The door opens, and Silas saunters in to their cottage. Why he bothered to knock is anyone's guess.

"Brother! Are you still doing that experiment of yours?" His eyes flicker quickly over Eli's face. "Why yes, you still are. How long has it been now, four years?"

"Five, nearly." Eli sets his book down on the table and stands. His emulations of humanity are entirely unnecessary, of course, but he likes the reminders of how they do things. "Are you still up to your usual antics with women?"

"If by that you mean playing with my food before I eat it, yes. Don't worry, I'm not leaving trails of exsanguinated prostitutes for anyone to get excited about."

Eli sighs. "No, I'm sure you aren't. Why are you here?"

"To catch up with my dear brother, who I love and want to make sure hasn't been buried in ancient tomes since the last time I saw him?"

Silas laughs. "No, you're right. I have a question about... vampire and human biology, as it were."

"Do tell."

"Female vampires cannot, of course, become pregnant, but have you come across any reports or rumors of male vampires fathering a child?"

"I hope for the mother's sake you haven't discovered it's possible empirically."

"Oh no, I don't leave my toys alive after I've played with them. I'm just... curious."

"I've heard rumors of half-vampires," Eli admits after a moment. "Nothing concrete, no firsthand accounts. It might be nothing."

"Or it might not be."

"I do hope you aren't seriously considering having offspring."

"Would that be such a terrible thing, really?"

"Yes."

"Oh, not necessarily, by your standards. We are related, after all."

"Do what you will," Eli says with a sigh. "Try not to get yourself killed doing anything stupid."

"I'm touched. See you in another five months, brother."

Silas continues to drop by a few times a year, frequently telling Eli far more than he cares to know about the limits of the human body when subjected to violent sexual activity. Rape quickly features less in Silas's stories, however, replaced by what he considers amusing anecdotes about his attempts to seduce women into sleeping with him willingly. The deaths of his partners-or-victims take longer to fade, until during one visit in 2002:

"My last one actually caught, though the girl -- April, I think, or maybe Amber -- died of, oh, probably excruciatingly rapid pregnancy. But that's one for your books: vampires can, in fact, father children. No guarantees of getting a living one at the end of it, though."

"Fascinating," Eli says drily. "I don't suppose you've satisfied your curiosity."

"Dear, dear brother," Silas says patronizingly. "Why would you think I have?"

"The waning hope that you might not inflict your existence on a helpless child."

"I'll ignore that for the sake of your good looks," Silas replies.

It takes another year for Silas to share more progress, but when he does, it comes in the form of him entering Eli's cottage holding the hand of a young, heavily pregnant Indian woman, her movements slightly jerky and her eyes glassy and unfocused. "This is Myra," Silas says proudly. "She's nearly three weeks along, and I think my baby might actually make it."

Myra, beyond being obviously puppeted by Silas's witch power, has a sickly gray pallor to her skin and an unnatural thinness everywhere besides her distended belly.

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.

Eli kneels down to pick it -- her, as it turns out -- up. She's so small, and clearly too dark-skinned to be an immortal child, and she killed her mother coming out.

And she's alive, and he's...

He's an uncle. A horrifying thought, since he only has one brother, but she's a baby, and Eli turned out fine even if Silas didn't.

Eli's niece regards his arm solemnly, and then chomps down on it.

Her teeth are sharp enough to break vampiric skin, but as it turns out, she isn't venomous. Also, she doesn't think much of his taste, and is now gazing intently at the fresh corpse of her mother.

He did sort of make a promise to Myra.

"No, Calypso," he says to his niece. "Eating your mother is not acceptable behavior. I still have some food left over from when I was caring for her. What do you think you'll make of raw steak?"

Calypso allows herself to be carried into the tiny kitchen, sits on the counter when set there like she's six months old instead of six minutes, and accepts refrigerated steak after some brief contemplation.

She devours an awful lot of it, for a neonate.

Well, most neonates don't have full heads of hair, or teeth, or the ability to hold their heads up let alone sit so steadily.

... The rate she's going through food seems likely to put a dent in funds that he'd rather reserve for rare books. "I wonder," he says to her, "if I could bring you along on a hunt." She certainly doesn't smell like a human, just something mildly pleasant.

"Are you really going to feed her that sludge you drink?" Silas asks mildly, from a safe distance of a hundred meters east-south-east of Eli's cottage. "She's my daughter, you know."

"Ah yes, because bringing a hematophagic baby with dubious self-control near sources of her most desired food seems like such a good way to keep under the Volturi's radar."

"You have a perfectly good cooling human corpse you need to dispose of, Eli."

"As practical a solution as that might be, I am loathe to feed my niece her mother."

Calypso, evidently bored by this conversation, lifts Eli's hand to her mouth and nibbles on one of his fingers.

"You've gone entirely too soft on that muck. Feed her the damn corpse, or I'm bringing her a snack her own age."

Eli spends a fraction of a second estimating the probability of his brother following through on that threat if he tries to call his bluff.

"Fine. She'd get more meat off Myra's bones than any infant's, anyway."

"What an eminently sensible idea." Silas begins to approach the cottage again. "Do you think she can strip the bones clean?"

"I wouldn't care to guess."

He sighs, picks Calypso up from the counter, and brings her to the main room of his cottage. Myra is still lying where she died, blood pooling around her from her abdomen.

Eli sets her daughter on the floor beside her and murmurs, "God only knows how your mind works, Calypso, but I hope you won't remember this."

Regardless of any future feelings about the matter, at present Calypso seems entirely happy to suck her mother dry of what blood remains in her body.

Silas is shortly present in the room. "Oh, look at you," he coos. "Aren't you a gorgeous, obviously not fully vampiric infant? Aren't you a treasure, I wonder if you sparkle or if you could toddle among the humans and suck blood from their ankles."

He kneels down and reaches to ruffle her dark hair.

Calypso, after swallowing a bite of raw flesh, ducks her head away from his hand and frowns up at him.

Silas scoops her up and cuddles her. "Now, now," he scolds her gently. "I'm your father."

He cradles her comfortably in one arm and ruffles her hair with his free hand. "I suppose you'll need clothes if I want to take you anywhere," he says thoughtfully. "Eli--"

"I cared for Myra for the last week, you can buy your daughter clothes with whatever you've swiped off your last few meals."