Moonlight: The Big Bad Wolf (Black Swan 4)

by Danann, Victoria

  He had expected her to be sitting at the table by then. Shrimp with Chinese greens usually brought her running. He ducked his head into the den then started down the hallway toward their bedroom. When he got to the doorway he heard a sharp hissing intake of breath. He hurried to the bath and found her there on a wet floor and clearly in a lot of pain.

  He sank down next to her. "Baby. Is it time?" She couldn't even get out a decipherable answer and her eyes looked a little scared. "Can you take us to the clinic?"

  Her reply was a scream that was stifled by a sob.

  Storm's mind was racing. If she couldn't get them to Edinburgh and going to a regular hospital was out of the question, for obvious reasons, then what in the name of Hades could he do? He was near panic, when he saw the black diamond pendant roll across the v-neckline of her shirt. Bracing her upper body against his, he took her hand, curled it into a fist around the pendant, and squeezed gently.

  In a heartbeat, Deliverance responded to the charm he had given his daughter and was standing over them. Storm gathered Litha into his arms. As he struggled to get to his feet, holding her without slipping on the wet floor, he was overcome with the déjà vu of reliving performance of a similar feat when Elora Laiken arrived in their world.

  The demon looked every bit as scared as Storm was feeling. He carefully placed Litha in her father's arms saying, "Get her to the headquarters clinic in Edinburgh. Ask for Doc Lange. And come back for me before you do anything else."

  Without another word, they were gone.

  Standing there in pants that were wet, he realized he was shaking. Not from the cold. Deliverance was back in under three minutes, but it had felt like so much longer to Storm. When they popped into the clinic, he was already yelling, "Where is she?"

  The nurse attendant on floor duty pointed toward the end of the hall. They asked him to wait outside the door while they changed her clothes and prepared her for delivery. Apparently they had awakened the doctor and he still hadn't arrived. Litha's moans were getting louder.

  Storm turned to Deliverance. "Find that worthless medic and get him here now even if he's not wearing pants." The demon vanished and Storm decided he'd waited in the hall long enough.

  They didn't try to stop him from entering. They'd already cleaned her up and gotten her into a hospital gown.

  He brushed the damp hair back from her face. She looked up at him and tried to say his name, but the only sound that came out was a cry of pain. The door opened a second later and the doctor hurried in, as he was more or less pushed from behind by the anxious grandemon.

  They had discussed the use of drugs with Doc Lange ahead of time and concluded that they couldn't risk it because they had no idea how Litha and the baby, with their unusual genetics, would handle various chemicals. Or even if they could. That left Litha facing what sounded like a difficult delivery with no help.

  "What can I do?" Storm asked her helplessly. She was trying to say something, but she was clenching her teeth so hard he couldn't understand her. She tried again. He thought he understood, but couldn't believe she had asked for Elora. "You want Elora?" Litha nodded, at the same time she gripped his hand hard enough to break the bones.

  Storm turned to Deliverance. "She wants Elora. I'm going to call Ram. You go get her."

  Ram and Elora were curled up on the couch watching a movie and Helm was in bed for the night, gods willing. Ram heard his phone on the kitchen counter.

  He reached over the bar and grabbed the phone. Looking at the caller ID, he said, "Stormy."

  Elora grabbed the remote and paused the video.

  "Storm."

  "Ram. She's in labor. I think it's bad. She wants Elora."

  He sounded scared to Rammel.

  "Where are you?"

  "Edinburgh. The demon is coming for Elora."

  There was a loud knock on the door.

  "I think he's here. She'll be there in a minute. I'll follow as soon as I can."

  "Ram..."

  Ram waited, but Storm didn't finish that thought. "I know. We're on the way." Elora started to open the door, but Ram got there in time to put his hand on it. "Wait! That demon is on the other side of the door. He's goin' to take you to Edinburgh. Litha's in labor and askin' for you." He opened the door and looked at Deliverance. "I have to get the nanny for my boy. Will you come back for me in fifteen minutes?"

