9. Chapter 9
Chapter nine
Jen
"Tell me what you are."
Madison says it forty minutes after she wakes up. She has been watching the truck and the men and me the whole time.
"You lifted me off that bed like I weighed nothing. I'm a hundred and forty pounds. You got me down a hallway when I could barely stand. The man in the passenger seat has a green shine to his skin. The one at my room had tusks."
She meets my eyes.
"So tell me what you are."
I let out a slow breath.
"I would've told you I was human a month ago." I shake my head. "I'm still figuring out the rest."
"That's not an answer."
"No." I glance at the road ahead. "It's the best one I've got."
She waits.
"Okay. None of us in these trucks are fully human. The man driving turns into a wolf. The one in the passenger seat is half goblin, half fae. The one with the tusks is half orc. The one who wouldn't come into your room is a demon hybrid."
Madison looks at the back of Daron's head.
"An actual wolf."
"Born that way."
She watches him drive for a long moment.
"And you?"
Her eyes come back to me.
"What parts of you are different?"
"My senses. I can smell things across a room. I can hear breathing through walls. I don't get sick."
"That's...not exactly human."
"No."
"I can also grow horns." I shrug. "And I can make people do things with my voice."
Madison blinks.
"Jesus."
She shakes her head.
"That is not normal."
"You're telling me." I don't know how much to give her, but I continue. "I feel different in my own body every day now. And my soul's bonded to these men. All six of them."
Then she laughs. It is not a small laugh. It comes up out of her chest and she puts her hand over her mouth and laughs into her palm.
"I'm sorry," she says, and laughs again. "You're going to tell me Superman is real next."
"No, but some of them can fly."
The laugh has tears in it now — not crying, the kind that come when you are past hysterical. She breathes. The laugh quiets. She drags the back of her hand across her eyes.
"I'm a teacher," she says. "I teach the times tables. I told a kid last month that ghosts aren't real. I gave her a hug because she was scared."
"I'm sorry all of this is happening to you."
"And now you're telling me people can fly."
"Yes."
The humor goes out of her face.
"I'm freaking out," she says. "A lot. I'm freaking the fuck out. I'm asking you all these questions like I'm fine and I am not. I am not going to be fine anytime soon and I want you to know it, because I might start screaming."
"Then scream."
What's left on her face now is fear. Real fear. "Oh my god," she says.
I put my hand on hers. She does not pull away.
"Oh my god, there's a baby in me, and—" Her breath goes ragged. "Can she fly? Is she going to fly?"
"I don't know," I say. "Maybe. Nobody knows what she'll be yet."
Daron finds my eyes in the rearview. He does not slow the truck, but he is reading me. I shake my head. He keeps driving.
"Madison. Look at me."
She does.
"You're allowed to be freaking out. I still am."
She lets out a breath. It shakes, but it comes.
"Okay," she says. "Okay. I'm still freaking out but I'm here, but I’m with you and not chained to a bed. Progress. Okay, okay–I want to keep asking questions. Is that all right?"
"Yes."
"Tell me what's in my body."
"A half-demon pregnancy. On the Syndicate's protocol it runs six weeks instead of nine months. You've carried about three weeks so far."
"So half." She gets there immediately. "They told me the baby is a girl. How big is she, then?"
"Measuring like a twenty-week human fetus. On this clock you're at the midpoint. If the cascade runs, you deliver in four days. If you take the reversal, it shuts the cascade off and you finish the slower way — about three more weeks."
Her hand stays on her stomach. "And the egg's yours."
"My egg. Fen's sperm. Put in you because your blood scored right. None of it was anyone's choice but theirs."
"How many did they get to work? Before me."
"You're the first human they've run this accelerated cascade on. That's the part nobody has numbers for, including Vance."
Madison presses a hand flat to her stomach. "The baby runs warm. Not fever-warm. Like a heater somebody left on." She doesn't wait for me. "Is she going to live?"
