Chapter Seventeen
Marquis
Having Mads on his arm once more, he strolled into the council building, veering toward the upper floors by force of habit.
Mads tugged him the right way and they descended concrete stairs and followed the scent of antiseptic and misery.
Mads didn’t seem to react negatively. He slept fitfully, and he was prone to drifting off in thought more often than he had been, but that was part of healing, Marquis supposed.
Dr. Vans’s office stood open, the male at his desk once more leafing through papers. He brightened when they approached and rolled his chair back, fingers tented. “You cut your dosage in half, correct?”
Vans looked to Mads first, him being his patient and all. It seemed fitting as Vans rose and led them away from his office to a side room and an examination table. The equipment in there was severely outdated, but mages didn’t need the most sophisticated technology all the time.
“Of course. Nite stopped me this morning from taking the full dose before I corroborated with you.” Mads offered an uneasy smile as Vans gestured him to sit on the table.
Marquis settled in a seat nearby as Dr. Vans had Mads lay back.
He lifted his shirt on command, and Vans coated his belly in a viscous fluid right over his omega line.
“I didn’t realize your dosages weren’t stable.
Anything I should be wary of?” Marquis frowned as Vans pulled a device on the end of a coiled cord along with him as he double gloved and stared at a black-and-white screen that whined at some inhuman frequency that seemed to chip at his ears through the bond he shared with his familiar.
“Well, considering things,” Vans said as he touched the device over Mads’s belly, rolling it back and forth rather like a searching massage, eyes locked onto the screen.
Marquis wasn’t certain what he was looking at, but when Vans locked onto something, he held the device still and zoomed in. Vans extended his hand to Mads, wrist turned. “Would you, dear?”
As if accustomed, Mads pulled the top glove off of Vans’s stack and angled his head up with a worrisome expression that sang of unease and joy in beautiful harmony.
Vans drew his wand from his pocket, a rather plain and varnished thing he kept meticulously sanitized.
With a flicker of a spell, he whispered under his breath.
Magic mostly relied on innate knowledge of the elements a mage worked with, intention and direction.
Spoken spells were rarely a thing done unless there needed to be fine tuning.
And in the language of sages, Latin, his words spoke of medical terminology Marquis struggled to translate.
He brushed over words: augeo, macto, definitus, sagaciter, parvulus, novus vita, gravida.
To amplify, to magnify, to enhance. To define that which was small and precious—new life. For the good of pregnancy…
“Snakes and spirits…” Marquis choked on his own words as the screen magically enhanced. We’ve done it…
On the screen before them curled the fine image of a tiny little new mage life curled in on itself, heart little more than a flickering pulse of cells.
Vans used his wand to rotate and zoom in on the image, the view shimmering in a place so intimate that even Marquis would never be able to touch.
“Do we want to know the most likely gender? There’re no genitals visible at this point, but I can often tell from the vascular pattern with about eighty-six-percent certainty! ”
“Please?” Mads sat up a little, still clutching to the used glove. Marquis’s mind spun, trying to process it all as Vans did some sort of counting of visible veins.
“I can safely rule out alpha; omega is iffy, but we’re looking at a girl most likely.
” Vans changed view of the little lima bean within Mads and pushed a button so that a grainy black-and-white image spit out of a printer on the side of the cart with an offensive screech.
“Gestational age looks correct. Size is good. Placement of the placenta… Oh boy, it’s posterior, so you’re going to show sooner than later.
” Vans drew his wand away, handed Mads the device, and stripped his gloves surreptitiously before handing Mads an antibacterial wipe to clean up.
The astringent smell of alcohol flooded the room as Marquis took a shuddering breath.
“Well, say something, man! Your omega looks like he’s about to cry, he’s got a very full bladder, by the by, and you look like you’ve seen a ghost.” Vans threw a dirty glove at Marquis, making him splutter as the wet rubber left a residue on his face.
It tasted vaguely of that clear glue that children put in school boxes, sweet and plasticine.
Marquis sputtered and wiped his face before tackling Mads with a firm hug and what he meant to be a hum of appreciation that came out as a wail of a sob. “A baby girl! A girl. We’ll have a baby! Ours.”
Mads clutched to Marquis and took a deep breath, body shuddering. “A little witch.”
