Eighth Grave After Dark (24 page)

“What the fuck?” Osh asked me.

He grinned down at me from up high. It actually wasn't so deep as the fall that lasted forever would have me believe, but it was deep enough to make getting me out of there a problem.

There it was again. A pain across my stomach and abdomen that crept around to my back. Crap on a cracker. I was in labor.

“So, guys,” I said, looking up at heads in a circle. It would have been comical if— Who was I kidding? It was comical. “My water broke. I'm in labor, so if we could just hurry this along. Also, I think I broke a rib. Or two. And possibly my hips. And my ankle hurts.”

“The way I see it,” Osh said, “you got yourself into this mess. You can get yourself out of it.”

Cookie whacked the back of his head.

“Just kidding.”

“Who's the girl?” Quentin asked, his signs difficult to read from my vantage.

I tried to sign back, to no avail. “Amber, can you tell Quentin this is Mo? She's mute but uses mostly home signs. I need a Deaf interpreter.”

She relayed my message and I could hear Artemis whimpering in the background. I was surprised she wasn't down here with me. After a moment, Quentin nodded.

“Okay,” I said, looking at Mo, “are there any neighbors close by with a rope of some kind?”

“Yes,” she said, pointing repeatedly. I'd been at the convent all this time but had no way of visiting our neighbors. Even if I could have ventured out, we were trying to keep to ourselves, to allay any questions our new neighbors might have about why we were living there, so I had no idea what lay beyond our holy border. “Quentin, can you let her lead you to them? We need rope and boiling water.”

“Why boiling water?” he asked.

“I don't know. They just always boil water when someone's having a baby.”

“Not the boiling water,” Reyes said to Quentin. “But we do need rope or ties or, better yet, mountain climbing gear, but that's aiming high.”

He nodded and Mo disappeared to lead them to the closest neighbors. Hopefully they'd have at least one item on our list.

“Can you lift me out of here?” I asked Reyes, only half teasing.

He didn't smile. “How are you?”

“I'm okay. I need some ibuprofen. Or some morphine.”

He nodded. “I've called Katherine.”

“Katherine the Midwife. You have to say her full name.”

“She's on the way,” he continued without even cracking a smile. I was losing my touch. “But it'll take her almost an hour to get here.”

“Okay. I'll wait,” I said, just as another spasm ripped through me. It made breathing impossible with the rib situation. I grabbed hold of a tree root—hopefully—nearby and squeezed.

“Lower me down,” I heard someone say. “I was a pediatrics nurse, and I even helped deliver a few babies in my day. I need to check her.”

No way. They were going to put me in an enclosed area with Denise?

“This won't hold,” Reyes said.

“It won't hold you, but it'll hold me. We're risking the baby's life.”

“If it doesn't and you fall onto her—”

“I won't. I'm the smallest one here besides Amber, and I'm pretty sure she wouldn't know what to look for.”

I drifted away again, wondering how far under the dirt the bones were. Someone needed to know that they were here.

I looked up to tell them, but found myself staring at a butt. A butt I'd recognize anywhere. It was Denise's, and she was being lowered with sheets that had been tied together. She was so going to fall on me. I closed my eyes as dirt tumbled down on me, and it felt good and I fell into oblivion again until an excruciating pain jerked me out of it.

“I hate labor!” I yelled, but it came out as a whisper.

“Here,” I heard Denise say before feeling the rim of a water bottle at my mouth. She'd brought Katherine the Midwife's case with her. “I called Gemma. She's on the way, sweetheart. You just hang in there.”

I pushed it away. “Were you possessed? Is that why you're being nice to me?”

She laughed softly. Like laughed. At something I said. Oh yeah. She was possessed. Bedeviled. Entangled in Satan's snare.

She lifted a bottle to my mouth again. “Just a tiny sip,” she said. “Once you go into hard labor, you can't eat or drink anything. I need to see how far along you are, but it's too cramped.”

“I was fine until you showed up.”

“Can you get onto your knees?”

