Windy City Dragon Page 16

  “A week, huh?” he said.

  Lowering her forehead to his, she reached between them. He was ready. She slid herself down until he was inside her again. “Let’s say goodbye in a way that will last.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  The truth rarely received a warm welcome. To some, it cracked across the cheek like a slap. To others, truth’s knock was ignored like an unrecognized stranger’s. Tobias had underestimated Sabrina. Yes, she was sad to leave her human life behind, but he’d seen something else in her today. When it came to her people, she was fiercely loyal and willing to sacrifice her own happiness for them.

  He pondered that and more as he, Gabriel, and Raven neared the east side of the Michigan Avenue Bridge.

  “Gabriel, look!” Raven pointed at the water beyond the railing, dyed bright green for the occasion. “It matches your ring.”

  It was shocking the first time you saw it. The Chicago plumbers’ union had been dyeing the river green since 1962. He used to come watch the boats spread the dye every year until questions regarding the environmental friendliness of the coloring caused him to lose his enthusiasm over it. Now that he knew Sabrina and her coven were behind it and that it was magic, not chemicals, he took it in with a whole new appreciation. And Raven’s excitement was infectious.

  “How do they do it?” Gabriel asked.

  “Witchcraft,” Tobias said.

  Raven paused among the crowd to look at him as if he might be joking.

  “The same one you visited for the cure,” Tobias said, intentionally cryptic.

  “Madam Chloe?” Raven looked delighted.

  Tobias pressed a finger over his lips. “Top secret.”

  The sidewalk was crowded and Raven gripped the brown railing and stared out over the winding green river. “Sabrina’s certainly concerned about keeping us all a secret, isn’t she?”

  Tobias winced at her harsh tone. That was unlike Raven. “She has her reasons. It’s okay.”

  “Okay? Is it really okay that her coven thinks it’s better than everyone else? It sounds to me like she’s an ungrateful, self-centered bitch.”

  Tobias held up his hands. He’d never seen Raven act like this before. “Chill—there’s no need for insults. Let’s go back to the house and talk this out.” Tobias could hardly believe his ears or the way the air around them began to crackle with Raven’s ire.

  He glanced at Gabriel whose mouth was hanging open in shock. His brother gave him a half shrug and then placed a hand on his mate’s back. “Raven?”

  Raven’s face was bright red and covered in a sheen of sweat.

  “Gabriel, what’s wrong with her?” Tobias muttered but his brother just shook his head.

  “I saved her life.” Raven pointed her finger at Tobias’s chest. “I warded her home to keep her safe. We are here hiding from an assassin, and I still found enough compassion to put my neck out for her, and she thinks we’re lesser than her stupid vampires? I don’t think so!”

  Tobias reacted, trying to cover Raven’s mouth. “Raven, stop!”

  An electric shock blew him back a step.

  Gabriel’s expression tightened as purple fireworks zinged off Raven’s exposed skin and popped in the air around them. He looked as perplexed at Raven’s sudden bout of rage as Tobias.

  “Perhaps Tobias is right. We should continue this conversation in private,” Gabriel murmured.

  “Perhaps I should end this right now.” Raven raised her ring. It glowed like a star between them. She focused on Tobias, her entire body shaking.

  Tobias held up his hands. “Whoa, whoa, whoa… Where did that come from? Let’s all take a beat and talk about this civilly.” His eyes drifted to the crowd around them. Thankfully, no one seemed to be paying much attention to their quarrel. This was Chicago on Saint Patrick’s Day. The crowd was already getting rowdy.

  Raven pitched forward, her body undulating.

  Gabriel’s eyes went wide. “Raven, are you okay? You look like you’re going to be sick.”

  The witch hurled. Tobias watched in horror as vomit spewed from Raven’s mouth in a color that almost matched the green river. But the sick seemed to make Raven’s magic tantrum worse. Flashes of light popped and spiraled in the air around her, and light shimmied across her slick skin in waves.

  “Gabriel, what’s happening to me?” Raven’s eyes rolled back in her head and she collapsed.

