The Nothing: A Book of the Between (29 page)

When he was done, he stood his ground, making it clear that he meant to defend the old dragon’s body with his own. Good. Let there be more meat. Maybe a mouthful for all rather than only the select few. When the first of the dragons moved forward, she prepared herself, to speak if needed, to shift back to dragon if force became necessary.

And that was when the first of the pains struck her. Fierce and primal, it gripped her belly in a cramping vise that stole her breath and would have doubled her over if her will had been less strong. She endured, keeping to her feet, hoping that no sign of weakness had registered on her face. A vain hope. She could feel the cold sweat and the dragons would be able to scent her pain and the thundering of her blood.

Vision blurred, she watched the approach of the dragon vanguard, waited for them to tear into the kill. It would distract them. While they were gorging and Teheren was preventing chaos, she could slip away a little and recover. Surely she was seeing things wrong because of the pain. She blinked and passed a clammy hand over her eyes.

The four dragons, two large females and two young males, took to the air in formation. Flying in low over the kill, with perfect precision they hooked their talons and lifted the dead weight up, winging a slow and heavy flight toward the dry riverbed. The rest of the dragons turned and followed on foot, raising a great, choking cloud of dust that blinded her, setting tears running down her cheeks.

No, no, no. This wasn’t right. None of it was right.

Another pain took her, this time making her gasp and weakening her knees. No denying the source of the pain now and what it meant.

My son. It is too early.

She had seen dragons give birth to stillborns, tiny, perfectly formed creatures born too early. Some were far enough along to draw a few breaths and survive for an hour or two. But not this one within her, surely. It had only been a matter of days. Maybe it had to do with shifting from human to dragon and back again. The dragon’s metabolism burned so much hotter and faster than the human, and the period of carrying the young was a matter of three months as opposed to nine.

If she shifted back to dragon it might stop the blinding pain, prevent the loss of the warrior child who had been so many long years in the making. Little by little, the contraction eased, and she was able to draw a full breath and think more clearly. She was surprised by a sudden longing for her mother. The calm advice, the gentle soothing hands. A thousand years gone, and still she remembered that touch. No human hands had touched her in all the years since, with the exception of the Warrior. His hands had been gentle enough, but then he had thought her someone else. When he realized who and what she was, he had spurned her.

The memory of the Warrior’s rejection steeled her. She would have her revenge on him, on the dragons who had made her mother outcast from the Forever, on all the worlds. By the time she was through, there would be nothing left. She prepared to shift to dragon, but another contraction swept over her. Fighting it, struggling for breath and for the energy it took to make the shift, she felt hands on her shoulders.

A shock ran through her at the human touch and she opened her eyes to see a man. His face was weathered, his golden eyes more dragon than human, the black pupils long horizontal slits.

“You mustn’t shift now.” His voice was deep and a little rusty from disuse. There was an odd accent to his speech, the vowels too short, the consonants overly pronounced, but she could understand him without difficulty.

“What business is it of yours?”

Her own words came out garbled, so close was she to the shift. She could feel the hard edges of her dragon consciousness, the armor of scales, the promise of flight, the safety of pure, brute strength.

Fingers dug into her shoulders, shaking her, distracting her. “You will kill the baby.”

That stopped her. She wavered between the two states, listening, not fully able to come back to human or to continue into dragon. The pain began again, but it was a half pain. She was aware of it but could step outside and watch it with other eyes.

No words this time, she only looked her question at the man who would not let her go.

“Come back. You must go through the pain in order to deliver the baby. It is the way.”

“It’s too early,” she said, feeling her body slipping back to its human half against her will. Those fingers, those eyes, disrupted her focus, as if the pain and fear were not enough.

The golden eyes shifted to her belly. “I think not.”

“As if you have knowledge!” She spat at him. “It’s been only days.”

“But you shifted to dragon, accelerating the growth. And then back again. Is it so?”

This time, she felt the contraction coming and fought against it, as if somehow she could stop her muscles from the rhythmic tightening. It was no good. And this time, it was worse. She staggered, and the man supported her, then lifted her from the ground and began to carry her.

