Teren put his hand back on my neck automatically and I realized I must have flinched when I'd nodded. He kept up his plan, obviously having done quite a bit of thinking about this in the past few days, when he'd been waiting around for me to die. "Great-Gran also wanted to know what he'd dosed me with, so she kept anything that looked like research." His eyes brightened along with his smile. "I think I can use his notes to find others." He shook his head, his eyes swimming with hope. "There has to be someone out there, like us, who's tried to turn a human." He shook his head. "There just has to be." He nodded, his jaw set. "And I'll find them."
I put my hand on that jaw, trying to ease the tension I felt there. "We'll find them, Teren. Together, remember?"
He looked away briefly and then looked back. "No, Emma. I'm sorry, but you have to stay here now."
I laughed, and then realized he was serious and stopped."What? No, I want to go with you. I want us to do this together."
He sighed and ran a hand down my hair. "Emma, baby, it's too dangerous. We don't know...what sort of people we'll find." He looked down. "I'm not risking your life like that. Not when I'm trying to save it."
I grabbed his arm as he pulled his hand away. "Then I don't want you to go. If it's dangerous..." My throat closed up on me and I couldn't finish that thought.
He sighed again as he looked over my face. I could see the strain of the last few days in his countenance and hated everything that had happened to our merry family, changing it completely. I suddenly wished our biggest problem was the ex who remembered too much of him.
Finally, he softly said, "What choice do I have, Emma. I can't just sit back...and not try and save you." I looked about to protest again and he held up his hand, cutting me off. "I won't go alone. I'll take someone with me." From downstairs I heard a flood of Russian and Teren chuckled softly. I hadn't caught the comment (I guess magically knowing Russian wasn't something passed along with his blood, darn), and Teren smiled softly as he explained. "Great-Gran just volunteered her services."
I relaxed back into the pillows a bit with that news. Halina was strong, stronger than Teren, and as driven to save my children as we were. Plus she'd fight tooth and nail to keep Teren safe. As far as bodyguards go, she was a pretty good one.
Seeing my silent acceptance of that, his face brightened for a moment. I smiled at seeing the hope there. It didn't ease the strain I saw underneath it, but it lightened the edges of it considerably. I wanted to let myself believe that he'd find our answers, that everything would be okay, but even with the madman's help, finding others like Teren seemed impossible to me. At least finding them in time seemed impossible.
Exhaling in an attempt to distract my mind from my pessimistic thoughts, I felt my teeth stubbornly drop back down. They slid into my lower lip and popped right through the tender skin. "Ow," I muttered, as I carefully sucked on my lip.
Teren gave me an odd, knowing grin and pushed back a corner of my mouth to look at my tooth. He didn't seem at all weirded out at seeing fangs on me, now that I was aware they were there, but I felt a little weirded out by him examining me. He dropped my lip and brought his hand back to my stomach. "You need to be careful, those things are sharp."
I gave him as much of a lopsided grin as I could with my still overly large feeling mouth. "Well, I didn't exactly mean to do that. I suppose I'll get used to them. I hope I do okay at work with them." I sighed and looked over his suddenly perfectly still shape lying beside me, still propped up on his elbow. "What day is it anyway, Teren? How much work have I missed?"
Watching his reaction carefully, I wondered how angry Clarice was at me for missing even more work. I seriously hoped she didn't take it out on me by inundating me with records room work. My feet were starting to swell in the afternoons and the thought of standing on them all day made them ache already.
Teren sniffed and looked down, speaking more into the sheets than at me. "It's Sunday. You only missed Friday."
I sighed at that, relieved. The attack was on a Thursday night. If I somehow got through this with only one day missed, she may not can me. Feeling the dull ache at my neck return, I started to wonder how I'd explain that. I hadn't looked at it yet, but I was positive the wound was much more than two tiny fang pricks that a turtleneck would easily cover. I'm pretty sure that bastard had used every chomper he had, and my skin looked like a pit-bull had mauled me. Swell.
Teren still wasn't looking at me, and I thought some of his earlier guilt had crept back into his features. A bit of the ice crept back into my stomach too. "Teren, please tell me you called in for me on Friday?"
He peeked up at me from the corner of his eye. "I did."
I exhaled again. "Oh, good. I wouldn't want to get fired." I chuckled, but he didn't laugh with me. He bit his lip; that worried me a little. "What did you tell them? What's my story?" I was fairly certain he didn't tell them a creature of the night bit me.
He sighed and looked down again. I had the sudden image of a large hammer slowly lowering through the air. I wasn't sure why, but I was pretty sure I wasn't going to like what he was about to say. He sighed, confirming my suspicions. "I told them you were in a car crash."
