Luminosity

by Alicorn

  Edward noticed my discomfort and put his arm around me. The woman who was looking at us said, "Edward Cullen. How surprising to see you." She spoke English, although it was accented - my guess was that she didn't practice the language often. "And I take it that you have found a mate."

  "This is Bella," said Edward, nodding. "Bella, this is Zafrina, and that is Senna and that's Kachiri." He pointed out the two who'd ignored our approach.

  I attempted to smile, and succeeded, although I kept looking at the corpses. Kachiri finished hers and looked over her shoulder at us, and then Senna followed suit.

  The men were already dead and couldn't get deader, and I did need to know if I could handle blood... I took a small breath.

  It was about ten or twenty times worse than when the blood was neatly contained in a human; my throat instantly combusted, praying for drink. Venom gushed into my mouth. I summoned the instinct to fear the three women, identifying the dead as their prey which I couldn't safely take, and held very, very still, caught between the terror I was using and the thirst I'd invited. Edward's arm, still around my shoulders, squeezed. I didn't know if I would have been able to leave the blood unconsumed if it hadn't belonged to the Amazons. Rational thought wasn't efficacious against the thirst; the best I could do was pit one drive against another, fearing for my life at the hands of the coven if I drank the blood that the pain in my throat told me I needed.

  I swallowed the venom, and it was instantly replaced; it didn't matter that I'd stopped breathing. I closed my eyes and turned towards Edward, who wrapped his arms around me comfortingly. "I'm sorry," he said to the Amazons. "She's very controlled for a newborn, but hasn't been near human blood before. Please excuse her."

  I had been near human blood before, but this was faster to explain, and anyway, I'd known not to inhale near Harry while the blood was fresh... and those men were dead, and our friends the Amazon coven had killed them... and even if the loggers had been driving some tree extinct, they didn't deserve to die... and they smelled so good and I wanted to fight Kachiri for her dead man and suck out whatever drops were left in his veins and cool the burning in my throat but I thought she might kill me if I tried and I didn't deserve to die either -

  Edward said, "It looks like you've finished eating. If you could dispose of the leftovers, it would be easier for us to talk to you; we have some questions."

  "Very well," said Zafrina, agreeably enough, and I heard the three women picking up their respective beverage containers and racing off into the forest with them. I didn't know what they were going to do to cover up their involvement in the deaths; I didn't think I'd like it if I got the answer. That didn't keep my brain from wildly speculating. Drop the bodies into piranha-infested waters? That would probably work well. Fling them into some slash-and-burn farm that was in the middle of the "burn" phase? Risky... I was so parched. I wished I'd brought a bottle of water. I wanted blood. The jaguar had been too long ago. My throat smoldered.

  They came back after about thirty seconds. "We can go somewhere else, if that would be more comfortable for your Bella," offered either Senna or Kachiri; I hadn't heard either speak and wasn't looking, still burying my face in Edward's shirt. I felt him nod, and he picked me up, accurately judging me too affected by the blood and the murder to want to move around under my own power. I might just take off and find someone full of blood that smelled that good and make the burning stop.

  Edward followed the coven through the forest with me in his arms. I opened my eyes and watched plants whiz by, then closed them again. Eventually we'd arrived at the Amazons' venue of choice. It was a section of rainforest, much like any other.

  "Bella, there's none of the scent here," Edward murmured to me. "You can breathe."

  I breathed again, and set my feet on the ground, where they held me up quite satisfactorily in spite of my ongoing distress. No one seemed to expect me to talk, which was good. "What did you visit us about, then?" asked Zafrina.

  Edward related the story of what he'd learned after our honeymoon had been cut short from the Ticuna Indian woman who'd heard of half vampires. "Bella had some eggs taken from her before she turned," he told them. Then he had to explain what eggs were to the scientifically uninitiated coven. "The upshot is that if half-vampires are possible, a human woman could bear a child that is both mine and Bella's," he concluded.

