VA 2 - Blood Jewel (30 page)

There’s something I haven’t
mentioned to you because I don’t know if my theory holds any truth
to it or not, but I believe I could be on to something. It has
always bothered me that Chansey had a twin to die at birth because
Ella did as well. It seems unlikely that Anteros would opt to save
one twin and not the other, so I have done some research and I
don’t believe Emelyn was a twin at all.”

“What do you believe she
was?”

“I believe Emelyn is Chansey’s
Fylgia.”

It was vaguely familiar and I knew
Sol would be disappointed in my lapse of remembering what he taught
me about mythology. “I remember Sol taught me about Fylgias, but I
don’t remember what it is.”

“A Fylgia is a supernatural being
that accompanies a person in connection to their fate. They appear
commonly in one’s sleep and when they materialize, they act as
guardians. I think Emelyn is Chansey’s Anteros appointed protector.
Emelyn would have protected Chansey in her mother’s womb during the
pregnancy and she always appears to Chansey during the most
important times in her life. She guides Chansey through
life.”

It was all coming back to me. Yes,
this made sense to me. “I have to talk to Chansey about this. I
have to explain things to her.”

“Don’t worry. She’ll understand.
She was made to understand.”

“Thank you. I guess it was a good
thing you came to be with us when Chansey was
transitioning.”

“It was no accident that I was
here when Emelyn appeared to you.”

“I have to tell Chansey. I can
feel that she isn’t sleeping restfully. I think she is having a
nightmare, so I’m going to wake her and explain what is happening.
Thank you, Sebastian.”

I was out the door before I heard
his response. I entered our bedroom and saw Chansey sleeping
restlessly as she moaned, “No...don’t,” in her sleep. I touched her
arm and she suddenly came up off the bed fighting and gasping for
air. I reached for her and pulled her into my arms. “You’re safe,
Love. I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”

Her heart was pounding so hard, I
almost felt the pulsation of it in my ears. She was
terrified.

“It’s Marsala. She came for me and
she found me. She found us.”

She was up to her Black Magic
tricks to get to Chansey again. I didn’t understand why it wasn’t
time for Chansey to be turned, but I had to have faith that Anteros
would show me how to protect her from Marsala and her supernatural
means of reaching Chansey.

“You’re going to be fine,
Chansey.”

“You can’t turn me tomorrow,” she
announced.

Apparently, I wasn’t privy to that
information. “What makes you say that?”

She covered her mouth with her hand
as tears spilled from her eyes. “I had a vision of something that
happened. I think it’s a prophesy.”

A prophesy? Of what? “You said the
vision has already happened.”

“Yes. I think Emelyn is showing me
what happened when we were at Granna and Granddaddy’s house. It
happened when we were asleep in the apartment. Marsala found us.
She stood at our bedside and watched us sleep, but I don’t think
she was corporeally there. I think she was there through Black
Magic.”

The Marsala I knew wouldn’t have
simply watched us sleep. Sebastian was right about her not missing
her opportunity. “She only watched us sleep?”

“She watched us for a while, but
then she came closer to me. She stood over me and stared at my
sleeping body for a long while. When she was finished, she was
about to put her hands around my throat when she suddenly stopped
as if she was listening attentively to something. She leaned over
me and put her ear to my chest like she was listening to my heart.
She stayed that way for a minute and then she moved her ear lower
down my body to my stomach. She listened another minute and I saw a
malicious grin come over her face. When she lifted her ear from my
stomach, she replaced it with her palm and said, ‘It is your lucky
night, Agápe. Tonight you escape death because you carry his child,
but that won’t always be the case.’ Then, she turned and
left.”

Damn, I didn’t know how Marsala
could manage to be so cruel from so far away, but this was clearly
another one of her tricks. Chansey’s heart was pounding away and I
knew what she wanted me to do, but I didn’t want to hurt her by
telling her there was no baby.

She reached for her flat belly,
touched it and then looked at me. “Is it possible?”

I shook my head and squeezed my
eyes tightly to prepare myself to say the words. “No, Love, it’s
one of Marsala’s tricks.”

She rested her palm on her lower
belly and asked, “Will you put your ear here and listen the way she
did in my vision? Only to put my mind at ease?”

It felt cruel and inhumane to do
this to Chansey. I saw the hope in her eyes, wishing for this
impossibility to be possible, even if she wouldn’t admit to
it.

“I will if it’s what you want, but
I don’t want to upset you.”

“I want you to,” she said as she
lay back flat on the bed and pulled her satin nightgown up away
from her body. “I would feel better about being turned tomorrow if
I knew there wasn’t a little tiny Curry in there,” she laughed, but
I didn’t mistake her jest for indifference. She wanted to hear me
tell her that I heard something.

Her reference to being turned
tomorrow reminded of another disappointment I would need to discuss
her after I told her there wasn’t a baby. I looked at her tanned
belly above her black lacy panties and thought about how it
deserved to be swollen with a beautiful baby for her to love. I
rubbed my hand over it and wished I could give her this thing she
repetitively denied wanting.

I didn’t know why, but I took a
deep breath and held it as I leaned forward to place my ear just
above the edge of her panties. We were both silent and motionless
as I listened for the telltale sign of a new life within Chansey. I
held my breath, expecting to hear nothing, but hopelessly wished to
hear the sound of a miracle.

And then there it was...the
sweetest sound to ever be heard by my ears. Lub dub, lub dub, lub
dub, over and over again, at least 170 times over a
minute.

My heart began to race and I
realized I was still holding my breath. Could it be? Surely my ears
were tricking me.

“I feel your excitement. You hear
something, don’t you, Curry?”

