“It’s not that,” Ingrid said solemnly. “We’ve heard a few rumors.”
“Scary things,” Kaylee added.
With a sigh, I sat down. Gossip was second only to gambling for the title of favorite activities amongst the crew at headquarters. With everything that had happened over the last few days, it should not have come as a surprise that people would be talking. I had already told everyone in the outreach about Cynda, mainly as a safety precaution, but I didn’t think any other news had made it out yet.
“What have you heard?”
“I heard that Cynda escaped from a compound where children are hunted for sport,” Ingrid replied with a nervous look, “and if that’s true, I think I’ve heard of it.”
“It’s true,” I admitted. “I went out there earlier to have a look around. What do you know about it?”
Ingrid’s nervous fidgeting didn’t hide the fact that she was shaking. Layla put her hand on Ingrid’s shoulder and whispered, “It’s okay, tell her.”
“Lucy, I…” Tears started welling up in Ingrid’s pale green eyes. “I’ve been there. Years ago, Kaylee and Layla were too young, so they didn’t know about this but… Stephan brought our clan there…” She broke off and dried her eyes on the back of her hand. “You have to understand that I didn’t know any better.”
I did understand this, but if she was saying what I thought she was, it still came as a shock. Ingrid had needed little convincing to join the outreach because she had already overcome her genetic programming. Long before I met her, Ingrid had escaped her clan, taking Layla and Kaylee with her. They had joined the Daughters of Darkness out of desperation. Despite being a mystical sect run by women, the Daughters weren’t very different from any other vampire clan when it came to the atrocities they commit against humans and each other. When I offered another way out, Ingrid was grateful.
“You hunted?” I asked as gently as I could.
“Yes,” Ingrid answered in a shuddered whisper, “and I enjoyed it, Lucy. Looking back now it makes me so sick and ashamed.”
“Don’t be, you’re a different person now,” I reassured her. “I know telling me this is difficult, but if there’s anything you can remember that would help us, I need to know.” As terrible as I felt for Ingrid, I couldn’t help but get a little excited at the prospect of some solid information. “Did you meet the owner of the farm?”
“His name is Adam. I don’t know his last name.” Ingrid frowned in thought. “No, Stephan never used it if he had one. The name of the place is Blackthorn Plantation and that I do know for certain. They have an office in the Garden District for arranging weekends.”
“Oh?” The name Adam was about as useless to me as Bluebeard, but an office right here in town was something I was very interested in. “The Garden District, seriously?”
Ingrid shot me a look that told me I was being clueless. “Lucy, seriously, you should know that tons of vampire-only businesses exist in plain sight. It’s not like they advertise in the phone book, but you know most businesses here advertise by word of mouth and in the clubs.”
I shuddered at the memory of the only vampire club I had ever been to. From what Ingrid told me, they were actually much worse here. “Do you have the address?”
“No.” She shook her head. “But if we’re careful, I bet it wouldn’t be that hard to get it.”
“I don’t know.” As much as I wanted to tell her to do just that, I hesitated. My job was to keep all of my recruits safe, not to send them on missions that might put them in danger. “I’ll pass along any information you have to Evan, but beyond that-”
“I want to help, Lucy. Not just with information.” Ingrid’s tone was fierce. “Stephan is dead, and the Daughters are fractious enough that no one would know I’m not part of a coven. I can’t forgive myself for what I did years ago, but if I can help save the lives of children, I want in.”
“We all do,” Layla added with equal conviction and Kaylee nodded in agreement.
“I appreciate that you want to help, but I’m not going to let you put yourselves in danger.” I really did appreciate their offer, but besides the safety issues, I was still wearing a ruined shirt and picking coffee grounds out of my teeth. I must have betrayed my thoughts because Ingrid narrowed her eyes at me.
“Lucy, I admit that we suck at stuff like making coffee, but in case you forgot, we’re still vampires. Don’t write us off because we’re trying to be better people.”