She slapped at his chest, but the blows were weak and futile. By the time the contraction eased, she felt limp as a wilted plant, her entire body drenched in sweat.

“Put me down.” She wasn’t sure her knees would hold her, but if not, she would crawl. Away somewhere, behind a rock, hoping not to become prey.

“Shall I? And let them consume you and the child both? Here, you have at least a chance of safety.”

The air darkened and cooled as he stepped around a gnarled bush, which had a few dusty leaves still clinging to it, and ducked beneath a rock formation into a cave. Enough light filtered in for her to see that the floor was smooth dirt and had been swept. Her captor set her down with her back against the wall and stepped away, light and swift, before she could kick him.

“Who are you?” she demanded, staring up at him. He looked familiar, although she knew few human men. The Warrior looked much different, and the other one, the one she had spiked, was dead.

“You know me not?” He stood in the shadows. It was the rhythm of the speech, the accent, the eyes, that told her the truth.

“Teheren,” she said.

He offered a stiff half bow. “Flesh and bone.”

Why are you helping me?
Before she could speak the words, the pain came again, and after that, there was no speaking. They contractions were nearly constant, one on top of another with barely space to catch her breath. Panic beat at her, born of the thought that this would go on for days, weeks, years, that the child within would simply continue to grow until it consumed her flesh from within.

Time slipped and shifted. There was only the pain for very long stretches, and always the fear. Sometimes a face hung over her, and once she thought a hand smoothed hair back from her forehead. At one point, she roused enough to feel wetness between her legs, and looking down, she saw her thighs gleaming with blood. The dragons would smell it, would be upon her. Fear gripped her, but she was defenseless now, too weak to shift, too tired to run. Her eyes sought out Teheren, saw his nostrils flare, and braced herself for him to shift and attack. Instead, he crossed to the mouth of the cave, looking out.

“They are still busy at the riverbed. I suggested that they pile stones on the body. It is difficult for a dragon to move a stone. But they won’t be long. This baby needs to come soon.”

Her lips were dry and cracked. She licked them and managed one word. “Why?”

“Why am I helping you?”

She nodded.

“Too many dragons have died. I do what I can to save the few who remain.”

So he was against her, then. Pain came again, this time in a mounting wave that felt like it would tear her insides out. She heard herself scream and was helpless to stop it. Something shifted inside under the power of that contraction. She bore down with all of her strength, and then there was a rush of fluid and a slippery body between her thighs.

Teheren was there, lifting the child, clearing his mouth and nose. A slap to the bottoms of the feet, and a moment later, she heard the lusty cry of a newborn child.

“Let me hold him.”

She stretched out her arms, then drew back at the sight of Teheren’s face. He hesitated, then placed the baby on her chest. It was wet and slippery, smeared with blood and a thick, white substance. All legs and arms and fingers and toes present and accounted for. Scales patterned the neck and shoulders. Scars marred the right cheek, as if the child had been wounded in utero. The scars and the scales were strange but not surprising, given the way it had been conceived. But what was wrong with this baby was of such significance that Aidan could not grasp it all at once.

“No,” she said aloud. “No, it can’t be. There must be some mistake.”

This baby had grown inside of her, had come forth through hours of wracking pain and fear. But it was not the warrior child she had planned for.

The baby was, undeniably, a girl.

Rage followed comprehension. Aidan had decreed that this child would be a boy. If this was not so, then it must be the fault of the child, who in some way must have set her will above Aidan’s in order to be born female.

She pressed her hand over the baby’s mouth and nose, blocking off air. A girl child was a dangerous thing, a rival, and of no use to her. The little one fought for life, kicking her feet, twisting her head side to side. Because she was so slippery, still coated with blood and body fluids, Aidan’s hands kept slipping away, and the baby continued to cry.

“What are you doing?” Teheren wrenched the child away from her. “You must have a fever of the brain.”

