Lucy Kelly (2 page)

He was listening for a response, when her three
Ankida
came running up the stairs.

“What is it?” Arjun asked, coming down the hall.  He opened the door and shouted out, “Addie!” 

Addie had been sitting on the bench at the end of the bed and now lay slumped over the corner.  One hand dangled down towards the floor where her cell phone lay.

He picked her up and climbed up onto the bed with her in his arms, his brothers crowding around on either side.

“Kai, call Rapha!” Arjun said.

Kai immediately signaled the Medical Cluster that they were needed.  As he looked at the unconscious Queen lying in the arms of her
Ankida
, he cursed himself for not signaling the Medical Cluster right away.  Every second counted. 

What if she were hurt?  Or lost the babies?  He noticed the phone lying on the floor at the end of the bed and picked it up before someone could step on it or kick it under the bed.

Kai could hear Rapha, Delpha, and Zephyr coming down the hall.  They entered the room just as he picked up the phone.  By now, the room was so crowded with people that he decided to step out and go back to his post. 

Arjun may have him brought up on charges for not realizing sooner the Queen was in jeopardy.  However, until then, he was going to remain on duty.

As he stepped out and closed the door, he heard a faint voice coming from the device.  He held it up to his ear and spoke, “This is Kai.  If your words have caused harm to our Queen, you will pay with your life,” he growled into the phone.

“What?  What happened to Addie?  We were just talking and suddenly she went quiet,” said Becky. 

She went on to relate the gist of her conversation with Addie to the angry man on the phone.  As she was reaching the end of the story, the door opened and the three Medicals, Rapha and his two brothers, Delpha and Zephyr, emerged.  Kai’s brother Ari signaled he was coming in to see if everything was okay.

“Hold on, Becky,” said Kai as he turned to Rapha, “the Queen?”

“She’s fine.  She’s had a shock but is awake now and recovering…”  Rapha didn’t get a chance to finish his sentence when he was cut off by a cry from the bedroom.

“MY PHONE!  Where did it go?  I have to talk to Becky!” they heard their Queen shouting. 

Kai held up the phone for Rapha to see as he turned back to the door and opened it.  The sight that beheld him would have been funny in any other situation.  Arjun held Addie tightly on his lap while Kylan and Rune were lifting the bed sheets and looking through the covers.  He cleared his throat and held out the phone.

“Queen Aditya, I apologize.  I only thought to save it from being crushed in the turmoil.  Are you truly well?” Kai asked.

He didn’t know it, but his face was showing all the emotions he’d gone through in the last ten minutes. 

Addie accepted the phone and tapped Arjun on the arm, letting him know she wanted him to let her up. 

She said into the phone, “Becky, I’m going to put Arjun on so you can tell him everything you told me.” 

Then, without waiting for a response, she handed the phone to Arjun and stepped up to Kai.  She didn’t have to look up as far because in the last eleven weeks, she’d grown an inch and was now five-foot-five.  She thought it was great. 

When she got over the surprise, what really pleased her was that all of her freckles were now gone.  Rapha had given her a lotion that had repaired her skin.  With her fair skin and bright coppery hair, she would still be vulnerable, though, to new ones cropping up.

Just before she started speaking, Kai’s brother Ari came to the door.  The two of them were twins.  Her blonde Vikings, was how she thought of them.  They were the first Nephilim she’d met who were blonde, and they wore their hair long with braids at their temples.  Arjun had told her it was a tradition for the males of their House to wear their hair this way. 

They were also shorter and stockier than other Nephilim, at six-foot-six with barrel chests, wide shoulders and thick, muscled thighs.

Still, even though they more closely resembled humans in height, they had strangely colored eyes that marked them as foreign.  Their eyes were chartreuse with brown flecks.  That almost neon yellow-green color was startling at first, and she hoped most people would assume they were wearing colored contacts.

“I want to apologize for scaring you, Kai.  I was so surprised by Becky’s news that I fainted.  It's the first time I’ve ever fainted in my life.  I can’t promise I won’t do that again because it doesn’t seem to be something I can control.  I do promise to do everything I can to make sure I’m as healthy as possible.  I won’t do anything to hurt myself or the babies.

