Chapter XIII

Reunited

Struggling to open her eyes was an effort for the still form of Maggie Evans. Finally she succeeded in the effort without moving her throbbing head, but at least she wasn't nauseated for the first time in a long time. Seeing as if through a veil, Maggie knew she wasn't in her room at her Aunt Eugenie's house, she recognized the room, it was Josette's room. JOSETTE'S ROOM, she yelled in her head, startling the visitor in the chair beside her bed with her slight movement. Maggie didn't care who was at her bedside, maybe they would go away, moving her eyes, stopping at the needles in her arm, following the needle and the IV line to the bottles above her bed. Maybe this is it, maybe I'm finally dying, and they brought me here. As long as those bugs are gone. Maggie was starting to panic herself, until she felt the cold familiar hand touch her brow. "Mon amour, I am here," Barnabas said.

"Barnabas," Maggie said thickly.

"Yes, my darling," Barnabas replied stroking cheek.

"I'm not dreaming, am I?" Maggie asked him so low she could barely be heard.

"No, ma cherie, you are not dreaming. I am here, and you will be all right. Shhhh. Don't talk. You need to rest, my darling." Barnabas said to the still form on Josette's bed.

"Barnabas?" Maggie said in a very low, conspiratorial tone.

"Yes." Barnabas said.

"The bugs, Barnabas. Don't let them on me anymore, please! " Maggie was starting to get hysterical.

Barnabas stopped stroking the side of his face, and reached over to Maggie, and took her face in his hands, placed his thumbs to her temples, locked his gaze with her eyes, and said, "Maggie, calm down. You are safe. Nothing is going to harm you. The bugs are gone." The quiet hypnotic monotone of his voice took effect, his words calmed her down, but he knew it wouldn't last, the poison in her blood was powerful.  

He fought to calm his rage, keeping the beast down. How can she be alive he was thinking to himself. Holding her hand tightly, his mind drifted back to when he arrived at her aunt's home.   Entering the modest two-story farmhouse, he was assaulted by the smell of blood. He was struggling to keep the Vampire at bay to go to Maggie. Flinging the small attractive woman aside as if she were nothing more than a rag doll, he went up the stairs so fast that the human eye would not have detected more than a whoosh of air. Following the scent of blood and two heartbeats, he flung open the door to the bathroom to see Maggie lying in a pool of her own blood. Horrified by the sight that greeted him he had stopped a moment to gain complete control, he listened and heard the heartbeat, not Maggie's, he would know hers anywhere, but a small young, but healthy steady beating. So, it was true, Maggie was pregnant!   She had looked barely alive, how had she been able to carry a healthy child, she had looked like death. Her hair was lifeless, the odor that emitted from her unkempt and unwashed body was overwhelming to his sensitive sense of smell. He looked beyond to lifeless unwashed hair, her cheeks were hollow, and the bones were so prominent he could almost make out her skull. Her eyes were sunken so deep into the sockets from malnutrition due to dehydration, for a moment he was stunned, and only a moment. His rage was such that he threw his head back and howled in rage, and gently lifted the still form of his lover, took his cape and wrapped it about her, swooped her up in his powerful arms, with vampiric speed opened the nearest door, and with one powerful sweep of his hand, still holding onto Maggie knocked the entire window out of the bedroom, and took to the air. All the way, monitoring her heartbeat, so afraid she wouldn't make it. He knew what he would do, if for one minute she went to the brink, he would make her his for all eternity.

Barnabas was shook out of his thoughts from the woman slapping at her arms, tearing out the IV needles, crying lowly "Get them off, please. They're back."

Barnabas took Maggie's wrist and stopped her, and said sternly, "Maggie! *Look*   *at*   *me.*" She somehow obeyed his command, but was still struggling to get the nonexistent bugs off her. They were so very real to her. She had never been so frightened. They were going to get her and bury her alive. There were so many of them. Through her haze, she heard him, and looked, and felt lost, but afraid to take her complete attention from her lonely nightmare that no one, it seemed, could do anything about. Tears were trickling down the side of her face as she faced, what seemed to her a neverending torture. Then she felt, the pinpricks in her wrists. The fear and panic was replaced by pleasure. Overwhelming familiar pleasure. Now, the moans were for another reason. She felt him take the pleasure away. He put his hands to the side of her face, and told her to sleep, and surprisingly enough she was able to sleep.

Barnabas had drank deep from his lover, but not long. He didn't know what would happen if he took too much. Now, he listened for the small heartbeat, and the steady beating assured him that the baby was okay, he raised his wrist to his mouth, and with a powerful plunge opened his vein, and drank, ignoring the pleasure he was feeling.   He disengaged his fangs when he felt he had enough to complete the task he was undertaking. Putting his mouth to Maggie's wrist he mixed his blood with hers releasing the powerful antibodies to release into Maggie's system. The vampiric blood from him would destroy the poisonous toxins from the powerful tranquilizer. Valium that had almost killed Maggie.

Tasting her blood he knew she had suffered far beyond her endurance, and should not have. It should not have happened this way. He could feel the rage rising as he looked upon this woman who was carrying his child.

He knew that the blood Maggie had taken from him had protected the child, and Julia Hoffman had confirmed that.

Julia had explained to him how it had been possible for him to father a child, because of her experiments, and why she had tried to hide it from him and Maggie bode no explanation. There were no excuses. He would deal with Dr. Hoffman, but not now. Thinking about Dr. Hoffman's deception about this, something he had never thought possible, it was very very hard for him to sit still and not go and rip her throat out, and drain her of every ounce of blood in her body. He won the struggle. He was calm -- for now. Maggie was sleeping, the night was peaceful.

To be continued...