Hidden Embers

by Tessa Adams

  What was particularly interesting about this strain was the way it had invaded the three hosts’ DNA so quickly, without the body even having a chance to fight it off—almost as if it had been manufactured specifically for Brian and his children. Which was absurd. Except…

  She clicked a few keys, separated the virus’s RNA from Brian’s DNA and compared the two. Her heart started to beat a little faster, excitement thrumming in her bloodstream even as she forced herself to remain calm and focused. She could still be wrong. There was no use getting excited until she knew for sure.

  Punching up the viral infection pattern from Rose and Jake, she had the computer separate it out in the same way. As she looked at it, everything snapped into place with an almost audible click.

  Still, she wasn’t ready to say anything. She needed more evidence, needed to see how this worked with another family. Something Quinn had said jogged her memory, and she pulled up the list of case files, scanning through until she found the two that belonged to Dylan’s sister and niece, Marta and Lana. She did the same thing to their samples as she’d done to the others—and came up with the exact same response, despite the fact that the virus was very different from the one that attacked Brian and his family.

  On a hunch, she pulled up Michael’s sample, looked at it. It was a different mutation from Brian’s as well, though no less sophisticated. Pulling it apart yielded the same results she’d seen with the previous two mutations. And yet, if what she was thinking was the case, shouldn’t Quinn have been infected?

  She pushed away from her workstation and bounded across the lab to where they kept the medical supplies. Picking up a slide, a needle and an alcohol swab, she called out, “Quinn, I need you over here for a second. I want to look at something.”

  The urgency in her tone caused both Quinn and Phoebe’s heads to snap up. “What’s wrong?” Quinn demanded, as he made his way across the lab entirely too quickly for her peace of mind. The fact that Phoebe beat him didn’t escape her notice.

  “I need some blood.”

  “Whose blood?” he asked.

  “Yours, Quinn! Whose do you think? Actually,” she turned to Phoebe. “Can you call Dylan? I’d really like to take a sample of his blood as well.”

  “Of course. But where are you going with this?” Phoebe eyed her intently.

  “I’m not exactly sure yet.”

  “But you are on to something. I can tell,” Phoebe said with a dawning excitement.

  “I think I am. I do want the coroner to take another look at Brian’s body, however. I’m pretty sure he missed the injection site.”

  Quinn held his arm out to her, and Jasmine swabbed it quickly with alcohol, doing her best not to touch him any more than she absolutely had to. She could tell that he noticed by the darkening of his eyes, but he didn’t say anything, and she was grateful for that. Her emotions had had more than enough for the day.

  She did the blood draw quickly, taking two tubes of blood, then left him to deal with the bandage in her rush to look at the sample. Thank God for Quinn’s supercomputer—as she worked, she was aware that Quinn and Phoebe were hanging over her shoulder.

  She smeared a little of his blood on a slide, then spun the rest out. She wanted to look at his DNA, which she could only do when she’d separated the white blood cells from the red.

  While she waited for everything else to be ready, she took the slide over to the high-powered electron microscope, photographed it, then pulled the photo up on the left side of her computer monitor. She made sure Michael’s was on the right, and she studied both of them for long minutes, her eyes going back and forth between the two.

  “What are we looking for?” demanded Phoebe, leaning over her shoulder.

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Well, what are you sure of?”

  “Nothing yet. That’s the whole point of this exercise.”

  The supercomputer stopped working, so she switched screens, pulling up the DNA information from Quinn and once again comparing it to Michael’s. What she saw in the string of code had her heart beating faster.

  She could see it there. God, she could actually see it there.

  “Jasmine.” Quinn’s voice was a low warning—a sure sign that he was running out of patience.

  She looked at the numbers one more time, then turned to Phoebe. “Can you help me harvest the DNA from Quinn’s blood sample? I want to pull the actual strands out and look at them as well.”

  “Of course. But could you at least give us some idea of what you’re doing? You’re driving me nuts!”

  “First, did you ever spin Michael’s blood out like this—look at his DNA?”