“I’m not,” I said defensively, “but right now we don’t have much of a plan.”
“I know, but I do,” Ingrid said smugly.
“You do?” I eyed her skeptically.
“You need some kind of a chip that the kids are implanted with right?”
“How did you know that?” Rumors were one thing, but as far as I knew, the only people who knew about the implant, outside of Andre and me, were Abe, Dara, and Evan, and that was a pretty tight-lipped group.
“Cynda told me,” Kaylee said casually.
“What? How did you talk to Cynda and more importantly, how are you not dead?”
“She doesn’t affect me,” Kaylee said with a shrug. “Abe says it’s because of my allergy to blood.”
“That…actually makes sense,” I admitted. Both Layla and Kaylee had been discovered as defective, which is part of what led Ingrid to take both with her when she escaped. Admittedly, a vampire who is allergic to blood is a pretty big defect, but in the vampire community, being defective was an automatic death sentence.
“Anyway,” Ingrid continued, “I can get you that chip and save a child at the same time.”
“Okay, how?” I was honestly curious at that point.
“Posing as a high priestess of the Daughters,” Ingrid answered. “Everyone knows the Daughters are nut cases, but no one really knows much about what they do other than some crazy ritual stuff and a lot of drugs. If I ask them to sell me a child for ritualistic purposes, I bet they would do it.”
“That’s absurd,” I reasoned. “Why would Bluebeard, or Adam, sell you a kid?”
“Why not? A lot of labs sell genetic material to other clans and this isn’t really all that different. He breeds children for the sole purpose of killing them. If I offered the same price that he charges for a weekend, he’d do it.”
I had to admit, it was crazy, but it was possible. If we planned it right, it could also be a good distraction for getting Isaac out at the same time.
“I’ll talk this over with Evan,” I promised, “but don’t make any plans until then.”
“What about baby shower plans?” Kaylee asked.
“Baby shower plans are fine, Kaylee,” I assured her and wondered what I was getting myself into. “Baby buying plans are not.”
Chapter 11
I had been planning on heading over to headquarters that afternoon, but since I was already awake, I decided to get an early start. It was too early to visit Cynda, so I decided to check in with Abe and get some scientific answers. I found him with his face jammed into the giant microscope that dominated his workspace. I tapped lightly on the doorframe to get his attention. He looked up at me with a smile.
“Well, Lucy, I thought I was going to have big news for you, but it seems your rebel mission beat me to the punch.”
“Huh?” Normally that was my reaction to Abe spouting a bunch of medical jargon at me, not because he was being vague.
“Sorry.” He flipped on the bank of computer monitors on his desk and motioned me over. “Yesterday morning, when I was doing a comparison of Cynda’s cat DNA against the database, I remembered that Isaac’s information was never added because I kept a separate database for the outreach. Lucy, I feel like an idiot. If I had thought to compare samples last year it would have been clear to me.”
That explained one of the many questions that I had. “So it’s true? Isaac is my father?” Not that I had any doubt after talking to both Isaac and Ida, but Abe wasn’t talking about my height and eye color, he had scien
tific proof.
“Without a doubt. What’s more, after talking to Cynda, I’m closer to understanding how.”
“I’m glad she’s comfortable enough to talk to you.”
“Oh, she’s warmed to me a little,” Abe said with a smile. “Probably because I introduced her to ice cream.”
“She’s never had ice cream?” I added another check mark to the list of reasons Bluebeard needed to die. No child should grow up not knowing the joy of ice cream.
“Lactose counteracts the amino acids in the shellfish. She’s now on a steady diet of grilled cheese, pizza and ice cream, like a typical teenager.”
“Uh oh, you might want to tell her she didn’t get the skinny gene.” Some vampires, like Dara, never gained weight no matter what they ate. I may be a little thin now, but a year ago, I was nearly twenty pounds overweight. It wasn't until I began the excruciating workout that preceded my hunter training that I became anything close to healthy.
