Heir of Night by Emily Goodwin
Chapter 42
Isit on the porch swing, hands going to my stomach. Juliet is moving around, kicking me in the ribs and stretching the confines of my insides to their limits. Rolling my neck, I stretch my arms out and watch Scarlet run around the yard.
It’s been a week since Evander brought over the fragment of the gemstone, and a week since I found the feather I know without a doubt was a sign.
Julian is at peace.
I don’t know where, and I don’t know how, but he is.
It brings me comfort yet doesn’t make me feel better. I miss him, and as each day passes, I grow angrier and angrier. Paimon is going to fucking pay for what he did, and the coward hasn’t been seen since his plan crumbled apart. He’s still trapped in Hell, and the Horsemen are on the loose. It’s only a matter of time before they team up again.
Though there’s a chance the Horsemen are acting on their own now, and I can’t turn on the news without seeing something that makes me question if it was sparked by them. Political leaders who used to get along are suddenly at odds with each other. The same disease that killed livestock in the Middle-East made its way to the UK, and as of now, no one knows how it spread. The cost of beef has already gone up here, and a farm in Kansas that grows crops for livestock feed got an unusual amount of rain, washing away what was just starting to grow in the fields.
And just last night, an earthquake happened in the Caribbean. Dozens of people are dead, and hundreds are missing.
War, Pestilence, Famine, and now Death are gathering souls. We have to stop them before they get even more powerful.
“Ready?” I call to Scarlet, slowly getting back on my feet. Juliet feels heavier again, and I think I’m around thirty-six weeks now, even though I haven’t been pregnant for that long. Part of me does fear I’m going to have a giant baby just chilling inside me until her actual due date well over a month away. “Actually, never mind. It’s so nice out,” I tell her and telekinetically throw her slobbery tennis ball. “I’ll be right back.”
Lucas is in the kitchen, watching a YouTube video on how to make a grilled cheese sandwich on his iPad. It melts my heart every time I see him cooking for me. He’s gotten a lot better, and I fucking love him so much for trying.
“I don’t need anything,” I tell him and attempt to wrap my arms around him, but my stomach gets in the way. “Though a three-cheese sandwich with avocado sounds amazing.”
Lucas finishes buttering the piece of bread and puts it on the cast-iron skillet. “I will never understand humans’ love for avocados. Green, mushy fruit sounds disgusting without knowing how it smells.”
I laugh. “I can’t eat it plain, but it’s good in things.” We kiss, and I break away to get my book of shadows, my mom’s dark grimoire, and the fragment of the gemstone Evander brought over. “I was doing some thinking,” I start, flipping a page in the notebook.
“Don’t overexert yourself,” Eliza’s singsong voice comes from the hall. Her usual smug smile turns genuine when she enters the kitchen. For the most part, it’s been nice having her here. Sticking more to a regular vampire schedule than Lucas, she sleeps during the day and goes out at night. Where she goes, I don’t know, and I don’t want to.
“Hah. Too late for that.” I point to my notes, showing them a spell I’m working on. “The circle we cast when you were cursed was very effective in holding the black magic in place but took time to cast. There’s no way we could set things up and stand around a Horseman long enough to cast the circle, and it’s a literal circle of protection that needs to be visualized. But I was thinking if we used some of the same sacred geometry in this circle but set each trap up in a triangle shape instead, and had all four triangles together, it would look like this.”
“It’s a square.” Eliza’s brows go up.
“Exactly. Four corners. Four elements to draw power from, all while using the same spell Paimon used on me.”
“A circle within a circle,” Lucas sums up.
“Yes.” My eyes light up. “I’m going to test out a mini version and then send my notes over to Evander if it works out like I think.”
“The day Juliet asks you for help with her sacred geometry homework is the day you’re officially screwed,” Eliza says to Lucas. His normal reaction would be to glower at her, or roll his eyes even. This time, the mention of his daughter and being able to do something as simple as help her with her homework—even if it’s magic he doesn’t understand—makes him smile.
“I wasn’t the best at it,” I admit. “All those calculations are time-consuming, and if you get something wrong, you can mess things up big time.”
“Don’t mess this up.” Eliza pulls a bag of carrots out of the fridge to give to her guinea pigs. “No pressure or anything.” She winks a perfectly lined eye at me and takes the back stairs to her room. I hang out in the kitchen with Lucas while he makes my grilled cheese.
He heats up bagged blood and puts it in my favorite coffee mug. I look at him, eye twitching, but don’t say anything. I’ll just bleach it later when he’s not around.
