“That wouldn’t have been a problem six months ago, but New Orleans has turned me into a morning person. I’ll do my best.”
“I’ll walk you back to your room,” Dr. Ramos offered.
“Thanks,” Lucy replied. She was looking forward to having a moment with the doctor without Evan present.
They arrived at Lucy’s door just as Lona was coming down the hall with her hands full of plastic grocery bags. “Hey Lucy! Miles and I grabbed a few of your things.”
“Thanks Lona.” Lucy placed her palm on the glass panel by the door and wondered if it would open. Evan had taken a scan of her palm earlier and told her she could access her room and the elevators. The light on the panel flashed green and the door unlocked with an audible click.
“Well, I’ll leave you two alone now,” Dr. Ramos said with a smile.
“Actually,” Lucy said hesitantly, “if you’re not busy, I’d like to talk to you, both of you.” She looked at Lona as well.
“Of course I’m not busy. And Lucy, I’m always around to talk. Should I go get us some coffee?”
“You can if you don’t trust me, but Ida passed me a few secrets that I’ve been dying to try out. I’ve got fresh beans and filtered water.”
Lona produced a flask from one of the bags. “And I’ve got the secret ingredient in case it doesn’t go well.”
Thirty minutes later the three women were settled in Lucy’s small living room, drinking passable coffee that was laced, liberally, with the contents of Lona’s flask.
“I’ve been wondering,” Lucy said and glanced at Lona. “Well, earlier, when I said Lona told me everything, I meant everything, including about Jacob.”
“And you naturally want to know if any other mistakes have been made,” Dr. Ramos supplied. “Why didn’t you ask Evan directly?”
Lucy grimaced. “Truthfully, he scares me a bit. Plus, I wanted the plain truth. I felt that if the answer was yes, well, Evan was trying to pitch me the job and I didn’t want to hear any spin on how it was for the greater good or anything.”
“The truthful answer is no,” Dara replied. “In fact, it’s pretty easy to tell the difference. Someone like me isn’t going to be wandering around in alleys or bad neighborhoods at night. Admittedly, there are plenty of folks like me who might be wandering around at night for other nefarious reasons. We still have a very high crime rate, but you’ll know the difference, and you’ll learn that when it comes to normal crime, our hunters have a direct line to the police department. None of our calls go unanswered. So in a way, you’ll be helping the city in more ways than one.”
“But there’s always a possibility,” Lucy began.
“Of course there is,” Dr. Ramos answered, “but there’s just as much likelihood that you could kill a vampire innocently. Actually, given your blood, the likelihood is even higher.”
“What do you mean?” Lucy asked, horrified.
“Sex,” Lona explained with a wicked glint in her eye. “The enzyme in your blood is also in other bodily fluids.”
“Not just sex,” Dr. Ramos amended. “Evan once, no twice, made a vampire very ill with a simple kiss. You have about ten times the potency he does, so you could very likely be lethal to vampires in general, not just the genetically modified killers.”
“Interesting...” Lucy let her gaze fall to Dara’s hand, specifically the simple gold band with a stylized fleur de lis engraving. “I’m guessing that you and Evan worked it out though. “
“Oh!” Lona squealed. “How did you figure out it was Dara? I didn’t even know they-” Dr. Ramos cut her off with a look. As usual, Lona failed to be mollified.
“You missed your calling, Lucy. You put some of the best television detectives to shame.” Dara examined her hand with a contented smile. “It’s not a secret, Evan and I will celebrate our twentieth anniversary in December, which incidentally will be twice the length of my previous three marriages in total. Given my track record, I thought keeping my own name was for the best. That and neither of us wanted our private life to affect our professional life.”
Lucy laughed. “The ring is pretty, but even before I noticed that yours matched Evan’s, you two are pretty obviously head over heels for each other. It’s all over your faces. So tell me your story, I’m in the mood for a feel good romance after all the crap I’ve been through today.”
