34

BY TWO FORTY-FIVE we were in a maternity room at St. John's hospital. If I'd been further along someone might have called it a birthing room, but not in front of me, not if they wanted to live. To say that I was not happy to be there was an understatement of amazingly gigantic proportions.

Dr. North had taken one look at the crowd with me, and managed a private room for the exam. Or maybe he'd known me well enough to arrange it ahead of time. The room had pink flowered wallpaper, and all the furniture tried to be homey, or at least to pretend we were in a nice hotel. All except the bed. The bed was nicer than most, but it still had railings, and one of those trays on wheels at the foot of it. It was still a hospital bed no matter how dolled-up the surroundings might be.

I wasn't lying in the bed. I was pacing the room, because we were waiting for the blood test results. We'd find out in minutes just how bad the news was going to be.

Micah was in a chair in the corner, staying out of my way. Smart man. We had two werelions with us, one standing quietly against a wall, and the other in the room's only other chair, reading. Joseph had shown up with six werelions for me to choose from. Joseph seriously didn't like Haven, Auggie's lion, and was hoping I'd pick other, less dominant lions to play with. Okay by me. But how do you choose from relative strangers? How do you choose the ones who will at the very least let you change them, violently, into their animal forms. How do you trust that they won't fight you?

Joseph assured me and Jean-Claude, "I picked submissives, as I discussed with Jean-Claude. I think they'll be like Nathaniel was for you once, for the ardeur."

"What's that supposed to mean?" I'd asked.

"I think you'll be able to feed the ardeur from them without full sexual contact. If I understand how the ardeur works, it's only dominance and power that keeps you from feeding from a kiss."

"That's the theory," I said.

They all seemed soft and unfinished and too fragile for my life, but I chose two of them. Travis and Noel; blondish and brunette respectively. Travis was a business major and Noel an English major. Noel wore glasses and had a test Monday. He'd brought books to study. Travis just brought himself.

Noel was reading for his test and ignoring everything around him. Travis was watching everything with those pale brown eyes of his. He watched the way cops watch, as if he were memorizing everything. He seemed particularly interested in Richard.

My bodyguard shift had changed over, so Claudia and Lisandro were in the far corner near the door, doing that bodyguard casual that was almost a slump, but not quite. If either of them had ever been military or police, it never showed. They were just bad-asses, and that was enough. There were two more guards outside the room, by the door, which Dr. North had objected to, but Claudia had looked at him hard, and he'd okayed it. One of the guards outside the door was Graham, the other a werehyena that I didn't know. Ixion was his name, though he said it like he hated it, and hadn't had it long. Narcissus had more fun than he should have, passing out names to some of his new men. Ixion was so ex-military that he still had the haircut, and looked uncomfortable in civilian clothes.

We didn't really need four bodyguards, but it was the only way Claudia could see to get us a wolf who would shift for me at the hospital if I needed it, without letting Richard know that none of us trusted him to take my beast in an emergency. Graham was my wolf in the hole, so to speak, and Ixion got to come along because Claudia preferred all the guards to be in pairs. If we were pretending, we had to make it good pretend.

"You're going to wear yourself out, Anita," Richard said.

"Then I'll wear myself out," I snapped, and knew that I snapped, and didn't have nerves left to care.

He pushed away from the wall, and walked toward me. He reached out, as if he'd hug me, or comfort me.

"Don't," I said, and kept walking until the window made me stop and turn around.

"I just want to help, Anita," he said.

"Pacing helps," I said, not looking at him. Why couldn't he understand that I just wanted to be left the fuck alone? Micah understood it. Nathaniel had wanted to come, but shapeshifting so early had exhausted him. Once you hit animal form you usually spend between six and eight hours in it; if you shift back early it comes with a price. If he was going to be any good tonight he needed rest. I'd left him tucked in with Damian, so they could both feel better before nightfall.

Richard touched my shoulder as I went past. I jerked away from him and kept on walking. If we could have figured out a way to bring Damian with me, we would have. He helped me be calm, and I needed it. But vampires do not travel well in daylight.

"If you don't calm down," Richard said, "you may call your beast. You don't want that, not here."

I stopped and glared at him. "It would take care of the problem though, wouldn't it?"