  "I've never heard of this truly happening," said Zafrina skeptically. "Of course there are stories, but there are stories about anything and everything; only a handful are true."

  "It may be a fruitless search," acknowledged Edward. "We're prepared to devote some time to investigating anyway. We know the Ticuna have legends about half-vampires; who else might know something?"

  Zafrina listed a half-dozen tribes; Kachiri chimed in with a few more, and I concluded that it was her voice that had offered the change of location. Senna was quite silent. Zafrina remarked, after about ten peoples with half-vampire stories had been suggested, "It surprises me that you, golden-eyed still, would let a human die to get your child."

  "No," I said at once. "Not if it will kill her. We want to find out if there's a way she could live through it."

  "Ah, she speaks," said Kachiri. "But the stories never say the mother lives."

  "But the stories are old," I said. "Medicine has gotten much better. Forty years ago, my eggs couldn't have been harvested as they were. Perhaps the last half-vampire born is two or three hundred years old, and his or her mother could have been saved with something that was invented since then. We only need to find out what killed her to make a good guess about that."

  "If she existed at all," said Zafrina.

  "As I said," said Edward, "it may turn out that we're looking for something that isn't there. But we want to try. Are there vampires that live closer to the tribes you mentioned, who might talk to us and might know something more concrete?"

  Kachiri gave the usual stomping grounds of two vampires, both of whom traveled alone and would be therefore unlikely to attack the pair of us, although she didn't vouch for their helpfulness, and remarked that she and her coven had only met each briefly. They'd run into each other, come to an agreement on their respective territories, and then never noticeably encroached again.

  They had nothing else useful to tell us, so Edward courteously caught them up on the latest Cullen family news and then excused us.

  I fought the mental image of those dead men into the farthest recesses of my mind, and followed him as he took off at a run through the rainforest.

  * * *

  One would expect, even given no detailed information, that it would be very difficult and time-consuming to find nomadic vampires one has never met who are not trying to be easy to find in a continent as large as South America. One would be absolutely correct. We tromped around the suggested locations for almost three weeks. During this time, Edward filled in the large gaps in my Spanish, so I could get along in the non-Brazil countries. We went sniffing in uninhabited areas for vampire scents and passed through population centers for Edward to catch thoughts of suspicious disappearances.

  Finally, we ran into a vampire who could have been one of those Kachiri described, in the middle of the Chilean Andes.

  She was a small, nervous-looking woman with a long black braid and the same off-white tinge to her skin that seemed common to vampires made of non-white humans. We caught just a glimpse of her from a distance before she disappeared over a mountain, apparently spooked.

  "Did you get her name?" I asked Edward as we followed the path she'd taken over the rocks.

  "No," he said. "If I keep her in range it's sure to come up..." He ranged a little ahead of me, pitting his speed against the other vampire's familiarity with the territory and head start. "Huilen!" he shouted, after a few seconds. That was presumably her name; he continued in Spanish. "Huilen, we don't want to hurt you! We just want to talk!"

  She paused, clinging to a mountain peak, ready to escape if we made any threatening moves. I caugh
t up to Edward.

  "Please talk to us," I called in the same language. Since she'd stopped, I thought she probably knew Spanish.

  "How do you know my name?" she demanded in a high, clear voice that carried easily through the mountain air.

  "Come talk to us and we'll explain," I replied.

  "I can hear you from here," she said.

  "You'll run away again as soon as you aren't curious anymore," I retorted. "Please come here. We won't hurt you."

  Huilen crept down the mountain cautiously; Edward and I held still. "Who are you?" she asked.

  "My name is Edward," he said, "and this is my wife Bella."

  "And how do you know my name?" she asked again. Edward explained his ability, which made Huilen even more nervous, although she didn't run away again. "What do you want?" she said when he'd finished accounting for his knowledge.

  "We're trying to find out if half-vampires exist," I said.

  Huilen stared at us, and then Edward said abruptly, "Who was that?"

