by Alicorn
"He was eating people," I reminded her. That information had filtered through to everyone in the family.
"Even so. Denali's remote, but it's not thatremote," mused Alice. "I'm sure he could get to enough potential feeding grounds that there'd be no reason for him to spend more than twenty-four hours round trip each time."
"He might have eaten a few people each time he went out, and needed to spread it out," I said, and with a sinking feeling it occurred to me that there was one exceptionally dangerous location that was a twenty-four hour round trip from Denali.
But if Laurent had gone there, he wouldn't have made the return journey.
"Bah," said Alice. "You wandered into one of the holes in the cheese that is your future again."
"Huh," I said, feigning surprise. "Anyway, I guess there's no way to find out what happened to Laurent, is there?"
"Not really," Alice said regretfully. "I see the future, not the past."
I patted her shoulder, pursing my lips sympathetically, and excused myself.
I had an awkward question for Rachel.
* * *
Rachel was actually not sure if wolves had killed Laurent.
I know it wasn't anyone in my pack, she wrote back. I checked. But things are rocky enough between me and Becky that I haven't communicated with her much - mostly about practical things like who's on duty doing lookout where so the packs don't have to run into each other. We've been tending to fight, which really sucks. Turns out the non-alphas can move between packs however they want, and she's collecting the hardcore anti-vampire wolves and they're just barely not going after Harry and Sue and Cody. If you know where he would have been I can tell you if my guys were there then.
But I didn't know - it was only a wild guess. Can you ask her directly? I wrote back, and attached a description of Laurent.
She didn't get back to me for two days after that, and I occupied my free time hovering near Gianna, discussing parenting with Edward, and wondering what I would even do if I learned that Becky's pack had killed Laurent.
I still didn't have the answer to that question when I got Rachel's reply. Promise me you won't hurt my sister for killing your friend, was all she wrote.
He wasn't my friend, I wrote back. If he was near you guys, he was probably going to kill somebody in La Push or Forks, maybe even Charlie - I just wish they'd been able to capture him instead of killing, because if Irina ever finds out, then there's a potential small war on your hands. I explained the relationship between Irina and Laurent and the reason the other Denalis had tolerated his lifestyle. If Irina figures out what happened to her Laurent...
I didn't really know Irina well. The only vampire I'd ever met in my life who'd lost a mate was Marcus, who I had never seen utter a word or do anything but wander around, touch Aro's hand, and stare into space. I didn't know how long ago his mate had died, or what he'd done when the grief had been fresh. The next most available source of information I had was to imagine Edward dead.
Every fragment of my self refused to let me imagine this in any detail. It was the only intolerable concept in the world. I could imagine being flung back into the agony I'd felt when turning, though it had been incomprehsibly torturous. I could imagine my own death, though I loved life and hoped to cling to it for all time. I could imagine Gianna miscarrying, little Elspeth failing to survive, though I felt more attached to my daughter-to-be with every passing hour.
But Edward had to exist, or something was fundamentally wrong with the universe.
Filled with unreasonable panic, I restored the original names in my mental scenario and gradually forced my rebellious mind to calm. IfIrina found out who had killed Laurent. That was the hypothetical at hand. My husband was safe,my mate had not been killed by a pack of anti-vampire wolves, my Edward was mine for all eternity.
I wrote, If Irina figures out what happened to her Laurent, she will kill whoever killed him or die trying. The rest of her coven might help her.
I sent the e-mail, and I went to soothe the ruffles in my thoughts by finding Edward.
* * *
"What happened to Marcus's mate?" I asked Edward, some time later.
"Didyme? She died," Edward replied. "Less than a year after Aro turned her - Marcus met her right after she became a vampire. Marcus wasn't with her at the time of her death, so he didn't see the specifics, but Aro found the coven of vampires who'd killed her, and he and Marcus destroyed them together. She was Aro's sister," Edward added, as an afterthought.
"Aro seems to have borne up under the loss a lot better than Marcus," I observed.
Edward nodded. "I've never heard Aro thinking about Didyme at all. Marcus thinks of almost nothing else, so I picked it all up from him. Aro did love her, but... it's not the same. It's like Ilario and Gianna, as opposed to Maggie and Gianna. Ilario is her brother, and that's a very human sort of relationship. He loves her, he'll do everything in his power to protect her, but he could eventually move on if she died. Maggie's in a different position."
"Irina must be going through hell," I said, pulling Edward a little closer. Mine, mine, mine - I knew my brain was being taken over by spooky mate bond magic. I'd signed up for exactly that when I'd said I was ready to turn. And if I hadn't, then I would have eventually died of the disease of mortality, and then Edward would have lost me, and then he would have gone through hell and I would be dead and have no Edward, and that would not be satisfactory at all. Much better for us to be both immortal and together. Albeit a little nerve-wracking when I considered the chinks in our undeath.
"She's still not convinced that Laurent is dead," he said, stroking my hair. "She has some hope."
"How long can she go on hoping that? If he doesn't come home, and doesn't come home, and goes on not coming home..."
"Not forever," admitted Edward. "Maybe longer than you'd think, though."
