The Shifter’s Prisoner

by T. S. Ryder

  “Whose blood is this?” she asked.

  “Stefan Beauchamp’s,” Dr. Roche-Duquesne replied, and chuckled at the stunned look on Kendra’s face. “I know, they don’t seem like brothers at all,” she said.

  “I’ll say,” Kendra murmured, and took another peek through the microscope. “It doesn’t appear that he’s infected,” she noted.

  “He’s not,” Dr. Roche-Duquesne confirmed. “We haven’t managed to find a cure yet, but our research wasn’t completely in vain. We devised a test that locates the disease with 97% accuracy, and we’ve found some ways of alleviating the symptoms. The method of transmission kept us baffled, though, until Keith decided to come to you.”

  Kendra rose from the telescope again and took a seat on one of the nearby stools. “But that doesn’t make any sense,” she said, but Dr. Roche-Duquesne waved her head.

  “You have to understand, for all the similarities, vampire physiology differs rather drastically from human in a number of ways that made figuring anything about this disease extremely difficult,” she tried to explain. “Their metabolisms are much faster and their cells repair any damage they sustain so quickly and so completely that viral and bacterial diseases barely presented a problem before.” Knowing next to nothing about the vampire race, Kendra took the doctor’s word for it, instead addressing a new source of confusion.

  “Their?” she asked, “I thought you and Sebastien were siblings?”

  “We are,” Dr. Roche-Duquesne nodded, smiling again. “I’m his baby sister.” If she were not sitting already, Kendra was sure she would’ve felt her legs wobble at that little piece of information. “Shocking, I know,” the older woman said, apparently amused by Kendra’s reaction. “It doesn’t happen often, but vampires and humans have been known to Bond and produce offspring.” Something about the way the doctor said the word ‘bond’ made Kendra practically hear the capital B.

  “And a Bond would be...?”

  Dr. Roche-Duquesne took a seat as well. “We do not know yet what truly causes it,” she told Kendra. “But basically, it is a very strong pheromone reaction between a man and a woman of breeding age. It’s purely physical – a way for their bodies to proclaim they found the right person to make babies with – but it isn’t a prerequisite for successful conception, not between vampires. There has never been a dhampir born without a Bonding, though.”

  Kendra frowned. “Dhampir? Like Alucard?” she asked, finally finding a use for all the hours she’d spent playing Castlevania as a kid.

  Dr. Roche-Duquesne laughed. “Something like that, although unlike him, the only difference between us and pure humans is that we tend to live a little longer and have better health.”

  “Dr. Duquesne...” Kendra began, but his widow replied before she could finish the question.

  “He was human, but my father found him trustworthy and we were allowed to remain with the Clan. We were a rare pairing, though. Dhampir usually wed amongst themselves, or with other vampires – unlike the vampires, we can go about in daylight without any ill effect, so we’re very useful to have around, which is why most vampires tend to treat us very well.”

  This time, it was Kendra’s turn to laugh. “You know, the more you tell me about your culture, the more questions I have,” she said jokingly, but it was true. The genetics, the social composition of a Clan, the hierarchy... new topics of interests revealed themselves to her with each new answer she received.

  “I can imagine,” Dr. Roche-Duquesne said, smiling sympathetically, “Vampires have a history just as long and a culture just as intricate as humans do, and you are, above all, a scientist. Your heightened curiosity is perfectly normal... just as it’s normal that I can’t give you all the answers at once.”

  She stood up and walked over to one of the desks in the laboratory, her own, Kendra suspected, from the photos of her and Dr. Duquesne that stood on it encased in silver frames, and brought back a large, heavy book, handing it to Kendra as she sat back down. “This is one of the histories vampire children are taught when they first start school,” she told Kendra. “It’s oversimplified, but it covers the basics, and I thought you’d find it useful.” She smiled. “Plus, this way, you and I could concentrate on the medical aspects without getting distracted. We have very little time to make as much progress as we can, and we have to make the most of it.”