  “No,” Quinn answered. “It never occurred to us that we would need to.”

  “Which means you didn’t do it for anyone else either, right? Not Lana or Marta?”

  Phoebe’s eyes narrowed, even as she got out the detergent and alcohol they were going to need to separate the DNA. “What are you getting at, Jasmine? What does DNA at its molecular level have to do with this? And why are we talking siblings and relatives here?” She gestured to the computer screen. “What am I not seeing here?”

  “I’d really rather look at everything—”

  “Come on! We’re not going to hold you to it, whatever it is. Just give us something.”

  The urgency in Phoebe’s voice broke through the excited hum working its way through Jasmine. A quick glance at Quinn showed that he was dying a thousand deaths waiting for her answer, and she knew she couldn’t hold out on them any longer, even if she didn’t yet have proof to back up her theory.

  Turning back to the computer screen, she pulled up Quinn’s results. “Do you see this?” she said, pointing to the healthy red blood cells that were magnified and shown in 3-D on her monitor. Then she pointed to a few of the round, spiky things weaving their way through his bloodstream.

  “That’s Michael’s blood, right? After he was infected with the virus.” Phoebe bent down to get a closer look. “It looks like everyone else’s that we’ve seen in here.”

  “Except this isn’t Michael’s blood. This is Quinn’s. I—”

  “What?” Phoebe gasped, her hands going to her mouth. “He’s infected? Oh my God!”

  “He’s fine!” Jasmine snapped out, yanking her friend onto one of the nearby chairs before she fell down. “You’re fine,” she repeated, glancing up at Quinn, whose skin had taken on a decidedly gray tinge. “This is why I didn’t want to say anything before I had all my ducks in a row.”

  “What are you saying? That Quinn’s infected but he isn’t going to catch the disease?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying. Look at this.” She put a finger on the computer screen and traced the virus. “It’s breaking down, getting weaker—not stronger.”

  “How do you know? Maybe this is just another mutation. Maybe it’s changed since he caught it from Brian.”

  “Oh, it’s a mutation, all right, but he didn’t catch it from Brian. He caught it from Michael.” She pulled Michael’s blood sample up on the left of the screen again. “See what I’m talking about?” Again, she traced over the enlarged virus cells, only this time they were a lot healthier than the ones in Quinn’s system. “See the differences?” she said. “This is the same incarnation of the virus, but it’s one where the immune system didn’t fight back. It just allowed it in.”

  She went back to Quinn’s blood. “It’s a marked contrast to this sample, where Quinn’s immune system has almost completely obliterated the virus.”

  “So, what are you saying? That I have some weird antibodies that prevent me from catching this thing?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying. And I don’t think it’s just you. I think it’s Dylan as well.”

  Both Quinn and Phoebe went rigid. “You think Dylan’s infected?” Quinn demanded, as Phoebe reached for her cell phone.

  “I don’t know. But I’m guessing he might have been infected three months ago by Marta—” Jasmine
clicked the mouse a few times and pulled up Marta’s blood sample. The virus bore marked differences to the one that had killed Michael. “But I don’t know how long the virus takes to break down. Quinn’s immune system has almost obliterated it in five days. Dylan’s probably did the same thing, but even so, there should be a trace of it left behind.”

  “So why do some people infected with the virus get sick and not others?” demanded Phoebe, hanging up the phone after all but ordering her mate to get to the lab.

  “That’s how all viruses work,” Quinn answered. “We’ve just been so used to thinking of this thing as having a one hundred percent mortality rate that we forgot how likely it was for some people to be infected without developing symptoms.”

  “Do you think I’ve been infected?” Phoebe asked. Typical of the scientist, her voice held only mild curiosity, as opposed to the panic that had been there when she’d thought of Dylan or Quinn having contracted the virus.

  “Actually, I don’t. But we can take some blood and find out right now.”

  “Yeah. Let’s do that.” Quinn’s voice was tense. “Dylan will lose it if you don’t have the answer to that question by the time we explain this to him.”

