Ritual Magic (34 page)

"Solomon, go, please." I looked right at him
and gave him the bravest expression I could muster. There was
nothing inside of me that actually wanted him to leave, but I knew
that he needed to help protect the castle. He could be the one to
tip the scales in our favor. He was now the protector of the
family.

Solomon nodded gently with cold steel in his
eyes and was immediately gone. I felt so alone.

The contractions seemed to be gaining
momentum and force for a while there. By the end of the second
hour, whenever a contraction would hit, I wanted to jump out of the
bed and dash for the window. It no longer mattered that I couldn't
shadow jump or fly—I wanted out as quickly as possible. For some
strange reason, my mind thought that I could run
away
from
the pain of labor and childbirth. It was frightening that I was
going to have to endure more pain to finally hold Cora in my arms
again.

I kept telling myself that the closer the
contractions got, the closer to the end of the tunnel I was. That
was a comforting thought until Gabriel had to open his big fat
mouth.

"It looks like you may be transitioning to
hard labor soon." He smiled down at me while he checked the paper
printout on a machine that I had been strapped to shortly after
they realized I was in labor.
He actually had the nerve to SMILE
at me when he said that! AHHHHHHH!

"HARD labor? HARD?! This isn't
hard
labor?!" My voice convulsed with each word. Another contraction hit
and an explosion was felt rocking the castle just outside the
window.

Gabriel and Mortisha stared at each other
for one brief second, but I could understand the fierce emotions
kept at bay as their eyes flickered and froze.
Oh no!

"Tell me, is the baby going to be okay? Is
Cora going to be OKAY?!" I demanded as their heads turned back
towards me.

"Yes." Leo's voice drifted along the stale
air of the room as he strode over to me with his perfectly long
legs. He was approaching from a far corner where a shadowed portal
blinked out of sight. He stopped at the side of the bed, grasping
my hand and pulling it into his chest firmly. He was so hot that my
body temperature shot up a couple of degrees just from the contact.
His skin's pretty warm too. HA, HA!

"Are Celeste and Cora going to be okay?
Answer the woman—she's in pain and overly hormonal for Hades'
sake!"

My eyes cut to Leo to warn him that I was
much
more dangerous than
that
at the second.

"Yes, they are fine." Gabriel's voice rang
out. "It's just...well..." He turned to Mortisha as if she were his
lifeline and she put a steady hand on his shoulder as she turned to
Leo.
That's super weird.

"There is a strange...coincidence that we
have noticed during Celeste's labor." Tisha took a step forward and
came closer to the bed, advancing on Leo as if she were delivering
terrible news. She had the 'don't shoot the messenger' look on her
face, but she didn't seem concerned about anything that Leo could
do to her—her eyes actually kept flicking back to me as she
attempted to share her news.

"It appears,"
flick
, "that every time
that Celeste has an especially strong contraction,"
flick
,
"that we feel the attack on the castle in the form of an
explosion,"
flick
, "or even the walls groaning as if the
castle is going to fall down upon us."
Flick, flick, flick. Was
she just inferring that I was a natural disaster waiting to
happen?

My heart missed a beat as I processed what
Tisha had just been saying.
I
was dangerous. This painful,
not even
hard
labor was tearing the place apart. The world
was crashing down around our ears, and it seemed to be directly
related to my being in labor.

Just then I
felt
Cora move inside me.
I cooed and ran my hand along my belly, covered with the monitor
strap that Gabriel had placed on me.

"Shhh, Cora, it's okay, baby. It's going to
be okay."

Cora moved again, and this time it was
followed by a terrible contraction. I winced as I squeezed down on
Leo's hand so fiercely that his head whipped around to bear witness
to the intense pain that was rocketing through my body. I gritted
my teeth and breathed out towards the ceiling as I closed my eyes
and imagined myself in a beautiful place...possibly...

"Celeste!" Leo's voice cleared my mind and
brought me crashing back down to Earth. "You can't concentrate on
projecting yourself—you will send yourself away like you did on the
plane. You must stay with us, my love." Leo cocked his head as the
room shook so fiercely that the ceiling rained tiny grains of
plaster and dust down on us. Leo's eyes never left mine as he
leaned in closer to me.

