“Lucy, are you okay?”
Already jumpy, I shrieked again and hit my head on the bedside table. I hadn’t noticed Isaac, who was sitting in an armchair across the room. “Define okay,” I snarled. He offered me a hand off the floor, which I was grateful for, seeing as I only had one.
“Do you need me to call for a doctor?”
“I’m not sure,” I said with another cautious peek at the horror movie prop that was growing out of me. Isaac followed my gaze and let out a low whistle.
“I don’t believe it, you’re regenerating!”
“What? Like, I’m growing a new arm?”
“It would appear so.” Isaac was clearly awestruck. “I’m sorry.” He tore his gaze from my arm and gave me a sheepish smile. “It’s rude to stare. I just didn’t think that was possible. A finger or toe maybe, but to grow a whole arm, I don’t even think the bastard has figured that one out yet.”
“So Abe was wrong, I am part starfish,” I joked, but sobered quickly. The observation rooms were outfitted with every monitoring device possible, so the fact that I was up and about could not have gone unnoticed. However, the fact that Abe hadn’t shown up to poke and prod my arm yet set off warning bells in my head and I vaguely remembered Andre saying something about Ingrid being seriously injured. “Oh god, what time is it? What day is it?” I looked up at Isaac in horror. “Did…did everyone make it back here?”
“Everyone’s alive,” he assured me with a tight frown, “but there were some pretty severe injuries. Evan has a broken leg and Ingrid’s still in surgery. I’m not going to lie, I had my doubts about her survival, but she’s one hell of a fighter. I don’t know how extensive her own healing abilities are, but from what I hear, she got caught between the explosion that threw you and another that started the fire. She sustained severe burns over most of her body.”
“I don’t understand what happened.” I sat down, drained and suddenly feeling sick to my stomach. The news about Ingrid was beyond upsetting and I felt like a jerk for freaking out over an arm that was healing itself while she was still in surgery for far worse injuries. “How did they find us? We checked everything!”
“We underestimated him,” Isaac said quietly. “He managed to plant a tracker on Ingrid. Abe found it when she was brought in. There was a debate amongst some people as to whether or not Ingrid was aware of this.”
“What? That’s ridiculous!” I wondered who could possibly think that Ingrid would double cross us like that and prayed that it wasn’t Andre. Our relationship was on thin ice as it was and this wasn’t the type of thing I was going to let go.
“Not entirely,” Isaac countered. “After all, she had previous relations with the bastard and she is a vampire. Evan’s questions were justified, but Miles and Holly both explained what had actually happened.”
“It was when he grabbed her, wasn’t it?” Learning that Evan was the one who had trust issues was actually far more shocking than if it had been Andre. “So we’ve been compromised again. What does that mean?”
“It was and yes,” Isaac confirmed. “Evan closed down EJC’s normal operations until further notice because he can’t be sure this location hasn’t been compromised.”
A cold chill ran down my spine. Headquarters had always been the one place that seemed like an impenetrable fortress. The idea that Bluebeard might know where we were scared me. I felt guilty. I knew it wasn’t entirely my fault that Bluebeard was able to outsmart us, but I was the one pushing everyone into premature action. But on the other hand, my father was free. And sitting there, in the still somewhat secure observation room, he looked more human than he had when Andre and I first found him in the woods.
“There’s something I don’t understand though,” I said with a glance at my arm. “Andre said the chimeras were rigged to explode at the time of death, but the vampires Bluebeard sent after me were rigged with the same explosive transmitter, the same one you had. They didn’t explode though.”
“I’m not entirely sure, but I have a theory,” Isaac replied. “Back before I escaped the first time, I was the only one of Bluebeard’s creations that could have been called human. He called me his son, a title that may be accurate by some bastardization of the word, but one that I rejected immediately. His other creations were closer to animals, an evolutionary step down even from the chimeric guards he now employs. Despite my best effort to end the bastard’s life, he survived to create an operation even bigger than the one he previously ran. Back then, he only employed the transmitters that he now uses in the children. Obviously, my escape proved that if desperate enough, a vampire will claw his own body open with a sharp rock to get it out.”