  Jasmine spent the next few minutes taking Phoebe’s blood and repeating the same steps she’d just gone through with Quinn. But when they pulled up Phoebe’s blood sample, it was perfectly clean—no trace of the virus.

  Jasmine grinned, excited to have more proof that she was finally on the right trail.

  Quinn was watching her with eyes turned nearly black in their intensity. “She’s been exposed as much as I have, but she hasn’t contracted anything. Why?”

  “Because none of the people who have contracted the disease share Phoebe’s DNA.”

  Total and complete silence met her announcement, and for long seconds nobody moved. Then both Quinn and Phoebe started talking at once.

  “You can’t be saying that this spreads on a DNA level?” asked Phoebe.

  “Is that what the mutations are?” Quinn demanded. “Changes in the virus meant to make it more compatible with the victim’s DNA?”

  Jasmine smiled, thrilled that someone else was now thinking along the same lines she was. “That’s exactly what I’m saying. All along, you’ve been bamboozled as to how this thing spreads. Sometimes it’s been injected by a Wyvernmoon, and sometimes it just seems to spread.”

  She pulled up the samples from Brian and his family again. “This is why it spreads. Look at this mutation—it’s different from what killed Michael or Lana and Marta. But it is exactly the same as what killed both of his children.”

  “So, one family member gets injected with the disease that is somehow modified to their DNA—and then spreads it to the rest of their blood relations?” Phoebe sounded both horrified and fascinated. “By what? Physical contact?”

  “I don’t know,” Quinn said, looking shell-shocked. “But that would explain why Brian’s wife didn’t get sick. The virus was formulated to break down Brian’s DNA, not hers.”

  “Exactly!” Jasmine told him. “Each mutation we’re seeing is actually the virus being mapped genetically to best attack an individual’s DNA. Or at least that’s my theory.”

  She pulled up Michael’s DNA map, which she’d had the supercomputer start on when she first got there, figuring it would be interesting to see if the virus actually made any significant changes in the host’s DNA—which, it turned out, it had.

  She showed the proof to Quinn and Phoebe, and Phoebe cursed, very loudly and creatively. “If this is the case, we really do have a traitor in the clan. How else could the Wyvernmoons be getting DNA samples?”

  “Absolutely,” agreed Quinn, and Jasmine could see that he’d reached the same unsavory conclusion she had. “But it’s worse than that, Phoebe. If what Jasmine suspects is true, then when Marta was infected a few months ago, it was a direct assassination attempt on Dylan.”

  “Just as Michael’s death a few days ago was an assassination attempt on you.” Jasmine hadn’t wanted to say it, knowing how the words were going to hit Quinn, but the scientist in her wouldn’t let her leave out any pertinent facts.

  Quinn reeled, as if he hadn’t seen his own situation as clearly, but that only made it more important to bring the connection to light. It stood to reason that if the Wyvernmoons had tried to kill him once, they would do so again.

  Quinn stumbled backward a few steps, turned away, and Jasmine popped up to follow him. She might still be furious at him, but she could see the guilt all over his face and knew it would eat him alive if she left him alone to deal with it.

  “It isn’t your fault, Quinn.”

  “They killed him to get to me. How much more my fault can it be?”

  “They killed him, not you. And if it wasn’t with this virus, it would have been with something else designed to make you vulnerable. Their fault, not yours.”

  “No.”

  “Yes!” Phoebe’s voice rang out across the lab. “This is no different than when they kidnapped me to set that trap for Dylan, Quinn. Was it Dylan’s fault that you were injured in that fight or that I was at Silus’s mercy for hours?”

  “It’s not the same thing.”

  “It’s exactly the same thing,” Dylan’s voice came from the back of the lab, where he’d entered unbeknownst to them. “You convinced me to stop blaming myself for what happened to Phoebe. If what you said then was the truth, then you can’t blame yourself for this. No matter how much it hurts to think that Michael was turned into a weapon to hurt you. It wasn’t his fault and it wasn’t yours.”

