Chaos Bites Part 5

CHAPTER 5.

Megan left to answer the front door. Faith curled into me like the kitten she could become. Her soft breath brushed my arm; the dark sweep of her lashes and the sharp slope of her cheek reminded me so much of her father, my heart contracted. No one would ever hurt her while I was around.

Minutes later Anna, Aaron, and Ben spilled into the backyard. Eight, six, and five respectively-or maybe I should say nine, six, and five, as it was Anna's birthday.

"Aunt Liz." Anna gently stroked Faith's knee. "Where'd you get a baby?"

Her voice was soft, the expression on her face rapt. Did all little girls stare at babies as if they were the best dolls on the shelf? Not me, but then I hadn't been much of a little girl.

"What's her name?" Ben shouted. Shouting was Ben's normal volume.

"Shut up, dummy!" That was Aaron, who hadn't spoken any more quietly than Ben. "You'll wake her."

Anna smacked both of them in the back of the head. Right hand. Left hand. Whack. Whack. They turned on her, mutiny in their eyes, and Megan came out the back door.

"Stop," she ordered, then pointed at the football in the gra.s.s. "Go."

The boys shuffled off, though they threw glares at their sister over their shoulder. She didn't seem worried.

"What is her name?" Anna asked.

"Faith."

"Pretty." I wasn't sure if she was talking about the name or the baby. "Where'd you get her?" Anna repeated, as if I might have ordered Faith off the Internet and she wanted to know how.

At least Anna wasn't looking at me as if she thought Faith were mine. Megan's daughter might only be nine, but she knew how the whole baby thing worked and that it took humans a bit longer than a month to have one. What she didn't know was that Aunt Liz wasn't quite human. I planned to keep it that way.

"I'm babysitting for a friend," I said.

She continued to stroke Faith's knee. The baby sighed and smiled in her sleep. I barely stopped myself from saying, Aw.

"Why don't you take her upstairs?" Megan asked as she came up behind my chair. "Put her down for her nap."

I wasn't sure if the kid should take a nap or not. Wouldn't she then stay awake all night? I would. I also wasn't sure if I should let her out of my sight. Who knew what Faith could do besides shape-shift.

"Come on." Megan took my elbow and drew me into the house. "I've got a playpen left from when the kids were small. She can sleep in there. She won't get out."

I snorted.

"Oh." Megan paused. "I also have a baby monitor. You'll be able to hear her as soon as she wakes up."

"I don't know-"

"She has to sleep. Then she'll need to eat." Megan eyed Faith. "She's probably still on formula. What have you fed her?"

"Tuna." Megan's face took on such an expression of horror, I muttered, "She didn't eat it."

"What on earth possessed you-?"

"She was a kitten!" I glanced furtively over my shoulder at the kids. The boys were playing, but Anna stared at me with curiosity, so I lowered my voice. "What was I supposed to feed her? Mice?"

"h.e.l.l if I know." Megan opened the back door and stepped into the kitchen, where she pulled a can out of a cabinet. "Powdered formula. My cousin left this behind when she visited with her new baby. You can take it, along with some bottles." Megan eyed the diaper-clad Faith. "I've also got a bag of diapers, and I'll find some of Anna's old clothes."

"You kept all that c.r.a.p?"

Megan shrugged, but she wouldn't meet my eyes. In a burst of clarity, I understood that she couldn't bear to part with anything that reminded her of the life she'd shared with Max.

I didn't think that was healthy, but I also wasn't the one to say so. As far as I was concerned, Megan could do whatever she needed to do to survive without him. I did.

Megan yanked the playpen out of a closet in the boys' room, and I placed Faith on the padded bottom, taking the blanket Megan provided. I leaned over to cover the baby, but jerked back at the last second.

"Whoa!" Blue elephants marched right to left across the cotton. I threw the thing far, far away.

"Hey!" Megan said. "What the heck?"

I grabbed her arm before she could retrieve it. "You can't cover her with anything but plain material." At Megan's continued blank expression, I said, "Kitten blanket, kitten Faith."

"Oh." Megan smacked herself in the forehead with the heel of her hand. "Duh."

"Even a baby elephant would have put a crimp in your playpen."

"And a hole in my ceiling."

I hadn't thought of that. I was going to have to watch this kid and everything around her.

"Maybe you should leave Faith here," Megan murmured.

"What? No!"

"You don't think I can take care of her?"

"No. I mean yes. No." I ran my hand through my s.h.a.ggy dark brown hair. "She's not a regular baby, Meg."

"I want to help. You've got enough on your plate, and face it, Liz, you aren't Mary Poppins."

"Really? You think?" I sighed and jerked my head toward the hall. This conversation might get heated, and I did not want to wake Faith. Megan and I stepped out of the room and closed the door.

"Luther is good with her," I began.

"What if something attacks you? One of you gonna hold Faith while the other fights?"

"If we have to." I didn't plan on getting attacked. I planned on hauling a.s.s all the way to the Badlands. "Listen, I appreciate the offer, but who knows what she might turn into. Who knows what she can do. Her dad was a skinwalker, but her mom . . . not a clue."

Megan frowned. "I can handle it."

