by Angel Payne
“Baby, I don’t think this kid will wait three more minutes, let alone thirty.”
Yeah, even when she insists on saying that.
“Holy God.” I seethe it out, realizing Disciplinary Dad Time starts right this second. When Bean kicks out again, his demand meets the plank of my restraining palm, backed by my decisive growl. “No you do not, young man.”
“Reece.” Emma’s frustrated huff has me pinning her with my glare. Still, she charges, “Do you remember what you just agreed to? What you just swore that you understood?”
Gut-deep snarl. “That was different!”
“No.” Faster and stronger than the golden bullet she’s embodying, she whips a hand around my wrist. “It’s no damned different.” Her face softens, but her grip is still a solid-gold cuff. “This is the way it’s going to happen, Zeus.” As soon as she blinks back a new slew of tears, I comprehend the deeper gist of her shaky tone. Shit. She’s known this all along. Has probably had several conversations with Bean about it already. She’s known all of this but has waited this damn long to spring it on me…
Knowing exactly how I’d react.
Just like this.
With instincts igniting in horror. Then outrage. Then at last, disgusting coils of raw fear.
Nevertheless, this goddess remains my beacon of beauty, strength, courage, and tenacity—all even more so now, since there’s a surge of a new element to her splendor as well. Maternal resolve.
“This is the way it has to happen, Reece.” She openly winces as Bean high-kicks his approval of that. “Just…just tell me you understand. Okay?”
My heart howls to do just that—but the depths of my spirit and the fibers of my fortitude are still drenched in roars of protesting rebellion. “Understand what?” I snap. “That I’m supposed to watch while this child refuses to take the normal exit out?” What the living fuck?
Though I hold back from spewing that aloud, I refuse to school my face into the same obeisance—a call I regret as soon as her whole body tenses with pain. But this time, her suffering isn’t due to a contraction or any of Bean’s kicks. Her heart is bruised—and I’m her callous assailant.
Damn it.
“Bunny,” I grate, sliding one of my hands to cradle the back of her neck. “Come on, now. Return the favor. You and him. Listen to me.” I spread my fingers up and then in, tenderly scraping them along her scalp. “What’s wrong with taking at least one part of this gig the right way?”
With a shaky exhalation, Emma lets her head rock back into my hold. With a gaze glittering as bright as abalone shells, she rasps back, “But what if it’s the wrong way?”
Narrowed gaze. Then even tighter, until I’m nearly squinting. “What do you—”
“What if…” She frantically shoots her gaze downward, but the sight of her cavorting belly only pales her skin by three more shades. Despite the bizarre sight and the nerves it unhinges for her, she goes on. “What if…it’s easier to get him out like this, than by forcing him down a dark and scary tunnel?” She raises her gaze and locks it to mine once more. “What if…he reacts to that fear by lashing out? By using any or all of the powers he’s inherited but doesn’t how to control yet?”
From the front, Cal busts out a sharp snarl. “Oh, hell!”
I twist my lips. “And now that that’s been said…”
My wife digs her hand into the front of my vest again. The tremble in her hold matches the dread in her gaze. “D-Don’t be mad.”
Shit.
I’m officially certain she’s not the only one flashing desperate fear right now—but I can do her one better. Guilt plugs so deeply into me, both my hands look tucked into dayglow-blue gloves. “Mad?” I blurt. “Velvet, does this kid have you high now?” I grab her hand and mesh our fingers back together. At any other time and in any other world, we’d be a special-effects department’s dream, my isotope digits mashed against the mini tiki torches of hers, but right now, I look at the sight with nothing but desperation and contrition. “I’m not mad, Emmalina,” I finally confess. “I’m…I’m sorry. And I’m terrified. And I’m feeling so goddamned helpless.”
I give in to a heavy wash of the latter, unable to even complete my thought. Four months ago, we stood before God and our loved ones, making vows to always be real and open with each other—but this is honesty I never thought I’d have to face. An impotence that’s worse than hell.
