Luminosity

by Alicorn

  "So soon, Bells?" Charlie asked, while Billy looked at me with a guarded, but not hostile, expression.

  "Yes, I'd really like to get home," I replied. "I'm sure some crisis or other will come up here that calls for my presence soon enough, and if nothing else, now that you know what the story is I may be able to visit just to visit - but for shorter periods, at least until Edward gets in on the secret one way or another and I can bring him along."

  "Is that healthy, to be so... attached to him?" Charlie asked. He'd been caught up on the fine details of vampire psychology over the previous week, but still asked questions like that sometimes. I half expected him to ask if I'd ever tried to stop being a vampire.

  "That's not really a useful question, since the attachment's not going away," I said, "and I wouldn't wish it away, if it could."

  "Fair enough," sighed Charlie. "Keep in touch, Bells."

  "I will."

  I gave Billy a cordial nod, which he returned, and then went back outdoors, where I called Edward to find out where he was. This check-in turned, predictably enough, into a long conversation during which I ran all the way to the airport. Once there, I booked tickets to Helsinki and caught my plane.

  * * *

  Edward met me at the airport in Helsinki. The next six days were spent in a lovely, if rushed, tour of Scandinavia; we hit all the major tourist attractions and a few minor ones so I could account for having been gone as long as I had. I learned bits and pieces of Swedish and Finnish. I was able to go about in public without contact lenses, as my eyes were entirely amber: an unusual color, but not one unheard of in humans.

  Edward noticed, stared at, and kissed the small bite marks on my wrist, but didn't ask.

  Our travels went in a loosely westerly direction, and finally we drove up to our home. I wore extra-long sleeves to at least postpone the rest of the family's discovering that I had been bitten by a small venomous creature. There had been no good way to hide it from Edward, but nobody else inspected me with such regularity and thoroughness.

  The first thing I noticed when we approached the house was the singing. It was Maggie, crooning something in Gaelic. She had a splendid voice; I could understand why Alice had predicted Gianna would appreciate it. When I got out of the car and looked, the Irish vampire - still gold-eyed - was sitting on a picnic blanket with Gianna in the backyard. The human was eating a sandwich, and looking at Maggie with considerably less ambivalence than she'd displayed when I'd last seen them together. The blush was still present, though. Maggie was entirely unselfconscious (not to mention incapable of blushing), and seemed confident in her voice and glad to be entertaining the object of her affection.

  It was all so cute that I almost could have missed the patchwork of bruises spotting Gianna's skin.

  I hadn't tried to handle any humans since becoming a vampire except Harry, who'd been starting to turn before I picked him up, and Sue, who I'd had every intention of grievously injuring to begin with. I didn't really know how hard it was, but it didn't seem like it could be thatdifficult - couldn't Maggie press too hard once, calibrate Gianna's fragility, and then back off enough to avoid the injury?

  It didn't look like that was what had happened. The contusions were of a variety of ages - some hours old, still dark, and others yellowing. I didn't see any casts, splints, or even bandages, so the damage was limited, but there were so manybruises. I hadn't gotten one from Edward while I'd been human, that I recalled. Then again, I'd been clumsy enough that I'd been accustomed to having a variety of small injuries that I didn't necessarily remember getting... but I hadn't looked like I'd been painted.

  However, the fact that Maggie was not quite gentle enough with Gianna didn't seem to have prevented them from growing adorably close or caused Ilario to break Maggie into gravel, so I decided that it wasn't any of my business. Maggie finished her song, then briefly deigned to pay attention to Edward and me. "Welcome home!" she called to us.

  "Thanks!" I called back.

  That was all Maggie had in her attention span for persons not Gianna, and she started another song. This one seemed to be in English, but it was so archaic, heavily accented, and full of regionalisms that I could make out about one word in three.

  We checked in with the others of the family; everyone could have heard the car pulling up and seen us out the window or heard me speak to Maggie, but it was polite to speak face-to-face. I also had an interest in seeing whether Jasper remained distant and cool towards me. Harry had become less disconcerted by my unrecognizeability. I hoped that it wouldn't cause a more lasting rift between me and Jasper.

