by Jenna Barwin
He folded his lean body onto the bedside chair and looked at her suspiciously. “If your blood is not human, how can you be sure a vampire will be able to feed on your human form?”
That’s his first question? Really?
“Do you concede I’m not human?” she asked.
“All you’ve proven is you can change shape.” He picked up her hand and tentatively sniffed it, like he was sampling a wine whose pedigree was uncertain. “You could just as easily be a cursed mortal.”
What, he wants a taste to prove it? She yanked her hand back. Not going there. No we are not. “Do you believe I have abilities a normal human doesn’t?”
He paused. “Yes.”
“One of those abilities is enhanced sight.” She stared at the ceiling while she spoke, the pain wearing her down. “I may look like my human father—”
“You said you weren’t human,” he snapped at her.
“We, ah,” she said, and stopped. She never considered herself human until he questioned it. “We need humans to procreate. My father, he was from India, his genes set my human form, but our Lux genes dominate, so we’re Lux and not human.” She looked down at her human hands. “Thanks to my Lux genes, I see a broader spectrum of light, even when human. When I saw the red light on your chest, I figured a silver bullet would follow. Silver wouldn’t harm me the way it would you.”
She didn’t mention the Kevlar-like undershirt. He didn’t need every little detail.
“Why are you here?” he asked, his voice dark and demanding again.
“Right now? To study your community, much like humans study indigenous cultures.”
“Mortals have not always been kind to native populations.”
“You expect us to be just as aggressive? We’ve lived here four thousand years and haven’t done anything to harm humankind. We have a strong ethic against interfering with their free will.”
“Four thousand years?” he repeated, not hiding his disbelief.
“My family—my people—our history goes back four thousand years, and then we hit a brick wall,” she said with a shrug, the bandages restricting her to a lopsided movement. “From our records, well, it appears we were stranded here. The first humans we came in contact with called us ‘those who fell from the sky.’ Later we were called the Alatus Lux. The name stuck. But it doesn’t tell us where—what place—we came from. Our origin seems to have been lost.”
“How is it we’ve never heard of your people?”
“There aren’t many of us, and after our first contact, we worked to keep our presence secret, just as you have,” she said, telling only part of the truth. He knew about her people—hell, everyone had heard the story—he just hadn’t put all the pieces together. “Originally, there were two hundred of us. By breeding with humans, we’ve increased our number to around a thousand.”
“If you’ve been here that long, why so few? Did a great illness decrease your numbers?”
“We—we live for a long time, much longer than humans, but our ability to procreate, well, it’s limited.”
“Why?”
“We can’t morph back to our native forms while pregnant. If you knew what it felt like to stay human for nine whole months, you wouldn’t ask that question. The stabilizer—the medicine in the injector—it’s based on a hormone. The hormone keeps us locked in human form when we’re pregnant.”
She didn’t volunteer how they kept the baby from killing the mother when the mother was human. Some things just weren’t meant to be shared.
He crossed his arms. “If your DNA is so different, how can a mortal man impregnate you?”
“Do you want the deep science or the big picture?”
“An overview will do.”
“Well, each human parent normally contributes one strand of DNA—one from the mother, and one from the father. With us, there’s a third strand, sort of an overlay morphing around the double-stranded human DNA, completely changing the double strand.”
He looked thoughtful for a moment. “Where do your people live?”
“Once adults, we are free to move through your world so long as we don’t interfere.” She moved a pillow under her arm. The longer she stayed in one position, the more it hurt.
“You avoided my question.”
“We have a base—the Enclave—and we can return to it.”
“Where is it located?”
“Some things I just can’t tell you. That’s one—” She stopped abruptly, grimacing at the pain shooting through her arm. “Sorry,” she said, closing her eyes and holding her breath, waiting for the wave of pain to subside.
Why couldn’t he just let it go for now? Until Karen returned with food, only meditation would help her control the pain. And as much as she liked hearing his voice, all this talk wasn’t helping.
He took a vial of pills out of his pocket—the painkiller the doctor gave him. “You may have one of these if you need it, but you will not postpone this conversation.”
She pushed his hand away. “I don’t want one.”
“If you change your mind, they are here.”
He placed the brown plastic vial on the bedstand, next to the one containing the antibiotic, and settled back into his chair, his brows knitted together. She pinched the arm nerve in her shoulder. The pressure relieved some of the pain, but not much. She closed her eyes and tried really hard to focus on peaceful thoughts.
“I don’t know what to believe.” His voice interrupted her meditation, and she opened her eyes again. “All this could be a lie.” He made a sweeping gesture toward her. “You could be in league with the assassin. Perhaps your plan was to get shot and gain entrance to my home.”
How dare he? I’ve told him far more than I ever should, yet he has the gall to call me a liar? Her nostrils flared and she held her chin up. “If I wanted to enter your home, I would simply enter it and you’d never know I had. I don’t need anyone’s help.”
The corner of his mouth twitched. “Such pride. You do know what the priests say about pride.”
