Dark DNA
By CeraD Colby
©2013 CeraD Colby
Preface
The one thing immortals, werewolves, vampires, shape shifters, and humans all have in common is a never ending search for love, companionship and family as well as a place to feel a part of something. So this book is dedicated to each and every one of us, all the world over, and to the many animals, humans, immortals, 2 legged, or 4 legged, that constantly yearn for this most universal of emotions – love!
©2013 by Cera D. Colby
All Rights Reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means, including scanning, photocopying or otherwise without prior written permission of the copyright holder.
Chapter 1
“There’s absolutely no way that can be true. Have you lost your mind? Seriously?! Don’t even waste your time with it, Gabby.”
Gabby Roberts scanned the cafeteria slowly hoping no one else was listening to their conversation. Could Beth have been any louder? There weren’t that many other students around, but still, a few heads turned at Beth’s outburst.
“Shhhhhhh…,” Gabby hissed at Beth while giving her the stink eye simultaneously.
A couple of sophomore lab techs a few tables over acknowledged her outburst and paused from their own lunches and conversation just long enough to obviously eavesdrop. They appeared as if they could pass for brothers. Both had short auburn hair, they were tanned, and wore resembling button-ups; one green, the other blue, with matching beige cargo shorts and well worn boat shoes.
Gabby rolled her eyes at her friend, shook it off and turned back to Beth motioning for her to move in closer. She slid her untouched burger and fries out from in front of her and leaned in closer to her colleague.
“Just hear me out.” Gabby said in a hushed tone. “Have you ever thought about parvo viruses in mammalian species?” She made the statement not waiting for an answer. “The way it affects the host and how it leads to death, but it can also be remedied with vaccines.”
“Yeah, but that’s just… ,” Beth started.
“Until they discovered B19!” Gabby interrupted her friend.
Beth slapped her cheek in mock horror… “So what you’re saying is… ”
“What I’m saying is, Ms. Smart Ass, I mean, Ms. Beth Bridges, is that somehow or someway, that something is searching for a compatible host. I’m not just making this all up. If the virus is in the fecal matter then how’d it get there in the first place?”
Beth was shaking her head. She wasn’t laughing nor did she find what Gabby saying to be any type of amusement whatsoever. She sarcastically responded, “I don’t know. Someone stepped in it?”
“Not that… I mean the origin, before it was first documented in the 70’s. Let’s say that someone was in search of a mate. Do you think it would be possible for one to catch the virus through intercourse, through saliva, or a bite maybe?”
The two girls were really into their discussion. They didn’t notice that the rest of the lunchroom was practically empty. The only other people in the room now, the two cargo boys, obviously sophomores, got up from their table, textbooks in hand and begin to walk off too.
“Gabby, what are you getting at?” Beth asked her exasperated friend.
“Whatever’s hiding somewhere in the dark of a mountainside is not from here but, it’s here whether we choose to believe it or not. Just recently someone was mauled to death and the only thing left to identify was a heap of flesh, lots of blood, a bloody shoe and no tracks to follow. Not long after that a bear was drove out of its den and into the community.”
“Okay… so, who do you propose did it… ,” Beth asked again, still not following her friends train of thought, “who run the bear out of its den?”
“What do I think did it?” Gabby sat upright in the plastic seat. “A Lycoi Anthropos…” she said with conviction.
Laughter instantly arose from behind the two girls. It was the two sophomores they had noticed before, still eavesdropping on the two young ladies conversation. The auburn haired guy in the green shirt barked rather loudly after his hysterics, drawing the attention of a teacher about ten feet away who was at the soda machine by the exit door trying to shove his wadded dollar bill into the slot.
The guy with the blue shirt brushed his hair back from his face with an open palm, trying to be as cool as could be. He said, “I see you girls are into mythology. Good luck with finding one of those in the real world,” he joked, before him and his buddy bumped fists and began walking off.
Obviously, Mr. Blue thought he was a stud. And telling an upper class man something like that, yeah he really felt up on his game today. Both of them, they must have thought they were just going to stroll off without the girls saying a word. Boy, were they wrong.
Gabby slammed her fist against the table top with a force that compelled her hard plastic lunch tray to vibrate itself a few inches away from where she’d slid it earlier. Her burger bun flopped off to the side from atop it’s meaty base and a few fries fell on the floor. Ripples bumped from side to side in her soda.
She rose from her seat with conviction, heat rising in her face. She felt like a lit firecracker about to burst. If he had been closer, Mr. Blue would now have a fist firmly planted in his left eye. Lucky for him he was several feet away.
Gabby’s belief in what she spoke of was more than just that, though, but she would have to prove her beliefs without any reasonable doubt to be of existence. Therefore she needed physical proof instead of one relying on her word alone. And she knew that too. But Mr. Blue and his buddy Mr. Green, and all those annoying pains in the asses like him, she really just wanted to kick them all in the crotch!