“Fuck!” I grate it as our bean shoves up again and Emma’s face contorts in a dozen angles. I repeat it as her torso lifts off my lap, almost as if the life inside it is pulling at her in his need to be free.
“Reece.”
Her sough interrupts my goal to invent a profanity better than the F-word. As soon as I fling my head back down, soaking up the magnificence of her beauty even in the throes of her distress, she speaks again.
“Y-You’re not…helpless.” As she speaks, she demonstrates the point—by sliding her hand to reposition mine.
Directly over the middle of her stomach.
With my forefinger straight and the rest curled in.
“I—I don’t underst—” I fall silent, darting a quizzical scowl between her face and her belly. “Wh-What the hell?” But as the words tumble out of me, mortification clings to them. The dread thickens as I really start understanding what she’s going to ask of me.
No.
What she’ll demand I do to her.
“What the hell, Emma?”
As if that’s going to hold her—or our irascible child—off.
“Reece.” A new grimace lances her face.
“No.” I jerk my hand up, twisting it into a tight fist. “No, goddamnit.” I notice Calvin twitching, as if he’s debating whether to pull over again. Wisely, the guy maintains most of his attention forward, gunning the car to an urgent but safe speed.
But not urgent enough.
“Reece.”
“No!”
“You need to do this, damn it!” I’m toast for resistance as she jerks my hand back down, forcing my forefinger back against her trembling skin. “He wants out, husband. He wants out now. And he’ll do it, no matter what it takes.”
“She’s right.” Though Cal mutters it with conviction, his shoulders are cliffs of tension and his knuckles are still coiled and pale against the wheel. “I don’t want it to be true any more than you do, man. But if that kid’s ready, he’s ready.” He finishes with a shared glance in the rearview, his eyes telling me what he doesn’t dare voice aloud. That Emma may be rasping and shaking, but her will has never been forged of stronger iron—her conviction never more focused or unfaltering. Because everything else, including me and even her own existence, pale to dim priorities behind the life that wants to break free now.
No.
That will break free.
That thought must be digitally scrawling across my forehead, because she speaks out as if following up to it. “So is he going to do this shit his way or yours?”
I wait for two seconds, hoping—in vain, I already know—that she has a third option. But I’ve got to gird my goddamned balls and accept those choices. Which aren’t really choices. Am I going to let my infant son, brilliant as he is, go into random Hulk-smash mode on my wife’s vital organs, or am I going to lead by example and show the little bugger that punches should only be a last resort?
And even then, with precision.
Precision.
Okay, yeah. That’s going to have to be my keyword here.
And even as I think it, I can’t believe it.
But I lock my teeth, square my jaw—and, most importantly, clear my mind of every last distraction except all the anatomy diagrams I’ve memorized over the last couple of months. If civilian study hours really counted toward anything, there’s a damn good chance I could qualify for an OB-GYN residency by now, anyway. I’m just putting the knowledge to use in a way that turns my ears to bells and my stomach to rocks.
But I push past both. Hard.
Before pulli
ng in a breath. Thoroughly.
Then shifting my finger on Emma’s belly. Determinedly.
And then…freezing.
Completely.
Horrifyingly.
My vision clouds. My equilibrium careens. I zero in on the sight of my index finger, prepped and resembling a powered laser pointer, but activating it any further is a thought as foreign as slitting my own throat.
“Fuck,” I choke. “No!” The mists in my vision thicken—but in the midst of them, clear as if it’s happening again, I see Kane lying prone beneath me instead. Begging me to save Los Angeles—and his sanity—by killing him with my bare hands. I battle to tell myself this isn’t the same shit at all, but the only answer from my senses isn’t helping.
This isn’t the same.
It’s worse.
Even thinking of cutting into this woman—of purposely slicing her open—is a visceral rip in my soul. A violation of my existence. And while my logic swings back with swords of common sense, I furiously and methodically snap each one.