  Gabriel caught her unconscious body and pulled her into his arms. The crowd pointed and murmured to each other. That was going to be a bitch to deal with if it ended up on video. Sparks of purple and emerald-green magic zinged off Raven’s skin like it was the Fourth of July.

  Suddenly, a familiar face pushed through the crowd and grabbed his shoulder. Sabrina, and she was furious. “You have to get her out of here, Tobias. She’s drawing too much attention.”

  He gave her a nod and turned toward the crowd, smiling and spreading his hands. “Happy Saint Paddy’s Day, everyone!” Tobias clapped twice and waved his fingers. “We’re a performance art troupe from Columbia. Looks like someone drank too much green beer.” He waved a hand at his brother and Raven. “Enjoy your morning.”

  Sabrina helped clear a path as they navigated the crowded walkway. By the time they reached the street, Sabrina had already hailed a taxi.

  “I’ll take her to my office. I need to examine her. She’s sick,” Tobias said to her.

  “Just get her out of here.” They climbed in and Sabrina slammed the door behind them.

  Chapter Twenty

  A short Uber later and they entered the austere surroundings of his medical office building across from the hospital. Thank the Mountain Tobias didn’t have office hours today. Gabriel ushered Raven into the elevator. She was awake now but still flushed.

  “It’s so hot.” She tugged at the collar of her coat.

  “Has anything like this ever happened before?” Tobias asked.

  The two looked at each other. “When I first came into my magic, symbols used to glow along my skin anytime Gabriel touched me, but they went away after I absorbed the magic of my ancestors. I’ve never had anything like this.”

  Tobias unlocked the door to his medical office and ushered them both inside to an exam room. “Put her on the table.”

  There was a tornado of dark smoke and Sabrina appeared beside him. “What the hell is going on, Tobias? Do you know how many people saw the human fireworks show today?”

  Tobias turned to her, “She’s sick, Sabrina. Something’s wrong. Really wrong.”

  Sabrina took one look at Raven and snapped into nurse mode. She grabbed Tobias’s stethoscope from his neck.

  “Get her out of that coat, Gabriel,” Tobias said.

  Sabrina started taking Raven’s vitals. “Her blood pressure is high, and so is her temp. Really high. One hundred and three.”

  Tobias frowned. “We can add that to puking fluorescent green and sending off magic sparks.” He pulled out his penlight and started examining her.

  “Ugh. I feel terrible,” Raven said.

  Gabriel rushed from the office and returned with a plastic cup Tobias recognized as coming from his waiting room. “Try to drink something.”

  “What have you had to eat today?” Tobias asked. “Maybe it’s food poisoning.”

  “Fluorescent food poisoning?” Sabrina spread her hands.

  “I didn’t eat anything. I haven’t felt good in the mornings lately, so I’ve been skipping breakfast.”

  Tobias stared at Raven, assessing her overall condition, then felt a cold suspicion worm up through his gut. When Sabrina’s eyes met his, he knew she suspected it too. “Gabriel, my personal office is the second door on the right. There are packets of peanut butter crackers in the top drawer of my desk.”

  As soon as Gabriel had left the room, Tobias addressed Raven directly. “We need to talk.”

  “Why? What’s going on?” Raven asked. “Tobias, after everything that’s happened today, just give it to me straight. I can’t t
ake much more of this.”

  “I, uh, I was just wondering… you said you were sick in the mornings.” Tobias swallowed hard. “And I know you thought you were barren, but… could you be pregnant?”

  “Pregnant?” Raven said breathlessly. “No. I can’t be. I mean I really can’t be. Remember the chemotherapy? My eggs are fried.” She ran a hand over the swollen mound of her abdomen. Sure, she’d been a little bloated lately and hungry all the time, but she couldn’t be pregnant.

  Her mind raced back to Crimson’s temple, to the fertility ritual the voodoo queen had forced her to participate in. The bright white lines of the circle came back to her, the offerings of fruit and eggs. Gabriel had made love to her in the center of that spell—a quick animalistic coupling they’d been helpless to resist—to save their lives. It couldn’t have worked, could it?

  Today was the seventeenth of March. The spell had taken place on Mardi Gras, February thirteenth. About five weeks. Wasn’t that too early to be having symptoms?

