Fifteen
When Zachariah had turned the car into the neighbourhood Tobias felt his heart beat begin to rise, a pounding, he suddenly had an acute awareness of the blood pumping around his body, zinging to his very fingertips. The suburban neighbourhood had neatly trimmed lawns, large well kept trees planted at intervals barely disguising the white picket fence and matching porches.
"Stop the car." His voice was barely above a whisper.
"Stop." Shouting now. As soon as he saw the petite figure beyond the tinted glass he unfastened his seat belt and slid out of the backseat.
Zachariah shut down the engine and struggled to leave the car, running round barely catching the door as Tobias got out. He took long strides over the lawn, jumping over the low fence whilst the girl on the porch remained oblivious to his approach. "Saben?"
The girl's head turned and her dark eyes grew impossibly wide to see Tobias standing on the grass.
He watched as the bag fell from her precarious grasp and the glass shattered around her feet.
"Don't move." He instructed and went to her in four bounding steps, he lifted her easily. He was overwhelmed with the familiar sweet scent of her, and the sweet weight of her in his arms. He wanted to savour the moment, the moment that decimated all the convincing he had tried to do in the dark hours, the small voice that whispered their separation had been for the best.
"Uh, Tobias, can you put me down?" She said. Her tone did not fit into the happy reunion in his head.
"Oh, yes. Sorry." He set her down inside the hall of the house and it was the first opportunity to look at her. Her face was unchanged, her hair a dull shade of pink with the dark brown of her natural colour having grown out a few inches. She smoothed her oversized shirt down over her distended belly and his mouth went dry.
"You're…"
"A behemoth." She finished for him.
"Pregnant." He finished.
Tobias licked his lips, his eyes fastened to her belly mesmerized by the shirt logo stretched across her skin. "Saben-"
Saben was looking everywhere but at his face, she couldn't seem to speak though her lips trembled with the effort not to say everything at once.
He tore his eyes away to look at the house, it bore no personal stamp, no photo frames, no mismatched piece of furniture, he could see into the den, a blanket spread across the couch where Saben must have been sleeping.
When he looked back into her bleak eyes he saw the glossy shine of tears. "What do you want?" She asked stiffly.
"Can we sit down?"
She moved slowly, using walls and furniture to get by. He gently took hold of her arm and she gripped his skin hard as she lowered herself onto the couch.
He took a seat opposite her trying to give her the illusion of space.
She seemed to struggle to regain her composure but when she did speak it was stern and not like Saben at all. "I suppose Thea told you."
He nodded.
She shook her head slowly and he could see the anger blossom in the set of her mouth.
"I had a right to know, Saben."
The anger spilt into her eyes, into her very being. "You cancelled that right the instant you screwed around. I saw you that night at Solstice, I should have known from the beginning you were jerking me around. Tobias' fucking charity case."
"It was never that." He said sitting further forward on his seat, fighting the urge to reach out and grasp her hand.
Tears were rolling down her cheeks now.
"It's complicated." He whispered.
He could see her trying to remain cool and calm, she refused to meet his eyes. He wondered If she had spent so much time alone if she'd forgotten what it was to talk. He watched as she rubbed her bump, taking strength from the baby inside.
"May I?"
She looked up at him for a long time before giving the bare nod of permission, he got on his knees in front of her and splayed his palm across her. As if on instinct the baby kicked against his hand and wonderment and fear possessed him instantly. "Saben, tell me, is it mine?"
She hesitated, lips trembling with the truth and then. "What if it is?"
He met her eyes. The possibilities were limitless, the baby would be royalty amongst the Witch community, a future leader, heir Consul. She would bear immense responsibility, many lives would weigh heavy on her shoulders and the burden of great and powerful knowledge.
"Saben."
She was shaking her head, a stubborn defiance he had seen before when he knew she wasn't going to budge or change her mind. Even this expression made him tender.
There was a sudden, intrusive noise at the back of the house, they both turned their heads toward it.
Saben looked scared.
"What is it?" He asked.
She shook her head. "I don't know."
A smell of something rotten invaded their noses and Saben covered her mouth to stop herself gagging. More noise erupted and she grasped his hand hard.
She got up with difficulty, Tobias offered to help but she was more interested in seeing what it was. "You expecting anyone?"
She shook her head, no. Tobias went ahead of her as the noises sounded violent: the sound of plates and pans being thrown this way and that. They made their way to the kitchen in slow silent steps, Tobias peeked round the door to see a male figure with his back turned to him. The smell made him want to retch, instead his eyes began to water.
Saben tried to get a look to and as soon as her foot crossed the stranger turned around and she let out an almighty scream.
Tobias had seen ghouls before, when he was a boy he had helped raise a fresh corpse from the dead and had been punished so severely but his talent had not gone unnoticed.
