Pandora's Box: Book 3 of the Crystal Raven Series

Tremors chased them the length of the tunnel. Every four or five steps, Ember stopped to wail about her lost fairy, and Jean-Claude would shout at her to get her boys to safety as Wandjina gave the ground another shake. Quick! He would yell before the roof caved-in. Aiko was having trouble running. She frowned, puzzled. Her balance was off, and it made no sense. She was uninjured, and even with Ember pulling on her arm, and the hounds dancing at her feet, she should not be stumbling so much. She hissed, at Ember or maybe at the ground that kept shaking and upsetting her balance. A mere earth tremor should not keep her from outpacing a succubus even weighed down by ninety pounds of blubbering girl.

Crystal was oblivious to everything. In her panic to escape, she had tunnel vision, her world shrinking to the dot of light at the head of them. She had an iron grip on Gwen’s arm, pulling her along in a desperate tumult to escape. In her fear, Gwen barely noticed the painful grip that was leaving angry red welts on her arm. Behind, Cantara and Alex were being chivvied up the tunnel by an over-enthusiastic Tangerine, who was discovering a latent talent for herding. Besides, shoes tasted good, even when still on stinky feet. Today was a day packed with fun games!

The girls tumbled out into the bright sunlight and collapsed in a jumble of heaving chests and licking tongues.

“OH MY GOD AIKO!” Ember cried. “You’re a whale!”

Five pairs of eyes turned to stare at Aiko’s belly. She looked like a dyslectic ‘d,’ a stick figure with a round belly the size of a beach ball. And then her water broke.

“Aiko!” Gwen demanded. “Just how long is the gestation period of a vampyre?”

“Seven!” Aiko cried out as the first contraction doubled her over. “Months!”

“What’s wrong?” Ember demanded, confused.

“She’s having a baby,” Gwen replied, taking control of the situation. “We need to get her to somewhere sheltered.”

“Our campsite from last night,” Alex suggested. But how could it have only been last night if Aiko was suddenly seven months pregnant?

Gwen sent Ember and Crystal ahead to start a fire and to get her boys out from under their feet while she, Alex sand Cantara helped the pregnant woman across the rocky ground. They would need to keep the baby warm when it came, and she mentally reviewed supplies. There were really not prepared for this, but she thought Alex might be able to rig up a baby carrier with one of the knapsacks. What would they do about diapers, though? And what did a baby vampyre eat? Did vampyre mothers nurse like their human counterparts? This was a mess, and for the first time in a long time, Gwen wished her mother was there. Could she even deliver a baby on her own? After all, she had only assist once or twice as part of a half-finished Midwives’ course.

Reaching the shelter, they found Ember and Crystal struggling to light the fire. The blue imp kept shoving a hand into the pile of wood, and Crystal would swat it away. Angrily scolding her, he shoved his hand deep into the budding firepit, and flames eight feet high leapt up, nearly singing Crystal’s eyebrows. The imp sat back, beaming proudly. Go figure, Crystal thought as she glared at it, the little bugger was a minion of Hell. She angrily piled wood onto the hungry flames as Ember fussed over the grinning imp. Bloody showoff.

Gwen took over as she and the others arrived. She instructed Alex to spread out a groundsheet and blanket while she and Cantara wrestled with Aiko’s pants. You can’t have a baby while wearing pants, but the tight leather clothing the vampyre favoured were giving them fits, especially now that her abdomen was extended and swollen. In the end, an impatient Cantara cut them off. Gwen shook her head. When the vampyre was no longer in pain, the two of them were going to go round and round over this. Those were the pants Alvaro had bought her for her birthday, and Aiko was only saying she had finally broken them in.

Normally her mother would suggest walking until the patient was fully dilated, and while it made sense, Gwen doubted scrambling over a mountain was what her mother had in mind. Gwen lay her patient down immediately. Besides, it was much too cold to be wandering across the mountain without pants. And Gwen did not want to push it. In her pain, Aiko was growing vicious and had already tried to bite both her and Cantara. Gwen suspected the djinn did not have the patience to deal with a woman in childbirth, and already she and Alex had to separate them to prevent a catfight.

“Boil some water, Crystal,” Gwen instructed.

“Really?” Crystal laughed. “I thought that was busy work to keep the men occupied.”

“For tea,” Gwen sighed, giving the other girl a hard stare. “It’s cold, and we can all use a hot drink.”

Gwen suspected this would be a difficult delivery, and not only because they were on a windswept mountain. First pregnancies often had unforeseen complications – one reason many primitive cultures once aborted the first pregnancy. Not an option, at least not at this point. Aiko was already fully dilated, and the baby was crowning. At least that part was normal. Aiko’s contractions were now two minutes apart, and the actual birth should start soon. Now, if she could only keep Aiko from crushing everyone’s hands every time she had a contraction.

“It won’t be long now,” Gwen soothed, moping the vampyre’s forehead.

