Page 64 of Monster Queen Rising

"Then no."

I stand there with her hand in mine and I think about how easy it would be.

I could go down those stairs and say one word and Vance would walk up here and put her hands on Madison whether Madison wanted it or not, and she'd do it well, because she's the only person alive who's ever administered that compound.Nobody in this house could stop me. Nobody in this house would even try.

Madison said no.

That's the whole thing. That's the entire difference between this room and every room that woman ever built.

I don't move.

Fen's at the threshold.

He's stopped at the line of the door and he hasn't crossed it. The dark lines are up at his throat, the shift at half and held there. Crull's on the floor of the hall across from him, back against the wall, benched arm in his lap — the two of them keeping the doorway between them and the room, close enough to be here, far enough to stay out of it.

His line's pulled so tight I feel it in my teeth every time Madison's body folds her over. Nothing to do about it. Nothing to fix. A man watching a door.

Madison sees him between contractions.

"You can sit closer," she says. Breathless. "Where she can hear you."

He looks at her.

And I watch him remember the porch.

He sits with his back against the doorframe, outside it, close enough to see in. He doesn't say anything for a while. Long enough that I think he isn't going to.

Then he starts.

"The house is dark."

His voice is low and flat and it goes into the room like a stone into water.

"Everyone is awake. Nobody is asleep tonight. Crull is across from me in the hall and he has not moved. The dog is at the bottom of the stairs, sitting up. He has been sitting up for three hours."

He stops.

Madison's got her forehead against my shoulder, breathing through the top of one, and I feel her go still. Listening.

"Thaw is on the porch," Fen says. "Daron and Dean are on the north line walking the perimeter. The bread is under a cloth on the counter. Crull made it before dark."

He runs out.

The silence sits there.

"Keep going," Madison says, into my shoulder, wrecked.

He does.

"The trees start forty feet off the porch. Two hundred yards to the tree line on the east side, then the ridge. In the morning the light comes across the yard from the east and hits the kitchen window first. That is the first thing that gets warm."

Another one takes her, and Janet talks her through it while Fen talks under it, the two voices running at once, and Madison holds on to both.

"Nobody is coming," Fen says.

The room stops.

He doesn't hear it stop. He's not talking to us.