“I can’t.” It coils up from the sea of bile in my gut, a hateful gurgle. “Velvet,” I rasp. “I—”
“Reece.” But I’m torn off my mental moorings by the anguish of her whisper—and then the taut, tormented moan with which she finishes. The Kane memories vanish like smoke, torched by the distress that takes over her whole form. “Reece. Please!” She grabs at the middle of my chest, igniting my vest and shirt until her fingertips sear my skin. Vaguely, I’m aware of the cigar-sized scorches now connecting my pecs, but there’s no time to acknowledge the pain—not when Emma’s clearly enduring so much more of it. “Intestines aren’t supposed to be trampolines, right?”
I gulp hard. “Holy fuck.”
At once, her stare sharpens. A few seconds of hope interrupt her misery. At once, I’m invaded by conflicting, wrenching emotions. There’s raging fury about her pain but consuming elation that I can do something about it. Except that my heroic duty here is going to involve…
“Goddamnit.”
It bears repeating, probably a hundred times more, but there’s no time for that. Doing the right thing doesn’t mean doing the easy thing. But Christ on a pogo stick, how many more times do I have to show the universe that I fucking get it?
Apparently—and clearly—one more.
“Hey.” With her fingertips still lodged against my chest, at least Emma’s mellowed her fingers into warm churros instead of blazing skewers. “You’re not in this alone, Dark Knight.” She lends herself a tiny smile because of the reference. “I’m right here.”
Though I’ve been working on a return smile for her, I embrace my inner Bruce Wayne and let a growl take over my throat instead. “Not cool to steal my lines, baby—even if you are Wonder Woman.”
“Nothing to steal,” she volleys. “They’re not lines.”
The space over my heart grows warmer, coming alive with a sensation I’ve never experienced before. I don’t move my stare from her gorgeous golden face, but I’m damn positive she’s lighting up everything in my chest with a mixture of liquid sun and forty-carat flecks.
“They’re simply the truth, my beautiful Zeus.” She wraps her other hand back around mine, filling all of my fingers with that incredible golden power. “We’re going to do this together, okay?” she presses. “We’re going to greet our son, face-to-face, at last. We’re going to be here with all of the same elation and connection and jubilation with which he was first created. We’re going to look at him, and kiss him, and hold him—”
“And love him.” I declare it in a thick husk, already watching the intention in her eyes. Instantly, it’s cut short by the sharp gasp on her lips. But as Bean starts up his dance party again, I soak up all of the tearful gratitude she musters across her face and pours into the pressure of her fingers. “And then we’ll tell him that, each and every day,” I go on. “The same way I’ll never stop telling you, my incredible woman.”
I stroke a hand through her hair, savoring its silky warmth. I glide that hand along the back of her neck, remembering each and every time I’ve cupped that honey-soft spot before kissing her. I do that now, brushing my lips across hers. At the same time, I inhale deeply, dousing my senses in her sunshine and summer-wind scent. I notice it all. I memorize it all.
I memorize us.
Because it’s all about to change.
As soon as I turn my forefinger into an electric scalpel and lower it to her skin.
And then through her skin.
“Aaaaahhhh!”
And then, with her shriek in my ears and her agony in my soul, slicing even deeper.
“Don’t stop. Damn it, don’t stop, Reece!”
And then obeying her—despite how it’s all but killing me. Despite how I register how she’s following my path with her fingers, seeming to mitigate her pain with solar-level heat, which is fine and dandy unless one is the guy inflicting the torture in the first place.
Christ. And I really thought my months inside the Source had forever squared away my debt to karma? Being Faline’s lab rat was barely the appetizer course for this entree of an ordeal.
Having to reach in past my wife’s intestines, enduring the slosh of her body fluids as I do.
Having to swallow back my sick as Calvin can’t, enduring his violent dry heaves and his get-me-a-bag breaths.
Having to keep going, pushing aside her bladder, to gain an unhindered view of her uterus.
And now, for the shittiest hell: having to haul in a huge breath while feeling my way along the swollen bulge.
