Angel's Messiah (4 page)

I held out my hand to Danny and as he took it my world spun and everything went blank.

“Helena,” a voice called through the fog.

“Danny?”

“Helena, I’m going to take you to Michael. You need help.”

“No,” I mumbled. “I don’t want to go.”

“Helena, I don’t know what’s wrong with you.”

“Bucket,” I whispered.

Danny held the bucket under my face with one hand and held back my hair with the other. The roiling and heaving started again.

Why?
I moaned inwardly.
Those vampires didn’t taste too bad. Why am I so sick?

Hours later — it felt like hours — when the heaving had stopped, I’d showered and was back in bed. Resting in Danny’s arms, I cried.

“I think I’m dying, Danny,” I sobbed.

He rubbed my arms. “What makes you think that?”

I sighed. “I didn’t tell you everything.”

He kissed the top of my head. “What do you mean?”

“I didn’t tell you exactly
how
I got Satan’s blood.”

“And you think that may have some bearing on what’s happening to you now?”

“Yes.”

He clasped my hands in his. “Out with it then.”

I took a couple of deep breaths, trying to calm my heart.

“I had to drink it.”

Danny’s arm tightened around me. “
You did what?
”

“I drank it. I only tasted a small amount,” I added quickly. “The rest I transported to the La’miere hotel, to coat the daggers I used to kill the archangels.”

“Why didn’t you tell me before?” he asked.

“Well, you said that Satan’s blood was no poison to me, so I didn’t think it was important, but what if it’s just taken longer to have an effect on me?”

“What you’re experiencing isn’t the symptoms of poisoning,” Danny assured me.

My vision blurred and I blinked my eyes, trying to refocus. Everything changed.

“Danny,” I whispered, clinging to him in desperation, “why is it dark?”

“What do you mean, Helena, it’s still light outside.”

“I … I can’t
see
anything.”

Danny straightened me up and turned me around to look at me. My eyes rolled back in my head and my body started convulsing. I could feel everything that was happening to me, yet had no control over it. Danny held onto me tightly and placed something in my mouth, presumably to stop me from biting down on my tongue.

When my body went limp he took the wood — I could taste the woody flavour — from my mouth and lowered me onto the pillow.

I opened my eyes and Danny gasped. My vision had returned, though it was very blurry and I was frightened my sight would disappear again.

“Your eyes,” he whispered. “Maybe you were right. Maybe the blood
was
a poison to you and you’ve been trying to assimilate it. Your eyes have changed colour, they’re hazel.”

“Hazel? That’s new. Dark brown, to red, to hazel.”

My body started trembling again, though only for a short while.

“It doesn’t seem as bad now, the trembling,” Danny said. “Perhaps when you feed you’ll be able to keep your food down. We’ll give it a couple of days and try again. For now you rest, and I
mean
rest.”

“Don’t worry, I don’t think I can work up an appetite for what you’re telling me to abstain from anyway,” I pouted.

After having rested for a couple of days and not throwing up again, we finally returned to the ranch — above ground rather than underground. I was still having dizzy spells, though I disguised them by closing my eyes and saying I needed to rest for a few minutes. Luckily the dizziness abated when I employed that tactic.

I sat on the ground and waited for Danny to return, enjoying the warmth of the morning sun on my face. My stomach rumbled. These days if it wasn’t rumbling it was heaving. I knew which I preferred.

For some strange reason I felt the urge to hunt a werewolf. It came over me all of a sudden, from nowhere. Yes, I’d wanted to hunt werewolf before. I’d just never gotten around to it. Why I felt the urge to hunt them now, when I wasn't exactly at my best, I didn't know.

Danny brought the vamps in pairs again, including a couple of females, on the off-chance they might be more agreeable — to my stomach, not to dying — and they tasted fine, the best yet.

“Your colour looks better,” Danny said.

“I feel a bit better. I do have the strangest urge though,” I said.

“What for?” Danny asked.

“To hunt werewolf.”

Danny laughed. “If you keep your food down, maybe tomorrow.”

I nodded my head. Danny headed off to find me one more meal. Six would be more than enough to restore my strength, if I could keep them down.

Before I finished the last one, my stomach complained and my legs began to shake uncontrollably. Maybe I’d overdone it. I put my hands on the ground and pushed down with my feet, trying to stop the quaking.

“
Shit!
” Danny said.

I couldn’t remember ever hearing Danny swear before. He must be worried if he’d resort to the sort of language that came out of my mouth at least once in every dozen sentences. But then again, he wasn’t the only one who was worried. I was sure I was dying.

The treetops began to spin and I closed my eyes.

“I’m not going to make it home,” I said.

It was the first night we didn’t spend back at the cottage since Danny had returned to me. We were lucky we just happened to be in the very place vampires didn’t like to frequent, due to the smell. I knew that Drake wouldn’t kill me, if he happened to come across us. I couldn’t say the same for the other vampires, even if we had worked together once as a team, years before. There’d be so many new vamps that wouldn’t know me, yet would have heard the tales. They’d all be thinking how glorious it would be to kill me, if I was still alive, and become a legend among immortals.

3.
Miracle

It was almost twenty hours before my body was finally at rest. I was sorely weakened and could hardly stand. Danny carried me home, to the cottage, in his arms.

I lay on the bed, weak, angry and frustrated by what was happening to me.

“We have to get
help
,” Danny said desperately. “This isn’t natural. You shouldn’t be sick, not like this.”

