In moments the three friends appeared in the hallway, blasters in hand.
“What is it?” Dean asked.
J.B. stood in the middle of the hallway with Ryan’s Steyr in his hand. “Ryan, Krysty and Mildred,” he said. “They’re gone.”
Chapter Nine
“I can see the head!” the healer cried, sweat dripping off his nose. He’d wanted to call in an assistant hours earlier, but Baron Reichel had forbidden it, not wanting any more people than were necessary to see his wife in such a compromised state.
Reichel ville, on the southern shores of Erie Lake, hadn’t been blessed with a newborn for many, many months. Things had been born, but they bore no resemblance to children. The baron could ill afford to let it be known that such monsters were born into his family. His bloodline was pure, and his heirs needed to be full norms. If his wife bore him a mutie, the fewer who knew about it the better.
Baron Reichel sat on a bench out in the hall just on the other side of the door to the healer’s room. He had been in the room for the longest time, but his constant concern over his wife’s agonized shrieks had prompted the healer to ask him to leave, allowing the healer to do his work without the interference and misguided concerns of an impassioned observer.
“You must push,” the healer said. “Push harder!”
“I can’t,” the woman gasped, nearing the point of exhaustion.
The healer believed her. In all his years he had never seen such a lengthy and painful birth. Everything about the delivery of this child was slow and complicated when in truth there were absolutely no signs warranting complications, or even pain for that matter. But here was the baron’s wife, in labor half the day and still hours to go before the child was born. “You must try,” the healer urged, his voice showing far more compassion than normal. Usually he was very hard on women during birth, forcing them to work harder in order to end their ordeal more quickly. But Gayle Reichel had already suffered too much, for too long.
She cut short a moan and pushed. The child’s head moved slightly, no more than the width of several hairs. “Yes, that’s it! Very good! Again!”
“It moved?” Gayle asked, her breathy voice filled with both surprise and relief.
“Yes, it’s coming… Now, push again.” She grimaced and tightened her body, tensing her stomach muscles and trying to squeeze the child through a birth canal that was far too small.
“I see an ear!” the healer exclaimed. “Keep going!”
Gayle was almost laughing now. She probably felt the child beginning to move a little more each time. After so many hours, she was happy to see it finally coming out of her body. She closed her eyes, pressed her lips together and grabbed at the wooden rails on either side of the roughly made bed. Then she groaned sharply…and pushed.
Her fingernails cut into the hard, polished wood of the rails. The child’s entire head appeared, followed quickly by its shoulders, neck.
And then…
The rest of its body slid out into the world, almost in a gush. The healer moved quickly, managing to catch the child, then inhaled a gasp. With his eyes closed, he held the child in his hands and for the longest time his mouth moved, but he uttered no sound. Finally he said in a whisper, “Father Death, have mercy on this soul.”
BARON REICHEL HAD BEEN waiting for what seemed like hours. The screams of his wife had pained him, and now that they had stopped, he feared the worst.
But as he continued to wait in silence, not knowing what had happened to his wife was far worse than hearing her constant cries of pain. At last he stood and bravely opened the door to the healer’s chambers.
The room seemed even quieter than the hall had been. His wife, Gayle, was lying on the bed, her chest rising and falling in a deep and regular rhythm. The healer sat at a desk with his head in his hands, no doubt exhausted by the lengthy birthing.