“Where is Danyelle?” Gavin said. “Why isn’t she here?”
“I sent her and Lee to fetch Rachelle and her people. They should be here soon.”
“What are we going to do about Barrows?” Chris growled. “We can’t let him follow us around!”
“I’ll take care of it,” David said.
“How? I won’t let you kill him.”
“Let?” Gavin said before David could answer. “I fear you are labouring under a misapprehension, Detective. I allow your presence for the debt I owe you, but do not think for a moment that it extends beyond allowing you to observe. As my guest, you may accompany me and observe. You will not be allowed to interfere with what I decide to do, or not do.”
David broke in before the cop could rally with a fresh argument likely to piss Gavin off. “I’ll deal with this. Barrows might prove useful considering we have AML to deal with.”
Gavin dismissed the matter as dealt with. “The night is passing. Angel has her people waiting outside. What of your pack?”
David turned to Lawrence. “Rally the troops. All are coming, no exceptions.”
Lawrence hurried away.
“Transport?” Gavin said to Edward.
“It’s all arranged. We just need Rachelle and her people to arrive and we can go.”
“Excellent. This matter has dragged on long enough. My sword will end it tonight.”
Edward picked up his cane from where it lay upon his desk. He twisted the pearled handle, pulled, and the sword it concealed slid out a few inches. He grimly slammed it home again.
David stared. He hadn’t expected Edward to fight with them, but he didn’t object after a moment of thought. If Stephen died so would his familiar. Edward had served Stephen for a very long time. If he was going to die, it was only right he die trying to save his master.
Danyelle escorted Rachelle and her entourage into the room some ten minutes later. By that time, Gavin was very impatient to leave. He was in no mood for Rachelle’s mouth or for Spence’s dislike of the witch accompanying her. He glared hard at Spence when the shifter muttered about the smell suddenly permeating the office, and shared it with the witch when she responded by imitating a dog whimpering like a whipped cur.
David shook his head, wondering how anyone got anything done with allies that could barely stand to be in the same room with each other. Spence was right though; the witch did stink, but it was her magic, not body odour. She was a necromance and her aura was dark as a consequence. He wasn’t sure that necromancy, though considered a black art, was more evil than any other kind of magic. The White Council, for example, was only called white because its members shunned any form of black magic, but did that stop them from using their powers to kill their enemies or defend themselves?
Of course not.
White or black didn’t matter; magic of any kind could do harm, just as it could be used to help. Even necromancy had a positive side despite its dark reputation. Anyone wishing to contact a dead loved one had to do so through a practitioner of it. A medium was simply a necromance who limited himself to contacting spirits. That didn’t mean that mediums couldn’t do the other things associated with being a practicing necromance. Refraining from raising zombies was just a choice they made, not a lack of ability despite their denials.
“What are we waiting for again?” Rachelle said snidely.
“You know very well,” Edward said. “Andrew is only hours old. I know it has been centuries for you, but surely you remember your own first rising.”
Gavin snorted.
“Of course I remember!”
“Then you know what we’re waiting for. He will be no good to us starving. He will certainly be no help if he drops dead before showing us where Stephen is.”
David felt Ronnie approaching. He would know her Presence anywhere. “Here they come now.”
“Finally!” Rachelle said as Ronnie led Andrew back into the room. The vamp looked much better than he had. He had taken the time to wash up and change clothes. “You know where Stephen and Michael are being held?”
Andrew nodded warily, and David remembered that apart from Danyelle whom he’d met only briefly earlier, Andrew was just now meeting more of his own kind for the first time. He was so new that Rachelle and Gavin were literally the first vampires not of his own House he’d met since being turned. David wondered if it was anything like meeting a shifter from another pack. He recalled that sense of kinship he’d felt when meeting Geoffrey and his family earlier. He had recognised them as shifters and wolves like him, but there had been a sense of wrongness too. Maybe that wasn’t the right word for it. Perhaps otherness was a better one. That sense that they were kin but not pack had been striking. Did vamps feel like that when meeting vamps from a different House or line? He didn’t know, but would like to. He would ask Stephen about it, and a lot more besides, but they had to rescue him first.
“Who is our enemy?” Gavin said intently. “AML yes, but who is behind them? I refuse to believe a few AML fanatics managed to capture Michael and Stephen. One of us might fall to them if taken by surprise, but two of us both captured and not slain? No, I do not believe it.”
“He’s a really old vampire named Arcadian—” Andrew began.
Rachelle gasped and seemed to sway as if struck. Danyelle paled and that was telling. Vampires were very pale at the best of times. It was Gavin’s reaction that was the most interesting.
“Impossible!” Gavin snapped. “You lie!”
“He isn’t lying,” David said. He was still learning about what he could do now, but that lesson was one of the first that Mist had taught him. “I don’t know who Arcadian is. Someone bad I’m guessing, but Andrew isn’t lying.”
“Arcadian is dead,” Gavin said flatly.
He shrugged. “Then this man has the same name.”
“None of us would use that name,” Danyelle said. “No one would dare.”
Rachelle nodded. She looked ill. Scared. Very scared.
