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My gut twists.
“What?” Amethyst cries out. “What did she say?”
“She said she wants to see me,” I say, trying to straighten up and fight the nausea. The fear is so great but I need to work my way through it for Rose. I can’t be losing my damn mind, I’m supposed to be the calm supportive one while she’s trying to deliver a baby vampire.
I swallow hard and look at the two of them. “It’s happening.”
“Oh,” Amethyst says, clapping her hands together quickly, while Wolf puts his arm around her, giving her an affectionate squeeze. “Oh, it’s happening, it’s happening.”
“Here comes baby Constantine,” I announce, and I quickly head up the stairs before I lose my nerve.
The house I bought this time around in Venice is located in the Castello region, overlooking the public gardens. It’s a big and beautiful house, with a lot of history and just a touch of darkness from the shadows of the trees and the gothic architecture. Because we can’t have a birth in a hospital—it would be fairly obvious that the baby being born wasn’t entirely human—we have to have it in the house. Van Helsing assures me that one day he’d love to open a hospital for vampires, but it’s kind of a moot point since vampires have been doing just fine for centuries.
On the second level, Maria waves me over with a smile and I follow her into the bathroom where I can already hear Rose whimpering in pain. They say that vampire births are nowhere near as painful as human births, but even so it’s apparent she’s feeling discomfort.
I peer around the doorframe to our sprawling bathroom and see Rose in the claw-foot tub, naked and grimacing, with Van Helsing at her feet, coaching her.
“Just a little more,” he says, eyes grave with determination. “Just a little more Rose.’
Holy shit this is happening fast.
“I can’t,” she whimpers.
“You can,” I tell her, coming right over to her. I drop to my knees beside her and hang onto her hand. “I’m here.”
“Valtu,” she says softly, looking at me with dazed eyes, a thin sheen of sweat on her forehead. “You’re here.”
“I’ve been here the whole time, my dove,” I reassure her, kissing her hand. “Just downstairs with your parents, not wanting to get in the way.”
She tries to smile, then scrunches up her nose, smelling me. “Are you drinking already?”
“Hey, this is hard on me too.”
“Valtu,” the doctor warns me. “Stop distracting her. We need her to do one last push.”
I give her hand a squeeze. “Can you give one last push, Rose? One last big push and then baby Constantine is here.” I look at the doctor. “Then the baby is here, right? That’s it?”
“Yes,” he says, his voice clipped. “That’s it. Now come on, Rose.”
Rose groans and then her face contorts and she lets out a howl as she pushes.
I watch, absolutely fascinated. This is life being born, everlasting life, and it’s a product of us, of Valtu and Rose and Dahlia and Lucy and Mina. It’s our love mixed together, our destiny coming to fruition. It’s all the hell we’ve had to go through to find each other and all the times we thought we’d never find each other again.
This baby is love eternal.
And the love is ours.
“There it is,” Van Helsing says, quickly reaching into the tub as the baby emerges from Rose and is brought to the surface. “It’s a boy.”
“A boy!” I exclaim. “A boy, Rose!”
She’s laughing and crying and reaching forward, waiting for the Doctor to properly clean and dry him off. “Constantine. My baby boy.”
It’s pure fucking joy. Absolutely. I don’t even know what to do with myself, I don’t even know if I’m breathing. I’m so damn happy, and so fucking proud, if I do say so myself. Not just of Rose but the fact that we produced baby boy Constantine.
And he’s beautiful. Chubby, wrinkled, red and so beautiful.
“You did it,” I whisper to Rose, kissing her forehead, her cheek, her jaw. “You did it, my dove.”