Because anything, even throwing oneself into an increasingly crumbly and obvious lie, would feel better than that sickening black hole of grief that I could not bear to contemplate. But Irina wasliving it. Whatever she thought, her worst nightmare - or close enough as to make no difference - was reality. I was concealing that all-important information from her.
Because if I didn't, she'd die and might take a wolf or two with her.
Would Irina rather die, if she found out what had happened to Laurent? Probably she'd rather kill Becky's entire pack first - maybe Rachel's too, maybe the whole Quileute tribe, who knew how widely she'd assign the blame - but after. If she wreaked all the vengeance she wanted, somehow picked off wolves one at a time until they were gone without losing her own life, what would she want to happen next?
I was sure I knew the corresponding answer for Edward. I'd been able to figure that much out even before I'd turned. He had the tragic self-sacrificing streak; he wouldn't want to live in a world that didn't contain me. Irina, though, I wasn't sure. Would she consider her life worth living anymore? Could she even consider the question?
I wondered suddenly what would happen to wolves whose imprints died. Their human, mortalimprints, afforded no special lifespan or unusual resilience. Maybe that was why the tribe didn't contain any hundred-year-old holdovers from the last pack; maybe they'd all imprinted and quit their anti-aging regimen of periodically turning into giant wolves, so they wouldn't have to outlive their loves by long. When little Claire caught up to Quil, would he abandon his other form, turning physically thirty and forty and fifty with her, so he wouldn't have to be young while she was old, alive while she was dead? Was Jared already trying to get himself under control so his age-matched girlfriend wouldn't rush by him?
How could I make sure that this disaster never,ever befell me?
I decided that I was not going to continue flying off to La Push whenever there was a hiccup with the pack. Rachel was a smart cookie and could handle her stuff, with long-distance consultation and funding handled via the Internet. I didn't need to be physically present, especially not with Harry and Sue and Cody nearb
y to be resident venom sources if they wanted someone turned. (Rachel had mentioned, in a pre-Laurent-revelation e-mail, that in order to keep the peace with Becky's pack, Harry and Sue and Cody were living in the shack full-time. Harry was fixing the place up to be a fit home. Leah and Seth still lived in the family's house on the reservation. But they were still within spitting distance.)
But simply being present wasn't necessarily enough to fend off the specter threatening my peace of mind. I would need to be present andeffective. I had some advantages against some of the foes I might have to face eventually. But these were known to those very foes, and if I were the only one left standing while Alec caused my family to fall senselessly to the ground around me, then I'd just be one vampire, not very good at fighting, to be targeted separately by some non-mental attack while my helpless brothers and sisters and in-laws andEdward were unable to defend me.
And then they - he - could be destroyed. That hurt. It hurt to think about it so much that I wanted to think about anything else, or not to think at all - just to snuggle closer to my gloriously alive Edward and pretend that our "immortality" was invulnerability. But it wasn't. Neglecting that fact wouldn't make it less factual. Edward could be taken from me. I couldn'tdefend him against every threat the world might throw at us.
Not okay.
I wondered about the limits of my shield. What might I eventually be able to add to it? Becoming immune to Jasper had been easy. I'd practically just repeated a mantra to myself. The first mantra I'd even tried. Was that a coincidence, just a feature of Jasper's power existing close to the line between what I did and didn't block? Or was my witchcraft very extensible?
Just how much could I immunize myself to, if I tried?
There was probably some limit, and I'd need to be able to cover for that with some competence in physical combat. I'd avoided sparring since getting my scar. I didn't have any clothes that I normally wore which could cover my wrist in even the most casual mock fight - sleeves were mobile sorts of things. I still didn't have a goodstory to explain it. But it was possible that Elspeth would be venomous, and then I could claim she bit me. The sample of half-vampires numbered five, so far - four of whom were half-siblings. It wasn't guaranteed that my daughter would be like the other female hybrids before her.
In less than a week, I'd find out if that was a viable cover story. Until then I wore long sleeves when around anyone other than Edward.
And then I'd have motherhood to take up a huge chunk of my time.
At least Elspeth would sleep nights.
* * *
The sheer ferventness Maggie applied to her anxious writhing over Gianna's condition was impressive. It made Elspeth's birth nearly anticlimactic. While Maggie held her breath and Gianna's hand, and Ilario fidgeted nearby, Carlisle administered some heavy-duty anaesthesia and a sedative. Edward cut down to the shell; Rosalie handed over a tooth and he cut through the shell with that and gave it back to her. While she rinsed the blood off it and let it re-adhere to her mouth, I pried the shell open, and there was Elspeth.
My baby.
I grinned from ear to ear and thrust my hands into the liquid to retrieve her. She opened her mouth, and I had a sudden idea - I leaned my arm in such a way as to present the inside of my left wrist for biting, and obligingly, she fastened her teeth onto the correct location. She wasn't venomous, but the fluid my arm was immersed in was like venom - it could explain the scar, and I didn't expect anyone to experiment with the stuff to check my story. "Ow," I muttered as I picked her up, because she did break my skin. But I felt the wound healing smooth, and she apparently didn't think I tasted good, because she didn't bite me again when I cradled her close. Carlisle handed me a blanket and patted me on the back, and I wrapped her up.
