Chapter 10: Hot Blooded
[November 2013 - 7 Months Pregnant - Bunker DIY Sauna - I’m at Soup]
My eyelids felt like they were made of lead. It took every ounce of strength I had to pry them open. I was on a cot, in a plastic serial-killer room, and in the corner a shape that smelled a lot like Dean’s body wash was moving.
“Dean?”
It barely came out as a whisper. My voice was hoarse and dry from disuse, I didn’t have time to wonder if he heard me, Dean was at my side in an instant.
“Hey,” he stroked my hair and took my hand in his, “welcome back, Dubs.”
“Why am I wet?”
“That’s what she said.”
I closed my eyes and smiled weakly.
“I need to get some water in you,” he said, “do you think you can sit up?”
“If you help me.”
He lifted my hands and put them around his neck, I held on as best I could as he pulled me to a sitting position. After he slipped some pillows at my back, I collapsed backwards into them, only slightly more elevated than I had been a minute ago.
“God, I’m so tired,” I croaked, “I want to sleep.”
“I know, you can sleep after you drink some water and keep some food down.”
I thought I was nodding, but in reality I really just bobbed my head a little. Every movement took so much effort.
Dean held a cup to my lips and I took too much too fast and coughed.
“Sorry, Kate,” he wiped my chin with a damp cloth.
I opened my eyes and saw the damp cloth turned out to be his undershirt. Then I noticed something else. He was dressed only in his boxers and glistened with sweat.
“Where are your clothes? Where am I?”
“Sam found some obscure lore about human hybrid pregnancies and his hunch turned out to be right.”
After successfully taking and swallowing a sip of water, I looked at him.
“That didn’t answer any of my questions.”
“You’re in our homemade sauna and my clothes are outside because it’s boiling in here.”
I could feel the heat but it wasn’t oppressive, it was comforting actually. Weird.
“If you don’t have naturally occurring hellfire for your demon baby, store bought is fine.”
Ah.
“How long have I been out?”
“Almost five days,” he gave me another sip of water, “do you remember anything?”
“I remember being woozy and lightheaded before bed, it’s a black void after that.”
Dean switched the water cup for a mug of steaming broth. He blew on it before putting it to my lips. I sipped carefully. Beef broth, my favorite. He remembered. Then I sipped greedily.
“Hey, easy there!”
He pulled it away and I pouted.
“We need to make sure you can keep it down, this is the first time in five days you’ve had any calories.”
“It tastes good, can you not blow on it?”
Dean cocked his head, “Sure?”
As he offered me another sip, I inhaled the steam. As I swallowed the heat radiated down my throat and through the rest of my body. It felt so good. I didn’t think drinking broth could feel this amazing. Dean watched me with cautious curiosity, only allowing me a few sips at a time.
There was a rustling of plastic and a flap of the plastic lifted to reveal Sam, a stack of books under his arm.
“Kate!”
I leaned back against the pillows and smiled.
“Hi Sam.”
The longer I stayed in the sauna, the stronger I felt. Even the black veins I’d kept hidden from the boys began receding. Thank goodness I wouldn’t have to fess up to those, Dean would have been out of his mind with worry if he knew. I’d kept liquids down for twelve hours before Dean or Jody let me have anything solid. After that, I felt strong enough for short trips out of the sauna, like to the bathroom. I’d been on a bedpan before that, much to my embarrassment. Neither Jody, nor Dean nor Sam ever confirmed who was changing it so I assumed they all had at some point.
The kitchen was the only other place I felt comfortable, and even then, only with the oven on full blast with the door open. Dean refused to leave me in there by myself, despite the ribbons of sweat I could see under his shirt. Still, I spent most of my day in the sauna where not only did my body refuse to sweat but clearly enjoyed the heat. Store-bought hellfire indeed.
Dean had set up a folding card table in the sauna and both boys frequently came to sit with me. We played all sorts of card games, but our favorite was Uno using a worn deck that Sam had found hidden behind a couple books in the library. Both boys would strip down to their boxers before coming inside my “room”, to save on laundry, for the weirdest “strip” card game I’d ever played.
“Dean, you can’t just put a Draw 4 down on Kate’s Draw 4,” Sam cried.
“House rules, Sammy, don’t be sad you didn’t save your Draw 4. Now draw your 8 cards so Kate can go,” Dean chided playfully.
It was in this state of the boys’ undress that the “door” flap opened suddenly to reveal Rowena. Standing in a halo of light from the infirmary overheads, she was dressed in a skintight black pencil skirt with an equally tight red turtleneck.
“Oh boys, you didn’t have to get dressed up on my account,” she purred.
Sam immediately blushed and avoided Rowena’s eyes. Dean leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms.
“I want it on the record that I’m opposed to this plan,” he said.
“And what, exactly, am I here for–”
Rowena stared at me.
“Oh I see. Well, that explains it.”