I tried to make light of the situation. “At least I’m not crying tears of blood anymore.”

“Helena, I can’t leave you to get help. Why won’t you let me take you to Michael?”

“I don’t want to go,” I said adamantly. “If you really want his help ask him to come here.”

“I can’t do that,” Danny said.

“What about Hael, then?” I said I was fond of Hael. He was the angel who had erected a plaque in Danny’s memory, after I’d killed him, in order to save him from being cast out and becoming a demon. “He might come.”

“I can’t call down an archangel. We have to go to them.”

I sighed. He was being pig-headed again, but then, so was I. If our positions were reversed I would’ve being yelling at Michael or Hael to get their butts down here and help him. Danny could be funny about things like that at times.

He’s set in his ways.

“Can’t
you
try to heal me?” I asked. “Whatever it is it seems to be beyond me.”

“If I try and fail, will you consent to seeing Michael?” he asked.

Damn,
I thought to myself.
He wants to hedge his bets, in case he can’t help me. I guess it’s only reasonable.

“Fine,” I grumbled. “Just get on with it, will you.”

Danny placed the heel of one hand on my forehead and the other hand over my heart. I waited to be filled with bliss and peace, for my body to spasm from the connection … and felt nothing.

“Why isn’t it working?” I asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Try again,” I encouraged him.

He did try, another three times, and each time nothing happened — he felt nothing and I felt nothing.

“Try the thing you do to heal bones,” I said.

“You don’t have any broken bones though.”

“Just try, please.”

Danny cupped his hands and held them slightly above my body, starting from my head and slowly working his way down my neck, shoulders, each arm and torso. As he passed my lower abdomen he stopped and backtracked. His hands hovered there and I knew he’d found something. He fell back into the chair he’d dragged to the side of the bed, his hand still cupped and a look of shock on his face. The blood had drained from his face. He was paler than me at my worst.

My heart started racing. I was almost afraid to ask, yet I had to know.

“What’s wrong with me? I’m dying, aren’t I?”

He shook his head, opened his mouth to speak and closed it again. He leaned forward and ran his hands through his hair, a gesture I knew well. It meant that things didn’t bode well for me and he was trying to work out in his head how to phrase it.

“Tell me what’s wrong with me,” I demanded.

“There’s nothing wrong with you,” he sighed, the colour slowly returning to his face.

He sounded a little baffled by what he’d found, which was apparently nothing
bad
at all. So what was it then? Was I somehow evolving into something else, or was it all in my head?

“Then how can I be so sick?” I asked, confused. “Are you saying it’s psychological, all in my head?”

“No, I’m not saying that at all.”

“Then what are you saying?”

He knelt on the floor beside the bed and clasped my hand. He kissed the palm gently and folded it within his own hands. My heart beat faster now. I wanted to scream. The suspense, or something else, was killing me.

Danny looked into my eyes and I saw the initial shock was now replaced with wonder.

“Tell me,
please
,” I begged.

“You’re pregnant.”

I pulled my hand away from him. If this was his idea of a joke it wasn’t funny at all. I couldn’t have children and he knew it.

“It’s hard to believe, I know,” he said, “but there is a life growing within your womb. From what I can tell it’s been there for about two months.”

“I can’t be pregnant,” I said, shaking my head in disbelief. “I can’t have children.”

“
He
told me He would give us a gift. I always thought He was referring to our being together. Perhaps He meant this,” Danny rubbed my abdomen with his hand, gentle and tender, “as the gift. A miracle of our own.”

“So you’re saying I’m suffering from the immortal equivalent of morning sickness?”

“Apparently, yes,” he chuckled.

“This sucks, big time.”

Danny looked upset. “You’re unhappy that you’re pregnant?”

“No, I only wish the morning sickness wasn’t
so
bad. This is probably one of the only immortal drawbacks I’ve come across.”

“But mortal women suffer morning sickness,” Danny said.

“Yeah, but not like this. This is
easily
ten times worse than mortal morning sickness,” I sighed. “I guess that’s why immortals don’t have babies.”

I thought about Kiana, a varakiana who had given birth to a child half mortal, half immortal. I wondered if she’d suffered as much as me. Perhaps not. Her diet was closer to a mortal diet than mine. That had to make a difference. Vomiting blood was not a nice thing.

“Are you absolutely sure? I mean, shouldn’t we get a second opinion, or is there some sort of pregnancy test I can take?”

“Helena, I’m certain. There
is
a spark of life in your womb. Look inwards. You should be able to find it for yourself now you know
what
to look for.”

I closed my eyes and let my mind reach within me, probing every inch of my body until I reached my womb. I heard the faintest of flutters — a tiny heart beating so rapidly mine had stopped in comparison. I reached out to touch it and something smacked my mind. There was no other word to describe what had happened. It was like I was child reaching out to touch a hot stove and had been smacked, not in anger, but in fear, in an effort to make me withdraw so I would not hurt myself.

It was amazing. I was pregnant.

I wanted to do a little happy dance, or shake my booty, but I was so weak all I could manage was to lean over and grab hold of Danny, hugging him fiercely. I started crying. I couldn’t help myself.

“Why are you crying?” Danny asked.

“Because I’m
happy.
”

He laughed. “You cry when you’re sad, you cry when you’re happy. How am I meant to know?”

“You’ll get used to it, I’m sure,” I laughed and sobbed, “after a few hundred years.”