“Is there anything that can be done medically?” Doc Jane asked.
Havers went to shake his head, but froze as the sharp point of the knife cut into the skin of his neck. As blood leaked out and ran into the starched collar of his formal shirt, the red matched his bow tie.
“Nothing of which I am aware,” the physician said roughly. “Not on the earth, at any rate.”
“Tell her it’s not her fault,” Qhuinn demanded. “Tell her she did nothing wrong.”
Layla closed her eyes. “Assuming that’s true—”
“In humans that’s usually the case, provided there’s no trauma,” Doc Jane interjected.
“Tell her,” Qhuinn snapped, his arm starting to vibrate ever so slightly, as if he were a heartbeat away from dispatching his own violence.
“’Tis true,” Havers croaked.
Layla looked at the doctor, searching out the stare behind the ruined glasses. “Nothing?”
Havers spoke quickly. “The incidence of spontaneous miscarriage is presented in approximately one in three pregnancies. I believe, as with humans, it is caused by a self-regulation system that ensures defects of various kinds are not carried to term.”
“But I am definitely pregnant,” she said in a hollow tone.
“Yes. Your blood tests proved that.”
“Is there any risk to her health,” Qhuinn asked, “as this continues?”
“Are you her whard?” Havers blurted.
Phury interjected. “He’s the father of her child. So you treat him with the same respect you would me.”
That had the physician’s eyes bulging, those brows surfacing above the busted tortoiseshell frames. And it was funny; that was when Qhuinn showed a modicum of reaction—just a flicker in his face before the fierce features resettled into aggression.
“Answer me,” Qhuinn snapped. “Is she in any danger?”
“I-I—” Havers swallowed hard. “There are no guarantees in medicine. Generally speaking, I would say no—she is healthy on all other accounts, and the miscarriage appears to be following the generic course. Further…”
As the doctor continued to speak, his educated, refined tone so much more uneven than it had been the night before, Layla checked out.
Everything receded, her hearing disappearing, along with any sense of the temperature in the room, the bed beneath her, the other bodies standing around. The only thing she saw was Qhuinn’s mismatched eyes.
Her sole thought as he held that knife against the other male’s throat?
Even though they were not in love, he was exactly what she would have wanted as a father for her young. Ever since she had made the decision to participate in the real world, she had learned how rough life was, how others could conspire against you—and how sometimes principled force was all that got you through the night.
Qhuinn had the latter in spades.
He was a great, fearsome protector, and that was precisely what a female needed when she was pregnant, nursing, or caring for a young.
That and his innate kindness made him noble to her.
No matter the color of his eyes.
Nearly fifty miles to the south from where Havers was piss-pants terrified in his own clinic, Assail was behind the wheel of his Range Rover, and shaking his head in disbelief.
Things just kept getting more interesting with this woman.
Thanks to GPS, he had tracked her Audi from afar as she had decisively passed out of her neighborhood and gotten on the Northway. At each suburban exit, he expected her to get off, but as they’d left Caldwell well in the dust, he’d begun to think she might be heading all the way down into Manhattan.
Not so.
West Point, home of the venerable human military school, was about halfway between New York City and Caldwell, and as she exited the highway at that point, he was relieved. A lot happened down in the land of zip codes that started with 100, and he didn’t want to get too far from home base for two reasons: One, he still hadn’t heard from the twins about whether those minor-league dealers had showed up, and two, dawn was coming at some point, and he didn’t like the idea of abandoning his heavily modified and reinforced Range Rover at the side of the road somewhere because he needed to dematerialize back to safety.
Once off the highway, the woman proceeded at precisely forty-five miles an hour through the township’s preamble of gas stations, tourist hotels, and fast-food joints. Then on the far side of all that quick, cheap, and easy, things started to get expensive. Grand houses, the kind that were set back on lawns that looked like carpets, began to crop up, their low, loose stone walls quaintly crumbling at the sides of the road. She bypassed all of the estates, however, finally pulling over into the parking lot of a little park that had a river view.
Just as she got out, he drove right by her, his head turning in her direction, measuring her.
A hundred yards later, out of sight from where she was, Assail stopped his car on the shoulder of the road, emerged into the biting wind, and did up the buttons on his double-breasted coat. His loafers were not ideal for tracking through the snow, but he didn’t care. His feet would put up with the cold and the wet, and he had a dozen more pairs waiting for him in his closet at home.
As her vehicle, not her body, had the tracking device on it, he kept his eyes on her. Sure enough, she was putting those cross-countries on, and then, with a white ski mask over her head and the pale camos covering her lithe body, she all but disappeared into the blue-washed winter landscape.
He stayed right with her.
Flashing out ahead at clips of fifteen to twenty yards, he found pines to shield himself behind as she progressed back toward the mansions, her skis eating up the snow-covered ground.
She was going to go to one of those big houses, he thought as he kept pace with her, anticipating her direction and, for the most part, guessing correctly.
Every time she went by him without knowing he was there, his body wanted to jump out at her. Take her down. Bite her.
For some reason, this human made him hungry.
And cat and mouse was very erotic, especially if only the cat knew the game was afoot.
The property she eventually infiltrated was nearly a mile away, but in spite of the distance, her blistering pace on those skis didn’t lag in the slightest. She entered at the front right corner of the lawn, stepping up on the perennial low wall, and then resuming her course.
This made no sense. If she were compromised, she was an extra distance away from her car. Surely the nearer edge would have made more sense? After all, and in either case, she was exposed now, no trees to offer cover, no possible defense against trespassing available to her if she were sighted.
Unless she knew the owner. In which case, why hide yourself and sneak up at night?
The seven-or eight-acre lawn gradually rose toward a fifteen-to twenty-thousand-square-foot stone house, modernist sculptures sitting like blind, shiny sentries on the approach, the gardens sprawling out in the back. The whole time, she stuck close to that wall, and watching her from seventy-five feet up ahead, he found himself feeling impressed by her. Against the snow, she moved as a breeze would, invisible and quick, her shadow thrown against the gray stone wall such that it seemed to disappear—
Ahhhhhhh.
She’d chosen the route specifically for that, hadn’t she.
Yes, indeed, the angle of the moonlight placed her shadow exactly on the stones, effectively creating further camouflage.
An odd tingle went through him.
Smart.
Assail flashed forward, finding a hiding place in and among the plantings at the side of the house. Up close, he saw that the grand manse was not new, although not ancient, either—then again, in the New World, it was rare to run into anything constructed earlier than the eighteenth century. Lots of lead-paned windows. And porches. And terraces.
All in all? Wealth and distinction.