"You don't mean that," he said.

"The hell I don't."

"Ulfric." It was Travis, from his corner of the wall.

Richard turned to him.

"Ulfric, she's burning off her nervous energy by pacing."

"I know that," Richard said in a less than friendly voice.

"If you make her stop pacing, then where will the energy go?"

Richard opened his mouth, shut it, and nodded. "You've made your point. I guess it's making me nervous to watch her pace."

"Then don't watch," Travis said, as if it were the easiest thing in the world.

Richard drew a deep breath, and said, "I'm going to get some air. I'll be right outside, I promise."

I paused in the pacing to say, "I know you will."

He nodded, and he walked out. When the door was shut behind him, Travis said, "Thank God. One of you that nervous is enough for a room this size."

I looked at him. "Is Richard that nervous?"

Micah laughed. "Yes."

I hugged my arms tight. "I guess I'm so nervous that I didn't notice."

"You're entitled to be nervous," Claudia said from near the door.

I nodded, but not like I believed it. There was a knock on the door. I jumped, and turned toward the door, my fingers digging into my own arms. I wasn't hugging myself now, I was clinging, as if my fingernails were digging into that last piece of rock ledge before you fall screaming into the abyss.

Graham opened the door enough to stick his head in, and said, "The doctor is here."

"Let him in," Claudia said, and her voice held tension. Was I making everyone crazy with nerves?

Dr. North came in, with a glance at Ixion, still by the door. "Your men are making the nurses and patients a little nervous. Could they come in the room?"

I looked at Claudia. She was the one in charge. She nodded, and sent Lisandro to open the door and invite Graham and Ixion inside. Graham just found a piece of wall to hold up. He gave me a nervous smile that I think was meant to be comforting. Ixion scowled at the entire room, and didn't seem to know where to stand. The room was getting a little crowded.

"The window, Ixion," Claudia said. "Not everything that hunts us comes through doors." We weren't really in that much danger from direct attack, but it gave the man somewhere to stand that was far away from the bed and whatever we'd be doing. Though if there was a pelvic exam coming up, then everyone who couldn't be the father was leaving.

When Ixion had settled against the window, Dr. North looked around the room. "Do you want this discussed in front of everyone?"

"You just had me bring two extra people inside, doc."

He smiled. "I mean, maybe you'd want some of them to go to the cafeteria."

I sighed, and shook my head. How could I explain that if the news was bad enough I might need one, or all, of my support staff? I couldn't, so I didn't. "Just spit it out, doc, okay? The suspense is getting to me."

He nodded, adjusted his glasses. The door opened behind him, and Richard came in. "Did I miss anything?"

I shook my head.

"Anita," Dr. North said, "you're going to bleed if you don't stop digging your nails into your arms."

I stared down at my hands as if they'd just appeared at the end of my arms. My fingers were stiff with tension when I peeled them away from my arms. Little half moons from my fingernails decorated my skin. Almost blood, almost.

Richard offered me his hand. I hesitated, then took it. The energy spiked between us; we were both too nervous to be of much help to each other. He shut down, shielded up, and his hand was just warm and real in my hand. I appreciated the effort on his part, after he'd seen what I'd done to my own arms, but I finally lost the battle not to look behind me at Micah. I was too scared to play to anyone's ego. Too scared not to want to wrap myself in as much comfort as I could find.

Micah came to my other hand. Richard stiffened, not wanting it, and not able to hide that he didn't want it, but he didn't throw a fit. I squeezed his hand, and bumped my head against his shoulder to let him know how much the effort meant to me, because it did. It really did. The extra attention earned me a smile, that smile that brightened his whole face. The smile that once I'd have given my heart to see.

I turned back to the doctor, clinging to both of them, and feeling better for it. I'd have liked to play it cool, but I clung to their hands as if they were the last pieces of wood in a drowning ocean.

"I had them run the blood work a second time, Anita."

"That can't be good," I said.

"Is this where you ask her to sit down?" Claudia asked.

Dr. North glanced at her. "She can sit down if she wants." He turned back to me, with a smile. "Do you want to sit down?"

"Do I need to sit down?"