“Is that what you did?” I asked.
“It was,” Isaac confirmed with a nod. “The vampires you’ve met are his current children. He calls them his sons, and as you’ve seen, they call him father. They are the only caste of his menagerie that he trusts with tasks outside the plantation. I suspect the implants in the vampires are there as a precaution against one of them pulling the same stunt I did, but I think the chimeras are different. They are his unique creations and as such, I suspect he wants to keep it that way. Triggering them to self-destruct when killed makes it impossible for a rival geneticist to haul one off to the lab for study.”
“That makes sense, I guess. But what’s to stop a rival from scooping up a handful of chimera guts and just recreating the DNA?”
“Good question,” Isaac said with a frown. “I suppose that’s a question you’ll have to ask Abe.”
“Fair enough. I’m sure he’ll be happy to bore me with the details. That is, after he pokes and prods at my arm for a while. I’m kind of his favorite science project,” I said with a half-smile.
“Ah, like father like daughter,” he replied with a fond smile. “I do believe my peculiarities might have singlehandedly been responsible for Abe’s premature hair loss.”
“And if you’ve noticed, he’s a little thinner on top now that I’m around,” I joked, but sobered quickly. “My father.” The word still felt so foreign. “I’m still kind of in shock over the fact that you’re real. This is kind of awkward, but I don’t even know what to call you. Dad? Father? Pops?”
Isaac laughed. “Hey you or old man works just as well. I will leave that up to you.”
“Dad,” I said experimentally. “My mom was always just mom, so that works.” Bringing up my mother sent us both into our own bittersweet memories and another wave of guilt washed over me. Guilt that I had never fully moved past, despite the legion of child psychologists and grief counselors my grandmother had dragged me to in the months following my mother’s death. I’d kept it buried in the back of my mind for many years, but it had been weighing heavily on me since meeting Isaac and hearing his tragic story.
“It was my fault.”
“What was?” Isaac asked with a slight frown.
“Her death,” I said quietly. “I begged and begged for a computer. It was all I talked about for months leading up to my birthday. She…there was a computer in the trunk, smashed to bits in the accident. She drove all the way to Palo Alto to get it for me, for my birthday. If I hadn’t begged…”
“Lucy, no,” Isaac laid his hand over mine. “Julia already had the computer. She had picked it up earlier and showed it to me that night. She was so proud of how smart you were…and still are. I know how you feel, I’ve spent the last fifteen years blaming myself. I shouldn’t have sent her back to California, I should have gone back with her, and I shouldn’t have assumed she’d moved on. Julia’s death was a tragic accident, but Lucy, it was an accident. I’ve made my peace with the fact that I can’t turn back time. I’ll never stop loving your mother. The brief time we shared was more meaningful than some people have in an entire lifetime. I’ll never forget that, just as you won’t forget the years you shared with her. But we both need to learn to remember those moments without the taint of regret.”
He was right, of course, but it didn’t make it any
easier. I wiped a tear from my cheek and hugged my father with my one good arm. “You know it’s kind of funny,” I said with a sniff. “I didn’t give it much thought, you know, not having a father. I grew up in San Francisco in a time where half the kids I knew had either one parent or two moms or two dads or whatever. But when it did cross my mind, I always imagined my dad was a secret agent working for the government. Blame that on growing up in Washington,” I added with a sardonic smile. “But as a teenager, I kind of got bitter.”
“I hear that happens,” Isaac said with an amused smile.
“Yeah, occasionally,” I said with a half laugh. “I started assuming my dad was some deadbeat who never wanted anything to do with my mom and me, so I just got angry and tried to stop thinking about it. You know, the odds are about a million to one against the secret agent yet here you are. I could have ended up a lot worse off, huh?”