  “Thank you,” Kendra nodded, honestly grateful for the thought – and she agreed, it would be better for their work if they could focus only on those parts of the vampire world that had a direct influence on what they were dealing with.

  She put the book down on the table next to her, making a mental note to take it with her when she left, and turned back to the older woman. “Dr. Roche-Duquesne...” she began, but the doctor interrupted her with a laugh.

  “Oh, god, child, no!” she chuckled, “That is too big of a mouthful and much too formal. Anais will do just fine.”

  Kendra lifted an eyebrow. “You call me Dr. Allenby,” she noted, but Dr. Roche-Duquesne would not be dissuaded.

  “So I’ll call you Kendra from now on,” she said, and Kendra had a feeling she was being made fun of a little. “Would that make us even?”

  Deciding that this was not an important enough matter to be fought over, Kendra just nodded before she continued with her original query. “You were telling me earlier how difficult it was for you to realize that what you were dealing with an actual disease.”

  “Oh, yes,” Anais confirmed it, her expression once again growing grave, and Kendra could see now the similarities in the bone structure she shared with her brother. “As I was saying, vampire physiology is such that it tends to kill most disease carriers before they get a chance to do any real damage, though in the years before modern medicine they presented a much bigger problem than they do now. And, as Alex said last night, vampires don’t really get cancer. There are, we presume, instances of abnormal cell growth that grows into cancer in humans, but we’d always thought that the vampires’ natural healing factor nipped those in the bud... until now, that is.”

  Kendra nodded. “When did you first notice something was wrong?” she asked.

  “Roughly a year ago, a few weeks after the Great Gathering. You’ll find out about those in the book I gave you as well, and the next one is the reason why we’re in such a hurry – we’re the hosts of this year’s Gathering, and it’s ten days away. Anyway, after we returned from the last Great Gathering, one of my nurses asked me to pay her sister a visit. The girl seemed to be suffering from uncharacteristically strong fatigue and a fever that just wouldn’t break, which for a vampire is unusual, to say the least. I tried to administer some tried treatments for similar symptoms, but none of it worked and the girl died several weeks later. She spent the last ten days in a deep coma, probably because of the fever-induced brain damage.” God, how sad! And what a shock it must’ve been for a species so used to being practically invincible.

  “We didn’t suspect any foul play at the time, and the girl was cremated,” Anais continued. “But new cases began to appear over time, and we’ve lost twenty-three people since the first case. The first definite findings we uncovered came from autopsies we performed on the poor souls who died, and once we realized what it was that we needed to be looking for, it became easier to diagnose the disease in living patients and find treatments that worked for them. But I’m afraid that, for all our effort, we couldn’t find a way to fully eradicate it, or to prevent further infection.”

  “But how was it that a virus never crossed your mind?” Kendra couldn’t help but ask. She understood now how a vampire or a dhampir doctor could’ve automatically dismissed that possibility, but Dr. Duquesne was human.

  “As you noted yourself, the diseased cells showed more in common with human cancer cells than with virus-infected ones,” Anais noted. “And, also, the investigations Sebastien launched at our father’s order to find out the common traits between the victims showed very few straight lines. We suspected at f
irst it might be transferred through blood, as feeding is an essential part of proper vampire sustenance, but not everyone who fed on an infected person contracted the disease. And if it were airborne it would’ve spread much faster.” Indeed, Kendra thought to herself, mulling over theories in her head as to what could cause such a sporadic network of infection.

  One of the more controversial theories about the most controversial disease in human history came to her mind almost instantly. “Have you ever heard about the multifactorial model of AIDS contraction?” she asked Anais, and the older woman shook her head in negation. “Basically, back in the early days, one of the theories about AIDS was that it took a set of multiple factors to come together for a body to become vulnerable to the disease, which would explain why some people could be infected with HIV for a long time before they develop AIDS. It’s generally considered an outdated theory, and has been for decades, but the way you describe the pattern of this infection... it may very well be the reason why some people who come into contact with infected blood do contract the disease while others don’t.” And AIDS itself had originally been considered a new form of cancer, another parallel that Kendra thought worth looking into.