His smile widened, and he glanced at the men on either side. "I don't think so, but if you do, I think you've got enough support." He nodded at Micah and Richard.

"Just tell me, doc," I said. My voice strained, but normalish. Points for me.

"Can I be absolutely candid in front of everyone in this room?" he asked.

I fought the urge to scream, and managed to say, "Yes, yes, just say it. God, please, just say it."

He nodded, again. "Are you aware that you have lycanthropy?"

I nodded, then frowned. "I'm aware that I'm carrying lycanthropy."

"Funny you should say it that way," he said. "Your blood work is just unique, Anita."

"I learned a few weeks ago that I'm carrying leopard, wolf, lion, and something that the doctors couldn't even identify."

He gave me a look. "You know that it's impossible to carry more than one strain of lycanthropy. They cancel each other out. You can't catch it more than once."

I nodded again, squeezing the hands that held me. "I know all that. It's a medical miracle, yadda-yadda-yadda, just get to the pregnancy part. Do I have Mowgli syndrome, or Vlad's syndrome?"

He gave me very good eye contact, way too serious, and said, "Yes, as far as the tests can tell us."

My knees went, and I might have hit the floor, but Micah and Richard caught me. Someone brought one of the chairs up, and the men lowered me into it. They kept their hands on mine, and each of them put a hand on a shoulder, as if they didn't trust me not to fall forward. I wasn't that bad, not yet. Not yet.

"What do you mean, 'as far as the tests can tell'?" Micah asked.

"The two syndromes are like lycanthropy; you can't have both. A fetus can't carry both Vlad's and Mowgli syndrome. If Anita weren't carrying four different kinds of lycanthropy, a medical impossibility, I'd say we might have twins, but because of the other blood work, and some of the other tests..."

His mouth kept moving, but all I could hear in my ears was the blood roaring through it. Richard and Micah helped me put my head between my knees, and kept me from falling out of the chair. The head between my knees helped after a few moments. But I was glad for their hands on me, holding me in place. I don't faint, but I'd passed out before, and this felt awfully similar. Jesus, twins. Talk about karmic payback, with interest. Twins with two of the worst birth defects known to modern science. Sweet Mary, Mother of God, help me on this one.

Dr. North's voice came from just in front of me. He was kneeling by me. "Anita, Anita, can you hear me? Anita!"

I managed to nod my head.

"I don't want to give you false hope here, because to my knowledge the only way to test positive for these syndromes is to be pregnant, but you tested negative for pregnancy. Twice."

I raised my head, slowly; one, because it was as fast as I could move it safely, and two, because I didn't believe I'd heard what I'd heard. "What?" I asked, in a voice that didn't sound like me at all.

He was kneeling in front of me, and he was tall enough and me short enough that we had perfect eye contact. His face was sincere, worried around the edges. He spoke slowly, carefully. "You tested negative for pregnancy."

I frowned at him. "But you said..."

He nodded. "I know. I don't understand the test results either. In fact, the nurses and interns are arm-wrestling right now for who gets to help me do an ultrasound."

"Arm-wrestling?"

"Do you want the truth?"

"Yeah."

"No matter what happens with the ultrasound this is a medical first, as far as any of us know. Either you aren't pregnant, and you've tested positive for two syndromes that we thought needed a pregnancy to test positive. Or you are carrying twins, from different fathers, and for some reason our tests deny that you're pregnant. Unusual enough. And don't forget, as we discussed on the phone, the Mowgli baby could be viable in weeks, but the other baby wouldn't be."

I just stared at him.

"What do you mean, doctor?" Richard asked it.

He gave an abbreviated lecture on Mowgli, and the potential for a speedy pregnancy. "Or something about Anita's blood work makes her test positive for all of it." He looked at me, still on his knees. "Are you a lycanthrope? I mean, do you shapeshift?"

I shook my head, then added, "Not so far."

"What does 'not so far' mean?" he asked.

"It means, I came close."

Micah said, "We thought she was going to shift earlier today."

"How long has she been carrying multiple strains of lycanthropy?"

Micah glanced at me. I shrugged. "About six months, we think. When she didn't shift, we just assumed she hadn't caught it."