“And just what do you know about it? You don’t even know what we were talking about!” she thundered to the boys as they were making their departure.
The sophomores stopped in their tracks and about-faced to the girls still standing in the same spot. “Well, I do know there’s no such thing as what you were talking about. Plus,” said the one in blue, pointing at his temple, “you might be a little bit off in the noggin.”
The teacher, still standing by the vending machine, pressed a button on the soda machine as soon as Mr. Blue finished. The soda dropped into the basket in the bottom with a loud clank. He reached over and picked it up, popped the top, took a sip and then waited for the outcome of this unprovoked and punkish verbal attack initiated by the boat shoe brothers.
Now Beth rose from her seat in her friends behalf. She flipped their two antagonists the middle birdie and said, “And this doesn’t mean you’re number one, by the way. Why don’t you two go find yourselves some toys to play with?”
The boys looked to each other, and then back to the girls, smirked and took steps in their basic direction.
“Whoa! Stop right there boys! Right this instant!” the teacher announced. “I think you two need to do exactly as the young ladies requested.”
“But…” the boy in blue started.
“But what… Would you like to tell your story to the principal – or let it go?” the teacher asked.
Without question the two would rather not tell it to the principal. Who in their right mind would want that? The cargo brothers shrugged it off and without haste made their way out of the cafeteria, side-by-side.
“Good day, ladies…” the teacher said before he followed the boys out.
“Thank you.” Gabby yelled to the hero teacher after he left the cafeteria.
“I’ll show ‘em.” Gabby said.
“Don’t sweat it. They’r
e a couple of clowns.”
But Gabby could not shake the thought of proving those clowns wrong.
Chapter 2
2 Years Later……
Pop! Zap!
“Crap! Drat! Shoot! Snot! Rats! Fudge! Frack! Son of a … ”
Gabby swore again and again as electricity popped once more and a new charge flowed through her body giving her another painful bite. It was truly beginning to annoy her at just how many times she’d been electrocuted today. If she had to endure one more french fry-session she was ready to throw her whole device right out her second story window.
She threw the phillips head screwdriver down on the floor in a little fit and wiped her messy long brown hair out of her face angrily. She’d been working on the device for over four hours now and it still didn’t do what she wanted it to. If she had a tenpenny nail right now she could probably bite it right in half.
A lot was riding on this pile of metal she had been playing with, for what seemed like years now. If she couldn’t get it to working soon and prove the bunch of clowns at the University that she was right, and not a complete lunatic, and that they had no right to laugh at her continuous claims of paranormal being existence, then she could very well sit down and cry right here and now. Her reputation was at stake, true, and she sometimes wondered if her sanity were too.
Supernatural beings – those things that go bump in the night, she knew they were real. Ever since she was a child she’d known that creatures like vampires and werewolves had to exist. There was no doubt in her mind. In fact, she once saw a werewolf – right below her own bedroom window, when she was just 12 years old.
And no, it wasn’t just a stray dog, like her parents had suggested, laughing at her story. The memory still stung as though it had just happened when she thought about it. That creature had had red eyes and it was twice the size of any dog she’d ever seen. No way it was a dog – and she knew all about dogs, having done so much research on them just to refute the possibility that what she had seen was a dog. Not a dog – no, no, no!!
Gabby had been working on proving their existence ever since that night. Her scientific studies, her technical courses, her mechanical wizardry, her constant research, the library visits and online searches along with her contact with all the teachers at the University of Science, it had all been with one single purpose in mind – to be able to prove to the world that they, supernatural beings, really existed! And then the credit for the discovery would be hers, and hers, alone.
Based on the way things were going today it just looked like she would be laughed at forever. She was so tired of being compared to UFO hunters. If she heard one more ET, alien, Extraterrestrial or little green men joke she was going to beat the living crap out of that person. Nothing was working out the way she had planned today and she was truly aggravated and ready to relieve a bit of her frustration.
Furiously she slapped the digital camera sized machine now sitting quietly on her desk, knocking it a few inches across her counter before she walked over and collapsed onto her bed. A metallic clanking reverberated around the room as she lay there fuming about the device and the fact that it still wasn’t working like she wanted it to. She rolled on her side on her small bed, stared at her posters on the wall, trying to distract herself while thinking what she should try next.
Trying hard not to cry, she was just that aggravated at the days events, she just lay there a few minutes when suddenly, the contraption she had just slapped the crap out of started beeping! It’s lights started flashing yellow, orange and red, and the needle bounced excitedly around behind the small glass window located on the top.
“What the hell…,” she said as the machine jibbered and jabbered as it sat on her desk. Gabby jumped off the bed, almost fell on the floor and ran as fast as possible to get back to her desk. She crouched on the chair in front of it, eyeing it suspiciously as it just kept working it’s way through all her warning signals that she had installed on it. Afraid to get her hopes up too high, she really didn’t know what to do concerning this new change of events.