Now she was just expecting miracles. “My femurs have been shoved into my hip sockets.”

“If that were true, you would be screaming in agony. You may have pulled some tendons, though, so be very, very careful.”

She was standing over me and slowly slid to her knees. Moving one of my legs, she parted it at the knee, and while it hurt, it wasn't excruciating. She tried the other one, with the same results. “If I pull your arms, can you grab hold of my shoulders and get into a crouching position? It'll help with delivery if it comes to that.”

“Delivery?” I asked, my voice an octave higher than normal. “No way.”

“Hon, we may not have a choice. We need to be prepared.”

“Like the Boy Scouts.”

“Exactly.”

“Okay, I can try.”

“First we're going to have to get your pants off.”

“Oh, hell no,” I said, suddenly self-conscious. “We have an audience.”

“And we,” she said, smiling at me, “have a sheet. Several, in fact.”

With Denise's help, I got onto my knees and we managed to get my pants off me.

“Can't the guys just lift me out of here with the sheets?”

“No, it's too big of a risk. If you fall again—”

“You could have fallen on me. Why was that not a risk?”

“Charley, every risk has to be weighed. It was riskier for you and for the baby for me not to come down here and check you. But it's riskier for you both if the sheets don't hold and you fall again. What is that?”

She pointed to my left. I'd been sitting on a skull. “So that's what that was. Killed my tailbone.”

“Is that—?”

“A skull. Yes, we have to tell people. There are two bodies down here.”

Even in the low light, Denise's face paled visibly. It was awesome.

“You okay?” I asked.

“Yes, We need to get a sheet under you, then I'm going to check you.”

It took some creative thinking, but we managed to get the sheet mostly underneath me.

She'd brought gloves from Katherine the Midwife's stash and put them on. “Can you straighten up just a bit?”

I grabbed a protruding root and straightened as much as I could. A blistering hot pain shot through me. Every part of my body hurt, but she was able to get a hand between my parted legs. “Okay, you are at about a seven with ninety percent effacement.”

“Should I push? I don't want to push too early. I've heard stories.”

Reyes's heat felt good. I could feel it from where I sat.

“How long was she out?” she asked Cookie.

“About an hour.”

“An hour?” I asked, surprised. “It felt like minutes.” I fell onto my palms again, my head resting in her lap as a spasm of pain clawed at me and squeezed my midsection like I was a bottle of ketchup. I gritted my teeth and sucked air in and out through them. My hands curled around handfuls of the sheet until the pain began to subside.

“Charley,” Cookie said from overhead. “I can't believe this is happening.”

“Me neither.”

“Do you remember that time we went to the movie and that woman went into labor but she wouldn't leave because she didn't want to miss the ending and then, bam, it was too late?”

“Oh yeah. That was crazy. That ending sucked.”

“Right?”

“Do you want to tell me what you were doing out here?” Reyes asked.

“I was following you.”

“Why?”

“You snuck out of the house and—” Anther spasm ripped through me and all I could wonder was why in the world had women been doing this for thousands of years? This was barbaric. This was torture. Never again. Never again as long as I lived would I have another baby, so Beep had better be pretty awesome.

“And what?” he asked me. I realized, of course, they were trying to take my mind off the pain. Off the situation.

“And you met with Angel again.”

“Don't bring me into this,” Angel said.

“Angel!” I said, happy to see him. Or hear him, since my face was planted in Denise's crotch. “Why were you meeting with Reyes?”

“I can't tell you. He's meaner than you are.”

I lifted just to glare up at him. “Clearly you don't know me very well.”

“I would go down there to be with you, but I draw the line at childbirth.”

“Chickenshit.”

“And proud of it.”

“I would have told you,” Reyes said. “You're holding my underwear hostage. I would've had no choice.”

“Does that mean you aren't wearing any?”

“Your blood pressure is too high,” Denise said. She'd checked me with one of those wrist models that fascinated me. She looked up. “We need that rope.”