  Jasper was edgy, but not obviously upset. More tellingly, Edward seemed calm in talking to him, so he couldn't be thinking daggers at me. Alice complained good-naturedly that I'd gone invisible for longer than ever while away: "More than a week! But only when you weren't with Edward, for some reason," she said. "Maybe you're influenced enough by his decisions that it sheds light on what you're going to do, when you're together?"

  I should have thought of that.

  Alice couldn't see what I was doing if it involved wolves, but if she looked for Edward, and we weren't together, she'd find him easily. I could only be glad that she didn't make a habit of supervising him twenty-four hours a day and would assume that we were together during most unobserved hours - she'd probably already seen a suspicious amount of Edward all by himself wandering Scandinavia as though alone. Which he had been.

  Damn Harry's carelessness. He could have announced to Eleazar in August that he wanted to move out to an unspecified location, and then Tanya wouldn't have called Carlisle and Alice wouldn't have looked for him. He could haveasked someone, anyone, me or any other Cullen, whether it was safe for him to make love to his wife as though he hadn't just been turned into a vampire. If he'd gotten Sue pregnant anyway, I'd still have needed to travel to help out, but I would have had better information and timed accordingly - once I'd had the C-section idea I could have planned to be there for only a day or two.

  Alice didn't seem suspicious, though, just gently teasing. I laughed, made a joke about how I couldn't concentrate on keeping my shield up nearly as well with Edward around, and excused us to our cottage.

  When we got there, I said without preamble, "I think we might be able to safely have a half-vampire baby."

  * * *

  "What? How -" Edward began, and then he shook his head. "What can you tell me?"

  I bit my lip. I hated not being able to tell him things. Hating that in and of itself, when it was in my power to tell all, was dangerous. So I hated Aro, instead. Once he was out of the picture I wouldn't need to.

  I almost wished that Edward would just demand an explanation of me, making it so hard to keep the assorted secrets that I could judge it not worth the trouble. Or that he'd stumble across something, as Charlie had. But if I truly wished that I might as well spill all the beans - and that wasn't the best thing to do. I already had a little itch of worry in the back of my mind about the danger Charlie had walked into, although the wolves would look out for him if they could. Better not to add a similar one about Edward.

  "I had an idea," I said, which was true. "Caesarean section - early in the pregnancy. Gianna probably couldn't expect to live through a whole month, but she could likely manage three weeks or so, especially if we turned her right after. And Nahuel was a really healthy baby when he was born. He had nobody taking care of him for three days and he was fine. A preemie half-vampire would probably be no more vulnerable than, say, a full-term or slightly early human baby, and would catch up quickly, as fast as they grow."

  "That sounds sensible," said Edward, lighting up.

  "One thing that has me worried is all those bruises, though," I said, as it occurred to me that they could in this sense be my business. "I'm guessing Maggie hasn't broken any bones or anything, since Gianna wasn't taped up that I could see, but having a lot of extra healing to do while trying to carry a half-vampire is... I don't know how it'd interact, but it c
ouldn't be in agood way."

  "I haven't been keeping up to date on that," Edward said. "But some of the bruises did look new, so if Maggie's getting more careful, it's not happening very fast. It's something we'd need to discuss with Gianna at least, and Maggie too, most likely."

  "She'll probably need human blood to drink during the pregnancy," I said. "Nahuel can live on whatever if he decides to, but fetuses don't have that kind of volition..." I went on walking him through all the steps, including the possibility that the shell would only be vulnerable to vampire teeth and that it could grow attached to the uterus. I didn't pull in any evidence that I couldonly have gotten from Sue, although some of the mental leaps were a little tenuous and I had to frame everything with uncertainty. It wasn't obvious if Edward connected the dots (the blinking neon dots labeled "connect me!"), but he didn't mention it if he did.

  Night fell, and Gianna was presumably asleep, so we put off bringing the subject up with her until the next morning.