As far as she could tell, it definitely looked like it was working! And if the readings were coming through exactly the way she’d designed her device to read in the first place, then there was definitely one close by! A real supernatural being! She grabbed the medium sized hand scanner from off her desk, turned the volume completely off, and ran down two flights of stairs from her apartment down to the street, too impatient to shut her front door or wait for the elevator. Once she got down to the street she looked at her hand scanner, walking in the direction that indicated a strong signal.
Its lights flickered excitedly in the dark outside her apartment building. Various arrays of yellow, orange and red flickered as she waved the camera sized scanner in front of her body – sweeping it from side to side. She hadn’t really thought of the time or the fact that it was really dark right now. All her mind was focused on now were the flashing lights in front of her.
“Yellow, no no… orange……. yes, that’s better, come on red, come on red… “ she talked to the device hoping to know which direction to go in next.
She walked about two blocks following orange lights and then suddenly they changed to red. “Red, yeah, that’s it….., keep on baby!” Gabby urged, still talking to the scanner as though it were a person.
She followed the direction of the red lights as the device now was now showing red lights all the way across. Three more blocks, still red lights all across! Before long Gabby saw a dark figure standing alone in the road ahead of her about another block up. Her heart, already beating fast because of the jog she was making, suddenly starting beating even faster as she tried to slow her walking down to a normal pace. She knew it was because of the mysterious figure she had just spotted ahead of her.
Gabby was obviously out of breath from the jog she had just done but she was so excited about her device and it’s discovery that she could barely contain herself. And her arms were so tired from carrying it – it only weighed about ten pounds or so but she thought to herself that the next version definitely needed to be smaller and lighter. She was really getting a workout between the sudden run and the fact that she was lugging this metal box about!
If this machine works, and she felt that it was working, then her whole life was about to change. Was she really ready for that? Gabby thought that and all sorts of things to herself now – but not anything at all about whether or not she should be afraid of the figure she had just spotted ahead – the one that was setting her machine off like fireworks on the fourth of July! The figure that she had followed now for almost six or seven blocks!
The figure she was following – the one that was only about twenty feet away from her now – just kept on walking down the road with a casual stroll, not really seeming to pay one bit of attention to her obviously ridiculous attempt at following him. Good news for her – she hadn’t scared him off yet! Maybe he was listening to music on an ipod or something…
As she drew closer to the figure, still only feet behind him, he stepped into the light of a nearby street lamp. A flash of bright blond hair and clearly broad shoulders told her right away that it was definitely a… man. A man? Suddenly she became really nervous.
Up to this point she had not even thought about doing anything dangerous – she was just so excited about her scanner… Suddenly her excitement was replaced with fear! What if he had a gun or attacked her? She had no way of defending herself short of hitting him with her scanner! Even though Gabby was fairly tall for a girl, she had no fighting training of any kind – and she knew she wasn’t strong enough to fight off a healthy adult male, especially as tired as she was right now.
Chapter 3
The metal scanner in her hand went absolutely berserk as she took the next step closer to the man ahead of her. The needle on the top was flopping back and forth like it was possessed, and the lights – all of them, they were all red – and flashing like crazy! Even worse than before! She sile
ntly complimented herself for not being stupid enough to let this one beep as well – she was so happy she turned the volume off before she left the apartment. If she had left it on there’s no telling just how loud it would have been – especially now, and it would have given her away for sure. So much for stealth mode.
Gabby froze in place after she took the step and wondered for a second just how she would approach this thing. Now that she was so close to him/it/whatever, just how would she find out if she was right? After what seemed like several moments of doubt, she came to the conclusion that the element of surprise was definitely the way to go. Catch him off guard and if anything went wrong, well, she could always run away. Her long legs meant she could run – and as soon as she got a brief rest she knew she would be ready to go if necessary.
“It’s now or never!” Gabby said to herself under her breath, hoping the being wouldn’t hear her. She carefully sat her scanner down on the sidewalk and then quickened her pace, making sure that her long, slender legs covered the distance between them quickly. As soon as she felt she was close enough to the figure, she let out a yell and jumped on the man’s back, knocking them both to the ground. This attack could have been described as many things – but certainly not graceful. Think more Grace Adler or Lucille Ball.
The guy Gabby jumped on, obviously not expecting such a welcome as this, yelled, grumbled and grunted as Gabby man-handled him, flipping him over amidst the skirmish. He flailed about like a school girl – definitely not what she was expecting (thank goodness) but before he knew what was happening next, she grabbed his face with a firm grip, right around his chin and pulled his upper lip up to expose his top row of teeth.
“Are you kidding me?! No way!” Gabby yelled to no one in particular, completely exasperated by tonight’s events and the tackle she had just so skillfully made. In fact, her hands were still holding the guys mouth.
Dark DNA: A Paranormal Romance (Vampire and Werewolf) Page 1