  Deliverance nodded, gripped Elora's forearm, and was gone. It was Elora's first ride through passes and she wouldn't say she was the least bit fond of the experience or any of the associated sensations. They walked through a wall of mist into Litha's hospital room and Elora didn't waste any time getting to her side.

  She took Litha's hand. Looking down into her eyes the fear was so potent she could swear she smelled it, but she managed a little smile. "Hey there. We're gonna have a baby tonight. It's the most marvelous thing in the universe and, when you get on the other side of this, you'll say it was worth it. I promise."

  Without looking away from Litha, she asked Storm, "What's going on?"

  "She went straight into hard labor. She can't have any drugs because we don't know what they would do in her system. Or the baby's."

  Doc Lange was on a rolling stool with a miner's light on his head trying to see what was going on.

  Storm looked at his cell phone. "Yeah?" He turned to Deliverance. "Ram says he's ready. Would you go get him, please?"

  Elora hissed at Doc Lange. "Tell me something. Now."

  "We have a baby on the way." He said it nonchalantly, as only a person who has never given birth can do.

  Elora wanted to throttle him and, in fact, made a mental note to do so when the crisis was over. "Idiot. Tell me something useful." Litha's shouts were starting to sound more like screams and Storm looked like he was about to lose it. "The baby is big and we can't give the mother any assistance of a pharmaceutical nature. The combination of those two things makes for a rough ride."

  The next time Litha screamed, Storm grabbed the doc and shook him. "Do something!"

  Elora couldn't have let go of Litha's hand if she'd wanted to. The witch's grip was like a vise and it crossed Elora's mind that she was lucky Litha had good control on the burn impulse or her hand could end up charcoal broiled.

  She yelled for Ram and hoped that he was in the hall where he could hear her. He opened the door and looked in.

  "Can you get the dad out of here and get him under control? Sedate him if you have to. That moron may be a quack, but he's the only quack we've got."

  Hearing that, Deliverance assisted Rammel in pulling Storm off Doc Lange and dragging him out into the hall by force where he continued to fight them both. Ram was going to have a prize black eye to show for his trouble.

  "Storm! Listen to me!" With the demon's assistance, Ram got behind Storm and got him into a throat lock. This wasn't the first time he'd been in this situation. Storm didn't respond well when people he loved were in trouble and he felt helpless to do anything about it. "If you do no' pull it together, we're goin' to have to sedate you. You do no' want to be conked out when your little girl makes her debut into this world." Ram gave him a little jerk. "You can no' help your wife this way."

  Storm grew still.

  "That's right." Ram took in a deep breath of relief and relaxed his hold a little bit. "'Tis no' easy to wait, but I'll be stayin' right here and Elora has your girl."

  Slowly Storm sat up with his back against the hallway wall and Ram did the same. They stayed that way for the next half hour while Deliverance paced the hallway. Just as Storm said, "I hate this," everything went quiet in the room beyond the door. Too quiet.

  Storm struggled to get to his feet. He had once told Glen that he had experienced fear. It was a lie. He hadn't experienced real fear until that moment. He reached out to open the door, but his hand was shaking badly. Rammel stood behind. Close. Just in case.

  When Storm opened the door, the first thing he saw was Elora covered in blood with a shocked look on her face. The
white bedding next to her was also drenched in fresh blood. He started to crumple, but Rammel grabbed him around the waist and held him up.

  "Litha," Storm's voice broke into a whisper.

  Elora smiled. "She's good. Or she will be. Just as soon as we show her that plump baby with all the black hair. Why don't you come take my place here? Hold your wife's hand, give her a kiss, and tell her she's the most beautiful woman who ever lived."

  Storm started toward Litha, but one of the nurses stepped in front of him. Before he knew what was happening the woman had thrust a pink bundle into his hands, saying, "Mr. Storm. Would you like to hold your baby?"

  She wasn't cleaned off yet, but that didn't matter. He looked from the baby to Litha with the characteristic shocked look of new fatherhood. The new mom was weak, but managed to smile, partly from the joy of knowing all was well with her little girl and partly from seeing that awestruck expression on her husband's face.

