Moonlight: The Big Bad Wolf (Black Swan 4) (41 page)

Storm carefully retrieved the little one from Litha's chest like she was made of glass, then went with the nurse to clean the afterbirth off the baby, weigh her, measure her, brush her hair with a feather-soft baby brush, and wrap her in a clean pink blanket. Then he got to hold her on his shoulder and breathe in the heavenly aroma of brand new infant with Deliverance practically glued to his side. The demon had been visibly moved, but was strangely silent.

Litha didn't get to rest for long. While Storm and the baby were down the hall, the nurses got busy cleaning the blood away from Litha and changing her linens so that she could rest comfortably.

They also showed Elora where she could have access to a shower and gave her a clean set of scrubs to change into. Twenty minutes later she returned, looking clean but tired. She did a double take when she saw that Ram's eye was swelling closed, red on the way to black.

"You did good," he said.

She reached toward his eye instinctively, but stopped her hand before she touched it. "You too. Let's have a nurse take a look at that."

"'Tis fine."

"No. 'Tis no' fine." After mocking his accent lovingly, she left the room, but returned a few minutes later with ice. "I insist." She placed it in his hand. He smiled and nodded. Who doesn't love to be fussed over?

Litha roused from sleep when she heard voices in the room. A nurse was asking for the baby's name and the clipboard indicated that the question was official.

Storm said, "Liberty Rose Brandywine Storm."

"No." Litha's voice sounded so rough from all the screaming and she sounded like she might be drugged as well, even though she hadn't been. "Her name is Elora Rose Brandywine Storm."

Storm blinked. He could not have been more surprised if Litha had said the baby's name was Clarence the Clown. After all the teasing about naming the baby Elora and Litha alternating between threats of burning him or leaving him in a pass if he continued talking about naming the baby Elora, which was never his idea in the first place, he really couldn't believe that she had done the very thing she had sworn would never happen in a thousand years.

Elora had been sitting on the radiator ledge under the window. When she heard the announcement, her hand flew to her mouth and she came to the side of the bed closest to the new mom.

"Litha. That's the loveliest thing I can think of."

"We're still calling her Rosie."

"It's a great honor."

Litha took Elora's hand. "I'm a demon, Elora. It's not an honor. It's a deal. If anything happens to you, we will take care of Helm and love him like he's our own. If anything happens to us, you'll do the same with Rosie."

Elora swallowed hard and looked over her shoulder at Ram. He took the ice away from his eye and nodded. "Ram says yes, we will. You know we would love her like she's our own and take care of her even without the contract."

"I know. But this way it's official."

"Don't burn me to seal the deal."

Litha smiled and let go of Elora's hand. "Okay. Sleepy."

Elora walked straight to Storm, gave him a one-armed hug, and gave Rosie a tender kiss on the cheek.

"That was scary," Storm said looking down at Elora. "You haven't looked that gory since the day you arrived at Jefferson Unit."

"Well, I guess that's what happens when a little demon decides to skip the birth."

Storm looked confused. "What do you mean?"

Elora glanced at Ram who was leaning against a far wall. "You don't know?"

"Know what?"

"Rosie didn't come into the world like most babies. Litha was in so much distress... I guess Rosie just decided to put an end to it. So this little infant girl simply appeared in the air above her mother, still attached to the placenta. I reached out and caught her before she fell onto Litha's stomach. The afterbirth broke all over me, which is where all the blood came from.

"Doc Lange and the nurses got it together pretty quickly, cut the cord and tied it off. I asked if they were going to make her cry. They said they had already cleaned out her mouth and that she was breathing normally so there was no need to traumatize her. It's the first thing that quack has ever done that sounded right to me."

Storm looked stunned. "You're saying my baby wasn't really born."

"Well, obviously she was born. She just exercised an option that's not available to most of us. It made things a lot easier on her mama and that's for sure."

Elora chuckled. "Good luck trying to ground her."

She exchanged grins with Ram who was shaking his head and thanking Paddy it wasn't going to be his parenting problem.

Storm turned to Deliverance. "Have you heard of this before?"

"Not exactly, but we knew that the only thing we knew was that we didn't know what to expect."

Elora smiled. "The main thing is Litha's fine and she'll be back to normal so much faster this way. It's probably the closest thing to a virgin birth that's ever happened.

"The baby's fine and she looks really happy where she is right now. I'm thinking daddy's girl." Storm couldn't help but look a little delighted at that possibility. He tucked his chin so he could look down at his baby sleeping on his shoulder, as if to confirm whether she was as happy as Elora said.

"No. She's not just fine. She's
so
beautiful," Elora gushed as she ran the back of a finger over her little pink cheek.

Turning to Ram she said, "Her first name is Elora. Did you know that?"

"Got a feelin' you'll not be lettin' any of us forget it."

At home in their apartment at Jefferson Unit, Elora gently swayed back and forth with Helm falling asleep on her shoulder. "Wasn't she beautiful, Ram? She looked more like a two-month-old baby than a newborn. Her cheeks. Her lips. All that black hair. It's so funny about her name being Rosie, because she makes me think of Rose Red from..."