Aiko hissed at her and swore she would unman Alvaro for doing this to her. Gwen grinned down hesitantly. She knew it was only the pain talking, but with Aiko, it was sometimes hard to tell. As much as she could gather from talking to the woman over the past year, Aiko had not only killed every lover she had ever had, she had eaten them. Right now, Gwen wouldn’t want to be Alvaro, and if she was, she wouldn’t stop running during this century.

“Cantara,” Gwen suggested. “See if you can find something to support her back, would you? We need to sit her up and make it easier to deliver the baby.”

Aiko’s eyes had become glassy and feverish with the pain. Gwen was no longer sure if she was tracking the instructions and encouragement she whispered quietly to her, and could not decide if she should be worried, or not. The baby was more than crowning, and she needed Aiko to push and push only when instructed.

“Okay,” Gwen urged. “Rest. Take deep breaths, like this.” And Gwen demonstrated, so sounding like an asthmatic train engine that Alex, Crystal and Ember fell over laughing.

“Not funny,” Gwen scolded. “Keep it up, and I’ll put a baby in your bellies.”

“Not possible,” Crystal sputtered.

“Push it, and you’ll see how evil I am,” Gwen warned. “I have mad evil skills.”

“Do not!” Ember retorted. “Does she?”

And even Aiko laughed.

The baby’s head and one arm were out. There was no blood, merely a clear slime that covered the baby and made him slippery as Gwen attempted to turn him to ease his second arm out of the birth canal. There! That wasn’t too bad; even if Aiko had sworn to shove her head through an orifice it wasn’t going to fit through.

“Okay,” Gwen urged, “just one more push.”

“I’ll push you,” Aiko muttered darkly, gritting her teeth and pushing to expel the unwanted baby as a wave of agony swept over her. She did not care that they said you soon forgot the pain of childbirth, she would never forgive this baby or the man who did this to her.

And then it was all over but the cleaning up. Cantara helped Gwen cut the umbilical cord and then passed the baby to Crystal to bathe and swaddle in a blanket while she helped Aiko pass the afterbirth. Somehow this slime was even grosser than the flesh and blood of a human birth. And really, between wrapping and keeping the baby warm, and cleaning up both mother and child, they were dangerously low on spare clothing. Alex was going to kill her when she saw what Gwen had done to her favourite shirt, and wasn’t that her good hoodie that Crystal was turning into a diaper. The sacrifices one made for your girls, she thought sardonically. When this was over, she was finding herself more boys than Kristen had and wasn’t letting anyone with ovaries anywhere near her. Oh, yuck!

Dinner was on the fire, and mother and baby were resting comfortably as the women settled into their campsite. Cantara and Alex were busy rigging a shelter from the wind with two of the thermal blankets, pitons and rocks, fighting with the gusting wind to stretch and hold the two silver blankets down to create a lean-to against the side of the largest boulder. The djinn was swearing worse than Aiko at the height of her labour, and Alex was not much better, if far less inventive. With Ember cooking supper, and her dogs barking at the flames, it was a wonder that mother and child could sleep. Still, both were resting peacefully after their ordeal.

Gwen settled back against a boulder and accepted a plate of half raw, half-burnt beans. While cooking over a fire was often difficult, one day soon, they would have to take some time to teach the girl how to cook. But not right now. Now, all she wanted to do was choke down her beans and then not move for a thousand years. Around her, the others were settling in, and soon conversation fell off altogether. It was mostly only complaints about the cold and the colder beans. Not worth pursuing.

The plaintive cries of a hungry baby woke the camp. They had neglected to set a watch, and the fire had died down to embers. As Cantara rounded up the last of their wood, Gwen moved to help mother and child. She found Aiko with the babe already at her teat, frowning down puzzled. She looked up at Gwen with sad, frightened eyes.

“Aiko, what is it?”

“This child will die,” Aiko replied in a flat, emotionless voice. “He does not blood the teat.”

Gwen frowned, confused, not sure if or how bad this was. She did not have enough experience with vampyre babies. Well, not any, actually. The unnamed babe was her first. Aiko refused to give him a name because in the Vampyre culture, a child is not named until he or she is inspected by their fathers, and the stubborn woman would not break with tradition. And now, Gwen had to worry about whether the child would live long enough to meet his father or die without a name.

“Let me get my crystals, and I’ll examine him,” Gwen offered.

Since they were already up, the other women gathered around mother and child. They took turns passing the baby from arm to arm, chucking his chin and rocking him as Gwen prepared. He gurgled happily at the attention, kicking his little arms and legs and giving all the signs that he was a happy and healthy child. He even spit up some of the breast milk when he was in Cantara’s arms, and the djinn had to scramble to find something to clean up the mess. Everything as normal as any human baby Gwen had ever seen, but then again, this was not a human child.