Gianna had held up so well through the procedure that Carlisle was able to put her in a coma before Ilario administered Maggie's venom. Maggie's release of tension was palpable - Gianna was out of the woods, and after some unconsciousness and some mindboggling torment, she would be fine. Unbreathing, Maggie assumed a protective position, holding her turning mate like she was made of glass. Ilario discarded the syringes and started pacing while Carlisle cleaned up the blood.
And I was a mother.
Elspeth had my eyes. Not my amber vampire eyes, gradually lightening with every meal I had - the brown ones I'd sported when human. The shade exactly matched the photographs I had from my first seventeen years.
This didn't escape Edward's notice. As we left the room where Gianna lay, he remarked on it. "I admit I missed your eyes," he said. "I'm glad they weren't lost completely."
"She has your hair, though," I told him, once we'd gotten far enough away. She did: the same bronze-red-brown. Just a little fuzz of it. A question occurred to me while I stared raptly at our daughter. "Can you hear anything from her?"
"Not yet. I've never been able to hear a baby less than two months old, and usually it takes six - I'm sure she'll be far faster than that, unless she's got her mother's brain, too," he said wryly.
"The bit where Alice couldn't see her turned out to be a fluke," I said. I touched Elspeth's nose and she expelled a small puff of air with a pahsound.
"But as you pointed out, that wasn't something you had while human," he replied, grinning involuntarily at the baby.
I nodded. "Oh," I said, when we were out of earshot of the main house, "if anybody asks..." I shifted Elspeth in my arms and pointed at the torn sleeve that revealed part of the scar on my wrist. "I got this when Elspeth bit me. She's not venomous but the amniotic fluid was close enough."
"Understood," he said. "If Maggie asks?"
I considered what he could say to her. "I don't know the really fine points of what she'll notice and what she won't. Can you just say, "Elspeth bit her"? She did, after all."
"Not in response to a direct question about your scar," he said, "not when I know the scar predates Elspeth. The statement has to be something I believe to be true in context, not just in isolation."
I exhaled a breath through my teeth, petting Elspeth's hair as I did so. She was very warm. "She'll never buy that you don't know where it's from. Ugh. If Maggie asks you... a baby half-vampire bit me. I trust she can be allowed to extrapolate incorrectly."
Edward's eyes widened, but he nodded. "Can I hold her?" he asked after a moment. I handed Elspeth over, missing the heat and the vital thrum of her heart immediately.
The look on Edward's face was indescribably paternal as he cradled our child. "She's perfect," he murmured.
"I know," I said, gloatingly.
"Oooh," said Elspeth, with an uncannily toothy smile for a newborn infant, and we arrived at our fairytale home in the woods to try to interest her in non-blood comestibles.
* * *
Chapter 26: Little Witch
I read Elspeth's mind before Edward did.
This was mostly a coincidence: he was on an errand in town with Jasper at the time, out of range. They were trying to find a purveyor of forged documents so that Elspeth could be freely moved about the globe. Edward had to be along to help find such a person - existing contacts in Norway were thin on the ground. Jasper was there because his preferred method of handling such business relationships involved the application of artificial fear to discourage excessive inquisitiveness. I didn't care for that part, but I had other things on my mind and was still vaguely avoiding Jasper.
Meanwhile, Alice and I were having a photo shoot, taking pictures of Elspeth in different outfits against assorted backdrops so that when Renée could begin to see baby pictures, they'd seem to cover a couple of years of first-time-parent scrapbooking, not the few months it'd take her to rocket through infancy and toddlerhood.
"Um," said Elspeth, which was the sound she usually made when considering whether a proferred food item was acceptable to her. I'd been drawing on my residual knowledge of cooking to keep her fed; there was no real kitchen in the cottage, just an old fashioned fireplace with a pot hanging in it, so I did all the cooking
in the main house and brought the food out to her. (Gianna had woken from her coma and I didn't particularly want Elspeth listening to her screams.) Elspeth did not much care for food - that, or my cooking was just not as good now that I found none of the ingredients appealing and could scarcely remember any part of the skill. Still, she would reluctantly eat copious amounts of things that passed muster once we'd coaxed her into trying them; she needed the fuel to grow as fast as she did.
"Are you hungry, Elspeth?" I asked her, swapping her sweater for a silly ruffled dress that Alice had bought her. We were taking most of our pictures indoors or against the backdrop of the plain sky, so the season wouldn't be readily detectable, and Alice - who I'd given relatively free rein with the just-for-show outfits - had selected items for all weathers.
"Um," said Elspeth again, and she placed her hand on my cheek.
The feeling was like running through a memory in chronological order, but it wasn't my memory. Too fuzzy to be post-turning, too complete to be pre-, and too painless to be from the middle of the process. Also, I was in the memory - my face, as it looked to those around me. After a moment, I realized: though I had no idea how or why, Elspeth was showing me her perspective on her own birth. The visuals were all there, although they didn't interfere with my real vision. It didn't come with sound or any other sensory tracks. There was just the picture of me leaning in and then Elspeth's vision wheeling to show the rest of the room.