“Do you forgive me for scaring you like that?” she asked.

Kai went down on one knee and started to confess all the things he felt he had done wrong.  He couldn’t believe the Queen was apologizing to him!

She put her hand on his head and boosted up her power; the natural glow to her skin intensified, and she began giving off flashes of bright gold.

“It's alright, Kai.  I’m okay.  The babies are fine.  Now stand up and let me have your arm and help me go down the stairs.  I’m ready for my breakfast.  For some reason, my promised breakfast in bed never appeared,” she said, with a twinkle in her eyes and a smile on her lips.

As she left the room with Ari in front and Kai tenderly escorting her down the stairs, two of her
Ankida
, Rune and Kylan, protested that they were about to serve her when they were signaled to come upstairs.  Now the scare was over, they were teasing her about causing their breakfast to grow cold.

Back in the bedroom, Arjun and Becky continued their low-voiced conversation on the cell phone.

Chapter Two

Sarah Kline was happy to be in Chicago.  She’d been looking forward to the Sci-Fi Convention for a longtime.  She’d just hung up some clothes and paused from unpacking her suitcase to look at herself in the mirrored surface of the sliding closet door. 

Last night before she left home to catch the red-eye to O’Hare, she’d weighed in at 146.  She could zip up the size ten pants she’d brought with her, but they were still a little tight in the hips. 

I’m a pear,
she thought. 
From the waist up, I’m an okay medium sized, five-foot-two, blonde-haired, brown-eyed woman.  And from the waist down, I’m a wide-hipped thick-legged pear.  If only my weight were more evenly distributed, a little more in the chest, a little less on the thighs.  I guess I need to meet an ass man.

She blew her hair away from her face with a pouty huff.  Suddenly not liking any of the clothes she brought, she decided it was time to buy a new dress.  Here she was on her first vacation in so long the last one was only a vague recollection.  She deserved new clothes, sightseeing, and restaurant dining.

Yesterday, she signed the final papers to sell her shares in the software company they founded together, to her longtime friend and second-in-command, Jack.  The doctors had told her if she didn’t slow down and stop with the seventy and eighty hour workweeks, she’d be headed into stroke town.  So sign the papers, give up her company, and take an immediate vacation was exactly what she did. 

It was helpful that her favorite science-fiction writer was putting on a big event at the Sci-Fi Convention here in Chicago.  She knew she would have to go out of town to keep from stopping by the office, therefore the red-eye flight after her retirement party.  Retired at twenty-seven was a triumph few achieved.  The fact that she retired for medical reasons was nothing to boast about. 

She chuckled over the scene at the airport. 

“Sarah,” said Jack, as he stood beside the car curbside.  “You take care of yourself.  Go to a spa, drink fancy cocktails, and kiss several men.  You know, act as if you’re me.” 

He opened the trunk of his car.  Before he pulled out her luggage, he turned to her and asked, with a wiggle of his eyebrows, “If I look in these bags, am I going to find a laptop or other notebook device?”

She gave him an innocent big-eyed glance. “Of course not, just my e-Reader.  I promise,” she answered, with one hand behind her back.

“Doll, you are not getting away with that!”  He looked over her shoulder, “Yep, you’ve got your fingers crossed.  Did you forget that since I’m six-two to your five-two, I can easily see over your shoulder?  I’m going to look in your bags; any embarrassment you may have from having me rifling through your undies is on you.” 

He continued to unzip her bag and look through her neatly folded piles.  Sure enough, he found her laptop and a couple of spare battery packs.

“But Jack, I’ll go nuts if I can’t go online at all,” she whined, giving him a pouty face, hoping to win some sympathy.

“Sugar Lips, I’d much rather have you bored up to your eyeteeth and alive to whine about it, than be visiting your ass in the hospital.  Cold Turkey, Sarah, you have to do it. 

“Don’t worry,” said Jack, as he put the contraband electronics off to the side of the trunk, “I’ll take care of your babies until the docs give you a clean bill of health.” 

He zipped up the suitcase and pulled it out of the trunk.