She walked over to me and motioned that I stand up, which I did. Though I hid my newly popped stomach under baggy sweats and a hoodie, she immediately pressed her hand against my belly. I felt a strange power surge from me to her, my skin felt hot and tingled. Taking a step back without thinking, I broke the connection and the sensation stopped.
“Kate?” Dean shot out of his chair, his muscles tightened, ready to spring to my defense.
“I’m ok,” I put my hands to my stomach, “that was weird.”
“How far are you?” Rowena asked.
There was no point in denying anything.
“Seven months.”
She nodded and, seemingly for the first time, noticed the temperature inside the DIY sauna.
“So that’s how you managed to get this far. I’d be impressed if it weren’t so…crude.”
“Hang on,” I said, “‘That explains it’? ‘Explains’ what?”
“The signal dear,” Rowena said, as if that answered everything with perfect clarity.
The boys and I stared at her in complete bewilderment. Rowena put her hands on her hips.
“I forgot how much hand-holding you children need for the simplest things. Is there somewhere else we can go to talk? Somewhere,” she looked at the plastic walls, “less cramped?”
Dean started a fire in the library and pulled a highback chair over to it for me. I wrapped myself up in the largest blanket we could find and sat down still feeling a chilly twinge but it was manageable. The others sat nearby, though outside of the ring of heat coming off the fireplace, except Dean whose chair was as close to mine as possible without actually being in my lap.
“I already didn’t want to call you, Rowena, so start explaining before I decide this was the worst idea,” he said.
“A normal human soul,” she started, looking at her nails as if she was explaining that the sky was blue, “gives off an energy, not unlike a candle, that those of us who are attuned can detect. Your baby, my dear, is a lighthouse. And instead of keeping ships away from the shore, it’s calling them to it.”
I felt Dean tense next to me, I put a hand on his arm.
“Is there anything we can do to dim the signal?” I asked.
“Or turn it off?” Dean added.
“Aye, there are a few tricks that would help.”
“Do you know anything about Cambions?” Sam asked, impatient.
“Oh, that’s what we’re having?” Rowena crooned and leaned forward to rub my stomach, but Dean batted her hand away.
“Specifically, the delivery,” I added, “What can we expect during the delivery and…what would it take to convince you to assist?”
Rowena leaned back in her chair and steepled her fingers. She was silent for a moment before leaning forward again.
“You’ve already countered the part that kills most Cambion would-be-mothers, the fever, the delivery should be no trouble. What you really need is to dim the beacon. I can shield it, but it will cost me physically. My payment will be two-fold.”
“Here we go,” Dean muttered, “let’s hear it.”
She gave him a stern look out the side of her eye and glanced back to me.
“First, I request the placenta and umbilical cord after birth.”
“What? Gross!” Dean exclaimed.
“Can you give us a minute?” I asked.
Rowena nodded and walked over to the other side of the library.
“Dean,” I said under my breath, “It’s medical waste, she’d honestly be doing us a favor by taking it.”
“I don’t like it,” he said, “she’ll want to use it in a spell or god knows what else.”
“She can dehumidify it and put the powder in capsules for all I care.”
Sam snorted. Dean looked confused.
“What kind of magic is that?”
“The suburban mom-fluencer kind,” I said.
Dean’s eyes grew wide.
“Gross.”
“Deal!” I said to Rowena and she headed back over. “What’s your second request?”
“To be the child’s godmother. He will need proper instruction when his powers begin to manifest and I want to be his only teacher.”
I hesitated on this one. I didn’t want our child to only have one source of information about their powers. Dean held up one finger to Rowena and gave a sarcastic smile.
“One more minute please,” he said.
She stepped back to the other side of the library, picking up the book she’d been flipping through before.
“I actually don’t totally hate this one,” Dean said.
Sam and I looked at him in surprise.
“Why not? You hate Rowena,” Sam said, “You want to give her a reason to hang out with us for years?”
“Yeah, I’m with Sam!”
Dean looked at Sam then me.
“Right on all counts, but if Rowena is interested in the safety of our baby, even if it’s for her own selfish reasons, that puts her on our side more than it puts her against us.”
I smiled. Pride welled up in me realizing how much Dean was actually planning for the long game. He didn’t use to plan more than a week in advance, now he was thinking in terms of years.
“What if I added some information to sweeten the pot?” Rowena called over from her book.
We all looked over at her.
“Depends on the information,” Dean said, “What you got?”
She closed the book with a snap and sauntered back to her chair.
“The demon who possessed you, Dean, intentionally impregnated Katherine. His name is Kenneth.”
“We already knew he got me pregnant on purpose,” I said.
“But did you know that Kenneth’s the demon that was hunting you, Kate? He’s planning to return and claim his offspring.”
Blood rushed from my face and the cold twinge grew stronger. I stared at Rowena without blinking, well, through Rowena was a better description. Dean’s voice came through muffled.
“Over my dead body,” he said, “Rowena, you have a deal.”