“I should never have demonstrated my abilities so openly. Others might guess what I am.” She stopped rubbing her shoulder. It wasn’t helping. “I should have let you die,” she grumbled.
“You don’t mean that.”
“If you keep acting like I’m the enemy, I will.” She moved the pillow again, pounding it flat with her good hand. When would Karen be back with food? Much longer, and she’d morph into an oversized termite and start gnawing on the furniture.
“Why are you working for Leopold?” he asked.
She looked up at him. “Uh, it’s a little complicated.”
“Then simplify it.”
“I let him feed on me to save his life. Is that simple enough?”
“And Leopold has not claimed you?”
She narrowed her eyes at him. Neanderthal. “You vampires may believe the world revolves around your fangs, but he can’t ‘claim’ me without my consent, and I haven’t given it. Besides,” she continued testily, “Leopold was one of my teachers, it would seem wrong to be with him now. I can’t get beyond it and neither can he—he will always see me as a child.”
“A child?”
“I was much younger when it happened.”
Her arm spasmed and began shaking violently. The injector lay on the bed next to her, and she scooped it up, dialing in a different number and pressing it to her naked thigh, just below the hem of her tank top.
“What is that?” he asked, his eyes following her actions but lingering on her legs.
“I increased the dosage of the stabilizer. It’ll help me deal with the pain, but I need to eat to fuel the healing process.” Her arm stopped shaking. She no longer risked morphing spontaneously, but the pain still bit with the teeth of a tiger.
Henry’s eyes took on a faraway look. He sat there silently, and then something brought him back to the present. “I would like to verify with Leopold how you met him.”
“Give me my cell phone.”
Henry hesitated.
“It’s not a weapon. I have to contact Leopold or he won’t tell you the truth about when he met me.”
He handed it to her. Using her good hand, she texted Leopold: Henry Bautista will call. Answer his questions truthfully.
She showed him the text message before she sent it. “Do you need Leopold’s phone number?”
“I have it. We go back many years.”
“Do you trust him?”
“As much as I do any vampire.”
“Good. I hope—” She was cut off by the ring of her phone. “Hello?” she answered.
“Cerissa, my child, this is Leopold.”
“You received my message.”
“So. Henry Bautista wants to invest in our project?” He sounded almost gleeful.
“No,” she replied, taken aback. “Something happened—I was shot.”
“Are you all right?”
“I’ll be fine, but he thinks I’m in league with the shooter.”
“Why would you help someone who shot you?”
“I’ll let Henry explain his reasoning. He’ll call you shortly—please tell him whatever he wants to know.”
“Anything he asks?”
“Even how, and when, we first met.” She glanced over at Henry when she spoke those words—his eyes were watching her intently.
“I’ll expect his call.”
“Thanks.”
There was a pause. “You’re sure you’re all right? You don’t need me to send help?”
“I’m fine, truly I am.” She ended the call and looked at Henry. “Leopold doesn’t know what I am. Please don’t tell him.”
He looked at her with those cold, dark eyes. She saw no sympathy in them.
“I will take this with me for now.” He grabbed the phone from her hand and slid it back into the pocket holding her watch.
After he was gone, she tried to stand again. He may have her phone and watch, but he didn’t have everything. When he removed her injector from the pocket of her jeans, he picked them up, revealing her purse. What luck! Zeke had been smart enough to retrieve her purse out of the saddlebag, and there it was, hidden under her jeans.
She took a step away from the bed, but her knees buckled, and her body met the floor. A few breaths later, she began crawling on two knees and one hand. When she got to her purse, she popped open the flap and pulled out a power bar. Manna from heaven. Ripping the wrapper with her teeth, she stuffed the whole bar into her mouth, chewing and waiting for the room to stop spinning, and her energy to return.
Chapter 22
Henry placed the call to Leopold from the desk of his home office. Four rooms separated his office from where Cerissa lay in the guest room. It was unlikely she would hear him from there.
Upon answering, Leopold immediately demanded, “How did you let this happen to my envoy?”
Henry ignored the accusation and explained the night’s events, including Dr. Clarke’s surgery. “I shouldn’t tell you this, but there was an attempt on Yacov’s life a few days before Cerissa arrived. I’m sure you can see my concern. Could she have been in league with tonight’s shooter and gotten cold feet at the last moment?”
“I would never use an envoy that way. Unlike you, I honor my agreements.”
Henry suppressed a growl. It was fortunate for Leopold they were on the phone, or the New York CEO would be wearing Henry’s silver knife through his spleen. The knife sat securely in his gun safe, but for Leopold, he’d take it out of retirement. “She told me you met her when she was a child.”
A long pause—when Leopold spoke, he sounded guarded. “What exactly did she tell you?”
“The same thing she told you—you would confirm the truth of how you met her.”
Another pause. “In the 1820s, before I came to New York, I was advisor to Count Gustaferro in Italy—a minor count, but one with designs on gaining power in the region.”
“You’ve mentioned him before.”
