“I have to get out. I can’t keep it up. I’ll never be one of them. Besides, they’ve served their purpose. Like you said, they’ve helped me unlock my skills and control the rage.”
Howard draws some of my blood into a syringe, pauses, and looks thoughtfully at me.
“You are concerned you will lose your humanity?”
That’s a joke. How can you lose what you don’t have? I don’t want to get into that debate with him again, though, so I just remind him of his own words.
“They’re designed to weed it out.”
I watch him transfer the blood onto a series of glass slides, then squeeze drops of milky white liquid from a series of small glass bottles, with pipettes. He puts the first under the microscope on his bench.
“I’m going to have to do it soon.”
He switches the first slide for the second, but doesn’t reply. He doesn’t want to talk about it. That’s hardly fair, considering he’s faked his own death twice now: once when he left The Coven almost fifty years ago, and then again just last year when The Breed found us.
“Are you even listening to me?”
“Of course, my dear.”
He carries on swapping the slides, “Soon, I agree. Not just yet, though, you still have much to learn.”
I sigh. He’s right. As much as I hate The Breed and the whole vampire war, I still need Dillon to teach me. Besides, I haven’t figured out how I’m going to convince them I’m dead yet. That part was easy for Howard, he just faked a run-in with a slayer. Namely me. What would it take, I wonder, to kill something like me?
“I am getting close, Maxi,” he tells me, sounding like the mad professor.
I guess he is. He has three sets of mice: plain, vamp, and hybrid. He keeps them apart. He has to. The vampires he created with his own venom kill the vanilla mice on sight, so far without exception. It’s a nightmare, because it means he has to inseminate the normal mice artificially to get the crossbreeds.
The offspring are another thing. Some come out pretty normal. They are safe to mix in either group. Others are okay with the vanillas, but kill the vamps on sight. The others freak me out though; they take out anything. Plain, vamp, mongrel, it doesn’t matter. They are just killing machines. All the half-breeds so far have two things in common, though. They are sterile, and they are male. I guess it is nature’s way of saying, “I might abhor a vacuum, but not that much.” Sam would be gutted if he realised just how futile his dreams are.
“I have finally been able to complete the matrix,” Howard grins, lifting a half-breed. “Meet Max. She is pregnant.”
“She?” I’m stunned.
“Yes, my dear. The ratio of male to female in the mice may have been more pronounced, but I have had three females so far.”
Obviously, I haven’t been keeping up with Howard’s research. I’ll have to spend more time with him.
“The first, I bred with natural mice, and although she was able to conceive, the vampire in her killed the embryos. The second, I attempted to breed with vampires, but she kept killing them. When I inseminated her, the two strains of the virus turned against each other, and she died. This, my dear, is the proof of the hypothesis. She will give birth within the day.”
He can’t contain his excitement, his free hand forming a fist and shaking, his shoulders hunched. Worried he might crush his precious specimen, I take her from him, lifting the tiny brown creature level with my face. She stares back at me with no trace of fear.
“How is that possible? According to your theory, it shouldn’t be. How does this prove you’re right? I mean, you haven’t been able to get any pure blood vampires. You only have the ones you turned.”
“Ah, that was before my friend in Romania sent me Vlad here.” Howard points to a single mouse, housed away from the others. It is, of course, albino, with bright red beady eyes. Classic.
“Right. So, let me see if I have this straight. The vampire mice, like the true-blood vampires, evolved in isolation, and contracted a congenital disease that somehow became a part of their DNA. So, they can’t be reverted?”
Howard nods and I continue, like a schoolchild reciting times tables.
“The males have both biological and viral reproductive capacity. They can mate with humans, half-blood, or true-blood, and they can turn humans with their venom. The females have only biological capacity. They can only breed with true-bloods because the male half-breeds are sterile and their bodies reject human sperm? And they can’t turn humans, because they have no venom, even though a turned human female can?”
“Yes, yes. A turned male human like me retains the capacity to impregnate a human woman, as you know of course, and the ability to infect any human with contracted vampirism. An infected human female however, loses her ability to carry a child to term. The virus is excellent at curing disease, but it views the embryo as an alien entity and destroys it.”
“But I thought half-breeds were all supposed to be sterile, like me?”
“Not like you, Maxi. Only the males, my dear, only the males. We believed for so long that all dhampirs are sterile, simply because females like you are so very rare. There are only about ten of you worldwide, even less than true-blood female vampires. Even among true-bloods, the male to female ratio is above twenty to one, in crossbreeds, it is closer to fifty to one. In addition, since a female true-blood can only give birth to a half-dozen at most before her bones become too set, true-blood vampires are a dying breed. As if nature realised her mistake and tried to correct it. Only the venomous spread of the disease will save the vampires from extinction.”
“Which is why you want to find the cure so badly? But how does this get you any closer?”
“I am coming to that,” Howard waves a finger in the air. “Max and Vlad here have shown that a true-blood male vampire can breed with a female half-blood. The resulting offspring will tell us much. I am waiting to see if they are closer to the natural, or the vampire, and what their reproductive capacities are.”