"I don't know. Nobody does. The protocol's new and you're new. First thing is getting you to the cabin and figuring out what your body needs in the next ninety-six hours."
"Ninety-six hours."
"Four days. That's the cascade to viable baby."
She lifts her head.
"Okay. I have most of the picture now. There's more I'll want — about him, about her. But I have enough to say one thing, and-–. This . . . this is my body."
"Yes."
She has been strapped to a bed for weeks with a clock ticking in her that nobody let her set. I hold still.
"I've been carrying her. My body is doing the work. You can tell me she's half yours. You can tell me she's half his. I'm the one deciding."
I nod with tears in my eyes now.
"I haven't decided."
"Madison, I want you to have every option we know about before you decide.
You don't have to choose tonight. But if you don't take the reversal, the accelerated cascade keeps running, and you'll deliver in four days.
If you do take it, the cascade stops and the pregnancy drops back to its previous pace—about three more weeks.
The reversal's never been used either. Either way, it's your decision. "
"I don't know. It's — it's all too much right now."
"Then it waits."
"What does he think about it?"
"I haven't asked him what he'd choose. But I know he'd never take the choice from you, and I know the only thing he's wanted since the cell is for everyone to come out alive. That much I can tell you."
"I want to talk to him before I decide anything."
"Okay. There's a rest stop in about two hours."
Two hours later we pull off the highway into a stretch of forest. Daron radios the second truck. It pulls in behind us. Crull and Dean take the perimeter. Daron and Harek stay with the lead truck.
I climb out.
Fen comes down out of the sky a minute after the trucks stop. He's been with us the whole drive — riding the ridgelines off the road, never letting us get more than a mile ahead. Close enough that I felt him the whole way.
He sees me. He sees Madison through the windshield. He waits.
I cross to him.
"She wants to talk to you."
He looks at the lead truck a long moment. Then he follows me.
Harek is at the back door. He takes me in, takes in Fen, and steps clear.
I get in first. Madison is awake, sitting up against the door. She watches Fen fold himself into the cab behind me.
"Madison. This is Fen."
He settles as far away as he can in the truck on purpose. His hands go flat on his thighs. He keeps his eyes on her face.
"Hi," Madison says.
"...Hello." Rough.
She studies him.
"You're Fen."
He doesn't answer in words. He doesn't look away either.
"You're the father."
Fen blinks slowly. "Yes."
"Did you know they were going to make a baby?"
His jaw clenches. "No."
I don't fill in the rest. The years in the cell, what it did to him — Madison can have that later, if she wants it.
"What's she going to be?" Madison asks. "What's she going to look like? What's she going to need?"
"We don't know," I say. "But we’ll be here to help you."
Fen lets me talk. Then it happens.
His nostrils move — small, the kind of thing I'd miss on anyone else. He's scenting the cab. Scenting her. And it hits him, because the smell isn’t just Madison. Isn't a stranger. It's me and him. His head turns toward her stomach.
Not the careful not-looking he's been doing since he got in. The thread between us pulls tight.
Madison watches his face change.
"Mine," he says.
It's forced up out of him. He didn't reach for it.
Madison’s hand moves to her stomach.
"I didn't have a choice either," she says. She holds his eyes, and something passes between two people who got used the same way.
"What do you want?" she asks him. "Tell me."
"Live." A breath. "You. Live."
"And?"
He can't get the rest into words. He turns to me, and the thread carries what his mouth won't.
"He wants you both to live," I say, for him.
Madison's eyes go wet. She doesn't cry. She shuts them a second.
"I think that's more than the doctors ever wanted for me. I was just the incubator to them." She opens her eyes. "Thank you. Thank you for caring what happens to me. Thank you for being so careful and not crowding me."
Fen dips his head. It's all he has.
"I'll make a choice tonight. Or tomorrow. I want both of you in the room when I do. But I'm the one deciding."
He nods.
"Yes," I say.
"Okay. I'm going to sleep. Wake me at the house." Her eyes are already sliding shut. "Stay if you want. You're not in the way."
He stays.