This ghoul's face was grey, completely drained of any normal human colour, it's over large tongue lolled in its mouth making wet sounds. It's skin hung in thick grey folds and its eyes sockets seemed dark but there was the shrivelled raisins of its eyeballs. The creature had fangs.
It was wearing a leather jacket, jeans and motorcycle boots all covered in brown old blood.
Saben's eyes were wide, stuck to the ghoul's hideous mockery of a human face whilst whispering under her breath.
Tobias was slowly reaching for one of the kitchen chairs. The ghoul began to make noises as if trying to communicate with them but Tobias was deaf to it instead he took hold of the chair and swung it at the creatures head. The ghoul fell to the ground, knocked sideways but got right back up again.
Saben grasped Tobias shoulder, leaning heavily on him, screaming, "no." It took a moment for him to comprehend her command. "It's Geoff."
Geoff? She recognized the monster and the ghoul seemed to pay attention at the sound of his name, his eyes falling almost tenderly on Saben. But the wild animal anger was still in him and he reached for Tobias with the intent to rip the witch apart.
Tobias dodged out of his grasp but Saben's footing was foiled when he moved and she fell to the ground with a grunt. Geoff lurched toward her.
Tobias took hold of him , his skin was soft beneath his leather jacket and Toby didn't like the feel beneath his grip. Using all his strength Toby hauled the ghoul back to the ground and away from Saben.
He looked around for something, a broom, a wooden spoon, anything to plunge into the soft flesh and kill it but there was nothing around the granite surfaces. The ghoul stood, looming over Toby by a few feet. The stench of him made Toby dizzy.
They struggled for a few minutes, there wasn't enough space to do a spell and any witch fire might hurt Saben and soon the ghoul had him pinned against the wall and he had little choice as orange fire began to dance between his fingers.
Suddenly the ghoul cried out, a nonsense sound and he slumped forward heavily crushing Toby whose hand brilliantly hot with witch fire slipped into his skin and the soft parts of his pulpy organs.
Toby struggled to push the thing off of him and when he looked up he saw Saben holding a broken chair leg, blood and viscera running down her hand. She had stabbed him and his skin had been so soft and malleable she had managed to angle the stick into his soft heart.
He wanted to hold when he saw her shaking but even as he approached she had turned a peculiar pale shade and her eyelids began to flutter.
"What's wrong?" He asked softly.
"It's wet." She raised her other hand to show his slick reflection in her palm.
"What?"
"The baby's coming." She said and he caught her as she collapsed forward into his arms crying out in pain.
*
Saben was screaming. Nothing could have prepared her for the unbelievable pain of child birth, it was incomparable: the delicate balance of holding back and pushing and all the while, she was torn apart, her bones bending.
Tobias had been there in his gown, gloves and mask but she had grown frantic she asked the nurses to get him out and now he sat perched on the edge of the waiting room chair, listening to the echoes of Saben Mariley Frost screaming.
His baby was coming. The thought was too immense for him to handle, he wrung his fingers together and ducked his head praying to the goddesses of hearth and fertility to deliver both mother and child safely through it.
Lost in frantic prayers he barely noticed the temperature in the room drop. He looked up to see a tall silhouette slowly materialise into a man.
Tobias stood. "Hello?" There was no reply but he moved with such intense stride that Tobias knew he was not human. "Who in the name of the White Lady are you?"
Saben's scream echoed down the hall and the stranger's eyes seemed to glow an impossibly radiant blue that was at once silver and impossibly black.
Tobias eyes widened. Night Lord Cebren a Lamia seated on the Night World Council, he had a seat beside Hunter Redfern himself and was the Head of the House of Cheber. Tobias had known of him by reputation alone, and had a chance to meet with him briefly long ago when Edgith Harman had still been alive and lively in Night World politics.
He was the newest of the vampires to sit upon the Council though he was by no means the youngest. Older than Hunter Redfern and a born vampire he had wreaked havoc in history before settling down into a position on the US Council.
Rumour had it his mother had been a witch, a very powerful woman of the old world and his father was one of Maya's own born children. But these were just rumours.
The sight of him in the hospital was so absurd that Tobias was at an instant loss for words. Suffocating in the Power that swirled around the vampire. All the excitement of the imminent birth deserted him, the first slither of doubt, could this baby truly be his?
The Night Lord's eyes were glowing as if lit by stars, fixed on a faraway point. "Saben Frost is in there?"
Tobias nodded.
He studied the vampire's face, the pinch of his lips, the intensity of his eyes fixed to the distant as if he could see through brick and wood and steel right through to Saben on the delivery bed. "You're the one aren't you?"
He turned his eyes toward Tobias, not truly looking at him but through him.
"You're the reason she is the way she is."