“It’s not that interesting,” Dara blushed and waved her hand.
“Come on, Dara, I’ve never heard the story either,” Lona added, settling herself more comfortably in her chair. “Story time!”
Dara drained her coffee cup and got up for a refill. “As you know, I met Abe and Evan in college and at the time, we didn’t know anything about our true selves. Anyway, there isn’t much to tell. We were at a party in college and both Evan and I had too much to drink. We thought we’d take a walk to clear our heads. We ended up down by this little duck pond, talking about our hopes for the future, one thing led to another and we kissed. I’m sure it would have been a lovely kiss, but after a minute or two, I ran off to dump the contents of my stomach in the bushes. I assumed, of course, that I’d gotten sick off the booze, and both of us were a bit embarrassed and awkward, so we never brought it up again.” Dara sipped her coffee and fell silent.
“Until?”
“Until what?”
“You said Evan made you sick twice,” Lucy reminded her. “That was one. What happened in round two?”
“Nearly fifteen years later, right after Abe discovered the anomaly in Evan’s blood, and in the blood of the vampires, we tested ourselves,” Dara continued. “Abe, as you know, was normal. I, on the other hand, was given the shock of my life. Abe promised not to say anything until we could get more information and do a lot more testing. At this point, we’d known each other for a long time, and it was pretty obvious that I wasn’t leading a dual life. But still, after the attack, we didn’t know how Evan would take the news.
“That night, I couldn’t sleep, and my thoughts drifted back to the kiss. We had already discovered that the enzyme was present in saliva. I decided that I had to know what type of a threat this posed to me, as well as any other ‘normal’ vampires who might be exposed to the enzyme. When I went to work the next day, the first thing I did was walk into Evan’s office, lock the door, and attacked him with a passionate kiss. It got a response, not the one I was expecting.”
Lucy was on the edge of her seat, her coffee tipping dangerously toward the floor. “Well? What response?” She demanded.
Dara grinned. “He kissed me back.”
“And? Did you keep kissing or did you high tail it to the loo?”
“I had some slight cramps and a bit of a headache, but nothing more. I suspect alcohol and nerves played a far bigger role in the first instance. Of course, I had to explain myself, but Evan took it a lot better than I expected. In fact, we began some additional research to ensure that innocent people weren’t going to make each other sick.”
“So,” Lucy drawled, “how did you overcome the illness?”
“The truth is rather simple. I’m immune.”
“There’s a vaccine?” Lucy asked in shock. “But what if the eye guys, or whatever they’re called, got their hands on it?”
Dr. Ramos smiled. “Eyes of the Sun, yes Evan still has a lot to go over with you. There is no vaccine, but yes, it’s possible for a vampire to become immune to a hunter, though we’re still doing some tests in the lab on your blood. I don’t think even I could be immune to you. As far as the ES finding out, I’d gladly give them the answer they have been searching for.”
“You would?” Lucy couldn’t understand why Dr. Ramos would want the vampires to have immunity if she was working for the side that was trying to eliminate them.
“Absolutely, though you’d be out of a job if they were ever to try. It’s very simple. I’m a vegetarian, vegan actually. I stopped eating meat soon after I found out what I was. I guess it was my way of coping with what we didn’t really underst
and, and the illness went away.” Dr. Ramos smiled wryly. “Interesting the way evolution works these things out. Of course, the ES won’t be taking us up on that solution anytime soon. The fact that they’ve modified their dietary needs to include human flesh and blood actually makes them far more vulnerable to the toxins in the enzyme.”
Lucy sat silent, lost in her own thoughts.
“You all right, Lucy?” Lona gave an affectionate tug on her bare foot.
“Just thinking.” Lucy curled up around the pillow in her chair. “Not that I ever had much luck with guys, but now that I’ll have to have them submit to a DNA test before the first date, I think my fear of dying alone in a house full of cats just became a lot more valid.”
The other women laughed.
