by James Fahy
I couldn’t help thinking about poor, little Angelina.
The same strain of retardant which had caused our beloved lab rat to combust now flowed through my veins, damping, if not completely eradicating, the Pale virus. I sincerely hoped that both Brad the rat and I would last. I glanced over at his cage, and he stared back at me placidly.
We’re in this together now, buddy, I thought. You and me against the world.
Griff’s final tweaks to Epsilon had stabilised it but the base formula was my own work, so I knew full well what Epsilon was. It wasn’t a one shot cure. If the serum held (which was in no way guaranteed), then this was something I was going to have to dose myself with regularly for the foreseeable future, at least every twenty four hours, until we could improve it and maybe make it a permanent inhibitor.
Yay, the remainder of my future on medication. I sighed. It still sounded better than the alternative to me.
I should turn myself in, I realised, report myself to the Cabal and let them know I was carrying the infection, even if it was currently under control. I knew that was what I should do.
I would be considered a Level Two threat and almost certainly quarantined. But is that all they would do? Keep me locked up until they knew the extent of my ‘cure’?
From what I had learned of their methods downstairs in the MA division, I didn’t trust that. Knowing that part of my company was developing weapons for the Cabal, I wouldn’t have expected anything less than medical testing, possible dissection, and then the disposal of my body in a clean incinerator.
I was an unknown quantity now. Cabal wasn’t fond of those.
Griff had relayed my story to Lucy by the time I had dressed and freshened up as much as is possible in the lab toilets. I had pinned my hair up off my face but avoiding looking at myself in the mirror, trying to convince myself it wasn’t because I was afraid I might see a stranger there.
I had been infected and cured of a bio-militant mutated virus, bitten by one vampire, and I’d drunk from another. All three of these things had had remarkable effects on my physical wellbeing. Was I still a regular human? I sure as hell hoped so.
Just when I thought I couldn’t feel any more uncomfortable, I came out of the bathrooms and found myself immediately confronted with a half-naked vampire.
Thankfully, I had been in the bathroom when Allesandro had first awoken so by the time I came out of the ladies room, he was only half naked. As I re-entered the lab, he was finishing buttoning up a pair of Griff’s borrowed jeans. Lucy had just handed him a lab coat, her face an odd shade of pink. She looked a little quivery. He didn’t seem to notice as he took the lab coat from her graciously.
He noticed me though, and slid his arms into the sleeves as he turned. He looked relieved to see me and strode over to where I stood, the open lab coat flapping around him like a cape. I stared wide-eyed, shocked to see him up and about but also surprised to see there was not a scratch on him.
His blisters were healed, his skin was flawless, his hair its usual wavy mop. The only notable difference was that instead of his customary white skin, he looked remarkably tanned all over. He was positively glowing with health, like a lifeguard in Barbados. I couldn’t help but notice his coffee coloured chest and stomach, dark against the white lab coat slung carelessly over his shoulders.
He could have passed for human now. The burns he had received had literally tanned him. My vampire looked less like a crispy mess and more like a lifeguard.
I really had to stop referring to him as ‘my vampire’, I told myself sternly.
“You’re … awake,” I made myself say, forcing my roving eyes up to his face and away from what I couldn’t help but notice, with scientific detachment of course, were perfectly sculpted obliques. “And dressed – after a fashion.”
My voice squeaked a little with embarrassment as Allesandro looked down at me, a tiny smile on his golden face. He was clearly enjoying my attention.
“You too,” he said. “More’s the pity.”
He flicked a thumb over his shoulder without looking away.
“Your companions were kind enough to find me clothing, but I cannot fasten the skinny human’s shirt, I’m afraid. We are differently built it seems.”
I glanced behind Allesandro to see Griff standing with his arms crossed, looking quite sulky, while Lucy teetered on a chair, her fist crammed in her mouth as she gestured rather rude things at me excitedly. She was practically miming ‘hubba hubba’ like a cartoon character.
