Purity War

by Laurel Night

  “Yeah…” the way her eyes cut to me quickly then away again made me suspicious.

  “Is there something else?”

  “Something else? What do you mean?” Her falsely bright tone answered my suspicions.

  “Spill it.” My voice was flat. I knew that look of falsified innocence.

  “I don’t know what you mean?” The way her tone lifted at the end of her sentence was so out of character for her I almost laughed.

  “Come on, Em, I know you’re hiding something from me. Something else is going on here, or you wouldn’t be destroying your manicure that way.”

  She paused in her chewing and glanced at her hands, surprised that she had nibbled away most of the polish. Her eyes met mine before abruptly rolling skyward. “Ugh, okay, there is something else I wasn’t sure I wanted to bring up.”

  “Okay…” I said slowly, trying to make my expression as open as possible.

  “Look, it’s just… don’t judge me, okay?”

  “Judge you? I don’t judge you, Em!” I couldn’t keep the hurt and surprise out of my voice.

  “Lulu,” she said flatly, “You know how you get sometimes. All… I dunno, self-righteous or something. I need you to not do that right now, okay?”

  “Okay, no self-righteousness. Got it.” I attempted to make my expression less judge-y.

  Emily sucked in a deep breath and let it out. “So, I haven’t gotten my period for a long time.”

  “WHAT???” I couldn’t help the shock in the expression, it was so unexpected.

  “Yeah,” Em answered in a low voice.

  “I didn’t even think about it, but I mean I guess that it makes sense that you would be… all the times he’s slept over… but STILL, Em, you’re usually so careful about that, aren’t you on the pill? Oh my God, and you drank all that rum today…” The words poured out as my mind flitted from one topic to another with the speed of a hummingbird tasting flowers. “Wait, how long is ‘a long time,’ exactly?”

  “Well, that’s the thing: I don’t remember if I had it before we went to Hall in Tirol, I was so out of it I wasn’t really paying attention, and I was sick. Then, the month after we got back I barely bled, just a tiny amount, but Todd and I weren’t sleeping together yet and I just reasoned it was stress—you know how I miss it sometimes when I have crazy deadlines.”

  She paused, looking at me for acknowledgment or confirmation that I agreed. I nodded, and she continued.

  “So, after that Todd and I HAD been together, but nothing else had changed, I was still on the birth control, so I had no reason to suspect I was pregnant. But now it’s been two months with nothing and I’m worried. Could I be pregnant? The pill is supposed to be super effective and I’ve never had even a scare before, but I don’t know if he has like, super sperm or something, and with all the changes to my body, I don‘t even know where to begin!” She looked up at me, worried.

  Putting on my calm face, I asked gently, “Have you tried a pregnancy test?”

  She sniffed. “No, I just missed my last period. I’ve been thinking about it, but honestly, I’m afraid to know. Besides, what if it wouldn’t show up like a normal pregnancy, anyway? I mean, we have no idea what my DNA is like, now. We also haven’t considered the possibility that I could have gotten pregnant when we mated his way, before. I know they said it’s not possible, but they said everything we’ve been through was never possible before us, either. Plus, what if I am pregnant and it’s, like, not a human baby at all? I don’t know what to do, Lulu!” Em threw her arms around my neck and sobbed, her small body heaving.

  I wrapped my arms around her and rubbed reassuring circles on her back. The poor thing had hidden her worries so well I hadn’t even picked up on it until today. What kind of friend was I?

  “Em, it’s alright, I’m here with you, okay? No matter what, I’m not leaving your side. We’ll figure it out together. Okay?” I felt her head nod on my shoulder. “Okay. First things first, we should take a pregnancy test. If nothing else it will tell us a positive, and we’ll know, or a negative, and we’ll move on to the next step.”

  Em heaved a deep sigh and sat back. “Well, no time like the present I suppose.”

  “You want to go get a test now? We can run to the pharmacy on the corner and be done with this in ten minutes.”

  “I actually already bought a test. I guess I was just afraid to take it.” Her voice was small. It broke my heart to hear it, she was usually so boisterous.