She figured that he would look, so she pretended to whine, knowing she had back up in the other bag.  He’d stop looking now that he’d found something.  Therefore, she was shocked when he reached for the second suitcase and instead of pulling it out, unzipped it, too.  Well, damn.

He turned to her, winked, and said, “I know you too well.  You should have realized that you can’t pull anything over on me.  I’m going to be paying your bills for the next three months.  All you have to do is play and run up your credit cards.” 

He finished pulling out another smaller laptop with a
‘tsk tsk,’
and then zipped the second suitcase and removed it from the trunk, also. 

“And since I’m paying your bills, I’ll know if you go out and buy a laptop.  So promise me you’ll be good.”

“You know, it’s not the laptops that get me into trouble.  Now you’re just acting bossy,” Sarah said with a huff.

“Yes, I know, Sweetie.  However, it’s the tool you use the most that leads you down the path of destruction.  Now give me a hug and let’s get this show on the road before you miss your flight, and I get a ticket for staying at the curb for so long.”

“I’m going to miss you lots,” she said, reaching forward to hug him. 

They hugged good-bye and handed her bags to the curbside Skycap for check-in. 

He blew her a kiss before driving away.  He’d been her best friend since third grade when she moved to San Francisco from Chicago.  Being unused to such changeable weather, she’d gotten wet in the rain, and he’d offered to share his umbrella with her for the walk home from school. 

It turned out he lived around the corner from her, and they’d been inseparable since then.  Their parents let them run around outside every day after school until the streetlights came on.  Even later, when she moved around so much, he was the one person she held onto – he was her lifeline.

At least I was able to retire,
she thought, smiling over the memories. 
Many people in my position have to keep working to keep a roof over their heads.  I can concentrate on my health and not worry about money.

She turned away from the mirror and went back to unpacking.  She was wondering what stores she should go to, when a story on the radio caught her attention. 

“…one hundred percent success rate in fertility.  The scientists are saying it's a statistical impossibility.  I think there must be something in the water.  Stay tuned for more at the top of the hour on the possibility of another Baby Boom generation."

Guess I’ll have to be careful if I decide on a vacation fling,
she thought. 
Just in case, I’ll stick to bottled water.

By ten am, Sarah was walking through the front doors of Ann Taylor on North Michigan Avenue.  She hadn’t lost enough weight yet to shop at Chico’s store.  After trying on several dresses, she was wavering between two.  One was a basic little black dress with some ruching that covered any flaws in her figure.  The other was long, white, and floaty.  With the right heels (very high), and hairdo (very tall), she might be able to pull off the look.  Considering the event, she bought both.  She’d decide later which one to wear.

Figuring she couldn’t go wrong with either gold or silver jewelry or the right shoes, she left Ann Taylor’s to go to a shoe store and continue her shopping.

***

While Sarah was in the shoe store, Becky Anderson was entering Ann Taylor’s store.  She knew she’d be trying on several dresses, so she’d worn a comfy stretch-waist skirt with a loose caftan blouse.  She also carried an extra pair of shoes in her bag. 

Over the years, she’d learned that an experienced salesperson could really cut down on her shopping time when she needed to find the right outfit for her pear-shaped body, and she was also in a hurry.

“Hi, I’m hoping you can help me,” she said, walking up to the most likely salesperson.

The woman gave her an odd look before responding. 

“Good morning.  Exactly, what are you looking for today?” she asked.

“Well, I’m going to a semi-formal event on Saturday night, and I need to look like a million bucks.  I’m even thinking of changing the green streaks in my hair to another color to match my dress,” Becky said with a grin. 

“Unfortunately, just this morning I realized I needed something new, and I’m pressed for time.  Do you have anything that would look good on my figure?” she asked, posing a little as she stood between the clothing racks.

“Hmmm, I think I know just the thing.  Let’s get you into a dressing room.  Size 10, petite?” she asked.

“Either a ten or a twelve,” answered Becky, as they turned to walk to the back of the store. “I’d like to try on both sizes to see what looks better.  It depends on the cut of the dress.”

Becky began undressing, ready to see the dresses the saleslady would bring her.  She was a little surprised when she bought only four dresses.  One was a long sheath with a splash of color, another lengthy floaty white dress and two black dresses.