“Blood traitor was what was written on the wall where the destroyed painting was,” I said.
“The blood was a match for Oscar’s,” Lisette confirmed.
“Or it could be Damien’s,” Andre said. “If their DNA is close enough that he could enter Oscar’s home, then it is certainly possible that he could have written the message to make us think Oscar had done it.”
This surprised me, coming from Andre, who was always quick to think the worst of Oscar.
“While nothing you mentioned fits the description of the man I knew, this seems like a rather long and complicated deception aimed only at pointing us in a direction that we were already headed.”
“True, but this book is rather old and there are definite differences in the type of ink used in the beginning as opposed to the end. If it’s a fake, it’s a rather good one,” Fausto replied.
“We’ll have to have the lab take a look at it,” Andre said. “I’d rather we do that stateside. Lucy and I will be leaving in the morning, so we’ll bring the book with us. But I understand that Evan asked the two of you to New Orleans as well?”
“Much like the two of you coming here, he thinks a fresh pair of eyes would be helpful,” Lisette explained. “But I can’t help being a little excited about meeting some people for the first time.”
“And I’m looking forward to seeing some old friends,” Fausto added. “We’re to follow a week after you.”
“Perhaps we’ll even have something of a lead instead of chasing ghosts,” I said with a wry smile. My head was swimming with the information Fausto had imparted upon us and I wasn’t exactly sure what to make of it just yet.
After Fausto and Lisette left, I unwrapped the bandages and checked my ankle. There didn’t appear to be any sign of healing. Even worse, the painkillers that Andre had picked up for me still had no effect. I had gone from nearly indestructible to completely fragile almost overnight and that scared me. I’d taken for granted my abilities and now that they were gone, I didn’t have a backup plan.
“How is it?” Andre asked.
“Pretty much the same. How long does a broken ankle take to heal?”
“That’s going to depend on the extent of the damage. Sometimes the bones mend on their own and sometimes they need screws to hold them in place. I’m sure that Abe will have you fixed up in no time. I’ve already asked for a wheelchair at the airport.”
Even though I knew he meant to put me at ease, I suddenly realized that I would be out in public with little mobility. If someone was looking for me, I’d be a sitting duck. I pushed the worrying thoughts from my head and concentrated on what we had learned.
“So, what do you think Damien’s motives are?” I asked Andre.
“Honestly, I don’t think he was lying when he said he had his own preservation in mind, but that could mean a couple of different things.”
“How is that?” I asked.
“He may not have been working on his own or even willingly,” Andre said. “He seemed to indicate that the vampire you confronted in the cemetery was Delphine LaLaurie. The vampire she killed, the one your father knew, had to have been working for her. She killed him simply because he had been seen talking to someone from the outreach. Why would Damien risk his own life, knowing that he might be killed if he was caught?”
“So you think Damien might have been told to deliver the journal to me?” It wasn’t out of the realm of possibility, but it also relied on making a lot of jumps in logic and quite frankly, my mind was already spinning.
“It’s possible. Or he might not even be on her radar. He could be just another vamp who wants to rise to power and sees you as the enemy of his enemy. Either way, I don’t trust him and I don’t want you to try to seek him out on your own when we get back.”
“Don’t worry,” I said, slightly hurt by the accusation, and indicated my broken ankle. “I have a feeling I’m not going anywhere for a while.”
Chapter 14
Abe had me sedated to perform the surgery on my ankle. When he explained all of the pins, braces, and screws that he had to put in to set the bone properly, I was glad that I hadn’t been awake for that. Unless my body found a way to start healing itself, I’d never breeze through airport security again. I still couldn’t walk, but Abe assured me that I could start physical therapy within a week and that I might be able to lose the crutches in as little as two weeks if I was aggressive. Unfortunately, that was the extent of his good news.
An analysis of my blood showed that the enzyme was lower than that of the normal hunters. On top of that, my hemograph readings no longer registered me as an anomaly, but as a normal human. I had to wear a monitor in the event that anything changed, but after three days in recovery, nothing had. Had this happened a year ago, I probably would have been relieved to be normal, but with my life, and the lives of everyone I knew and loved on the line, being normal had the potential to be a death sentence.
For Cynda, this was even worse. The fluctuations in her DNA caused her neural implant to misfire. The implant was what kept her from transforming into a killing machine with no self-control. While she wasn’t transforming, she was prone to dangerous seizures and had to be removed from school. Abe’s wife, a former schoolteacher, was helping her keep up with the work, but on top of the added stress, she was showing signs of severe depression and I was worried about her. I tried visiting her, to cheer her up, but in my current condition, I may have made things worse for the both of us.
To keep from being completely useless, I spent most of my time in the security office with Mike and Holly, pouring over all of the information we had in hopes of finding something that they might have missed. In between statistics and spreadsheets documenting the activity of the last few months, I spent a good deal of time reading over Abe’s mostly incomprehensible medical records, hoping to find a clue as to what was wrong with me. But I gave up after it became clear that without a medical degree, I wasn’t going to understand enough to solve this mystery. I might as well have been looking up Voodoo curses for all the good it did me.