Gwen took up the baby and held a healing crystal to his forehead. She frowned as it remained clear, a strong indication of good health. The baby cooed and giggled, squirming in her arms.

“He’s fine, Aiko,” Gwen assured his mother. “Maybe a little more active than I would expect so soon after birth. Still, he’s healthy, happy and apparently well-fed.”

“He does not blood the teat,” Aiko insisted stubbornly.

“Nevertheless…” Gwen sighed. Aiko knew one thing and one thing only about vampyre babies – they blooded the teat, or they died. How else would they get the pranic energy they needed to survive?

“I will keep an eye on him,” Gwen promised. “A close eye.”

The camp settled back in, and this time Cantara set a watch. If nothing else, they could keep the fire lit so mother and child would remain warm through the night, although they had precious little fuel left. God knew what they would do tomorrow night with the temperature on the mountain was dropping dangerously after the sunset and no wood for a fire. They were at least two days above the frost line, and four days before the temperatures would climb to something approaching reasonable. At least the hounds were staying with them, the djinn thought sourly. Maybe she could figure some way to burn them….

The women were still drowsing in camp well after the sun rose, having been woken three more times through the night by the hungry babe. Exhausted from their collective ordeals within Pandora’s lair, and from a restless night of squalling baby, the thump thump thump of the rotors did not immediately register. A helicopter! The women sprang from their blankets, not sure what it meant. The US Military insignia emblazoned on its side was clear to see, but what was the American army doing in Turkey? And what did it mean for the exhausted women?

“Is there a Crystal Raven amongst you?” A voice called down from the helicopter.

The six women exchanged troubled looks. Crystal shrugged and raised her hand.

“Thank God,” the voice cried. “April Moonshadow sent us. We are to bring you back to the fortress as quickly as possible.”

“Oh, goody!” Ember exclaimed. “A ride home. Well,” she whirled to confront the others, “it beats climbing all the way down.”

Ember was right. Even crowded with her boys, the helicopter was much warmer than the mountainside. Ember had tried to send the hounds on ahead, but they kept rematerializing back inside the helicopter. The third time, while it was becoming airborne, Tangerine all but sat on the pilot, and Cantara told her to give it up. Another close call like that last one and nobody was making it off the mountain in one piece. Hell hounds had a mind of their own and no fear of anything on this earth, unlike the human, vampyre and djinn in the flying coffin. What did they care if they all ended up bouncing off a mountain in a tin can?

It was a two-hour helicopter ride down the mountain, and while shorter than the week it took to climb up here, it seemed to take forever. None of the women knew what was waiting for them when the ride was over, and that anxiety made time weigh heavily on their minds. Had the Brotherhood been compromised? How and why had April sent a US Military helicopter out to search for them? None of it made sense, and for the four non-humans amongst them, the repercussions of discovery were frightening. Would the powers-that-be accept their presence amongst humans the way the Church had or were they destined for some Quantico Bay for immortals – condemned to live out their existence in a constant round of questioning and experiments?

Too many questions to be answered in one short helicopter ride. The fortress had changed in their absence. To the left of the ruined town, a helicopter landing pad had been added, barbwire fences surrounded everything, tents had sprouted like mushrooms, and trucks bearing a dozen national insignias were everywhere. What had happened in their absence? All this in only one week?

Gabriel had obviously managed to bring in the reinforcements. Brotherhood Choirists from all thirteen academies filled the fortress and its surroundings, but interspersed with them were men in combat fatigues, many from armies none of the women recognized. Something had happened, something very bad, and except for Ember, who noticed little beyond her hounds, the rescued women were very worried. How could any of this be good?

A reception party was waiting for them at the helipad. As the girls stooped hesitantly beneath the blades of the helicopter, a familiar figure rushed out and wrapped Gwen and Crystal in a bear hug.

“My God!” April cried. “It’s really you! I was beginning to lose hope!”

“Really, mom,” Gwen complained, “we’ve only been gone a week.”

“Girl,” April said between happy tears, “you’ve been missing for five months!”

And suddenly it all made sense to Gwen – Aiko giving birth to her child months early, the vampyres being gone from the area around the fortress, and the sudden military build-up that had an air of permanency. Somehow time had moved differently while they were in Pandora’s lair.

They all paused, turning to watch Aiko approach Alvaro. Puzzled, April watched Aiko hand Alvaro a bundle of rags.

“Is that -.” April began when her daughter cut her off.

“Shhh!”

“Alvaro de San Carlos,” Aiko pronounced in a voice that seemed too loud for the occasion, “I would like to introduce you to our son.”

Stunned, Alvaro accepted the bundle from Aiko. Carefully, he unwrapped the blankets to inspect the baby inside. Suddenly, he raised his child into the air, threw back his head and shouted.

“This is my son, Aidan Farstrider. Long may he live!”

“Aidan,” Gwen whispered, her cheeks wet with tears. “It’s a strong name.”