Aidan tried to snatch the baby back, but the pain began again, not quite so intense but enough to freeze her in place. She knew what this was, had seen it pushed out of dragons and other creatures following the emergence of a baby. A few minutes of intense cramping, pressure and pain in her torn birth canal, and the afterbirth slid out between her thighs, a gush of blood with it, filling the air with a tang of iron the other dragons would never fail to notice. Not now, not while they were so hungry.

The pain gone, she turned her attention back to Teheren. Still in human form, he stood at a safe distance, warming the baby against his bare chest.

“Too many have died,” he said, repeating his earlier words.

Aidan began the shift to dragon. No reason now to retain the limiting human form. Saliva spurted into her mouth at the thought of the baby’s hot blood and tender bones. She would eat the afterbirth as well. It was too small to be anything more than a teaser for a dragon, but it would be nourishing and full of blood.

“You forget your place, Teheren,” she said, beginning the shift.

“And you are overlooking the obvious. Cannot a girl child also be a warrior?”

Halfway between dragon and human, Aidan heard the words and considered. Possibly he was right, but the dragon slayers had always been male, one to each generation for a thousand years. This child had thwarted a very long lifetime of careful planning. If she was quick about the change, she could kill Teheren in his human form. He had not even begun to shift. The other dragons would not resent the kill if he were human, and she needed the flesh to restore her strength.

Her body was already covered in scales and expanding. Just a matter of wings and tail and teeth and she'd be ready to attack.

Teheren set the baby down. It didn’t cry, its clear gray eyes far too intelligent for a human of its age and size. The scars on its cheek made it look sinister and dangerous. Oh, the child must definitely die.

“You might consider taking your dragon form,” Teheren said to the child as he began his own shift. “You are capable and it would be safer.”

He transformed from human to dragon effortlessly, completing the process at the same time as Aidan. Oh, he was intolerable, and she would not back down now. She clapped her wings above her back and shot fire at him. He stood broadside, screening the baby with his bulk, and was far enough away that that the fire did little more than heat the scales on his shoulder to a red glow. It should have been a stronger flame, brighter, hotter. It should have reached farther. She hesitated, uncertain, frightened for the first time that Teheren would be the victor in a battle.

“Are you certain you wish to do this now, while you are weakened from childbirth?” He spoke aloud, in the dragon speech she did not know. The insolence of this fueled her rage. Jaws open, she rushed at him, coming in low and fast, ready to tear at the softness of his underbelly. Maybe to reach beneath him and snatch the child, if she could reach her.

Teheren blocked her effortlessly with his shoulder. The solid blow grated against her teeth, sent pain slashing through her jaw and into her own neck. A gash opened where she had struck him, black blood welling up and running down his foreleg, but there was no serious damage. No vital hurt. It wouldn’t even be enough to slow him down.

Aidan retreated, ready for the counterattack. But the red-gold dragon did not move.

“I will defend myself and the little one,” he said, still aloud. “But I will not willingly fight a weaker dragon. You might do well to pay attention to those.”

Tuned to Teheren, she had missed the approach of the others. Drawn by the smell of blood and the sound of battle, they congregated outside the mouth of the cave. Held off for a moment by the narrow entrance and the need to proceed one at a time, but not for long. They had been denied a meal when the old dragon was killed. The mood was not one that would be denied again.

“We will be stronger as a united front,” Teheren suggested. “Shall we?”

It galled her that she could not respond to him in the ancient tongue, her dislike and annoyance growing into a festering hate.
It will take more than two of us to protect a bloodstained human child. I will not die in her defense.

“No need, I think.”

From under his belly emerged a black snout, and then a horned head, great golden eyes taking in every detail. The girl-child had shifted into a pure black dragon. Armored now with scales, able to run and fly, she would be not nearly so vulnerable. And the dragons were not yet hungry enough to kill and eat each other. A pure black dragon was special and rare. They had been willing to accept Aidan as Queen because of the color of her scales. And they would be hesitant to harm a young one of the royal color, no matter what.