“I can add just a few drops of my blood to that,” I offer, seeing him grimace. “If that helps.”
“I don’t know how to make a comparison to something you’d eat, but it won’t help. Thank you, though. You know I’m not going to take a single drop of your blood until after you’ve healed from giving birth, and then when you are breastfeeding, I’ll have to limit how much.”
The subject of breastfeeding is a bit touchy. Lucas, having read about how beneficial it is to nurse a baby, thinks I should do it for at least two years. The thought of nursing a baby with teeth freaks me out. And unlike Lucas, instead of just reading about the benefits, I read about the struggles other moms went through on a few pregnancy chat boards. Being half angel has made my body excel in athletic ability and not getting sick, but this much humanity has made me sick—literally. There’s no promise nursing will come easily for me. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.
For now…I just need to concentrate on stopping the Horsemen so our daughter has a world to live in.
“I should have takena study break hours ago.” I let out a satisfied sigh, hand feebly landing on Lucas’s thigh. We’re both naked in bed after just having sex.
“You can take another anytime you want.” He moves onto his side and hooks his leg around me. Closing my eyes, I tell myself I’m going to get up in a minute to use the bathroom. I’m comfy, content, and could easily fall asleep right now.
“I’ll definitely need a nap first.”
“Take one.” Lucas runs his hand up my thigh and over to my stomach. “You have a few hours until your friends come over.”
“True. I’m so freaking tired.”
“You were restless last night,” he notes.
“I couldn’t get comfortable.”
“Let me help you now. I can rub your back until you fall asleep.”
I look back at him, heart melting all over again. “I’m going to owe you so many back rubs when I’m not pregnant anymore.”
He chuckles and pushes his hand down between my legs, fingers sweeping over my sensitive clit. It makes a rush go through me, and even though I just came three times, I want him to fuck me all over again. I widen my legs, welcoming his hand in between.
“I think I’ll take that other study break now,” I groan, and he moves two fingers in a circular motion over my clit. Pleasure builds inside me at a dizzying rate, and my body selfishly craves more. Lucas takes his hand from between my legs so he can move me against him, cock pressed against my ass. Fangs grazing against my neck, he works his deft fingers like magic, and I come for the fourth time, body shuddering and pussy spasming against his hand. “Thank you, hormones,” I huff, heart still racing.
“That wasn’t hormones,” Lucas retorts, kissing my neck. “That was all me.”
“Mhhh.” I bring my hand up, palm landing on his cheek. “You are very good at, well, everything in bed.” He kisses me again and then helps heft my pregnant ass out of bed so I can use the bathroom and get a big glass of water to drink. We lie down together, and Lucas runs his fingers up and down my back. It doesn’t take long to fall asleep, and this past week I feel like no matter how much sleep I’ve gotten, I’m still tired.
Lucas insisted we watch all the Star Wars movies in order again, since the last time we tried, we got interrupted and “too much time passed in between for me to really get the whole story.” I make it maybe twenty minutes in and I’m asleep, no matter what time of day it is.
Regretting all the water I drank, I wake only an hour later to use the bathroom. Lucas isn’t in bed with me, and I’m sure he’s in his office working. I lie back down after using the bathroom but can’t fall asleep because I need to get up and organize my weapons. I pull on a gray maternity dress, lazily make the bed, and empty the contents of my weapons chest on the bed.
“What are you doing?” Eliza asks, stopping in the hall outside our room.
“Taking an inventory and putting the weapons that would be the least helpful at the bottom of the chest,” I tell her, moving my favorite silver-tipped wooden stake from the bed back to the chest. “I can enchant a few of these too.”
“Is this your version of nesting?”
I look from the weapons to Eliza and back again. “Is it wrong if I say yes?”
“For anyone else, it’d be fucked up. But for you, it’s fitting.” She shrugs and continues down the hall. I go back to organizing my collection of weapons and bring two daggers and a battle axe with a human-bone handle downstairs to enchant. I need to do the same Nephilim-blood magic spell to the sword Lucas used to mow through the monsters Bael created.
Thinking about blood magic reminds me of that stupid blank piece of paper. It enrages me more and more each time I see it, because I have no fucking clue what it means. I can’t see anything on it, and I’ve tried multiple spells to try and get a hidden message to appear. Evander couldn’t detect any sort of spell on it, and I’m seriously starting to think my dad grabbed a piece of paper from a random printer, folded it, and gave it to me on accident or something.
Though I suppose it doesn’t matter, because my locator spells to find Lucifer have come back with zero results.
