Jamie's mind was buzzing as she abandoned the girl, Samantha. Her belly was cold and slightly swollen and she was clothed in a layer of filthy viscera over her tattered sweater. Strangely, this was not something that Jamie minded. In fact, it excited her, as did the approaching red and blue lights of the local police. But she did not hesitate, ducking down an alleyway and hurrying barefooted through the town. She knew she was in some danger. There must be cameras about, watchful eyes of the state that had captured her movements. She could not return home right away. Instead, she would have to find someplace to hide and to perform the ritual that was graven in her memory.
The words of the translator were strong, "This ritual, called "Guykôkp", was considered wasteful, as the children it produced were only a fraction as strong as those allowed to come to term over a normal period. But the Yāmā admit to no taboo, even in their own magics. So the ritual persisted and was used to create children in hours, rather than seasons. It requires the sacrifice of one's own blood and the chanting of a sacred psalm, as well as the typical drawings of the Yāmā rituals."
Jamie knew that alone she would have no chance, but with the bastard of Styita at her side, she would have a powerful tool and ally. A child, but one of dreadful purpose and necessity. But she needed something sharp, and a quiet place. Her furtive movements took her to just the place, one she knew well.
The Old Town Grill, just off the town's lakefront boardwalk, was shuttered for the evening. Jamie's boss would have closed it down three hours ago and locked up. But everyone on staff knew that one of the windows didn't latch properly so it was that Jamie found her way through the heavy warm fog to the reeking back alley, climbing atop a slick dumpster and struggling to lift the sash. She was excited again, not aroused but eagerly imagining her soon to be born child. How much would it favor its dreadful father? Would it seem human? If not she could always disguise it but...
The window forced she lowered herself down into the kitchen, on top of one of the steel prep tables. A knife was snatched from a rack, and she stripped off her remaining tattered sweater. Into the trash with it. After the ritual, she'd be able to grab clothes from one of the lockers, although she might need to pry them open. Her flesh quivered as she entered the dining room, and she began pushing tables aside. The streetlights outside lent a hazy amber glow, but it was largely dark. She could not afford light to warn the world of her activities here.
With the space prepared the knife shivered through the palm of her hand, a dripping rivulet of blood. This was nowhere near the pain oi Styita's embrace, and she bore it willingly, painting her body and the carpet with a mixture of her blood and table salt, a clumpy pinkish mess. At last, satisfied by the diagram, she made her way to the center and set the bloody knife aside. Squatting, she began to chant. The croaking guttural chant was not of the same language as the other spells. The book had its theories but Jamie had no care for them. She was engrossed by the waves of heat rolling from her belly.
As she chanted, so too did she change. She felt feverish, sweat standing out and running in rivulets over her breasts and thighs as her belly began to swell. She stared down at it as a dark line formed over her belly, and it began to grow out. She trembled, limbs feeling weak as the fat of her body was consumed to create the fetus growing within her. She was growing lean, gasping for air, but her growing belly, already appearing to be five months in, was not stopping. She could feel the thing moving with her, her baby, a writhing thing, with sharp appendages and cold skin.
She groaned, shuddering, her belly swelling more, her skin creaking like straining leather. Her breasts were not matching the growth of her belly, she noticed, with a detachment she could not control. Only the baby was growing, would her body know it was gone or would it try its best over the next nine months to be a mothers form?
She shuddered, her belly the size of a beach ball and a flood of dark fluid erupted from her bare sex, painting the carpet and her thighs. She could feel the baby wriggling and she pushed. She was wracked with agony as she felt it splitting her, sliding through her, and began to droop, drop, slither out of her pussy. The dark light revealed little, a smooth head, not much larger than two fists together, a segmented lower body, soft pallid skin, wriggling cilia, claws, black flashing eyes.
As the last of its tail slide free Jamie shuddered and collapsed, her baby mewling. It crawled, wriggled against her, sharp cilia on its lower body skating over her protective shield. It was still growing though, baby-like torso swelling and growing lean and muscular, a masculine human body atop a lengthening lower body like a worm, lined with those sharp waving tendrils. Its dark eyes met Jamie's in the dimness, lips parting to reveal sharp teeth and it let out a coughing cry.
Jamie's heart practically burst to look at her beautiful child, taking him against her bosom and embracing him as he mewled and whimpered. His growth stopped once his upper body appeared to be that of a fit young teenage man, and his mewling began to become defined words or rather a single word.
"Mama...?"
Jamie shuddered and held him tight, and she knew then what she had to do...