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ALEC
‘What are we missing, Jake? What am I not seeing?’ I slammed my hand down on the bench top, setting everything rattling. ‘Three months and we’re still no closer. We should’ve identified and isolated that antigen by now.’
Jake grimaced as he stared at the platelets swimming across the imaging screen. It was one of a countless number of specimen slides we’d examined, and our blood sample was diminishing. ‘I dunno. We’ve tried everything.’ He increased the resolution and adjusted the excitation wavelength. Still nothing. ‘And I’ve done that a hundred times, too. Still bloody invisible!’
His exasperation equalled my own. Unless we had a breakthrough, and soon, the Principate faced trouble. Word had already reached us that some prefects had broken the mourning rites and taken their blood vials. The fools had used up their meagre supplies, and were attacking those still in possession. Minor skirmishes had broken out into territorial raids, attracting the attention of local authorities.
Two breaches of decorum that had angered Marcus.
I threatened to confiscate the property of any Brethren found guilty stealing another’s blood vials. How long that threat would hold, I could only guess. Among our kind, self-interest came second only to their blood thirst. As the weeks progressed, that situation would only worsen.
I’d taken a calculated risk in revealing the existence of the bloodvault. And sharing out a few vials in exchange for maintaining Brethren loyalty was, in my opinion, worth it. If not for the Rebel attack, the supply in the vault may have lasted years. None of us had factored in such unimaginable treachery.
We needed to find that antigen soon. I rubbed my jaw to loosen my tensed-up muscles. I yanked open the internal door. ‘I need air.’ And hopefully some inspiration.
Unbuttoning my lab coat, I strode out into the corridor and threw open the timber doors. The icy February wind hit my face, an invigorating blast after the stifling air in the lab. We’d been cooped up in there too long, desperately searching for that damned antigen.
I growled and kicked a stray pebble to loosen up my restless legs. The pebble shot across the courtyard with the speed of a bullet and embedded itself in a nearby tree.
‘Cool.’ Dominik’s eager face smiled up at me.
I sighed. Since making him my juvenile, I had to get used to having him around. I understood that a fifteen-year-old needed a role model, but trailing me like a shadow was a bit much.
‘You referring to the temperature or the rock in the tree?’
‘Hey, the rock. Let me try.’
‘Dom!’ I grabbed his shoulder just as he attempted to whisk past me. Dominik’s lack of co-ordination was a worry. He could miss entirely and land on his arse or he could send a tiny pebble sailing through one of the chateau’s windows. I was in no mood to witness either. ‘Get back inside and help Jake rinse out the slides.’
He made a face. ‘Again? All I do is wash up stuff.’
‘Consider it part of your science training until I decide which distance education program to enrol you in. You need to be in school.’
His face crumbled. ‘I was hoping you’d forgotten about that.’
‘Not at all. I’ll look into it this week.’
‘Do I have to? Since when do vampires go to school?’ If he rolled his eyes any harder they’d end up in the back of his head.
‘Fifteen-year-old ones, with centuries ahead of them, do. You’ve much to learn and practice. And no more argument,’ I added, when he opened his mouth to, no doubt, protest.
He scuffed the toe of his shoe against the gravel, muttering in a mix of Czech and English. I overheard, “Not fair.”
So was this what was awaiting me, this future taste of fatherhood?
Jake’s chuckle drifted on the air.
Terrific. Still, perhaps it was time I trusted him with the blood samples. ‘Want to help load the slides?’
Initially I’d wanted him exposed to the Ingenii samples to build up his resistance to its lure. To all Brethren, Ingenii blood was like catnip, especially to juveniles. And being around Laura, I wanted him extra resistant. His eyes widened, and the grin that accompanied it showed I was on the right track. ‘No licking the samples, Dom.’
First day in the lab, I’d caught him bringing one of the smeared slides to his mouth. We were in mourning, and yes, I knew he was hungry, but the ninety days feeding abstinence wouldn’t kill him. If anything, it would teach him discipline, something every juvenile needed.
Another reason I’d put him on wash-up duty was to keep him away from temptation. ‘I’ve told you, Jake’s told you: Ingenii blood is deadly to Brethren. Do something stupid and we won’t be able to save you.’
‘I won’t, I won’t. Promise. I do not want to die.’ I almost laughed when he raced back into the lab as if the devil was on his heels. In spite of his unwillingness to return to school, the youngster had an aptitude for science and made a competent lab assistant.
The gravel crunched as I paced a few steps away from the small cottage that served as our makeshift lab. Across the drive, light streamed from the chateau’s windows, but the one I was focused on was dark. It was after 2am. Laura was asleep. The steady thump, thump of her heartbeat reached me. Was she dreaming? I could almost see her molten-bronze hair splayed on the pillow, lips invitingly parted begging for me to taste her, the gentle rise and fall of her breasts ... and I felt myself hardening. Not one moment of the day passed when she wasn’t somewhere in my thoughts, drawing me deeper and deeper into her. Laura owned me—body and soul.