“But what difference does that make?” I’m not following him. “All it suggests is that a half-breed like me could, in theory, mate with a true-blood vampire. That would happen over my dead body. No offence Howard, but the revulsion is overpowering.”
“Watch.”
Howard takes my namesake back from me and carries her over to the cage with the vampire mouse. He opens the door, and she scurries into the cage, and over to Vlad, who sniffs around her. The two settle nose to nose.
“I did not have to inseminate her. She does not turn on him. The instinctive revulsion you feel is some kind of reaction to the contracted disease, rather than the congenital version.”
“If I’m following you right, you’re suggesting that if I met a true-blood vampire, I wouldn’t feel the rage?”
“My guess is you would not even recognize him as a vampire. They are living, more like you than they are like me. They are as strong as you are. You would probably assume they were one of you.”
“Scary thought. So, what you’re saying is that Nell and I aren’t sterile, but that if we were somehow impregnated by a contracted vampire, it would kill us?”
“Ah, Nell,” Howard lifts a vial of watered down blood and swirls it around. “She is an interesting case. Something of a pseudo-slayer, you might say. According to this,” he waves the vial in the air, “she has human parents - both mother and father. The mother must have been turned towards the end of the second trimester, and given birth prematurely before the change was complete. She remained in the womb long enough for the virus to supplant some of the human father’s DNA, but not long enough for it to take over completely.”
Howard’s excitement fades. He sighs and his shoulders slump. He wrinkles his nose and bites the side of his bottom lip.
“I am afraid you are right, though, as far as you are concerned. I think it is something to do with not having the venom yourself. You have the congenital disease, but not the contracted one.”
“But I’ve been
bitten before. Sure, it stings, but it doesn’t have any long-term effects. You’ve seen that yourself.”
“I think it is something to do with the method of, um, delivery.”
Like I said, that would happen over my dead body, so it’s not an issue.
“And how does all this get you any closer to perfecting the cure?”
“It is helping me isolate the two separate strains of the disease, and further refine the hypothesis as to its likely effects on various subjects. The antidotes I have so far kill the host more often than they cure the disease. The only thing I can say for sure is that it is harmless to humans. The success rate for returning turned mice to their natural state alive is about twenty five percent, with around fifty four percent mortality and the remainder resistant to the treatment. The mortality rate in the half-breeds is around ninety eight percent, with no evident change in the other two percent. I have no idea of the effect it would have on Vlad.”
We fall silent as Howard ponders his research, and I’m just thankful all the male half-breeds are sterile. The thought of Sam succeeding in breeding makes me want to vomit.
The lab door opens and Libby enters, carrying a cool box. If the whole experimentation thing bothers her, she doesn’t show it. She takes the box, full of bags of blood, to a tall glass-fronted fridge and unloads them into it. She grabs a clipboard and scribbles for a while. She smiles over at us, then leaves without a word, going back upstairs.
Howard watches her the whole time, his head on one side. When she leaves, his eyes lose focus and a wistful expression settles on his face. He mutters under his breath, “So soon,” and seems surprised when I ask him why he never turned her after I was born.
“She would not hear of it,” he says.
I imagine that conversation; it would have been short and to the point.
“Well, I’ll leave you to it,” I pat Howard on the shoulder. He is engrossed in his work again before I have even finished speaking.
As I head out of the lab, I notice a newspaper on one of the desks. The headline: “Murderer Fights for Life” catches my eye, and I read the first few paragraphs of the story. A serial killer is holed up in the local prison hospital. I pick the paper up and wave it at Howard.
“Don’t even think about it.”
He looks sheepish but says nothing.
“I mean it,” I add, taking the tone of a scolding parent. “You stay home this week, until I tell you otherwise. They’re on a witch hunt.”
We stare at each other, the impossibility of the situation heavy in the air. He sighs and says, “Okay.”
I’m already out of the house before it registers that I forgot to ask him about Father Patrick and the dead reporter.
I HEAD BACK into town the human way, taking a bus, and hopping off a couple of stops before the station. I head into the city centre, and watch the revellers lurching from pub to pub.
A group of shrieking women stream past me, at their centre a pudgy blonde in a tight, pink dress, the ruches doing nothing to hide her bulging curves. She has a sash over one shoulder proudly proclaiming her status as “Bride To be.” She tucks her arm through a marginally slimmer woman’s, whose label reads “Chief bridesmaid.” I smile at them half-heartedly as they pass, but they are oblivious to me.
When I reach the pub, trailing behind the last of them, a thick arm drops down in front of me, resting on the doorjamb.
“This one with you, ladies?”
The bride looks over her shoulder, from me to the bouncer, and shakes her head, her mouth turned down, nose wrinkled.
“You got any ID, love?” He guides me to one side, leaving room for other patrons to pass, most of them younger than me.
I fish my ID card out of the small bag slung over my shoulder and wave it in front of him. At least this one isn’t fake, even if it doesn’t show my true date of birth. One of the few advantages of working for The Breed. Even so, he eyes it suspiciously, his head tilted back. He looks down his nose at me before passing it back and nodding for me to enter.