“I say again,” Gavin said, addressing himself to the very worried and scared looking Rachelle. “Arcadian is dead. I don’t know who this man is, and I don’t care. I do know he isn’t who he professes to be. Be at ease, Rachelle, there is nothing to fear. I helped Justin destroy Arcadian—he is no longer a presence in our world. I swear this to you.” He turned back to regard Andrew thoughtfully. “Now, what else can you tell us?”
“Arcadian...” Andrew hesitated at Gavin’s ferocious glare. “I don’t know what else to call him!”
“Never mind. Call him Arcadian, or call him Shirley Temple for all I care. Just get on with your story so we can end this mess tonight.”
“AML has been backing Arcadian with money and supplying him with victims. They kept us in the cellar of the main house in cages. They’re electrified. Stephen said the bars were too strong to bend, and he did try despite the pain. Michael did too. They have humans and shifters captive down there as well; they use them to feed Michael after they drain his blood.”
“They drain him to create rogues like O’Neal I assume, but why?”
“It’s much worse than making a few rogues.” Andrew said grimly. “They’re just as much Arcadian’s victims as Stephen and Michael are. They’re test subjects; the result of a weapon AML commissioned him to make, but he fooled them. They funded his research into a bio-weapon meant to kill vampires en masse, but that isn’t what he created.”
“How far along are they?” Rachelle said.
“The weapon is real, but it’s not fully ready. It’s not airborne yet, but it does work. The rogues were created by tainting Michael’s blood with it. Arcadian is playing AML for fools. The weapon is designed to change a third of all humans alive today into vampires, not kill them.”
David shook his head. “Madness.”
“A third?” Gavin said. “Why only a third?”
“Michael said the virus will skip a third of the population entirely. They’re going to be your... our cattle. Food. The final
third will simply die. I don’t know why he chose that ratio, but maybe he thinks saving an equal number of humans for food is optimal for his new world order. I don’t know, but Michael says it doesn’t matter anyway, because the rogues are all insane. He says it’s because their maker is a virus in a petri dish, and they don’t have a bond to keep them stable.”
“That would explain O’Neal,” Gavin said thoughtfully. “I knew at the time there was something not right about him.”
“We have to stop this,” David said. “If this gets out, AML won’t have to kill us all, the government will do it for them. This will turn every human against us.”
“A purge,” Gavin agreed. “Stephen feared it, and warned us it might happen. The government will not discriminate between guilty and innocent. A weapon like the one you describe would be enough incentive for them to kill every non-human in the country, not just my kind. They’ve been looking for an excuse for years. It’s only fear of international condemnation that holds them back as it is... well that, and the elves.”
“Those flighty pests don’t like us any better than the humans do,” Rachelle said snidely.
“True enough, but they would still see any purge as a potential threat.”
“You’re talking about war,” Spence said. “A new War of Races, like in the old days.”
David shivered. The last War of Races in Europe lasted decades and decimated populations there. Here in the Republic with humans wielding modern technological weapons against elves wielding battle magic and the ancient war spells created with it, the result could literally devastate the country. There were places in Europe where nothing would grow even to this day. Those deserts, the blasted lands, could occur in the Republic if things went wrong tonight.
“We can’t let it come to that,” he said. “We have to silence everyone involved.” The cop looked uneasy suddenly. “Don’t even think about it.”
She looked surprised. “What?”
“You know what. I won’t let you warn them.”
“I would never!”
Gavin regarded her thoughtfully. “You will accompany me tonight in my car. You will leave yours here at the club.”
“But!”
“No arguments, Detective. I will have you under my eye until this is over. You can do what you want after that, not before.”
She scowled but made no further objections.
Gavin looked around. “We go now. This ends tonight, for good or ill.”
* * *
38 ~ Justifications
Professor Elliot Massey switched on his computer next to the bio-containment cabinet and navigated through his files to find his place. He had saved his work that morning before bed—the vampires insisted they work at night to allow them to oversee the research. Understandable he supposed, but damned inconvenient. He had never slept well during daylight hours.
He found his last entry in the current file and read through it. He nodded as he recalled the negative result and checked the reference number. He didn’t want to waste time going back over old ground.
He took his seat before the level four bio-containment cabinet and pushed his hands into the gloves, forcing his fingers into the clinging rubber and working his hands until he had a proper fit. The samples were in sequence waiting for him to evaluate. He found the last one he had worked with, checking the reference number to be certain, and started work on the next in line.
He adjusted the microscope and laid bare the latest specimen’s secrets. Specimens now? Those poor souls were mere specimens were they? When had they stopped being people to him? He couldn’t pinpoint when it had happened. It had sickened him at first, participating in Arcadian’s mad experiments, but rationalisations and justifications had led him further and further into damnation. The goddess would shun him for betraying his oath this way. Do no harm—it was such a simple oath. Surely, there had been some way he could have kept it, but no, it had been too late the moment Arcadian offered to save Susan’s life.
Treacherous, foolish, hope.