  Anais sat silently for a while, thinking about Kendra’s theory. “It does make a certain amount of sense,” she said finally, her expression very somber. “And it’s a direction we haven’t considered before. We’ll need to delve into some preparations at first, mostly obtaining new samples, but other than that, I think we have all the tools we need to put that theory to the test.”

  Kendra wanted to say something, but her stomach decided to take the moment she opened her mouth to protest its state of emptiness, and Anais gave her a quizzical look. “You came down here as soon as you woke up, didn’t you?” she asked, and an embarrassed Kendra just nodded. “Well, come on, then,” Anais said, standing up. “Let’s get you fed and caffeinated so we can get to work.”

  Figuring it’d be easier to focus if she wasn’t hungry, Kendra followed Anais out of the laboratory, looking forward to something for the first time since she was brought into the house.

  Chapter Six

  It had been a difficult night for Sebastien, not only because he had to deal with the fact that he’d nearly torn his best friend to shreds but also because he’d had to bite the bullet and admit why he’d been behaving so irrationally in the past twelve hours.

  Ironically, the person who brought this fact to his attention was none other than Alex himself.

  “You’re Bonding with her!” he exclaimed, as he stormed into Sebastien’s office, slamming the door behind him.

  “You have no idea what you’re talking about.” He dismissed the accusation right away, but Alex knew him too well to just let things slide.

  “You pretty much snatched her out of my arms the second we came out of the plane, you sat by her bed like a dog until she woke up, your canines protracted for her without any provocation as if you were a horny teen and you nearly killed me last night for calling her a bitch... which she completely deserved after cold-cocking me – twice!”

  Sebastien’s brow shot up. “Twice?”

  Alex groaned. “She punched me when she saw me at the door before we took her to the lab,” he explained, and Sebastien couldn’t help but laugh. Oh, yeah. She was a real wildcat, his Kendra.

  He instantly felt his face grow cold.

  “Aw, hell,” he cursed. “I’m Bonding with her.”

  Noticeable possessiveness without a valid reason behind it was one of the first and most obvious early signs of Bonding, and he freaking missed it until now.

  “Damn it,” he grumbled, “As if this situation wasn’t complicated enough.”

  Alex grunted, agreeing, and for once not being an ass about being right.

  “I’m going to need to limit the time I spend with her as much as possible,” Sebastien said, prompting his friend to scoff.

  “As if that’s gonna do you any good. Face it, Seb, Mother Nature made her will clear – there are fat brown babies in your future.” Sebastien shot his second a violent look, a warning growl rumbling from deep inside his chest. “Whoa, there, boy,” Alex raised his palms up defensively. “It’s not my fault your woman’s thick and juicy.” Somehow, this only made Sebastien even angrier. “You know what, I’m just gonna shut up about this for now.” Alex finally gave up, and Sebastien decided that was probably the smartest thing his second had said all night.

  “Never mind Kendra now,” he announced, doing his best to calm his temper down. “Tell me about the reports.” While his sister and her late husband were working on the cure for the mysterious and fatal disease that was picking off the members of their Clan one by one, Sebastien and his direct subordinates were trying to find out any connections between the victims in an effort to locate the original source of the infection.

  “There’s nothing to tell,” Alex told him, just as exasperated by the dead ends they kept running into as Sebastien was. “So far the only real connection all of them shared was that they all attended the last Great Gathering... but, come on, it couldn’t be that. No one would be insane enough to desecrate the sanctity of a Gathering, and even if such a maniac existed, wouldn’t we have heard about victims in other Clans?”

  Reluctantly, Sebastien had to admit Alex had a point.

  But, still, there was something that picked at his brain and wouldn’t let him dismiss the idea just yet.

  “You know what I keep thinking about?” he told Alex. “The Mississippi Clan.”

  Alex frowned. “You mean their marriage proposal?” he asked, and Sebastien nodded.