I head to the bar and nudge my way to the front, ordering three bottles of blue to take advantage of the special offer. I down one, then carry the others into a corner, and lean against the wall, watching.
The hens have taken over a corner of the dancefloor. They are surrounding the bride, bouncing, and waving their arms in the air, pointing at her. One of them is much younger than the others, uncoordinated and ungainly. As she tries to dance, she slips off the side of her stiletto shoe, grabbing one of the older girls to keep from falling.
The older girl shrugs her off, and turns back to the group. She leans into one of the others, and the pair throw scornful looks at the hapless youngster and laugh. The younger one flushes, but keeps up her attempts to engage the group for a while before hobbling off and sitting on the edge of a table, rubbing her ankle.
I drain the last of the second bottle of blue, and turn to put the empty on a ledge beside me. My eyes are drawn to a thin, pale looking punter across the room. He’s watching the girl, too, with an all-too-familiar intent in his eyes.
I turn back just as she wobbles off in the direction of the fire exit, reaching into her handbag for a cigarette and lighter. A few seconds after she steps out, he follows. I drain the last bottle and make my way across the room.
“You got a light?” He is asking her as I step into the shadows behind him.
She lights her cigarette and holds the lighter out, the flame flickering and dying with the movement. She takes her eyes from him to thumb the flint, and he moves in, grabbing her wrist.
She yelps and he grins, fangs extending as his lips curl back.
“Here, let me.”
I grab his wrist in turn. My talons extend and my thumbnail digs deep into his tendons, forcing his hand to release her.
She snatches her arm away, rubbing her wrist. Glaring from him to me, she drops the cigarette, twists it under her foot, and wobbles back into the pub.
Fortunately for him, neither he nor I have drawn blood, and his fangs have retreated into the safety of their sheaths. I twist his arm up behind his back, grab his neck and run him face-first into the wall.
“Take a tip from someone who knows,” I tell him, whispering into his ear, not sure why I don’t sever his head. “Get out of town, and don’t come back.”
He nods eagerly. I pull him back off the wall and shove him away from the fire exit into the alley.
He doesn’t stop. He just runs, leaps to the roof of the single-story extension to the rear of the building, and scrambles from there to the rooftops.
I watch him go, then head back to the bar and order another three bottles.
Zero tolerance
THE NEXT MORNING, I report for duty at the police station, where The Breed have their base. I’m still considering Howard’s revelations about the pregnant half-breed mouse, and trying to figure out just how far Sam would go to procure the army of slayers he dreams of leading.
I tool up idly. No idea why we carry so much crap when all we do is rip the vampires apart with our bare hands. It’s not as if it helps us blend in with the human hunters. They know exactly who and what we are. They eye us warily and give us a wide berth, muttering mutiny to each other when they think we can’t hear. Some of them think we’re worse than the vampires. Even those who know they need us don’t trust us.
Sam clears his throat and all eyes turn to him. He doesn’t have to do any more to guarantee the attention.
“New orders from London,” his voice isn’t so much gravlly as bouldery. “Zero tolerance. Vampire plague reaching epidemic. Only one way to control it. Total eradication.”
He sounds like he’s reading a telegram. I imagine him voicing the punctuation, saying ‘stop’ between each phrase. I swallow a giggle at the thought.
If what Sam is saying is true, though, communication between The Coven and The Breed must have collapsed. That thought sobers my mood. The Italian and Romanian vampires, who have always been the most amenabl
e to peace, must be dangerously close to losing control of The Coven. The swelling numbers of Russians and Chinese, with few true-bloods among them, must be getting ready to make a move to seize control.
If that happens, vampire efforts to perfect a cure will cease. The Breed will not negotiate with the undead, only with true-bloods, so there will be nothing to talk about. The two camps will declare open war, and damn the cost to the human population.
I catch Dillon watching me, a warning to hide my feelings in his eyes. ‘They’re not the only ones who’d prefer to settle their differences in battle than round a table, you know.’ The voice in my head is unwelcome, uninvited.
I follow his eyes back to Sam, whose enthusiasm for the new orders is plain in the energy with which he tucks blades and flash bangs into the belt over his right shoulder.
If he weren’t so menacing, he would make me laugh. He looks and dresses like a caricature of an ageing American GI. He wears khaki pants, a combat jacket, and heavy black boots, and carries an unbelievable array of weaponry, none of which I have ever seen him use. His grey hair is cropped close, and mirrored by silvering stubble on his cheeks and chin. His skin, which may have been a deep bronze once, is weathered to a leathery taupe. His deep mahogany eyes are bloodshot, giving the whites a pink appearance at a distance.
I imagine him chewing on a thick cigar stub, rolling it between his fingers and spitting out of the side of his mouth. It doesn’t lift my mood any though.
‘Don’t underestimate him, Max.’
Nor does Dillon’s apparent disregard for the privacy of my own thoughts.
WE BEGIN A brutal raid on the city, killing vampires in their homes. They are homes just like mine, minus the mixed-breed living arrangements. These are not monsters; they are ordinary people going about quiet lives. They work night shifts and blend in with the people of the city, returning to a fridge full of blood instead of food to sleep through the day.
Breed: Slayer Page 3
