a basin of ice water and continued to bathe Marie. Her flushed skin was a rosy contrast to the white sheets, beautiful and deadly. He had to get the fever down. He washed her face, smoothing back her hair, stroking over her eyelids, wiping the corners of her eyes. He rinsed the rag again and wiped her lips. They were dry, cracked. She was terribly dehydrated. He slipped a few ice chips past her lips but he didn’t dare give her much.
“Ean?”
He wished Maya would go back to the babies. He knew she wouldn’t until he gave her answers.
“I injected her with magnesium sulfate and calcium. We have to give it time.” He wrung the cloth again and ran it over her chest, around and under her breasts. His beautiful love. What had they done?
“I bathed and dressed all the babies. They are tucked into their beds, sleeping for now. Your daughters are beautiful.” She had the smallest in a sling tied across her chest and snuggled under her shirt. That one needed watching and extra warmth.
In the bloody drama of the barn it hadn’t registered with him that they had seven daughters. All this and he could still wind up alone. The wasting sickness stalked. A slow death waited for most of them, possibly all. He felt as if he was living under water, at the bottom of the ocean where light couldn’t reach.
Marie sighed when the icy rag caressed her belly. He could feel the heat in her, rippling like waves from hot pavement. Her eyes fluttered. She looked at a spot just to the right of Ean.
“Adam?”
“It’s okay.” Ean bathed her face again, closing her lids over that glassy-eyed stare. “Shh.”
“He can’t leave me,” she said. Her hand gripped his wrist. “Not ever.”
He tipped his head back, blinking hard. If he could have thought of a response, he couldn’t have said it. His throat felt like it was swelling shut.
Maya wouldn’t let up. “Ean, we have to have help.”
He rose and turned Maya toward the hall, followed her out, stopping just outside the door. He leaned against the wall, so tired he could sleep standing up. He didn’t dare close his eyes for the second it might take Marie to slip away forever.
“Will she die?” Maya whispered.
“She has eclampsia. It can be fatal. I’m doing what I can.”
“It doesn’t look like she’s getting better.”
Ean lifted a hand, tried to formulate some argument to convince her. His hand dropped. Defeated. He looked hard toward the nursery and tried to believe some sort of miracle could yank them back from the cliff they were staggering toward.
“I’m going to get the magus, Ean.”
“How? Will you call him on the phone?” Very few Pantherians had access to the magus. It would be like trying to drop in on the president. Of necessity, a man with that much power required distance and protection from the endless string of needs and demands the entire species could make on him. Adam could have gotten through. Not Maya.
Maya turned away, hugging herself tight.
Ean heard Maya’s soft snuffling. She didn’t want him to know she was crying. He reached out and pulled her close, careful of the baby. She had to be as tired as he was. In the few hours since they’d gotten home, neither of them had a chance to so much as sit down or do more than grab a swallow of water here and there.
“I think I can get to the magus through the mirror,” she said. “I could find the way.”
She was trembling, terrified of the offer she made.
“No.”
“Ean, we can’t stand back and watch them die.” She slipped her hand inside her shirt. A tiny hand poked through the opening. Ean pressed his fingertip into a palm barely bigger than a buttercup.
“She’s so tiny. I don’t think this little one will make it, Ean.”
“It won’t help to lose you.”
“And there’s Adam,” she said. “Someone has to look for him.”
Ean didn’t see how Adam could be alive at this point. He refused to say so.
“I’m not asking you.” Maya pulled away from him. “I’m just letting you know. You’ll have to keep an eye on all of them by yourself for a while.”
She meant it. There was no question of stopping her, save locking her in a closet. He had no fight left.
She kissed his cheek and unbuttoned her shirt. His daughter fit in one of his hands. He cupped her to his chest. Her knees and arms were pulled in close to her tummy. He couldn’t resist the urge to give one tiny toe a lick. He’d seen raisins bigger than that toe. Maya helped him strap the sling across hi
s chest then she brought a flannel shirt from the laundry room to button around them.
“Don’t worry big brother,” she said. “I’ll be back. Someone has to make sure all your daughters know how to keep you in line.”
He hugged her and planted a kiss on her forehead. “Be safe.”
He checked the babies again after Maya went downstairs. He was grateful they needed his attention and he didn’t have to watch that mirror swallow her.
He checked Marie next. She moaned when he turned her to bathe her back.
“Ean, please,” she whispered, “cut my head off.”
He smiled through tears. “I’ll put Maya to work sharpening my chainsaw.”
She closed her eyes, swallowed, her breath labored.
“Marie, honey,” he asked, wringing the rag and sliding it over her burning skin again. “How did you shift? Did Adam help you?”
She opened her mouth, her eyelids fluttered, a rapid beat, like wings. Whatever she was going to say came out as a gurgle. Another seizure wracked her. He was helpless.
It was twenty minutes after the seizure passed before Ean allowed himself the luxury of sitting in a chair near the bed.
He didn’t want to close his eyes. Every time he did this nightmare of a day painted its grisliest scenes on the insides of his eyelids. Marie’s birth ravaged body, the dead man by the river and Adam, bleeding and freezing to death in the snow, waiting for help that wouldn’t come.
The insistent wails of newborns still rang in his ears. Everyone depended on him. He had never felt so inadequate.
Their best hope rested with Maya, the most sheltered and least trained of them all. She hadn’t let that stop her. If there had ever been a girl-child the tribe might willingly have relinquished to the wasting disease, Maya would be her. And fate had placed the tribe’s brightest hope for survival into the hands of the woman they had driven away.
Chapter Twelve
The icy teeth of a winter storm, the iron crush of death descending, had given way to womblike warmth that cradled and caressed him with a lover’s soft hands. Being inside her. That’s what Adam thought of. It felt as if he’d buried himself in the fragrant heaven of his lover’s body. Tight, squeezing, silky warmth. He waited for the rise in tension, that climbing to release.