Eli does not, actually, try to rip his brother's face off, but it's a near thing. "Why in God's green earth would you bring her to me?" he demands instead. He doesn't bother to pitch his voice too high for the poor girl to hear; she's probably going to die soon anyway, and inhuman monsters arguing silently can't possibly help her last hours alive be pleasant ones.

"You study things," Silas replies. "Any and every book that will hold still, you read. Surely you know something about sustaining a woman during the last stages of a violent pregnancy. Also, she's from the area."

Myra is held in place by some fraction of Silas's attention, but her breathing is labored and occasionally hitches. She more than likely has broken bones.

"She looks like she's seven months along, not three weeks. What the Hell kind of creature did you spawn?"

"I have no idea!" Silas sounds entirely too cheerful about the prospect of finding out. "But you know things, surely you can help me out. Don't you want to be an uncle?"

"I want you to stop torturing young women for your own amusement and sadistic curiosity. No, I don't know anything about how to ensure your hapless broodmare survives long enough to bear your child to term. It would have been kinder to return to your old ways; those, at least, don't last more than a single night before you wear out your toys."

"You know, I should have figured since as far as I know you haven't eaten one in a decade, but you really have gotten weird about humans, haven't you?"

He releases Myra's hand. She shuffles over to the worn old couch in the corner, then collapses quite like a puppet suddenly freed from its strings.

"Torture this, sadistic curiosity that. It's playing with my food, that's all."

"If a human fucked a food animal, that would be called bestiality. You're just a supernatural serial killer who's apparently decided to make the pre-murder torture more elaborate."

"If I'm a serial killer then you are too, brother dear. How many humans did you eat before you decided to try drinking swill to see if you could?"

"Plenty, but I was at least businesslike about it. Are you going to keep being reprehensible within striking range, or are you going to let me see what care I can cobble together for the undoubtedly traumatized mother of your child?"

"Oh, I can leave, if you don't think I'd be helpful."

"You really wouldn't."

Silas smirks at him and leaves.

Eli approaches Myra slowly even for a human, and says soothingly, "My name is Eli. I'm not going to hurt you."

Myra raises her head and stares tiredly at him. "Not even though it would be 'kinder'?"

She looks like death poorly warmed over, but her voice has a surprising strength of sarcasm to it.

"If that's what you want, I can at least make it quick."

She shakes her head, slowly. "No. I... even though he lied to me, even though he's a monster and might have-- made me pregnant with one... I love my baby." She rests a hand on her swollen abdomen. "If I don't make it, but-- the baby does, I-- I like the name Calypso for a girl. Orion for a boy."

"You're very calm about all this."

Myra shrugs, then winces at whatever that motion jostled. "People have said I'm unnaturally calm under pressure. Maybe I'm a little bit monster, like you two."

"We're vampires, if you want to know the specifics."

"Are there werewolves too?" Myra asks with a weak smile.

"Not anymore, as far as I know."

"Shame."

Myra lasts another week, devouring all the food Eli hurriedly bought in town and then also, after a half-delirious musing of hers, hungrily sucking down animal blood Eli brings to her.

After nearly four weeks of ludicrously accelerated pregnancy, the baby inside her stops just breaking ribs; it breaks her spine.

"God dammit," Silas snaps, as Myra struggles to breathe. "This close. You don't have anything?" he demands of Eli.

"No. I don't."

This charming young woman with a fondness for Greek mythology was going to die in front of him. Her fate had been sealed when Silas took an interest in her, really, but Eli had met very few of Silas's victims, and none of the others had lived a week in his house, or held up so well under such ridiculous strain.

"I suggest you leave before I take off your arm and beat you around the head with it."

They both know that Eli's the weaker of them while drinking animal blood, but Silas leaves anyway.

Myra chokes and spasms. More bones break. The scent of blood fills the air, and something--

--appears to be chewing through her abdomen.

It's a baby. A shade paler than its mother, already with a full head of dark hair and clearly toothed, remarkably precocious for a newborn.