  “What’s going on?” Gabriel asked, charging into the room with a handful of peanut butter cracker snacks. She reached out and plucked one from his grip.

  “We were wondering if Raven’s nausea might be due to pregnancy,” Tobias stated.

  “I told him it was impossible. I’m barren. Dr. Freemont told me that the chemotherapy I was on had completely destroyed the functioning of my ovaries. I haven’t had a period in years.”

  Gabriel’s face turned stony, his eyes flicking down to her abdomen. “Impossible in human terms.”

  “Brother, is there something you need to tell me?”

  “Raven and I were forced to take part in a voodoo queen’s fertility spell,” Gabriel murmured.

  “But she’s dead,” Raven added quickly. “I killed her. And come on, a spell can only do so much. Right? Right?”

  “You need to test her,” Sabrina said.

  Raven had almost forgotten the vampire was there. She was right beside her, her hand very close to hers on the examination table. Close but not touching, as if she wanted to be there for Raven but not overstep her bounds.

  “I’m a pediatric cardiologist. I don’t have pregnancy tests in the office.”

  “But you do have an ultrasound machine,” Sabrina said.

  “An ultrasound!” Raven protested. “This is ridiculous. I can’t be pregnant. I can’t be.”

  Gabriel exchanged a look with Tobias that Raven couldn’t read.

  “Let’s give it a go,” Tobias said. “We’ll prove you’re not pregnant, and I can check out your other organs while I’m at it.”

  Raven didn’t feel like herself. Her skin was hot. A headache pulsed at her temple. She had an urge to tell Tobias to go to hell and leave her alone.

  “Raven, please,” Gabriel said. He looked concerned.

  “Okay,” she said reluctantly.

  “Come this way. I’ll show you to the room.” Tobias helped her off the examination table and led her to the ultrasound room where he left her and Gabriel so that she could change into a paper gown.

  “Honestly, Gabriel. I’m feeling fine now.” She fought to make her voice chipper. “This is entirely unnecessary. We’re missing the parade.”

  Gabriel folded her clothes and stacked them on a chair. “Might as well let Tobias get it out of his system. He’s a healer. He won’t feel right until he knows exactly what’s going on.”

  “I’m just so angry. Everything is pissing me off.” She held up the peanut butter cracker she was eating. “Why do they use crumbly crackers in these things? We can send a man to the moon but can’t make a cracker that doesn’t go everywhere when you eat it?” She scootched back on the table, patting down the paper gown with more gusto than necessary,

  A scowl flattened her mate’s mouth. “We will figure this out. Tobias will know what to do. He’s very smart.”

  “Then what is he doing with Sabrina? I put our lives in danger to save her. She’s a vampire mob boss. He knows she wants us out of the city.” Raven’s ears felt hot, and she had the sudden urge to hit something.

  “He said we could stay and she’s here, helping him take care of you.” Gabriel took a seat beside the examination table and took her hand.

  “But it’s the principle. Doesn’t anyone else see that it’s the principle of the thing that these vampires think they own the city?” She shoved another cracker into her mouth.

  Gabriel cleared his throat. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Raven, but it seems unlike you to carry this much anger over something like this. You are usually the one tempering my anger.”

  “I’m consumed with it. I can’t remember ever feeling like this before.” She rubbed her temples. “I must be sick. It must be the illness.”

  A knock came on the door, and Tobias entered with Sabrina at his side. They were both wearing gloves. Gabriel’s hand came to rest on her shoulder. She leaned back and stared at the ceiling. After a few minutes of machine adjustments, Sabrina squirted a glob of lube on Raven’s lower belly and applied the wand to her skin.

  “It might be too early to see anything this way. Normally with early pregnancy we do an internal ultrasound, but Tobias doesn’t have the right equipment for that,” Sabrina said.

  The sound of her voice was sandpaper against Raven’s ears. Shit, she needed to get a handle on this. Why was she so angry?

  The wand glided under her belly button, curled, and stopped.

  She heard Sabrina gasp. “Tobias. Do you see this?”

