Chapter 35 – Change of Plans
Claire's POV
I didn't know whether I wanted to turn around or not, yet I knew that the temptation would eventually overcome my doubts and I would instinctively turn to see my baby girl.
I hadn't looked at her all that much, considering she had been porcelain white and looking as dead as a doornail, but now that I heard the cry I couldn't help wanting to hold her the way that only a mother could.
I was there in seconds, kneeling beside the baby that was wrapped up in a blanket. Wait a minute...
"Why did you wrap her in a blue blanket?" I asked Eve and Myrnin, not that it mattered but I had imagined a pink blanket.
"Because he is not a her. You have a baby boy."
I looked at Amelie with confusion lifting my features. "The dream said that we would have a girl," I told her.
"The dreams aren't always accurate; your hopes usually influence the dreams when it comes to the details that they can't be certain of."
I nodded my head in understanding and looked back at my baby boy – at Shane's baby boy – with the biggest smile forming on my face.
"What's his name?" Shane whispered in my ear as he kneeled down beside me and balanced his left arm on my shoulder.
"I don't know yet. I always imagined us with a girl; we already knew what her name would be. Let's wait until everything calms down, I'm sure we will have a name figured out then."
"Good idea," he smiled, and that smile told me everything that he could not put in to words.
"Michael isn't even here!" Eve exclaimed, "He's still fighting in that stupid battle that doesn't have any meaning now that Sam's dead!"
"You are right," Amelie stated instantly. "We should go back to the Elders' Council Building and tell everyone to go home. There is no further reason to fight."
I picked up the baby boy and held him in my arms, kissing his forehead gently to silence his cries. As I had dreamed before, his eyes were a deep-Shane-looking brown, and the small amount of hair that was on his head was auburn. He looked just like the baby in my dream, and I realised that it was the same baby, just a different name – whatever that may be.
"No, Claire," Shane told me as he placed his hands on my shoulders and led me to the sofa. "You are going to stay right here with our baby, so that you're safe."
"No, Shane," I mimicked, "We will be coming with you, won't we baby boy?" As if on cue the child that I held in my arms giggled.
"If we were in a normal town, you would be lying in a hospital bed, sleeping after giving birth... And our child would be in a sterilized hospital where it could learn to breathe like a normal newly-born baby."
"We're coming. It doesn't matter where we are, it's not safe anywhere."
"You're not going to back down, are you?" Shane asked me, but there was no hint of a smile on his face.
"Are you mad at me?"
"I could never be mad at you, no matter how hard I try." He embraced me and the baby and planted a light kiss on both of our foreheads.
"We should be on our way," Amelie said.
Michael's POV
I'd lost sight of the others a while ago, and I had been looking endlessly for them all throughout the Elders' Council Building – although, I had no such luck in finding them. Still searching, I bumped into a very angry Morley Danvers.
"Ah, another one of them! Where is Amelie?" he demanded, and then continued with, "and where is the young boy that was with her?"
"I don't know, I've been looking everywhere for them myself. Why are you looking for them?"
"Let's just say that they managed to get themselves in to my bad books and I'm looking to get revenge," he said with complete sincerity. "Did they not tell you where they were headed?"
"No, but if they had, you would be one of the last people I would confide in. We're on different sides of this fight, why are you stopping to chat?"
"I'm bored, I guess. I haven't killed anyone in a while."
I took a small step back and stated, "Well, I'm not volunteering."
He sighed and rolled his eyes in an overly dramatic gesture, "If I had wanted to kill you, you would be dead."
"So that would mean that you don't want to kill me?"
Before he had the chance to reply, a choir of voices sounded through the corridors. I made my way to the hall (with a very Myrnin-like Morley following behind) and when I reached my destination I found Amelie and Eve and Myrnin and Shane and Claire... and a baby.
"Is that..?" I asked Claire. I couldn't finish the sentence as my thoughts overlapped and I considered exactly what I was seeing.
"Ah, Amelie and the boy, you both left me earlier in quite a state. I told you to stay put. Wait a second..." He stared at the child in Claire's arms with a shocked expression. "The only way that this is possible... No, this is not possible."
"Actually, Morley, it is," Amelie said sadly, "You're brother plunged a silver stake into his heart and begged me to pull it out, he asked me to be the one to end his life. You may not believe me, but it is the truth."
"And this baby was just magically born?"
"If you want to call science magical, go ahead," Shane remarked.
"The last time I saw you all together there were two more people with you all. Where have they disappeared to?"
The expressions that followed told me all that I needed to know. They didn't know where Oliver was, or Miranda, and I had searched the entire Elders' Council Building, so they definitely weren't anywhere here.
So where could they be?