by Rayne Reilly
"I didn't know why shifters were being abducted. When the victim's girlfriend mentioned that I smelled similar to the kidnappers, I knew it must have been vampires that were doing the abducting. I pieced it together from there."
"You still haven't told me how you know Dimitri," she added.
Xander paused for a moment before answering. He cast his gaze downward then looked her in the eye.
"He's my father."
Julie put her hands to her head with a gasp. "Wait..what? And you didn't think to lead with this information?"
She shook her head as she looked at him. Xander put up his hands again in surrender. Julie could see he was feeling uncomfortable with the information that he was giving her. She wondered what else he was holding back.
"I didn't want to tell you this way. I wanted to wait until the time was right. But after speaking to the witness, I can see that I need to tell you everything now, even if it means I lose the chance to get to know you better. I'm sorry."
He looked away, and Julie felt a pang of sympathy for him. She composed herself and asked him another question.
"Do you know where the lab is? The secret one?"
Xander turned back to face her and shook his head. "I wish I did."
Julie believed him. She chuckled a little, remembering what she had thought when she met him. Now that she knew the truth she wasn't really all that surprised.
Xander looked at her. "What's funny?"
"When I met you for the first time I noticed that you weren't fully human. I thought I was a little crazy when the thought had popped into my mind that you were a vampire. Now I can see I wasn't so crazy after all," she remarked.
Xander laughed. "Not crazy, just very intuitive. And I'm not just any old vampire...I'm half Pure One like my father."
"What the hell does that mean?" her brows shot up in surprise.
"Dimitri is an ancient Pure One...One of the original vampires. There are only around ten thousand or so of them left on the planet. I was born a vampire. The original vampires - Pure One's- have been around since before mankind roamed the earth."
"Why do they call themselves Pure One's?" She asked curiously.
"They believe they are the original creation of gods and demons. For thousands of years they believed themselves to be the guardians of Earth and in charge of every living thing." Xander disclosed.
"Wow. Okay. So they think that they are better than humans?"
"They originally saw humans as a source of sustenance, that has changed somewhat over the past few hundred years and many Pure One's don't feed directly off humans any longer. They have tried to stay out of view and not interfere with human kind. It is very important that our kind remain hidden." Xander finished. He pressed his lips looking concerned.
"You said you're half Pure One...what is your other half?" Julie asked.
"Human. My mother was a full-blooded human."
Julie nodded. "What other types of vampires are there?"
Xander rubbed his chin, looking a little more relaxed. "Only turned-vampires. When Pure Ones bite humans and give them some of their blood to drink, they become turned-vampires. They aren't as strong as Pure Ones, and they don't require as much blood to survive. They are a weakened version of the ones who bit them."
Julie's curiosity was sky-rocketing with his revelations.
"So you do require blood? Human blood? I thought you said Pure One's don't feed on humans any more."
"I do require blood, yes. Every few days. I use donated blood. I don't bite people, don't worry. Most Pure One's use donated blood as well. Pure One's can't turn everyone into vampires either. Only certain people can be turned without dying from the bite of a Pure One. It has something to do with genetics, I don't know much about it. Some Pure One's don't care about who they bite. Others will choose carefully and get permission, like my friend Oroc, who I hope you will one day meet." He smiled a pearly white smile.
"How come your fangs...is that what you call them?" Julie felt her face flush as she spoke.
Xander gave a nod of his head. "Sure." He grinned.
"How come your fangs are not down all the time?"
"I am part human and in that respect I can force my vampire side to retreat. My fangs, as you call them, come out when my vampire side rises to the surface."
Julie put her hands in her lap. She was filled with a million and one questions.
"What about turned-vampires, do they bite humans?"
"They can bite humans, but they won't turn them if they do. Only the blood of a Pure One turns humans into vampires. Turned ones can live on animal blood, raw meat and that sort of thing. They don't need to bite. They only need to feed every few weeks. They appear mostly human. And as long as they feed the vampire side of themselves, they won't kill. They are not vulnerable to the sun the way Pure Ones are."
Julie looked outside at the warm sunny day, then back at Xander. "You don't seem to have a problem being in sunlight."
"That's because I am not a full blooded Pure One. My human side seems to afford me a few unique things that my father and other Pure Ones don't have. The sun does not affect me. Most of the Pure Ones have abilities I did not seem to inherit."
Julie sighed. Being a shifter, she understood having another side to herself and what it was like to be a supernatural being. She felt better now that Xander had opened up to her. With the big secret between them now revealed, maybe now she could allow her romantic feelings for him show.
She ran a hand through her hair and studied Xander's incredibly handsome face. He looked more relaxed. His mouth curled slightly as he gazed back at her.
"Thank you for telling me the truth," she said. "I appreciate knowing who I'm working with. I still think we should tell Jake what you know about Dimitri. Maybe it will help us solve the case more quickly."
"It may not be such a good idea just yet. Can you give me a day or so to figure out a few things?" he asked.
Julie bit her lip as she thought about the implications of waiting to tell Jake. She understood Xander's reticence to tell him, but neither did she want to see any more shifters being taken.