  "Let me see."

  He put the baby on Litha's chest where the new mom could feel the weight and warmth of that precious, pliant brand new little person. Storm kissed his wife and said, "Gods Almighty, Litha. You are the most beautiful woman who ever lived."

  "Tired."

  "Sleep then. We'll be here when you wake up."

  Storm carefully retrieved the little one from Litha's chest like she was made of glass, then went with the nurse to clean the afterbirth off the baby, weigh her, measure her, brush her hair with a feather-soft baby brush, and wrap her in a clean pink blanket. Then he got to hold her on his shoulder and breathe in the heavenly aroma of brand new infant with Deliverance practically glued to his side. The demon had been visibly moved, but was strangely silent.

  Litha didn't get to rest for long. While Storm and the baby were down the hall, the nurses got busy cleaning the blood away from Litha and changing her linens so that she could rest comfortably.

  They also showed Elora where she could have access to a shower and gave her a clean set of scrubs to change into. Twenty minutes later she returned, looking clean but tired. She did a double take when she saw that Ram's eye was swelling closed, red on the way to black.

  "You did good," he said.

  She reached toward his eye instinctively, but stopped her hand before she touched it. "You too. Let's have a nurse take a look at that."

  "'Tis fine."

  "No. 'Tis no' fine." After mocking his accent lovingly, she left the room, but returned a few minutes later with ice. "I insist." She placed it in his hand. He smiled and nodded. Who doesn't love to be fussed over?

  Litha roused from sleep when she heard voices in the room. A nurse was asking for the baby's name and the clipboard indicated that the question was official.

  Storm said, "Liberty Rose Brandywine Storm."

  "No." Litha's voice sounded so rough from all the screaming and she sounded like she might be drugged as well, even though she hadn't been. "Her name is Elora Rose Brandywine Storm."

  Storm blinked. He could not have been more surprised if Litha had said the baby's name was Clarence the Clown. After all the teasing about naming the baby Elora and Litha alternating between threats of burning him or leaving him in a pass if he continued talking about naming the baby Elora, which was never his idea in the first place, he really couldn't believe that she had done the very thing she had sworn would never happen in a thousand years.

  Elora had been sitting on the radiator ledge under the window. When she heard the announcement, her hand flew to her mouth and she came to the side of the bed closest to the new mom.

  "Litha. That's the loveliest thing I can think of."

  "We're still calling her Rosie."

  "It's a great honor."

  Litha took Elora's hand. "I'm a demon, Elora. It's not an honor. It's a deal. If anything happens to you, we will take care of Helm and love him like he's our own. If anything happens to us, you'll do the same with Rosie."

  Elora swallowed hard and looked over her shoulder at Ram. He took the ice away from his eye and nodded. "Ram says yes, we will. You know we would love her like she's our own and take care of her even without the contract."

  "I know. But this way it's official."

  "Don't burn me to seal the deal."

  Litha smiled and let go of Elora's hand. "Okay. Sleepy."

  Elora walked straight to Storm, gave him a one-armed hug, and gave Rosie a tender kiss on the cheek.

  "That was scary," Storm said looking down at Elora. "You haven't looked that gory since the day you arrived at Jefferson Unit."

  "Well, I guess that's what happens when a little demon decides to skip the birth."

  Storm looked confused. "What do you mean?"

  Elora glanced at Ram who was leaning against a far wall. "You don't know?"

  "Know what?"

  "Rosie didn't come into the world like most babies. Litha was in so much distress... I guess Rosie just decided to put an end to it. So this little infant girl simply appeared in the air above her mother, still attached to the placenta. I reached out and caught her before she fell onto Litha's stomach. The afterbirth broke all over me, which is where all the blood came from.

  "Doc Lange and the nurses got it together pretty quickly, cut the cord and tied it off. I asked if they were going to make her cry. They said they had already cleaned out her mouth and that she was breathing normally so there was no need to traumatize her. It's the first thing that quack has ever done that sounded right to me."

