Xhex just shook her head. "There's no way I am. My body's been through too much. "
"Let me do the internal, okay? Just to be certain there's nothing going on that I can feel inside. And then I'd like to take you to the Brotherhood compound and do an ultrasound on you. You were really uncomfortable when I went over your belly. I had V come with a car--he should almost be here by now. "
Xhex was barely hearing a word that was being spoken to her. She was too busy tracing back over the last couple weeks. She'd been with John the day before the abduction. That last time. Maybe. . .
If she was pregnant, she flat-out refused to believe it had anything to do with Lash. That would just be too cruel. Too fucking cruel.
Besides, maybe there was another reason for the bleeding.
Like a miscarriage, part of her brain insisted on pointing out.
"Do it," Xhex said. "But make it quick. I don't deal well with this shit and I'm going to flip out on you if it takes longer than a few minutes. "
"I'll be fast. "
As she closed her eyes and braced herself, a quick slide show set up shop in her head. Flash: her body on a stainless-steel table in a tiled room. Flash: her ankles and wrists locked in place. Flash: human doctors with spastic, lookie-here eyes coming at her. Flash: a video camera in her face and panning down. Flash: a scalpel catching the light from above.
Snap. Snap.
Her lids flipped open at the sounds because she was unsure whether what she'd heard was in her head or in the room. It was the latter. Doc Jane had her latex gloves on.
"I'll be gentle," Jane said.
Which would be a relative term, of course.
Xhex fisted the sheets and felt the muscles that ran up her inner thighs spasm as she went rigid from head to toe. The good news with the frozen- stiff act was that it cured her of that stutter. "I'd rather you be fast. "
"Xhex. . . I want you to look right at me. Right now. "
Xhex's scattered stare swung around. "What. "
"Hold my eyes. Right here. " The doctor pointed to her peepers. "Hold 'em. You lock on my face and know that I've had this done to me, okay? I know exactly what I'm doing, and not just because I've been trained. "
Xhex forced herself to focus and. . . Jesus, it did help. Meeting that evergreen stare did help. "You'll feel it. "
"Excuse me?"
Xhex cleared her throat. "If I'm. . . pregnant, you'll feel it. "
"How. "
"When you. . . there'll be a pattern. Inside. It won't. . . " She took a shallow breath, drawing on the tales she'd heard from her father's people. "The walls won't be smooth. "
Doc Jane didn't even blink. "Got it. You ready?"
No. "Yes. "
Xhex was in a cold sweat by the time it was over and that rib she'd broken was screaming from her sawing gulps of air.
"Tell me," she said hoarsely.
Chapter Twenty-three
"I'm telling you. . . Eliahu is alive. Eliahu Rathboone. . . he's alive. "
Standing in his room at the Rathboone mansion, Gregg Winn stared out the window at some of South Carolina's signature Spanish moss. In the moonlight, the shit was creepy as a shadow thrown by no discernible object. . . or body.
"Gregg, did you hear me?"