Hard Days Night (The Firsts Book 8) (35 page)

Erin stepped closer and said, “He’s in America.  We haven’t seen anyone here yet.”

“Oh. How long has it been since you saw him last?”

“Recently.
  Doc, just please examine her and tell us why she is having pain.”

He listened to the baby’s heartbeat and
began an examination, then looked up.  “I think you’re in active labor, but I’ll need to do a more thorough examination.”

Jack nodded.  “That means I’m out of here.  Bridget, I’ll be right outside.”

Taking his hand, Mal smiled. “I know you will.”

Dr. Eimar looked up at Erin and she waved her hand. “Do your thing, Doc.  I’m staying.”

After he examined her, he looked up at Mal.  “You’re dilated.  This baby is coming.  You’re sure you’re only six months along?”

“Certain.”

Shaking his head, the doctor pursed his lips. “Well, he’s big for that, and he’s ready to come.  We could fly you to the Hospital at Turks…”

“No, just do your job.  Bring the baby, doctor,” Erin said suddenly.  “Go get something to drink and then come back.”

Dr. Eimar nodded and left.  Erin looked at Mal.

“I should have expected this.  A vampire baby wouldn’t necessarily have the same gestation period of a human baby.  We’re superior physical specimens.  It makes sense that the child would develop quicker.  Mal, my love, we are having a baby tonight.”

“You really think I’m in labor?  That it’s okay?”

“I really do, Mal.  But he has to move you to a room with no outside access because I think we’ll be here when the sun rises.”

“Okay. Okay, then, we’re having a baby.”

She came easily.  With little trouble and no crying at all, Ahmose and Mal’s little girl slipped into the world and opened blue eyes almost immediately. 

Erin and Jack watched the nearly perfect little baby wrapped in white cotton, look around the world for the first time as if she was processing everything she saw.
  When her eyes stopped on her mother’s face, Erin was certain she smiled. In spite of everything she knew about babies, it was apparent none of those things necessarily applied to a first blood child.

“She’s remarkable,” Erin said quietly as the nurse lowered the baby into her mother’s arms for the first time.

Mal wanted to respond, but she couldn’t speak.  There were no words to convey her depth of emotion.  Words weren’t necessary anyway, because now that the little girl was no longer under the stress of birth, she could send her feelings to her mother.  Mal knew in that moment that there was nothing greater or more pure and perfect that the bond of mother and child.

She’d grown this beautiful person inside of her!

Nothing could be more sacred!   Tentatively, as if she couldn’t believe she actually existed, Mal slipped a finger beneath a tiny hooked finger of her new baby.  She was so overwhelmed at this precious contact that tears began to slide from her eyes. Mal glanced up and saw the same moisture in both Erin and Jack’s eyes too.

“Hello, lovely lady,” Jack whispered.

“She says hello to you,” Mal whispered back to him.  “I can’t wait until she’s old enough to tell you that herself.”

Erin shook her head. “The years do fly.  But now, look at what you made.” 

Erin mirrored Mal’s action by lifting one of the baby’s fingers as well and studying the extraordinarily small fingernail.  “I’ve never seen such a miracle,” she commented with reverence.  “A first blood child.”

Although she’d whispered it, Jack heard what she’d said.

His head swiveled quickly.  “What does that mean, Erin?”

Caught off guard, Erin smiled. 
“Nothing.  An old Celtic saying, you wouldn’t know it.  It refers to something rare and precious beyond belief.”

Jack’s eyes went to the baby’s face, which, unaware of her supernatural parentage, even he thought seemed incredibly alert for a newborn.  “It seems right,” he agreed.

“You haven’t mentioned her name. Had you decided on one?” Erin asked.

Mal nodded.  “My mother was such a loving, spiritual, beautiful soul.  I’d like to honor her memory.  So, Brigitte, I think.  It’s fitting and feels right.”  Mal smiled and looked up at her two friends.  “My daughter approves.”

Jack stood and came around the bed to the other side to embrace both Mal and her newborn.

“Then welcome to the world, Brigitte.”

His eyes locked on the baby, Jack felt a little unsettled at the intensity of her unexpected blue eyes staring into his.  He thought that his friend was right, the newly named child seemed to approve.

“She really is the most beautiful baby I have ever seen,” he said suddenly, and realized how true it was.  While he was looking at her, the baby pushed a hand toward him, her minute fingers splayed, her eyes on his, and he knew…somehow, he knew, she was reaching for him. 
For him
.  He responded slowly, because it all seemed surreal, but when he held that tiny hand against his huge palm, everything he thought he knew about the world shifted.  Was it just this miracle of birth?  Or was this child extraordinary beyond anything he’d ever known. 
Why did
he believe that it was so?

“I’m in love with your daughter already,” he told Mal, his eyes glistening.

With a smile that seemed as knowing and deep as the baby’s, Mal slid her fingers into Jack’s soft butter-colored hair that was too long, and sexy because of that.  “Stand in line, mister.  Stand in line.”

In the lobby of the clinic, a nurse gave a look of disapproval to a man
talking too loud on his cell phone.  He looked like the classic beach bum, dressed in a flowered shirt, ballooned knee-length pants, dirty corded sandals, and his dirty blonde hair was pulled back with a blue ribbon-like tie of some kind.

He shot her the same look back and walked outside.

Once his call finally connected, he spoke softer.

“Yeah, Mr. Canzone.
  I’m outside of the clinic.  She had the baby.”  He listened for a moment, then responded.  “Sure, uh, I think it’s healthy and she seems to be okay, too.  Yes, sir, I’ll keep an eye on her and report anything that changes.  Sir, how long am I going to have to stay here?”