I heard a gasp escape my lips as he looked up at me. Car crash seemed a little extreme for a neck wound. I suppose he was under a lot of strain at the time that he'd come up with it though, and I suppose I could hide my neck with a brace. Not exactly flattering, but, effective. He looked over my face and continued with, "I told them the crash put you into premature labor and the doctors were barely able to stop it." My eyes widened even farther as the tale he'd spun grew. I didn't see why he'd felt the need to expand on the lie. Wasn't simpler, better? He swallowed and finished his cover story. "I told them...the doctors put you on bed rest until the babies are born."
I felt that imagined hammer land squarely on my head.
"You what!" I yelled that, and my ears started ringing. Teren flinched and I'm sure his ears were ringing too. I guess I didn't need to be so loud now, but some things can't be helped. "They don't think I'm coming back? Why would you tell them that?" I managed in a more level tone, and from where the vamps were still chit-chatting in the kitchen, I heard Halina mutter, 'Here we go'.
Teren sighed and put a hand on my cheek. "Because you can't go back, Emma. You have to stay here...at the ranch."
His eyes looked sadly sympathetic. He knew I'd liked my job and had goals of moving up in the company. Being kept from there for months? Well, I wasn't even sure I'd have a job to go back to, at least, not the same one I'd left. Clarice would most likely replace me. I'd have to start over, in the mail room or something.
Feeling stubborn and childlike, I whispered, "You don't get to decide that for me."
He looked away for a second, thoughtfulness on his face, and then twisted his head back to me. "I didn't, you did."
Confused, I stared up at the ceiling. I didn't remember anything over the past few days, but surely I'd remember basically throwing my career away. "I've barely been conscious. When did I agree to that?"
He smiled and a cool finger traced the edge of my cheek before twisting to grab a long piece of my dark hair. With a half-smile he said, "When you told me I was foolish for staying in San Francisco, around all those innocent people." I blinked at him and was about to start some sort of response when he lost his small smile and shook his head. "The fact is, Emma, we don't know what's going to happen to you." He gave me a pointed look. "If you convert," he looked down, away from me, "which is what I'm hoping happens, if your body can't handle..."
He didn't finish that thought and looked back up at me. "You'll awake just as hungry as I did. You'll attack anything that moves." His small, wry smile returned as he twirled the lock of hair in his fingers. "And you are the one that convinced me that the safest place for a creature about to go through that kind of transformation, was here, at the ranch." His eyes looked over the room, as if he were taking in the land outside. "Surrounded by yummy cattle," he murmured.
I sighed softly, not really having an argument for that, since it was sort of my argument in the first place. Me and my big mouth. I never once imagined when I'd first said that, that I'd be referring to my own situation later on down the road. Yeah, the shoe on the other foot thing? Don't like it.
His smile grew at my silence and his fingers trailed down the strand of hair in his fingers before he let it drop. I could hear the individual fibers sliding over his skin. He sighed and his fingers shifted to my face, a light scent of grass on the tips, like he'd been plucking it outside. "I know, I didn't like it either, but you were right and here is the safest place for you."
Knowing I'd sound foolish objecting, I tried to anyway. "But...I have doctor's appointments to keep and the hospital is so far away now." I knew I was spouting improbabilities. The odds of me surviving until my due date probably weren't that great, but still, I was first and foremost a first time Mom, and I was a little worried about the whole "exiting" process. Doctors in white coats, with sterile equipment and vials full of drugs, were a very soothing thought. "I know you drive fast but-"
He tilted his head at me, his brow scrunched. "You...can't see doctors anymore, Emma. I'm sorry, I thought you'd see that right away. Your blood is mixed now, like mine, and it's just too risky. We can't let them examine you too closely. And really...a hospital birth was never going to happen. They would test the children's blood. I'm sorry, I thought you'd see that."
Truthfully, I had made that connection, but I'd pushed it out of my head almost immediately. Denial was a strong thing. And so was fear. "Can't see doctors? Can't go to a hospital? I'm about to have babies, Teren. How do you expect me to do that without doctors?" And loads of pain meds.
He smiled softly and ran his hand down my hair again in a soothing fashion, like he thought I was on the verge of hyperventilating or something. I heard supportive encouragement coming from both Alanna and Imogen, but blocked it out, focusing on the stubbly jaw of the man who, quite rightly, was keeping me from my building full of well trained professionals. "You can do it, sweetheart." His grin turned a little wry. "And you'll do it the same way women have done it for thousands of years."
I was about to roll my eyes and tell him he couldn't possibly understand the turmoil that I was feeling over this new consequence to the events of a few nights ago, but he leaned down to kiss me softly and my objection died. "Besides, all the women here have experience in baby delivery. You'll get all the help you need, right here."
I heard Alanna and Imogen agreeing with him, telling me that they'd take the very best care of me. Even Halina, said everything would be fine. Of course, her concern was more on the infants, than my pain level. Thinking about having a child in my luxuriously rich bed, the satin sheets feeling like liquid along my skin, I felt my chest tighten in anticipation. I was not a "natural" birth sort of girl.