"Please figure out a way to tell him about Dimitri so that I don't have to do it. God knows what's happening to the shifters out there in some lab somewhere," she said, shaking her head sadly.
"Okay. I will. Thank you," Xander replied warmly.
Julie put her seat belt on and started the car. "I still have plenty of questions for you, but first we need to get to the Medical Examiner's office. I want to see if they have any new information for us about the body that was found."
CHAPTER EIGHT
Megalos-Pharmaceuticals- Portland, Oregon.
Dimitri Megalos stood by the heavily tinted window of his large office. His immaculate designer Italian suit and expensive shoes hid the fact that beneath the polished exterior was a ruthless Pure One-Vampire.
With a blue tooth headset perched in one ear, he growled in frustration at the situation that suddenly lay before him. The information that a shifter's dead body had been found had sent him into a rage. With his hands in his pockets, he exhaled before speaking again.
"Under whose authority did you dispose of it?" His voice raised slightly, his face betraying his simmering anger.He continued his verbal attack against the person on the other end of the phone line.
"You should have disposed of it within the facility. What is wrong with you?"
"I understand, Sir. It was an oversight," a calm, quiet male voice answered. "However, you will be happy to know that we have found a blend that appears to be working to suppress some of the shifter's tendencies. Although it seems that the shifter DNA is quite a bit more complicated than I thought and the synthesis of the drug may not be a 'one drug does all' scenario."
Dimitri folded his arms and looked out the window at the street below. People moved around in clusters, looking small and insignificant. That was just how he saw humans, as well as shifters. Humans were his food. Shifters were the ob
stacle to getting that food.
Meanwhile, he had to deal with the moron on the phone. Green had to understand that his patience was wearing thin. Unfolding his arms, he placed his hands in his pockets and paced around his office.
"So what you are telling me is that you haven't succeeded in creating something that works. Our agreement was that you would come work for the Vampire High Council and help us with the shifter problem. Do you remember our agreement, Doctor?"
"Yes. Yes, I told you that it would not be as simple as just mixing a few recreational drugs together. Humans are much easier to harm than shifters. This species requires more research-"
Dimitri interrupted, his voice deep and angry, "You worked with them, you bloody fool! You assured me that if anyone could create this drug, it was you. Am I to assume you were not telling me the truth?"
"I...Of course I can do this...I-"
Dimitri cut the man off again. "Just fix this. If the F.B.I goes nosing around again, I may not be able to stop them from finding you this time. Got it?"
"Yes-"
Dimitri reached up and pressed disconnect on his headset, hanging up on the man. He ran a hand through his dyed brown hair. "Blithering fool," he muttered as he strolled to his desk and sat down.
The drug needed to be finished soon. He wanted the shifters out of the way once and for all. The entire plan hinged on incapacitating them. He refused to work side by side with humans, deciding instead to turn them into vampires so that it made his work life more bearable.
Turned-vampires did everything for him so that his hands would not get dirty. By altering his appearance, he was able to blend into the human world of corporate America. It was the only way that he could control the important aspects of their long-term plan. He had built his pharmaceutical company to one of the biggest in the area.
With the laboratories in place, he had finally begun the experimentation that he and his cohorts had set out to do all along. In spite of that, he was getting tired of Doctor Green, the lead scientist, telling him they still hadn't perfected the drug.
Green was a human but was a means to an end for Dimitri. And an important end it would be if he succeeded. The current problem of a shifter body being found compounded an already troubling development.
His informant in the upper levels of the F.B.I. had told him that someone had already tipped them off about the drug several months earlier. The F.B.I. agent had done his best to bury the idea of the drug and Dimitri thought he had heard the last of it.
Now his son finally seemed to be connecting the dots, and it was only a matter of time until he was doomed, thanks to Xander's do-good nature. Dimitri would find out who had betrayed him to the F.B.I. and see to it that they paid for their deception. He was sure it was someone on the Vampire High Council also known as the V.H.C.
Within the V.H.C. were the chosen few Pure Ones who were aware of the experimentation on shifters. As a member of the council himself, he knew each and every one of them. They had gone to great lengths to get to this point in their plan and could not let anything or anyone derail them.
After thousands of years on the planet, they knew what had to be done to assure the survival of the Pure Ones. Their way was the only way. It may have taken some convincing of some of the other Vampire High Council members, but he had managed to win a few votes in his favor. His role as a council member in North America was no small feat. There were many Pure Ones who wanted a seat on the council.
With only eight seats on the North American V.H.C., other Pure Ones were always waiting in the wings to take the place of any ancient vampire that fell out of favor with their own kind. Getting vampires to agree with his stance on shifters had taken time.
Now everything for which he had been working was jeopardized because someone was sloppy.
He exhaled in frustration. "I have to take care of everything myself."
***
Drug Experimentation Laboratory- Portland, Oregon.
