Maureen's eyes rolled up, and she collapsed into a heap of dirty clothes around a stick doll. Jo jerked with shock, finally noticing details: hollow eyes like bruises in her face, wrist and elbow bones standing out so sharp they almost cut the skin, pallor that made her freckles stand out like spattered paint.
That was her sister. Someone had done that to her sister!
Fear surged through Jo, and then cold rage. Maureen looked like one of those survivors in the photos of Dachau.
"Brian, what the hell did you drag her into?" Jo felt something dangerous pressing against her eyeballs. That clone of Buddy Johnson stood about an inch from getting his ass fried.
He seemed to know it. He held up a hand and knelt down to gently ease Maureen's position. "Peace, woman! I'm just carrying her to a place where she can get some food and rest. Ask David. He and I were both captured within minutes of coming here. She set me free this morning. She'd already killed the man who did this."
Jo fumbled her way out of Maureen's jacket, took the lighter out, and tossed both of them to Brian. "Get her covered. Make a fire, warm her up. Get some water into her. You know this goddamn place, for Chrissakes get her some fucking food!"
He just stared at her.
"Goddamn you, move your ass! Do I have to light a fucking fire under you?"
David shook his head, still groggy, and looked up at Brian. "Sisters," he said, as if he was cussing. "They fight like cats, but God help you if you dare threaten one of them."
The pins and needles of her waking feet proved that she was alive. She was alive and held a living David in her lap.
She noticed a briar next to David's hand, green and wiry and covered with thorns. It moved. Rage took her, and she ripped it out of the ground--a foot, three feet, five feet of rooted horror. It broke loose and shriveled in her hand. She threw the blackened remnant into a bush and hoped David hadn't seen.
She stared at her shaking hand. The rash throbbed with her racing heartbeat, and she thought of asphalt. Nice, safe, dead asphalt.
* * *
Maureen tasted blood. She must have cut her lip when she fell. Damn fool theatrical stunt to pull, fainting in the middle of a fight. Debate Club wouldn't permit it, but the Drama Club might. The world fuzzed in and out, balancing on the foggy edge between reality and dream.
Blood, the little worm boring in the back of her mind muttered. Remember the taste of Fiona's blood? Remember what it told you? Do you have the guts to run a blood test on yourself?
Was she pregnant?
The thought formed ice in her belly. She lay there, limp, eyes closed, and wondered. Words echoed around in gray emptiness, bouncing off the walls of her future. Was she pregnant? If so, who was the father?
And, what would she do when she found out?
Three questions. Three questions about her goddamn belly, not anybody else's. Not the pope's, not Father Donovan's, not even Sister Anne's back at St. John's School.
She'd asked how long sperm remained alive inside the human woman. Memories stirred, rolled over, and sat up. The past spoke to her in the dusty words from a medical text on anatomy a high-school friend had stolen from the library. Adults only! the circulation stamp shouted in heavy red ink. Black-market Sex Ed. It showed clinical detail to curious teenagers who had no other source. That was where she had found out about puberty, about why Buddy had used rubbers with Jo but never wasted one on her.
Sperm remains viable for up to three days inside the human female, said the dry clinical voice of the pages. The translation was, Dougal's slime still swam around in her, mixed with Brian's seed. Her skin crawled at the thought. For a moment, she thought she'd puke again.
An egg can be fertilized for anywhere up to twenty-four hours after ovulation. So a woman had a four-day range in any cycle of the moon, to become pregnant. Russian roulette is what it was, one bullet in seven chambers. Basis of Rhythm and Blues, a highly questionable method of contraception endorsed by Father Donovan. Like he'd really know.
And women tended to be more interested in sex when they were fertile. That was Nature's little joke, but then, remember She's a Mother.
Thirty hours from zygote to mitosis, three days for the embryo to migrate to the uterus, one week to implantation, all rough figures that change from one woman to another. Fiona must have gotten herself knocked up the first day she had Brian, to taste like that. Witch's luck, or witch's skill.
All Maureen would have would be a fertilized egg, at most.
Did she have the guts to look? Did she have the guts to live with the answers?
Maureen tasted the coppery salt in her mouth. When would a lab test know, she wondered. When would the proper hormones and other changes show up in her blood, her urine?
Not for weeks. There was another way. The dirt she lay in told her of it, lent her power. It was her land. It obeyed her. It supported her. That was the only reason she still lived.
{Look inside yourself,} it said. {A witch has more ways of sight than eyes. You don't need a crystal ball.}
She lay in her half-faint, voices murmuring around her, feeling warmth, feeling wetness in her mouth washing away the blood, feeling the gentle touch of concern. Brian, she knew. Brian held her. Brian cared for her.
She'd fucked him. Twice. She'd been too busy wrestling with herself to pay much attention to him in the process. Next time, she'd try to do better. Someday, she might even be able to kiss him.
You're dodging, the worm said. Are you