“I hadn’t actually thought of it like that,” he said thoughtfully. “Deadbeat or not, I have a lot to make up for starting right now. You’ve probably figured out that Abe doesn’t want you wandering until he’s had a chance to examine you, so you’re stuck here for a while. If there’s anything I can do or get for you just tell me.”
“Yeah I kind of figured.” I rolled my eyes. “Like I said, favorite science project. I guess I don’t really have any stuff any- Oh god, Gumbo!”
“Gumbo?”
“My cat,” I explained. “She was at the apartment. Actually, she’s the one who alerted me that there were intruders. I need to know if she made it out of there. Have you seen my phone?”
“I’ll check on your cat.” Isaac pulled out his own phone, sent off a message, and then looked at me with a sad, yet serious expression. “About your phone, Andre warned me that you aren’t going to take this news very well.”
“Oh god, what happened to Fred?” I know it sounded silly, but I had something of an attachment disorder with my electronics and Fred was my only link to the outside world, considering Abe planned on keeping me locked up for a while.
“I’m afraid Fred didn’t survive the explosion,” Isaac said somberly, but I could see he didn’t grasp the seriousness of the situation. Okay there was no seriousness, but Fred was just below Gumbo and my human friends in terms of who I cared about. “Andre said he’s working on uploading your information to a replacement.”
“Well, okay,” I said with a sigh. “Until then I guess you’ll have to be my eyes and ears. I really want to know what’s going on and I don’t like being cut off.”
“You’ll know everything I do, which isn’t much at the moment, but the dust hasn’t settled yet.” His phone chirped that he had a message and he glanced at it with a smile. “Gumbo survived with a few scratches and singed fur. She’s currently in Cynda’s care, but Lona warns you’ve got some competition for her affection.”
I sighed in relief. “Thank god! I’m not worried about the competition though, she was spoiled by the girls at the safe house and I think she likes them better than me. I’m surprised she took to Cynda though, considering…” I trailed off because I wasn’t sure how much Isaac knew about that situation. “Have you met Cynda yet?”
“I have, she’s quite a kid,” he said cryptically.
“And you know about her, um…” I couldn’t find the right word. Creation sounded horrible, but parentage was wrong as well.
“Cynda and I are both aware of her unique circumstances. I hate to say it, but I was actually a little more surprised at the grown man Anil has turned into since I last saw him, I hadn’t realized how much time had passed,” Isaac said with wistful sigh. “But about Cynda, Abe and Dara felt it best to talk to us together. She took it a lot better than I would have expected. She’s awfully fond of you.”
I was surprised at this. Sure, Cynda trusted me more than the others when I found her, but I suspected that had more to do with the fact that I had protected her from a vampire attack. If anything, I would have figured her to be resentful of me. “I just don’t understand how it happened. I would have been nine when she was born.”
“Well, that was what led me back to California when you were five.” Isaac frowned. “It wasn’t long after your mother left that I discovered that the bastard not only lived, but had been keeping tabs on my whereabouts. Not long after that, we merged the outreach with Evan’s organization. Then I was able to turn the tables and keep an eye on them. I overheard a couple of his goons talking about a child in California and my suspicions turned out to be true. I don’t want to think about what might have happened to you if I hadn’t overheard them.”
“But how did they get their hands on my DNA?” I asked. “Surely I would have remembered some creepy guys with gray skin trying to grab my hair or something.”
“Well first of all, he wouldn’t have sent the chimeras, and second, you probably never saw them. It would have been nothing for someone to break into your apartment and grab a hairbrush or anything else. Hell, I broke in to that apartment twice to show your mother how unsafe it was.”
“And she wasn’t convinced after that?”
“You’re forgetting that I was a cop. She said I had insider’s information.”
For a fleeting moment, I was irrationally mad at my mother for not listening to Isaac. But just as quickly, my overwhelming guilt pushed the thought aside. Isaac, or dad as I had to start remembering to think of him, was right. We couldn’t change the past, so there was no point in dwelling on what might have been.