He had allowed himself to become one of the inmates of this madhouse for hope’s sake, and Susan was the key to his cell. Susan and Chani rather. The vampire had kept her word by making Susan her familiar—her human servant. As promised, the process had cured her, but now she and the vampire were bonded. Nothing but death could separate them, trapping him in this evil dream doing Arcadian’s bidding. How far he had fallen. No not fallen. Pushed. Immortality research indeed. The project had never been about immortality. It was nothing but a eugenics program! Knowledge wasn’t evil; research of any kind could be misused, but live human test subjects in the basement of a vampire’s mansion were a big clue that the entire project was evil and illicit.
He sighed, and changed the current sample for the next one in sequence.
There was nothing he could do. He could refuse to continue his work. Jennifer and their colleagues would carry it forward, but at least he could deny Arcadian his skills. It would salve his conscience a little, but he doubted it would materially affect the end result of the project. It might slow it, but stop it? No. He needed to get Susan out of the house, out of Chani’s reach long enough to call the authorities down on Arcadian. The problem was the bond. Chani could find Susan or call her to her side from miles away. Even clear across the city, and there was another problem with calling the authorities in. He couldn’t allow harm to befall Chani. Harm to her was tantamount to harming his daughter—the bond again.
Whatever he did or didn’t do, he needed to protect them both while at the same time ensuring Arcadian’s mad scheme failed.
He pulled one hand out of the cabinet and updated his notes on the last sample on his computer. So far, the current study was proving to be a dead end and he thanked the goddess for it. A way to deliver the modified vampire virus en masse would turn a simple outbreak into a pandemic. He had to get himself and Susan away before his work reached that point.
He patted the pocket of his lab coat, feeling for the contents and mentally counting them. One, two, three... he felt better knowing he had them ready. Not that he had a good plan about what to do if he ever used them, but their presence was reassuring. The pressure syringes contained his one chance to get out of this madhouse and bring his daughter safely out with him. The syringes contained a concoction of drugs he had cobbled together that he was sure could drop a rhino in its tracks let alone a single vampire woman. If he used it on Chani, he had better have a way to contain her. If he didn’t have her tucked safely in a cage when she woke up, he was a dead man.
He made a few more notes on the computer, and went back to work on the next sample.
Had he any pride in this research, he would have been extremely pleased with the team’s progress to date. A lot of the work predated his arrival. Jennifer was responsible for much of that early progress, but the work had progressed by leaps and bounds since he’d joined the team.
Unfortunately.
He was very much afraid that time was running out. He needed to act and soon. They didn’t have a reliable airborne delivery vehicle for the modified virus yet, but VH29C—the latest iteration of the vampire virus and the most successful—was already a viable candidate for the weapon that Arcadian wanted. And it was a weapon no matter the vampire’s demurrals. Why else research an airborne variant if not to weaponise it?
Another notation on his computer, another sample under the scope.
The flu virus he was currently studying belonged to a particularly virulent strain. He had tested and discarded hundreds of variations on the theme now, modifying the horrors found in nature to create something worse. He had never been so relieved when all his attempts had failed.
Another notation, another sample.
He peered into the eyepiece and froze. Oh goddess no... he wasn’t ready! He peered into the eyepiece again hoping he was mistaken, but no, he had it right. This was disaster. His time had run out.
He looked around at his colleagues in the lab. No one was takin
g notice; they were too busy at their own scopes. He caught Jennifer’s eye and beckoned her over. Puzzlement flashed upon her face, but she rose from her station and came over. He stood to give her access to his scope, and she sat before it. She made some adjustments and studied the current sample. She looked up sharply moments later, and he nodded. They had done it... and doomed themselves. He saw the realisation dawn on her face, and her excitement changed to fear.
He took his place back from Jennifer and removed the sample from his scope, noting the reference number. He read the entry on his computer, and frowned. It was a strain of H9N2, or avian flu, that he had modified. H9N2 was an old enemy of humanity long since conquered, but modified to carry VH29C he had created something entirely new—a virulent airborne plague with no cure. It would kill millions if released. Billions in time, and would change the survivors into something else. This was it, the culmination of their work—Arcadian’s undead plague was a reality.
This was utter disaster. If Arcadian learned of this, he would want to go into full production immediately. The research phase was over, and their usefulness at an end, though only Jennifer and he knew it as yet. He put the sample back into the rack with the others to hide it. Jennifer’s eyes followed it, unable to let it go.
“What do we do?” Jennifer whispered.
“I’ll tell you what we don’t do,” he replied. “We don’t tell anyone. That’s first.”
“And second?”
“We get out of here and call the authorities. They will stop Arcadian. They must.”
“If they don’t, he’ll kill us.”
He nodded grimly. “He’ll kill us anyway. The moment he learns we’ve succeeded, he’ll know he doesn’t need us anymore.”
Fear filled Jennifer’s eyes again. “I wish I’d never heard of Arcadian. I wish I had said no.”
“I did say no, but he wouldn’t take that for my answer. He found a way to compel me. He would have found something for you too. You have family, friends, something to protect. He would have found it.”
Shifter Legacies Special Edition: Books 1-2 Page 48