I couldn’t lift my ear from her
stomach. I didn’t want to stop listening to the repetitive lub dub
sound because I was afraid I was wrong or that it was another one
of Marsala’s Black Magic tricks.

Chansey reached for my hair and
grabbed a fistful, forcing me to look up at her. “Tell me what you
hear.”

I was scared to say the
words.

“Ugh!” she groaned. “I can’t tell
what you’re thinking because your emotions are all over the
place.”

I broke into a smile that I
couldn’t contain if my life depended on it. “I think you need a
pregnancy test.”

≈ ≈ ≈

Because it was night, it was too
dangerous for Chansey to be out, so I had the honor of shopping for
a pregnancy test after midnight. I stood dumbfounded in a 24-hour
drugstore staring ignorantly at the numerous shelves of pregnancy
tests and had no idea which one to get for Chansey. A female
employee walked by and noticed me, but said nothing. A few minutes
later, she passed a second time and looked at me standing
motionless in a comatose state. “Do you need help, sir?”

Yeah, she had no idea about the
kind of help I needed. I continued staring ahead as I replied, “My
wife needs a pregnancy test and I have no idea what I’m doing.” I
turned to look at the clerk. “I absolutely have no idea what I’m
doing.”

She reached for one of the tests
and handed it to me. “I personally think they’re all about the
same, but I’d go with this one if she thinks it’s an early
pregnancy. This one claims to detect it sooner than the others. She
won’t trust the first result, so get this one with two
tests.”

I took the box from her hand and
stared at it.

“This must be your first one,” she
said. “Baby, I mean.”

I looked up at her. “Yes and not
something we expected.”

She reached and innocently touched
my arm. “Honey, babies have this notorious way of showing up when
you least expect them,” she laughed.

“Thank you for your
help.”

“You are quite welcome and early
congratulations if your wife is pregnant.”

I smiled at the thought. “Thank
you.”

Marsala could trick Chansey with
the dream. She could possibly trick me into believing I heard a
heartbeat, but she couldn’t trick two pregnancy tests,
right?

After I paid for the pregnancy
tests, I streaked to my car, not caring who saw me, because I was
desperate for confirmation one way or the other.

Once back at the compound, I raced
toward our quarters and ran into Sol in the hallway. “Whoa, where’s
the fire, dude?”

“Umm. Umm.” That’s all I could say
and I didn’t have time for idle conversation, so I left him
standing in the hallway staring after me strangely.

“Whatever,” I heard him call
behind me, but I didn’t care. I could explain my abrupt rudeness
after I knew the test results.

I hurried through the door and
Chansey was not in the bed. I didn’t see her anywhere. “Chansey,” I
called out.

She walked out of her sitting room.
“I’m right here,” she laughed because of my anxiousness.

I held the plastic bag out to her.
“The clerk at the drugstore recommended these.”

She took the bag from my hand and
pulled out the pregnancy test. She turned it over to read about it
and I offered, “I’ve already read the instructions. You just pee on
the absorbent tip or you can collect it in a cup and dip
it.”

She rolled her eyes at me. “I
figured as much.”

I stood nervously waiting for her
to take a step toward the bathroom, but she didn’t. “I’m
scared.”

I wasn’t sure of which verdict she
referred. “Scared it will be positive or that it will be
negative?”

“Both.”

I put my arms around her. “I’m
scared, too.”

“Scared it will be positive or
that it will be negative?”

“Both.”

“Okay, here we go.”

I watched her go into the bathroom
and shut the door. I sat on the edge of the bed knowing that our
lives were never going to be the same when she came back,
regardless of the results, and that’s when I started to
panic.

What if she was pregnant? What
would this baby be? Human? Vampire? Half and half? Was that even
possible to have half human and half vampire? There had simply
never been a vampire baby unless another Agápe couple had one. I
needed Sebastian again, but I wouldn’t ask until I knew for
sure.

I heard the doorknob turn and I
quickly stood up from the bed, waiting to hear the verdict. The
door slowly swung open and Chansey walked toward me with the
biggest smile I’ve ever seen her wear.

She slowly nodded her head up and
down and I felt like I’d been dropkicked in my gut.

“Yes?” I asked.

She nodded again. “Yes!”

“You’re going to have a
baby?”

“
We
are going to have
a baby,” she said through her smile.

I picked her up and spun her
around. When I was human, I always imagined what it would feel like
for my wife to tell me we were going to have a baby, but none of my
wildest dreams compared to the high I was currently
experiencing.

“How is this possible?” she
squealed as we spun.

I put Chansey down and took her
face in my hands. “I have no idea, but Emelyn appeared to me this
evening and told me I couldn’t turn you. I guess I know why
now.”

“Why did she appear to
you?”

“I have no idea. The only thing I
do know is that you just made me the happiest person in the world.
I love you, Chansey Rose Leclaire Brennan. You are absolutely the
most amazing person I’ve ever known.” I kissed her on the mouth. “I
cannot believe it. You’re going to make me a father.”

I dropped to my knees and placed a
kiss on the belly that was housing and nurturing our unborn child.
I felt Chansey running her hands through my hair as I kneeled
before her and I whispered against her stomach, “I love you in
there.”

26 Who Done
It?

It couldn’t be more perfect because
all of my family had come together to be with Chansey during her
transition. When we called them together in the living room, I’m
certain they expected to discuss a plan for the following day’s
draining of Chansey and her drinking from me, but we were about to
blow all of their minds.

We stood before them holding hands
as they gave us their undivided attention. “Chansey and I would
like to thank all of you for coming to be with us for her
transition, but we called all of you together to make an
announcement.” I hesitated and looked at Chansey, then back at our
family. “I won’t be turning her tomorrow.”