We spent the rest of the afternoon catching up on the last twenty-five years. Some of the stories he told about the people here in the organization were funny and made me laugh. Others, especially those about my mother, brought tears to my eyes. It was emotional, yet cathartic. Though after one particularly embarrassing story about something Andre did as a teenager, Isaac grew quiet.
“You know,” he said thoughtfully, “seeing the way Anil looks at Cynda makes me think perhaps it was a good thing you weren’t raised here after all. I don’t think I would have liked Andre nearly as much as I do.”
“What do you mean?” I asked casually, though I squirmed at the direction the conversation was taking.
Isaac gave me a skeptical look. “Andre was like a son to all of us and he grew up to be a man that I have great respect for. Don’t get me wrong, Lucy, I believe you and Andre were put on this earth as two halves of a whole. But you’re both adults. Consider how I might have felt about that when you were a teenager.”
“Huh? I doubt Andre would have had much interest in me. When he was Anil’s age I was just fourteen, and awkward.” Almost as awkward as I was feeling right at that moment.
“All the more reason,” Isaac emphasized.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I could feel my face turn beet red in embarrassment. I was immensely grateful when a knock on the door interrupted the conversation and Abe showed himself in.
“How’s Ingrid?” I asked before he had even shut the door.
“She’s on a long road to recovery, but she is definitely going to recover,” he answered with a deep breath. “I won’t pretend that doesn’t have more to do with the fact that she’s a vampire than my efforts. A human wouldn’t have survived long enough to make it to the operating table.”
I let out a sigh of relief. “What about everyone else?”
“Edgar has a slight concussion, but for the most part everyone is just a little bruised and scratched. Evan’s none too happy about being confined to a wheelchair for the next month, but short of a blood transfusion from you, he’s got no choice.”
Like Andre, Evan’s blood type was a close enough match to mine that I could donate to him in an emergency. “Well why don’t we? I mean it will give him a huge advantage…oh.” I stopped myself when I realized Evan had a pretty big reason for not wanting my abilities. “Yeah, never mind.” Dara was immune to the hunter’s enzyme, but not mine. She once told me she’d have no problem if Evan’s life was in danger, but a broken leg wasn’t exactly
life threatening, even if it sucked.
Isaac got up to leave. “I think I’ll go check on Evan and give you a little privacy.” I hugged him and said I’d come find him later, before turning back to Abe with a mock glare.
“I don’t suppose this is when you tell me I’m free to wander about and get into trouble, is it?”
“Nice try,” Abe laughed. “Your vital signs are fine and you sustained no other injury, so let’s have a look at that arm and maybe I’ll release you into the wilds of residential.”
“Brace yourself, it’s kind of gross,” I warned and pulled up my sleeve. Of course, this was Abe, so rather than recoil in disgust like a normal human, he leaned in for a closer look and muttered things like, “fascinating!” and “incredible!” I snuck a glance and gasped. There was now a clearly defined elbow and the beginning of a forearm, but the baby hand was still small and freakish as ever.
“Can you move any of your fingers?” Abe asked while prodding my tiny hand with one of those poking devices doctors seemed to have for no other reason than to make us feel like science experiments. I tried and winced. I could move them without a problem, but the pain sharpened when I did.
“Is it supposed to hurt?”
“I don’t know,” he muttered while furiously typing notes into his tablet. “I suspect, considering the rate at which you’re regenerating, that some pain is to be expected.”
“Do you actually think I’ll grow a whole new arm?” I admit the idea was as fascinating as it was disturbing, but if I just ended up with a strange growth, I was ready to lobby for an amputation and prosthetic.
“I do,” he replied, consulting his charts again. “I’ll run some calculations, but it looks like it might take about a week to fully grow in. I don’t see any reason to keep you here for that long, so I’ll just request that you wear a monitor and don’t leave the building.” He set down the tablet and leveled me with a stern look. “I don’t think I need to tell you that last bit holds a little higher authority than doctor’s orders.”
The Eyes of the Sun: The Complete Trilogy Page 49