I pointedly ignored her.
“For God’s sake, button the lab coat at least,” I said. “It’s … distracting.”
I stepped forward and buttoned the coat up for him. He stood still and let me do so, looking down at me curiously as I slid the buttons together one by one. The sleeves were too short for him, I noticed, and I glimpsed on his darkly tanned wrist a thin white scar, still healing.
“Thank you,” I said quietly, as I fastened his top button.
My fingers lingered on the pin. I swallowed hard.
“Thank you for saving me, for the blood. You didn’t have to do that.”
“You too,” he answered. “You could have left me in the pit to die.”
His hands closed over mine. They were cold. I looked up at him.
“You came to rescue me. I wasn’t going to leave you there.”
His blue eyes flickered over me as though he were taking me in, checking I was healed, no longer mutating into the Pale. He seemed so invested in me. I couldn’t explain it.
“And besides,” I said briskly, pulling my hands out of his and patting his chest in a rather matey way, trying to diffuse the tension quickly. “I needed you to give me a ride here, didn’t I?”
He smiled lopsidedly. It wasn’t his deliberate Sanctum charmer trademark smile. It seemed like his very own.
“I am very glad you are not dead, Doctor,” he said.
“Yeah, me too,” I replied. “Although after what we’ve been through, I think you can probably call me Phoebe.”
“Phoebe then,” he said softly.
It was almost a whisper. I was painfully, agonisingly aware that Griff and Lucy were both watching us intently and I felt my face reddening like a plum.
“Allesandro,” I said firmly, focusing on the matter in hand. “You and I? We need to talk.”
29
The four of us sat together around my workstation. Griff had fetched fresh coffee for us all. It must be after sundown, since Allesandro was up and about.
The ruckus at Carfax Tower had been in the early hours of the morning. Surely it was over with now and, if so, either Veronica Cloves and the rest of Cabal or else Gio and his murderous troupe would be out looking for me. Blue Lab was the safest bolthole to be in, I knew. Even Allesandro couldn’t have got past the iris and palm scanner without me so we were safe from other GOs, but Cloves could certainly come down here and it was surely an obvious place to look. I didn’t know how much time we had.
“It’s time you explained to me what the hell is going on,” I said to Allesandro. “My life has been one very unpleasant rollercoaster since you slipped your telephone number in my pocket, and I want to know why. Who are the Black Sacrament? What’s with the teeth? Why have you double-crossed your admittedly charmless and clearly unhinged clan master? What is on these files everyone is so interested in, and what the hell does this have to do with my dad?”
The vampire looked sidelong at Griff and Lucy, both of whom were watching him intently.
“Your people here, they can be trusted? You are sure?”
“Dude,” Griff said irritably, “you’re wearing my jeans. What more do you want?”
“They’re tight,” the vampire complained.
“They are, aren’t they?” murmured Lucy distantly, eyes glazed.
“They’re my team,” I said to Allesandro. “My friends. They just saved my ass. They broke every rule we have down here to stop me from dying, and they didn’t sell you down the river,
when they had all night to do so. You’re damn right I trust them. It’s everyone else I have a problem with.”
Allesandro considered this a moment, and then nodded.
“Very well.” He leaned forward. “The Black Sacrament, the ones who have been causing all your problems, are a breakaway group within the vampire community. It’s important, to me at least, that you understand that they do not represent the motivations or the interest of the community at large.”
He sneered, his fists balling on the workstation.
“They don’t even represent the interests of my clan at large. Gio is a fanatic. The others – Jessica, Helena, and the two male meatheads – they follow him out of loyalty; they believe in his cause. Or perhaps they are just used to following orders.”
He shrugged, leaning back in the chair.
“I am not one of them. I love my clan brothers and sisters, but they have been led astray by this poisonous sect. They are living in the past, in Gio’s obsession.”
“What do they want?” I asked.
