“Alana?” He looked at her in disbelief and, though she threw her arms around him, he appeared to be in shock. The color drained from his face.
“What are you doing here?” Edward looked over her shoulder and realized that Amon was right behind her. He curled his arms protectively around his sister and a look of suspicion crossed his face.
“I had to find you. We need to get you out of here right away!”
“We?” he questioned, planting his feet firmly on the ground, sending a clear message to Amon. “Do you have any idea what that creature is behind you, what a monstrous abomination he can be?”
Alana struggled in his arms and pushed him away, obviously displeased with his words as she rejoined Amon near the door and stood by him with her arms crossed over her chest.
“This creature saved me from a pack of your little ‘friends’ in the warehouse district, and he helped me come here tonight to find you.”
“They are not my friends,” he spat the words out in disgust, “and I’m not leaving here until I get what I came for.”
“If you remain here when the sacrifice to the God begins, you’ll get nothing but death—and that is if you’re lucky,” Amon said firmly, placing a protective arm around Alana’s shoulders. He had promised to help her find her brother, but he was not prepared to risk her life should Edward choose to stay.
“There is no sacrifice. Look around you. The place is in a shambles; the followers released us all and told us to get out.”
Amon could hardly believe his response, but the evidence was clear all around them.
“Why do you stay, then, when you could go with your sister who risked so much to free you?”
“They killed my best friend,” he answered, and he suddenly sounded very tired. “We came to New Orleans to research a strange blood type that we heard rumor of. We set up one rule that we promised to follow, and that was make sure we worked on the buddy system. He went out on his own one evening because I was overwhelmed with research. I should have gone with him, we both should have met with the same fate, but it didn’t happen that way because I was busy.”
“I am so sorry, Edward.” Alana’s voice was filled with compassion. “He made the decision to go alone; you can’t shoulder all of the blame. After it happened, you should have confided in me. I would have done anything to help you.”
“I couldn’t afford to put you at risk, don’t you see? I had already caused one death.”
“You did not cause his death. This has gone on far longer than you know.” Amon spoke truthfully, but the haunted look remained in Edward’s eyes.
“He made it back to our apartment and told me he had been bitten by some kid in a street gang, down some dark alley. At first, I thought he was joking but his skin was pale, and he soon became deliriously feverish. I drew his blood, as much as I dared to take in his condition, and I spent the rest of that night trying to discover a way to help him. His fever grew worse and, as the morning approached, he writhed in agony until I covered the windows with tin foil to keep out the light. He kept saying he was changing, dying; I knew it was true as I tested his blood. The strain was alien in nature, like nothing I had ever seen in a lab or heard of in a medical journal, and it was growing stronger by the minute, dominating his original type. By the late morning, I decided to take him to the hospital despite his fervent pleas against it. He died before I could get him out the front door. I thought I could save him, but all I had done was fail him.”
“What do you hope to accomplish by remaining here, your own death next? You cannot kill a God.” Amon tried to reason with him, but his words did little to dissuade the determined young man.
“No, I can’t kill a God,” he immediately responded with a cold smile on his face. “But I can kill the Devil.”
Edward turned his back to them and reached between the headboard of his bed and the mattress, removing a small aluminum case. They were completely silent as he entered the combination on the lock and lifted the lid.
“I ran so many tests on the blood he left behind,” he explained, withdrawing a large syringe, filled with a dark red liquid. “The foreign strain could not be separated from the existing plasma, but it could be affected. It was so simple, really, once I found the right indicator. Sickle cell anemia eradicated the invading infection. It killed the host blood as well, but it gave me what I needed to stop this…thing from taking any more lives.”
“You merely needed to get close enough to use it, so you became one of the Chosen,” Amon finished for him.
“I know where he is,” Edward nodded, “and with the house in chaos, it will be easier to reach him. I will end this now or die trying. If you attempt to stop me, I will use this on you.”
“We will go together.” Amon answered his challenge in a way that let him know he would not be refused. “I have demons of my own I need to face, if you will allow me to stand with you.”
Alana took his hand openly and raised her chin with a sign of strength. It was clear that she trusted Amon and was asking her brother to do the same. Edward watched her carefully and appeared to come to a decision as he set the syringe back inside the case and closed the lid.
Amon allowed the devastated young man to lead their group, but he followed closely on his heels, listening for signs of life in the shadows of the deserted halls. They quietly wound their way deeper and deeper into the interior of the house, meeting with no resistance.
“This is the last door,” Edward whispered with care over his shoulder, though Amon was well aware of the fact that their presence would have been detected a long time ago if the Demon God were truly in the next room.
“Permit me to enter first,” he respectfully requested and, though Edward frowned, he stepped aside so that Amon could reach the door handle.
He expected it to be locked, but it turned easily in his grasp and he opened the door to a large ballroom. The room was nearly dark, though there were softly glowing candles placed strategically around the area. He could see quite well in the shadows, but he was certain his human companions had not caught sight of the silhouette on the ornate throne at the far end of the banquet hall yet.
Every fiber in his being cried out in warning, but he could sense no other presence in the room and so he moved forward.
“Amon,” a beautiful male voice spoke his name from the seat at the end of the chamber. “You have come at last.”
Edward and Alana jumped when the words reached their ears, but Amon held out a steadying hand. With great caution, he advanced close enough so that his companions would be able to see the figure as well as he.