  She hissed, and turned to run, but Edward chased her; I followed, but Huilen was scrambling over the mountains with practiced efficiency and Edward was charging after her very fast, so it was all I could do to keep them in hearing distance. "Huilen, wait!" pleaded Edward. "We don't want to do you or him any harm! Please!"

  She didn't answer him, just continued to clamber over the terrain at high speed. I wondered what Edward would do with her if he caught her. I saw them going diagonally over a slope off to my left, and I pushed off from the ground with all four limbs, leaving gouges in the rock and hurtling towards them. I landed in front of Huilen and she veered right, but the course correction was enough to let Edward get around and cut her off. She stopped again and shrank into herself, making a small noise.

  "Huilen, we don't want to hurt you, or... Nahuel? Nahuel. But it's important to us to find out about half-vampires," said Edward. "Why are you so afraid?"

  "Your eyes," she murmured. "They're - what are you?"

  Patiently - whether because he was truly patient or because Huilen's thoughts were providing satisfactory information - Edward explained that we were vampires, but did not eat humans. Huilen seemed only a little surprised by our animal diet, although it struck her as odd that this would affect eye color.

  "Why do you want to know about the demon's children?" asked Huilen harshly. The way she said it, it was as though she had some specific demon in mind, and specific children.

  "When I was human," I said, approaching, "eggs were taken from me. We have a human friend who has agreed to bear my child, but we want to know if the child could be Edward's too."

  "Your friend will die," spat Huilen.

  "We would like to meet your nephew, Huilen," murmured Edward gently. "And hear the whole of your story."

  * * *

  Huilen's nephew Nahuel was definitely not a vampire. His skin was a richly saturated brown, dark and warm, and his eyes the same. He wore his hair like his aunt's, braided, but it was a bit shorter. He had vampirically perfect symmetry, and was quite beautiful, but he didn't move quiteso gracefully, and while I didn't see him run or lift weights, my estimation was that he would not bequite so fast or strong either. But it was close.

  The real giveaway was the heartbeat. Nahuel's heart thrummed at a speed I'd never heard a human's manage, although it was slower than mine or Harry's had been at the final moments of our turnings. He was also warm, about the same temperature as a werewolf, and smelled somewhere between human and vampire - not like food, but pleasant.

  He lived in a tiny house high on a mountain, which would be difficult for humans to access but not impossible. It was not too far from there to the city of Santiago de Chile, whence the vampire who went by "Santiago" apparently hailed.

  Huilen didn't live with Nahuel anymore, although she had raised him and visited frequently. "My sister is dead, of course," she explained, sounding angry. "She was so pretty. Our parents named her Pire, for the snow on the mountains. But she was too pretty, and the Libishomenwanted her for himself." I assumed the unfamiliar word was a legendary term for vampire. "She told me in confidence that an angel had taken her for his lover and I knew it was no angel - she was covered in bruises, I suppose he didn't take any care with her. I warned her, as if the injuries weren't warnings themselves, but she didn't listen - like she'd been bewitched. And she told me she was carrying his child."

  "This was how long ago?" asked Edward, studying Nahuel's youthful, lovely features. The half-vampire blinked back at him mildly.

  "A hundred and fifty years, give or take," supplied Nahuel. His voice was clear and gentle. "I grew very fast, but stopped when I was seven. Haven't noticed any change since."

  "Amazing," Edward murmured. "Do go on," he added to Huilen.

  "I knew everyone, even our parents, would want the child dead and Pire with him, if she were found to be carrying the demon's spawn, and I couldn't lose her," explained Huilen. "I went with her into the jungle, I hunted animals for her and she drank their blood ravenously, and she was still weak and her child hurt her from the inside, breaking bones. I thought perhaps if I nursed her well enough she could live, and then the demon's child could be destroyed without harming her." Nahuel didn't have any visible reaction to this description of his fetal self.

  "But Pire died anyway?" I murmured.