“The Black Sacrament, Gio and the others, believe that you humans are responsible for ruining what was the old world. Back when we lived in secret, when you thought of us only as myths. Life was better, in their opinion. They do not want to integrate. They do not want to fit in, here in this new world of ours. They don’t want to play nicely with others. But that is not all they are angry about. Most of all they want their master back.”
“Their master?” Griff asked. “I thought Gio chap was the clan master?”
The vampire nodded.
“He is, now. He wasn’t always.” His eyes flicked back to mine. “We are a long lived people, Phoebe. You call us immortal, but you humans know so very little about us really. Gio has been clan master since the wars began. Since our true clan master, a very old and very powerful vampire named Tassoni Bonaccorso was lost to us.”
“He was killed when the wars began?” I asked. “You say Gio took over when the wars started, so your clan’s original master died before then? When the Pale virus mutated and the world went to hell, I mean?”
Allesandro’s eyes were very direct.
“Tassoni didn’t die just when the world went to hell …Tassoni is the reason the world went to hell.”
Allesandro pushed his coffee aside with a sneer. I glanced at Griff and Lucy. They were watching the vampire with looks of suspicion and awe respectively, but were both clearly enthralled by what he was saying.
“Mankind, your people, created the Pale. Everyone knows this. They were intended as a weapon, a defence system – the ultimate super soldier, yes?”
Griff nodded from behind his coffee cup.
“An army of near perfect killers, combat perfect, their DNA tweaked and engineered to make them faster, stronger, quicker to heal, harder to damage.”
“A noble cause for your human scientists,” the vampire said. “Such an army would be unstoppable, the ultimate deterrent to terrorism and to war. Imagine their dream; a nation protected by near invincible peacekeepers, the whole world saved.”
“This isn’t anything we don’t already know,” Griff interrupted, lowering his mug. “We know our own history well enough, thank you.”
Allesandro shot him an angry glance.
“Do you?” he challenged. “I’m not sure.”
He looked at all of us in turn. There was fire in his eyes now, a deep buried anger I hadn’t seen there before.
“Do you not wonder where the technology came from, this sudden leap in bio-medical engineering that appeared out of nowhere in the old civilisation. How do you think the Pale were made in the first place?”
He looked around at our faces, his blue eyes now just thoughtful, almost sad.
“Do you really believe they are the product of tampered human cells? Reconditioned human DNA? Impossible. The government of the old world, before the wars, started a quest for a perfect solider, yes, but then they stumbled upon a most wondrous find. Something that would shift the balance of their research.”
He leaned forward.
“They found a vampire,” he said. “This was long before we had come out of the shadows to drag you back from the brink of your own extinction. This was before the wars, before mankind even knew of our existence. Your human scientists, the government and military of the old civilisation, they found and captured a live vampire.”
“Tassoni Bonaccorso,” I said, suddenly finding my throat very dry.
The vampire nodded at me.
“The humans took our clan leader. The strongest and most powerful of us. They buried him in a secret laboratory, far from the world of prying eyes. What a find. Another species, long thought to be myth. I’m sure they were quite excited by it; better than the missing link, better than the Holy Grail.”
His face soured.
“So they experimented on him. They discovered that he was stronger than a human, faster, could regenerate wounds at a phenomenal rate. We believe he suffered greatly at their hands in the name of science; filled with drugs, sampled, dissected, harvested. They didn’t care. It’s not like he was human, is it? Just a strange animal to be studied and dissected.”
His mouth turned downwards in disgust. I couldn’t help but think of the Pale in the cell on the MA Level of Blue Lab.
I thought of the test results, all those subjects, all of them dead. But I hadn’t felt as bad as I did when I’d discovered the deaths in Cambridge, because they were people. Actual human deaths.
I found I couldn’t meet Allesandro’s gaze as he continued.