“Thank you, my love…” Marquis froze, mind reeling. “We need a nanny… Would you like to chestfeed again, or we can find a wetnurse from the shifters, or perhaps—”
Mads popped a hand over Marquis’s mouth and choked out a half laugh. “Let’s tackle things one at a time. Let us wait until their spirit quickens and then we can welcome them and buy things.”
As was tradition. Mads had never been one for mage tradition, and when he’d become aware of Rexford, he’d— Marquis thought back.
They’d not even wanted a child so soon back in those days.
Children just…happened. Either you had sex during their heat to conceive, or you didn’t.
They’d, of course, engaged in one another, but the announcement had been a pleasant surprise and largely overshadowed by Justin’s birth.
“I don’t even have a girl’s name in mind,” Marquis said, laughing.
“I do.” Mads smiled and told an old story of pecan shells, dirty fingers, and a refined, delicate woman who welcomed Mads so wholeheartedly.
“Morgana.” Marquis spoke the name on a breath and stole Mads into the fiercest of kisses.
***
Back on the road again, Marquis was a pitiable mess.
He wrapped Mads in a dozen layers of protective charms as they pulled out one of Marquis’s old motorcycles.
One he’d named Zephyr. A 1952 model FL that had been painted black, chrome polished, and every spell possible lined within.
It used no gas, ran on a thumbnail-sized wish crystal, and purred like a tiger.
With a few modern improvements for turn signals, lighting, windshield, and passenger, Marquis rode as he’d not done in years.
The roar of his own coven members flocked him, Rexford’s core enforcers behind.
And tucked in a backpack loaded down with more skid gear than strictly necessary, was the plump, warm, and excited weight of his mate familiar.
The one who had borne his heir and carried their daughter.
But who was to stop a daughter from becoming an heir?
They’d never had a witch wandmaker, but perhaps it was time.
The roar of the highway and vibrations beneath him reassured him of a future to come.
And from one highway to the next, out of sight of cameras, they swapped spells, some cloaking themselves from mortal eyes to change their riders and make tracking them that much harder.
Even if they had cameras, they’d see Marquis’s bike running down one stretch of highway, missing every camera along the way, and reappearing at another hours away. No middle.
An advance party roared ahead of them, scouts that would search the perimeter and rooms of the bed-and-breakfast to prepare for the humans to come. And if Nelson was correct, they would be there with the promise of trade. What they would have to trade was the question.
They roared into a parking lot some time later, the radio in his helmet giving him forewarning that some of the humans had arrived early, but everything was safe.
They really did want to broker peace, it appeared.
Marquis just wanted it all to be over with, to be a covenmaster, to loosen his belt and raise a child without the looming threat of death above all magekind laid on his shoulders like some Jesuit cross.
He disembarked and whipped his helmet free, shaking out the spell that filtered air and kept him comfortable. Mads yawned from his backpack, and a rustling told him he’d peeked out. As if to confirm, warm whiskers tickled the back of his neck soon after. I smell shifter. Wolf.
Marquis frowned and searched around. “Perhaps Izohr or their ward.”
It’s not Sailor or Sheila. Mads never would call people by their names. Always with informality, even in familiar form. Undignified, but Marquis relished his ability to be comfortable anywhere.
“The owners are dragons and the staff are ravens.” Marquis shucked his gloves and stowed them with his helmet before marching toward the rather quaint building.
The old estate had the scent and lingering magic of having been a clan of some sort, confirmed by the few houses built out on the property.
Private cabins. Marquis couldn’t remember who had resided there in recent memory.
But then again, he’d taken over after so many deaths had happened.
I’ll keep you updated on the sniffer.
Izohr, as if summoned by writ of being mentioned, sidled up, his heavy step crunching gravel beneath thick boots.
Sheila walked at his side, body held at attention, side brushing Izohr’s legs. Marquis had noticed she’d picked the habit up during her service to the blind omega, Warring.
Smell wolf. Not family. The little one’s confirmation made Marquis suspicious, and they crowded in, marching up the steps in file to fill the lobby of a rather humble entryway, a flustered woman at the front desk rifling papers before standing at attention. “Mages!”
Marquis made his way to the front of the group and nodded at the woman. “We’re early. Apologies.”