  Chapter 25: Expectations

  Maggie proved very displeased by the idea.

  "Let me get this straight," she said indignantly, after we failed to get Gianna alone and explained to both of them at once instead. "Bellasaid something dumb to Aro under pressure, which means Gianna's in danger if she doesn't have Bella's kid. Nowhere in this does it say that the kid has to be Edward's too. Not if that's going to hurt my Gianna."

  "Maggie," said Gianna, "they think I'll be safe - and it means I'll turn sooner, too..."

  Maggie softened at once when Gianna spoke, turning to the Italian woman and carefully taking one of her hands. "Baby, I want that over with soon too, but you might not make it that far!" she said. "Nobody has before! This is an experimentthey want to try. You're not a guinea pig, baby."

  "I said I would help," Gianna murmured.

  "You didn't know when you said so that they'd ask you this! Enough people die having normal babies - my own mother did."

  "I'm sorry to hear that, but that was more than a hundred and fifty years ago," I said. "Carlisle, Edward, and Rosalie are all doctors. We can have all the advance notice we could possibly need. Every advantage that Nahuel's mother didn't have - or yours, for that matter. If things take a turn for the worse before the three-week mark we can do the C-section earlier than planned."

  "I'm getting Ilario, he'll back me up," said Maggie fiercely, patting Gianna's cheek once and then rushing out of the house to look for him.

  "I take it they're getting along, then?" Edward asked mildly.

  "He'll leave me alone with her as of last week," Gianna said.

  "And that hasn't changed since you're... kind of black and blue?" I asked. "It's not really my business, I'm sure if there were something seriously wrong it would have been noticed and addressed before now by Ilario if nobody else - although if I'm wrong please tell me. But if you're getting hurt often it would probably make a pregnancy, any pregnancy, riskier."

  "Actually," Gianna said, "Ilario was the first one to give me a bruise. He was upset about something Maggie said. I don't remember exactly what it was, but he grabbed my hand and pulled me away from her. She didn't try to play tug of war or anything. He just squeezed too hard. And then she fussed over me so much that he decided she's no more likely to hurt me than he is. So he thought it would be hypocritical of him to keep spending time around me himself without letting Maggie do it. She's always more upset than I am when I get hurt, anyway."

  "Still, there are a lot..." I mused.

  Gianna shrugged, looking down and blushing again. "She gets carried away, but she stops whatever she's doing right away when I say "ow". The first time it happened she offered to quit touching me at all so she wouldn't get carried away anymore, but... I said she didn't have to do that." She squirmed slightly.

  "Right, um," I said, having wandered into territory that was even less my business. If Gianna was covering up something serious, Edward would know about it and tell me, and he was silent. "She's obviously very concerned with your safety, so that might wind up being what happens anyway for a few weeks - or months if we have to go the human baby route."

  "I could mention that to her," Gianna said lightly.

  "Might help," I allowed.

  I heard Maggie and Ilario's footfalls as they approached us. A few seconds later, they were there, Maggie promptly sitting back next to Gianna and carefully putting an arm over her shoulders while Ilario stood.

  "Let me get this straight," Ilario said, and there ensued a conversation very similar to the one we'd had with Maggie, minus the part where Gianna was addressed as "baby" and the part where someone's mother had died in childbirth.

  "I understand you're both worried about me," Gianna said when this segment of the exchange wound down, "but isn't it my decision?"

  Maggie bit her lip. "Baby, you don't know what it'd do to me if you died. I don't think even I know what it'd do to me, and I already can't stand to think of it. I know it's up to you, but it affects more than just you."

  Gianna patted Maggie's knee. "But I think it sounds survivable. Also, it gives more of an explanation for why I'm going to be turned. The Cullens have a history of turning dying people - but not people who've just given birth to a human baby once and are fine."

  "Aren't I sufficient explanation?" protested Maggie. "Bella wasn't dying, she was just Edward's."