It was difficult to judge the ethnicity of the creature before him, with his beautiful almond-shaped eyes, his cream-colored skin and light hair. It was almost as if the man before him was a perfect balance of all the races known to mankind.
“I know you have come here to kill me, but that will not be necessary now. I am leaving this place.”
“Why allow us in here at all, if you knew of our intentions?” Amon discovered that the courage to ask this being a simple question was much harder to come by than he would have imagined.
“You are a very special son of mankind, and in so many ways,” the perfect voice responded. “I wish to share my tale with you.”
“Why don’t you share where you will be going, then, and why you have released everyone?”
“I am going home, Amon.” The graceful figure slowly rose to stand in front of the throne.
“You must understand, I meant no harm from the very beginning. My exploration vessel crashed on the surface of your planet, so many millennia ago that I have lost track of the time. I alone survived and was further devastated when I discovered the communication device we carried was irreversibly damaged during the incident. I knew that if I were ever to hold the hope of returning to my own kind, I would be forced to survive the eons ahead until the technology necessary to signal my people came to pass.
“My race is compatible with the biologic
al life forms on earth, but to exist for any length of time we must evolve as our host species evolves. And, to do that, we must upgrade our ‘DNA’ as you call it, with your blood. I have often regretted the fact that my bite is fatal for most humans, but I did what was necessary.”
“You regret killing people?” Edward blurted out with emotion, his shaking hands fumbling on the combination lock of the silver case.
“I believe your own kind kills indiscriminately to accomplish what is necessary as well. I have taken very few lives by comparison. I merely wished to live until your race had adequate means for me to send word to my own world, so that I might return. They come for me even now.”
“Then you were a parasite, feeding on the human race,” Alana said softly, her tone strangely understanding. “Couldn’t you have used your superior intellect to advance the human race so you could reach the stars more quickly?”
“I may have known how to use the tools of communication our species employed, but I did not know how they worked or how to manufacture them. Tell me, Aziza,” he took one small step toward the group and Amon was stunned by the fact that this strangely enigmatic creature would have remembered her after all this time.
“You may know how to use a telephone or drive a car, but if you found yourself crashed on a desert island with nothing but the sand, sea and jungle around you, would you know how to build these things?
“That is not to say I didn’t attempt it, of course. I inspired your kind to achieve in many ways, though I found they were especially susceptible to superstition. Religion was the most ideal way to manage them. I remember well the desert dwellers I instructed on pyramid building, as do you, Amon. When that sacred resting place for the Chosen was destroyed, strife broke out among my followers there. I took only my most devoted members of the priesthood and we sailed to what they would come to call the New World. We were in the jungles, then, surrounded by new blood and tribes of people who were eager to learn. I taught them to worship the stars and create a calendar. Their people carried my legend north where they built great landing strips for my star ships and welcoming icons in the harsh rock.”
“It was to no avail. I was as much alone as the day I came here, and reconciled to the fact that I must bide my time.”
“You have always been there, always among us?”
“I have evolved alongside your species from the very day you took your first steps. But I had not realized, until now, how much mankind had also changed with me.”
“Why do you realize this here with us?” Amon asked, just beginning to understand the magnitude of his epic confession.
“I see that Edward has discovered the building blocks for the secret to immortality and, in time, his research will change the world.” He nodded at Alana’s brother.
“Amon, you have finally claimed the destiny you were denied for so long…and Alana will give birth to the daughter you created one day ago when you found each other again. She will be the first of her kind, a perfect specimen containing both of our species.”
The eerily blended being looked upon the small group with an emotion that resembled a kind of familial pride before he slowly turned his back to them; He walked away from the throne, setting one pale hand on the side door before he addressed them one last time.
“I will be forever gone from this place, rejoining those I left behind. In many ways, Amon, you and I have survived by the same means to meet the same end. You may choose to hate me for the eternity that remains, or you may come to realize that you have the beginnings of an astonishing new world that you have created as surely as I.”
They all suddenly understood there was life to be lived, a new life, one they must strive to nurture if everything they had lost were to hold any meaning at all.
Journal Entry
I watch my daughter grow each day and I have learned a new kind of love--one that I had never thought possible before. At times, I grasp a tentative understanding for the course my mother took and think that I should forgive her. I know now that she acted only out of love, no matter how misguided. Sometimes I think I see her face on a crowded city street, and once I imagined that I caught a glimpse of her figure across the garden of our bayou home.
Still, it is no matter… I know that she must be gone.
Edward has taken his passion for revenge and turned it toward the search for a cure. I admit that I longed for such a thing in centuries past, but, if it should come to be now, I do not know what it would mean for my family. Perhaps evolution should be allowed to take its course as it has all along, for where would I be without it?
This is the last time I will write in my book of memories, because I am no longer alone. My soul has found the place where it belongs, and my heart shares all dreams with Alana now. She progressively remembers more of our history together, as I share my journal with her, though she tells me that the true miracle of our love is this time we have in the present.
I will lay down my quill and, one day, the hand of my daughter will replace my own.
That is as it should be.
THE END
www.kimberlyadkins.com
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kimberly Adkins is an author and avid artist who works with oils, acrylics and water colors. She also spends time song writing and sometimes singing when they make her.
For Kimberly, romance writing is a wonderful and appealing outlet of magic, because passion is truly real, and Fate lines up to reward the faithful who believe that love holds a power beyond our understanding and dreams can have a chance to come true.
www.BookStrand.com
Blood Evolution (BookStrand Publishing Romance) Page 6