28

EVERYONE I CONSIDERED a boyfriend or a lover left. I wanted some alone time. But truly alone was too dangerous. Requiem and some bodyguards stayed. I dressed in the bathroom, which seemed stupid since everyone had seen me naked, but I needed some privacy.

While Jean-Claude and Asher were with me, I felt utterly calm about the baby, even happy. Once they were gone the panic set back in. One of them, I wasn't sure which, had used vampire wiles on me. Or maybe, I was just picking up someone's emotions. Hell, I was bound metaphysically to so many different men, it didn't even have to be Jean-Claude's emotions I was picking up. All I knew for certain was that they weren't mine.

I got dressed in the emergency clothes I'd started keeping in Jean-Claude's room. Jeans, black T-shirt, jogging shoes, good leather belt, and enough underwear to go under it all. The belt helped hold my shoulder holster. The familiar tightness of it made me feel better. More secure. The security had little to do with being able to shoot people. Most of the people making my life hard, I loved, and didn't want to shoot. No, the gun was more psychological-better than real-life-better. Guns only work against things you're willing to kill. If you're not willing to kill, then a gun is, in some ways, a false sense of security. The wrist sheaths and silver-edged knives, that was extra security. Short of a heart blow, most of the people in my life would survive a knife. I didn't expect to argue that hard with anybody, but the wrist sheaths helped me feel better. I left the bathroom dressed and armed. Much better.

I added another thing I kept at Jean-Claude's, an extra cross. I got it out of the bedside table. It was cool against my skin, hidden under the shirt.

"I am the only monster in the room that a cross will stop, do you distrust me that much?" Requiem said from the bed.

His comment made me glance at Remus and another new werehyena sitting near the fireplace. "It's nothing personal, Requiem, but I've been visited by Belle and Marmee Noir. The cross helps keep them at bay."

"They are terrible powers."

"Yeah." I rummaged in the overnight bag until I came up with my cell phone, then headed for the bathroom.

"You can talk in front of me, Anita. I will not bear tales."

"You're blood-oathed to Jean-Claude. You'll talk if he wants you to, but frankly, I just want some privacy. Again, nothing personal, Requiem." I sighed, because this kind of shit was one of the reasons I'd been able to keep turning him down as pomme de sang. He was messy, or at least not neat, and I didn't need more emotionally messy men in my life. "Look, this isn't going to work between us if you take everything so damned personally. Fuck buddies don't fret this much, okay."

His face had closed down to that handsome blankness. "Okay," he said, and that one empty word let me know his feelings were hurt. Shit, I did not need this.

I closed the bathroom door, and used my cell phone to call my gynecologist. I'd finally realized that a little piece of plastic wasn't quite good enough. It was ninety-nine percent accurate; for this, I wanted a hundred percent. It took me nearly five minutes to convince the receptionist that I needed to talk to a nurse, or the doctor. The doctor, of course, was with a patient, but five minutes on hold snagged me a nurse.

"What seems to be the problem?" she asked in a voice that was part cheerful and part impatient.

"How accurate are those home pregnancy tests? I mean I know what the box says, but really, how good are they?"

"Very good, very accurate." Her voice had softened a little.

I swallowed hard enough that she probably heard me. "So if one comes back positive, then..."

"Then congratulations," she said.

"But it's not a hundred percent, right?"

"No, but a false positive is very rare, Ms. Blake, very rare."

"Isn't there like a blood test that's a hundred percent accurate?"

"There is a blood test, yes, but normally the doctors trust the home tests, too."

"But if I wanted to schedule a blood test, to be absolutely sure, then I could?"

"Well, yes."

"Today."

"Ms. Blake, if you're that worried, take a second home pregnancy test, but I doubt that the second test will give you a different answer. False negatives, those we see, but false positives are very rare."

"How rare?" I asked.

I heard paper rustling. "When was the date of your last period?"

"First week of September."

"Do you have the exact date?"

"No, I don't." I fought not to sound angry. Who the hell kept track to the day of their period?

"Ms. Blake, Anita, I think we need to schedule you a prenatal visit."

"Prenatal, no, I mean, yes, I mean, oh, hell."

"Anita, I talk to a lot of women. Most of them are happy about the news, but not all of them. You don't sound like this was good news to you."