  “What? What is it?” Raven asked.

  Tobias replaced Sabrina by her side and his face was as grim as Raven had ever seen it. He reached across her body to turn the screen to face her. A steady, intermittent whooshing sound met her ears. Raven wasn’t sure what she was looking at. There was a round white shape inside her abdomen. Beautiful in a way. Oval with a texture like a mound of pearls. It almost looked like… It looked like…

  “An egg,” Tobias said. “You’re carrying a dragon egg.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Of all the things Tobias had thought might happen today, seeing a dragon egg inside a human uterus was not one of them. He’d believed Raven when she’d said she was barren. There was no reason to think she was lying. Not to mention, the side effects of her chemotherapy were familiar to him. Only, he hadn’t considered the magic factor.

  First, there was Gabriel’s tooth, capable of healing her cancer but also capable of healing the damage caused by the chemotherapy. Second, there was the fertility spell. Tobias wasn’t familiar with voodoo, but magic could accomplish strange and mystical things. Even as he looked at the egg, he couldn’t wrap his head around what he was seeing. He’d presumed that the copulation of a dragon and a witch would result in a human fetus that might shift into a dragon after it was born. Never had he suspected the young would form in the same way it would if Raven were a dragon.

  “Tobias?” Gabriel grabbed his elbow and shook. “What does this mean?”

  “It means Raven is pregnant with a dragon.” Tobias repositioned the ultrasound and looked at Gabriel out of the corner of his eye. “Congratulations, brother, you’ve accomplished the most forbidden act of our species.”

  Gabriel shook his head. “No. No. Not an egg. She has a human body. We have to get it out.”

  “Get it out?” Raven sat up, wiping the lube from her belly with a wad of tissues from the box next to the monitor. “You aren’t touching my baby. Neither of you.”

  “You don’t understand, Raven. It’s a dragon.” Gabriel spread his hands as if what he was saying was obvious.

  “Dragons lay eggs and then keep them warm until they hatch. You don’t have a dragon’s body. The egg will be too big and intractable to pass through your birth canal,” Tobias said. He was trying his best to remain clinical and detached, but inside he was reeling. This was bad. So bad. “Chances are you and the youngling will both die if you try to deliver it.”

  “What a load of crap.” Raven’s face reddened as she spoke.


  Tobias frowned. “No wonder her blood pressure and temperature are raised,” he said to Gabriel. “The dragon inside her is heating everything up.”

  Raven wrapped a hand around her opposite fist and brought it to her forehead. “Here’s what we’re going to do. We will allow the egg to develop to the typical size and then take it out via cesarean section. Obviously I won’t be able to sit on it like I assume a dragon would—”

  “Oh, the dragon mother doesn’t sit on the eggs. She’s not a chicken,” Gabriel said with a chuckle. One look from Raven and he sobered up. “Normally the eggs are placed near the heart of the volcano inside the mountain.”

  Raven ground her teeth. “We’ll buy an incubator.” She said the words slowly, and Tobias cringed at the venom in them.

  Gabriel stopped talking and turned statue still, staring at the picture on the monitor. A muscle in his neck twitched like it had a life of its own.

  Tobias tried his best to explain the dangers to Raven. “A fully formed dragon egg is about the size of human triplets. It might be possible for you to carry it to term, but it won’t be comfortable for you, and removing it will require an experienced ob-gyn. Whoever does it will have to understand what he’s doing. You will have to introduce a human doctor to dragon physiology.” He rubbed his head. “And hope they’re crazy enough not to tell our secret.”

  “You can do the surgery,” Raven said, looking him directly in the eye. “You’re a talented doctor, and we have magic and the healing amulet to use if there’s trouble.”

  “Ooooh, no. I want no part of this.” Tobias waved his hands and shook his head. “This would be enough to get us all beheaded if we were in Paragon. It’s said that the offspring of a dragon and a witch will have the power to flatten cities. It could be the most powerful supernatural being this world has ever known.”

  Gabriel’s hand shot out and caught his brother by the shoulder. “Folklore. Nothing more. We are not in Paragon, brother, and you owe Raven for saving your girlfriend’s life.”