“Got it!” Amber called out. “He didn't want to lend it to us. He didn't believe we had a pregnant woman stuck in a hole. So he came to help.”

“Hey, there,” a man called down to me. A Native American, judging by his accent. “I'm thinking we might need to get some professionals out here.”

“So, yeah, I'm not wearing pants,” I said to him. “Sorry.”

“I'm okay with it if your husband is.”

Another spasm, this one harder than any of its predecessors, tried to tear me in half. I cried out between locked teeth and tried to breathe in a pattern. It didn't work.

“We need the rope,” Denise called.

“I'm getting it ready,” Reyes said.

“Got the board,” Osh said as he ran up.

He put a wide board across the opening. “What's that for?” I asked. “It will just break like the ones before.”

“Not this one,” he said. “It's from your kitchen table.”

“Oh, okay, that might work.” I doubled over and clenched my fists so hard, my fingernails pierced the flesh on my palms. “There's so much pressure,” I told Denise. “I feel like I have to push.”

“Okay, sweetheart.” She eased me back and reached between my legs to check again. “You're ready. If you have to push, push.”

“But they can pull us out now.”

She shook her head. “It's too late. We are going to have to do this here.”

I glared at her. “I don't want my baby born in a well,” I gritted out.

“I know,” she said as I pushed with all my might. I couldn't not.

She instructed me on how to do it. Push to the count of ten, then rest. Push to the count of ten, then rest. It occurred to me that she hadn't done this in a very long time. They might have changed things since her day. Maybe babies were born differently now. Maybe ten was no longer the magic number. But I couldn't argue with her. I could barely speak through the labor.

She rubbed my back until it was over and I could take a breath; then she listened for Beep's heartbeat again.

“I need the rope!” she screamed; then she shoved me back against the wall, wedged her palms against my lower abdomen, and pushed up.

I cried out in pain and tried to get her off me.

She said something I didn't comprehend; then she did it. Again. For the third time in my life, she slapped me.

My temper flared and the ground shook beneath us, causing dirt to fall on our heads. It didn't faze her.

“Look at me,” she said, her face inches from mine. “Beep is in trouble. If you push, she could suffocate.”

Alarm sobered me instantly.

“I lost her heartbeat for a few seconds. The cord could be wrapped around her throat. You may have to have a C-section.”

“We can't leave the grounds,” I said, my agony ripping a sob from the deepest core of my being. “She'll be in danger.”

“Charley, she already is. I don't understand.”

“There are—” I stopped as another sob shook through me, my horror was so great. “There are beings who want her dead. Huge supernatural beings with large razor-sharp teeth and claws the size of Pittsburgh. They'll kill her the minute we step off this ground.”

She gaped at me as though I were a child telling a tall tale. In her eyes, I could see the instinctive desire to chastise me for being ridiculous—then understanding dawned. “Charley, are you serious?”

“Trust me, I wish I weren't.”

For a long while, she sat stunned, at an utter loss for what to do. My muscles seized again. She coached me through it again, pushed my abdomen to keep the umbilical cord from strangling my daughter. As painful as that felt, I could only be grateful. Then it hit her as I tried to catch my breath and get comfortable, both of which were impossible.

She nodded and straightened. “Lean back,” she said, all business.

I sat on my heels, my knees spread as far as they could be in the cramped quarters.

She squatted down and perched elbows between my knees. “I'm going to reach in and loop the cord over her head. I'll have to push her back a little to do it. This is going to hurt, Charley.”

“I've been hurt before,” I said, determined to do anything it took.

Then Reyes was there, his incorporeal form scalding, the sensation welcome until he reached around me from behind and held me to the prickly wall of the well, forcing me back so Denise could do what was needed. She reached inside me and ripped me in two from the inside out.

I screamed, long and loud and guttural, as Reyes pinned my shoulders against the well wall. I clawed at his arms, but he was the only thing keeping me from doubling over as my stepmother pushed Beep back up and then searched for the cord. The sheet beneath us was covered in blood, as were my legs. And my shirt. And pretty much everything around me.