In addition to helping me feel as if I was actually contributing, neither Mike nor Holly acted as if I was any different, which was a relief. I was getting tired of the awkward conversations, sympathetic smiles, and outright pity that I was getting from some of the other members of the team.
“Holly, can you send me the… Are you putting on makeup?”
I looked up from the email I had been reading to see Holly bent over a small compact mirror, mascara wand in hand. Holly never wore makeup and honestly, she didn’t need to wear makeup, given her perfectly modified genetics.
“Is it a crime to want to look good?” she asked with a slightly defensive tone.
“Of course not, but Holly, you’re ridiculously beautiful and I’m not sure the Gothic raccoon look is your style.”
“It’s not,” she muttered, wiping away a glob of black from her lower lid. “I’m guessing there’s a secret to applying this crap that I’m not privy to.”
“I think the secret is a steady hand and more patience than I have,” I replied. “But if you’re determined, maybe you should talk to Tanya.”
“I already did. She swore this stuff was foolproof.”
“Okay, then maybe you just need practice, or maybe you should just accept that you really don’t need makeup because you’re a supermodel freak of nature.”
“Thanks, I think?”
“Yes, Holly, that was a compliment, and maybe a little jealousy thrown in for good measure,” I said with a wink. “I don’t suppose this has anything to do with your mystery friend, does it?”
“Just trying something different,” she muttered dismissively. “Anyway, what did you need?”
“The emails we recovered from L. Laurie,” I said, respecting Holly’s silent plea to butt out of her business.
“All of them? There’s about a thousand.”
“Do I look like I’m going anywhere?” I asked, propping my cast-cover
ed foot up on the desk.
“Good point,” she said and pulled up the database. “I’m not going to try to transfer this, it will take too long. Let me create another login for you.”
“Oh wow, yeah,” I said after logging in to the database and seeing several thousand files listed. “Um, is the government still using this?”
“Yep, but what you want is in the archive folder.”
I was about to click on the archive when I noticed an email with my name in the subject line near the top of the list. Technically, we were only maintaining this database and were not supposed to snoop through the records, but the email was from Agent Cervantes to Evan, so I felt I had a right to look. What I found was interesting. Cervantes requested that Evan send a sample of my DNA to GTAC’s central laboratory for analysis. No explanation as to why they wanted it, or why they approached Evan rather than me, was given. I found Evan’s reply, which was, thankfully, no dice. He explained that what they were asking was unethical and if they wanted my cooperation, they would have to ask me. Cervantes’ reply to this was that asking was merely a formality and that they could and would obtain my DNA by any means necessary. Obviously, this freaked me out, so I sent a message to Evan, telling him to clear his schedule immediately, and I hobbled my way up to his office.
“Any reason you weren’t going to tell me that the government wants to carve me up like an Area 51 experiment?”
“Saw that, did you?” Evan said with a sigh. “Honestly, I didn’t want to add any more stress to your current situation. Don’t worry, I just sent back a reply, along with a docket containing information that I wouldn’t hesitate to send to certain government agencies should they try to make good on their threat. I also copied the oversight committee that acts as a liaison to the office of the president on such matters to prove that I wasn’t bluffing.”
“What do you think Cervantes is playing at?” I asked.
“I think she’s running out of options,” Evan replied. “She wants to know what we refuse to tell her.”
“And that is…”
“That would be what exactly it is that makes you deadly to vampires and how to exploit it for the purpose of winning this war.”
“In other words, the same damned reason the vampires are after me,” I spat with a frustrated huff. “If it’s genocide they’re after, why don’t they sit back and wait for the vampires to kill themselves off?”
“Fair point, but I don’t think the government is interested so much in genocide as in regulation of the vampire population.”
“I fail to see the difference.”
“Understandably,” Evan said. “It’s a fine line that the government is treading. Cervantes understands more than most that there is a difference between natural vampires and mods.”
“Does she?” Considering what I just read, I doubted that immensely.
“Cervantes is a vampire, Lucy,” Evan said with a huge grin. “I wish you had been here to see the look on her face when Abe delivered the news. I had hoped that this information would push her firmly into the compassion camp, but I think it had another effect. She’s scared. In her mind, eradicating the mods and ensuring the destruction of any evidence that vampires exist is the only way to guarantee self-preservation. It’s not rational, but I’m hoping in time she’ll figure that out.”
I wasn’t nearly as optimistic as Evan. “Well she can have anything she wants. In fact, go ahead and tell her I said yes. I want to see the look on her face when she finds out my DNA is useless.”
“We don’t know that for certain yet. Abe hasn’t done any tests yet, but he thinks there’s a possibility we might be able to kick start your immune system the same way we saved Andre.”
“You mean have him give me a blood transfusion? Do you think it will work?” I didn’t want to get my hopes up, but it was a plausible theory and I was willing to try anything.
“If it doesn’t kill you, then yes, it could work. But Abe needs to do some trials in the lab first. After all, you’re still a vampire, even if you aren’t reading as one at the moment. Besides, although you have the enzyme, there’s no guarantee Andre’s enzyme won’t kill you.”