Dr. North nodded as if that made sense. "Logical, up to a point. The literature says the first full moon and you shift, period. But you're saying she's had six full moons, and nothing."

"Don't talk about me like I'm not here," I said.

"I'm sorry, Anita. I thought I'd give you a few minutes to recover."

"I'm as recovered as I'm going to get," I said. I took in a deep breath and let it out slow. I pushed at their hands. "I can sit up, I'm okay."

"Anita"--and this time it was Micah--"let us help, please."

I tried to find the energy to get grumpy about it, but I didn't have it to spare. "Fine, just hold me, don't hold me down in the chair. It's like being trapped." Trapped, yeah, that about covered it.

Micah held his hand down, and after a heartbeat, I took it. Richard did the same on the other side, and I took his hand, too. I was being brave, but if the news kept being so interesting, I might need something to hold on to.

"The blood work results came back with the same results on all the tests twice. Since according to everything we think we know, that's impossible, I want to do an ultrasound. The ultrasound will show whether you're pregnant or not. We'll be able to see it. If we don't see it, then you aren't pregnant. The home test was a false positive, and the blood work is right."

"And if I am pregnant?"

He fought his face, trying to find some bedside manner that would fit. "Then we'll do this."

"Two babies, one that may grow so fast that it will be ready to deliver in weeks, and a second baby that may try to eat its way out of me, or eat its twin." My voice was mine again, matter-of-fact. I could have been talking about what to have for dinner.

Someone said, "Jesus." Richard's hand tightened on mine until it almost hurt, but I didn't tell him to let go. I wanted to feel him there. Micah added a second hand, holding my arm, too. At least neither of them told the big lie, that it would be all right. It wasn't going to be all right.

Dr. North blinked at me. It's never good to see your doctor do that slow oh-my-God blink. "I think that would be worst-case scenario, Anita. Let's get the ultrasound done, then we'll know what we're dealing with." He stood up, shaking out his pants legs, and not meeting anyone's eyes. I think I'd been a little too accurately pessimistic for Dr. North. Me, being too pessimistic, hell, yeah.

35

I GOT TO lie down on the bed. Doc North put the railings down so he could get the ultrasound equipment and himself close enough. The railings on the other side went down so that the crowd could gather round. He hadn't been exaggerating about the interns and nurses arm-wrestling. Well, maybe about the method of choosing, but they all wanted to be there. We were making medical oddity, if not medical history, no matter what happened. I felt like a display at the zoo.

Dr. North beat me to it, by saying, "We don't need this many people."

One of the interns said, "Let's clear some of her people out."

I looked right at him, and said, "Get out!"

He started to argue.

Dr. North said, "Get out."

The intern got out. The remaining junior doctors were way more polite.

The nurses got squeezed out completely, though one of the doctors was a woman.

Claudia saved the day, a little, by saying, "Anita, he was an asshole, but for this, we can get some of us outside. I'm going to assume," and she glared at the white coats, "that some of these people are here to help out. Regardless of what the ultrasound shows, we don't have the medical expertise to offer suggestions." She motioned her people out, saying, "We'll be right outside if you need us."

She called to Travis and Noel. "The two of you, come with us."

"We're not guards," Travis said. "Joseph gave us to Anita, not to you."

"Now is not the time to be a pain in the ass, Travis," I said; my voice wasn't calm anymore. It was starting to crumble round the edges.

He didn't argue after that. He just walked out. Noel followed him, clutching his book and his backpack. Claudia gave me a look before she went out. I almost called her back in, but didn't. We weren't close friends, but I trusted her. I trusted Micah, and to a point I trusted Richard. But they weren't neutral parties, and we might need a cooler head, one not so personally involved. The door closed behind her before I could decide to say Stay. Decision made.

Dr. North started sending interns out, until we were down to three. That left enough room for Micah and Richard to stand near the head of the bed on the opposite side of the ultrasound stuff. I had only one hand to offer, and Micah got that. Richard ended up gripping my shoulder, but bless him, he didn't argue about it. Maybe grown-up reality had finally hit us all, and the squabbling would stop. We could hope.