  Storm looked stunned. "You're saying my baby wasn't really born."

  "Well, obviously she was born. She just exercised an option that's not available to most of us. It made things a lot easier on her mama and that's for sure."

  Elora chuckled. "Good luck trying to ground her."

  She exchanged grins with Ram who was shaking his head and thanking Paddy it wasn't going to be his parenting problem.

  Storm turned to Deliverance. "Have you heard of this before?"

  "Not exactly, but we knew that the only thing we knew was that we didn't know what to expect."

  Elora smiled. "The main thing is Litha's fine and she'll be back to normal so much faster this way. It's probably the closest thing to a virgin birth that's ever happened.

  "The baby's fine and she looks really happy where she is right now. I'm thinking daddy's girl." Storm couldn't help but look a little delighted at that possibility. He tucked his chin so he could look down at his baby sleeping on his shoulder, as if to confirm whether she was as happy as Elora said.

  "No. She's not just fine. She's so beautiful," Elora gushed as she ran the back of a finger over her little pink cheek.

  Turning to Ram she said, "Her first name is Elora. Did you know that?"

  "Got a feelin' you'll not be lettin' any of us forget it."

  At home in their apartment at Jefferson Unit, Elora gently swayed back and forth with Helm falling asleep on her shoulder. "Wasn't she beautiful, Ram? She looked more like a two-month-old baby than a newborn. Her cheeks. Her lips. All that black hair. It's so funny about her name being Rosie, because she makes me think of Rose Red from..."

  "I know what you're goin' to say. That she's so pretty she's like a character from one of those stupid stories."

  "I'm on to you, Ram. You call my fai... elftales stupid stories because you like getting a rise out of me."

  His eyes twinkled. "Aye. Gettin' a rise out of you is the second most entertainin' thin' I can think of."

  ***

  EPILOGUE

  Baka's Log.

  I have moved to Paris and settled into the temporary facility. Naturally I hope to be here for a short time, not because of any personal opinion about the location, but because the length of our stay directly corresponds to the success of our mission, which is to locate those infected with the vampire virus, administer the curative vaccine, and offer rehabilitation.

  With each passing day, The Vampire Inversion, which is the informal name referencing the overall mission, becomes more sophisticated and better able
to address the entirety of the problem, including what to do with the lost when they are recovered. Hiring personnel is a painfully slow and laborious process because of The Order's need for secrecy. Nonetheless, we have taken on some badly-needed psychologists and social workers who are in a position to follow our operation, like a carnival or circus, from place to place as needed.

  We have also employed a master aromatherapist because we have learned, quite by accident, that some combinations of herbs or essential oils relieve the stress symptoms that mimic withdrawal. That speeds physical recovery of the victims, but psychological or emotional healing will require time. Therefore, we are going to need to leave our "halfway houses" operational after we have concluded the hunter phase of the operation. The biggest problem I anticipate with that is oversight of the mid level administrators left in charge.

  The scope of that, in terms of resources and administration, is daunting. It's a good thing that The Order of the Black Swan is well-heeled because my projections of potential costs are staggering. My projections are based on fantasy numbers as we have no way of estimating how many virus victims remain at large in the world.

  Of course costs could be reined in, considerably, if The Order took the same just-turn-them-loose approach as prison systems. But, because The Order adheres to its own doctrine which involves a far stricter code of morality than most religions, it has pledged rehabilitation of the cured regardless of expense. Naturally, I am more than proud to work for this organization.

  We are like fishermen who go out every day and cast our nets. Perhaps we will be rewarded with a big haul. Perhaps we will return with a few of the lost who may be restored to the living. Perhaps we will be frustrated and have nothing to show for our time and energy.

  At the close of each day, I collect and analyze reports of how many victims were recovered. I then coordinate with the local heads of operations on where to take them and how to transport them. I wish this task force had an organizational wizard as capable as Farnsworth from Jefferson Unit. How that would simplify my life.