The desire to sink my teeth into her soft, milky flesh and drink my fill grew. I thought of the last time I bit her, how she’d moaned with pleasure. I closed my eyes and tried to swallow my desire as my fangs slid down.
Damn! I inhaled, clamped my mouth shut and endured the burning pain until it passed. It wasn’t just the period of mourning. Not until the babe was born could I partake of her blood again and feed from that silky throat. I needed to keep working, to keep my mind occupied lest my feet dragged me to her side to lay bare her throat ... Damn! I shook my head. In the last few days, the urge to bite her had been steadily growing, and it would only continue to rise after the period of mourning was over. Could we avoid each other, have no sex at all? I barked out a laugh. As if! I’d just have to suffer.
Any period of mourning was a dangerous time. From what I’d been told, there had been only two other occasions when our world had mourned the passing of a Great One. Each time, the period of enforced abstinence had led to many human deaths when the younger Brethren, particularly the juveniles, could no longer control their hunger. They’d fed until they’d made themselves sick. My chest tightened at the thought of that happening again.
Yet it wasn’t the only thing bothering me. I hadn’t told Laura about the lamia. One of the things had survived the destruction of Timur’s fortress and somehow had eluded capture by Karl’s men.
They’d managed to track it as far as the border of Karl’s territory, and by his reckoning, the wretched thing was headed here.
Weren’t we weak enough from the deprivation imposed by the period of mourning? How on earth could we possibly hope to kill it, let along resist the powers of the lamia in our present state?
Of all the lousy timing! I picked up another small stone and sent it careering into the sky, shooting through the hazy shimmer of the magical ward guarding the estate. At least the lamia had no chance getting through that.
Just then, a shooting star streaked across the sky before disintegrating in a puff of dust. The view of the stars here was without equal. Had I been in the city, with its glaring lights, the beauty of that passing meteor would have gone unnoticed.
I sucked in a breath. That was it! Why hadn’t I thought of that before?
A surge of adrenaline shot through me and I raced back to the lab. Dominik was swapping slides and peering intently into the spare scope. Whatever Jake had given him to examine wasn’t blood. They smelled like a collection of samples—cheese, saliva and ... human urea?
‘Wow! I never knew human shit looked like that?’
Jake glanced up, cracked a smile and shrugged. ‘He’s a teenager.’
As if that explained everything.
‘Unless you’ve got a brilliant idea, I’m done for the night.’
‘I just may have.’ I flicked off the lights. We didn’t need to use them anyway. Just another habit. ‘We can’t see it because there’s too much light.’
He stared at me over the rim of his coffee mug. ‘Fly that past me again.’
I grabbed the last sample of Laura’s blood from the centrifuge and a couple of clean slides. ‘We’ve been going around this the wrong way—relying on human methods. The antigen’s there all right. We just need to coax it out. If we darken—’
‘Dark field effect? We’ve tried that.’ He emptied the mug and left it sitting on the bench.
‘Nope, not dark field.’ I smeared a drop of Laura’s blood onto the slide and placed it under the ‘scope. ‘Our kind’s nocturnal. So’s the antigen. It’ll only show up in the dark.’ I hoped. It was a hunch and I’d learnt to go with them.
Jake’s eyebrows shot upwards. ‘How are you so sure?’
‘I’m not, but it’s the only thing that makes sense right now.’
He shrugged. ‘Nothing to lose, eh.’
Exactly what I thought. I adjusted the lens, peered down the ‘scope and waited. Five seconds ticked by, then ten. ‘C’mon, I know you’re there.’ Light from the courtyard lampposts still filtered in through the windows. Perhaps that was the problem. ‘Dom, close the shutters.’
Shutters protected the windows of all the estate cottages. Seconds after hearing the click of the final wooden shutter, total darkness engulfed the lab. Perfect. My pulse hitched up a notch when slowly, like a comet appearing in the night sky, tiny golden serpent-like filaments materialised from the black ooze on the slide—the antigen! It could be nothing else.
‘Huh! Found you.’ I grinned like a schoolboy who’d just been told the holidays were starting early.
‘What’s it like?’ Jake’s voice dropped to an almost reverent whisper.
‘See for yourself.’ I stood aside to let him take a look. There was no point in projecting the image onto the computer screen. The camera wasn’t sensitive enough to capture anything in such darkness.
‘Can I look, too?’ Dominik hovered at my elbow, his own set of slides forgotten.
‘In a minute. After Jake.’
Long seconds passed before Jake made any comment. ‘Like nothing I’ve ever seen before. Didn’t know what to expect, but seeing these things swimming around in here ... Seems fitting they’d look like vipers.’