“She’s still got a teenager’s metabolism and I learned my lesson last year about telling a young lady about her weight. Although I may need to make an exception.” Abe regarded me with a slight frown.
“Oh come on! Not you too, Abe. I’ve been a little stressed, but I’m not intentionally starving myself.”
“I won’t press the issue, Lucy. Just remember that even with your vampire genes, your body still requires nourishment to function properly.”
“Noted,” I grumbled. Honestly, with everything else that was going on, it was a little disconcerting that quite a few people had noticed my weight loss. I silently vowed to pay closer attention to my diet.
“But as I was saying,” Abe continued, “yes, I’ve discovered a few new developments regarding your conception. Cynda informed me that Bluebeard’s children are not born artificially.”
“Really?” That was interesting. Mods weren’t born so much as hatched from an artificial womb in a laboratory. All of their genetic material is built to specific standards and the fetuses are monitored throughout their development. Any perceived defects were either corrected or the fetus was destroyed. Parental bonds weren’t something vampires were very big on fostering.
“I’m certain that the embryo is developed in the standard way,” Abe explained, “but they are then implanted into the uterus of a woman and birthed naturally. The child is then cared for collectively, but all of the children know who their ‘mother’ is. My theory, as awful as it sounds, is that Bluebeard cultivates these emotional bonds for the purpose of insuring that both the children and mother are able to experience strong feelings of fear.”
“That’s sick! Why would-” I shook my head and shuddered. “Never mind, psycho-murderer monster, I answered that for myself. So how does this affect me? I’m assuming my mom and dad didn’t light some candles, put on the sexy music, and whip out a mixing bowl.” Note to self: never evoke that mental image ever again.
“Well no, I imagine they took a more traditional approach,” Abe laughed. Sure, he could laugh, it’s not like we were talking about his parents having sex. “But what this means is that it’s likely Bluebeard didn’t bother to sterilize Isaac.”
“Okay sure, but that still doesn’t explain the incompatibility issues between a vampire and a hunter,” I reminded him.
“No, but it’s funny you should mention that because in a roundabout way, learning that Isaac is your father solved a mystery about his genetics that had me stumped for decades.” Abe typed something into the computer and the DNA models appeared again. “In a way, Isaac is like Cynda. He too is a chimera, but where Cynda has animal DNA, Isaac’s DNA is split into two distinctly different strains existing in tandem, human and vampire.”
“How is that possible?” I asked. “Does that mean I’m human, vampire, and hunter?”
“That is exactly what that means,” Abe affirmed. “Not only is this possible, but it occurs naturally in some animals and occasionally in humans. There are reports of people who have two distinct blood types and often people who have hermaphroditic characteristics are the result of two distinct, non-identical twin embryos merging into one. These are naturally occurring chimeras. Scientists have been experimenting with chimeric animals since the sixties. Understand that genetics scientists, like me, are forbidden from chimeric experiments on humans due to strict legislations. Of course, you and I both know mods have no such legislating body.”
“That explains a lot.” I told Abe about the confusing readings on the hemograph.
“Exactly,” Abe exclaimed. “Isaac is not an anomaly because his DNA is specifically human and vampire, existing separately within the same body, but not the same cells. The hemograph was transmitting whatever signature it was seeing at the time.”
“So wait, why am I an anomaly? Shouldn’t I be a chimera too?” For some reason, I always thought that a chimera was a small furry mammal from Australia. Then again, I thought a credenza was a plant, until an embarrassing episode at an ex-boyfriend’s parent’s house in college.
“Oddly, no,” Abe said and pulled up another computer model. “At first I thought you should be, but I realized that Isaac’s human DNA is what allowed your mother to become pregnant. Had your mother simply been human, you would have been a chimera. The addition of the hunter’s enzyme is what caused you to be an anomaly. Based on my theory, Isaac’s embryo was comprised mostly of genetic material from a modified vampire with only a small percentage of human DNA thrown in. I suspect highly that this was done so that Bluebeard could implant the embryo into a human female without her body rejecting it.”