I'd had to take my jacket off, which showed the gun and its shoulder holster. I was using the extra belt I'd kept at Jean-Claude's, but I was down two, so I'd have to send Nathaniel shopping for more leather belts soon. The lone female intern kept looking at the gun, with quick flashes of her eyes, as if she'd never seen one before.

I had to slide the belt off, and unhook the bottom part of the shoulder rig, so the doctor could snake my jeans down around my hips. The gun didn't stay put when I lay back on the bed, and I had to use both hands to pull it down. I suppose I could have taken it off and let Micah hold it, but I wanted the gun touching me. It was the only security blanket I had with me, except for Micah and Richard. And since both of them were a little responsible for my being in this mess, well, I was having mixed feelings about clinging to anyone who could even remotely have gotten me pregnant. For the first time, I wondered if a vasectomy on a lycanthrope was an absolutely sure thing.

"This is going to be cold," Dr. North said, before he squirted clear gel all over my stomach. It was cold, but it gave me something else to occupy my mind, and I was taking it.

"Micah had a vasectomy about three years ago. We'd discounted him as the possible father, but he is a lycanthrope, I mean..."

Dr. North looked at Micah. "Did he just burn the ends or did you put in silver clips?"

"Both, and I was tested about six months ago and came up clean."

"I've heard about using silver clips; are you aware that there've been two cases of silver poisoning from vasectomies like yours?"

Micah shook his head. "No, I wasn't aware."

"You might let your doctor run a blood test for silver levels, just to be safe." Dr. North looked down at me, and his face was all soft. Good bedside manner. He held up a chunky piece of plastic. "I'm going to run this over your skin. It doesn't hurt."

I nodded. "You explained how it works, doc, just do it."

He started running the chunky wand over my stomach, spreading the clear gel around as he worked. I watched the little TV screen behind him. He was glancing at it, too. It was gray, white, and black, and fuzzy. If it had been my television at home I'd have been calling the cable company and raising hell. The images seemed to make more sense to him than to me, because he'd glance and move the wand. Then he just started moving the wand without looking at it, looking only at the screen.

The tallest intern said, "Well, damn." He sounded terribly disappointed.

North didn't even glance at him. He just said, "Get out."

"But..."

"Now," and my kindly doctor sounded as mean and serious as I'd ever heard him. He might have good patient manners, but I was beginning to get the idea that his bedside manner ended by the bedside. Fine with me.

"What's wrong?" Richard said. He was leaning over me, trying to decipher the images.

I asked. "What are you seeing that I'm not?"

"Nothing's wrong, Mr. Zeeman," Dr. North said without looking at him. "And what am I seeing? Nothing."

"What does that mean, nothing?" Micah asked, and for the first time I heard a thread of tension in his voice. That iron control, cracking just a little.

North turned back to me with a smile. "You are not pregnant."

I blinked up at him. "But the test..."

He shrugged. "A rare, very rare, false positive. Anita, you're outside normal parameters on every other test we've run, why should we be surprised if a home pregnancy test gets a little confused with your internal chemistry?"

I stared up at him, not willing to believe it yet. "You're sure. I'm not pregnant."

He shook his head. He put the wand back on my stomach. He made a slow circle of a surprisingly small area. "We'd see it here. It would be tiny, but we would see it, if it were there to see. It's not."

"Then how did I come back positive for Mowgli and Vlad's syndrome?"

"I don't know for certain, but I would guess that the same enzymes the test looks for would come back positive if you yourself were a lycanthrope. It's designed to test human mothers, not mothers who are already lycanthropes."

"What about the Vlad's syndrome?" This from the female intern.

North frowned at her. "We'll discuss the case when the patient has had her questions answered, Dr. Nichols."

She looked suitably chagrined. "I'm sorry, Dr. North."

"No, she's got a point," I said, "what about the Vlad's syndrome?"

He touched my chin, moved my head so Requiem's bite marks showed. "Do you donate blood on a regular basis?"

"Yes," I said.

"We're testing for enzymes in the blood at this stage, Anita. I've never read a study on what regular blood donation does to blood test results. We know it can cause anemia, but beyond that, I don't think anyone's really studied it."

"May I ask a question, please?" It was the female intern, Nichols.

North gave her a cold look. "It depends on the question, doctor." He said the doctor part like it was an insult. I was seeing a whole new side of my doctor.