  Quinn nodded, but Jasmine could tell by the look on his face that it was going to be a long time before he would start to believe what they were saying. If he ever did.

  The thought made her ache, as Quinn had spent far too long holding himself responsible for every bad thing that happened in his world. She couldn’t help wondering how many more hits he could take before going down, once and for all.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  It was time. After nearly two years of waiting, of laying the trap, it was finally time to spring it shut. If things went as planned, Quinn, Dylan, Phoebe—as well as a number of Dylan’s sentries—would be eliminated, once and for all. And as for Dr. Jasmine Kane, well, it would be a pleasure to ensure that she would be taken out of the equation as well.

  They’d had to move up the timetable thanks to her. Maybe it would have been okay, maybe things could have waited another week as they had planned, but she hadn’t liked the way Jasmine, Quinn and Phoebe had huddled over the computer monitors all morning. She didn’t know what they had found—she’d been flawless in disposing the evidence—but still, better to move things along before they discovered the weakness in the Wyvernmoon virus.

  Once Dylan and his highest-ranking officials were out of the way, there would be nothing to stop the Wyvernmoons from taking over. Then they could kill any Dragonstar who would not swear allegiance to them—they could, as long as a cure to the virus was not found. If those three damn doctors managed to figure out how to get around the virus—and as the Wyvernmoons had recently learned themselves, there was a way—then there was a chance the takeover would not go as smoothly as they had planned. And that was not acceptable—not to Brock and not to her. The Dragonstars were too big a threat.

  Her Dragonstar cell phone started ringing. She answered it with a cautious “Hello,” then did her best to sound normal as Gabe, one of Dylan’s two second-in-commands, spewed orders for her to get to the lab, ASAP.

  She agreed. What else could she do? She couldn’t afford to make them suspicious this close to the end. But her skin itched at the thought of being so close to the enemy if something went wrong.

  She’d have no means of escape.

  She shuddered at the thought of what Dylan would do to her if he found out about her duplicity, but when she closed her eyes, it wasn’t their king she saw exacting his revenge. It was Quinn and Gabe, the fires of hell burning in their e
yes as they avenged the deaths of their loved ones. Dylan wasn’t known for his mercy, but she’d been around him long enough to know that it was there. Gabe had none, and as for Quinn, well, she didn’t want to test him. Too many times lately she’d seen his thirst for vengeance.

  She would just have to be even more cautious than usual, make sure that she could not be traced to anything. It would be difficult, but not impossible. She couldn’t let them find out she was the one who had snuck into Marta’s and Michael’s houses to steal a few strands of their hair.

  But on the off chance—the very off chance—that the plan it had taken Brock and her two years to put together failed, she wanted to make sure she was covered. Because the only thing worse than being a dragon who had betrayed her clan was one who had no clan. It was not a position she ever wanted to be in.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Jasmine laid her head down on her lab station with a grimace. Her back was aching, her eyes burning and her head felt like it was going to explode. And yet, even with all that, she felt better than she had in a long, long time.

  They didn’t have a cure for the disease—probably wouldn’t have one for weeks, if not months—but they had a really sound starting point on which to formulate a vaccine. That was something, not to mention the fact that they now knew that the point of origin for any new familial-based infections was, indeed, an injection.

  They still hadn’t found an unexplained injection site on Brian, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t. In the meantime, Dylan had three of his sentries tracing every step Brian had made in the forty-eight hours before his death. They’d find the moment when he was injected—and when they did, they’d know exactly who to blame.

  God knew, Jasmine wasn’t the only one who was energized. The lab had enough electricity whipping through it to power a small city for a year. After Dylan had shown up, they had done the same comparison on his blood, and eventually on his DNA. Everyone had breathed a huge sigh of relief that the point of infection had indeed been isolated—and that Dylan had the same antibodies, strangely, that Quinn did. Soon after, the lab had filled up quickly with sentries who wanted to be part of the action, and Jasmine had spent the afternoon working with fifteen different people leaning over her shoulder.