I glanced down at my hand. In the utter darkness of our blackened room, the eyes of the serpent ring glowed. Was it responding to the Ingenii blood?
Jake glanced up and gave me a smile before slapping me on the back. ‘You should’ve gone for that fresh air weeks ago.’ I chuckled as Jake returned to the ’scope. ‘Sneaky little beggars! Hidden in plain sight like glow-worms in a cave.’
‘My turn now?’ Dominik practically hopped from foot to foot.
‘C’mon quick look.’ Jake rose and swapped places with him.
I tinkered with the camera settings on the desktop for a way to lighten the image, when Dominik tugged at my coat. ‘Umm ... something’s happening. They’re like, disappearing. Is it supposed to do that?’
The youngster squeaked when I yanked him from the chair. I peered down the ’scope. He was right. The serpent-like antigens were indeed disappearing—curling up and disintegrating. My stomach dropped. I increased the magnification, but it made no difference. It was gone. ‘What the...?’
‘I didn’t do anything! I only looked,’ Dominik wailed in my ear.
‘It’s okay, Dom. Not your fault.’ I stepped aside for Jake as I tried to figure out what the devil was going on.
‘Shit! We had them.’ He banged the bench top and lifted his head from the scope. His eyes practically glowed in the dark as he gazed at me. ‘Deliberate short lifespan outside its hosts medium so it can’t be transferred?’
Made sense. ‘Except via sex? Then how does it stay alive in the vials?’
‘It’s still in its hosts medium, but the moment you remove it—’
‘—and it comes into contact with the air...’
He nodded.
There was our problem. The antigen could not be separated from the host’s blood. Exposure to air triggered its self-destruct mechanism.
Our job just got a whole lot harder. ‘Well, we’ve finally identified it. Stage one down. Now for stage two: identify its components for replication.’
‘Got a feeling this thing’s gonna fight us all the way.’
‘Then we fight back ... and win.’ We had no choice. I pushed away from the bench and retrieved the last blood sample. ‘All that’s left.’
With a grim smile, Jake snatched his discarded lab coat from the laundry basket. ‘Easy peasy. Let’s do it.’
‘“Easy peasy?”’ I laughed as I prepared the next slide. ‘You sound just like—’
Jake elbowed me. ‘Yeah, yeah I know. What do you expect after living with her for several centuries?’
‘She rubs off on you.’ Laura was convinced Kari was in love with Jake, but how he felt about her was not my concern. Still, it was interesting how he was copying her words.
‘Yeah, she does. Ready to nick this thing?’
Infused with new energy, we set about mapping the antigen’s DNA. Could we do it? Over the next few hours, we tried again and again with no success. The moment we came even close, the antigen would simply disintegrate.
I hated to admit it, but perhaps Marcus had been right. We were tampering with unknown forces. It wasn’t that I feared some sort of retribution, but rather failure. The Principate was a direct consequence of the curse and its reliance on Ingenii blood. The Principate’s demise would signal the end of the advantage enjoyed by the princeps. If we failed to replicate the effects of the antigen, my position as princeps—and Laura’s guardian—would be in jeopardy. In vampire years, I was too young to enjoy the strength and speed I now rightfully claimed.
Once the curse was lifted, my power would fade, for there was every chance Laura’s blood would revert to human.
So much at stake, and for all my scientific learning, I had to keep reminding myself that we weren’t dealing with science, but magic. I had but to look at myself, and the rings I wore, to know the truth of that. But, from my understanding, magic worked only within natural forces.
This is what Jake and I focused on.
As it got close to sunrise, I sent Dominik back to the chateau for his day sleep.
Until he was out of his juvenile stage, Ingenii blood was off limits to him. At this early stage of his transformation, while his body was still adjusting, ingesting such powerful blood could even kill him. That I had been the only juvenile in Brethren history to feed from Ingenii blood attested to my lineage—a direct descendant of the witch Eithne, who had uttered the fateful curse condemning Marcus’s family line.
For the next century, he would have to live in the dark. And unless we could create a synthetic version—once our own blood vials ran out—we would be joining him. But for the moment, and although there was still a day to go before the official end to the ninety days of mourning, Jake and I broke protocol and took our blood vials early.
We needed the daylight hours.
I gazed at the test tube I held. We were down to our last drop of Laura’s blood. If pressed, we could resort to the Ingenii blood vials. More and more, it appeared we may have to—and that this whole endeavour may fail.
It was a prospect I dared not consider.
We slogged on until well after sunset when the phone in my back pocket buzzed—a message from Karl.
‘Watch out. Heard from my contacts in Milan. Lamia’s headed your way all right. It’s killing our brethren and getting stronger. We’re too weak to fight it.’
Holy mother of.... I tensed, closed my eyes and rubbed my brow. This was the last thing I needed. Damn lamia!