"It's not about the pregnancy, but about the bite."

"You can ask." He made it sound like he wouldn't if he were her, but Nichols was made of sterner stuff, and didn't back down, though she looked nervous bordering on scared.

"There's a lot of bruising around the bite. I thought it was just two neat puncture marks."

I looked at her. "You've only seen bite marks in the morgue, right?" I made it a question.

She nodded. "I took a preternatural forensics course."

"What are you doing in obstetrics?" I asked.

"Nichols is going to be one of the first doctors we'll graduate with a specialty in preternatural obstetrics."

I frowned at them both. "I'd think that would be a very limited specialty."

"Growing every year," North said.

I answered her question. "A vampire bite is like any other wound; if death results from the bite, then you don't get the same bruising. It can leave just two neat puncture wounds, because once the fangs go in, the blood flows easily from the anticoagulant in their saliva. It's drinking, not really eating. Some of the older vamps pride themselves on being able to leave no marks but the two puncture marks. Younger vamps will leave more impressions of teeth, but it's rare for them to break the skin, except with the fangs. The few times I've had vamps leave bite marks that involve more than the fangs, they were going for pain, not just feeding. They wanted it to hurt."

"We saw one body that they thought a vampire and a wereanimal had attacked, because they got impressions of fangs, but the collarbone and neck area were savaged."

I shook my head, and now that North had brought the wound to my attention, it ached a little. Requiem hadn't been a gentleman about this bite. In the heat of his need, he'd done more than just insert fangs.

"I don't know the case, but it could have been just a vampire."

She shook her head. "It was a lot of damage."

I held out my right arm with its mound of bite marks at the bend. "Vampire," I said. I pulled down the neck of my T-shirt, stretching the neck out a little, so I could show her the scars on my collarbone. "Different vampire. He broke my collarbone, and worried at the wound like a terrier with a rat."

She paled a little, but said, "I would love to contact the forensics program and suggest you come and lecture. I think just seeing your scars and talking to you in more detail might help coroners and medical examiners across the country in correctly attributing the damage on some of the victims." She started to reach out, then stopped herself.

I said, "You can touch the scars, if you want."

She glanced at North; he gave a small nod. She touched the collarbone scar, very tentatively, as if it were more intimate than it should have been. At the bend of my arm, she trailed her fingers over those scars like she was memorizing them. She trailed down to the claw marks lower on the arm. "Lycanthrope?"

"Shapeshifted witch, actually."

Her eyes got wide. "A real shapeshifted witch, with an animal skin object, not a lycanthrope?" She was excited about it, and I was impressed that she knew the difference; most people didn't.

"Yeah."

She finally touched the cross-shaped burn scar, a little crooked now because of the claw marks. "This should mean you're a vampire, but you aren't."

Nice that someone was sure. Out loud, I said, "Some vampire's flunkies amused themselves by branding me while we waited for their master to wake for the night."

She gave me wide eyes. "I would love to talk to you at greater length. Thank you so much for answering my questions at a time like this."

"I fall into lecture mode pretty easy," I said. "I'm used to being the resident expert on the preternatural."

"Thank you," she said, and sounded like she meant it.

I finally turned back to North. I searched his face. "I'm not pregnant, you promise, your fucking word of honor, that I'm not pregnant?"

He smiled at me. "I swear, my hand to God, that there is nothing inside you but you. You are not pregnant."

I'd needed Nichols's distraction to give my mind time to process. I'd needed time to let it sink in. I turned to Micah and Richard. I looked from one to the other of them.

The other intern was using a towel to wipe the goop off my tummy. I let him do it. I stared up at two of the men in my life, and said, as if they hadn't heard, "I'm not pregnant."

"We heard," Micah said, smiling.

"Well, say something," I said.

Richard said, "What do you want us to say?"

"Are you disappointed? Happy? Relieved?"

"We're waiting for you to tell us what reaction won't piss you off," Micah said.

For some reason that made me laugh, and the laughter turned to crying, though I had no idea why. I curled on my side and wept, while they tried to hold me. Dr. North and the interns left us to it. Left me to cry away the stress and fear, and underneath that, a tiny, tiny piece of regret.