"Concentrate exclusively on the sound of my
voice, Celeste. Release thoughts of anything else." His eyes
flickered slightly, and he stared down at me with his ice-blue
human eyes
. SHOOT, this man was hot when he laid it on like
this.
I really hated being so incredibly hormonal, but I just
couldn't seem to help myself.

Leo reached up and brushed the sweaty hair
out of my face and then smiled back down at me. "You are the most
beautiful creature I have ever seen. It appears that being in labor
truly becomes you, Celeste."

"Shut up." I sucked air in at the same time
that I hissed at him. My contraction had not released me yet, and I
was just trying to ease my way through it.
OMG, if this isn't
hard labor, what the hell am I going to do to survive the
really
hard stuff?
! I wanted to cry.

As the contraction began to dissipate, I
turned to Leo's shining face and winced. "Thank you for being here,
Leo." I was grateful for his support, but his timing seemed
suspicious. "What
are
you doing here, though? Aren't you
guarding the castle?"

"I am no
guard
." Leo shrugged as he
patted my hand and set it back on the bed, obviously aware that I
was drifting down from my contraction. "I came to check on you
before I went into the forefront. The castle is under siege on all
sides." He tilted his head slightly as he began to pace the room in
his perfect Armani suit.
Who goes to battle in perfect Italian
slacks, anyway?

"The shadow demons have even found ways
beyond our protective barriers, although how that happened we are
not sure. We will have to take all of the facts in after this is
over—there is much to discuss and someone is going to pay." He
continued to pace the room as if he were talking about the color of
the floor. It was unsettling because his anger seemed to blend in
with his perfect control just a little
too
well.

Leo stopped his pacing and turned back
towards Gabriel and Tisha who were now standing closer to each
other like they were getting ready to huddle.

"Take care of Celeste and Cora. Make sure
that they have everything they need. And if there are any
problems..." He chucked a cell phone to Gabriel and, of course,
Gabriel caught it mid-air. The reflexes on all of these men were
easy to take for granted. "Speed dial #1 if you need me, #2 if you
need Solomon, #3 if you need Von." Leo seemed to grin slightly at
the order that he had set up the speed dial numbers. Leo was always
going to be number one, especially in his own book. With that, he
turned to me one more time, blew a kiss in my direction, nodded to
Gabriel and Tisha and left.

I heard myself sigh as I laid my head back
in the pillow and stared up at the ceiling. There were still tiny
motes of dust swirling in the air from the earlier quake.

My mind was playing through the discussion
earlier about how my contractions were related to the destruction
that was felt in the castle. The thought jarred me a bit with a
good helping of reality—it was my fault. My eyes caught movement
over by the window, but it didn't register that anything else was
in the room until I heard Tisha's sharp gasp.

My head turned instinctively towards the
movement and I caught the sight of a hideously gnarled black figure
standing with dark, empty eyes staring unblinkingly at me.

Shivers ran screaming down my spine as
Gabriel ran towards the figure with his bare hands. He was as
graceful as ...goodness help me, a gazelle. He sprang into action
and was fighting hand-to-hand as another contraction ripped through
my enormous belly. Grasping wildly at my sides, my eyes were pulled
from the life-and-death fight happening just feet away from my
bed.

Crying out in pain, I could hear as the
walls began to rumble with tortured screeches and moans. I gritted
my teeth as I reminded myself that I needed to continue to breathe.
Not breathing would be disastrous for the baby, not to mention me.
My vision began to fuzz as I heard a sharp growl where Gabriel and
the shadow demon were fighting.

My head turned slowly towards the window
just as a blur of black fabric and red streaks whizzed by the edge
of the bed and attacked the shadow demon keeping Gabriel from his
doctoring duties. I listened closely for anything familiar as I
watched the blur grab the shadow demon by the throat and throw it
violently into the far wall.