“Andre doesn’t make me sick the way you did to Dara,” I reasoned. “Anyway, who cares? I’ll go vegetarian if I have to. Just get me out of this cast! What are we waiting for?”
“Andre’s out with your father at Ben’s soccer match. I’ll check with Abe’s schedule and let you know what we can do.”
I decided to find Cynda and let her know that there was hope, no matter how slim. She was in her room, watching some violent anime program, and sporting a neon purple cast. The bags under her eyes told me that she wasn’t getting enough rest.
“How are you feeling?” I asked.
“Seriously?” She clicked the mute button on the television remote and sighed. “At this point, I think being pregnant would have been better. What the hell is wrong with us?”
“I wish I knew,” I said honestly. “Do you remember anything weird before this happened? Everyone seems to think that we might have been exposed to something that made us sick.”
“Yeah, Abe and Dara have asked me that about a thousand times,” she replied, rolling her eyes. “Other than school and G2, I don’t ever leave here.”
Because it also served as a safe house, I’d been to G2 quite a few times myself, but it wasn’t likely anyone working there would be harboring any hostile feelings for us. Nan, the manager, had a pretty keen eye for spotting trouble with her staff.
“Maybe someone let Kaylee into the kitchen and she accidentally poisoned us,” Cynda added with a smirk.
“I think that would have resulted in food poisoning for the entire staff. That is, if she didn’t burn the place down first,” I said with a chuckle. “At any rate, I don’t want to get your hopes up too much, but Abe’s going to run some tests to see if a blood transfusion from Andre might kick start our immune systems.”
“How would that help?”
“That was how Andre ended up sharing my abilities,” I explained. “He was attacked and my blood type was a match, so Abe did an emergency transfusion and he recovered from being gutted almost immediately afterward. I don’t know exactly how it happened, but his blood kind of adapted to mine, so the heightened enzyme and healing ability stuck around.”
“Cool,” Cynda said. “I guess I didn’t know that. When will you know if it works?”
“As soon as Andre gets back from Ben’s game.”
“I hope that’s soon,” she said, glancing down at her cast in frustration. “This thing is making my arm itch.”
I didn’t have long to wait at all. Andre was back within the hour and Abe was interested enough in seeing the results that he had us come down to his lab immediately. After drawing several vials of blood from Andre and me, and running several tests under the microscope, he confirmed that the transfusion would have no ill effect.
“I’m going to be completely honest, Lucy,” Abe said with a serious look. “I’ve done enough tests and double checking to ensure that receiving the transfusion will not harm you in any way, but there is no guarantee that it will completely reverse your condition. We won’t know that for a few days after the procedure.”
“That’s a risk I’m willing to take,” I assured him.
Andre was led off by Brad, Abe’s senior medical assistant, to have his blood drawn. Meanwhile, Abe set me up in one of the operating rooms and called in Dara to assist.
“Um, this is making me a little nervous.”
“Don’t worry,” Dara assured me. “We only have you in here in the event that there are complications. I don’t expect there to be, but it’s always better to be prepared.”
“Just be gentle with the needle. I’ve been through a lot,” I joked.
“Abe gets to do that part,” she said with a wink. Secretly, I was relieved. I’ve had enough of my blood drawn by both of them to know that Abe was much better at getting the needle in without mangling my veins
.
“Okay Lucy, just lie back and get comfortable. The less you move, the easier this will be,” Abe said. “I’m going to start with a half pint and monitor with the density scanner for changes. But if you feel any discomfort, let us know immediately, okay?”
“Got it,” I said, and turned away as Abe prepped my arm for the needle. I felt a slight pinch as it went in, but other than that, I wasn’t traumatized too much. There was a weird pressure near the point of entry, but Abe assured me that this was normal.
For the first few minutes, everything seemed to be fine. I kept my breathing regular and thought about wedding plans. Rather, I thought about the fact that I would probably have to make wedding plans soon and mentally kicked myself for not asking Cynda to be a bridesmaid when I went to see her. The more I thought about what planning a wedding entailed, the more I wondered how Andre would feel about eloping. I stifled a giggle at the thought of what Lona’s reaction would be if we even attempted to get out of having some big, crazy wedding.
“So far so good, Lucy,” Abe said quietly. “Your enzyme levels are coming back up.”
“Awesome,” I said with a yawn. The quiet, rhythmic hum of the machines in the operating room lulled me into a quiet peace, but just as I started to drift off into a half sleep, a horrible pain jolted me awake. My ankle felt like it had grown to twice its size and throbbed worse than when I broke it.
“Abe something’s wrong with my ankle!” I cried.
The diagnostic machine that was suspended over me swung down towards my feet.
“The break is mending,” Abe said, but he didn’t sound like this was a positive. “Dara, call Brad and have him prep for surgery. The bone is healing, but the pins we put in are in the way. They have to come out now.”
The pain was getting worse by the moment. It felt as if my foot was about to explode off my leg. I barely registered that Abe had an electric saw and had already started cutting through my cast.
The Eyes of the Sun: The Complete Trilogy Page 76
