She turns back towards me, very slowly.
“What?”
“You are pregnant, are you not, Lucy Cushing?”
“How do you know?” she says in a vicious whisper.
“I can taste it.” I smile.
“No one can know,” Lucy says suddenly and then instantly her expression changes, as if she knows she should not have said anything.
“I cannot un-know you are with child.” I feel a stirring in my loins which, despite their recent trauma, have an interest in this female I haven’t felt for the last fifty years. Or longer. “Are you married to the father?”
“And what if I am?” she retorts. “Would that stop me frombelongingto you?”
So, that’s a no. She is not married.
“No,” I respond. “It would not stop me from claiming you.”
“Beast,” she retorts.
I preen a little. “I aim to please.”
“Look,” Lucy says, putting her hands on her hips again. “If you keep me here, there will be trouble. My family will come forme, and you will lose plenty. If you let me go, I’ll return, say you’ve left Budapest, and no one will bother you.”
I chuckle under my breath.
“Do you think I was turned yesterday, little morsel?” I see her shoulders visibly drop. “Your family will come for you, and they will attempt to destroy me and my nest.”
Instantly I see a way to manage this situation. To get Viktor off my back, to put off the inevitable visit from the Van Helsing clan. To keep Lucy and the child she carries for myself.
“How about”—I gently thumb my fang, as I have done since I was a newly turned vampire—“we make a deal.”
“A deal? With the devil,” Lucy scoffs, but there’s something in her eyes which begs to differ with her words.
“If you be my consort for…I don’t know…until you birth your child, I can keep your secret, and you can help me with some social occasions.”
“Social occasions? Me? With you? A vampire?” she says incredulously. “How is that going to work?”
But she doesn’t say no.
Lucy
Dominik Király,the vampire king, is offering me, a Van Helsing, a deal?
And I have to be considering it because I didn’t tell him to go back to where he was spawned. Otherwise why on earth would I even be contemplating what he’s offering?
I’m pregnant, not stupid. I can have my child, in peace, back in London.
Except, in my heart, I know I can’t. There’s work to deal with, and my bosses are about as likely to welcome my pregnancy as they would to offer me, a woman, a partnership. Then there’s my uncle who is going to be less than impressed with my choices, in particular the fact my current situation is the result of a drunken one-night stand and not a specially chosen warrior who could give my baby all his gene pool.
And Uncle isn’t likely to be prepared to let me give up work, especially if he thinks I’ve failed in Budapest.
All in all, it’s not looking great for a return home.
Dominik’s suggestion shouldn’t be appealing…but it sort of is…
I’ve long harbored a secret feeling that the monsters we’re told came out of the shadows are not monsters at all.