Farther. Farther…
My hands quaver as my mind panics. Where the hell am I supposed to cut? What did all the guide books say about this? Why the fuck can’t I remember any of it? And most importantly, how far are we from home? Is there any possibility of holding off so Neeta can do it?
“Shit!” Emma’s scream coincides with a new punch from inside her uterus. The whole thing vibrates from the impact, setting off similar tremors up and down her body. “Oh, sh-sh-shit,” she repeats from between her chattering teeth.
“Holy crap,” Cal exclaims as we reach a crest with a view out to the ocean. In the distance, over the waters of the Pacific, there are bursts of red, gold, blue, and green—and I sincerely wish I could attribute the guy’s astonishment to those fireworks displays, officially heralding the arrival of the new year. But he and I have a more astounding light show to be concerned with right now.
The one emanating from the center of my wife’s body.
“Christ on fucking dynamite,” I spit. So having to stress about looking at my woman’s uterus isn’t enough. Now I’ve got to figure out how to cut the damn thing open? With it looking like an oversize magic bean, complete with the ethereal blue glow? And as long as we’ve gotten to that subject: what the living hell is going on with this shit? What does this even mean?
I’m entitled to spew that one aloud too, and I do. Not that it helps with one shred of my roiling gut, one beat of my thundering pulse, or one degree of my scalding bloodstream. I’m a mess, sitting here like one of the assholes I used to corner in back alleys, existing on a mix of raw terror and blind uncertainty—and the catatonia that fucked-up alliance can bring on.
“Damn it!” Emma digs her grip into my wrist, nearly putting a permanent indent between the two bones. “It means you’ve got to get him out, Reece. Do it,” she orders, her teeth fully bared. “Just—oh, God!”
“Oh, God.”
Our overlapping iterations are different spears on the air. Mine’s a rough, stunned croak; hers is a high, desperate scream. Her pain threatens to wither me again, until I fully recognize this shit is on me. She’s not just relying on the lightning in my fingertips. She needs the power that her love has infused into my character—and the strength it’s given my will.
But not just her.
My son is counting on it too.
I feel that now. I feel him, five times more forceful than before. His energy is a palpable power in my
senses. It hums stronger by the second, crackling like static through all my nerve endings, as I reach into the opening I’ve created.
And feel a smile breaching my lips.
As pure happiness fills my spirit.
It’s impossible to keep out, this joy and wonder and fulfillment, shining like the amber light that emanates from every inch of my astonishing woman. Yes, from inside of her too—a glow that pulses stronger and stronger, illuminating my fingers as if I’m reaching for a comet inside a nebula. If that’s the case, I’m more than ready to let this orb pulverize every cell of my being.
And the next moment, I’m pretty sure it does.
As I suck up my qualms and laser the new incision across her uterus.
As I stop for a second, wondering why there’s no reacting scream from Emma.
As I stare at the smile that breaches her lips instead…
Just as one tiny, perfect hand reaches out of the incision…
Then another, stretching the opening back a little farther. And then even wider, as those hands spread out like an angel distributing the riches of heaven…
A comparison that really isn’t one.
Because I’m damn sure I’ve just laid eyes on a piece of God himself.
The most perfect, effulgent, brilliant, magnificent piece.
It’s all right there, in the divinity of that little face. In the high strength of his cheeks, the proud jut of his chin, the brave set of his lips. In the lush mop of his white-gold hair and in the amber seriousness of his brows.
But most of all, it’s in the grand glory of his gaze. Those silver-gray depths that blink at me, already knowing me. Already seeing right through me…
Already loving me.
But not nearly as much as I love him.
Wholly. Utterly. Terrifyingly. With a capacity I never even knew I was capable of—until I met his mother. Only this is even more. An expansion of that fusion. New doors and windows flying open inside me, exposing the beauty and light of a daybreak I never imagined for myself. A purity I never thought I’d know again. A new start in my soul. A new perfection in my life.