  I said, "That'd be sufficient explanation if you had run into her all by herself a year or two ago before she met the Volturi. Now, they think she belongs to me, so I need a credible reason to turn her. If simply thinking that people ought to be vampires instead of humans when they're willing were a reason the Volturi would accept, I could have just said that in Volterra."

  "You should've let me fight you for her," Maggie said. "That would be credible."

  "I don't think it would have helped the situation at all if Aro found that I'd put her up as stakes on a fight," I said dryly, "since you challenged me on my home turf while you were alone and I had my whole coven present, and clearly didn't have to wager her - or lose."

  "Oh," said Maggie, hanging her head.

  "Maggie," I said. "I have every confidence that Gianna will be okay as long as we do a C-section at or before the three week mark, then turn her."

  The Irish vampire looked up at me. "You really do believe that," she murmured.

  I debated whether to tell her that I was immune to her power. I decided that she'd find out sooner or later, or at least suspect it - and it'd be a show of good faith. "I actually think I'm immune to your power," I told her sheepishly. She frowned. "Edward, you tell her," I said.

  "I think Bella's right," he said confidently. Maggie scrutinized his face - I wasn't sure if this was habit, an actual way to focus her witchcraft, or just for effect.

  Maggie looked over at Gianna. "You're sure you want to do it this way, Gianna?" she asked softly.

  Gianna nodded, then glanced at her brother, who looked uncomfortable but didn't speak.

  Maggie looked at Edward and me, fixing us with fierce glares. "If she dies," she said in a flat, cold voice very unlike her usual demeanor. She didn't finish the sentence, letting the threat trail off into thought.

  "If you tried, no matter how justified you were, you'd die too," Edward said softly.

  "If she dies," Maggie said, "then I wouldn't care if I did."

  * * *

  Permission secured, it was time to deal with the complicated technical stuff. I wasn't deeply involved in this part. I had no relevant expertise and my biological contribution was already in a freezer. It was mostly Edward, Rosalie, and Carlisle, ordering assorted equipment which trickled into the house in boxes over the next few days and then beginning work.

  Meanwhile, Maggie redoubled her efforts to leave Gianna undamaged, and the bruises slowly faded. The attempt wasn't without its mistakes, but Gianna could have picked up the same level of injury by bumping into things all by herself, and was disinclined to adopt a hands-off policy with Maggie. I didn't want to risk re-igniting Ma
ggie's opposition to the plan by requiring more of a sacrifice from her.

  Edward kept me in the loop on the general shape of the process. Rosalie had taken far more eggs from me than were normally removed in a harvesting procedure, since I'd had no expectation of needing them in their original state. As a result, they had some leeway with the raw materials, and were creating several embryos, most of which would go right back in the freezer to be used later in case we found a second surrogate and wanted a second child. This also meant that we had an opportunity to pick the gender we preferred.

  "Well," I said when presented with this, "if there's a bunch to choose from, why stop at gender? Let's get Alice and have her look them over, and tell us about them in detail."

  So we found Alice, who pranced into the room, closed her eyes to concentrate, and promptly said, "Ow!"

  "What's wrong?" asked Jasper, who'd followed close at her heels. Edward, who didn't need to ask, groaned.

  "They take after you, Bella," laughed Alice weakly.

  "You can't see them?" I asked. "That doesn't make sense. You could see me perfectly when I was human; they shouldn't have inherited that immunity if they inherited any of it at all."

  "Not a thing," Alice said. "I can't even tell which are the girls and which are the boys. I'm sorry, I wish I could help."

  "Can you see around them?" asked Edward. "If we decide on one can you look ahead a few months and see us...?"

  Alice tried, but then winced. "Nothing that depends on them, either. Oh, boy, this is going to be fun."

  I sucked in a nervous breath. "I guess we're flying blind, then - or rather, with what we can find from the genes alone. That's gender and what else?"

  "Carlisle's already looked at one of them, but while he's fairly confident that that one was a female, she had twenty-four pairs of chromosomes - which means anything known about human genes could be completely off-base," Edward said.