  “Okay, well… do you want me to go get a test? I can take one with you. Bonding!” I smiled brightly.

  “Nah, don’t waste your money, we both know you’re not pregnant.” She snorted a half-hearted laugh at her own joke since I was obviously not in danger of getting pregnant. Mick’s pants had remained firmly in place at our every encounter, and his mouth carefully away from my neck.

  “Thanks,” I said, leveling a sarcastic glare at her puffy eyes.

  “Sorry,” she mumbled, “Lulu, will you come with me?”

  “Sure, Em. Whatever you need.” I stood and reached out my hand to pull her from the couch. Once she was standing I wrapped her in a tight hug, then left my arm around her shoulder as I steered towards her room. “Let’s go pee on a stick!”

  ***

  MICK

  I knew something serious had happened the second I saw Lucy’s face. Her hazel eyes, normally sparkling with humor, were dark, worried. Emily didn’t look much better. She was a tiny woman, but now she appeared to have shrunken in on herself as if trying to take up as little space as possible.

  Todd took one glance at their half-hearted smiles and his face dropped. “What’s wrong?”

  Emily glanced at Lucy with an alarmed expression, then back at Todd. “Why do you ask that?”

  “Because I can read it all over your face, baby. You weren’t acting normal last night, and you’re worse tonight. Come in already,” he gestured impatiently, beckoning them from the doorway to the living room as if he owned the place and I was just the doorman.

  It was my house, but Todd had been here so much now it might as well be his. Since we came back from Hall in Tirol he hadn’t wanted to be apart from Emily, so he’d been using my place as a base camp. Their relationship was still relatively young, and he didn’t want to crowd her. He sensed through their connection when she desired some space or time alone with Lucy and often retreated here to grant her that.

  Now he led the girls into the living room and gestured to the crisp white couch that sat near the gas fireplace. I decorated my home here with a lot of the same style as my place in Austria, although I left out the glowing walls and opted for normal human lighting. I had designed the layout of this place to echo that one; it made it feel more like home. The walls were covered with stone tiles in a medium grey, and my kitchen had nearly the same quartz island and bronze fixtures. The only other difference was the normal-sized windows. It was too difficult to get the motorized steel shutters we had in Austria, so I settled for ordinary shutters and grey light-blocking curtains instead. They blended nicely with the stone walls and were barely noticeable when pulled back.

  Lucy and Emily settled on the couch together. Emily sat in the middle and Todd immediately sat to her left. I perched on the chair that faced the couch and examined them quietly. Todd’s face was anxious, sensing Emily’s emotional state. Emily stared at the floor, her knee bouncing and one hand pressed to her lips. She appeared to be chewing on the fingertips of her left hand. Lucy held the other tightly and watched Emily’s face with concern.

  “Alright,” I said after my study. “Something’s going on, we all know it, just some of us are in the dark as to what it is. I assume you’ve come here to tell us?”

  My eyes searched the gaze between Lucy and Emily, who appeared to be having a silent conversation only the two of them could understand. Lucy nodded in encouragement and Emily dropped her hand then swallowed with difficulty.

  “Yes.” Turning to her left, she reached for Todd, wh
o immediately claimed her hand. “Todd, baby, I haven’t been honest with you. I’m sorry… some things have been going on that I couldn’t really understand or explain, and instead of talking to you about it I kept it to myself. I…”

  “Is it me?” Todd interrupted anxiously. “I know my transition to human hasn’t exactly been… ideal… but I hoped you would give me more time to assimilate to your way of doing things.”

  Emily’s eyes betrayed her shock at his outburst. Clearly, he misread where this was going. “No, baby, it’s nothing to do with that, I promise. Well, I mean it might have something to do with that, but it’s nothing wrong with you. I love you.” She brought his hand to her mouth and kissed it, then beamed up at him with fervor.

  “I love you too, baby. I’m sorry I interrupted, please go on,” Todd slid closer to her on the couch, withdrawing his hand from hers so he could wrap it around her shoulder instead.