  Huilen nodded. "She did. She lost so much blood, and was so weakened to make him grow so quickly, and he had broken so many of her bones. But she loved her child. She named him Nahuel - after the jungle cat - and her dying wish was that I care for her son. And I told her I would. But after he ripped his way out, through the hard shell that had grown around him in her womb, and I lifted him from her body, he bit me. I crawled into the jungle, and thought I would die. When I was finished turning, he was sleeping, curled up beside me."

  "So you're venomous," Edward said, looking back to Nahuel. "And you sleep."

  "I do, and I am," confirmed Nahuel. "My sisters have no venom, but I do not know if that is due to gender or to chance."

  "You have sisters," exclaimed Edward.

  "Three," said Nahuel, "as of seventeen years ago. The other two are older than me. But their mothers died as well. My father considers himself a scientist, and thinks he's breeding a master race; I'm told that more of his experiments have died in... attempting to conceive... or during their pregnancies, than have managed to bring to term. My sisters travel with him, but I already had Huilen for family, and was not interested in going with him when he came looking for me several years after my mother's death."

  Edward nodded, crestfallen at the implied death toll. It yielded a pessimistic prognosis for an attempt at our own half-vampire child. I took his hand and folded it in mine. Seventeen years previously, medicine had been fairly modern. If Nahuel's father had had any interest at all in keeping the newest sister's mother alive, and it was the sort of thing that was reliably doable with 2005 technology, it could most likely have been managed then. And Joham was a vampire, and could have turned the mothers if that would have saved them and he'd wanted them alive. Maybe he didn't care, but he wasn't there to ask.

  I asked, but Nahuel couldn't speculate as to how much care the recent crop of "attempts" had gotten; Pire had been abandoned altogether once pregnant, but that might or might not have been a special situation, as she was with Huilen instead of isolated. Nahuel rarely had any contact with his father, whose name was Joham but whose location and contact information were unknown.

  The three sisters were from various parts of the world - one Aboriginal Australian, one Swiss, one Korean. Nahuel had heard of failures from Mexico, Iceland, Ghana, Nigeria, China, Tibet, India, the Philippines, Indonesia and Russia, and didn't think that Joham and the sisters had bothered to mention all such deaths. So Joham clearly had no geographical pattern that we could use to predict his movements. There was no realistic hope of finding him and getting more information before Aro came to check up on Gianna.

  We quizzed Nahuel a little m
ore on his biology, just out of some masochistic interest in knowing what could have been. He obliged us readily enough. He was not as strong, fast, tough, sensorily gifted, precise in movement, roomy-minded, or possessed of perfect recall as a vampire. In physical power, he was behind an average vampire by the same amount that a vampire was behind a newborn; it was similar for the other physical abilities. His mind had space in proportion to his senses and capacities, as ours did. He could remember anything he chose to remember and might or might not forget things otherwise.

  I winced when he remarked casually that he could survive on either human food or blood - human or animal - but found his aunt's diet the most pleasant. Huilen's eyes (of course) were murderous burgundy.

  Nahuel sounded like he was acting on a much milder preference than her, though, somewhere between a human's "I really enjoy bacon, and I don't like tofu at all" and a vampire's "only human blood will quench my desperate, maddening thirst". I was mildly repulsed, which he appeared to notice.

  I debated with myself whether I ought to try to convert the pair of them, or at least Nahuel. It felt very awkward - they hadn't expressed the interest that Maggie had. Part of me thought that it would be ungrateful and rude of me to have badgered Huilen into taking us to her nephew's home and dragged a painful story out of them, only to then disapprove of their dietary habits. Part of me thought something along the lines of,people are dying, if there's any chance you can stop it then you must tolerate arbitary amounts of awkwardness because there is no embarrassment you can feel that it's worth someone's life to avoid.

  While Edward accumulated information about Nahuel's eldest sister's witchcraft (she could divert notice away from herself, apparently - becoming not invisible, but uninteresting), I let these parts of myself fight it out. If what I really wanted to do was minimize death, I ought to kill Huilen then and there. Even if I convinced her to become a vegetarian, she was not overwhelmingly likely to go on forever without ever messing up.