Doctor Henry Green let out an exasperated sigh as he hung up the phone. His research was going much better than even he had expected. To have Dimitri tell him otherwise was an insult. Henry put his phone in his pocket and adjusted his lab coat. He pulled at his gray goatee, smoothing the hair between his fingers muttering to himself he walked toward the lab.
He may be an ancient original vampire, but he doesn't understand shifter physiology the way I do.
Henry Green was tired of others dictating how the trials should be going. He was the geneticist, not those people.What did they know about shifters? His time around shifters had taught him all he needed to carry out his plan. He had seen what shifters were capable of doing and had worked with the worst of them in shifter rehabilitation facilities.
Managing to find Dimitri and convincing him to let him work in his laboratory had been easy. Dimitri's hatred of shifters almost rivaled his own. They were abominations that needed to be studied and dissected.
He scanned the row of beds where human/shifters of all types were strapped down and sedated. Intravenous tubes and monitors were attached to each of them. Sneering, he watched how helpless they were. His clinical trial of the drug serum had killed one of the shifters so far and he knew that the drug needed more modifications. An assistant on staff had arranged the disposal of the body without his consent, causing the current problem with Dimitri.
He had to admit the Vampire High Council's plan for the shifters was an ingenious one, and it gave him the opportunity to put his talents to good use. But he wasn't going to allow Dimitri to rush him when it came to his life's work.
He would see to it that shifters became a thing of the past and then he would deal with the Vampire High Council.The fact that the V.H.C. considered themselves superior to humans made Henry even more determined to show them who the greater being was. He considered himself a gifted person with exceptional intellect. He had managed to outsmart the S.A.C. he could certainly do the same when it came to blood-sucking vampires.
CHAPTER NINE
Heading back to the car, Julie was disappointed that the Medical Examiner still had no known cause of death for the victim that had been found a few days ago. The M.E. told them that toxicology results would take another day or two.
"I'd hoped that we'd get more information today. I want to know what killed that man," Julie admitted.
"Me too," Xander said firmly.
Julie stopped walking and placed her hands on her hips. She turned to look at Xander.
"What are you going to tell Jake?"
Xander raised one brow.
"What are you going to tell him?" he retorted.
"He should be told who may be behind this and it should come from you, not me. Don't you think so?" she asked.
"Yes, but maybe we should wait until we get the lab results back. Just in case."
"In case what? He needs to know that you are a vampire."
"Does he?" Xander ran a hand through his hair. "I mean, what does my being a vampire change in the investigation? That guy would still be dead. How is it anything but dangerous to reveal what I am? Do you know what the S.A.C will do to me if they find out?"
"The S.A.C think there are no vampires. They won't do anything. They've been telling us for years that your kind doesn't exist."
Xander shoved his hands in his pockets and gave Julie a scolding look that told her the S.A.C knew full well about vampires. Julie removed her hands from her hips and dropped them to her sides.
"Seriously? Okay, this is annoying. Is there anyone aside from me, who didn't know vampires existed until today?"
Xander tilted his head, giving a slight lift of his eyebrows. Removing his hands from his pockets he folded his arms.
"My father...Dimitri believes that the S.A.C know full well that we exist and are hunting us down as we speak. I have seen zero evidence of this and Jake hasn't mentioned anything to me about vampires. So I don't know how much of that I believe. I don't trust the S.A.C., though. They are a suspicious bunch."
&n
bsp; Julie laughed out loud. "This coming from you? The most suspicious F.B.I special agent I have met so far?"
Xander smirked.
Julie added, "I have to say I agree with you. The S.A.C. are a bunch of old and tired shifters who have forgotten to move forward with the times. They still think we should be hiding from humans. Maybe a hundred or even fifty years ago I would have agreed. But not today. People have moved past the need to kill anything that's different than they are."
Xander shrugged. "Maybe. Though it isn't the humans I would be afraid of; it's our species...vampires and shifters.I feel like they will never accept one another. My father raised me and everything he ever said about shifters was filled with hatred. If it weren't for a few kind Pure One mentors along the way to set me straight, I am not so sure we would be standing here talking. Pure One's that are like my father are very dangerous and jeopardize the rest of our kind if they are caught."
"Wow. It sounds like your father is a real piece of..." Her words trailed off.
Xander let out a small laugh. "Yes. He is. You don't know the half of it!"
They both turned and began walking toward the car again. Julie's cell phone rang. She pulled it out of her pocket and answered.
It was Jake and he sounded angry.
"The S.A.C. have asked that the body be taken to their lab. Please tell me you got to the M.E.'s office before now?"
Julie responded. "We're just leaving there now, but we don't have much more to tell you. We're still awaiting toxicology results."
Jake let out an exasperated sigh. "Damn it. I was hoping to avoid their interference for a while longer. Come on back in and update me on what you have found out."
"Sure thing. See you soon."
Julie hung up.
"What was that all about?" Xander asked.
With his sense of hearing and smell being on par with Julie's, he had heard Jake's frustration over the phone.
"Jake says we may be cut out of the equation now regarding information. The bloody S.A.C. is hijacking the case. He's asked us to go back to the office and fill him in."