"I'm sure you can, but you'll have to work."

"Not much more cost for four kids with the sitter than three."

"How you gonna explain a baby that turns into a giraffe?" Megan's frown deepened. "What if she wakes up ravenous and gets her hands on a tiger T-shirt? I couldn't live with myself if your kids were hurt, Meg."

Her shoulders slumped. "Neither could I."

"I appreciate the offer, but she's my responsibility." The doorbell rang again. "Go on," I said. "I'll be there in a minute."

Megan left; I stepped into the bedroom, glanced into the playpen-still asleep-then s.n.a.t.c.hed the receiver for the monitor and made sure the base was on. Back in the hall, I sensed I wasn't alone.

Since I couldn't very well wear my knife in a sheath at my waist during a kid's birthday party, I'd strapped it to my calf beneath my jeans. I went down on one knee as if to tie my shoe, my fingers creeping beneath the cuff toward the weapon.

"You're wearin' sandals, love."

The instant I heard the voice, I blew out a relieved breath and stood. "Quinn."

A man stepped free of the shadows at the far end of the hall. "Mistress."

Quinn Fitzpatrick was tall and sleek with shiny black hair and eerie yellow-green eyes. He was also a gargoyle, though you couldn't tell it by looking at him. He was handsome to the point of stunning, warm and solid and alive. Yet not long after bar time he would be curled up in Megan's garden as still as a statue, literally.

When G.o.d tossed the Grigori into the pit, he slammed shut the pearly gates. However, while some had broken the rules, others had not. Those angels too good to go to h.e.l.l, but too corrupt for heaven, became fairies.

Left behind on the earth, they were lost. Suddenly human with no idea how to be, they would never have survived without help. They got it from the beasts. As a reward, those animals that offered aid were given the gifts of flight and shape-shifting. They could sprout wings; they could turn to stone.

Once the fairies could manage on their own, the gargoyles began to protect the weak and unwary from demon attack. The more humans they saved, the more human they became.

With the grace of the black panther he could become, Quinn moved forward.

"I told you to call me Liz," I reminded him.

I was the leader of the light but I didn't much care to be called mistress or any other form of similar address. Many of my people were ancient, however, and such t.i.tles came naturally to them.

Quinn's gaze had strayed to the stairs Megan had so recently trotted down. I heard the low murmur of her voice as she welcomed her guests.

"She would like a baby in the house again," he murmured, with a slight cant of the Irish. He'd been on this side of the Atlantic long enough-centuries perhaps-to lose most of his accent.

"Oh, no you don't," I said.

"Don't what?" He continued to stare toward the sound of Megan's voice.

"You're here to protect her, not impregnate her," I whispered furiously.

A soft growl rumbled from his chest. "I would never hurt her."

"If it hurts," I said, "you aren't doing it right."

"Mistress-" At my glare he began again. "Liz. I know my place. I know my job."

I'd had him sent to watch over Megan after a seer was murdered on my doorstep. Who knew when another Nephilim might show up looking for me. Who knew what they might decide to do if they couldn't find me, but found Megan instead. I wasn't going to take that chance-hence the arrival of Quinn.

That he appeared to have fallen in love with Megan was a bonus. He would die to keep her safe. If I couldn't be here, the next best thing was Quinn Fitzpatrick.

"She still thinks you're nothing more than the slightly lame day-shift bartender?" I asked. In an attempt to seem more human, Quinn dropped things a lot.

His shoulders slumped. "Yes."

Megan hadn't a clue who or what Quinn was, or that he loved her. With three kids and a thriving business, Megan was lucky she could figure out her own name most days.

"Have you caught any more Nephilim slithering around?" I asked.

Quinn's head came up. "Half a dozen since the last time you were here, Mis-Liz." He puffed out his chest. "They are ashes."

The more Nephilim Quinn dusted, the more human he became. As it was, he had to spend a certain number of hours in every twenty-four as a panther-statue or flesh and blood, didn't matter. But those hours dwindled every time he protected the innocent. Soon he'd be completely human. Or so he said.

"You could leave the child with Megan. Nothing would hurt her while I'm here."

"I'm sure nothing would. And you'd get double points, right?"

"I don't understand."

"Protect a baby, big-time innocent, wouldn't you get more tickets in the soon-to-be-human sweepstakes."

Quinn stiffened. "I wouldn't protect her for my own gain."

"No?"

"No." He seemed truly insulted. "She's an infant. What kind of man would I be if I required payment in order to help her?"

"You aren't a man yet."

"And I wouldn't deserve to be one if I were a man like that."

I liked Quinn more and more every time I saw him.

"Thanks for the offer," I said, "but I can't leave her behind."

I rattled off the same reasons I'd given Megan, and Quinn nodded. "The child could be of any mother. Even Sawyer's own."

Hadn't thought of that. But wouldn't Sawyer have- What? Drowned Faith in a burlap sack? I didn't think so.

Still, his mother had been the evilest of evil, the vilest of the vile. Witness that she could easily have given birth to her own son's child.

At the least, Sawyer would have told me. Unless his mind shied away from the idea as completely as mine had, and really, why wouldn't it?