“You’re too young to be that cynical,” Dara said and got up to leave. “The future holds many wonders. However, my future holds a nine o’clock PTSD study, so I’d better get going.”
Lona stood as well. “Me too, I’ve got a full day of tying up loose ends tomorrow.”
A wave of guilt hit Lucy. “I can come with you.”
Lona shook her head. “No, I’ve got it covered, you have a new job now, and it pays better anyway. Get some sleep, Evan’s probably got a full day planned for you.”
After they left, Lucy readied herself for bed, but found herself lying awake with more questions than answers about her new life. Just before the sky started lightening, Lucy drifted into restless sleep, punctuated with strange dreams.
Chapter 7
The following afternoon, Evan gave Lucy a tour of the facilities. From the public facing lobby on the ground floor, all the way up to the fifteenth, which was the first of four floors dedicated to the secret world she was now a part of. Evan explained that the only access to the top floors was through his official office on the fourteenth floor, and through the elevator located in the hidden parking lot where she had first arrived with Miles.
“There are, of course, emergency stairwells, but from here up, they do not connect to any of the lower floors,” Evan explained. They were standing in the hallway near where Lucy had first come in. It still looked to her like an unassuming hospital. “Everything you are going to see from this point forward is effectively invisible to the rest of the world. The employees below us believe this to be a restricted area for government contracts, which technically, is the truth. You’ve seen the medical wing already. Over there is the entrance. Through here,” Evan indicated a set of swinging doors at the end of the hall, “are the labs and libraries.”
Lucy followed Evan through the doors. Most of the labs had their doors closed and some had signs indicating controlled environment testing. The library consisted of one large room that was lined with shelves of books and media, connected to a hallway off which there were smaller rooms that offered desks and armchairs for private study.
“Will I be spending a lot of time here?” Lucy asked.
“Probably not, though I will be recommending that you read through some of our studies and reports just to familiarize yourself with how we operate. This area is mostly utilized by Abe’s team, just like the labs themselves. You will be spending most of your time training upstairs. Let’s head back to the elevator and I’ll show you.”
The fitness facility was every bit as state of the art as Lucy had been told. There were separate locker rooms for men and women, a full sized gym that had mats strewn about the floor, and an elevated track that ran along the edges of the room. Just beyond that was a room with treadmills, elliptical machines, and various other forms of torture.
“I’m getting a very bad feeling about this.”
Evan laughed. “Relax Lucy. No one is going to expect you to start out running ten miles on the treadmill. But this is a physically demanding job. You’ll be training with Miles and Hugh every afternoon. You’ll learn some basic hand to hand combat and once they feel you’re ready, we’ll move on to weapons training, which is down the hall.”
Lucy paled noticeably.
“We won’t go in there just yet,” Evan assured her. “The next two floors are residential and my office, both of which you’ve seen, so all that’s left is the roof. Let’s swing by the kitchen and grab some coffees then we’ll go up there and talk.”
Lucy was disappointed that Ida was not around when they detoured through the kitchen on their way back to the elevator. Evan placed his hand on the glass screen and said, “Rooftop.” The elevator swung upwards and the doors opened to reveal what appeared to be a park with lush green grass, paved walkways, trees and shrubs, flowers of all different colors, and patios with umbrella-shaded tables and cushioned rattan sofas.
“Oh wow,” Lucy whispered, looking in every direction at once.
“Pretty impressive isn’t it?” Evan made an expansive gesture. “Hard to believe we’re still in the city. It was Johnny’s idea. I wanted a place for employees to relax and get some sunshine. Johnny suggested the garden, and his father is a horticulturalist, so I hired him to turn the roof into a garden.”
“Who’s Johnny?”
“One of the original three members. You already know Hugh. Johnny and Saba are the other two. They are married now and they have a son, Anil, who will probably be up here soon. He’s a good kid, but a bit too keen on joining the team. Saba wants him to go to college.”
“Do the employees live here?” Lucy asked.
