The Blackstone Chronicles - By John Saul Page 0,79

worst had been when he’d dilated her cervix, but even that hadn’t hurt badly. “Is that it?” she asked as the nurse began cleaning up the small operating room.

“That’s all there is,” the doctor replied. “I’d like you to lie down and relax for half an hour or so, and then I’ll take a look to make sure there aren’t any problems, but I can’t really imagine that there are going to be any. It’s a very simple procedure, and I know what I’m doing.”

Forty minutes later Andrea was dressed and back out on the street. It had stopped drizzling. The first thing she did when she was out of the brick building in which she’d at least solved the worst of her problems was to reach into her purse and pull out a cigarette.

A cigarette, and the lighter that Rebecca had given her yesterday.

She squeezed the trigger concealed in the dragon’s throat, lit the cigarette, and sucked the smoke deep into her lungs, at last feeling a loosening of the tension she’d had all day.

Rebecca.

She’d have to apologize to Rebecca for what she’d said this morning.

And thank her for the lighter too. She was still holding it in her hand, and now, as the sun broke through the clouds overhead, it glinted brightly. She held it up, gazed at its red eyes, and once again squeezed its neck.

Click. Its flaming tongue appeared, flickering in the light breeze.

Andrea gazed at the lighter for a long time. Its red eyes glinted at her with a fiery light that seemed to come, not from the sun, but from deep within the dragon’s golden body. Glowing crimson, the eyes held her mesmerized. Then, almost unaware of what she was doing, she held her other hand up too.

Very slowly she moved her hand toward the dragon’s fiery tongue.

When the flame touched her skin, it didn’t hurt.

It didn’t hurt at all.

Chapter 7

Dusk had fallen as Andrea pulled up in front of her mother’s house. In all the other houses on the block, except for the Hartwicks’ next door, windows were already glowing with light, and thin curtains revealed glimpses of warm, inviting interiors. Only her mother’s house was dark; save for the dim porch light that might provide a measure of safety to someone climbing the front steps, but offered no real welcome, the house appeared to be deserted. Yet Andrea was certain her mother was at home. She could almost feel Martha’s unforgiving presence inside, almost see her kneeling on the prie-dieu, her fingers clicking through her rosary beads while her lips formed the words, Hail Mary, Mother of God. Pray for us now and in the hour of … Except that it would be the Ave Maria her mother was reciting, repeating the prayer over and over again in the original Latin, understanding no more of the prayers she uttered than she understood the daughter she’d raised.

Andrea shut off the car’s engine, but instead of getting out of the Toyota, she reached into her purse, found her cigarettes, and used the dragon to light one. As she sat in the car, smoking her cigarette, she idly flicked the lighter on and off, watching the tongue of flame flare quickly, then die away. The cigarette was only half smoked when she was startled by a rap on the glass and glanced over to see Rebecca peering worriedly through the curbside window.

“Andrea? Are you all right?”

Stubbing the cigarette out in the car’s ashtray, Andrea got out. “I’m okay, I guess.” She sighed, knowing she wasn’t okay at all. The first terrible doubt about what she’d done had set in even before she’d gotten back in her car. Over and over, she’d tried to convince herself that she’d done the right thing, but she still hadn’t been able to rid herself of the nagging feeling that she could have coped with the situation another way. Surely she could have found some kind of job: pregnant women worked all the time—lots of them right up until a week or so before they were ready to deliver. And after the baby was born, there would have been lots of options. She could have put the baby up for adoption, or maybe even kept it and—

Stop it, she commanded herself. It’s over and done with.

Rebecca was still looking at her anxiously. Andrea forced herself to smile as she came around to the curb. “Hey, it’s all right,” she said. “I’m going to be okay. And look, I’m sorry about