It was a mistake to ask, Ballgame knew it as soon as he asked.  He tried to fix it, but he knew it wasn’t possible.  He just fucking hated this little tropical shithole with about a billion lizards everywhere he went, even when he tried to piss.

“I’m sorry, sir, I meant no disrespect, it’s just, I wondered how long the assignment was going to last, that’s all.”

Fuck
me
, Ballgame thought,
I’m probably toast now
. 

IN SOUTH AFRICA

Ahmose hadn’t slept well in days.  He sat up, once again, blown from sleep, but this time, something grabbed at him.  Something insisted on his attention
, something he did not understand and could not recognize.  It didn’t matter, though, whatever it was pounded on his mind.  He had no choice but to listen.

What
did this mean?
  His heart was racing, and it felt as if little electrical shorts were lighting up his brain.   He had never felt anything like this in all of his centuries.   It felt like something was trying to get inside his mind, and although he tried to force the foreign sensation away, it came harder, so much so, that, hands wrapped around his temples, he surged out of bed and across the room.

It was still day, he could feel that, so escaping the enclosure of his dwelling was not possible.  In spite of the danger of daylight, he almost opened the door and went
out anyway.  It seemed as if reason had stopped and terror had taken control of his actions.

But he pulled himself away from the doorway, backed up until he dropped onto a sofa.

“Stay down,” he insisted out loud, to himself, although he wasn’t sure he would listen. 

Something, something, something…was out there, driving him towards it
. That was it!
  He was caught in a spiritual vortex that he could not understand…he needed a seer.  He needed Cherise.

Should he wake her?  It was a few hours earlier in Iceland, and the household had likely just gone down for rest.  Was this imminent?  They couldn’t pursue it anyway until the sun dropped, so he should try to get back to sleep,
then contact Cherise and David when they were all rested and fed tonight.

Whatever it was that begged for attention tore at Ahmose all day.  He managed a few hours of sleep in between startled awakenings and roaming around aimlessly from one side of his dwelling to the other.

The minutes never moved more slowly.  What on the Mother Earth could be attacking the mind of a child of the moon as powerful as Ahmose?   Whatever this was easily scratched itself into his consciousness and demanded he attend.  He could admit, but only to himself, that this strange and unsettling event frightened him. 

What if he was losing sanity?  It had happened to two other first bloods from this community.  What made him special enough to escap
e that fate over his subjects?

There was no real rest now, and he accepted that.  One thing he’d learned was that when something demanded control, sometimes the best way to find the agenda was to let it take the reins.  For lack of a better choice, Ahmose
laid back down on his bed and cleared his mind.

He let it in
.

At first, he was overwhelmed.  First blood magics swirled in his mind’s eye
, like cosmic storms, pushing and pulling as if he knew what to do with them. 

So at least he knew something now that he did not know before.  This had to do with first blood, with his race, his people, perhaps his destiny.  Ahmose was grateful that the magics had revealed themselves to him.  This, he could manage.  The magics would only come if they had purpose, and would only go when they achieved their goal.  First blood magics were perhaps the most powerful force on Mother Earth. 

First blood magics came from deep within the Mother and from well past the Sky.  They were ancient, universal, and ultimately, human. The magics were the base of every first blood born to the sun or the moon, every first blood vampire forming the collective power, as he himself was part of the whole.

Now, wrapped in the overwhelming magics, like recognized like, and Ahmose was no longer afraid.  But he still did not know why this was happening and what it wanted him to know.  In spite of
this unexpected reconciliation with this meteoric intrusion, he knew that he still needed Cherise.  A few more hours now, and he would call her to come.  As always, he knew that she would.

When night fell again, after Cherise was on her way, Ahmose
would secure what mattered most in this village, which were the children.  He knew they were as safe in this protected village as they would be anywhere else on earth. But any time something new like this happened, it bore scrutiny to make certain it posed no threat to the village or to the first bloods who called this paradise on Mother Earth, home.

Sleep, now, would not come.  His mind wore a whirlwind inside so he knew…this was not a time for rest.

A fine wine, though, yes.

Chapter 17

“It’s impossible to believe that this baby is only a day old,” Jack said, as he held Brigitte.  She gurgled happily in his arms, the odd bright blue eyes unexpected in a newborn’s face.  He would swear she was completely aware of him, and wouldn’t have been at all surprised if she said his name.

The sun’s early rays began to scatter across the gentle sea, and Mal watched her daughter carefully.  Erin was inside, in the basement, but she’d told Mal that she thought the baby would be okay with daylight. 

“I know very little about first blood
babies,” she’d told Mal last night as they waited to be released from the clinic.  “I had a conversation with a sexy first blood years ago in Paris.”  Erin’s eyes glittered.  “He was incredible.  If your baby daddy was anything like Xavier, wow, and wow!  Anyway, I spent three days with him and we talked about his race some. He told me that their childhoods are quite normal, human for the first twenty or thirty years of their lives.  He and his brother had been able to enjoy the sunlight until their vampire blood kicked in and they lost the day.  So, I believe that your baby won’t have to live in the dark for the first few decades of her life.  We know that the sun is life-giving, and perhaps that is the intention of the start of the vampire’s life.  Still, watch her closely, and if you see any sign of distress, if her skin pinkens rapidly or her breathing changes, get her down here.”

“In a heartbeat.”
Mal paused and looked into Erin’s eyes before she went down for the day.  “Thank you, Erin, for everything.  You’ve been my savior, and my daughter’s savior, and I know I can’t ever repay you for what you’ve done for us.”