“Want to help me enchant some weapons?” I ask Pandora. “I’ll have to mix up some potions.”
She jumps all over that and beats me into the kitchen. I’m finishing the spell for the battle axe when my phone rings. It’s Abby, and we’ve talked a few times since I told her about Julian’s death. She keeps calling to check on me, which I appreciate, but in true Callie fashion, I want to repress my grief and focus on revenge.
“Hello?” I answer.
“Hey, Cal. Is this a good time?”
“Yeah. I’m almost done putting an enchantment on an axe.”
“Oh, wow. That’s, uh, interesting. What does it do?” she asks.
“This particular spell will make the blade burn anyone it cuts, but it’s not hot enough to cauterize the wound. Just burn you while you bleed out.”
“You sound too cheery about that.”
“There are certain demons I would love to see suffer. Anyway, what’s up?”
“I’m still good friends with a few doctors who went through med school with me, and I was talking to one in Dallas this afternoon. She said they’ve had an influx of patients coming in the ER with an unknown virus with varying symptoms, but the pathology all comes back to the same thing. The CDC is involved now, and they’re going to make a public statement soon. This is spreading fast, and there’s no cure.”
I step away from the stove, turning down the burner. Holy shit. “Pestilence is making a plague,” I think out loud. “Be careful, Abby. If this comes to your hospital, take a vacation.”
“I can’t avoid it. I work in emergency medicine. This is my job.”
“Yeah, but we know this disease was created by a Horseman.”
“Who’s to say others we treat weren’t created by him too?” she asks ruefully.
“That’s a good point. Did your friend say when this all started?”
“They saw their first case a week and a half ago.”
The day Paimon failed and Julian died. “Well, Pestilence is a lush. He moved on fast. Don’t worry, we’re onto—” I cut off with a sharp intake of breath. What felt like a bad period cramp came on all of a sudden, gradually getting stronger until it fucking hurt.
“Cal?”
I grunt and put a hand on the counter, blowing out air. “Sorry, I got a cramp out of nowhere.”
“A cramp?” she echoes. “You don’t mean like in your leg, right?”
“Right. It felt like a period cramp.” Gritting my teeth, I put my hand on my lower abdomen and inhale, feeling better. “It’s gone now.”
“Cal, that’s a contraction.”
“Maybe Braxton Hicks. I’ve been busy creating high-powered magical traps all day and now I’m casting more spells, so it could have trigged those pains again.”
“I kinda want to know more about these magical traps, but you need to mark this down so you can keep track of contractions.”
“There’s no point,” I tell her. “As much as I’d love to get this baby out of me, I’m not going into labor right now. The midwife checked me yesterday, and I’m only dilated barely one centimeter. That was an experience, by the way.”
Abby laughs. “Yeah, they get way up there. And you don’t want to know how many women get rushed into the ER because they didn’t think they could go into labor, either, and had their baby in the car.”
“As long as I stay home, I’m fine.”
“There’s no way you can have a hospital birth?” she asks carefully. As a doctor, the thought of a home birth makes Abby cringe.
“I wanted pain meds and all the drugs they’re willing to give me, but we can’t. I’ll be vulnerable during labor, and a demon already figured out the baby has just enough divinity in her to use as the key to open the gates. I’ll be here, with the midwife from our coven to help with the labor and birth, and my friends will be here to cast protection spells.”
“I can come too,” Abby tells me. “I’m not an OB, but I do know a thing or two about medical emergencies, not that I think you’re going to have one.”
Having a house full of people was a hard pill to swallow, and that’s after realizing I was giving up my pain-free labor. I imagined just Lucas and myself in the room, with the doctor and nurse, of course. It was supposed to be quiet and calm, and everything was going to go according to plan. Adding one more person to the roster is the last thing I want, but it’s different with Abby.
“I’d really like it if you could be here. I’m not gonna lie. I’m a little scared since my mom died giving birth to me.”
“Oh,” Abby says and then pauses. She still forgets sometimes that we’re not actually related, and it’s a sore subject for her. “Right. That was different. You have more divinity in you than Juliet does. I really like that name, by the way.”
I smile, feeling a little emotional. “Thanks. Someday she’ll understand how much meaning her name has.”
“She will. That, uh, kind of reminds me,” she starts and then hesitates.
“Yeah?” I refill my glass with water and go into the conservatory. It’s nice and sunny today, making this room warm. I really should have planted something to fill these empty counters with.