  “You have to admit that was more than a little weird,” he said. “They’ve been pissed at us ever since my father helped my mother run away from home.”

  It's been one of the great romances in vampire history, akin to Romeo and Juliet of the human world, except his parents actually had good heads on their shoulders and planned their union with much greater care. They’d met and Bonded at one of the Great Gatherings, their connection instant and all-consuming, but his maternal grandfather, the Clan King of Mississippi, refused to allow the union, seeking to hurt the then Clan King of Louisiana for some transgression long forgotten by everyone else but him, and not caring who got hurt in the process.

  But he’d underestimated the strength of his daughter’s character. It took her and her beloved months of planning, but when the opportune moment came, she packed her bags and, together with every dhampir slave brave enough to follow her, ran away from her father’s plantation and into the bayou, where Baptiste Roche waited for her with boats and a small but well-equipped army.

  Sebastien’s paternal grandfather granted the runaway slaves their freedom and welcomed them into the Clan, and his parents wed and led a long and happy life together until his mother’s death, their joy a perpetual thorn in the eye of her father and brothers. Ever since then, there hadn’t been a single Great Gathering that hadn’t had at least one major fight between the Louisiana and the Mississippi Clan, usually with the latter as instigators (though God knew their own Clan didn’t lack in dumb hotheads).

  That was, until last year’s Gathering, which saw, for the first time in over 200 years, an offer of peace – and alliance through marriage – between the two feuding Clans. The offer of marriage was declined (unlike Sebastien’s mother’s family, the Roche looked down on the idea of cousin spouses), but the offer of peace was accepted with open arms, and the two Clams spent the night in joint revelry, drinking, dancing and coupling until the dawn’s approaching light sent them all to their beds.

  “I want to investigate this further,” Sebastien told Alex. “Speak to the families, to friends... to any of the infected who are still able to speak. Ask them to tell you every little thing they remember from that night, no matter how insignificant it might seem.” Alex sighed, clearly thinking that this was a lost cause, but nevertheless obeyed. They might butt heads sometimes, but his second never failed to execute the Clan Prince�
�s commands to the fullest.

  Once he and Alex parted, Sebastien threw himself a work, but when it became obvious that the only thing he could think of was Kendra alone in her bed, he gave up and went down to the gym to sweat off his frustrations. It didn’t do much to ease his mind, but at least it made him tired enough to fall asleep without too much tossing about.

  When the sun set and the metal window covers rose, Sebastien woke up to the sound out of pure habit. As usual, after breakfast, he went down to the medical bay to see his father, passing through the laboratory on his way. Sure, he could’ve taken another route, but this one was faster... and he knew Kendra was there.

  It was such an odd feeling, being so profoundly aware of another person, yet he felt as comfortable about it as if things had always been this way. He’d wondered if she was feeling the same, or if it would be taking more time for the Bonding to sink its hooks into her body and soul the way it had into his. He hoped it would happen sooner rather than later, because the wait was killing him.

  She with Anais in the lab, bent over a desk as they observed something he couldn’t see from this angle – but he could observe the generous curve of her full backside instead, and felt like it was a fair exchange. He smirked but otherwise tried to pass through as if her vicinity didn’t have his hormones screaming to snatch her and carry her off to his room over one shoulder.

  For better or worse, though, Anais turned just as he’d passed them by and called out to him. “Going to see the old man?” she asked by the way of greeting, and Sebastien nodded.

  “Is he lucid?” he asked in reply, knowing that his sister kept regular tabs on their father while he was in the sick bay.

  “It was still daylight when I saw him last,” she told him and walked over to her work desk to pick up their father’s sheet. “Come on, we’ll go see if he’s awake together,” she smiled at her brother, linking her arm with his, before calling out to her new assistant. “Kendra, come with us. Father’s one of our latest infected, and the disease hasn’t truly begun ravaging him yet. You’ll get to see how it looks in the early stage... and meet the Clan King, too.”