"I know what you're goin' to say. That she's so pretty she's like a character from one of those stupid stories."

"I'm on to you, Ram. You call my fai... elftales stupid stories because you like getting a rise out of me."

His eyes twinkled. "Aye. Gettin' a rise out of you is the second most entertainin' thin' I can think of."

***

EPILOGUE

Baka's Log.

I have moved to Paris and settled into the temporary facility. Naturally I hope to be here for a short time, not because of any personal opinion about the location, but because the length of our stay directly corresponds to the success of our mission, which is to locate those infected with the vampire virus, administer the curative vaccine, and offer rehabilitation.

With each passing day, The Vampire Inversion, which is the informal name referencing the overall mission, becomes more sophisticated and better able to address the entirety of the problem, including what to do with the lost when they are recovered. Hiring personnel is a painfully slow and laborious process because of The Order's need for secrecy. Nonetheless, we have taken on some badly-needed psychologists and social workers who are in a position to follow our operation, like a carnival or circus, from place to place as needed.

We have also employed a master aromatherapist because we have learned, quite by accident, that some combinations of herbs or essential oils relieve the stress symptoms that mimic withdrawal. That speeds physical recovery of the victims, but psychological or emotional healing will require time. Therefore, we are going to need to leave our "halfway houses" operational after we have concluded the hunter phase of the operation. The biggest problem I anticipate with that is oversight of the mid level administrators left in charge.

The scope of that, in terms of resources and administration, is daunting. It's a good thing that The Order of the Black Swan is well-heeled because my projections of potential costs are staggering. My projections are based on fantasy numbers as we have no way of estimating how many virus victims remain at large in the world.

Of course costs could be reined in, considerably, if The Order took the same just-turn-them-loose approach as prison systems. But, because The Order adheres to its own doctrine which involves a far stricter code of morality than most religions, it has pledged rehabilitation of the cured regardless of expense. Naturally, I am more than proud to work for this organization.

We are like fishermen who go out every day and cast our nets. Perhaps we will be rewarded with a big haul. Perhaps we will return with a few of the lost who may be restored to the living. Perhaps we will be frustrated and have nothing to show for our time and energy.

At the close of each day, I collect and analyze reports of how many victims were recovered. I then coordinate with the local heads of operations on where to take them and how to transport them. I wish this task force had an organizational wizard as capable as Farnsworth from Jefferson Unit. How that would simplify my life.

One of the bright lights in this undertaking is the fact that I am able to work with my wife, who happens to have a unique and supremely useful ability to call vampire to her. The scientific operations that explain her talent are beyond us at this point in time and, therefore, seem quite magical. There are, in fact, many things about her that seem magical to me, but those thoughts shall be reserved for my personal journal. Let it suffice to say that I feel blessed to have her with me.

Speaking of my wife, one of the tricky things about her involvement is the irritant caused by the fact that the vampire juveniles do not even try to disguise their interest in her. They may be the emotional equivalent of human teens, but they are dangerous predators in every sense, meaning their interest in taking blood is inextricably entangled with their sexual urges. We have managed this problem, to the best of our ability, by making sure that Jean Etienne is always present when Heaven is called to play.

The vampire were, if anything, encouraged to pursue boorish standards by their early super-Americanization. Their view of what might be acceptable behavior toward a man's wife was severely tainted by the videos they watched both at Jefferson Unit and when they were guests of the somewhat quirky demon, Deliverance.

Realistically there may never have been a chance of them expressing anything resembling a civilized manner. For example, one of the biggest hurdles we've encountered is that none of them can maintain any focus if there is a woman in the area experiencing menses. From what Jean Etienne tells me, only mature vampire with a measure of self-discipline can remain focused with such a distraction.

Apparently menstrual blood is irresistible to them. Jean Etienne unabashedly describes the ecstasy of burying their faces in blood-covered pussy and rolling around in a state of euphoria. It sounds quite similar to the reaction that might be observed when one gives catnip to a feline.

Unfortunately, since there is no way to control for the presence of menstruating women, this is an issue that will probably persist.

The thing that weighs upon my mind most fervently is the persistent thought that we can never say job well done until the last vampire in existence is either dead or cured. It worries me that the possibility of that seems unlikely and yet I know that the other choice, to do nothing, is not a choice at all.

***

POSTSCRIPT

Torn Finngarick called for a Guinness Extra Stout to be served to Glen, who wasn't used to alcohol at all and certainly wasn't ready for Irish black beer. He took a manly mouthful, thinking he had arrived, and promptly spewed it all over Torn in a spectacular demonstration of human fountain power. The other three members of Z Team laughed so hard they had to wipe tears.

"That was almost as funny as the night that Chokarzi stripper puked half a gallon of half-digested Cuervo in your face in the middle of a lap dance."

For reasons that defied logic, or perhaps because he had given them a much needed laugh, Z Team took a liking to Glen and accepted the news that they were reassigned to Jefferson Unit without any discernible reaction, violent or otherwise. When he informed them that they were to accompany him to Fort Dixon after the funeral, they simply shrugged as if they could care less. Glyphs said, "New York's no worse than any other place."