“Tassoni was a powerful being. Old and strong in ways you cannot imagine. How your humans kept him captive and under control, I can only guess. Our clan has spent the last thirty years gathering together the information we have, but even the Black Sacrament don’t have all the facts. So much history, ours as well as yours, was lost in the wars. We’re never found where they held him.”
“They used Tassoni’s DNA to create the Pale, didn’t they?” I said flatly, feeling numb. “The Pale are made from vampires?”
“Not just vampires,” Allesandro responded. “We have weaknesses of our own you know, specific to our kind, which you humans do not; our inactivity during daylight, our reaction to sunlight, the aversion of certain precious metals.”
He smiled humourlessly.
“Your people of old were ambitious, Doctor. The scientists, the military, the government – those who dreamed of building their super soldiers, they wanted the best of both worlds. They spliced the DNA of my kind from their ‘subject’ Tassoni with human DNA, trying to counter the negatives.”
He spread his hands with a flourish.
“A hybrid creature was born; albino, human in appearance, pale. But these things were merely cosmetic. The superior being had been created. The mission had been accomplished. The new race was born, a race to serve and protect mankind in its infinite wisdom. The Pale had arrived in the world; the bastard child of your people and mine.”
“But the Pale went … wrong,” Lucy said. “The virus, their genetic makeup, the alterations, they ended up mutating at an exponential rate – the rational thought of the new super soldiers broke down.”
Griff nodded.
“By the time the new creatures began to devolve, there was no pulling the plug on them,” he said. “It was too late to abandon the project by then; there were already tens of thousands of the Pale produced, all test-tube grown and hyper-matured through adolescence to be stationed all through the free world. When the genetic decay came, it was swift and unstoppable, and those who were attacked became infected. The virus transmits biologically, as Doctor Harkness recently demonstrated.”
Allesandro shook his head at Griff.
“But this is the important truth. This is where the misconception is,” he said. “The Pale did not ‘go wrong’. They rebelled against and attacked humans because they were instructed to.”
We all stared at the vampire in confusion.
“Instructed to?” I
echoed.
“As I have said, your people know little about mine,” he explained patiently. “Do you know what happens when a vampire ‘makes’ a human? When their DNA is mixed outside of a lab, I mean?”
Lucy actually put her hand up as though she was in school.
“That person becomes a vampire too,” she said. “Well, I think the vampire has to bite you and drink your blood, and then you have to drink the vampire’s blood as well. The same one, I mean. Then you … become a vampire yourself?”
Allesandro was staring at her, and her voice had lost all its enthusiasm by the end of the sentence.
“No,” he responded simply, leaving Lucy more than a little deflated. “Vampires are not made from amended humans. We are not an infection. We are a separate species of being altogether, as different to you as Bonewalkers are. When a vampire deliberately makes a human through genetic bonding, the result is what we call a ghoul.”
He looked back to me as I leaned forward, intrigued.
“What’s a ghoul?” I asked.
“A ghoul is a pathetic creature; half dead, basic animal instincts, servile, obedient. They are the perfect, if extremely unattractive, slave. They do not think for themselves. They obey only their master, and they are endlessly hungry. They can be useful to us. We can control their actions, their movements, like puppets.”
He laced his fingers together on the table top.
“The Pale, all of them, came from a mixture of human DNA and the DNA of one vampire, one master vampire. Tassoni. And he was understandably angry at humanity. The Pale were, and are, his ghouls.”
“Christ,” Lucy said, looking horrified. “But if a vampire can control any ghoul it makes—”
Allesandro smiled ironically.
“Of course these ghouls, thanks to human scientific intervention, were strong and bold and clever. They were filled with killing aggression on a scale unheard of. You unwittingly created your own perfect murderers. We can control ghouls remotely, using our minds. You must know by now, Phoebe, that my kind has advanced psychic potential. We can speak directly into your minds. We call this the whisper. We can force truth from your lips. We call this persuasion. And we can command those who we have created. We call this will.”