"It wasn't."

"Dr. North is just coming out, I'll let you talk to him." Silence, then the sounds of movement, cloth rustling, and a man's voice. "Hey, Anita, how's my favorite vampire hunter doing?"

"Not so good today," I said, and my voice sounded small, and hurt.

"I'm sorry about that. We need to schedule you an appointment."

"I don't want to be pregnant."

He was quiet for a moment. "You're not very far along, Anita; you still have options."

"Abortion, you mean?"

"Yes."

"I can't, not unless there's something majorly wrong. I mean, I'll need to be tested for Vlad's syndrome, and Mowgli syndrome."

"I figured the Vlad's syndrome test, but you only need the Mowgli test if you've had sex with a shapeshifter while he's in animal form."

I put my forehead against the cool marble tiles of the wall, and said, "I know that."

"Oh," he said in that overly cheerful way, the way people say it when what they really want to say is OH MY GOD.' He recovered quickly; he was, after all, a doctor. "Peggy, I'm going take this in my office, transfer it, please. Hang on a minute, Anita, let's get some privacy." I listened to a mercifully short amount of Muzak, then the phone picked up, and he said, "Okay, Anita, we'll need you to come in as soon as possible." I heard paper rippling. "We had a cancellation at two o'clock this afternoon."

"I don't know if I can make it."

"If this were just a regular prenatal visit, Anita, I'd say fine, do it next week, but if we're testing for both of the syndromes, and you're telling me there's a chance, especially for Mowgli syndrome, then we need to do the blood work now."

I wanted to say I'd only had sex with one lycanthrope in animal form, just one time, but as they say, once is all it takes. "Doc, I've read up on Vlad's syndrome. I don't know as much about the other. I mean, if I really am pregnant, then it's just this little bunch of cells, right? I mean, I'd be at best two months along, right? There's no chance of the baby trying to eat its way out until it's bigger, right?" Just saying that made my stomach tight. There might be no option of keeping anything.

"Humans have a pretty long gestation period for a mammal. I am assuming mammalian shapeshifter, here?"

"Yes. Does that make a difference?"

"It can. You see, the problem with Mowgli syndrome is that sometimes the fetus grows at the rate of the animal, and not the human."

I flipped back through every biology class I'd ever had, and nowhere had I ever learned the gestation period of a leopard. It just hadn't been covered.

"Anita, talk to me, Anita."

"I'm here, doc, I just... I know if it's Vlad's syndrome that I have to abort. The baby won't live anyway, and will try to take me with it. But like I said, I'm not as clear on the other syndrome. It's a lot more rare."

"Very rare, in fact less than ten cases reported in this country. If the worst happens and it's Vlad's syndrome, then we have time to fix it. If it's Mowgli syndrome, depends on the animal." I heard computer keys clacking. "Do you know what type of shapeshifter he was?"

"It was only once, and yeah--" I stopped defending myself, and just said, "... leopard, okay, leopard." Sweet Jesus, I couldn't believe I was having this conversation.

I heard the computer keys again. "Leopard is between ninety and a hundred and six days, an average of around ninety-six days."

"So?" I said.

"A human's gestation is two hundred and eighty days."

"Still, so what?"

"So this: I'll assume you don't have severe Mowgli syndrome, or you'd know it by now. You'd be almost ready to deliver."

"You're joking," I said.

"No," he said, "but you don't have that, obviously. You could still have a less severe version of Mowgli syndrome. If you do, then the pregnancy could kick into high gear, and you could go from being barely pregnant to being ready to deliver, in a matter of days."

"You're joking."

"I'm looking at the medical literature as we speak. The Internet is a wonderful tool sometimes. Two cases in this country of women who had milder forms of Mowgli syndrome. Even with the test, Anita, all we can tell you is yes or no. Think of it like Down syndrome; we can test and know if you have it, but even an amnio wouldn't tell you the severity of it."

"Vlad's syndrome is an automatic abortion--what about Mowgli syndrome?" I asked.

He hesitated, then said, slowly, "Not automatic, no, but the birth defects can be pretty, um, severe."

"It's never good when your doctor sounds nervous, Dr. North. What am I missing that's put that tone in your voice?"