“I was at…at my parents,” she says awkwardly, hesitating again. “I was there last weekend and asked Nancy if she had anything of yours from your childhood.”
My heart jumps into my throat. “Does she? I would have thought she burned it all.”
“I did too,” Abby admits, and I hate the guilt in her voice. It’s not her fault. “Which is why I was surprised to know she has a bin full of stuff. I have it, if you want it. She, um, also wants to know if she can send you a baby shower gift. She follows the bookstore on Instagram and knows you’re having a girl.”
“Oh, um…I…I don’t know,” I tell her honestly. “I don’t need anything from her, nor do I want it.”
“I understand. I wouldn’t, either, if I were in your position.”
“My old stuff, though. Did you happen to look through it?”
“Yeah, I wanted to make sure it was legit before I offered it to you.”
“What’s in it?” I ask eagerly.
“A few photos, the outfit you wore home from the hospital, a pair of baby shoes, a blanket, and some art projects you made in preschool and kindergarten. Dad—William—has no idea she kept it all.”
“The blanket,” I rush out. “Is it a black quilt with stars in each corner?”
“Yeah. It is.”
Tears immediately well in my eyes. “My mom made that,” I whisper, voice tight. “Michael told me she made it by hand as they watched the moonrise together.”
“Oh, Cal. I’m bringing it over for sure. You need it. Juliet needs it.”
“Thank you,” I tell her, annoyed at myself for the constant crying. “It’s the second thing I have from my mother.”
“Do you want me to wash it first? It kind of smells like mothballs from being in storage for so long.”
“As long as you don’t mind?”
“Not at all. I’m doing laundry now.” I hear her turn her washing machine on. “I’ll add it with the load I’m gonna put in. I’ve always wanted to make Penny a quilt and want to even more now. Something with meaning. Everything she owns has been bought brand-new.”
I sit on a wooden bench in the conservatory and chat with Abby about making something memorable for our daughters. She’s telling me how she attempted to make Penny’s witch costume for Halloween when another cramp slowly rolls in. It’s not painful at first and then makes me grunt out loud. It doesn’t last long, and once it’s gone, I’m back to feeling fine.
“Callie,” Abby says slowly yet is unable to hide the excitement in her voice. “That was just about twenty minutes after your first contraction.”
“It’s just Braxton Hicks, I’m sure. I forgot about my water.” I lean over to pick it up off the wooden counter.
“You can talk through Braxton Hicks. You stopped talking both times.”
“Maybe I’m just a wimp when it comes to my pain tolerance.”
“For some reason, I don’t think that’s true at all.” She laughs. “Penny just woke up from her nap, so I’m gonna go. I’m off tomorrow so I’ll bring by the blanket and, ya know, help you have a freaking baby!”
“Abby, I swear to god, if you jinx me.”
She laughs. “Just keep me updated.”
“I will. Give Penny a kiss for me. Take care, Abby.” I end the call, finish my water, and have to pee by the time I walk back into the kitchen. I use the bathroom and then watch TV in the family room. I end up falling asleep, waking when the doorbell rings. Binx is curled up next to me and makes no attempt to get up and answer the door for me.
It’s Kristy and the twins, arriving a little early for our state of the union meeting, as Kristy is calling it.
“Can someone get that?” I ask out loud to my familiars. Pandora and Freya are sleeping on the back porch and have no interest in getting up. Scarlet is waiting by the door, wagging her tail. I can hear it thumping against the floor from all the way in here. “Fine,” I grumble and give Binx a kiss before moving him so I can get up. I was asleep for about forty minutes and am a little disappointed I didn’t get woken up with a contraction in that time, because I am secretly hoping to get this baby out of me ASAP so I can go back to kicking ass and taking names.
And I cannot wait for Lucas and me to meet our daughter.
The family room connects with the living room, and I slide the pocket door back. My hand slips off the wood, and I lean forward, reaching for the doorframe. A cramp starts low in my abdomen, but this time it feels tight, like my entire middle is being synched—and it fucking hurts.
“Lucas,” I pant through gritted teeth, unable to breathe. His office is on the other side of the house. “Lucas,” I call again, a little louder that time. He gets to me right as the pain starts to fade.
Thinking it’s a pain from using magic, he wraps his arm around me. It’s different this time; instead of feeling like the baby was pushing against my womb in an attempt to make more room for herself, it’s like my body is pushing her this time.
“Did you use your angel powers?” He smooths my hair back, needing reassurance everything is okay.
“No,” I tell him. “This was different. I think…I think that was a contraction.”