My mouth was open, aghast at what I saw
before me—it was Camela, the demon witch from hell...and she was
helping
me.
What the...?
I was in absolute shock
watching Camela tower over the crumbled mass of pure evil.
Am I
in an alternate universe or something? Camela had actually come to
my rescue. MINE.

Camela stood ceremoniously over the
unconscious shadow demon as she flicked her long, witch-black hair
over her shoulder. Raising a hand of deathly sharp nails to her
view, she eyed her nails like they were perfectly manicured and not
frightening talons of razor sharp danger. Looking down at the
shadow demon, she huffed, reached down in a flash, and ripped its
head off of its shoulders with a quick twist and tug. With a
disinterested girly grunt, she threw the head down at the body and
turned on the rest of us in the room, finally noticing that we were
all gaping at her like her hair had just caught on fire.

"What?" Her accent was especially
accentuated as she sneered at me. "I heard the commotion and
thought that I could be of service."
Wow, that had to
hurt
to even say the words out loud.

"Camela?" I couldn't believe that I was
actually looking at her in wonder, reaching up to rub my eyes
because there was absolutely no
way
that this could honestly
be happening. Camela was...
incredible.
She had been
absolutely amazing—a one-woman demolition team. Who knew that she
could be so...primal? "What..."

Camela shrugged as she strutted over to the
doorway, pulling it aside as she sashayed into the hallway, looking
first left and then right. She walked back into my room like she
owned the place, eyeing the furnishings as if she was taking
inventory to ensure I hadn't moved anything without her
permission.

"I am protecting the baby. It is just that
simple." She clicked in her metal-spiked heels over to the middle
of the room. She eyed Gabriel as he brushed himself off, revealing
a deep gash across his chest—a lingering reminder of the shadow
demon that wanted to take his life. She snorted as she turned to
Tisha with a flash of red in her eyes. "What is the progress? When
will the child be free of the womb?"

I cringed at the way that Camela had just
referred to me as 'the womb.' She was so cold and hostile, all in
one little package and yet, it was so very
Camela
.

"What do you care about the baby?" I snarked
at her as I pushed up in the bed, still reeling from the last
contraction that had seemed to fade away as I watched Camela
decapitate the figure now cast against the far wall. "It's not like
you have ever cared about the baby before. Why now?"

"The baby," Camela turned on me, "is part
Leonzio. Although it is also part you and three other imbeciles, I
feel strongly that the baby must exist because it does, in fact,
belong to Leonzio." She shrugged as if the conversation was boring
to her.
What a witch. She just called me an imbecile.

I adjusted my shoulders and leaned back in
my pillow again. This was not a good situation to be in—the castle
under siege and my body wracked with pain. I was sweaty, hot,
stressed out beyond belief, exhausted and frightened. What good was
having Camela around going to do?
Well, she could definitely
kick shadow demon ass...

"Thank you for your help, Camela. Are you
planning on leaving now?"
Please say yes, please say
yes.

Camela turned towards the window and yanked
the curtain away slightly as she peered outside.

"No, I plan on staying until the child is
born into this world." She was not giving us a choice—she was here
for the long haul.

I glowered at her as she turned to give me
the evil eye.
Crap in a basket, I hate that woman and now she
plans to make herself at home here in my own private little hell.
She is probably just loving having a front row seat for my pain and
suffering.
Grrrr.

I suddenly felt the need to grow my own
claws, but just then another mind-numbing contraction drew my
attention away.

"AHHHH!" I clenched the sheets on the bed
like they were going to help my pain seep away. I shook my head as
I began to breathe in through my nose and out through my mouth, in
through my nose and out through my mouth. My breath released in a
big SHHHHH noise as I tried to focus on the feel of the sheets in
my balled fists.

When I finally opened my eyes, I saw Gabriel
pulling the paper from the diagnostic machine, eyeing it like it
was a ticker-tape from an old stock market machine. I instantly had
visions of Gomez Addams rattling off stock projections as the
stocks skyrocketed and then plummeted down to rock bottom. The
image was quite unsettling, really. More so than I would have
expected. I sighed as I tried to keep my mind off of the horrible
shaking sensation that was rocking my bed.
Just get past this
contraction and everything will be okay.