“Part time, at least. Sometimes it’s not safe for a hunter to go home, so they have rooms here, just like the one you’re staying in. Lately though, we’ve been a bit busier than usual and I feel more comfortable with everyone under one roof. Personally, I don’t think I’ve spent more than one night a year at my house since the project started.”
After touring the garden, they found a quiet set of comfortable benches, partially hidden behind a row of bushes, and settled in with their coffee.
“So how many people are on the team?” Lucy asked.
“Thirty-eight,” Evan replied. “Twelve of which, not including us, are hunters.”
“You still hunt?” Lucy was surprised at this.
“Until I’m too old or too broken, I’ll be out there with my team. I’m not about to send anyone into a potentially dangerous situation and sit back in the safety of my office. That may be the way some leaders work, but that’s not my policy.”
Lucy couldn’t help but admire Evan for that.
“So does this secret organization have a name?”
“Officially, the US government and EU call this the Eclipse Project. Of course, officially the US and EU deny all knowledge of the Eclipse Project.”
“That’s the second time you’ve hinted at government secrets. Is this some sort of Area 51 or X-files thing that you can’t tell me about without killing me after?”
Evan laughed. “Not exactly, although I have seen a few conspiracy theory blogs that come a little too close to the truth. There is, how shall I say this, a branch of government that tracks unusual activity. A few years after I put together the team, I was approached by an agent who had been following the mysterious deaths for a few decades prior to my own attack. Apparently, similar attacks had been happening simultaneously in New Orleans and Paris. This agent, working in tandem with a similar agency in France, had uncovered a fair amount of history on the group we now know as The Eyes of the Sun.”
“I’ve been meaning to ask about that. Strange name, I guess that’s why you got the name Eclipse. So who are they?”
“That is a good question,” Evan exhaled. “Unfortunately, there is no easy answer. Their origin is fairly straightforward. We theorize that thousands of years ago, there were two different species on the planet, vampires and humans. As we evolved, the two began to inner mix, and the genetic differences between the two became very subtle. Normal vampires, like Dara, are found throughout the world on every continent. Likewise, humans like us, those carrying the enzyme, are also found everywhere. Both groups make up just fewer than ten percent of the population, but in New Orl
eans and Paris, we seem to have higher numbers, closer to twenty-five percent. We suspect that originally, the vampires were predators and the enzyme was humanity’s natural defense mechanism. As the two groups intermixed, both traits were bred out of the larger population. Those of us carrying the enzyme, as well as those carrying vampire DNA, are not as mixed. Sure, there may have been a vampire somewhere in my family tree and someone in Dara’s may have had the enzyme, but there hasn’t been enough to dilute us to a ‘normal’ human status.”
“Wait a minute,” Lucy stopped him. “I thought you said that humans and vampires can’t breed?”
“So I did,” Evan answered. “Again, this is all theory, but we speculate that the enzyme itself has evolved. Early in the Earth’s history, we think the enzyme wasn’t so much toxic as it was a deterrent, similar to the secretions some animals give off to keep predators away.”
“So why wouldn’t someone like Dara still have the natural instinct to hunt someone like you?” Lucy asked.
“Social evolution,” Evan replied. “By the time the world became organized, with early tribal governments and language, the instincts were lost. We began warring with the neighboring tribe and later we set off to explore and conquer. Understand that I’m talking about ancient history here. As a species, we were intermixed long before we left the caves and invented the wheel. Now, fast forward to about five hundred years ago. We now have a modern world with rudimentary science and maritime trade routes. At this point in history, no one had any idea that their neighbor may have different DNA than they do. But in a few isolated areas, there were still tribes of original humans and vampires. Some of these tribes still exist today, in remote areas, as you might have guessed. Most aboriginal tribes are either all human or all vampire.”
“I’m guessing the vampires are the cannibalistic tribes we always hear about?” Lucy asked. “So why aren’t we trying to eliminate them as well?”
The Eyes of the Sun: The Complete Trilogy Page 8