  “Okay,” she began again, “When we left Austria we knew that Todd had changed, and everything with me seemed normal. However, it seems that was a false assumption-”

  “What? What do you mean? Are you sick?” Todd’s anxious inquiry interrupted again.

  “I’m trying to explain, baby, if you’ll let me,” Emily smiled gently, then continued. “Lucy and I have discovered that… I appear to have gained some of your inhuman characteristics—namely, strength and speed that are decidedly out of my normal human abilities. I can now jump nearly fifteen feet in the air, run at impossible speeds, and recently I tossed Lucy over my head as if she were a five-pound sack of potatoes.” Emily paused to squeeze Lucy’s hand and smile at her in apology for the comparison. “We didn’t really run any tests in on me in Austria, but perhaps we should have.”

  It was now my turn to interrupt. “Emily, what are you saying, exactly?”

  Emily opened her mouth, but it was Lucy who answered first. “We theorized that maybe both Todd and Emily are now some kind of half-breed, a human with vimpiri traits. We did a few simple tests proving that she’s something more than human. However, it’s not like we can get her a blood test at the local walk-in clinic, so further testing probably needs to be done back in Austria.”

  This was a lot to take in. Lucy was right, we had never considered that Emily would be altered. It was in our genetic code to modify and adapt, and humans were relatively non adaptive by comparison. But, if she was manifesting the abilities they listed, she definitely was altered in some way. I knew this was exactly the thing our kind feared when they found out about Todd and Emily’s pairing. It was one thing for a Lost Bachelor to give up his vimpiri future to have a human mate; it was another entirely to create this half-breed combination of the two. Selfishly, my thoughts drifted to my situation. This would not bode well for my chances of convincing my mother to allow me to pair with Lucy. I sighed.

  “Well, it appears we need to take another trip to run some tests. I can make the flight arrangements, I…”

  Lucy cleared her throat. “Mick, there’s something else.”

  “Something else?”

  Lucy nodded at Emily encouragingly.

  Emily’s voice was low. “We don’t know, but we think I may be… pregnant.”

  Todd’s jaw dropped, and he stuttered. “B-b-but, that’s not possible, is it? I mean,” he glanced at me in absolute panic, “How can that be possible?”

  I was having a hard time keeping my own jaw off the floor. “I have no idea, Todd. Emily, what do you mean you’re not sure? I thought you have preventative measures for this sort of thing, and tests to confirm?” My mind was reeling with this information but I knew the others were looking to me for leadership, so I tried to keep my cool.

  “I took a test—several, in fact—but they didn’t turn out… normal.”

  “How so?” My voice was low and smooth, trying to project the steady calm my mother always had.

  “Well, it’s this little plastic thing you have to pee on, and then either a pink plus or a negative sign shows up to indicate pregnant or not.”

  “Okay,” I encouraged, “that seems simple enough.”

  “Right, except none of that happened.”

  “So it didn’t change to a plus? That would seem to indicate that you weren’t pregnant?”

  “No, it changed, but it wasn’t pink, and it wasn’t a plus. It was bright green, and it made a sort of a star shape.”

  “Perhaps the test was faulty?”

  “No, we tried a bunch of different ones and it was all the same. We don’t know what it means. It could just mean that my pee is weird now that I’m… different, and the test didn’t know how to handle that. We have no way of knowing. But I haven’t had my regular cycle in months and I also don’t know if that’s because of this change or because I am pregnant. We thought the wisest solution was to go back to Austria and consult with your mom.” Having unloaded her secrets, Emily sagged back against the couch in relief. Todd, his arm around her, appeared to still be in shock.

  “So… you’re saying… we might have offspring?” Todd’s chest rose and fell rapidly as he waited for a reply.

  “Yes…” Emily answered in a small, fearful voice. She expected him to be upset at the news.

  “That’s… that’s… AMAZING!” Todd shouted, throwing his other arm around Emily and squeezing her so tightly she slapped at his arm for release, gasping. “I never thought I could reproduce! As a Lost Bachelor, I resigned myself to being alone for the rest of my life. Then I met you, and suddenly I was no longer alone… and now THIS! It’s incredible!” He pumped his fist in the air in celebration.