Human female. I looked at Abe in horror as it suddenly dawned on me. “Abe, there were humans on the farm. I didn’t notice them at first, but Andre did. What are the odds that those women Cynda calls the mothers are human? If Cynda was cloned from my DNA, then she’d already have some human DNA, but I bet every other kid there is a human-vampire chimera. And I’m willing to bet those women are probably on a missing-person report somewhere.”
Abe thought about this for a moment then gave me a grim look. “If you’re right, this could pose an even bigger problem. Especially if Bluebeard realizes what he has on his hands.”
“What do you mean?”
With a sigh, Abe got up, went back over to his microscope, and switched on the projection screen. “One of the tests I just ran revealed that because of his human DNA, Isaac is immune to the toxicity of the hunter’s enzyme.”
“Even mine?” I understood what Abe was saying clearly. The hunter’s enzyme hadn’t been a secret from the vampire community for a while. The fear was that one day they would find a way to breed a line of vampires who were immune to its effect.
“Even yours, but that might very well have more to do with the shared DNA. Unfortunately, I have no way of testing that unless we come across another human-vampire chimera. I’m currently running a sweep of the database for that, but it will take several more hours. You don’t want to know how many samples there are.”
“You’re right,” I said with a grimace, “but I think we need to tell Evan about this. I got some valuable information this morning about the farm, or Blackthorn Plantation as it’s apparently known to its clients. Do you know if he’s busy right now?”
“Oh, he’s busy at the moment,” Abe said with a sly smile, “and I’m sure he’d love the distraction, but let’s let him finish his interview.”
“Interview?”
“Evan’s least favorite part of running a multi-billion dollar, privately owned company. Every so often, some reporter, who is trying to make a name for themselves, tries to uncover the real reason Evan was able to skirt international business laws and reestablish EJC as a privately held entity.”
After growing up near DC with a politician as my guardian, this shouldn’t have come as a shock, but it did make me wonder how secret the organization really was in this day and age. I’ve seen some of the conspiracy theory pages that talk about the government covering up the existence of vampires and like Evan had warne
d, some were a little too close to the truth.
“So what does he tell them?” I asked.
“The truth,” Abe replied with a laugh. “It’s brilliant in its simplicity. When they finally get around to the ‘hard questions’, Evan goes into a lengthy explanation about being attacked by a vampire and working with the government to rid the world of evil. Usually the unfortunate reporter takes this as an elaborate ‘no comment’ and either the story is scrapped or it becomes a run of the mill tale of financial success.”
“Maybe I should load up my weapons, throw on some black leather, and interrupt the meeting,” I joked. “Evan, this is no time for an interview! We have a vampire rampaging downtown!”
“I’ll bet he’d love that,” Abe laughed. “No, give him an hour. Ida’s probably got breakfast going, why don’t you go grab something and I’ll message you when he’s out.”
“Alright, I know when I’m being a pest,” I said with feigned hurt. “Just don’t get wrapped up in looking at DNA and forget!”
The dining room was mostly empty, which wasn’t surprising since most of the residents worked third shift. Only a handful of day staffers and a few hunters, who hadn’t yet gone off to bed, were scattered about the room. I made a beeline for the coffee counter and poured a huge cup to wash away the memory of Layla’s abysmal attempt. As I was agonizing over the choice of cinnamon roll or something healthy, I heard a familiar voice call out.
“Hey Hugh, either I’m dreaming or you owe me fifty bucks. Looks like the Loch Ness monster couldn’t resist the lure of coffee.”
“Looks more like medusa to me, don’t stare directly at her!”
I grabbed a cinnamon bun and stalked over to the table, where Hugh and Miles were drinking coffee and pretending to play cards as if they didn’t see me. I set my breakfast down and unconsciously smoothed my hair behind my ears before flopping into a vacant chair and pouting at them like a petulant child.
The Eyes of the Sun: The Complete Trilogy Page 41