"If you have even a mild form of Mowgli syndrome, then by Monday the fetus could come up on an ultrasound as over the age limit for abortion in this state. You really do not want to be out of options on this particular birth defect, Anita."

O-kay, I thought. "Two o'clock, right?"

"Meet me at St. John's, just come straight up to the maternity ward."

My heart pounded up into my throat. "Maternity ward? Aren't you getting a little ahead of yourself there, doc?"

"At my office, we'll have to send out the blood for testing. At the hospital, we'll get all the results back much faster. Depending on the test results, if we want a closer look, the hospital is set up with the ultrasound equipment we'll want for this."

"You've got ultrasound at your office," I said.

"We do, but they've got more sensitive equipment at the hospital. We'll get more information much quicker, and speed really is of the essence here, Anita."

"Okay, I'll be there at two."

"Great."

"Your bedside manner sucks today, by the way."

He laughed. "I know you, Anita. If I didn't scare you, you'd find excuses to delay coming in."

"Did you exaggerate to scare me?" I asked.

"No, sorry, but no. I just told you more bluntly than I would normally have told a patient. But then most of my patients don't need rough treatment just to get them into the office."

"You're not wanting me in the office, doc, you're wanting to see me at the hospital. I only go to hospitals when I've gotten hurt in the line of duty."

"Are you backing out on me?" he asked.

I sighed. "No, no, I'll be there." I thought of something, and figured I should ask. "I can bring company with me to the maternity ward, right? I mean it's not like when I was a kid, and all restricted, is it?"

"You can bring a friend to hold your hand, if you want, but since we may have to do a pelvic exam, it should be a close friend."

Pelvic exam, shit. "At least one of them will be close enough to stay in the room. The rest can wait outside."

"The rest?" He made it a question.

"At least one boyfriend, maybe more, and bodyguards."

"Bodyguards? Are you in danger?"

"Almost always, but this isn't... it's not like bad guys trying to hurt me, or anything. Let's just say that I think this will be a pretty stressful visit for me, and for the foreseeable future I shouldn't be going anywhere stressful without muscle."

"Is that supposed to be a riddle?" he asked.

"Not on purpose," I said.

"You're usually pretty straightforward, Anita."

"Sorry, but this isn't something I can really explain on the phone."

"Okay, does it affect your health, and this situation?"

I thought about it, then said, "Maybe, yes. I guess it does." I realized if I shapeshifted for real that I'd lose the baby, and this entire medical emergency would be over before we'd even decided what to do about it. But I just couldn't think of a quick way to explain what had been happening to me. "Can I bring the extra people?"

"If I say no?"

"Then we have a problem."

"How many extra?"

"Hopefully no more than four." I did quick math in my head. Two bodyguards, and at least one of each beast I held inside me. "Five."

"Five," he said.

"At least two of them will be boyfriends."

"Potential fathers?"

"Yeah."

"If they're not disruptive, then I guess so."

"If anybody gets disruptive, it's gonna be me," I said, and I hung up on him. It was rude, but my nerves just couldn't take any more talk about it. I was scared, so scared that my skin felt cold with it. Cold? I touched my forehead and tried to decide if I really was cold. If I was, then I was endangering Damian, my poor vampire servant, who was the first of my metaphysical men I started draining energy from, if I went too long between feedings. Was I draining him to death, so he'd never wake from his coffin? I'd tamed the ardeur so that it wasn't as demanding; I could push it off for a few hours, but the price was high. And sometimes the price had almost been Damian's life. Theoretically, after Damian was dead then I'd start draining Nathaniel. I never wanted to find out if the theory was right.

I checked my watch: ten a.m. God, it had been a long, damn, morning. It was incredibly early for so many of Jean-Claude's vamps to be awake. So far only master vamps had woken up, and that didn't include Damian, but still... Was I already draining him, just because I hadn't fed the ardeur or eaten any breakfast? Real food helped keep the other hungers back, from the ardeur to the beasts. I hadn't even had a cup of coffee yet. It wasn't the time of day, but how long I'd been awake without eating that made it a mistake. Maybe we'd eaten a big enough meal from Auggie last night, but I couldn't chance that. I needed food. The only question was, which hunger to feed first? Sex, or coffee? Hmm, let me think.