“It was the last time I would try meddling in mortal politics, as it almost cost me my life. Mortal politicians are not to be trusted.”
Nothing new there—Leopold had been outspoken against the formation of Sierra Escondida for just that reason. “What does Gustaferro have to do with Cerissa?”
“I’m getting there. I’d been the count’s advisor for over a year when Cerissa was sent to his court to be fostered. I assumed her people placed her there to find a husband. She was fourteen, or so I was told, just beginning to bud into womanhood—”
“You’re telling me she is over two hundred years old?”
“Precisely.”
“Two hundred,” Henry repeated. He reached for his cross. “Her appearance—didn’t it raise questions back then?”
“I had assumed she was the bastard child of a wealthy European military officer who had served in India or Egypt. At the count’s request, I tutored her in politics and history. We worked together for many months, until I fell out of favor with the count.
“The count didn’t know what I was,” Leopold continued. “He locked me in his estate basement, a windowless granite hole, having lured me there under false pretenses. He was very religious, and a large silver cross covered the only door into the basement, woven into an ornate silver grille running floor to ceiling. With the cell door closed, I was trapped by the silver barrier it created. During the day, a food tray was shoved through a slot under the door. I would dump the food down the dung hole to make it look like I was eating, so they wouldn’t grow suspicious. I slept during the day and paced at night, wondering when I would have the opportunity to mesmerize a guard. Of course, I grew hungry.”
When Henry first heard the story, he figured Leopold had gnawed on a few rats to survive. So there was more to the tale.
“Somehow Cerissa convinced the count to allow her tutoring to continue. The guards brought her to me and left her with me unguarded.”
“They left her alone with a prisoner?” Henry asked, his voice rising with disbelief.
“What can I say? She can be persuasive when she wants to be. She brought with her the books and papers from our previous lessons and placed them on the small table. A table, bed, and chair were all the furniture in that dank cell. She sat down on the chair, used a small knife to open a vein in her wrist, and held it out to me. At first I refused, fearful I might harm her, but the blood began to pool and drip. I took her wrist and licked the blood from it before wrapping my lips over the wound.”
“So what? She fed you. Is there a point here?”
“When I finished, she seemed fine. Before my eyes, I watched as her wrist healed. She told me not to fear. My secret was safe with her. She explained she came from a family of people who were long-lived and had remarkable regenerative powers. She understood the need for secrecy and returned each night with the knife to feed me. Eventually, the count decided to release me, having realized I was not behind whatever paranoid delusion had gripped him. I suspect Cerissa had a part in changing his mind.”
“And you offered her your blood?”
“She told you that? Did she also tell you it made her violently ill?”
“She mentioned she was allergic to vampire blood.”
“I guess you could call it an allergic reaction, though the symptoms were closer to food poisoning. I stayed with her all night, giving what comfort I could. By the next evening she was well. Not long afterwards, she left the court. I didn’t hear from her again until a few years ago.”
Henry rubbed his hand across the tight muscles in his forehead. “You still haven’t answered my question. Could she be responsible for the attacks?”
“The odds are so unlikely I would bet my entire fortune against it. She had no trouble finding me in New York. She knew all about our communities, where they were located, and our treaty. She’d missed a few things, but not much. If she wanted to hurt us, she could have done so without ever exposing herself.”
“How did you know it was her, and not som
e relative posing as her?”
“Aside from the physical resemblance, I recognized her blood, the unique scent of her. Besides, she knew too much, too many details about the time she spent with me as my student. I have no doubt it’s her.”
“Having found you, what did she want?”
“My sponsorship. I liked the idea she pitched, so I’m backing it. It’s going to make me very rich.”
“What is she researching?”
“It has to do with cloning. I can’t say more; we have to protect our trade secrets, you know.”
“What do you believe she is?”
“Some form of Dorian Gray? She doesn’t sound like she’s sold her soul to the devil, but one can never tell,” Leopold said with a dark laugh. “Quite frankly, I haven’t pushed her on it. I felt she would tell me in her own time.”
Henry pressed his lips together to keep his hot anger contained. Leopold had blindly turned her loose on Sierra Escondida? What if her plan was to destroy them all? “Is she a supernatural being?”
“I doubt it—she tastes human—but I can tell you this. I’ve watched her around both mortals and vampires, and she seems to have an influence, well, call it an aura. Over time, people relax around her, they seem charmed by her, but it’s different from our mesmerizing abilities.”
“How can you trust her?”
“If she wanted to harm us, she already had enough information to do so easily.” Leopold paused. “Why don’t you trust her?”
Henry drummed his fingers on his desk. How to answer and keep his promise to Cerissa? He should never have given his word. Still, she’d saved his life—he was honor-bound to protect her for now. He stayed silent.
Leopold chuckled. “Henry, stop being so paranoid. I wouldn’t put my reputation on the line unless I believed what she told me. I’ve tasted her character—she has no intent to harm us.”
“I see. Well, if you think of anything to shed light on our situation, please call me.”
