The Angel of Death (The Soul Summoner #3)
Author: Elicia Hyder
1.
"You're going to put that thing where?"
My eyes were double their normal size as I peered at Dr. Grayson Watts over the bridge the paper sheet formed between my knees. The long device in her hand looked more like a lightsaber than a medical instrument. My mouth was gaping so wide that I should have been at the dentist's office rather than the OB/GYN.
Dr. Watts cocked her head to the side and raised an eyebrow. "It's a transvaginal ultrasound, Sloan. It will be a little uncomfortable, but this is the only way we can get a clear picture of your uterus at this stage and determine how far along you are."
I winced. "It looks like you're going to battle the Empire."
She wasn't amused.
I sighed and flopped back on the exam table. "Go ahead."
"Relax your knees," she said.
I focused on the speckled ceiling tiles and gulped. "Oh, boy."
I sucked in a deep breath and whimpered as she impaled me like a jousting knight.
"Relax," she said again.
I considered kicking her in the face.
A moment later, she turned the screen on her computer toward me, and I rose up on my elbows again. "Here is your uterus." She was pointing to a cloud of white fuzz on the screen. "And this black blob is the gestational sac." She shifted her magic wand around some more. "And this little spot right here, that's your baby."
I squinted my eyes. A small, gray misshapen bean was inside the black blob.
My chest tightened, and I fell back onto my pillow again and took a few deep breaths.
"It looks like you're about eight weeks along," she said.
"Eight weeks?" I shook my head. "No. That can't be right. I know exactly when I got pregnant. October 19th."
I counted backward in my mind. So much had happened in the past few months it was hard to place the events and catastrophes in the order in which they occurred. It had been three weeks since my boyfriend, Warren Parish, was reactivated with the Marine Corps. The week before that, my biological mother-a demon, literally-tried to kill me. Two weeks before that, my adoptive mother died from brain cancer on October 19th. The tiny speck on the screen was the product of emotional, grief-stricken sex, when my boyfriend hadn't bothered to remove his boots or use any protection. I couldn't be eight weeks along.
"It's only been about six weeks," I told her.
She closed my legs when she removed the wand. "The weeks are calculated starting with the first day of your last period, so mid-October is right for the conception date."
"I knew it," I said. "Warren should be very glad the military has him because if he were still here, I might kill him."
Dr. Watts was trying hard to suppress a giggle. Her latex gloves snapped as she removed them. She pulled a sliding, paper wheel from her pocket and adjusted it with her thumbs. "This puts your due date as July 11th."
As she scribbled in her notes, I stared out the window. On one hand, July 11th felt like an eternity away. On the other, if I had learned anything in the previous four months, it was how much could radically change in such a short time period. Warren was lost to me in November, and there was no guarantee he would find me by July.
"Are you all right?"
I groaned and covered my face with my arms.
She rolled on her chair till she was by my head. "Sloan?"
I let out a deep sigh. "I'm all right. This wasn't exactly planned."
"I can tell." She helped me sit up. "Can I ask about the father?"
There was so much to say about my baby's father that I didn't even know where to begin. He was the son of an Angel of Death. He was a Recon Marine Sniper and then a mercenary. He had a body that could only be ranked on a scale of one to oh-my-god, and he made love like he should require a height restriction. Of course, none of this was the kind of information Dr. Watts was interested in.
"He's not here because he's off in Iraq or Israel or somewhere," I said.
"Military?" she asked.
I smoothed the paper sheet over my bare legs. "He's in the Marines, but I don't know where he is. He can't tell me anything."
She frowned. "I'm sorry to hear that. Does he know you're pregnant?"
"No one outside this room knows." That was true, unless you counted the supernatural world. "You won't tell my dad, will you?" My father and Dr. Watts worked in the same building.
She dumped her gloves in the trashcan. "I wouldn't dream of it. And legally, whatever you say in this room is protected under doctor-patient confidentiality."