  “I confess, that’s not the reaction I was expecting,” Lucy laughed at Todd’s jubilant gesture. “Typically young men are a little less enthusiastic.”

  “You’ve had this conversation with a man before?” My tone was sharp, and I winced internally at the note of jealousy in it.

  “No, not me,” she blushed, embarrassed, “Just… generally, in our society young men are afraid of having children when they’re not married and settled down. Todd being a rockstar and all, we just kind of assumed… well, he just took it a lot better than we had expected, that’s all.”

  My heart rate slowed as I understood. “I see. You have to remember Todd isn’t as young as he appears to you. He’s roughly 500 human years old, so he’s past the point in a vimpiri life cycle when he’d be ready to raise offspring.” I grinned to let her know I was amused, not angry. “Offspring are a blessing, even to normal vimpiri. We take many, many years to gestate and birth them. We don’t reproduce with the speed that humans do.”

  “But that’s just it—we don’t know what kind of offspring this is,” Emily said, her nerves cracking through her happiness at Todd’s unexpected joy. “We don’t know if it’s half-human, half-vimpiri, whatever kind of half-breed we are, or whatever other combination it could be.”

  “That’s a fair point,” I acknowledged. We need to figure out if that’s even something we can determine at this stage.”

  “Baby,” Emily began, “I’m glad you’re not freaking out, but I kind of am. If I’m pregnant, I don’t know what I’m pregnant with. Was it from when we… you know… the vimpiri way? Or after? I don’t know, and I don’t know how I feel about it.” A single tear trickled down her cheek when she confessed this, and Todd’s reaction was immediately contrite. He stroked her face tenderly and began speaking to her in hushed tones as she sniffed.

  Rising, I shifted my gaze to Lucy. “Lucy, will you come over here for a second?” I gestured to the kitchen. She had been watching Todd and Emily embrace and was clearly uncomfortable with her proximity to the whispered conversation they were now having. Unable to determine what she should do with herself, she crossed her legs the other direction and leaned on the arm of the sofa.

  Lucy bounced up and joined me in the kitchen, sliding into one of the bar stools that lined the island. “Thanks,” she said.

  “No problem,” I replied. “It felt like they should have a moment alone. That was q
uite a bombshell you two just dropped.”

  Lucy tucked a strand of dark blonde hair behind her ear and nodded. “Tell me about it. We realized Friday there was something different about her when she punched a guy and sent him flying yards away. Then we tried out a few things yesterday and confirmed it, but she wasn’t ready to say anything. Then she told me today she thought she might be pregnant AFTER we went to the movies and drank a bunch of rum.” Her tone had grown angry, but abruptly she sighed. “I would be furious with her if she didn’t seem so fragile right now.”

  “Why would you be furious?” The confession surprised me. It wasn’t as if she could help what had happened to her.

  “Well, you’re not supposed to drink when you’re pregnant,” she explained, “It’s bad for the baby. At least,” she amended, “it’s bad for human babies.”

  I thought carefully before answering. “Well, for vimpiri mothers there really is no such limitation., they may drink as much vishut as they like. Remember, vimpiri gestate for a very long time; as long as the mother is conscious of her intake, it’s not a problem. Not that vimpiri are prone to abusing drugs like humans seem to be since our bodies are pretty-well impervious to most toxins. It simply isn’t something that’s ever been a problem, I suppose.”

  “Well, that makes me feel a little better,” Lucy confessed. “I felt guilty for encouraging Em to drink, finding out later that she might be pregnant, perhaps by several months. Hopefully, the vimpiri part of her, or the child, is strong.” Her eyes regained some of their glow, and her lips curved into a small smile. “How are you? I know you weren’t expecting all of this tonight.”

  “I was surprised when you called and said you were coming over. We’ve never really… I mean, that just wasn’t like you. But I’m fine. Um, would you like something to drink? Wine? Water?” I was awkward standing at the kitchen island with nothing to do, and I bustled to the wine rack below the counter and selected a bottle. “This cabernet is an excellent vintage,” I added, presenting it to her. “Or I have some bottled water in the fridge?”